The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Of course. That’s what we do. We’re wives of the Raj.’

  There was another faint bubble of laughter before Myrtle drifted into sleep. Nerys waited until she was breathing steadily, a puff of a snore with each exhalation, then slid off the bed. She adjusted the covers over Myrtle’s shoulders and only hesitated for a second before kissing her damp forehead. She could smell the gin in her pores.

  From Kargil, Evan had taken a guide and horses over the Zoji La as far as the Hindu shrine to Shiva at Amarnath, and from there he joined the stream of religious pilgrims returning to the city. For the last nine miles of the journey the Srinagar road was passable to vehicles, so he crowded with the other travellers into a public bus.

  Nerys was waiting for him at the depot on the dusty outskirts of the city. One bus had already pulled in and discharged its passengers. There were farmers coming to market, pilgrims, labourers and several vast families running to three or four generations, but Evan hadn’t been among them. She returned to her seat on a low stone wall and watched the seething crowds. There was a din of traffic, and the thick smell of exhaust fumes and kerosene. An emaciated dog with open sores on its back nosed in rubbish scattered at the roadside. A second bus rounded the corner and stopped at the far side of the road. A throng of men burst out and began to drag their bundles from the interior. The cacophony of shouting and hooting grew even louder, and in the midst of it she caught sight of Evan. He climbed slowly down the steps of the bus and awkwardly retrieved two shabby grips from the cascade of bags being tossed off the roof by the baggage men. Then he stood stiffly in the full heat of the sun, one bag in either hand, a sombre figure in his dusty black clerical clothes.

  Nerys jumped up and slipped through the crowd. She touched her hand to his sleeve and he swung round. His eyes widened as he gazed at her. ‘Nerys, you look beautiful,’ he stammered.

  She was startled and pleased. Evan never commented on her appearance. ‘Do I?’

  ‘You do. You look like … one of the colonial ladies.’

  ‘Well, I’m not one. I’m Mrs Watkins of the Welsh Presbyterian Mission to Northern India, just the same as ever. Hello, Evan.’

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ he said. He was shy of this new version of his wife with her hair prettily arranged and her floral-print dress.

  ‘Welcome to Srinagar.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, her lips just catching the corner of his cheek as he turned his head.

  ‘It’s busy. So many people. I’m not used to crowds,’ he said.

  ‘I know. But it’s a beautiful city, once you get to know it.’ She took one of his bags and linked her other hand in his.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Evan asked.

  ‘First of all to the Garden of Eden,’ she answered. ‘Myrtle is there, and I want you to meet Caroline. After that we can go home. To Kanihama, I mean.’

  Zahra was back with the extended families up in the village. Nerys had decided that this would be the best context in which to introduce their shared orphan baby to Evan.

  They stayed in the city for two days as Myrtle’s guests. Nerys was not surprised that Evan was suspicious of Srinagar. He loomed uncomfortably among the cushions and framed photographs in the houseboat, and he refused altogether to make the shikara ride across to the Srinagar Club. The summer season’s round of parties and polo matches had started up again, although in a more muted way since most of the men were away with their Indian or British Army regiments, but Evan would have no part of it. It was only under duress that he accepted his invitation to that week’s cocktail reception on the lawn at the Residency, and took his turn to shake Mr Fanshawe’s hand. He misunderstood the protocol of the receiving line and began a lengthy account of the Presbyterian Mission in India.

  ‘There is good work going on in Kargil, I am pleased to say. We have a growing congregation and I have recently left the mission under the highly competent supervision of one of my fellow ministers,’ he explained. ‘We are now bringing the message into Kashmir.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ Mr Fanshawe said pleasantly, and one of his aides manoeuvred Evan away. In wartime, missionaries of any creed or nationality came very low down on the British government’s scale of importance.

  Caroline came to tea on the houseboat, wearing a duck-egg blue crêpe de Chine blouse and her pearl necklace. She looked pale but held herself steady. In a low voice she explained to Evan that she had been unwell recently and her husband was in Malaya, a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

  ‘I shall pray for you both and for his safe return,’ Evan said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Caroline touched his hand, seeming genuinely comforted.

