Page 44 of The Secrets of the Tea Garden

He hailed a rickshaw. Libby was acutely aware that they were sitting with their arms touching–the dark hairs of his forearms tickling her pale skin–as they were jostled south down Chowringhee Street. They passed the Grand Hotel and turned into Lindsay Street. She felt suddenly tongue-tied but he appeared preoccupied and didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps meeting up with him was a mistake; they might findnothing to say to each other or end up arguing again. At the clock tower, Ghulam helped her down and paid the driver.

He led her into the covered market past pyramids of fruit and vegetables: bananas, apricots, okra and aubergines. Porters stepped around them with wide flat baskets on their heads, carrying packages of foodstuffs and cloth, while traders called out for business. Corridors spread out in different directions. She was struck anew by the plentiful supplies in India compared to the ration-weary Britain she had left behind. Any returning British would be in for a shock.

‘This way,’ said Ghulam, nodding. Libby was amazed at the variety on offer: stalls packed with china and hardware, drapery and shoes, flowers and hot peanuts. They pushed on through a butcher’s hall, the floor sticky with fresh blood. Overhead, fans whirred in the gloomy gaslit alleyways and pigeons flapped and darted. Passing a cheese stall, Libby could see daylight again. Ghulam stopped and waved her forward into a restaurant. She wondered if he had brought her the long way round so that she could experience the market in all its chaotic glory.

Ghulam was welcomed as if he often came there. A series of booths, some of them curtained, lined the room. From the chatter, Libby could hear that they were providing privacy for women and children. The people she could see were all Indian. Ghulam sat opposite her in one of the booths, leaving the curtain drawn back. She wondered who else he had dined here with in these intimate cubicles. Libby felt her insides flutter again.

‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked. ‘I come here when I’m in need of some Punjabi food. The Bengalis live on fish – sometimes I crave a well-cooked mutton curry.’

‘I like the sound of that too.’

He raised an eyebrow quizzically.

‘Auntie’s cook is probably the worst in Calcutta,’ she explained. ‘I’ve had my fill of soggy veg and rubbery chicken.’ She pushed escaping tendrils of hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture. ‘Oh dear, that makesme sound like a typical memsahib complaining about the servants. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant I’d love a decent curry.’

Ghulam’s mouth twitched in amusement. He ordered swiftly. The waiter brought them glasses ofnimbu pani. As they waited for the food, Ghulam took a swig of his lime drink and then leant on his elbows and fixed her with a direct look. Libby smirked.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Ghulam.

‘I was just remembering how Mother always nagged me about keeping my elbows off the table,’ said Libby, planting her own firmly on the tabletop too.

Ghulam gave his charming uneven smile again, the one that made his face suddenly very handsome and Libby’s stomach curdle. ‘We got off on the wrong foot, didn’t we?’ he said. ‘Let’s start again getting to know each other. Tell me about your mother with the exacting table manners.’

Libby found herself telling him not only about Tilly, her brothers and Josey, but about Newcastle, the café and Lexy, and her unhappiness at school and how she would have run away if it hadn’t been for her mentor Miss MacGregor. She spoke enthusiastically of her time as a Land Girl, of the anti-climax of living back at home again, of teaching Doreen to type and her frustration with the typing pool at the bank.

‘They didn’t expect a woman behind a typewriter to have any brain cells,’ said Libby. ‘I was forever getting into trouble for making alterations to the manager’s letters.’

This made Ghulam laugh, a deep, amused chuckle that made her laugh too.

A series of dishes came: mutton curry in rich gravy, black bean dal, fried aubergine, spicy potatoes and rice. Ghulam scooped up his food with chapattis so Libby ignored the cutlery brought for her and did the same. They both ate with relish.

‘This is all delicious,’ said Libby, licking her tingling lips. ‘Now it’s your turn – you’ve led a far more exciting life if everything Adela says is true. I want to hear about it all.’

After a bit of prompting, Ghulam began to tell her about growing up in Lahore in a tall mansion house in the heart of the old city, with three brothers and two sisters.

‘Rafi was always my favourite big brother,’ he said. ‘He was the dashing one who could ride and play sport and make friends easily. I idolised him. Being bright, he was sent away to school in Simla and I couldn’t wait for him to come home in the holidays – I was always pestering him to play cricket with me. Then he enlisted in the Lahore Horse and was sent to France. After that he went to Scotland to do a forestry degree. By the time he came home he was a stranger – aping the manners of the sahibs he worked with – and I was an angry young man.’

Ghulam drained off his drink. Libby poured him some more from the cool metal jug.

‘So you grew apart?’ guessed Libby. ‘A different war, but the outcome’s the same – a family split by long years of separation – I know how that feels.’ She saw the struggle in his face and knew that, deep down, he must still love his brother Rafi as much as he did as a boy. ‘You shouldn’t blame Rafi too much for that.’

Ghulam shrugged.

‘And you still had Fatima as an ally,’ said Libby with an encouraging look. ‘What was she like as a girl?’

Ghulam smiled with affection. ‘My little sister was the quiet rebel. I was the one who had the blazing rows with my father and older brothers but Fatima just got on with what she wanted to do – she studied hard at school and went on to university. She had an inspirational teacher like you did – her headmistress – but she also credits our mother. On the surface Mother was a very traditional woman who kept strict purdah and didn’t have an education – but Fatima told me our mother hadlost three babies because there were no purdah doctors and she wanted Fatima to be a doctor to women like her.’

‘She must have been a remarkable woman to have raised such independent-minded children,’ said Libby.

‘That is my only real regret,’ Ghulam admitted, ‘that I never saw my mother again before she died.’

‘When did you last see her?’ asked Libby.

‘When I was released from prison in ’28. I went to see her when my father was out at work. She scolded me and made me eat a huge meal and wept over me when I left. I think we both knew we’d never see each other again.’

Libby saw his eyes gleam with tears. She waited while he sipped more of the lime-flavoured water and then said, ‘Tell me about your time with the communists – when you went to Simla campaigning for the rights of the hill people.’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘So Adela told you about that too? And did she tell you how her husband Sam saved me from arrest at the Sipi Fair?’