THE TEA PLANTER'S DAUGHTER:A wonderfully moving story of courage and enduring love: First in the India Tea Series

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘What? What!’ he said in confusion.

  Clarrie took Louisa’s hand; there was hardly a pulse. Suddenly, Louisa’s eyes opened and fixed on Clarrie. She tried to speak. Clarrie turned to Herbert and put Louisa s hand into his.

  ‘She’s trying to tell you something,’ she said with urgency.

  As Clarrie stepped out of the way, Herbert clasped his wife’s hand to his face.

  ‘What is it, my love?’ he asked, his voice cracking. Tell me!’

  ‘W-Will,’ Louisa murmured. ‘Will…’

  ‘Will what?’ Herbert demanded. ‘Shall I send for the doctor? Is that what you want?’

  She shook her head and looked pleadingly past her husband to Clarrie. In that moment, Clarrie knew what she was trying to say.

  ‘She wants Master Will,’ Clarrie cried. ‘I’ll go for him.’

  Without waiting for permission, Clarrie pressed on the bell that rang in the quarters below and dashed out of the room.

  A bedraggled Will met her halfway up the stairs, eyes wide in alarm.

  ‘I heard the bell and you were gone—’

  ‘Your mother wants to see you,’ Clarrie said, her heart squeezing at the sight of his worried face. ‘Go to her quickly.’

  Will leaped up two steps at a time then turned. ‘I forgot my violin — she’ll want to hear it.’

  Clarrie stopped him. ‘You go ahead, I’ll fetch it.’ He hesitated. ‘Go on!’ she urged.

  The boy ran on, calling out to his mother that he was coming. Clarrie rushed back for the instrument, heart pounding with dread. The violin lay under a tangle of blankets that Will had thrown off in his haste to answer the bell. She seized it quickly and hurried back upstairs.

  Clarrie found Herbert still clutching his wife’s hand, just as she had left him. Will hovered beside him. Louisa’s eyes were half closed, her mouth half open. Her ragged breathing had eased a fraction.

  The boy turned to Clarrie, his eyes full of tears. ‘Mama’s not saying anything,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think she knows who I am.’

  Herbert said nothing. On impulse, Clarrie held out the violin.

  ‘She wants you to play — that’s what she said.’

  Will hesitated, glancing at his father. ‘Shall I, Papa?’

  Herbert did not seem to hear him. All he could do was hang on to his wife’s hand as if by doing so he could anchor her in this world.

  Clarrie touched the boy’s shoulder and nodded in encouragement. ‘Do it for your mother,’ she said gently.

  Will clutched the violin under his chin and began a shaky rendition of ‘Water of Tyne’, which Olive had recently taught him. When he got to the end, he paused and then played it again, this time with more assurance, the notes soaring to fill the room.

  At the last stroke of the bow, the sound reverberated around them as if reluctant to die away. The memory of the tune seemed to hang in the air, as silence settled once more. Total silence. Will stood with his violin suspended and Herbert gripped Louisa.

  Clarrie stifled a gasp. Louisa’s noisy breathing had stopped. She reached out to Will. ‘She’s gone,’ she said softly.

  But he flinched away, dropping his instrument, and leaped round the bed.

  ‘Mama?’ he cried. ‘Mama!’

  Herbert let out a terrible groan, as if a mighty blow had winded him. Clarrie picked up the violin and hurried to the door to leave them to their grief. Moments later, she heard Herbert roar, ‘Get away! Don’t touch her!’

  Will screamed, ‘She’s not dead! She’s not!’

  Clarrie froze. She wanted to run back in and throw her arms about the boy and comfort him, as his father should be doing.

  ‘Get out!’ Herbert howled like an animal in a trap. ‘Leave me with her, for God’s sake.’

  Will came tearing out of the bedroom, sobbing and wild-eyed.

  ‘Will—’ She tried to stop him, but he pushed her out of the way and fled down the passageway, flinging himself down the stairs. She heard him rattling at the front door, trying to escape. Quickly, she ran along to Bertie’s room and hammered on the door.

  ‘Please, sir, come quickly!’ she shouted and kept knocking until he answered.

  ‘What is it?’ he scowled, his usually slicked hair tousled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bertie,’ she gasped, ‘it’s your mother. Your father needs you.’

