The Kashmir Shawl

NINE


‘It’s not too cold,’ Rainer insisted.

Rainer never seemed to feel it, but in the last few days the valley weather had become so raw and damp that even indoors Nerys wore her new tweed pheran with several cardigans layered beneath. Myrtle had warned her that she would soon have to start carrying an earthenware fire-pot for warmth, as the Kashmiris did. Recently the two women had begun to feel like the forgotten rearguard of an army, as the last of the summer-season residents retreated south to the plains. The mountains were shrouded in mist, the Srinagar Club was empty, except for a couple of subdued tables for bridge, and the Lake Bar was silent, stripped of its lounge chairs and parasols.

Rainer Stamm was one of the few who did remain. Myrtle and Nerys had gone to his party, and instead of the usual faces they had been introduced to a Pandit university professor and his daughter, who was a musician, a Buddhist poet, and two tough-looking young American men whose role had never been fully explained and who, Myrtle later insisted, had been spies. They had had fun at this unusual gathering, and since then Rainer had taken to visiting the Garden of Eden for coffee or drinks. In return he invited them to the magic shows he gave to audiences of students.

Today he was explaining to Nerys how a permit he was waiting for had finally been refused. ‘The reason the British are giving me is the war. Tell me, how can it make the smallest difference to the war whether or not one Swiss national climbs Nanga Parbat? On the other hand it does make the greatest difference to me, and to the family of Matthew Forbes.’

‘If you climb what?’ Nerys asked him. ‘And the family of whom?’

This morning they were at Rainer’s house in the old town, sitting on the window seat of a casement that projected over a reach of the Jhelum river. There was a magnificent view of a bridge and the stately Hindu temple on the far bank, but the room itself was under-heated and dusty. Rainer’s furniture was a collection of battered rejects haphazardly grouped on a once fine but now filthy and threadbare carpet, and his possessions seemed to consist of nothing but books, coils of rope, glittery stage props and hinged boxes painted with occult symbols relating to his magic tricks. Nerys was fascinated by the few glimpses she had been given into Rainer’s life, but until today he had offered little real information.

Now he answered, ‘You don’t know? Nanga Parbat is a mountain. A very fine peak, the ninth highest in the world. It lies just eighty miles north of here. I will be the first person to reach the summit. I decided that years ago. The Germans think it is theirs to claim, but they are mistaken.’

Nerys was beginning to recognise Rainer’s brand of bravado and defiance. He made his claims with such intensity and such twinkling humour that it was impossible not to catch his enthusiasm. ‘I see.’

His eyes held hers. He didn’t often look as serious as he did now.

‘Maybe you do. I will capture it by going fast and light. That was always my intention with Matthew.’

‘Rainer, I don’t understand a word of this,’ she protested. ‘Are you going to tell me the story or not?’

Rainer was good at telling stories. He liked to exercise command over his audience, just as he did when he performed his magic. He waved his hands now in an abracadabra gesture. ‘I will tell you on the way. Are you ready to go?’

He had suggested a drive to one of the villages and a picnic. Even the thought of going out into the mist made her shiver, but on the other hand Rainer’s company would make up for the cold. Myrtle was attacking her own boredom by volunteering for all the war work that came her way, and today she was on a committee concerned with packing Indian sweets to send home to British children. Nerys didn’t belong to the wives’ groups, and was quite relieved not to, but solitude and inactivity were a particularly unwelcome prospect today.

She gave in. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m ready.’

Rainer hoisted an armful of canvas bags and bowed her out into the street. On a patch of derelict ground, with a swarm of children to guard it, stood a red-painted Ford truck. It had a small closed cab and an open back into which Rainer tossed his bags. Two boys capered on the cab roof and others swung on the running-boards. They catcalled and gestured at Rainer until he dropped some coins into the hands of the biggest one, then fought to open the doors for him, like a mob of ragged footmen. Rainer cranked a starting-handle and the engine coughed. Nerys climbed into the passenger seat and they swayed over the ruts, the most daring children clinging to the chassis until the last possible moment.

‘I didn’t know you had a car,’ she remarked, as they accelerated away.

‘Of course I do. And for your sake I have even begged a cupful of petrol. Enough to get us where we are going – and who knows? Maybe all the way back again.’

Fuel was reserved for military purposes, and for civilians it was increasingly hard to come by. Nerys laughed. ‘I’m impressed. Are you going to tell me exactly where we might not get back from?’

Rainer tapped the side of his nose. ‘In good time. First the story.’

They were heading out of town, through quiet streets where the houses of civil servants and teachers rested in secluded gardens. Nerys settled as comfortably as she could in the truck’s rigid seat.

‘Did you ever visit the European cemetery in Leh?’ Rainer began.

‘Of course I did. I used to go and sit there whenever I felt homesick. There’s a handful of headstones with Welsh names, belonging to mission families from before our time. It’s a sad place because of the little children’s graves, but there’s a wonderful view.’

‘Then you will remember the memorial plaque to Matthew Forbes.’

Nerys did remember. She suddenly saw it in her mind’s eye, a simple plate let into the wall of the enclosure.

In Memoriam

Matthew Alexander Forbes, St John’s College, Cambridge Lost on Nanga Parbat, August 1938, aged 22

‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

Rainer stared ahead over the truck’s steering-wheel. They were reaching the outskirts of Srinagar, where the houses and roadside markets gave way to paddy fields and orchards. ‘I placed it there, following the wishes of his family. I was with Matthew on the last morning of his life. The very last words he spoke were, “See you in a couple of hours. I’ll open a tin of soup.”’

‘Go on.’

‘Fast and light, that was our plan. We were in good shape for the climb. We had a small team of Sherpas, Matthew, two very strong officers of the Indian Army, and me. Matthew and I had camped at twenty thousand feet and were planning to advance the next day to establish a higher camp. Matthew was resting and I had climbed solo to a point on the ridge from which to reconnoitre our route upwards. I was looking towards the summit through my binoculars, when the entire slope above the camp gave way. Matthew, the tent, everything – everything that had been there – was swept away and buried under thousands of tons of ice and snow.’

