The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  The fragile, exquisite Kashmiri summer was coming, and she shivered at the prospect of what darkness might lie ahead.

  Of course Rainer would do whatever he could to help one woman, who had lost her child as well as her husband. She imagined how he would take his wife back to Switzerland, where they would perhaps live in another lush valley with the white mountain-tops looking down on them. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing you’re doing.’

  She had also been in India long enough to know that many marriages were arranged between near-strangers and became strong, successful and affectionate unions. ‘I hope you will be happy,’ she added, with most of her heart.

  They reached the bank of the river and looked along the steps at the familiar scenes of people washing their clothes, cooking, rinsing pans and soaping children.

  ‘Will you come to my wedding?’ Rainer asked.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He touched her hand.

  She had once thought he was inscrutable, but now she suddenly saw him in all his strength. She also knew that she loved him. ‘You’ll be going to Switzerland?’

  There was a pause. ‘Eventually. My father is there, and I have friends in the mountains. But I shall miss Kashmir.’

  He didn’t add and you, and she was in a way relieved. They had said enough to each other.

  They reached the door of the mission. Two bazaar children were sitting on the step even though Nerys’s schoolroom had closed hours ago. One tapped her mouth and reached out her cupped hand. Rainer took a coin from his pocket, the other child snatched it and they ran away.

  ‘I’ll let you know the day and time of the wedding,’ he told Nerys. ‘It’ll be very soon.’

  ‘I will be there,’ she promised. She stood with her hand on the door’s iron latch and watched him go, walking back to Prita through the oblivious crowds.

  She was already awake, knowing that he was in the grip of the dream again. Ralph writhed, his arms cradled over his head and his legs kicking as he tried to fend off whatever it was that stalked and terrorised him. Sweat had soaked his pyjamas and the bed-sheet. Caroline tried to hold him but he tore himself away from her. He muttered and thrashed and then screamed, just once, but loudly enough for her to imagine Julia Dunkeley waking up next door.

  ‘Ralph, please, hush. It’s all right. I’m here, you’re safe. It was a nightmare, just a bad dream again.’

  He struggled blindly upright, twisting as he tried to escape the horror in his head. She caught his arm and fought to steady him, but panic lent him strength. He brushed her off and pounced. His hands closed round her neck and squeezed, thumbs like steel digging into her windpipe, heavy limbs pinning her down. Caroline’s breath gargled and then stopped. She never knew how close she came to losing consciousness, only that the pressure of his fingers suddenly slackened and air rushed into her lungs. She gasped and shuddered, too shocked to move. In the darkness she sensed that Ralph drew back, his hands in the air, confusion gathering in him as he jolted into consciousness.

  ‘Caroline?’

  She managed a sound, no more than a rasp in her throat.

  Ralph fell back against the bolster. He groaned and panted as she eased herself upright and slid to the edge of the bed. She groped for the box and struck a match, then lit the candle. The electricity was on, she could hear the distant hum of the barracks generator, but she knew from experience that a bright light could frighten him before he was fully awake. The candle flame wavered and steadied behind her cupped palm.

  ‘Caroline?’

  She found that she could speak, although her neck and throat throbbed agonisingly. ‘I’m here. You were having a nightmare.’

  His face and skull glistened with sweat. He nodded, eyes searching the long shadows in the room as the night terrors receded.

  ‘Shall I make you some tea?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Not tea.’

  He sat up, pyjamas pasted to his body, and swung his legs out of bed. He put on his dressing-gown and shuffled to the door.

  ‘Ralph, please, won’t you tell me about the dream? Maybe if you talked about it, it would help to make it stop.’

  He shook his head. His fingers twisted the doorknob and she knew that he was longing for the whisky bottle.

  ‘All right, not to me, perhaps, but what about one of the other men? Men who will have seen … some of the same things?’

  ‘No. It’s a bloody dream, that’s all.’

