The Kashmir Shawl

FOURTEEN


August 1944

‘Do you know for certain?’ Myrtle asked. A plume of cigarette smoke drifted over her head, offering her a small degree of protection from the flies that troubled Nerys and Caroline. There was a dung-heap on the other side of the garden wall. The afternoon was stiflingly hot, and a thick haze blotted out the sky.

Caroline’s eyes were so wide that the whites were visible all the way round the blue irises. Her fingers knotted in her lap as she twisted her wedding and engagement rings. ‘Oh, yes, I think so. I mean, it’s not official yet. Mrs Dunkeley says that as soon as there is definite confirmation of names and ranks, Division HQ will formally notify wives and families. But I think it must be true.’

Nerys leant back on a wobbly bench seat, her ankle brushing a bed of coriander that loaded the air with its scent. She had been watching Caroline with deepening concern.

Archie took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Good show. Brave fellows,’ he said. His wheelchair was drawn up in its usual spot under the shade of an almond tree.



The bungalow in the outer sprawl of Srinagar’s new town had a small fenced garden. With the help of a bent old man, who laboured in the sun with a battered straw hat perched on top of his red skullcap, Myrtle had been growing squash and spinach and a bed of fist-sized kohlrabi. ‘Look at this one, I’d win first prize with it in any village show in England,’ she had claimed, as she brandished the dirt-coated object. ‘The question is, why would anyone want to eat such a thing?’

The McMinns had retreated to Delhi for the previous winter, leaving the Garden of Eden locked and empty because Myrtle had been unable to find anyone who wanted to buy it. But just as the heat of the summer had begun to build yet again, an American civilian couple had taken it for the season, with a vague promise that they might consider a purchase if all went well. Bob Flanner was in import-export, Myrtle reported, and seemed to have plenty of dollars to throw around. Mrs Flanner had employed Majid and the rest of the staff, which Myrtle said was a great relief because even paying them a much-reduced retainer wage was more than she and Archie could afford. As a short-term solution, the McMinns had made the difficult journey back up from Delhi and had had their furniture moved into the little rented place. It was a long way from the lake and there was no view of water or mountains, or of anything much, except a brick wall and the tops of trees in the nearby gardens, but Archie had insisted that it was ideal. ‘So quiet. Our neighbours are all charming people. And I love to sit in a garden in the cool breeze.’

‘After this summer, I just don’t know,’ Myrtle confided to Nerys.

There was nothing Nerys could suggest, no prediction she might make that would carry any more weight than a hundred others, let alone offer Myrtle grounds for optimism. Uncertainty was still the daily reality, not just for themselves but for the war and what the end of it might bring.



At the end of March the Japanese had marched from occupied Burma into India via the remote Naga hills. Their commanding general’s intention was to cut the road between Imphal, the capital of the Indian state of Manipur, which lay just seventy miles from the Burmese border, and the sleepy garrison town of Kohima. They failed to take Imphal but Kohima was besieged. The fighting in and around the town continued into April as a scratch force of mixed British and Indian regiments struggled to defend it.

The Allied forces grimly battled on as casualties mounted. Reinforcements slowly trickled up the road from the Allied supply base at Dimapur and the siege was finally lifted. On 22 June, twenty miles outside Imphal, British troops from Kohima met men from the 5th Indian Division who were moving up to meet them. The Japanese advance into India was halted. Their troops were increasingly short of ammunition, air cover and food supplies, and the Allied forces began slowly to clear them from the hills, driving them back the way they had come into Burma.

Through all this time only Evan and Ianto Jones had carried on as normal. Against all the odds, a big shipment of Bibles had arrived from Wales, and the two men cycled every day to hand them out to their tiny congregation and whoever else seemed inclined to accept the Word. But to Nerys it seemed that they had all been holding their breath for weeks and were now able to let out a gasp of relief. One evening she came back unexpectedly to the little whitewashed room that served for a chapel at the mission to find Evan on his knees in prayer. She whispered an apology for disturbing him and prepared to tiptoe away but Evan caught her hand. ‘Stay here with me, Nerys.’

She fumbled into a kneeling position beside him.

‘I am praying for our men in battle, of course, in Burma and wherever they are,’ he said, ‘but I am praying also for you and me and our future family, my dear. If the Almighty will just be good enough not to take that as a selfish supplication.’

Her heart squeezed with sympathy for him. Evan longed for a child as much as she did. He regularly reached out for her under the cover of darkness, embracing her without saying a word – as if to speak would be to open floodgates of embarrassment – but in spite of his inarticulacy she thought they understood each other a little better nowadays. She tried to reassure him. ‘I’m sure He won’t.’

In the silence that followed she even tried out a halting, unpractised version of a prayer herself. It was a very long time since she had tried to pray. Children’s voices rose from the enclosed yard under the windows where her mission pupils played and chased each other. She humbly prayed that Evan might relent and consent to their adopting Zahra. Once she had done that she ventured to say, ‘We could still have a family. There’s more than one way …’

There wasn’t even a beat of hesitation. ‘I don’t believe I could do it,’ he said. ‘Not take on someone else’s child and raise it as our own.’ There was a note of pure desolation in his voice.

