The Kashmir Shawl

SIX


The two women picked their way between tables and parasols, passing busy waiters who swivelled under trays of cocktails. The pontoon rocked gently on the lake water and Nerys put out a hand to steady herself.

‘Here we are,’ Myrtle announced over her shoulder. ‘The Lake Bar, Srinagar Club.’ She slipped into a seat at a table for two and indicated its partner to Nerys. When they were settled Myrtle took out her cigarette case and lit one of her gold-tipped cigarettes. She reclined against the cushions, blowing out smoke through clenched teeth and looking at the throng. ‘The centre of the universe, to some people.’

‘Not to you?’ Nerys asked lightly. She felt intimidated. The tables were full of smart women, and men in well-cut riding clothes or the uniforms of the various cavalry regiments. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and to be extravagantly at ease, laughing a lot as if they were all in on some enormously amusing joke. Myrtle had been greeted by at least a dozen people on their way in.

A white-jacketed waiter bowed in front of them and wished them good afternoon.

‘Are you having a cocktail?’ Myrtle asked.



Nerys shook her head. ‘Just some tea.’ Myrtle’s eyebrows rose and Nerys hesitated. ‘Well, maybe …’

‘Two gin fizzes,’ Myrtle ordered briskly. ‘No, it’s not the centre of the universe to me.’

‘Darling, where have you been?’ a voice cried. A woman swooped out of the crowd and pressed her powdered cheek to Myrtle’s. ‘You’ve missed a heavenly season. Such fun, honestly. Just look at you! You’re so thin – you’ve gone quite jungli. What on earth were you doing up in those mountains? Is Archie with you? Because I’m going to tell him just what I think of him, dragging you off into the wild for weeks and weeks like that. And did you hear about Angela Gibson?’ She lowered her voice and murmured in Myrtle’s ear.

Myrtle gently disengaged herself. ‘Frances, let me introduce you. Nerys, this is Mrs Conway-Freeborne. Frances, my friend Mrs Watkins.’

Mrs Conway-Freeborne’s glance slid over Nerys’s plain linen skirt and home-stitched blouse. Nerys felt even dowdier, if that were possible, under this fashionable person’s scrutiny. ‘How d’you do?’ the woman said perfunctorily. She spoke quietly to Myrtle again, but her avid expression contradicted the discreet murmur. Nerys only caught snatches of the conversation. ‘Bolted again,’ and ‘He won’t take her back this time, mark my words.’ She tried not to overhear any more and gazed at the view instead. This was only her third day in the Vale of Kashmir. She was still not quite convinced that what she saw could be real.

Behind her lay the windows and flags and awnings of the club, where Europeans in Kashmir gathered to eat and gossip and play. A little distance away was the Bund, the main street of Srinagar’s new town. It was lined with shops with strange names like ‘Poor John’ and ‘Suffering Moses’, selling silver and beads, papier-mâché and rugs, shawls and silk hangings. In the distance was one of the city’s seven bridges spanning the Jhelum river. A horse-drawn tonga clopped slowly across it, forcing a lone car heading the other way to a standstill. The river was the old town’s central thoroughfare. It wound between wooden frontages and ancient stone ghats, and was crowded with barges and water taxis, and lined with markets. Nerys shifted in her chair. There was so much to explore and so much to discover, yet she was sitting here in front of another gin fizz hearing nothing but shrieks of laughter and titbits of gossip about people she didn’t know.

A snatch of swing drifted out of the club’s french windows as someone turned up the gramophone. She was struck by the incongruity of the juxtaposition – dance music with this dream landscape. Straight ahead of her, beyond the pontoon ropes, lay the lake. The water was shadowed at the margins by tall poplar trees where dragonflies ringed the black mirror surface, and out beyond the moored boats it was a vast sheet of dappled amethyst and silver. A sudden breeze fanned it and the reflections of the high mountains trembled and broke into fragments, their snowy crests scattering into white and pewter ripples. The late-afternoon sun was hot, but as soon as it dipped Nerys knew the evening would be deliciously chill and scented with charcoal smoke.

A pair of Kashmir kingfishers perched on a loop of rope, only a yard away. Their plumage was an intricate marbling of black and white. The birds returned her gaze out of unwinking eyes, rotating their black-crested heads in unison.

‘I am so sorry.’

Myrtle’s apology broke into Nerys’s thoughts. ‘Why? What for?’

Mrs Conway-Freeborne had gone away. Myrtle swallowed half her gin fizz and began to pleat the stiff cover of a Srinagar Club matchbook. ‘The club chatter, I suppose. Always the same. Always malicious, never charitable.’

Nerys had noticed Myrtle’s changed mood since their arrival. On the road she had been humorous, affectionate and curious about their surroundings. Here her manner was more brittle and her impatient attention danced too rapidly from one subject to the next. But there was so much else for Nerys to take in, Srinagar seeming such a dazzle of sights and scenery after sleepy Leh, that up until now she hadn’t given this difference much thought.

She studied Myrtle’s face. Vertical frown lines marked her friend’s forehead and her wide mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You seem to know everyone,’ she began cautiously.

Myrtle hitched one shoulder. ‘It’s rather a small circle. The old faces passing round what they think is new gossip. That’s why I’m so pleased to have you here. You are, as they say, a breath of fresh air.’

