Tea love and war, p.32
Tea, Love and War, page 32
‘Hunter coming back! Is there another tusker?’
I heard the cries of one of the boys who was running past our house from the direction of the river. The fastest children soon came into view from the village and I watched as a battered and dusty Land Rover forced its own wider route down the track and stopped in front of our hut. The rains had started and as Mr Nuttall strode through the mud towards us the children and other villagers who had arrived scattered to the cover of the surrounding trees from where they could peer out and watch.
‘What is the matter? What is happening?’ Mama was rushing about, arranging the charpai for the great white hunter to sit down, anxiously looking at my nervous face.
‘You are able to return to school.’
Mr Nuttall spoke in English and smiled patiently as my tears overtook my stammered thanks.
‘I think you had better tell your mother what has happened.’
Mama’s understanding of English was sufficient for her to have understood what had been said without knowing the reason. In a torrent of Assamese I gabbled what had happened, telling her of the ultimatum that I should get married and of my expulsion. I told her how sorry I was that I had not been able to tell her the truth and she just stood there with her hands to her mouth.
Mr Nuttall interrupted to tell me that he had met with the parish priest at Digboi, Father Fosati, and that they had jointly confronted the sisters at the Little Flower School saying that a young girl with incomplete education and no means of support should be helped and not expelled. They had called on the sisters to remember their religious foundation and principles; but I was later to learn that it was only when Arthur Nuttall agreed to pay for the remaining shorthand classes to finish my course that the nuns had relented.
All I cared about was that I was now able to return to school. I did not know how to thank my new-found saviour and was stumbling over the words when he held up a hand, told me to stop and went back to the Land Rover. I watched him lift a large cardboard box out of the back and carefully bring it back to the hut where he solemnly handed it to me.
Inside the box were three dresses which he said had belonged to his daughter Diana and that she no longer needed. There was also a bottle of perfume and, finally, an envelope in which I found the sum of fifty rupees – as much as a sirdar on a tea estate would earn in a full month.
Of course I cried even more. I had never had dresses like this, perfume was not something I had ever contemplated, and the money would not only pay for my ticket back to school but provide pocket money for the foreseeable future. I knelt on the mud floor in thanks to Mr Nuttall but he just lifted me up by the hand, wished me every good fortune and went back through the rain to the Land Rover which soon bumped off through the trees towards Pengaree.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sister Margherita was hardly gracious when I returned to Digboi. Her obvious discomfort no doubt came from her being forced to acknowledge that I seemed to have rather more influence than she had given me credit for. None of the sisters mentioned the circumstances of my earlier departure. It was explained that the shorthand and typing classes were to resume as before and I was able to settle back happily into my life surrounded by my friends.
Even those girls who had previously been disdainful of what they regarded as my lowly status gave me grudging respect. One or two even persuaded themselves to admire my new dresses and looked enviously at the shapely perfume bottle beside my bed in the dormitory. After the huge trauma of those last weeks I found a new lease of life and threw myself into my studies with great enthusiasm. I felt that the future course of my life was now charted out.
I took my final shorthand and typing exams and passed. I was fulfilled and very happy. My friends and I were now at an age when we could move on from the Little Flower School and I was excited to be offered my first job with James Warren & Co. Ltd, a small company in the town. The salary was low at only 150 rupees a month but I felt I would just be able to afford to rent rooms in Dibrugah, although with rent and travelling to and from work there would be very little left over from my salary at the end of each month.
Now I had a stroke of good fortune. A school friend called Maureen, who had left the Little Flower School the previous year, had found a job in the town teaching at a private school and offered to share her rented rooms with me. I was happy to accept. The arrangement seemed ideal: we both went out to work and we could both lead independent social lives but we would have someone to talk to when we came home.
Maureen had family in the area: her father was an officer in the River Steamer & Navigation Company and her parents lived nearby together with her brothers and sisters. We didn’t keep servants so did all the housework ourselves. I had become rather expert at cleaning from my time at school but as far as cooking was concerned I was absolutely raw – I had not been allowed in the kitchen at either of the convent schools and at home Mama would do everything. I managed to get by with the help of Maureen and a good Anglo-Indian family as near neighbours but my cooking remained rudimentary and whenever Maureen was out I was quite happy to manage with a loaf of bread and a cup of tea! I did not go back to the house for lunch but would instead carry a snack, or tiffin, and eat this in the company’s waiting room. It felt good to know that I was able to be independent and support myself.
My lunchtimes were occasionally sociable. It was company practice that visitors would not normally be seen until after lunch so there were often people sitting in the waiting area until the offices reopened in the afternoon. One day a young Englishman called Tony Clarkson offered to take me out to lunch at the Dibrugah planters’ club which was quite a distance from the centre of town. He took me on the back of his scooter and we ate quickly so that he could get me back before the office reopened. Unfortunately I was seen on the scooter by the parish priest, Father Dalsovo, and when I reached my rooms that evening he was waiting for me. He cross-examined me about the man I had been with: it seemed that the Father saw me as a vulnerable convent girl who needed guidance. He said he thought my present accommodation was unsuitable and that I needed to be watched over.
