The Secret Mandarin. Sara Sheridan

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      ‘Actors!’ I declared as the men laughed. ‘They do take the whole business rather seriously, don’t you think? Did you as much as notice the famous tights, Mr Llewelyn? That’s what I want to know.’

      Robert cut in, of course, as soon as the laughter subsided. ‘I shall tell you the story of the cultivation of the potato now,’ he announced and diverted the attention away from me just as the cheese came to the table.

      Although I sighed inwardly, I do admit that the details of his tale did appear more interesting somehow at sea than they ever had in the drawing room at Gilston Road.

      When the ship’s bell struck ten Robert walked me to my cabin door and bid me goodnight.

      ‘I enjoyed myself,’ I said. ‘Thank you for letting me attend.’

      In my cabin, alone again as I pulled off my gloves and considered getting ready for bed, I heard a footstep on the corridor. I waited a moment or two as it receded and then checked the door. At the footplate Robert had left two books. One was on the subject of the Han Dynasty, the other an examination of Chinese porcelain production. I took them in greedily and flicked through the pages. It was difficult to sleep in the heat. Even in the dead of night it was humid and uncomfortable. I often read until my eyes were dry with tiredness. It was comforting that this gift meant Robert was set to forgive me a little and was entering into the spirit of the peace pact I had hoped for.

      In the second tome a detail caught my eye—an unusual china plate with a star pattern. At dinner the captain had mentioned how different the stars were when he viewed them from the south and I thought to show him what I had found. Perhaps he might be able to identify the stars in the illustration. We had a long way to go together. I grabbed the book and left my cabin once more.

      In the moonlight I crossed the deck and rapped on the captain’s door, not waiting for an invitation to enter. I had left him so lately that I still expected there to be company in the room. As it turned out there was. The cabin boy. As the startled child ran past me, a flash of bare flesh and rags, it struck me that he could not be more than twelve years of age. His breeches were not fastened properly and I could smell a grown man’s sweat—the smell of sex on his skin. My blood ran cold.

      Barraclough squared up with his shirt tails trailing. He ignored the boy’s flight entirely.

      ‘Ah, Miss Penney,’ he said. ‘Can I help you in some way?’

      I am no prude and no innocent either. I know of such things. Unlike Jane, I have moved in many circles and some are circles of the night, of gambling dens and seedy brothels, of smooth young boys and richer men. There were reasons Robert did not wish me to admit to my life in Shaftesbury Avenue, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Talent might not be thoroughly unrespectable but some of the places it can take you are. This child had been tampered with. I thought of the bruises I had seen on his arms and legs over the weeks, his treatment at the equator, the way he had fled from me when I offered to bind his wound and now this. Barraclough was despicable. Had he done this every night of the voyage? Had he dismissed the company he entertained at dinner in order to terrorise this child? And if I accused him openly what might he do? Buggery is no mild offence. At home they hang you. For the captain, the stakes could rise no higher. I did not want to corner him and make him fight. I only wanted to save the boy if I could.

      ‘It is nothing. It doesn’t matter,’ I said and left at once.

      The child was nowhere to be seen. I ducked inside my cabin with my mind racing. My only point of appeal for injustice was to the captain. On the water they are as kings. I thought of telling Robert. I almost did but the captain was the captain and Robert cared for no one.

      The next morning I approached the child on deck at his duties. He was afraid and lashed out at me.

      ‘Go away!’ he hissed.

      ‘What is your name?’ I tried.

      He regarded me plainly.

      ‘I am Mary,’ I said.

      He hunched his shoulders, clearly calculating whether talking to me could cause him any harm.

      ‘Simon,’ he said. ‘I am Simon Rose. Please leave me alone, Miss. They will beat me.’

      No child should have to endure such wickedness but on board there was little I could do. I resolved, however, to take whatever action I could think of. When the invitation came to join the captain’s table that night I declined. I declined every night from then on.

      Perhaps a week later, Barraclough passed me as I strolled on the deck. He tipped his hat. ‘We miss your company, madam,’ he said.

      ‘Manners maketh not the man,’ I replied, gliding on. ‘I have seen what you have done.’

      He did not answer and kept away from me then.

      ‘Lord, Mary,’ said Robert, some time later, when he realised finally that I was avoiding the captain. ‘You are never at ease. What fuss is it you are making now?’

      I almost rebutted him. I almost told him, but it would have done no good. He was not a person who cared for cabin boys and servants, actresses or illegitimate sons. I had no more power to help the child than my sister had had to help me. I offered what little I could but the child would not accept even a scrap of food from me (for I tried that) or the whispered offer that he might, if he wished, sleep outside my door for protection.

      When Robert later wrote the memoir of his travels he did not dwell on the voyage. He said, I think, that his passage of four months to Hong Kong was ‘uneventful’. After all, of more interest to his readers were his wanderings in China, the allure of the East and the plants he found there, along with some account of the people. The book sold well. It secured his children’s education and saw Gilston Road polished and repaired, hung with fine curtains hand-embroidered in Soo Chow and fitted out with intricate papers on the walls. I can see Jane pulling her cashmere stole around her, enjoying the spoils. Of course, I was not mentioned—his companion on the uneventful voyage. He did not tell of the storm at the Cape nor mention any of the crew. Those days are unrecorded. The late night games of rummy in my cabin. The night we ate spices off the coast of Alleppey. Or the day Simon Rose’s body was committed to the Indian Ocean, covered in bruises and swaddled in sackcloth, for the child did not even have a hammock to be buried in and had slept on the bare floor.

      After that I retired to my cabin for the rest of the voyage, tiresome though it was to be closeted and alone. I read and pondered, thinking often of my baby, wondering about his progress and hoping Nanny Charlotte was right and he was fine. The tiny porthole allowed me to daydream, my eyes on the cloudless sky and my heart in London still. It was a heavy burden. I decided to write to Jane when we got there.

      By Hong Kong I was the only person on board who had not been off the ship in eighteen weeks. The air in the bay was dripping with humidity. I put on my most fitted corset for the disembarking, aware that I would be noticed and commented upon. I piled up my hair and wore a hat. The atmosphere was so full of water I noticed every hot, heavy movement, my legs damp with sweat. Still, as the lush, green bay grew closer my heart pounded. I looked up at the Peak, making out one or two houses being built.

      ‘Bamboo scaffolds,’ Robert said delightedly. He had brought up his binoculars. ‘An excellent idea. Ingenious.’

      My notice, however, had fallen to the dock, which was coming steadily closer. It teemed with tiny figures despite the fact there were only five СКАЧАТЬ