Page 78 of The Girl from the Tea Garden (The India Tea #3)

For once Sam was not piloting the plane.

He had been detailed to make a film of the prestigious event for the SEAC film unit.

It was to be a much-needed morale booster for the Indian army.

There had been plenty of bitter talk, among officers as well as lower ranks, about their forgotten war on the Burma front.

Sam, who had spent the past dangerous months flying supplies to beleaguered troops behind the Japanese lines and had witnessed the Herculean efforts of infantry, gunners and engineers to keep Kohima and Imphal from falling into enemy hands, knew more than most how deserving of their medals were the surviving soldiers.

He had landed on precarious strips of cleared jungle for Wingate’s Chindits, avoided Japanese night fighters to drop ammunition and water by parachute, and coaxed skittish mules on to his aircraft for use in the Burma mountains.

The operations had been endless and punishing, but the worst risk to their transport drops so far was not enemy attack or the terrain, but the order to continue flying through the monsoon– and in daytime.

There was nothing as terrifying as flying into giant cauldrons of cumulonimbus clouds and being hurled around while deafening hail clattered like bullets on the metal aircraft.

Sam’s jaw continually ached from being clenched.

His heart would race, until he found the all-important hole in the cloud into which he could dive, hoping to find their drop zone and not a mountain wall.

Chubs, clutching his homemade pinpoint map, stayed as calm as if they were scouting a picnic spot.

‘Anytime now would do nicely, Padre,’ he would encourage. Chubs had nicknamed Sam ‘The Padre’ after they discovered he’d once been a missionary.

Back at their Assam base at Agartala, in the humid officers’ mess they would toast their survival in gin and throw treats to their mascot in the compound, a pet Himalayan black bear.

After a few snatched hours of exhausted sleep, their bearer would shake them awake, and the relentless round of flights would begin all over again.

But today Sam had a welcome diversion and respite as documentary maker. He relished being behind the camera observing once more.

He took close-up footage of the Viceroy inspecting troops of the 15th Punjab Regiment, Durham Light Infantry, Royal Berkshires, Royal Welsh Fusiliers and 1st Gurkha Rifles.

Wavell presented medals. Sam filmed the men showing captured military hardware: mountain guns with wooden spoked wheels.

Three prisoners of war were spoken to through a Japanese-American interpreter.

Sam knew the significance of this: to show the world that the Allies treated their captured POWs with humanity– at least with food, shelter and medicines.

Next Wavell visited the hospital. Sam took some shots.

The censors at the War Office could decide if the pictures of men shrunken by fever or bandaged beyond recognition were to be shown more widely.

To him, these men should not be hidden away from a squeamish public; they deserved to receive just as much recognition as the medal wearers. But he doubted that they would.

As the VIPs took refreshment with the doctors, Sam stepped outside, enjoying the warm sunshine on his back. He never minded the heat in the hills; it was the humid, claustrophobic cities, like Calcutta, that sapped his energy and spirit.

As he finished a cigarette and waited for the Viceroy, a dusty Jeep drove into the compound and was stopped by guards.

Sam was surprised to see three women clamber out of the back, their topees tipped back jauntily, laughing and shoving their male colleague playfully at some remark he must have made.

They were blatantly flirting with the guards, trying to wheedle their way into getting a closer view of the VIP visit.

Sam snorted in amusement. On a whim he raised his camera, which was strung around his neck, and focused it on the group.

Through the lens he could just pick out the ENSA badges on their shirts.

Nice, shapely figures. The dark-haired one pulled off her filthy hat and shook out her hair. A double for Vivien Leigh.

Sam’s heart thudded in his chest. It couldn’t possibly be.

Without hesitating, he started to stride towards the noisy party.

As he got close, the young woman looked over.

Her eyes widened. Then she smiled and his stomach flipped over.

Her face was streaked with dust and sweat, but she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered.

‘Adela.’

‘Sam.’

She came up to him and held out her hand. He shook it, feeling ridiculously formal. What he really wanted to do was crush her to his chest and not let go. They stood grinning at each other. She didn’t seem so shocked to see him. Sam was almost speechless.

‘I’d heard you were in the RAF,’ she said, ‘and making films for them. Are you travelling with Wavell?’

