The Secret Mandarin (20 page)

After four more days of journeying, our mandarin friend disembarked at one of the small villages beyond Che Kieng, taking over half the contents of the hold with him. I stood on deck, watching with surprise as the men hoisted three coffins on deck. They loaded them onto a cart and Wang explained that the mandarin was delivering these caskets to his family burial grounds nearby. The delivery of coffins was not considered a priority in Chinese households and often years would pass before the trip was made.

I was to discover that the coffins were often not buried at all but laid out above ground in the family plot. This man might be making a journey that had been hanging over him for some months or even years. On my part, I had not realised we had slept so close to the mandarin’s dead relations, stowed directly beneath our
quarters. I am sure that I might not have slumbered so soundly had I known. No wonder the poor man did not feel sociable and resided alone in his cabin in an opium haze.

As the mandarin departed I noticed Sing Hoo was dallying on the dockside and, as well as buying some leafy, green vegetables for our congee, he seemed to be selling a small bag of rice to a local village man. He looked shiftily in my direction, hoping no doubt that I had not realised the portent of his transaction. The rice was either ours or belonged to the boatman as Sing Hoo, like Wang, carried no provisions of his own. When the few
cash
were handed over another fight broke out. I could not make out whether it was about the price agreed or some change that was due. Standing beside me, Wang sighed.

‘I do not want,’ he said, his eyes darting towards Sing Hoo below us. ‘He will have us murdered by someone he swindles. I do not want to be murdered.’

I could not help feeling Wang had a point. Later Robert found him packing his things in the hold, intending to leave. By coercion only, Robert bought him out, promising a bonus on the journey’s completion.

I, however, was of the view that Sing Hoo was incorrigible. Nothing seemed to make the slightest difference to his behaviour. He simply took whatever punishment was meted out to him, while still selling the contraband nonetheless. We had cast our lot, though. We needed to keep both servants with us, be they bound to the expedition by love, trust or money. Sing Hoo knew our secret and that meant he had to stay. Still, Robert locked the
cash
box, hid the key and it was clear, to the satisfaction of both Wang and the boatman, that Sing Hoo was no longer trusted even if he was not to be dismissed.

As we proceeded onwards the land became hillier and there was a general air of dilapidation. Abandoned pagodas littered the slopes in various stages of disrepair. It was a strange place. Many families seemed to have their burial grounds between Che Kieng and the town of Kiang Nan. It seemed to me we were travelling through the Dead Lands. Some coffins were left above ground and had been there so long that wild roses were growing over them in a tangled mass, as if the earth had come up to meet the dead.

I have never been fond of horror stories or ghosts. Robert had no such qualms and the notion of a good yarn from beyond the grave appeared to boost his spirits. He tried to draw me in, bringing up first the ghost of Hamlet’s father and then the story of the Borgias. In these grim and shadowy surroundings, where coffins littered the landscape, I became jumpy.

‘Please don’t,’ I begged like a ten year old, as we walked by the boat in the twilight before supper. ‘It makes me afraid.’

‘But surely you must enjoy the death pact at the end of
Romeo and Juliet
? I thought that would appeal to you, Mary.’

‘It does. But of spirits from beyond…’ I shuddered.

‘So might you be perturbed if one of these coffins was to creak slowly open and the bones of the head of the Dynasty were to sit up?’ he teased, his voice low and theatrical.

When he tapped my shoulder lightly I pushed him and, I am ashamed to say, a squeal left my lips.

Thereafter, for several days I confined myself to the barge, declining to take up Robert’s offer of a constitutional walk along the bank. I felt as if I left the moving boat the dead would cling to my ankles. It made me maudlin and I thought again of home, my mind drawn back.

‘I bought my father a marble gravestone before I left,’
Robert confided one day. ‘It is thirteen-feet high. When I ordered it from the mason he tried to sell me something smaller. He said my father was only a servant. But I wanted his grave marked properly. It was the least I could do. He taught me everything. He was the only one ever to teach me. Everything else I have found by trial and error.’

I expect we were both of us thinking very much of home, and fathers too. All those no longer with us, whose influence was keenly felt.

Then after a grim week, slowly the scenery brightened and even the food improved. The hills became more majestic, and I came out of the cabin and sat on deck to enjoy it. Robert apologised for his schoolboy pranks in the Dead Lands and tempted me onto the towpath to walk with him again. We talked for hours. Our conversations were of our days in Hong Kong and our time in Ning-po. Of the day we shaved our hair off and became Chinese. Of the foods we missed most from England (all, we realised, of the sweet and creamy variety) and the sensation of sleeping on a proper bed, with proper sheets. And, best of all, of bathing in an enamel bath with hot water and (oh, heaven!) soap.

