The Tea-Planter's Daughter Page 2

  Julia pressed her lips together, and did not answer.

  Later Julia’s ayah told Kali, “Why do you feed the Missie all this stuff of fathers going into the forest? This is the bad thing about Hindus. We Christians don’t have any such nonsense. We have God sitting nicely inside the church, and we don’t have to go hunting for him among leeches and mud and such things. And you keep out of that forest too, old man. If you had wanted that kind of life you should never have married a young wife. Now you will be stuck with kids till the day of your death.”

  Kali had bowed his head and looked sad.

  Now he waited by the door. But Julia stared into the mist, and she did not say anything more.

  Chapter 2

  The valley into which Julia stared with such concentration, and into which she had listened for sounds of a car on her twenty-fifth birthday morning, was created out of a range of hills in the shape of a spoon with the valley its bowl. From the top of every hill the plain could be seen shimmering under a haze of heat five thousand feet below. At the handle end of the valley the tops of the hills were hard to reach, and there was only one gap from which the low country could easily be seen; but the height built up more gradually at the bowl’s tip, and it was here that the only road into the district, the road from Cochin, entered. There was no road through the sheer hills that formed the spoon’s handle.

  The hills of Arnaivarlai appeared to someone standing down below to rise up like a wall. There was no lead up to them, no primary bumpings of the land. One minute it was flat and hot and dry, and a moment later this great line of needles made of stone and jungle trees went soaring up into the sky and plucked the rain down. It was because of the hills that the plains on which they stood got any water at all. Without these sudden hills the rivers down there would have run dry a million years ago.

  Once wild elephants had roamed over the whole valley, plunging from the hills at the spoon’s rim into the depths where the river ran. All the roads inside the valley had been originally formed by the wild herds, and only improved upon by the farmers who subsequently came to live there. The farmers had managed, by cutting down most of the jungle in the bowl of the spoon, to curb some of the elephants’ enthusiasm for the place; although, in spite of having very little cover and hardly anything but tea bushes for food, they often ventured in all the same. Because the valley had been, so to speak, formed by elephants, its discoverer Thomas Buxton, Julia Clockhouse’s grandfather, named it after them. He called it Arnaivarlai, which means “Elephant Road”. It was, in fact, because of elephants that he had discovered the valley in the first place. He had been out on an elephant shoot on the day he stumbled on it.

  Thomas Buxton and his partners had tried several different crops in the high wet lands: coffee, cotton, and even lentils. They had all failed. Unfortunately by the time they discovered that the area was ideal for the growing of tea they had lost all their capital and were forced to sell. The buyers bought Thomas Buxton as well as the hills, the rivers, and the grasslands. He was employed to manage the estates that had once belonged to him. Thomas Buxton became the first Arnaivarlai tea estate manager.

  There were faded brown photos of him hanging in the club, thinner than his son Edward, Julia’s father, and wearing a moustache. But the likeness was there all the same.

  Once, years ago, when Julia had been little, her ayah had taken her into the billiard room where this photo hung, and telling the child to stand by it had looked carefully from her to the portrait of her ancestor, trying to see if there was any likeness between them.

  “She is nothing like her granddaddy who was so dark!” cried Ayah at last, after lengthy scrutiny. “Just look at this sweet yellow hair!” Ayah had run her hand electrically over Julia’s fine vibrating mop and had screamed at the shock she got from it. Later she had told the other ayahs, “I think there is some ghost walking round with my Missie’s black hair, while she, poor thing, has to make do with ghost fluff!”

  Ladies arranging flowers in the Arnaivarlai Club after breakfast saw, looking through the rain-streamed window, this same ghost fluff transported by the horse, Markandaya, moving across the valley.

  There were two important buildings in the valley. One was the club, and the other the Senior Manager’s bungalow. These had been situated on either side of the valley so that they faced each other. They had been placed like that for the convenience of Maud Buxton, Thomas’s wife. She had liked to look across the valley and see whose horses were tied at the club rail. Thus she could tell who was visiting the club, and decide whether she liked the company enough to go there herself. So Maud’s granddaughter, Julia, emerging from her bungalow gates and setting off along the road on Markandaya, was clearly visible to the ladies looking out of the club windows.

