The Secret Mandarin (13 page)

‘We will leave here soon, will we not?’ I ventured.

Robert lit up and licked his lips.

‘Too bitter,’ he commented.

‘It is not long now,’ I drew his attention back.

Robert stubbed out the tobacco. He sat forwards, his elbows on his knees.

‘How do you know?’ he said. ‘We might stay longer.’

‘They have three harvests a year, Robert. I cannot imagine you will miss them.’

Robert nodded. He seemed amused. It did not occur to him that he might need to tell me of his plans.

‘You do know me, Mary. There is no denying it.’

‘I like green tea,’ I said.

‘Well, Miss Penney, you shall have it.’ Robert bowed. ‘Before Hwuy-chow we shall visit Ning-po. There will be an abundance there. And besides, there is a man I must meet.’

I pulled out our map and laid it in front of me. Ning-po was not far—another British trading port further along the Straits. Robert regarded me from his chair.

‘Two weeks, if that, Mary,’ he said. ‘I have taken our cabins.’

When Robert and I arrived in Ning-po we were to report to the British Consul, Mr Thom, but he had been borne away on important business. We hovered near his residence unsure what to do. We had no other friendly name to hand and no recommendation to secure us lodgings. Mr Thom’s Chinese housekeeper, apparently left alone in the Consulate, did not know when her master might return and had the surly manner of one haughty from being left in charge. Then Wang brought us news of another European who lived in the town’s Catholic Mission and we decided to call upon him for advice. It was not far away.

When we arrived at the address we found a rather grand house with a European-style front gate, clustered around which there was a crowd, highly charged with anticipation. We pushed our way through, struck the huge, brass knocker and were welcomed inside by a servant. He showed us into a large, pleasant drawing room. After a minute or two a figure appeared in the doorway. Father Allan was clearly an eccentric. A small man, he had adopted the Chinese way, or so it seemed at first, though quickly I realised that his outfit was, in fact, highly comical. He wore a coolie’s hat with a mandarin’s robe—something akin to dressing a drayman with a fine top hat. Instantly I understood the reason for the crowd at his front door. If an eccentric such
as this lived nearby I would hope to catch sight of him by lingering. Father Allan was unperturbed. His accent was American and his hand movements expansive.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he greeted us. ‘I am Father Allan, but you must call me Bertie.’ He bowed. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here.’

I liked him immediately, while Robert squirmed uncomfortably at the priest’s open manner. We were in a fix, however, with nowhere else to go and Bertie was well informed and willing to have us.

‘You must be the charming Miss Penney.’ He kissed my hand. ‘And Mr Fortune, of course. News travels here at lightning speeds. Come, have some tea and we will walk in the garden. I have an orchard, you know. It will be quite up your street. You are welcome to stay until Mr Thom returns. We have far too many rooms and I will relish the company. Did you come from Chusan?’

In the end, despite Robert’s initial insistence that we take lodgings, we stayed for several weeks in the house and it turned out that Bertie, while audacious in sartorial matters, was a font of knowledge on the subject of the interior. His open manner belied a sharp mind and over the weeks both Robert and I found him an extraordinarily surprising individual. As some kind of hub for the missions Bertie was in correspondence with every Catholic priest inside China’s borders. There were communities everywhere, from Hong Kong to locations so deep in the interior that no white man had ever been there. Unlike the Anglicans, the papists encouraged their emissaries to take to the local customs and this secured excellent inside knowledge. Bertie had details of the location of mountain passes and border crossings between provinces in the Bohea Mountains. He had precious news of jurisdictions five hundred miles inland, of local customs and practices that varied from region to region, of
Buddhist monasteries offering shelter to travellers and of areas blighted by disease. In the library Bertie would sit and talk for hours with Robert taking notes all the while.

Bertie had time for everybody and the knack of seeing, somehow, what people really were about. The house was a fine building but it had not given him airs or made him forget the reason he had come to China in the first place. Every evening he had soup served at the back entrance, a huge, steaming pot that was distributed to the ragged crowd who assembled in anticipation at six o’clock.

‘I cannot sit down to my own dinner without seeing first to those less fortunate,’ Bertie said.

Everyone we had met so far in our adventuring considered the Chinese an untrustworthy race in general, and lazy. Bertie’s beliefs ran against this trend. He embraced every soul that he met. The man brimmed with forgiveness. I felt when I sat with him that he could see through me blood and bone, to my soul.