The McMinns had made Nerys extravagantly welcome. Their home was a houseboat, moored under the shade of trees on the far side of the lake from where they now sat, but it was not the kind of houseboat that Nerys could ever have imagined. The local laws prohibited Europeans from owning property in Kashmir, but the British and others had neatly sidestepped this by buying or building boats to live in. Rows of opulent floating palaces lined the banks of the lake, and whenever the owners fancied a change of scenery, they had only to summon the barge men and have their home poled to a different location.

All the boats had fanciful names: Cleopatra’s Delight, Maharajah’s Palace, Royal Pleasure. The McMinns’ was called the Garden of Eden. It was a broad, imposing wooden structure on a flat barge base, painted a soft shade of pale toffee brown. There were twisted pillars and intricate wooden lattices, carvings and pinnacles, a deep veranda at the front, with a sweeping view of the water, and sparkling white awnings all down the sunny side to shade the windows. Within, every surface was lined with carved or inlaid cedarwood. Nerys had never actually seen a cigar box, but she imagined that this polished, sweetly scented interior must be rather like a giant one. Her bedroom contained a huge canopied bed and a miniature chandelier; it was hung with crewel embroidered curtains and lined with rugs. Her bathroom was as elaborately panelled as everywhere else, and pairs of dim mirrors reflected her pale nakedness into infinity. Whenever she wanted a bath or tea – or anything else she could think of, most probably – Myrtle had instructed her to ring the little brass bell that stood on her windowsill. A moment later Majid, the McMinns’ chief house-boy, would tap softly on her door. Another much smaller boat, where the cooking was done and where the servants lived, was linked to theirs by a gangplank. All day long smoke rose from its crooked chimney topped with a conical tin hat.

‘Yes, ma’am? Hot water for you? Masala chai? Small chota, maybe?’

Nerys seldom rang. She didn’t want to give Majid unnecessary work to do, although she knew that if she even hinted this to Myrtle she would be scolded.

The Garden of Eden seemed just that, and it amused her to imagine Evan’s reaction to the decadent luxury of it all. But already Nerys was feeling anxious about trespassing for too long on the McMinns’ hospitality. She thought vaguely about looking for a room to rent, ready for when Evan arrived, perhaps in one of the tall wooden houses that jutted imposingly over the Jhelum river in the old town.

‘You will stay, won’t you?’ Myrtle insisted, as if she were reading her thoughts. ‘You’re looking slightly less like a ghost, but you’re not fit yet, you know.’

Nerys stayed in bed late every morning, where Majid brought her breakfast of rice porridge with delicious Kashmiri honey and fresh bread rolls. When Myrtle went off to pay a call or to shop or to accompany Archie on what she dismissed as some tedious business socialising, Nerys could spend hours reading, choosing books at random from Archie’s imposing shelves, or just sitting amid the deep cushions of the veranda, watching the light as it slid over the water. She already felt more robust, as if her body had been remoulded over a firmer set of bones.

‘I’m better,’ she protested.

Myrtle snapped her fingers at the waiter and pointed to their empty glasses.



Nerys had noticed how she would drink two or three strong cocktails, and then over dinner she would be at first brightly talkative, teasing her and Archie, then argumentative, and finally sleepy. In the argumentative phase Archie would put out his hand to catch his wife’s gesticulating one, as if he were trying to net a butterfly, and murmur to her, ‘That’s enough, old girl. Time for bed.’

Myrtle would snatch hers away. ‘It’s early. Put on a record, darling. Let’s have a little dance.’

Nerys said very firmly, ‘I don’t want another, thank you.’

Myrtle sighed and her frown deepened. ‘Oh dear. I’d forgotten how boring Srinagar can be. Don’t you ever get bored, Nerys?’

‘Not in the same way as you, I don’t think.’ You need something useful to do, Myrtle McMinn, she thought. From what she had seen so far, Myrtle’s days seemed to consist of telephoning, getting dressed to go out, going out, and then recovering from either the boredom or the alcoholic excesses of going out by undressing and wrapping herself in a silk kimono. What else did all these women do, apart from laugh and sip cocktails and paint their nails?

Myrtle scratched a line in the air to indicate that their drinks were to be put on the McMinns’ bar tab. She smiled at Nerys, squeezed her arm and let it go. The furrows were erased from her forehead. ‘You’re quite right. Archie will be home early tonight, and we should go and keep him company. I’m sorry to be so witchy. Frances Thingummy-Thingwig quite got to me, with her evil stories. Poor Angie Gibson wouldn’t hurt a fly, and if she’s finally left her horrible husband for good then I wish her luck. She deserves better. Now, let’s go. Am I forgiven?’

‘For nothing,’ Nerys insisted. They linked arms and made their way past the emptying tables. It was the soft blue time by the lake that wasn’t quite afternoon any longer but hadn’t yet become evening. It was the hour when Europeans went home to dress for dinner before meeting yet again later at the club or elsewhere.

A little wooden bridge linked the pontoon to the stretch of close-mown grass in front of the clubhouse. As they crossed it, their heels clicking on the wooden planks, the first bat of the evening flitted from the trees and skimmed overhead. The lights in the club drawing room were on, and a group of people was silhouetted in front of the windows.

Nerys saw a man with a head of curling tawny hair, chopped off anyhow, unlike the tidy military crops of his companions. His face was sunburnt and his clothes looked as if he had shrugged them on without much thought as to whether they were even clean, let alone pressed. He had deep-set eyes, a broad chest, and although he was of only average height he seemed bigger than his companions. He was talking in a resonant voice, in English but with a noticeable foreign accent, and Nerys heard him demand, ‘Why not? The answer should be yes. In the mountains no is never an answer, my friends. We must ask again …’

As the two women passed by he lifted his head and frankly appraised them. His eyes caught Nerys’s and held them for a second. Caught off balance by this she looked straight ahead and followed Myrtle on through the french windows and into the drawing room. They passed out of earshot.

