The Secret Mandarin (10 page)

That evening Robert set up his plant press and opened the drying racks. He carefully labelled each leafy specimen, laid it between thick papers and left the air to do its work. Then he turned his attention to the seeds. He cleaned them minutely with a small brush and put some into tagged canvas bags. The others he laid out to dry. From this I took it that some required airing while others did not. I watched this process carefully, holding open the cloth bags for him and tying the twine tightly. His concentration was intense though he looked very tired. It seemed he never stopped planning. His mission consumed him entirely. I tried to take in everything he was doing. After all, I might as well learn to help. As he piled the last of the bags into a wooden box he looked up, realising that I had watched all the while. A smile broke out on his face and he reached for the lamp to escort me back to my cabin by way of saying goodnight.

Really, I think Robert was stronger than the servants. He kept longer hours and often worked twice as hard. I could see the muscles in his arms as he reached for the lamplight.

‘I can send these back from Chusan,’ he said, indicating the drying racks of specimens. ‘They will be ready then.’

The Formosa Channel was stormy. The boat rocked badly in the choppy swell and Sing Hoo became sick. Wang cooked food as close to him as possible and made it highly spiced. The poor man kept down scarcely anything and vomited over the side half a dozen times each day. The men were berthed with two other Chinese travelling, as I understood it, only to Chimoo Bay. Occasionally at night, above the breaking of the waves, I could hear Sing Hoo wailing in the distance. We were in no danger whatsoever, of course. The water was high and uneven but we could hardly have called it a storm. Sing Hoo, however, was inconsolable.

For several days Robert watched over his specimens as they aired. A knock or a bump could dent them easily so he held them in place with a crisscrossed twine secured to the drying frame with nails. He changed the pressing papers daily, kept his eye on the plants in glass cases and made meticulous notes in his journal. I was eager to help and here and there an extra pair of hands made a difference. Robert often explained the process as he went along. Mostly I simply enjoyed the flowers, but I noticed as my competence increased I could tie knots easily and prepare different seeds for storage without needing instruction. It was pleasant to have something to do.

One evening I was helping with the drying racks when Sing Hoo started to moan very loudly in a cabin along the passage.

‘Do you think we ought to go to him?’ I suggested.

Robert shook his head. ‘No.’

The truth of it was, of course, that Robert would not leave his specimens.

‘It might hearten him to see us,’ I persisted.

Robert shot me an angry look. ‘He has his own people,’ he growled.

I was about to point out that it could not have escaped even Robert’s notice that in no measure could Wang and Sing Hoo be said to be kinsmen, when the ship keeled very suddenly and I was thrown to the floor. Robert fell likewise on top of me and in his attempts to hold the rack upright he snapped off one of the legs. The whole thing tumbled. I was dazed and struggled to my feet. Robert was on his knees with the papers in his hands.

‘We are lucky these are not fully dried and still have some pliancy,’ he said. ‘Only two are crushed.’

As if time had distorted, I got to my feet and helped him stack those we could salvage in a pile of papers. We bound it with twine. I was still reeling, realising slowly that he had less concern for me than for the specimens.

‘Damn this weather,’ Robert exclaimed. ‘I suppose they are safer this way.’ He patted the parcel. As the ship keeled again and we both almost tumbled once more we could hear Sing Hoo’s voice raised in terror.

‘He is not much of a sailor,’ I said.

Robert laughed. Now the specimens were safe he relaxed and, I suppose, realised there would be no harm in indulging me. ‘I expect he will be better when we are travelling overland. I suppose we can go to him now, if you still wish it.’

We made our way along the dark, wooden passage clinging to the rail and entered the Chinamen’s cabin without knocking. Inside Sing Hoo was huddled in a corner. He was shaking and wild eyed, and sprung to his feet,
shouting in a babble that neither Robert nor I could understand. His cabin mates regarded him with plain disgust.

‘Sit down,’ Robert ordered and reached out to take Sing Hoo’s arm. Like a cornered dog, Sing Hoo lashed out wildly, flaying with his arms and baring his teeth. Robert moved more swiftly than I would have expected. In a mere second Sing Hoo was floored and Robert held him there, his foot on the man’s back, his arms held tightly behind. My brother-in-law was competent in hand-to-hand combat—I knew that for myself already, ever since our spats at Portsmouth.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked Wang, who looked delighted at Robert’s assault on his rival and inclined his head eagerly.

