The Secret Mandarin. Sara Sheridan

concede that it was my sister, after all, who had to live with the successful candidate.

      Our second but last interview was with a younger girl, new to the city. Her name was Charlotte. As soon as she opened her mouth and we heard her accent, it was as if a spell was being cast. Charlotte came from a little town not ten miles from where Jane and I were raised. Scarce seventeen and plain, there was a familiarity about her that we liked immediately. As a nursemaid she had looked after a family of two children outside London as well as having experience of her own, large family. ‘There are many at home. I am the eldest of eight,’ she grinned. She was well versed in poetry, I was glad to hear, and her favourite game was hide and seek. On Jane’s list of priorities, Charlotte’s manner was businesslike and respectful and although she had only one reference, it was excellent and, in addition, she was acquainted with many of the farming families we remembered from our childhood. After a fifteen-minute interview, Jane and I knew we had found someone who fulfilled our requirements and we offered her the job.

      Charlotte’s trunk arrived later that very afternoon and the children took to her immediately. Jane was quietly delighted at having another servant in the house.

      ‘You will call her Nanny Charlotte,’ she told Helen and Thomas, proudly.

      It seemed to me she might have added, ‘In the hearing of as many of the neighbours as possible’, for to have a third domestic servant in the house was a leap up the social ladder indeed, whatever circumstances had brought about the engagement in the first place. We ordered a uniform of course, and Jane wrote to William to inform him of what she had done. I had no heart to add a postscript of my own.

      ‘I will miss you horribly,’ I declared as Jane and I mended the last of the packing together, darning stockings and sewing buttons. The five months of the shipwreck was the longest we had ever been apart. ‘I know I will be lonely.’

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ she chided me. ‘We will write every week. India will be wonderful. It is the perfect place for you, Mary.’

      My sister lifted the cotton shirt up to her nose as if it was a veil.

      ‘You will write to me of dusky beauties,’ she twitched the material. ‘And I will write of the children.’

      I noticed that she breathed in, smelling the shirt before she put it down. Perhaps the soap and starch reminded her of Robert. The way he smelt on Sundays, freshly pressed, freshly dressed. When she took his arm and they walked together along the crescent, to church. That was how my sister loved her husband—well turned out and in public.

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘he is getting on. Nurseries pay well for the exotic and this trip will bring in a good fee plus anything Robert can sell on top. God will bring him home again and keep him safe.’

      I had no fear for Robert. Nor for myself. After all, I had survived a shipwreck a thousand miles from London and still come home. I am of the view, however, that it was less God’s business and more blind luck. And no one could deny that we were of a lucky disposition, all of us.

      ‘He will be fine,’ I said. ‘Of course he will.’

      When the trunks were packed we had sherry in the drawing room. Robert was booked on the Braganza, due to set sail for China from Portsmouth on the same tide as I. Jane had arranged for us to travel to the port together. She was stoic, of course, but had placed vases of lilies in each room. The funereal scent pervaded the house and matched her hidden mood. Jane might be exasperated by me but we had been close all our lives. This time it was not only I who was leaving but her husband as well.

      Robert was late home from work that night. We did not 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