‘Nettle soap,’ I decided. My maid used to buy smooth nettle soap from an apothecary in Chiswick. It left my skin like alabaster.

Over the days, as we went higher, the air felt clear and thin. Time passed and we came closer to Hwuy Chow Foo, following our progress on the map when we started in the morning and before we lay down at night.

I was below deck reading when our pleasant journey was interrupted by an absolute howling. I swear, it was like a banshee. As I jumped up and rushed out to see what had come to pass, I witnessed Robert screaming on deck and
jumping up and down. I felt frantic. Had some dreadful new calamity befallen us? As I looked round in panic I checked that there was nothing wrong with any of the men and the boat was unharmed. Then I realised that on the contrary, Robert was not upset. He was in ecstasy. He was pointing ahead.

‘My God,’ he said, recovering his faculty of speech. ‘On the hill. Look, Mary.’

Ahead of us I stared up at the mountains and, realising what I could see, I felt excitement rising in my belly. There on the slopes were the first of the tea plantations. I felt like screaming with exhilaration, as Robert had. It shocked me and I held my tongue. Instead, we stood together on the deck, watching and hardly able to form a sentence between us. Within three li the emerald hills were littered with tiny farms.

‘It is here. It is here,’ he breathed at last, and I grasped his hand, squeezing it tightly.

The tea countries were upon us.

We set up near Hwuy Chow Foo for some time. I was pleased that the dogs in the streets no longer barked at either Robert or me. Our Chinese diet meant that now we even smelt local. Despite the occasional craving for hot chocolate and Welsh rarebit, I had become accustomed to tea with no sugar or milk; to spring rolls and egg rolls and congee; to noodles doused in soya sauce with chickens’ feet and to roasted pigeon that arrived with the head on.

Robert took rooms for us at a local inn, having decided that staying in the centre of the town was too risky and we were better out of the way. The inn was dreary. What furniture there was, was worn, but our rooms were large and clean. Sing Hoo cooked for us—his cooking was much more palatable than our first night’s meal of over-salted vegetables and fatty pork which we agreed immediately was not to be repeated.

‘I’d pay
not
to eat the filthy stuff,’ Robert swore.

And, in fact, we did, for the arrangement he came to with the innkeeper allowed Sing Hoo use of the kitchen at a fee roughly equivalent to what it would have cost to order our food there anyway. We deemed it money well spent.

Much of the time we ventured abroad, travelling mostly by bamboo sedan chair, our knees and feet swathed in oiled paper to keep us dry in the rain and our heads covered by
an umbrella whatever the weather—for the sun was harsh when it wasn’t raining. We were fortunate there was little military fortification in the area and, after our experiences in Che Kieng and Hang Chow Foo, we were relieved to be able to wander easily around the town and up into the farms surrounding it with little threat of a military presence, for it was only the very occasional company of soldiers that marched through.

In the hills we passed streams of coolies carrying wooden boxes full of tea, headed eventually for Shanghae, the main port for the region. There was no better way to transport this cargo along the treacherous mountain paths than on a man’s back. Where the path narrowed to a single track the men stood precariously balanced to one side to let us pass. They were perilously close to the edge of the mountain, but seemed unperturbed by the danger.

‘Lord, that’s risky,’ Robert commented, ‘but I expect they have it in the blood.’

I drew many of the coolies in my notebook. Some balanced their tea boxes on long wooden sticks when they rested rather than allowing the chest to sit on the damp ground and risk it becoming tainted by moisture. To my mind, the men seemed too old and frail to be carrying the heavy loads at all—so light themselves that a strong breeze might topple them. I did not share Robert’s faith in their sense of balance.

Our first trip was made to the hill at Sung Lo Shan. This was a pilgrimage. High above the plains, the hill was where tea was said to have been discovered. I had by now read a good deal of the
Ch’a Ching
and could provide Robert with information from each of its three volumes. Some of the legends were lovely. I especially enjoyed the story of the eighteen tea trees maintained solely for the Emperor’s use and also the information regarding the plant’s medical
applications. Tea was thought to help heart disease, to be good for the kidneys, and to increase fertility in women. The leaves were chewed and applied to chilblains to ease the pain. I passed on all this and Robert made notes here and there, although only if he felt the point in question had a valid industrial or medicinal use.