The next week I was sent by Father Dalsovo, clutching his letter of introduction, to visit Mrs Ratna Baruah who lived in a large chung, a bungalow raised on pillars. She was about sixty years of age and had four grown-up and good-looking daughters – Pronoti, Ira, Pakhi and Kuku – all married. She rented out rooms and although she did not have one to spare, since it was the Father who had made the request she allowed me to use a small room that had previously been an office. I was allowed to share her bathroom too, although for that purpose I had to go down the front stairway, walk underneath the bungalow and then climb up the back stairs to the bathroom. I was very sad to leave Maureen but she was comfortably involved with her own family and agreed that I ought to do what the Father had recommended.
I was very happy with Mrs Baruah who took care of me very well. Since her daughters had left home I was some company for her in the evenings and she would often take me out to visit her friends locally. This was good as I did not have any other form of entertainment or a boyfriend.
There were two disturbing incidents. One of the other tenants was an elderly gentleman of about sixty-five years of age with whom I exchanged pleasantries – he was always very polite. One day Mrs Baruah handed me a large parcel and told me that someone had delivered it saying it was from my mother. The wrapping was too good to be from a villager and there was no sender’s name. I opened the packet to find a negligee, panties and dressing gown together with a set of make-up and some Cadbury’s chocolate. I was frightened since I could not think who would send me such expensive things. Mrs Baruah said the parcel must be from a boyfriend. I told her I did not have a boyfriend and she called me a silly girl and said I had better use it all anyway.
The dressing gown was very useful for my trips to the bathroom, but when I opened the chocolate I found a note saying ‘To the beautiful pair of eyes’ which made me even more worried. Months passed and I feared that my new admirer would come to the office or even stop me in the street, but nothing happened. My daily routine was to leave my towel and underwear in the bathroom to dry after my evening bath but one day I arrived for my bath early and found them missing. I went back to my room to see if I had left them there and when I returned to the bathroom, empty handed, I was surprised to see the missing items were there. The towel was warm and rather stiff and I scolded the servant boy whom I suspected of using the towel on his ironing board as extra padding. When I threatened to report him to Mrs Baruah he was frightened and suddenly blurted out that the old gentleman used to remove my towel and underwear and take them to his room.
I was disgusted and told Mrs Baruah what had happened, but she would not hear any criticism of her lodger and said that I must be imagining things. Some weeks passed and another parcel arrived. Among the contents was a pink dress with a label marked ‘Punjab Tailors’ so I went to the shop and found out from the owner that the dress had been bought by the elderly gentleman at the bungalow. Now at last Mrs Baruah accepted that there was a problem and took action, asking him to leave; although she used the excuse that she needed the room for her family since she did not want a confrontation.
The second incident was with another tenant, a pilot officer who lived in the next room. One hot summer night I left the window open with the table fan running. I was disturbed by a noise and saw a shadow on the wall and then a man jumped down from the window and on to my bed. He put his hand over my mouth and told me not to make a noise and ran his hands all over me. I was terrified but managed to break free and scream. Pronoti was staying in the house at the time so I ran along the corridor to her room and woke her up. I said that I suspected I had been attacked by the pilot from the next- door room and although she did not believe me at first she was persuaded to knock on his door. On being challenged he said he had been fast asleep, having returned early from a party and gone to bed. Pronoti asked him why he had gone to bed with his suit on. The next day he too was asked to leave. I think the Baruah family were becoming rather tired of having me as a guest and at the same time I was increasingly aware of how vulnerable I was as a single girl.
My low wages meant that I was limited in what I could do in terms of outings or entertainment and whilst I kept at my job I longed for something more lucrative. Much to my surprise one of the friends I had met through Miss Dixon, a Mr George Bradley, came to see me with good news. It seemed that Mr J. E. Atkins, the labour adviser (who might nowadays be called a personnel manager) of the Assam branch of ABITA, the Indian Tea Association, was looking for a secretary. Mr Bradley had put my name forward. The job was at Dikom, twenty kilometres from Dibrugah, and I was to attend an interview.
In trepidation and wearing my best dress I travelled to Dikom and was interviewed by Mr Atkins himself. The interview did not go at all well. I found it very difficult to read back the shorthand I had nervously noted down, and my typing was full of mistakes and corrections. I was certain I had failed and travelled back to my lodgings in a state of depression. Little did I know that Mr Atkins’ wife, who had been a secretary herself, had seen my test paper and persuaded her kindly husband that I would surely improve. The next thing I knew was a telephone call to say that Mr Atkins had decided to employ me on a salary of 450 rupees a month and with transport laid on so that I could commute to and from work by car! I was in raptures.
Mr and Mrs Atkins had no children of their own but they had four dogs, Jimmy, Lofty, Brownie and Buloo. All four grew progressively fond of me and I of them. Lofty, a dachshund, faithfully followed Mr Atkins to and from his office which was within walking distance of the bungalow where they lived, only a stone’s throw from the road leading to Digboi.
