‘From Joan?’ George asked in surprise. ‘No, why should I?’
‘Doesn’t she tell you how Bonnie’s getting on?’
George hesitated, a forkful of sausage and mashed potato halfway to his mouth. ‘Bonnie’s not my bairn,’ he said, ‘so I don’t need to know, do I?’
Libby felt uncomfortable. She would have understood if George had been bitter about Joan’s infidelity but his indifference struck her as odd – perhaps not towards Joan but towards three-year-old Bonnie. After all, George himself had said how much his mother Olive adored the child and Adela was fond of her too, saying she was a sunny-natured little girl. Libby wondered if Adela found comfort in having Joan’s daughter around to spoil or if it just made her hanker after her lost child? But did George really feel no affection towards Bonnie at all? Or was he pretending not to care so that he could start a new life out in India without any emotional ties?
She watched him carry on eating with his usual relish. George did everything with enthusiasm; it was one of the things she liked about him. Libby decided not to mention Bonnie again. Strange how different people could be: Adela had travelled halfway round the world to try and find her illegitimate baby, whereas George appeared to feel nothing for the child he had taken on during the War.
His plate cleared, George leant closer and took her hand across the table.
‘Enough talk about Newcastle,’ he said, giving her one of his disarming blue-eyed looks. ‘I promised to give you a good time in Calcutta, didn’t I?’
‘You did’ – Libby smiled – ‘and you are.’
‘That’s grand.’ He grinned. ‘So when would you next like to go dancing, bonny lass?’
The moment George finally kissed her took Libby quite by surprise. After every dinner-dance, Libby had been hopeful that George would take her in his arms and kiss her goodnight but there had always been others around sharing the taxi, dropping her off in Alipore first.
One Sunday afternoon, on a picnic in the Botanical Gardens, while their friends dozed and chatted, George and Libby wandered off to look at the lake. She began talking about what concerned her; the ominous rumours that violence was erupting in the Punjab.
‘Do you think it’s possible that hundreds of Hindus have been massacred near Rawalpindi?’ Libby asked. ‘Or is it scaremongering? I know it’s over a thousand miles away but the killing could spread to Bengal as well, couldn’t it? It sounds too awful. Was it very terrible here last summer?’
‘Luckily I was in England for most of August,’ said George.
‘Oh, of course,’ Libby said, remembering. ‘That’s when we met up again.’
Perhaps it was the sudden memory of their night out in Newcastle that prompted George or perhaps he just wanted her to stop dwelling on the grim news. But the next moment he was taking her by the hand and pulling her behind the dense foliage of a tree. Tilting her chin, he leant towards her and covered her mouth with his in an eager embrace. Libby’s heart jolted in astonishment, then she was kissing him back with enthusiasm. His moustache smelt of curry and cologne and he tasted of beer as his tongue explored her mouth.
‘Oh, lass,’ he murmured, taking a breath, ‘you’re just as tasty as I remember.’
Libby stifled her amusement. He made her sound like a steak and kidney pie. He pressed her up against the trunk of the tree and kissed her again. Libby’s heart hammered. Was he a little drunk?
‘Brewis!’ a voice called from a few yards away. ‘Brewis, where’ve you gone?’ It was Eddy Carter, one of his fellow lodgers from Harrington Street. ‘We’re going to play croquet – need you to make up the numbers.’
George and Libby broke apart. He gave her a wry look.
‘To be continued,’ he said with a conspiratorial grin.
Libby couldn’t speak; her feelings were a mix of arousal and frustration – and something else she couldn’t quite name. How far would they have gone if Eddy hadn’t interrupted them?
Libby, her heart still hammering, had no idea how George managed to play croquet with his usual casual banter as if nothing had happened under the willow tree. She caught his look a couple of times and he gave her the slightest of winks but apart from that, he didn’t single her out for attention.
She was aware of Flowers eyeing her during the game and knew that she must have seen them wander off together. Libby tried not to blush under her scrutiny. Had Flowers sent Eddy to look for George, jealous of them being alone?
