Page 74 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)
Tempers were frayed after the nonstop series of shows and the nerve-racking travel.
They shared tin-roofed huts with giant red cockroaches and changed for shows all together in the same small tent, without chairs or mirrors.
Monkeys invaded and ran off with costume jewellery and hats, the juggler got dysentery and the magician fell off a rickety stage and broke a leg.
They had to leave him behind in a hospital in Abbottabad, to follow on when he could travel.
And Mavis had a point about the thin air: singing required double breaths that left the singers feeling faint.
For Adela, all the tension and exhaustion was worth it for the moments of comradeship with the men – seeing their faces relax as they enjoyed the show and forgot about the war for a few precious moments.
They danced in mess tents with the sound of jackals in the forests beyond and sat cross-legged with troops around campfires singing all the songs they could think of until they grew hoarse.
The women were in high demand as penfriends for homesick conscripts, who were on the verge of being sent into action in Burma.
‘Be my girl and write to me’ was a constant refrain. Prue took on the task with enthusiasm.
‘What about Stuey?’ Mavis pointed out. ‘You’ve already got a man.’
‘Most of these boys have also got girlfriends,’ said Prue. ‘That’s not the point. They just want letters. It’s what they live for.’
Nobody would tell the entertainers what their impending orders were, but it was obvious that the fightback against the Japanese army on the fringes of India’s eastern borders had begun. The mood in the camps was jittery.
Adela and Tommy had renewed an old habit of slipping off to the cinema together whenever there was a free afternoon at their base in Murree to watch out-of-date newsreels.
There was footage of General Orde Wingate and his guerrilla force, the Chindits, being airlifted into Burma, and reports of their successes, but the film was six months old.
From what Adela could glean, there had been fierce fighting on the Arakan peninsula near Chittagong since December.
What she wanted to know was the present situation further north, on the Assam border.
When they returned to Murree from Abbottabad, there was a letter awaiting her from her mother.
Adela sat on the chalet steps and read it eagerly.
Clarrie and Harry were well and managing things at Belgooree.
Her mother was worried about James pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, taking on numerous civil defence duties, as well as the work of the plantations.
‘I’ve forbidden him to come to Belgooree while the present crisis is on,’ wrote Clarrie, ‘as I can manage perfectly well with Daleep and Banu’s help.’
What present crisis was she referring to, Adela worried? Was it the war in general or Assam in particular? Familiar tension curdled in her stomach.
I had a visit from Sophie last week. She has volunteered with the Red Cross as a driver and was on her way up to Dimapur.
She is so plucky and brave. It doesn’t seem to bother her that she is heading into a war zone– she was as cheerful as ever.
She said that Rafi fully supported what she was doing– besides, he’s away such a lot that she hardly sees him.
She is very excited to think she might come across your show and see you if you are sent up to Dimapur.
Selfishly, I hope you won’t go anywhere near Upper Assam.
There’s never any mention in the press about the Japanese being on Indian soil, but from what James tells me, Imphal is under threat and Kohima too– do you remember playing tennis up there with your father one Christmas holiday?
One of his fishing friends had a bungalow with a tennis court. How long ago that all seems now.
Adela could hear the longing in her mother’s words. It was nearly six years since her father’s death. For Adela, the pain of loss had eased to the point where she could think about him and smile rather than be choked with tears. But she sensed that, for her mother, the grief was as raw as ever.
Adela was folding up the letter when she saw a postscript on the back. Her heart skipped a beat to see Sam’s name.
PS As you asked me to, I wrote to DrBlack to see if he knew the whereabouts of Sam Jackman.
I just heard back last week. It seems that Sam enlisted with the Royal Air Force.
DrBlack says he was on operations in Iraq, but since returning to India he’s been assigned to the film unit.
The doctor is not sure where he is, though he suspects it might be Chittagong or somewhere on the battlefront, but a letter care of the Public Relations Directorate in Delhi would probably catch up with him eventually .
Adela’s heart thudded at the unexpected news.
So Sam was an airman and working in films. She felt light-headed.
For so long she had known nothing, had invented a dozen stories of what might have become of him, but never guessed that he’d joined the RAF.