  She followed him into the sitting room. He snatched the bottle of cheap Indian whisky off the engraved silver tray that had been their wedding present from the Fanshawes and poured three inches into a tumbler. His hands were shaking and the rim rattled against his teeth as he drank. He didn’t even put the glass down as he refilled it, but his hands were already steadier.

  ‘Ralph, don’t drink so much. It doesn’t help.’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ he said flatly. ‘Believe me.’

  After the nightmares he would drink until he anaesthetised himself and then fall into snoring oblivion. When he woke up the next day he would be as pale as death, angry as a trapped bear, and she would have to tread around him as if in a minefield.

  Caroline was afraid of her husband and of his barely contained violence, and however much she sympathised with him, it seemed that she was helpless in the aftermath of what he had seen and suffered. Ralph could go out to the club, or to the regimental mess with the other officers he counted as friends, and outwardly appear almost his old self. Only she knew how haunted he was, and how fragile the shell that contained him.

  Involuntarily her fingers crept up to explore her bruised throat. She saw that he was looking oddly at her and drew them away again.

  ‘Was I trying to throttle you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Christ. It wasn’t you in my sleep, you must know that. There was a Jap, one of the jailers. Sadistic bastard. He …’ Ralph’s eyes closed, then snapped open as if he couldn’t bear to contemplate what lay behind his eyelids.

  Caroline waited, holding her breath. She was imagining how another man (the same sort of man, perhaps) might have recognised his prisoner’s weakness – Ralph’s particular vulnerability, which he kept concealed at such cost and had hoped to hide even from his wife – and worked on it in ways that were quite possibly cruel beyond her understanding.

  ‘Go on,’ she said softly, hoping to encourage him.

  She shouldn’t have spoken. Ralph gulped back the second whisky and the glass clattered on the tray. ‘For Christ’s sake, no. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was dreaming.’ He came towards her and she had to resist the impulse to shield herself. But he only touched his hand to her shoulder before withdrawing it. ‘It’s a bloody rotten life for you too, isn’t it?’ he muttered.

  A slow flush crept up her face, and the blood hammered painfully through the bruises. Ralph stared down at her until his mouth puckered, the way it did when he was forced into anything more than a routine exchange with her. He turned sharply away, muttering, ‘Almighty God, what is the matter with you?’

  He didn’t expect or wait for an answer. He picked up the bottle, saying in a harsh voice, ‘Go to bed. I’m going to sit up and read.’

  In the morning, she would find him sprawled and unconscious in the armchair.

  The Catholic church was a little red-brick structure with a miniature steeple and a roof of corrugated iron painted pea-green. Nerys and Caroline sat in the front pew beside Professor Pran’s daughter. They were the only guests. Prita came down the aisle on the professor’s arm, wearing her white sari and a white dupatta woven with a tiny thread of gold covering her hair. Rainer waited for her at the altar rail, his coat brushed and a dark red rose in his buttonhole.

  The priest who conducted the service was Father Kennedy of the Catholic Mission. Nerys knew him slightly, and Evan had once told her that he was a fine missionary. As Rainer and Prita exchanged their vows, she looked up at the plain glass in the church’s tiny tr
efoil windows and thought about the various contracts that a marriage entailed. It was more complicated, much more, than honouring and obeying suggested.

  And as for love – how many versions of that were there?

  Beside her, Caroline sat with her head bent, turning the rings on her wedding finger. The chafed skin beneath was raw and flaking. She wore a gauzy scarf round her neck to hide blue-purple thumbprint bruises.

  After the bride and groom had signed the register in the miniature vestry, with the professor and Nerys as their witnesses, Rainer took them all to his favourite dhaba for the wedding breakfast. Father Kennedy came too, and told some good stories about the early days of the mission in Kashmir. It was a happy party. Prita said very little, but she smiled sometimes and rested her hand with the new gold band on her husband’s arm.