Robert removed his foot and let Sing Hoo’s arms go but the man did not rise. He remained silent on the bare boards.

‘It must break soon,’ Robert observed in the direction of the others who had stationed themselves edgily in the opposite corner to the fracas.

There was nothing more to be said so I bowed as I had seen the Chinese do, my hands clasped before me, my eyes lowered, and I wished them all a peaceful goodnight.

Robert was a brute but, I suppose, sometimes he needed to be. That night I dreamt myself as a warrior and I attacked him. I wrestled Robert to the floor. I bound his hands and made him watch as I shredded his stupid specimens right in his face. Then, scissors in hand, Jane materialised beside me.

‘Shush, Mary,’ she said.

And suddenly I wasn’t a warrior any more. I was in a garden, on my knees. I still had the scissors but I used them to prune a rose bush. Coolies were watering the other plants around me. Everyone was Chinese. When I woke again I sighed deeply.

‘That man is driving me crazy,’ I whispered to myself.

What infuriated me was that, despite his hateful behaviour, so often he was right.

It was the habit of the smaller ships in these straits to feed the crew with fish foraged during the sailing but the sea was so unsettled that the nets could not be cast. After days of biscuits and grog the crew became surly. I saw Wang selling small portions of his cooked rice to some of the deckhands—rice that Robert had bought to supply him and Sing Hoo. Robert and I ate with Landers. The captain’s table was stocked with preserved food and after a while even these supplies began to dwindle to a spare diet of salted beef and tasteless crackers over which we discussed the Chinese coastline and, upon occasion, the recent war. Landers had fought, of course.

‘Sorted them out and no mistake,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Imagine refusing to trade! Cheeky beggars!’

As the days progressed I tried to encourage Sing Hoo to eat something to sustain himself, but it was hopeless.

‘Many days more?’ he kept asking earnestly.

All I could do was assure him that the weather would change.

To divert myself from these troubles, I took to visiting Landers on the poop deck. Like all the naval officers I have met, he was fascinated by the stars and he offered to guide me round the night sky once the sun had fallen below the horizon. I never knew that stars rose and set. Landers instructed me good naturedly. To be so competent in making your way in the world as to need only the sky for guidance was intriguing and the man’s relaxed company was pleasant. With Robert I never knew what he might do next whereas Landers was easy—the kind of chap you could rely on.

‘The stars here are amazing,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Landers replied enthusiastically, ‘the sky is a huge map. You can tell the time by the orbits, you know—just like guessing the time of day when the sun is up.’

I enjoyed learning about Orion and Gemini, seeing the moon move across the sky and learning what time of year one might expect a meteor shower or catch sight of a particular planet.

One such evening I was on deck, staring at the sky with him when we hit a squall. These straits were infamous for poor weather but even counting that we had a bad run of it. We moved to the shelter of the poop where Landers gave orders to guide us through the swell and the men set to it. The waves were rising higher and higher. Then, all at once, there was a crash directly over our heads. I screamed as the timber roof shattered and the splintered wood rained down. Was it happening again? I crouched instinctively as a huge, grey mass quivered beside me out of nowhere. The fish was enormous and it seemed to have been stunned by its fall. The rest of the ship was clearly intact. We were not wrecked.

Landers leant over to examine the trawl. He was admirably unruffled.

‘What have we here?’ he said.

‘Is it a shark?’ I asked, rising slowly to my feet again.

‘No,’ Landers laughed. ‘“Is it a shark?” Don’t know the name of it to tell the truth, Miss Penney. Look at the ugly thing. But she’ll cook up delicious.’

He called the bosun who reckoned the catch at thirty pounds, netted it and had it dispatched to the galley immediately to feed all hands.

That evening the captain’s table was fine—the fish was fried and the cook had found a lemon to juice on it. We were ravenous, our appetites piqued by monotony.

‘This is why I love to journey,’ Landers said. ‘Delicious! A fish from the skies, who would have thought it?’

By the time we reached Chimoo Bay and the Chinese travellers had disembarked, the herbarium specimens had dried. Robert packed them in fresh papers, labelled each carefully, put the lot in a large tin and sealed the lid with wax. He pasted the instructions to the front along with the address of the Royal Society. On the dock he commissioned parcel passage back to Hong Kong on an opium vessel at anchor. The box’s onward journey was to be made from there with the first Royal Navy ship returning to London. The seeds were given a similar treatment and dispatched to a nursery in Wiltshire with which Robert had an arrangement.

