Her mother, on receiving Libby’s first school photo, had worried that her daughter was growing fat and asked the school to ban her from the tuck shop. Libby had found other ways to satisfy her sweet tooth, by finishing other girls’ schoolwork and letting them copy her sums in exchange for toffees and sticks of liquorice.
Luckily for Libby, a young enthusiastic teacher had joined the school and had seen the potential in the unhappy, rebellious girl. Miss MacGregor had been in the suffrage movement as a schoolgirl and enthralled Libby and her friends with tales of protest marches and run-ins with police. She had taught them history – with a liberal dose of anti-imperialist politics – and Libby had grown to adore her.
It was Miss MacGregor who had persuaded Libby to stay on at school until she was seventeen and gain certificates that would equip her for employment. She had instilled in Libby a righteous anger at injustice and an ambition to make the world a better place. Tilly had complained Miss MacGregor had made Libby impossible to live with, and her brothers had teased her mercilessly about her having a ‘crush’ on the charismatic teacher.
Libby wriggled under the bedcovers, trying to warm up. The talking in the room below had stopped. Then she heard it: the tell-tale squeaking of the iron-framed bed and its old springs. Adela and Sam were making love. Libby felt a hot wave of embarrassment and envy. She had lost her virginity on that very bed to a Polish refugee who had been billeted with them during the War. She’d been seventeen and Stefan hadn’t been much older. They had both been inexperienced but enthusiastic, and took the opportunity to experiment while Tilly was out volunteering at the WVS rest centre.
Blue-eyed Stefan had left to train as an army mechanic and had sent her occasional postcards from North Africa. By the time she had joined the Land Army at eighteen their sporadic correspondence had petered out.
Libby burrowed down under the blankets trying not to hear the sounds of love-making coming from below. Lucky Adela and Sam! Libby had never been in love with Stefan but he had left her with an appetite for sex. Her mother would have been aghast at Libby’s brief fiery affair with a handsome, dark-eyed Italian POW who had come to help with the harvest at the Northumbrian farm where nineteen-year-old Libby was working in 1944. Tilly would have called it fraternising with the enemy, but Libby had made sure that Lorenzo was no fascist sympathiser. At the end of the harvest party, they had toasted the communists and the Socialist International before sneaking off to the hay barn where she had allowed him to seduce her.
She had been briefly, passionately in love with Lorenzo but he had hurried home to Italy – and, she discovered, to a waiting wife – at the end of the War.
Libby was now fully awake. She rubbed her cold toes and pondered her new determination to go back to India. Be brutally honest, she told herself. It wasn’t just eagerness at seeing her father again and revisiting the tea plantations; Calcutta drew her too. Or more specifically: handsome, fair-haired, fun-loving George Brewis. She had relived their doorstep kiss a thousand times.
Lying sleepless in the attic, Libby wondered who George Brewis had kissed since. She hadn’t heard from him again. Ridiculous to hold out hope of a romance with George; he was a man of the world and she must have seemed immature and provincial to his eyes. He could have had no idea how passionately she had adored him from afar as a girl in her early teens – or how much his recent kiss had meant to her.
Restlessly, Libby turned over. The noises from below had stopped. No doubt the loving couple were now falling asleep contentedly in each other’s arms. Libby let go a sigh. She sat up, turned on the bedside light and reached for her sketching pad. Whenever she was agitated about something, she found that doodling in a sketch book and creating funny figures calmed her anxious thoughts. It was a strategy she had discovered at boarding school.
Despite her numb fingers, Libby did a quick cartoon of her and George dancing, exaggerating his shoulders and flop of fair hair, and giving herself large feet and lips that were more like a duck’s beak. She chuckled, discarded the pad and turned out the light.
CHAPTER 4
Newcastle, February 1947
What if your father can’t come immediately to Calcutta to meet you?’ fretted Tilly.
‘I’ll be staying with Uncle Johnny and Aunt Helena,’ Libby pointed out. ‘Adela says they live in a very safe part of the city – Alipore. There’s been no trouble there at all.’
