THE TEA PLANTER'S DAUGHTER:A wonderfully moving story of courage and enduring love: First in the India Tea Series

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Yes, of course. I could never be happy with such a man. And I know how much it would hurt you.’

  Jock let go a long sigh that was almost a groan and closed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice sounded lifeless and drained of emotion. ‘Then never let us speak that man’s name between us again.’

  If Clarrie had hoped that her father’s humour would improve once the threat of Wesley’s proposal had been dismissed, she was sadly mistaken. He withdrew ever further into the cocoon of his study and a twilight world of intoxication and delusion where she could not reach him.

  Sometimes, as summer turned to autumn, he would not emerge for days on end, and if he did, it was only to seek more spirit or opium. Shaking, and painfully thin, he would summon enough strength to ride into the village, bartering away knives, watch, fishing rod and saddle in return for alcohol or pellets of opium. Clarrie knew from the sickly-sweet smell leaking out from his den when her father was smoking the drug. It left him weak, trembling and melancholic, his joints and stomach aching. Neither she nor Kamal could get him to eat. He was wasting away before their very eyes and she was powerless to stop his self-destruction. Had she been wrong to dismiss Wesley’s offer of marriage so quickly? Often his sensual, mocking face with its puckered eyebrow would come to mind unbidden and she would wonder what it would be like to be married to him. But she smothered such treacherous thoughts, for they did not help her father one iota.

  With the arrival of winter and the cold season, Clarrie grew desperate, knowing that the slightest chill might see him off. They had a dismal Christmas with no money to spend on presents or treats in Shillong. One day in January, just after Clarrie’s nineteenth birthday had come and gone without celebration, Olive’s music teacher announced that her husband was being posted to Lahore and she would be leaving. Clarrie’s initial relief that she would not have to scrape together any more fees was quickly followed by guilt, for Olive was distraught at her going. She moped around the house, refusing to practise.

  ‘What’s the point? There’s no one left who appreciates my playing.’

  ‘I do,’ Clarrie tried to cajole her, ‘and so does Kamal.’

  ‘But you don’t understand it,’ Olive complained. ‘Father’s the only one who does, but he doesn’t care the least bit anymore!’

  At her wits’ end, Clarrie confronted Jock. She stormed into the study and yanked up the blinds, letting sharp light into the fusty, stinking room. Her father flinched and groaned.

  ‘This has gone on long enough,’ she berated him. ‘I’ll not let you give up on everything like this. You’ve got two daughters to support, or have you forgotten? When’s the last time you bothered to listen to Olive playing her violin? Or the last, time you went out to look at the tea garden and talk to your workers?’ She advanced on the huddled figure on the camp bed and grabbed at the covers. ‘Get up, Father. Get up at once!’

  She tensed at what she saw. He was skeletal in his nightshirt, his pale wasted legs and arms half their former size. His head seemed too big for his body now and his eyes too big for his face. She steeled herself to bully him out of bed, panic gripping her that if she did not he would die there.

  ‘I’ve got a good mind to ride over to the Oxford and tell the Robsons they might as well come and help themselves to Belgooree right now because Jock Belhaven’s given up. Is that what I should do, Father?’ she demanded angrily.

  He stared at her as if she were a stranger. He did not move. ‘Wesley Robson’s right,’ she taunted him. ‘This place is in ruins. Who would want it in this state? I must have been mad not to accept his offer of marriage. Perhaps I will now.’

  That struck home, for Jock’s face clouded in pain and he struggled to raise himself.

  ‘No — don’t …’ he whispered, his voice thin as a reed.

  She leaned forward to help him. ‘Then get up, Babu,’ she urged, ‘for my sake and Olive’s — get up and live!’

  But he sank back at once. ‘I can’t,’ he croaked. ‘I’m too tired. You can manage things.’

  ‘No!’ Clarrie cried in alarm. ‘Not without you.’

  He looked at her with lifeless eyes. ‘Write — to Cousin — Jared,’ he gasped. ‘He will — help you …’

  ‘How can he help? He lives thousands of miles away in England. He runs a pub, not a bank. We need money, Father!’

