Page 72 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
Adela gave a teary smile at Fluffy’s brusque, wise words; they eased a fraction of the emptiness she felt. She leant across the wicker sofa and hugged her stout benefactor, breathing in her smell of camphor and lavender. ‘Thank you, Auntie. Thank you for everything and more.’
CHAPTER 13
Adela had forgotten how beautiful Belgooree was. She saw it with fresh eyes as her father drove her back up from Shillong into the Khassia hills. The orchids bloomed and the air smelt of honey; the car stirred up showers of butterflies as they drove by. The jungle parted like stage curtains from time to time to reveal cultivated terraces of potatoes. Cattle meandered out of the trees to cross the road, tended by boys in mountain caps who sang as they prodded the beasts out of the way.
When the engine strained at the steeper gradient and they bumped along the plantation tracks between the emerald tea bushes, Adela felt emotion catch her throat. She waved at the women returning to the weighing machine with baskets of leaves strapped to their heads.
‘Second flush from Eastern Section?’ she asked.
Wesley grinned and nodded. ‘Glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything about tea.’
‘I haven’t been away that long.’ She smiled.
‘Well, it seems like an eternity to me and your mother.’ He ruffled her hair like he used to when she was little. She leant in and hugged him.
‘Give it a week and you’ll be wishing me back to Aunt Fluffy’s.’
‘Very likely,’ he said and winked, accelerating past the factory and in through the compound, tooting the horn repeatedly.
The noise brought Clarrie and Harry clattering down the bungalow steps.
Harry threw himself at his big sister as soon as she climbed from the car. ‘Delly’s home!’
She picked him up and swung him round in her arms, dropping him back swiftly. ‘Goodness, you’re like a sack of potatoes! I can hardly pick you up.’
He reached up to be swung around again, but Adela was rushing to her mother for a much-needed hug. They clung on together.
‘I’ve missed you, Mother,’ she mumbled into Clarrie’s hair, noticing threads of grey for the first time.
‘Me too, my darling.’ Clarrie squeezed her tight and kissed her head. They broke apart and Clarrie scrutinised her. ‘You’re looking a little thin and pasty. Mohammed Din will have to feed you up. None of these faddy diets from Simla in this household.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Adela said and smiled, ‘but I’m fine really.’ There was something about the way her mother eyed her that made her self-conscious. Was it possible for a mother to tell just by looking that her daughter had lost her innocence? Adela turned away. ‘Where’s Ayah Mimi?’
‘You can go and see her,’ said Clarrie. ‘She keeps to her hut most of the time these days– sleeping and praying.’
‘She’s well though?’
‘She’s fine,’ said Wesley. ‘Still refusing to come and live in the house. She eats less than a mynah bird, but she’ll outlive us all.’
Adela’s first days back were spent early-morning riding and accompanying her father around the tea garden. The temperature was climbing and there had been a couple of half-hearted storms, but the main monsoon was yet to arrive. They listened on the temperamental radio to reports of its progress up the Subcontinent. The rains had started in Ceylon.
Clarrie was once again busy in the factory, overseeing with an eagle eye the processes of withering, rolling, fermenting, drying and sorting, as well as taking part in the tea tasting. Their mohurer, Daleep, had a flair for tea and had been trained up as a taster; Clarrie enjoyed debating with him about the character of their teas and whether they were bright and brisk or a touch flat and dull.
‘Never try and argue with Clarissa Belhaven when it comes to the merits of Belgooree tea,’ Wesley had joked with the eager young Daleep when he had first been promoted. ‘Just listen and learn.’ Daleep was now as expert as Wesley and gaining on Clarrie.
Adela greeted the women in the sorting room as they sat on the floor over sieves, sifting the processed tea leaves into grades, their shawls pulled over their noses to keep out the dust. She breathed in the heady aromatic smell of tea that permeated the sheds, a safe, secure smell that conjured up her early childhood.
Each day she called on her old nurse, Ayah Mimi, bringing her bowls of dal and making her tea. No one knew her age, but Sophie had guessed she was in her seventies, though she looked older. The woman had had a hard life after being Sophie’s nanny, eking out a living and ending up as a holy woman sheltering in the forest hut at the hilltop temple clearing, where Sophie had found her again. She was the last of the household to have seen Sophie’s baby brother after the fateful day Sophie’s father had shot his wife and turned the gun on himself. Ayah Mimi had fled with the baby, but been forced to hand him over to a police officer, who had dumped the newborn in an orphanage. For years Ayah Mimi had searched for him in vain, as had Sophie after her return to India as an adult.
Adela waited a week before she brought the subject up, knowing it was painful for the old nurse. But the nagging thought that Tommy might be the missing boy would not go away. She sat on a rush mat on the bare floor of the ayah’s hut and talked about Sophie coming for her birthday.
‘One of the reasons Auntie Sophie likes to come here is to see you, Ayah Mimi. She’s always asking after you in her letters to Mother.’
Ayah smiled and nodded.
‘I wonder how much she remembers being here when she was little. Can’t be much, can it? And her feelings about the place must be mixed.’
Again the old woman nodded, the expression in her eyes reflective.
