Page 58 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

‘Not that Olive gave her any thanks for it,’ Lexy said. ‘For a while after your aunt married Jack, she didn’t even give Clarrie the time of day– cut her out of her life. Your mam was very hurt– not that she said so, but you could tell.’

‘Well, Olive was jealous of Clarrie, wasn’t she?’ said Maggie.

‘Jealous?’ puzzled Adela. ‘Why? Because she married the rich lawyer Herbert and got the café?’

‘No, ’cause Clarrie had been courted by Jack Brewis before your aunt was.’

‘Really?’ Adela gasped. ‘I never knew that.’

‘Aye,’ said Maggie. ‘Jack’s first choice was your mam.’

‘I think Olive has spent all her married life worried that Jack still liked your mam best.’

Adela was shocked by the thought– both that Uncle Jack had desired her mother and that Olive should have punished Clarrie for it.

Was that why Olive had been so protective of Uncle Jack while she had stayed at Lime Terrace?

Was it possible that her aunt resented her being there because of long-ago jealousy towards Clarrie over Jack?

How sad to allow bad feelings to fester over the years; she was quite sure her mother was unaware of them.

It made Adela think of her mother in a new light; she had once been a beautiful young woman whom other men had fallen in love with– Jack, the elderly Herbert Stock, and Wesley.

But Adela was in no doubt that it was her father who had been the love of her mother’s life.

They carried on talking about Olive.

‘She’s still terrified of the world,’ Lexy said with a sigh.

‘I can’t help feeling sorry for her. I just wish she wouldn’t be so hard on Jane.

She used to be such a loving lass and bright as a button, but over the years Olive has heaped all her cares on the lass’s shoulders.

Course your aunt always favoured George, right from when they were bairns. ’

‘Aunt Olive drinks sherry on her own every day,’ said Adela. ‘I suppose it’s to give her Dutch courage to go out and face the world.’

‘Aye, I know,’ said Lexy, ‘and she uses the profits from the café to buy it.’

‘It’s the tea rooms what prop up your uncle Jack’s business an’ all,’ said Maggie. ‘Isn’t that right, Lexy?’

‘Hush, Maggie man! I don’t want Adela to worry about that in her condition.’

‘Is the café in danger of closing?’ Adela asked in concern.

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Lexy. ‘I was hoping Clarrie would have come over with you and sorted things out with Olive and Jack. But with your da dying– well, I don’t like to bother her with any of it.’

‘But legally the café belongs to the Brewises, doesn’t it?’ Adela frowned. ‘Mother said she signed it over to Aunt Olive when she was last in Newcastle when I was little.’

‘Aye, but your mam and da were still investing in the café,’ said Lexy. ‘What they didn’t know was that since the Slump their money was going into the Tyneside Tea Company more often than not.’

‘Clarrie has a right to know.’ Maggie was indignant. She eyed Adela through a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘Maybes you should be the one to tell her, hinny.’

Lexy said, ‘Adela’s got enough on her plate without worrying about the café.

If I thought we were in real trouble, I’d write to Clarrie me’sel’.

’ She smiled at Adela sitting cross-legged by the hearth, leaning against Ina’s chair.

‘Knowing your mam, she’d carry on paying to keep Jack’s business afloat– anything to help Olive and her children.

It’s a crying shame Olive isn’t half as big-hearted. ’

The year 1939 came in with a clatter of hailstones and anxious talk of military build-up on the Continent.

The newspapers speculated whether Hitler would extend his occupation of the Sudetenland into the rest of Czechoslovakia.

The government were compiling a register for war service, and an Auxiliary Territorial Service for women had been set up.

On Ina’s crackling radio they talked about the manufacture of Anderson shelters for civilians.

‘What’s one of them when it’s at home?’ Maggie asked.

‘Some sort of shelter to stick in the garden,’ said Adela, ‘and protect you from bombs.’

To Adela it all seemed too far-fetched to be true.

She was more interested in finding music on the radio.

‘Blue Skies Are Round the Corner’ became her favourite, and she clung on to it like a mantra as her belly swelled and the creature inside her squirmed restlessly and left her out of breath as she climbed the stairs to her tiny bedroom.

Lexy came at the beginning of February with news about the adoption. Through the minister at the seamen’s mission, Lexy had made contact with a church that arranged adoptions for unwanted babies.

