The Secret Mandarin. Sara Sheridan

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       Chapter Two

      The road was muddy and it slowed us down. The hired carriage, uncomfortable to drive in at the best of times, bumped along the uneven surface. If I lost hold of it, the rug simply jolted off my knees.

      When I had first arrived in London I walked there. It was more than a hundred miles and took me a week. I left home with my mother’s blessing. I was fifteen by then and fired with visions of myself on stage, my name on billboards, fêted. I arrived with a shilling in pennies, a change of clothing and a fanatical light burning in my eyes that made me shine in any part I was offered. I bribed the scene-changers, forced my way into auditions and, once I had hijacked the part, stole the attention of the audience by fair means or foul—anything to act, to lose myself for a few brief hours on stage and bask in the limelight and the applause. My tactics worked. In my ten years in London I had managed everything I had hoped for—even two love affairs that had not inspired a single sentence in the scandal sheets and which, for a long time, saw me better provided for than most young actresses. Then I had met William. I hated being swept under the carpet like this. It was simply not in my nature.

      Robert, by contrast, was in good humour. He clutched his pencil eagerly and wrote notes in a moleskine—comments on the weather or trees he had spotted by the road or over the tops of the brick-walled gardens as we rode out of Fulham, past Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park.

      As we left the reaches of the city we followed a route now familiar to me, scattered with villages along the way—Claygate, Chessington and Esher. The clean air cut unexpectedly through the dampness, my head cleared and I felt calmer. I realised that I had been closeted too long in my sister’s blue back bedroom at Gilston Road.

      ‘I will simply have to make the best of this,’ I thought. ‘Perhaps I am an exotic flower and Calcutta will have me blooming. Maybe my instincts are wrong.’

      Outside the window the puddles splashed as we drove through.

      Robert sat back smugly. ‘Headed for warmer climes, eh, Mary? We English travel well,’ he remarked.

      ‘You are not English,’ I laughed.

      Robert pulled at his greatcoat. I had irked him. So far from home I could see he would enjoy not being placed. He could be born a gentleman, an Englishman, whatever he chose.

      ‘I’m sorry. I did not intend to hurt you,’ I apologised.

      ‘It is the least of what you’ve done, Mary,’ he retorted tartly.

      I straightened the rug over my knees and lowered my eyes. I did not wish to quarrel. We had hours until we reached the port. He drew a small volume from his pocket and settled down to read. Glancing over, I could see maps of India, drawings СКАЧАТЬ