  The next day Nerys went up to Kanihama to see Zahra and the loyal Farida. She stayed in the village for a few nights, singing songs and playing games with Faisal, his little brother and the other children from her old schoolroom. She had taken with her some simple medicines and dressings, and treated the villagers’ numerous winter ailments as best she could. She assured Zafir that Zahra’s precious shawl was in her safe keeping, and at the same time discreetly made sure that the other side of the bargain was being honoured. She was in no real doubt that the little girl was well looked after, particularly by Farida – life up in the village was hard, but she could see that Zahra was healthy and full of laughter.

  When she returned to Srinagar she brought the two girls with her for a spring visit to the city, the first of that new year. When they arrived the pair scampered ahead, down the lane to the mission door, past a beggar who sometimes crouched in a niche in the wall. Inside the house Evan absently stroked the girls’ heads and Ianto beamed through his spectacles. The children who regularly came to the schoolroom took them back into their games.

  Nerys was disconcerted by Caroline’s response when she told her about the girls’ arrival. Her hands flew to her mouth and her face drained of colour. ‘I can’t see her. I really cannot, not now that Ralph’s here.’

  Nerys’s heart sank. ‘But as far as Ralph and everyone else is concerned she’s a mission orphan.’

  ‘I can’t. You don’t understand.’

  Ralph saw everything, Caroline believed. Guilty, she flushed under his scrutiny and heard in her head, What is the matter with you?

  ‘All right.’ Nerys sighed. ‘If you feel you really can’t. But it seems a shame.’

  April came. Rainer was packing boxes, preparing to leave his apartment overlooking the Jhelum river. The coils of rope, mountaineer’s hardware and the paraphernalia of magic tricks were all gathered up, heavy drums sealed and labelled for collection by various freight agents.

  In Europe, the US Army Air Force and RAF Mosquitos had taken it in turns to bomb Berlin as the Red Army closed in on the city overland.

  ‘It’s almost over,’ Ralph said, listening to the news. Caroline turned aside.

  After the war. After the war. What would that mean? She felt increasingly as if she were in one of Rainer Stamm’s magical boxes, where the roof and walls squeezed closer and closer together. She was trapped. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the flash of metal and even felt the kiss of steel on her skin as a blade sliced through the wall. She flinched, and realised that Ralph was glaring at her.

  Evan opened a letter from the Welsh Presbyterian Mission, postmarked Shillong. He put it aside until Nerys had seen that Zahra and Farida were asleep in their shared bed and Ianto had eaten his supper with them and gone off to his rented room beyond the bazaar. Then he said, ‘My dear, I have something to tell you. We are recalled to Shillong.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘In a month or so, probably. Of course, much depends on the war news. But I’d say it would be something of that order. You’ll be pleased to hear that Ianto is to stay on to continue our work here. I hope very much that we shall be able to travel back through Kargil and Leh, to revisit my earlier converts. I am going to write and ask if that might be possible.’

  ‘It’s very soon,’ Nerys managed to say.

  Evan had taken a sheet of writing paper to begin his letter. ‘We have been in the field for quite a respectable amount of time,’ he said.

  I shall have to take Zahra with us, Nerys decided. Somehow, it will have to be done. Perhaps Farida belongs in Kanihama with Faisal and the others, but I cannot leave Zahra behind.

  Ralph went to a dinner at the mess. The few of his brother officers who remained in Srinagar HQ were invariably polite to him, even deferential, but the cordiality they showed him had not increased since his return. If anything, he was more of an outcast. They were aware of what he had been through, but the effects were not discussed. They were not articulate men.

  Tonight, however, the atmosphere was different.

  They had listened to the latest news bulletin. Yesterday the Russians had reached Vienna. Major Dunkeley thumped his clenched fist on the table. The bloody Boche were finally done for, he declared. It wouldn’t be long before Berlin and Hitler himself fell into Allied hands. It was a damned shame that it was the Reds and not the British who were to have that honour, but even so – it was not too premature to have a small celebration, between friends, was it?