‘Did you know them?’ Nerys asked, as Myrtle glanced round.

‘No – why? Wait a minute. The wild-looking one is called Stamm, I think. He can’t be a German, can he? Swiss, or something like that, probably. I don’t know the others.’

The room was almost empty. A young woman was sitting alone at the far end.

‘Now, here is someone I do want to speak to,’ Myrtle murmured.

The woman held a magazine intently angled towards the lamp but Nerys could tell she wasn’t reading it. A cup of tea sat cold and untouched beside her.



‘Caroline?’ Myrtle said.

Reluctantly the other put the magazine down. She had very pale skin, so nearly translucent that the blue veins showed in her throat. Her fair curly hair was held back from her temples with a pair of tortoiseshell combs and her full lower lip looked as if it might tremble at any moment. Nerys could see that she was very young, perhaps not much more than twenty, and distinctly pretty in a round-faced, innocent way.

‘Caroline,’ Myrtle repeated, ‘how are you?’

Caroline collected herself. She produced a smile. ‘You’re back.’

Myrtle made the introductions.

‘Caroline, please,’ the young woman insisted, when Nerys tried to call her Mrs Bowen. Here, plainly, was someone quite unlike Mrs Conway-Freeborne.

‘Nerys,’ she offered in return.

‘Is Ralph here?’ Myrtle wanted to know.

‘No. He’s gone with the regiment – didn’t you hear? I believe it’s manoeuvres first and then another posting. There may be one more short leave, or they may have to deploy at once. I don’t know anything, though, really. It’s only what Mrs Dunkeley and the other wives are saying.’

Caroline’s fingers twisted in her lap, and her rings caught the light. Nerys felt a twist of sympathy for this young wife, probably newly married and deeply in love with her handsome officer husband who must now go off to war.

Myrtle sat forwards in her chair. She reached out and caught Caroline’s chin, turning her face to the light as she did so. ‘And you?’

The girl’s skin was so pale and clear that the flush rising from her neck and colouring her cheeks was very noticeable. ‘I’m …’ She tightened her lips and moved away from Myrtle’s grasp. ‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you.’

She looked warningly towards Nerys, and Myrtle nodded. ‘I’ll come and call on you,’ she told her, in a way that didn’t invite contradiction. Nerys wondered whether that was what the girl wanted, because she didn’t look as though she did. She was biting her lip, and her long lashes were lowered to conceal the expression in her eyes.

Myrtle and Nerys said their goodbyes, and went on through the club to the jetty where the shikara men waited for a fare.

‘Here, Memsahib,’ called one, out of a row of bobbing heads. ‘Cheap fast ride. Where you go?’

They climbed down into his taxi boat as he held it steady for them. Like the others, it was a narrow, elegant craft with a high prow. Under a curtained canopy there was a mattress seat for two, piled with cushions and rugs. Nerys and Myrtle slid into their places as the boatman pushed off from the mooring. He was a Muslim, dressed in a long grey tunic-style shirt and a bright red skullcap. A shawl hung over his shoulders, against the coming chill.

Myrtle told him where they were going and he dipped his leaf-shaped paddle. Water dripped as he lifted it again and they glided forwards through the lotus leaves and ranks of dried seed heads out towards the centre of the lake. The sun was setting and bars of low cloud in the west were flushed with gold and crimson. Mist rose off the water and hung in filmy layers, partly veiling the two low hills of Srinagar, one crowned with a fort and the other with an ancient temple. The Himalayas were dark, two-dimensional masses against an ink-blue sky already pricked with stars. The old town shone with yellow lights, and there were more chains of lights showing on the lake’s islands and from the Mogul gardens at the opposite end. The boat seemed suspended in the air, anchored by its mirror reflection. The only sound was the rhythmic dip of the paddle and the boatman singing under his breath. The thought came to Nerys, unformed because it was so unpractised, but still it came, This is beautiful. I am so happy.

Then Myrtle’s cigarette lighter clicked and the flame briefly lit an ellipse of her face. ‘Poor Caroline Bowen,’ she said, on an exhaled breath.



‘It must be hard for such a young wife, to have her husband going off to fight and not knowing when he will ever come back.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘I wish it were that simple,’ Myrtle said at last.

‘Why?’

She paused. Then she said, ‘I’ll tell you what everyone knows.’

She described how Miss Caroline Cornwall, as she then was, had come out to Kashmir straight from her secretarial college in London. She was from a good family but her parents were dead – her mother when she was a little girl and her father quite recently, from a heart attack. That had left her stepmother with whom she was on friendly terms without being particularly intimate, because Caroline had been at boarding school since before her father’s remarriage.

‘A sad story, but not that unusual, I suppose,’ Nerys murmured, reflecting at the same time that she had no knowledge of the sort of people who sent their motherless daughters away to school. She couldn’t imagine her shy, fond father doing such a thing. ‘How do you know her?’

‘I met her first at a Residency party. The stepmother has some remote family connection to Mrs Fanshawe.’

Mr Fanshawe was the British Resident in the princely state of Kashmir. In the grand setting of the Srinagar Residency, he and Mrs Fanshawe performed the rituals and elaborate formalities of liaison between the British rulers and the government of India, the maharajah and his court, and directed the complicated strata of military and civilian societies that surrounded them.