‘Yes.’ His voice sounded embarrassingly husky in his ears. ‘When did you join ENSA? Have you been back in India long?’ He was still gripping her hand. ‘I want to hear everything.’

She laughed. It made his chest constrict. How had he forgotten how much he loved the way she tilted her head to one side and half closed her eyes in amusement?

‘Since February,’ Adela said. ‘We all have. Do you remember Prue and Tommy from The Simla Songsters?’ She dropped his hand as she turned to the others. ‘And this is Betsie, who hasn’t quite recovered from being attacked by monkeys in the bath.’

Sam exchanged greetings with them all.

‘Can we meet the Viceroy?’ Prue asked with a wink.

‘We don’t want to get on film looking like this,’ Betsie said in horror.

‘Perhaps on our return,’ Sam suggested, ‘you could perform something for the camera. I could suggest it to the ADC.’

‘Return from where?’ Adela asked.

‘We’re off to Bishenpur this afternoon and then on to Kohima.’

Her face fell. ‘So soon? But you’re coming back?’

‘Tomorrow night, before returning Wavell to Calcutta.’

‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘Then we’ll put on our glad rags for the Viceroy.’

There was no time for further conversation, as one of Wavell’s aides summoned Sam back. He gave a regretful shrug and a lingering look, before striding away.

The rest of Sam’s day passed in a blur. They descended through clouds to the camp at Bishenpur, the mountains hidden from view.

Sam’s nerves jangled, as they always did when he was a passenger rather than pilot.

As the ceremony of medal giving began again– he focused in on a gunner from the Gordon Highlanders who was being honoured– his mind was only half on the task.

He had thought of Adela often over the intervening years, yet imagined her in Britain.

She would be doing something for the war effort or working as an actress or married to some lucky man in the tea business and raising his children.

In times of fear, exhaustion or the adrenaline-pumping moments of this hellish war, Sam had tortured himself with thoughts of Adela.

In some perverse way it made it all seem more bearable to think of her living, breathing and laughing somewhere in the world rather than to imagine a world without her.

Even if he never saw her again, just to think that she lived a life under the same moon and stars was a comfort; it made the world worth fighting for.

Yet there she was in Imphal just a few hours ago, stepping out of a filthy Jeep and into his life again.

Sam mocked himself for his runaway thoughts.

Just because she looked pleased to see him didn’t mean she shared the same strong feelings.

How could she? They hadn’t met for over six years.

Adela had been hardly out of girlhood. He had known back then that she had cared for him– until his impetuous actions at the Sipi Fair.

At least he would have the chance to explain all that to her.

If they ever got back to Imphal on schedule. Impatience curdled in his gut.

Sam set to the task of filming as they travelled on to Kohima.

He had seen it all from the air, the carnage and devastation.

It was amazing how just one monsoon was already covering the pounded earth and the mass graves with lush new growth.

He took footage of Wavell looking through binoculars at recent battle areas.

As the cloud cleared over the Naga Hills, the courageous tribesmen who had helped the Allies lined up to salute the Viceroy and the Maharajah in the traditional way by putting their hands to their noses.

Sam was suddenly overwhelmed. Their villages and animals had been destroyed by someone else’s war, yet the Nagas greeted the British with gifts of machetes and homespun cloth.

Sam felt a lump in his throat at their generosity and lack of reproach.

Yet again he felt humbled by the lion-hearted spirit of India’s hill people.

Adela had no idea how she had kept so outwardly calm at seeing Sam again.

Sam! He had stridden towards her, camera swinging from his chest as if he had been waiting for her to arrive.

He looked older, his tanned face scored with deeper lines around his hazel eyes and firm mouth.

His hair was cropped short, his cap stuffed into his belt out of the way for filming.

But his easy smile was just as broad, and his eyes shone with the same mixture of warmth and mischief that made her pulse race.

Then he had taken her hand and almost crushed it in his. Her heart had felt as if it would explode out of her chest at his touch. Surely he had been aware of her shaking or seen the flush rise up her neck.

‘So you’re just as keen on Sam Jackman as ever?’ Prue teased her.

Adela gave a rueful laugh. ‘Was it that obvious?’

‘It was to me,’ said Prue, ‘but then you have talked a lot about him since we’ve got back to India.’