Page 122 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
On Christmas Eve a card came from Adela’s dear old guardian, Fluffy Hogg, with seasonal good wishes. Scrawled on the back was a message. Adela caught her breath at the familiar name.
I thought you’d want to know that your missionary friend, Sam Jackman, has left the Sarahan district. I heard it from Fatima. He came to see her, but unfortunately she has been away in Lahore seeing to her sick mother so missed him, and he left no onward address. We think that the mission might have given him a second chance and sent him somewhere else to start afresh at short notice.
Adela reread the tantalising short message several times with a thumping heart. It told her so little. Why had Sam left? Where had he gone? Had he taken Pema with him? To hear of him in this way was upsetting. He had disappeared from the Himalayas, and the chances of her ever seeing him again were even more remote than before.Oh Sam! Where are you now?she wondered bleakly.
Adela couldn’t bear to have the card on display so slipped it into her bedside drawer under her nightie, alongside the photograph she had kept of her and Sam on the Narkanda veranda. Briefly she gazed at the photo. How happy they looked together! Her heart twisted to think of what might have been. But it was a glimpse into a past life that would never be hers again.
On Christmas day, with the café decorated with homemade paper streamers and old Chinese lanterns (that Tilly remembered Clarrie using for her long-ago twenty-first birthday party), the Robsons, Lexy, Josey and Derek all came together to share a meal. Tilly and Josey took to each other at once– Tilly remembered Josey as a lively child at a Christmas party of Clarrie’s during the Great War– and the café rang with their raucous laughter as they swapped anecdotes about their growing up in Newcastle among eccentric and bossy relations.
Later, as the short day waned and they pulled the blackout curtains, George and Jane turned up with a bottle of homemade ginger wine and a crate of beer that George had somehow got hold of in return for tea.
Adela and Josey played duets on the piano and they began a sing-song. Libby gazed at George with adoration and joined him in renditions of ‘Blaydon Races’ and ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, even though Tilly shrieked that it was like a cat’s chorus.
‘A very pretty cat,’ George said with a wink, throwing an arm around the girl and making Libby blush puce with pleasure.
They ended up with Josey getting George to carry her gramophone downstairs from the flat– they took so long that Lexy made lewd comments about what they might be doing– and the party went on long into the evening as they danced to Glenn Miller and Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra.
Mungo curled up and went to sleep under a table, and Adela, tipsy on unaccustomed beer, sang ‘Cheek to Cheek’, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ and ‘The Nearness of You’, which reduced an emotional Tilly to tears.
‘How Clarrie would love to hear you, dear girl,’ she said and sniffed.
This made Adela tearful. How she wished they could all be together!
‘If only Daddy could be here too.’ Libby sighed. Adela reached over and pulled her into a hug.
Swiftly, George stood up and refilled their glasses. ‘Before we all go home and leave these lovely ladies in peace,’ he said, raising his glass, ‘let’s all drink to absent family and friends.’
‘To family and friends!’ they chorused.
Adela had a sudden image of Sam with his battered green hat pushed back on his untidy hair and his lean face grinning down at her, his look playful. She felt anew the upset of the previous day, when she’d learned that Sam had disappeared once more.My darling Sam, may you stay safe and happy,she wished silently as her eyes smarted.
George, mistaking her emotion for homesickness, gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘Maybes next Christmas you’ll be with your mam.’
Adela forced a smile and nodded.
After that, in more sombre mood they all hugged each other as Jane and George went into the pitch-black night. How Adela would miss George if he enlisted; he was a tonic for them all. Adela persuaded Tilly to stay, not wanting her to risk a long walk home and getting into trouble with ARP wardens. Together the women took Tilly and her children upstairs to sleep in Lexy’s small sitting room.
It had been a special day, a brief respite from the daily hardships and tensions of war, where they had joked and comforted each other. Proof, thought Adela as she bedded down, that what mattered most in these uneasy times was friendship and love.
CHAPTER 25
September 1941
Tilly picked her way through the smouldering wreckage, trying not to gag at the stench of charred buildings and bodies. A pall of thick smoke hung over everything, making her eyes stream and throat sore. In the distance flames from the goods station on New Bridge Street lit the early morning. Ambulance and fire-engine bells clanged. Never in her worst nightmares did she ever think she would have to witness such scenes.
‘Over here!’ an ARP warden hollered. ‘I hear something.’
Tilly, armed with blankets, hurried over and peered into the half-collapsed entrance of an Anderson shelter. The house had taken a direct hit; it was a pile of scorched bricks. There was nothing much left of the whole street. The night had been one of terror, as the city had been showered with scores of high-explosive bombs, incendiaries and parachute mines. They had worked through the night to bring people to safety in the Shieldfield school that was a temporary rest centre and give them food and reassurance, not knowing if they would be the next target.
‘Wait,’ ordered the warden, kicking debris out of the way and venturing into the shelter.
Tilly felt completely exhausted. The air attacks had started again in April. Would they ever be free of the fear of screaming bombs? Had she been wrong not to try to get back to India with the children when she’d had the chance? Too late for doubts. At least Mungo and Libby were safely back at their schools– Libby mutinous, but persuaded by Miss MacGregor to stay on into sixth form at least for a year. Jamie had also had his arm twisted to begin his degree in medicine rather than enlist. He was somewhere in the city helping out at a first aid station.
The warden reappeared, carrying a whimpering bundle. Tilly went immediately to help.
‘Little laddie,’ said the warden.
‘Give him to me,’ she said, holding out her arms, swapping the infant for the blankets, keeping one to wrap around him. He stared at her with huge eyes out of a face covered in soil. ‘There, there, little man,’ she crooned, gently rocking him, ‘you’re safe now.’ She glanced at the warden. ‘Anyone else?’
