Page 7 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

Her father gave her a sheepish look. ‘I thought you would have guessed.’ He turned to Sam. ‘Please help me get Clarissa to bed.’

Sam didn’t hesitate; he helped Clarrie to her feet and shouldered her weight.

Adela gulped. ‘I’ll go for MD,’ she said and fled from the veranda, calling for the khansama.

DrHemmings in Shillong was out on a call; all Mohammed Din could do was to leave a message.

So Adela’s old nurse, Ayah Mimi, was roused from her quarters in the garden and hobbled in as quickly as she could to help with the birth.

She found Clarrie shrieking in pain while Wesley paced and shouted orders, his fear infecting Adela.

‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Adela cried, hovering by the bedroom door.

‘She is going to have a baby,’ Ayah said, issuing instructions to Mohammed Din for hot water and clean cloths. Then the door to the bedroom was firmly closed. Adela could hear Ayah giving encouragement while her father,insisting on being present, blasphemed and pleaded and cried endearments.

Sam came back from telephoning the school to find her weeping in a chair, big Mohammed Din trying to calm her with soft words and tea.

‘I feel so terrible,’ Adela sobbed. ‘It’s all my fault for saying those things. If M-Mother dies, I won’t ever forgive myself.’

Sam put an arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘It’s not your fault. Women don’t go into labour because of something that’s said– it’s just that it’s time for the baby to come.’

She looked into his face, her eyes swollen from crying.

‘But my father will blame me. He hates me now. I think he might have slapped me if you hadn’t s-stopped him. Daddy has never ever smacked me before.’

‘He was upset– you all were. He was just standing up for your mother. Come now, stop crying,’ he chided. ‘You’re lucky to have parents who love each other so much.’ Sam pulled out a crumpled handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at her tears.

Suddenly he seemed so much older and wiser than she, his handsome face frowning in concern.

He might look young, but he was a man of the world and, she imagined, with a lurch of the heart, that he was already experienced with women.

She wondered how many grown-up women he had pulled into his comforting arms. She took the large cotton handkerchief and, blowing her nose, pulled away from his hold.

‘Why don’t we go for a walk in the garden?’ Sam suggested. ‘Let things take their course in there.’ He gestured in the direction of the bedroom, where the noises were getting more muted.

Adela nodded and scrambled to her feet, pulling Sam’s car blanket around her shoulders. The night air held the chill of autumn; a bright moon hung over the trees like a lamp illuminating the lawns and paths, making the dew glitter like silver drops.

‘Tell me about your parents, Sam,’ Adela asked. ‘Did they not love each other?’

Sam stopped and gazed up at the moonlit sky. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked.

Adela smirked, pleased that he deferred to her like a grown-up, and shook her head.

She watched him pull out a battered packet of bidis– small, pungent Indian cigarettes– and light one up.

The tip glowed in the dark as he drew in smoke, and then he exhaled with a sigh, the scented smell tickling her nostrils.

‘I thought they loved each other,’ he said ruefully, ‘until the day my mother walked out and deserted us. I was seven years old. I felt like the sky had fallen in. I don’t even remember her saying goodbye.’

‘How cruel,’ Adela gasped. ‘Where did she go?’

‘Back to England. My father said she couldn’t cope with Assam– or having a husband who was away on the river so much. He said it was nothing to do with me but ...’

‘But what?’

‘Well, she never gave me the choice to go with her, did she?’ Sam could not keep the anger out of his voice.

‘Would you have gone with her?’ Adela pressed him.

Sam took a long draw on the thin cheroot and then ground it under his shoe. He shrugged.

‘The way I see it, she deserted us both. I wanted my father to change the name of our boat from Cullercoats to something Indian so we wouldn’t be reminded of her all the time, but he wouldn’t.’

‘Cullercoats? Was that her maiden name or something?’

‘It’s the fishing village she came from.’ He plunged his hands in his pockets. ‘I think my father always hoped she’d come back one day, but she never did. And if she did now, I wouldn’t want to see her.’

Adela was shocked by his bitter tone; it seemed so unlike him. She felt suddenly selfish at her tears and complaints, when Sam had suffered far worse as a child. Her mother would never desert her in a million years.

She pulled his hand from his pocket and gave it a squeeze. ‘Your mother was a fool to run away from you. But I’m glad you had your dad. At least he cared about you, didn’t he?’

Sam swallowed and gave a brief smile. ‘Yes, he did.’ His voice sounded husky.

After a moment they disengaged hands and walked on down the path. Neither spoke. Adela breathed in the night smells of woodsmoke and damp foliage, her spirit soothed by the presence of Sam in her beloved Belgooree. They wandered as far as the factory before turning back.

As they retraced their steps up the garden path, Adela plucked up courage to ask, ‘What did Miss Black say when you rang the school? Was she very cross?’

‘Relieved more than cross. When I explained what was happening here and why your father couldn’t ring in person, she seemed a bit lost for words.’

‘I bet she was.’ Adela blushed to think of Sam having to talk of her mother in childbirth. ‘So she wasn’t hard on you for helping me escape?’

Sam gave a rueful look. ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll be invited back to give out the prizes at speech day.’

