The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  The two weeks crept by, but Rainer did not reappear.

  Which jungle had taken him? Where was he, who was not even a soldier? It seemed that he had done the disappearing act she had often imagined. Nerys stifled her anxiety, compressing it until it weighed like lead beneath her diaphragm.

  ‘When will they be here?’ Caroline asked constantly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Nerys soothed.

  The post was delivered only once a week in Kanihama. The postman brought a letter from Myrtle and waited at Nerys’s door to see her open it, as eager to hear the contents as they were. She gave him money and he retreated.

  Myrtle had scrawled, ‘No one knows where Rainer is. Not a word, or even a breath of a rumour. He has simply vanished. Do you want me to come up to Kanihama without him? What can I do to help you?’

  Nerys sent a note back: ‘He’ll come. Stay there, be our ears and eyes. Caroline and I will be all right.’

  That night, under the flickering shadows, she reviewed her options. They were limited. It might be possible to borrow a car in Srinagar, with a driver who didn’t know either Ravi Singh or the European wives, to take Caroline and herself to the convent hospital in Baramulla. But a journey for a pregnant woman that had seemed a feasible undertaking with Rainer in the Ford became a daunting prospect with a stranger. Alternatively she could convey Caroline back to Srinagar where she could present herself at the military clinic, but that would be to undo all the concealments of the last months.

  Or they could stay put.

  After sleepless hours, she went out first thing in the morning and asked a series of questions of the Kanihama women. Eventually they led her to a crone with a seamed face and a white headcloth, who was puffing on a pipe beside a smoky fire. This, she learnt, was the village midwife. The old woman listened and nodded, then put out a hand for Nerys’s money. In reply, Nerys rocked her empty arms and mimed passing over money. Baby first, then the fee. The old woman laughed, showing a row of blackened teeth, and the laughter spread to the other women. Nerys decided that she liked the midwife, and they shook hands.

  Back at the little house, she persuaded Caroline to undress so that she could examine her. As Nerys felt her stomach Caroline’s eyes opened so wide that the whites showed all round the blue irises. ‘How many babies have you delivered?’ she asked, in a tight voice.

  ‘Several,’ Nerys answered. The baby’s head seemed neatly engaged. If it was a straightforward labour and delivery, all would be well. If not … Please, Rainer, she implored within her head. For God’s sake, get here before it’s too late.

  It was a sunny day, and there was even a whisper of warmth in the breeze. Nerys gathered up sheets and cloths and towels and took them in a bundle down to the dyers’ shed on the banks of the stream. There she persuaded the men to fill one of their copper vats with crystal stream water, and to boil it. She laundered all the bedclothes and the other pieces, then hung them on the lines that crisscrossed the bank. They dried in the sun and wind, billowing among the brilliantly coloured hanks of pashmina yarn.

  Caroline complained of the pain in her back. Nerys filled her kangri with embers and gave it to her to rest against. Evening crept up and she lit the candles yet again.

  Rainer, where are you?

  She refused to let her head fill with images of him taken prisoner, or lying wounded in the thick jungle, or worse.

  At midnight, Caroline suddenly got up from her charpoy. She went to the window and rested her head against one folded arm, exhaling with a low grunt of pain.

  ‘What do you feel?’ Nerys asked.

  ‘It’s started.’

  ‘All right. It’s going to be all right.’ She lit the lamp and stoked the stove.

  Caroline lay on the mattress and drew up her knees. She looked terrified, and there were beads of sweat breaking under her hairline. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she almost screamed, as Nerys put on her pheran.

  ‘I’ll be five minutes. I’m going for the midwife. Try to rest.’

  The old woman was fast asleep in her crumbling little house. Nerys shook her awake as gently as she could. ‘Come,’ she begged.

  Grumbling under her breath, she got up and slowly put on her threadbare pheran. She picked a battered pail off a shelf, half filled it with a dark brew that was sitting in a pan on the stove top and followed Nerys into the night.

  Caroline was gasping with fear and pain as the midwife examined her. There was a dismissive twist to the woman’s shoulder as she straightened up again. She pillowed her cheek on her folded hands and pointed to the drink she had brought. Then she marched off again. The message was clear. Caroline should drink some of her herbal brew, and there was still plenty of time for everyone to sleep.

