Page 1 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

A dela heard a scream; it was coming from the dormitory. She bounded up the dark wooden staircase two steps at a time and burst through the door. A group of girls stood around the far bed, taunting.

‘You have to,’ ordered Nina Davidge. ‘Every new girl must drink it. I drank twice this much last term.’

‘Go on, Flowers, drink it!’

‘Stinky Flowers!’

‘We’ll call you Weedy if you don’t.’

‘Please stop it,’ wailed Flowers Dunlop. ‘It’s not smelling nice.’

‘ Not smelling nice ,’ Margie Munro said, mimicking her sing-song Indian accent. ‘You’re so chee-chee .’

‘It’s for your own good,’ Nina said, thrusting it right in the girl’s face. ‘Else you’re not one of us. We’re going to teach you how to be a good little memsahib and learn our ways. That’s why your parents sent you here, isn’t it? Pin her down, girls!’

Adela stood rooted to the spot, heart drumming as her classmates grabbed the new girl by her skinny arms and long plait.

Nina was lying about having drunk the stuff herself; she had refused any initiation ceremony when she’d joined the school in the summer term.

Her delicate bones needed heat, Nina had told them, and that was the only reason why she was in a dump of a school like StNinian’s in Shillong with the daughters of non-commissioned officers and box-wallahs.

Otherwise, according to Nina, she would be at a boarding school at home in England with girls of her own social class.

Better for Flowers if she just submitted and got it over with; then Nina might leave her alone.

But Flowers was fighting back, squirming out of their hold and shrieking in protest.

Margie caught sight of Adela and called, ‘Hey, Tea Leaf! Come and help us.’

Adela winced. Until last term, plump, pretty Margie, the sergeant’s daughter, had been her best friend.

Then tall Nina, a retired colonel’s daughter with her blonde hair in a sleek ponytail, had breezed in and picked Margie to do her bidding.

For some reason Nina had taken a dislike to Adela, although she had gone out of her way to be friendly.

Margie tried to keep friends with them both, but this term she’d started calling her by the irritating nickname Nina had invented, Tea Leaf, just because Adela’s parents ran a tea plantation.

Nina turned. ‘Yes, Tea Leaf. Get yourself over here and help with giving this silly patient her medicine.’

Adela hesitated. If she joined in, it might make Nina be friends with her.

‘No, help me !’ squealed Flowers, throwing her a pleading look, eyes wide with distress.

Adela ran forward.

‘That’s it, Tea Leaf.’ Nina gave a malicious little laugh. ‘You hold her head back.’

‘Give me that,’ Adela said, grabbing at the tooth mug of frothy urine-smelling liquid. She dreaded to think what all was in it. ‘I’ll do it.’

Nina was so surprised she let go. The other girls giggled and chanted.

‘Throw it, throw it! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers! Water the Flowers!’

Flowers Dunlop, a station master’s daughter, stared back like a terrified deer caught in a trap.

Then she screwed her eyes tight shut and braced herself for the ordeal.

Adela felt a wave of guilt, like the first time she had shot dead a blackbuck with the rifle her father had bought her for her eleventh birthday.

Don’t be sentimental, Adela. He had wiped away her tears. All’s fair game in the jungle.

But this wasn’t fair; her thirteen-year-old schoolmates were picking on the unhappy new girl like a pack of jackals smelling her weakness, and all because her mother was a native. Turning from Flowers, Adela spun round and flung the disgusting concoction over Nina.

There was a stunned silence. Until that very second, Adela herself had no idea she was going to do it. Nina spluttered in shock. The other girls loosened their hold and Flowers wriggled free. Margie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a nervous snort of laughter.

Nina, her look murderous, shrieked and launched herself at Adela.

‘I hate you!’ She grabbed hold of Adela’s long, dark plait and yanked it hard, scratching at her face like a wildcat.

Adela fought back, shoving Nina on to the bed.

‘Serves you right,’ Adela panted as they tussled. ‘You’re just a big bully.’

‘And you’re a wog just like Flowers!’ Nina screamed, digging her nails into her breast. ‘Nobody likes you. Your mother’s a half-caste and your father’s a cad!’

Adela gasped in fury. How dare she speak about her parents like that! She seized Nina’s long, pale fingers and sank her teeth into them. Nina let out a piercing scream that brought the young house mother tearing into the dormitory.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Miss Bensham demanded.

The other girls scattered to their beds. Adela stood up just in time to see Flowers slip out of the room unnoticed. Nina burst into tears.

