Page 19 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
Rita was contrite. ‘Oh, my dearest, here I am complaining about my family when you have had such tragedy in yours. Don’t listen to me. Let’s change the subject.’
They did, but Sophie couldn’t help dwelling on her lack of relations. Orphaned at six years old in India when her parents had died violent deaths, she had been brought up by a beloved aunt in Scotland, who had died when Sophie was twenty-one. Though she had hardly any memory of her parents, it still made Sophie shudder to think that her own father could have shot her mother and then shot himself. What drove a man to do that? In the aftermath of her parents’ tragedy, she had also lost her only brother. He had been given away at birth and never been seen again. It was a source of pain too that she and Rafi appeared unable to have children. Once she had been pregnant to another man ... Sophie forced herself not to think of the dark circumstances of her miscarriage and her failed marriage to the forester Tam Telfer. Yet she had Rafi, whom she adored; he was her family, along with her dear cousin Tilly, whom she was impatient to see again at Belgooree over Christmas.
When Rafi appeared with Kishan, Sophie leapt up and went to her husband. The warm smile he gave her was enough to banish the bluest of thoughts.
Sophie and Rafi were on the point of leaving for Belgooree when Sanjay appeared, clutching a cricket bat.
‘Come on, Rafiji.’ The handsome youth gave a winning smile. ‘You’re the best bowler in Gulgat. Stourton said he’d play too. Just for an hour. You don’t mind, do you, MrsKhan?’
‘We really need to be on the road,’ Sophie said, dismayed.
‘You can field,’ Sanjay declared. ‘You have a great throwing arm– shapely but strong.’
Rafi gave her a helpless look. She knew how he pitied the boy for losing his father so young. Yet the Raja’s nephew was on the cusp of manhood; he was no longer a child, even if the adults around him still treated him like one. His mother and grandmother overindulged him, while his uncle and Rita ignored or excused his outbursts of temper as something he would grow out of. Even Rafi seemed blind to the boy’s manipulating charm; she could see how flattered he was to be asked to play cricket for the young prince. Maybe she was being unfair, Sophie thought, and Sanjay was being naturally enthusiastic. Strange, though, how he had waited just until their moment of departure to waylay them with his sudden cricket match.
‘Very well,’ she relented. ‘But we go this afternoon.’
On Christmas Day, Adela rushed down the drive when she heard the Khans’ car hooting on the tea garden track.
‘Happy Christmas! Where have you been?’ Adela jumped on board and squeezed in between Rafi and Sophie, flinging her arms about both and kissing their cheeks. ‘We thought you were coming yesterday. I’m so sick of baby talk. Auntie Tilly’s never put Harry down for a minute. I’m so glad you’re here.Now we can have some fun.’
Rafi laughed and Sophie hugged her back. ‘Happy Christmas too, my darling lassie. Your Uncle Rafi got embroiled in a cricket match that lasted all day – that’s why we are late.’
‘Your Auntie Sophie caught out Sanjay,’ said Rafi, ‘otherwise we’d still be playing.’
‘Yes, that didn’t go down well at all,’ Sophie grimaced.
‘Who’s Sanjay?’
‘The Raja’s nephew,’ said Rafi. ‘Remember he once came on a hunting trip here with his uncle.’
‘Was he the boy who said he’d skin my tiger cub, Molly, if I let her out of the house?’
‘Sounds like Sanjay,’ Sophie said, rolling her eyes.
‘He’d have been teasing,’ Rafi defended.
‘He has a cruel streak,’ said Sophie.
‘Not cruel, just boisterous.’
‘He’s still behaving like a spoilt brat, yet he’s nearly a man. It’s high time you learned how to say no to him once in a while.’
Adela felt uncomfortable at their disagreement; it wasn’t like them. ‘Well, I remember him as rather good-looking and I was probably being a pest. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. You’re both here, and that’s the best Christmas present I could have.’
Rafi ruffled her hair and Sophie gave her another kiss, and the topic of Sanjay was dropped.
Shrieks of delight greeted the latecomers as Sophie and Tilly hugged, Clarrie rustled up cocktails and the men swapped news. Tilly’s youngest son, Mungo, leapt from chair to chair in a pirate outfit and set Scout barking madly. Around a table set out on the veranda, they ate a huge lunch of chestnut soup, snipe, blackcock, quail, roast potatoes, greens and curried cauliflower, followed by plum pudding and brandy butter and gaudy sugary sweetmeats with coffee. Wesley served up his best claret and a bottle of port he’d kept for ten years. Adela knew her father was doing his best to impress his cousin James and show off Belgooree hospitality.
The conversation was loud and unceasing. Tilly talked of her son and daughter at boarding school in England, while James and Wesley discussed falling tea prices and the likelihood of production having to be cut.
‘Oh, James, you promised not to talk shop,’ Tilly protested.
‘And you promised not to bore about babies,’ James grunted.
Sophie intervened swiftly. ‘Tell the gossip from Assam, Tilly. Who is the burra memsahib at the club these days?’
‘Tilly of course,’ James joked.