  By the time it was light, Caroline was writhing in a twist of laundered sheets. With every contraction she gave a snarl of pain that rose to a scream. In each brief respite Nerys sponged her face with cool water and made her drink a mouthful of the midwife’s potion. ‘You’re doing well,’ she kept whispering. As far as she could tell, Caroline was. ‘Try to save your strength. Breathe.’

  In the middle of the morning the midwife came strolling back, chewing on a handful of pickled walnuts and spitting out the coarse skins into her cupped palm. Nerys made her wash her hands before she examined Caroline.

  ‘Make it stop,’ Caroline screamed. ‘Please, God, help me.’

  The woman straightened up again, adjusting her headcloth.

  ‘Good,’ she said surprisingly, in English, and her face cracked into a rare smile. She took a strip of linen cloth from Nerys’s basket and doubled it into a band. Then she put it between Caroline’s teeth before the girl’s tear-stained face screwed up with the arrival of another contraction. Caroline bit into the cloth as the midwife laid her ear against her belly. There was another scream, choked by the band of linen. With a sudden gush the waters broke.

  When Nerys looked between Caroline’s legs she could see the wet black oval of the baby’s head. ‘Can you push?’ she asked.

  The elemental noises and smells of imminent birth brought the procedures of the delivery room at Shillong flooding back. She felt calm now. She told Caroline how to pant between contractions, and how to push into her pelvis instead of her throat. The midwife perched on a stool between Caroline’s knees, and when the baby’s head appeared she cupped it in one brown hand and expertly guided the tiny, slippery shoulders with the other.

  ‘One more big push and you’ll see him,’ Nerys promised. Caroline’s crimson face poured with tears, she tore the soaking rag out of her mouth and howled, and the baby was born. It had long, scrawny arms and legs, a thatch of black hair, and it was a healthy girl.

  Working together, Nerys and the midwife cleaned the baby’s airway, smiled at each other as the first mewing cry erupted, then wrapped her in a pashmina and laid her on Caroline’s chest. Caroline was lying back against pillows and blankets. Her eyes were closed and she was shuddering with exhaustion. ‘It’s not a girl,’ she breathed.

  ‘Yes, it is, and she’s beautiful.’

  It was the same old miracle, Nerys thought, the same and different every time. She tucked a fold of shawl over one minute crimson foot and offered up a jumbled, wordless prayer of thanks. If Evan were here he would have knelt to bless this new life, but as it was, the tiny girl would have to make do with the approximation that was all Nerys could offer, and the mumbled imprecations of the Muslim midwife as she tied off the cord and cut it with a flash of bright blade.

  ‘Let me take her,’ Nerys said.

  Caroline gave up the baby without protest as the old woman turned her attention to delivering the afterbirth. Nerys remembered how carefully the nurses at Shillong had checked to see that none remained inside the mother, and was relieved that this midwife was equally attentive. With the baby held against her shoulder she stroked Caroline’s sweat-soaked hair off her face. ‘You’re doing so well. You were very brave,’ she told her.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Caroline sobbed.r />
  There was a scratch at the door, then it creaked open. Farida’s small figure stood outlined against the bright light.

  ‘Hello,’ Nerys said in surprise.

  The little girl sidled into the room, crept closer and tugged at the shawl that swaddled the baby. Nerys glanced at Caroline but her head had fallen to one side and her eyes were closed in exhaustion. She crouched so that Farida could look at the newborn, but the child went further. She deftly scooped the baby into her own arms and sat down cross-legged next to the stove, cradling her in her lap. She began to croon a little song. The midwife nodded in casual approval. As Farida laid a finger against the baby’s cheek, Nerys realised it was the first time she had ever seen her smile.

  She was relegated to the margins of this ancient tableau, so she made herself busy, putting the kettle on and tidying the bloodstained cloths into a basket.

  The midwife finished her work, then she and Farida bathed the baby in a tin basin. The little scrap of flesh kicked and cried, but Caroline was still sunk against her pillows, eyes closed. They dressed her in some of the blue knitted garments and Farida fiercely took possession of her again.

