The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  Myrtle put her plate aside and sat back. ‘Well.’ She smiled.

  Nerys’s mind ran on what had to be done in the house before she could be ready to leave for the commissioner’s party. Diskit or the house-boy would have to be given very clear instructions about leaving out a cold supper for their guests, in case they were hungry later. Hot-water bottles were to be filled. Then she remembered her new cardigan, still unfinished. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Myrtle leant forward and touched her hand. ‘Is something wrong?’

  Nerys would have liked to tell her. What did recognising a potential friend mean, if it didn’t include honesty? She said only, ‘I forgot a job, that’s all. Some sewing I was going to do before the party. Now I’ll have to wear something different. It doesn’t matter.’

  Myrtle regarded her. Her gaze was shrewd. ‘There’s still time. Let’s go and have a look, shall we?’

  Nerys didn’t try to protest. Myrtle sat on the bed while she showed her the cream cardigan. They agreed that it would be a shame to sew on the buttons in too much of a hurry.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Myrtle said. She went to her bedroom and came back with a brooch. She held it out and Nerys saw a circle of pearls and brilliants backed by a substantial pin. ‘You could wear this at the front, so, and it will hold the edges together, and it won’t matter if the sleeve buttons are missing for today. Look, you can turn the cuffs like this. It’s beautiful knitting. You’re very good at making things, aren’t you?’

  A small cloudy mirror was propped on the dressing-table, and Nerys and Myrtle faced their reflections. Their eyes met as the brooch brilliants sparkled in the sunlight slanting through the shutters.

  ‘May I really borrow it?’

  ‘Of course. You probably think it’s insane to have brought jewellery on an expedition like this. It was my mother’s, and I like to have it with me. The necklace too.’ Myrtle touched the pearls round her neck.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Good. That’s solved. Why don’t you have a lie-down now? The men are talking, and I should try to write up my journal.’

  The recognition extended in both directions, then. Myrtle had seen her weariness. ‘The servants …’ Nerys began.

  ‘… will manage quite well, I should think.’ Myrtle turned back the coverlet. ‘Here.’

  Nerys sank down, and found her new friend helping her off with her shoes. The bedclothes were lightly drawn over her shoulders, and the shutters folded to cut out the sunshine. She closed her eyes, and let herself sink.

  The Residency garden was packed with a dense crowd of all the people of any importance in Leh, and a large proportion of the travelling merchants who would soon be departing for home. The party marked the last glimmer of summer, and once the decorous tea and sweet pastries phase of the afternoon was over, the talk and music swelled into a tide of noise. Local people and travellers were intent on making the most of the night. The commissioner, a short, jolly man with a scarlet face, had made his speech of welcome from a wooden dais and now circulated among his guests with a whisky-and-soda in one hand. The light turned moth-grey as evening approached, the first stars came out and the white tops of the mountains shone an unearthly apricot in the last gleam of the sun. An area in the centre of the gardens had been roped off, and a huge bonfire in the middle roared into flames as men doused it with kerosene and flung burning torches into its heart. More torches tied on tall poles blazed everywhere in the grounds, licking the passing faces with lurid tongues of colour as plumes of black smoke swirled into the air.

  Nerys had slept deeply and she had to drag herself back through layers of dreams and what felt like centuries of time, even though it was less than an hour later that Evan was shaking her awake. Her head was splitting, and she forced two aspirin down her parched throat before trying to get dressed. The effort of putting on her clothes and pinning the cardigan with Myrtle’s brooch took almost all the strength she could summon. When she looked briefly in the mirror, her pallor was startling.

  They walked the short distance to the Residency with the McMinns. Myrtle scrutinised her. ‘Are you sure you want to come?’ she whispered.

  Nerys nodded. Myrtle accepted the assurance.

