Page 57 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)
A dela stuck to the house during daylight hours, helping with Ina, keeping the fire stoked up and making endless pans of vegetable soup.
Around the house, Adela wore a pair of bright orange pantaloons that she had brought from India to wear as pyjamas, letting out the drawstring for comfort.
Maggie did the shopping. After tea, when they’d put Ina to bed, Adela would dress warmly and go out in the dark around Cullercoats, walking along the promontory north towards Whitley Bay or south in the direction of Tynemouth, wondering if Sam’s mother still lived nearby.
Strange that she should end up at the small fishing village from where MrsJackman came.
At first Maggie would protest at these nocturnal rambles.
‘What you want to do that for? You’ll catch your death or slip on the icy pavements and hurt yourself or the baby.’
But Adela would not be kept indoors. ‘I’m not an invalid, Maggie. I need fresh air and exercise. I promise not to go far.’
Lexy had given her a cheap ring to wear on her wedding finger, and the story to neighbours was that Adela was a young widow helping with the housework for bed and board.
If anyone suspected she was with child, no one said so, but Adela was increasingly self-conscious and preferred to go outdoors when most folk were in their homes.
Besides, she didn’t want to run into anyone who might know her from Newcastle.
She existed in a strange state of limbo, anxious at the ordeal to come but impatient for it to be over.
She missed her mother more every day, yet the women were kind and never once made her feel ashamed for her predicament.
Wanting to show her gratitude to her mother’s friends, Adela risked going out to the shops in broad daylight just before Christmas.
With the last of her wages she bought some treats: tangerines, bars of chocolate, and chestnuts for roasting; lavender water for Ina; and cigarettes and a soft woollen scarf for Maggie in her favourite purple.
For Lexy she wrapped up the colourful bangles she had worn in the summer and that Lexy had admired.
It was on this day that Adela spotted a small shop selling sewing supplies: needles, threads, buttons and bolts of cloth.
Glancing up at the name above the door, she felt her stomach somersault.
Jackman. She stood rooted to the spot, heart hammering.
How could just the sight of Sam’s surname upset her so?
But why was it such a shock? She knew that Sam’s mother came from this fishing village and had probably returned here.
Ever since Adela had come to live in Cullercoats, the thought of bumping into Sam’s mother– maybe even seeking her out– had nagged at the back of her mind, disturbing her thoughts.
Or maybe this shop had nothing to do with Sam’s mother at all.
Adela forced herself to peer in the door and saw a small plump woman behind the counter, who beckoned her in.
‘Can I help you?’
Adela felt her mouth dry and throat tighten.
She couldn’t speak. Forcing a smile, she shook her head and hurried away.
Maggie was concerned by her agitated state when she returned home out of breath and clutching her shopping.
Later, after Adela questioned her about Jackman’s shop, Maggie told her that the woman had once lived abroad in a hot country, which hadn’t suited her.
Adela was sure it must be Sam’s mother. She longed to go in and ask her, but what on earth would she say if the shopkeeper said yes?
The woman might get upset or angry. Adela would be doing it for selfish reasons, to be able to talk about Sam and somehow feel closer to him by being with his mother.
But it might also lead to awkward questions about her pregnancy and what she was doing there.
So Adela stifled her curiosity and kept increasingly at home.
Adela grew fond of her mother’s old friends.
Maggie had had a very hard life with a low-paid job in a laundry and a husband who regularly beat her.
When the laundry had closed five years ago, a year after her husband’s death, she had been almost destitute.
She’d gone to Lexy for help. Lexy had fixed her up with a job looking after their old friend Ina.
Ina was struggling to manage the family house after the death of her bachelor son and was becoming increasingly confused.
Three of Ina’s five children were now dead, and of the remaining two, daughter Sally had emigrated to Canada with her husband, while Grace was married to a lighthouse keeper and lived in a remote part of the Scottish Hebrides.
Ina’s son had left enough modest savings for Maggie to keep house for them both.
Ina was sweet-natured and never complained of being housebound with a bad hip that had got worse over the years. She talked of her dead offspring as if they were still alive and frequently called Adela Clarrie.