Rainer’s voice remained steady but furrows had appeared in his cheeks. He looked suddenly a decade older. ‘I stood in the avalanche debris, and there was nothing around me but the wind. All I could do was climb down to the low camp where the other men were waiting for us to come back. We sent the news home to Matthew’s family via Gilgit and Simla.

‘His father was a mountaineer, too, and he understood the climber’s compulsion to climb, but I don’t believe his mother will ever recover. He was her only son, a brilliant mathematician. I had known him and his family for ten years because they came out to Switzerland to ski in winter and to climb in summer, and as soon as he heard about my expedition Matthew begged and begged me again to take him with me. I knew that he was fully capable of it, or of course I would have refused him. We came out from Delhi via Manali and up to Leh, in order to train and to acclimatise, and Matthew loved that place. That was why I placed his memorial in the graveyard there. It would have been a fine achievement for him, you know, to reach the summit. I couldn’t have denied him the chance, when he wanted it so badly. But the mountains take away as readily as they give.’

Nerys imagined an eager young Englishman discovering the winding alleyways of sleepy Leh, or climbing to the old palace that stood on a hill overlooking the town to gaze out over the gold and emerald Indus valley.

Understanding that he was revealing a source of deep, private pain, she reached out and put her hand over Rainer’s. Her fingers rested on his fist, until she remembered herself and withdrew them again.

‘So, you may understand why I must go back. When I stand on the summit, the first man to reach there, Matthew will be with me. I have a book belonging to him that he left in the low camp, with his signature on the inside. I will take that page with me, and I will bury it up there for him.’



There was the faintest tremor in Rainer’s voice now. Nerys found that her eyes were pricking with tears in response. ‘I do understand,’ she said.

‘Yes. The British authorities do not see it in the same light. There is no permit for me to return. Even though I engineer an invitation and take myself to the Residency party in my evening clothes, such as they are, to speak in person to Mr Fanshawe and dance with his wife, who unfortunately looks like a horse, the answer is no. However …’ He glanced at Nerys, and the lines in his face softened and disappeared. ‘I danced with you, and for that it was worth attending the most tedious British party only to be told I am not allowed to climb a high mountain in India.’

‘I don’t know about mountains or permits, Rainer, but I enjoyed dancing with you too,’ she said.

She was remembering some of the words she had heard Myrtle’s acquaintances murmur in connection with Rainer Stamm. Dubious, adventurer and charlatan were among them, but Nerys didn’t care. He intrigued her and, for all his bad reputation, she thought he was as honest as anyone she had ever met.

Rainer pointed ahead. The road had been climbing northwards, and the mist that cloaked the valley suddenly fell away in trails of silvery-grey vapour. The foothills emerged with their ribbing of dark pine trees, and the white peaks lifted into the sky behind them. She knew, because she had been watching it for long days, that the snowline dropped by a few hundred feet each morning.

‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said, as lightly as she could manage.

‘I would like to take you up there with me, all the way over the passes and up to a place called Astor, from where you can see my Naked Mountain. Nanga Parbat is called that, you know, because it stands alone.’ He leant forward and tapped one of the dials on the dust-coated dashboard. ‘But we have only just enough petrol to get us to Kanihama and perhaps home again.’



‘Kanihama?’

‘Wait and see.’

After an hour’s driving on a dirt road winding between tall poplar trees and bare paddies, they came to a village of mud-brick houses set in apple orchards. The sun shone over the rumpled blanket of mist that layered the Vale below, and a breeze stirred the trees. Rainer stopped the truck in a small square of houses and Nerys wound down her window. Sweet air flooded into her lungs, bringing with it the loud chirping of crickets, a cock’s crow, the splash of running water and the voices of children playing nearby.

‘Oh,’ she said in surprise.

This place looked and sounded different in a dozen ways but still it strongly reminded her of villages at home that were also caught in the cup of hills and flooded with the scent of woodsmoke and animal manure. She opened the truck door and stepped out, drawing her pheran around her.

Kanihama was a lovely place.

Wide-eyed children crept round the corners of houses, followed at a distance by shawled women and men in thick coats and lambskin caps. Rainer swung down from the truck and spoke a few words to a crescent-faced man with a thick black beard.

Rainer turned back to Nerys. ‘Your shawl spinner …’

He had found out where the woman lived, not far from his own house in the packed alleyways of Srinagar old town, and a few days ago Nerys and he had gone together to visit her. As Nerys had done the first time, they found her in her bare room with her spinning wheel and her children. Nerys gave the family food and some money, and she had tried to make promises about coming back and helping in whatever way she could. The woman only stared up at her, her face dulled by hunger and despair, while the two older children dragged at Nerys’s clothes and insinuated their small filthy hands into her pockets. The baby clung to its sister’s hair, seeming too listless even to blink. The oldest one had snatched up the family treasure again, and thrust the shawl towards Nerys’s face. ‘You buy. You buy,’ she had insisted.

Nerys had gently put the piece aside, asking Rainer to tell the mother that she wanted to help them without taking their single asset.

‘Kanihama is the woman’s family home,’ Rainer continued. ‘I heard this much, and I asked for some more information. I discovered that this man is her father.’

The man nodded abruptly to Nerys. She offered the few words of Kashmiri greeting that she had learnt so far and he inclined his head again. A woman joined him, her hair and the lower half of her face covered with folds of plain pashmina.

‘They are asking if we want to see their work,’ Rainer said.

One of the houses was a little larger than the others, with wooden benches placed against the outside walls to catch the sun. Inside they were shown into a single room, the beamed roof supported by rough wooden pillars. A stove burnt at one side, the fragrant smoke curling up an iron chimney pipe.