  Seeing the state she was in, he went at once, asking no more. Clarrie clattered downstairs in pursuit of Will. He had unlocked the solid front door and left it wide open. She ran into the square, searching for him among the shadows in the dim gaslight. Please God, he had not run further into the town.

  Clarrie heard weeping as she rounded the corner. Will was crouching down by the railings, shaking and wretched. She leaned down and touched him on the shoulder.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Will,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s m-my fault,’ the boy sobbed. ‘I thought I could m-make her b-better with music. So b-babyish. I’m a stupid boy — a stupid, stupid boy!’

  Clarrie knelt down beside him. These were Herbert’s and Bertie’s censorious words he repeated.

  ‘Nothing is your fault,’ she told him firmly. ‘Your mother has been ill for a long time. She wasn’t strong enough to fight off the chill she caught. Even the doctor couldn’t save her.’

  ‘He t-told m-me to g-go,’ Will said, distraught. ‘Papa h-hates me.’

  ‘No, never,’ Clarrie insisted. ‘Your father is too upset to know what he’s saying.’ She pulled him into her arms. ‘He’ll need you, Will. You have to comfort each other, not run away. Promise me, you won’t ever run away?’

  He nodded and leaned into her hold. ‘You won’t go, will you? Now that Mama is—’ He could not bring himself to say the word.

  ‘Course not,’ Clarrie promised. ‘I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.’

  She held on to him in the chilly dark, wishing she could protect this loving, affectionate boy from the grief she knew was about to engulf him.

  CHAPTER 14

  That winter, No. 12 Summerhill was plunged into deep mourning. Herbert was inconsolable. Social engagements were abandoned and Bertie’s wedding was postponed. Herbert shut himself away for long hours in his study, relentlessly increasing his caseload to blot out his grief. He was curt to Clarrie and no longer gave Olive free range of his books, punishing them for not bringing Louisa’s deteriorating condition to his attention. For a time he was so cold towards them that Clarrie thought they might be dismissed and flung on to the street, but for some reason it did not happen.

  Will moped around the house like a lost soul, subdued and unhappy. His thirteenth birthday came and went without celebration, save for Clarrie and Olive buying him sheet music and Dolly baking him a cake. Clarrie tried to comfort him as best she could, encouraging him to play his music. But Herbert could not bear to hear the violin.

  ‘Stop that fearful noise, for pity’s sake!’ he would bawl along the landing. ‘We’re in mourning for your mother — have you no respect?’ Then he would slam his study door closed again.

  After several such reprimands, Will lost the appetite for playing and gave up his practising with Olive. Clarrie’s heart ached for the boy and she wondered if she should intervene on his behalf. But Herbert seemed lost in a dark, lonely place and she was reminded of her father after her mother’s death.

  ‘Give it time,’ she counselled Will. ‘Your father must be allowed to mourn in peace, but he won’t always want silence. As my old friend Kamal used to say, “Remember, the sun always comes back after the rain”.’

  Will stood with his hands plunged into his pockets and shook his head in disbelief. He came less and less to her sitting room downstairs and kept more to his own room or sneaked into his mother’s and sat there alone among the dusty books and bottles of perfume; Herbert had forbidden anything to be touched or tidied. He was often late home after school and Clarrie knew that he wandered the town to delay his return to the unhappy house. But his father, if he
noticed at all, seemed not to care.

  Bertie was the most difficult of them all. His usual cajoling and bullying of his father into doing as he wished no longer worked. Herbert would not even talk about setting a new wedding date. Verity seldom called, shunning the desolate house, but Clarrie was sure that she was putting pressure on Bertie to act.

  Bertie, who had shown little grief for a mother who paid him scant attention compared to Will, took out his frustration at the enforced mourning on the servants. He reduced Olive to tears by hurling shoes at her.

  ‘Call these polished? They’re a disgrace!’

  He offended Dolly by sending back her food as inedible, and took every opportunity to humiliate Clarrie in front of clients.

  ‘Belhaven, bring us tea — good English tea, none of that spicy native muck you drink.’

  Once she overheard him explaining about her to a portly grocer who had eyed her frostily on the doorstep.

  ‘Is she a half-breed?’

  ‘Yes. Belhaven’s one of my father’s waifs and strays from church, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He’s a good man, yer father,’ the grocer grunted. ‘Just hope she’s grateful.’

