Page 45 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

But she bottled up her fears and told them she would be fine.

She wanted to ask Sophie to write and tell her what was happening at Gulgat and with Jay, but she did not dare utter his name.

Her feelings about him were so terribly mixed.

His recklessness had led to the wounded man-eater mauling her father in a frenzied attack from which he could never have recovered.

Only someone with her father’s strength and bravery could have lasted the long hours of agony that he did.

Yet Jay had been the one to finally shoot the tigress and had done all he could to try and keep her father alive.

What was Jay thinking now? Did he regret his life becoming entangled with hers in the same way that she regretted ever becoming involved in his?

But however much she railed against Jay’s pleasure-seeking selfishness, she knew she would never blame him as much as she blamed herself for her father’s death.

The days crept slowly by; the temperatures continued to rise.

Adela’s only release was to saddle up before dawn and ride out through the dewy tea bushes, watching the haze of smoke hanging over the village from early-morning fires and the pickers stream in a colourful wave, baskets strapped to their heads, up the plantation tracks.

Her heart ached that her father would never again ride with her, or be by her side to wave to the women, as they had done together countless times before.

She had lost the nerve to ride further into the forest.

Mainly Adela confined herself to the compound, trying to entertain a grieving Harry. Her brother wandered around like a lost puppy looking for its missing master.

‘Delly, when is Daddy coming back?’

‘He’s not, Harry. I’m sorry.’

‘Will he be here when I’m five?’

‘No, he won’t. You know he won’t.’

‘But he said he’d teach me how to fish when I’m five. He has to if he said he would.’

Each time he asked her, it opened up her raw grief anew. But worse was when he wanted to know about the tiger.

‘Did you see it, Delly? Did it eat Daddy?’

‘Of course it didn’t!’

Harry’s lip trembled at her cross tone.

‘Mungo said it did.’

‘Well, Mungo’s a silly boy for saying so,’ Adela snapped. ‘He wasn’t there.’

‘Did the tiger just eat a bit of Daddy then?’

‘Stop asking! It’s a horrid thing to talk about.’

After that, Harry stopped pestering her with morbid questions.

He stopped speaking to her at all. The unhappy boy became withdrawn and started wetting the bed at night.

Adela felt consumed with guilt for being impatient towards him, but she couldn’t smother her growing jealousy towards her brother for being able to comfort their mother when she could not.

Daily Clarrie seemed to grow more dependent on Harry.

She allowed her son to clamber into her bed at night– he never seemed to wet hers– and yet when Adela asked one night if she could sleep with them, Clarrie had teased, ‘I can’t be coping with two babies.

And darling, it’s far too hot for us all to sleep together. ’

It was the night the monsoon had started in earnest, rain battering the corrugated-iron roof like a thunder of kettledrums. Adela lay howling with the covers thrown off, glad of the noise that drowned out her noisy grief.

Halfway through the night, wide awake, she went to the window in her nightdress and opened the shutters.

Within seconds she was soaked through, her hair like wet ropes about her shoulders, the cotton nightdress stuck to her body like a watery shroud.

She invoked the gods of the monsoon to come and take her, to strike her down with a lightning bolt.

‘Why take my dad when you should have taken me?’

Three days later she was in bed with a fever, alternately shivering with cold and burning with heat. Her mother sent for DrHemmings.

‘It’s her own fault for standing out in the rain,’ Clarrie said fractiously. ‘As if I haven’t got enough to worry about.’

DrHemmings prescribed tablets for Adela’s headaches and an embrocation for her sore shoulder, which was still swollen from her fall from the elephant.

‘Get MD to give her hot sweet tea and plenty of infusions to sweat out the fever.’

Ayah Mimi came in to nurse her. A week later Adela was up and about again, wobbly on her feet but calmer.

The old ayah’s tender care had been like a balm to her bruised heart, and she saw more clearly how hard her mother was struggling to keep the plantation and household going.

It was no wonder she had no energy left to console her guilt-ridden daughter.

‘What can I do to help, Mother?’ Adela asked.

‘Be kind to your brother,’ Clarrie replied.

After that, Adela did her best to be more patient with Harry, taking him on the front of her pony for rides and down to the thundering waterfalls and swollen river pools to watch the villagers hauling in fish in their nets.

