The Kashmir Shawl

TWELVE


A startling crash in the undergrowth, then a long rattle of stones rolling downhill made Mair jump. She swung round and glimpsed a goat’s scrawny hindquarters as it dashed away. A second later its stink swept over her and she was instantly transported back to Changthang, where all the weeks of exploration had begun. And here, in the abandoned village, was where her unravelling of the shawl’s history finally ended.

Mehraan’s father’s and grandfather’s families and the other kani craftsmen had lived and worked in this huddle of cottages, now little more than broken walls surrendered to the weeds and thorn bushes. In the middle of the rough square stood a gaunt tree trunk, the scorched and splintered wood indicating that it had been struck by lightning. She picked her way past it and stood in the doorway of the biggest house. Looking upwards through the bare rafters she could see a lammergeier riding on the upward draughts of air.

There were a few scraps of abandoned furniture on the earth floor of the house, an old aluminium pot among the mud-brick rubble, the chimney pipe of a cooking stove tilted in one corner. It was like the old mission house in Leh. The people who had lived here were gone, and they were never coming back. The links were broken.

Shivering a little, Mair went outside again and wandered away to the edge of the village where the river rushed down through a rocky ravine. There were more derelict buildings here, roofs of rusted corrugated iron hanging at dangerous angles, a corner of one sheet creaking in the wind as a counterpoint to the splash of water. Downhill, across a bend in the river, Mair could pick out a red dot. It was the Coca-Cola baseball cap worn by the driver from the Srinagar travel agency, who had brought her up here on a half-day excursion in the inevitable white Toyota.

She sat down on a flat rock and looked over at the remains of Kanihama.

Mehraan’s grandfather, the weaver who had signed his work with a double BB, was dead, his son too, and the villagers had moved elsewhere. Fine shawls were still made in Kashmir, and were bought for weddings and stored as precious currency, or else they went to Delhi and from there to the expensive shops of the West, but they were not woven in this village. This place belonged to the shepherds and their animals.

Abruptly Mair jumped up again. The scent of the wind, the smell of animal dung, even the patches of hardy turf between grey rocks reminded her of home and the old house in Wales. As longing for the valley swept over her, she heard her father’s voice. ‘Had enough of your travels? Come on, come back to us.’

She blinked. He was gone, but what he had said was right. It was time to go home. She wanted to see Hattie and her other friends, her brother and sister.

There was one more visit to make in Srinagar, and after that she was ready to leave. Mair put her hands in the pockets of her coat and began to skip downhill.



‘Here you are again. How jolly,’ Caroline called out, as soon as Aruna showed her into the room.

There was sitar music quietly playing but Aruna switched it off and ostentatiously tidied the handful of CD cases. Caroline’s bandaged leg was still propped up and there was a smell of antiseptic. She began talking as if no time at all had elapsed since Mair’s first visit.

‘I’m so glad you dropped in. Seeing the shawl again brought it all back, you know, such marvellous memories. They were dear, loyal chums to me, Myrtle and Nerys were. I remember it all perfectly. The Garden of Eden. How we used to laugh about that.’

‘Srinagar was like the Garden of Eden?’

Caroline gave a long peal of laughter. ‘No, I mean the houseboat. Myrtle’s – on the lake.’

‘Oh, I see. The names. The one I’m staying in is called Solomon and Sheba.’

‘What fun. It’s terribly good of you to take time to visit an old crock like me. There must be masses of things you’d rather be doing on your holiday.’

‘No,’ Mair said. ‘Really, there aren’t.’

‘Do have some gin. I’m not supposed to drink, the doctor now tells me. But I can give you some – don’t suppose that will do me any harm, eh? Aruna, where are you?’

Remembering the last time, Mair insisted that she would much prefer tea. Aruna was despatched to make it. ‘I’ve brought a photograph to show you,’ she said, as soon as they were alone together.

Caroline’s white head turned. ‘Have you, dear?’

Mair knelt by her chair and held up the picture. ‘If I turn this light on, and hold it towards the window as well, do you think you could see it?’

Slowly, stiffly, Caroline took it and drew it so close that it touched her nose. She screwed up her eyes so that they were almost swallowed in loose skin crosshatched with wrinkles. Her other hand patted the folds of her clothing and retrieved a pair of glasses on a cord. By setting these in place and angling her neck to one side, she seemed able to bring it into focus.

She studied it for a long time.

‘Yes, that was the Garden of Eden.’ She pointed with a knobbly finger. ‘That’s Myrtle McMinn, with your grandmother, Nerys, the dear creature. Look at us. We were girls, weren’t we? Hardly more than children ourselves.’

She let the picture drop on to her chest. Without warning, tears ran down her cheeks. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and dried her eyes.

Mair whispered, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Not at all. I’m just being silly. So long ago, you know. So long I can hardly believe I was once that girl.’

‘Can you remember who took the picture? Was it your husband? Or Mr McMinn? Or maybe my grandfather?’

‘Evan Watkins? Such a stern, sweet man he was. No, it wasn’t him.’

‘Who, then?’

Caroline shook her head. She smiled through her tears, a very old person’s wily, secretive smile. ‘It was the magician. My goodness, he was the pin-up. Whatever was his name? I can’t have forgotten.’ Her face clouded, then cleared again. ‘I remember. His name was Rainer,’ she said.

Mair actually heard a click, like a key fitting a lock.

At Lamayuru, the night before the terrible day, Bruno Becker had told her that his mountain-guide grandfather had worked for Rainer Stamm, the mountaineer. The two of them had almost died in an attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger. She could precisely recall the cadences of Bruno’s voice, and she could almost taste the cognac on her tongue. ‘Rainer Stamm?’