  Clarrie inwardly seethed at their disparaging remarks, but forced herself to be outwardly impassive. She could not risk jeopardising her or Olive’s employment at this stage, but one day she would be avenged of all the slights and petty cruelties.

  At the end of January 1907, Clarrie turned twenty-one. In triumph, she went back to visit her cousins at Cherry Terrace with the last wages she would hand over to them. She had seen Jared and Lily every week at church where she would hand over the payments, but she had never returned to the pub.

  It looked as dreary and smoky as she remembered; the brick terraces grimy with soot and the lanes slippery with mud and stagnant puddles. She picked her way carefully to the back door and entered to the sound of Lily haranguing some poor waitress.

  ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ Lily sneered on seeing Clarrie standing there in her housekeeper’s uniform. At once, Clarrie could tell she was inebriated by the way she swayed and steadied herself against the table. Even so, the kitchen looked its usual hive of activity, pies cooling on the table and a coating of flour lying over the furniture. The young girl scurried away, sensing trouble.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Belhaven. I’ve come with the last of our payments,’ Clarrie told her without ceremony, holding out the package. ‘I was twenty-one last week. Thought you’d want it now rather than wait for Sunday.’

  Lily sniffed and took it. ‘How thoughtful of you,’ she said in a derisive tone, ‘and happy birthday. Hope you weren’t showing yersel’ up by celebratin’ when the Stocks are in full mournin’?’

  ‘Course not. Where’s Cousin Jared?’

  ‘Off somewhere with the rolley,’ Lily complained. ‘Never here when he’s needed. That useless lass and daft Harrison are all I’ve got to help me.’ She flopped down onto a hard chair. ‘Don’t suppose you’d like to lend a hand for the afternoon?’

  ‘Not on my afternoon off,’ Clarrie said pointedly. ‘I’m meeting a friend.’

  Lily gave her a sour look. ‘Ungrateful little madam,’ she muttered.

  Clarrie was stung by the accusation. ‘Perhaps you should show a bit more gratitude for what Olive and I did for you, for a change — not to mention the money I’ve provided for nearly a year for nothing in return!’

  Lily gaped in shock.

  ‘Well, we’ve done enough,’ Clarrie declared, ‘and that’s an end to it.’

  Lily hauled herself up. ‘That’s what you think! You might be of age, but yer sister isn’t. We’re still her legal guardians and we want a share of her wages till she’s twenty-one an’ all.’

  Clarrie advanced on her in fury, forcing Lily to take a step back. ‘Just you try!’ she cried. ‘You’ll not get a penny more of my sister’s wages, and if you threaten her I’ll get Mr Stock to take you to law. I’ll not let you hold Olive back any longer; she’s got more God-given talents than the rest of us put together and I’m going to see that she uses them.’

  Lily was momentarily speechless; then, scowling, she said, ‘You’re full of hot air — wouldn’t dare tak’ us to law! I’ll have what’s rightfully mine.’

  ‘You have no right over Olive’s wages or over anything she does any more,’ Clarrie declared. ‘She’s my sister and my responsibility. And if you want the Stocks to continue as your customers you’ll drop any further demands.’

  Lily swayed, her face betraying sudden doubt. ‘You’d not harm me business?’

  ‘You leave Olive alone and I’ll leave your business alone,’ Clarrie bargained. ‘And while we’re about it, you can tell me who you sold her violin to.’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ Lily said with a dismissive wave. ‘It was poor quality — hardly fetched enough for a sack of flour.’

  ‘What would you know about the quality of a violin?’ Clarrie protested.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to know,’ Lily said, her lip curling with distaste. ‘Playing them things leads to sin.’

  ‘Well, when you remember, I want to know,’ Clarrie said determinedly, ‘so I can buy it back. It was my father’s and belongs in our family.’

  Suddenly Lily’s face sagged like baking collapsing. She dropped onto a chair again.

  ‘I knew you’d be bother, right from the start,’ she grumbled. ‘That fool of a husband of mine thought there’d be money left from India — couldn’t believe that useless cousin of his could have lost it all!’ She gave Clarrie a hate-filled glare. ‘But I always thought the pair of you’d be trouble — what with that dirty foreign blood in yer veins.’

