The Kashmir Shawl

SIXTEEN


The launch drew closer, its bow pennant drawn taut by the wind and a fresh green wake churning behind it.

Caroline stood at the end of the jetty not far from the Shalimar Garden. The powerful engine throttled back and the boat made a semi-circle, stirring up the reek of lake-water as it slid to the mooring post. Two liveried servants stepped ashore and made fast and she saw Ravi waiting for her under the white awning. She let the nearest servant hand her on board, and stepped down on to the scrubbed-teak deck. Immediately the engine roared and the launch curved away again, heading out into the lake.

Ravi bowed suavely. But this was better than she could have hoped for. He couldn’t do much to her out here, in full sight of passing shikaras, with two of his servants close at hand.

They sat down in canvas chairs at a brass-cornered table. One of the servants was at the wheel; the other retreated below to the little covered cabin. The thrum of the engine and the swish of water would make what she had to say inaudible to anyone but Ravi.

‘This is an unlooked-for pleasure,’ he said, glancing at his jewelled watch. ‘Unfortunately I have to meet someone at precisely eleven o’clock.’

When at last the long, terrible night had ended, she had scrawled a note and sent it by a messenger. Once she was dressed, Ralph had lurched past her and fallen into the bed she had just vacated. She had left him there, yellow and snoring, after giving instructions to the house-boy that he was to take Sahib his coffee immediately he woke up. Ravi’s reply had reached her within the hour and she had hurried out of the house to meet the launch at the place he indicated.

‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.

‘Please go ahead.’

She drew air into her lungs. Her mouth felt stiff, dry as paper, but she got out the plain words she had rehearsed. ‘After our time together I had a child. It was your child, Ravi. I didn’t want my husband to find out, so I concealed the whole thing.’

‘Mine?’ His voice cut like a knife.

‘Yes.’ She shifted her gaze from the tabletop, upwards to meet his. ‘You are the only man I have ever had relations with. I was a virgin, remember?’

‘Yes. And is this what you wanted to say to me?’

‘Not everything. My husband heard about the baby last night, from an officer in the mess. I thought I had kept everything secret, even from you, which was what I originally decided was for the best, but now it seems that I have failed. So naturally I have come straight to see you, to tell you everything and to ask for your understanding.’

Ravi pondered, the corners of his mouth turning down. At last he spoke. ‘I see. Tell me, Caroline, did you really imagine that I didn’t know?’

Caroline shrank. ‘I hoped not.’

‘I have had you watched, my dear. You – and your friends running about with their kangris.’

‘You knew about Zahra all along?’

He gestured impatiently. ‘Your weavers’ village is not exactly beyond my reach.’

So at least one of the people up there must have been in Ravi’s pay. Caroline shivered at the thought of Zahra innocently playing under the tree with eyes always upon her, ready to report her movements back to Srinagar. Yet it had somehow suited Ravi to leave her alone. Maybe all he wanted was to keep her at a safe distance from his family.

She lifted her head. ‘I am here to warn you, Ravi. My husband is very angry. He was drunk last night …’

Again the impatient gesture. ‘I know that too.’

It didn’t matter how. She would have to come to terms later with the extent to which she and everyone she knew had been spied upon. ‘He told me that he is going to kill you.’

Ravi threw back his head and laughed, as if this were the most comical thing he had ever heard. ‘Is that all you’ve come to say?’

She said, ‘I don’t want Ralph to be hurt. I know he won’t come off best if he does try to injure you.’

Ravi’s amusement vanished. In a voice so low that it hardly reached her, he murmured, ‘And I thought you might have come to explain why you stole my ruby.’

The launch passed between the wooden pillars that marked the beginning of the river channel. Over to their right Caroline saw a line of houseboats, the Garden of Eden at the end of the row. The flower-seller’s shikara was making its way towards his customers, the packed blooms a dash of brilliant colour against the rippled water.

Her voice almost failed her, but there was nothing she could do except try to brazen this out. ‘As you seem to know everything else, you probably also know that I sold the stone to a dealer. I had to have money to take care of the child.’

Ravi nodded, as if this satisfied him. They slid past the Lake Bar of the Srinagar Club, its tables and sunshades newly set out for the approach of summer. A white-coated waiter stood ready to take cocktail orders and a little clutch of shikaras for hire bobbed at the side.

‘I shall have to leave you here.’ He pointed to the steps that led towards the Bund. Sunlight glinted on a car making its way over the first Jhelum bridge. ‘By the way, my wife expects to be confined later this summer. I shall have a son.’



‘How wonderful for you,’ Caroline said. ‘I do hope it will be a boy. I hope all will go well.’

Ravi laughed again, plump and handsome under the awning. Her hopes were utterly meaningless to him and her good wishes meant nothing. Over his shoulder he gave a curt order to the boatman and the prow swung towards the steps. The boat was briefly secured and Ravi stood up to help her ashore. Caroline had achieved nothing at all by seeing him.

She stepped out on to dry land.

Unable to stop herself she asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘About?’

‘About my child.’

‘I am going to protect my family’s interests, of course.’

Another command to the boatman, the ropes were unlooped, and the launch sped away.



Nerys listened in horror as Caroline spilt out the story.