Nerys knelt for a moment longer, then stiffly got to her feet. She patted Evan on the shoulder and he bent his head without speaking. His hair was now almost entirely grey.

Down in the schoolroom yard Zahra, aged two years and three months, came running to greet Nerys. Not one of the children there was plump but Zahra still had soft dimples in her pale-brown knees and elbows. She had two rows of perfect white teeth and her brown-gilt hair had grown long. ‘Ness, Ness,’ she called in delight.

By the end of July the 15,000 Japanese soldiers who had marched into India were struggling back towards Rangoon. Half of them were to die along the way, starved and exhausted and crippled by dysentery.

Then at the beginning of August, extraordinary news had filtered through to Srinagar.

A detachment of British prisoners of war had been found in the remote hills inside Burma. Following the fall of Singapore the men had originally been held at Changi prison, but then they had been moved northwards to labour on the roads that were being hastily constructed in the attempt to supply infantry advances over the border into India. These men, fortunate not to have been butchered by their retreating Japanese captors, had been discovered by an advancing unit of the Indian Infantry. When the soldiers stumbled upon them they were hiding in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of a hill village, uncertain of the progress of the Allied advance and starved almost to death. Captain Ralph Bowen was one of those men.



This was the news that Caroline brought to Myrtle and Archie’s bungalow on that hot afternoon.

‘Do you know for certain?’ Myrtle repeated.

‘No, but if it’s true, if it really is him, he might be here in a few weeks’ time. I’ll be able to look after him, won’t I? I’ll be a wife again, like you are to Archie.’

Archie rarely spoke of his own war experience, and he didn’t look directly at any of them now. But he said, from under the shade of the tree, ‘It won’t be easy for him, you know, getting back to Srinagar. His old life will seem to belong to another chap entirely. None of us can conceive of what he’s likely to have seen and suffered.’

He looked away at the fence and the treetops, then recovered himself. ‘He’s damned lucky, though. We’re all lucky. We’re going to win this war, quite soon now, and then there will be a life again. A new world.’

He pounded his clenched fist into the palm of the other hand and his hollow face brightened in anticipation. Nerys marvelled at Archie’s spirit in genuinely counting himself as fortunate, and in looking forward to a new world in which the British India the McMinns had known all their lives would almost certainly no longer exist.

‘Yes.’ Caroline nodded. Her hands were shaking.

It was Myrtle who voiced the question, but each of the women had it in their minds. ‘And what about Zahra?’

Caroline seemed to quiver with fear.

Since Archie and Myrtle’s return the question had been in abeyance, because the odd circumstances had developed their own rhythm and there had seemed no reason to intervene. Between them, they had become an extended family to the little girl. Caroline played with her or took her for walks, always with Farida to accompany them, yet for all the originally promising signs it seemed that she had never properly learnt to love her daughter. Her face was shadowed when she looked at her, her arms always stiff when she held her. It was the McMinns and Nerys who freely deluged Zahra with affection and pointed out her latest achievements to each other with open pride. Archie adored watching her running and playing, and he could spend hours chatting to her and telling her stories. But Myrtle had finally admitted to Nerys that she doubted she could care for another dependant as well as her crippled husband.

‘I’m afraid that I don’t do even that properly,’ she said. ‘How could I be a mother as well, when everything in my world is already dedicated to Archie?’

‘I know, I understand. Maybe Evan and I, in the end …’ There’s always hope, Nerys believed.

Nerys insisted that the two girls spent a good proportion of their time up in Kanihama, with the weavers’ families. It was important not to cut them off from their background and likely future, she believed. But it was easy for them to come often to Srinagar, especially during the golden Kashmir summer.

‘Caroline’s afraid to love her,’ Myrtle had said once, when she and Nerys were alone.

‘She had a breakdown after the birth. That’s what happened,’ Nerys had answered. ‘Zahra’s bound up with that, and it’s the illness coming back that Caroline’s afraid of.’

A sudden breath of wind tinkled the clay bells of a cheap temple ornament that Myrtle had hung from the veranda beam. The gardener appeared between his vegetable beds, his straw hat nodding in time with his movements as he lifted and lowered his watering-can.

Archie gestured towards the house with his pipe stem. ‘Shall I trundle inside and let you girls talk together?’

Caroline shook her head. ‘No, please. You know all about everything. Just tell me what I must do. I can’t let Ralph know about what I did with … what I did, especially now when he has been through so much and is coming home to be taken care of. I can’t, can I?’ Panic made her voice rise.

‘So, don’t say or do anything,’ Myrtle concluded.

Nerys tried to be reassuring. ‘We can all go on taking care of Zahra, just like we do now, always have done, as discreetly as need be. Kanihama’s far enough away, and in the city we’ve got the umbrella of the mission. She’s an orphan, one child among many others. No one has asked any questions about her, have they?’