  Clarrie gripped the back of a chair to control her anger. ‘My mother, who you despise so easily without ever having met her, had more kindness and goodness in her short life than you ever will should you live to be ninety. I’m proud to have her Indian blood running through my veins, so your insults don’t hurt me.’ Clarrie gave her a look of contempt. ‘It’s you I pity, ‘cos it doesn’t matter what’s in your veins, you’ll never be happy. As long as you carry on caring for no one but yourself, you’ll stay a bitter and unhappy woman. I don’t know how Cousin Jared stands it.’

  Lily’s face twisted in outrage. Hauling herself to her feet, she shouted belligerently, ‘How dare you? Gerr out!’ She picked up a wooden spoon and began hitting Clarrie with it. Clarrie raised her arm protectively and backed away as Lily screamed, ‘I never want to see yer in me house again, do y’ hear? Out! Out! Gerr out!’

  Clarrie rushed for the back door with Lily stumbling behind, cursing. Quickly, Clarrie escaped across the yard and out into the back lane with Lily bawling after her. She hurried from the humiliating scene, shaken yet triumphant. She had finally given the bullying Lily a piece of her mind. Just let her try to take her threats about Olive any further. Under her blustering cruelty, Lily was nothing but a coward and a drunk; someone to be pitied more than feared.

  Turning, breathless, into the street at the bottom of the lane, Clarrie collided with a man carrying a basketful of packages.

  ‘Watch yer step!’

  She grabbed at his tottering parcels. One fell to the ground and burst open, scattering black tea leaves over her shoes. ‘Sorry!’

  She looked up into the annoyed face of the delivery man as she tried to salvage the half-empty package.

  ‘Jack Brewis?’ she gasped.

  ‘Aye, and who are—’ he began, then stopped, peering closer. ‘You’re that lass who knaws all about tea. Clarrie, isn’t it?’

  She smiled and nodded.

  ‘What you running away from so fast — the devil or the coppers?’ he teased.

  ‘Something worse.’ She laughed in relief.

  ‘That harridan at the Cherry Tree?’ he guessed. ‘That explains it.’ He gave her a quizzical look. ‘But I thought you’d left; haven’t seen you about for months.’

  ‘I was just visiting.’

  ‘I kept an eye out for you,’ he said.<
br />
  ‘Did you?’ Clarrie was pleased.

  He grinned. ‘Well, no one else round here spends money on Darjeeling.’

  Clarrie laughed. ‘Perhaps I’ll buy some more then. At least let me pay for what I’ve spoilt.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Jack said at once, taking the half-empty package from her. ‘One less packet won’t make any difference. I might be out of a job shortly anyway.’ He looked suddenly glum.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Clarrie asked.

  Jack sighed. ‘Mr Milner’s having a hard time of it. Some of the other tea companies are jealous like — don’t want him to succeed — and are trying to spoil his business. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.’ He stopped and gave her an anxious look. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. What can a lass like you do about it, anyways?’

  ‘Perhaps I can help more than you think. I work for a solicitor now; I’m a housekeeper,’ she told him proudly.

  His hazel eyes widened with interest. ‘I thought you were looking canny smart. Who d’you work for?’

  ‘The Stocks at Number Twelve Summerhill.’

  ‘Summerhill, eh?’ He whistled in admiration. ‘By, you’ve come up in the world!’

  ‘Aye,’ Clarrie grinned, ‘and I intend to go further.’

  He gave her a mock bow. ‘I’m honoured you’re still speaking to the likes of me, Jack Brewis, tea delivery man, soon to be out of a job if Mr Milner can’t see off the opposition.’ Jack sighed heavily, unable to remain flippant. ‘It’s a crying shame, Clarrie, ‘cos he’s a canny boss. I was ill over Christmas and he paid me till I was back on me feet, though he couldn’t afford it — not with his rivals ganging up against him. Thing is it’s hard for him to prove anything, but he’s sure they are.’

  Clarrie put a hand on his arm. ‘Tell him to speak to Mr Stock — if anyone can help it’s him. He’d do anything for his clients. And he needs something like that just now — to feel he can help right a wrong — he’s that grief-stricken about his wife dying. I worry he might never pull himself out of his despair.’

  She saw Jack blushing and noticed she was still holding on to his arm. She flushed and quickly pulled away.