Outside in the mission yard, half a dozen children played with a ball and a set of wooden crates. Their noise floated in through the open windows, Zahra’s happy voice audible among them.

‘What did he mean, do you think, about protecting his family’s interests?’

Helplessly, Caroline shook her head. ‘He’s ruthless. He does what he wants, gets what he wants. What can we do?’

Nerys was at a loss, and a sense of deep foreboding took hold of her. ‘I don’t know. But somehow we’ll have to hide Zahra so Ravi Singh can’t find her.’

Evan was out, but Ianto Jones was in the chapel room laying out service sheets for a prayer meeting. Nerys made a rapid decision. ‘Ianto? Please stay and watch the children until three o’clock. Then lock the yard gate when they’ve all gone.’

He blinked behind his thick glasses, Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘But—’

‘Please.’



With Caroline at her heels, Nerys ran down the stairs and scooped Zahra out of the little group of infants. Farida threw the ball aside and attached herself to Nerys’s heels. At the gate they stopped and scanned the alley. The beggar wasn’t there. Nerys asked Farida if she had seen the hands-out man today and the child nodded. He had been there earlier, but she had seen him going away again.

They dashed along the canal bank to the river, past smoky food stalls and chai-vendors and gossiping boatmen. Nerys clasped Zahra in her arms and the little girl laughed and wriggled in pleasure at this new game. They were gasping for breath by the time they reached Rainer’s door. Nerys thumped on it, even in the heat of this moment remembering the night when Farida had come to fetch them out of Rainer’s bed, only to find her mother dead.

Rainer opened the door. ‘Is the city on fire?’

Nerys and Caroline ducked inside. Farida plumped herself down on the step, refusing to come in with them. She gathered up her skirt and pulled her shawl over her head, apparently settling down to watch the street.

In the upstairs room, cooled by the breeze off the water, Prita was sitting sewing amid the last of Rainer’s myriad boxes. She put her work aside and stood up, wordlessly greeting them with a bow over her folded hands.

Zahra was heavy. Gratefully, Nerys let her slide to the floor. The child’s attention was caught by the bright silks in Prita’s work basket and she ran straight to them. Then she saw a pair of small pointed scissors and made a grab for those too. Prita caught her hand and told her in Kashmiri, ‘No, those are too sharp. You will cut your fingers.’ She put the scissors out of reach on top of one of the boxes.

‘What has happened?’ Rainer asked.

Caroline stammered out her story again. Taken by a stranger’s attention, especially one who spoke the village language so well, Zahra started chattering to Prita. Nerys was watching Caroline and then looking for Rainer’s reaction, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Prita reach out and awkwardly, longingly, stroke Zahra’s hair.

Without quite knowing why she did it, Nerys took up the embroidery scissors, stooped down to separate out a single thick lock of the same brown-gilt hair, and snipped it off.

Rainer frowned. ‘Yes. We must take her away from here.’

Zahra broke away from Prita and Nerys, heading now for the white wicker cage where Rainer’s stage doves shared a perch.

‘Birds,’ the child cried in delight. ‘Zahra birds.’

Rainer opened a painted box and took out his tailcoat. He slipped it on, covered the cage with the red silk handkerchief from the top pocket, and invited Zahra to search the others. As soon as she had made sure that one was empty he produced the four interlinked metal rings from it, and spun the chain round her throat, like a huge necklace. She tugged at it, puzzled but smiling, before he whipped it away and threw four separate rings in the air. While she was still captivated by the juggling, he lifted a corner of the red handkerchief to show her that the cage was empty.

Zahra’s eyes rounded. ‘Gone,’ she breathed, staring at the perch and then the empty air.

The three women looked on. Prita was fondly smiling and even Caroline’s pale, tense face had briefly softened and coloured.

Rainer beckoned to Zahra and she went straight to him. He touched his finger to his lips before blindfolding her with the red handkerchief.

Nerys remembered afterwards how Zahra had laughed, showing no fear, and stretched out her hands to try to grab Rainer as he gently turned her three times in a circle.

Off came the blindfold again. The cage was still empty. Rainer mimed perplexity, but then his hand shot into the same pocket of the tailcoat and, with a flourish, he tossed into the air first one white dove and then the other. The birds flew up over Zahra’s head and settled on an open shutter.



Nerys clapped, and Caroline and Prita joined in.

Zahra was too delighted to move. She gazed at Rainer in awe. He held out his arm and the birds obligingly came back to roost.

‘More,’ Zahra whispered.

‘Rainer …’ Nerys began, intending to say that there were important things to discuss. He was rummaging through the box. Out came his magician’s cape, embroidered with occult symbols. ‘Rainer…’

They all heard the slap of bare feet on the stairs. Farida burst into the room. ‘Hands-out man.’ She held up four fingers. Four men.

Nerys ran to the window that looked away from the river. Through a crack in the shutters she saw them, and recognised one of the faces. It was the beggar who frequented the alley behind the mission, only he didn’t look like a beggar any more. And at the end of the narrow street she could just see the polished silver radiator grille and shiny black bonnet of an opulent motor-car.

‘Ravi Singh’s here.’

There was a thunderous knocking at the door. Caroline backed up against the wall, hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, God. Don’t let them in.’