It was at Sung Lo Shan one bright day that we finally found the yellow camellia. We had passed many tea farms. Mostly they were smallholdings of four or five acres, a down-at-heel farmhouse attached. Near one of these Robert spotted a garden with an orchard and we decided to stop and take a look. The lady of the house, wizened and elderly, lived with her two sons and their families—ten of them crowded into a tiny space. They treated Robert like royalty, maintaining a hunched appearance throughout his visit and addressing him as ‘Your Eminence’. We stretched our legs in the garden, the children remaining silent, standing in a ramshackle line and eyeing Robert with awe.

And then I spotted it. To one side, grown quite by chance among the plum trees—a glossy-leafed camellia absolutely covered in yellow flowers. I recognised the plant immediately.

‘Robert,’ I said excitedly. ‘Look. It is your camellia.’

‘Oh, well done,’ he breathed. ‘Stay calm now.’

This made me smile. I was not quite so far gone that I was set to fit over a flower. He casually called the old woman over and said nonchalantly that the plant had caught the eye of his secretary and he would like to buy it. After some haggling, they settled on the figure of two silver dollars—a fortune for the family, but nothing compared to what it was worth in England. Under supervision Wang and Sing Hoo dug it up and placed it into a creaky old tea chest, which had been provided. On the way back to our lodgings it was the camellia that rode in Robert’s sedan, with him
pacing behind, urging the bearers not to allow it to rock from side to side. We made a curious sight no doubt.

‘Be careful. Careful,’ Robert instructed the bearers testily, before turning to me and proclaiming, ‘Mary, it is a prize. A
prize.
Though I did not find it, Mary. You did. And it is a treasure.’

That night we stayed up past midnight taking cuttings and pressing one or two of the custard-coloured flowers. Robert examined the plant minutely, making plans for when he could collect the seeds.

‘This plant is important then?’ I asked.

‘Of course. It is on my list of the ones most likely to sell well. It is beautiful though, is it not? We have camellias in yellow now! Who would have thought it? I had hoped to find one but I had not been sure.’ His eyes were gleaming.

Our stock of plants was growing. Also in Robert’s care were a beautiful white gardenia, which smelled of paradise, a sunny, double yellow rose, some cotton plants he had found sown between the tea, a white glycine and some dwarf trees, which in the end, he decided not to keep, as at home these were considered in bad taste and are most unfashionable. The yard of the inn had rich soil and Robert kept the specimens in sundry pots. This transformed the barren courtyard into a thriving nursery so that after a fortnight or two the tumbledown building looked quite attractive from the outside.

Best of all, to our amazement, the local tea farmers welcomed Sing Wa and were completely open about their business, allowing us access to the farms and the processing rooms where the tea was dried and treated. We had not been sure how they might react but in the event it was easy for us, and the men were unfailingly generous, probably due to the lack of soldiers in the area. The Chinese military was notoriously fierce and punishment was
uncompromising for common men and mandarins alike. Free from any direct threat, Wang presented Robert as an eccentric, rich Northerner obsessed by tea, who wished to set up plantations on his own land. The farmers had little to do with mandarins, even those in the area (who seemed both few and distant), and they were honoured to have the chance to meet a fine gentleman, especially one so keen to learn their art. We paid a silver dollar or two, greasing palms, smoothing our way.

‘
Thea viridis,
’ Robert muttered, almost as if it was a prayer.

We had missed the crops being gathered for the first two harvests of the year—the first, tiny, precious leaves in April, which commanded extraordinary prices, and the second, in May, which was the main export crop and had been processed before our arrival. The final gathering, however, was of the lowest quality, picked for the Chinese market and that was underway. We watched like hawks.

All this time, recovered from his beating, Sing Hoo was in good spirits. Hwuy Chow was his home province and he admitted that it was good to be back among everything that was familiar to him. He proposed to visit several of his relations who lived to the south and west of Hwuy Chow Foo, not as far as Mo-yuen. This would take several days’ travel and Robert put off the trip, saying he would give Sing Hoo leave to organise a visit towards the end of our sojourn when the work was done. Meanwhile the man struck up a liaison with a maid. One day we arrived back from the tea farms earlier than expected to find him idling with her, a peony in her hair. Robert was furious—such behaviour in London, after all, would throw both parties on the streets. I laughed, ordered tea and dismissed them from our presence.

‘Heavens, Robert, let them have their fun,’ I said. ‘He has done far worse than this and got away with it.’

‘If we did not need him he would be gone,’ Robert replied irritably. ‘I hope that peony was not from one of my plants.’

