The Girl From the Tea Garden

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘How cruel,’ Adela gasped. ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘Back to England. My father said she couldn’t cope with Assam – or having a husband who was away on the river so much. He said it was nothing to do with me but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, she never gave me the choice to go with her, did she?’ Sam could not keep the anger out of his voice.

  ‘Would you have gone with her?’ Adela pressed him.

  Sam took a long draw on the thin cheroot and then ground it under his shoe. He shrugged.

  ‘The way I see it, she deserted us both. I wanted my father to change the name of our boat from Cullercoats to something Indian so we wouldn’t be reminded of her all the time, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Cullercoats? Was that her maiden name or something?’

  ‘It’s the fishing village she came from.’ He plunged his hands in his pockets. ‘I think my father always hoped she’d come back one day, but she never did. And if she did now, I wouldn’t want to see her.’

  Adela was shocked by his bitter tone; it seemed so unlike him. She felt suddenly selfish at her tears and complaints, when Sam had suffered far worse as a child. Her mother would never desert her in a million years.

  She pulled his hand from his pocket and gave it a squeeze. ‘Your mother was a fool to run away from you. But I’m glad you had your dad. At least he cared about you, didn’t he?’

  Sam swallowed and gave a brief smile. ‘Yes, he did.’ His voice sounded husky.

  After a moment they disengaged hands and walked on down the path. Neither spoke. Adela breathed in the night smells of woodsmoke and damp foliage, her spirit soothed by the presence of Sam in her beloved Belgooree. They wandered as far as the factory before turning back.

  As they retraced their steps up the garden path, Adela plucked up courage to ask, ‘What did Miss Black say when you rang the school? Was she very cross?’

  ‘Relieved more than cross. When I explained what was happening here and why your father couldn’t ring in person, she seemed a bit lost for words.’

  ‘I bet she was.’ Adela blushed to think of Sam having to talk of her mother in childbirth. ‘So she wasn’t hard on you for helping me escape?’

  Sam gave a rueful look. ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll be invited back to give out the prizes at speech day.’

  Adela couldn’t help a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry.’

  As they regained the bungalow steps, a door was flung open. Wesley came tearing out of the bedroom and across the veranda.

  ‘It’s happened!’ he bellowed. ‘Adela, where are you?’

  Scout was barking and jumping around him in agitation.

  Her stomach vaulted. ‘Daddy! What’s happened? Is Mother all right?’

  He lurched at her, his face crumpling into tears. He could hardly get out his words.

  Adela flung her arms about him. ‘Is it Mother?’ she cried. ‘Tell me!’

  He gripped her tight and almost roared, ‘Yes, she’s all right and you have a baby brother!’

  By the time Dr Hemmings arrived from Shillong at daybreak, the newborn had already been swaddled and fed. Adela dozed in a long cane chair on the veranda, wrapped in Sam’s car blanket, with Scout curled at her feet, while her father and Sam attempted to finish the bottle of whisky they had begun two hours ago in celebration. Her father’s animosity towards Sam had evaporated in the euphoria of the birth.

  ‘I have a son!’ Wesley greeted the doctor, climbing unsteadily to his feet. ‘Have a whisky with me, Hemmings.’

  ‘Don’t feel I deserve it,’ the balding doctor said. ‘Ayah has done all the hard work. I’ll just look in on Mrs Robson first.’

  The doctor checked on mother and baby, retreating when he found them both sleeping.

  Adela was roused by Mohammed Din, fetching tea and puris for their visitor.

  ‘Umm, my favourite,’ Adela said, grinning at the servant, reaching for one of the deep-fried puffed-up breads.

  ‘Guests first,’ Ayah Mimi said, appearing out of the shadows wagging a finger. She touched Adela gently. The nanny was like a tiny bird, thin and darting in her movements, yet strong and wise. She had once been the ayah to Auntie Tilly’s cousin Sophie in this very house, so when the Robsons had returned to Belgooree from England, Ayah Mimi had become Adela’s beloved nanny too.