Caroline numbly shook her head. It was a year and more since the afternoon in the Shalimar Garden.

‘It’s not going to be so difficult,’ Nerys said. She was making calculations. Zahra and Farida must spend more time secluded at Kanihama, but that would happen naturally as autumn and winter came round again. Maybe she could move back to the village herself. How might she explain that to Evan?

‘You’re right, I shouldn’t do anything. I want to see Ralph come back safely, I want to see if … if we can, you know, make a life together, somehow. Why not?’ Caroline faltered.

If only you could, Nerys thought. She tried to look on the positive side. Maybe Ralph would have softened in the three years that he had been away. Maybe having an exhausted and starved survivor to care for might give Caroline the backbone of confidence she needed. Maybe a solution to the Zahra problem would eventually present itself. Maybe Evan would indeed change his mind. ‘There’s no reason why not,’ she said.

Caroline bit the corner of her lip. ‘I need to find a way … to provide for her, don’t I? With money, I mean. To make sure that even if she hasn’t got a mother … that is, a proper mother who can … So that some day she’ll at least have a dowry. She’d be able to marry then and have her own daughter.’ Caroline’s face crumpled and she began to cry.

Archie scratched the side of his jaw with the stem of his cold pipe, still enough of a British officer to feel uncomfortable at the sight of a woman’s tears. Caroline somehow collected herself. With a watery smile through her distress, she muttered, ‘Sorry. I’m stupid. Zahra’s better off than Farida and the others, for a start, isn’t she? There’s always the hope of a windfall. Or, I know, a legacy. My godmother, maybe.’

‘Exactly,’ Myrtle agreed.

Money was now a problem for all of them. Nerys had almost used up her inheritance from her grandparents, the mission outreach and school funds were minutely accounted for, and the McMinns were no longer comfortably off.

‘The Lord will provide,’ Nerys said. That was what Evan believed, and Ianto.

‘In the meantime I’m going to make some tea.’ Myrtle went off into the house, clapping her hands and calling out for the heavy-footed girl who helped in the kitchen. Myrtle and Nerys often laughed nowadays about her similarities to Diskit, all the way back in Leh.

The samovar and the tray of heavy Benares brass were familiar from the Garden of Eden, as were the delicate china cups and saucers with their pattern of pale blue harebells.

‘Thank you, darling girl,’ Archie said, and patted her hand when she passed him his cup. ‘I love tea-time.’

‘Could that possibly be because of its proximity to chota hour?’

There were no more cocktails, but Archie’s bottle of whisky made its regular evening appearance.

‘No, I don’t believe so. Tea has its own limpid charm.’

The McMinns still teased and joked, and Nerys was the only one who knew how hard for Myrtle the work of nursing him was, and how deeply she missed the vigorous man she had married. She looked at both of them now with the greatest affection.

After tea, Caroline said that she must make her way home to the married-quarters bungalow in case there was any more news. Nerys said that she would walk with her as far as the tonga stand. They left Myrtle at Archie’s side, her arms resting on his shoulders. The sinking sun cast a long, conjoined shadow on the ground, as if they were one person.



Caroline and Nerys went out of the back gate into the lane. The sky had cleared and a black cloud of flies rose from the neighbour’s dung-heap, and a beggar who had been squatting beside the fence gathered up his ragged dhoti and ran away ahead of them on legs as thin as a stork’s.

‘Will you be all right?’ Nerys asked. A bony old nag raised its head and the driver scrambled out of the back seat of the tonga where he had been dozing.

‘Of course I will. I should be happy. My husband’s coming home to me. Plenty of other women’s aren’t.’

Nerys stood back and the old carriage creaked away.

It was uncomfortable to remember their half-hope that Ralph Bowen might not return, as if more problems might be solved than posed by a man’s death.

Poor Ralph, she thought. As much poor him as poor Caroline: at least as much.

She began the walk back to the mission. It was a long way but she loved slipping through the streets and along the reedy paths that lined the waterways. The Srinagar smells of dung and fragrant cooking and smoke clung around her; shouts, a snatch of music and the clang of metal-beating gave way to the hooting of traffic as she ducked across a busy road and plunged into a maze of tiny streets that had become almost as familiar as the lanes in Wales. Close to home, she came from under a bridge and saw long lines of cloth hung to dry outside a dye works. Reflected strips of crimson and pink and saffron and violet wavered between green temple domes in the silver river water. The city was beautiful and impervious, and its conflicts made her small concerns seem even smaller. By the time she reached home she was calm, and as ready as Evan himself to accept whatever befell them all.



Caroline paid off the tonga man and unlatched the garden gate. It creaked and stuck on its hinges as it always did and she gave up the attempt to open it, squeezing through the narrow gap instead, as she usually ended up doing. Julia Dunkeley was gardening next door – Caroline could hear the snap of secateurs as the woman tended her struggling roses. Caroline ducked her head and hurried up the path, past a bed of thirsty marigolds, hoping that for once her neighbour wouldn’t poke her head over the fence.

