Page 3 of The Secrets of the Tea Garden

James thought he must have misheard. ‘G-get rid of?’

‘Aye, you heard me,’ snapped Logan. ‘I can’t have a bastard half-half growing up under my nose or that of my young wife.’

James winced. ‘Miss Anderson is hardly going to know—’

‘You know fine well how tongues wag at the club,’ Logan interrupted. ‘Some busybody will tell her. Besides, I don’t want him growing up here. If you won’t have him up at Cheviot View, then you must take him to an orphanage or some such place where they look after his kind.’

‘But he’s not an orphan,’ James gasped. ‘He has a mother and—’

‘That’s an order!’ Logan barked. ‘If you defy me on this, I can make your life hell at the Oxford.’

James was shaken. His callous boss was threatening his very future at the Oxford tea gardens – and all because of a wretched tea picker and her half-breed son. He felt suddenly furious. If Logan had shown some restraint – gone horse riding more often like the rest of the bachelors did instead of indulging base passions – then this situation would never have arisen. Logan was quick to condemn others for transgressing; he had made sure a tea planter from a small garden in the hills at Belgooree, Jock Belhaven, and his half-Indian wife along with their Eurasian daughters had been ostracised at the club.

James was on the point of refusing when Logan part-relented.

‘Listen, Robson. I’m thinking only of Miss Anderson’s sensibilities. You’re a decent young man; you wouldn’t want to see the burra memsahib embarrassed or put in an intolerable situation, would you? You can see what a sweet, innocent thing she is even from her photo.’He held James’s look. ‘Do this for me, and I’ll make sure that you’re recommended as assistant manager at the next board meeting.’

James bit back his mutinous retort. With his stomach curdling with disgust, he nodded and turned away. Chivvying the perplexed Aruna, who still clutched her child, James led them away from Dunsapie Cottage.

Aruna appeared to accept her fate without complaint; she moved back to the lines and continued with her work in the tea gardens. Sunil Ram, the oldpunkah-wallahfrom Dunsapie Cottage, visited with titbits of food for her and the boy. James knew this because he found him there one morning when he came to take the boy away. Above the rows of crude huts, the air was thick with the smoke from open fires and the smell of cooking.

‘Brat’ was squatting next to Sunil Ram, laughing as the old man shared out a chapatti. Seeing the young manager, Aruna scrambled towards the child and held him close. James flinched at the defiance in her dark eyes, the fierceness of a mother’s love. His resolve failed and he walked on.

James put off doing anything about the boy, hoping that Logan would drop the matter and allow his son to grow up among the tea pickers. But one day, the boy found his way back to Dunsapie Cottage in search of his father. Logan summoned James.

‘This mustn’t happen again, Robson. Take a couple of days’ leave immediately and go to Shillong. The orphanage will be the best thing for the Brat. He’ll have an education and a Christian upbringing. A better life than here. That’s what I want for him. Do I make myself clear?’

James thought the man contemptible. Logan was now trying to justify his decision to cast out his son by pretending to have Christian sensibilities. The hypocrite! James looked around for the boy. He was sitting on the veranda beside Sunil Ram, helping the old man pull on the rope that worked thepunkah. James called to him.

‘Come, boy,jaldi! Would you like a ride on a horse?’ James made horse noises and riding gestures.

‘Brat’ came willingly, with a toothy grin.

Word must have spread quickly around the tea workers, for James had barely had time to arrange a horse and trap and his bearer, Aslam, to arrive with provisions for the journey, when Aruna tore into the factory compound. At the sight of her son perched up beside Aslam, she flung herself forward and tried to grab the boy. ‘Brat’ laughed, thinking it a game. But Aruna yelled and clutched at his leg. He started to whimper.

‘He must come with me,’ James said in Hindustani. She didn’t appear to understand. James had no idea what tribal language she spoke. He flicked the reins.

‘Out of the way!’ James ordered. ‘Get her out of the way before she gets trampled.’

Men from the factory swiftly intervened to pull Aruna back. Her wails of distress pierced the air and sent a flock of parrots screeching out of the trees.

‘I’m sorry,’ James called over his shoulder. But his words were drowned out by Aruna’s screams and the boy’s crying. Aslam held tightly to the bewildered child, trying to calm him.

James quickened the pace of his horse. They picked up speed, dust rising in a choking cloud around them. The boy kept calling out for his mother till James shouted at him to be quiet. ‘Brat’ burst into floods of tears as Aslam cuddled the distraught boy. James ground his teeth. He could still hear the mother’s weeping from miles away. But he knew it could only be in his head.

James had not been to Shillong since the earthquake two years previously. A whole hillside of buildings appeared to have vanished; the native bazaar was reduced to a patchwork of makeshift stalls and huts cobbled together out of salvaged wood and tarpaulin. The government and military buildings had fared better – or had been rebuilt more swiftly.

He had to ask the way to the orphanage, only to discover there were two: one run by Catholic nuns and the other by Baptist Missionaries. On a whim he chose the nuns. They would be kind to the boy, surely?

The young sister who came to the gateway looked Eurasian. She eyed James with suspicion as he stammered out his flimsy story. Her look told him she thought the child was his.

‘D-dead, I’m afraid. Both parents,’ James lied. ‘They would have wanted him to come to a good Christian home like this, Sister.’

She took a look at the boy sucking hard on his thumb standing before her. Aslam held on to his other hand. Even to James’s eyes the child looked exhausted and miserable. After a moment’s hesitation, she ushered them inside the compound.

‘We can’t stay,’ James said in a panic. ‘We just wish to leave the boy in good hands and go.’

The look of rebuke on the nun’s face made James squirm with shame. ‘We can’t send you away without any refreshment,’ she replied. ‘Your servant too. I’m Sister Placid.’