Page 39 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

A dela 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.

‘Ayah, you don’t have to talk about this if it upsets you, but do you mind if I ask you something about Sophie’s baby brother?’

Ayah didn’t flinch but fixed Adela with a steady gaze. After a long moment she nodded her assent.

‘A male friend of mine in Simla came from an orphanage in Shillong– he was adopted by a British couple– and he’d be the right sort of age for Sophie’s brother.

I know it’s a long shot, but can you remember the name of the orphanage where you .

.. where the Logan baby was taken? Was it the Catholics or the Welsh Baptists? ’

Ayah began to twist her hands in her lap. Her eyes focused on something distant. Her voice when she spoke was thin and high-pitched, like wind through reeds.

‘I don’t know which orphanage.’

‘But I thought you went to work in one in the hope of finding him.’

‘I did,’ she whispered, ‘but only because I thought that’s where the police officer would have taken him.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Adela felt a stab of disappointment.

‘That night – before the terrible thing happened – I took baby sahib in a basket to the village like Logan Memsahib said,’ Ayah recalled painfully.

‘She thought the baby was in danger from Logan Sahib – he was shouting so much at the baby. Ama, a wise local woman, sheltered us. But afterwards Burke Sahib, the policeman, found me and took him away– said I was stealing a white baby and I was never to try and find him or Sophie again or I would go to prison—’

A dry sob broke from her throat. Adela immediately threw her arms around the tiny woman.

‘Even though he made bad threats,’ croaked Ayah, ‘I did everything to try and find Sophie because I knew from Burke Sahib that she was still alive. Logan Memsahib had kept her daughter safe by getting her to play hide and seek. But it was many years before I knew this – not until Sophie came back to me ...’

‘Oh, Ayah, I shouldn’t have made you remember!’ They rocked back and forth.

‘I never forget,’ said Ayah, ‘not one day of my life. The little sahib is always in my heart.’ She looked at Adela with a spark of hope in her rheumy eyes. ‘Perhaps this Simla sahib is him.’

‘That’s what I keep wondering,’ Adela said. ‘Do you think I should mention it to Auntie Sophie?’

‘What is his name? Is he a nice man?’

‘Tommy Villiers– and yes, he’s nice. He’s fun and a bit of a show-off, but that’s an act he puts on– underneath he’s kind and really quite caring.’

‘Tommy Villiers,’ Ayah repeated. ‘What does he look like?’

Adela pulled from her pocket the recent programme from The Arabian Nights .

‘It’s not very clear and he’s dressed up in a turban, but that’s Tommy sitting in the front. Do you think he looks anything like either of Sophie’s parents?’

‘The eyes,’ said Ayah, ‘they are kind, like Logan Memsahib’s.’

It didn’t seem much to go on. ‘Would it be cruel to get Auntie Sophie’s hopes up?’ Adela said, sounding worried.

‘It is much more cruel never to know. If there is a chance, then tell her,’ Ayah urged.

‘But how can we ever prove it?’

Ayah sighed at the impossibility. ‘If the gods have been good, then he will still possess the elephant bracelet.’

‘What bracelet?’

‘Logan Sahib had two that she wore. One she gave to Sophie, and one to me to sell if needs be to feed the baby. I tucked it into his shawl when that man took him away.’

‘I’ve seen Sophie’s bracelet– it’s made of ivory elephants’ heads. I used to count them as a child. Twelve heads.’

Ayah Mimi nodded in agreement.

‘I’ll write to Tommy and ask him.’

The old woman smiled and cradled her face with slim bony fingers. For the first time in ages Adela heard her old nanny break into a song of joy.

On the thirteenth of June, Adela’s aunties arrived for her birthday, Tilly with ten-year-old Mungo and Sophie with Rafi. Harry shrieked with excitement to see the older boy, who at once started showing him his homemade catapult. They ran off into the garden to try it out.

‘Uncle James sends apologies and happy returns,’ said Tilly, kissing Adela, ‘but it’s too frantically busy at the Oxford Estates for him to get away. Doing as much as he can before the monsoons make the roads impassable.’

‘I quite understand,’ Adela said. ‘I’m just sorry he’ll miss the picnic.’

She hadn’t wanted a big fuss made of her turning eighteen; somehow she felt so much older. It embarrassed her to hear her parents make teasing comments about their little girl being so grown up now and ready for the world.