At the end of the afternoon, when Libby was being dropped off in Alipore, Flowers said to her, ‘I’m off work on Tuesday – come round for tiffin. You still haven’t met my dad.’
Libby felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t done so; she had been too obsessed with George and trying to see him as much as possible.
‘Thanks, I’d like that,’ she agreed.
George saw her to the gate of New House. ‘I have to go away this coming week,’ he told her.
Libby was dismayed. ‘For how long?’
‘Ten days, but I’ll be back in time for your birthday, I promise.’
Why hadn’t he told her before? Ten days seemed like an eternity.
He grinned. ‘And perhaps we can arrange a night out alone sometime soon?’
Libby smiled and nodded. He leant forward and pecked her on the cheek. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m away,’ he said.
She watched him hurry back to the waiting car and climb in beside Flowers. Libby felt a tug of jealousy. They waved. She raised her hand in farewell and watched until the car was out of sight. She was encouraged by George’s increased ardour towards her at the picnic but was left wondering what it meant. Did George want her for his girl or not?
Flowers lived in busy Sudder Street behind Hogg’s Market. Libby arrived by taxi. Since George had taken to organising her social life, her Aunt Helena had stopped fussing about Libby venturing out on her own. The taxi driver sounded his horn as he inched around bullock carts, porters, street sellers, cows, mangy dogs, shoe-shine boys and rickshaws. Stepping out of the car, Libby was almost deafened by the cries of vendors, the blare of horns and the shriek of scavenging birds.
The block of flats where Flowers lived with her parents was set back from the pavement behind tall iron gates and fronted by a small dusty courtyard with a banyan tree full of noisy sparrows. Flowers was looking out for her.
‘We’re on the second floor. I hope you’re hungry.’ Flowers grinned. ‘Mum has laid in provisions for a small army.’
Whereas the Khans’ living quarters had been sparsely furnished, the Dunlops’ sitting room was crammed with dark, heavy mahogany furniture. Ornate side tables jostled for space with high-backed upholstered chairs, a chaise longue, a sideboard, a dining table and chairs and a harmonium. The walls were covered in old prints of Calcutta, gilt-framed mirrors and sconces that must once have held oil lamps. The walls were papered in faded green stripes and any parquet floor that wasn’t hidden by furniture was covered in red durries.
A small, friendly-looking woman greeted her. ‘I’m Flowers’s mother – welcome to our home! We are so pleased to meet you. Call me Winnie.’ She was dressed in a flowery frock and had dark hair kept in order by tortoiseshell combs.
Flowers’s father was propped up in a long cane chair. Despite his baldness, he looked much younger than Libby had imagined, with a trim moustache and light-coloured eyes under bushy eyebrows. But then most of her contemporaries had fathers far younger than her own. Mr Dunlop didn’t look Anglo-Indian either. Flowers evidently got her darker looks from her mother.
‘How do you do, Miss Robson?’ He reached for his sticks and Libby saw at once that he had only one leg.
‘Please don’t get up, Mr Dunlop,’ she said, quickly crossing the room to shake his hand. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’
He beamed. ‘The pleasure is mine.’
Flowers tried to help her father to the table but he shrugged off her attempt with an impatient ‘I can manage’. He beckoned Libby to sit besid
e him. It struck Libby how a man of his age – he didn’t look more than fifty – must find enforced retirement a trial.
Tiffin was a four-course lunch of mulligatawny soup, chicken liver on toast, fried fish with tartare sauce, mashed potatoes and cabbage, finished off with a pudding of pink blancmange and stewed apple. It was washed down with iced jugs of homemade lemonade.
All the while, Mr Dunlop asked Libby questions about life in Assam and he reminisced about his time in the railway colony at Srimangal in East Bengal where he was once stationmaster.
‘We were happiest there, weren’t we, Winnie? Things went downhill when I was moved to Calcutta during the War. Realised too late I had diabetes – lost my leg.’
‘It’s not so bad here, Danny, dearest,’ said Winnie. ‘There’s more to do than up-country – and we have family here.’
‘Your family,’ he muttered.