Caroline nodded in surprise. ‘Why, yes. That’s right. Do you know him?’

‘I don’t. His name was mentioned to me by someone else, when we were on our way from Leh to Srinagar.’

‘Who would that be?’

‘Bruno Becker. He’s Swiss, and he’s married to an American woman called Karen.’ She thought that the names just might mean something to Mrs Bowen. She added, ‘They had a beautiful little daughter called Lotus.’

‘They had?’



The forensic sharpness of the question took Mair aback. She said quickly, regretting her lack of foresight, ‘It’s a very sad story. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bring you bad news.’

Aruna carried in the tea tray. There was a homely patchwork tea cosy, china cups and a battered silver bowl containing sugar cubes with a pair of clawed tongs. It all looked much more appealing than warm gin.

‘I don’t know these people,’ Caroline said. ‘Do you take milk and sugar? Please go on.’

Mair hesitated. ‘I met the Beckers by chance in Leh and we set out from there together. We were cut off on the way by a heavy snowstorm, and at the place where we were staying the little girl was bitten by a rabid dog. I heard a few days ago from her father. I’m afraid she didn’t survive.’

Caroline put down the milk jug. Her hand shook and china clinked on the tray. ‘I am so very sorry to hear that. How painful for her family. The death of a child is a great tragedy.’

Aruna took the filled teacup from her and passed it to Mair. ‘Don’t be tired,’ she warned the old woman. Over Caroline’s head she glowered at Mair.

‘I am so pleased you brought me the photograph,’ Caroline murmured, and sweetly smiled. She’s slipping into forgetfulness, Mair thought. The old lady didn’t really have any idea who her visitor was. The photograph represented a tiny piece in the mosaic of her memories, the pattern still bright and sharp in places but rubbed into a featureless monochrome in others.

Caroline seemed to be talking to herself now more than to Mair. She nodded. ‘Yes, it must have been precious to Nerys. The picture, and the shawl too.’

Mair took it out of her bag one last time and shook it out so it floated on the air between them. ‘When I showed it to you the other day, you said something like, “This was Zahra’s.”’

‘Did I?’

‘So … I wondered if you would like to have it? To give back to Zahra, perhaps?’

It was a stab in the dark, no more than that. But the reaction was startling. Caroline threw up her hands. ‘Oh, no, no, thank you. Poor little Zahra. It was a way of paying for her, you see. Yes, that was what it was. Oh dear. Now I am going to cry.’

Appalled, Mair saw how Mrs Bowen crumpled like a winter leaf. She was completely at sea now.

Aruna marched forward and put her hand under Mair’s arm, propelling her to her feet. ‘Mrs Bowen must not be upset so much. I ask you to leave her in peace, not to come with these old things.’

‘I’m s-sorry, so sorry,’ Mair stammered.

Aruna almost frogmarched her to the door. Caroline’s face was hidden in her hands.

‘Please forgive me for upsetting you,’ Mair called to her.

Outside the room Aruna rounded on her. ‘Why do you come here to talk of these hurts? She lose her own little girl. You know so much but not this? Long time ago, but she spend many, many years in England in asylum. She come back here to Srinagar and life is quiet for her. Please respect.’

‘Of course. Of course I will. I didn’t know.’

Caroline called loudly, ‘The letters, Aruna. From Nerys. They are in a box. I want the young woman to have the letters. She is my friend Nerys Watkins’s granddaughter, you know …’ Her cracked old voice shook with urgency, but Aruna almost bundled Mair into the street. The door closed firmly on her. Mair waited for a moment or two and knocked again, but she knew there would be no answer.



The blue mountains were doubled in the flat lake water, and a twinned reflection turned every passing shikara into a strange insect suspended in glassy air. In the shallows beside the Garden of Eden, lotus flowers turned their creamy petals into the sunshine. Sighing with satisfaction at the view and the day’s springtime perfection, Myrtle drained her glass and held it up to let Majid know she needed a refill.

She had curled her hair, applied her favourite dark red lipstick, and there was a determined gaiety in her manner. Nerys noticed how many drinks she had had, but she well knew that this was how Myrtle dealt with a low mood. The latest news of Archie was that he had been posted nearer to the front line but Myrtle would never express anxiety, even to Nerys and Caroline. She sparkled today as she always did, although there was a metallic glint in her brilliance.

‘Do you realise what we have here?’ she cried. ‘Three mothers and one daughter. That’s rather lovely, don’t you think?’

Nerys had brought Zahra down from Kanihama. The baby lay in her red and green woven wicker basket under the shade of an awning. She was a tranquil little creature, accepting her bottle from whoever was on hand to give it and gravely eyeing the world from Nerys’s arms or from her sling on Farida’s back. Sometimes Caroline could be encouraged to hold her, but the tense lines of her shoulders and her shadowed smile betrayed her uncertainty. The other two women didn’t try to force the issue. Ever since she had given birth, Caroline had been in a delicate mental state. Some days, Myrtle reported, she lacked the will even to get out of her bed in the houseboat. Myrtle didn’t think she was fit to go back to her bungalow in the compound, but Caroline had numbly insisted that this was what she must do.

‘Otherwise what will people think?’ she said. ‘I’ve completely recovered from my so-called fever. I told Mrs Dunkeley so. You have both been so kind to me. If only I knew what was going to happen to Zahra …’

Her eyes filled with tears all over again. Caroline cried too often these days, at a dead bird glimpsed by the roadside, a crippled child begging in the bazaar. Nerys and Myrtle hurried to reassure her. ‘Zahra is well and happy. As far as the world is concerned, she will be a mission orphan, just like Farida and her brothers. There’s nothing to link her to you or to Ravi Singh,’ Nerys said, for the hundredth time.

