The Girl From the Tea Garden

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  All spring the talk at the club had been of the shock invasion by the Japanese army, rushing like tigers through Malaya and then on into Burma after the capture of Singapore in February.

  ‘We’ll hold the line at Sittang River,’ James had said bullishly, knocking back a double whisky. He had started drinking more heavily in Tilly’s absence.

  But in Burma, the 17th Infantry Division of the Indian Army under General Smyth had been quickly outflanked and pushed back north and west. By early March the capital, Rangoon, had fallen. Mandalay in the centre had followed. The Indian army made a desperate fighting retreat across the Chindwin River and through the almost impenetrable jungles and mountains to India. James had hunted in those teak forests as a young man when Burma had still been a part of India. He knew planters who had gone to work there and some of their Indian staff.

  The news had grown ever grimmer. By April the Japanese had occupied the Andaman Islands and were bombing naval bases in Ceylon and Southern India; Madras was being evacuated. The tea planters, coal mine managers and oil workers of Assam were in near panic at the speed of events. A year ago they had thought India was ‘safe as houses’, as his fellow manager and neighbour, Reggie Percy-Barratt, had claimed. Now they were being forced to contemplate sending their families to safety in Calcutta or Delhi – always supposing anywhere in India was now safe.

  The enemy was pressing towards their border. Burma had gone up in flames; cities and oil fields were ablaze, whether set alight by the invaders or the retreating British, James didn’t know. Rumour had it that thousands of stranded Indians were fleeing too: plantation workers, shopkeepers and clerks with their families.

  ‘Well, the Europeans had to be given priority on the ships, didn’t they?’ said Percy-Barratt defensively. ‘Rangoon couldn’t handle such numbers of evacuees.’

  James had been uncomfortable at the thought. These Indians were in Burma working for the British and were subjects of King George. Knowing the terrain and the stifling heat of West Burma, it would be a near-impossible trek for women and children. He doubted many could survive even if they evaded the pursuing Japanese. He looked again through his binoculars. It amazed him that so many troops had made it back across the border. It was rumoured that thousands hadn’t; whole units had been either killed or taken prisoner.

  He agonised about what to do: hurry back to the Oxford Estates and make preparations to evacuate the remaining wives and families of his staff, or continue up towards the border to see what he could do to help.

  ‘Damn it!’ he cursed under his breath. Turning to his assistant, Manzur, he said, ‘Come on. You can drive me up to Kohima.’

  They found the border village in chaos. Army tents and temporary shelters were erected on the lawns of British bungalows. Tennis courts and paddocks had been given over to emergency field hospitals, vehicles, mess awnings and equipment. Exhausted men in grubby, sweat-stained uniforms milled around. But what lay beyond, corralled on the hillside, struck horror into James’s chest. A seething mass of people – emaciated, collapsing, beseeching, half naked, filthy, diseased – were camped out in the open as far as the eye could see. He was appalled at the almost Biblical scene of suffering.

  The border officials were completely overwhelmed by the situation. James tried to get some sense out of one young man.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ he said defensively. ‘We’ve been told to only let Europeans into Assam.’

  ‘They’ll die if you don’t,’ James said.

  ‘What can I do?’ the man said, removing his spectacles and rubbing his eyes in exhaustion.

  ‘Show a bit of compassion, man!’

  But the clerk remained obstinate. ‘Take it up with my superiors. I’m just trying to do my job.’

  James stormed off. He could see the situation was hopeless. He ordered Manzur to drive him back to the plantation.

  James sighed in frustration. ‘We’ll offer some provisions to the army – maybe some labour to help them build defences or supply roads. See what they need. If the Japanese are coming, we’re going to be on the front line.’

  On the way back his young assistant suggested, ‘Sahib, we could extend the lines, build some temporary shelters. Take some of those people in. They’ll have to let them across the border sooner or later.’