There were three looms, looking to Nerys like a dauntingly complicated web of struts and cords. The only sounds were the steady whisper of bobbins as they passed between the threads, and the occasional gentle thump of the heddles.

When the weavers looked up and saw the visitors, the atmosphere of quiet industry changed to a bustle of welcome. The one nearest to them slid smartly off his bench and beckoned Nerys to his side. Watched by the crescent-faced man and two or three of the women, and by a fringe of inquisitive children bobbing in the doorway, he unpinned a protective cotton cloth that had covered his work.

Nerys gazed at the half-completed kani-woven shawl that was revealed.

The design was an intricate pattern of peacock feathers within lush borders of floral and paisley shapes, but it was the colours that took her breath away. They captured all the shades of a Kashmiri summer’s afternoon, from aquamarine to silver, from the sky’s blue to the deep green depths of lake water.



‘You like?’ the head man asked.

She could only nod.

With a touch of theatre the weaver bounded back on to his seat, and rippled fingers as practised as a concert pianist’s over the dozens of bobbins laid out in front of him. He picked out one note, a bobbin wound with pearl-white yarn, and dipped it beneath a single warp thread to create, Nerys realised, a tiny point of light at the heart of a stylised lotus bloom. Then he took up another, this time wound with palest silver, and counted the next five threads before slipping the bobbin beneath them. He was already rapt in concentration, and instinctively she stepped back in order not to distract him.

She realised that she had been holding her breath.

Rainer and Nerys were led outside again and escorted to a sunny bench. Tea was brought and served by one of the dark-eyed girls of the village. She smiled at Nerys but was too shy to linger. Rainer and the head man were deep in a conversation involving more gestures than actual words, so she rested her head against the wall and studied the view. The village seemed far away from Srinagar. She guessed that nothing much had changed here in centuries. Food was grown in the fields and the patches of garden; rice was planted, harvested and sold, and the dry stalks were neatly bound into the sheaves she could see piled in the barn beside her to provide winter fodder for the animals. Two boys drove a small flock of sheep and goats across the other side of the square, rattling their sticks against the house walls and giving low calls of encouragement. A group of little girls crouched together, playing a game of throwing and catching five white pebbles.

Nerys was so absorbed in the scene, and in her thoughts, that she started when Rainer called her name. He was talking now to two of the women who held up enamel jugs and baskets for his inspection.

‘We could make up for being too poor to buy the shawl by supplementing our picnic with some of their fruit and yoghurt, don’t you think?’



‘Yes, I do.’

For a few rupees they chose an earthenware pot full of cool white yoghurt, some small yellow apples, and a square of sacking tied round a generous scoop of walnuts. The villagers were disappointed but evidently not particularly surprised that the visitors hadn’t made a more substantial purchase.

‘At the price they’re asking, they’ll have to wait for Vivien Leigh to come calling for that shawl.’ Rainer grinned. ‘I would have bought it for you, if I had the money.’

‘I’m not surprised it costs the earth. It’s exquisite.’

The children had crowded in to watch the transaction. Even the two shepherds had penned their animals and come to join the others. Rainer waved his arms and gathered them all into a circle. ‘Come on, come and look,’ he called.

‘Keep them amused for a minute,’ he casually instructed Nerys, and strolled away towards the red Ford. Nerys blinked at two dozen expectant faces, and at the men and women who were leaving their work to see what might happen next. Her mind went awkwardly blank until she remembered her little schoolroom at the mission in Leh.

Hoping for the best, she began to sing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’. In her strong, chapel-trained contralto voice she gave the nursery rhyme full volume and emphasis, complete with actions. By the time she got to ‘they were neither up nor down’ bemused stares had given way to ripples of laughter, and Rainer was back again.

‘Not bad. Maybe I will offer you a job as my assistant,’ he said.

From the depths of one of his canvas bags he produced four silvery rings, linked in a chain. With a bow he presented the chain to the bearded head man, and indicated that he should give it a good tug and try to pull the rings apart. The man did so, with a great show of strength, but he couldn’t break the links. Rainer took them back, turned them once between his thumb and forefinger, and held up four separate rings. There was a hubbub of amazed shouting, which he pretended not to hear, throwing the rings in the air instead and juggling with them. When he caught them again he held them up for everyone to see, and they were linked. This time he passed the chain to the head man’s wife, and she giggled within her shawl as she failed to separate the rings.

Nerys loudly clapped, and now the villagers joined in the applause. She and Rainer were hemmed in on all sides as everyone tried to edge in for a closer look. She noticed how he seemed to grow taller and to become more lion-like with the attention of the crowd.

He dropped the rings into his bag and just as casually brought out a flat sheet of plain glass. He held it up towards the sun and the light shone straight through it. He turned the square through every plane, then tapped the surface so that it rang a clear note. Shrugging, he passed the glass to the nearest spectator to hold and began to search through his own pockets. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he pointed to the smallest girl, who had a pocket in her apron front. That was empty, so Rainer made a show of thinking hard. Then he waved his hand over the head of another child, and unravelled a yard of black velvet ribbon from his left ear. The child cupped a hand to the ear and scuttled away sideways like a crab. All the others hooted with delight. Rainer looped the ribbon between his fingers and snapped it taut. Then, with a polite bow, he retrieved his sheet of glass and threaded the ribbon straight through the middle of it.

There was a gasp, and then a collective whispering. The ribbon curled free on the reverse side, and Rainer handed the glass to the head man’s wife. She breathed on it, then wiped the mist away with her sleeve. Sunlight flashed off the smooth surface as she examined it. Rainer coiled the ribbon and presented it to her, taking back the glass and stowing it in his bag.

