Читать книгу The Secret Mandarin - Sara Sheridan, Sara Sheridan - Страница 6

I think my family were glad that I had died. It must have been a relief. Crystal clear, I can see Jane now, wringing her tiny hands while she reads out the news from the evening edition—the first they know of the storm. As her lips form the words she is all too aware that her tidy navy dress with the red buttons is inappropriate attire in the circumstances, and that she will have to unpack the mourning clothes she used when our mother died. She wonders if she will be expected to organise a memorial service or a monumental stone.

‘What is it one does,’ she thinks, ‘when there is no body to bury?’

Robert, her husband, in his dark jacket and carefully chosen cravat, is pacing the thin carpet of their Wedgwood-green drawing room, circling around her like a wiry, wily woodland predator as he listens to the article read out from the paper. It is five weeks after the ship went down and all they have are the scantiest of details—a dry little column about the ferocity of the storm and the notorious waters of the Indian Ocean—fifty souls on board, no survivors and no mention of me.

Even if you are at sea, the weather in England is unlikely to kill you. Drama on the high waters off the Cornish coast or in the North Sea is not unheard of, but fatalities are very rare. Of course, there is plenty that will carry you off. The pox, the cutthroats fired up on gin who will burst your skin for a shilling, or the sheer poverty, the circular fortunes of the slums. If you have no money you can’t eat so the poor are thin, the unlucky starve and, for the most part, the likes of Jane, Robert and I don’t notice. But whatever filthy, threadbare, rat-infested, desperate horrors you might encounter in London, the weather all on its own is unlikely to take you, whatever Miss Austen might have her readers believe about the frailty of English women subjected to a summer rainstorm.

In the Indian Ocean it’s quite different. I can’t imagine Jane cried at the news of my demise. Her soft voice doesn’t waver as she reads the report aloud. My sister does not find it strange or tragic that I have been borne away by the sea. I imagine she thinks of it as the ‘sort of thing Mary would do.’ Always stoic, her dark eyes dart emotionless, like a tame bird. She copes uncomplainingly with everything and causes no fuss. I am the wild one.

She did cry, however, three weeks later, when I came back. I paused at the front door, wondering if I should have sent word from Portsmouth rather than simply a note from St Denis. The doctor had had good English. He made idle chatter as he inspected my bruises and cuts, pressing gently where the skin had swollen.

‘You will be marked for life,’ he pronounced, ‘but you will recover.’

Then he had them feed me bone marrow and a little brandy. Now, weeks later, the bruises were gone but there were scars that still ached. I was back in London after an uncomfortable voyage home on a trading ship. The city was my lifeblood and I was glad to be there, but my heart was pounding too, for I did not know what my family would make of my return. It had been five months since I was here last and I had disgraced them. I reached out and let the knocker strike and then waited.

The maid opened up and revealed my nephew behind her in the hallway. He froze as soon as he saw me and I thought he looked rather like a photograph, a perfect picture of England. His little body was already taut and strong in the image of his father and his skin was so pale in his charcoal grey shorts that his knees seemed somehow luminous against the shiny, dark, wooden floorboards.

‘Aunt Mary!’ he shouted when he found he could once more speak. There was panic rising in his voice and his eyes were wide.

‘Now, now, Thomas,’ I said to comfort him, as I advanced into the house past the plump, open-mouthed serving girl and laid my hat on the satinwood table. The poor child backed away as if I was a spectre and I realised straight away that my note had not yet arrived. They had evidently been mourning me.

‘A good thing that I can swim, don’t you think?’ I said gently, smiling to make light of it.

Thomas was taking lessons at the new pool in Kensington. We had discussed the subject on many occasions and he had vouched that it was his ambition to dive into the deep end from the balcony. Now, far braver than taking a fifteen-foot drop, he put out his hand and touched my cheek.

‘There now,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever believe a bad review, Thomas. Let that be a lesson to you.’

By this time we had been too long without being announced and Jane appeared from the morning room to investigate. She was holding the baby. My baby. I think it was only there in the hallway that I realised how much I had missed him. He had grown in my absence and there was a rash on his cheek. I found I was smiling quite involuntarily as I stared at it. It was a relief to see that he looked chubby and healthy, dressed in a little smock. They had kept their word. Jane hesitated at the sight of me and seemed to deflate—the black skirt of her mourning dress was huge and she too small within it.

‘He must be almost six months old now. He looks well,’ I smiled.

‘Mary,’ she mouthed.

I reached out to hold her in greeting and as I pulled back I saw there were tears in her eyes.

‘I was washed ashore,’ I whispered. ‘I wrote to you but I must have overtaken the letter…’ My voice trailed.

I put out my arms and she gave me the baby. I hugged him close. I never will understand how it is possible to so love a child—a child you cannot possibly know. A new baby. Heavens, a new baby can turn into anyone—a family disgrace or lord of the manor. How ever do you know if you will like him or not? Clutching onto my son, though, after all those months, finally I felt whole again. I felt like myself.

