Page 52 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

Jane went reluctantly, but the trip was a big success.

She didn’t feel any panic sitting next to her chattering cousin, sharing a bag of lemon drops, and was so caught up in the film that she sat on to watch the credits.

Sheepishly on the way home, Jane admitted that she hadn’t been to see a film since she was twelve and had never been to a talkie before.

‘I had this terrible memory of scary music being played while a monster came up on the screen. It seemed that real. I screamed and hid under the seat for the whole of the film. Mam was so cross with me for making a scene that she said she’d never go again.’

‘And she never let you go either?’

‘Said it wasn’t worth the risk of me getting hysterical. I know it sounds silly,’ Jane said and blushed, ‘but I’ve always been frightened of the dark and being stuck somewhere where I couldn’t get out.’

‘It’s not silly,’ said Adela, ‘but you don’t have to be frightened any more. You’ve proved you can do it.’

‘Yes, I have, haven’t I?’ Jane smiled.

‘When that Essoldo opens at the end of August, me and you are going to be first in line,’ Adela declared. ‘We’ll stuff ourselves with chocolates and swoon over the stars.’

The next time there was a social at the cricket club, Adela insisted Jane came too.

‘I can’t dance and I’ve got nothing to wear,’ Jane protested in alarm.

Adela marched her upstairs and pulled out the summer dresses she had brought from India. ‘Try them on.’

‘But I’m taller than you.’

‘We can let down the hem.’

‘And you’ve got more, you know,bosom.’

‘Only since you’ve started fattening me up with all your lovely cooking.’

They were reduced to giggles as Jane wriggled into Adela’s clothes and paraded around the room wearing a topee and impersonating a memsahib.

Adela laughed. ‘You’re a good mimic.’

They decided on a full skirt in turquoise chiffon with one of Jane’s white short-sleeved blouses, a wide pink belt and a matching diaphanous scarf, which Adela pinned around Jane’s shoulders, and clipped a mother-of-pearl hairslide into her short dark hair.

Adela allowed Jane to borrow her deep pink lipstick.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Adela gasped. Jane blushed at her image in the mirror, amazed at the poised dark-eyed woman who gazed steadily back at her.

Adela put on a bright yellow frock that accentuated her curves.

‘I’ll have to watch myself with your pies,’ she joked, ‘or this dress won’t fit me much longer.’

She tied her hair in a golden snood, put bangles on her wrists and dark red lipstick on her full mouth.

Olive was sent into a panic when she saw them ready to go out.

‘Lipstick!’ she shrieked. ‘Get that off now, do you hear?’

‘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.