The Kashmir Shawl

NINETEEN


The house was in a leafy street in south Delhi, secluded behind rendered walls painted pale mustard-yellow. They waited at black metal gates as Bruno spoke into an entryphone.

They had arrived separately the night before, Mair from London and Bruno from Zürich, to meet at the anonymous hotel near the airport where they had arranged to stay. Eating dinner in the hotel’s gloomy coffee shop, they had been awkward with each other after the ease of the cabin in Switzerland. Now that they were finally in India they were unsure what their mission really was, and it seemed too late to be agreeing on what they would say to Zahra or how they might say it. They made small-talk and went straight to their rooms afterwards.

Jetlagged and unable to sleep, Mair had slid open the balcony door and stepped out into the night. There wasn’t even a shiver of movement in the scalding air, and the traffic noise from beyond the hotel garden was as loud at three a.m. as at midday. The orangey ribbons of elevated motorways snaked in all directions, glimmering with cars and trucks, and in their shelter were the awnings and refuse of colonies of destitute people. In the ten months she had been away she had forgotten the din, the surging motion and the brutal contrasts of India.



Was this all a mistake? Mair wondered. Should she have left history where it lay?

She shook herself.

A voice like the buzz of a grasshopper floated out of the entryphone grille and the left-hand gate swung open. They walked along a path between oleander bushes with the patter of a water sprinkler close at hand. A door opened at the top of some shallow steps and a small elderly woman stood there. She was light-skinned and she had Kashmiri features, but this was not Zahra. ‘Mrs Dasgupta says please to come in.’

They followed her into a wide hallway, the polished floor laid with Kashmir rugs.

‘I am Farida,’ the woman said. ‘Come this way.’

A set of doors led to a room full of dark carved furniture, kept cool and dim by lowered blinds. A stately figure came to greet them, her arms outstretched to envelop Bruno. She had styled hair that was more grey than dark, she was plump, dressed in a loose silk shirt and wide trousers, and spectacles hung from a cord round her neck.

‘You are here,’ she cried. ‘Come, let me look at you.’

Mair stood aside as they hugged each other and spoke rapidly in Swiss-German. Bruno handed over the flowers and gifts they had brought with them, and Zahra exclaimed and remonstrated. Mair looked at the pierced china baskets filled with sweets, the coloured glass ornaments, teapots, and numerous framed photographs of boys and young men in variations of uniform, teamsports clothing or academic dress. She smiled to herself. This was a family home. Zahra’s family home.

‘I am Zahra Dasgupta.’ A hand was held out and warmly shook Mair’s.

Bruno introduced them: ‘This is Mair Ellis, Zahra. Mair has become a good friend of mine since Lotus died.’

Once he had spoken Lotus’s name he seemed to relax a little.

‘I’m so sorry about your child,’ Zahra said. ‘So very sorry. It is a terrible tragedy. How is your wife?’

‘She is in the States. We’re separated now, Zahra.’



The woman’s eyes moved from Bruno’s taut face to Mair’s, assessing them. There was a sharp brain behind the majestic exterior. Mair wanted to say, No, it’s not what you think: there are these two halves of a whole that Bruno and I hold and we’ve brought them here …

‘I am sorry for that too,’ Zahra said. She took Bruno’s arm and led him to a chair.

Farida brought the inevitable tray of tea with china cups and a brass samovar. She put out plates of cakes and embroidered napkins and Zahra rearranged them as soon as they were set down, the two of them getting in each other’s way and telling the other what to do. It was evident that they were long-term companions and friends rather than employer and servant. At last they were both satisfied and they all sat in the heavy plush armchairs with cups and plates dispersed between them.

Zahra said to Mair, ‘I knew this man when he was a small baby. A very sweet, good little baby he was. Growing up he was more like all boys, very noisy and causing disruption. He was driving his mother mad a lot of the time.’

‘Zahra, Mair doesn’t want to hear this,’ Bruno protested.

He was embarrassed because Zahra was treating Mair as if she were a girlfriend, and as soon as she realised as much, Mair felt a dull red blush colour her face and obstinately stay there.

Zahra and Farida looked at each other.

‘So you are making a holiday now in Delhi?’ Farida asked.

Zahra interrupted her, ‘No, no, no, you know that Bruno told me he had something most important to talk about.’ She sat back in her armchair, slippered feet placed side by side and hands folded across her stomach. ‘I am very curious to hear what it is.’ Her glance slid from Bruno to Mair.

The room went quiet.

Mair felt breathless as she reached into her bag. She unfolded the shawl from its wrapping and spread it over Zahra’s broad knees.



Farida instantly gave a grasshopper chirp and seized the nearest corner. Blinking, she held the soft fabric up to her cheek. ‘This is kani weaving. From my home in Kashmir.’

Mair slipped the photograph from a folder and laid it on the arm of Zahra’s chair. On the opposite arm she placed a little cellophane envelope containing a lock of gilt-brown hair. Farida had found the shawl’s reversed BB signature. ‘I know this work,’ she breathed. ‘From my own village.’ Her face shone.

‘What are these things?’ Zahra demanded. ‘Why do you bring them to me?’

‘It’s a long story. Mair will explain her part first,’ Bruno said.

‘Look at the picture,’ Mair suggested.

Zahra settled her spectacles on her nose and peered down. She breathed out through her nose, almost a snort. ‘Srinagar, I think.’

Mair pointed. ‘This is my grandmother, Nerys Watkins. She and her husband were Christian missionaries in Kashmir during the war.’

Farida bobbed upwards. She grabbed the picture and gazed at it. ‘Ness. This is Ness,’ she cried.