  Adela handed round the plate, while Mohammed Din poured tea. ‘Proper tea too,’ she announced, breathing in the peachy smell of Belgooree tea. ‘Not like at sch—’

  Abruptly she stopped, not wanting the conversation to revert to her absconding from school. She felt suddenly leaden inside, her appetite vanishing as the memory of her unhappy flight, and last night’s wrangling flooded back. She slid Sam a wary look. What trouble she had caused him, pitching him headlong into a family row and making things difficult for him with the Blacks at St Ninian’s for forcing him to aid her escape. He looked exhausted, his eyes glazed with lack of sleep and whisky. His hat had fallen off the back of his head and his hair stuck up at untidy angles. Nelson, tired out from all the excitement, napped in his lap. How Sam must wish he had never set eyes on her.

  Wanting suddenly to be with her mother, Adela left the men talking and slipped into her parents’ bedroom. The smell of cloves could not mask the stench of blood and afterbirth. She recoiled from the odour, struck anew with shock that her mother could have given birth. She was in her late forties, wasn’t she? The thought of her parents having sex at their age, let alone producing a baby, made her feel queasy. But there was the proof, her new brother lying peacefully in an ancient swinging cot by the bedside. Adela peered at him. He was tightly swaddled in a white sheet, his face crinkled like a withered plum, and with a shock of dark hair sprouting from his crown. She didn’t know what to make of him.

  Once Auntie Tilly had said, ‘You and my Jamie get on so well together. It’s such a shame you don’t have a brother or sister to play with at Belgooree. Don’t you wish you had one?’

  ‘No,’ Adela had said, laughing. ‘Why would I want to share Mother and Daddy with anyone else?’

  She turned away quickly from the cradle.

  ‘Mother?’ Adela whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

  Clarrie’s face on the pillow looked flushed, dark hair stuck to her glistening brow, and there were purple smudges under her closed eyes. How Adela adored that face.

  She burned with shame at the hurtful things she had shouted at her parents – repeating Nina’s poisonous words – when all she had wanted was for them to deny it all and for things to be the same between them as before. But they had not been able to calm her fears; instead her father had admitted to being engaged to the hateful Mrs Davidge, and then her mother had admitted to having some Assamese grandmother, whom Adela had never heard of. It couldn’t be true! How could they have kept such secrets from her?

  Adela sat on the bed trying to hold back the tide of panic rising in her chest. She wasn’t who she thought she was. She wasn’t one of them – the girls at school, who were proud of being British through and through. They knew where they came from; their allegiance was undivided. Home was Britain, even if half of them had never even been there. Until last night, despite the malicious gossip of Nina, Adela had believed she was every inch a British girl too. But not now. Her great-grandmother was Assamese. Had she been a farmer’s daughter or a peasant? Perhaps a tea picker. Adela cringed to think what Nina and the others would have to say about that: ‘Two annas has the blood of a chai-wallah in her veins.’

  It made her all the more determined that she was never going back to St Ninian’s. Adela got up and tiptoed back to the cot. She bent down and stroked the cheek of the baby. It was soft as an apricot. He snuffled like a puppy at her touch. She felt the first stirring of emotion, a stab of pity, towards him.

  ‘Poor baby,’ she whispered. ‘You’re a two annas just like me.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Christmas, 1933

  Adela heard her parents arguin
g over her again. She was pulling off her riding boots at the bottom of the veranda steps when she became aware of raised voices from within the bungalow.

  ‘Well, I’ve invited them to stay. Tilly and Sophie want to see Adela as much as baby Harry,’ Clarrie insisted. ‘They’re concerned about her.’

  ‘There’s no need to be,’ Wesley snapped. ‘We’re managing perfectly well teaching her at home.’

  ‘Horse riding and tea tasting do not add up to an education.’

  ‘They do if she’s going to go into the family business.’

  ‘She’s too young to know what she wants,’ Clarrie retorted. ‘We can’t keep her here indefinitely. She needs to be with girls her own age doing interesting things and passing examinations; only then will she be equipped for the modern world. Things were different when Olive and I were young girls here and—’

  ‘I hope you’re not accusing me of being overprotective and selfish like your father was,’ cried Wesley.

  ‘That’s not fair! And you know I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Because if I ever start turning into Jock Belhaven, you have my permission to take me out and shoot me.’