‘What have you called him?’ I asked, giving him my finger to grasp as I stared into his handsome blue eyes.

But the shock of seeing me again had been terrible and instead of replying, my sister folded over and landed on the carpet.

I loosened the stays of her bodice with my free hand. I swear she was as small as a child. My niece, Helen, came out of the morning room in a jumble of mahogany ringlets and black, lace-edged ribbons. I sent her to fetch water and told Thomas to bring a pillow for Jane’s head while the maid fanned my sister’s prostrate form with a copy of the morning paper.

‘I told Mother you couldn’t die,’ Helen said defiantly.

Carefully, I sprinkled water on my sister’s ashen cheeks. As she opened her eyes I couldn’t decide whether she was simply shocked that I was alive or dreading that I was home again. When she sat up the pins in her hair had loosened and a strand fell down like a blackbird’s broken wing. It trembled in the wake of the maid’s vigorous attempts at fanning with the London Times. Jane waved her off to one side.

‘Stop that at once, Harriet,’ she directed. ‘And bring us some tea.’

Harriet had taken the children to the park. The day was bright if a little cold. My sister said nothing as she poured. After the initial exchange of information, there was, I suppose, little to say until the details had been digested. Jane bit her lip. She was thinking. I examined myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I looked respectable enough—my chestnut hair was piled into a bun and my hazel eyes shone bright and healthy. I had healed well. In fact I looked better nourished than my pale sister. I always thought Jane worked too hard and was thin as a waif, albeit a ladylike one.

After a few minutes the front door opened and crashed closed and I heard Robert storming across the hallway—a familiar pause as he removed his hat, coat and gloves. I caught Jane’s eye and a flicker of a smile crossed both our lips. As children and, truth to tell, sometimes even as adults, we used to play hide and seek. Until Jane was ten we could both fit in the cupboard in my mother’s kitchen—behind the loose piles of crockery. Now we said nothing and didn’t move an inch, only sat waiting on the plump pink sofas by the fire. There would be no games today.

‘Jane,’ he roared.

She did not call back to him, only raised an eyebrow and went to the door. I stared into the fire. There was anger in his voice already. It did not bode well. Right enough, Robert’s eyes were alight as he pushed into the room past his wife and stood on the carpet in front of me, staring.

‘After all your indiscretions! Mary, have you no shame?’

‘I was washed ashore,’ I started.

But he was not listening.

‘We have tried everything for you.’

Jane slipped back into her seat. She must have sent a message to the Gardens while I was talking to the children and dandling baby Henry on my knee. Robert never came home in the afternoon except in the middle of winter when it was dark early and his beloved plants could not be tended. I had often remarked to Jane that her husband treated his orchids with more care than his three children.

She used to shake her head. ‘Don’t be silly, Mary.’

I realised that we should have discussed this between ourselves before Robert returned. I also realised that Jane had decided not to.

‘You are reckless, Mary Penney,’ Robert snapped, the fury dripping from his lips. He ran a hand over his dark hair, in desperation, I expect. ‘The worst of it is that you are reckless not only for yourself but for all of us.’

He strode to the chair beside Jane’s and sat down. He was wiry but strong and his body was tense with anxiety. When he was angry he did not blink. Jane tried to calm her husband. I knew that she wanted me to stay, however shocking my return.

‘You do not feel it time enough then, Robert?’ she asked. ‘A few months?’

I hung my head. I could see the difficulty I brought them. They could have done far worse than send me away to start a new life. Many in their position would have.

‘I will go back to the theatre,’ I declared.

At that Robert jumped out of his chair with his cheap pocket watch bouncing against his peacock-green waistcoat.

‘And forsake us all?’ he raised his voice. ‘You go back to the stage and you will be dead to the children. It is enough, Mary.’

He meant it. And in that moment I knew that I’d never act again. Having the baby had changed me. It had changed everything. The day had come and gone when I would risk anything for a chance to play Rosalind. I had been foolish but still my blood rose and I could feel the colour in my cheeks. If I did not leave and could not go back to the stage then I would be a spinster—the children’s penniless, spinster aunt. I was unmarriageable to anyone in polite society for all my tiny waist, my smooth skin and indeed, my talent. Still, I did not want to leave. England was my home and I was sure all that awaited me abroad was a string of second-rate suitors. My choices were limited and I railed against all of them. As far as I was concerned, I had been happy before all of this in London. I wanted to be happy here again.

‘They die in Calicut,’ I said. ‘There is dysentery and worse.’

Jane sipped her tea silently. Between us we had scarcely caught a chill all our lives. When little Helen was only two she had a fever. Both Jane and I had been shocked. We had so little experience of sickness that we had to nurse her from a household manual, learning page by page. Penney women were small but strong. Our mother had been a full sixty years of age when she died.

‘You will not catch it,’ Jane said.

‘We will secure another passage,’ Robert added. ‘We will send you to India again.’