One day Robert went in search of a yellow camellia. The flowers were on his long list of highly saleable plants that he had most hoped to find in China. This colour was unheard of in Europe and yellow, he swore, always commanded a high price so when it was rumoured they grew near Ning-po he took his chances. Bertie and I spent the day on the mission’s terrace. Bertie had correspondence to deal with while I attempted to write to Jane. We fell, of course, to talking.

‘You are an adventurer, Mary,’ he said.

This made me sad. After all, I was not. I’d been forced to take this voyage.

‘Robert compelled me to come here,’ I admitted.

Bertie leant forward, his grey eyes soft. ‘Oh, I did not refer to your journey. Though it is quite extraordinary. No, my dear, I refer to your spirit. You strike me as brave. I hope
you do not find me presumptuous, but, well, I am. My guess is that the reason Robert compelled you to accompany him is more to do with Robert than with you. My experience is that two hundred and fifty miles is in general enough to outrun any scandal.’

I laughed. ‘It was a scandal, all right. How did you know?’

Bertie shrugged. ‘What else?’ he said as he rang the bell on the table and ordered the maid to bring us some tea. ‘It is my job. Your sister must be very dear for you to bear it,’ he said.

I hesitated. ‘Bertie, would you, might you, confess me?’

Bertie tipped his hat, which on this afternoon was made of silk in the manner of a mandarin’s cap.

‘I should have to convert you first and I have no time for a baptism today,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps it would be more convenient to simply
confide
in me.’

I did not hesitate. Not even for a moment. It was as if I had been waiting for somebody to ask. In Chusan I had spent months alone with no one to talk to apart from Robert, who appeared intermittently in our dingy lodging house. To meet Bertie, with his easy manners and generous company, was like jumping into the ocean after months in the desert. I blurted everything, from my first meeting William to the day Robert and I left Hong Kong. I was so rapt in my own story, I confess, I almost forgot that Bertie was there. It was as if a tide was washing over me and I could not stop it.

‘Oh, I know,’ I finished, ‘it is a hundred sins all at once, Bertie. Adultery, illegitimacy, I have been headstrong and vain. And somewhere I must be proud too for I cannot say I truly regret it all. And Robert will have at me for admitting even the half. I have been utterly miserable.’

Bertie put his hand on mine.

‘He has dragged you three thousand miles on account of an illegitimate child and a talent for the stage?’

I burst into tears. Bertie made the sign of the cross before me.

‘Hush now,’ he said.

And as my tears subsided I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that Mr Thom had been called away and I was in Ning-po with someone who understood. To come so far and be listened to felt like flying—a smooth and fluid movement of the soul.

Once I had spoken of my story I found it difficult to lay aside the subject, I admit it. I felt different. Better. The mornings found me on the terrace sipping tea in the Chinese fashion, the leaves floating in my cup, with Bertie patiently listening before he started his religious duties for the day. It was extraordinary, I thought, that he showed no sign of his knowledge to Robert. In fact, if he was thick as thieves with me before breakfast he was no less cosy with Robert after dinner when they retired to the library to discuss horticulture.

‘And what of the mandarins?’ Robert asked him.

We had Chinese servants and we bought our supplies from Chinese merchants, but Robert was callow in the ways of the ruling classes and I had never met so much as one mandarin.

Bertie smiled and his eyes twinkled. He pulled several books from their places and made a pile of them on the dark table.

‘That is a start,’ he said. ‘But it is only by practice that you will come to understand. They are just men, like all of us, Fortune. Each an individual. They do what they must.’

It turned out that the mandarins were something akin to our own aristocracy or at least our English Ten Thousand—those in charge, those with the power and the money. They were drawn from two tribes with differences in their customs—the Han and the Manchu. The mandarins were
known for their barbarity—even to their own people. During our time in Ning-po Robert spent several hours in the library every day and read almost every book on the shelves there.

It was in the library, in fact, that Robert kept his yellow camellias. The flowers had caused great excitement when he had found them, or at least, possibly found them, for Robert had bought the specimens for five dollars, but they were untested—the buds were tight as tiny cricket balls and the prized yellow flowers only a promise as yet unseen. He became quite obsessed, positioning and repositioning the plants each morning so they had the best light of the day. On one occasion when I came into the library, I found him searching with a large magnifying glass around the side of the buds for a mere wisp of yellow.

‘They are worth hundreds,’ he swore.

