The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  The head man thrust a corner of the shawl towards them, pointing with his blackened fingernail at a mark stitched there, like a double BB with one B reversed.

  ‘This man. Fingers like butterfly wing. So light,’ Zafir said.

  ‘I want to buy it.’

  ‘Caroline, you can’t possibly, it’ll cost the earth,’ Nerys whispered. ‘It’s years and years of their work.’

  ‘How much?’

  The weaver and the two embroiderers drew in a huddle behind Zafir. There was a fierce muttering between them. Stonyfaced, Zafir turned back to the two women. ‘One thousand five hundred rupees.’

  Nerys did the mental arithmetic. ‘That’s nearly a hundred and twenty pounds. We’ll never be able to bargain …’

  ‘Here,’ Caroline said. From the pocket of her blue tweed coat she brought out an envelope, opened it and produced the two crisp notes. The men stared, but Zafir’s hand was already outstretched. Nerys was sure that in all their lives they had never seen so much money.

  ‘Tell them to keep the rest. Tell them it’s for taking care of Zahra. I want her to stay here with them, where she’ll be safe.’

  Caroline stumbled to her feet. She made her way to the door, leaving behind her the shawl, the money and Nerys.

  When Nerys finally emerged she had the shawl with her, wrapped once more in its protective linen. Caroline was looking towards the stream as it splashed down through the rocky gorge. Under the chinar tree the children were playing a game with sticks and stones.

  ‘When does the snow come?’

  It was October. ‘In a month or so.’ After that the roads would be difficult or impossible to negotiate until the spring thaw.

  Caroline nodded, as if her attention was far away. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? I always thought so.’

  Their van driver had finished his delivery of chickens and had collected a row of baskets filled with red apples. She put her hands into the empty pockets of her tweed coat and began to pick her way through the drifts of leaves towards him. As she passed the children she stopped for a long moment, but Zahra was gurgling with laughter as Farida rolled pebbles at her. She picked up the roundest, whitest one and threw it at the tree trunk, never even glancing at Caroline.

  Nerys was treated differently. As soon as they saw she was leaving they ran at her full tilt, and she had a word and a sweet for all of them. They knew that Nerys always came back, so there was no serious outcry when she left.

  The van swayed down the track. Nerys tried to pass the wrapped-up shawl to Caroline, but she shook her head. ‘That’s Zahra’s dowry. I want you to keep it safe for her.’

  ‘Of course I will. Caroline, the money …’

  ‘Let’s just say it was a legacy. That’s it. A legacy. From my fairy godmother.’

  Nerys didn’t like the wild sound of Caroline’s laughter.

  By early November, the mountains were cloaked in snow once more and the old brown city creaked with frost. There were already predictions that this year the lake would freeze for the first time since the Christmas cricket match.

  One afternoon Caroline came home to the bungalow after visiting Myrtle and Archie and found the house-boy kneeling on a folded rice sack beside the blackened bed of marigold stalks. He was polishing a pair of army boots as if he wanted to rub the leather away. Shivering, she clicked open the front door. ‘Ralph? Ralph?’

  There was an army cap on the rickety hat stand.

  The man looking up at her from the armchair was almost unrecognisable.

  His face was little more than a death’s head with eyes bulging out of purple sockets. His head was almost bald, except for a few colourless strands, and the exposed scalp was raked with livid scars. Caroline ran to him but the spectre raised his crossed arms. She wasn’t sure if it was to fend her off or an automatic reaction to protect his brittle body from potential assault.

  She stopped short and dropped to her knees on the hearthrug. She put one hand out to touch his knee and felt the raw bone through the khaki.

  He said, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper, ‘I’m sorry not to give you any warning. There was a plane coming up with a spare seat at the last moment, so they put me in it.’

  ‘They told me you were still too weak to travel. I can’t believe you’re here. Thank God you’re alive.’

  His mouth opened in a version of a smile, revealing that he had lost several teeth. ‘Just about. You look well, Caroline. You look … pretty.’ Ralph lifted a strand of her hair, as if he couldn’t quite believe in its bright blondeness. He twisted it round his forefinger, stopping just short of pulling it, and she remembered that Ravi had done exactly the same thing.