The spectators were too amazed to applaud this time. The children were all dumbstruck, and slightly frightened.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.’ Rainer smiled and bowed. In the midst of an astonished silence he took Nerys’s arm and they returned to the Ford. They drove out of the little square and down the hill out of the village. He glanced sideways at her as they jolted over the ruts. ‘Was that too much?’

‘I was impressed.’

He sighed. ‘I always mean to offer a little less show, a little more substance. Unfortunately I fail to live up to my good intentions, because illusion is easy and the truth is always so very hard. Shall we have our picnic now?’

‘Yes, please. Is the truth so very difficult, Rainer?’

‘I know you don’t find it to be. That’s because you are good, Nerys, as well as beautiful.’

She was good, Nerys decided, because there had so far been very few other options. But no man had ever told her that she was beautiful. With colour rising in her cheeks she stared through the windscreen at the snowy rampart of the Himalayas.

They found a sheltered hollow in the angle of two huge boulders on the lip of a tree-lined ravine. Out of the wind, and with the warmth of thin sunshine held by the stone, it was almost comfortable. Rainer hoisted a rusty drum pierced with rough holes from the back of the truck and set about gathering armfuls of dead wood. In minutes, a fire glowed in the brazier and an old tin kettle was filled from the stream that ran through the ravine. When the water boiled the kettle whistled, the incongruous domesticity of the sound in this wild place making Nerys smile. She made tea while Rainer chopped an onion and unwrapped a chunk of dark red meat. He sliced it into cubes with a pocket knife, and fried it with the onion and a fistful of spices. With the rising scent of cumin and fennel seed, Nerys realised she was ravenous.

‘Is there anything you can’t do?’ she asked him.

‘I can’t stay in one place,’ he answered, without looking up. She understood that this was the truth, and she could take it as a warning if she chose.

They leant back against the rock to eat the curried lamb inside folds of bread, and finished up with rich, thick yoghurt, apples and walnuts. Rainer cracked the shells of the nuts for her and arranged the kernels on his outspread handkerchief.

Nerys made more tea, and poured it into the two tin mugs. ‘I want to hear about our spinner now. Why does she live all alone in Srinagar, if she was born up here?’

Rainer sipped his tea. He told her that the girl had grown up in Kanihama’s extended families of spinners, dyers, weavers and embroiderers. But then she had fallen in love with a man, one of the pedlars who came through the villages selling oil, aluminium saucepans and trinkets, and she had married him against her father’s wishes. The man was from Srinagar and she had gone to the city to live with him in his mother’s house, as all the young women did here, because after marriage they no longer belonged to their own family but to the husband’s.

The pedlar had turned out to be a bad man, as the father had known all along, although the wife had three children before her husband abandoned her. The mother-in-law then threw the girl out, claiming that she was an adulteress because her son had told her as much, and insisting that the three children must have been fathered by some other man. Left alone, the wife couldn’t go back to her own family in the village because they had disowned her on her marriage, so the only option left to her was to try to support her children single-handed. Otherwise they would all starve.

Nerys had seen for herself what that struggle was like.

She had been listening as intently as if to a fable. But now she collected herself, remembering that it was the truth and not a story at all. ‘That is brutal, as well as sad.’

‘Yes, I am afraid it is.’

‘What can we do?’

Rainer shook his head. ‘Beyond offering a little money, some food here and there? Nothing. That is the way it is here.’

But nothing wasn’t any good, Nerys thought. Even the little she had been able to do for the children in Leh was much better than that. Evan wouldn’t have accepted nothing, either. He would extend a hand, in his pure conviction, to help a sinner, as he saw it.



Nerys closed her eyes for a moment. Evan had been in her mind ever since this morning when the postman had paddled up to the steps of the Garden of Eden with the letter.

‘There is a good deal of sadness in Kashmir,’ Rainer murmured, ‘but I don’t like seeing it reflected in your face.’

He was looking so hard at her that she had to meet his gaze. In confusion, she thought how recognisable he had become. She knew him, and he knew her.

‘Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?’ he whispered.

Nerys squared her shoulders. ‘I had a letter this morning from my husband. I was expecting him to join me very soon. But he has decided to spend the winter in Kargil, because his work there has absorbed his attention and he is valuable to the mission. He believes that it would be better and safer for me to spend the winter season here in the Vale, with Myrtle, and then he will travel to meet me after the snows melt again. Then we’ll resume our work together.’

This last was what she told herself, but she didn’t know for sure. Nor would there be many more mails arriving from Kargil this year. The passes were barely negotiable now, and in another week Ladakh would be cut off within its lines of mountains.

The truth was, Nerys didn’t add, that Evan found it simpler to preach and work when she wasn’t there to reproach him with her various needs. He could love God’s creatures more generally without suffering the daily and specific reminder that he and his wife were not in love at all.

‘I don’t know your husband,’ Rainer answered, ‘but he sounds like a fool.’

He took one of her hands and very gently kissed the knuckles. She didn’t snatch it away.

Nerys had learnt quite a lot about men and women since meeting Myrtle McMinn. She had seen the way Myrtle wove her way through the parties and tennis games and cocktail hours in Srinagar, flirting and laughing and attracting admiration wherever she went, and she had also seen – and heard – her at home with Archie before he had gone away. Nerys was in no doubt at all that Myrtle did love her husband, but the world wasn’t either black or white as far as love went. There were infinite permutations of colour, and a hundred thousand grades of feeling, between loving and not loving. To deny as much, she began to think, was to deny not only the obvious truth but your own humanity.

Nerys wanted Rainer to touch her. She felt dizzy with the force of how much she wanted him to touch her. She was beginning to understand what Myrtle had been talking about when she had advised her to have some fun.

My dear?

But Rainer only touched his finger to the rescued brooch at the neck of her blouse. There was a sudden rustle and snapping of twigs from the line of trees and they looked up to see a bearded goat gazing at them. A goat meant a goatherd not far away.

‘I think we should go back now.’ Rainer smiled.