  ‘Oh, honestly!’ Clarrie exclaimed. ‘You can be just as stubborn.’

  ‘I would never stand in the way of my daughter’s happiness.’

  ‘And neither would I,’ Clarrie said. ‘Anyway, the Robsons and Khans have both accepted our invitation—’

  ‘Your invitation.’

  Clarrie gave an impatient sigh. ‘You should be pleased they want to come and make a fuss over Harry – Tilly’s dying to see him.’

  ‘It’s not Tilly I object to, it’s that pompous husband of hers.’

  ‘James is your cousin,’ Clarrie reminded him, ‘and you used to get along fine when you were business partners.’

  ‘James and his bullying father always made it perfectly clear that I was very much the junior partner. He’ll relish the chance to come here and lord it over us, tell us how well they’re doing at the Oxford Estates compared to us.’

  ‘We’re not doing so badly, surely.’

  ‘How would you know?’ Wesley accused. ‘You haven’t been near the factory for months.’

  ‘You haven’t let me! You’ve wrapped me in cotton wool since Harry’s birth and treated me like an invalid.’

  ‘You know you haven’t been well,’ Wesley blustered, ‘and Dr Hemmings said a woman of your age will take longer to get over—’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re tired all the time, and now you want to overdo things by having all these people to stay.’

  ‘The only thing I’m tired of is being stuck in this bungalow with a baby that feeds like a tiger while you and Adela ride off and enjoy yourselves around the tea garden.’

  ‘But you refused a wet-nurse when I suggested it.’

  ‘I know I did.’ Clarrie sounded tearful. ‘I just want some adult company for once. Is that too much to ask?’

  In alarm Adela heard her mother break into a sob. At once Wesley was contrite.

  ‘Oh, Clarissa, my darling! I’m so sorry. The last thing I want to do is upset you.’

  Her mother’s voice was muffled, as if her face was buried into Wesley’s shoulder.

  ‘Of course your friends must come and stay,’ he relented. ‘My insufferable cousin probably won’t hang around long – he’ll be itching to get back to the Boxing Day drinking and horse racing at Tezpur.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Clarrie brightened. ‘It’s ages since we’ve had anyone to stay.’

  ‘Well, Tilly and Sophie are so busy with their own lives,’ Wesley said.

  ‘Yes, I know. It’ll be so good to see them again – have a house full for Christmas. And I’m sure they will have good advice on what to do with Adela.’

  Adela went straight back to the stables and got the syce to saddle up her pony, Patch, again. The mid-afternoon sun lit the steep hillside of emerald tea bushes as she cantered up through the gardens and into the forest. She only stopped when she reached the clearing with the fallen-down temple and the derelict hut where Ayah Mimi had once lived when she had no children to look after.

  Adela had been overjoyed to hear that her special aunties, Tilly and Sophie, were coming for Christmas. They were her mother’s friends, not proper aunties. Her only real auntie was Aunt Olive, who lived in England and ran a teahouse, but Adela hadn’t seen her since she was two years old and had no memory of her. This had never bothered Adela, as her pretend aunties were more than enough; she adored them. Tilly was plump and talkative, a mother hen who loved children and gave wonderful hugs like a huge, soft hot-water bottle. Uncle James, her husband, was not the least bit cuddly; he was square and pugnacious, with a laugh like a bark who teased Tilly for overindulging their offspring.

  ‘Pack the little devils off home to school as soon as they can catch a ball,’ he would decree, and then roar with laughter at his wife’s cries of protest. He had got his way, however. Tilly had had to part with two out of the three, Jamie and Libby, taking them back to the North of England to be schooled.

  While Auntie Tilly was motherly, Auntie Sophie was glamorous and a little bit notorious. She was a divorcee with a deep laugh and Scottish lilt who had married an Indian and converted to Islam. With her shapely figure and wavy fair hair, she could make a mechanic’s boiler suit look stylish – which she often did when helping to fix one of the five cars that belonged to the Raja of Gulgat. Her husband, Rafi, worked as an aide-de-camp and chief forester for the Raja in the neighbouring principality to Belgooree. Rafi Khan, with his dark good looks, startlingly green eyes and film-star moustache, was the most handsome man Adela had ever seen. Together, he and Sophie were like a Hollywood couple, with no children to make them seem ordinary. They were fun and athletic and would organise treasure hunts, party games and camping trips. One day, Adela vowed, when she was grown up, she was going to dye her hair blonde and perm it to look like Sophie Khan.