This, of course, would take some weeks and I resigned myself to the decision slowly. For a woman like me there are few options. I had, I realised, come back to London hoping for something that was no longer there—an insubstantial promise of love that I had trusted like a fool—a promise, that, despite everything, I could not believe was truly gone. I had hoped that a few months’ absence, might, at the least, allow me some shadow of the life I had before. I missed my friends in Drury Lane—the bright-eyed actresses and their dowdy dressers, our plump and jolly regulars backstage who accompanied us on afternoon trips to Regent Street and Piccadilly, shopping in Dickins, Smith & Stevens or setting out to James Smith’s to buy umbrellas or fancy parasols. I missed the fun of sherry and shortcake in the early evening and the backstage parties later on, the lazy band tuning up in a side room and the whores plying their trade on our doorstep. If I had expected to return to any of that I was mistaken—in the event of wanting to keep my son respectable, that is. I was at my family’s disposal once more. It hurt. Still there were many women in a far worse position than I.

It’s so easy to fall. From my sister’s house in leafy Kensington, on Gilston Road, it is but a small drop to some damp room down by the river where you grow very thin and are used very harshly. I wanted no son of mine to dwindle to a stick. Too many children, half abandoned, live their lives hungry. Open your eyes and you’ll see them in the filthy, dark corners, angular and ravenous. Even their hair is thin. Their mothers, poor souls, have nothing to give as they disappear into the quicksand, penny whores if they’re as much as passingly pretty and washerwomen if they’re not. Most people of our acquaintance do not even notice the desperation of the thousands, but there are plenty who regularly pawn their clothes for a little bread and would sell their honour, their spirit and their children if they could, for a life less comfortable than a nobleman’s dog.

We were doing our best to salvage my mistake and, with a little stake money, India at least offered a decent chance for Henry (who, raised respectably with his cousins, would be free of my disgrace) and for me (since abroad I might still marry tolerably well).

I moved into my old room at the back of the house. Like a beating heart, in the background the city pulsed with vitality, but I might as well have been in Calcutta for all I could partake of it. I had nothing to do apart from spend time with the children for a few hours in the morning but I accepted that, for Henry’s sake.

‘He has your smile, Aunt Mary,’ Helen said.

‘I am not sure I am pleased by that,’ I told her. ‘Henry has no teeth yet.’

And this set us giggling. We drew pictures with coloured pencils and I kept Helen and Thomas amused with stories. I liked to hold Henry. I allowed myself to dote on him for hours until Harriet came to take him out in the perambulator after lunch.

Then, most afternoons I read an old copy of Moll Flanders and pondered on a woman, fallen like me, and attempting to be practical while indulging a hopeless love. I ran over again and again what had happened and cursed the unfairness of it. Damn William and his upper-class sang-froid that had left me abandoned like this. And yet I did not believe I was capable of settling for what Jane had. My spirit is too unruly. I loathed Robert and his like—their grasping, scraping self-righteousness. The lack of passion. The awful fear of what Others May Think. It seemed to me preposterous that Jane should love him—a man who calculated every step from a very high horse. To Robert what I had done was incomprehensible. For myself, I regretted what had happened, but running over the events in my mind, I knew why I had made my choices. I had been unlucky.

The night Henry was conceived William had been courting me for a year with what gentlemen call ‘no satisfaction’. He took me to his private rooms for dinner. The hangings on the wall glowed sumptuous red in the candlelight. We ate roasted boar with pear relish and crisp parsnips studded with rock salt, all served on silver platters that seemed to dance as the light flickered down from the sconces on the wall. As he downed French burgundy, I sipped champagne and William wove a wonderful spell. He would keep a house for me, he said. Anything I desired. Anything. Of course, such promises of devotion fired a passion in me that was blinding. I lived to be adored and here was a Duke’s son, on his knees.

When I surrendered he kissed me all over and I hardly blushed. In the end he was so gentle that it surprised me. William was a large man and so much of the world that I expected him to make a hearty lover. Instead, ‘You beautiful woman,’ he moaned, the sweat dripping off him as he fumbled like some schoolboy. I should have known then how weak he really was. Instead, his vulnerability touched me and excited by the jewels and promises I took pity on him and forgave his physical frailty. I trusted him completely.

Now, in the cold bedroom at the back of my sister’s house, the pale walls blue in the fading light of the afternoon and my cheeks already wet with tears, I cried for myself and my poor baby boy—whatever might become of us. I was sequestered—all respectable doors bar these were closed to me, and though Drury Lane would have welcomed me back with open arms, I had Henry to consider. It was a sacrifice all right and a shock to find that in six months nothing had changed. Still, I comforted myself that there is always hope and I did not wish for one second that the storm had done its job.

One afternoon about a week after I returned to Gilston Road, Harriet knocked on my bedroom door. She curtseyed, unwillingly, I thought, and held out a tiny salver with a calling card. I expected no visitors and eagerly turned it over to see who might have arrived. My stomach lurched as I read the name—William. A warm surge of hope fired through me. Perhaps everything would be all right after all. I told Harriet that I would come down shortly.

