The Tea Gardens

by Fiona McIntosh

  Fresh tendrils of steam lifted from the surface as he shifted. ‘Trust me, this will relax you.’ And without asking, he pushed me gently forward into a sitting position, then pulled at the pins that held my hair in a loose bun and sighed as my hair dropped in loose waves.

  Saxon began to soap me gently, starting at my shoulders. He used the slipperiness of those suds to begin massaging my muscles, first gently and without hurry at my neck, then more insistently down my spine. As I relaxed, I felt his attention turn more amorous. I closed my eyes and let his sensuality stroke me however he chose. With patience but ultimately with need, his fingers moved around and I felt, for the first time, his touch become demanding. The control he innately possessed was banished to desire. Now everything about where our skin met was hard; full of need. There was nothing shy about how he caressed my breasts, soaping them, fondling them in a way that was so teasingly erotic I gave a strangulated sound of pleasurable anguish.

  And then we were both au courant. Except now it was a lightning current that only we were creating and travelling together. I surrendered, following his urge to clamber out of the bath. He cocooned us in a towel while greedy lips sought and found each other, and there it was, that special seal that fastened us together. Did he lift me with one good arm? He must have and there was fleeting anxiety in my thoughts for his health and strength, but it was chased away when I was laid back against his bed. The chill of being out of the water and feeling the soft mountain breeze against my skin coaxed a shiver of delight and fresh desire until I was reaching for him like a person famished. Saxon took a few moments, though, resisting his own urges, to gaze at me, damp, naked, desperate for him.

  His normally rakish smile had a tentative quality to it; was it regret? Second thoughts? I’ll never know.

  He lowered himself onto the bed and, still exerting a last reserve of control, he paused. ‘Are you sure?’

  I’d touched his body as a doctor, even as a nurse, but now I touched him as a lover. I held his face and kissed him for my answer. I kissed him more deeply than I had ever permitted a kiss to be and then I began to kiss all of him. I pushed him back against the pillows. There would be nothing submissive about me in this activity; I was choosing it, I was permitting it, I was leading it.

  He understood, relaxed as best as I imagined he could under my ministrations, making do with burying his hands in my hair as I lost myself to the full exploration of my hunger for Saxon Vickery.

  Not long after I heard his gasp and then when he found his voice again he couldn’t help the gentle mockery. ‘Dr Fenwick, I’m going to have to recommend your type of medical therapy to all my male patients.’

  He heard my shaking laughter from where I lay across his belly while he stroked my breasts.

  ‘My, my,’ he continued, his tone impressed. ‘I think I shall have to submit a journal piece to the Lancet for consideration as groundbreaking new treatment for TB.’

  A part of me was annoyed that he was teasing me like this at a moment when I wanted only intimacy; but I was helplessly amused, knowing it was also his way of assisting me to come to terms with our recklessness.

  ‘Now,’ he said, moving swiftly to change our positions. ‘Let me show you the more intrusive Vickery way. It’s your turn to lie back and think of England.’ He frowned. ‘Are we safe?’

  I understood immediately and nodded. ‘Fortunately, yes, but we shall take greater precaution next time.’

  ‘Next time?’ he said, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Well, I’d better hold something back, then,’ he quipped.

  ‘Don’t. I want all of you. I’m selfish and starved and I can’t think of next time because right now is all that matters —’

  Saxon cut off my words, lowering himself for a searching kiss that I could swear lasted for hours. And, silenced, I abandoned myself to him again, momentarily frightened by how defenceless it made me feel to be making love with someone I desired too much. There was no sense of control left within me; my surrender was whole.

  24

  I discovered my limbs sprawled proprietorially across Saxon’s body. He was breathing peacefully in sleep, unaware that I had woken and was now watching him resting with a sense of wonder.

  Given my longstanding ardour for Jove, I knew the lines of his face almost as well as my own. I’d studied him from afar, from up close, in photographs, from behind bushes. Jove had always been handsome but he’d softened a little over the last couple of decades. Gravity had begun to pull on that once tightly stretched skin so that the line of his chin had blurred slightly as he headed towards fifty.

