Page 120 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
He gazed at her with intense blue eyes. His voice when he spoke was a hoarse whisper. ‘How will I manage without my Tilly? She’s the reason I get up in the morning and do my job. Cheviot View is so lonely without her, so bloody lonely!’
‘I know,’ Clarrie said gently. ‘All you can do is be brave and carry on doing your job. Some day soon, God willing, Tilly and the children will return, just as Adela will come back to Belgooree.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ asked James.
‘I have to– and so do you.’
Just then Clarrie heard a child’s shout and a clatter of feet. Harry was back.
‘Hello, Uncle James.’ He grinned. ‘I saw the car coming and ran home. Are you staying?’
‘Yes, he’s staying,’ Clarrie said at once.
‘Have you been running?’ Harry asked in curiosity. ‘You look all pink in the face.’
James straightened up and rubbed his eyes on his sleeve. ‘No, just a bit of grit in the eyes.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘But your mother got rid of it.’ Over Harry’s head, he gave Clarrie a grateful smile.
James stayed on for three days, doing a tour of the gardens and factory with Clarrie, their talk businesslike. No further mention was made of Tilly, and the tea planter resumed his usual brisk manner. Yet Clarrie could not forget her glimpse of a more vulnerable James, one who had let down his emotional guard and shed tears for his wife and family. Under all his bluster and forthright opinions, James had a soft heart– at least when it came to Tilly. Clarrie felt a fresh pang of loss for Wesley. Perhaps the Robson cousins had been more alike than she’d ever imagined: loyal and loving under their tough manliness.
Before he left to return to Upper Assam, James made a suggestion. The day before, they had been discussing Harry’s education. James had been critical of Clarrie’s reluctance to send her son away to school, even to StMungo’s in Shillong, where he could return to her at weekends. James had pointed out that Harry would be seven in a couple of months’ time and that he was bright enough and ready for school. But Clarrie had been firm and told him that the decision was hers alone.
‘I know you think it’s none of my business,’ he said, ‘but I have a very talented young assistant, Manzur Ahmad, who wants to be a teacher. He’s my bearer Aslam’s boy. His mother, Meera, was the children’s ayah. Perhaps you remember her.’
‘Of course. Meera has been here on several occasions – a sweet woman. Didn’t you and Tilly pay for Manzur to go to school?’
‘Yes, we did. Tilly took a shine to the boy and said we owed it to Meera for all that she’d done for our children. Well, you know Tilly– daft about kiddies.’
‘It was a kind gesture,’ Clarrie said, waiting for him to explain why he was talking about Manzur.
‘The thing is, his father wants Manzur to train as a clerk in the plantation office– that’s where he’s been for the past year since finishing school– and he’s very efficient at what he does. I don’t want to lose him, but he’s a bright young man with a mind of his own, and I’m worried he might just up and off.’
‘So, what are you thinking?’ Clarrie probed.
‘That if I offered him some tutoring over here, say once a month, with young Harry, then Manzur might be content to stay.’ James added dryly, ‘Then both Aslam and I would be happy.’
Clarrie considered. It might do Harry good to have a young tutor with the energy and patience to teach him. She was touched that James had been giving the problem some thought.
‘If Manzur would be willing to do that,’ Clarrie said and smiled, ‘then yes, I’d be very grateful for your offer. Perhaps we could try it out for a couple of months and see how Manzur gets on with Harry.’
‘Good idea,’ James said, nodding.
He left whistling ‘The British Grenadiers’, which Clarrie knew was a sign that James’s spirits were reviving.
CHAPTER 24
Newcastle, autumn 1940
Adela never mentioned anything about the bombing raids in letters to her mother. The first one in July had been terrifying. The sirens had wailed their warning on a late Tuesday afternoon just as she’d been in the middle of replenishing the tea from the urn in the voluntary canteen at the railway station. She had put down the large metal teapot and hurried out with her fellow workers and customers to the underground passage between the platforms, which doubled as a temporary air-raid shelter.
A sailor had played his harmonica to keep their minds off what might be happening above. Adela’s chest had tightened till she could barely breathe as they waited. The first bombs had sounded like the thunder of a distant train. In the dark somebody reached out for her hand. She held on to it tightly, until her fingers were numb.
The bombing had grown louder and more intense, shaking the walls, while the sailor carried on playing. Adela’s teeth had jarred as she clenched them shut to stop herself screaming. She thought her end had come and prayed that Lexy and the others would survive, that the café was still standing and that her Brewis family and Tilly were safe.
When they had emerged, shaking and laughing with euphoria at having survived, fire engines and ambulances were hurtling along the street heading for the quayside. Later she had discovered that the bombers had struck as close as the Spillers factory by the river, a split second away from the High Level Bridge. The air had reeked with burning rubber and metal, and palls of black smoke had blocked out the sun. Jarrow, the shipyard town on the south bank of the Tyne, had also been ablaze. The death toll that day had been thirteen, and the injured well over a hundred.
The raids carried on over the summer and into September, but Adela learnt to mask her fear and make jokes like others did.
‘Hitler must have heard you’d put yourself forward as Henry Higgins in our play,’ she teased Derek.