It was hot inside the little box of a house. The new house-boy had forgotten to close the blinds before he left and the sun had been pouring in all afternoon. The early-evening light was still bright enough to show up the dust coating the bureau and dimming the glass of the framed wedding photograph. Caroline went quickly through to the bedroom. She undid the buttons of her sundress and let it drop at her feet. She stretched her neck in an attempt to ease the thumping pain in her head, then twisted her hair and pinned it up off the nape where the skin was damp and sweaty.

The bed was smooth and flat under a striped cotton cover. The bolster was in place, two pillows placed side by side on top of it, just as always. Caroline closed her eyes. In a few weeks, perhaps as little as two or three, Ralph’s head would rest on the left-hand pillow. One of his military-history books from the little row in the sitting-room bookcase would be waiting for him on the bamboo night-table.

She was shaking from head to foot. A trickle of sweat ran between her bare shoulder-blades.

She turned away from the bed and ran out of the room.

In her underwear, she sat down at the bureau and lowered the lid. From a musty drawer she took a sheet of writing paper and rummaged in one of the wooden niches for a bottle of Quink ink and a fountain pen. Dear Ravi, she wrote.

She stopped and bit the end of the pen, then rushed on.

I’m sorry it has taken such a very long time to reply to your note. Maybe everything has changed for you since you wrote it. If so, please disregard this. Otherwise I should like to come and see you, as you suggested.

Sincerely, Caroline



She didn’t need to unfold the letter that he had written to her over a year ago because she knew it by heart, but she did take the thick sheet of heavy cream paper from its hiding place. Thoughtfully, she ran the tip of her index finger over the embossing. Ravi’s handwriting was black, fluent, with strong downstrokes.

He had written to ask her to come and visit him in private, saying that he missed her, and also that he believed they had certain matters to discuss. The last line of the brief note seemed to have been written with more speed, less calculation:

Please come, dearest girl. Ever yours, Ravi

What matters, precisely, did he want to discuss?

Sometimes, during the long months that had elapsed, Caroline had let herself believe that he did love her, and that the only obstacle keeping the two of them apart was her own determination. Most of the time, though, she had been able to hold the conviction that Ravi Singh was only interested in his own pleasures, and that he was a man to be feared.

The threat in this letter was so gossamer that it was hardly identifiable. But now that Ralph was coming back she had to find out what Ravi really intended, or else live in perpetual uncertainty.

There was another reason for wanting to see him. It was for Zahra’s sake. Somehow, if she could only find a way to do it, she intended to exploit the fact that Ravi Singh was so carelessly, thoughtlessly rich.

Caroline found an envelope for her note, sealed and addressed it. Then she went into the bedroom for the box of matches that stood beside the candlestick on her night-table. She struck a match and put the flame to one corner of Ravi’s letter. She held the curling paper until her fingers burnt, then dropped the last cream fragment into the tin wastepaper bin.

Sweat had dried on her skin and she felt cold.





Sitar music was playing as Caroline followed the soft-footed servant across a paved inner courtyard. At the centre of the enclosed space was a pool lined with turquoise and gold tiles, where plump fish caught the shafts of sunlight. A trickle of water struck a cool note in the heat of the afternoon.

Ravi was reclining in a low chair in a vaulted room off the courtyard. The musician was seated cross-legged on some cushions in the corner, head bowed over his instrument. Ravi stood up as soon as the servant showed her in. ‘How beautiful you are looking.’ He kissed the back of her hand.

Caroline ran the palm of the other one over the full skirt of her summer dress. Ravi had grown plumper, she thought, with a soft pad of flesh under his jawline that lent a touch of corruption to his boyish profile.

Ravi nodded to the sitar player and gave a curt order to the servant. Both of them withdrew and Caroline looked around her with intentional coolness. She had often been alone with Ravi in other rooms of his house, but this one was new to her. There was a carved desk with a high-backed chair, almost throne-like in its grandeur. The green leather desk was piled with papers, locked boxes, soft felt pouches, printed documents. Opposite it was a recess where a divan stood, heaped with silk and embroidered cushions. Otherwise there was only the chair and a low table with a neat pile of leather-bound books. The windows were tall, narrow slits that barred the Kashmir rugs with shafts of gold. It seemed that Ravi wasn’t so much the lazy playboy any longer. This was the room of a busy man who was doing important business – or who wanted to give the impression that he was.

Caroline was disconcerted by the atmosphere of austere opulence. Already Ravi was getting the upper hand. She turned away from him for a second, pretending to look through one of the window slits to a view of the garden.

‘Where shall I sit?’ she asked, over her shoulder.

‘Come.’

He put his arm round her waist and guided her to the divan. It was big enough to allow two clear feet of space between them as they sat back among the cushions. Caroline drew her feet up beneath her and studied Ravi’s face. The extra flesh made him look older, but he was still extraordinarily handsome. She suppressed an inconvenient wish that he would kiss her, and more.

‘What would you like? Some tea? A cocktail? Iced lemonade?’

‘Perhaps some lemonade, thank you.’

