The Secret Mandarin. Sara Sheridan

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 other ships in the bay. I took a deep breath or two, as if I were waiting in the wings, and decided that I would try my best. The island looked lush and green and not at all the unpleasant, arid rock I had expected. Perhaps my time in Hong Kong would pass well if only I could make myself amenable. By now I could make out individual faces in the mass of people going about their business. Wide-faced women were selling noodles and hot tea. Coolies with wooden chests balanced on their backs were scurrying from the docked vessels towards the town. And rows of Englishmen in red uniforms wearing pith helmets to protect their flushed faces from the sun were overseeing the activity, checking papers and directing traffic. Back from the main bustle young Chinese girls in brightly-coloured satin dresses lazily eyed the soldiers.

      I watched Barraclough disembark, the first to stride down the gangplank and towards the harbour master’s office with his lading papers in hand. I was glad to come down after him and stared icily as Robert shook his hand and we said goodbye. Perhaps Robert did have some notion of what had gone on, for Barraclough was in Hong Kong a week or more and Robert did not invite him to dine.

      As we watched our trunks unloaded and waited for the Ward’s cases to be unbolted and brought down, Robert breathed deeply with satisfaction. I crept off to one side, finding my land legs hard to come by. The ground seemed to sway and I felt quite in a haze, as if I had taken a swig of laudanum in the backroom at the theatre as was pleasant from time to time. Along the dock there was a wooden shrine with a cloud of incense around it and I decided to try out the solid ground and make for that. There were two old women there on their knees before it, praying, one whirling a wooden clacker and the other beating on a brass gong. The latter approached me and offered a handful of incense sticks, gesturing for payment. I scrabbled inside my purse for a small coin, which she inspected, shrugged her shoulders and then carefully stowed away. I suppose it is normal to use English coins around the world. The island was ours, after all.

      ‘Come, come,’ she gestured me forward and then put her hands together to indicate that I should pray at the shrine.

      As I came closer I saw there was a figure, roughly hewn from wood, and small pots with tropical flowers beneath gold and red Chinese script. There was so much incense already stuck into piles of sand, I was surprised that the whole thing had not ignited, but I decided that I would light my own anyway as a gesture, foolish perhaps, for my arrival. As the sticks started to smoke I made a wish, concentrating hard on it. Please let us be all right, I prayed, as the fragrant smoke wound like a spell around me. Henry and I. Jane and the children. Let us all do well. And it was only as I walked