Libby saw Flowers roll her eyes. Libby tried to distract Mr Dunlop from thoughts of his reduced life in Calcutta.
‘Flowers tells me that you are from a tea planter family from Assam too,’ said Libby. ‘I don’t know any Dunlops. Whereabouts in Assam?’
Danny Dunlop gave a regretful shrug. ‘That I don’t know. You see, my parents died young and I was raised in an orphanage – so many planters succumbed to disease in those days; it’s a tough climate. But I don’t need to tell you that. I was always told they were British and that my father was Scottish. It’s obvious from my name, isn’t it? Dunlop is Scottish.’
Flowers said, ‘Dad’s always wanted to go back and trace our family one day, haven’t you, Dad?’
‘The journey would be too much for you,’ fussed Winnie.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Still, I would have liked to go back to Shillong and seen where I grew up.’
‘Shillong?’ Libby looked at Flowers. ‘Isn’t that where you and Adela went to school too?’
‘Yes, we overlapped for a short time,’ said Flowers. ‘Adela left and went to Simla but she was the best friend I had in that place. The other girls didn’t treat Anglo-Indians like us very well.’
‘You were just as British as they were!’ Mr Dunlop protested. ‘They had no right to be so unkind.’
‘Mum turning up on speech day in a sari didn’t help,’ said Flowers.
‘I only did that once,’ said Winnie, ‘and I looked twice as elegant as those horsey army women.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ Libby agreed.
Winnie gave a proud jut of her chin. ‘My family can trace their roots back to some of the first Europeans in India – St Thomas Christians – but many of the newly arrived British look down their long noses as if we’re no better than Untouchables.’
‘Libby’s family are not like that,’ said Flowers.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean you, Libby,’ said Winnie quickly.
‘Mum’s right about the snobbery towards us though. It’s something we’ve always had to live with but now it’s really worrying. What will happen to us now that the British will be handing over to the Indians? We’ve worked for the British Raj for generations yet there’s no guarantee that the jobs we have will be secure in the future.’
‘We’ll go back to Britain,’ Danny Dunlop insisted. ‘It’s our home too.’
Winnie was outspoken. ‘We could never afford it – and it’s not our home.’
‘Well, it’s mine!’ he protested. ‘If my father hadn’t died young I’d have been brought up on a tea plantation like Libby.’
‘Don’t get upset, Dad,’ said Flowers. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Winnie apologised again. ‘You just make me anxious with your talk of going to England. I think we Anglo-Indians should stick together and make the best of it here. Be a special kind of Indian in the new India.’
Danny exclaimed, ‘The Indians have an even lower opinion of Anglo-Indians than the British – they hate us for doing our patriotic duty during the War – so don’t expect any special treatment from the likes of Nehru and his Congress-wallahs.’
‘What do you want to do, Flowers?’ Libby asked.
The young woman shrugged.
‘Flowers could get a good job back home nursing,’ her father answered for her.
‘But where would we go?’ Flowers asked.
‘Adela would help find us somewhere to live in Newcastle,’ he suggested. ‘And the climate would suit me better. I could enjoy a happy retirement there. Watch cricket and live by the sea. Find other railwaymen to share a chota peg with at the club. Look up Dunlop relations.’
Winnie shook her head in disbelief. ‘What other Dunlops? They won’t all live together in a colony like a railway family here.’
‘I’ll find them,’ he said with conviction.
Libby wondered how often they argued about their future. She hadn’t realised how especially difficult and uncertain it must be for those families caught in the middle – the half-halfs, as Helena unkindly called them, accepted as neither truly British nor properly Indian.
Flowers looked embarrassed. ‘I didn’t invite Libby here to witness a family squabble. Let’s talk of something else. When are you going up to Assam, Libby?’
‘In a week or so – after my birthday – when my father comes to Calcutta.’ Libby smiled.
‘Lucky you. I haven’t been out of the city for over two years,’ said Flowers. ‘I nursed in Assam during the War.’
‘My daughter was on the Front Line in Burma,’ said Mr Dunlop proudly, ‘caring for our boys.’
‘Yes, Adela told me,’ said Libby. ‘You were much braver than I was. Being a Land Girl was hard work but I was never in any danger.’