‘The Fanshawes are very sound on service, and pragmatic on Independence,’ Nerys had heard Archie McMinn saying. ‘They do an excellent job here, in the old-fashioned way.’ She hadn’t known what any of that meant; neither did she imagine that she would ever understand precisely because India didn’t run in her blood, as it did in Myrtle’s and Archie’s.

Myrtle was describing how Caroline Cornwall had come out to join the Resident’s household. ‘She was appointed a sort of assistant secretary to Mrs F. I think her duties amounted to doing the flowers in the public rooms every day, managing the calls book, sending out invitations and so on. That reminds me, I must take you to sign the book. If you don’t leave a card, darling, you won’t be invited to lovely gatherings up at the house – cocktails, tea and tennis, that sort of thing.’

Myrtle was laughing and Nerys joined in. ‘I don’t have a card. And I can’t play tennis.’

‘My God. Social death. How will you ever meet anyone?’

‘I’ve met you and Archie. That will do for me. Go on with the story, please.’

‘Well. Miss Cornwall had been up here barely six months before her engagement was announced to a Captain Ralph Bowen. They met, of course, at the party following a polo game in which she had watched Captain Bowen scoring three goals. Or something of that order anyway – who knows? This was quickly followed by a wedding at the English church, regimental guard of honour, reception at the Residency.’

‘All very suitable, by the sound of it.’

‘So you might think. This was perhaps a year ago.’

‘And now the captain is going off to war.’

That wasn’t news. Most of the Indian Army husbands were away, and as the summer season ended, Srinagar was home to a mixture of abandoned wives and the few remaining civilian families whose men, like Archie, were in reserved occupations. Myrtle had remarked more than once that it was a very different place from the pre-war city.

They were in the middle of the lake now. The sun had gone down and the light in the sky faded through lavender to steel grey as the moon rose over the mountains. Nerys watched the silver disc as it sailed through veils of cloud.

‘Nerys?’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you say that you are happily married?’



Her immediate dutiful response was to say yes. Anything less would be a betrayal. And then, with the small start that was becoming almost familiar, she realised once again that she had hardly thought about her husband that day. How could that be, for a woman who was laying claim to a happy marriage?

The moment of exultation she had just experienced had been to do with the beauty of the place, and the pleasure of having Myrtle for a friend, but most of all it had arisen from a sense of freedom. For almost the first time in her life, certainly for the first time since her wedding day, she felt like her own person. But then, she reminded herself, if she were not married to Evan she wouldn’t be here at all, to be happy or otherwise. She would be at home in Wales, and most probably a spinster. Very few other romantic opportunities had presented themselves. Or – more accurately – none.

Nerys smiled, remembering home and the narrow horizons of chapel and valley. It was true that as a husband Evan was disappointing in some respects: married life wasn’t the passionate communion she had dreamt of as a green girl. But she was in no doubt that Evan was a good man, and a kind one in his way, and a human being with much in him for her to admire. She respected him. Theirs wasn’t like Myrtle and Archie’s partnership, but she reckoned that all marriages were different.

She was also beginning to understand that it was true what people said about absence making the heart grow fonder. She was looking forward to seeing Evan here in Srinagar, even in his stiff black preacher’s clothes among the smart club wives. She had a sudden picture in her mind of his hands, long-fingered, as they rested on hers. My dear?

Suddenly she was blushing as hotly as Caroline Bowen had done and she was glad of the gathering darkness. ‘Yes,’ she said deliberately, and with conviction. ‘I would say that I am.’

‘Yes,’ Myrtle echoed. Nerys had no doubt that she was mentally celebrating her own luck and happiness, not the Watkinses’.

Ahead of them were the lights of the Garden of Eden and its neighbours glimmering under the sentinel trees. There was the expected scent of smoke in the air, and of Majid’s good cooking. Myrtle cast the butt of her cigarette into the water. ‘The trouble for Caroline is that she isn’t happy. I don’t believe that her captain ever can make her happy, either.’

‘I’m sorry for her, then.’ Nerys didn’t press for more information.

The shikara man expertly drew his paddle in a circle, swinging the boat’s prow towards the houseboat’s steps.

But Myrtle added, in a lower voice, ‘She’s a very young girl, and her head’s full of romantic ideas. She doesn’t have many people to confide in. Her husband is always away and she’s been looking elsewhere for love and attention, the poor darling. That’s not unusual in Srinagar, of course, but unfortunately Caroline has chosen an option that’s not just compromising but quite dangerous. As soon as she told me about it I warned her to break it off at once, but from what I saw of her tonight I’m guessing that she has done nothing of the kind.’

The prow of the shikara gently grazed the houseboat steps that descended to water level. The boatman caught the mooring post and made fast. At the same moment the double doors leading to the Garden’s veranda opened and Archie appeared, yellow lamplight spilling over his head and shoulders.

‘Here you are at last,’ he called.

Myrtle silently placed a finger to her lips to indicate to Nerys that even Archie wasn’t privy to this particular story.

Nerys briefly grasped her hand. ‘Mrs Bowen is lucky to have you for a friend,’ she murmured. ‘And so am I.’

Myrtle threw her head back and hooted with laughter, startling the boatman. The shikara rocked as they climbed to their feet, and Archie handed them in turn up the shallow steps before he dropped some coins into the man’s uplifted hand.



‘Thank you, Sahib. Goodnight, Lady Sahibs.’ The boat was already sliding away into the gloom and its ripples lapped sweetly against the Garden’s planking.