  Looking upon Saxon, his jaw was still starkly drawn and the only lines spoke of that rare laughter and much frowning. Midway through his fourth decade they still remained the only clues to where age would write more of its years and its experiences upon him.

  I wondered if Frances had ever splayed her arms and legs over his body in this same manner? She didn’t have to, I suppose. She was Mrs Frances Vickery and had claim to him. I was the interloper . . . I was the thief, stealing from her. I swallowed at the ugly title, feeling my pulse quicken.

  ‘Hello, fair Isla.’

  I grinned, banishing demons. ‘I had no idea we fell asleep.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Warmth and the heaviness of slumber had moulded our bodies to one another. Reluctantly, I left the comfort of our union to reach for my wristwatch from the bedside table. ‘Good grief, nearing midday. How ridiculous.’

  ‘Nothing ridiculous about exhausting sexual liaisons.’

  ‘I’ve not stayed in bed this late since I was ten and too ill to leave it.’

  ‘Then you should have had a lot more lovers in your time.’ He waggled a finger.

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’d be jealous of all of them. Come on, have a shower and dress. Today I’m going to teach you about tea, although we could have a quick —’

  I squealed, laughing and tumbling out of bed as he grabbed my hips to swing me back into his embrace.

  ‘I don’t want to be responsible for any relapse of your health.’

  ‘But what a way to go, Isla. Death by lovemaking.’

  ‘Don’t jest. I need you well.’

  ‘So you can leave me?’

  Our expressions lost all amusement and our gazes met across the room and rested sombre and heavy, like gravestones marking sorrow. We both knew death of a sort was coming at us. This little window into a different life could only ever be short-lived.

  ‘I have to leave,’ I murmured.

  ‘I know.’

  I gave a small shrug. ‘But not before I learn about tea and life up here in the hills. Come on, show me it all . . . if you’re up to it.’ I glanced at his crotch and he feigned despair at me as I guffawed and headed for the bathroom.

  _________

  We emerged with flushed faces, polished and gleaming not just from our ablutions but I suspect from pure vigour of what life had just given to us. We touched each other constantly, whether it was a squeeze of the shoulder as we stepped past one another or a proper pause so he could twirl around his finger a strand of my hair that had dropped from its loose fastening.

  Arm in arm we wandered down the hill from the house. I’d never seen Saxon dressed so casually; he wore cream linen trousers and an open-necked white cotton shirt that caught the soft breeze and allowed me an erotic glimpse at his body beneath every now and then. I’d become the child again, feeling besotted. We’d taken off his bandage so his wound could breathe now. It was more superficial than I’d first thought and healing well. He probably wouldn’t be scarred . . . not externally, anyway.

  ‘First into the gardens themselves,’ he said.

  I noted that all the nearby workers’ faces had a distinctly different look from the more angular lines of the Bengalis in Calcutta. Here they generally had the flatter, rounder Mongolian features of people who had found their way here from Bhutan and Nepal. They were squat, appeared strong-li
mbed, their fingers short, nails gnarled from the work. But they were dressed in colourful clothes and their singing was melodic and pretty. I mentioned what I was thinking.

  ‘They’re called Lepchas but I won’t give you an academic lecture about their history or culture. Suffice to say they’re originally from Nepal, some from Bhutan and indeed Tibet.’

  He waved to the women and spoke to them in their local language. I watched them giggle and reply shyly.

  ‘They think you are very beautiful,’ he translated.

  ‘Do they also think I’m your wife?’ I sighed.

  He gave an expression of not caring what they thought. We stood awhile to observe them at their work and as they relaxed again into it, they began to sing softly among the bushes.

  ‘So, if you watch the pickers,’ he spoke quietly, ‘they don’t pull the leaves off the bush so much as pinch them off. Do you see?’ He made a twisting gesture in the air with his thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s harder than it looks,’ he assured.

