Page 202 of The Secrets of the Tea Garden
‘Sorry.’ She pulled back. ‘Are you badly hurt?’
‘I can bear any pain if you’ll stay with me,’ Ghulam said with a wincing smile.
She curled up next to him and stroked his face until he fell asleep.
Darkness fell and Fatima left for her hospital digs before it grew too late. Libby rose to go too but Ghulam stirred, fretful.
‘Don’t leave, Libby,’ he murmured.
Sanjeev said, ‘I will sleep next door with friends. Knock if you need anything.’
Left alone together with Libby, Ghulam sighed in contentment and fell asleep again.
In the hour before dawn, Ghulam said in a hoarse voice, ‘Are you awake?’
Libby, who had hardly slept for watching over him, whispered, ‘Yes. Is there something you need? Water?’
He nodded. She helped him sip. Then he began to talk, telling her in hesitant words what had happened to him. He had arrived safely in Delhi but had been appalled at the sight of the huge refugee camps stretching out on the broiling plain. Aghast at the scale of the misery and then the frantic scramble at the aerodrome of families trying to leave India for Pakistan, Ghulam had had second thoughts.
On the point of boarding the aeroplane to Lahore, he had given up his seat to a distraught young woman who feared being separated from her family. It struck him how his desire to see his father one more time was selfish in the face of the panic and terror around him. He was taking up a valuable place on the plane just to indulge his daydream of being reconciled with a long-lost father. In contrast, this woman’s life was in the balance as to whether she got safely to Pakistan or was left behind.
‘So I gave up my seat. I knew that my father would have approved. We never agreed on much, but he believed strongly in charity and helping the stranger.’
‘That was a great kindness,’ said Libby.
‘I wrote a brief letter to my father and family,’ Ghulam continued, ‘and asked her to deliver it when she got to Lahore. It was only much later that I realised the letter had never reached them. I had asked themto tell Fatima ...’ Ghulam’s jaw clenched in anguish. ‘I never meant to cause so much distress.’
Libby kissed his cheek. ‘She knows that.’
After a moment Ghulam carried on. ‘I knew my boss at the newspaper wasn’t expecting me back for a month or more, so I decided to stay and help in the camps. It was mostly manual labour – digging latrines and such – but I felt I was of most use speaking to the refugees in their native Punjabi. They were so homesick and traumatised by what they had been through. To protect myself, I pretended to be Christian. I knew enough from school to pass as one. The stories they told ... unspeakable things ...’
Ghulam broke off. Libby slipped her arm gently around him and held him close. He swallowed.
‘Then, after about six weeks, I decided it was time to return to Calcutta. I had just enough money left to buy a ticket. On the way to buying it, I was knifed and robbed.’ His breathing grew rapid as he relived the attack. ‘I remember lying in the street, helpless, and then I must have passed out.’
He turned to look at her, his eyes glinting. ‘The only reason I’m alive is because a chai-wallah came to my rescue – took me back to the one room he shared with a dozen others and stopped the bleeding. They were a Hindu family. They must have known what I was – they nursed me for a fortnight – but when gangs came round looking for Muslims, not one of them gave me away.’
‘How brave and kind of them,’ said Libby, feeling immense gratitude towards these people she would never meet.
‘Once I could stand and walk again,’ said Ghulam, ‘I knew I had to go – they had little to spare and I had already taken so much.’
‘So how on earth did you get back to Calcutta?’ Libby asked. ‘You were destitute.’
‘I was. I thought of going to beg at the door of an old friend,’ he said, his jaw tensing.
‘Cordelia’s?’ Libby questioned.
He started. ‘How did you know?’
‘I know she came from Delhi,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you.’
‘But I didn’t,’ said Ghulam, ‘because something extraordinary happened. I was making my way to her home in New Delhi – I’d stopped to rest in Connaught Circus – when a car drew up beside me and a man in uniform got out. He was Sikh – I recognised his uniform: it was the Lahore Horse – Rafi’s old regiment. He stared at me and asked me if I was Ghulam Khan.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Libby.
‘Rafi’s old friend Sundar Singh,’ said Ghulam. ‘Rafi had asked him to search Delhi for me in case I was there and still alive—’ Ghulam stifled a sob. ‘He had been looking for me for weeks. It was only then that I realised that my family had never got my letter ...’
‘We thought you must have taken the train to Lahore,’ Libby said. ‘I didn’t think you could have survived – you’d been missing too long. But Rafi and Fatima never gave up believing you were out there somewhere.’