  Finally the midwife held out her hand for the money. Nerys counted it into her palm, note by note, and only then would the woman accept some tea with bread and honey. Even Farida took a cup of tea. Caroline’s lips were swollen and cracked, so Nerys smoothed Vaseline into them, then made her drink and eat a little.

  ‘Do you want to try to feed her?’ she asked, but Caroline only shook her head.

  ‘Zahra,’ Farida announced.

  She and the midwife debated something, then Farida repeated, ‘Zahra,’ and adjusted the baby’s bonnet.

  ‘Have you thought of a name?’ Nerys asked.

  Caroline had mentioned that her father’s name was Charles, and she had joked once that maybe she should choose Linlithgow, in honour of the viceroy, or even George for the king. That seemed a long time ago, and there had never been any mention of girls’ names.

  ‘Zahra sounds pretty,’ Nerys added.

  ‘All right,’ Caroline answered. Then she added, ‘I’m sorry, Nerys. I am so tired.’

  ‘Of course you are. Rest now.’

  Somehow, Nerys thought, she must get news to Myrtle.

  At the end of the afternoon, when Zahra was asleep in a little box crib with Farida crouched like a shadow beside her, a deputation of women came to the door. Farida’s grandmother was among them, and she was carrying an earthenware dish swathed in a cloth. There was a delicious smell.

  With stately formality, the women laid out bowls and carved wooden spoons, then ladled out portions of steaming tahar rice cooked with turmeric, a dish traditionally made everywhere in Kashmir by Hindus and Muslims alike, to give thanks to God for a lucky escape or a safe delivery from danger.

  Nerys and Caroline shared the fragrant food.

  ‘Thank you,’ Caroline said humbly. ‘Thank you. I have been lucky, I know that. I was afraid that I was going to die.’

  Someone knew of a boy who was going down to Srinagar to work with his uncle at the shawl factory. Nerys wrote the note for Myrtle and entrusted it to him.

  When everyone had gone, even Farida, she tried again; ‘Do you want to hold her?’ she murmured. ‘She’s got such black hair, and big dark eyes.’

  ‘Then she looks like her father. I can’t keep her, I can’t be her mother, so perhaps I shouldn’t even think about her as my baby.’

  Nerys stroked her hand. In Caroline’s position she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself holding Zahra to her heart. Nobody would have been able to tear her away – not without killing Nerys first.

  Perhaps in the circumstances Caroline’s instinct was wiser than hers.

  There was a wet nurse in the village, the same woman who had looked after the yarn-spinner’s baby. Zahra could go to her, for now, until Myrtle came and they could discuss what was to be done.

  The next afternoon, a car arrived in the square. It was a trader’s truck from Srinagar, with a sullen driver who jumped out and flung up the bonnet to examine the engine as if the journey had taken a final toll. Myrtle stepped out from the passenger side. She wore her pheran loose over her shoulders, the folds pushed back to reveal her neat waistline.

  ‘I have never been more pleased to see you,’ Nerys told her.

  Myrtle had brought milk powder and glass feeding bottles, flowers and chocolates, the Srinagar newspaper, but no news of any of the men. ‘The talk’s all about Japanese atrocities in Singapore, prisoners of war, a hospital massacre. The damned Japs shot the patients and all the doctors. No one has the remotest interest in our little affairs, darling. I saw that woman who lives next to Caroline and told her that Caroline is much better from being in the sun with my dear cousin, and she hardly heard me. How is she?’

  ‘Physically she’s tired but recovering well. Emotionally, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘She’s beautiful.’

  Myrtle carried her armful of gifts into the house.

  ‘Golly. Look at all this. I feel as if I’m in a smart nursing home,’ Caroline called from her bed, and the ghost of her old smile accompanied the words.

  Myrtle and Nerys went later to visit Zahra, who was ensconced with Farida and the wet nurse. Faisal was delighted to welcome Myrtle, and danced along with his hand in hers.

