Page 69 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)
J ames looked through his field glasses with disbelief.
The road dipping down from the hills was filled with bedraggled soldiers.
They came like an army of locusts, covering the slopes, trudging forward in the saturating heat or on open trucks that did for ambulances.
A couple of aeroplanes buzzed overhead and then veered out of view in the direction of the Burmese border.
All spring the talk at the club had been of the shock invasion by the Japanese army, rushing like tigers through Malaya and then on into Burma after the capture of Singapore in February.
‘We’ll hold the line at Sittang River,’ James had said bullishly, knocking back a double whisky. He had started drinking more heavily in Tilly’s absence.
The news had grown ever grimmer. By April the Japanese had occupied the Andaman Islands and were bombing naval bases in Ceylon and Southern India; Madras was being evacuated.
The tea planters, coal mine managers and oil workers of Assam were in near panic at the speed of events.
A year ago they had thought India was ‘safe as houses’, as his fellow manager and neighbour, Reggie Percy-Barratt, had claimed.
Now they were being forced to contemplate sending their families to safety in Calcutta or Delhi– always supposing anywhere in India was now safe.
The enemy was pressing towards their border.
Burma had gone up in flames; cities and oil fields were ablaze, whether set alight by the invaders or the retreating British, James didn’t know.
Rumour had it that thousands of stranded Indians were fleeing too: plantation workers, shopkeepers and clerks with their families.
‘Well, the Europeans had to be given priority on the ships, didn’t they?’ said Percy-Barratt defensively. ‘Rangoon couldn’t handle such numbers of evacuees.’
James had been uncomfortable at the thought.
These Indians were in Burma working for the British and were subjects of King George.
Knowing the terrain and the stifling heat of West Burma, it would be a near-impossible trek for women and children.
He doubted many could survive even if they evaded the pursuing Japanese.
He looked again through his binoculars. It amazed him that so many troops had made it back across the border.
It was rumoured that thousands hadn’t; whole units had been either killed or taken prisoner.
He agonised about what to do: hurry back to the Oxford Estates and make preparations to evacuate the remaining wives and families of his staff, or continue up towards the border to see what he could do to help.
‘Damn it!’ he cursed under his breath. Turning to his assistant, Manzur, he said, ‘Come on. You can drive me up to Kohima.’
They found the border village in chaos. Army tents and temporary shelters were erected on the lawns of British bungalows.
Tennis courts and paddocks had been given over to emergency field hospitals, vehicles, mess awnings and equipment.
Exhausted men in grubby, sweat-stained uniforms milled around.
But what lay beyond, corralled on the hillside, struck horror into James’s chest. A seething mass of people– emaciated, collapsing, beseeching, half naked, filthy, diseased– were camped out in the open as far as the eye could see.
He was appalled at the almost Biblical scene of suffering.
The border officials were completely overwhelmed by the situation. James tried to get some sense out of one young man.
‘It’s not my fault,’ he said defensively. ‘We’ve been told to only let Europeans into Assam.’
‘They’ll die if you don’t,’ James said.
‘What can I do?’ the man said, removing his spectacles and rubbing his eyes in exhaustion.
‘Show a bit of compassion, man!’
But the clerk remained obstinate. ‘Take it up with my superiors. I’m just trying to do my job.’
James stormed off. He could see the situation was hopeless. He ordered Manzur to drive him back to the plantation.
James sighed in frustration. ‘We’ll offer some provisions to the army– maybe some labour to help them build defences or supply roads. See what they need. If the Japanese are coming, we’re going to be on the front line.’
On the way back his young assistant suggested, ‘Sahib, we could extend the lines, build some temporary shelters. Take some of those people in. They’ll have to let them across the border sooner or later.’
James just grunted. He should upbraid Manzur for being impertinent; it was none of his business what the authorities chose to do.
But he didn’t. He had a growing respect for the young man and was secretly admiring that he had the confidence to voice his opinion to his boss.
Clarrie liked Manzur too. He had proved a patient and encouraging tutor for Harry– who was turning out to be rather a serious child– and Clarrie had been pleased with his efforts.
Clarrie would be outraged at the treatment of the fleeing civilians from Burma.
That night James couldn’t rid himself of the image of the destitute refugees on the hillside.
They reminded him of bad memories from twenty years ago, the camps of absconding plantation workers that had lined the ghats of the Brahmaputra River.
He sat on the veranda in the dark, drinking and thinking back to the time when he’d brought Tilly to Assam as his wife.
He’d been embarrassed that her first sight of his domain was scores of cholera-raddled troublemakers.
They had been desperate and destitute, but he had seen them only as a burden and the makers of their own misfortune.
He had been further irritated by Clarrie’s high-handed comments about how all the tea planters should rally to help them.
My God! She’d even talked about defying the tea association and putting up wages unilaterally, a sure way of causing further disturbance and dissension in the tea gardens.
How contemptuous he had been of her suggestions and of Wesley for letting her take such a hand in business at Belgooree.
James slugged back his whisky. Strange how he was seeing things through her eyes now.
Something must be done about the refugees from Burma.
He stood and went to lean on the balcony railing.
The trees below pulsed with night sounds in the warm, sticky air.
The monsoon would come soon. Perhaps that was the only thing that would keep the Japanese invasion at bay: flooded and impassable jungle ravines.
But it would also bring fever and further misery to those fleeing and struggling to reach the border.
It was your fault, Robson! an angry young man had once shouted at him at the club in Tezpur, half a dozen years ago. Those poor runaway bastards. Saw them as a boy. Never forget. No one deserved to die like that.
Sam Jackman. He’d been thrown out of the club for disorderly behaviour.
At the time James had not understood. But Jackman– amiable and amusing when sober– had gained a reputation for maligning tea planters when in drink.
Especially over the coolies’ agitation twenty years ago.
Some men made excuses for him; he had taken the death of his father, the old steamship captain, badly.
James had been less tolerant, indignant at being blamed for any of it.
He sighed deeply, wondering what had become of the ardent young man with a passion for justice, as well as a weakness for cards.
He hadn’t seen him since the disgraced missionary had visited Belgooree four years ago in the wake of Wesley’s death.
James winced to recall how spikily unpleasant he had been to the lad at the time.
Sam hadn’t deserved his needling remarks.
James wondered if Jackman had enlisted or whether he still remained in India.
Poor Sam; he had been dashed to hear that Adela had gone to England.
James now knew what it was like to pine for a woman.
He stood up straight, glancing dolefully at his empty tumbler.
Whisky seemed to be one of the luxuries still plentiful in Assam, no matter how perilous their situation.
He really ought to cut down. Tilly would be telling him to if she were here.
But she wasn’t. James felt a fresh wave of anger at his errant wife.
He might be dead in a few weeks, bayonetted by the Japanese.
Then she’d be full of remorse for abandoning him!
Stop feeling sorry for yourself . That was what an exasperated Clarrie had said to him when he’d whined to her recently about Tilly. Just be glad you have a spouse, even if she’s halfway across the world. She’s looking after your family after all.
James grunted out loud. ‘You’re right, Clarrie Robson. I’ve got nothing to complain about. Tilly will come back to me– if there’s still somewhere to come back to when this bloody war is over.’
He turned from the starlit view with a new determination. He would go back to Kohima and force the authorities to begin letting in the refugees. The Oxford would accommodate some– or help them on their way. He wasn’t going to be accused a second time of turning a blind eye to suffering.
‘If we’re all going to die,’ James said to the night, ‘let us at least fight and die together on Indian soil.’