  That night, Nerys and Evan lay side by side under the cigar-box panelling. Her husband’s presence seemed to amplify the houseboat’s creaking and the rippling of water, and because they were conscious of the way that the sound travelled they spoke in whispers.

  ‘Your friend Mrs Bowen is highly strung.’

  ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘I feel sorry for her,’ he said.

  Nerys thought he must recognise a fellow sufferer. She could feel the tension that ran through Evan as if there were steel wires under the seams and buttons of his flannel pyjamas.

  ‘Mrs McMinn has been kind, all these months.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nerys agreed.

  ‘I was a little afraid that your head might be turned, you know.’

  The darkness masked her smile. ‘By kindness?’

  ‘Of course not. By this way of life. The Garden of Eden, indeed. We can’t afford legions of servants in white jackets. We don’t drink gin, or smoke cigarettes.’

  ‘I am your wife, Evan. I understand what our way of life must be.’

  Nerys thought of Rainer and the way that he regarded his body as a useful instrument, not an adversary either to be tortured by or to be guilty about. And then, with precise determination, she moved on from the memories of Rainer and what they had done together in order to concentrate on the knowledge she had gained from them. She curled herself against Evan’s rigid hip, and fitted her chin in the nook of his shoulder. She listened to the way their breathing snagged and then almost imperceptibly synchronised. Gently she hooked her arm over his ribs and warmth spread between their bodies.

  He cleared his throat and turned on to his side, facing away from her.

  Once, Nerys reflected, she would have taken this as a rejection and she would have drawn back to lie staring miserably into darkness.

  Instead she nestled closer, fitting her curve against his. His spine was a string of bony knobs. Her lips touched the most prominent one at the base of his neck. ‘It’s all going to be all right,’ she whispered.

  She had to believe that it would be.

  They fell asleep still curled together.

  Two days later they reached Kanihama.

  Evan strode into the ramshackle square and surveyed the old men sitting under the shade of the chinar tree, the wandering goats and the mud-brick houses. A pack of children, led by Faisal, broke out of their game and clamoured at Nerys’s knees. Farida appeared in the shadow of a wall, with Zahra asleep in the sling on her back. She lifted her hand and let it fall as soon as Nerys saw her. Thin spirals of smoke rose against the blue sky and the air was cool after the city’s heat.

  The tight set of Evan’s shoulders seemed to loosen. He looked round with less certainty, but with kindled interest. Perhaps, Nerys thought, this place brought their real home to mind in the same way as it did for her.

  She led him into her house. He took in the brick walls with their rough hangings, the bedroom that was little more than a smoky alcove, her kangri in its storage niche beside the iron stove. ‘You spent the winter here?’ he asked.

  ‘From January, yes.’

  There was a silence. Inquisitive children had gathered in the doorway and an outer circle of villagers was assembling to watch the latest spectacle.

  Evan put his hand on her shoulder, then shifted it so that his fingers traced the stalk of he
r neck. ‘I admire you.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad. It gets quite warm when the stove is lit.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did, about your head being turned. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need to be.’ She smiled.

  Faisal slid into the room. ‘Hello, sir.’ Pointing with a sharp, filthy forefinger he recited, ‘Head, arm, knee, foot.’

  ‘Very good, well done.’ Evan nodded. ‘Who is this boy?’

  ‘Faisal. He’s very clever. He was my first pupil.’

  ‘And how many do you have now?’

  ‘A dozen. It’s a barter system. They learn a few words of English, and I am occasionally paid in eggs, some onions and carrots.’ She laughed. ‘It works rather well.’

  ‘What about their families?’

  ‘They are weavers, dyers, embroiderers. It’s a Muslim village. They don’t have a mosque here, but there is a prayer room. The women work very hard, growing the vegetables, tending the animals, raising the children. Most of the men are in the shawl trade. The pieces they make are exquisite but they have become too expensive to sell and make a profit.’