  She had felt better sitting in the shade of the trees, smiling at people she knew and watching the parade of strangers in different national dress. But now she had to move away from the bonfire’s heat, and the coils of kerosene smoke that chased her sent waves of nausea to her stomach. Yarkandi men had performed a Cossack dance against the backdrop of flames, kicking and cartwheeling to the pounding of drums, and now their show was giving way to a procession of monks in traditional masquerade costumes. Two men in grotesque masks swayed in front of the blaze, followed by vultures’ heads, towering stags, fluttering peacocks and a paper dragon with thirty human legs, its body lit from within so it glowed like a dancing lava stream. The looming mask faces, all giant eyes and teeth and lolling tongues, seemed more real than reality. The dark mass of trees and prickling sky closed, then receded. The music pounded in her head. She was going to faint. Gripped by panic Nerys stared round, but she could see no one she recognised. The ground tilted and yawned, a giant bird’s head pecked in her direction, and she fell forwards into nowhere.

  FOUR

  When Nerys came round, it was to see a circle of Ladakhi faces peering down at her. Her head was resting in someone’s lap.

  ‘Tell them to step back and give her some air, for God’s sake.’

  It was a relief to hear Myrtle’s voice, and then to see Archie McMinn holding back the onlookers. A bottle of smelling salts was waved under Nerys’s nose and she coughed violently. She tried to sit up and Evan’s face came into focus. He was kneeling beside her, distress in every line of his body. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘What for?’ Myrtle wanted to know. It was Myrtle’s lap Nerys was lying in, and Myrtle’s hand on her forehead.

  ‘Archie, make all these people go away, can’t you?’ she ordered.

  There were fireworks going off somewhere close at hand, showers of crimson sparks falling out of the sky. The commissioner arrived, his face blooming even redder with embarrassed concern.

  ‘Mr Watkins, we’ll organise a stretcher party to carry your wife into the house.’

  Nerys fought her way to a sitting position. ‘I’m all right now. Please let me get up.’

  Several pairs of arms supported her, some urging her upwards and others restraining her. Nerys twisted so she could see Myrtle’s face. She looked straight into her eyes. ‘Help me,’ she begged.

  Myrtle understood what was needed. She supported Nerys as she got to her feet and let her lean on her arm. ‘I think you can walk, can’t you? That’s good. Come inside the house with me.’

  ‘Nerys …’ Evan began.

  But she didn’t have the strength to reassure him, not at this moment, or to smooth over the acute discomfort her fainting in public would have caused him. ‘I’ll be all right with Mrs McMinn.’ She tried to smile. ‘I fainted, that’s all. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Myrtle will take care of her, old chap,’ Archie said, in a tone that implied they shouldn’t involve themselves in women’s business.

  With Nerys still leaning on Myrtle’s arm they began to walk slowly, the commissioner sailing ahead of them, like an ice-breaker cutting through the floes of the crowd. When they reached the veranda he explained that every guest bedroom in the house was occupied: would Mrs Watkins mind if he escorted them to his own quarters? He added that a runner had been sent to fetch the Leh doctor, who unfortunately happened not to be at the Residency this evening.

  Myrtle put her hand on his arm. ‘Won’t you go back to your guests now, and let your bearer look after us?’

  He looked thoroughly relieved at the suggestion. A moment later a servant showed the two women into a masculine bedroom with the shutters closed against the noise of the party. Nerys saw polo prints on the walls, a brass-framed bed, and a pair of highly polished tall boots
with the knobs of boot trees protruding. Luckily there was a day-bed with a plaid rug folded on it, pushed back against a wall. She didn’t think she could have made herself comfortable on the commissioner’s own bed.

  Myrtle shook out the rug. ‘Lie down here. Could you drink a glass of water? Or maybe some sweet tea?’

  Nerys ran her tongue over dry lips. ‘You’ve been so kind. This afternoon, and now.’

  Myrtle sat beside her, took her hands and massaged some warmth into them. ‘You need looking after. Is Leh quite the right place for a woman in your condition, even a missionary’s wife?’

  Nerys couldn’t stop herself. She tried, drawing up her shoulders and clenching her jaw, but it was too late. The first sob caught in her chest and then exploded out of her. Tears rushed out of her eyes and poured down her face. She gasped, between sobs, ‘I’m not … I’m not expecting a … baby. I was, but I lost it.’ The words were half obliterated and she gave up the attempt to speak. It was a relief to cry. It was the first time she had wept properly since the miscarriage.