‘Most of the bairns are sent abroad to the colonies– Canada and the like. They get a good, healthy outdoor life working on farms. That’s grand, isn’t it?’

Adela’s heart beat erratically and her palms sweated.

‘I suppose so.’ She didn’t really want to dwell on such things.

To her, this baby was a deep source of shame.

She didn’t want to think of it as a person who would have a future life somewhere else.

Once it was born, it would no longer be her concern.

She wanted rid of it as soon as she possibly could.

‘I don’t want to know anything about it after the birth,’ she said, ‘not even if it’s a girl or a boy.’

But as the time of birth drew nearer and the baby turned in the womb, Adela couldn’t help dwelling on what would become of it. Her mind was filled with images of street children in India abandoned to poverty with no parents to fend for them, at the mercy of disease and hunger, begging for food.

When Lexy next came, Adela said, ‘I want it to go to a good home. How will I know it will be cared for? Can’t a childless couple in Britain take it in? So it can get a good schooling and be more than just a farm labourer or housemaid.’

Lexy fixed her with a look. ‘I’m not a miracle worker, lass.’

‘Sorry.’ Adela looked away. ‘You’ve done more for me than I ever deserved. I know I’ve no right to ask.’

Lexy said, ‘I’ll put in a word. They’re good church people. It’s not all the bairns that gan abroad.’

A week later, as Adela was helping feed Ina some broth, she felt a gush between her legs. Mortified that she’d wet herself, Adela was reassured by Maggie.

‘It’s your waters breaking, hinny. Your time’s nearly come.’

She put Adela to bed, lining it with towels and brown paper.

Nothing happened. Adela watched the first fat flakes of snow glide past the window as she waited.

The sky darkened. Dread paralysed her. She had seen tea pickers go into labour among the tea bushes and be rushed to the compound, but she had always been bustled out of sight while her mother went to help with the births.

She was ignorant of what she would experience next.

How she longed at that moment for her mother!

Even the lowliest tea worker had had Clarrie’s fussing attention, yet here she lay thousands of miles from home, without a mother’s love and reassurance at the birth of her firstborn.

It was a moment that they would now never share, and she had only herself to blame.

Feeling horribly alone, she got up again to help with the dishes, but Maggie chased her back upstairs.

‘I’m not in labour,’ Adela protested. ‘Let me help with Ina.’

Half an hour later she was twisting in agony and shouting for her mother. Lexy appeared as if by magic.

‘It’s snowing hard,’ she said, stamping her feet and bringing in a blast of icy air.

She coaxed Adela on to the bed and through the pain. ‘Breathe easy. That’s it, lass.’

But the pain grew unbearable; it was red-hot and came in ever-increasing waves. Is this what the Khassia hill women had had to endure? And the women on Fatima’s purdah ward? She had never appreciated the agony they must have gone through.

Adela shrieked, ‘I’m going to die!’

‘Stop being so dramatic.’ Lexy laughed. ‘I’ve helped ten nephews and nieces into this world, as well as me youngest sister. I’ve never lost any of ’em. So be me guest and scream the house down.’

It felt like for ever, but there was still a streak of light left in the sky when Adela’s baby came pushing out on to the lumpy bed.

The labour was swift– no more than two hours– and the birth uncomplicated.

Within minutes it was giving a lusty wail.

Lexy saw to the umbilical cord and wrapped the baby in a clean sheet.

‘Do you want a hold?’ she asked.

Adela lay back, panting. ‘No.’

‘Want to know the sex?’

Adela shook her head. Her eyes felt hot and watery. She squeezed them shut.

‘Let me know if you change your mind. If we get snowed in, you’ll have to feed the bairn anyway.’

Adela dozed. She woke to hear the women below laughing and cooing over the baby.

She turned on her side, tears stinging her eyes.

Tears of relief. But once they started, she couldn’t stop them.

She had a vivid memory of her mother holding newborn Harry in her arms, her tired face suffused with love, completely absorbed in the joy of cradling her son.

It left her winded. Burying her face in the pillow, she muffled her sobbing and cried herself into exhausted sleep.

In the night she awoke and climbed out of bed on wobbly legs, needing to relieve herself.

She used the chamber pot. There was an odd noise coming from below.

Adela descended. In the firelight she could see Lexy asleep on the sofa.

Within touching distance, the baby was lying in a scrubbed-out fish box, swaddled in blankets, making snuffling, whimpering noises that were growing louder.