  On Christmas Eve in Gulgat, Sophie distributed baskets of fruit, flowers and money to the bungalow servants and their neighbours, explaining how they would be in Belgooree for Christmas. That’s if we ever get away, she thought, sighing, and went to look for Rafi.

  As she mounted the steps to the Raja’s modern pavilion, built eight years ago to accommodate his second wife, Rita, she heard her husband’s placatory voice.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Stourton is just here to advise.’

  ‘I don’t want his advice,’ said Kishan in agitation. ‘Why are the Britishers always interfering where they’re not wanted? My meddling old mother has him wrapped around his pink little finger.’

  Sophie heard Rafi give an amused snort. ‘I think it’s supposed to be her finger that he’s wrapped around.’

  ‘His finger, her finger,’ the Raja answered with impatience, ‘what does it matter? I want them all to keep their fingers to themselves and let me decide who my successor will be.’

  Sophie hung back as the two men discussed the latest palace intrigue: the dowager rani’s attempt to force her son Kishan to declare his nephew Sanjay his heir rather than his own daughters. She glanced up through the thick subtropical jungle of banana trees, bamboos and sal to the crumbling fortress on the escarpment above. Somewhere in the gloomy depths of its shuttered rooms, the old rani brooded over the loss, eight years ago, of her favourite son, Ravindra, swept away by a river in spate. Together with her widowed daughter-in-law, the timid and grieving Henna, the old woman kept their bitterness inflamed.

  ‘Was it not Kishan’s fault for taking Ravindra fishing when the day had been decreed inauspicious?’ she would rail. ‘Kishan should never have encouraged his younger brother to enjoy swimming in the first place. He is to blame for our unhappiness!’

  In the widowed rani’s eyes, her eldest son’s sins were many. He had preferred to go overseas and study in Scotland rather than live with his own people. He had neglected h
is first, high-caste wife, and when she had died in childbirth, he should never have married that woman from Bombay, who refused to live in purdah and could not give him sons. But the Raja’s biggest crime to date was to send Ravindra’s only son, her beloved grandson Sanjay, away to school near Delhi and to refuse to name him as the heir to Gulgat.

  Poor Sanjay, Sophie thought. Alternately spoilt and neglected, the boy was incapable of pleasing them all. She had liked him as a small boy – he could still be charming and friendly – but at seventeen, he could be petulant if he didn’t get his own way. Recently he had grown overfamiliar with Rita and with her, making suggestive remarks and trying to kiss them when their husbands were not there. Perhaps it was a phase that boys of his age went through, but it made her uncomfortable.

  ‘Why are you lurking outside?’ a silvery voice called from the veranda above.

  Sophie looked up guiltily to see Rita’s attractive dimpled face grinning down at her. The Raja’s wife blew a smoke ring over the balcony. ‘Come up at once, Mrs Khan, or I’ll report you to that stuffy Britisher, Stourton, for spying on us all.’

  Sophie bounded up the outside stairs two at a time.

  ‘So you do possess a dress?’ Rita teased, stubbing out her cigarette and eyeing her friend with approval. ‘Turquoise suits you. Is it too early for a cocktail? Yes, I suppose it is. Coffee then?’ She ordered refreshments and made room for Sophie on the swing seat beside her, gathering in her immaculate cream sari.

  Sophie gazed out on the valley below – a shimmer of emerald paddy fields wreathed in morning mist – and breathed in the temperate air.

  ‘I love this time of year, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rita agreed, ‘but only because Kishan and I will be going to Bombay. A month of theatre and concerts for me, and parties and dancing for the girls.’

  ‘Are Jasmina and Sabeena very excited?’ Sophie smiled.

  ‘Ready to burst,’ Rita said, and chuckled. ‘And I can’t wait to get Kishan away from all this.’ She waved a slim be-ringed hand in the air. ‘Before his mother poisons us all, or the Britisher brings in the army and hoists a flag over the house.’