‘You’ve been having a good time,’ Archie observed. ‘Who was at the club?’

‘The usual tragic figures.’ Myrtle sighed. ‘I don’t think Nerys was impressed.’

‘That’s not true,’ Nerys protested indignantly. ‘I was rather overcome by the glamour of it. We met a woman who said Myrtle had gone jungli, but I imagine she was actually referring to me.’

Archie rested a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘I can’t think what she was talking about. You are the two most elegant and beautiful women in Srinagar.’

Laughing, they passed into the houseboat’s saloon.

The round table in the centre was laid for dinner, with crystal glasses and silverware on the starched white cloth. The marquetry panels and carved cornicing glowed in the candlelight, and the pervading scent of polished wood mingled with the fragrance of dozens of deep crimson late roses arranged in bowls on the side tables. In silver frames, the faces of Myrtle and Archie’s family in England and Scotland crowded the shelves, interspersed with pictures of steam engines and bridges. Archie’s Indian Railways work was also his passion, but he complained that his country was at war and he would much rather be in uniform.

He moved towards the drinks tray as Nerys went on down the corridor that ran along one side of the houseboat. The wide floorboards creaked softly under her feet.

In her room, the covers were already turned down on the bed. Her few clothes hung neatly in the sweet-scented wardrobe, each item freshly pressed, with her shoes polished and placed on the shelf beneath. She took off her light jacket and put it on a hanger. How easy it would be, she thought, to grow accustomed to such luxury. It was a good thing therefore that the opportunity wouldn’t arise. Soon, in the next few days, she must begin the search for an appropriate home to rent in order to be ready for when Evan arrived. She couldn’t trespass on the McMinns’ hospitality for ever. Her budget was tiny, but she was sure she would find something.

After a soft knock on her door Majid appeared. ‘Are you ready, ma’am? I will send hot water?’

A little procession of Majid’s helpers came with tall enamel jugs and filled her bath.



That evening, at dinner, Archie announced, ‘My darling, I have to go down to Rawalpindi in two days’ time, and then to Delhi. After that I’m not sure, probably east. I don’t know how long it will be for, unfortunately. There are some track problems that we must solve in order to cope with troop movements.’

Myrtle put down her knife and fork. ‘So soon?’ she asked calmly.

Both women knew better than to ask what troop movements, and where.

‘I had a telephone call this afternoon. Our holiday’s over. We were lucky to get such an extended time off, you know.’

‘Yes, of course we were,’ Myrtle agreed. She sipped at a glass of water and Majid, who had been silent in the shadow at the far end of the room, came forward to replenish it from a crystal jug. ‘I should think Nerys and I will amuse ourselves here for a few more weeks. I don’t think I shall go down to Delhi yet. It would mean opening the house up properly, and that seems pointless just for me, don’t you think?’

She didn’t say as much – because that would have been a complaint, and she made it a firm rule always to defer to the demands of her husband’s work – but Myrtle dreaded going back south to their winter home. It was too lonely there, in the quiet rooms, without Archie. This time she was sure he would be away for a long while.

‘That sounds a good idea,’ Archie concurred.



Nerys kept her head bent in order not to intercept the look that passed between them. As soon as she had finished eating she excused herself, saying she had some letters to write, and left the McMinns alone together.



The tailor worked in a tiny shop between the first and second Jhelum bridges.

Archie had driven out of Srinagar the day before, and Nerys was trying hard to be the best possible company for Myrtle. She wasn’t finding it particularly easy because she had just received a letter from Evan saying he was detained by mission business near Kargil and wouldn’t reach Srinagar until the very end of October. Her own spirits were lower than they had been since leaving Leh. Didn’t he want to come and join her? Why was his work always so much more important than she was? But, still, she had ignored her own inclination to spend the afternoon moping over a book on the shady veranda of the Garden of Eden, and agreed to come shopping with Myrtle.

The tailor sprang up as soon as he saw them. He sat them in the two chairs that took up almost the entire floor space, and began to haul bolts of cloth off the shelves.

‘Silk, madam. Finest.’ A waterfall of pale eau-de-Nil fabric spilt over Nerys’s lap. ‘Tussore, linen, pure cotton.’ Silver pink, lavender, dove grey, snow white. Nerys couldn’t help fingering the folds. She did need clothes, even if they weren’t things as lovely as Myrtle’s or Mrs Conway-Freeborne’s. She even had a little money of her own, the few hundred pounds’ worth of capital left to her by her grandparents that she had never touched. She had believed that it might buy a home for Evan and their family some day or – with vague and nowadays seriously diminished piety – perhaps be used to do some good work. But then (the thought made her feel deliciously wanton and self-indulgent) maybe she could spend just a little of it on herself.



‘Tweed,’ Myrtle said crisply, pushing aside the summer-weight fabrics. ‘You will want a pheran, Nerys.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A long Kashmiri topcoat with loose sleeves like a cape. Warm, practical. Everyone wears one as soon as the cold weather arrives.’

The tailor came back, tottering under the weight of bolts of heavier fabric. He shook out one length after another and the three began to debate the differences, comparing the thickness of one with the weave of another, considering the subtlest heather-purple check against the green with a thin pimento-red stripe. And then, once Nerys had finally chosen a fine grey-blue tweed the colour of lake mist, there were a dozen details of cut and style to be decided. After that, there was an elaborate series of measurements to be taken, all of this written down in a black notebook with pages as fine as the skin of a brown onion. A samovar was brought in on a heavy brass tray and tea was served, with fresh afternoon bread straight from the oven in the baker’s shop a dozen yards away.