I was now just twenty-one years old and still rather unworldly. Both Mr and Mrs Atkins became very protective of me and each Monday morning I was required to give my new mentors a brief explanation of how I had spent the weekend. They kept a close interest in my personal life and social activities. As for my work, that gradually improved, but this was only due to the patience of Mr Atkins in putting up with my mistakes. I saw him as my friend, philosopher, guide, teacher and, almost inevitably, a father figure.
As to my real father, I continued to harbour hopes that I might trace his family and learn about my roots. I often discussed my longings with Mr Atkins, and he made the sensible suggestion that I should find out from Mama on my next visit to Pengaree which regiment my father had served in. I could not think why I had not thought of this before and went home with eager anticipation. Sadly, my hopes were dashed when Mama could only tell me that she knew my father had been ‘killed in action’ but had no knowledge of either his regiment or his rank.
In social terms and outside my working life I expected to be isolated, as many of my breeding were, but it was a small town and fortunately the Anglo-Indian community was active. There were only a few of them but I would meet some of them on Sunday mornings after church and was occasionally invited to have a meal with these new friends.
One day two young handsome men came to the house looking for Mrs Baruah. They were very courteous and when I told them she was out I asked where they had come from. They said they were from the air force and their names were David and Ian; they were both Anglo-Indians. I was rather impressed. Boldly I invited them to my room for a cup of tea and asked if they were pilots and perhaps stationed at the Chabua airfield nearby. The next day Ian came to seem me again looking very sheepish. He told me they were not in the air force but that they worked in tea – they had said they were with the air force since they thought that might make them more attractive to me. David was the one who was said to be very interested in me but in the event it was Ian with whom I kept in touch.
Some evenings I would visit a friend called Jane who was happily married to an Assamese man with two sons. There I met an Englishman called Roy Hooper. He was a big man and twice my age. He was obviously keen on me and I enjoyed his company. He visited me at the bungalow and took me out to meet his other friends in the tea business, hoping to make me more involved in the culture and thereby presumably more enthusiastic about him. We got on very well together, he made me laugh and he was clearly destined to be a powerful and influential man within the Moran Tea Company for whom he worked.
I persuaded myself that I might come to love Roy. Mr and Mrs Atkins were far from convinced – I think they regarded both the age gap and the difference in social status as impossible obstacles – but as usual I was stubborn and did not listen to their advice.
Looking back I think Roy was very much attracted to me but at heart it was partly because he was sorry for me and partly because he was very lonely. After a few months, to my excitement but also apprehension, he asked me to marry him and said he had applied to the company for permission to take a wife. I hesitated and then said yes.
I had a sleepless night trying to imagine what the future would be like; but the following morning Roy came to me in a state of distress and told me that the executives of the company had refused permission. The senior people in the company had already met me socially and I guess that they felt I was not quite the person to be a tea executive’s wife. Roy confessed that they had told him to go home on leave, find a wife in England and come back married. He said he did not know what to do, he talked dramatically of leaving the company and marrying me anyway but I was pretty sure that he wasn’t really serious about this and I would hate to have seen him give up his job. By now I knew him well enough to be aware that he was fiercely ambitious and that it would be quite wrong for him to throw away his career.
The trouble was that Roy was of an age when he desperately wanted to have a wife. We talked far into the night and the next evening he came round to the bungalow after work and we went for a long walk together. He said that he had decided to follow the advice given by the company and was desperately sorry.
I was upset but deep down I think I had realized that it would not have worked out even if he had been given permission to marry. Mrs Atkins could see my distress and consoled me as did Mrs Baruah, although I do not think that the latter had approved of the proposal anyway. The Atkins made sympathetic noises but I could sense their relief also.
The planter community was very active and there were very few single European or even Anglo-Indian girls in the area. This was understandable: the lights of Delhi and Calcutta were a brighter and more enticing alternative to the isolation of Assam. The other issue was that most of the Indian girls were kept on a short rein by their parents and would tend to socialize within their own social and religious groups and families.
So there I was, young, unattached and by all accounts attractive. My lighter skin marked me out as different and perhaps even alluring to many Indian men. Whilst I was still a shy convent girl at heart I wanted to make the most of my independence and saw no reason why I should not maximize my advantages. I quickly worked out how to dress for different occasions, had my long brown hair cut into a modern style and soon found myself on almost every planter’s guest list and so invited to a series of lively parties. Most of the parties were held at the various planters’ clubs, the Panitola Club generally being regarded as the best of these.
I do not think the Atkins’ really approved of my new social success but they liked to see me happy and their weekly Monday briefing, when I told them where I had been and whom I had met, seemed to keep them reasonably content. Naturally I was careful to give acceptable descriptions of my activities. Mrs Baruah was generally disapproving of my constant outings but I was popular with her daughters so she put up with me. And so I continued in this way, working hard but happily in my fairly sheltered environment and then going out at least twice a week to the various club nights and parties. Of course I went back to the village to visit Mama and her family as often as I could, and I continued to make enquiries of the planters that I met to see if any of them could help me in my quest for my father’s family. But the people I met were of a younger vintage and my questions led nowhere.