  James just grunted. He should upbraid Manzur for being impertinent; it was none of his business what the authorities chose to do. But he didn’t. He had a growing respect for the young man and was secretly admiring that he had the confidence to voice his opinion to his boss. Clarrie liked Manzur too. He had proved a patient and encouraging tutor for Harry – who was turning out to be rather a serious child – and Clarrie had been pleased with his efforts. Clarrie would be outraged at the treatment of the fleeing civilians from Burma.

  That night James couldn’t rid himself of the image of the destitute refugees on the hillside. They reminded him of bad memories from twenty years ago, the camps of absconding plantation workers that had lined the ghats of the Brahmaputra River. He sat on the veranda in the dark, drinking and thinking back to the time when he’d brought Tilly to Assam as his wife. He’d been embarrassed that her first sight of his domain was scores of cholera-raddled troublemakers. They had been desperate and destitute, but he had seen them only as a burden and the makers of their own misfortune. He had been further irritated by Clarrie’s high-handed comments about how all the tea planters should rally to help them. My God! She’d even talked about defying the tea association and putting up wages unilaterally, a sure way of causing further disturbance and dissension in the tea gardens. How contemptuous he had been of her suggestions and of Wesley for letting her take such a hand in business at Belgooree.

  James slugged back his whisky. Strange how he was seeing things through her eyes now. Something must be done about the refugees from Burma. He stood and went to lean on the balcony railing. The trees below pulsed with night sounds in the warm, sticky air. The monsoon would come soon. Perhaps that was the only thing that would keep the Japanese invasion at bay: flooded and impassable jungle ravines. But it would also bring fever and further misery to those fleeing and struggling to reach the border.

  It was your fault, Robson! an angry young man had once shouted at him at the club in Tezpur, half a dozen years ago. Those poor runaway bastards. Saw them as a boy. Never forget. No one deserved to die like that.

  Sam Jackman. He’d been thrown out of the club for disorderly behaviour. At the time James had not understood. But Jackman – amiable and amusing when sober – had gained a reputation for maligning tea planters when in drink. Especially over the coolies’ agitation twenty years ago. Some men made excuses for him; he had taken the death of his father, the old steamship captain, badly. James had been less tolerant, indignant at being blamed for any of it.

  He sighed deeply, wondering what had become of the ardent young man with a passion for justice, as well as a weakness for cards. He hadn’t seen him since the disgraced missionary had visited Belgooree four years ago in the wake of Wesley’s death. James winced to recall how spikily unpleasant he had been to the lad at the time. Sam hadn’t deserved his needling remarks. James wondered if Jackman had enlisted or whether he still remained in India. Poor Sam; he had been dashed to hear that Adela had gone to England. James now knew what it was like to pine for a woman.

  He stood up straight, glancing dolefully at his empty tumbler. Whisky seemed to be one of the luxuries still plentiful in Assam, no matter how perilous their situation. He really ought to cut down. Tilly would be telling him to if she were here. But she wasn’t. James felt a fresh wave of anger at his errant wife. He might be dead in a few weeks, bayonetted by the Japanese. Then she’d be full of remorse for abandoning him!

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. That was what an exasperated Clarrie had said to him when he’d whined to her recently about Tilly. Just be glad you have a spouse, even if she’s halfway across the world. She’s looking after your family after all.

  J
ames grunted out loud. ‘You’re right, Clarrie Robson. I’ve got nothing to complain about. Tilly will come back to me – if there’s still somewhere to come back to when this bloody war is over.’

  He turned from the starlit view with a new determination. He would go back to Kohima and force the authorities to begin letting in the refugees. The Oxford would accommodate some – or help them on their way. He wasn’t going to be accused a second time of turning a blind eye to suffering.

  ‘If we’re all going to die,’ James said to the night, ‘let us at least fight and die together on Indian soil.’

  CHAPTER 27

  October 1943

  The Toodle Pips dance trio received a raucous reception from the audience of Land Girls, who were packed into the barn of a stately home in Cumberland.

  ‘They’ll eat you alive, Tommy,’ Adela teased as she came off the rickety stage with Prue and Helen. They were clad only in black leotards and purple tutus, breathless from singing their signature song, ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’.