Myrtle adored the baby. She swept her up and rubbed her firm nose against Zahra’s soft button one, and covered her olive skin with lipsticked kisses.



‘Divine, so divine,’ she crooned. ‘I could eat you all up, ears to toes. Oh, God, Nerys, do you think Archie might let us adopt her when this bloody war ends?’

Nerys hesitated. She said carefully, ‘Srinagar will whisper that she’s yours and not Archie’s. We’ve given them every reason to jump to that conclusion.’

Myrtle cackled. ‘Who gives a damn about whispers? I don’t. When Archie comes home and sees her, I’m sure he’ll fall in love with her too. Don’t you think?’ Then she looked up from her contemplation of the baby and her eyes met Nerys’s. ‘But are you and Evan going to fight me for her?’

It was a joke, with a shiver of painful truth in it.

Nerys loved Zahra too. Sometimes she felt afraid of how much she adored the dark eyes and tiny curling fingers. But she could only shake her head. She hadn’t seen Evan since the previous autumn, and he was beginning to feel like a stranger to her. Who could predict what her husband might allow, or might refuse even to consider?

Zahra’s future was just one of the legion of uncertainties facing them all.

Majid brought Myrtle another drink. Picking up the basket, he announced, ‘Time for baby feeding.’

He had fallen for Zahra too, and whenever he could he spirited her away to the dim recesses of the kitchen boat to be cooed over by the cook and the boys and their retinue of aunts and sisters. As he took her off he said, ‘Visitor coming, ma’am.’

They looked up to see a gold-painted shikara gliding over the water. Against the gaudy cushions Rainer lay back and smoked his pipe. He waved and called to them, ‘Summer is here.’

In Kashmir May was the most beautiful month of all. The almond, apple and cherry trees were in bloom and falling petals blew in the breeze, like the antithesis of snow.

The boatman made fast and Rainer hopped up the steps to the shade of the veranda. He was strong and his burns had healed quickly, but he never spoke about his excursion to Malaya.

He kissed Caroline and Myrtle twice on each cheek, then lifted Nerys’s hand and touched it to his lips. She blushed at the sudden tenderness in him. ‘I have come to take Nerys away,’ he announced. ‘It’s a day for a picnic in the Shalimar Garden.’

‘Off you go, then,’ Myrtle waved a hand. ‘Caroline and I will have tea and maybe a cocktail or two at the club.’

‘Won’t you let me try out my new toy first?’ Rainer had brought an elaborate new Leica camera with him, complete with tripod and a set of lenses. He lifted the camera body out of its brown leather case and fiddled with the settings. Then he pointed to the corner of the veranda framed by the carved-wood canopy. ‘Sit over there, perhaps, with the lake behind you.’

‘Whatever you say, Mr Stamm.’

Myrtle took her natural place in the middle, tipped up her chin and looked straight into the camera. Caroline edged beside her, smiling but looking to the other two for her cue as she and Nerys hooked their arms around Myrtle’s waist.

He said, ‘That’s very pretty. I shall name this portrait “Summer in the Garden of Eden”.’

Nerys always remembered Myrtle’s scent and the waft of cigarette smoke, the light catching the diamond in Caroline’s engagement ring and Rainer clowning behind the lens. He put a black cloth over his head and muttered inside its folds, then shouted, ‘Hey presto!’ As they laughed at him, the shutter clicked.

‘You haven’t disappeared in a puff of smoke,’ Myrtle pointed out. ‘And neither have we.’

‘I must be out of practice,’ he said.

A cloud licked over the sun, and for a second the shimmer faded out of the day. Nerys drew her cardigan over her shoulders and checked that Myrtle’s circlet brooch was safe.

‘Have you time for a drink?’ Myrtle asked. ‘Do just have one, won’t you? Caroline and I might be quite blue once we’re left on our own.’

‘Please forgive me this time. I want to talk to Nerys,’ Rainer said.

The shikara man was waiting for them at the steps, idly dipping his paddle and watching the insects skimming over the water. Ripples briefly fractured the reflected mountains. Myrtle clapped her hands and her smile widened.

‘Of course. Have fun!’ she cried.

A moment later Nerys and Rainer were gliding towards the trees at the far end of the lake. Nerys was quiet because the afternoon’s loveliness seemed intensified by its fragility. Rainer’s arm rested over her shoulders, but she was thinking how opaque he had become. Or perhaps he always had been. She had learnt the shape and weight of him, his scent and taste and the various timbres of his voice, but he had given away so little.

In the great Mogul garden the fountains splashed between the beds of crimson peonies. They walked under the dappled shade of unfurling chinar leaves and Rainer talked of a new trick he was devising and an invitation he had received to perform magic to entertain British and American troops.

‘But where will you be going?’ Nerys asked, out of dread of his leaving and fear that he might stay. ‘And when?’ She had her own urgent reason for wanting to talk to him today.

They came to the top of the garden’s series of steps and turned to look back at the view.

‘Let’s have our picnic,’ he said.

As always, Rainer took pleasure in the precision of practical arrangements. From a canvas rucksack he produced a white cloth and spread it in the shade of a huge old tree. There was a metal flask of fresh sweet buttermilk laced with mint, and afternoon bread just an hour old, fragrant and crusted with sesame.