  There were ten other planters’ bungalows in the valley but all the rest were in such out of the way places that their occupants had to ride all the way to the club before they knew who was there, and therefore whether they were going to enjoy themselves or not. In fact in the days of Thomas Buxton probably any company must have been preferable to the extreme loneliness of the planters’ isolated bungalows. But by the time the flower-arranging ladies were gathered at the club window looking at Julia riding, their husbands owned motor bikes as well as horses and some even had jeeps, so that they could get to the club fairly easily. Nowadays they were even able to take trips to the low country without too much difficulty if they were lucky enough to get permission to leave from the Senior Manager.

  “Poor thing!” said Doris, who was big and kind and renowned for not seeing any harm in anyone. “She’ll get soaked! If she’s not already!”

  Nana Sallinger, who knew when it was sensible to be kind, said, “And on her birthday too! Did you all know it was Julia’s birthday?” She looked round enquiringly at the other four ladies who sat at the bar sipping gin while they pulled off the dead heads of pinks and petunias.

  “Well, we’re going to her birthday party tonight, aren’t we, dear?” said Doris comfortably. “So we should know!” She stuck a great handful of geraniums into the vase.

  Lorraine, who was orderly, liked to do things right, and had spent much time standing back and looking at the arrangements with slitted eyes, cried, “Doris! You can’t put that red in there! It clashes with the marigolds! It looks ghastly!”

  “Oh. Does it?” blinked Doris. “I thought it looked rather nice!

  Muriel, who had only been in the district a year, took off her glasses, huffed on them, rubbed them on her skirt, and said, “I didn’t know it was her birthday …”

  Nana gave Doris a knowing look, which said, “She’s not invited!” though Nana was, in fact, a bit disappointed. Being invited wasn’t all that much of an honour if the ones who weren’t asked were as junior as Muriel.

  Doris did not seem to have noticed Nana’s look, so Nana said, “I do think it’s a shame that everyone isn’t invited. After all, we’re all in this together, aren’t we!” She spoke as though they were drowning mariners in the last of the lifeboats. “I mean, if I was in her position I wouldn’t have left out a soul …” She looked round, smiling, like a politician asking the populace to vote for her.

  They all looked across the valley to where, seen through a sheet of falling water, the wife of the Senior Manager rode.

  “Poor thing,” murmured Doris again.

  “Poor thing,” echoed the others dutifully.

  Julia, in fact, was perfectly unaware of the Arnaivarlai ladies’ scrutiny of her. Her mind was on lemons. As she rode round the side of the hills following the rim of the spoon, but halfway down the bowl and level with her bungalow, she had looked back and seen the lemons on the tree in her garden. At first she had thought they were yellow dusters put out by the servants to dry after washing them. When she realised that it was the lemon crop she saw she decided to tell the cook, Babuchi, to make lemon flip instead of chocolate soufflé for her birthday party that evening. As she rode Markandaya tugged, foamed at the shoulde
r and whipped flies off with a tail that whipped Julia quite painfully as well, and julia worked out how she would ask Babuchi to change the pudding. She spoke aloud so that the horse thought it was to him she said, “Babuchi, I would like lemon flip for the party tonight!” or, “Do you know how to make lemon flip, Babuchi?” She even experimented with, “I don’t like your chocolate soufflé, Babuchi,” but rejected that at once.

  Every time Julia spoke the horse moved his ear encouragingly, much to the aggravation of the flies trying to settle there.

  In the club Bobo Chatterjee, Kuts’ wife, rang for the bearer and ordered a plate of curry puffs. Lorraine said, “But it’s only a couple of hours to lunchtime! Are you sure?” and Doris told the barman to serve another round of drinks.

