For several days she hardly stirred, seized by lethargy and an irrational fear that if she ventured beyond the bedroom into the unknown, her unborn baby might be harmed. The slim young woman who came with trays of food and took away her clothes for washing, turned out to be Aslam’s wife, Meera.
‘She’ll be the ayah once the baby’s born,’ James told her. ‘She’s a timid soul, but doesn’t keep strict purdah, so I thought she was ideal for helping you.’
Tilly felt she was being watched the whole time and didn’t see that she needed a servant. But she didn’t have the energy to argue. She slept for long hours or sat at the rough wooden table looking through her stamp albums without the inclination to add to them. Occasionally she heard someone arrive below and the noise of activity as they were given refreshments and waited for her to appear. Later, after they’d gone, Aslam would send in Meera with a calling card on a tray from the wife of a neighbouring planter or office manager.
After a week and ashamed at her own timidity, she made the effort to dress in outdoor clothes and leave the upper floor for a proper look around, but was horrified at the state of the house. Most of the downstairs was given over to storerooms that James called godowns, full of darkness and strange smells and windows with bars. Looking up she could see that even some of the upstairs windows were boarded over with cardboard instead of being fixed. It was a bachelor’s lair of mismatched furniture, chairs that had lost their springs and hunting trophies. At the bottom of the stairs, she had to force herself to pass a roaring tiger’s head without screaming. She had imagined that James, like her father, would have a study full of books that she could work her way through, but all she could find was a battered copy of Sport in British Burma by Captain Pollok.
She sat on the veranda staring out at an overgrown garden and a dizzying landscape of endless trees and bushes, ringed in the distance by mountain peaks. Like fortress walls, Tilly shuddered. She had the strangest sensation of being hemmed in and yet cast adrift in a sea of green. She tried not to imagine the ferocious beasts that lurked in the undergrowth, but every rustle of grass and frantic bird call was ominous. Tilly fled back to the bedroom to re-read her Walter Scott novels.
James grew baffled. ‘You can’t put yourself into purdah old girl.’ And then concerned. ‘Are you unwell? Is it the baby? Shall I call for the garden doctor?’
Tilly grew tearful but could not explain her anxieties. She didn’t want a doctor; she wanted her mother and fussing sisters, grey streets, libraries, tea shops and the din of a northern city; hooters, trams and the cries of newspaper sellers. She wanted Sophie’s teasing and a dose of her cousin’s bravery. Whatever made her think she could live in such an alien place, so far from her family in this green prison? She wasn’t going to last a month. She had even lost the taste for tea; she was a failure as a tea planter’s wife.
James sent for Muriel Percy-Barratt.
‘A case of newly-wed jitters,’ Muriel announced, arriving the next day and bursting into Tilly’s bedroom. ‘We’ve all been through it. But there’s no point moping up here; leads to melancholia. Seen it happen before; women letting themselves go and not caring about their appearance. Before you know what’s what, they’re wasting away and heading for the cemetery. Well I can tell you now, my girl, you are not going to do that to dear James. You’re going to pull yourself together and come and have tea at my house; meet some of the other wives. I’ve sent round a rallying call. I’ll give you half an hour to get ready.’
A reluctant Tilly, with Meera’s help, had a hasty wash and put on a clean dress. She climbed into the Percy-Barratt’s horse-drawn carriage and Muriel gave the command to go. It took nearly an hour to ride across to their nearest neighbour but Tilly found the trip in the mild air lifted her spirits and did not make her as queasy as James’s car had done. She only half-listened to the older woman’s stream of advice on diet in pregnancy, club nights and Christmas activities, but it reminded her of Mona’s bossy affection and the loneliness inside eased a fraction.
The Percy-Barratts lived in a beautifully-kept bungalow with a neatly thatched roof overhanging a deep veranda, amid manicured lawns with a view down to a pond where a stork stood motionless as a statue. Taking tea, sitting in comfortably upholstered cane chairs, they were soon joined by two other women; plump Jean Bradley, wife of a deputy manager at one of the Oxford gardens and a younger Ros Mitchell, whose husband worked for an agency called Strachan’s.