  The other woman enveloped her in a hug, the warmest embrace Nerys had had for long weeks. Myrtle whispered in her ear, ‘Oh, God, how clumsy of me, how stupidly clumsy. Please forgive me. I just assumed. Was it bad? It must have been, and you haven’t properly recovered, have you? You poor, poor thing. Go on, cry all you can.’

  She held on to her and stroked her hair, muttering soothing half-sentences, and Nerys went ahead and cried like a two-year-old.

  At last, the sobbing slowed and stopped. Nerys lifted her head, revealing a streaming red face. The collar and yoke of Myrtle’s blouse were soaked, but Myrtle only dug in the pockets of her flannel trousers and produced a large linen handkerchief. She dried Nerys’s cheeks before putting it into her hands. ‘It’s one of Archie’s. Little lacy things are no good out here, are they? It’s camp laundered too, scented with eau de kerosene. Go on, blow.’

  Nerys blew hard, and then sniffed. She realised she felt distinctly better. ‘I’ve been very feeble today, haven’t I? It’s not the impression I wanted to give, honestly. It’s not what I’m really like.’

  ‘Feeble, eh? Living up here, cut off all winter, the only British woman for a couple of hundred miles, single-handedly running a mission school, tra-la. Yep. I’d say that’s as weak as water.’ Myrtle was smiling as she thumbed the last tears from Nerys’s cheek. ‘Take me, by comparison. Lotus-eating half the year on the lake in Srinagar, then venturing out for a dainty hunting trip with just five servants, eleven ponies and my devoted husband. You make me feel feeble, my girl. Feeble and spoilt.’ In an automatic gesture she reached with her fingers to twist her pearl necklace.

  Nerys’s stomach turned over. She realised that, as well as being covered with dust and grass stalks, her cream cardigan was hanging open. Her hands clutched the place where the brooch had been. ‘It’s gone!’ she cried.

  Myrtle burrowed in the opposite trouser pocket. She held out the circlet in the palm of her hand. ‘It had come undone. You were lucky it didn’t skewer you through the heart when you fainted dead away.’

  They looked at each other, and then they began to laugh. Myrtle comically scratched her hair so it stood up in a cocks-comb, and Nerys rocked back against the buttoned cushion of the day-bed. They were still laughing when the commissioner’s bearer knocked at the door. ‘Madam, doctor here.’

  Dr Tsering bustled in, looking puzzled. He was the only doctor in Leh and, like the commissioner, he spent just a few weeks of the year in town. Nerys knew that he was overwhelmed with sick people clamouring for cures for all their ailments before the snow came – as if leprosy or TB could be cured with a brown bottle of pills – and she regretted that he had been summoned all the way to the Residency to attend to her trivial problem. She collected herself. ‘I am much better,’ she said.

  ‘Laughter very good treatment, ma’am,’ he answered. He unclipped his bag and uncoiled a stethoscope. ‘Now, lying back, please.’

  Four days later Dr Tsering paid Nerys another visit, this time at the mission, and declared that she was fit to travel.

  In surprise she protested, ‘But I’m not planning to travel anywhere.’

  Myrtle’s company had restored her spirits. They had enjoyed their hours of what Archie McMinn called pincushion time, although the only actual sewing they did was to make simple costumes for a playlet acted by the children. Mostly they had played games with the smallest infants, and walked in the bazaar, and exchanged details of their contrasting histories. Nerys had talked about Wales, and startled herself by describing the low grey crags and mist-filled valleys with a longing she didn’t even know she had been feeling.

  In turn Myrtle explained that she was the daughter of an Indian Civil Service official, and her childhood had been parcelled out between relatives in England and annual visits to India. ‘I didn’t see much of my ma and pa,’ she said succinctly.

  Archie was a railway engineer, and in a few days’ time his annual long leave would be over. Myrtle and he were going back to Srinagar, and Nerys already knew how much she would miss her new friend.