  There was a ragged cheer, and the port decanter was called for.

  As it circulated and the cigar smoke thickened, Ralph briefly became just another officer among soldiers who at last had victory in their sights. He drank and joked and sang the regimental ditties, and his glass was filled and refilled.

  Since Changi and Burma, Ralph Bowen’s liver had never functioned properly. There were several other parts of his body that let him down too, so he didn’t take particular notice even when the MO ordered him to go easy on the old bottle. He drank to get drunk in any case, and that point came more and more quickly.

  Too soon, he slipped beyond the self-imposed barriers. In the press of warmth and brotherhood, he let his arm fall from the back of the chair where it had been resting on to the broad shoulders of Lieutenant Ormsby. Under the revolving fans the room was swimming but this was a safe place, even a beloved one.

  Ormsby shook himself free and leapt to his feet. ‘For Christ’s sake, Bowen.’

  A glass of port skidded off the polished table and smashed to the floor.

  ‘That’s enough,’ growled Dunkeley. ‘Captain Bowen, please return to your quarters.’

  In a capsule of silence, Ralph reeled out of the room.

  A voice called after him, ‘Off you go to that pretty little wife of yours,’ and someone else tittered.

  The cool air outside made him stagger. He leant against the door frame and a passing servant said respectfully, ‘May I help you, sir?’

  ‘No. Leave me alone,’ he muttered.

  He tried to take one more step but his legs gave way. He collapsed into the gaudy bushes that bloomed under the windows of the mess. He instantly fell into a doze, but he thought he could only have been asleep for a second or two. When he surfaced again he could hear voices, and the sound of two men relieving themselves on the lawn a few yards away.

  ‘Julia’s sister ran into her in Delhi a couple of years back. She was coming out of a doctor’s office with McMinn’s wife.’

  ‘I wish I’d been in Delhi with Myrtle McMinn.’ The other one laughed.

  ‘They were both mightily uncomfortable to be spotted. Alice said she was certain she was pregnant.’

  ‘Who – Caroline Bowen?’

  ‘The same.’

  Ralph felt the grit and dirt under his cheek. He lay as still as he could.

  There was a loud guffaw. ‘Not by her husband?’

  ‘This is the interesting part. Bowen was in Burma, wasn’t he? No – it was that unspeakable Ravi Singh fellow, apparently. That’s how the story goes. Of course, it could be just Srinagar gossip, but they were pretty thick at one time, the two of them.’

  Somebody belched and excused himsel
f, and then footsteps swished across the grass towards the bungalows. The voices were swallowed by the darkness.

  When he was sure that he was alone Ralph hauled himself painfully to a sitting position. He rested his head in his hands and tried to think.

  Caroline? His wife – who seemed more like a white mouse than a woman – his wife and Ravi Singh?

  It seemed utterly unlikely, and as he tried to pursue the notion he realised that it didn’t hold much significance anyway. A woman in bed with the wrong man? A miserable little by-blow, done away with by a doctor in Delhi or even delivered and then hidden away? What did it matter?

  Worse things had happened – far, far worse.

  Ralph manoeuvred himself on to hands and knees and, by hauling on the bushes, achieved a standing position. Frowning hard and repeating the words one, two, one, two, he found that he could march very acceptably. He swung his arms smartly, and even though the ground shifted and tilted he made it all the way to the lane that ran past the married-quarters bungalows. Here was the gate. No, not that one. Further. Wouldn’t do to step into the wrong house.

  Next but one. Almost there. Sleep, that was the thing.

  A patch of deeper shadow lay in the long grass beside the fence. His blurred eyes settled on it and in the same instant the shadow stirred. It became a man, hunkered on the ground, lying in wait for him.

  Ralph staggered, but the enemy’s threat almost sobered him. Bayonet or pistol, which would it be? He wouldn’t stop to find out. Kill him first.