They all looked at her in amazement.

‘You knew my grandma?’ Mair wondered.

‘She was my best mother when I was a small girl. I remember all about her. There were songs and games. She was so kind, an angel.’

Mair held out her hand, and Farida grasped it in her tiny dry one.

Farida told her, ‘I can see now, your face. You have something like her here.’ She drew a circle round her own mouth and chin.

Mair thought, Whatever happens next, I am so grateful to have come this far.

Nerys had known this small, bright-eyed woman when Farida was a little girl. It was like holding hands with Nerys herself, across the divide of almost seventy years.



Yet again time rearranged itself, folding into new patterns.

She would almost certainly never know exactly what Zahra or Farida had meant to her grandmother, and why she had kept a lock of hair and a shawl hidden for so long, as if they were her most precious and secret possessions, but she had this human link that connected her directly to Nerys.

Bruno was smiling at her.

Mair pointed for the second time. ‘This one is a friend of my grandmother’s called Myrtle McMinn. And this is another friend of theirs, Caroline Bowen.’

Zahra shifted her weight. ‘I do not understand any of this.’ She pouted. ‘I found Farida, you know. My husband and I went to Srinagar when we were married and I made a visit to the school my mother told me about, a mission school, you see, where I was looked after. I was an orphan just like Farida,’ she explained to Mair. ‘There were many orphans in Kashmir. My mother Prita and father adopted me, took me away from that school to Switzerland.’

Mair couldn’t help but glance down at Caroline Bowen’s sweet English face.

‘When Dilip and I came to see the school the missionaries were gone. This happens, especially in Srinagar, which is a place very much changed for the worse. But the school was still there and Farida was helping the teachers. We talked, and she remembered me when I was two years old. Can you imagine that?’

Farida patted Zahra’s shoulder and laughed. ‘I never forgot her. I loved her so much I thought she was my own baby. But then she went away and I cried for a long time. I was so happy to see her again, a married lady. I had no husband, and my two brothers went to Pakistan many years ago.’

‘So she came here to live with me. I insisted on this,’ Zahra said, in triumph. ‘To be auntie to my boys, and sister to me.’ She rattled the cellophane envelope. ‘So. What are these other people to us, and this piece of hair?’

‘I think,’ Mair slowly said, ‘this lock of hair is yours. It was with the shawl, and we found it put away among my mother’s things after my father died last year.’

Farida opened the envelope and tipped the contents into her hand. Zahra bent over it, pinching the hair in her fingers and holding it up to her head for Farida to compare.

There was no resemblance.

‘No,’ Zahra said.

‘It might be,’ Farida said.

They both laughed but uncertainty was kindling in their faces. They were apprehensive about what they might learn next.

Mair was glad to let Bruno take up the story.

‘As well as being my grandfather’s good friend, Rainer was a friend of these three women,’ he began.

‘It was wartime,’ Zahra remarked. ‘Many people made friends and lost them in those days.’

‘That’s true. In 1945, as you know, Rainer put his wife Prita and a child aboard a ship for England. They were met at Liverpool docks by an Englishman, a mountaineering friend of Rainer’s, who helped them with their onward journey to Switzerland. And when they arrived there, they were taken in by Victor Becker and his family.’

‘It was done for my father’s sake. My mother was always proud. He was a special man, she said to me, to have such friends as your grandfather Victor.’

Bruno smiled again. Mair saw that the ease from the cabin was coming back to him, and there was more than that – he was alive with interest in Zahra’s story.

Zahra leant forward. ‘My mother believed always that Rainer meant to return to us. He was killed in the car before he could come. But he did not abandon us.’

He nodded. ‘Zahra, Mair and I both believe that Rainer and his wife helped out a friend by taking her illegitimate baby out of India. By taking you away, to safety in Switzerland.’

‘My mother told me she and Rainer took me, cut my hair, dressed me as her boy until I was on the ship. There was danger, but Prita was not sure why. Naturally Rainer would have made everything clear if he had not died.’

Mair leant forward too, touching the tip of her finger to where Caroline smiled in the picture. ‘Mrs Dasgupta, Rainer Stamm took this photograph. I think the third woman might be your mother.’

Zahra frowned. ‘This person, you think?’ She turned away and indicated one of the framed photographs that stood on a low table beside her. ‘Take a look, please. Here is my mother.’

In the picture Prita Stamm stood with her chin up, a small grandson hanging on to either hand.

‘I meant the woman who gave birth to you,’ Mair amended. ‘She is still alive, and she lives in Srinagar. I met her last year and I showed her these things.’

Zahra lifted her cup, very deliberately drank some tea, replaced the cup in the saucer. ‘If you know so much, then who was my father?’ Her lower lip protruded and her voice had cooled by several degrees.

Caroline’s lover must have been Kashmiri, and theirs could only have been a forbidden liaison, a wartime love affair, but she had no idea what kind of man he might have been. Not an honourable one, that seemed certain. Had Caroline loved him? Why hadn’t Ralph Bowen stood by his wife? The mysteries seemed to thicken, even though she had imagined them solved.

She could feel Bruno watching her and she wanted to turn to him, but she plunged on: ‘I don’t know that. I don’t think we will ever know, unless Caroline Bowen herself tells us.’

‘Do you have any proof of this theory?’

‘Firm documentary proof? No, none. There are only the letters that my grandmother wrote to Caroline and the story that Bruno and I have pieced together between us. But when I showed Caroline this shawl, she recognised it at once. “That belongs to Zahra. It’s her dowry shawl,” was what she said.’

