Page 60 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

D espite all Adela’s intentions of leaving Cullercoats as soon as she could, Lexy insisted she stayed on at the house until her body recovered.

Maggie bound up Adela’s sore breasts to hasten the drying up of her breast milk, and it was a month before her bleeding stopped.

That spring she tried to avoid listening to the increasingly worrying news on the wireless.

Yet she couldn’t help knowing that Nazi troops had marched into Czechoslovakia and Italy had invaded Albania.

‘They’re calling up men of twenty and twenty-one,’ Lexy told Adela and Maggie. Ina started talking about the Kaiser and fretting about Will.

‘Who’s Will?’ Adela asked.

‘Your mam’s stepson, Will Stock,’ said Lexy.

‘He was the canniest lad you could ever meet. Clarrie thought the world of Will– we all did. Died in France after the war ended. Your da served with him. By, Wesley had us all in tears at the memorial service with the canny things he said about Will! Reckon that’s when your mam realised Wesley was a good ’un. ’

Growing impatient to be doing something useful, Adela said it was time she started earning a living again.

‘Please can I come and live with you at the café flat?’ she asked Lexy. ‘I don’t think I can face going back to Aunt Olive’s, even if she’d let me.’

‘Course you can, hinny,’ Lexy said, beaming. ‘I’d be happy to have your cheery face around the place. It’ll be just like when me and your mam used to share it.’

Adela’s return to Newcastle was greeted with enthusiasm by Nance and the other waitresses at the café, as well as her cousin Jane.

‘Did it not work out for you in Edinburgh?’ Jane asked with a look of curiosity.

Adela shook her head. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she said, not wanting to make up any more lies about the past few months.

‘I would have sent on your mail,’ said Jane, ‘but Mam told me to give it to Lexy to do.’

‘Thanks, that was kind of you.’ Adela deflected any further questions with talk about the new films at the Stoll and Essoldo. But Jane persisted.

‘So you won’t be coming back to Lime Terrace and sharing a room with me.’

‘Your parents were very kind to have me for as long as they did,’ said Adela. ‘I can’t expect them to keep me indefinitely. Anyway, Lexy offered, and I’ll help out at the café as much as I can.’

She wasn’t at all sure that Jane believed that she had been in Edinburgh all this time, but George didn’t question her story.

‘Good to see you back, lass,’ he said as he grinned. He picked her up and swung her around. ‘Newcastle’s been a dull dog without you.’

‘Don’t believe you.’ Adela laughed. ‘Are you still courting the gorgeous Joan?’

George winked, which Adela took to be a yes.

Within a week Adela had talked her way into a job at the new Essoldo cinema, working as an usherette and helping out in the circle lounge café.

At Lexy’s encouragement, she decided to pay a visit to The People’s Theatre in Rye Hill.

The keen amateur group ran a thriving theatre in an old converted chapel uphill from Herbert’s.

‘Don’t spend all your spare time helping out here,’ said Lexy. ‘Go and have a bit o’ fun with the players. See if you can do a bit o’ singin’ and dancin’.’

‘The People’s don’t do variety.’ Adela smiled. ‘They’re much more serious.’

‘Well, you can liven them up then.’

Calling round one early-summer’s evening, Adela found the stage door open and discovered Wilf, George’s cricketing friend, who had briefly been out with Nance, helping with carpentry behind the scenes.

‘Fancy finding you here!’ Adela exclaimed.

Wilf blushed. ‘Just filling in for a lad I work with.’ He quickly led her into the main hall where the players were rehearsing a satire about war, George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man .

When they took a break, Wilf introduced her to a gaunt middle-aged man called Derek, who was producing the play.

He eyed her suspiciously when he heard she’d done all her acting in Simla.

‘Not one of those prima donna memsahibs, are you?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Adela sparked back. ‘I was usually the third spear carrier or a monk.’

Nearby, a round-faced woman blew out cigarette smoke and chuckled.

Derek frowned. ‘’Cause we don’t hold with imperialists here,’ he continued. ‘We have a proud socialist tradition of radical plays. If it’s singing and dancing you want, try the operatic society.’

‘I’ve done Shaw as well,’ Adela persisted. ‘ Saint Joan . Was understudy for the main part at my boarding school.’

‘Boarding school.’ Derek gave a snort of derision.

‘Stop teasing her,’ the plump woman said, grinding out her cigarette in a saucer and stepping forward.

‘I’m Josey Lyons. We welcome anyone here who wants to help out; you don’t have to be a working-class warrior like Derek.

’ She shook Adela by the hand and smiled.