Adela couldn’t help a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, Sam, I’m sorry.’

As they regained the bungalow steps, a door was flung open. Wesley came tearing out of the bedroom and across the veranda.

‘It’s happened!’ he bellowed. ‘Adela, where are you?’

Scout was barking and jumping around him in agitation.

Her stomach vaulted. ‘Daddy! What’s happened? Is Mother all right?’

He lurched at her, his face crumpling into tears. He could hardly get out his words.

Adela flung her arms about him. ‘Is it Mother?’ she cried. ‘Tell me!’

He gripped her tight and almost roared, ‘Yes, she’s all right and you have a baby brother!’

By the time DrHemmings arrived from Shillong at daybreak, the newborn had already been swaddled and fed.

Adela dozed in a long cane chair on the veranda, wrapped in Sam’s car blanket, with Scout curled at her feet, while her father and Sam attempted to finish the bottle of whisky they had begun two hours ago in celebration.

Her father’s animosity towards Sam had evaporated in the euphoria of the birth.

‘I have a son!’ Wesley greeted the doctor, climbing unsteadily to his feet. ‘Have a whisky with me, Hemmings.’

‘Don’t feel I deserve it,’ the balding doctor said. ‘Ayah has done all the hard work. I’ll just look in on MrsRobson first.’

The doctor checked on mother and baby, retreating when he found them both sleeping.

Adela was roused by Mohammed Din, fetching tea and puris for their visitor.

‘Umm, my favourite,’ Adela said, grinning at the servant, reaching for one of the deep-fried puffed-up breads.

‘Guests first,’ Ayah Mimi said, appearing out of the shadows wagging a finger.

She touched Adela gently. The nanny was like a tiny bird, thin and darting in her movements, yet strong and wise.

She had once been the ayah to Auntie Tilly’s cousin Sophie in this very house, so when the Robsons had returned to Belgooree from England, Ayah Mimi had become Adela’s beloved nanny too.

Adela handed round the plate, while Mohammed Din poured tea. ‘Proper tea too,’ she announced, breathing in the peachy smell of Belgooree tea. ‘Not like at sch—’

Abruptly she stopped, not wanting the conversation to revert to her absconding from school.

She felt suddenly leaden inside, her appetite vanishing as the memory of her unhappy flight, and last night’s wrangling flooded back.

She slid Sam a wary look. What trouble she had caused him, pitching him headlong into a family row and making things difficult for him with the Blacks at StNinian’s for forcing him to aid her escape.

He looked exhausted, his eyes glazed with lack of sleep and whisky.

His hat had fallen off the back of his head and his hair stuck up at untidy angles.

Nelson, tired out from all the excitement, napped in his lap.

How Sam must wish he had never set eyes on her.

Wanting suddenly to be with her mother, Adela left the men talking and slipped into her parents’ bedroom.

The smell of cloves could not mask the stench of blood and afterbirth.

She recoiled from the odour, struck anew with shock that her mother could have given birth.

She was in her late forties, wasn’t she?

The thought of her parents having sex at their age, let alone producing a baby, made her feel queasy.

But there was the proof, her new brother lying peacefully in an ancient swinging cot by the bedside.

Adela peered at him. He was tightly swaddled in a white sheet, his face crinkled like a withered plum, and with a shock of dark hair sprouting from his crown. She didn’t know what to make of him.

Once Auntie Tilly had said, ‘You and my Jamie get on so well together. It’s such a shame you don’t have a brother or sister to play with at Belgooree. Don’t you wish you had one?’

‘No,’ Adela had said, laughing. ‘Why would I want to share Mother and Daddy with anyone else?’

She turned away quickly from the cradle.

‘Mother?’ Adela whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

Clarrie’s face on the pillow looked flushed, dark hair stuck to her glistening brow, and there were purple smudges under her closed eyes. How Adela adored that face.

She burned with shame at the hurtful things she had shouted at her parents– repeating Nina’s poisonous words– when all she had wanted was for them to deny it all and for things to be the same between them as before.

But they had not been able to calm her fears; instead her father had admitted to being engaged to the hateful MrsDavidge, and then her mother had admitted to having some Assamese grandmother, whom Adela had never heard of.

It couldn’t be true! How could they have kept such secrets from her?

Adela sat on the bed trying to hold back the tide of panic rising in her chest. She wasn’t who she thought she was.

She wasn’t one of them– the girls at school, who were proud of being British through and through.

They knew where they came from; their allegiance was undivided.

Home was Britain, even if half of them had never even been there.

Until last night, despite the malicious gossip of Nina, Adela had believed she was every inch a British girl too.

But not now. Her great-grandmother was Assamese.

Had she been a farmer’s daughter or a peasant?

Perhaps a tea picker. Adela cringed to think what Nina and the others would have to say about that: ‘Two annas has the blood of a chai-wallah in her veins.’

It made her all the more determined that she was never going back to StNinian’s.

Adela got up and tiptoed back to the cot.

She bent down and stroked the cheek of the baby.

It was soft as an apricot. He snuffled like a puppy at her touch.

She felt the first stirring of emotion, a stab of pity, towards him.

‘Poor baby,’ she whispered. ‘You’re a two annas just like me.’