  I didn’t need to be told. I could already imagine it as I observed their wondrous fluidity and economy of motion as the workers didn’t just pluck a leaf but moved their fingers across the top of the bush like a human version of locusts. They harvested at speed, both hands moving on separate sections but in synchrony, somehow in the same manoeuvre gathering the leaves into pliable palms. When hands were full, without looking but simply knowing precisely how hard to throw, they tossed their bundles of leaves behind their shoulders into conical baskets that ran the length of their backs. The baskets were miraculously held in place by a band of plaited rope around each woman’s head. Some wore hats, while others veiled themselves from the sun with prettily woven shawls.

  ‘The pickers carefully take only double-headed leaves.’

  ‘What? You mean they’re being precise at this speed?’

  He laughed. ‘Yes, my word. It’s years of experience that teaches them what to pick and when. Can you see that woman over there is leaving that bush next to her?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s not ready.’

  I shook my head with awe. ‘Show me what they’re picking.’

  He moved across and spoke to one of the workers. She smiled, then gestured that he was to go ahead. I watched him point to a particular pair of leaves and she nodded. He pinched it off and brought it over to me. Long, waxy-looking leaves of the richest green were placed in my hand, each with razor-shaped sides.

  ‘They’re essentially shoots. Right now the women know to take only the tender first two leaves with a curled bud.’

  ‘That’s sounds mathematical!’

  ‘They know what they’re doing. Their mothers did so, and their mothers before them. They’ve learned from tiny children around the skirts of those grandparents and parents.’

  ‘These late summer pickings mean larger leaves, lots of silvery tips.’ He pointed. ‘This is our pride. It makes a coppery-coloured tea with the special gilding of a muscatel flavour that only this region can produce, plus the insects make all the difference.’

  ‘Insects?’

  He nodded, frowning. ‘They would look to you like tiny grasshoppers but they’re known as green flies. They arrive just for a couple of weeks and feed on the leaves, sucking at the moisture, which, can you believe, is beneficial as it shrivels the leaf, stunts growth and intensifies the flavour.’

  ‘Well, I never. How many leaves to a tin of tea, then?’ I wondered. It wasn’t a genuine question but Saxon pondered.

  ‘It varies from flush to flush but I would say probably well over ten thousand shoots to about a pound of the best tea for first flush.’ He pointed at the tiny leaves in my hand. ‘Darjeeling’s finest,’ he assured. ‘All the way to our royals. Gold to the Brits.’

  ‘Can’t live without it.’ I grinned back. ‘Solves all of life’s crises.’

  ‘Suffice to say that what you see being picked here will fetch a fine price . . . but these poor workers will see only a few rupees for their day’s labour. In fact, that pound of tea is equivalent to probably a month of their wages and I suspect I’m underestimating that.’

  I didn’t want to get into a conversation about social issues, although I could hear the current of disappointment in his tone. This was presumably an old argument . . . a constant claw of contention between the brothers.

  ‘Do they live on site?’ I asked, trying to shift the direction of the conversation.

  He took the tea-leaves back and flung them into one of the women’s baskets. ‘Up in the nearby villages. They all have families to care for. Many work with the new babies strapped to their front. Some of those babies might only be a few days old.’

  I was not prepared to take on Saxon’s guilt; I had plenty of my own to work through so I ruthlessly moved him off-topic, making a sighing sound. ‘It’s so romantic, really, isn’t it?’

  ‘The tea gardens?’

  ‘Tea itself, and especially the gardens.’

  ‘Well, like all good romances, it nearly didn’t happen,’ he said, giving me a wink. ‘Let’s walk on. We can stroll through the bushes.’

  I followed, waving my thanks to the women.

  ‘There’s much legend surrounding tea and the people around here like to believe it was a fairytale story of a wandering Buddhist monk who was one day boiling water and had a gust of wind blow a tea-leaf into his pot. When our monk drank the liquid, he felt enlivened.’

  ‘Nice,’ I agreed.