There was a silence.

And then Zahra observed, ‘Mine is not such an uncommon name.’ Her face showed her disapproval. ‘And my mother Prita made sure that my marriage was a proper one, with a suitable dowry. My own theory is somewhat different. I believe, you see, that Rainer was my real father.’

Mair thought, Yes, that’s equally plausible. Wartime, a magician mountaineer with pin-up looks, and a girl from the Vale of Kashmir. A girl Rainer couldn’t marry – perhaps because of her father’s anger or her brothers’ defence of her honour – but whose child he vowed to protect. He found a wife, a widow who had lost her own son, married her, made a will, and took care to send the two of them away to Switzerland and safety. Only then, at the last moment, did his plans somehow go awry.

Triumph glinted in Zahra’s eyes as she handed back Mair’s photograph. ‘Occam’s Razor,’ she pronounced. ‘Are you familiar with this principle?’

Bruno laughed. He left his seat and went to Zahra, putting his arm over her ample shoulders. ‘The simplest explanation is usually the correct one?’

‘Good boy.’

Mair began to protest but Bruno warned her with a look. She was angry at this intervention. He wasn’t going to stop her pronouncing what she knew to be true, not when it had taken her so long to uncover that truth. But his gaze didn’t waver, and a different, entirely contradictory feeling swept through her.

It wasn’t sweet or honeyed or even remotely comfortable – it was sharp, and thoroughly disconcerting, because she knew at that moment without any shadow of doubt that she was in love with him.

The words, whatever they were going to be, dried in her mouth.

Bruno’s face showed a flicker of amusement. His glance said that they understood each other. She wanted to go and kiss him, but she made herself sit still and concentrate.

Zahra laced her fingers. ‘I am right, you see. But these are old, long-ago times. Why are we discussing them? Let’s talk about young people. They are the future. Bruno, please tell me, will it be painful if I show you and your friend some pictures of my grandsons?’

‘No, I’d like to see them,’ he said. He was still looking at Mair and she felt hot in the over-furnished room, and confused. It was unthinkable that Bruno might suspect she was in pursuit of him. Might he think she had engineered this whole trip to India as a way of getting closer to him? Surely not, when she had herself only just worked out these feelings.

Zahra and Farida were replacing cups on the tray, clearing space among cushions to lay out photograph albums, telling each other all the time where to find what they wanted and how to make room for it. Farida laid the shawl aside.

Mair put her photograph in its folder and quietly replaced it with the lock of hair in her handbag.

‘See, Bruno? This is little Sanjay – he is nearly six. He is a very clever boy. Already he is good at mathematics. His father tells us he is the best in his class.’

A long interlude followed in which Bruno looked at all the pictures and asked the right questions while Mair peered over his shoulder and made supplementary noises.

And then after the Dasgupta family news it was time for reciprocal questions about the senior Beckers and their neighbours, and commiserations because Bruno’s father wasn’t showing any signs of mental recovery. Farida brought in more tea and savoury snacks. Footsteps came across the courtyard and an elderly, oval-shaped man in a business suit appeared in the doorway.

Zahra called, ‘Dilip, you are here at last. Say hello to our visitors.’

Mr Dasgupta was bald, smiling, almost as light-skinned as his wife. He was courteous to Zahra’s connections from Switzerland but it was also clear that here was a man who was ready for his dinner. With polite formulations, invitations to stay and regretful refusals, the visit began to wind itself up.



Mair had worked out what she wanted to do. ‘Mrs Dasgupta,’ she began, ‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’

With only a glint over the spectacles, she said, ‘My dear, of course.’

‘For my grandmother Nerys’s sake, please will you keep the shawl? I’d like you to have it – you and Farida, of course – and I think that’s what Nerys would have wanted too. For months I was on a quest for its history. I went to Ladakh and Srinagar, even up to what’s left of Kanihama village to see where it was woven and embroidered.

‘I feel that in the end the shawl would be closer to home here with you, closer to its own history, rather than in England with me.’

Farida’s face blazed with joy. She said imploringly to Zahra, ‘My village. My family made this thing. So much work.’ She held it against her thin chest. ‘And it comes from our mother Ness, you know, very long ago.’

Mr Dasgupta put on horn-rimmed glasses and studied the corner of the shawl that hung free from Farida’s arms. ‘The finest work. Good enough for a museum,’ he pronounced.

Zahra pursed her lips. ‘Dilip knows what he is talking about. His business is textiles. If this is truly what you would like,’ she said, ‘although this shawl has no real connection to me, I appreciate what you are saying. Therefore, thank you.’

‘Just one more thing,’ Mair said. ‘I’d like to take a photograph.’

Quickly she brought out her digital camera and passed it to Bruno. She stood on one side of Zahra with Farida on the other, the shawl draped like a magnificent banner between the three of them.

Bruno took the picture.

Mr Dasgupta insisted that he must drive them back to their hotel but Mair and Bruno said they wouldn’t hear of it. They compromised by accepting a lift to a busier street where a taxi or an auto-rickshaw would be easy to find. Zahra and Farida came out and saw them into the big black car that had white linen slipcovers over the seats. Bruno was warmly embraced, Mair was kissed on the cheek, and the car moved off at last.

Zahra waved energetically until they turned the corner. Farida stood in the wall’s shade with the shawl still in her arms.

After Dilip had left them, with a stream of instructions about how to regain their hotel, Bruno let out a long breath. ‘I need a beer.’ He groaned.

The nearest bar was lit with blue and pink neon. It had giant Bollywood posters lining the walls and a clientele dressed in skinny jeans and oracular Japanese T-shirts.

