Page 14 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)
Dear Cousin Jane Sorry this is such a belated thank you for your lovely birthday card with the sixteen dragonflies– they really are that brightly coloured here– shimmering green and blue and red.
I’ve been so busy with the end-of-term play ( She Stoops to Conquer – I got the part of Constance, which I think is a more interesting one than leading lady, Kate) as well as helping out at the Gaiety Theatre– Aunt Fluffy complains that since the school holidays started I practically live backstage and that she might as well send round all my meals.
But guess what? I’ve got a part in the musical No, No, Nanette dancing and singing in the chorus!
! I’m so thrilled I could burst. I especially love ‘Tea for Two’, as it reminds me of singing it in the car with Daddy at the top of our voices.
Prue is helping behind the scenes painting stage scenery.
It’s much easier doing that at the Gaiety than at school because they have a clever system of painting the canvas over two floors with a slit between the two, where the backcloth can be wound up and down on a roll, so Prue is often upstairs painting away.
You can always tell it’s her because she has a very loud whistle and whistles along to all the songs, which sometimes annoys the lead actors, but makes me smile and dance even harder.
Prue left school this term and is staying up for the season, then will be joining her parents in Jubbulpore (her father works at the Gun Carriage Factory).
I’ll miss her terribly, but at least we’ve got till the cold season together.
I won’t be going home this summer because I’m involved in the musical, and now the monsoon has come there’s been bad flooding on the way up to Shillong, so the family are a bit marooned at Belgooree.
But as I wrote in a previous letter, I’m glad I got home for the Easter holidays, and all seemed well.
You asked about my brother because I forgot to tell you last time.
Harry had grown so much since Christmas– he’s going to be tall like Daddy and he’s got the same dark wavy hair that won’t lie down even when it’s brushed.
He’s speaking now but he chooses not to say very much– at least not to humans– but he talks to Scout like a best friend and I think he would sleep with the dog on the veranda if he was allowed to!
He’ll be three in three months’ time. Harry hums a lot and he loves building towers with wooden bricks and then knocking them down.
Ayah Mimi is forever searching for bricks under the furniture.
The best day of the holiday was going riding with Daddy and Mother over to Um Shirpi for a picnic and a swim, while Ayah looked after Harry.
It was like old times. Daddy said that next year he might take me hunting in the jungle around Gulgat with Rafi and the Raja.
That would be so much fun! Mother didn’t like the idea, but Daddy laughed and said that I would be a match for any tiger!
They have leopards in the forests here. I saw one late at night when I was returning with DrFatima from the clinic near Kufri.
It walked right across the path in the moonlight in front of our ponies.
It stopped and stared at us with big yellow eyes and twitched its tail, then bounded off into the trees again.
Luckily the ponies and the baggage mule didn’t get spooked or bolt for their lives, but I had my heart in my mouth, I can tell you!
I love going into the hills with DrFatima– it gives me a chance to ride properly and not just promenade around The Ridge and Jakko Hill like the richer girls at school, who have riding lessons.
Sometimes Sundar Singh gives us a lift in his old open-top Chevrolet, but DrFatima doesn’t like to be beholden to him.
She can be very stubborn for someone so shy– well, not shy exactly, but very reserved about her feelings.
She says I’m far too open with mine! I like going to visit the hill people.
They are friendly and welcoming and they live very tough lives– the men are employed as coolies in the town, so the women do all the work in the fields and look after the families while they are away.
They look old very quickly, though the young women are beautiful (except for those with pockmarks from smallpox), with rings in their noses and colourful clothes.
They sing and laugh and tease us for not being married.
You should see them dressed up for the native Sipi Fair in May, weighed down with necklaces and earrings of silver and bright jewels and the most enormous hoops in their noses – you could practically skip with them!
Aunt Fluffy doesn’t approve of the Sipi Fair because she says some of the young girls are sold off as brides like at a cattle market, but she doesn’t stop me going because it’s a fun day out and I like seeing the hill people letting their hair down, as they lead such hard lives the rest of the year.
At the hill clinics DrFatima performs small operations and gives out medicines.
There are some terrible accidents– children with burns from falling into fires or women who have cut themselves chopping wood, and their wounds have gone septic before they can be treated.
Sometimes DrFatima can get them sent to hospital in time, but not always.
One time a young woman came in carrying a baby who had been mauled by a dog.
The baby was screaming and the mother was weeping.
DrFatima treated the wounds and we sat up all night with the baby and you could tell she was in great pain crying in her mother’s arms. In the morning she seemed more calm, but later that day she went into a fit and died.
The dog must have been rabid. We were there when they cremated her little body and put the ashes into the river.
I couldn’t stop crying, until DrFatima told me not to be so emotional, as it didn’t help.
But I know that she sometimes cries quietly at night from all the sorrow she sees.
She wants to make everyone better; that’s her mission in life.
Sometimes Tibetans come to the clinics at Kufri and Theog.
They walk all the way from Tibet through the high mountain passes to sell jewellery and homespun cloth in the Indian towns, carrying everything on sturdy yaks, which are like shaggy oxen.
They are the gentlest people I’ve met– they smile a lot and their faces are creased and weathered by the fierce mountain sun.
If they can’t pay, DrFatima accepts a few apples or a bracelet of a couple of beads on a leather strap.
There are some missionaries at Narkanda who grow apples– the orchards were planted in the 1920s– and it gives the hill people something to sell at market.
I haven’t been up that far yet, but DrFatima promises she’ll take me soon.
The monsoons have come now and the days are very misty and wet, so I prefer to be here in Simla, working at the theatre.
Next summer I ’ ll be leaving school– I refuse to stay on any longer than I have to.
It ’ s not that I don ’ t like StMary ’ s, but I ’ m not in the least bit academic and I want to get out into the world.
What do you think I should do? What ’ s it like now that you are working at Herbert ’ s Café?
I ’ m not sure I am cut out to join the family business.
I don ’ t really want to go back to Belgooree and work in tea like my parents.
I know Daddy would like me to, but Mother understands that I want more excitement from life.
She often talks about her childhood at Belgooree with Aunt Olive.
It ’ s strange how your mother has no real memory of it because according to my mother, Aunt Olive was about fifteen when she left, which is just a bit younger than me.
I couldn ’ t possibly forget India if I ’ d had to leave at that age.
I hope the excursion to the seaside is a tonic for both your parents– it sounds like they work very hard.
How is Cousin George’s romance going with the telephonist?
Please send me a photo of you all at the seaside. Your loving cousin, Adela.
PS Aunt Fluffy says I can go to the after-show dance at the finish of the musical in August even though I’m not yet seventeen. It’s going to be at The Chalet (it’s part of the United Services Club) and they are famous for putting on really good parties!
PPS. Have you fallen in love yet, Jane? I still think often of Sam, even though I’ll probably never see him again.
I can’t really explain why he’s still on my mind, as I haven’t seen him since I was thirteen– but it’s more than just about good looks when you fall in love, isn’t it? I adore everything about him.