‘Where are the children?’ I asked as she left.

My voice was casual—at least I hoped it sounded so. My hands shook.

‘Upstairs, Miss Penney.’

‘Thank you.’

In the mirror my colour was high, my heart racing. Of course, I had rehearsed this moment—meeting William by chance in public, perhaps in Hyde Park, or seeing him on the other side of the street. But since his absolute abandonment, my letters returned, the long hours of waiting, the humiliation of being shunned, well, I had never imagined that he would actually call. All my thoughts had been directed to being beautiful at a distance. Of taking him by surprise and prompting him to adore me once again. The father of my child was downstairs. And Jane—Jane was out.

I laid my palms on my cheeks and took as deep a breath as I could, confined by my corset. Usually when I acted I did not tie my stays so tightly. The night I met William I had not worn a corset at all. I was Titania, Queen of the Fairies, all flowing chiffon and trailing beads. He had kissed my hand and remarked that the part had become me—henceforth he would think of Titania no other way.

‘Do you think of Titania often, your Lordship?’ I drawled, all confidence.

‘From now on I shall,’ he bowed.

Now, blushing, I hurried downstairs to the drawing room, my confidence much dented since my fairy days. William was standing by the fireplace. He looked as handsome as ever. As I entered, Harriet brought in a tray of tea things and laid them on the table next to the sofa. She curtseyed and left. I kept a steady gaze on the tall figure by the mantle. William did not meet my eye. I would not, I swore inwardly, take him back unless he begged.

‘You are well?’ he enquired at length.

‘Yes.’

‘You look well.’

I waited and in agony indicated the teapot. ‘Might I offer you…’ My voice trailed off.

William nodded. My hands were shaking too violently—I did not want to attempt pouring the tea so I crossed the room and sat down instead. I couldn’t bear it.

‘Monsoon, eh?’ he commented. ‘I expected you to be battered and walking with a limp! Half drowned when the Regatta went down and look at you. You’re some gal, Mary!’

I stared. What on earth was the fool trying to say?

‘William, why are you here?’ I asked.

His eyes fell to the carpet.

‘It was a boy, I heard,’ he said. ‘We have only daughters. My wife has never borne a son.’

My heart sank and I felt a rush of anger. A female child would not have prompted the visit and, clearly, neither had I.

‘The claim of a natural child in such circumstances is strong. I will recognise him, Mary. I have discussed him with Eleanor.’

I got up and poured the tea after all. It would occupy me at least.

‘Eleanor is one of seven girls, you know,’ William continued. ‘It runs in the family.’

It seemed impossible I had ever kissed the mouth that uttered these words. Of course, a wiser woman might have flattered him. A wiser woman might have tried to woo him back. A wiser woman might not have felt anger rising hot in her belly or at least might have ignored it. Not I.

‘And so you plan Henry to be your heir?’ I said, ‘and I will be nothing to either of you. I will sail again for Calcutta. Henry will stay in this house.’

‘Oh, of course,’ William said. ‘Certainly until he is old enough to go to school. I have no objection to it.’

‘You have no objection! No objection! You have never seen the boy, William. In point of fact you have not seen me since last summer and by God, you were not a man of honour on that occasion!’

I was working up a fury. A vision of Henry at twenty-one visiting his half-sisters. Him being whispered of as the bastard child of his wealthy father. ‘To some actress, I heard,’ they would nudge and wink, my name unknown. I saw William an old man, paying the bills, passing on a lesser title. While in Calcutta or Bombay I would outlive a husband I was unlikely to love. I would not matter to anyone.

I thought I might pelt William with the shortbread that Harriet had placed on the tray. Perhaps pick up the poker by the fire and smash something, hit him, anything. Had I survived the shipwreck just for this? I was searching for the words to shame him, ready to launch an attack, when, like the angel she is, Jane swept into the room. She probably saved me from a charge of murder.

‘Your Lordship,’ she curtseyed to William.

‘Mrs Fortune,’ he smiled.

‘I have asked Harriet to bring down the baby so you might see him,’ she said. ‘I hope I have done the right thing?’

It was so like my sister to easily fit in with whatever was going on and simply make the best of it. William looked relieved.

‘Yes, yes. I have told Mary that I will own him. It is all decided.’

‘I have not decided,’ I said.

Jane sat down next to me.

‘Shush, Mary,’ she soothed, before turning her attention to business. She was right, of course. This was the best thing that could have happened for the baby even if William’s offer was somewhat late. Scarce more than a year ago he had said he loved me. He had sworn on his life.

Jane picked up the plate of shortbread and began to serve, passing the biscuits smoothly as she spoke. She, at least, was thinking with logic.

‘Now, your Lordship, might I ask how much you were thinking of annually?’

Money was always tight. When Robert had his first appointment at the Royal Horticultural Society he earned a hundred pounds a year. Before my disgrace I was paid three times as much at Covent Garden—and then there were the gifts. Trinkets, baubles and fancies. Frills and sparkles. A dressing room so full of flowers it made you sneeze. I was never a star but I had admirers, a retainer and a portion of the receipts.