The whole process took more than two hours, and Myrtle said that that was really very quick for such an important purchase.

‘Seven days, then ready, Memsahib,’ promised the tailor.

Eventually they emerged into the late sunshine. Myrtle pushed her fists deep into the pockets of her skirt and looked up and down the narrow street. Her dark hair was growing longer and she had rolled it into loose curls that framed her face. She had also applied red lipstick. Nerys thought how beautiful and bold she looked.

‘It’s half past four. I have to go to Bandage Club,’ Myrtle announced. ‘It’s not what you’d call fun, I’m afraid, but would you like to come with me? You may get a cup of tea and an iced bun, unless the buns have been withdrawn due to rationing.’

The organisation for military and civilian wives, British and Indian, was actually called Wartime Hospital Supplies. The volunteers sat at long tables sorting and packing bandages and dressings for despatch to the front. Nerys could imagine the club ladies working away while all the time their gossip scorched the antiseptic air. She didn’t feel strongly tempted, and the alleys of the old town were beckoning. ‘Next time. I think I’ll go for a walk now.’

Myrtle looked doubtful. ‘A walk? Here? Why not take a shikara to the Shalimar Garden instead?’

‘I’ll take a tonga home if it gets too much.’ Nerys smiled.



Alone, she wandered past the local baker’s tiny niche in the crowded row of shops. The shop consisted of a pit dug in the ground, in which the baker crouched below street level in front of a cylindrical clay oven glowing hot with the wood fire at its base. He leant forward to fan the red embers, and even from where she was standing Nerys could feel the heat on her cheeks and forehead. The vertical walls of the oven were lined with circles of half-cooked dough, the delicious afternoon bread of Kashmir. Three veiled Muslim women brushed past her and the sweating baker half rose from his squatting position to serve them with hot fresh rolls from the highest part of the oven. Even though she had had tea at the tailor’s shop the scent of the sesame-crusted bread was too good to resist. Nerys bought a roll for herself and ate it as she strolled on down the alley towards the sliver of canal visible at the far end. On the way she passed one shop selling piles of aluminium pans and kettles, another that specialised in string and rope of every conceivable weight, coiled in pyramids or hung on spools, and others that had nothing but drums of cooking oil, a few sacks of rice, or stacked bundles of firewood to be weighed out on a primitive balance. A man led a donkey swaying under a load of wood that was taller than itself.

When she reached the canal Nerys glanced from left to right. Srinagar was threaded with waterways, an intricate maze of them connecting the lakes and the river, itself much more heavily frequented than the dusty streets. The canal surface here was coated with a bright green scum, broken up in places by the passing boats to reveal the oily blackness beneath. One shikara was curtained to protect its passenger from the casual gaze, another boat was loaded with cut greens from the floating gardens out in the lake.

The muddy banks on either side boiled with life. A woman with a bucket was washing plates, and others slapped the suds out of their laundry against convenient rocks. Glistening naked children screamed and splashed in the water as, a little further on, a girl tipped out a bowlful of slops. A miserable goat tethered to a post stood with its stick legs buried in mud as chickens scraped and picked in the filth coating the steps. A raft with raised sides slid across, weighed down with a flock of sheep and a child shepherd. The ferryman propelled it by dragging it along a suspended wire. As soon as the boat scraped the opposite bank the sheep crowded off and poured down an alley, following some ancient route through the depths of the city. Tall wooden buildings jutted over the narrow channel, the top storeys built outwards with their high windows propped open to catch the breeze.

Nerys hesitated as she worked out which way to turn. To her left the route was blocked by the poles and tattered awnings of a busy waterside market, where pierced and blackened oil drums functioned as braziers over which stallholders fried pakoras or simmered goat meat; to the right were the brick pillars of a bridge. She retraced a few steps and turned at random into the first alley running parallel to the canal. She had already forgotten where the tailor’s shop and the baker’s lay in this tangle of walls and crowded niches. Picking her way past heaps of refuse, ripe with the stink of the market, she began to walk towards what she thought was a glimpse of the canal. A cart straddling the way forced her to turn aside again and step in another direction, down an alley so narrow there was room for only one person to walk. A sharp dogleg turned one way, then seemed to double back again, and now the sky was blocked out by a crisscross of overhead lines hung with dyed lengths of fabric, hoisted to dry. A file of bearded men in red skullcaps marched towards her and she flattened herself against the wall to let them by. Nerys knew already that she was lost. She could only keep walking on until she came either to the canal where she could perhaps wave for a shikara, or to a road big enough for a tonga to ply for hire.

The crowds thinned out as she moved away from the market, and she was sometimes almost alone between stone walls or closed wooden shutters. The few passers-by stared blankly at the lone European woman who had wandered away from the jaunty houseboats and the security of the club.

She began to think that Myrtle’s advice to go to the Shalimar Garden instead of here had actually been excellent.

Wondering if she could, after all, go back the way she had come, she stopped to peer behind her. A sudden violent tug at the hem of her skirt made her spin round again, almost over-balancing. The lane seemed deserted but then she looked down and saw a trio of tiny children at her feet. Their faces were dark with dirt, their eyes very bright. The oldest might have been five, and she carried a baby bound in a cloth on her back. Her brother was the one who had grabbed a fistful of her skirt. The girl said a few words and pointed, and all the time the baby stared up at Nerys, unwinking. When Nerys didn’t respond, the girl insistently repeated the same phrase, glaring at her as if she must be stupid.

