Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for East of India by Erica Brown. Before I share the extract let me tell you what the book is all about.
India, 1940. When Nadine learns that the Indian woman she thought her nanny is, in fact, her mother, she rebels against her English father and he arranges for Nadine to be wed to an Australian merchant many years older. She is whisked off to his plantation in Malaya but as the Second World War rages throughout the East, Nadine is taken captive by the Japanese. She is held at a camp in Sumatra with other women and forced to provide sexual favours for the soldiers. In the most unlikely circumstances, Nadine finds an ally and protector in a Japanese-American general, caught up in the war. The two bond over the conflicted identities and gradually fall in love.
But can Nadine survive long enough to find happiness?
Don’t miss this emotional and powerful saga about a women’s determination to beat the odds, perfect for fans of Renita D’Silva, Dinah Jefferies and Julia Gregson.
Genre: Exotic Saga, Historical Fiction
Release Date: 16th April 2018
Publisher: Canelo
Links to Book: Amazon (UK) Kobo (UK) Google Books (UK) Apple Books (UK)
Extract
Chapter Two
The house in which Nadine had been born was as drenched as the rest of the world, but the shutters were tightly closed against the wetness outside, sealing the humid heat within.
Excess water gurgled along culverts and into storage tanks. The high walls enveloped a household untroubled by famine or deluge.
The soles of her sopping-wet stockings left a watery trail all the way from the front door to her bedroom.
Myla, the housekeeper, left the job of pounding spices in the kitchen and shadowed Nadine’s progress, dipping to pick up the clothes as she discarded them. With each dip a mist of cinnamon and other spices drifted from her clothes.
‘I want a bath,’ said Nadine, her chest tight, her head aching with the weight of unanswered questions. ‘A very hot bath.’
Myla eyed her warily.
‘A chill,’ she said once she’d chewed over the facts and reached a conclusion. ‘You are getting a chill. A bath would be good. I will see to it.’
The water was hot and simmering with the perfume of violet-scented bath salts.
The pain in Nadine’s chest persisted and her face was wet with tears. Sinking herself deeper into the water, she closed her eyes, conjuring up Cecilia’s superior expression. Gossip had been the lifeblood of the cantonment since the first memsahib had placed her booted foot on Indian soil.
Almost young women now, the girls she’d gone to school with were feeling their feet, their superiority and class snobbery. She was different and they’d decided she did not belong.
Back in her room, dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, head swathed in a soft towel, she looked at the photograph sitting on top of the chest of drawers. It had a black frame and had sat there for as long as she could remember. This, according to her father, was her long-deceased mother. Every night Shanti had bid her say a prayer for this woman.
The woman’s hair was shingled and she was looking coyly over her shoulder. Nadine eyed her speculatively. Never before had she searched so diligently for some facial feature confirming this was her mother.
The contrast was striking. Shanti had been bright and colourful. The black-and-white photograph showed a stranger, a woman she had never known yet was expected to venerate, to remember as someone special. She couldn’t do that now. Cecilia had sown the seeds of doubt and they would not go away.
Quickly, without giving herself time to think, she prised the brass fixings from the back of the frame. They were stiff, but though her fingernail broke, she persevered, slid the photo out, turned it over and read the faded inscription.
To my darling Freddie… sorry for turning you down, but until we meet again, much love from your darling Gertrude Unwin. Look after your little girl. No matter her mother’s origins, she didn’t ask to be born.
June 1926
Nadine felt as though her blood had turned to ice: ‘Your little girl’ had to be her. The reference to her not asking to be born cut the deepest. She read the words again, each one slicing into her heart, stabbing at her mind. The words were unchanged; had she expected them to be different? In time she might live with what Cecilia had said, but this… this meant her whole childhood had been a lie.
In her mind she went back over all the birthdays she’d ever had. Leaving the photograph out of its frame, she brushed her hair numbly and dressed automatically, not really caring whether her clothes matched or not.
‘You will eat with your father?’ Myla asked her later when she was sitting out on the veranda, staring towards the double gates at the end of the drive.
She asked her again. ‘Will you eat now or later?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
Nadine’s eyes remained fixed on the gate. The photograph lay face down in her lap, her palms flat on top of it.
At the sound of a car horn the gate wallah came out of his little hut at the side, sprinting across the patch of dusty grass to swing both gates wide open.
The air was fresh with the scent of raindrops hanging on blossoms and the sound of monkeys chattering in the trees.
The last rays of sunset flashed on the chromium headlights of her father’s car. Due to his height and his turban, the chauffeur sat hunched over the wheel, his shoulders tight against his ears.
She stepped in front of her father.
‘I need to talk to you.’
A slimly built man with sharp eyes and quick movements, he looked disgruntled at being confronted the moment he got out of his car.
‘And what could possibly be so important that you have to waylay me before I’m even through my front door?’
She felt the heat of him as he passed by.
Behind her back she held the photograph with both hands. ‘Father, I want to speak to you.’
‘And I want to speak to you.’ His voice was a flat monotone and her stomach curdled. ‘Good,’ she said, more resolutely than she felt.
Myla held the door open for them to enter.
‘The school sent me a note.’ He shook his head as he passed his hat, his briefcase and his walking cane to the houseboy. ‘This will not do!’ He made a hissing sound through his teeth when he was angry; he was doing it now.
‘The dancing, or lighting Shanti’s funeral pyre?’
His expression froze. She had caught him off guard.
She pressed on regardless, knowing he would get angry but for once in her life not caring if he did.
‘I want to know about my mother.’ She brought the disassembled photograph out from behind her back. ‘Not this woman in the picture. I want to know why you didn’t tell me who she really was. I want to know who I am, Father. I want you to confirm to me that Shanti was my mother.’
Author Bio:
Erica Brown is the pseudonym of a very successful author of women’s fiction and crime. She lives in Bath and has one daughter and twin grandchildren one of whom is dead set on becoming a writer.
Author Social Media Links
Twitter: @baywriterallat1
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