‘Strachan’s manage all sorts of businesses in Assam,’ Muriel explained, ‘tea, coal, shipping.’
‘My husband Duncan is overseeing a steamship company at the moment,’ Ros managed to interject, ‘learning the ropes.’
‘The Mitchells moved up from Shillong earlier this year, didn’t you dear?’ Muriel continued. ‘Though the main office is in Calcutta.’
‘Actually the main office is in Newcastle,’ Ros corrected.
‘Newcastle in England?’ Tilly seized on the name.
Ros nodded. ‘Not that I’ve ever been there.’
‘Oh,’ Tilly sank back in disappointment. ‘That’s my home.’
‘Duncan has though. He’s from the Borders. A little fishing place, St Abbs; you’ve probably never heard of it.’
‘Oh, yes! We used to go there on holidays. My brother Johnny loved swimming off the harbour wall even when the rain poured.’
They chatted on, Tilly suddenly garrulous after two weeks of virtual silence, reminiscing about the past. Ros, who had grown up in Calcutta and Shillong, had visited Scotland on leave with her husband. Pulling out a silver cigarette case, Ros offered it around. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t, dear,’ Muriel said with a disapproving look, ‘It looks most unladylike.’
Ros hesitated then put them away. Muriel ordered more tea and reasserted her authority over the conversation, turning it to plans for the Christmas festivities. Polo games, horse racing, a children’s party and fancy dress ball at the club would be the highlights in a week of celebration.
‘James is one of our best polo players,’ Muriel said.
‘Is he?’ Tilly said in surprise.
‘Captain three years running, didn’t you know?’
‘No, I–’
‘Oh yes, and he always stays over here during Race Week so he doesn’t have to go back up to Cheviot View after a hard day’s drinking. You know what planters are like once they get together.’
Tilly nodded, though she had no idea.
‘In fact, I insist that you both come and stay for Christmas,’ Muriel enthused. ‘We’ll have such fun and it’ll be nice to have a young face around now that the children are all away.’
For a moment, Tilly thought she heard a wobble in Muriel’s voice. Was it possible that this burra memsahib with all her self-confidence and experience of India, might still have a vulnerable spot; her children? She swallowed down the tears that welled at the thought of her family gathering in Dunbar for Christmas without her.
‘Thank you,’ Tilly said, ‘I’ll see what James says.’
‘Oh, he’ll want to come here; no doubt about that.’
As the sun dipped and the women made to leave, James arrived to collect her in the car. His anxious expression cleared at the sight of Tilly laughing with Duncan Mitchell’s fair-haired wife. The young women arranged to meet for a game of mah jong at the club on Saturday. Tilly was cheered to hear there was a lending library there too.
‘And I’ve got dak for you,’ James held up a bundle of letters. ‘Looks like Christmas post.’
Tilly tore open a letter from Sophie as soon as they drove off but found her queasiness return as she tried to read in the car. Over supper in the upstairs sitting-room, she read out extracts to James, giggling at her friend’s descriptions of her new surroundings, while omitting the references to the marriage bed. She drew guilty comfort that Sophie was not finding it all easy going either.
‘Oh, lucky Sophie, seeing a lot of my brother, but what a wor
ry having Tam so ill,’ Tilly sighed. ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’
‘Fever’s an occupational hazard in India,’ James said, ‘but he’s a young man and should shake it off. I had malaria every rainy season for the first three years.’
‘Did you?’ Tilly gasped in concern.
‘Been fit as an ox since,’ he reassured.
‘I couldn’t bear it if you got seriously ill,’ Tilly blurted out.
James smiled, ‘you mustn’t worry.’
Tilly folded the letter. ‘I’m glad Helena is nice; she looked a bit formidable in her wedding photograph. I was frightened she’d be one of those fierce army wives like you thought she was.’
‘I hardly met her.’ James covered her hand. ‘You worry too much about things and let that imagination of yours run away with you. You need more fresh air and less reading of gothic novels.’
‘Stop sounding like my mother,’ Tilly laughed and read out a letter from home. Her mother sounded happily settled with Mona, and Jacobina would be joining them for New Year. The thought made her tearful again, so she hurried on to the third letter.