Rainer didn’t hesitate. Smiling, he held up the red blindfold. Ready for another trick, Zahra jumped into his arms. He signalled her to silence, wrapping the blindfold again. The knocking at the door grew more insistent. Rainer enveloped himself and Zahra in the swirling cape. Prita was at his side too, hanging on his arm. He muttered one sentence to her and she slid behind his back.

Downstairs there was a crash as the door burst inwards. Shadowed by Prita, Rainer picked up the box of tricks with his free hand and calmly walked to the head of the stairs. Ravi Singh’s men clattered up to him and he waved them on into the room overlooking the river. Caroline stood frozen, but Nerys had crossed to Prita’s chair and taken up her discarded sewing. As the four men tipped into the room she put in a careful stitch and glanced up at them in surprise.

‘Good day,’ she said in Kashmiri. And in English, ‘This is a private house, you know. How can we help you?’

Ravi Singh stood framed in sunlight in the street doorway, his dark shadow thrown on the old wooden floorboards. He wore dazzling white kurta pyjama and a high-buttoned coat of pale buff linen, every inch the haughty Kashmiri aristocrat.

‘Hello there,’ Rainer cheerily called down to him. ‘What’s all this?’ Not waiting for Ravi’s answer he skipped down the stairs to meet him.

As his foot touched the bottom step he seemed to trip and almost overbalance. The box of tricks flew open and a shower of glittering rings, metal cups, scarves, coloured balls and gewgaws cascaded at Ravi’s feet. Rainer’s extravagant cape, the opposite of a muted pheran, swirled about him as Ravi stepped backwards with an exclamation of startled annoyance. He was scowling in distaste at this display of heathen arcana.

‘How clumsy of me.’ Rainer sighed. One-sidedly he bent to scoop up a coloured ball, but at the same instant two doves escaped from within his cape. Their wingbeats were loud in the confined space. Ravi leapt further backwards, crashing against the door edge, his arms flailing to beat off the birds. Prita’s white pashmina shawl fluttered as she enveloped herself within it and drew a fold over her bowed head. She slipped past Ravi Singh and out into the street.

‘So sorry.’ Rainer laughed. ‘I am training the birds. You see we have some way to go.’

Casually he unhooked his cape and let it drop from his shoulders. He folded it neatly and placed it inside the box, then piled the fallen items on top. Finally he took off the tailcoat and closed the lid of the box on everything. In his shirtsleeves he stretched out his arms and the doves flew back to him.

‘Is this a social call?’ he asked the glowering Ravi.



‘It is not. I have come for the child.’

‘For this five men burst into my house? Child? Which child is this?’

With a growl of impatience Ravi pushed him aside and took the stairs two at a time. Nerys still sat with the sewing in her lap, but when Ravi appeared she got up and went composedly to meet him. Caroline stood like a ghost against the window as the four men hunted through the room.

‘What are you doing?’ Nerys demanded.

Ravi strode to Caroline. ‘Where is the child?’ he shouted.

Rainer came back and put the doves into their cage. ‘Would our guests like some refreshments?’ he asked.

Nerys slid to his side. Rainer flicked a glance at Ravi’s half-turned back, then cupped Nerys’s face in his hands. He whispered to her, ‘She will be safe. Don’t worry if you hear nothing for a while. And I will come back, I promise you.’

His lips brushed her forehead. Before Ravi angrily swung away from the trembling Caroline, Rainer had melted away.

Vanished, as if into thin air. Nerys inwardly smiled.

‘Search the house,’ Ravi ordered. ‘Where has the Swiss gone? Bring him back.’

His furious expression indicated that he knew he was already outwitted. The men ran to do as they were told and Ravi confronted the two women again.

‘The girl was here an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Where is she now?’

‘She?’ Nerys innocently asked. She had trouble not smiling, and she realised that she was actually enjoying herself. She took Caroline’s cold hand and drew it under her arm so they presented a solid front against Ravi. ‘We have had some mission children to visit. They love the magic, you know. But they have all gone home now. Is it one of them you mean?’

Ravi came one step closer but Nerys only raised her chin and held on to Caroline. Nerys’s look said plainly, I may be only a woman but I am British, a missionary’s wife. You are a powerful man, but what do you think will happen if you lay a single finger on either of us?



He stopped short, with his hands clenched at his sides.

‘Who was the Indian woman?’

‘I think you must be referring to Mrs Stamm. I am sorry you didn’t give me the chance to introduce you. Perhaps there will be another opportunity.’

Ravi’s handsome face was contused with anger, but he managed to speak coolly enough. ‘As you well know, Mrs Watkins, the child I am looking for is actually my own daughter. I have decided that neither Mrs Bowen, nor her husband, nor your little Christian mission is fit to care for her. I am going to take her into my own household.’

Perhaps as a slave to one of your sisters – or quite probably much worse than that, Nerys mentally supplied. ‘I’m afraid you are too late. The child is no longer in Srinagar, and will soon be leaving India.’

‘You cannot remove an Indian native from her own country and people.’

Her level gaze retorted, It’s still wartime. India has thousands of orphans, starving or abandoned. Do you think one child will be missed among so many?

But she didn’t make the attempt to contradict him.

Two of the men came back. The house was empty and their search hadn’t taken long. Presumably the other two were combing the streets for Rainer and Prita. Nerys felt no anxiety on that score.

