Sara Sheridan - The Secret Mandarin

‘ Allons nous à St Denis, ’ the old man said. ‘ Il y a un docteur. ’

I think my family were glad that I had died. It must have been a relief. Crystal clear, I can see Jane now, wringing her tiny hands while she reads out the news from the evening edition—the first they know of the storm. As her lips form the words she is all too aware that her tidy navy dress with the red buttons is inappropriate attire in the circumstances, and that she will have to unpack the mourning clothes she used when our mother died. She wonders if she will be expected to organise a memorial service or a monumental stone.

‘What is it one does,’ she thinks, ‘when there is no body to bury?’

Robert, her husband, in his dark jacket and carefully chosen cravat, is pacing the thin carpet of their Wedgwood-green drawing room, circling around her like a wiry, wily woodland predator as he listens to the article read out from the paper. It is five weeks after the ship went down and all they have are the scantiest of details—a dry little column about the ferocity of the storm and the notorious waters of the Indian Ocean—fifty souls on board, no survivors and no mention of me.

Even if you are at sea, the weather in England is unlikely to kill you. Drama on the high waters off the Cornish coast or in the North Sea is not unheard of, but fatalities are very rare. Of course, there is plenty that will carry you off. The pox, the cutthroats fired up on gin who will burst your skin for a shilling, or the sheer poverty, the circular fortunes of the slums. If you have no money you can’t eat so the poor are thin, the unlucky starve and, for the most part, the likes of Jane, Robert and I don’t notice. But whatever filthy, threadbare, rat-infested, desperate horrors you might encounter in London, the weather all on its own is unlikely to take you, whatever Miss Austen might have her readers believe about the frailty of English women subjected to a summer rainstorm.

In the Indian Ocean it’s quite different. I can’t imagine Jane cried at the news of my demise. Her soft voice doesn’t waver as she reads the report aloud. My sister does not find it strange or tragic that I have been borne away by the sea. I imagine she thinks of it as the ‘sort of thing Mary would do.’ Always stoic, her dark eyes dart emotionless, like a tame bird. She copes uncomplainingly with everything and causes no fuss. I am the wild one.

She did cry, however, three weeks later, when I came back. I paused at the front door, wondering if I should have sent word from Portsmouth rather than simply a note from St Denis. The doctor had had good English. He made idle chatter as he inspected my bruises and cuts, pressing gently where the skin had swollen.

‘You will be marked for life,’ he pronounced, ‘but you will recover.’

Then he had them feed me bone marrow and a little brandy. Now, weeks later, the bruises were gone but there were scars that still ached. I was back in London after an uncomfortable voyage home on a trading ship. The city was my lifeblood and I was glad to be there, but my heart was pounding too, for I did not know what my family would make of my return. It had been five months since I was here last and I had disgraced them. I reached out and let the knocker strike and then waited.

The maid opened up and revealed my nephew behind her in the hallway. He froze as soon as he saw me and I thought he looked rather like a photograph, a perfect picture of England. His little body was already taut and strong in the image of his father and his skin was so pale in his charcoal grey shorts that his knees seemed somehow luminous against the shiny, dark, wooden floorboards.

‘Aunt Mary!’ he shouted when he found he could once more speak. There was panic rising in his voice and his eyes were wide.

‘Now, now, Thomas,’ I said to comfort him, as I advanced into the house past the plump, open-mouthed serving girl and laid my hat on the satinwood table. The poor child backed away as if I was a spectre and I realised straight away that my note had not yet arrived. They had evidently been mourning me.

‘A good thing that I can swim, don’t you think?’ I said gently, smiling to make light of it.

Thomas was taking lessons at the new pool in Kensington. We had discussed the subject on many occasions and he had vouched that it was his ambition to dive into the deep end from the balcony. Now, far braver than taking a fifteen-foot drop, he put out his hand and touched my cheek.

‘There now,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever believe a bad review, Thomas. Let that be a lesson to you.’

By this time we had been too long without being announced and Jane appeared from the morning room to investigate. She was holding the baby. My baby. I think it was only there in the hallway that I realised how much I had missed him. He had grown in my absence and there was a rash on his cheek. I found I was smiling quite involuntarily as I stared at it. It was a relief to see that he looked chubby and healthy, dressed in a little smock. They had kept their word. Jane hesitated at the sight of me and seemed to deflate—the black skirt of her mourning dress was huge and she too small within it.

‘He must be almost six months old now. He looks well,’ I smiled.

‘Mary,’ she mouthed.

I reached out to hold her in greeting and as I pulled back I saw there were tears in her eyes.

‘I was washed ashore,’ I whispered. ‘I wrote to you but I must have overtaken the letter…’ My voice trailed.

I put out my arms and she gave me the baby. I hugged him close. I never will understand how it is possible to so love a child—a child you cannot possibly know. A new baby. Heavens, a new baby can turn into anyone—a family disgrace or lord of the manor. How ever do you know if you will like him or not? Clutching onto my son, though, after all those months, finally I felt whole again. I felt like myself.

‘What have you called him?’ I asked, giving him my finger to grasp as I stared into his handsome blue eyes.

But the shock of seeing me again had been terrible and instead of replying, my sister folded over and landed on the carpet.

I loosened the stays of her bodice with my free hand. I swear she was as small as a child. My niece, Helen, came out of the morning room in a jumble of mahogany ringlets and black, lace-edged ribbons. I sent her to fetch water and told Thomas to bring a pillow for Jane’s head while the maid fanned my sister’s prostrate form with a copy of the morning paper.

‘I told Mother you couldn’t die,’ Helen said defiantly.

Carefully, I sprinkled water on my sister’s ashen cheeks. As she opened her eyes I couldn’t decide whether she was simply shocked that I was alive or dreading that I was home again. When she sat up the pins in her hair had loosened and a strand fell down like a blackbird’s broken wing. It trembled in the wake of the maid’s vigorous attempts at fanning with the London Times. Jane waved her off to one side.

‘Stop that at once, Harriet,’ she directed. ‘And bring us some tea.’

Harriet had taken the children to the park. The day was bright if a little cold. My sister said nothing as she poured. After the initial exchange of information, there was, I suppose, little to say until the details had been digested. Jane bit her lip. She was thinking. I examined myself in the mirror over the fireplace. I looked respectable enough—my chestnut hair was piled into a bun and my hazel eyes shone bright and healthy. I had healed well. In fact I looked better nourished than my pale sister. I always thought Jane worked too hard and was thin as a waif, albeit a ladylike one.

After a few minutes the front door opened and crashed closed and I heard Robert storming across the hallway—a familiar pause as he removed his hat, coat and gloves. I caught Jane’s eye and a flicker of a smile crossed both our lips. As children and, truth to tell, sometimes even as adults, we used to play hide and seek. Until Jane was ten we could both fit in the cupboard in my mother’s kitchen—behind the loose piles of crockery. Now we said nothing and didn’t move an inch, only sat waiting on the plump pink sofas by the fire. There would be no games today.