  Tommy Villiers adjusted his bow tie and winked. ‘Thanks for nicely warming up my audience, girls. Now watch the master perform.’ He extinguished his half-smoked cigarette, slipped it into his dinner jacket pocket, took a deep breath and sauntered on to the stage.

  Prue and Adela watched from the wings. ‘Listen to them laughing at his jokes,’ said Adela. ‘Half of them want to mother him, and the other half want to take him to bed.’

  Prue snorted. ‘They’d be sorely disappointed. He’s only got eyes for Henry Bracknall Junior.’

  ‘Don’t be such a gossip,’ said Adela, shoving her friend in the arm.

  ‘Well, you know it’s true.’

  ‘Henry just gives him a billet when Tommy’s in London.’

  ‘Precisely’ said Prue, tapping her nose conspiratorially.

  ‘Well,’ Adela said with a rueful smile, ‘they’d make a lovely couple. Henry is such a sweet, kind man – nothing like his overbearing father.’

  ‘You’re not still holding out hope Tommy’ll fall in love with you?’

  ‘Course not.’ Adela laughed at the idea. ‘Even in Simla he was more like a brother than a boyfriend.’

  They hurried off to change into their ENSA uniforms. If they got an encore, they’d be ready to sing ‘My Hero’ from The Chocolate Soldier.

  What a happy day it had been, Adela recalled, when Tommy had come back in to her life. She’d just done her audition at the Theatre Royal and was waiting tensely in one of the dressing rooms that had been converted into an office. There was an air of excitement and semi-organised anarchy about the place. Beyond the door she’d heard a familiar laugh and ribald comment and had dashed out.

  ‘Tommy Villiers?’

  ‘Adela Robson? Adela, my gorgeous girl! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to clean the floors. What do you think I’m doing here?’ She had stuck out her tongue and then hugged him.

  He had made her a cup of disgusting ersatz coffee while they had caught up on the past three years.

  ‘Came back to help the Mother Country,’ Tommy had said, ‘in the only way I know how.’

  ‘You never answered my letters about Sophie Khan and whether you might be her brother,’ Adela had chided.

  ‘All that weird and wonderful stuff about carved heads on bracelets? Seemed too Agatha Christie for words.’

  ‘Sophie was so hoping to meet you. You could at least have sent a reply.’

  Tommy had given her a strange look and dropped his air of insouciance for a moment. ‘I’m not sure I want to be reinvented as someone’s brother. It would change everything – and I don’t want to be changed. I know who Tommy Villiers is. I don’t know what sort of person Sophie Khan’s brother might be. Does that make any sense to you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ She had kissed him on the cheek and never mentioned Sophie again. They had only spoken once about the painful ending to Adela’s last summer in Simla and her being ostracised by her theatre friends over her behaviour with Jay. Tommy told her that Nina Davidge’s mother had swiftly married a widowed district officer and gone to live in Sialkot, dragging Nina with her.

  ‘Nina wanted to stay in Simla, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. Never thought I’d feel sorry for the girl, but her mother was a gorgon.’

  ‘So Nina never did go to RADA then?’ Adela had asked.

  Tommy had snorted. ‘You have to be able to act to do that.’

  Adela had expected to feel a flicker of triumph that the privileged, popular Nina had not had it easy after all. But she felt nothing except a small twinge of pity. The gut-wrenching emotion that the name Nina Davidge had provoked for so many years had vanished.

  Deborah Halliday, Tommy told her, had returned to Burma. They had worried about what might have become of the Hallidays, but Tommy had lost touch with Adela’s one-time school friend and didn’t know. The news from Burma grew more grim, and Adela was always trying to glean information. Her beloved Assam was now on the front line.

  The last she’d heard from her mother was that Uncle James had been working himself into the ground directing labour to help build defences. While other companies had pulled out their personnel, the tea planters had rallied round to defend Assam’s upper valleys. But there was precious little about it in the newspapers. The censors appeared to be throwing a blanket of secrecy over that theatre of war that just increased her anxiety. Adela had pangs of guilt that she hadn’t returned to Belgooree at the start of the war. But how could she possibly have guessed that India would be threatened with invasion by Japan? She knew now the dread that her mother must have experienced at the thought of her only daughter being encircled by the enemy. Yet it was useless to dwell on past decisions, as she could do nothing to change them. So Adela learned how to mask her constant fear for her family and homeland by keeping busy and acting cheerful.