‘She attacked me,’ Nina sobbed.

Miss Bensham bustled forward. ‘Dear girl, your hair’s soaking.’ She wrinkled her nose at the sour smell.

‘She did it!’ Nina burrowed into the house mother’s plump hold. ‘And she b-bit my h-hand.’

‘Oh my word, I can see teeth marks! Adela, is this true?’

Adela stood mutely defiant.

‘Girls?’ Miss Bensham looked around at the others. ‘What happened?’

‘Miss,’ said Margie, ‘she just went for Nina.’

‘Whatever possessed you?’ Their house mother looked deeply shocked.

Adela hesitated. If she told on the others about what they had been doing to Flowers, they would turn on her. At least Flowers had escaped.

‘She insulted my parents,’ Adela said.

‘I never did,’ Nina protested, her blue eyes reproachful.

‘Yes, you did!’

‘Nina, what did you say?’ Miss Bensham pushed her to arm’s length and scrutinised her.

‘Nothing, miss,’ she sniffed. ‘I don’t even know her parents.’

Miss Bensham looked at a loss as to what to do.

‘It’s not my fault, miss,’ Nina whined. ‘Adela picks on me because she doesn’t like me being friends with Margie.’

‘You must all be friends together, girls. Now go and rinse out your hair before teatime, Nina. Everyone else leave the dormitory now; you shouldn’t be up here in the afternoon.’ The girls scrambled for the door. ‘Not you, Adela Robson. You’re coming with me.’

As Adela followed the house mother out, Nina stuck out her tongue and made a rude gesture that only Adela saw.

When Adela refused to explain her behaviour to Miss Bensham, she was sent to the headmistress, Miss Gertrude Black.

Her office smelled of polish and flowers; a mix of beeswax and the marigolds and wild pink cosmos that stood in a blue vase on a bookcase by the door.

For a moment it caught Adela’s attention, and she forgot why she was there.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been hauled in front of the brown-suited, red-headed Miss Black.

By no means. Three years ago, in her very first week at the school, Adela had caused panic among girls and staff by smuggling in her pet tiger cub, Molly, in a laundry basket.

She had wept for hours when her father had returned and taken Molly home without her.

Then there was the time when she had thrown a jug of water from an upstairs window over a visiting missionary.

In the dusk she had mistaken the spindly figure for one of the annoying boys from StMungo’s School who were always daring each other to throw pebbles at the girls’ dormitory windows.

Miss Black scrutinised her over horn-rimmed spectacles and did not ask her to sit down.

‘I must say, Adela, I am dismayed to see you once more in front of my desk. I’m even more aghast to hear that this time it’s not merely your usual high spirits causing trouble, but an attack on another girl.

It’s completely unacceptable. I’ve seen the teeth marks on Nina’s hand, and I’ve already had her mother on the telephone demanding that you are expelled.

Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t be. ’

Adela felt her cheeks burn. ‘Nina Davidge is a bully!’

‘Give me an example.’

Adela was on the point of telling her about Flowers being forced to drink Nina’s disgusting potion but hesitated. She didn’t want to drag Flowers into her spat with the colonel’s daughter, or Nina would only take it out on them both. Flowers would be summoned and forced to tell tales against Nina.

‘She says unkind things,’ Adela replied. ‘She was horrible about my mother and called my father a cad.’

Miss Black raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s certainly not a nice thing to say.

But remember the old adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” You mustn’t be oversensitive.

I’ll have a word with Nina about it. I expect you girls to set an example to the younger ones.

You’re thirteen years-old and in the senior school now, so you better start acting your age. ’

The headmistress pushed her spectacles more firmly on to her nose.

‘In the meantime, you will be punished for such unladylike behaviour. You shall not be allowed to take part in the junior inter-house hockey matches, but instead will be given extra sewing duties by Miss Bensham. A period of calm reflection is what is needed. If anything like this happens again,’ Miss Black warned, ‘I shall not hesitate in summoning your parents and having you removed.’

Adela’s stomach lurched at the threat; how disappointed her parents would be if she was sent home in disgrace. Yet a part of her felt defiant; she would like nothing better than to leave the strictures of StNinian’s and return to her beloved home at Belgooree.

Frustrating as her punishment was– Adela loathed sewing and yearned to be out in the fresh autumnal air– she submitted without protest, hoping the trouble with Nina would soon blow over.

Perhaps the snobbish colonel’s daughter had only said those hurtful things about her parents in the heat of the moment.

Adela was sure she couldn’t have meant them, for they weren’t true.