  Evan went outside, ducking his head just in time to avoid the low door lintel. Farida detached herself from the wall and stepped backwards.

  ‘This is Farida, and the baby is Zahra,’ Nerys murmured, with her heart knocking.

  He glanced at them and nodded. ‘I can begin our work here,’ he said. ‘I will start with the villagers, then visit the outlying settlements. I noticed on the way up that the area is fairly heavily populated, given the altitude.’

  She smiled. ‘There’s plenty of water, fertile soil, sunshine for four months of the summer. The Kashmiris believe their valley is a small paradise.’

  Evan frowned. ‘Do they?’

  It was hot under the midday sun. He removed his black clerical coat and turned back frayed shirt cuffs to expose his thin wrists, as if to indicate that he was ready to start work at that very moment. At the head of a small group of village men, Nerys saw Zafir making his way towards them. He bowed to her, his dark crescent face unsmiling.

  ‘Your husband, ma’am?’

  Nerys made the simple introductions, praying that at least Evan would not launch into being the Christian preacher. To her relief, he quietly accepted the men’s scrutiny and finally Zafir gave him a nod that indicated a qualified welcome. That was a good beginning, she thought. The only way for Westerners to be accepted in Kanihama was to accept its ways, and she guessed that Evan must have come to a similar – perhaps belated – conclusion in Kargil.

  They made their way back to the house. The kettle boiled and Nerys brewed tea Kashmir-style, laced with spices. It was strange to see Evan seated opposite with his clerical collar off and the top shirt stud undone, his watch chain glinting across the concave front of his waistcoat. She smiled at him, and his watchful face broke into a faint answering smile.

  ‘I think I shall buy a bicycle,’ he announced. ‘It will be useful to get about on.’

  Later she took her pupils across to her makeshift schoolroom. He looked in on a singing game, and said that perhaps he would use the room for Bible readings and a discussion group.

  ‘Was that how you began in Kargil?’

  ‘It was. Not many came. I think our prayer meetings and services at Leh were well attended only because of the excellent thukpa dinners you and Diskit served afterwards.’

  ‘Poor Diskit.’ Nerys laughed to cover the pressure of her sympathy for Evan, for the patient, unshakeable depths of his belief and his willingness to go on working against all the odds of India. ‘I’ll see what I can do here, without her invaluable assistance.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. I owe you perhaps more than I had realised.’

  The little group of children looked from one to the other.

  ‘Shall we sing our song for Mr Watkins?’ she suggested. With the accompaniment of their rattles and drums and carved pipes, they joined in a chorus. Evan listened to the end, then said he really must go and write his report for Shillong.

  If it had been strange to see him sitting opposite her in this little house, it was stranger still to have him lying beside her that night. When she blew out the candle the darkness seemed so solid that it weighed on the bedclothes. She was thankful that Rainer had never once slept in this bed with her.

  It will get easier not to think about him, she told herself. Time will pass.

  ‘You seem very fond of that baby,’ Evan remarked. Nerys lay with her head on his shoulder, her arm lightly curved over his chest. She thought a little of the tension had melted out of his limbs.

  ‘Zahra? Yes, I am. And of Faisal too, and his sister and brother.’

  She had told Evan nothing of Zahra’s history, except that her mother had left her in the village because to own her would be to bring dishonour to her family. Evan had seen too many orphans in India to be inconveniently curious about this one.

  He said firmly, ‘I hope we will have a child of our own before too long.’

  He turned on his side, but this time it was to face her. ‘I’m sorry. I have been a poor husband to you. I thought about it a good deal when I was alone in Kargil. I intend to do better in future.’

  When his mouth met hers, she tasted his sincerity. Evan was utterly incapable of dissembling.

  Unlike me, unlike me.

  ‘I haven’t been the best wife, either.’

  Evan gave this his consideration. ‘Shall we agree to leave our unsatisfactory beginning behind us?’

