The Girl From the Tea Garden

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ALSO BY JANET MACLEOD TROTTER

  THE INDIA TEA SERIES

  The Tea Planter’s Daughter – Book 1

  The Tea Planter’s Bride – Book 2

  HISTORICAL

  THE JARROW TRILOGY

  The Jarrow Lass

  Child of Jarrow

  Return to Jarrow

  THE DURHAM TRILOGY

  The Hungry Hills

  The Darkening Skies

  Never Stand Alone

  THE TYNESIDE SAGAS

  A Handful of Stars

  Chasing the Dream

  For Love & Glory

  THE GREATWAR SAGAS

  No Greater Love (formerly The Suffragette)

  A Crimson Dawn

  SCOTTISH HISTORICAL ROMANCE

  The Jacobite Lass

  The Beltane Fires

  Fortune in Muscovy

  MYSTERY/CRIME

  The Vanishing of Ruth

  The Haunting of Kulah

  TEENAGE

  Love Games

  NONFICTION

  Beatles & Chiefs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Janet MacLeod Trotter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503941137

  ISBN-10: 1503941132

  Cover design by Lisa Horton

  For Manaal – thank you for your friendship and support

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  SOME ANGLO-INDIAN TERMS

  ACRONYMNS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Shillong, India, 1933

  Adela heard a scream; it was coming from the dormitory. She bounded up the dark wooden staircase two steps at a time and burst through the door. A group of girls stood around the far bed, taunting.

  ‘You have to,’ ordered Nina Davidge. ‘Every new girl must drink it. I drank twice this much last term.’

  ‘Go on, Flowers, drink it!’

  ‘Stinky Flowers!’

  ‘We’ll call you Weedy if you don’t.’

  ‘Please stop it,’ wailed Flowers Dunlop. ‘It’s not smelling nice.’

  ‘Not smelling nice,’ Margie Munro said, mimicking her sing-song Indian accent. ‘You’re so chee-chee.’

  ‘It’s for your own good,’ Nina said, thrusting it right in the girl’s face. ‘Else you’re not one of us. We’re going to teach you how to be a good little memsahib and learn our ways. That’s why your parents sent you here, isn’t it? Pin her down, girls!’

  Adela stood rooted to the spot, heart drumming as her classmates grabbed the new girl by her skinny arms and long plait. Nina was lying about having drunk the stuff herself; she had refused any initiation ceremony when she’d joined the school in the summer term. Her delicate bones needed heat, Nina had told them, and that was the only reason why she was in a dump of a school like St Ninian’s in Shillong with the daughters of non-commissioned officers and box-wallahs. Otherwise, according to Nina, she would be at a boarding school at home in England with girls of her own social class. Better for Flowers if she just submitted and got it over with; then Nina might leave her alone. But Flowers was fighting back, squirming out of their hold and shrieking in protest.

  Margie caught sight of Adela and called, ‘Hey, Tea Leaf! Come and help us.’

  Adela winced. Until last term, plump, pretty Margie, the sergeant’s daughter, had been her best friend. Then tall Nina, a retired colonel’s daughter with her blonde hair in a sleek ponytail, had breezed in and picked Margie to do her bidding. For some reason Nina had taken a dislike to Adela, although she had gone out of her way to be friendly. Margie tried to keep friends with them both, but this term she’d started calling her by the irritating nickname Nina had invented, Tea Leaf, just because Adela’s parents ran a tea plantation.

  Nina turned. ‘Yes, Tea Leaf. Get yourself over here and help with giving this silly patient her medicine.’

  Adela hesitated. If she joined in, it might make Nina be friends with her.

  ‘No, help me!’ squealed Flowers, throwing her a pleading look, eyes wide with distress.

  Adela ran forward.

  ‘That’s it, Tea Leaf.’ Nina gave a malicious little laugh. ‘You hold her head back.’

  ‘Give me that,’ Adela said, grabbing at the tooth mug of frothy urine-smelling liquid. She dreaded to think what all was in it. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Nina was so surprised she let go. The other girls giggled and chanted.

  ‘Throw it, throw it! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers!’

  Flowers Dunlop, a station master’s daughter, stared back like a terrified deer caught in a trap. Then she screwed her eyes tight shut and braced herself for the ordeal. Adela felt a wave of guilt, like the first time she had shot dead a blackbuck with the rifle her father had bought her for her eleventh birthday. Don’t be sentimental, Adela. He had wiped away her tears. All’s fair game in the jungle.

  But this wasn’t fair; her thirteen-year-old schoolmates were picking on the unhappy new girl like a pack of jackals smelling her weakness, and all because her mother was a native. Turning from Flowers, Adela spun round and flung the disgusting concoction over Nina.

  There was a stunned silence. Until that very second, Adela herself had no idea she was going to do it. Nina spluttered in shock. The other girls loosened their hold and Flowers wriggled free. Margie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a nervous snort of laughter.

  Nina, her look murderous, shrieked and launched herself at Adela.