‘In fact,’ she said in a loud whisper, ‘even Derek’s roots are suspect.

His father was a station master, which makes him lower middle class. ’

‘Signalman,’ Derek protested. ‘He was a signalman, and my grandfather was a miner.’

‘Helps if you have a miner in your family tree,’ Josey said with a wink.

Adela decided to keep quiet about her family of tea planters. ‘Farm workers a couple of generations back,’ Adela said. ‘Does that qualify me to help out behind the scenes? I’ll do anything.’

‘Of course it does,’ said Josey, offering her a cigarette. Adela hesitated, then took one; this was more nerve-racking than she’d anticipated.

Josey said to Derek, ‘Let’s try her out. If she auditions well, she can be my understudy for Louka.’

‘The saucy chambermaid?’ Adela exclaimed. ‘I’d love that.’

‘You know the play then?’ Derek said with a sceptical look.

‘Went to see the film three times,’ she replied. ‘Tried to style my hair like Anne Grey. She was wonderful as Raina. And I know it’s an anti-war play and that’s why you’re probably putting it on now, even though it’s a comedy.’

Derek raised his bushy grey eyebrows. ‘All right. You can sit here and prompt,’ he agreed. ‘Just no more mention of boarding school.’

Adela went to the theatre in Rye Hill whenever she had a free moment.

She found keeping busy was the best remedy for her shattered emotions.

By filling every waking minute, she didn’t have to dwell on the traumas of the past year, the grief for her father and the way she had messed up her life.

Relief came from helping others and not brooding on her mistakes.

Activity alleviated the gnawing emptiness inside.

Adela helped with costumes and painting the scenery, prompted at rehearsals and learnt the part of Louka by heart.

Determined to impress the lugubrious Derek, she helped sell tickets around the town, advertising the play at Herbert’s Café and mentioning it to regular cinemagoers at the Essoldo.

The rest of the cast were friendly and helpful – thirty-year-old Josey in particular was easy to like.

She was well-spoken– her voice gravelly from constant smoking– yet dressed like a tramp, in old corduroy trousers and misfit jackets.

She lived in cheap digs off Westgate Road run by a retired Co-operative bookkeeper, with an assortment of bohemian spinsters.

‘I’ve lived with them for a dozen years now. They’re my family,’ explained Josey to a curious Adela after one rehearsal. ‘Much better than the real thing.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Adela asked as they walked back into town together.

‘Mine were ghastly. My father went to prison for fraud; no idea where he is now. Mother couldn’t cope without servants and money so threw herself at the mercy of my rich uncle Clive.

Ten years ago they sold up and emigrated to Argentina.

My brother went with them, but I refused point-blank.

I’d already joined the People’s, and it was just as we were expanding the theatre and moving into the old chapel.

So I stayed. That’s why Derek likes me; even though I grew up posh, I turned my back on all that.

Even changed my surname.’ She gave a chuckle of amusement.

‘Picked Lyons after my favourite restaurant.’

‘You were very brave to do it all on your own,’ said Adela. ‘I couldn’t have left home and come all this way without having family here to stay with.’

‘You’re very mysterious about your background.’ Josey smiled. ‘Don’t be cowed by Derek. Was it Burma you said you came from? Are you the daughter of some famous governor general or commander-in-chief?’

‘India,’ said Adela. ‘Assam– tea-growing country– though I went to school in the hills at Simla. And no, I’m not the daughter of anyone high up.

My father’s a tea planter ...’ Adela faltered, winded by her own words.

‘Was a tea planter. He died last year very suddenly.’ Her eyes filled up with tears as the familiar pain of grief gripped her.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Josey said, quickly steering her towards a low brick wall in front of someone’s house and sitting her down. Adela found herself weeping into Josey’s comfy shoulder and telling her some of the details of Wesley’s gruesome death and her overwhelming feeling of guilt.

When she drew away and blew her nose, Josey was giving her a strange look.

‘You must think I’m awful,’ Adela sniffed.

‘Robson did you say your name was?’ Josey’s tone was sharp. ‘Your mother isn’t called Clarrie, is she?’

‘Yes,’ Adela said. ‘How did you know?’

Josey let out a low whistle and reached for her cigarettes. She lit up before answering. ‘So Clarrie and Wesley Robson are your parents. Who would have thought it?’ She turned and eyed Adela. ‘Yes, I can see the resemblance now.’

‘How do you know my mother?’ She felt a fresh pang of longing.

Josey gave a wistful smile. ‘Clarrie was my step-grandmother.’

‘Grandmother?’ Adela was astonished. ‘How can that possibly be?’