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

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Eighty per cent of army life is dull as ditchwater,’ he said.

  ‘And the other twenty per cent?’ Clarrie asked.

  He hesitated. ‘That’s the bit one tries to forget,’ he answered.

  The next day, Clarrie arranged to meet him at the hospital after she had been to work and he had been to visit Bertie and Verity. She found him already on the side ward to which Herbert had been moved, sitting at his father’s side. When he looked up at her, he could not hide his shock at Herbert’s fragile appearance.

  ‘Talk to him,’ Clarrie encouraged him gently. ‘He gets comfort from the sound of voices even if he doesn’t understand.’

  Will tried, but his usual eloquence deserted him. Clarrie squeezed his shoulder. They sat in silence until suddenly Will began to sing ‘The Cliffs of Old Tynemouth’, softly at first and almost under his breath, then louder. It was a traditional air he had learned as a boy in school and sung a hundred times in snatches around the house.

  ‘Oh, the cliffs of old Tynemouth they’re wild and they’re sweet,

  And dear are the waters that roll at their feet.

  As his melodious tenor voice swelled around them, Clarrie remembered times when Will and Olive had sung it together in the nursery. Her eyes prickled and her throat watered.

  ‘Other lands may be fairer but naught can be seen,

  Like the shore where our first love and boyhood have been …’

  She noticed how Herbert’s eyes fixed on Will as if in concentration, a part of him trying to remember through the fog of confusion.

  ‘… ‘Tis the joy of my fancy, the home of my heart.’

  When the song came to an end, Clarrie urged him to sing another. But Will shook his head, overcome with emotion at the effort.

  So Clarrie sang one that she had heard often in the tea room, ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Lexy and Edna were always singing it. Will joined in. After that, they sang snatches of all the popular songs they could remember.

  Eventually the matron put her head round the door and told them visiting time was over.

  ‘I’d pay to hear you two sing,’ she joked.

  When Clarrie bent to kiss Herbert goodbye, she was sure he knew who she was.

  ‘Isn’t it good having Will back?’ she murmured. ‘You’ll see him tomorrow too.’

  Turning in the doorway, Clarrie saw that Herbert still watched her. She blew him a kiss and left with a lighter heart than for months.

  A ringing telephone woke Clarrie from a deep sleep. Struggling out of bed, she ran down to the cloakroom in her nightdress. It was the hospital. Herbert had died in his sleep, just before dawn.

  CHAPTER 33

  Will’s leave was extended so that he could attend his father’s funeral. Clarrie was thankful to have him there to support her and to prevent Bertie from dictating how everything should be done. Bertie wanted a lavish affair at the cathedral, but Clarrie insisted it should be at the John Knox where Herbert had worshipped most of his life. Privately, to Will, she declared that Bertie was only trying to impress his in-laws. She gave way on the funeral wake. It was to be held at Tankerville Terrace as she could not entertain at the partially requisitioned Summerhill.

  ‘I can hardly bear the thought of a party anyway,’ she told Will.

  Clarrie went through the motions of funeral and mourning, her feelings numbed by the shock of Herbert’s going. Deep down she had known he would never recover from the second seizure and yet she had got used to going to the hospital and seeing him week after week, lulled by the routine of visiting and spurred on by hope.

  She was touched and humbled by the scores of people who turned up to offer their condolences: friends, clients, church members and regulars from the cafe who had held him in high regard. Her staff came to support her, as did Olive and Jack, and Johnny travelled overnight from Edinburgh to be there too. Herbert’s Tea Rooms were closed and shuttered for a week as a mark of respect.

  As soon as the funeral was over, Bertie summoned Clarrie to the office to sort out Herbert’s affairs. ‘There is much to discuss,’ he told her over the telephone. But she refused to waste Will’s precious last days of leave on dreary legal matters and Will was not the least bit interested either.

  ‘Leave Bertie to it,’ he said drily. ‘He loves nothing better than sorting out a juicy probate.’

  Both Clarrie and Will rued the fact that Johnny’s horses had long since been requisitioned. Instead of riding they went on long walks, out into the countryside where the corn was ripe and women labourers were already harvesting crops.