He clapped his hands and the servant reappeared. They were always there, invisible but within earshot, she remembered that. Seconds later a tray was brought with frosted glasses, a jug in a holder of silver filigree, a dish of sliced lemons and limes, starched white napkins and a basin of water with floating rose petals. Ravi dipped his fingers and dried them, Caroline followed suit. The lemonade was poured.

‘Leave us now,’ he said, and the servant bowed himself out. Ravi unhooked a silk hanging and let it fall over the doorway. They were alone, as far as they ever would be.

‘Do you know, it is more than a year since we have seen each other?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘In the Shalimar Garden. You were with Mrs McMinn and the missionary’s wife. And the orphan children, of course.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Your memory is good.’

The lemonade was icily refreshing. Ravi’s dark eyes didn’t flicker. He knows, Caroline thought. Of course he knows. She smiled at him.

‘The missionaries do very good work,’ she said.

Ravi circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, drew her hand closer. He studied the fine network of blue veins under the skin before touching the hot pulse that beat there. ‘You are nervous.’

‘No.’

He smiled, mocking her with raised eyebrows. ‘What have you been doing for a whole year, little Caroline?’

‘I don’t know that an account of my time would interest you. I live a quiet life. There is a war on, and my husband has been a prisoner of the Japanese all this time. But I have recently heard that he has been found alive in Burma, and will be returning to Srinagar as soon as he is fit enough.’

‘I’m happy to hear that. Are you happy, Caroline?’

‘Thank you for asking. Yes, I am.’

He’s playing with me, she thought. Like a cat with a mouse.

Ravi nodded. He said, ‘I have some news too. I am to be married next month.’

She paused. ‘How wonderful. Congratulations. Do I know her?’ Her mind was working at the possible significance. It would be safer for her, surely, if Ravi was a married man with a reputation to protect and his own intimate concerns to distract him.

‘I don’t think so. She is from Jammu. It is a very satisfactory match for both families, but the details have taken some time to finalise.’

He gestured at the documents on his desk. Caroline understood that this would not just be a marriage between two individuals. How absurd that she had ever even dreamt of any different outcome.

‘Perhaps you can help me. I have a serious decision to make,’ he said. He crossed to the desk and picked up the pouches, then dropped them on the divan in front of Caroline. They were fastened with threads of woven silk. She untied one and tipped the contents into her lap, swallowing a gasp. They were rubies, cut and uncut, magnificent and blood-dark.

‘A bridal gift, a necklace. What do you think? Or these sapphires, perhaps?’

Another cascade of stones, lake-blue to deepest ultramarine, spilt into her cupped hand. Ravi picked out one the size of a thumbnail, angled it towards a shaft of sunlight, then tossed it back into the heap. Some of the stones slipped between Caroline’s fingers and he scooped them up as casually as if they were pebbles.

‘Azmeena has pale skin. I think the sapphires will flatter her. Would you agree?’



‘I don’t know your fiancée, Ravi. I can’t possibly advise you as to what jewellery you should choose for her.’

He smiled again, took the stones back to his desk and dropped them in a little heap on the blotter. He tossed the empty pouches after them and sat down again, much closer now. ‘Her skin isn’t as pale as yours. Yours is the whitest I have ever seen. Here.’ He leant closer still and touched her breast. ‘And here.’ His fingers brushed the folds of her skirt where they draped over her inner thigh.

Caroline felt the blood swirl inside her head, leaving her lips as dry as sandpaper. She opened her mouth with difficulty. ‘Please. Don’t do that.’

He raised an eyebrow, as if to ask, Why have you come here, if not for this? He put his head on one side, frankly examining her. ‘Circumstances are changing for us both,’ he said.

‘That’s true.’

‘We have known each other well, darling Caroline …’ Now he lifted a strand of her hair and twisted it round his finger, stopping only just short of pulling it. He was close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek.

‘… and we must be particularly careful of our shared history. In order to protect each other as well as ourselves, don’t you agree?’

The words themselves were neutral but there was something so delicately insinuating in his tone, so implicitly threatening, that she shifted herself away from him.

‘I will never breathe a syllable about the way you seduced me, Ravi, if that’s what you fear. I’m not a tart, or a troublemaker, or even a chatterbox. You took advantage of me when I was much more innocent than I am now, but you can trust me to be discreet about it.’

Caroline’s mouth was so dry that the inner folds stuck to her teeth. She worked her lips and tongue to make the saliva flow and he stared at her, his features crimping with faint distaste. ‘Seduction? Is that how you remember it? My recollection is that you needed very little persuasion.’



Her head dully pounded as some of the scenes flashed past her, vivid as on a cinema screen. Rose petals, riding out on horseback in the flushed dawn, grass and perfume, Ravi’s lips and hands. She didn’t answer.

‘I suppose,’ Ravi said, ‘we should also note that at the time you were married to a serving British officer, and I was a mere bachelor, promised to no one at all.’

She lifted her chin. ‘I have already said that you have nothing to fear about my discretion, and you are right that I have more to lose than you do. That’s how it usually is, isn’t it, between men and women in these matters?’

