Page 1 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
CHAPTER 1
Shillong, India, 1933
Adela heard a scream; it was coming from the dormitory. She bounded up the dark wooden staircase two steps at a time and burst through the door. A group of girls stood around the far bed, taunting.
‘You have to,’ ordered Nina Davidge. ‘Every new girl must drink it. I drank twice this much last term.’
‘Go on, Flowers, drink it!’
‘Stinky Flowers!’
‘We’ll call you Weedy if you don’t.’
‘Please stop it,’ wailed Flowers Dunlop. ‘It’s not smelling nice.’
‘Not smelling nice,’ Margie Munro said, mimicking her sing-song Indian accent. ‘You’re sochee-chee.’
‘It’s for your own good,’ Nina said, thrusting it right in the girl’s face. ‘Else you’re not one of us. We’re going to teach you how to be a good little memsahib and learn our ways. That’s why your parents sent you here, isn’t it? Pin her down, girls!’
Adela stood rooted to the spot, heart drumming as her classmates grabbed the new girl by her skinny arms and long plait. Nina was lying about having drunk the stuff herself; she had refused any initiation ceremony when she’d joined the school in the summer term. Her delicate bones needed heat, Nina had told them, and that was the only reason why she was in a dump of a school like StNinian’s in Shillong with the daughters of non-commissioned officers and box-wallahs. Otherwise, according to Nina, she would be at a boarding school at home in England with girls of her own social class. Better for Flowers if she just submitted and got it over with; then Nina might leave her alone. But Flowers was fighting back, squirming out of their hold and shrieking in protest.
Margie caught sight of Adela and called, ‘Hey, Tea Leaf! Come and help us.’
Adela winced. Until last term, plump, pretty Margie, the sergeant’s daughter, had been her best friend. Then tall Nina, a retired colonel’s daughter with her blonde hair in a sleek ponytail, had breezed in and picked Margie to do her bidding. For some reason Nina had taken a dislike to Adela, although she had gone out of her way to be friendly. Margie tried to keep friends with them both, but this term she’d started calling her by the irritating nickname Nina had invented, Tea Leaf, just because Adela’s parents ran a tea plantation.
Nina turned. ‘Yes, Tea Leaf. Get yourself over here and help with giving this silly patient her medicine.’
Adela hesitated. If she joined in, it might make Nina be friends with her.
‘No, helpme!’ squealed Flowers, throwing her a pleading look, eyes wide with distress.
Adela ran forward.
‘That’s it, Tea Leaf.’ Nina gave a malicious little laugh. ‘You hold her head back.’
‘Give me that,’ Adela said, grabbing at the tooth mug of frothy urine-smelling liquid. She dreaded to think what all was in it. ‘I’ll do it.’
Nina was so surprised she let go. The other girls giggled and chanted.
‘Throw it, throw it! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers!’
Flowers Dunlop, a station master’s daughter, stared back like a terrified deer caught in a trap. Then she screwed her eyes tight shut and braced herself for the ordeal. Adela felt a wave of guilt, like the first time she had shot dead a blackbuck with the rifle her father had bought her for her eleventh birthday.Don’t be sentimental, Adela.He had wiped away her tears.All’s fair game in the jungle.
But this wasn’t fair; her thirteen-year-old schoolmates were picking on the unhappy new girl like a pack of jackals smelling her weakness, and all because her mother was a native. Turning from Flowers, Adela spun round and flung the disgusting concoction over Nina.
There was a stunned silence. Until that very second, Adela herself had no idea she was going to do it. Nina spluttered in shock. The other girls loosened their hold and Flowers wriggled free. Margie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a nervous snort of laughter.
Nina, her look murderous, shrieked and launched herself at Adela.
‘I hate you!’ She grabbed hold of Adela’s long, dark plait and yanked it hard, scratching at her face like a wildcat.
Adela fought back, shoving Nina on to the bed.
‘Serves you right,’ Adela panted as they tussled. ‘You’re just a big bully.’
‘And you’re a wog just like Flowers!’ Nina screamed, digging her nails into her breast. ‘Nobody likes you. Your mother’s a half-caste and your father’s a cad!’
Adela gasped in fury. How dare she speak about her parents like that! She seized Nina’s long, pale fingers and sank her teeth into them. Nina let out a piercing scream that brought the young house mother tearing into the dormitory.