  “You would think,” said Nana Sallinger, looking squintingly across the valley to where Julia Clockhouse, just visible through a haze of drizzle, was passing under a large tree, “you would think that she could do her hair up when she goes riding. It seems extraordinary to ride a horse with that bush!” From here, a quarter of a mile away, the large pale hair of the Senior Manager’s wife was the only thing clearly visible about her.

  “Come now, darling, don’t be catty,” said Doris.

  “I am speaking aesthetically,” said Nana loftily. “If you have a small face like a bit of melted wax candle then you should wear your hair up, that’s all!”

  “I love her hair!” cried Amanda, making a lascivious gesture with her fingers, then added, “Nana wants our senior lady to go riding in a bun and a bowler!”

  Doris told Nana mildly, “I never thought you were so conventional, dear.”

  The curry puffs arrived, crisp and hot, and fried in the sort of fat that clings to the top of the mouth, and lingers on for ages after the food is eaten.

  “Aha,” plump and dimpled Bobo murmured, and then said, munching, “I would love to ride a horse, but I suppose it’s too late now,” which made the other women laugh sympathetically.

  “Keep off the curry puffs and you never know,” winked Amanda.

  “I will just have a single one more then give them up forever,” sighed Bobo, stretching out her hand to the plate.

  The ladies had nearly finished the club flowers when the Clockhouses’ tribal servant boy appeared, panting. He said that a Rani who was the mother of the newest Arnaivarlai assistant had arrived at the Clockhouse bungalow bringing a big bunch of flowers for Clockhouse Madam’s birthday.

  “The Rani Madam is waiting for an answer, the Clockhouse Madam is out riding, and the Clockhouse Master not come back from Madras,” gasped the little boy, “and Kali and Babuchi don’t know what to do!”

  “She obviously is expecting to get an invitation to the party this evening,” said Nana, popping another spray of foliage into the big vase for the mantelpiece.

  “She can’t possibly come!” Lorraine said severely. “Junior assistants don’t get invited!”

  Muriel, who had been very silent for a long time, said in a wavering voice, “Why not?” so that all the others turned and looked at her with embarrassment.

  “I think it’s a shame!” Doris cried. “Don’t all you girls agree that it’s fun to have a new face at the Arnaivarlai parties sometimes?”

  “I do not!” said Nana crossly. “I can’t stand outsiders. It’s so boring having to make polite conversation.”

  “I think that it would be very bad for our company’s reputation if this lady, who is a Rani, and therefore presumably an influential person, should leave here feeling snubbed,” Doris persisted. “And of course if one assistant is invited then all should be!” She winked at Muriel, who went red.

  “Well, I suppose you have something there,” Lorraine said doubtfully.

  “Bring a pencil and paper, Bearer,” Doris called. “I will write a note to the Rani at once!”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to wait till Julia gets back from her ride?” asked Lorraine.

  Nana gave a contemptuous snort, and Amanda said, “Our Julia is a sweetie, but not up to that sort of thing!”

  “I will take all responsibility. Don’t you worry, girls! Auntie Doris will see to everything!” She handed her note to the little boy and told him, “Run quickly and give this to the Rani Madam, darling!”

  The rider’s hair was, even as the ladies in the club talked of it, shrinking rapidly, drowned in the downpour.

  Even if Julia had known that across the valley the ladies in the club were watching her she would not have cared much. For one thing, the ladies of Arnaivarlai always seemed to be watching Julia, though she did not know why. But at the very moment of the club ladies’ critical appraisal of her Julia got a shivery feeling that much more important eyes were on her. She got the impression of a god looking at her over the rim of the valley.

  It had stopped raining but drops lay shivering on the tea bushes, so that it felt to Julia as though she was riding in a glistening green bowl.

  Gwen Buxton, her mother, who, because she was an artist, saw things differently to other people, said once, “Our valley is a spoon held up to the lips of the gods of India. But they won’t drink because the dose is too strong.”

  Julia, who had been very young at the time, had asked her mother why they didn’t force the medicine down the gods’ throats, using a rope-wrapped bottle so that their teeth would not crush the glass. She had seen her father thrust colic medicine down his horse, Narada, in this way once. A picture had come into her mind of her father’s hand over the snout of the great god, the roped bottle neck between the god’s teeth, her father’s teeth showing too in his furious aggravation, and the smell of gin and peppermint as the dose went down.