Below them rolled the flowers and geometric water courses, sparkling with fountains, and beyond that the lake with its blue islands, the haze of smoke over the old town and the two Srinagar hills crowned with a fort and a temple. Perhaps he had brought her here to lay all this at her feet, like a Mogul emperor with his latest concubine. She turned abruptly to him but he stopped her with a finger to her mouth.

‘I have to leave Srinagar, Nerys. I would have gone already, if every hour with you didn’t make me wish for two more.’

It would be so easy to believe him.

Then he whispered, ‘Come with me. Stay with me.’

Briefly, the world contracted until it was no more than the twin points of light reflected in his barley-sugar eyes. His finger moved to rest in the notch at the base of her throat and, giddily, Nerys imagined the cities she would never see unless she followed Rainer, the journeys they might take, and the mountains he had promised to show her.

But when she tried to picture their homecomings, a home refused to materialise. There was no such place. Not even Rainer’s particular magic could frame one for the two of them.

It took the greatest effort she had ever made to clasp his warm hand and draw it away from her, but she managed to do it. His response was to move even closer so that their mouths almost touched. ‘Nerys, will you marry me? I want you to be my woman.’

She let the words run through her like Kashmiri honey. But then she straightened her back and looked into his eyes. ‘I am married already. We have been trying to pretend I’m not, that’s all.’

Rainer batted the objection away. ‘Divorce him. Or if we can’t marry, come and live with me. You are not a woman to be hedged by conventions. I know you better than that.’

And that proved he did not know her.

In her pocket was this morning’s letter from Evan, filled with the fussy details of the work he was obliged to leave in order to travel to Srinagar, details that he wished her to investigate in connection with the possible establishment of another mission in Kashmir, and all the silent, fretful constructions of her husband’s fear and anxiety.



She was a woman to be hedged by conventions, because those conventions were what she had pledged to uphold. It was only now that she was presented with the real possibility of flouting them that she understood how firmly she intended to stand.

Her stomach turned over at the thought of what lay ahead. There was a single flicker of brightness in the vista, and that was pride in making – at last – the hardest decision of her life.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Evan will arrive in Srinagar later this week. He is bringing the mission to Kashmir, and I will support his work.’

Disbelief kindled in Rainer’s eyes.

She studied the creases in his skin, the humorous twist of his mouth, and realised that of all the times she had desired him in the months since Christmas she longed for him most urgently now.

He said, ‘Don’t give away your own happiness for another person’s sake. Don’t abandon your own life.’

And in her raw state she was suddenly angry with him. The uncertainties that had swamped her in the past weeks fell away. Whatever lay in store, she would be living her life by her own principles, not Rainer Stamm’s.

‘Abandoning my life? That’s an arrogant assumption. I am doing no such thing.’

A motor launch inched its way across the lake, spinning a silver thread behind it. Perhaps it was Ravi Singh’s, she thought.

‘I love you,’ Rainer said quietly.

He had never told her this before. She tried out the response in her head. I love you too. I’ll always love you. But she said nothing. The afternoon was loud with birdsong and the chirp of crickets yet silence bled between them, cutting them off from each other and sealing their separation.

‘I leave Srinagar tomorrow,’ he warned her.

She lifted her head. ‘Did you believe I’d follow you?’

He met her eyes. ‘I let myself hope.’



‘I am so sorry.’

As she studied his face, his expression changed. In a single second he became a different person. He smiled at her, a performer’s smile that he might have flashed at an audience before some feat of disguise or misdirection. ‘What a shame. But why are we so serious? Life is for enjoying, and that’s what we should do. If we can’t, pfffff.’ He shrugged and exhaled, and his foreignness struck her as it had never done before.

Scrambling to his feet, he held out his hand. ‘Come on. Why don’t we finish our walk? It’s a beautiful evening.’

They descended the long series of steps and crossed the terraces between fountains and water channels. On the lowest level of the garden there were great beds of scarlet tulips. To Nerys’s burning eyes, they looked like pools of blood.

Outside the walls they fought their way through the insistent crowds of beggars and trinket-sellers and chai-vendors brought out by the promise of summer, and she felt exhausted by the sheer hourly effort it took just to exist in India.

I want to go home, she thought, for almost the first time since she had come to Srinagar. The longing for Wales, for her own place and people and that other green valley threaded with streams, almost overpowered her.

At the jetty, the gold-painted shikara was waiting for them. The boatman handed her aboard and saw to it that she was comfortable on the mattress cushions. Instead of taking the place next to her Rainer sat opposite with his back to the boat’s prow.

‘So I can look at you,’ he said. The sun was slipping down the sky and the light had changed from blue to gold. When they reached the middle of the lake, where veils of mist were beginning to lift off the water, Rainer picked up the boatman’s spare paddle that was stowed beside his feet. He studied the familiar leaf-shaped blade and then inverted it. Pressed against his chest, it formed a heart.

They reached the Garden of Eden. There was nobody at home, but they heard voices from the kitchen boat. Rainer stood up, balancing against the shikara’s gentle rocking, and helped Nerys to the steps. Then he released her hand. ‘Goodnight,’ he said.

‘Goodnight, Rainer. I hope you have a safe journey.’

Wherever you are going.

She stood on the veranda under the carved-wood awning and watched the shikara glide away. Rainer still stood upright, with the inverted paddle close to his side. This was the image of him that she would carry with her: his shadow laid over the still water, cupped in the reflections of the boat’s high stern and prow, and the leaf-heart placed over his own, a shield as well as a declaration.

‘Good evening, ma’am.’

Nerys spun round. It was Majid in his white tunic, hands pressed together.

‘Majid, where is Mrs McMinn?’

‘I think club, ma’am.’

