The Secret Mandarin. Sara Sheridan

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СКАЧАТЬ I could see the reason. There was a figure in the drawing room. An old man. He inclined his head and came to the door.

      ‘This the girl?’

      Robert nodded.

      ‘Yes, my sister-in-law, Mary. Rather overtaken by the weather,’ he said.

      My stomach turned over so fast my kidneys felt as if they had been hit. Robert was plotting. The old man eyed me avariciously. Even in the heat my fingers drained ice cold.

      ‘Well, my dear, you have settled upon Hong Kong, then?’ he said. His teeth were yellowing and his thin lips seemed almost blue-grey. He was seventy, this fellow, if he was a day.

      ‘I must get changed,’ I replied coldly and walked up to my room.

      I would rather be a spinster than be sold off, traded in, whatever they might call it. I had lost all my trust after William and the world of love and marriage was no longer somewhere I wished to travel. Marriage carried with it a long list of things I could not, should not do. Some say once you’re married you can do as you please but that isn’t true if you marry someone who wilfully restricts you. You have a great deal less control over a man’s life than he has over yours. I began to look on Robert’s plans for me as if they were some kind of unhealthy obsession on his part. I knew that he had good intentions. He wanted a rich husband to support me. In Hong Kong I must make my living and the pickings for a woman on her own were slim. Robert would leave me with a little money, of course, and I might find a job that would earn a meagre keep, but the drop here if I did not marry was no less than it would have been in London. I tried to ignore this.

      Once I had dressed I sneaked down to the kitchen. Wang was still there, eating noodle soup from a bowl. Between ugly, gulped mouthfuls, he asked a question in Cantonese and the maid rebuked him.

      ‘What did he say?’ I asked.

      The girl had good enough English.

      ‘Stupid man. He ask if you have seen the ship that sails without wind. No such thing.’

      ‘I have seen it. A steam ship. The Sirius.‘

      ‘He wants to work on this ship.’

      ‘Tell him it is in London—a long way from here.’

      Wang continued to eat and as my words were relayed he barely stopped long enough to laugh.

      ‘He come from inland,’ the girl motioned. ‘No good sailor anyway. From Bohea.’

      ‘Bohea?’ I said gleefully. What a stroke of good luck—this was Robert’s other tea country. The home of black tea.

      ‘Fetch the master,’ I directed. ‘Bring him now.’

      Much to the maid’s displeasure I picked up a spoon and tasted the noodle soup from the pot that still lay hot beside the range. Unlike us, the servants ate exotic fare. There were noodles and dumplings, chickens’ feet and rice. The cook made a plum sauce that was delicious. The plums were delivered fragrant, still ripening on the bough. They smelt enticing. Unlike the mangoes and bamboo shoots, the melons and fresh ginger, they reminded me of home.

      ‘Fetch him,’ I motioned to her, ignoring her look of disapproval as I took another mouthful.

      Robert’s acquaintance had evidently left and Robert had retired to his study. He arrived in the kitchen seconds after the maid had bid him and his eyes lit up when I explained where Wang came from. He was so excited that thankfully he did not mention his friend, rebuke my coldness or tell me, as he had become accustomed to, that I really must play the hostess more. Instead he asked Wang a series of questions that he fired like bullets. Wang answered slowly. He knew how to grow tea and how to dry it. He had made black tea but preferred to drink green. Bohea was hilly and the best way to travel in the province was by sedan chair. By the end of the conversation Robert had engaged Wang for his trip. Like Sing Hoo, despite the obvious dangers, Wang was tempted by the money, and, of course, at first he did not fully understand the import of what Robert was to do. While principally interested in tea, Robert asked general questions about geography and did not concentrate overly on the tea plantations that were his real prize. Neither Wang nor Sing Hoo were to know for some time that Robert had their country’s main export in his sights. Meanwhile the man nodded furiously and beamed whenever Robert spoke, for he had been engaged at a monthly rate two times what he might expect in the normal run of things. His information about Bohea would prove invaluable.

      ‘Well done, Mary,’ Robert pronounced and disappeared upstairs once more.

      Sing Hoo and Wang did not take to each other. From the beginning it was clear they were constitutionally opposed. At first I wondered if the natives of Bohea and Hwuy-chow were generally at odds, like supporters of opposing teams, but this was not the case. The men simply disliked each other on sight. I think their rivalry was not helped by the fact that Robert could not tell them apart. While their facial features and general size was similar, I have to say they were not indistinguishable by any means. Sing Hoo was a good ten years the senior for a start. Robert simply did not appear to see this or any other difference and clearly felt they were unimportant in any case as long as one or the other did his bidding.

      The last few days in Hong Kong were punctuated by bickering between the men that degenerated rapidly into sly punches, nips and kicks whenever they could manage.

      ‘I do not fancy a year’s wanderings with those two,’ I jested to Robert. ‘They will kill each other in a month.’

      Robert was unperturbed. ‘Servants,’ he said vaguely, as if the other staff could regularly be seen punching each other and the enmity between the men was perfectly normal.

      Supplies for the trip were piled high in the hallway. Robert had procured a gun, a stove, a tent, a trunk of goods for barter as well as Chinese currency. This last was a strange-looking collection of coins that he secreted in the internal pockets of his coat, in the hollow heels of his shoes, in the false bottoms of his travelling trunks, and sewed into the hems of his trousers. The large coins were silver. The smaller, bronze coins were called cash. They had holes through the centre and came strung together.

      During his time in Hong Kong Robert had bought goods to be sent home and sold. There were ten inlaid chests, several bales of embroidered fabric, sundry porcelain items and a selection of carved ivory and mother-of-pearl fan sticks. He split this consignment in two and organised transport back to London on separate ships to halve his risk. It would be sold for a profit at auction before he returned and provide Jane with a nest egg.

      ‘It will be cheaper still in the interior,’ he said gleefully. ‘I shall send more from there. This is only the start.’

      I admired Robert’s tenacity and determination in Hong Kong. He had arrived with only an outline plan and had succeeded in filling it in great detail. He organised the trip in the three weeks allotted, set up a line of credit for his export plans and tried his best to see me settled. It was to his mind the honourable thing to do and I was glad that we were settled on friendlier terms than on the Braganza. Sometimes in the evenings we talked nostalgically of England as if we had been away for years rather than months. As if we were friends rather than enemies. I have to admit it was pleasant to have such society once more, albeit with a man I scarcely ever agreed with. We came to an uneasy truce, putting the journey to Hong Kong behind us and, in the face of his departure, I found some real forgiveness within me at last.

      Still, it was not all easy. Twice more he brought elderly men to the house to peruse me СКАЧАТЬ