The telephone rang in the saloon. A dense scribble of wires slung from wooden posts on the bank brought a telephone line as well as electric power to the houseboat, but its jangling bell always startled Nerys. She had been half reading and half watching the kingfishers out on the lake, and Myrtle was writing letters. Myrtle put down her pen and picked up the phone.

‘This is the Garden of Eden,’ she announced.

Nerys could just hear a woman’s voice at the other end. It sounded high and hysterical.

‘Not at all. Don’t worry,’ Myrtle murmured, raising an eyebrow in Nerys’s direction.

The voice went on. It was half a minute before Myrtle managed to say, ‘I think you should just get into a shikara and come straight here … Yes, come now … Of course … Of course … See you soon.’ She hung up. ‘That was Caroline Bowen. It sounds like more trouble.’

‘Oh dear. Should I go out somewhere?’

‘No, stay here. You could ring the bell for some coffee, perhaps.’



Myrtle went over to the veranda window. She lit a cigarette and leant against the glass, watching for the boat to come gliding over the water.

When she arrived, Caroline was swathed in her pheran with the hood pulled down to hide her face. She waited until Majid had served the coffee and withdrawn, and as soon as she showed herself they saw that her eyes were crimson and swollen almost shut from prolonged crying. Myrtle tutted in sympathy, settled her on the sofa and gave her coffee.

‘Caroline, dear girl, you have to tell us right now exactly what the real trouble is. Otherwise we can’t help. Can we, Nerys?’

Nerys had less confidence in their joint powers than Myrtle. Caroline tried to speak, but at first the girl couldn’t find the words and she wouldn’t look at either of them. Finally in a low, hoarse voice she managed to say, ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

Myrtle nodded, entirely unsurprised. ‘Are you? Why is that making you so unhappy?’

Caroline lifted her eyes now. ‘It’s not my husband’s child.’

‘Is it Ravi Singh’s?’

Her miserable silence was enough of an answer.

‘Does Ravi know? Does Ralph know?’

She shook her head. ‘No one does, except you two now. Oh, God, I’m so glad to have told you. It’s such a relief, you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been going mad. I’ve tried absolutely every single thing I could think of, drinking gin until I threw up, taking hot baths, going riding and putting the horse to fences at a gallop, but nothing worked. I felt terribly ill and tired, and then that sort of passed and now I’m just …’ she passed her hand over her middle ‘… getting bigger.’

‘How many months is it, do you know?’ Nerys asked gently.

Caroline bit her lip. ‘About four, I should think.’

Myrtle was making calculations. ‘What have you heard from Ralph?’

‘Just the usual letters. He’s … not all that good at writing. Everyone thought they would be going to North Africa, but it’s Malaya.’

‘Is there likely to be any home leave for the regiment?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’ She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘That’s what I hear. Ralph hasn’t mentioned anything.’

‘All right.’ There was a pause before Myrtle went on, ‘This is a rather personal question, I know, but we’re having no more secrets. How do you know it isn’t Ralph’s baby? He was here in Srinagar all summer. The timing would be right. And if it were his, he’d be rather pleased, wouldn’t he? Especially if it’s a boy, I should think. And even if it’s not his, with Ravi Singh being so light-skinned … It wouldn’t be the first time in history such a thing has happened, would it?’

Nerys had said nothing but she tried to flash a warning to Myrtle. Be careful. Don’t assume more than you can know.

It was too late. Caroline’s face crumpled and her empty coffee cup fell from her fingers and rolled on the rug. Her hands came up to her mouth and her whole body shook.

‘What is it?’ Myrtle cried. ‘What have I said?’

‘It can’t be Ralph’s baby, you see. That’s just it.’

‘Can’t?’ Myrtle persisted.

It was Nerys who stood up, retrieved the cup and put it back on the brass tray, then went to sit at Caroline’s side. She took the girl’s hands and looked into her ravaged face. ‘I think I understand,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to.’

Caroline seemed reassured by this. She collected herself and firmly shook her head. ‘No, I want to – need to talk about it. I came over here to Mrs McMinn, I mean Myrtle, and to you, because I knew I must. There hasn’t been anyone I could ’fess up to before, and that’s what has made it so bad. I mean, my stepmother has been decent enough, but she’s at home and I’m here, and we’ve never had that sort of a motherly conversation. That’s to say, before Ralph and I were married I knew I had to arrange matters so when I was in Delhi to buy my wedding dress I saw the doctor there – Mrs Fanshawe gave me an address – and he fixed me up with the hideous rubber thing you’re supposed to put in.’

Her eyes held Nerys’s.

A three-letter man, Nerys remembered. That was what Archie McMinn had called Captain Bowen.

‘I had it in its box on our wedding night, all ready to put in like the doctor told me. But Ralph had drunk too much and he more or less passed out. I wasn’t all that surprised, I’d seen him drinking before, so I tried to laugh about it the next day, you know, saying something about making up for lost time. Ralph didn’t think it was funny, not at all. He made an excuse that night about feeling ill, and slept on the camp bed. After a few more days I didn’t think it was funny either. I’d be putting talcum powder on the rubber thing, and going to bed in my pretty nightdresses, and my husband never did what he was supposed to.’

‘Never?’ Myrtle whispered. Nerys could see how difficult it was for her friend to imagine such a thing. For herself, it wasn’t such a leap.

Caroline held up her head. ‘Never.’

‘My poor duck.’ Myrtle sighed.

‘I thought it must be me. Not that I was thinking I might be repulsively deformed or anything like that – I was at boarding school and I’d seen everyone else so I knew I was actually on the decent side of ordinary, if that doesn’t sound too conceited. I mean, just not being alluring enough. But after a while I started to think, Bloody hell, if I want to and he doesn’t, that can’t all be my fault, can it? Sometimes we’d get near to it, but I always felt he was closing his eyes so as to be somewhere else while it was happening, and never managing to detach himself quite enough actually to be able to do it. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes, it makes sense,’ Nerys assured her.