‘I suppose I can rely on my brother Johnny to keep an eye on you,’ Tilly said, ‘and Helena’s always seemed the sensible type.’
Libby turned and winked at Adela. It had been Adela’s inspired suggestion that Libby spend the last few weeks of the cold season in Calcutta with Tilly’s older brother Johnny, a retired Indian Army doctor, and his wife Helena. Tilly had always looked up to her big brother, so once he had written enthusiastically inviting Libby to stay with them, then Tilly’s opposition to her daughter’s ‘India escapade’ had begun to weaken.
Tilly still had reservations. ‘You promise me you won’t go gallivanting around the city on your own or getting involved in any politics?’
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Libby.
‘Or upsetting Helena with your anti-colonial views. She’s from a pukka army family, you know – they’ve been in India for several generations. I can just hear you spouting off—’
‘I won’t upset Helena, I promise. I’ll be a proper little memsahib.’
‘And don’t say things like that,’ Tilly warned, ‘with that naughty grin of yours. People will think you’re making fun of them.’
Libby pulled a face of mock-shock. ‘Stuffy colonial memsahibs in imperial capitalist Calcutta – what’s there to make fun of?’
‘Adela, speak to her,’ Tilly pleaded.
‘It’s no good asking me,’ said Adela. ‘Our branch of the Robsons has never been pukka as far as the British are concerned.’
Tilly gave her an awkward glance. ‘That’s ancient history.’
Adela gave a dry laugh. ‘I’m afraid not. Some people at the planters’ club still cut me and mother dead at the Christmas race week.’
‘Just “hen-house” spitefulness,’ Tilly said, trying to explain it away. ‘Some of the wives have always been jealous of Clarrie for being more beautiful and clever than them.’
Libby was indignant. ‘You know that’s not the reason, Mother. It’s pure racial snobbery. They don’t like Clarrie because she’s quarter Indian. They’re petty and mean minded – the worst kind of Britisher.’
‘All right, all right,’ Tilly said, turning pink and flustered. ‘Adela doesn’t want to hear it spelled out. And it won’t do any good to antagonise people who hold those views – however repugnant – they’re too old to change their ways now. And don’t use that word Britisher – it smacks of the Quit India brigade – you’ll upset your father and uncle.’
‘Okay then, not Britisher,’ said Libby, ‘just the worst kind of imperialist, bigoted memsahib.’
Tilly rolled her eyes at Libby and Adela started laughing.
It was decided that Libby would fly to India so that she would arrive before the hot season and not have to contend with arriving in Bombay and a long, hazardous train journey across the Indian plains to Bengal. Tilly imagined all manner of dangers – blown-up tracks, robberies at knife-point, being caught in a riot, contracting typhoid, getting bitten by a rabid station dog – and insisted on her daughter flying into Dum Dum airport in Calcutta.
Once Tilly had accepted Libby was not going to change her mind about going, she had busied herself with arrangements.
‘You must have new dresses,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t possibly be seen around the clubs of Calcutta in that old utility frock or – heaven forbid – trousers.’
Josey took her up to the theatre and got the wardrobe mistress to help adapt some pre-war dresses.
‘Green’s your colour, sweetie,’ said Josey. ‘You’ll look knockout in this.’ She held up a satin evening dress. ‘Can you believe I used to wear t
his?’
‘Yes, I remember you in it,’ said Libby. ‘You looked so glamorous.’
Josey gave a throaty laugh. ‘You used to like me when you were younger, didn’t you?’
‘I still do,’ Libby replied.
‘Liar,’ smirked Josey.
‘I would never lie. I just used to like you more then than now,’ Libby said, giving Josey a playful nudge. ‘You were kind to me. I remember wanting to go and live in your digs with all those eccentric women. I loved the way you did what you wanted and said what you thought. I never understood why you came to live with us instead. We were all so dull.’
Josey lit up a cigarette. ‘I lost my digs when I joined ENSA. Your mother was kind enough to take me in whenever I was in the area. After a while it just became home.’
Libby took Josey’s cigarette, drew on it, blew out smoke and handed it back. ‘You’re very fond of Mother, aren’t you?’
