“Tell me about the tea that’s grown here,” he said eventually, as the silence between them threatened to become uncomfortable.
Vikrama smiled briefly, then began. “These were originally Assam plants, but thanks to Mr. Taylor’s help with the grafting, we’ve been developing our own variety, which has even been given its own name—Ceylon.”
“Like the island.”
“That’s right. And I can assure you that one day we’ll outdo all the other varieties.”
Holding their breath, Grace and Victoria listened to Vikrama’s comments about the tea. Grace would have liked to remark to her sister about how impressive she found his knowledge, but they had gained on the men by too much for them to risk speaking without their father overhearing.
As the two men finally turned to go back, the sisters hid motionless among the tea plants and only stood upright again once they were out of range.
“What now?” Victoria asked, brushing a little dry tea dust from her dress.
“Let’s stay here for a while,” Grace said. She had no desire to be back between the stuffy walls of the house. “Maybe we could go and have a look at the elephants clearing the forest. What do you think?”
Victoria nodded, her eyes shining. Doubt crept in immediately, however. “But Mama will notice we’re missing. The morning’s almost over, and Miss Giles is bound to have told her that we’re nowhere to be seen.”
“We can tell her later where we’ve been. Anyway she can work it out—we did talk about the elephants yesterday. Perhaps we’ll see some more of those beautiful parrots on the way.”
That was enough to convince Victoria. Although the only clue they had of the direction was that the freshly cleared field lay higher up the slope, they set out determinedly along the path that led through the tea field. Every so often Grace met the eye of a tea picker, but she would immediately turn back to her work.
After a while they reached an area of forest loud with echoing cries. The slope was steep and difficult to negotiate, but there was a broad, stony path dappled with the huge footprints of elephants. A pile of sawn logs was heaped at the side of the track. They were heading in the right direction.
“Watch where you’re treading,” Grace warned, her own eyes glued to the ground to make sure she didn’t miss any dangerous bumps. “You might roll all the way down the mountainside and end up nothing but a bag of unidentifiable bones at the bottom.”
“That would be fun!” Victoria replied cheerfully. “I always wondered how dice felt.”
“Dice?” Grace asked, almost getting her feet tangled in a large root that had been washed clear of soil by the rain.
“They’re forever being thrown together in cups!” Victoria grinned. “Anyway you’re the one who should watch your step. I’m not the one who just tripped up.”
They heard voices and stopped. Soon after, three men appeared leading an elephant. It was not magnificently adorned like the temple elephants in Colombo. The chain around its front right foot, held by one of the workers, was cutting into its flesh. Grace swallowed as she noticed other signs of maltreatment on the animal. Was this why Vikrama had not brought her father here? Because he didn’t want to shock him with the way the beasts of burden were handled? Victoria, too, seemed visibly shocked at the sight of the animal, its grey bark-like skin covered in streaks of blood.
“We ought to go back,” Grace said, taking her sister’s hand. Victoria let herself be led away without protest.
Neither of them said a word as they scrambled down the hill. Before reaching the tea field, they decided to take a different path from the one by which they had come.
Perhaps we’ll see something on the way to cheer us up, Grace thought anxiously, resolving to have a word with her father about the elephants.
Still in silence, they trotted along the path. Grace noticed how much the sight of the elephant had affected her sister.
“I woke up really early this morning,” Grace said finally. “I saw a brilliant-blue butterfly. You’d have loved it.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up, then?” Victoria asked indifferently, clearly still troubled by the images in her mind’s eye. Grace immediately felt stupid. Victoria was no longer a little child who could be distracted from a bad experience by telling a pretty story.
“You were sleeping so peacefully. And it was still really early. But I’m sure it’ll be back. Then—”
Suddenly a rider shot out of the bushes. Victoria cried out in shock. Grace hesitated a moment then grabbed her wrist. She managed to pull her sister aside just in time to prevent her from being trampled beneath the horse’s hooves. The bay horse reared up in fright as the rider desperately tried to stay in the saddle. It took a while for him to get his mount back under control. “Bloody hell, children! What on earth are you doing here?”
The man, whose eyes were blazing with anger, had dark hair and a beard. His clothes and his accent revealed him to be a member of the English upper class.
Grace straightened her back and smoothed her dress. “I’m sorry, sir. We’re newly arrived here and we hadn’t expected to see anyone on the path.”
The man examined her from head to foot. The anger in his expression faded a little. “You must belong to the new family. You’re Tremaynes, I assume.”
Grace nodded. The man dismounted and came over to them without taking his eyes from hers.
“My name is Daniel Stockton. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss . . . ?”
“Tremayne. Grace Tremayne. This is my younger sister, Victoria.”
The man took her hand and kissed it lightly before turning to Victoria with a smile. “Please forgive me for almost riding you into the ground. But it’s so rare that one meets anyone else up here, and I fear I’ve adopted the dangerous riding habits of the natives. You should see the way they drive their carts.”
Grace didn’t reply. Something about the man made her uneasy. His smell? The way he smiled? The strange spark in his eyes?