Bruno said, ‘That was rather clever of you.’

A waiter brought their drinks, the glasses deliciously beaded with condensation. They clinked them together. Mair felt as if she were already half drunk. Amazement and apprehension ran through her in unsteadying currents. ‘What was?’

‘You returned the shawl to its rightful owner, without the owner accepting the real reason for her right of possession. Do you feel sad to have parted with it?’

Mair shook her head. ‘It was Zahra’s all along. I couldn’t keep it for myself. You do believe our story, don’t you, rather than Zahra’s version?’

‘Yep. Anyway, scientifically speaking, the simplest theory most probably being the correct one isn’t what Occam’s Razor really indicates …’

‘Oh, please.’ She laughed.

‘Zahra’s is quite a success story, isn’t it? I think, having come so far, it’s her right to believe in whatever version of her past she chooses.’

‘Yes. Thank you for warning me off when I was going to plunge on regardless.’

‘You looked furious.’

She bit her lip, fending off embarrassment because of the revelation that had followed the anger. ‘It was only for about a second. Was I wrong to have tried to convince her in the first place?’



‘No. Deliberately to withhold the truth would have been wrong. Shall we look at your photograph?’

As they bent over the little screen Mair was acutely conscious of his hand and arm, and the weight of his shoulder against hers.

The picture was pin-sharp, and somehow Bruno had caught an echo of that other photograph of three women.

‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll take it to the business centre at the hotel and run off a gloss print. We can take it with us.’

‘Take it with us?’

‘To Srinagar.’

She stared at him. ‘We’re going to Srinagar?’

After Zahra had so decisively stonewalled the news they had brought her, Mair had assumed they would have to abandon their original plan to travel on to Kashmir. She didn’t see how they could find a way to tell Caroline that the daughter she had given up so long ago was alive and well, but had chosen not to believe in their relationship.

‘Of course. We have to close this circle somehow, don’t you think?’

As if to demonstrate, Bruno reached out to clasp her hand, lightly threading his fingers through hers.

Mair wondered giddily which circle he really meant. She loved him for taking up her quest and making it theirs. For that, and for everything else. Suddenly, Hattie and Ed floated into her mind.

‘Would you like another of those?’ he asked, nodding at her drink.

‘I would,’ she said.



Srinagar had changed.

On the way in from the airport, the roads were clogged with slow-moving traffic, held up at almost every junction by police or Indian Army roadblocks. Imperious young paramilitaries toting automatic weapons patrolled the streets, herding the crowds of pedestrians as they passed in a weary stream under the chinar trees. The blue air was thick with the fumes of idling engines, and crackling with tension. Around Lal Chowk there were bombed-out buildings, shabby bazaars and fine old brick houses blackened by fire or pocked with bullet holes. Everywhere they looked there were more troops, and more roadblocks. Mair knew that separatist insurgents had stepped up their activities as more of the militant young stone-throwers returned from the camps as trained gunmen and arsonists. The levels of violence against the Indian Army of occupation had lately risen almost to the point of open war, yet still she hadn’t quite anticipated the atmosphere of dejection and the evidence of economic decay that riddled Srinagar.

The word that came to her was extinguished. That was how the place and its buoyant people seemed today, and the sadness of it struck through her.

In the taxi Bruno silently gazed out of the window. She had wanted him to love Kashmir at first sight because that was how it had been for her, and she found herself trying to excuse the present state of the city. She pointed at ancient tiered roofs in the distance. ‘It’s not always like this. It’s really very beautiful. Look, there’s the Jama Masjid, the Friday Mosque. Fourteenth century.’

Their driver sat hunched in his grey tunic, patiently waiting for yet another Indian soldier to flag him down and minutely scrutinise their papers.

At last they reached the hotel. Mair had chosen one of the Chinese-owned establishments on the Bund, not the one where she had sheltered from the grenade attack, but quite close at hand. They had passed Solomon and Sheba on the way, the old houseboat tilting even more rakishly towards the mirror surface of the lake. She didn’t even point it out to Bruno. She had decided against booking a houseboat. For all their various states of decay they were raffish, romantic destinations, chosen by lovers and honeymooners.



As they checked in, they were told that a city-wide curfew would operate from dusk until dawn. They ate another coffee-shop dinner, this one without even the benefit of alcohol because the hotel didn’t serve it. From not very far away they heard the brief, shocking rattle of gunfire.

‘Difficult time.’ Their waiter sighed as he put down bowls of reddish soup. ‘Very difficult. You are tourists here?’ There was always hope for more tourists.

‘Not really,’ Mair had to say.

‘You are UN? NGO?’

‘No, just visiting a friend.’ Bruno probably didn’t mean to sound curt, but the man withdrew at once.

They didn’t talk much while they were eating. Mair knew that Bruno must be thinking of that other visit he had planned, with Lotus and Karen.

In her room, before she went to bed, she lifted layers of tobacco-reeking net curtain and peered out into the night. A police car crawled along the deserted street. Not far away, a building was on fire. She could see an ugly red glow licking the undersides of cushions of smoke.



The next morning they took an auto-rickshaw to Caroline’s house.

The old bazaars were thronged with people and, instead of an army jeep, a mixed herd of goats and sheep scudding through the traffic held them up. Bruno smiled at the sight. ‘I’m sorry I was so subdued last night.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘This is a troubled place.’

‘But a resilient one. It gets under your skin, I know that.’

‘It must have been the same for Caroline. She made the opposite move to most of the British Raj, coming back out from England to live here, didn’t she?’

Their little vehicle surged forward as the last of the sheep bounded out of their path.

