Page 34 of The Secrets of the Tea Garden
But she was already clambering into the rickshaw. Libby couldn’t wait to get away and put distance between them. As the rickshaw-wallah jostled his way down the lane, avoiding two boys indhotiswho were heaving an overloaded cart in the opposite direction, she clung on to the sides of the vehicle. Her eyes stung with angry tears. Libby didn’t look back.
Ghulam stayed in the street, watching Libby’s rickshaw merge into the traffic and the throng of passers-by. He pulled out a squashed packet of cigarettes from his top pocket and searched for matches. Realising they were in the jacket that he had left upstairs, he sighed in frustration. He put the packet back in his pocket and ran his hands through his thick hair with a groan of annoyance.
What an infuriating woman! Her remarks about his past life in Lahore had particularly riled him. It was true he had benefited from an elite education at Aitcheson College but he had rejected such a privileged life. Instead of training as a lawyer as his father had wanted him to do, he had joined the Free Hindustan Movement and been thrown out of his father’s house.
Libby Robson had no idea of the sacrifice he had made to follow the path that he had; five years in prison then living hand-to-mouth as he tramped the country encouraging resistance to colonial rule, always keeping one step ahead of the authorities. Only with the outbreak of war did he agree a temporary truce in his revolt against the British. Communists and socialists like him had agreed that the greater evil facing them all was fascism, so they had co-operated with the war effort. Ghulam thought bitterly how he had been vilified by friends in the Congress Party for doing so, and how he had lost the trust of some comrades dear to him – one in particular.
For a time, he had turned his back on politics. When the appalling famine had hit Bengal four years ago, Ghulam had thrown all his energies into helping the starving. It had been a hopeless job. Fatima had arrived in Calcutta and found him worn out and dispirited. If it hadn’t been for his caring sister, he might have driven himself into an early grave. It was through friends of hers that he had secured his part-time job at the newspaper.
Ghulam looked up at the top-floor flat. He felt a wave of remorse for spoiling Fatima’s tea party. She allowed herself so few moments of relaxation from her demanding hospital job. What had got into him?
The Robson woman had not deserved his anger either. She had struck him as one of those do-gooder missionary types – well-meaning but patronising – in her prim dress and straw hat. Was it her insistence on agreeing with him about ending colonial rule that he had found so irritating? Or was it the way she had regarded him with those dark-blueeyes as if she somehow found him wanting that had goaded him into rudeness?
He turned and retreated into Amelia Buildings. He would not be judged by some Britisher half his age who thought she knew India better than he did.
‘Damn you!’ he cursed under his breath as he mounted the stairs. Ghulam wasn’t sure if the oath was for the girl or for himself. Now he would have to explain his baffling behaviour to his disappointed sister.