‘Well, after the honeymoon he was mostly with the regiment anyway. Ralph’s a soldier, so was his father, and his father, all the way back to the battle of Waterloo or some such, and soldiering comes first, before everything else. He took the trouble to warn me about that, before we got engaged, and I was keen enough on being married to convince myself I could either change him or live with it. I mean, being realistic, how many other proposals was I going to get? I’d come all the way out here and I couldn’t go on living at the Residency for ever. Ralph was quite handsome and he seemed to want me.’

Even Nerys understood that an ambitious soldier would need a wife. The colonel and the colonel’s lady. Caroline would have been a very suitable choice.

Caroline looked down at her engagement and wedding rings. ‘It was a happy ending, wasn’t it? I was going to be Ralph’s wife, the mother of his sons. Oh, God.’

The tears started up again, running down her smooth pink cheeks. Myrtle passed her a handkerchief and said, ‘What about Ravi Singh?’

‘I’m sure you can guess. I shouldn’t have let him make love to me but I couldn’t stop it happening. I felt as if I was in heaven. The glamour, first of all. Everything was such fun and nothing took any effort, not like at my house where even the damned kitchen-boy ignores what I tell him to do and the dust lies an inch thick. Ravi has legions of bowing servants, and a string of sweet ponies, and a chauffeur to take him wherever he wants to go in his big car. The food’s all divine, and you should just see the silks and the silver, and he can be more idiotic and funny than any Englishman you’ve ever met.’

‘He has the time to devote to it,’ Myrtle said drily.

‘I know, I know. And he took ages to seduce me, really he did. It wasn’t crude or too insistent, nothing like that. He’d just kiss the inside of my wrist – here – and then quickly cover that precise square inch of skin with my cuff, humbly, as if I’d allowed him a glimpse of the most beautiful treasure in the world. It went on like that for weeks, a tiny bit further each time, and always making me laugh and bringing me heavenly presents and telling me … telling me all the things that I had imagined Ralph saying.’

Nerys thought of Rainer and the Kanihama picnic. The only difference was that she was by this time a shade more sceptical about men and sex than Caroline Bowen was. She felt herself redden, and hoped that Myrtle wouldn’t notice and wonder why.

Caroline lifted her head. ‘When it did happen, it was wonderful,’ she insisted. ‘I want you to know that I don’t regret it, although I’m in such a damned awful mess now.’

Nerys was listening intently.

‘It was at his family’s summerhouse, in the country. When Ravi took off my clothes the air was like silk over my arms and legs. Nothing was going to spoil that moment – nothing. I felt as beautiful as a painting, and as powerful as a queen. He was doing me honour, you know.’

Myrtle and Nerys were silenced. Love had temporarily made a pretty, round-faced, unlucky English girl into something close to a tragic heroine.

Myrtle found her voice first. ‘You didn’t have your cap with you, of course? The hideous rubber thing in its box?’

‘No.’

‘And, of course, Ravi didn’t make himself responsible for any arrangements of that sort?’

‘No.’

Myrtle sighed.

Caroline quickly added, ‘The times after that I mostly used it. Well, I did sometimes. The trouble is that it’s just not very romantic, is it? If it was with one’s husband, I’m sure it would be all right. He’d be used to you going off into the bathroom and fishing around.’

Nerys couldn’t help but smile at her.

‘Then I began to notice that each time I was with him, Ravi made it less of a ceremony. I wanted him more and more, so much that I actually ached for him. I used to babble stupidly about loving him, I couldn’t stop myself, and he edged further and further away. One day when we were alone together, and I was already beginning to guess I might be pregnant, he looked at his watch instead of undressing me and said that he had to go riding.

‘At the Residency party I drank some cocktails for courage and when he asked me to dance I tried to talk properly to him. But, oh, the ice of it. I’d never have imagined he could be so cold, while I was just burning up with fury and fear. That was when you two rescued me. Since then, I’ve been sitting in our dismal empty house, praying for a miracle. But they don’t happen. So I’m pretty much in the mire, aren’t I?’

‘Do you really love Ravi?’ Nerys asked. She had seen the man’s cold, aquiline face and proud bearing.

‘Of course I do. Desperately,’ Caroline flung back, but Nerys suspected that she was clinging to love itself rather than Ravi. That was quite a good thing.

‘All right. Let’s work out what we can do,’ Myrtle said. Caroline gave her a grateful look. ‘Is it too late for us to find someone who can help, do you think?’

‘I’m afraid it is,’ Nerys said. She was firm because it was highly unlikely that any proper doctor would agree to perform a late abortion on a healthy woman, and she couldn’t bear even the thought of the clumsy unofficial alternatives. The other two regarded her steadily.

‘When Evan and I were in Shillong I worked at the mission hospital, in the delivery ward. I saw the results of a couple of botched attempts to get rid of babies. I don’t ever want to see another.’

‘You are a midwife?’ Myrtle gaped. ‘I must say, that’s jolly useful.’

‘No, I’m not. I helped out, that’s all.’

‘Even so. I’ve never seen a baby born.’

‘Neither have I,’ Caroline said. She turned pale at the thought of what lay ahead, but Myrtle was now all briskness.

‘Take that woolly thing off, Caroline, and stand up. Turn sideways and let’s have a look at you.’



She did as she was told, awkwardly smoothing her skirt over a small protuberance. Yes, Nerys thought. Sixteen or seventeen weeks into what was probably a healthy pregnancy. Caroline was slim, but she looked strong and resilient. Even so, she was going to need proper medical care.

Myrtle nodded. She was clearly thinking hard. ‘Would you want to keep the baby? I mean, after it’s born.’