Aruna answered the door of the house in its overgrown garden and frowned at Mair as if she had last visited only the day before yesterday. ‘Mrs Bowen very tired. Not at all well. I am sorry.’

Mair stepped closer, holding the package of Nerys’s letters. ‘I promised I would return these. We won’t stay very long. This is Mr Becker, a friend of an old friend of Mrs Bowen’s.’

Aruna received this information and the package with another frown, but she gave up the attempt to exclude them.

The room at the back of the house was quiet, except for Chopin on the CD player. Caroline sat in her usual chair. Both feet were now propped up on the stool and a walking frame stood close at hand. Sensing their presence she turned her head as soon as they came in, but Mair could tell that her eyesight had gone completely. She peered anxiously in their direction, listening intently through the piano music.

‘Aruna? Is that you?’

Mair went quickly to her side. ‘It’s Mair again. Do you remember? Nerys Watkins’s granddaughter?’

‘Who? Who is that? Nerys’s granddaughter, did you say? My dear friend Nerys? I can’t believe it.’

Mair hesitated, momentarily disconcerted by the memory blank. Bruno was equal to it. He came to the other side of the chair and said gently, ‘Hello, Mrs Bowen. I’m Bruno, Mair’s friend. My grandfather was a good friend of Rainer Stamm’s.’

‘Rainer.’ Caroline clapped her hands. ‘How extraordinary. Where is he? I’d like to see him. Do tell him so, won’t you?’

Bruno took her hand and held on to it. It looked like a tiny claw caught in his big fist.

Caroline smiled, radiance lighting her blind face. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Rainer’s dead, you know. He was climbing a mountain.’

‘Everyone’s dead,’ she retorted, still smiling. ‘You get used to it at my age. I’m ninety, you know. Ninety. That’s right, Aruna, isn’t it?’ She cocked her head, listening for Aruna’s voice.



‘Yes, ninety.’ Aruna sighed. This was obviously a question that was regularly asked. She unscrewed a small brown bottle and counted out green-and-white capsules.

Caroline sat back, still clasping Bruno’s hand. ‘Isn’t this jolly? You must tell me all your news. We should have a drink. Aruna, dear, what have we got?’

‘Thank you, that would be very welcome,’ Bruno said, giving Aruna a look. He had the measure of her.

‘I’ll see what there is,’ she said, as she left the room.

Mair came closer. ‘Mrs Bowen, do you remember when I came to see you last year and I brought the shawl? Zahra’s shawl, you said it was.’

‘Did I, dear?’ The smile hardly faded. The CD stopped playing and the music centre emitted a small electrical hum.

Mair lowered her voice. There was no script for what she was about to say.

‘I left the shawl with Zahra. Was that the right thing to have done? I saw her two days ago, in Delhi. Zahra survived, you see. Rainer sent her safely to Europe, all those years ago. Bruno and I met her, and her husband.’

There was a moment’s pause.

‘Did you? That’s nice, dear,’ Caroline said.

The electrical hum was like a mosquito’s whine. Bruno began a move to switch off the player but Caroline gripped his hand. ‘Don’t go.’

‘I won’t,’ he soothed. ‘Do you understand what Mair is saying?’

The old woman turned, trying in vain to see their faces. Uncertainty clouded her trusting smile. ‘Who? Who is this? Is Nerys here?’

Mair said, more urgently, ‘Was it the right thing to do, to give Zahra her shawl?’

Over Caroline’s white head Bruno’s eyes locked with hers.

Caroline murmured, ‘Well, I expect so. If it was hers. Where is Aruna?’

‘She has just gone to fetch some drinks. She’ll be back in a minute,’ Bruno reassured her. He squeezed her hand and her face cleared again.

‘Oh, yes. A drink would be nice. What did you say your name was?’

‘It’s Bruno.’

Aruna came back with a tray and glasses and a jug. She poured lemonade for them all, and when hers was placed in her hand Caroline gulped thirstily, like a child. Afterwards she gave a small belch. Aruna tipped two pills into her palm and she swallowed them with a refill of lemonade.

Mair wondered how long they had actually been sitting in the room with its view of the garden that Caroline could no longer see. It felt like a long time.

The thread that she had traced for so many months ended here. It had woven a complicated pattern, and even though she couldn’t cut the ends free and finish them off with knots, like those of the shawl itself, she was glad that she had followed it all the way.

Caroline yawned. Her head fell back against the chair cushions and her jaw sagged. Bruno released her hand and folded her wrist into her lap. A moment later a snore escaped from her open mouth.

Mair was looking round the room. Pointedly, Aruna drew up a blanket and tucked it round her charge’s shoulders. She picked up the glasses and replaced them on the tray as Mair and Bruno stood up.

‘I’d like to leave this for Mrs Bowen,’ Mair said quickly. ‘It’s … some old friends of hers who we met this week in Delhi.’

Caroline’s chair was placed next to the brown-tiled fireplace. There was a shelf over it with a gilt-framed overmantel mirror so Mair tucked the glossy print into a corner of the frame. She and Zahra and Farida smiled out into the room. Aruna immediately came to peer at it, adjusting her spectacles to see more clearly.



She pointed. ‘You brought this shawl with you last time you were here.’

’That’s right.’

‘She can’t see it, you know. What does it mean?’

‘Nothing. It’s just a Kashmir shawl. And it’s more that we – I, that is – want the photograph to see her. Is that all right?’ She ignored Aruna’s sceptical look. ‘Please, may I use the bathroom before we leave?’

‘I will show you.’