  Her face instantly boiled scarlet. She jerked backwards and gave a gasp as the hair tore from her scalp. She fell back on her heels and Ralph stared at her.

  ‘Let me – let me get you something to eat,’ she stammered. ‘There’s … chocolate. Or honey, Kashmiri honey, you like that.’

  She saw that already she irritated him.

  ‘I can’t eat very much,’ he snapped.

  Caroline bit her lip. ‘Tell me what I can do for you. Please, Ralph.’

  His head fell back and his eyes closed. That single exhausted movement told her that what he had been through, the darkness she could only guess at, had opened a chasm between them. She knew with sudden and absolute certainty that, whatever she might do and however hard she tried, she would never be able to please him now.

  All right, she thought. But I’ll try. I’ll make that my penance.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ he said.

  FIFTEEN

  March 1945

  He was as handsome as always, and as secretive. She could hardly believe that he was really here in Srinagar. He had materialised in the flesh, just like Miss Soo Ling in the sliding box or the doves in one of his stage tricks.

  Nerys let Rainer lead her through the streets near Lal Chowk until they reached an ordinary little dhaba, a place where tradesmen from the nearby workshops came to swallow a plateful of cheap food. He pulled out a metal chair for her at a plywood table.

  ‘What would you like?’ he asked. ‘Champagne? Pâté de foie gras?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, please. And then strawberries and cream. Rainer, I can hardly believe it. Are you really here?’

  He extended his hand so she could check its solid warmth. She clasped it between both of hers, just for one second, which was as much as she could allow herself.

  He looked fit, windburnt and as tightly coiled as a spring. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ he said.

  She had received a scribbled note, delivered by one of the urchins from the bazaar. Without stopping even to look in the mirror she had set out to Lal Chowk. He was waiting for her in the middle of the teeming square at the centre of the city, as if to underline physically what she already knew – that their weeks together had been the very heart of her time in Kashmir.

  ‘As if I was going to choose not to, perhaps.’

  He looked into her eyes. ‘It might have been difficult for you. Is your husband in Srinagar?’

  ‘Yes. He’s very busy.’

  There had been no need to lie to Evan about where she was going because he hadn’t asked. She hesitated and then added, ‘Rainer … nothing has changed. I’m doing what I always intended to do. I am the missionary’s wife and helper. Now and always.’

  ‘I know. I know, I know, I know. But I can still love you, can’t I? I went away because it would have been impossible to stay and watch you being Evan’s wife, and all I learnt was that wherever I am I feel the same. I do try to look upon loving you as a blessing, you know. It makes me a better person, probably.’

  They laughed at the probably.

  Rainer wasn’t unhappy, she could see that. It wasn’t his way.

  The simple joy of seeing and being with him swelled inside her, making her feel light and easy as she hadn’t done for months.

  A dish of onions and limes
was placed in front of them, followed by a bowl of dhal makhani and a basket of hot naan bread. Rainer demolished the food without looking at it, as if finishing it off were a task that must be completed. Nerys sipped cardamom tea.

  ‘Tell me about everything,’ he demanded. ‘How are you? I want the truth, too.’

  Nerys’s smile faded a little. It had been a hard winter.

  ‘No, wait a minute. I’ve got something for you,’ he said. He opened the inside pocket of his coat and slipped a small brown-paper folder across the table.

  The three women on the houseboat veranda were laughing at a forgotten joke, with lotus leaves and a stretch of lake water spread behind them. It was a charming photograph, capturing the happy glamour of the old days on the Garden of Eden. Nerys looked across the table. ‘Is it mine? To keep?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. I’m only sorry that it has taken me so long to come and give it to you in person.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She put the photograph away in her handbag. ‘I am all right,’ she told him. But I miss you. Every day.

  He heard the unspoken words. ‘And Myrtle and Caroline?’

  Myrtle and Archie were down in Delhi, and Mr and Mrs Flanner had finally bought the old houseboat. Nerys had bumped into Laura Flanner at a WVS fund-raising housie-housie party, where the new owner complained that the McMinns hadn’t told them the half of what was decrepit about the boat. Nerys protested that to her it had always seemed the lap of luxury.

