Page 137 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
‘Not at all,’ Jimmy said. ‘I should have been more persistent.’
‘I better go now,’ she said, smiling, ‘but I’ll come back and see you.’
‘Will you?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’d like that. Just to talk to you would be a better tonic than the stuff they’re making me swallow.’
‘Jimmy.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I promise I’ll not leave Imphal without seeing you again.’
She went quickly, before he saw the tears of pity in her eyes. The number of shattered lives that they had seen on their tour was sometimes overwhelming. But to suddenly come across a man that she had known before the war– had been a little in love with– and see him reduced to a husk of his former self was heart-wrenching.
Each morning before their hectic schedule of performances, Adela made the effort to go early and visit Jimmy. Most of the nurses on duty encouraged it, as it raised the morale of the whole ward when she sang them songs over breakfast.
At the end of their second week in Imphal, rumours spread of the imminent arrival of a VIP.
‘Could be Mountbatten come to dole out medals,’ Tommy speculated.
‘Oh, I hope so.’ Prue grinned. ‘He’s a real dish. Do you think we’ll get to perform for him?’
But before it could happen, Adela, Tommy, Prue and Betsie agreed to go to a casualty clearing station at Tamu sixty miles away to perform to medics and patients. The monsoon rains had eased and the roads were drying out. They crammed into a jeep without room for props or costumes and were driven south by a cheerful Gurkha. The friends were nervous at going nearer to the front– Jimmy had pleaded with Adela not to go– but the joyful surprise of the hard-pressed staff at their surprise arrival was worth it.
The clearing station was a huddle of canvas buildings in a forest clearing by a river, with patients lying on stretchers that were kept off the ground by forked sticks. The nurses had dispensed with the starched-white uniforms of hospital and were living in tents with holes in the ground for latrines and sustained by food dropped from the air. To Adela’s amazement she came across an old school friend from Shillong, the only girl who had ever been a true friend, however briefly.
‘Flowers Dunlop! I don’t believe it!’
The young woman in slacks and shirt, and her dark hair still worn in a thick plait, gaped at her. At once they were hugging and giggling as if they were thirteen again.
‘I’ve been sent up from an army hospital in East Bengal to help,’ Flowers explained. ‘We’ve got so many cases of fever coming in, and it’s hopeless sending them to hospital in the plains in the hot season, as it just makes them worse, so we’re treating as many as we can here and keeping them in the hills to recuperate.’
‘Yes, I’ve seen some of them at Imphal– including an old boyfriend,’ said Adela. ‘I sing to them over their egg and toast.’
‘I bet that cheers them up,’ Flowers said, winking.
Later, after Adela had sung with her friends to patients babbling with delirium and groaning in pain, she sat on Flowers’ camp bed under a mosquito net as they drank tea by the light of a hurricane lamp. Flowers told her about training as a nurse and how she had been working in Rangoon when the Japanese invaded Burma. She had escaped on one of the last overcrowded ships to leave the port. After that she enlisted as an army nurse and was sent to the Middle East.
‘Since coming back, I’ve worked in Calcutta and then with a specialist neurosurgical unit in Comilla before coming here.’
‘Gosh, you’re adventurous,’ Adela said in admiration, ‘and brave.’
Flowers flashed her an amused look. ‘Not what you would have expected from the timid girl you knew at StNinian’s?’
‘No, not really,’ Adela admitted. ‘But we were very young then.’
‘But you were always brave,’ said Flowers. ‘I wish I’d had the courage to run away like you did. I hated school. And you caused such a fuss, you wouldn’t believe it. Especially when you didn’t come back.’
‘I hope they didn’t pick on you more because I wasn’t there,’ Adela said with a guilty pang.
‘They did,’ Flowers answered bluntly. ‘But it made me stronger. I kept telling myself that I was better than them and that I’d make something of myself– not just learn the social graces and make myself pretty for a husband. You did that for me, Adela. So thanks for getting yourself expelled.’ Flowers gave a wide grin.
They laughed and drank more tea. Adela gave a brief outline of what she’d done in the intervening years, leaving out the painful details of her affair and illegitimate child.
‘I’m sorry to hear about the death of your father,’ said Flowers. ‘My father’s health is not good. My mother wants him to go to the convalescent home in Simla, but he won’t desert his duties as station master, even though their house got requisitioned by the army and they are living in a leaking bungalow in Sreemangal.’
‘Jaflong would be closer than Simla for a spell of R&R. Doesn’t your mother come from there?’
Flowers smiled. ‘Fancy you remembering that. Yes, it would be closer, but the railways would pay for him to go to Simla if he made a good case. But he will never ask.’ They fell into silence, each thinking about their parents. Flowers murmured, ‘It’s funny being up here, close to the tea plantations. I hope I have the chance to see Assam while I’m here.’