  He turned his face away and closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I just — want — to be — left alone.’

  Clarrie stared at him in disbelief. All the months of anguish and fighting to keep Belgooree going had been for nothing. A rising tide of anger and fear threatened to overpower her. As she looked at her defeated father, something inside finally snapped.

  ‘I hate you!’ she cried. ‘You’re a coward! I’m glad Mother’s dead and doesn’t have to see how weak and useless you look lying there.’ She shook with fury as she screamed at him. ‘Where’s my father? Where’s the brave soldier, the strong Northumbrian? You’re not him. If you don’t get up and try to help your own daughters, then I never want to speak to you again!’

  He seemed impervious to her goading and lay still with his eyes closed as if she were not there. She might as well rant at the damp walls for all the difference it would make. Clarrie stormed from the room, slamming the door so violently that the whole house shook. She did not need to tell Olive or Kamal what had happened, for their shocked looks told her they had heard every furious word. She fled through the sitting room out to the veranda.

  Gripping the balustrade, Clarrie heard Olive begin to cry in the room beyond, but for once she could not comfort her. She was so choked with anger that she did not trust herself to speak another word. She gritted her teeth, forcing back her own tears.

  ‘Miss Clarissa.’ Kamal stood at the door. ‘Come inside and I will make you spicy tea.’

  Unable to bear his kindness, she stumbled towards the steps.

  ‘I’m going to Ama’s,’ she gulped and made her escape. As she mounted Prince, she heard Kamal calling her to stay. Olive came running out on to the veranda too.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ she wailed, ‘don’t leave me!’

  ‘I want to go alone,’ Clarrie called as she urged Prince through the gate. Kamal was trying to reason with Olive and coax her back inside. Clarrie swallowed down tears as she cantered towards the village.

  Smoke from evening fires trailed into the starry sky as the last of the cattle were herded back home. She heard women singing through the twilight and calling to their children to come in. From somewhere a tune struck up on a bamboo pipe and filled the night sky with its haunting melody. All at once, Clarrie’s pain was eased, as if a weight had been lifted off her chest.

  She found Ama and her family sitting round the open fire chewing betel nut wrapped in pan leaves and spitting out the bittersweet red juice. At once Ama made her welcome, not questioning why she came at such an hour. One of her daughters brought Clarrie a bowl of rice and dhal and another some hot sweet tea.

  Afterwards, the others withdrew, leaving Clarrie alone with her old nurse. She poured out her worries and told Ama of the row with her father.

  ‘I said some terrible things — hateful things,’ Clarrie confessed. ‘But seeing him like that — I was so frightened and angry with him. I still am. I don’t know what to do. Tell me, Ama!’

  At first Ama said nothing, just continued to chew and stare into the fire, holding Clarrie’s hand in her lap. Finally she spoke.

  ‘Tonight you must put your anger to sleep. When the sun comes up you will make your peace with Babu sahib.’ She gazed at Clarrie with solemn eyes. ‘He gave you life and you must respect him. He is a good man but his spirit is weary; it is lost and trying to find a way home. But he still loves you.’

  Clarrie bowed her head as a wave of emotion surged up from inside. She let out a gasp and burst into tears at last. Ama drew her into her arms and rocked her while she sobbed out her heart, stroking her hair and whispering words of comfort.

  Afterwa
rds, Clarrie lay down with her head in Ama’s lap, staring at the flames, her mind blissfully empty. Without having to ask, she knew Ama would let her stay the night under her roof, as sometimes she had done as a child. Later, she curled up on a rush mat under a heavy woollen blanket and went to sleep with the smell of wood smoke in her hair and the sound of cattle snuffling beyond the bamboo partition.

  Clarrie awoke in the dawn light, strangely calm and released from all the fury of the previous evening. She stepped out into the bitterly cold morning, the blanket still wrapped around her.

  She was helping stir the porridge when steps came pounding towards the compound. Kamal burst through the opening.

  ‘Miss Clarissa!’ he cried, his face creased in distress.

