Page 40 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
‘Amissionary?’
‘Well a sort of missionary-cum-farmer.’ Adela smiled.
‘Good to hear he’s alive and well,’ said Clarrie.
‘Start at the beginning,’ said Tilly, ‘and tell us all you know.’
Adela had a sudden stomach lurch that she had been unwise to spill her secret, but she was keen to steer the conversation away from Bracknall. Besides, talking about Sam at least brought him closer as they conjured him up in their conversation – and that was better than nothing.
Restless: that was how Sam felt these days. Climbing up through snow-laden oaks to the crest of Hatu Peak, he stopped to catch his breath. He had come to take a cine film, but the arc of the Himalayas had disappeared behind lowering clouds; the air was stingingly cold, and he was glad of his yak hat with its warm flaps and his Tibetan coat. He was going mad sitting indoors all day. He couldn’t endlessly read like the Reverend Hunt, his fellow missionary. Hunt was a genial but private man, content in his own company and a house full of books.
Sam found the winter months frustrating, with not enough to do in the orchards to keep him occupied. He enjoyed visiting the locals in their homes, especially on festival days, such as Christmas, but he was no good at preaching religion or telling Bible stories like Hunt was; he preferred to help them mend their gardening tools and champion their causes with the local landowner over rents or harvests.
‘Don’t get involved in local politics,’ Hunt had warned. ‘Things are very sensitive these days, and we don’t want the mission closed down.’
Fatima’s clinic would not return until the snows melted, so he didn’t have her welcome company either. She was a handsome woman with beautiful eyes, and he always felt a lifting of the spirits when her grave expression broke into a rare smile. He knew she only smiled or laughed for those who earned her respect– or possibly her affection.
But it wasn’t the dedicated doctor who robbed him of his peace of mind; it was the thought of Adela Robson being a day and a half’s ride down the road in Simla. How surprised he had been to hear from his friend Boz, the hearty Scotsman who had befriended him two summers ago on his way up to Spiti, that Adela was living so close by. He had assumed she would have been packed off to England to finish her schooling far from the wagging tongues of Assam, so had been amazed to find that she had ended up at StMary’s and was making a name for herself in the local theatre.
He had stepped willingly into Guy Fellows’s shoes to make up the numbers at Adela’s birthday supper, for he was curious to learn more about the headstrong, impishly pretty girl who had shaken him out of his quiet life four years previously. Ducking under the lamplit trees of Fluffy Hogg’s bungalow that June evening, he had caught his breath at the sight of the beautiful woman at the top of the veranda steps. Her dark, lustrous hair was piled up, revealing a slender neck and bare shoulders, her shapely figure and slim legs flattered by a shimmering pink dress. As he’d stepped closer, feeling ridiculously gauche in Boz’s old dinner suit, he’d realised that this woman with the large eyes and heart-shaped face was Adela.
She had rushed to greet Boz, while Sam had hung back in the shadows, trying to compose himself, but when Boz had stepped aside to introduce him, Sam had bounded up the steps and stuck out his hand. For a moment Adela had just stared at him as if he had dropped out of the trees; whether it was a look of disbelief or disappointment, he was still not sure. But she had recovered quickly and shaken his hand– neat, warm fingers that had lain in his rough palm and set off a hammering of excitement in his chest– until he had pulled away, quite unnerved at her effect on him.
There had been a lot of small talk and excited giggling among Adela and her friends, while he had talked politics with the amiable Sikh surveyor Sundar and tried to engage Fatima in conversation about the clinic. But Fatima was happy to sit back and let the others talk; observation was what the doctor did best. Yet it was Adela whose curiosity had overridden social niceties; it was she who had questioned him about the crises in his life that had led to his new start in Narkanda. She was different from her friends– more enquiring and mature in thought and yet with the same thirst for life as any seventeen-year-old.
He was unsettled by the intense look she gave him with her brown-green eyes framed by thick dark lashes, her creamy skin flawless in the candlelight. He had felt almost winded by her scrutiny and yet he had spilled out his story, unable to stop himself. Her young friends had squirmed with discomfort, but Adela had made a joke and diffused the strained atmosphere. Why had it seemed so important that he tell her about DrBlack saving him from the gutter? Was it because she had once confided in him so completely about her Anglo-Indian origins and the school bullies?
