The Tea Planter's Daughter Quotes

“she convalesces. She’s finally agreed that we need a housekeeper-cum-cook. Bertie’s”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“Clarrie was up extra early to supervise breakfast and help Olive with carrying hot water to the guests. Three of Bertie’s friends were staying in the house, including the best man, and they expected a hearty breakfast to start the special day. Tubby Blake had brought his valet, who had slept in Clarrie’s sitting room and flirted with Dolly when he wasn’t upstairs polishing shoes and helping the men dress.”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“On the day of the wedding, Clarrie woke feeling shivery and apprehensive. She had probably caught a chill. Olive helped her dress, chattering in excitement as she unbound the rags from Clarrie’s hair and arranged the long black strands into elaborate coils with ringlets framing her oval face.”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“valleys of India are abundant with beauty, hope–and tea. The passionate and resourceful women of the Belhaven and Robson tea planter families have always dreamed big, even in the momentous early years of the twentieth century. From the majestic mountains of Assam to the industrial streets of northern Britain, they must learn to cope with hidden secrets, forbidden love, betrayal and adversity as they strive to make life better for themselves and their loved ones. But as they embark on epic adventures across a fast-changing world, will the upheavals of war and the dying days of the British Raj stop their dreams from becoming a reality?”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“father’s study, his bearded face in shock. A stream of foul abuse pursued him. ‘Sahib is not well,’ he said, quickly closing the door. ‘He is snapping like a tiger.’ Clarrie put a hand on the old man’s arm. Kamal had served her father since his army days, long before she was born, and knew the raging drunk beyond the door was a pathetic shadow of a once”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“off”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“She sat back on her haunches, feeding the fire. In her mind’s eye she could hear her mother’s silvery voice gently chiding her: ‘Don’t squat like a common villager –sit like a lady, Clarissa!’It was sometimes hard to conjure up her mother’s face these days: her cautious smile and watchful brown eyes, her dark hair pulled into tight coils at the nape of her neck. There was a photograph on her father’s desk of them all taking afternoon tea on the veranda: baby Olive on her father’s knee and an impatient five- year- old Clarissa pulling away from her mother’s hand, her face blurred, bored with keeping still for the photographer. Yet her mother had remained composed, a slender, beautiful pre- Raphaelite figure with a wistful half- smile.”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“No wonder her father was in such a state. Some large tea estates like the Oxford were ruthless in their quest for new labour to work their vast gardens. She had met Wesley Robson at a polo match in Tezpur last year: one of those brash young men newly out from England, good- looking and arrogant, thinking they knew more about India after three months than those who had lived here all their lives. Her father had taken against him at once, because he was one of the Robsons of Tyneside, a powerful family who had risen from being tenant farmers like the Belhavens, making their money in boilers and now investing in tea. Everything they touched seemed to spawn riches. The Robsons and the Belhavens had had a falling out years ago over something to do with farming equipment.”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“Don’t worry, I’ll calm him.’She forced a smile at her petrified younger sister and dashed for the door, nearly colliding with Kamal, their Bengali khansama, retreating hastily from her father’s study, his bearded face in shock. A stream of foul abuse pursued him.”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter

“possibility of an armistice. It came suddenly on the eleventh. The news spread with an eruption of noise: church bells clanged and hooters blew along”
― Janet MacLeod Trotter, The Tea Planter's Daughter