‘And the baby?’

‘She is here, ma’am.’

When Zahra woke up, Nerys gave her a bottle, bathed and changed her. The scrawny limbs had grown rounded and dimpled. When the sudden darkness fell she stood on the veranda and rocked the baby in her arms, her lips pressed to her black hair.

When Myrtle climbed out of the shikara that had brought her back from the club she stumbled on the steps and almost fell into the water. ‘Damn, blast it. That’s my last pair of decent stockings in tatters,’ she cried.

Nerys took her arm and tried to steer her to a chair. Myrtle resisted, and folded into the sofa instead. She put her head into her hands and massaged her forehead. ‘My wretched, dazed brain.’

‘I’ll get you some water.’

‘Have you heard the news?’



Nerys waited, her breath catching.

‘A poor boy has been knifed to death. They found his body in one of those brick alleys in the bazaar.’

She didn’t even have to ask the question, because Myrtle was already answering it. ‘A Muslim boy.’

Set upon in the dark by Hindu youths, themselves avenging some earlier attack by Muslims: the latest episode in the religious hatred that swelled under Kashmir’s smooth skin.

‘There’s rioting,’ Myrtle said. ‘At the club, just now, they were advising everyone to go home and stay inside until the morning. Otherwise I’d still be there.’

Nerys listened, and in the stillness she thought she could just hear the distant sound of shouts and stone-throwing.

‘I don’t understand India any more. It’s all I know, but I can hardly recognise the country where I grew up, or understand what’s happening to beautiful Kashmir. They want us to leave, and we will do, but what will happen after that? There’ll be nothing left, nothing but blood and destruction.’

Myrtle groped in her handbag and found her cigarette case. She lit one of her gold-tipped cigarettes and exhaled a blue cloud. As Nerys watched her, she lost her poise and her powdered face crumpled. ‘Everything is ending. What’s going to happen to us all?’

Nerys had never seen Myrtle cry. She held her in her arms and smoothed the tears that chased blackened streaks down her face.

‘God, I’m drunk. Pie-eyed. Archie doesn’t let me do it, you know. But he’s not here, and everything is so dismal, and I’m an apology without him.’

Nerys insisted, ‘No, you’re not. You’re a brave, strong, admirable woman, and the best friend I’ve ever had. I’ve learnt so much from you and that’s the honest truth.’

They gripped each other’s hands. The clamour in the distance seemed to be subsiding, leaving only the night noises of lapping water and owls hooting.



Myrtle sniffed and blew her nose. ‘Damn. So sorry. Stupid of me. It’s the drink and the news of a senseless murder. How was the Shalimar picnic? Where’s Rainer?’

‘He wanted to tell me that he’s leaving Srinagar tomorrow. Today was a goodbye.’

‘Oh, my darling. And here’s me with my tale of woe. To hell with it all. Come on, let’s have a nightcap. Don’t you think so? Mmm?’

‘No, Myrtle. No more to drink. Come on, let’s get you to bed.’

‘You sound like Archie. I rather like it.’ Myrtle stood up and made her unsteady way to Zahra’s basket. She leant down and turned back an inch of coverlet. ‘You are the future, aren’t you, little girl? Thank God we have you here to remind us there’s some point to this wicked world.’

Then she let Nerys help her to her room, where she submitted to having her shoes removed and her dress unbuttoned. With some difficulty, Nerys settled her in her bed among the starched pillowcases, embroidered hangings and silk quilts. There was face powder scattered on the dressing-table’s glass top, a clutter of scent jars, discarded clothes piled on a carved wooden chair.

‘Stay with me,’ Myrtle begged. ‘Talk. Tell me, I don’t know … Tell me about you and Rainer.’

Nerys thought about it. ‘I shall miss him,’ she said in the end. She loved him, she might have added, but there was no sentence or suggestion that followed on from that admission. The mountaineer-magician and the missionary’s wife? She smiled. The end of their affair had been there all along, sewn up in its beginning.

‘When does Evan get to Srinagar?’

‘He said in his letter that there were two or three days’ work he wanted to finish in Kargil, then he’ll be on his way. So in a week’s time, at most.’

‘Rainer knows that, of course?’

‘Of course.’

‘Hah. He’s making a tactical exit, then.’



‘He asked me to go with him. He asked me to marry him.’

Myrtle drew in a breath and turned her head on the pillow. ‘And?’

There is no and.

‘I reminded him that I’m already married.’

‘And you’ll do your duty,’ Myrtle agreed. ‘All right. Tell me one thing, and please be honest. Do you feel guilty about last winter?’

Nerys looked at her. Myrtle’s eyes were growing heavy with sleep.

‘No,’ she said.

‘That’s good to hear. Because nothing corrodes a marriage like guilt, my girl.’

‘Evan and I will have to find a way to live. But I won’t be doing so as an apology, or an act of atonement for having committed adultery.’

Myrtle gave a spurt of drowsy laughter. ‘I like that. I’m impressed. Caroline should take a lesson from you.’

‘Caroline will find her own solution. But d’you think that’s what we’re really about, the three of us? Doing our duty?’

‘Of course. That’s what we do. We’re wives of the Raj.’

There was another faint bubble of laughter before Myrtle drifted into sleep. Nerys waited until she was breathing steadily, a puff of a snore with each exhalation, then slid off the bed. She adjusted the covers over Myrtle’s shoulders and only hesitated for a second before kissing her damp forehead. She could smell the gin in her pores.



From Kargil, Evan had taken a guide and horses over the Zoji La as far as the Hindu shrine to Shiva at Amarnath, and from there he joined the stream of religious pilgrims returning to the city. For the last nine miles of the journey the Srinagar road was passable to vehicles, so he crowded with the other travellers into a public bus.