After Mother died I began to give money to Robert and Jane. Five pounds a month sometimes. Robert kept an account so he could repay me. He had an eye to the business of plants. Once when I had scoffed at his obsession, his ridiculous interest in soil types and root systems, Robert pulled out the newspaper and read a report of an auction—prices paid for tropical flowers arrived the week before from the East Indies. It ran into thousands.

‘Rubber, tea, sugar, timber,’ he enumerated, leaning over the dining table counting on his fingers. ‘They’ve all been brought back to London. Tobacco, potato, coffee, cocoa beans. I will find something,’ he muttered, ‘and it will pay.’

At the time Robert’s ranting seemed like the crazy ramblings of a Lowland Scot. Not that Robert had kept his accent. It diminished daily.

‘I will not end up like Douglas,’ he swore, ‘mad, penniless and alone.’

I nibbled the cheese on my plate. You could not argue with Robert about plants and my interest in any case was limited.

The thirty guineas a year most generously settled on Henry was the first money that had come from my side of things in eighteen months. It had been difficult for Robert and Jane, I knew. As in any household, extra money was a boon. So this windfall provided a nanny, covered all Henry’s expenses and, with what William had referred to as his ‘dues for the last several months’, Jane paid for another ticket to send me back to India, for, unspoken as William rose to leave, was the understanding that I was troublesome and the money would only be forthcoming if I was removed. If I had daydreamed of dallying in London, I had been squarely woken from it.

The Filigree was due to sail at the end of the month.

I found myself restless and unable to sleep. Things weighed uncomfortably on my mind. One night, some days after William’s visit, I was late and wakeful. I visited Henry in the nursery but at length I grew tired of watching him and had it in mind to cut a slice of bread and have it with some of Cook’s excellent raspberry conserve. I sneaked down to the kitchen like a naughty child, barefoot in Jane’s old lawn nightdress. I had not bought anything to wear after the wreck and had only the clothes kindly provided for me on the island—Parisian cast-offs, well worn—and some hand-me-downs from my sister.

The slate was cold on my feet. The air in the house heavy and silent—not even the ticking of a clock. The bread was wrapped in cloth and, as I unwound it, I jumped, spotting Robert, red-eyed, crouching beside the stove. He looked worn out—far more than I. His skin was as white as the nightshirt he was wearing over his breeches and the curl of hair that protruded at the top of his chest, clearly visible above the linen collar, looked dark against it.

‘Sorry, Mary,’ he said. ‘I could not sleep. I have not rested properly in days.’

The house, it struck me, was a shell and we were restless spirits within it, seeking respite. Though I could not see what reason Robert had to prowl about in the dark.

I had planned on opening the heavy back door and sitting on the step while I ate. Everyone in the family had done that from time to time. It was something of a tradition. That night it was too cloudy to see the stars but the moon was almost full. It cast an opaque light through the misty sky.

‘Well,’ Robert said, ‘perhaps we should have some milk?’

He brought the jug from the pantry and poured. I cut two slices of bread and spread them thickly with butter and jam. We swapped, pushing our wares over the tabletop. I glanced at the door.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘We should sit down.’

There was a breeze in the garden. Very slight but delicious. The fresh air blew in as we sat companionably on the step listening to the church bell sounding three. As the night wears on, the chiming sound echoes so. It is different once it’s dark and the streets are quiet. I thought this could not be anywhere but England. The touch of cool night air on my skin and the bells in the distance. There were those, I knew, who had been out half the night at cards or dancing or worse, who were only now in some dark carriage on their way home. Robert shifted uncomfortably. He had a fleck of jam on his forearm and when I pointed it out he brought his arm to his mouth and sucked the sweetness away. This left, I noticed, a pale pink mark on his skin.

‘I am going, Mary,’ he said. ‘I am commissioned.’

Robert did not look at me though an eager, almost shy, smile played around his lips. He had been given his chance. I assumed that he meant that the Society was sending him abroad to collect botanical specimens. It had been his ambition for some time.

‘Where will you go?’ I asked.

‘China. Camellia sinensis. Tea plants.’

‘You would think they had tea plants aplenty at Kew.’

‘Those are Indian tea plants, not Chinese ones. Besides, I am not going for the Society,’ Robert whispered. ‘They do not pay anything more for travelling and whatever I bring back is not mine. I will go for the Honourable East India Company, Mary. Whatever new plants I collect outside the terms of the commission will belong to me. I will sell them to a private nursery for profit.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

Robert stared towards the garden wall. ‘More than one year certainly. Perhaps two or three. If I can find something it will make us, Mary. And of all the specimens to come from the Orient I cannot believe I will not make a discovery there.’

He had not touched the food. It lay in his hand. When Robert had secured his position at the Society it seemed the pinnacle of his career. This was a leap beyond. For all his efforts to fit in, all his fears about my behaviour, Robert was audacious on his own part. He worked every daylight hour. I could not find it in my heart to begrudge him this success, however difficult a time I was having.