‘Only if they are yellow,’ I pointed out. ‘Robert, how could you be so foolish?’

Robert shrugged and settled back down to his book. ‘It is a wager. But I think they will be yellow as primroses. I hope so for then when they bloom they will be worth as much as all the tree peonies and azaleas I sent home together.’

Robert had struck a deal that when the flowers came out he would forward a further five dollars to the boy who had procured them on his behalf. One morning I heard the smash of glass as I sat reading on the terrace. I jumped up and ran into the library to find Robert red faced and furious beside the plant pot of offending blooms.

‘Damn!’ he shrieked, ‘the filthy, Chinese liar!’ He launched a book he had been reading towards the window, one pane of which was already shattered.

‘Robert!’ I shouted. ‘This is Bertie’s house! Calm down!’

‘Oh, I will pay for it, Mary. But damn it! Damn it to
hell! These flowers are white—not yellow. Fetch me Wang, will you?’

With our servants dispatched to find the dishonest flower seller Robert’s temper eased. He sat on a wicker chair by the camellia, peering at the bloom with his magnifying glass as if inside the white there might be yellow petals yet to come. That evening none of us were surprised that neither Wang nor Sing Hoo could find the young vagabond who had taken Robert’s
cash.
He had left town swiftly with the money, no doubt delighted with his scam. Robert clearly thought this behaviour was representative of all Chinese citizens, but for my part, though I left it unsaid, if he had tempted a poor man with a fortune, who would blame the fellow for taking what he could?

‘Sorry, Bertie, about your windows,’ he said sheepishly over dinner. ‘I have instructed the repairs.’

‘Ah, the frailty of man…’ Bertie replied with a twinkle in his eye.

The afternoon after the camellias opened Robert, Bertie and I walked into Ning-po. We had not seen Bertie until after lunch that day for he had been in silent contemplation all morning, followed by his formal prayers, led at a nearby chapel. Bertie’s devotion fascinated me. Sometimes he would talk about the time he spent studying in Rome and how the grandeur of the Vatican, all Bernini’s angels and Caravaggio’s sinners, had seemed at odds to him with what he took to be his own mission. Down by the river we set aside the disappointment of the flowers and Robert and I listened to Bertie talking about the year he had spent in a seminary in Naples as we strolled along the unpaved streets. He talked about his mission in China. At last we stopped on the riverbank and stood staring at the curious bridge across the water. The tide was alternately
so high and then so low that the city engineers had built a floating bridge that rested on huge boats. These rose and fell with the tidal flow, leaving the arches of the bridge always high enough for ships to pass underneath.

‘It is ingenious,’ Bertie declared in admiration. ‘It took them months to construct of course, but it is worth it in the end.’

Robert had not been put off his quest for the camellia. He regarded the moving bridge and the persistence required for its construction, as if it was a message.

‘I will try again,’ he mused. ‘It is out there, somewhere.’

We decided to linger for a while, so I set up my drawing stool and made some sketches. It occurred to me that at home we could build jetties on a similar model to allow ships to dock in tidal water. It was in my mind that Robert should send the drawings home to see if anything might come of the idea. Bertie meanwhile was chattering fluently to the small crowd that had assembled to inspect his outfit. He kept a supply of wooden crucifixes in a drawstring bag and gave them out like lucky charms. When I had finished he inspected each sheet, nodded approvingly and then helped to fold my stool. I had found myself all morning wondering what Jane would have made of Robert’s behaviour, for his temper had been monstrous. I had never seen him so passionate in London—taken up and bookish, certainly, but not with this fire in his belly—all over a flower.

When Jane had told me of Robert’s proposal, all those years before, I had questioned her.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked my sister, the day before she made her vows. ‘Do you love him at all?’

She cast me a glance. To her such questions were a mere annoyance. She wanted to be married. She wanted to be a lady. With Robert these things were possible.

‘Oh, Mary,’ she shook her head as if I was hopeless. ‘I am not afraid of Robert. He is not like
that.
’

An absence of terror seemed a strange basis for a marriage and at fifteen I was still not completely sure what Jane was talking about in any case. I followed my older sister down the aisle and stood by her side. And all I remember is that the bouquet was rosebuds and thistles—a spiky affair.

And now it was clear to me that Robert was
like that.
He had been that way since we left England. Unaccountably, he reminded me of my father, only with Robert it was I who bore the brunt of the man’s dark temper and Jane who was illuminated.