‘I’ve tried hard enough to stop it, haven’t I? There’ve been weeks and weeks when I’ve thought of nothing but how to get rid of it. But now …’ she placed one hand on her belly ‘… I’m confused. It’s growing. I can feel it. But it can’t be Ralph’s, and I know he’ll never, never accept what I’ve done, so if I want to keep my life as it is I’ve got to hide this from him. I suppose Ravi might have acknowledged the baby as his, at least in some way, but only as a bastard, never as part of his family. He’d never marry me, even if I could get a divorce. I’ve stopped even dreaming about that,’ she concluded.

‘I don’t think you should let Ravi Singh know anything whatsoever,’ Myrtle warned her. ‘That wouldn’t be helpful.’

‘What do you think would be the best outcome for you, Caroline?’ Nerys asked.

She gave a small, mirthless laugh. ‘Apart from discreetly losing the baby, you mean? I suppose it would be for me to give birth, secretly if possible, and to find a good adoptive home for the baby, perhaps where I could even visit from time to time. Otherwise, I don’t know. I suppose for Ralph to come back after the war, and for us to try again, harder, to be married in the way I believe we both hoped for at the outset.’ Her lower lip protruded, making her look like a vulnerable child. ‘But that’s really rather a lot to be wishing for, isn’t it?’

Nerys’s heart twisted with sympathy. Caroline Bowen was a simple girl who in the end wanted simple things. A husband, love, a family. Was she any different herself?

Myrtle was smiling and her eyes had begun to sparkle. She had lost the bored expression that had marked her more often since Archie had left. She linked a hand with each of the others and drew them into a close circle. ‘We’re on our own for the rest of the winter. Ralph is in Malaya, Archie’s somewhere in the east and Evan isn’t coming down from Kargil until the spring thaw. So, united we stand, and this is what we’re going to do. We’ll all be pregnant.’

Nerys said, with a dry catch in her throat, ‘I don’t know quite how we’ll achieve that.’

‘Of course you and I won’t actually be, unfortunately, but we’ll look as if we are. Wrapped up in a pheran all winter, with a fire-pot to nurse, who’s to know the difference? I’ve often looked at the Kashmiri ladies and thought as much. Caroline, you’ll stay out in the married quarters for just as long as you can hide the pregnancy and convince all those gossiping wives that everything is as usual. Then as soon as that gets too difficult you can claim you’re lonely living without Ralph and move in here with me.’ She waved a hand. ‘There isn’t really room for the three of us in the poor old Garden, but we’ll find a way round that when we need to. At the same time Nerys and I will also be pretending to get plumper and slower, and we’ll wrap ourselves up so much that if there is any talk, or any question about where a mysterious baby might actually have come from, no one will be able to point more than the finger of suspicion at anyone.’

She crowed with pleasure at her plan. ‘Aren’t I a genius? Go on, tell me.’

Nerys said, ‘They say madness and genius are closely related. I know which is my verdict.’

Wide-eyed, Caroline was weighing up the idea.

Myrtle swept on: ‘You and I, Caroline, can go down to Delhi a couple of times, shopping or visiting. No one will bother us at my house, and you can see a doctor while we’re there. Maybe in the last month we’ll have to take you to stay somewhere else, away from the watching eyes. Then, when the baby’s due, Delhi again. After that, we can look for foster parents, with a view to adoption. There’s a war on. Babies are going to be orphaned, aren’t they?’ Her face was almost feverishly bright now.



Ah, Nerys thought. ‘Myrtle?’ she prompted gently.

Myrtle and she had never discussed why the McMinns had no children, even when Myrtle had looked after her following her own miscarriage. She had guessed that they had been unable to, for whatever reason, and because her own loss was so often in her mind she had avoided the question.

Myrtle only held up her hand. Her eyes were fixed on Caroline’s face. Caroline gnawed her lip. Her situation was desperate enough for her to try anything.

‘It might work,’ she said at last.

‘Nerys? Are you with us?’ Myrtle persisted.

They exchanged glances, acknowledging the calculations that they were separately making, and the responsibility for Caroline Bowen and her baby that they would be assuming from now on. ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Count on me.’

Caroline’s face was brightening. ‘You’re so good, both of you. I’ve never in my life had friends like you.’ She squeezed their fingers so hard that Nerys feared for the blood flow. ‘Friends for ever,’ she declared.

‘I am clever, aren’t I?’ Myrtle laughed.



That evening, Nerys and Myrtle sat down alone to dinner.

Across the starched tablecloth Nerys said, ‘What exactly are you planning? If we’re going to be co-conspirators, you know, you’d better tell me everything.’

Myrtle twisted her glass, examining the lights reflected in the depths. ‘I want to help Caroline, of course. It’s a rotten situation for her.’ Then, in a lower voice, she said, ‘Archie and I haven’t been able to have a child of our own. You’ll have guessed that. Archie has always told me that he couldn’t countenance adoption. You know, another man’s child—’ She broke off, sighing in a way that was quite unlike her. But then she lifted her chin and looked straight at Nerys. ‘But perhaps if there is a baby, a real one, needing a loving home, he might see it differently. There’s a chance, isn’t there?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’



Knowing Archie, who was outwardly the mildest but also the most strong-minded of men, Nerys was doubtful. But seeing the brilliance of Myrtle’s eyes she couldn’t find it in herself to say so. Her own thoughts were racing on.

A baby, newborn and needing a home. If in the end Myrtle couldn’t step in, she could offer to do so herself. An orphan, an Indian baby, how could Evan refuse to help?

‘Whatever happens, we’ve got to look after poor Caroline,’ Myrtle said.

‘Will you tell me something? What does Archie mean by a three-letter man?’

Myrtle lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘It means a queer,’ she explained.

‘I thought that was probably it.’





‘ZAHRA’S SHAWL’


Mair sipped at a glass of warm gin slightly diluted with flat tonic water. Caroline Bowen’s eyesight was obviously troubling her because she had to angle her head away from her enviably straight spine just to hold her visitor in partial focus. Mair had begun to explain her mission to Ladakh and Kashmir, but it was too long-winded and she could see that the old lady wasn’t following her.