‘Well done,’ I said, holding up my milk in a toast. ‘I hope you discover something England cannot live without!’

We tapped the cups together, though as he drank I could see a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. Robert had fought hard to scramble up the rough battlements of advancement. He had become everything his betters wanted—a hard worker, a respectable family man and a prudent and underpaid employee. Now he had thrown over the Royal Society and struck out for himself. A mission to a barbarian land would be both dangerous and difficult. It was daring. No wonder he couldn’t sleep.

‘If anything happens to me,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I worry that they will fall. They will go hungry. I could stay at the Society, of course, but then we will never have the money to move up. I want the children to marry well.’

A few months ago I would have considered these words only proof of Robert’s desperate desire for his own advancement, but now, having Henry, I recognised the father in him. Besides, he showed more spirit that evening than I had seen in him in ten years.

‘No one could know more than you do. You have an eye for it—a feel for the plants that has brought you this far and will take you further. Strike out for yourself, I say, Robert. Jane will not be for starving if I know my sister. You are doing the right thing,’ I promised him.

He took a hearty bite of his bread and jam.

‘They do have a fund at the East India Company,’ he murmured. ‘For widows.’

We said no more.

The following afternoon I took the atlas from the morning room and sat by the fire. The tea countries are hilly and lie away from the coast. Robert was set to travel far further than I. With my finger I traced the outline of Madagascar, the largest island in the Indian Ocean. Réunion lies to its east. My fingers followed the fine line of the coast. The map seemed too small to contain the vast, empty sea, the expanse of beach, the two miles to St Denis that I had been led on horseback, half dead. What lay for me in the maze of streets behind the tiny black dot that marked Calcutta and where was my sense of adventure that I so strongly resisted its allure? Unlike Robert I would not travel in unwelcoming territory. Bohea and Hwuy-chow were closed to white men. In India I would be welcomed with open arms.

I stretched my hand across the open page, my thumb on London, my fingers lighting on Calcutta and Hong Kong, Robert’s landing point in China. We would be very distant. Weeks of sea between us. William did not love me any longer. He had dispatched me as easily as a lame horse or a hunting dog. Bought and paid for.

That week, Jane ordered two trunks from Heal’s. We packed them together.

‘I did not expect to love Henry so much,’ I admitted.

‘You cannot have everything you want, Mary,’ she chided me.

The truth was I had nothing I wanted. Neither William nor Henry nor my life on the stage—only a sense of doing what was expected. I had fought against that all my life.

‘Mother should have come with you to London,’ Jane said wistfully, as if that might have kept me in check.

I giggled. Our mother loved a rogue. She probably would have encouraged me with William, if I had the measure of her.

‘It is not funny,’ Jane retorted. ‘You treat everything as if it doesn’t matter. It matters when you hurt people, Mary.’

But as far as I could make out I had hurt no one but myself and I let the matter drop, instead lingering by the open window. I love the smell of the horses wafting up as they pass. You can only just catch it. The sound of hooves and the whiff of hide that reminds me always of the stables near our old house, where we grew up, Jane and I. She and the children were my only family now and there was a bond between us that I simply could not bear to break.

‘Do you remember Townsend Farm?’ I asked. ‘Father took me there once. He let me ride a pony. A white one.’

Jane stiffened. She banged the lid of the trunk down. She thought we were better off without him. Mother had agreed. ‘We might have no man about the house but we can do for ourselves,’ she used to say. I missed my father though, for I had been his favourite. I was not quite eight and Jane perhaps only ten when he died. Why he had cared for me more, I have no idea. Nor why he had taken almost a dislike to my sister—for he had been fierce with her, though I could not remember much of it. The bonds between a family are strange indeed. Jane had sheltered me when many would have slammed the door in my face and yet she would not talk about him. If I mentioned our father she simply clammed up, drawing her protective armour around her. Saying nothing. Our children make us so vulnerable. Our parents too, I suppose.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Jane snapped. ‘I have to pack, Mary. I have to organise everything. There is no time for your dilly-dallying. Come along.’

I had lost everything aboard the Regatta—love tokens, letters, my books and clothes. With William’s money in hand, such replacements as could be procured arrived daily now, packed with sachets of lavender and mothballs. A notebook wrapped in brown paper from Bond Street as a present from Jane. Ribbons, a shawl for the evening, a bible, two day dresses from King Street and an evening gown from Chandos Street—everything I would need. And in Jane and Robert’s room the other trunk, identical to mine but packed with a few clothes, a box of Robert’s favourite tobacco from Christy’s (‘No one mixes the same,’ he always blustered as he exhaled), some botanical books, a map, more books to read on the journey (all on the subject of the Chinese). And then items for sale—prints of London and of the Queen for the homesick abroad, copies of Punch and the London Illustrated News.