Nerys was waiting for him at the depot on the dusty outskirts of the city. One bus had already pulled in and discharged its passengers. There were farmers coming to market, pilgrims, labourers and several vast families running to three or four generations, but Evan hadn’t been among them. She returned to her seat on a low stone wall and watched the seething crowds. There was a din of traffic, and the thick smell of exhaust fumes and kerosene. An emaciated dog with open sores on its back nosed in rubbish scattered at the roadside. A second bus rounded the corner and stopped at the far side of the road. A throng of men burst out and began to drag their bundles from the interior. The cacophony of shouting and hooting grew even louder, and in the midst of it she caught sight of Evan. He climbed slowly down the steps of the bus and awkwardly retrieved two shabby grips from the cascade of bags being tossed off the roof by the baggage men. Then he stood stiffly in the full heat of the sun, one bag in either hand, a sombre figure in his dusty black clerical clothes.

Nerys jumped up and slipped through the crowd. She touched her hand to his sleeve and he swung round. His eyes widened as he gazed at her. ‘Nerys, you look beautiful,’ he stammered.

She was startled and pleased. Evan never commented on her appearance. ‘Do I?’

‘You do. You look like … one of the colonial ladies.’

‘Well, I’m not one. I’m Mrs Watkins of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission to Northern India, just the same as ever. Hello, Evan.’

‘Hello, my dear,’ he said. He was shy of this new version of his wife with her hair prettily arranged and her floral-print dress.

‘Welcome to Srinagar.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, her lips just catching the corner of his cheek as he turned his head.

‘It’s busy. So many people. I’m not used to crowds,’ he said.

‘I know. But it’s a beautiful city, once you get to know it.’ She took one of his bags and linked her other hand in his.

‘Where are we going?’ Evan asked.

‘First of all to the Garden of Eden,’ she answered. ‘Myrtle is there, and I want you to meet Caroline. After that we can go home. To Kanihama, I mean.’

Zahra was back with the extended families up in the village. Nerys had decided that this would be the best context in which to introduce their shared orphan baby to Evan.



They stayed in the city for two days as Myrtle’s guests. Nerys was not surprised that Evan was suspicious of Srinagar. He loomed uncomfortably among the cushions and framed photographs in the houseboat, and he refused altogether to make the shikara ride across to the Srinagar Club. The summer season’s round of parties and polo matches had started up again, although in a more muted way since most of the men were away with their Indian or British Army regiments, but Evan would have no part of it. It was only under duress that he accepted his invitation to that week’s cocktail reception on the lawn at the Residency, and took his turn to shake Mr Fanshawe’s hand. He misunderstood the protocol of the receiving line and began a lengthy account of the Presbyterian Mission in India.

‘There is good work going on in Kargil, I am pleased to say. We have a growing congregation and I have recently left the mission under the highly competent supervision of one of my fellow ministers,’ he explained. ‘We are now bringing the message into Kashmir.’

‘Jolly good,’ Mr Fanshawe said pleasantly, and one of his aides manoeuvred Evan away. In wartime, missionaries of any creed or nationality came very low down on the British government’s scale of importance.

Caroline came to tea on the houseboat, wearing a duck-egg blue crêpe de Chine blouse and her pearl necklace. She looked pale but held herself steady. In a low voice she explained to Evan that she had been unwell recently and her husband was in Malaya, a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

‘I shall pray for you both and for his safe return,’ Evan said.

‘Thank you.’ Caroline touched his hand, seeming genuinely comforted.



That night, Nerys and Evan lay side by side under the cigar-box panelling. Her husband’s presence seemed to amplify the houseboat’s creaking and the rippling of water, and because they were conscious of the way that the sound travelled they spoke in whispers.

‘Your friend Mrs Bowen is highly strung.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘I feel sorry for her,’ he said.

Nerys thought he must recognise a fellow sufferer. She could feel the tension that ran through Evan as if there were steel wires under the seams and buttons of his flannel pyjamas.

‘Mrs McMinn has been kind, all these months.’

‘Yes,’ Nerys agreed.

‘I was a little afraid that your head might be turned, you know.’

The darkness masked her smile. ‘By kindness?’

‘Of course not. By this way of life. The Garden of Eden, indeed. We can’t afford legions of servants in white jackets. We don’t drink gin, or smoke cigarettes.’

‘I am your wife, Evan. I understand what our way of life must be.’

Nerys thought of Rainer and the way that he regarded his body as a useful instrument, not an adversary either to be tortured by or to be guilty about. And then, with precise determination, she moved on from the memories of Rainer and what they had done together in order to concentrate on the knowledge she had gained from them. She curled herself against Evan’s rigid hip, and fitted her chin in the nook of his shoulder. She listened to the way their breathing snagged and then almost imperceptibly synchronised. Gently she hooked her arm over his ribs and warmth spread between their bodies.

He cleared his throat and turned on to his side, facing away from her.

Once, Nerys reflected, she would have taken this as a rejection and she would have drawn back to lie staring miserably into darkness.



Instead she nestled closer, fitting her curve against his. His spine was a string of bony knobs. Her lips touched the most prominent one at the base of his neck. ‘It’s all going to be all right,’ she whispered.

She had to believe that it would be.

They fell asleep still curled together.



Two days later they reached Kanihama.