‘Men of one sort and women of another, yes.’

She wouldn’t rise to that. She concentrated on swallowing, her throat working hard. He looked down his fine nose at her, as if he thought she might be slightly mad. In the silence she could just hear the pleasant trickling of water in the courtyard outside.

‘Is there anything else you would like to mention, dearest girl, while we are having this affectionate talk?’

She didn’t hesitate even for a second. ‘No. Nothing whatsoever.’

He waited, and she let him wait. The seconds ticked by. In the end he sighed and gently stroked her forearm.

‘So we have made a pact, Caroline, haven’t we? Trust in exchange for trust.’

‘If you like.’

‘I do like,’ he breathed. ‘But if I find that my trust has been betrayed …’

‘It will not be. Tell me, Ravi, are you making a similar pact with every one of your mistresses? It must be very time-consuming for you, if you are.’

He threw his head back and laughed, apparently delighted with this. ‘No, my dear, I’m not going to so much trouble. But you and I, we have something very particular between us, don’t we?’

He knows, she thought again. He knows everything. ‘I am flattered that you think so.’



He studied her again, still openly amused. ‘Very well. We’ll leave it there. And now that we have made our pact, don’t you think we should seal it?’

His hand suddenly tightened on her arm. He pressed her back against the cushions and shifted his weight so he rolled on top of her. He was heavy nowadays, and very strong. His smiling mouth came down on hers, and as Caroline wrenched her head to one side, her lip smashed against his teeth. Only an hour ago she had dreamt a girlish version of this. Was she mad, perhaps, or just stupid? She writhed beneath him, broke from under his shoulder and bit as hard as she could into the starched cotton of his kurta sleeve.

‘Little bitch,’ Ravi snarled, but her resistance only excited him. He tried to cover her mouth with his hand but she managed to fight free. She remembered the flocks of silent servants, out of sight but never out of earshot. ‘Help. Help me,’ she screamed.

Ravi dropped her arm. He muttered under his breath and stood up, straightening his clothes. He walked to the nearest window slit and stood with his back to her, regaining control of himself. Caroline jumped off the divan and backed away as far as she could, coming hard up against the desk. He was between her and the door – otherwise she would have run for it. As the carved desk edge dug into her buttocks, the jewels flashed into her mind. Quicker than she could even think of it, one hand shot out, snatched a gem from the little heap and whisked back again. Praying that it wasn’t the biggest of the lot, she slid it into the seam pocket of her skirt. The tailor and dressmaker, introduced to her by Myrtle, had insisted on placing it there. ‘Memsahib always need pocket. Handkerchief, letter, some little thing.’

When Ravi slowly turned back from the window, she was a yard away from the desk and staring at the door.

‘You are like a lioness,’ he said, almost tenderly. ‘And your lip is bleeding. Let me …’

His handkerchief was starched and scented. He dipped one corner in the bowl of water, cupped her chin and gently dabbed her lip. Caroline closed her eyes, submitting to his care. She was breathless, her heart jumping.

‘There. That’s much better,’ he said.

‘I want to go home.’

‘Of course you shall go home. Are you ready?’

He opened the door. Across the courtyard, Caroline just glimpsed the movement as one of the servants stepped out of sight. She would never know if anyone would have responded to another scream.

Extravagantly, she had ordered her tonga man to wait for her. She hadn’t wanted to run the risk of finding herself stranded out here, on the rural far side of the lake, and she was thoroughly glad of the decision.

‘But I would have sent you home in the car,’ Ravi protested.

‘There is no need.’

He folded down the rickety step himself, before the grovelling driver could reach it, and handed Caroline up into the seat.

‘Goodbye,’ she said.

Ravi told the driver to take her home, and handed him a note that made the man’s eyes revolve. ‘I hope not altogether goodbye.’ He smiled. ‘Please give my regards, won’t you, to your friends Mrs McMinn and the missionary’s little wife?’

The tonga man whipped up his horse and Caroline sank back under the hood. Her hand was buried in her pocket. She sat shaking until Ravi’s house was a mile behind them, then leant forward and ordered the driver to take her to a different address.

The dealer was in the old town, a street or two from the dressmaker’s shop, which was why she had noticed it in the first place. She stepped down at the junction of two roads and waited there until the tonga had jingled away, then hurried past a row of old brick houses. The stone slid between her sweaty fingers and the realisation of what she was doing made her head pound with fear. When she reached the doorway she was panting and her heartbeat drummed in her ears. The window was dusty and a ginger dog lay stretched over the hollow wooden step. The small sign read Dealer in Gemstones.

The trader sat inside, reading a newspaper. He folded it away and slowly stood up. On his counter was a polished brass till, a glass case containing some shoddily ornate necklaces and rings, and a jeweller’s loupe.

‘Good afternoon, Memsahib.’

To Caroline’s heightened awareness he seemed both suspicious and ingratiating. She placed her clenched fist on the counter and opened her palm. She saw that the stone was a cut ruby, a decent size but not so big as to be startling. She was in luck. So far. ‘I wish to sell this.’