“May I accompany you home, perhaps?” His smile grew broader as he found what he had clearly been looking for in her expression. “As you’ve seen, it can be quite dangerous around here. I’d hate to think of anything happening to my neighbour’s two delightful daughters.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Grace replied stiffly, “but we wouldn’t want to keep you from your business, since you were obviously in such a hurry. We’ve found our way here; we can find our way back again. Good day, Mr. Stockton.”
Grace took her sister by the hand and led her away. She could feel the man’s eyes boring into her back until he finally mounted up and rode away. Her fear that he might overtake them was proved unfounded, as he disappeared down a side track.
“Why were you so mean to him?” Victoria asked after they had walked side by side for a while.
“He almost mowed you down!” Grace said, striding purposefully on ahead. “And then he dares to pass the blame on to us!”
“But he apologised. Just think; he knew we’d arrived! Once he found out who we were he was friendly enough.”
“Too friendly, if you ask me,” Grace said irritably. She had no idea herself what had antagonised her towards him; she wasn’t usually so quick to take against a new acquaintance. “If you ask me, it’s nothing special that he knew of our family’s arrival. Everyone around here probably knows by now. Did you see all the villas on the way here? The people who live there are just waiting for something new to happen. Just you wait, one day we’ll be like that and fall on anyone who moves to this mountain.”
6
Nuwara Eliya, 2008
The next morning, Diana and Jonathan were driven by a wedding guest to a small railway station, from where they were to take a train to Nuwara Eliya. When the train appeared, wreathed in clouds of smoke, it was already quite crowded, but the people accepted the cramped conditions with good grace, and no one complained whenever Diana or Jonathan accidentally bumped into them.
After a few stations some s
eats became vacant, so they no longer had to stand.
“Nuwara Eliya is also known as ‘Little England,’” Jonathan said as the train passed through a landscape of green hills. “I’m sure you can imagine why.”
Diana was captivated by the view. Here and there the greenery was punctuated by white dots, which would not have been here two hundred years ago.
“That villa up there is in the English style,” she replied with a smile. “Tremayne House looks similar to that, except the landscape around it isn’t as beautiful.”
“There are a lot of villas like that here—more than there are tea plantations. There was a time when this country was very popular with the English as it was such a stark contrast to their cool homeland. The monsoon rains may even have reminded them of their own weather, which made them feel at home. And, unlike the coast, in this region it’s never sweltering.”
“You sound as though you’ve been here before,” Diana said with a smile—with his in-depth knowledge, he could have been a travel guide.
“I’ve lived here for quite a while, and nothing pleases the local people more than showing off their country to a foreigner.”
“But you can hardly be called a foreigner with your ancestry.”
“Nevertheless, I only have English and Indian citizenship, not Sri Lankan. I’m just as much a foreigner as you are. With a residence permit, of course.” After looking briefly out of the window he added, “You haven’t really picked the best time to come; the monsoon will be starting any time now.”
“I wasn’t intending to stay very long. Just long enough to find out a little about my family.”
Jonathan smiled enigmatically, but he said nothing.
The train pulled into a small station at the foot of the mountain. “This is where we get off,” Jonathan said. He fished their bags from the overstuffed baggage rack, which had been bulging dangerously the whole time as it swung above their heads.
It proved difficult to make their way between the other passengers, but fortunately the train driver wasn’t in a hurry. He waited patiently until all those who were crowding around the exits had left the train and the conductor gave the signal. As the train, with its heavy, loudly chattering cargo, pulled away from the platform, Jonathan and Diana left the station and turned on to a winding sandy track, following a sign that directed them towards the Hill Club Hotel.
“That’s one of the oldest hotels here. It’s been providing accommodation for travellers since colonial times. I think it will make a good base for your search.”
“There wouldn’t happen to be a Nadi reader here, would there?”
“No, I’m sure there won’t be—all you’ll find here are plenty of signs of English visitors from the past. But I’m sure Vijita will get well enough to leave hospital. You’ve seen all the offerings they placed at the shrine for him. And our medicine is as modern as anywhere, at least in Colombo. And since that’s where he is, you don’t need to worry—he’ll decipher your leaf as soon as he can.”
Perhaps I would have been better off going to the library in Colombo, she thought, but then recalled Jonathan’s objection. Of course the readers there would not be pleased if she asked them to decipher a leaf that had been stolen.
After they had walked uphill for a quarter of an hour, the hotel came into view between the trees. The sunshine gave its façade the appearance of a pearl on green velvet.
“Turn around!” Jonathan said suddenly. Diana obeyed and was rewarded with a breathtaking view. The green hills nestled together like lovers who never wanted to be separated.
“Our station must be somewhere down there.”
Looking to where Jonathan was pointing, all Diana could see were the rails that snaked through the hills like a vein.
“It looks a little like the Scottish Highlands,” Diana observed with a smile as she turned back to Jonathan. As she did so, she noticed that he had been watching her the whole time. He looked away as though embarrassed.
“True, except our temperatures are a bit better than Scotland, especially in winter.”
