Page 171 of The Secrets of the Tea Garden

CHAPTER 36

Belgooree, mid-September

After a week of anxious waiting for marauding gangs to appear in the district, nothing had happened. Libby began to hope that Stourton’s unsettling visit had been for nothing.

Yet rumours were rife around the tea garden that there had been terrible atrocities in neighbouring Gulgat. Whole villages had been torched and the Muslim minority had been butchered or had fled to East Pakistan. Abandoned houses that were still standing were being given to Hindu refugees escaping in the other direction. There were tales of these Bengalis arriving with horrific wounds and mutilations. Each new wave of displaced, traumatised Hindus appeared to provoke a fresh round of attacks on Gulgat’s dwindling minority of Muslims.

Libby sent a telegram home:Sorry will miss holiday stop still with Sophie at Belgooree stop all well stop love Libby.

She didn’t want to give them any cause for worry about her safety or reveal that they were marooned at Belgooree by fear of the troubles in Gulgat spreading. She would write later when the situation had calmed down. But Sophie no longer went for rides and kept mainly to the house or compound. Libby kept her company, though she insisted on helping Clarrie each morning in the office.

‘I have to do something,’ she protested. ‘And I’m not the target.’

Clarrie had given her a worried look. ‘A group of angry men aren’t necessarily going to know what the wife of Rafi Khan looks like – only that she’s British,’ she warned. ‘I don’t want you going further than the factory either.’

Clarrie had agonised over whether to allow Harry to return for the new school term in Shillong or to keep him at home and let Manzur tutor him again. In the end she had decided that it was best to keep things as normal as possible and the boy had gone back to school, eager to see his friends. It was arranged that he would board there until Christmas. All the women had been sad to see him go. Harry had shrugged off their attempts to hug and kiss him, though he’d hung on to Breckon and shed tears when parted from the dog.

Each day Libby checked the dak for a reply from Ghulam, but none came. She knew with the upheaval of people and the unforeseen chaos of Partition that services had been badly disrupted. In some parts of the country post lay uncollected, trains stood idle awaiting firemen to shovel coal, police forces were depleted and milk went undelivered. Perhaps Ghulam had never received her letter. Or had something happened to him? How she worried about his safety in Calcutta!

Then one sultry afternoon, as Libby and Sophie dozed on the shady veranda, Libby jolted awake to the sound of distant firecrackers. She sat up and listened. In the jungle beyond the compound, birds flew into the air screeching. There was a sound like a rumble of thunder before a downpour but there was no stirring of wind in the trees that normally preceded a monsoon storm.

‘What is it?’ Sophie asked, sitting up.

‘That noise ...’ Libby said.

They both strained to hear.

‘Sounds like rifle fire,’ said Sophie.

They scrambled to their feet and went to peer over the veranda railing. The glare dazzled Libby’s eyes. At first she saw nothing. Thensomething caught her eye; some movement in the pearly sky. It looked like a cloud. Then she realised what it was.

‘Something’s burning,’ she gasped. ‘Over there on the hill.’ She pointed.

Sophie stayed calm. ‘It could just be charcoal burners.’ But she went inside to fetch binoculars.

Returning, Sophie gazed at the distant plume of smoke. ‘It’s difficult to say what it is.’

‘The road to Gulgat is in that direction,’ said Libby. ‘I’m going to find Clarrie.’

‘Send Alok,’ said Sophie.

But Libby was already leaping down the veranda steps and running down the garden path. Halfway down the drive she heard gunshot again, nearer this time. She arrived at the factory, breathless. Clarrie was in the tasting room.

‘I think there’s trouble on the Gulgat road,’ Libby panted.

In the short time it took for the women to emerge from the building, word had spread from the village of a disturbance a dozen miles away.

Banu rode up from the gardens. ‘Goondasfrom Gulgat,’ he reported grimly.

Libby’s heart thumped in fright. Clarrie calmly began issuing instructions. She told Nitin to ring and alert the police in Shillong. She closed the factory and office and sent the staff home. She issued her managers with firearms. Banu went to call in the tea pickers from the gardens and rally his family, sending Nitin to protect the Robsons. As Clarrie and Libby hurried back with Nitin to the bungalow, Clarrie was ordering the compound to be secured.

They found Sophie watching anxiously from the veranda.

‘Banu thinks there are two truckloads,’ said Clarrie. ‘Maybe a score of troublemakers. It’s nothing we can’t handle.’

‘This is all my fault,’ Sophie said in distress. ‘I should have gone when Stourton warned me.’

‘How is this your fault?’ said Clarrie. ‘They can’t know you’re here. They’re a paid mob out to make trouble where there’s been none.’