Ravi flung a last glance at Caroline. ‘Do you still imagine that you can outwit me?’

Only Nerys could feel how violently Caroline trembled.

With his men at his heels, Ravi left them.

As soon as they were sure he had gone, Nerys took the distraught Caroline in her arms. ‘Don’t worry. Zahra will be safe. Rainer will see to that.’

But she thought that Caroline’s mental state had slipped beyond anxiety for Zahra or even for herself. She was shaking, and biting her lips so hard that toothmarks showed in the thin skin. She seemed eaten up by a black terror that had no rational roots in her real difficulties, and by deep unhappiness that flooded all her being. All Nerys could do was hold her tight, murmur disjointed words that did not comfort, and hope that her despair might eventually lighten.

‘Sit down,’ she murmured to her. ‘I am going to make you some tea, and then take you home.’ She guided Caroline to Prita’s chair.

Farida appeared in the doorway. The girl marched straight to Nerys, her eyes burning. Nerys gripped her shoulders. ‘You did very well, Farida. Zahra will be safe from bad men now.’

But Farida only swung out at Nerys with two fists. She beat them on Nerys’s body. ‘Zahra. I want Zahra.’ She wouldn’t ever give way to tears, but the depth of her distress was plain.

Nerys could only catch at her wrists to restrain her, and say, ‘I know, I know you do, but she has had to go away. I hope she’ll come back, Farida, but I don’t know when it will be.’

The girl tore herself free and ran to the door. With a heavy heart, Nerys watched her go. It would be hard for all of them until they knew what Zahra’s future was likely to be, but hardest of all for poor, loyal Farida.



Outside in the bright afternoon, a woman in a plain white sari walked quickly through the streets with a child on her hip. The child was crying but no one paid the slightest attention to such a commonplace sight. At a sufficient distance, a tough-looking European man in shirtsleeves took the same route. A series of detours through enclosed alleyways and across weedy patches of derelict ground brought the people to the gate of Professor Pran, the Pandit university teacher who was shortly to move away for ever from the beloved city of his birth.



When Caroline and Nerys returned to the Bowens’ bungalow, the worried house-boy was waiting on the step for them. ‘Madam, quick now. Very sorry, Sahib sick. Hospital.’

Julia Dunkeley’s head popped up beyond the hedge. It was her husband who had sent for the doctor while Caroline was out. She said she would come with Caroline to the hospital, but Nerys told her very firmly that there was no need for that because she would accompany Caroline herself.

The army hospital was a series of single-storey buildings set in scrubby gardens, and in the past weeks Ralph had spent plenty of time there. Now a nurse led the two women to a curtained-off corner of a long ward in which wounded men lay propped in their beds and convalescents read or played cards at a centre table.

Ralph was asleep. His skin was a dark yellow colour and he was breathing in thick gasps through his open mouth. A metal kidney dish stood on the locker. Caroline sank down on the edge of the bedside chair and Nerys told her that she would wait outside. There was a loggia opening off the ward and she went out there where the air was less redolent of clogged dressings and sickness. Small groups of men sat smoking in bamboo chairs. She found an empty seat and sank down, gratefully closing her eyes.

She needed time to assimilate the events of the day.

Later, Caroline made her way towards her. She looked as if she were sleep-walking, even though her eyes were unnaturally wide. ‘The doctor says his liver is failing. He is very ill.’

The bluff MO had made a tent of his fingertips, not quite looking Captain Bowen’s wife in the eye. He had talked about the severe damage her husband’s bodily systems had sustained while he was a captive of the Japanese, and how his life was in the balance.

‘We must hope fervently that he will recover from this crisis,’ he said, and added that for the next few days the outcome was unpredictable. But if and when Ralph was finally out of danger, his life from now on would always have to be highly regulated.

‘You understand me, I’m sure,’ the doctor said. ‘He must keep quiet, watch his diet, drink absolutely no alcohol. There will be a disabled discharge, of course. He is fortunate to have a young wife to care for him.’ Then he had touched Caroline lightly on the shoulder. ‘This is another shock for you, my dear. But if we do manage to pull him through, the two of you will have your life together. I promise you, we will do our very best for him.’

Nerys led her between the flowerbeds. Caroline’s head hung as she concentrated on the effort of walking. They were almost at the hospital gates when she suddenly jerked upright and began to laugh. ‘He won’t be able to shoot Ravi Singh now, will he? But just to make sure, I’m going to throw his guns in the lake.’

‘It’s all right, Caroline. I’ll speak to Major Dunkeley about the guns,’ Nerys soothed.

She wished very much that Myrtle and Archie were here today.



At the bottom of a narrow ravine choked with rocks and twisted tree roots lay the wreckage of a red Ford truck. Broken glass covered the stones, shards of it glittering in the sunshine.

An Indian Army troop carrier had drawn up at the roadside thirty feet above, and a trio of soldiers scrambled through the chutes of torn earth and uprooted saplings that marked the truck’s descent. As they reached the mangled vehicle the buzzing of flies was the only sound. One of the men stooped and peered into the upside-down cab. A pool of blood had collected in the roof felt and the flies swarmed there. There was much more blood on the grey metal dashboard, and the torn ribbons of a white dupatta scarf hung from the twisted wing mirror.