‘What did you say? I’m sorry, I don’t get many visitors,’ she broke in, before Mair had half finished.

The plump attendant had gone away after pouring the gin, but now she shuffled back. She looked discouragingly at Mair. ‘I told you. Mrs Bowen is tired today.’

Mair drew her chair closer, taking care not to knock the stool supporting the bandaged leg. ‘I’m the one who should be apologising, barging in on you like this.’

Caroline Bowen’s smile broke through her confusion. Like a reflection in rippled water, Mair caught a surprising glimpse of the young woman she had once been. A momentary half-recognition snagged in her mind but it was gone as soon as she reached for it.

‘Oh, I’m jolly glad to have some company. Aruna and I get pretty bored here on our own, you know. Won’t you tell me your name again? My memory’s absolutely shocking, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s Mair.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s Welsh.’

The white head tipped again as she peered through invisible mists. ‘Welsh, eh?’

‘Mrs Bowen, do you remember as far back as the 1940s? My maternal grandparents were out in Srinagar in those days, with the Welsh Presbyterian Mission, and I’m trying to trace them. I know it’s a very long shot, but I thought you might just remember something …’

It was as if the mist thinned to allow Mrs Bowen a glimpse of a familiar view.

‘Who were they? Who did you say? I was here, you know – 1941, 1942. Such times, they were. My husband was Indian Army. He was in the defence of Singapore against the Japanese. So many brave men died.’

‘Was your husband killed?’

Across the room, Aruna made a move.

The white head turned, the eyes dim and almost sightless again. ‘Ralph? No. He was very brave – he won the MC. I’m sorry, dear, I don’t know anyone … What name did you say? Has our friend got enough to drink, Aruna? Where have you gone?’

‘Oh, yes, this is plenty for me,’ Mair said quickly. She made a move to gather herself before taking her leave, and Caroline looked up anxiously.

‘Don’t go just yet. It’s heavenly to have a chat like this.’

Mair was uneasy. There was something not quite normal about Caroline Bowen. Perhaps it was just her great age and her apparent isolation in this sunny, ordinary room. ‘I don’t want to tire you.’

‘That’s quite all right. I have masses of time to rest, you know. What were we talking about?’

‘You mentioned your husband, and the war. Have you been living in Srinagar ever since?’



Again there was a movement from Aruna, this one more definitely an intervention. Caroline lifted her hand.

‘No. I went home in ’forty-five. Myrtle and her husband, they stayed on, but most of us went home. After Partition, of course, everything was quite different. The old India was gone. And Kashmir, ah, a sad story. You won’t remember, Aruna, what it was like in those days. We had such fun. Such marvellous times.’ She gave up on the struggle to see the present, and let her head fall back against the chair cushions.

Mair guessed that the images in her mind’s eye were much more vivid.

‘I was ill for quite a number of years. That was unfortunate, of course. I was in a nursing home in England, and you do lose touch. By the time I was well again, or once they’d decided I was well, I should say, I was widowed, and that’s difficult, isn’t it?’

They’d decided? Mair wondered. Who might they be? ‘It must have been.’

‘Are you married, dear?’

Mair smiled at her. ‘No. It’s never happened. Or, strictly speaking, I’ve never reached a point where it seemed important to make that commitment. I’ve had boyfriends, but that’s what they stayed.’

Caroline was delighted with that. ‘How modern. How independent you must be. I’m terribly envious. No widowhood for you, eh?’

‘Not without being married first, I suppose.’

‘That’s marvellous. My advice to you is, stay just the way you are.’

They were both laughing. Once again the younger Caroline shimmered briefly in the old face. This time, Mair almost pinpointed the evasive likeness to someone, but it floated away again. ‘So then what happened?’ she asked.

‘When?’

‘After you were widowed?’

‘Oh, you don’t want to hear about all that. England’s a very different place, quite different from the country I grew up in. By the time I had a chance to look about me I realised that India felt more like home to me than England ever would. So I came back out here, and I’ve stayed ever since. I can manage, even though everything is so expensive.’

‘It’s time for your medicine,’ Aruna said. She picked up a tray, and the almost-empty gin bottle clinked against the empty tonic-water bottle. Mair thought that if Mrs Bowen was living on a small fixed income, her money would certainly stretch much further here in Kashmir than at home in England. Both women watched Aruna as she made her way across the room, evidently on the way to fetch the promised medicine. Mair picked up her rucksack and her brown pashmina.

‘I’d better go.’ And, as she said it, a face came into sharp focus.

She caught her breath in utter astonishment.

She looked at Mrs Bowen, and immediately she was certain. She burrowed in the bag and brought out the familiar bundle. ‘But before I do, may I just show you something?’

She shook out the shawl so that it billowed in the air, then drifted over Caroline Bowen’s lap.

The silence deepened in the quiet room. Slowly Caroline gathered a handful of the soft stuff between her fingers and lifted it to her face. She seemed to inhale the scent trapped in its folds, and then, with a great effort, she focused her eyes on the colours of a Kashmiri summer.

A long time seemed to pass.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘It was with my late grandmother’s things.’

There was a beat before Caroline whispered, ‘I wish I could see you properly.’

Mair knelt down beside her chair. Caroline’s veined claw of a hand reached out and tentatively explored the contours of her cheek and jaw.

She murmured, ‘Welsh, didn’t you say?’

‘Yes. My grandmother’s name was Nerys Watkins. I have a photograph of her, with you, here in Srinagar.’



‘Nerys was my friend. And this,’ she held up a bunched handful of soft wool, ‘this is Zahra’s. Her dowry.’

Caroline’s carer came back with the medicine, and found them with the shawl drawn between them like a narrative.