They vividly reminded her of the children at her school in Leh. She missed them all, their clapping and singing and shy laughter – even their resistance to her efforts to teach them anything except games.

Her basic knowledge of Ladakhi was no use here, and she hadn’t yet picked up a word of Kashmiri. She tried what Hindustani she knew but the children only shrugged and pulled harder at her. Giving up, Nerys followed as they dragged her along in their wake. Down another twist of the lane, past a mangy dog guarding a doorstep and a beggar who thrust his stick at her, they came to a dark doorway. A piece of sacking was looped to one side and Nerys ducked under the lintel.

Blinking, she looked round.

It was a bare, drab slot of a room that smelt of sour milk and human dirt. A heap of torn covers on some sacks revealed where the family slept. In another corner there were a few pots and pans and a dish covered with a filthy rag. In the middle of the room, on a square cut from what had once been a carpet, sat a young woman. She looked exhausted. Her hair was covered with a strip of cloth for a dupatta; her shapeless and soiled cotton tunic only partly concealed her extreme thinness. Her bare feet were filthy and cracked, spread flat on the floor as she leant over a spinning wheel. When the children came in with Nerys she let a spool of spun yarn drop into her lap and dully stared at them. Her daughter launched into what was clearly an explanation of whatever the woman they had captured might be good for. The spinner wearily nodded, attempting a smile for her children’s hostage.

More than anything else about the sad sight, that smile touched Nerys’s heart.

The little boy started pinching and whining at his mother. Her smile died. She briefly stroked his hair, then twisted a handful of cloudy combed wool and began to work the treadle of her wheel. The gossamer yarn as it was spun was so fine that Nerys, standing not a yard away, could barely see it.

With the baby’s head lolling against her back, the little girl rummaged under the sacks and drew out a basket. She unfastened the hemp ties, stooped down and gently lifted out the contents. It was something flat and soft, wrapped in a cloth. When the cloth was folded back, Nerys saw a flash of colours.

With a showman’s verve, the child shook out the shawl and twirled it in the air, spinning on her heels so the featherweight wool floated. The little boy, hunched against his mother’s flank, clapped his hands and grinned. Even the passive baby chuckled. With care not to let even a corner of the treasure touch the trodden-earth floor, the child caught the folds in her arms and held them out to Nerys. The soft background of the pashmina was a pale rose and at either end there was a broad patterned band, stylised flowers intricately woven in dark red and a dozen shades of green and palest cream. She examined the work closely, intrigued by its fineness. The reverse, she saw, was so like the face as to be almost indistinguishable. How was this beautiful, elegant work done? With Myrtle, she had spent an hour browsing the shops along the Bund but she had seen nothing like this.

‘Kani,’ the exhausted young woman said, as if this explained something. ‘Kani,’ she insisted.

The little girl jumped in front of Nerys, bunching the soft wool in her fists. ‘Rupees? Rupees?’

The woman touched her fingers to her mouth, all the lines of her face drawn into a plea for money.

In agony, Nerys took out her leather purse. The boy scrambled to his feet and bumped against her shins, trying to catch a glimpse of wealth. She knew what lay inside – just a few coins, and small-denomination notes worn soft in the Indian way. Enough for a shikara ride across the wide lake, back home to the Garden of Eden.

Nerys shook the little sum out and held it in the palm of her hand for them all to see. With shame, she realised that there was not enough to pay for even a single cocktail at the Srinagar Club.

The little girl turned away. She busied herself with refolding their treasure inside its cloth. The woman nodded, holding up her hand for Nerys’s money. She hid it away inside her tunic. She was embarrassed that an honourable potential sale had transformed itself into unvarnished charity, and she wouldn’t meet Nerys’s eyes. The boy knew exactly what was happening and was already pinching his mother’s thin arm again and wheedling for food.



Abruptly Nerys turned aside, upset and disturbed by what she saw. In her eagerness to get away she was out in the lane once more, where twilight was gathering, before she recalled that she was hopelessly lost. She had to duck back under the lintel and face the family again. She performed a small mime of confusion, pointing one way and the other, shaking her head and holding up her hands. The mother sighed a brief instruction to the children and bent to her spinning wheel.

Hand in hand with her brother, the little girl led Nerys back past the beggar, who was now sleeping, and the inert dog. The cohort was turning a corner as another, bigger, band of children scuffled out of the shadows. An older boy screeched and began snatching at the clothes of Nerys’s tiny guide. She slapped back at him, shouting at the top of her voice as the newcomers set on her and her brother. Their hands were darting all over the children’s filthy clothes, searching for the money that Nerys must have given them. Nerys waded in between the two groups, dragging them apart and hustling her friends up the alley towards a glimmer of light.

But now the disturbance had drawn more attention from the warren of dark alleys and passages, and a gang of much older children rushed out at them. These ignored the small fry and jostled Nerys close up against a wall. She tried to slap away their hands as they grabbed at her pockets. The biggest of them, a hulking youth with the dark beginnings of a beard, tore off Myrtle’s circlet of pearl and brilliants that she wore pinned at the throat of her blouse.

‘Give that back to me,’ Nerys screamed.

She was ringed by hostile faces, but she was relieved to see her own threesome retreating under cover of the confusion and melting away. She could give her full attention to her own plight. She stood taller, and pushed the youth in the chest. Instead of stepping back he came closer, thrusting his face into hers. She smelt his breath and the sweat of his body. She was afraid now, and gathered herself to run.