The men searched through the cab and the truck body, picking through open boxes that spilt a few clothes, some metal cups, a bright-coloured ball squashed and dented by the impact. From the twigs of a thorn bush one man retrieved a child’s plaited leather sandal.

There were no bodies to be found, no valuables, only the rifled luggage. The soldiers conferred in low voices and then began the steep ascent back to the road where their companions smoked and waited. This was an under-populated area, too rocky and barren for any farming, even for grazing animals. There were caves at the upper end of some of these ravines, used as hiding places by Azad Kashmir rebels or other desperate men, and the rocky ground was also home to packs of wild dogs. One of the men said that there were wolves hereabouts too. Further down the mountainside, where shepherds spent the summer months, there were stone-lined pits that had been dug as wolf traps. The others shrugged. Whether this was an accident followed by looting, a roadside hold-up or a murder scene was not their concern, and they had seen plenty of sights more disturbing. The wireless operator reported the incident to their base and gave the map co-ordinates. Then the troop carrier resumed its journey.



There were six berths in the cabin and a single small porthole. The woman and child had been assigned a middle and lower left, each with a cretonne curtain that could be drawn for privacy. The porter deposited their cabin bags and the man gave him his tip. As soon as they were alone the three of them inspected the little space and peered into the miniature bathroom.

‘I wonder who you’ll be sharing with?’ the man said.

They would be women, of course, whoever they were, and most probably also Indian. Perhaps they would be nuns, or scholarship students heading for England.

The child clung to the woman’s hand. His hair was cut short and he wore an everyday kurta pyjama.

‘Why can you not come with us now?’ the woman demanded.

‘I can’t, because I have a promise to fulfil. You don’t want me to break a promise, do you?’

It was a discussion they had been over many, many times.

‘Who will meet us in England? How will I know who they are?’

‘My friend will be at the docks, that is another promise. You have his photograph safe so you will recognise him?’

She held it up. It showed a smiling elderly man in leather boots and knee breeches, his hat pushed to the back of his head and a pipe in his mouth.

‘Edward will take care of you both. And very soon, a matter of weeks, I will join you and we will go to my home in Switzerland. You’ll be happy there, I know. That’s promise number three, isn’t it?’

She smiled, at last. ‘You are very good.’

He took her face between his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Remember, as soon as the ship leaves the dock you are safe. You can put her in her proper clothes again, and she will no longer be Arjun but the orphan daughter of friends you are taking to her father’s cousins in London.’

The woman nodded obediently.

‘Don’t worry so much.’ He kissed her again, then lifted the child off its feet and swung it to the top bunk. ‘You are the king of the castle up there, aren’t you?’

Later, with the klaxons sounding to warn those who were not sailing that they must leave the ship immediately, they reached the head of the gangway. Everywhere friends and relatives were hugging and weeping as the moment of parting approached.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ the man breathed. He kissed the two of them once more and ran down the sloping gangway. He stood on the dockside as the giant hawsers were released and the ship’s hooter gave three long blasts. Craning his neck upwards, he could just see the woman at the ship’s rail, the child held tightly in her arms. He waved until his arms ached, and watched the white dupatta fluttering in response. When finally he couldn’t see it any more across the breadth of water, he turned and threaded his way through the cacophony of porters and baggage carts. Ahead of him, towering over the Bombay docks, stood the giant arch known as the Gateway to India. The man began to hurry. He had to catch the Frontier Mail to Rawalpindi, where his American companions and their sherpas, recruited from Darjeeling, were waiting for him. Then they would begin the long journey north to the mountain. It was already much later in the season than he had intended.

Ralph was still in the hospital, but the chief MO believed that he had turned a corner. The doctor told Caroline that she should be proud of her husband because he had an unquenchable will to live. She turned her eyes down to her hands, picking at the rags of skin until her sore fingers bled. A voice in her head, louder and more insistent than ever, continued to tell her that she wasn’t worth anything, couldn’t be, because she didn’t have the will to do a single thing, even to put an end to herself.

If you had an ounce of courage, you would do it, if you had an ounce of courage, you would …

When she was not at the hospital, she spent most of her time alone in the stifling bungalow. Nerys tried to persuade to come and stay at the mission, but Caroline was finding it harder and harder to be with other people, even Nerys.

‘I’m just tired,’ she whispered. ‘Tired and worried. When will there be any news from Rainer?’

‘I don’t know. We just have to trust him to do the right thing,’ was the only answer.



On 9 May, news of the unconditional German surrender was announced and Victory in Europe was declared. Srinagar broke into celebrations, although India still looked eastwards to the Pacific war. Multi-coloured lights dappled the black lake, and in the early hours of the morning, dance music still drifted out of the club.

Mr Fanshawe let the diminished British military and civilian population know that on the night of 10 May an impromptu VE Day party would be held in the gardens of the Residency.

‘Please come – come with Evan and Ianto and me. Just for an hour,’ Nerys begged Caroline.

‘All right,’ she finally agreed.

Making a huge effort, she had the dhobi-wallah air and press her silk dress, she put curlers in her hair, and even searched the tin cupboard in the bathroom for the lipstick Myrtle had once declared was just the right shade for her skin. An hour before the party was due to start she sat down on the veranda chair to gather her strength. The air was hot and seemed thick enough to choke her. She rested her head against a cushion and fanned herself with an old magazine.