The relief of finally knowing made her euphoric.
He would be in his element behind a camera, even if it was just propaganda newsreels and photographs.
But her joy turned quickly to dread to think he might be on the embattled Burmese border.
Was he still flying for the RAF too? Or was he part of the ground crew?
All the rest of the day she see-sawed between exhilaration at knowing what had become of Sam and anxiety to think of him in constant danger.
A week later, in early April, they were packing up and heading back to the plain.
‘Typical disorganised ENSA,’ Mavis grumbled. ‘Just as everyone else is heading for the hills in the hot weather, we’re being sent back to fry in the sun.’
To Adela and Prue’s disappointment, the planned tour to Jubbulpore was cancelled and instead they were sent to Bihar to perform to camps of field companies: engineers, gunners, transport and supplies men and medics. The heat became fierce and the dust blew into everything.
‘Now you know what it means to sing through gritted teeth,’ Tommy joked.
Adela found herself endlessly trying to soothe tempers among her fellow dancers and keep Mavis and Prue apart, except on stage.
Prue fretted that she wouldn’t get to see Stuey before he was deployed to Burma.
His training in southern India was over.
They picked up an anxious rumour from loose talk in the officers’ mess that Imphal was besieged and that there was fierce fighting around Kohima.
The supply basis at Dimapur was under threat.
If the Japanese broke through at Kohima, then Dimapur and the rest of Assam would be theirs for the taking.
Adela wore herself out worrying about Sophie in the front line and James and his fellow tea planters at imminent risk.
Belgooree was a few days’ march from there.
But there was no official news of any conflict; the authorities had brought down a safety curtain of ominous silence.
She tried to keep her fears to herself and put on a brave face, but Tommy understood.
‘Singing and dancing are your weapons,’ he said, giving her a hug, ‘so go out and use them. With a voice like yours, we’re not going to lose India.’
By May they were on their way to Calcutta, a journey that should have taken three days. Five days of slow trains, stopping at endless chaotic stations and Mavis complaining about everything from kerosene-tasting tea to the stench of dung fires pushed Prue to breaking point.
‘If you don’t shut up, I’m going to ram this tiffin tin into your miserable mouth and push you off the train!’
‘There’s no need talk like that,’ Mavis said, quite taken aback.
‘There’s every need. You’re driving us all mad.’
‘I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking,’ panted Mavis, fanning herself with an old newspaper. ‘India is stinky and sweaty and we all want to go home.’
‘No,’ Prue cried, ‘the only stinky and sweaty person here is you! I knew you should never have come. You can’t sing and you’re only a half-decent dancer. Call yourself a Bluebell? The nearest you ever got to a bluebell was in a wood.’
‘Well, I’ve never been so offended!’ Mavis spluttered. ‘And if we’re talking about dancing, you dance like you’ve got two left feet.’
Adela tried to intervene. ‘That’s enough, both of you. Let’s all just calm down and try to get some sleep. It’s just the heat talking.’
‘I’m not going to dance with her again,’ declared Mavis, ‘not till she apologises.’
‘Apologise?’ Prue exclaimed. ‘You’re the one who should be apologising to the whole show for being the worst performer. We’d be better off with two Toodle Pips rather than two plus a panting elephant.’
‘That’s it!’ shouted Mavis, puce-faced. ‘I’m not dancing with you ever again.’ She turned to Adela, her eyes welling with tears. ‘You’ll have to decide.’
‘Decide what?’
‘Which of us you want as your other Pip. My Pip suits your Pip better than her Pip.’
At that moment Adela caught Tommy’s look.
He always kept out of the arguments, but she could see him trying to suppress a snort of laughter at Mavis’s plea about pips.
Adela felt a laugh bubble up inside. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but couldn’t stop it.
In seconds both she and Tommy were doubled up and clutching their stomachs from spasms of laughter, filling the fetid carriage with their hoots of amusement.
Mavis burst into tears. Prue looked at them as if they had lost their senses.
But it was infectious, and soon the whole carriage was in giggles, even Mavis,relieving the frayed nerves from months on the road and the ever-present fear of being invaded.