The Kashmir Shawl (11 page)

‘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.’

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.’

‘All this, before the snow comes?’

‘It is only the beginning of September, but if the weather happens to be against us the Lord will direct our actions.’

‘Do you really want me to go?’

The mattress rustled as he minutely shifted his weight. ‘I think it would be a good idea.’

‘Very well,’ Nerys said, in a cold voice that she didn’t want to acknowledge as her own.

Three days later, her bag stood in the mission courtyard beside the McMinns’ luggage, waiting to be loaded on to the first relay of ponies. Nerys handed out apples and dried apricots to the scrum of Leh children, not just her pupils, who were staring through the gate at all the activity. Diskit’s three grimy offspring were among them, and Diskit herself stood on the house steps in tears. She wasn’t wearing her headcloth. Nerys put down the fruit basket and went to her. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll be back in two months’ time. Sahib will bring me home.’

Diskit only sobbed more loudly. Nerys put her arm round her shoulders, inhaling the ripe smell of her hair. ‘Don’t forget your scarf. Always when you are working. Look after Sahib for me.’

Diskit wiped her nose on her sleeve and sniffed. ‘Yes, Mem.’

‘The ponies are ready,’ Archie announced, from beyond the gate, as hoofs rattled on the dried earth. Myrtle had put on her sola topi, with the muslin veil tied around her face, and Nerys had a wide straw hat.

Evan stood to one side, looking unhappy now the moment of parting had finally come. Nerys went to his side and reached up for a kiss. Awkwardly he knocked her hat askew as their dry lips touched. He stood back at once and patted her shoulder. ‘It won’t be so long. God bless you, my dear.’

She mumbled a goodbye, conscious that Diskit, the house-boys and the schoolchildren were watching, although the McMinns had tactfully busied themselves out in the street. The bolder children flung themselves at her, clasping her knees, and she bent down to hug and kiss each of them, instead of her husband.

Archie and Myrtle were mounted and Nerys’s pony was waiting. Archie’s bearer helped her to clamber into the padded saddle, then took the reins and turned the pony’s head to the road for her. She twisted round to wave goodbye. The procession moved off down the lane, past the chapel and into the street leading to the bazaar, leaving Evan’s solitary black silhouette outlined against the stone wall of the mission compound.

It was a cloudless day. As they wound the first miles along the Indus valley, Nerys felt heat strike through her straw hat, and wished she had brought cotton gloves to protect her hands from the blazing sun. After a time, on a high spur of land, she saw the prayer flags and brass spires of Spitok rising above the towering walls. This was the first of the great
gompas
on the route, and it was the furthest point she had travelled from Leh in more than a year.

Myrtle had gone ahead, but now she reined in her pony and waited for Nerys to catch up. Archie and the string of pack ponies were already far in the distance, enveloped in a puff of swirling dust.

‘Would you like company?’ Myrtle asked. Only her dark eyes were visible between the swathes of veil. ‘Or would you rather be left to yourself?’

Nerys looked up at the mountains ahead. The surprising strength that she had discovered on the long ride up from Manali seemed within her grasp again. ‘Company, please,’ she said.

Myrtle reached out of the saddle to pat her knee. ‘Good.’

They faced west, and rode on.

Nerys soon discovered that travelling with the McMinns was a completely different experience from her journey with Evan. At night they stayed in the rest houses set along the route, commandeering the places regardless of who might have arrived ahead of them. As a British sahib and a proper daughter of the Raj, Archie and Myrtle automatically took the precedence they saw as their due. They felt no compunction in ousting Ladakhi or Kashmiri travellers from the shelters, even on one evening a Muslim man, with a hennaed beard, who was accompanied by several veiled wives and half a dozen small children and babies. Evan and Nerys had always been confused and unwilling to impose themselves over other people, even the humblest. Whenever they came to a guesthouse, to sleep beside the road in their draughty tent had often seemed the easier solution.

The rest houses were often no more than two-roomed shacks, a living and sleeping room and an attached kitchen, and they were generally dirty and lacking any but the most basic amenities, but Sahib McMinn and his party were always greeted by the owners with extra civility and efforts to please. It wasn’t hard to deduce why, because although Archie demanded a full account of what was owing and didn’t overpay by a single
anna
, he invariably understood what the fair rate should be and handed over the money promptly and cheerfully.

Their camp servants always first arrived at the rest house,
and by the time the McMinns rode up, their
yakdan
bags had been untied from the ponies and set in the room for them. Camp beds were erected because Myrtle refused to use the charpoys provided, saying they were alive with bugs. Archie always pretended to be dismayed by his wife’s fussy behaviour, but affectionate amusement twinkled out of him. There were plenty of warm blankets, and even linen sheets, which were unpacked and repacked each day. The McMinns’ servants bought food locally to supplement the supplies the pack ponies carried, and their cook made the dinners, which were served with plates and cutlery rinsed daily in a solution of potassium permanganate. Sometimes there was even the opportunity to take a bath. A collapsible canvas structure was erected and part-filled, and Nerys was able to sit in it and luxuriously scoop warm water from an enamel jug over her skin and hair.

At the end of each day’s journey, sitting in their camp chairs under the cobwebby guesthouse rafters, there was plenty for the three to talk and laugh about. Myrtle gossiped and joked about people they had encountered, or the various foibles of the pony men.

‘Do you think they have a rota?’ she speculated, about the Muhammadan and his wives.

‘No, I should think he favours the prettiest one,’ Archie replied. ‘I would.’

‘How can he tell?’ Myrtle wondered.

‘They don’t go to
bed
in their veils, darling.’

Myrtle hooted with laughter. She smoked thin black cigarettes with opulent gold tips. The first time she lit one, Nerys glanced at her in surprise and Myrtle blew out a long plume of smoke. ‘I was on my very best behaviour, you know, when we met. We were staying in the mission house. Will you disapprove hugely when you really get to know me?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Nerys laughed.

Last thing at night, the bearer brought in mugs of hot cocoa. Archie tipped a slug of brandy into his own and Myrtle’s, and raised an eyebrow at Nerys.

‘Yes, please,’ she said. This was a custom to which she had quickly adapted.

There was only ever the one room at the rest houses, but she soon also got used to sharing with Myrtle and Archie. In bed Myrtle wore pearl-grey silk pyjamas with a Parisian label. ‘Much better for travelling, you know. The coolies drop lice in the beds when they make them up, but they slither off the silk.’

She was right. Lice had been a feature of the Watkinses’ journey up to Leh, clinging snugly in the seams of Nerys’s flannel nightgowns.

With Archie’s rhythmic snoring and Myrtle’s breathing as its accompaniment, Nerys found that she slept better on the Srinagar road than she had done lately in the mission house. Every morning, as soon as it was light, the bearer brought in their bed tea. After they had drunk it Archie went outside in his dressing-gown to shave in daylight while the women got dressed, and then it was time for hot porridge, scrambled eggs and the cook’s delicious fresh bread.