Robert continued to be tired. I saw him mostly at dinner if he came home in time. He was working out his notice at the greenhouses in Chiswick, determined to leave everything in his care in perfect condition. Our only family outing was to a photographic studio in Chelsea ten days before we left. We took two hansom cabs and as the horses picked their way along the colourful West London streets I sat straight and eager with Henry asleep on my lap. I was delighted to see the city at last after being confined for so long.

On the route there were market stalls and apothecary shops, rag-and-bone men and ladies out walking. Even the strong smell of hops from the brewery delighted me but the children scrunched up their noses and complained. Towards Chelsea my attention was drawn particularly by old posters for the plays at Drury Lane that had opened weeks before. The tall, dark lettering on thin paper captured me immediately—Othello and The Dragon’s Gift at the Theatre Royal. I wondered who was on the bill and if the parties were as much fun backstage as they used to be. Did the ladies still drink laudanum for their nerves and the gentlemen arrive with garden roses and boughs of bay? Helen followed my line of sight, seeing my eyes light a little, I suppose, on the thin, posted papers, and being a girl who was naturally curious, she leaned forward to read more easily and Jane, sitting next to her, pulled her daughter firmly back against the cushion as if out of harm’s way.

At the studio Jane held Henry in her arms with Robert behind us, and the older children to one side. In the photograph none of us is smiling and Robert looks exhausted, the sepia only highlighting the bags beneath his eyes and the indents of his hollow cheeks. At least we would have a record of the last weeks we were together.

‘You will carry it with you, Father?’ Thomas asked.

‘All the way to China,’ Robert promised. ‘And when I return you will have grown beyond all recognition. You will be tall and speak Latin perfectly.’

A mere five years before, we had had another photograph taken. John, their eldest boy, now away at school, was held by Jane while I had little Helen on my knee. All of us were in jovial spirits that day. I was playing Cleopatra at the Olympic and had not yet encountered William. The kohl around my eyes had been almost permanent that summer. The dark lines did not come off fully until weeks after. They lent me an air of mystery, a sense of the forbidden.

In India the women wear kohl. They paint their skin with henna and scent themselves with moonflowers. The Hindus will not eat animals. But there is gold cloth as fine as muslin and as many servants in each household as work a whole terrace in London. I studied Hindustani from a book. ‘Fetch this. Bring that.’ So I could give orders. But still I did not want to leave.

In my last week, Jane and I engaged the nanny together. Harriet whistled as she worked, very pleased at this development, for it would greatly ease her workload. Jane’s too, I suppose, for though principally in the house for Henry, the girl would also undertake duties for Helen and Thomas. With William’s money in hand, Jane had placed a newspaper advertisement. She offered ten pounds a year plus board and we had over twenty enquiries.

We interviewed the more eloquent applicants—a mixed bag of ages and experience. Jane was drawn towards the older women, the more prim the better. They came with references, of course, each woman from one wealthy family or another fallen on hard times and making her way as she could. For my part, I wanted laughter in the nursery and I took to asking, ‘What games do you play with your charges?’ The women Jane favoured invariably faltered at this. I despaired that we would come to an agreement and I had to concede that it was my sister, after all, who had to live with the successful candidate.

Our second but last interview was with a younger girl, new to the city. Her name was Charlotte. As soon as she opened her mouth and we heard her accent, it was as if a spell was being cast. Charlotte came from a little town not ten miles from where Jane and I were raised. Scarce seventeen and plain, there was a familiarity about her that we liked immediately. As a nursemaid she had looked after a family of two children outside London as well as having experience of her own, large family. ‘There are many at home. I am the eldest of eight,’ she grinned. She was well versed in poetry, I was glad to hear, and her favourite game was hide and seek. On Jane’s list of priorities, Charlotte’s manner was businesslike and respectful and although she had only one reference, it was excellent and, in addition, she was acquainted with many of the farming families we remembered from our childhood. After a fifteen-minute interview, Jane and I knew we had found someone who fulfilled our requirements and we offered her the job.

Charlotte’s trunk arrived later that very afternoon and the children took to her immediately. Jane was quietly delighted at having another servant in the house.

‘You will call her Nanny Charlotte,’ she told Helen and Thomas, proudly.

It seemed to me she might have added, ‘In the hearing of as many of the neighbours as possible’, for to have a third domestic servant in the house was a leap up the social ladder indeed, whatever circumstances had brought about the engagement in the first place. We ordered a uniform of course, and Jane wrote to William to inform him of what she had done. I had no heart to add a postscript of my own.

‘I will miss you horribly,’ I declared as Jane and I mended the last of the packing together, darning stockings and sewing buttons. The five months of the shipwreck was the longest we had ever been apart. ‘I know I will be lonely.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she chided me. ‘We will write every week. India will be wonderful. It is the perfect place for you, Mary.’

My sister lifted the cotton shirt up to her nose as if it was a veil.

‘You will write to me of dusky beauties,’ she twitched the material. ‘And I will write of the children.’