‘She was widowed very young,’ Maggie told Adela, ‘but raised five bairns on her own. Wor Ina sold second-hand clothes all over Tyneside to feed ’em, and they all got on in life.’
Of them all, Adela grew closest to Lexy. No matter how many hours the extrovert manager worked in the café, she always found time to come two or three times a week to visit and make sure Adela was all right. With Lexy’s irrepressible optimism and bawdy humour, she lifted all their spirits.
The café was closed on Christmas Day and, despite Lexy having numerous sisters, nephews and nieces who had invited her to spend the day with them, Lexy chose to go to Cullercoats and share a meal with her friends.
She brought a pudding and crackers to go with Maggie’s goose and roast vegetables.
For Adela, there were letters from her mother and from Sophie and Tilly, along with small gifts of clothing, a brooch and more Belgooree tea, all of which Olive had handed over to Lexy.
They had agreed with Olive to keep up the pretence to Clarrie that Adela was still living with the Brewises in Newcastle.
Any letters Adela wrote home were posted by Lexy in the city.
To pre-empt the likelihood of any Robsons trying to track her down, Adela had taken the precaution of writing to Tilly to say that she wouldn’t be able to see her children over the Christmas holidays, but hoped to see them at Easter.
Adela shared out the presents but said, ‘I’ll read the letters later, thanks,’ knowing how emotional they would make her.
How would her mother and Harry be spending the first Christmas without her and her father?
She had thought it would be easier to be so far away from home without the constant reminder that her father wasn’t there, but it was worse not to have the comfort of her mother and brother.
Inside she carried a leaden weight of grief for her beloved father, and she felt on the verge of tears all day.
She made a huge effort not to let it show.
They ate well and, encouraged by Lexy, Adela led them in a sing-song.
For Ina she sang an old song popular in the Great War that her mother had taught her, ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’, which made the old lady cry.
This sparked off a series of more cheerful hit songs: ‘Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries’, ‘Sally’ and ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’.
But when Maggie started a rendition of ‘Tea for Two’, it was Adela who burst into tears.
‘Reminds her of her da,’ Lexy explained, giving Adela a hug. ‘They used to sing it together.’
‘Eeh, sorry, hinny,’ Maggie gasped.
‘D-don’t be,’ Adela said weepily. ‘It’s comforting to be with people who knew him.’
‘Aye, he was a real gentleman, your father,’ Maggie said, squeezing Adela’s arm. ‘Wish I’d had a man half as good as him.’
Afterwards, they sat around the fire in the lamplight, peeling hot roast chestnuts, smoking cigarettes and reminiscing about the days when Lexy, Ina and Maggie had lived in the west end of Newcastle and patronised the Cherry Tree pub.
It was there that they had befriended Clarrie, who was working all hours for her father’s cousin, Jared Belhaven, and his wife, Lily.
‘An old witch was Lily,’ Lexy said, ‘but Jared was canny enough.’
‘That’s ’cause he paid you lots of attention,’ Maggie cackled, ‘and swept you off your feet after old Lily died.’
‘He didn’t do much sweepin’.’ Lexy chuckled. ‘He was lazy that way. But I had a few happy years with your Belhaven cousin, Adela, before he died.’
‘And you made his last days happy an’ all,’ Maggie said.
Adela encouraged them to talk about the old days; she liked to hear how her mother had coped with coming to a strange land from India.
From what the women told her, her mother had had a much tougher time than she had.
It made her ashamed that she was so caught up in her own worries over the pregnancy when she had friends to help her.
Whereas her mother and aunt had come to Newcastle not knowing a soul apart from a Belhaven cousin, whom they had never met and had been treated little better than slaves.
It was these women – poor, rowdy and big-hearted – who had helped her mother through the first frightening months, when she had still been mourning the death of her own father, Adela’s grandfather, Jock.
It was these same friends who still had little material wealth, but were prepared to share with her what little they had, when her own aunt had turned her out.
‘What was Aunt Olive like in those days?’
‘Always frightened of her own shadow,’ Maggie said. ‘She would never have survived at the Cherry Tree if it hadn’t been for Clarrie protecting her from Lily and doing the brunt of the chores. It was Clarrie getting that job with the Stocks that saved them both and helped them up in the world.’