Evan strode into the ramshackle square and surveyed the old men sitting under the shade of the chinar tree, the wandering goats and the mud-brick houses. A pack of children, led by Faisal, broke out of their game and clamoured at Nerys’s knees. Farida appeared in the shadow of a wall, with Zahra asleep in the sling on her back. She lifted her hand and let it fall as soon as Nerys saw her. Thin spirals of smoke rose against the blue sky and the air was cool after the city’s heat.

The tight set of Evan’s shoulders seemed to loosen. He looked round with less certainty, but with kindled interest. Perhaps, Nerys thought, this place brought their real home to mind in the same way as it did for her.

She led him into her house. He took in the brick walls with their rough hangings, the bedroom that was little more than a smoky alcove, her kangri in its storage niche beside the iron stove. ‘You spent the winter here?’ he asked.

‘From January, yes.’

There was a silence. Inquisitive children had gathered in the doorway and an outer circle of villagers was assembling to watch the latest spectacle.

Evan put his hand on her shoulder, then shifted it so that his fingers traced the stalk of her neck. ‘I admire you.’

‘It wasn’t so bad. It gets quite warm when the stove is lit.’

‘I shouldn’t have said what I did, about your head being turned. I’m sorry.’

‘There’s no need to be.’ She smiled.

Faisal slid into the room. ‘Hello, sir.’ Pointing with a sharp, filthy forefinger he recited, ‘Head, arm, knee, foot.’



‘Very good, well done.’ Evan nodded. ‘Who is this boy?’

‘Faisal. He’s very clever. He was my first pupil.’

‘And how many do you have now?’

‘A dozen. It’s a barter system. They learn a few words of English, and I am occasionally paid in eggs, some onions and carrots.’ She laughed. ‘It works rather well.’

‘What about their families?’

‘They are weavers, dyers, embroiderers. It’s a Muslim village. They don’t have a mosque here, but there is a prayer room. The women work very hard, growing the vegetables, tending the animals, raising the children. Most of the men are in the shawl trade. The pieces they make are exquisite but they have become too expensive to sell and make a profit.’

Evan went outside, ducking his head just in time to avoid the low door lintel. Farida detached herself from the wall and stepped backwards.

‘This is Farida, and the baby is Zahra,’ Nerys murmured, with her heart knocking.

He glanced at them and nodded. ‘I can begin our work here,’ he said. ‘I will start with the villagers, then visit the outlying settlements. I noticed on the way up that the area is fairly heavily populated, given the altitude.’

She smiled. ‘There’s plenty of water, fertile soil, sunshine for four months of the summer. The Kashmiris believe their valley is a small paradise.’

Evan frowned. ‘Do they?’

It was hot under the midday sun. He removed his black clerical coat and turned back frayed shirt cuffs to expose his thin wrists, as if to indicate that he was ready to start work at that very moment. At the head of a small group of village men, Nerys saw Zafir making his way towards them. He bowed to her, his dark crescent face unsmiling.

‘Your husband, ma’am?’

Nerys made the simple introductions, praying that at least Evan would not launch into being the Christian preacher. To her relief, he quietly accepted the men’s scrutiny and finally Zafir gave him a nod that indicated a qualified welcome. That was a good beginning, she thought. The only way for Westerners to be accepted in Kanihama was to accept its ways, and she guessed that Evan must have come to a similar – perhaps belated – conclusion in Kargil.

They made their way back to the house. The kettle boiled and Nerys brewed tea Kashmir-style, laced with spices. It was strange to see Evan seated opposite with his clerical collar off and the top shirt stud undone, his watch chain glinting across the concave front of his waistcoat. She smiled at him, and his watchful face broke into a faint answering smile.

‘I think I shall buy a bicycle,’ he announced. ‘It will be useful to get about on.’

Later she took her pupils across to her makeshift schoolroom. He looked in on a singing game, and said that perhaps he would use the room for Bible readings and a discussion group.

‘Was that how you began in Kargil?’

‘It was. Not many came. I think our prayer meetings and services at Leh were well attended only because of the excellent thukpa dinners you and Diskit served afterwards.’

‘Poor Diskit.’ Nerys laughed to cover the pressure of her sympathy for Evan, for the patient, unshakeable depths of his belief and his willingness to go on working against all the odds of India. ‘I’ll see what I can do here, without her invaluable assistance.’

‘Thank you, my dear. I owe you perhaps more than I had realised.’

The little group of children looked from one to the other.

‘Shall we sing our song for Mr Watkins?’ she suggested. With the accompaniment of their rattles and drums and carved pipes, they joined in a chorus. Evan listened to the end, then said he really must go and write his report for Shillong.

If it had been strange to see him sitting opposite her in this little house, it was stranger still to have him lying beside her that night. When she blew out the candle the darkness seemed so solid that it weighed on the bedclothes. She was thankful that Rainer had never once slept in this bed with her.

It will get easier not to think about him, she told herself. Time will pass.

‘You seem very fond of that baby,’ Evan remarked. Nerys lay with her head on his shoulder, her arm lightly curved over his chest. She thought a little of the tension had melted out of his limbs.

‘Zahra? Yes, I am. And of Faisal too, and his sister and brother.’

She had told Evan nothing of Zahra’s history, except that her mother had left her in the village because to own her would be to bring dishonour to her family. Evan had seen too many orphans in India to be inconveniently curious about this one.

He said firmly, ‘I hope we will have a child of our own before too long.’

He turned on his side, but this time it was to face her. ‘I’m sorry. I have been a poor husband to you. I thought about it a good deal when I was alone in Kargil. I intend to do better in future.’

When his mouth met hers, she tasted his sincerity. Evan was utterly incapable of dissembling.

Unlike me, unlike me.

‘I haven’t been the best wife, either.’