  It was when they were putting together a review troupe to tour Scotland in early 1942 that Prudence Knight had walked in, whistling and offering to paint stage scenery. Adela had been overjoyed to meet her old Simla school friend, and when one of the three Toodle Pips went ill with measles, brunette Prue stepped in and took her place. Her dance steps were a bit wooden and not always in time, but Prue had a rich alto voice and enough bravado to make up for it.

  Josey sometimes joined them too – when she wasn’t in a touring play – and performed in a series of sketches that Tommy had written. The rest of the show was made up of two acrobats who could unicycle, a crooner with a husky smoker’s voice, a mediocre ventriloquist and a jaunty band consisting of an accordionist, violinist and drummer who always got feet tapping. If there was a piano at the venue which was moderately in tune and had most of its keys, Adela would also sing solo, with Tommy bashing away on the piano.

  For the last eighteen months they had criss-crossed Britain in overcrowded trains and battered trucks with their show – from Newquay in the south to the Orkneys in the far north; from Blackpool in the west to Lincolnshire in the east. They performed in vast army camps, RAF aerodromes, garrison theatres and village halls, sometimes to hundreds of men and at other times to a handful in some remote anti-aircraft battery. They toured hospitals, factories, mines and prisoner-of-war camps. On one occasion, when Tommy’s comedy routine was met with silence and stony looks, The Toodle Pips were sent back on to save the show. Afterwards it was discovered that the baffled audience were a group of Polish airmen, who hadn’t understood Tommy’s quick delivery or humour. Josey had teased him for weeks afterwards. ‘Give us your best Polish jokes, Villiers.’

  Their schedules were relentless, the travel gruelling and the accommodation often primitive, but they knew they were doing it not just to entertain, but to lift morale among jaded troops and nervous trainees. They were never off-duty on these tours, but expected to socialise and dance afterwards.

  ‘Always make a beeline for the sergeants’ mess,’ Josey had advised. ‘They give you hot meals and lashings of tea
– as long as you don’t mind it brewed up in the urn with tinned milk and sugar.’

  ‘Sugar?’ Tommy had cried. ‘What heaven!’

  But often the women were monopolised by the officers and ended up in late-night drinking parties and slow dancing. They had been warned at the outset by an ENSA official, ‘Be friendly and chat to the boys – they’ll need cheering up most likely – but don’t be flighty or lead them on.’ She had fixed the new girls with a look and said words that made Adela flinch. ‘No loose behaviour or babies on tour, do you hear?’

  Prue was often quoting this in mock-severe tones, unaware of just how painfully it reminded Adela of her shameful mistake with Jay. Her friend was always one of the last to leave the fun and revelled in the attention.

  ‘You’re such a prude,’ Prue would tease Adela. ‘You won’t even let them give you a goodnight kiss.’

  ‘Can’t be flighty,’ Adela would quip, and change the subject.

  When she thought back to her time in Simla and her infatuation with Prince Sanjay, she wondered if that could really have been her. She could think of him with dispassion now – he’d been handsome and charming – but she felt no flicker of desire or emotion towards him. But Sam was another matter. She looked at the young officers and soldiers who were eager for friendship, and none of them stirred her heart in the way Sam still did. Sometimes she would glimpse a ruffled head of fair hair or a pair of muscled shoulders that made her insides somersault, and for a split second she thought she had found him again, was desperate for it to be Sam. Always her hopes were dashed, and she would turn away and hide her desolation. Adela knew she would never be able to fall for another man the way she had for Sam. It made it easier to resist the advances of other men yet left her feeling alone and yearning for what she couldn’t have.

  After the show in Cumberland to the Land Girls, Adela and her companions travelled south. With one week left of their six-week tour, conversation turned to what they might do next. Tommy raised the subject of going abroad.