‘It’s from Clarrie Robson,’ she said in surprise, reading the short note. ‘Oh, James! She’s inviting us up to Belgooree for Christmas. Isn’t that kind?’
James’s face clouded. ‘That’s just mischief making.’
‘Why do you say that?’
When her husband wouldn’t answer, Tilly said, ‘I think it would be grand to spend the holiday with the Robsons. They’re your only family. I’d jump at the chance if it were my relations.’
‘The Belhaven woman is no relation of mine,’ James snapped.
‘Why are you so unkind about Clarrie?’ Tilly asked. ‘Is it because she’s Anglo-Indian?’
‘Race has nothing to do with it; it’s about business. Belhavens have always thought they know best – they’ve never tried to co-operate with the rest of us – old man Jock Belhaven was just as stubborn.’
‘We wouldn’t have to talk business,’ Tilly said. ‘I’d love to see Adela again. And Belgooree sounds a lovely place from what Clarrie and Wesley say–’
‘It isn’t.’
‘So you’ve been there?’
James avoided her look. ‘I just think you’d find it too remote – too jungly.’
‘It can’t be more so than out here – and anyway I’d have Clarrie for company.’
‘I don’t want you going to Belgooree,’ James snapped, ‘and that’s that. We’ll be spending Christmas with the Percy-Barratts like I always do. So you will write to her and say no.’
Tilly watched her husband in dismay as he poured himself a large whisky, his expression as severe and uncompromising as his words. Without another word, he took his drink onto the veranda and left her alone. The disquiet she had felt on hearing Wesley and Captain Jackman talk about James as ruthless and hard-hearted in business, returned. She hoped there wasn’t a side to her new husband that she would come to fear.
Chapter 23
April 1923
Tilly’s baby came swiftly and without much warning just as the first pickings were being made from the tea bushes.
‘Our very own first flush!’ James cried with delight at the sight of Tilly sat up in bed with their pink crinkled son swaddled and lying in a crib alongside. He was to be called James after his father, but known as Jamie.
Tilly felt tired and sore, yet triumphant at her achievement; she had managed without the interference of the garden doctor. Dr Thomas, a wiry Welshman with a nose like a strawberry from too much whisky and exposure to harsh sun, had at James’s insistence, examined her a month before the birth. Her husband had worried at her sleeplessness and fretting, as her womb grew large and heavy, and she once more became a recluse at the house, too nervy to join her friend Ros at the club.
‘It’s an hour’s drive away,’ Tilly had made excuses, ‘and I can’t even sit with you.’
She hated the way the women were segregated from the men’s clubhouse in a dismal tin-roofed building that the planters jovially called the ‘hen-house’. With the advent of hot weather it was becoming uncomfortable to sit inside and the so-called library consisted of a few antiquated books on household management and a stack of dated magazines and newspapers.
Tilly had been content to stay at Cheviot View ‘preparing her nest’, as Muriel put it. Once the festivities of Christmas were over, she had arranged repairs to windows, put up new curtains, had the downstairs dining-room whitewashed and ordered a comfortable new sofa from Calcutta which arrived strapped to a bullock cart, along with a cot for the baby. Ros had taken her on a rare trip to the bazaar in Tezpur to buy crockery that wasn’t chipped, cushion covers and floor rugs to brighten up the dowdy bungalow, and from a passing pedlar Tilly bought brass ornaments and a gaudy musical box that played a snatch of Swan Lake.
‘It’ll lull the baby to sleep,’ she had told James.
From home, she got Mona to send out baby clothes and she handed a long list of medical supplies to Dr Thomas.
‘You won’t need half of these,’ he had scoffed, more interested in helping himself to James’s whisky. When he had failed to provide what she asked for, Tilly had gone to Ros for help, who made a special trip to Shillong to kit out a full medicine cupboard for her anxious friend.
‘I don’t think you’re silly for worrying; not at all,’ Ros had said and left Tilly wondering if the childless Ros had experienced some personal loss. Nothing was ever said and Tilly felt she couldn’t ask; her new friend was a more private person than the extrovert Sophie.
When Dr Thomas came to visit the newborn baby, Tilly asked him about feeding and bathing the infant, but he seemed quite taken aback by her questions.