Caroline was fast asleep. Mair bent over her as she passed and just brushed the top of her head with her lips.

‘She is asleep most of the time nowadays,’ Aruna said, with just a hint of tenderness. She pointed down the little hallway to the open door of a green-painted bathroom and carried the tray into the kitchen. Bruno stood examining a series of framed photographs of polo teams that hung beside the front door.

Mair checked over her shoulder, rushed to the bathroom and loudly closed the door, staying on the outside of it. Caroline’s room must be the one next door. There was a bed with a white cover under the canopy of a rolled mosquito net. She slipped in and glanced round. It was more like a hospital room than a bedroom, with a similar antiseptic tang in the air. Next to the bed stood a table with a single drawer.

She slid open the drawer, glancing at the medical contents. Then she tucked the cellophane-enclosed lock of Zahra’s hair inside at the back where it couldn’t be seen. She closed it and dashed back to peer through the crack in the door. The hallway was filled with the sound of knocking. Aruna bustled out of the kitchen, and while her back was turned, Mair popped out as if from the bathroom.

Bruno raised one eyebrow at her.

On the doorstep stood three women, faces framed by black hijab scarves. One of them carried a wicker basket, with the same red and green patterning as a kangri holder. Evidently Aruna knew her visitors quite well. She showed them to the old chairs under the shade of the veranda. Mair was thinking, But I know them too. How do I know them? There were two young girls with smooth olive cheeks, and an older one with a lined face.

Aruna accepted the wicker basket and opened the pot within. A heavenly smell rose to surround them.

‘That’s good,’ Bruno said.

Aruna nodded. ‘It is tahar rice, cooked in a special way with turmeric. In Kashmir we make it always when there is a safe arrival, an escape from danger.’

Mair remembered. Of course. They were Mehraan the karkhanadar’s mother and his two sisters. They recognised her too. The girls giggled and the mother inclined her head.

‘I was going to pay a visit to Mehraan’s workshop.’ Mair smiled. ‘How is he? How are you?’

There was an exchange between the women. Aruna said, ‘If you would sit with us, the rice is to share. It is important. A … symbol. They have brought for Madam, but there is plenty.’

‘Thank you,’ Mair said simply. They took their places in a circle, the girls cross-legged on the floor. Aruna brought plates and Mehraan’s mother reverently spooned the rice, a few mouthfuls each. It was eaten moistened with creamy Kashmiri yoghurt, sprinkled with nuts and fresh coriander. Mair and Bruno copied the women, eating in silence, using the bunched fingers of the right hand and chasing up every stray grain with an eager thumb.

It was one of the most delicious dishes Mair had ever tasted.

Aruna replaced the lid on the pot. ‘For Mrs Bowen, when she wakes up. She will enjoy.’

There was more giggling and murmuring from the girls.

Aruna said, ‘They would like to know, is this man your husband?’

Mair couldn’t look at Bruno, but she felt his eyes rest on her. She was conscious all the time of his proximity, of the oddness of their being in Srinagar together. Now that all the pieces Nerys had left behind had been put in their right places, it would be time to think of home again, and separate ways.

Her heart contracted with dismay.

‘No, he’s not my husband. But he is my good friend.’

There was more smothered laughter, and some talk that Mair and Bruno couldn’t follow.

Aruna composed herself and told them, ‘Mehraan is good. He has come often this year, to help me. In the winter he brought wood and cleared snow. See? He mended the fence.’

New pickets of light-coloured wood were interspersed among the old splintered ones.

‘That’s very kind of him. Where is he? At the workshop?’

Aruna hesitated. Then she said, ‘Mehraan is not in Srinagar. He has gone to a camp. He has crossed the Line, and his mother hears today that he is safe. So she makes tahar.’

Mair and Bruno both stiffened.

To cross the Line of Control into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir was a hazardous journey, and this camp of his could only be a training centre for militant Free Kashmir insurgents. Mair struggled to reconcile this information with her memory of the sombre young man whose responsibilities made him seem much older than his real age.

‘I hope … he will be safe,’ she whispered, imagining him returning to his mother and sisters only to be murdered by the army or paramilitaries.

Aruna wagged a finger at them. ‘This is not what you will be thinking. It is not a war camp. It is for learning of Islam, for peace.’

The mother spoke rapidly and the two daughters turned their faces to her.

Aruna did her best to translate. ‘For Mehraan and his friends, there is only one jihad. That is inside the heart of every man, alone, where there is no weapon except God’s truth. It is to this camp, and the teachers there, that Mehraan has found his way. He is missed here, but it is right for him to go.’

Mehraan’s mother bent her head. Mair found that she was close to tears. There was so much sadness in Kashmir, and such fortitude.

It was time to leave.

Bruno and Mair thanked the women for sharing the gift of tahar rice, and Mair asked Aruna if she might call again to visit Mrs Bowen before she left Srinagar. Herself again, Aruna gave a barely perceptible nod.

Mair hugged Mehraan’s little sisters and bowed over her folded hands to their remarkable mother.

A moment later she and Bruno were walking away down the lane, under apple and walnut trees touched with autumn colour. They were so full of their visit that they took no notice of where they were heading and after two minutes they were lost in a maze of high-walled alleys. A dog panted beneath some wooden steps.

Bruno stopped. ‘Do you think it’s this way?’

‘No – we came from over there.’

They hesitated and he put his hands on her shoulders, looking down into her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘We’ll find our way. What were you doing, back there?’

‘Leaving Zahra’s lock of hair beside Caroline’s bed. It’s not much of a connection, is it? But it’s better than nothing.’

