Page 77 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)
‘I’ve been sent up from an army hospital in East Bengal to help,’ Flowers explained.
‘We’ve got so many cases of fever coming in, and it’s hopeless sending them to hospital in the plains in the hot season, as it just makes them worse, so we’re treating as many as we can here and keeping them in the hills to recuperate. ’
‘Yes, I’ve seen some of them at Imphal– including an old boyfriend,’ said Adela. ‘I sing to them over their egg and toast.’
‘I bet that cheers them up,’ Flowers said, winking.
Later, after Adela had sung with her friends to patients babbling with delirium and groaning in pain, she sat on Flowers’ camp bed under a mosquito net as they drank tea by the light of a hurricane lamp.
Flowers told her about training as a nurse and how she had been working in Rangoon when the Japanese invaded Burma.
She had escaped on one of the last overcrowded ships to leave the port.
After that she enlisted as an army nurse and was sent to the Middle East.
‘Since coming back, I’ve worked in Calcutta and then with a specialist neurosurgical unit in Comilla before coming here.’
‘Gosh, you’re adventurous,’ Adela said in admiration, ‘and brave.’
Flowers flashed her an amused look. ‘Not what you would have expected from the timid girl you knew at StNinian’s?’
‘No, not really,’ Adela admitted. ‘But we were very young then.’
‘But you were always brave,’ said Flowers. ‘I wish I’d had the courage to run away like you did. I hated school. And you caused such a fuss, you wouldn’t believe it. Especially when you didn’t come back.’
‘I hope they didn’t pick on you more because I wasn’t there,’ Adela said with a guilty pang.
‘They did,’ Flowers answered bluntly. ‘But it made me stronger. I kept telling myself that I was better than them and that I’d make something of myself– not just learn the social graces and make myself pretty for a husband.
You did that for me, Adela. So thanks for getting yourself expelled. ’ Flowers gave a wide grin.
They laughed and drank more tea. Adela gave a brief outline of what she’d done in the intervening years, leaving out the painful details of her affair and illegitimate child.
‘I’m sorry to hear about the death of your father,’ said Flowers.
‘My father’s health is not good. My mother wants him to go to the convalescent home in Simla, but he won’t desert his duties as station master, even though their house got requisitioned by the army and they are living in a leaking bungalow in Sreemangal. ’
‘Jaflong would be closer than Simla for a spell of R said his father was a Scots tea planter.
Daddy grew up in Shillong, so I don’t know how that fits in, but he seemed quite proud of the connection. ’
‘You’ll have to ask him more about it when you next see him,’ said Adela, feeling a sudden pang of homesickness for Belgooree.
Soon after, Adela crawled into the tent she was sharing with Prue and fell into exhausted sleep. In the morning she was woken by screams. Scrambling from the tent with Prue, they saw Betsie cowering in a canvas bath behind the tent flap.
‘Stop them!’ she squealed.
‘Stop who?’ Adela looked around wildly for attackers.
‘Up there!’ She waved a hand.
Adela looked up at the tree above. A crowd of monkeys were chattering loudly. Suddenly one hurled a twig at the naked Betsie. Prue picked it up and flung it back.
‘Don’t!’ Adela cried. ‘You won’t win.’
A shower of sticks rained down on them. Adela grabbed Betsie’s towel and held it over her.
‘Finish off quickly,’ she ordered and ducked at the same time.
Prue took refuge in the tent. A minute later Adela was following, with Betsie bundled in the towel.
They collapsed, laughing, in a hysterical heap.
It was minutes before they could draw breath.
‘Are you boozing in there?’ Tommy shouted through the canvas. ‘What’s going on, girls?’
‘Monkey business,’ Adela snorted, which set them all off again.
They stayed three more days before the driver returned to collect them. On the last night one of the orderlies chucked a grenade in the river, which brought fish to the surface and a smile to the nurses’ faces when they dined on fish that evening.
Early the next morning Flowers and Adela hugged and wished each other good luck, promising to stay in touch.
The ENSA troupe bumped their way back in the Jeep, their bodies jarred and bruised by the rutted road.
The driver kept the hood down to allow the breeze to cool them, so that by the time they arrived back in Imphal they were all covered in a thick brown dust.