  Myrtle peered into the box crib, turning back a few layers of blue woollens. ‘My God,’ she breathed in Nerys’s ear. ‘It’s Ravi Singh.’ They both hovered over the tiny baby, gazing at her as if she were a miracle.

  After resting for a week, Caroline made the journey with Myrtle back to the Garden of Eden where, as far as Srinagar knew or cared, she was still recovering from her bout of fever. She left her daughter in Nerys’s care, and both her friends could see that there was more exhausted relief than anguish in the separation. She was unnaturally quiet, except for sudden bouts of weeping that she seemed unable to control, but in Srinagar her distress could be put down to anxiety for Ralph Bowen, whose name had been listed among hundreds of others as a prisoner of war.

  Nerys resumed her small routines of songs and word games with the village children, broken up by afternoons of playing with Zahra and her ever-faithful attendant, Farida. It was a lucky accident that the baby’s arrival had broken through the girl’s shell of isolation, she thought. Farida even began to play with the other children, although she darted away every two or three minutes to make sure that the baby was sleeping or happily watching the patterns woven by the chinar branches over her head. She came every morning now, as reliably as Faisal, to take her breakfast with Nerys.

  Nerys began to see how Zahra might even be absorbed into the village. Babies and children didn’t seem to require the individual attention of their mothers – they were passed around between grandmothers, aunts and siblings, whoever happened to be at hand. Perhaps, she thought, with Myrtle, Caroline and herself to provide the money, there could be a life for Zahra in Kanihama. At least for her early years. And after that, when the end of the war came, there would be orphans, and displaced families, and children who would need protection in countless different ways. Who could predict what might happen to this particular orphan?

  That was how Nerys reasoned, with even more secret hope and longing now that Zahra was born.

  At the beginning of April, when buds had begun to swell on the thorn bushes and chinar twigs, and the fields and vegetable patches were green with new shoots, Nerys heard the sound of another car approaching. In her anxiety for Rainer she had conjured the same sound a hundred times, only to be as regularly disappointed, but now, once she let herself listen properly, it was unmistakable. She dropped the saucepan she was holding and ran outside.

  It was the truck, driven by Rainer. The door swung open but he seemed unable to climb out.

  She cried, ‘What’s happened? You’re hurt. Let me help you.’

  His face contorted. ‘Not that side. Come round here. If I
could lean on you …’

  With his weight supported on her shoulder they shuffled to the house and she helped him to the chair by the stove. His face was haggard and his torso seemed twisted, like a tree struck by lightning.

  ‘Where’s Caroline?’

  So wherever Rainer had come from, it was not the city.

  She said quickly, ‘In Srinagar, with Myrtle. She’s recovering, and the baby is here. It’s a girl.’

  Rainer passed his tongue over parched lips. ‘I am so sorry,’ he murmured, ‘to have let you down.’

  She put her cheek to his. ‘You didn’t. Drink some of this.’

  She had heated up a cupful of the midwife’s latest brew. She still didn’t know what the mixture contained, but she was impressed by its restorative effects. Rainer tasted and spat. ‘Dear God. What’s this poison?’

  She relaxed a little. ‘Rainer, what’s happened to you?’

  He took her hand and held it against him. After a moment he said, ‘I was lucky. I didn’t quite walk away, but I survived. Some others didn’t.’

  Nerys sat down beside him on the stool usually occupied by Faisal or Farida. His hand was badly scabbed and at the edges the renewed skin was puckered as if it had been burnt. To be bombarded with questions wasn’t what he needed, she thought. He would tell her when he was ready.

  He wasn’t ready until he had slept for two hours. Nerys helped him to undress before he lay down. Under the tunic that he was wearing over loose trousers, his arm and shoulder and the upper part of his chest were covered with stained, yellow-soaked burn dressings.

  ‘Would you like me to change these for you?’ she asked matter-of-factly.

  ‘Later,’ he said. As soon as his eyes closed he fell asleep.

  Nerys left him in her bed and went outside to play catch and hide-and-seek with the children. The piercing mountain air was scented with woodsmoke and animal dung, just as it had been on the afternoon when Rainer had first brought her here, and now in the sheltered places the sun felt hot on her shoulders.