But which way, in this maze of darkness?

Nerys balled her fists and ducked under his arm. She feinted a dash in one direction, the youth followed, then she broke away in the other. But to her horror she saw that a man’s misshapen figure loomed ahead, blocking the escape route she had chosen.

Now she was trapped.

The man shot out a hand to catch her wrist and his grip was like a vice. To her amazement he said calmly, in accented English, ‘Stand behind me, please.’

The next thing she knew he had interposed himself between her and the mob of children. He said something commanding in Kashmiri and they all fell back a step.

Nerys realised that the man’s silhouette appeared distorted because he carried a big bundle of rope over his shoulder. He let the coils drop at his feet and drew out a length to the full width of his outstretched arms. Then, from an inner pocket, he produced a vicious knife and there was a flash of steel as he cut off the length he had measured. Slowly he raised the blade to his lips and kissed it.

Nerys’s assailants now watched in reluctant fascination, and she edged to one side in order to gain a better view for herself.

With the knife gripped between his teeth the man took the ends of his yard of rope in each hand and snapped it taut across his chest. Then he quickly doubled the length and snapped that too. He caught up the mid-point in his left fist and, with a flourish, he withdrew the knife from between his lips. The blade flashed once more as he cut the doubled rope in two. The children murmured to each other and pushed closer, and the man let the biggest youth inspect the four ends that were bunched in his fist.

Now, grinning, the man joined the two severed ends in a knot and pulled it tight to test the join. He held the knot up to Nerys. ‘Please be kind enough to blow on it for me.’

Intrigued in spite of herself, she did as he asked.



He brandished the knotted rope in front of them. With surgical precision he placed his thumb and forefinger over the knot and slid it down the length of rope.

The knot slipped free, and the magician held up the uncut rope for them to see.

The gang of children gasped. As one body they moved backwards, distancing themselves from this sorcerer. He shook the intact rope at them, giving it a sharp snap in the air and with that they turned and ran, falling over themselves and each other in their anxiety to escape. A second later Nerys was alone with the magician, and the only sounds were of scurrying feet and a dog yelping.

The man bowed. He was of average height but broad-chested and muscular, with a mane of tawny hair. She already knew where she had seen him before.

‘Would you like to follow me?’ he asked politely. He dropped his rope length into a pocket, sheathed the knife somewhere about himself and shouldered the coils once more. A couple of turns down the alleyway, and a lane thick with weeds brought them out to a wide loop of the Jhelum river. There were lights everywhere, in the tall houses and on the bobbing boats, and music gaily echoed over the water.

The man stopped and bowed again. ‘My name is Rainer Stamm,’ he said, and held out his hand.

They shook, his huge fist enveloping hers.

‘I am Mrs Watkins.’ This sounded cold so she added, ‘Nerys Watkins.’

‘How do you do, Mrs English Watkins?’

He was laughing at her. Nerys withdrew her hand. ‘I am Welsh,’ she said.

‘I apologise for my mistake.’

Swiss, or something, was how Myrtle had dismissed him. He wasn’t British, anyway, Nerys was sure of that. He was too confident, too taunting, with his wide smile. Altogether too … leonine, was that it? ‘Thank you for rescuing me.’

Her handsome hero looked at her. ‘You didn’t need rescuing. You were looking after yourself. I just provided a moment’s diversion.’

‘How did you do that, by the way?’ Nerys pointed to an end of the rope trailing out of his pocket.

‘Ah, it’s known as the cut-rope trick. Would you like me to show you? It might come in useful, next time you lose your way in the bazaar. My house is just there. I could offer you a drink with the lesson, perhaps, now that we have introduced ourselves.’

Rainer Stamm pointed a few yards along the ghat to one of the fine old Srinagar houses, built of brick and wood and decorated with carvings. Its gabled windows projected over the water.

‘Thank you, no.’ Nerys smiled politely. ‘I must go. My friends will be wondering where I am.’

‘Of course. I saw you at the club with Mrs McMinn, I think. Let me call a boatman.’ A moment later a shikara came gliding to the step where they waited.

‘Those little devils didn’t rob you, did they?’ he asked casually.

Nerys’s hand flew to her throat where the neck of her blouse gaped. ‘That big one took my brooch.’

‘I want you to have it,’ Myrtle had insisted. ‘It suits you better than it does me.’ Her mind was made up and Nerys had known that there was no point in protesting. Since then she had worn the brooch almost every day.

Rainer Stamm bent forward and gently placed his finger in the notch at the base of her throat. ‘I’m sorry for that,’ he murmured.

Nerys stiffened, but he had withdrawn his hand. The boatman whistled softly between his teeth and she turned to the river.

Rainer offered her his arm, but she made not to see it. She clambered awkwardly into the boat, which rocked violently, causing her almost to lose her balance and the boatman to call a warning from his perch in the stern. Nerys collapsed on to the cushions, irritated by her gaucherie. She would have to borrow the fare money from Archie when she got back to the houseboat. But, as if he had read her thoughts, Rainer gave the man a note.

‘Thank you again,’ she called, from beneath the awning.

Rainer touched his forehead. He said crisply to the boatman, ‘Dal Lake, the Garden of Eden boat.’

He wanted her to know that he knew where she lived. It would be difficult, she already sensed, to keep ahead of Rainer Stamm.

The man dipped his paddle and the boat swished forwards.

‘Goodnight,’ the magician called, across the width of water.