‘Of course.’ Josey eyed her through smoke. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘You could persuade her to come back out to India.’
‘You haven’t been able to.’
‘No, but she’d listen to you, Josey. She has to face Dad sooner or later.’
Josey picked a fleck of tobacco from her tongue. ‘I’ve told her much the same thing. I’m not standing in her way, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ Josey insisted. ‘Tilly’s frightened to go back. She once described the Oxford plantation as a green prison. She’s terrified that if she returns she’ll never get away again.’
Libby felt her stomach clench. ‘That’s ridiculous. You make it sound like Dad is a gaoler. They just need to spend some time together. It’s the years of separation that’s bad for their marriage – not India.’
Josey ground out her cigarette. ‘Well, maybe that’s a conversation you better have with your father.’
Libby took that to be a criticism of James for not returning to see Tilly at the end of the War. But he still had a job to do, whereas Tilly had no such excuse. As far as Libby was concerned, it was her mother who was in the wrong.
Josey touched her arm lightly. ‘Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you pinned into this gown. It’s going to show off your lovely curves. Calcutta ballrooms won’t know what’s hit them.’
A few days before her departure, Libby and Adela went round to the flat above Herbert’s Café to spend the evening with Lexy. Doreen had gone out to the pictures with a friend. She had been mollified by Libby’s abrupt plans to leave by Adela promising to pay for Doreen to continue typing lessons.
‘Oh, Lexy, how it takes me back, to sit here with you,’ said Adela with a wistful smile. ‘Everything’s the same – even the brown sofa and the green-and-gold curtains.’
‘Do you remember when we all bedded down on the floor one Christmas?’ Libby joined in the reminiscing. ‘When you and Lexy said it was too dangerous for Mother to walk us back home in the blackout. I loved that night. It was so cosy camping beside the fire.’
‘Aye,’ chuckled Lexy, ‘and you looked so bonny and happy singing along with George. I could see then you were ganin’ to grow into a beauty.’
Libby put hands to her burning cheeks. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘It’s true,’ Adela agreed. ‘Will you get in touch with George once you’re in Calcutta?’
Libby felt a kick of excitement and said, ‘I’d like to.’
‘Make sure he’s not courting some other lass,’ Lexy warned. ‘I love that lad but I know he’s got a wandering eye.’
‘Not as wandering as his wife’s,’ Libby retorted. ‘George said Bonnie wasn’t his baby – that Joan had an affair even before they were married.’ Libby saw a look pass between the older women. ‘Did you know?’ she asked in surprise. ‘You did, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Adela. ‘I admired George for taking on the baby as his own – despite what Joan had done. She couldn’t have stood the shame of not being married.’
‘She trapped him,’ Libby said.
‘At least she got to keep her baby,’ said Adela.
‘Why didn’t she marry the real father?’ asked Libby. ‘Instead of taking advantage of George’s good nature.’
‘Maybe’s the lad couldn’t or wouldn’t,’ suggested Lexy. ‘Or maybe’s he died in action. There was a war on, remember – and she needed a ring on her finger.’
‘Why?’ Libby demanded. ‘If I was her, I’d have gone ahead and had the baby alone and not bothered what the wagging tongues said. Rather than forcing a man that didn’t love me to marry.’
Adela and Lexy fell silent. Libby saw that look of understanding pass between them again. She wondered what it meant and hoped she hadn’t been too outspoken.
When Adela spoke, her voice was oddly shaky. ‘Can I have one of your cigarettes, Lexy?’
Lexy passed her the packet and matchbox. Libby watched Adela light up the cigarette and inhale deeply. She thought her cousin had given up smoking.
‘Have I said something to upset you?’ Libby asked. ‘I wasn’t blaming George – far from it.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Adela said, immediately stubbing out the cigarette.
To Libby’s alarm, Adela’s eyes flooded with sudden tears. Libby leapt out of her chair and rushed to put an arm around her cousin.
‘I’m sorry; tell me what I’ve said. I’m always putting my foot in it.’