  Laura Flanner had raised one Bostonian eyebrow. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘But, then, I’m from Wales.’

  Myrtle had written to say that it was terribly sad and a bore but she didn’t think they would be coming up to Srinagar for this summer. After the war – suddenly everyone had started to talk about after the war as a real time, rather than just a prayer for the remote future – Archie was hoping to find a peacetime job with the railways again. Office-based, of course. He stood a better chance of that by staying in Delhi, Myrtle said, and wheeling himself off to see everyone he could think of. ‘You know Archie,’ she had written. ‘He never gets despondent, and he’ll never give up.’

  Nerys found Srinagar a much duller place without the McMinns.

  Caroline and Ralph Bowen appeared together at the Residency cocktail parties that the Fanshawes still occasionally hosted, or Nerys would sometimes catch sight of them at a regimental concert or among the spectators at a tennis match. Everyone said how encouraging it was that poor Captain Bowen was recovering so well and how fortunate it was that he had his wife to look after him. Nerys wondered if she was the only one to notice that as Ralph got physically stronger Caroline seemed to grow paler and more silent. Sometimes she came alone to tea with Nerys at the mission. She had developed a nervous habit of twisting the rings that were now loose on her third finger.

  ‘I’m quite all right,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t sleep very well these days, that’s all. Ralph has terrible nightmares. He won’t ever tell me what he’s dreaming about, but I think it helps him to wake up and find that I’m there. That’s something, isn’t it?’

  Nerys told Rainer the outline of this.

  ‘And Zahra?’ he asked.

  The two girls had been in Kanihama all winter, and Nerys had visited them as often as the road was open. Zahra was well looked after, and the precious shawl was safely folded away with Nerys’s best clothes in a chest at the mission.

  ‘There’s not much news in Srinagar.’ She smiled at Rainer. ‘Tell me yours. Where have you been, all these months? I know I probably shouldn’t ask. But I thought of you very often.’

  How odd it is, she thought, that two people can have one spoken conversation while conducting another in their hearts.

  ‘Did you? I like that. I’ve been devising a new trick. It’s a good one, you’ll enjoy it. I put on a few little magic shows for the troops – it was a cover for some camouflage advisory work. Covering troop movements, supply depots.’ He added, ‘Nothing at all heroic. I’m only a Swiss civilian. I’m not a friend because your people can’t be completely certain I’m not an enemy. It doesn’t matter now. The war will be over in a few weeks.’

  Evan was saying the same thing, and he had begun to talk about the mission recalling him to Shillong or even their eventual return to Wales. Nerys had more than once tried to bring up the subject of adoption, but he had been adamant that God’s will was either to give them a child of their own or that they should remain childless. She tried to devise plans for Zahra, but she knew that realistically all she could do was wait and hope.

  ‘And so, now what?’ she asked Rainer.

  He hooked one shoulder. ‘I have something important to do.’

  There was no point in asking what that might be.

  By now he had polished off all the food. He pushed the dishes aside and said abruptly, ‘I asked you to meet me here because I want to introduce you to someone. Will you come with me now?’

  Nerys looked at him in surprise. ‘Of course.’

  They left the dhaba and walked through the crowds. There were more people about, drawn out of their houses by the thin March sunshine, but the wind was still cold and Nerys wrapped her faithful pheran tightly around her.

  The house was built of soft red brick framed by thick wooden beams, an old Srinagar home in a quiet street. The door was opened by an elderly woman in a sari. Rainer was obviously a regular visitor. He spoke quietly to her and the door inched wider. They slipped inside and were led up the shallow wooden stairs.

  In the upstairs room another woman, much younger, was sitting on a window-seat staring down through slatted shutters into the street. As soon as she saw Rainer she jumped up and hurried to him. Glancing away as they greeted each other, Nerys noticed a crucifix on the wall. On a shelf below, with a candle burning in front of it, stood a framed photograph of a child. A rosary hung over the frame.

  The servant closed the door.

  ‘Nerys, this is my friend Prita.’

  Nerys took her hand. Prita’s face was drawn and her eyes were full of shadows. She was dressed all in white, the colour of mourning.