‘I’d never have thought of that. But it’s the best thing you could have done. That, and the photograph and the shawl.’

He was bending his head towards hers when there was a sudden yell, and the thud of feet pounding towards them.

In the other direction the dog leapt from its shelter, a quivering strip of tawny fur with its red mouth stretched in a snarl.

Bruno grabbed Mair’s wrist and dragged her away from the animal, running full pelt towards whoever was coming the other way.

Into Mair’s head flashed the image of a troop of soldiers with their guns raised. But with Bruno beside her she ran anyway.

From round the corner a mass of children flew at them. They almost collided, but Mair and Bruno jumped aside and let them race by. They were five-year-olds to teenaged boys with white skullcaps, all in neat dark-blue kameez, satchels bobbing, elbowing each other out of the way as they ran along. School was out for the day. The dog turned tail and crawled for shelter, and Mair and Bruno were left flattened against the alley wall as the children ran off. Shouts and laughter echoed behind them.

He let his head fall back and exhaled with relief. ‘Sorry. Sorry about that. I’m afraid of dogs.’

‘It’s all right.’ She took his arm. ‘They must all be heading somewhere. Shall we follow?’

They walked in the wake of the slower children. A hundred metres brought them out to the banks of a stream, one of the Jhelum tributaries, bordered by a little meadow. There was a fringe of poplars and silvery willows, and grass worn bare in dusty patches. The children were already running and kicking a ball between a pair of discarded satchels. Another group had set up cricket stumps, and a bolder contingent was swinging from a knotted rope over the water. The rope swung further out and higher up, a child clinging to the end like the weight of a pendulum.

Bruno and Mair sat on a grassy bank to watch.

The afternoon light was fading as the chill of the evening crept up from the stream, but they still sat there. The games were universal, and the joy of the participants seemed to rub out the troubles of the city beyond.

‘They look so happy,’ Mair said.

Bruno nodded. ‘And hopeful. Even in a dangerous place, with an uncertain future ahead for most of them. Hope’s the most powerful redemptive force, isn’t it? Do you know something else? While we’ve been watching them, I forgot to think about Lotus. I’ve done that several times since we came to India. Like when we were eating celebration rice just now, sitting on that veranda without the pressure of talk or barriers of language or faith. It’s never for very long, but when I do remember her again I feel a pain inside myself. It’s as if to experience even a moment of happiness is to deny the memory of her. As if I’m obliged, somehow, to nourish my sense of loss in order to honour her properly.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know where real grief ends and self-indulgence begins.’

‘You’re not self-indulgent,’ Mair said quietly.

‘No? I’m always thinking about what I think. I’m not sure I understand anything in the way I once did. All the old values have been turned inside out. What does anything matter, after what’s happened? Ambition, work, success, even love.’

‘I don’t know. Those are big questions. I think what matters is this, here. And versions of it, everywhere.’

She gestured to the small world of the playground, thinking at the same time of Wales, and Tal and Annie’s baby, and the peace of Bruno’s wood cabin in the mountains.

And of Zahra’s shawl.

‘You’re not ready yet to stop grieving,’ she said.

He had been staring ahead, but now he turned to look at her. ‘I’m not, no. It might take time.’

It was the gentlest and the most inclusive of warnings. She appreciated this candour, and the associated concern for her. ‘I know, I understand.’

As they talked she had been half watching the rope game. Three of the biggest boys swung outwards until the rope was almost horizontal, and at the highest point they each let go and leapt for the far bank.

Mair’s own muscles automatically contracted as she enviously measured the effort involved.

One by one the big boys made the return journey across a log balanced over the crusts of yellow scum that came flooding downstream. Now a much smaller boy grabbed the rope and ran up the bank to begin his swing. The last of the returning trio lost his balance on the log and kicked out as he lunged for dry ground. The log rolled sideways and collapsed into the water, but the little boy was too intent on his swinging to pay attention. His weight wasn’t sufficient to create the high arc that the others had achieved, but he wriggled on the end of the rope, swung back and outwards again. The bigger boys were hooting encouragement, but behind them the other children had begun to filter away, playtime ending as the early evening slid towards curfew hour.

The boy swung outwards for the third time, the rope slackening as his resolve deserted him. But he wouldn’t give up either, and allow the pendulum swing to carry him back to safety. For a split second he hung there, then sprang too late into empty air. Arms and legs flailing, he crashed into the water. He jumped up and tottered to the bank before falling forwards into mud and sand. When he stood up he was drenched to the thighs and the front of his blue kameez was coated with dirt.

Even at this distance Mair could see him trying to smile, but then he realised that the precarious log bridge had collapsed and he was stranded.

The big boys called his name.

Mair scrambled up. She ran the fifty yards to the rope and clamped her feet to the knotted end. As she swung she measured the distances by eye. There was a tree with a low-hanging branch in just the right place.

Exhilaration shot through her.

One more swing gave her enough momentum and the proper trajectory.

At the highest point she let go of the rope. The sky and the grass and the water revolved but she felt the point of stillness, the moment of glory when she knew that she couldn’t fall or miss her landing.

She caught the branch and turned an entirely unnecessary somersault. Rough bark tore her palms, but she hung on.

Trapeze wasn’t as good as sex, Hattie used to say. But it was up there.

Grinning, Mair dropped to the ground. The little boy stood with his mouth open. He forgot to cry, or even exclaim. On the other bank the boys leapt up and down and cheered.

She stooped to the child’s level. His eyes were liquid.