  Years later when she had described her fanciful notion to her husband, Ben, he had said, “It is us Europeans the gods are trying to spit out. We will have to get some little Indian boys into the spoon or we will never get them to swallow us.”

  Shortly after this conversation Ben had taken on the young Raja as a tea estate assistant.

  Julia was thinking about this Raja, wondering if he would be at her party tonight, but fearing that he would probably be considered too junior for such an occasion, when she got the impression of a god leaning over the top of the hills. She felt a tremor as though the god’s thumb was coming down to crush her like a beetle. The horse seemed to feel it too, shying away, and snorting.

  Then another heavy rainburst came, wetting all the parts of Julia that the first had not managed to reach, gathering in a pool at her crutch, wetting the thick hair there. When Julia was fifteen her father had said to her mother once, “What has Julia got down the front of her jeans? I will not have my daughter turned into a walking rude joke.”

  Gwen had said, “I don’t think Julia knows what a joke is, let alone a rude one!” but had later told Julia, “I think you’d better shave it, dear. You know what your father’s like.” She had lent Julia Edward’s razor, which was the only one available in their isolated position, but after the shave the hair grew back thicker than ever, as though where there had been one before there now grew two.

  Julia rode the gelding with light hands. She had been taught to ride by her father, Edward, but in this as in so many other things he had been disappointed in her, for she had no power.

  The horse slipped suddenly in the red mud. Markandaya pretended that the slight stumble and the consequent slacking of the reins was a signal for him to break into a gallop and Julia had to tug with all her might as they rushed skidding round corners before she could get him under control again. When she had managed to pull him up her face was splashed with red where the animal’s feet had thrown up mud. She made the horse stand for a few moments while she got her breath back, and she looked into the hills still watching even now for the sight of a car that might be coming through them on the road from Cochin.

  Several waterfalls cascaded down the sides of the valley, but they were so far away from Julia that they seemed to be silent and still, as though they were just shining smears among the
tea although a hundred yards from them you could not have heard a wild elephant trumpet over the loud rush of water.

  A pair of young boys crossed the road in front of Julia on her horse. They were arrogant and slender, and wore identical check loincloths and long Indian handloom shirts. They could have been twins, but perhaps were not even brothers. All the Indian labourers of this valley looked alike and, in fact, were closely related to each other. When Thomas Buxton had first come into the valley it had been populated only by a small number of tribal hunters. They had not been willing to work on Thomas Buxton’s tea estates so Tamil labour had been brought up from the plains below. Almost everyone working on the tea estates were descendants of these. At the beginning getting in and out of the valley had required an arduous and dangerous journey consisting of several days of bullock-cart travel through country inhabited by tiger, panther, wild elephant and even bear. The roads even today presented alarming drops on one side and unscaleable rises on the other, and even after engineers had cut and blasted and supported with granite ramparts in the worst places lumps still fell in heavy rain. Recently a bus full of passengers had gone over the edge. But in Thomas’s day it had been much worse, consisting of a potholed track of mud in the monsoon and dust in the dry weather. The people of the valley had found it easier and safer to stay inside the valley and find their mates there. Nowadays things were better. In Thomas’s day goods such as cloth and soap and salt were brought up every few months on the back of pack ponies, whereas by his granddaughter Julia’s time there was a weekly bus into the valley on which people could get to Cochin in five or six hours. But in spite of this improvement the people of the valley did not seem to wish to travel. They had got too lazy perhaps, or too comfortable to climb out of their deep green bowl and find a mate beyond. They continued to marry each other.

  The lookalike boys wore big wristwatches and held hands, a custom that here denoted only friendship. Their nails were varnished bright red, and they had the pale grey eyes of the valley people. They stood on the road staring at Julia with an air of bravado, as though they were engaged in an act of great daring. After a time one said in English, with a touch of smiling insolence, “Good night, Madam!”