I noticed that she breathed in, smelling the shirt before she put it down. Perhaps the soap and starch reminded her of Robert. The way he smelt on Sundays, freshly pressed, freshly dressed. When she took his arm and they walked together along the crescent, to church. That was how my sister loved her husband—well turned out and in public.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he is getting on. Nurseries pay well for the exotic and this trip will bring in a good fee plus anything Robert can sell on top. God will bring him home again and keep him safe.’

I had no fear for Robert. Nor for myself. After all, I had survived a shipwreck a thousand miles from London and still come home. I am of the view, however, that it was less God’s business and more blind luck. And no one could deny that we were of a lucky disposition, all of us.

‘He will be fine,’ I said. ‘Of course he will.’

When the trunks were packed we had sherry in the drawing room. Robert was booked on the Braganza, due to set sail for China from Portsmouth on the same tide as I. Jane had arranged for us to travel to the port together. She was stoic, of course, but had placed vases of lilies in each room. The funereal scent pervaded the house and matched her hidden mood. Jane might be exasperated by me but we had been close all our lives. This time it was not only I who was leaving but her husband as well.

Robert was late home from work that night. We did not wait for him. Cook sent up sandwiches and we ate them by the fire, toasting the cheese until it bubbled and spat. It made us thirsty and Jane had more sherry than usual.

‘He must have made you feel wonderful,’ she mused, drawing her hand down to smooth her navy skirts. ‘Did you like it? What William did to you?’

I sipped my sherry and let it evaporate a little inside my mouth before I swallowed. Jane and I had never discussed our carnal desires and the truth was, William was not my first, though neither of my other lovers had inspired me to the heights that the ladies talked of in the dressing rooms. For myself, if anything, I missed being held. I like the strength of a man’s arms around me. I avoided my sister’s question entirely.

‘Do you like it, Jane?’

Her eyes moved up to the shadows dancing on the ceiling.

‘I love my children,’ she said, ‘and it does not last long.’

It is true that I had never seen Jane flush for Robert. They never seemed like lovers—did not lie in bed all morning or dally on the stairs. But this was a step beyond what I had imagined. It seemed so cold.

‘William,’ I said, ‘was a terrible lover. But I know it can be…’ I paused, ‘very satisfying.’

My sister sighed. ‘Before I married Robert, Mother tried to warn me, but it is beyond imagination, is it not? She said that it was like rolling downhill. But that scarcely touches the truth and makes it sound pleasant. The whole business is just so animal. I think I will never get used to it. A gentleman becomes quite unlike himself. I am lucky I fall pregnant so quickly and can have done with it.’

I was not sure what to say to that. Robert and Jane had been married a long time and they had only three children. If she had fallen pregnant quickly each time, they had perhaps only rolled down the hill on a handful of occasions in all the years.

‘He is doing so well,’ I commented, and topped up our glasses from the decanter.

‘Oh, yes,’ she enthused. ‘God willing.’

My poor darling.

The day we left London it was raining. It rained all day. Jane rose early and saw to it herself that the children were breakfasted and dressed. By eight they were waiting to say goodbye, assembled uncomfortably in the morning room. These are awkward moments, I think, the moments of waiting, the time in between. Robert gave a short speech, advising them to be good, saying he was going away for everyone’s benefit and when he came back he would expect great things of them. Thomas’ lip quivered. Helen stared ahead, emotionless. I said nothing, only climbed up to the nursery where Henry was asleep and silently kissed his little head goodbye.

‘Look after him,’ I said to Nanny Charlotte.

‘He’s a lovely baby, Miss. Don’t you worry about him,’ her syrupy vowels soothed me.

I gave her a shilling and stumbled back downstairs. I shouldn’t be leaving. I shouldn’t be leaving. But here I was, almost gone, my sister kissing my cheek, her hands shaking.

‘You can trust me with Henry,’ she whispered. ‘Never fear,’ and then she turned and kissed Robert smoothly—a mere peck to which he scarcely responded. It was difficult to go. I stood on the steps until Robert grasped my arm and guided me firmly to the kerb.

When we mounted the carriage I could see the shades of self-doubt in my brother-in-law had hardened into righteousness. At the Society he had always been treated shabbily—a garden boy made good. Brave men have been broken that way. Douglas risked his life to bring fir trees from Canada and the seeds were left to rot in the Society’s offices. He died unrecognised for his achievements, an irascible old drunkard, half blind and mad. Robert was now privately commissioned.

‘On our way! On our way!’ he said gleefully as the carriage pulled off. It seemed he had no thought for those he left behind.

Jane remained dry eyed. The last time I saw her was through the coach’s moving window. The children were bundled upstairs. She stood on the doorstep of her house alone. It felt to me as if too much was unsaid, that words would have helped her if only she had used them. Everyone dear to me was now in that white, stucco house on Gilston Road and all in Jane’s care. For the second time that year I waved goodbye as I watched the house recede. When the carriage turned left I saw my sister spin round and walk through the doorway, the sweep of her skirt slowing her haste. She slammed the black door quickly, almost before she was fully through. And we were gone.