  ‘Perhaps I should be volunteering too,’ Clarrie agonised on their final meander. ‘I really don’t know what to do. For so long my first consideration has been Herbert. Without him I feel like a plant without roots.’

  ‘What you do at the cafe is important too,’ Will encouraged her. ‘You’re providing sustenance for scores of people, and it will only get worse — rationing’s bound to come in sooner or later. Keep the cafe going, Clarrie; it cheers people up and by God they need it. And think of Lexy and Edna and Ina and Dolly; they still depend on you.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ she sighed, ‘and I would hate to close it. It’ll give me something to keep me going when you’re gone.’

  Will linked her arm as they walked on. ‘That’s my Clarrie.’

  ‘And maybe this’ll be the last year of fighting and everyone will come to their senses before we have to ration anything.’

  But Will gave a bleak little laugh. ‘There’s no end in sight to this ghastly war. We’ll starve each other to death before either side surrenders.’

  It was an emotional parting, the day Will had to report to his regiment.

  ‘Don’t come to the station,’ he advised her. ‘It’ll be chaos as usual and we won’t know what to say.’

  ‘What else could I possibly be doing?’ Clarrie asked, stomach knotting.

  ‘Go to the tea room,’ he urged, ‘and keep busy. It will comfort me to think of you there. Let me wave you off as if it’s a normal day. Please, Clarrie.’

  She swallowed her disappointment that she would not be with him until the last possible moment. ‘If that’s what you want, then of course I will.’

  The clerks were already busy below when Clarrie took her leave of Will in Herbert’s study. He had not yet changed into his uniform and looked boyish in his flannel trousers and open shirt. She took hold of his large hands with her small neat ones.

  ‘I’m glad you were here when your father died,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it was pure chance — I think Herbert was hanging on for you. I’ve never seen him as peaceful as when you sang to him. Thank you for that.’

  Tears brimmed in Will’s eyes. ‘I hate to leave you all alone,’ he said, his voice cracking.

  ‘I’m not alone,’ she assured him. ‘I have my family at the cafe.’

  ‘I wish things weren’t so uncertain. I want to picture you writing to me at Papa’s desk and holding family tea parties in the drawing room — not a house full of army secretaries,’ he said, his fair face full of concern.

  She gripped his hands. ‘Whatever happens, you will always have a home wherever I am,’ she promised. ‘Just come back safe and sound, that’s all I ask.’

  They hugged and he held on to her tightly, as he used to as a boy when he was missing his mother. She stroked his hair and willed herself not to break down in front of him. ‘God protect you,’ she murmured.

  ‘And you,’ he echoed.

  When she pulled away, his face was damp with tears. They stood for a moment longer, smiling sadly at each other. There was so much to say and yet nothing more to be said, at such a moment.

  Clarrie left quickly, and did not let go a sob until she was out of the house. It felt as if a great weight pressed on her chest and would not let her breathe. She gulped for air and wiped at escaping tears. At the corner of the square, she turned and looked back at the house. She gasped in shock. For a split second, she saw Herbert’s tall figur
e standing at his study window, the way he used to look years ago. But of course it was Will gazing out for a last glimpse of her. He raised a hand in farewell. She waved back and blew him a kiss. Then she turned her back and hurried on, the image of him waving and smiling staying with her all the way to the tea room.

  It was a difficult day, her first back at the cafe since Herbert’s death, but she got through it by keeping busy while trying not to dwell on Will’s departure: Will leaving the house in his uniform, Will at the station, Will on a crowded train crossing the Tyne and rattling southwards.

  Rather than return to an empty house, Clarrie accepted Lexy’s invitation to have a late supper in the flat upstairs. Lexy’s youngest sister Edith had recently taken a job in Sunderland and Lexy, who had never lived alone before, was unnerved by the quiet.

  ‘Spent all me life wishing me sisters would emigrate to Timbuctoo,’ she joked, ‘but now I find I’m talking to meself for company.’

  They shared a pot of tea, halved a boiled egg and talked of the mundane: recipes that would use less sugar, a possible local supply of honey as a sugar substitute, Edna’s latest infatuation with a Belgian refugee working at the docks, Ina’s arthritis.