‘Just do what comes naturally to women,’ he had blustered and left quickly to celebrate on the veranda with James.
After the first euphoria of the birth, Tilly panicked that she wasn’t feeding Jamie enough. The baby cried a lot and was constantly at Tilly’s breast but his sucking was weak.
‘I think he’s losing weight,’ she fretted to her husband. ‘Does he look thinner to you?’
James, who was bleary from lack of sleep at the unaccustomed noise and irritated by his wife’s insistence that the baby should sleep in their room, grunted, ‘maybe we should hire a wet nurse if you’re not up to it. Isn’t that what some women do?’
Tilly had no clue and was wretched at the idea but she was growing exhausted too. James began sleeping in his dressing room and was gone long hours. She knew it was now the busiest time at the tea gardens but she couldn’t help feeling he was staying away longer than was needed. She cried for her mother who would know just what to do, yet felt she did not know any of the planters’ wives well enough to ask for help. Muriel, the one she knew best, would expect her to cope without fuss; it was what memsahibs did. She was reticent to ask Ros for help in case such baby talk was painful. She was utterly alone in her plight.
One night, James sent word that he was staying down at the office bungalow; there were problems in the lines. Tilly knew the lines were the rows of houses for the labourers and their families, though she had never seen them; only once had she been to the gardens where James had shown her proudly round well-built sheds full of machinery and she had taken tea with his head clerk, Anant Ram.
The baby had been querulous all day and Tilly was light-headed with lack of sleep and worry. She carried him from room to room, bouncing him in her weary arms, her breasts too sore at the thought of feeding him again.
‘Oh do be quiet,’ she shushed him as she gazed out, hot and listless, over the miles of darkening tea bushes. The usual rustlings and cries from the surrounding trees mingled with the baby’s whimpering and set her teeth on edge.
She was filled with a sudden anger and resentment. She hated this creature that wouldn’t shut up; she hated James and India and wished she had never left England. She hated herself for being weak and pathetic and useless at everything.
‘Ju
st shut up!’ she screamed at the swaddled infant and rushed to the balcony. She held him over the side. ‘Shut up or I’ll throw you over, do you hear me? I’ll dash you to the ground you little beast, I will!’
The baby wailed at her raised voice and the sudden violent movement; his eyes opening wide. At the same moment, Aslam appeared below, his face turned up in horror and alarm.
‘No Robson-Mem, do not drop him, I am begging you!’
Tilly stood shaking with rage; it would be so easy just to let go and then the noise would stop and she could sleep forever. She felt her grip loosening ...
Suddenly she was aware of a presence beside her, a musky scent and murmured words. Small cool fingers touched her like a breeze. Tilly glanced round in confusion. Meera was there, brown eyes watchful. The next moment the slim young woman was taking the baby from her arms and stepping back, rocking him and soothing with gentle words. Tilly stood shaking and gasping for breath, unable to move.
Meera disappeared and the wailing subsided. All at once, Tilly felt her legs go. She sank to her knees. A huge sob rose up inside and she burst into uncontrollable weeping that she did not know how to stop. She might have stayed like that forever, but Aslam and Meera returned, helped her up and coaxed her into the sitting-room. On the new sofa they made her drink a spicy tea she had never before tasted and eat hot morsels of sugary dough.
Afterwards, Meera put her to bed like a child, tucking her in and leaving the paraffin lamp turned down low. Tilly was vaguely aware that there was no noise from the baby but was too tired to question what had become of him. She fell into blissful, dreamless sleep.
***
Tilly awoke to bright daylight. Emerging from her grogginess, she caught sight of Meera sitting in the corner humming and cradling something under her sari.
‘What are you doing?’ Tilly asked.
Meera stopped singing and looked up. Gently and swiftly, she extracted a baby from under the folds, popping a round breast back in her chemise. In astonishment, Tilly watched as the servant crossed the room and held out the bundle. It was Jamie. She had never seen him look so contented, his eyes closed, cheeks flushed and small mouth wet with milk.
THE PLANTER'S BRIDE: A story of intrigue and passion: sequel to THE TEA PLANTER'S DAUGHTER (India Tea Series Book 2) Page 22