Evan gave this his consideration. ‘Shall we agree to leave our unsatisfactory beginning behind us?’

In that lies the only hope for our future.

‘Yes, I would like that very much.’

His hand moved. She let her knees fall apart and then her thighs, and he tentatively explored her. Now, at least, she understood what the explorer might discover. Slowly, by tiny stages, she led him into new territory.

There was no need for him to ask, My dear?



They fell into a routine at Kanihama. Evan did acquire a bicycle, and his dark, spindly figure urgently pedalling up the steep tracks was at first a comic spectacle for the villagers and just as quickly became a familiar sight that people hardly noticed. He started his Bible classes, attended by none of the men, except some inquisitive youths and the village simpleton, who tried to add his voice to Evan’s. Not one of the women came, of course. Then Nerys began to offer a simple dinner of rice and vegetable stew and a few of the poorest people ventured in. Evan said he would relay this promising news to Shillong and Delhi.

Nerys taught her little children, and in the afternoons she played with Faisal and the others or took Zahra for a walk along the winding tracks above the village where the resin scent of pine trees filled the air. In the evenings they ate their simple dinner, and read together by the light of a kerosene lantern. The war news from Europe, North Africa and Burma filtered up to them in days-old newspapers, in letters from home, and bulletins from Myrtle and Caroline in Srinagar.



It was the end of June when Nerys received a letter from Myrtle.

She slit open the envelope and a half-sheet of paper fell out. The few lines had been scribbled so quickly that they were hardly legible.

Archie has been seriously wounded. He’s been brought back on a troop ship and is in a military hospital in Chittagong. I’m leaving at once. Don’t know how I’ll get across there, but I’ll do it somehow. D. Fanshawe is helping. Look after Caroline a little, if you can.

Ask Evan to pray for A.

Always your friend, M

With numb fingers Nerys refolded the note. In her basket, Zahra kicked her bare feet at a bar of sunlight.



Mair was in her bedroom on Solomon and Sheba, packing to go home. She was rolling up the last T-shirts and stuffing them into the crevices of her rucksack when Farooq knocked on the door. He had already been twice on different pretexts, his hennaed beard twitching with curiosity, so she sighed and told him to come in.

‘Very much luggage,’ he said, peering into her open bags.

‘Really? I call this travelling light.’

‘Visitor to see you. It is one young man.’

She made her way down the creaking passageway, nodding to the male half of the Australian pair of aid workers who had recently arrived, and stepped along the gangplank to the lake shore. Mehraan was sitting astride a mosquito-sized motorbike, cradling his helmet in his lap.

‘Mehraan, is this machine yours?’

‘I have just bought it. It is useful.’

‘It must be. I’m glad to see you. I’m leaving Srinagar tomorrow and I thought I’d come to the workshop later to say goodbye.’

‘So I save you the trouble.’ He smiled. ‘Also I have done some small pieces of work for your friend, the English lady who has hurt her leg.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Srinagar is not all bombing and throwing stones, you see. The lady’s house is old, and some parts will fall down if we do not help to prop it. Yesterday I am there and her nurse gives me this package for you.’

‘What is it?’ Mair asked.

‘I do not know,’ he said.

Inside a folded piece of sacking tied with string was an ancient cardboard box with collapsing walls. Mair lifted one of the flaps and saw a bundle of old letters. There was a note attached, written in an almost indecipherable looped handwriting on lined paper.

My eyesight is now too poor to reread your grandmother’s letters. Perhaps you would like to see them. Please do not trouble to return them.

Sincerely yours,

Caroline C. Bowen



‘Oh,’ Mair said aloud.

‘Something is wrong?’

‘No, nothing at all.’ She was astonished that Caroline had remembered their conversation and then actually hunted out the cache of letters. She was trying to decide now whether she should go across town now to thank her in person for this treasure, but quickly concluded that it would be better not. She didn’t think Mrs Bowen was being confined by Aruna, but her carer obviously preferred her not to be upset. The way she had been hustled out at the end of her last visit made her reluctant to risk causing another disturbance.

‘Can you wait here for five minutes, Mehraan?’

She raced back to her room and found a large picture postcard of the Shalimar Garden. On the back she wrote a message of thanks for the loan of the letters, and promised that she would make sure they were returned safely even if she couldn’t deliver them in person. ‘I hope, though, to hand them back to you myself,’ she promised, and signed her name.

Then she put the card into a big envelope, addressed it and gave it to Mehraan. ‘Next time you visit her, will you give her this from me?’

Aruna would read it to Caroline, at worst.

‘I will,’ he said. He put on the enormous helmet and pressed the bike’s starter button.

Mair would have liked to give him a hug, or at least shake his hand, but she limited herself to a warm smile and a nod. ‘I hope we’ll see each other again, Mehraan, next time I come to Srinagar.’

‘Inshallah.’ He kicked off the stand and zoomed away towards the Bund.



Early the next morning, Farooq waved her off in a taxi to the airport.

‘Soon safe back with family in England,’ he said gleefully, palming her generous tip and slipping it into the pocket of his shirt.



When the Delhi flight took off at last, Mair peered out of the window to watch as the lovely valley dropped out of sight and the brown plains opened beyond. Now that she was actually on her way, she was profoundly sad to be leaving Kashmir and all of India behind. She reminded herself that she was going home, and at the other end of her journey, Hattie would be waiting at the airport to meet her. Her spirits immediately lifted.

She would come back to Srinagar. She had already half promised Caroline Bowen that she would.

On her lap, still in its brittle envelope, lay the single letter that she had taken out of the box to read on the flight.