The man inclined his head, then took the jewel. He pinched it in a pair of metal tweezers and unfolded the magnifying glass in order to study it. What if, Caroline thought, this man was Ravi’s own dealer and he recognised the stone?

No, this place was far too shabby. That was why she had thought of it.

The man breathed harder and turned the ruby to inspect it from another angle. Caroline’s legs were trembling so much she was afraid they might give way beneath her. She gripped the edge of the counter for support and told herself that all this was for Zahra. The stifling feelings of longing and fear and inadequacy that she always felt in connection with her daughter – her daughter – instantly swept over her.

The man put down his loupe. ‘Not a fine stone.’

‘How much?’

He turned down his mouth, dismissive. ‘Two hundred rupees.’

Too quick, much too little. Caroline’s sharpened senses told her that it was worth far more. She held out her hand for the ruby.

‘Three hundred,’ he snapped.

She stared. ‘Three thousand.’

‘Five hundred. Last word.’

After that it was only a matter of bargaining. Finally the man gave a surly nod. He went into the back of the shop and Caroline guessed that he was opening a safe. A moment later he was laying out a pair of thousand-rupee notes, pink and crisp instead of the ragged and filthy low-denomination notes in general circulation. Two little oval profiles of the king. Caroline tucked them away in her skirt pocket as the dealer dropped the ruby into a tiny bag.

Outside the shop she took a deep gulp of air. The sky had turned the colour of lead and a sinister breeze blew up the alley, presaging a storm. Ten yards off a thin-legged beggar sat on a step, his head hanging. Caroline edged by him and followed the familiar route past the tailor’s shop.

When she reached home she locked the bungalow doors. She hid the rupees in the camphor-scented drawer where she stored the folded items of her trousseau, including the nightgown she had worn on her wedding night. Just a glimpse of it was enough to make her slam the drawer shut. She crawled under the bedclothes and lay there, shuddering and listening to the roll of thunder. The thought of what she had just pulled off drew a gasp of wild laughter, but as soon as the laughter petered out she began to cry.



Nerys was surprised and pleased when Caroline asked if she might come with her to visit the girls in Kanihama. They took the bus as far up the valley as it went, and from there one of Nerys’s friends from an outlying farm gave them a lift in his old van. The back was piled with sacks of rice, a chicken coop lashed on top. The two women squeezed into the passenger seat, gripping its sticky sides to keep their balance as the truck swayed through the slides of mud and rock created by the recent rain. Nerys chatted to the driver, laughing and resorting to sign language whenever her vocabulary failed her. Caroline sat and seemed to listen, but her body was tense.

The square at Kanihama was decorated with fallen leaves, and clouds hid the brown folds of the mountains. The house where Nerys had lived and where Zahra had been born was occupied now by some of the dye-workers. Nearby a billy-goat tethered to a pole browsed a bare circle of earth.

‘Ness!’

Farida and Zahra came running at her, followed by Faisal and the others. Caroline stood a little to one side, fixedly smiling as the children pulled at Nerys’s hands and searched her pockets for treats. Nerys hugged Farida, then swung Zahra off her feet. She kissed the child’s sweet-scented neck and tried to pass her straight to Caroline, but Zahra recoiled and hid her face against Nerys’s shoulder.

‘It’s all right. I don’t want to hold her,’ Caroline insisted.

Most of the women were out in the fields, but a small deputation of men led by Farida’s grandfather, Zafir, came out of the prayer room to receive the visitors. They were led into one of the houses and seated on the best rug while tea was prepared. Nerys and Zafir exchanged polite remarks about the approach of winter.

‘Do they remember me?’ Caroline whispered to Nerys, as the tea was poured.

‘Yes. But your relationship to Zahra is not discussed, even if they bring to mind the connection between you. That’s because they’re not very interested. These are simple people, and their immediate family structures are far looser than ours. The weather and the crops, tending the animals, enough money to feed themselves, that’s what concerns them.’

At the word money Zafir pointed his black beard towards them.

‘The shawl,’ Caroline said distinctly. ‘The beautiful shawl, do you remember? I saw it being woven. It must be finished by now.’

The word shawl provoked an instant response. Zafir gave an order and a man left the room. Nerys sipped her tea in the ensuing silence.

Three minutes later the man came back, accompanied by the pale-faced weaver and two other young men. They brought a folded linen cloth, carried on the weaver’s outstretched forearms as if it were a religious relic. When he stooped at the women’s feet and began to unfold the cloth, Nerys shot a warning glance at Caroline.

The last fold of linen was turned back.

Even in the dimness of the room, the shawl shimmered like light on water. The weaver shook it out so the colours danced in the air. The other two young men caught the corners and brought the piece closer to show off the design. These were the embroiderers who had sat for a whole year, one end apiece, to work over the woven blossoms with their intricate stitches. The shawl wasn’t just their work, though. It also belonged to the spinners and dyers, and the talim man who had drawn up the intricate pattern for the weaver to follow. It was the prize possession of the entire village, their collective investment in the kani tradition that was steadily fading away. Nerys saw the weaver’s pitifully thin shoulders and his eager eyes, and she had to blink away the tears from her own.

