Page 134 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
Adela was folding up the letter when she saw a postscript on the back. Her heart skipped a beat to see Sam’s name.
PS As you asked me to, I wrote to DrBlack to see if he knew the whereabouts of Sam Jackman. I just heard back last week. It seems that Sam enlisted with the Royal Air Force. DrBlack says he was on operations in Iraq, but since returning to India he’s been assigned to the film unit. The doctor is not sure where he is, though he suspects it might be Chittagong or somewhere on the battlefront, but a letter care of the Public Relations Directorate in Delhi would probably catch up with him eventually.
Adela’s heart thudded at the unexpected news. So Sam was an airman and working in films. She felt light-headed. For so long she had known nothing, had invented a dozen stories of what might have become of him, but never guessed that he’d joined the RAF. The relief of finally knowing made her euphoric. He would be in his element behind a camera, even if it was just propaganda newsreels and photographs. But her joy turned quickly to dread to think he might be on the embattled Burmese border. Was he still flying for the RAF too? Or was he part of the ground crew? All the rest of the day she see-sawed between exhilaration at knowing what had become of Sam and anxiety to think of him in constant danger.
A week later, in early April, they were packing up and heading back to the plain.
‘Typical disorganised ENSA,’ Mavis grumbled. ‘Just as everyone else is heading for the hills in the hot weather, we’re being sent back to fry in the sun.’
To Adela and Prue’s disappointment, the planned tour to Jubbulpore was cancelled and instead they were sent to Bihar to perform to camps of field companies: engineers, gunners, transport and supplies men and medics. The heat became fierce and the dust blew into everything.
‘Now you know what it means to sing through gritted teeth,’ Tommy joked.
Adela found herself endlessly trying to soothe tempers among her fellow dancers and keep Mavis and Prue apart, except on stage. Prue fretted that she wouldn’t get to see Stuey before he was deployed to Burma. His training in southern India was over. They picked up an anxious rumour from loose talk in the officers’ mess that Imphal was besieged and that there was fierce fighting around Kohima. The supply basis at Dimapur was under threat. If the Japanese broke through at Kohima, then Dimapur and the rest of Assam would be theirs for the taking. Adela wore herself out worrying about Sophie in the front line and James and his fellow tea planters at imminent risk. Belgooree was a few days’ march from there. But there was no official news of any conflict; the authorities had brought down a safety curtain of ominous silence. She tried to keep her fears to herself and put on a brave face, but Tommy understood.
‘Singing and dancing are your weapons,’ he said, giving her a hug, ‘so go out and use them. With a voice like yours, we’re not going to lose India.’
By May they were on their way to Calcutta, a journey that should have taken three days. Five days of slow trains, stopping at endless chaotic stations and Mavis complaining about everything from kerosene-tasting tea to the stench of dung fires pushed Prue to breaking point.
‘If you don’t shut up, I’m going to ram this tiffin tin into your miserable mouth and push you off the train!’
‘There’s no need talk like that,’ Mavis said, quite taken aback.
‘There’s every need. You’re driving us all mad.’
‘I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking,’ panted Mavis, fanning herself with an old newspaper. ‘India is stinky and sweaty and we all want to go home.’
‘No,’ Prue cried, ‘the only stinky and sweaty person here is you! I knew you should never have come. You can’t sing and you’re only a half-decent dancer. Call yourself a Bluebell? The nearest you ever got to a bluebell was in a wood.’
‘Well, I’ve never been so offended!’ Mavis spluttered. ‘And if we’re talking about dancing, you dance like you’ve got two left feet.’
Adela tried to intervene. ‘That’s enough, both of you. Let’s all just calm down and try to get some sleep. It’s just the heat talking.’
‘I’m not going to dance with her again,’ declared Mavis, ‘not till she apologises.’
‘Apologise?’ Prue exclaimed. ‘You’re the one who should be apologising to the whole show for being the worst performer. We’d be better off with two Toodle Pips rather than two plus a panting elephant.’
‘That’s it!’ shouted Mavis, puce-faced. ‘I’m not dancing with you ever again.’ She turned to Adela, her eyes welling with tears. ‘You’ll have to decide.’
‘Decide what?’
‘Which of us you want as your other Pip. My Pip suits your Pip better than her Pip.’
At that moment Adela caught Tommy’s look. He always kept out of the arguments, but she could see him trying to suppress a snort of laughter at Mavis’s plea about pips. Adela felt a laugh bubble up inside. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but couldn’t stop it. In seconds both she and Tommy were doubled up and clutching their stomachs from spasms of laughter, filling the fetid carriage with their hoots of amusement. Mavis burst into tears. Prue looked at them as if they had lost their senses. But it was infectious, and soon the whole carriage was in giggles, even Mavis,relieving the frayed nerves from months on the road and the ever-present fear of being invaded.
Calcutta was a shock. Adela had not seen it for six years, but she was appalled at the scenes of destitution along the railway tracks. She had heard from her mother about a terrible famine in Bengal the previous year– there had been almost no news of it back in Britain– but nothing had prepared her for the grim sights that still lingered. Skeletal naked people with shrivelled limbs and huge staring eyes in skull-like heads lay by the rails or under bushes. It was impossible to tell if they were men or women; they were just husks of their former selves. Adela was nauseated. How could it possibly have got this bad? Surely the authorities could have done something for them.
Outside the station was also crowded with the moribund. The ENSA group looked about them in disbelief. Adela saw some of them recoil as sticklike arms gestured towards them for food. Their army escort instructed them firmly not to give away their rations.
‘Sorry, but those are the rules. You’ll get used to it I’m afraid.’
Adela knew about Indian poverty and beggars who lived by alms, but this was wretchedness on a sickening scale. She wondered what the effect must be on Indian troops to see their fellow citizens reduced to skin and bone, dying in front of their eyes. What would Rafi think, and had he seen the effects of the famine on his travels? For a moment she thought of Rafi’s brother Ghulam, so passionate and angry about the treatment of Indians under the British. Adela had no idea what had become of him.
They hurried from the sound of empty tin bowls being tapped on the hard ground and the sour smell of rotting humanity, guilty at their healthy flesh and the knowledge that they would be fed that night.
Central Calcutta, around Chowringhee Street, where the city teemed with troops and airmen on R&R from the China-Burma theatre of war, was a different world. Here, the bars, hotels, cinemas, clubs and ice-cream parlours were busy with trade and awash with money as British and Americans spent their pay.
Adela and her fellow players were taken to the Grand Hotel. It advertised seven-course meals and the downstairs dining room was packed with young officers entertaining Anglo-Indian secretaries and servicewomen. Jazz played in the crowded bar while the drinkers knocked back gins and lime and talked about sport and home. But the bedrooms were airless and cramped. That night Adela lay sweating and sleepless as a single fan turned the hot soupy air and she listened to someone throwing up in the room next door.