  Lexy took a sip of tea and pulled a face. ‘This stuff is getting worse,’ she complained. ‘Smells like tar and doesn’t taste much better.’

  Clarrie snorted. ‘You’re becoming quite a tea snob in your old age.’

  ‘Taught by the master,’ Lexy retorted.

  Clarrie sighed. ‘You’re right though. The last lot we got from Milner’s was coarse as anything — bits of twig in it the size of nails. But it’s not their fault; it’s the best they can buy for the money. It’s the planters getting greedy and taking fourth and fifth pickings off a bush. They don’t care about quality when the government have guaranteed them pre-war prices.’

  Lexy belted out a laugh. ‘Clarrie, you’re wasted in a teashop. I divvn’t follow the half of it, but if it was up to me, you’d be running the Board o’ Trade.’

  They never mentioned Will once, until Clarrie was on the point of leaving. Lexy squeezed her arm. ‘He’ll be canny, divvn’t you worry about the lad. He’s got himself out of plenty scrapes before.’

  That night, Clarrie climbed into Herbert’s bed, grateful for the sound of movement above, where the secretaries were billeted. They kept to themselves, wary of the widow below, whose house they were appropriating. She hugged the pillow that still smelled of Herbert. The dull weight that she had carried around all day rose up inside and caught in her throat. The grief she had held in check since Herbert’s death suddenly engulfed her, triggered by Will’s going. She wept, huge racking sobs, for the loss of her affectionate, diffident husband who had shown such courage through his long illness. And she wept for Will because she could do nothing to protect him; kind, loyal, loving Will, who lit up her life as if he were her own son.

  ***

  A week later, Clarrie returned to the house early feeling overtired, to find two men in Herbert’s study sorting through books. When she challenged them they said they were valuers from an auction house.

  ‘I have no intention of selling my husband’s books,’ Clarrie protested.

  The senior man said with an embarrassed look, ‘You’ll have to speak to Mr Stock about it.’

  ‘But he’s dead,’ Clarrie cried in confusion.

  The man’s expression turned pitying. ‘Mr Bertram Stock. He has appointed us to deal with his father’s effects.’

  Fuzzy-headed though she felt, Clarrie went straight round to Bertie’s office and demanded to see him at once.

  ‘What is the meaning of this? I’ve said nothing about selling Herbert’s books. I want to keep them for Will — he’s had no chance to choose anything.’ Clarrie railed for several minutes, infuriated by Bertie’s insouciance. He picked at his nails with a letter opener, hardly glancing up. Finally he held up his hand.

  ‘When you’ve quite finished your hysterical outburst, perhaps you’d care to sit down?’ He flicked his hand at the seat opposite his huge red-leather-covered desk without getting up.

  Clarrie sat rigid with indignation. He surveyed her.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get you to talk about legal matters since my father passed away,’ he said as if it were her fault.

  ‘I’m not ready,’ Clarrie replied. ‘I don’t wish to rush into anything. It’s too soon. You have no right to try to sell off Herbert’s things.’

  ‘I have every right,’ he said with a satisfied look. ‘All Papa’s possessions belong to me — the books, the furniture, the house.’

  Clarrie gawped at him in incomprehension. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Perfectly possible,’ he said. ‘I’ve been managing his affairs for years, remember.’

  ‘The business, yes,’ Clarrie said, ‘but not his personal things.’

  ‘Everything,’ Bertie said, with a malicious smile. ‘I made sure of that when he signed over power of attorney.’

  Clarrie was stunned. ‘You tricked him,’ she cried. ‘You’ve tricked me!’

  ‘No,’ Bertie said, leaning across the desk with eyes narrowed. ‘All my father’s things are mine by right. Do you think I’d let you keep what belonged to him and my dear mother? You, the housekeeper?’

  Clarrie rose out of her seat, glaring. ‘I don’t care about any of it for myself—’

  ‘Good,’ he interrupted, ‘then you won’t mind the army taking over the rest of the house. I’ve renegotiated the requisitioning of the entire building. When they’re done with it, I intend to sell. It will always be tainted in my eyes by you — your vulgar Anglo-Indian taste and your attempts to usurp my mama.’