The clink of the gate latch woke her from a doze. A man stood just inside the fence, holding out an envelope. ‘Madam, for you,’ he said softly.

On legs that felt like tubes of jelly, Caroline tottered down the step to the path and held out her hand to take the letter. Worrying vaguely that she didn’t have a suitable coin, she asked him to wait, but the man had already closed the gate. His shadow passed behind the bushes and Caroline glanced down at the handwriting on the envelope. A cold hand clutched at her stomach.

Standing in the veranda shade she tore it open.

Ravi wrote that the child was dead.

The Swiss man’s ruined vehicle had been found in a ravine. No bodies had been recovered as yet but there was enough evidence to make it certain that the deaths had taken place.

A tragedy, of course. Ravi was sure that she would want to hear about it before the news became generally known. He conveyed his sympathy and good wishes.

Caroline dropped the letter. Soundlessly, she drifted through the bungalow’s cramped rooms, her eyes travelling over the familiar furnishings, the faded covers, Ralph’s books of military history and their framed wedding photograph.

In the bathroom she searched until she found Ralph’s old razor. Carefully she unfolded the blade and stared at the dull blue steel. There was a rime of dried soap near the handle and when she inspected it more closely she saw a speckle of dark stubble. Nausea swelled inside her but she fought it down and repeated the word courage. Courage, courage. Then she swiped the blade, first one wrist and then the other.

Hours later, in the garden of the British Residency, lanterns were glimmering in huge trees as the bandleader held up his baton and bowed to the revellers crowding the lawns. An expectant silence fell, and then there was a huge whoooosh as the first firework streaked up into starry blackness. Scarlet sparks cascaded downwards as the victory cheers roared out.

Nerys broke away and murmured to Evan, ‘She said she was definitely coming. I’m going to the bungalow to find her.’

Evan didn’t care for parties and was glad to leave this one. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

The adjoining bungalows were in darkness. Everyone was out at the victory celebrations, at the Residency or the mess, depending on rank, and all the house-boys had taken the opportunity to gather for a smoke and gossip in the cabin near the compound entrance. Nerys and Evan made their way along the lane, the sweet scent of stocks from some lady’s garden heavy in the night air. They were still yards away from the Bowens’ gate when they heard the noise.

The front door was locked but Evan threw his weight against it and the lock splintered away from the frame.

The bathroom was sticky with blood, the floor and whitewashed walls and enamel bowls and thin towels, and Caroline’s arms were rusty and caked as she cradled her head in them. Her blonde hair was matted, and congealing blood smeared the protruding knobs of her spine, which was all they could see of her as she lay curled in the corner, screaming and screaming.

Evan’s face was as white as paper.

‘Go to the compound gate. Get help,’ Nerys ordered him. Then she knelt down in the blood and tried to draw Caroline’s arms away from her head. The razor she had been clutching dropped to the floor with a clatter.



‘It was good of you to come all this way. Thank you,’ Ralph Bowen said stiffly.

Myrtle and Nerys picked their way along the dock in the Bowens’ shuffling wake, as the homebound passengers for the SS Euphemia flowed on to the ship amid a river of trunks and cases borne by hundreds of coolies. A detachment of khaki-clad soldiers filed up the gangplank to the sound of a military band playing on the aft deck. Ladies in afternoon dresses and shady hats stepped out of cars, and the hooting and shouts and police whistles and all the cacophony of embarkation was stricken by the hammer blow of midsummer heat. Caroline hardly lifted her head.

The Bowens’ cabin was on an upper deck with a tiny porthole, giving a view of the davits of a lifeboat a couple of feet away. The cramped space was too small for the oversized bouquet the McMinns had sent in advance.

‘Thank you for these too,’ Ralph said, after he had read the card, briefly fingering one of the dark red Kashmiri cockscombs. He was spectrally thin, and what remained of his hair was pasted to his blotched cranium, but his colour was almost back to normal. As promised, he had been given an early military discharge, with a Military Cross to mark his conspicuous bravery, and now the Bowens were on their way back to England.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he said to his wife.

Without raising her head, she let him steer her to one of a pair of miniature armchairs separated by a round table with the same circumference as a modest hatbox. The only other place to sit was on one of the two berths. Caroline’s wrists were bandaged but she kept the dressings hidden by clutching the cuffs of her cardigan. Her uncurled hair fell in a thick mat over her eyes.

Nerys and Myrtle stood awkwardly.

‘We could perhaps find somewhere to have a cup of tea? There’s time before we sail, I should think,’ Ralph offered.

Myrtle refused, politely, and his relief was evident.

‘Caroline?’ Nerys said.

She lifted her head in response, but her blue eyes were clouded. The sedation she was under made her confused and lethargic. It could have been worse, was Nerys’s mordant thought. Ralph and the doctors could have put her in a strait-jacket. But maybe then the ship’s authorities would have refused to accept her on board.

There seemed not to be a healing word any of them could say.

‘You’ll be home soon. Just rest and enjoy the sea air,’ Nerys said. ‘You promise you will write to us, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ Caroline answered, in the voice of a dutiful child.