On another occasion, arriving again early, we disturbed Wang in Robert’s room with two men who, we surmised, had paid to see the great mandarin’s quarters. They fled on our arrival, leaving Wang shamefaced and Sing Hoo smug. The see-saw of their fortunes seemed to have one up, one down at all times. I knew Wang bargained rice sometimes and had seen him spirit away smaller items though, of course, Sing Hoo was far worse. This time, Wang, to his credit, apologised though he did not disclose the amount of money he had gained from the transaction. Robert blustered but he took no action. The offences were trifling and he had too much else on his mind. The profusion of information seemed to leach his attention and mine. Between us we filled notebooks with drawings and descriptions.

Quite apart from the tea, the colours of some of the hillside flowers were beautiful—green, glossy leaves with deep purple and red petals, the light musky scent of which belied their brazen, exotic colours. Other times the leaves were pale lime and framed lacy, delicate, white blossoms tinged with peach and pale rose. These smelt of the fruit yet to come. I wished I had a greater palette in my watercolour boxes to capture everything.

One night Robert arrived back at the inn with a bottle of rice wine that he had Sing Hoo take to the stream to chill. He was excited, unable even to sit down at first, pacing around the room, full of energy.

‘I have bought boxes of tea seeds,’ he announced, almost incredulous.

It was exactly what he had hoped for. All the plans were coming together.

‘How did you manage it?’ I asked.

Tea seeds were like gold dust in the region and their sale was highly restricted, but Robert had befriended a farmer and had sealed the matter by claiming they were for his ‘estates’ in the North and he could not leave without having them, no matter the price.

‘It will take two months,’ he declared, ‘but the man seems reliable.’

The boxes were to be ready after the harvest and the farmer had given Robert clear instructions about how they should be treated. The seeds were to be sown allowing four feet between each shrub for the optimum yield. Robert, naturally, thrived on these details. From the tea gardeners he found, at last, the answers to the questions he had written in his notebook at the beginning of the trip.

‘It is fulfilment, Mary. Completion,’ he said eagerly, and this delighted both of us. Robert’s mission was rapidly becoming a resounding success.

For my own part, I found myself drawn to the land. We were now set to stay a while and I resolved to enjoy it as if I were on a holiday. The clean air of the beautiful green hills rolled for miles. The sunsets were silent explosions of turmeric and syrupy flame. There was a serene simplicity to this place that reminded me of endless childhood summers. I wondered how I had ever lived in a city the size of London, in a city where it was so grey, and in such close proximity to people. Here I spent the majority of the time on my own by choice. It no longer even surprised me to see the man who stared back from the small looking glass in the corner of my room or who was reflected when I leaned over the still clear water of a hillside pool. It is strange that what seems at first alien becomes second nature in the blink of an eye.

I wished Jane could see this place, though I don’t expect she would have taken to it quite as keenly as I. There was part of me that was still childish—that still wanted to swim in the pond down the hill and eat blackberries on the way home until the juice stained my chin. Even at the age of eleven Jane had berated me.

‘A lady never rushes her food, Mary,’ she scolded.

‘Exactly,’ I said, not slowing down with the berries one bit.

I wondered if Henry would like it here—now well past his first birthday, no doubt plump and, I hoped, happy. I was sure he would. But I did not dwell on him or indeed on my sister either, and though I thought of my loved ones often, the disturbing dreams stopped and there was no longer a gnawing sensation of regret or discomfort. I found a lightness in Hwuy Chow Foo that allowed me to let them go more easily for a while.

Some afternoons I walked away from the farmed land towards the trees on the horizon. There I climbed up and rested among the shady branches to watch the harvesting far off in the distance. One day I happened upon a pool and jumped in to swim in the icy water, my skin tingling with the cold, my ponytail loose and fanning out behind me like a dark cloud. It was beautiful—a place of heady, simple pleasure.

When the tea was harvested, it was sent to be dried. This took several days and every available space was taken over—cottages, barns and outhouses filled with each man, woman and child, all playing their part in the process.

Robert rose early. He followed the bamboo baskets, brimming with greenery, down to the shallow, iron drying pans, which were set up indoors over furnaces. The barns and cottages were smoky as there were no proper chimneys, only a tiny flue installed in each premises. Even the walls smelt musky.

When the harvested tea arrived the leaves were tossed lightly over the heat for five minutes and then rolled by hand, three or four women to a table. Their nimble fingers danced over the foliage twisting it again and again until a green juice was extracted and the leaves were only a quarter of their original size. Then the tea was left to air outside, shaded if the sun was high and hot for, we were told, it must be done gently.

Once this process was complete the leaves were tossed back into the pans and stirred using bamboo brushes for an hour and then left in flat baskets over charcoal. The tea by this time was not a bright, live green any more, of course, but for their own use the Chinese did not add any additional colour and in this regard they disdained the green tea to which we were accustomed—the kind made for export.