  ‘I am glad to meet you,’ the woman said, in a low voice. ‘Rainer has told me about you, that you are a good woman and a good friend.’

  Nerys knew that the link between these two was something more than simple friendship. The air in the room seemed to shiver.

  ‘He has been very kind to me in my sad times,’ Prita continued. ‘See, over here? This is a picture of my son. God rest his innocent soul.’

  The boy was perhaps three, a solemn-faced infant in a white shirt.

  ‘Arjun’s father was killed in 1942. My husband was for Free Kashmir, this is what he and his fellows dreamt of, and his idea was not welcome to the British or to the maharajah. Many men died in the uprising at that time, but there was no end to it then and there will be much more killing to come. I sadly believe that the time of death in Kashmir is only now beginning.’

  Nerys still held the woman’s hand. It was light and dry, the sinews prominent under the thin skin.

  ‘I am staying here after that for the sake of our son, even though the enemies of my husband are mine too. Our child was Kashmiri first, before any religion, and if he did not grow up in Srinagar, what life would he know? But now …’

  Rainer came to Prita’s other side. He took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head where the smooth black hair parted. His solid bulk made Prita seem tiny. For a moment the three of them were drawn together as tightly by her grief as by any history.

  ‘Arjun was quite well, you know, a baby like any other. Then he was ill, one month, two, worse, and then he died. Rainer told me, you are a nurse. You will understand what I cannot.’

  ‘Not a proper nurse. Only a missionary’s wife,’ Nerys whispered. She was thinking: rheumatic fever, diphtheria, tetanus, measles, infant diarrhoea – there were so many diseases that carried off the children.

  Her arms ached with longing to hold Zahra.

  ‘It’
s only two weeks since Arjun died,’ Rainer said.

  ‘I am so sorry.’ There was nothing else Nerys could say.

  Prita’s ravaged face turned. ‘I am not behaving well to my guest, to Rainer’s good friend,’ she managed to whisper. ‘Perhaps you would like some tea.’

  Nerys hugged her and then stepped back. ‘Thank you, not now. But I will see you again,’ she promised.

  ‘Thank you,’ Prita said, and Rainer’s face flashed his gratitude.

  ‘I’ll see you home, Nerys.’

  He told Prita that he would be back soon.

  Nerys and Rainer walked towards the mission. After the shadows of the widow’s house the day seemed bright and noisy.

  He said, ‘I wanted very much to introduce her to you. I am going to marry her, you see.’

  The street clamour rang in Nerys’s ears.

  You asked me to marry you. And my answer was that I am already married.

  A group of American soldiers on leave flooded out of a bar and blocked their way. Nerys threaded her way past. One of them saw her face and apologised. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’

  She found her voice. ‘Do you … love her?’

  Rainer stopped walking. He didn’t touch her, but it was as if he did. ‘I think you know the answer to that.’

  ‘Then …’

  ‘I am going to take her back to Europe. Her husband was one of the leaders of the Kashmiri independence movement, and even before 1942 he made many enemies. He paid for that, but his death also left his family in an impossible position. Prita has a few friends, but they will be as vulnerable as she is once the war ends and you British leave India. This state will be cruelly divided and it won’t be safe for her to stay here, a widow without anyone to defend her. Prita’s husband was a Sikh but she is a Christian convert. A Catholic, like me.’

  They were close to the Jhelum river and Nerys stood gazing at the shikaras loaded with local goods on their way downriver to be traded or sold in Baramulla and as far away as Rawalpindi. She thought of the floating vegetable gardens out on the lakes, the apple orchards and rice paddies, the shops along the Bund, and the shawl-makers up in Kanihama. Srinagar and the whole of Kashmir were outwardly calm in the lemon-yellow spring sunshine, but she knew how deep were the rifts that lay beneath the surface. Evan and Ianto still went out every day to try to convert lower-caste Muslims and Hindus, and they reported that the two sides hated each other even more than they hated the British. Nerys heard that a radical Sikh leader had threatened, ‘If the Muslim League wants to establish Pakistan they will have to pass through an ocean of Sikh blood.’