‘What are we going to do, Mother?’ Adela asked one evening after Harry had been put to bed. ‘Are we still going to visit Aunt Olive in July?’

‘You must go,’ her mother said, ‘but I can’t– not now.’

‘I’m not leaving you here on your own,’ Adela protested.

‘I won’t be on my own. Harry will keep me company, and I have all our friends and helpers around me here.’

Adela swallowed. ‘But it’s you that Aunt Olive wants to see. I could stay here and look after things for you.’

Clarrie gave a soft snort. ‘Running Belgooree is about more than riding around the gardens and drinking first flush.’

Adela winced. ‘I know that but—’

‘I appreciate you offering, darling, really I do. But I’ve decided I’m going to stay and make a go of things.

My life is here, and it’s all I want to do.

I’ve written to Uncle James and Tilly. James has kindly agreed to help out when I need it– with negotiating prices and dealing with the Calcutta agents– and he’ll come over once a month to make sure I haven’t taken to the bottle. ’ Clarrie gave a wry smile.

‘So it’s all arranged?’ Adela was astounded.

‘Yes, as much as it can be.’

‘But you’ve never asked me what I want to do.’

Clarrie avoided her look. ‘No, I haven’t. I suppose I assumed you would still want to go to England. I don’t want you to feel tied to this place, and I know it can never be the same now without your father. You do want to visit Aunt Olive, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so. But not without you.’

‘Well, I can’t go just now. You must see that.’ Clarrie finally met her look. ‘I want you to go. I think meeting the rest of your family will be good for you.’

Adela swallowed. ‘So you don’t want me here?’

Her mother didn’t answer directly. ‘I’ve suggested to Sophie that she might like to take my passage instead. I know she would love to see Scotland again, and you would like her companionship, wouldn’t you? I know how close the two of you are.’

Adela’s spirits lifted a fraction. ‘Yes, I would like that– but only if you really can’t come.’

‘That’s settled then,’ Clarrie said with a look of relief. ‘I expect a reply back from her any day.’

By the second week in July it was all arranged.

Clarrie’s ticket had been transferred into Sophie’s name, and in two days’ time Rafi would come and collect Adela and drive them both to the railway station at Gawhatty, where they would meet up with Tilly and Mungo at the start of the long journey to Britain.

On the final afternoon Adela had planned a ride to the waterfall and a picnic, but Clarrie was delayed at the factory, so Adela ended up knocking a tennis ball about with Harry until it was too late for the trip. They ate late. Adela wanted to sit up talking to her mother, but Clarrie resisted.

‘I’m too tired and you have a very long day’s travel ahead of you tomorrow. Best get to bed.’

Adela hardly slept. In the green light of dawn she slipped out of the bungalow and walked to the burial grove to stand at her father’s grave.

The monsoon had brought fresh green growth, so it was hard to tell the ground had been recently dug.

It was marked by a simple cross, the grave still awaiting the elaborate headstone that her mother had commissioned.

She wanted to feel her father’s presence there, but couldn’t. He was somewhere else. The thought of his shattered remains lying below the earth made her stomach retch. She bent double and let out an animal cry.

‘I’m so sorry, Daddy! I will never forgive myself for the way you died.

Mother will never forgive me either. She hates me for it.

I can tell. She can hardly bear to look at me.

She’s sending me away. I don’t want to leave you, but I have to.

It’s the only way Mother can cope with what’s happened.

And I have no right to complain after what I’ve done to her– taken away the person she loved most in the whole world, will always love.

It’s like she can still see and hear you about the place.

I know she talks to you. Harry says he hears her speaking to you during the night.

It confuses him. He’s so unhappy, and I feel guilty for that too. ’

Adela rubbed her streaming eyes and nose on her sleeves.

Through the trees the sky was filling with golden light, and the dew on the grass began to sparkle.

The air was ringing with birdsong. Adela’s weeping stopped.

She felt as if balm were being rubbed on her sore heart; the sights and sounds of Belgooree would always be woven into the very fabric of her being wherever she went. She stood up.

‘Thank you, Dad,’ she whispered, bending to kiss the wooden cross. ‘I promise I will try my best to make up for this terrible thing I’ve done.’ She breathed in deeply, the earthy scented smell of Belgooree giving her courage. ‘And I will come back– I promise you that. I will come back.’