‘Goodbye, darling. Bon voyage,’ Myrtle said. Her scent, when she hugged Caroline, must have stirred a happier memory. Caroline smiled uncertainly, and her eyes brightened. Nerys had Rainer’s photograph in her handbag, and for that brief moment Caroline could almost have been the girl in the picture again.

They left her sitting in the little armchair, staring at the Kashmiri blooms.

Ralph followed them out of the cabin, carefully closing the door behind him. All along the passageway there were glimpses of festive scenes in the other cabins and there was a bustle of porters and baggage. The three of them made their way to a vestibule at the end where a door leading to the deck let in some humid air.

‘You have been very kind to Caroline since … ah, since her illness, both of you,’ he said abruptly.

‘It was all Nerys’s doing. I’ve been in Delhi the whole time,’ Myrtle demurred.

‘Of course it is very sad that the poor child died and set all this off,’ he added. ‘I hope Caroline will recover in time. It may even be for the best, in the circumstances. She is so very fragile, the slightest thing …’

Nerys began a retort, but Myrtle’s fingers rested lightly on her arm.

‘Take care of her,’ was all she did say.

Ralph nodded. ‘Her stepmother and I are in complete agreement. Once we are back in England she will go into a nursing home for a complete rest.’



‘Perhaps that won’t be necessary, after the sea air on the voyage. And it will be so good for her to see England in summer,’ Nerys hazarded.

The newsreel pictures of bomb-damaged cities and exhausted people queuing for food were not sunny in the least, but in India everyone clung to the pre-war images of home.

Silently Ralph pressed his hands together.

Myrtle assured him there was no need to come with them to the gangway, and Ralph agreed that Caroline should not be left alone for too long. He shook both women’s hands and thanked them once again.

Then he strode away towards the closed cabin door.

Nerys and Myrtle didn’t speak much until they were in the dusty taxi heading back to their hotel. They made a circuit of India Gate in the honking traffic.

‘Zahra isn’t dead, we all know that,’ Nerys burst out.

Myrtle went on staring out at the solid press of rickshaws and bullock carts as their driver forced a route.

Nerys insisted, as she had done a dozen times, ‘It’s one of his tricks. He set it all up, the accident with the Ford, to convince Ravi Singh not to pursue them. I know he did. Rainer promised me she would be safe and I trust him absolutely to keep his word.’

For a month, ever since the discovery of the crashed Ford had been made public, she had been telling herself that the accident was no more than classic misdirection, or disguise, or distraction. But day after day had passed, and there had been no word from Rainer.

‘I don’t know,’ Myrtle murmured. ‘Perhaps we should just begin to get used to the possibility that it’s true.’

‘No,’ Nerys said. It was a stony monosyllable.

No bodies had ever been discovered, but the police – so the gossip went, although no one knew anything for certain, even Mr Fanshawe, since no British subject was involved – were prepared to accept that in a wild and lawless area, any one of a number of things could have happened to them. In the face of all the blood, the ransacked luggage and the absence of any other evidence, the authorities were ready to reach the convenient conclusion that there had been three fatalities.

‘No,’ Nerys reiterated.

Somewhere, Zahra and Prita and Rainer were alive and safe. She was used to Rainer’s prolonged absences. He came and went according to his own devices. He had done ever since she had known him, and he would never change. She had never wanted to change him and – even if she had been free – to marry or even live with him would have been to do just that. Their beginning would have contained the end, and although she missed him in every waking moment, she understood that much.

The reason why there was no news would become clear. He would come. He had struggled back up to Kanihama, hadn’t he, as soon as he could travel, even with serious burns, because he had made a promise?

The last time she had seen him Rainer had touched her forehead with his lips. Don’t worry if you don’t hear anything. She will be safe, I promise you. And I will come back.

They reached the little hotel, and rather than retreat to their room, where a sluggish fan did nothing but stir up the heat, they went into a cavernous bar off the lobby. Palms drooped in brass pots and there was a grey smell of stale smoke. As soon as he saw them a solitary young waiter sprang up from his post, switching on a wide smile of welcome.

Nerys would very much have liked a stiff gin but nowadays Myrtle would only ever touch lemonade, so she ordered the same for herself.

The waiter’s vigil obliquely reminded her of Farida, who would be sitting as she did every day on her accustomed step outside a village house in Kanihama. She kept watch on the sparse traffic up and down the mountain tracks, and she raced to meet every new arrival, in case Zahra was coming.

This thought made Nerys so sad that she was ashamed of her own selfish, mute yearning for the missing child.



Myrtle lit a cigarette and clinked her tall glass against Nerys’s as if they were drinking cocktails at the Lake Bar of the Srinagar Club. She blew out a plume of smoke and leant back with a sigh. ‘That was a fairly dismal farewell,’ she said. ‘But we had to come, didn’t we?’

Nerys could only agree. ‘We did. I’ll go and see her as soon as Evan and I get home. She’ll be better, I’m sure. And, of course, there’ll be news of Zahra to tell her by then.’

Myrtle turned her speculative gaze on her friend. She was much thinner now and her cheeks were almost hollow, but she still laughed all the time. Men still turned to look at her as she passed.

‘Maybe. What have you heard from Shillong?’

