Page 125 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
Adela hesitated. ‘Be kind to Libby– just like you are to me.’
Tilly flushed at the gentle rebuke. How she wished she could love her daughter as easily as she did Clarrie’s. It wasn’t just that Adela was pretty and engaging and got on so easily with people; Libby might blossom in time and learn to listen rather than lecture. But of all her children, Libby was the one with whom she sparked and became too quickly irritated. Jamie was sensitive and amiable, like her own brother, Johnny. Even though she hadn’t seen Johnny for several years– a regimental doctor, he was somewhere in Mesopotamia– she had always loved him best of her siblings. Her youngest son, Mungo, was a boisterous, uncomplicated boy who followed orders and gave her little trouble. But Libby was single-minded and responded neither to cajoling nor threats. She was her father’s daughter; Libby was so like James. Tilly wondered if that was why she was harder on Libby than the others. Was she jealous of Libby’s adoration of James, even though it was her husband’s insistence and not hers that the children should be sent back to Britain for their schooling?
Oh, James! She didn’t want to think about her husband. It made her feel wretchedly guilty for failing to return to him. Yet a part of her felt relief at not having to live the isolated life of a tea planter’s wife. Here in Newcastle she was her own person again, able to choose where to live and what to do. She did miss him. Not so much physically– her appetite for sex had dwindled ever since Mungo’s difficult birth– but she missed his companionship and solid, reassuring presence. She forced her mind back to Adela’s request.
‘I’ll try my best,’ Tilly promised. They kissed cheeks like grown-ups, then Tilly said, ‘Oh, give me a hug, won’t you!’
They clung on for a moment, and then Tilly let her go. As she watched Adela thread her way along the crowded platform, she fought back tears and the fear that she might not see the girl again for a long time.
‘Goodbye, my darling girl,’ Tilly murmured, and blew a kiss as Adela turned one last time to wave before boarding the train.
Four days later a telegram came. Adela was a new recruit in the Entertainments National Service Association.
CHAPTER 26
Upper Assam, May 1942
James looked through his field glasses with disbelief. The road dipping down from the hills was filled with bedraggled soldiers. They came like an army of locusts, covering the slopes, trudging forward in the saturating heat or on open trucks that did for ambulances. A couple of aeroplanes buzzed overhead and then veered out of view in the direction of the Burmese border.
All spring the talk at the club had been of the shock invasion by the Japanese army, rushing like tigers through Malaya and then on into Burma after the capture of Singapore in February.
‘We’ll hold the line at Sittang River,’ James had said bullishly, knocking back a double whisky. He had started drinking more heavily in Tilly’s absence.
But in Burma, the 17th Infantry Division of the Indian Army under General Smyth had been quickly outflanked and pushed back north and west. By early March the capital, Rangoon, had fallen. Mandalay in the centre had followed. The Indian army made a desperate fighting retreat across the Chindwin River and through the almost impenetrable jungles and mountains to India. James had hunted in those teak forests as a young man when Burma had still been a part of India. He knew planters who had gone to work there and some of their Indian staff.
The news had grown ever grimmer. By April the Japanese had occupied the Andaman Islands and were bombing naval bases in Ceylon and Southern India; Madras was being evacuated. The tea planters, coal mine managers and oil workers of Assam were in near panic at the speed of events. A year ago they had thought India was ‘safe as houses’, as his fellow manager and neighbour, Reggie Percy-Barratt, had claimed. Now they were being forced to contemplate sending their families to safety in Calcutta or Delhi– always supposing anywhere in India was now safe.
The enemy was pressing towards their border. Burma had gone up in flames; cities and oil fields were ablaze, whether set alight by the invaders or the retreating British, James didn’t know. Rumour had it that thousands of stranded Indians were fleeing too: plantation workers, shopkeepers and clerks with their families.
‘Well, the Europeans had to be given priority on the ships, didn’t they?’ said Percy-Barratt defensively. ‘Rangoon couldn’t handle such numbers of evacuees.’
James had been uncomfortable at the thought. These Indians were in Burma working for the British and were subjects of King George. Knowing the terrain and the stifling heat of West Burma, it would be a near-impossible trek for women and children. He doubted many could survive even if they evaded the pursuing Japanese. He looked again through his binoculars. It amazed him that so many troops had made it back across the border. It was rumoured that thousands hadn’t; whole units had been either killed or taken prisoner.
He agonised about what to do: hurry back to the Oxford Estates and make preparations to evacuate the remaining wives and families of his staff, or continue up towards the border to see what he could do to help.
‘Damn it!’ he cursed under his breath. Turning to his assistant, Manzur, he said, ‘Come on. You can drive me up to Kohima.’
They found the border village in chaos. Army tents and temporary shelters were erected on the lawns of British bungalows. Tennis courts and paddocks had been given over to emergency field hospitals, vehicles, mess awnings and equipment. Exhausted men in grubby, sweat-stained uniforms milled around. But what lay beyond, corralled on the hillside, struck horror into James’s chest. A seething mass of people– emaciated, collapsing, beseeching, half naked, filthy, diseased– were camped out in the open as far as the eye could see. He was appalled at the almost Biblical scene of suffering.
The border officials were completely overwhelmed by the situation. James tried to get some sense out of one young man.
‘It’s not my fault,’ he said defensively. ‘We’ve been told to only let Europeans into Assam.’
‘They’ll die if you don’t,’ James said.
‘What can I do?’ the man said, removing his spectacles and rubbing his eyes in exhaustion.
‘Show a bit of compassion, man!’
But the clerk remained obstinate. ‘Take it up with my superiors. I’m just trying to do my job.’
James stormed off. He could see the situation was hopeless. He ordered Manzur to drive him back to the plantation.
James sighed in frustration. ‘We’ll offer some provisions to the army– maybe some labour to help them build defences or supply roads. See what they need. If the Japanese are coming, we’re going to be on the front line.’
On the way back his young assistant suggested, ‘Sahib, we could extend the lines, build some temporary shelters. Take some of those people in. They’ll have to let them across the border sooner or later.’
James just grunted. He should upbraid Manzur for being impertinent; it was none of his business what the authorities chose to do. But he didn’t. He had a growing respect for the young man and was secretly admiring that he had the confidence to voice his opinion to his boss. Clarrie liked Manzur too. He had proved a patient and encouraging tutor for Harry– who was turning out to be rather a serious child– and Clarrie had been pleased with his efforts. Clarrie would be outraged at the treatment of the fleeing civilians from Burma.