“You’re right there!”
Entering the hotel grounds reminded Diana of returning to Tremayne House. The building was similarly dilapidated, maybe a little further gone, since there didn’t seem to be a wizard like Mr. Green to care for the house and garden. The gardens laid out below the sun terrace must once have been magnificent, but were now overgrown. Yet the terrace itself gave the impression that at any moment a gentleman in a stiff high collar and frock coat would appear around the corner to enjoy a gin and a good Indonesian cigar in the shade.
The holidaymakers enjoying themselves here looked as though they came mainly from Asian countries. Diana saw a few Japanese and a couple who were probably from Thailand. Two Americans made themselves known by talking loudly in their unmistakable accents.
At the reception, which looked the same as it must have done a hundred and fifty years ago, Jonathan and Diana were greeted by a smartly dressed young man whose white shirt was bright against his dark skin.
“What can I do for you?” he asked in strongly accented English.
Jonathan asked in the local language for two rooms, and the young man hurried to an old-fashioned key rack where a few tarnished brass keys were hanging. There was no sign of modern card keys or those strange heavy keyrings, so common in Europe, that made it impossible to keep your room key in your handbag.
“He says he only has rooms available on two separate storeys,” Jonathan said. “Would you prefer the higher or lower one?”
“I don’t mind at all.”
Jonathan smiled. “OK, then you can have the upper room. You’ll see more of the wonderful view from there.”
When the receptionist returned with the keys, he asked Jonathan to sign the visitors’ book. Once that was done he rang a bell to summon a young man to lead Diana to her room.
“Shall we meet down here in an hour’s time?” Jonathan asked as he shouldered his bag.
Diana nodded and followed the bellhop up the lightly curving staircase.
The room’s furnishings were nowhere near as modern as the ones in the Grand Oriental in Colombo, but Diana was immediately captivated by its charm. It had a ceiling fan like those that circled lazily overhead in the old movies, watching the lives that played out below them.
Jonathan had not exaggerated about the view. The tea plantations and individual villas that dotted the sunlit landscape looked like a photo from a travel brochure.
Did Jonathan come here with his wife? she found herself wondering, but then she reminded herself that he must have divorced before going freelance.
After unpacking her bag, she undressed and took a shower. As the pleasantly warm water trickled over her skin, she let her thoughts wander. I ought to get in touch with the office, her conscience whispered, but at that moment she was looking forward so much to what she might find on the tea plantation that she had no desire at all to think of work.
As they had agreed, they met at one o’clock in the lobby. Jonathan had also enjoyed a shower and smelled pleasantly of sandalwood and lemon.
“I took the liberty of reserving us a seat on the terrace. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a cup of iced tea waiting for us there already.”
The air outside had changed during the last hour. Its smell reminded Diana of a fall of rain after a spell of long hot summer days, when nature was thirsting for a refreshing downpour that seeped away into the ground all too soon.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to hurry with our walk to the plantation. If I’m not mistaken, the monsoon will be upon us soon, and then we’ll be caught in the rain for a good month.”
If Diana were honest, she would have nothing against that. But an attack of common sense drove the thought away as she reminded herself of her responsibilities in the office.
“I have something for you,” Jonathan said once they had taken their seats. He reached into his pocket and drew out a brown envelope.
Diana raised he
r eyebrows in surprise. “What is it?”
“Some information I’ve found about the tea plantation. I could have given it to you earlier, but I thought it more appropriate to hand it over once we were on the spot.”
Diana smiled. “Thank you very much.”
“I must admit it’s refreshing to have a break from dealing with the subject of terrorism in this country. I’ve reached that chapter and it’s anything but cheerful.”
“The attack at the airport was three years ago, wasn’t it?” She was momentarily distracted from her eagerness to examine the contents of the envelope by her equally keen interest in the history of the country.
Jonathan nodded. “Yes, and since then we’ve had to introduce many new security measures. The south and west of the country have largely been protected by the Tigers, but we mustn’t be careless.”
“You mean the Tamil Tigers?”
Jonathan nodded. “Here they’re usually just called the Tigers. It’s strange to think that an organisation formed to fight for the rights of the Tamils became a terrorist organisation that doesn’t shrink from attacks, murders, and abductions.”
Hence the terrorist warnings, Diana thought. When preparing and researching for her trip she had largely ignored the brochure with the safety instructions.
“Does anyone actually know the cause of this conflict?”
“There have been tensions since long before the colonial era. During British rule the Tamils, who had migrated here from southern India, were literate and given preferential treatment. They were appointed to administrative positions, were made foremen of the plantations, and became senior officials in the cities. The Sinhalese, on the other hand, were always terribly exploited as workers. They see the higher-status Tamils as the agents of their oppressors. When the colonial period ended and the British withdrew, the anger of the Sinhalese, who were more numerous, was aimed at the Tamils. In 1983 there was a dreadful pogrom against the Tamils, and in the years that followed there were even attempts to prevent them from using their own language. That was when the Tamil Tigers were born.”
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