  ‘What is it?’ Clarrie jumped up in alarm, heart hammering.

  ‘Your father …’

  Suddenly his strong bearded face crumpled like a child’s. He stopped in his tracks and let out a strange howl of pain. Clarrie froze.

  ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No!’

  Rigid, she watched his tears brimming over and streaming down his cheeks. Kamal’s grief told her everything. Her father was dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jock Belhaven was buried, as he had instructed, beside his wife Jane in the small plot behind the house, rather than in the cemetery in Shillong with the other British. He had been found by Kamal, not in his study, but in the marital bedroom, curled up in the musty bed where Clarrie’s mother had died. The doctor from the cantonment said his weak heart had given out after years of recurring fever and ague. It was common for planters to die before the age of fifty-five.

  Clarrie was haunted by the memory of her cruel words to her father — the last he would ever hear from her — and the image of him crawling away like a wounded animal to the sanctuary of his old room. Her guilt was compounded by Olive’s bitter distress.

  ‘You killed him!’ she sobbed. ‘How could you say those hurtful things?’

  Clarrie did not try to argue, for part of her believed it to be true.

  Few people outside the village attended the burial, conducted swiftly by a visiting missionary who was working at the mission hospital in Shillong. Two of the nuns from Loreto convent came, along with a tea planter from Gowhatty who had fished with Jock in better times. But he had been buried a fortnight before news spread to planters further afield and letters of condolence began to arrive. A brief note came from Harry Wilson but he made no attempt to visit. No word came from the Oxford Estates. Clarrie did not know if she felt bitterness or relief.

  They continued in a state of limbo, dressed in mourning, waiting for something to happen. It was not long before the bank in Calcutta and other creditors were sending letters of condolence edged with steely insistence that the Belgooree estate must be sold. Clarrie was suddenly seized by the spectre of their being evicted and roaming the streets of Shillong — or worse, Calcutta — penniless. Perhaps they could beg the nuns to take them in. Yet the thought of such a restricted life filled her with gloom.

  Olive’s withdrawal from her was a cause of pain. The girl would hardly speak to her, punishing her for being left alone the night their father died. Olive had turned into a miserable, thumb-sucking child, refusing to do anything but lie on her bed and cry for long hours. Not even the long-suffering Kamal could comfort her.

  Going through Jock’s papers, Clarrie had found his cousin Jared’s address and written to inform him of her father’s death. She began to contemplate leaving India and venturing to this unknown north of England. Jock had spoken fondly of his upbringing on a hill farm in Northumberland, though the farm had long gone. The only relation left appeared to be his younger cousin, Jared, who had gone to Newcastle for work. Her father had been dismissive about his running a public house, but perhaps Jared had more business sense than her father ever had. If she could find work over there too, she would be able to support Olive until she was of age; then they could find a way of returning home to India. The more she worried over their situation, the more convinced she became that they would have to leave Assam to survive.

  Even though Clarrie had heard nothing back from Jared, she wrote again, asking if he could help find her a position in Newcastle as a housekeeper or companion. She was good at cooking, sewing and bookkeeping, as well as dealing with servants and ordering supplies. She knew a great deal about tea, she told this unknown cousin.

  Having sent the second letter, she fretted about what she had done, for she knew little about the man. Was he married? Did he have a family? Was he even alive? As Jock had not been good at keeping in touch and never wrote to anyone unless absolutely necessary, she had no way of knowing.

  When a letter came back a month later in reply to her first, Clarrie felt a wave of relief that there was someone to whom they could turn. She rushed to tell Olive.

  ‘Look, Cousin Jared has written! He says how sorry he is and how much he liked Father when they were boys. He signs it from Jared and Lily Belhaven. She must be his wife.’ She sat down on the bed beside her sister. ‘Isn’t it grand to have family somewhere in this world?’

  ‘What good are they so far away?’ Olive moaned.

  Clarrie tried to sound bright. ‘They might find me work; that’s what I’ve asked them to.’

  ‘What?’ Olive sat up. ‘You can’t mean it? Go and live in England?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Olive looked appalled. ‘We know nothing about it — except it’s cold and rainy and full of smoky towns except where the King lives. And we don’t know these cousins — they might be cruel and sell us into slavery.’