Nerys told her that she and Evan would be leaving Srinagar for Shillong in the next month. With the agreement of the central mission they would travel, as Evan had wished, over the mountains to Kargil and Leh to revisit his handful of converts, and then, by the mountain passes that they had first traversed, back to Manali. The privations of the journey that had seemed so notable then would be much less striking now, Nerys thought. They were all used to the absence of comforts.

‘Do you remember our great journey across to Srinagar?’ Myrtle smiled.

‘I’ll always remember it. I don’t think I knew how to be me until I met you,’ Nerys told her. She knew how much she owed to the McMinns.

Archie now held a part-time administrative post with the Indian Railways, and had used his engineering skills to adapt a car in which he could drive himself. It made a big difference, he cheerfully reported. His tops, the fine sets of antlers that he had bagged on his Ladakh shooting holiday, had found a permanent place on the wall in their Delhi house. Neither shooting excursions nor lakeside seasons in Srinagar were a possibility any longer.

‘Everything changes,’ Myrtle said, looking away again. ‘I wish you weren’t leaving India.’



‘Will you and Archie stay on?’

‘We don’t know anything or anywhere else,’ she said.

From her chair Nerys could see across the lobby to the main door, guarded by a man in a dark red turban and long coat, and a slice of the open street that lay beyond. Dust-heavy air shimmered in the heat, and throngs of Indians crowded the road, all classes and religions, mixed up with servicemen of a dozen nationalities, who had poured in as demobilisation began, the pedestrians diving between packed buses and shiny cars and carts pulled by coolies. All of this busy humanity streamed every hour of the day past the chai-wallah, who sat on the kerb with his spirit lamp and tin cups, staring into infinity with an unfathomable smile.

Only a few hundred yards from here was Bombay’s Victoria Terminus, with its soaring arches as grand as any cathedral. Tomorrow Nerys would take a train north and Myrtle would return to Delhi.

Nerys understood that she loved India, and she would miss every brutal and beautiful fragment of it.

She shook herself, and dug into her bag for a linen-wrapped package. She turned back a corner of the wrapping to show Myrtle the shawl. ‘I was going to give it back to Caroline before they sailed. But the moment never seemed right.’

‘No,’ Myrtle agreed.

Caroline believed that her daughter was dead, and the Kashmir shawl was woven with guilt as well as loss.

‘I’ll keep it safe for Zahra myself,’ Nerys decided.

‘All right.’

Myrtle had been trying gently to persuade her friend that all three of them were dead – why else had there been no word from Rainer? – but she had had no success, and had lately decided that it was kindest to let Nerys come to terms with that truth in her own time. She said, ‘Shall we go crazy and order ourselves another lemonade, perhaps?’

Nerys smiled. ‘Let’s do that.’

In a brown envelope in her bag was the gilt-threaded lock of Zahra’s hair. She didn’t tell even Myrtle about that. It was her talisman, her remaining link to the laughing little girl who had run at her and shouted, ‘Ness, Ness.’



The lake lay as flat as a mirror. Evan and Nerys had taken a shikara ride across to the Shalimar Garden, because this was their last evening in the Vale of Kashmir.

At the mission Evan’s books and their few significant pieces of furniture and kitchenware stood packed and prepared eventually to be freighted home to Wales. Their travelling bags and baskets of supplies were ready for the bus that would take them to the end of the Srinagar road, and from there they would pick up the pony men and their animals and begin the long ascent out of the Vale, up to the heights of the Zoji La and beyond that across into Ladakh.

Early August was already frilling the chinar leaves with ochre, and over the old town lay the familiar autumnal veils of lavender-coloured smoke. When the two of them reached the uppermost terrace, they turned to look at the spreading view. The water was criss-crossed with tiny boats that from this distance looked no bigger than water beetles, the floating gardens were ripe with vegetables and fruit, and over everything the mountains rose in pleats of purple and grey.

Evan was coughing almost absent-mindedly, like a tired sheep in a pen. This year he had fallen victim to a series of chest infections and Nerys was worried that his health and strength might not be up to the long journey ahead.

‘Don’t fuss about me, Nerys, please,’ was all he said, when she tried to talk to him about it. She glanced sideways at his profile now, familiar as always in his abstracted contemplation of his work, the mission, and the ways of the Almighty. He was gaunt, suntanned from bicycling in and above Srinagar, shy and awkward as he always had been, and dear to her.

He felt her gaze on him and turned abruptly. He said that he would have to get back soon, because there were two or three final matters that he needed to discuss with Ianto Jones.



Nerys nodded her acceptance and they fell into step as they began the descent. She took his arm and slid her hand beneath it and he held it there, gently pressed against his body.

For the sake of economy they had paid off their first shikara man, but there was a small flotilla of them waiting near the jetty and one soon came gliding towards them in the hope of a fare. Within the little sanctuary of flower-printed curtains looped back with raffia strings, they sat back against the cushions as the lake scent rose and caught in their throats. The boatman pushed away from the mooring and, glancing back at him, Nerys saw that he was holding his paddle close to his chest. The inverted leaf made a heart shape, and the memory pierced her like a blade.

Almost three months.

Rainer, with Prita and Zahra.

Vanished, as if into thin air.

Her grief was like a stone, but she contained it within herself. It was only for tonight, her last in this lovely place, that it seemed too much to bear.

She turned her head so that Evan might not see her face, and kept her eyes fixed on the fringe of houseboats that clung to the lake shore.