Sam had not intended to continue with them to the dance– he was a hopeless dancer and he was a fish out of water in such glittering palaces as Davico’s Ballroom– but Adela had been keen for him to join them. Or perhaps it had just been politeness, for she had been inundated with requests from other young men to dance and her promise of a waltz (the only dance he half knew) had come to nothing. The odious Bracknall, reeking of hair oil and ogling the young women, had monopolised Adela for the slow dance.
He remembered craving a cigarette, so when Adela had slipped out, he had suggested to MrsHogg that he make sure she was all right and gone in pursuit. Adela and he had smoked together, and Sam had felt the tension fall away as they stood side by side under the bright moon. So why had he spoilt the moment by lecturing her on Bracknall as if she were a child without a will of her own? For a dangerous moment he had thought he would kiss her, felt an overpowering urge to pull her into his arms and smother her moist cherry-red lips with hungry kisses, but he had drawn back.
What could he possibly offer her apart from a snatched moonlit embrace? He had no wealth or security and had sworn to dedicate his life to the work of the mission. He was single and unencumbered by emotional ties of any kind; life was a lot simpler and more bearable that way. So he had turned his back on Adela’s amorous looks and playful words, and she had taken the hint and ignored him for the rest of the evening.
Then why had he made excuses to go back to Simla a couple of weeks later and slip into the Gaiety Theatre to watch her perform on stage? Late summer and the apple-picking season had come as a blessed relief; weeks of mindless labour, picking, packing, hauling heavy boxes and getting the produce to market. If he had any energy left at the end of a hard day’s graft, Sam would organise a game of cricket among the villagers or ride up Hatu to see the sunset burning through the brown oaks.
But however much he exhausted himself physically, Sam could not rid his mind of thoughts of Adela. She came to him on the edge of sleep, a laughing sensual face and a swaying body in a pink dress who robbed his peace of mind and left him sweating and full of frustrated desire long into the night. Tormented, he would take himself in hand and slake his lust on his narrow single bed, falling asleep for a few hours of blessed oblivion, yet waking ashamed at his nocturnal weakness. He prayed hard that he would overcome such desires and accept his celibate life. It was the hardest part of being a missionary. In Assam there had been no shortage of bored British wives looking for seduction and brief liaisons; Sam had been happy to oblige, for these women wanted no emotional involvement beyond a broad shoulder to cry on.
Retreating from Hatu Mountain that day in late December, Sam packed a small haversack of provisions, told Reverend Hunt that he was going hiking for a few days, and set off for Simla. Part walking, part hitching lifts in a milk cart and a timber wagon, Sam arrived in Simla the following day with no clear idea of what he would do.
Boz was out of town for two weeks of leave, Sundar told him when Sam tracked him down to his modest digs in Number Four of the United Services Club barracks. The rows of identical flats were built of deodar so seasoned by the harsh winters they were almost black, but looking picturesque with overhanging icicles.
‘Gone back up to Quetta to visit old friends. He’s a Pathan at heart– a tartan Pathan!’ Sundar laughed at his own joke. ‘Stay here. I can put up a camp bed in my sitting room in a jiffy, as you Britishers say.’
Sam took no persuading and spent three enjoyable days in the Sikh’s lively company, strolling the town, whiling away hours at the Simla Coffee House playing draughts and talking politics, skating at Annandale and eating at Sundar’s favourite Punjabi café, where they served Lahori dishes of spicy dal and golden puffs of wheat glistening with ghee.
‘Hassan serves the best puri outside Lahore,’ Sundar declared, belching contentedly. ‘I’d have had to return home a long time ago if it hadn’t been for him. Isn’t that so, Hassan?’ He clapped a hairy hand on the café owner’s back.
‘That is so.’ Hassan gave a gap-toothed grin under thick moustaches.
Over many cups of tea– Sam having refused the whisky that Sundar kept for guests– they talked late into the evening. Sam learnt of the loss of Sundar’s wife and his pride in his ten-year-old son, Lalit, whose school photograph hung above the small fireplace.
‘You would like him,’ said Sundar, his eyes glistening. ‘He loves cricket– he’s a fast bowler. And he can hunt with a hawk.’
‘Is that for swooping on the ball at the boundary?’ Sam teased. ‘You must miss him.’
Sundar nodded and cleared his throat. ‘So when are you going to find a wife and sire a healthy son to carry on the name of Jackman?’
Sam laughed with embarrassment. ‘No time soon.’