We were to be at port for two days. The next stage of our journey as far as Chusan Island would take over a week. In the meantime Robert declared his intention to collect more specimens. After some enquiries it became clear that there was no plant nursery nearby, which was most disappointing. It was far easier, Robert said, to talk to someone who knew the local planting.

‘A good hour or two in a nursery can yield more than a week on the hillsides,’ he swore.

‘Robert,’ I asked. ‘Might I come with you?’

Robert regarded me plainly and I could not tell what he was thinking. Then it seemed as if he had made some kind of calculation and he nodded.

‘You must do as I ask,’ he said.

I was excited. This was to be my first expedition on the mainland. The next morning we caused quite a commotion at the dockside, the two of us side by side with Wang and Sing Hoo in our wake. Already we were in a place where Europeans were a rarity and European women practically unknown. For the first mile a curious crowd moved in the same general direction as Robert and I, observing us from a distance. Children gaped and pointed. I felt uncomfortable
in my skirt. Not that it was fancy, or indeed, particularly wide. However, it irked me to see one boy explaining to his younger sister that white women were all shaped like bells and that my legs fitted snugly under its frame. With elaborate hand gestures he made it clear the extent of my limbs and the apparently hilarious size of my feet. Robert gripped my arm tightly and guided me onwards. I was not in any position to remonstrate with the child and would not have lifted my skirts to prove myself, of course, but the turn of my ankle had been commented upon in more than one review and I felt outraged. Robert, sensing this, moved me on firmly.

‘It is only natural for them to be curious,’ he whispered. ‘Pay it no heed.’

As we walked further from the settlement I noticed rats moving in the squalid shadows. There were dingy pawn shops and ships’ chandlers and huge warehouses, their produce piled up on display, the eyes of the merchants expectantly upon us as they stood in the doorway.

‘You want to buy, mister?’ one man asked Robert. ‘Come in and I will prepare some tea.’

‘No, no.’ Robert waved him off.

We walked on. Near the end of the town I spotted two corpses in the street, side by side, covered only with a thin, white cloth, the still outlines clear in the sunshine. They had not started to smell yet. I wondered how they had died. Was there malaria here, or typhoid? But we did not stop. As we reached the very fringes, the crowd dispersed saving one elderly man who continued to follow us most of the day, never coming close enough to hear our conversation but never far enough away to lose sight.

The hills rose steeply and it was not long before Robert spotted one or two interesting plants that had him climbing rocks and excavating root systems. When I suggested
pressing onwards and leaving the men to dig, he insisted that all the work must be done in his sight. Sing Hoo, evidently feeling far better now he was on land, loitered behind Wang so all three men were stationed around the muddy excavation. It was very dull and I was keen to get on. I wondered if we might come across a cottage, or indeed, a family. I had yet to speak even indirectly to a native other than our own servants. The hills were charming and it was in my mind that we might find the elevation for some stunning views.

Robert would not budge, however. He worked carefully. Sing Hoo kept his eyes fixed on his master. Since Robert had toppled him during his screaming fit he had a new respect for my brother-in-law and watched reverently as Robert jotted down Latin names in his journal and made rough sketches of the terrain. Waved on by Robert, who seemed discomfited by my lingering, I decided to climb ahead alone and hiked a further four hundred yards. I rested on a flat rock looking down onto the valley though I stayed, of course, within sight.

Settling to wait I wondered if it was raining in London. At this time of the morning Jane or now, I supposed, Nanny Charlotte, would be supervising the nursery lunch. If I were at home I would only just be rising to a breakfast tray in the small brick house I used to rent in Soho. My maid had been called Mary—a fact that had always amused me. Jane became cross if I mentioned it in company, but I liked that we shared a name. Mary, as far as I know, had done well when I had dismissed her. Jane would not have my staff in the house and I had become too big with Henry to ignore my situation any longer. Without any money coming in and with respectable hopes for my unborn child in mind, I had had to comply. My dresser, who visited me in Gilston Road during my confinement, told me that Mary went to
work for a courtesan in Chelsea when I had disappeared from society entirely. It struck me as a strange hand of cards. I wished I had not met William or better still that I had snubbed him. I wished I was sipping my chocolate and Mary was still in my employ.