At this, Adela dissolved into tears. Shocked, Libby wrapped her arms tighter around her. Adela’s shoulders felt fragile and bony, shaking under Libby’s hold. Libby let her cry against her hair, not minding. Yet it upset her to see Adela in such a state, and she felt terrible that it was obviously something she had said that had reduced Adela to tears. On so many occasions it had been the older cousin who had comforted Libby, never this way round.
Adela made an effort to stop weeping. Pulling back from Libby and fumbling in her skirt pocket to produce a man’s large handkerchief – no doubt Sam’s – she blew her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Adela tearfully. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I’m still a bit emotional about leaving India and Mother.’
Lexy gave a bronchial cough. ‘Tell her, hinny,’ she said gently. ‘Libby’s not a bairn any more – she’s a woman of the world. She knows about men who promise the earth and then leave you in the lurch.’
Libby blushed deeply. She remembered how eighteen months ago, sore-hearted over Lorenzo, she had poured out her troubles to a sympathetic Lexy. She sat on the floor at Adela’s feet, watching the dark-haired woman struggle with her emotions. Her slim, pretty face was full of anguish. Libby realised her upset was nothing to do with George or Joan but something much more personal.
‘You know you can trust me,’ said Libby. ‘I won’t say anything you don’t want repeated. But only tell me if you want to.’
‘Gan on,’ Lexy encouraged. ‘A burden shared is a burden halved. Libby’s broad-minded and won’t judge you.’
Adela wiped her nose again. She sat clutching the handkerchief as if it gave her strength. Libby thought she was never going to speak.
Abruptly, Adela said, ‘When I was eighteen, I had an affair with a man in India and got pregnant. He never knew about the pregnancy. By the time I knew, I was back in Britain and had to deal with it alone. Except, thanks to Lexy, I wasn’t on my own for long.’
Libby reeled from the revelation. Adela pregnant? What man in India?
‘Oh, Adela, you poor thing,’ Libby gasped. ‘How on earth did you cope?’
Adela swallowed hard before continuing. ‘It was a few months before war broke out. I was living with Aunt Olive but she found out and said I had to go.’
‘She threw you out?’ Libby exclaimed. ‘How awful!’
‘It was Lexy who got me somewhere to live until the baby came.’
Libby gaped at her, searching back in her mind. It must have been when she was fourteen and railing against boarding school.
‘That Christmas
term,’ said Libby, ‘I remember being disappointed you never came to visit. The boys and I had to go to Auntie Mona’s in Dunbar for the Christmas holidays. All that time I was feeling sorry for myself, you were having to deal with that terrible situation. I wish I’d known. Everyone said you were in panto in Edinburgh.’
Adela nodded, her eyes welling with tears again. ‘But I wasn’t. I was living with friends of Lexy’s in Cullercoats, keeping out of the way so no one would know my shameful secret. The women were so kind and looked after me well – it was a little haven – I can’t imagine what I would have done without them.’
Libby’s insides twisted. She hardly dared ask. ‘And did the baby . . . ? What happened to it?’
Adela’s chin wobbled as she answered. ‘I had a son. A beautiful boy. I gave him away – for adoption – just wanted it all over and forgotten. I was so young. I had no idea. But I’ve thought of him every day since.’
Fresh tears trickled down Adela’s cheeks and she balled the handkerchief in her fist. Libby reached up quickly and put a comforting hand over hers.
‘So you never told the father?’ Libby asked.
Adela shook her head, too overcome to say more.
Lexy answered for her. ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference – the lad led her on with talk of getting wed but he was never in a position to marry her.’
Libby wanted to ask who the father was but didn’t want to upset Adela any more than she already had.
‘And Sam?’ Libby asked. ‘Have you told—?’
‘Sam knows everything,’ Lexy cut in. ‘He knows about the bairn and all the carry-on Adela’s been through.’
Libby realised how crass her remarks about having a baby out of wedlock and brazening it out must have sounded. Before the War it would have been unthinkable for a middle-class girl like Adela to have lived as an unmarried mother and kept her baby.
‘I’m sorry for my stupid remarks earlier about Joan and all that.’
The Secrets of the Tea Garden Page 5