  In that lies the only hope for our future.

  ‘Yes, I would like that very much.’

  His hand moved. She let her knees fall apart and then her thighs, and he tentatively explored her. Now, at least, she understood what the explorer might discover. Slowly, by tiny stages, she led him into new territory.

  There was no need for him to ask, My dear?

  They fell into a routine at Kanihama. Evan did acquire a bicycle, and his dark, spindly figure urgently pedalling up the steep tracks was at first a comic spectacle for the villagers and just as quickly became a familiar sight that people hardly noticed. He started his Bible classes, attended by none of the men, except some inquisitive youths and the village simpleton, who tried to add his voice to Evan’s. Not one of the women came, of course. Then Nerys began to offer a simple dinner of rice and vegetable stew and a few of the poorest people ventured in. Evan said he would relay this promising news to Shillong and Delhi.

  Nerys taught her little children, and in the afternoons she played with Faisal and the others or took Zahra for a walk along the winding tracks above the village where the resin scent of pine trees filled the air. In the evenings they ate their simple dinner, and read together by the light of a kerosene lantern. The war news from Europe, North Africa and Burma filtered up to them in days-old newspapers, in letters from home, and bulletins from Myrtle and Caroline in Srinagar.

  It was the end of June when Nerys received a letter from Myrtle.

  She slit open the envelope and a half-sheet of paper fell out. The few lines had been scribbled so quickly that they were hardly legible.

  Archie has been seriously wounded. He’s been brought back on a troop ship and is in a military hospital in Chittagong. I’m leaving at once. Don’t know how I’ll get across there, but I’ll do it somehow. D. Fanshawe is helping. Look after Caroline a little, if you can.

  Ask Evan to pray for A.

  Always your friend, M

  With numb fingers Nerys refolded the note. In her basket, Zahra kicked her bare feet at a bar of sunlight.

  Mair was in her bedroom on Solomon and Sheba, packing to go home. She was rolling up the last T-shirts and stuffing them into the crevices of her rucksack when Farooq knocked on the door. He had already been twice on different pretexts, his hennaed beard twitching with curiosity, so she sighed and told him to come in.

  ‘Very much luggage,’ he said, peering into her open bags.

  ‘Really? I call this travel
ling light.’

  ‘Visitor to see you. It is one young man.’

  She made her way down the creaking passageway, nodding to the male half of the Australian pair of aid workers who had recently arrived, and stepped along the gangplank to the lake shore. Mehraan was sitting astride a mosquito-sized motorbike, cradling his helmet in his lap.

  ‘Mehraan, is this machine yours?’

  ‘I have just bought it. It is useful.’

  ‘It must be. I’m glad to see you. I’m leaving Srinagar tomorrow and I thought I’d come to the workshop later to say goodbye.’

  ‘So I save you the trouble.’ He smiled. ‘Also I have done some small pieces of work for your friend, the English lady who has hurt her leg.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Srinagar is not all bombing and throwing stones, you see. The lady’s house is old, and some parts will fall down if we do not help to prop it. Yesterday I am there and her nurse gives me this package for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Mair asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ he said.

  Inside a folded piece of sacking tied with string was an ancient cardboard box with collapsing walls. Mair lifted one of the flaps and saw a bundle of old letters. There was a note attached, written in an almost indecipherable looped handwriting on lined paper.

  My eyesight is now too poor to reread your grandmother’s letters. Perhaps you would like to see them. Please do not trouble to return them.

  Sincerely yours,

  Caroline C. Bowen

  ‘Oh,’ Mair said aloud.

  ‘Something is wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing at all.’ She was astonished that Caroline had remembered their conversation and then actually hunted out the cache of letters. She was trying to decide now whether she should go across town now to thank her in person for this treasure, but quickly concluded that it would be better not. She didn’t think Mrs Bowen was being confined by Aruna, but her carer obviously preferred her not to be upset. The way she had been hustled out at the end of her last visit made her reluctant to risk causing another disturbance.