  ‘Except tea goes back a couple of thousand centuries and then some to the mountains around south-western China. Leaves from tea bushes were steeped, drunk and enjoyed for their flavour. It was only much later that brewing tea refined itself into an art form and part of the culture of China. It became a ritual, with firm etiquette surrounding the tea, its pot, the place of the brew.’ He held my hand to help me around a particularly dense part of the gardens. ‘Like everything bitter, it was considered medicinal. Chocolate, for instance, until it was lightened with milk and sweetened.’

  I grinned.

  ‘In its earliest form for the Europeans it was considered a not-so-pleasant-tasting beverage for detoxification and virility.’ He pumped the muscles in his arms.

  ‘Can we thank the British for adding milk and sugar, then?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said theatrically, jumping over a small tea bush to make me laugh.

  I was more astonished by his vigour and sense of fun than about the tea story, to be honest. This was not Professor Vickery of Calcutta but the hidden Saxon Vickery of Darjeeling.

  ‘I don’t think any people embraced a drink so wholly as the folk of the British Isles – easily their favourite beverage by 1800 and the popularity hasn’t waned. In fact,’ he said, waggling a forefinger, ‘I think we’re dependent upon it for our daily existence.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ I said.

  Saxon pointed us towards the series of low sheds. ‘Fancy a potted history of tea?’

  ‘It would be churlish of me to refuse you.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll keep it brief. It’s wrapped up with the Opium Wars. It was the Dutch traders who added small amounts of opium and arsenic to their tobacco. Soon enough the Chinese had tossed tobacco in favour of smoking opium in its lethal pure form, most of it coming from India. Despite Chinese diplomacy to slow the export, the East India Company was only too aware that the opium trade was vital to its cash flow. It became the penultimate revenue source for British India.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘No word of a lie. The Chinese Emperor was determined to stop this blight, though, and destroyed something like twenty thousand chests of opium in the port warehouses. Britain responded with war. Nevertheless, the East India Company began searching for other ways to source Britain’s national addiction.’

  ‘India,’ I said, with dawning.

  ‘Precisely. It needed a place where it could control not only the price but every stage of production. Tea had been growing in India for decades but now this most powerful of British
institutions went hunting for it, no longer prepared to trade for it.’ He pointed. ‘We’re nearly there so let me jump forward many years. Victorians became tea planters. Assam was the key place and vast tracts of jungle were cleared for it and many died for it – not just disease but wild creatures attacking them, from big cats to snakes. Elephants had to be trapped, tamed, taught to help clear the trees, roads, et cetera, and of course the great railways that you’ve experienced had to be cut into mountains. By the mid-1830s tea was grown commercially and companies like Twinings & Co were leaping aboard. By the Great War India was producing enough to brew about fifty billion cups of tea!’

  I roared with delight. ‘You’re making up those figures.’

  He raised his hands. ‘I swear I’m not. Quantity, however, does not equate to quality.’

  ‘So I’m guessing this is where Darjeeling enters the story.’

  ‘Follow me, Dr Fenwick,’ he said, and led me into the first of the sheds. ‘Darjeeling is the difference. Assam’s teas are generally malty.’

  ‘And strong, yes, I’ve noticed.’

  I liked the way the edges of his eyes creased with his smile. ‘In the tea industry they’d prefer you to use the word bracing. But, true, it’s a roughish tea, with perhaps a slight barkishness to its flavour.’

  I marvelled privately at his clever descriptions.

  We’d arrived into a long structure of wooden floors that were smooth from wear with a pitched roof of corrugated tin and plenty of windows to let in light. I felt a sense of great airiness in here even though I’d seen from the outside that it was three storeys high. I noticed several workers hard at sweeping.

  ‘The brooms are made from native grasses,’ he commented. ‘We like to keep the processing area tidy of fallen leaves. It’s hardly sterile but we don’t like dust in our fine tea.’

  I really wasn’t used to him being so chatty and it was obvious that he guessed my thoughts.

  ‘Am I banging on too much?’

  ‘No! I’m enjoying myself hugely. I just can’t believe what a difference a kiss makes.’