‘We were too busy to think of the danger,’ said Flowers with a rueful smile, ‘but the conditions were hardly the Ritz.’
Eventually, Libby stood up to go and turned to Winnie. ‘Thank you for such a lovely lunch. I’ve really enjoyed meeting you and Mr Dunlop.’
‘You must call again before you leave Calcutta,’ said Winnie, ‘now you know where we are. Please call in anytime.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Danny, ‘you must. I’d love another chat about Assam.’
‘Thank you, I’d like that very much,’ Libby said, touched by their warmth. ‘I hope you’ll all come to my party. My aunt and uncle are insisting on hosting one.’
The Dunlops seemed overwhelmed. Flowers answered for them. ‘We’d love to!’
‘It’ll be a chance to pay back some hospitality before I leave Calcutta,’ said Libby. ‘Everyone’s been so kind and generous. And you will get to meet my father.’
‘Our fathers could talk about Shillong together, couldn’t they?’ Flowers smiled. ‘That would be the next best thing to visiting, wouldn’t it, Dad?’
But this seemed to upset Danny. ‘How I wish I could travel back with you as far as Shillong – go and see my old school – just one last time.’
In alarm, Libby saw the man’s eyes welling with tears. Perhaps her coming here and stirring up old memories had not been a good idea after all.
Suddenly Flowers put a hand on Libby’s arm and said, ‘Perhaps I could travel with you as far as Shillong? Then I could visit Dad’s old school for him – see if there’s any information on our family.’
‘What a splendid idea!’ Mr Dunlop said.
Libby was taken aback. She was looking forward to travelling with her father and having him to herself. She’d even daydreamed that George might travel up and join them to see Assam for himself; Flowers didn’t fit into that plan. ‘But your work – wouldn’t it be difficult taking holiday at such short notice?’
‘I’m due some leave – I never take time off. But if you’d rather I didn’t come with you . . .’
‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ said Libby hastily, feeling guilty at her selfish thoughts. ‘It would be fun to have you with us.’
‘And you could visit Adela’s mother at Belgooree,’ Flower’s father suggested. ‘That’s not far from Shillong. Adela was
always inviting you.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of going further than Shillong,’ said Flowers.
‘I’m sure Clarrie Robson would like that,’ said Libby. ‘If you can get more than a few days off, then you must spend some time with us in Assam.’
‘What about your father?’ Flowers asked.
‘He’s probably wondering how on earth he’s going to keep me occupied while he’s at work.’
Flowers’s pretty face lit up. ‘Then I’d love to.’
‘Good,’ Libby said. ‘I’ll write to him and tell him.’
Leaving the flat, Libby wondered why she had encouraged the impromptu idea. She didn’t know Flowers well and had no idea how her father would really react to having her to stay.
Flowers accompanied her out of the building. At the entrance she stopped Libby with a hand on her arm again. ‘Sorry about inviting myself along with you. We don’t have to do it. I just thought it might keep Dad happy to say I’d look into his family background. This whole Independence thing – he and Mum never used to argue about anything but they can’t agree on the future. None of us really knows what to do or think – least of all me.’
Libby felt a stab of sympathy and was ashamed at her reluctance to have Flowers go along with her to Shillong.
‘Of course we must do it. I’ll arrange it with Dad.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Thanks.’ Flowers gave her a cautious smile. She kept her hand on Libby’s arm. ‘There’s one other thing I wanted to say while we’re alone. It’s about George.’
Libby’s insides tensed. ‘Oh?’
‘I think you have feelings for him. Am I right?’
Libby reddened. ‘Why are you asking? Do you feel the same?’
Flowers’s dark eyes widened. ‘Me?’ She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘George is very attractive and good fun, but I don’t think of him as a suitor.’
Libby felt a wave of relief. ‘Oh, I thought perhaps you did.’
Flowers shook her head. ‘But neither should you, Libby.’
‘Why not? His divorce will be coming through any day and it doesn’t bother me that he’s been married before.’
The Secrets of the Tea Garden Page 11