  Archie had been busy every day, paying off his hunting servants and pony men, making arrangements for the heads he had bagged, engaging more men for the return journey to Kashmir, and visiting the commissioner and the other Leh notables. But one morning, looking grave after returning from the Residency, he strolled from the mission veranda into the room where Evan’s predecessor’s old wireless stood. ‘It would be useful to get the BBC news,’ he murmured.

  ‘That wireless has never worked, I’m afraid,’ Evan explained stiffly. ‘Not in our time.’

  Archie nodded, and unscrewed the back to investigate the innards. Within an hour he had established that there was nothing wrong except that the massive battery was flat. The Residency had a wireless and so did the Gomperts, so the most important news from the outside world reached them quite quickly, but for everything else the Watkinses had to wait for newspapers and letters to make their way overland. Evan agreed that it would be most useful if the mission’s wireless could be coaxed back into service. That same day, four coolies and a bullock cart ferried the weighty lead-acid battery down to the Indus, where it was hooked up to the water-powered generator. The next day, accompanied by a parade of dancing children, it made the reverse journey.

  With the children still looking on, Archie went to work with pliers and a screwdriver. After a few minutes a sudden torrent of static burst out of the fretwork front panel. The startled audience screeched and fell over each other to get away from it. He twisted the knobs and the static dissolved into a babble of voices, and then the jaunty cadence of an English folk song. The children’s eyes widened with amazement.

  Archie brushed his palms together. ‘There we are.’

  That evening after Diskit had cleared the dinner plates, they pulled their chairs close to the dusted and polished set and listened to the news.

  German troops had reached Leningrad, and the city would soon be surrounded. The European war was creeping closer. Even Leh no longer felt removed from the threat.

  Evan slid a bookmark between the pages of his Bible before he closed it. ‘Nerys, I think it would be a good idea if you were to go with Mr and Mrs McMinn to Srinagar. Mr McMinn has kindly offered to escort you.’

  Nerys let her knitting drop. Myrtle’s eyes met hers, and she read surprise in them. This was an idea the two men had hatched, without reference to their wives. Dr Tsering was evidently in on the plot too. To contain her anger she made herself count five stitches in her work, then asked composedly, ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘You might enjoy a short holiday, and it would consolidate your strength before the winter.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  He paused, then said, ‘We have spoken about this, my dear. I am going out of Leh to visit a few of the villages, and the more far-flung settlements. I must take the Lord to the people, not sit here expecting the people to come to the Lord.’

&
nbsp; Out of the corner of her eye Nerys saw Archie McMinn stretch out his long legs. She resumed her steady knitting. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘we shouldn’t bore our guests with this debate. We can talk about it later.’

  Myrtle said gently, ‘I would love to have your company, Nerys. If it’s helpful for you to know that.’

  But later, once Evan had brought the shaft of cold air into their bed, enquired if Nerys was ready and blown out the candle, he merely said, ‘Goodnight, my dear.’

  She turned her head on the pillow and glared at his dark shape. ‘Is that all?’

  He drew away from her, by no more than half an inch, but she felt it. That small movement told her everything. Evan no longer saw her as his companion and supporter but as yet another source of anxiety. He would feel easier without her, and he would be freer to carry the mission work out of Leh. He didn’t want to abandon her altogether, though. To send her off to Srinagar with the McMinns must seem the perfect solution. She could follow his thinking exactly, and all she could really object to was his suggestion that what she needed in order to recover from the loss of their baby was a lakeside holiday without him.

  ‘All?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Srinagar. Thank you for thinking of it, but I don’t want to go anywhere if it means leaving you behind.’

  ‘Separation is one of the penalties of the work I do, Nerys.’

  He was like a wall, she thought. A blank wall that shut out the view, and endlessly denied that there was anything to be seen.

  She tried another tack. ‘What about my schoolchildren?’

  ‘I expect they will enjoy a holiday too.’ He sighed with the beginnings of exasperation. ‘I don’t know why you are objecting to the idea. I thought you would be pleased. You like Mrs McMinn, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, very much.’

  ‘Then go and stay with her, enjoy a rest, recuperate. I will cover the ground between here and Kargil more slowly, and investigate the work that might be done in future, if we ever have more people. Then I will come down to Srinagar to meet you, and we shall travel back to Leh together.’