  ‘I hate you!’ She grabbed hold of Adela’s long, dark plait and yanked it hard, scratching at her face like a wildcat.

  Adela fought back, shoving Nina on to the bed.

  ‘Serves you right,’ Adela panted as they tussled. ‘You’re just a big bully.’

  ‘And you’re a wog just like Flowers!’ Nina screamed, digging her nails into her breast. ‘Nobody likes you. Your mother’s a half-caste and your father’s a cad!’

  Adela gasped in fury. How dare she speak about her parents like that! She seized Nina’s long, pale fingers and sank her teeth into them. Nina let out a piercing scream that brought the young house mother tearing into the dormitory.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ Miss Bensham demanded.

  The other girls scattered to their beds. Adela stood u
p just in time to see Flowers slip out of the room unnoticed. Nina burst into tears.

  ‘She attacked me,’ Nina sobbed.

  Miss Bensham bustled forward. ‘Dear girl, your hair’s soaking.’ She wrinkled her nose at the sour smell.

  ‘She did it!’ Nina burrowed into the house mother’s plump hold. ‘And she b-bit my h-hand.’

  ‘Oh my word, I can see teeth marks! Adela, is this true?’

  Adela stood mutely defiant.

  ‘Girls?’ Miss Bensham looked around at the others. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Miss,’ said Margie, ‘she just went for Nina.’

  ‘Whatever possessed you?’ Their house mother looked deeply shocked.

  Adela hesitated. If she told on the others about what they had been doing to Flowers, they would turn on her. At least Flowers had escaped.

  ‘She insulted my parents,’ Adela said.

  ‘I never did,’ Nina protested, her blue eyes reproachful.

  ‘Yes, you did!’

  ‘Nina, what did you say?’ Miss Bensham pushed her to arm’s length and scrutinised her.

  ‘Nothing, miss,’ she sniffed. ‘I don’t even know her parents.’

  Miss Bensham looked at a loss as to what to do.

  ‘It’s not my fault, miss,’ Nina whined. ‘Adela picks on me because she doesn’t like me being friends with Margie.’

  ‘You must all be friends together, girls. Now go and rinse out your hair before teatime, Nina. Everyone else leave the dormitory now; you shouldn’t be up here in the afternoon.’ The girls scrambled for the door. ‘Not you, Adela Robson. You’re coming with me.’

  As Adela followed the house mother out, Nina stuck out her tongue and made a rude gesture that only Adela saw.

  When Adela refused to explain her behaviour to Miss Bensham, she was sent to the headmistress, Miss Gertrude Black. Her office smelled of polish and flowers; a mix of beeswax and the marigolds and wild pink cosmos that stood in a blue vase on a bookcase by the door. For a moment it caught Adela’s attention, and she forgot why she was there.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been hauled in front of the brown-suited, red-headed Miss Black. By no means. Three years ago, in her very first week at the school, Adela had caused panic among girls and staff by smuggling in her pet tiger cub, Molly, in a laundry basket. She had wept for hours when her father had returned and taken Molly home without her. Then there was the time when she had thrown a jug of water from an upstairs window over a visiting missionary. In the dusk she had mistaken the spindly figure for one of the annoying boys from St Mungo’s School who were always daring each other to throw pebbles at the girls’ dormitory windows.

  Miss Black scrutinised her over horn-rimmed spectacles and did not ask her to sit down.

  ‘I must say, Adela, I am dismayed to see you once more in front of my desk. I’m even more aghast to hear that this time it’s not merely your usual high spirits causing trouble, but an attack on another girl. It’s completely unacceptable. I’ve seen the teeth marks on Nina’s hand, and I’ve already had her mother on the telephone demanding that you are expelled. Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t be.’

  Adela felt her cheeks burn. ‘Nina Davidge is a bully!’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  Adela was on the point of telling her about Flowers being forced to drink Nina’s disgusting potion but hesitated. She didn’t want to drag Flowers into her spat with the colonel’s daughter, or Nina would only take it out on them both. Flowers would be summoned and forced to tell tales against Nina.

  ‘She says unkind things,’ Adela replied. ‘She was horrible about my mother and called my father a cad.’

  Miss Black raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s certainly not a nice thing to say. But remember the old adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” You mustn’t be oversensitive. I’ll have a word with Nina about it. I expect you girls to set an example to the younger ones. You’re thirteen years-old and in the senior school now, so you better start acting your age.’

  The headmistress pushed her spectacles more firmly on to her nose. ‘In the meantime, you will be punished for such unladylike behaviour. You shall not be allowed to take part in the junior inter-house hockey matches, but instead will be given extra sewing duties by Miss Bensham. A period of calm reflection is what is needed. If anything like this happens again,’ Miss Black warned, ‘I shall not hesitate in summoning your parents and having you removed.’

  Adela’s stomach lurched at the threat; how disappointed her parents would be if she was sent home in disgrace. Yet a part of her felt defiant; she would like nothing better than to leave the strictures of St Ninian’s and return to her beloved home at Belgooree.