The head man thrust a corner of the shawl towards them, pointing with his blackened fingernail at a mark stitched there, like a double BB with one B reversed.

‘This man. Fingers like butterfly wing. So light,’ Zafir said.

‘I want to buy it.’

‘Caroline, you can’t possibly, it’ll cost the earth,’ Nerys whispered. ‘It’s years and years of their work.’

‘How much?’

The weaver and the two embroiderers drew in a huddle behind Zafir. There was a fierce muttering between them. Stonyfaced, Zafir turned back to the two women. ‘One thousand five hundred rupees.’

Nerys did the mental arithmetic. ‘That’s nearly a hundred and twenty pounds. We’ll never be able to bargain …’

‘Here,’ Caroline said. From the pocket of her blue tweed coat she brought out an envelope, opened it and produced the two crisp notes. The men stared, but Zafir’s hand was already outstretched. Nerys was sure that in all their lives they had never seen so much money.



‘Tell them to keep the rest. Tell them it’s for taking care of Zahra. I want her to stay here with them, where she’ll be safe.’

Caroline stumbled to her feet. She made her way to the door, leaving behind her the shawl, the money and Nerys.

When Nerys finally emerged she had the shawl with her, wrapped once more in its protective linen. Caroline was looking towards the stream as it splashed down through the rocky gorge. Under the chinar tree the children were playing a game with sticks and stones.

‘When does the snow come?’

It was October. ‘In a month or so.’ After that the roads would be difficult or impossible to negotiate until the spring thaw.

Caroline nodded, as if her attention was far away. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? I always thought so.’

Their van driver had finished his delivery of chickens and had collected a row of baskets filled with red apples. She put her hands into the empty pockets of her tweed coat and began to pick her way through the drifts of leaves towards him. As she passed the children she stopped for a long moment, but Zahra was gurgling with laughter as Farida rolled pebbles at her. She picked up the roundest, whitest one and threw it at the tree trunk, never even glancing at Caroline.

Nerys was treated differently. As soon as they saw she was leaving they ran at her full tilt, and she had a word and a sweet for all of them. They knew that Nerys always came back, so there was no serious outcry when she left.

The van swayed down the track. Nerys tried to pass the wrapped-up shawl to Caroline, but she shook her head. ‘That’s Zahra’s dowry. I want you to keep it safe for her.’

‘Of course I will. Caroline, the money …’

‘Let’s just say it was a legacy. That’s it. A legacy. From my fairy godmother.’

Nerys didn’t like the wild sound of Caroline’s laughter.





By early November, the mountains were cloaked in snow once more and the old brown city creaked with frost. There were already predictions that this year the lake would freeze for the first time since the Christmas cricket match.

One afternoon Caroline came home to the bungalow after visiting Myrtle and Archie and found the house-boy kneeling on a folded rice sack beside the blackened bed of marigold stalks. He was polishing a pair of army boots as if he wanted to rub the leather away. Shivering, she clicked open the front door. ‘Ralph? Ralph?’

There was an army cap on the rickety hat stand.

The man looking up at her from the armchair was almost unrecognisable.

His face was little more than a death’s head with eyes bulging out of purple sockets. His head was almost bald, except for a few colourless strands, and the exposed scalp was raked with livid scars. Caroline ran to him but the spectre raised his crossed arms. She wasn’t sure if it was to fend her off or an automatic reaction to protect his brittle body from potential assault.

She stopped short and dropped to her knees on the hearthrug. She put one hand out to touch his knee and felt the raw bone through the khaki.

He said, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper, ‘I’m sorry not to give you any warning. There was a plane coming up with a spare seat at the last moment, so they put me in it.’

‘They told me you were still too weak to travel. I can’t believe you’re here. Thank God you’re alive.’

His mouth opened in a version of a smile, revealing that he had lost several teeth. ‘Just about. You look well, Caroline. You look … pretty.’ Ralph lifted a strand of her hair, as if he couldn’t quite believe in its bright blondeness. He twisted it round his forefinger, stopping just short of pulling it, and she remembered that Ravi had done exactly the same thing.

Her face instantly boiled scarlet. She jerked backwards and gave a gasp as the hair tore from her scalp. She fell back on her heels and Ralph stared at her.



‘Let me – let me get you something to eat,’ she stammered. ‘There’s … chocolate. Or honey, Kashmiri honey, you like that.’

She saw that already she irritated him.

‘I can’t eat very much,’ he snapped.

Caroline bit her lip. ‘Tell me what I can do for you. Please, Ralph.’

His head fell back and his eyes closed. That single exhausted movement told her that what he had been through, the darkness she could only guess at, had opened a chasm between them. She knew with sudden and absolute certainty that, whatever she might do and however hard she tried, she would never be able to please him now.

All right, she thought. But I’ll try. I’ll make that my penance.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ he said.