‘Hello,’ she said, and held out her smarting hand. He grasped it and they turned to the bank. Bruno was at the opposite side. He paddled into the filthy water and grasped the end of the log as the other boys bumped around him, eager to assist in this startling rescue. They hoisted it back to a precarious bridge position and Bruno balanced halfway across. Mair led the child to meet him and passed him over. As soon as the boy was deposited safely on the bank, Bruno came back to collect her.

‘Be very careful. I wouldn’t like you to slip and hurt yourself,’ he said, taking her hand.

‘Thank you for rescuing me. But you’ve got your feet wet.’

They laughed at each other as the boys capered around Mair, the small one already reabsorbed by the group. One who might have been his brother or cousin was trying to clean off the mud.

‘Very good, where you from? England? Good cricket,’ they shouted, as always. The biggest called a warning and they chased up the bank and across the meadow. Mair and Bruno were suddenly all alone.

‘You are a surprising woman,’ he said. ‘An absolutely amazing woman.’

‘I just wanted to do that.’

Wind riffled the dry leaves and smoke blew across the roofs of low brick houses. Bruno took her face between his hands and with his thumbs he stroked the corners of her mouth. They stood together, listening to the breeze and the ripple of water.

Mair remembered Leh, almost a year ago, and the day she had first met Karen and Lotus. And then came the memory of the terrible morning in the snow at Lamayuru. She had done a back-flip to please Lotus and the dog had streaked out of nowhere.

She closed her eyes, and opened them again.

A year had changed everything.

I won’t do that again, she thought. No more acrobatics. The circus was over.

Happiness unexpectedly possessed her: its reality seemed as perfect and as indestructible and as fleeting as the moment of flight itself.

‘It will be dark soon,’ Bruno murmured.

He held her hand as they headed across the meadow. At the margin a group of women in fluttering black burqas hurried by as the call to prayer sounded over the low roofs. This was a strictly orthodox Muslim neighbourhood, more like Saudi than Srinagar. Mair and Bruno released each other and decorously followed the path that led to the Jhelum river.

When they reached the smeared-glass walls of the hotel Bruno sighed. ‘Do we have to stay another night in this place?’ he asked.

‘No, we don’t. Where shall we go?’

He turned in a half-circle towards the glimmering waters of the lake. A handful of shikaras swayed at a jetty, hoping to pick up a fare before curfew. A pair of jeeps loaded with soldiers crawled by.

Across the water a few yellow lights winked in a row of houseboats. Dusk concealed their peeling paint and sagging timbers.

‘What about … There?’

Half an hour later, without luggage or anything but the clothes they stood in, they had taken possession of the Rose of Kashmir. Proudly the house-boy conducted them through carved rooms hung with embroideries and miniature chandeliers. The boards creaked loudly underfoot and the ornate mirrors were veiled with dust.

‘I make dinner,’ he told them, and sprang down the plank leading to the kitchen boat.

Mair and Bruno stood out on the pillared veranda. A moon like a silver ball floated over the high mountains. The last shikara glided by, its wake punctuated by drips from the paddle.

He sighed. ‘It’s all very beautiful. But Kashmir would only be a picture postcard if it … if it were not for you. Is it all right to say that, Mair? I did say I’m not sure I understand anything any more. If I’m wrong about this …’



Tomorrow, she thought, there would be other questions, and no doubt some things that would be more wrong than right, but for tonight there was nothing out of place, nothing missing, nothing but now.

‘You’re not wrong at all,’ she said.

It was dark, but still they could see each other’s face.

From the trees on the bank an owl hooted.





Acknowledgements


Bob and Carolyn Wilkins originally drew my attention to the effects of the veterinary drug Diclofenac on the vulture populations of Asia, and the consequent rise in the numbers of feral dogs and the spread of rabies. Drs Wilkins were also wonderful companions on a lengthy trek in the Zanskar mountains of the Indian Himalaya, as were Jane Maxim, Stephen Barnard and Graham Francis. Our guide was the inestimable Seb Mankelow, who shared his deep knowledge and love of the region with us, and who helped in many ways with the early research for this book. Our local guide was Sonam ‘Jimmy’ Stobges, whose energy and good humour made long days in difficult terrain seem easy. I am grateful to him and to his wife who welcomed us to the family home in Padum, and also to the camp staff and pony men. Dr Tsering Tashi of the Community Health Centre in Padum gave me an afternoon of his time to discuss the threat and the effects of rabies. Another Tashi was my resourceful driver on the long and difficult drive across the mountains from Ladakh via Kargil to Srinagar in Kashmir.

In Srinagar I was greatly helped by the owners and staff of Gurkha Houseboats on Nagin lake. I am grateful to the spinners, dyers, weavers and embroiderers of Srinagar and the Vale of Kashmir who invited me into their workshops, demonstrated their working methods and patiently explained the processes involved in producing fine shawls. Thanks are due to Justine Hardy for her generous advice, and also to Sara Wheeler.

My brother-in-law Arwyn Thomas was born in India to Welsh missionary parents, and he gave me helpful information about their work.

I would also like to thank Lynne Drew and everyone at HarperCollins, Hazel Orme, Annabel Robinson and the entire team at FMcM Associates, the London Library, and my unsurpassable agent Jonathan Lloyd.

As always, thank you to my supportive family, Charlie, Flora and Theo.





About the Author


Rosie Thomas is the author of a number of celebrated novels, including the bestsellers Sun at Midnight, Iris and Ruby and Constance. A keen traveller, she has climbed in the Alps and the Himalayas, competed in the Peking to Paris car rally, spent time on a tiny Bulgarian research station in Antarctica and travelled in Ladakh and Kashmir to research this novel. She lives in London.

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