  Frustrating as her punishment was – Adela loathed sewing and yearned to be out in the fresh autumnal air – she submitted without protest, hoping the trouble with Nina would soon blow over. Perhaps the snobbish colonel’s daughter had only said those hurtful things about her parents in the heat of the moment. Adela was sure she couldn’t have meant them, for they weren’t true.

  But the trouble didn’t stop. Nina was vindictive. Adela had misjudged quite how humiliated Nina had been, both by the drenching and by being publicly hauled in front of Miss Black. Nina called Adela a little sneak and organised the other girls into not speaking to her.

  ‘We’ve sent you to Coventry,’ Margie told her, ‘for being horrid to Nina.’

  ‘But she started it,’ Adela protested.

  ‘Can’t hear you!’ Margie called as she hurried away and left Adela mending sheets in the common room.

  Only Flowers Dunlop smiled warily at her when she entered the classroom or dormitory, and once she realised that Adela didn’t hold a grudge against her for what had happened, she was happy to chat about life as a member of a railway family. Her father was station master at the busy depot at Sreemangal in the tea district of Sylhet. He was a second-generation Scot in India. Her mother came from the nearby hill station of Jaflong. Adela had seen them dropping off an excited Flowers at the start of term: a jovial red-faced man and a pretty woman in a lime-green sari who had stood out like a sore thumb because no one else’s mother was dressed in native costume.

  ‘I’ve been fishing at Jaflong with my father,’ Adela enthused. ‘It’s beautiful there, and the fishing boats are like gondolas – just like in Venice.’

  ‘Have you been to Venice?’ Flowers asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘No, but I’ve seen pictures. And one day I’m going to go there – I’m going to travel all over the world and become a famous actress.’

  ‘How will you do that? Are your family very rich?’

  ‘No,’ Adela admitted. She waved away such an obstacle. ‘I’ll marry a prince or a viceroy and he will take me around the world. We’ll spend the summers in Europe, or maybe America – yes, we’ll have a house in Hollywood so I can star in the latest films.’

  Flowers chewed on the end of her pigtail. ‘I want to be a nurse and make people better.’

  Adela looked at her in pity. ‘I can’t think of anything worse – all that blood and having to empty bedpans and wash men’s bottoms.’

  Flowers gasped. ‘I wouldn’t want to do that.’

  ‘You’ll have to. Auntie Tilly’s brother is a doctor and he says that’s what nurses have to do. He calls them angels, but I think it sounds like a job from hell.’

  ‘Adela!’

  ‘Well, I’m just telling the truth. I think you should become a lady doctor instead, then you can be in charge of all the nurses and wear nicer clothes and still make people better.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Flowers’ slim face looked pensive. ‘I don’t think girls like me become lady doctors.’

  ‘Why ever not? You’re obviously brainy. You’ve only been here a month and you’re top of the class in almost everything – no wonder bossyboots Nina doesn’t like you. She was first in everything last term – except for the singing prize, which I won.’ />
  Adela abandoned her sewing and paced to the window. Outside, the leaves of a large chinar glowed brilliant scarlet in the mellow autumn sun. How she longed to be home in the hills at Belgooree, out riding through the tea garden on her piebald pony, Patch, shooting duck by the river with her father or, after an explore through the sal forest, pestering their khansama, Mohammed Din, for scraps of chicken for Scout, her hill dog. Anything but be stuck in school doing endless sewing, with everyone except new-girl Flowers giving her the cold shoulder.

  How she loathed St Ninian’s! She hated lessons and having to sit still and learn algebra and the names of long-dead kings and queens. School was only bearable when she was out of doors running and playing games on the half-bald playing field or larking around in the spinney with Margie and the others. She used to make Margie laugh with impersonations of the teachers. But Margie wasn’t speaking to her.

  Adela had to admit the bleak truth that things had been changing with Margie long before the fight with Nina. All term their friendship had been lukewarm. Margie hadn’t come to stay at Belgooree over the summer like she had in previous holidays; she had gone to Simla in the Himalayan foothills with Nina and her mother. ‘We went to a garden party at Viceregal Lodge,’ Margie had boasted, ‘and Nina got a part in a play at the Gaiety.’

  Adela had been consumed with envy to think that Nina had performed on a real stage with a paying audience and – if she was to be believed – in front of the Viceroy himself! Nina couldn’t act for toffee. It should have been her, Adela Robson, with a good singing voice and dancing legs, who entertained India’s most important people, the ‘heaven-born’ – those elite British government officials who spent the hot weather in Simla.

  But that was never going to happen, not while she was stuck in a boarding school in Shillong. Here, the only chance to act was in the inter-house plays in front of the headmistress and occasionally Miss Black’s missionary brother, Dr Norman Black, who had helped found the school and came to judge the competition – if he wasn’t away spreading the gospel to heathens.

  Adela gave an impatient sigh. If only she hadn’t interfered between Nina and Flowers. Since then school life had become completely unbearable.