  Clarrie flinched at his vitriol. ‘Why do you hate me so much? I made your father happy.’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ Bertie said with a contemptuous look. ‘I don’t feel anything towards you.’

  ‘And what about Will?’ she demanded. ‘It’s his home and his inheritance too.’

  ‘My brother will be adequately provided for; I shall see to that,’ Bertie said brusquely.

  Clarrie’s heart raced uncomfortably. ‘What about the investments you made on my behalf?’

  He looked suddenly awkward. ‘Ah yes, those.’ He cleared his throat. ‘They were sound investments at the time, but with the war they’ve lost their value. You can only hope they will pick up afterwards.’

  Clarrie’s head throbbed as she tried to take in what he was saying. Dread suddenly clawed at her insides. ‘Herbert’s Tea Rooms,’ she gasped, ‘at least they must be mine?’

  Bertie could hardly keep the smile of triumph from his face. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he answered.

  Clarrie swayed forward, gripping the desk in disbelief. ‘You vindictive bastard!’ she cried.

  Bertie sat back in his chair with a flicker of alarm.

  ‘Still your father’s daughter,’ he sneered, ‘with the language of the barrack room.’

  She swallowed down bile. ‘So you’d throw me out on the street, would you? Is that what Verity wants? Is that the thanks I get for being kind to your children?’

  Bertie reverted to his brusque tone. ‘I’m intending no such thing. I want to make you a proposition. You continue to manage the tea room and I will pay you a reasonable salary and allow you to live rent free in the upstairs flat.’

  Clarrie looked at him dumbfounded. With one breath he insulted and humiliated her and with the next expected her to be grateful when he offered her what was rightfully hers.

  ‘You have a nerve!’

  ‘The choice is yours; manage it or I’ll sell up.’

  Clarrie saw bitterly that she had no choice. All the time she had been slaving to build up her business he had been plotting to steal it. She clenched her teeth to stop herself retching. She managed to hiss, ‘Lexy lives upstairs, remember?’

  ‘Then she will have to leave,’ he said indifferently.

  ‘If you try to evict her, I’ll see you have a riot on your hands,’ Cl
arrie cried.

  Again uncertainty crossed his face. ‘Well, I’m sure you can come to some accommodation with that woman if you must. How you run the cafe will be your concern, as long as it makes me a profit.’

  ‘Profit?’ Clarrie spat out the word. ‘In this climate it’ll be a miracle to keep it going.’

  ‘Then produce me a miracle,’ he said.

  Clarrie rushed blindly from the office, head pounding. She was gripped by fear. How had Herbert produced such a selfish, cruel son? He would spin in his grave if he knew what Bertie had done. If only Will were there to fight on her behalf, she agonised. But Will was far away, moving up to the Front, and could do nothing to help even if he knew. As so often before, Clarrie was going to have to fight her own battles.

  Out in the September air, dizzy with panic, Clarrie staggered forward and vomited into the gutter.

  CHAPTER 34

  1917

  Clarrie said nothing of her troubles in the chatty letters she wrote to Will. She had moved into the flat above the cafe because it was more convenient for work, she explained. She and Lexy would be company for each other. In fact, Clarrie quickly realised that Lexy’s cheerful banter and brusquely caring manner were just the tonic she needed in the aftermath of Herbert’s death and being evicted from Summerhill by Bertie. She found that she hardly missed the old house.

  Her main worry was keeping the cafe going. She had kept from almost everyone, even Olive and Jack, her new precarious situation, not wanting it known that Herbert had left her so vulnerable. Only her old trusted friends Lexy and Ina knew.

  By early summer, the price of flour, sugar and tea had risen to new heights. Clarrie was increasingly relying on tinned foods to supplement their meals and meaty drinks in place of cocoa and coffee. Daniel Milner’s business was under strain as, with soaring prices, customers deserted, his vans and horses were requisitioned and his workforce was decimated by conscription. He had gone to tribunal at the end of 1916 to have Jack exempted from war service, arguing successfully that his business would collapse without him. On a rare visit just before Christmas, Clarrie had found Olive nearly sick with relief.