Page 99 of The Girl from the Tea Garden
‘There’s no harm in it, Aunt Olive.’ Adela stood her ground, catching Jane’s hand so she couldn’t run back upstairs.
‘Jack,’ Olive appealed to her husband, ‘you don’t want our Jane going out like that, do you?’
Jack looked up from his newspaper. He blinked in surprise at the young women.
‘You look smashin’, pet,’ he said. ‘You an’ all, Adela. Pretty as your mam.’
Olive looked thunderous. She rounded on her daughter. ‘You better behave yourselves mind. If I hear you’ve been making a fool of yourself, it’ll be the last time you go. And no talking to lads.’
Jack spoke up. ‘Haway, Olive, don’t you remember being young once? You were happy enough to talk to me and go out on my arm.’
Olive’s thin face tightened. ‘That was done proper. I didn’t gan out to parties wearing lipstick.’
‘George will chaperone us,’ Adela assured. As if on cue there was a hoot of the horn outside. ‘Come on, Jane. Bye, Aunt Olive, Uncle Jack. We won’t stay out late.’
In the car Jane laughed with relief as she recounted the confrontation to George. ‘I don’t know where you get the nerve,’ she said in admiration.
‘Aunt Olive isn’t a dragon,’ said Adela. ‘She just worries about things that will never happen. That’s no reason to stop you having a bit of fun.’
‘You are my kind of girl,’ George said and chuckled as he revved the car and they roared off up the street.
The cousins were in big demand on the dance floor that evening. Adela danced every dance, but got more enjoyment out of seeing Jane blossom under the attention of several of George’s friends.
‘Why have you been hiding your sister away for so long, Brewis?’ demanded Wilf, a lanky joiner at Vickers-Armstrongs engineering works. He wanted to walk her home, but Jane resisted.
‘Can I call on you?’ Wilf asked eagerly.
‘Mam doesn’t like visitors.’
‘Call into Herbert’s Café,’ Adela intervened. ‘She’s the manager there.’
‘Not exactly—’
‘The old tea rooms on Tyne Street?’ Wilf’s eyes widened. ‘They serve canny pies there.’
‘Jane’s homemade recipe,’ said Adela, linking arms with Jane and swinging her away before she could deny it. ‘She’ll be in tomorrow.’
As George drove them home, Adela said, ‘Well, that definitely counts as some Jubbulpore.’ The girls hooted with laughter in the back seat.
‘What’s all this talk about Jubbulpore?’ he asked in bemusement.
But he got no sense out of his sister and cousin, who dissolved into fresh giggles. He started a sing-song, and they sang nonstop all the way back to Arthur’s Hill.
CHAPTER 18
At the end of August, Tilly came for a visit to Newcastle with Jamie and Libby, leaving Mungo on the Dunbar farm with her sister and brother-in-law.
Lexy made a fuss of Tilly’s red-headed children. Jamie looked older than his fifteen years. He had grown tall and had his father’s square jaw, yet his interests were more in tune with his mother’s; he was bookish and more bashful than Adela remembered. They had been firm friends as children. Libby was thirteen and had grown chubby and argumentative since Adela had last seen her in India as a seven-year-old. She sparked with her mother, who nagged her to sit up and keep her elbows off the table. Libby’s answer was, ‘Why? What harm are they doing?’
‘Always got a cheeky answer.’ Tilly gave an irritated sigh.
‘It was a question actually,’ said Libby. ‘Miss MacGregor says we should question everything.’
‘I’m tired of hearing about the opinionated Miss MacGregor,’ said Tilly, rolling her eyes at Adela. ‘Libby’s history teacher is a bit of a firebrand.’
‘Mother doesn’t approve because Miss MacGregor is anti-imperialist,’ Libby said, ‘and so am I.’
Jamie patted his sister’s back. ‘We’ve been treated to daily lectures about the evils of colonial rule– in particular how awful we British are in India.’