  Clarrie laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. You’ve read too many fairy tales.’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ Olive said reproachfully. ‘I’m serious. I don’t want to leave here — not ever.’

  Clarrie took her hands. ‘Listen, I don’t want to either. But it looks as if we have no choice. We have to sell Belgooree to pay off Father’s debts. We can’t run the place on our own, don’t you see that?’

  ‘There is a way,’ Olive said, her look pleading. ‘You could change your mind and marry Wesley Robson.’

  Clarrie pulled away. ‘How can you say that after what he did to Babu? Father gave up after Robson’s visit — it knocked all the fight out of him.’

  ‘No it didn’t,’ Olive hissed. ‘You did that.’

  Clarrie stood up, tired of Olive’s complaints. ‘I’m not going to argue.’

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Olive shouted, ‘your stupid pride. If you’d said yes to marrying Mr Robson then everything would have been all right. Father would have come round to the idea once he saw Belgooree thriving again.’

  ‘You’re in cloud cuckoo land,’ Clarrie protested. ‘It would never have happened like that. Robson would have taken the land and then broken his promise to us.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Olive said, on the verge of tears again. ‘It was our one chance. But you had to spoil it. If you’d married him, Babu would still be alive!’

  Clarrie hurried from the room, the accusation ringing in her ears. It was nonsense! Even if she had submitted to such a hateful match, her father would never have given permission.

  But she could not rid her mind of the invidious thought: had she hastened her father’s death by her refusal to contemplate marriage to Wesley? It had been a dubious lifeline for Belgooree, but it had indeed been an offer to save them. Should she have tried to persuade her father to agree to it before it was too late? She would never know, but it only compounded her deep sense of guilt over her father’s death.

  The following week, the estate went up for sale. Olive continued to upset Clarrie with her constant refrain about her selfishness in rebuffing Wesley.

  ‘What’s done is done,’ Clarrie snapped. ‘It’s too late to change anything now.’

  ‘It might not be,’ Olive urged. ‘Why don’t you write to Mr Robson and say you’ve changed your mind? Or better still, go and see him. I’d come with you.’

  ‘No,’ Cl
arrie cried, ‘I couldn’t. He hasn’t even written about Father dying.’

  ‘Then you don’t love Belgooree as much as you say — as much as I do,’ Olive accused her. ‘If it was in my power, I’d do anything to stay here — even marry the likes of Wesley Robson.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Clarrie pleaded.

  ‘I won’t stop it,’ Olive said, ‘and I won’t leave here. I’ll never go to England or Newcastle and you can’t make me!’

  Clarrie tried to talk to Kamal about what they should do, but he would not be drawn.

  ‘You must accept the will of Allah,’ he told her and went about his work, sadness clinging to him like morning mist.

  When a second letter came from Jared and Lily, generously offering to take the girls into their home in Newcastle until they came of age, Clarrie felt a huge burden lift. But Olive made herself ill with crying. She had several violent coughing fits that left her weak and listless. She caught a chill that settled on her chest. Clarrie and Kamal nursed her with mounting concern. Olive said nothing, her eyes feverish and reproachful.

  Clarrie began to contemplate the unthinkable: she would go and seek out Wesley Robson and beg for his help. She would speak the humiliating words of apology if that was what it would take to stimulate Olive’s recovery. Calling in Ama to look after Olive, she set out with Kamal for Upper Assam.

  All day, they rode downhill through forest and jungle, resting at night in a tea house, then onward the next day till they reached Gowhatty on the swirling Brahmaputra river. There they left their ponies at the resthouse and boarded a steamer that took them upriver for two days to Tezpur, where they disembarked and hired a tonga to take them into the hills around Nowgong.

  At first, Clarrie had been so mesmerised by the temperate misty riverside that she had thought of little but the travelling itself. But as they journeyed into new territory and neared the Oxford Estates, her nervousness increased tenfold. What on earth was she going to say when she came face to face with Wesley Robson?