The Kashmir Shawl (2 page)

Awareness of how much she loved her brother wrapped round her like a blanket. All her life he had been her ally, whereas as children she and Eirlys had constantly squabbled, mostly because they were each other’s embodied opposites. Not that they had quarrelled recently, of course. The loss of their adored father had made them considerate of each other, even wary.

‘Do you know where it might have come from?’ Dylan asked her.

She said, ‘No. But maybe I could try to find out.’

This idea only came to her as she gave voice to it. She was surprised by the curiosity that the mysterious shawl aroused in her.

That night Mair and Eirlys went to bed for the last time in the room they had shared as children. Mair could tell that her sister wasn’t asleep, although she didn’t twist and turn between the damp sheets like Mair was doing. In the end she whispered, ‘Eirlys, can’t you sleep?’

‘No.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘The same as you, probably. Once your parents are both dead, you really are it, aren’t you? You’re responsible, because there’s no one standing in front of you. Do you know what I mean?’

Sympathy flooded through Mair. Her sister had been behaving responsibly for her entire life. She had been a prizewinning medical student and had just been appointed to a consultant’s post at her Birmingham hospital, yet she had still found time to marry and have two boys. All her life she had been studying and looking after other people, and now her vision of this latest phase of their lives was of yet more weight falling on her shoulders.

Mair thought, Ever since I could walk and talk, I’ve been skipping away from the path my sister and brother trod ahead of me. Instead of following them to a good university she had left home and Wales at seventeen, fulfilling a long-standing promise, halfway between a family joke and a rebellious threat, to run away and join a circus. And at Floyd’s Family Circus she had met Harriet Hayes, or Hattie the Clown. Together they had worked up a simple trapeze act. Their nights at the circus were a long way behind them now, but they had been close friends ever since. In the intervening years Mair had also been a dress-shop manager, the singer in a band, a receptionist, a PR, a nursery assistant, a bookseller, and several other incarnations in the job market, with varying degrees of success, but usually some satisfaction.

No, even Hattie wouldn’t call me responsible, she acknowledged. And Hattie was quite a lot more frivolous than Eirlys.

Mair’s heart began to pound against her ribs and a white light blazed behind her eyes. Her body felt suddenly as light as a feather, and she realised that what she was feeling was
free
. She wanted to capture this blessing, and at the same time she longed to share some of it with her sister. Her fingers reached out and touched the fringes of the shawl, which lay on the chair beside her bed. ‘Yes, I do know what you mean,’ she said. ‘Eirlys, I’ve been thinking. I might do some travelling. You know, now Dad’s gone and, like you say, there’s just us left behind. I was wondering about going to India – perhaps see what I can find out about Grandma and her shawl. I’d be unravelling some family history. Why don’t you come with me? We could spend some time together. We haven’t done much of that lately.’

There wasn’t so much as a second’s hesitation before Eirlys replied, ‘I couldn’t possibly. There’s the hospital. It’s difficult for the whole team, with the latest cuts. And who’d look after Graeme and the boys? You should go, though, if that’s what you really want to do. I saw the way you looked at the shawl.’

Mair knew there was no point in trying to change her sister’s mind. Eirlys was decisive enough for two people. ‘I do think it might be interesting,’ she said.

She didn’t try to articulate the feeling of rootlessness that had troubled her since their father’s death. Eirlys and Dylan were settled, and she was far from being so herself. Perhaps uncovering some family history might help her to feel her place again.

‘You might not find out anything at all. India’s a big country. But you deserve a break and a new horizon. Grief can take all sorts of different forms, you know. And you took on most of the burden of looking after Dad. Dylan and I are really grateful for what you did, giving up that job and everything.’

Mair blinked hard in the darkness, but hot tears still escaped from the corners of her eyes. After the funeral Eirlys had remarked that the baby of the family was so busy being unconventional that it didn’t leave much time for her to focus on anything else. That had stung Mair, but now she reflected that grief did indeed take many forms. Eirlys’s caused her to be more tart than usual. The realisation made her sister’s kindness now seem even more touching and valuable. She murmured, ‘It was a privilege. I’m glad I was free to do it.’

‘Take some time, have a trip to India. If you need a reason and the shawl gives you one, that’s fine,’ Eirlys concluded. ‘Now, can we go to sleep?’

Outside, the bleating of the sheep had finally subsided. Mair knew why. Once night had fallen, the ewes understood that their lost lambs could never be called back. The occasional despairing cry still rose to the stars, but the flock was settling into silence.

Mair woke up and lay in the narrow bed, trying to work out where she was. She had been dreaming of a dog barking and animals stirring in response, a rustle of alarm passing among them before the leaders broke away and scudded across the bitten ground. Then sunlight flooded a hillside with sudden colour and the moving animals flowed into grey-on-green paisley patterns against the grass. A sheepdog chivvied them towards a stone enclosure where a farmer was holding the gate open.

In the way that dreams unfold, a familiar and beloved place had become merged with another she hadn’t yet visited. The room was cold and she shivered, pulling the blankets round her shoulders. As she did so the first call of the muezzin broke through the shutters.

The skin at the nape of her neck prickled, not just with the chill but with anticipation.

She remembered.

She opened her eyes wider, struck by anxiety in the grey dawn. The hotel room was cramped and liberally strewn with her belongings. Last night she had burrowed through her bags, searching in a power blackout for pyjamas and bed socks. But the shawl was safely there, neatly folded over the back of the room’s single chair. The light wasn’t strong enough yet to reveal the colours in their full glory, but they were vividly printed in her mind’s eye.

Mair pushed back the covers and sat up. It was too early, but she knew she wasn’t going to fall asleep again.

She had decided to give herself a full day to acclimatise. So, after a solitary breakfast in the hotel’s chilly and deserted dining room, she made her slightly nervous preparations. Into her shoulder-bag went the sketch-map of the town that the smiling Ladakhi receptionist had given her, a bottle of mineral water, some antibacterial gel and a well-rinsed apple. She was uncertain enough of what lay ahead to experience a breathless flutter beneath her diaphragm that had almost nothing to do with the effects of altitude.

Mair had never been to India before, not even to the beaches of Goa or the sights of Jaipur, let alone to a remote town in the Himalayas. Nor was she – in spite of her declared independence – at all used to travelling alone. Holidays, when she could afford them, had in the past usually involved the Greek islands or Spain, with a new boyfriend or one who was on the way out, or some looser combination of friends almost always including Hattie. As usual, Eirlys had been right when she had pointed out that Mair didn’t often break off from her studied absence of routine.

Mair smiled again as she locked her hotel-room door. She was free now, wasn’t she? Days and weeks of formally unallocated time stretched ahead of her. Thanks to the sale of the old house in Wales, she had some money, and time to spare for the strange project that had gnawed at her imagination for months in a way she didn’t properly understand. She hadn’t talked very much about the undertaking, even to Hattie,
because it would have been too difficult to make her compulsion sound intelligible.

Just the same, the vaguest of vague plans had brought her all the way here to Leh, on an open ticket, with no fixed return date in mind to confine or comfort her.

She walked down the concrete path from the hotel, past beds of zinnias and cosmos and gaudy marigolds, and out into the street. Heading towards the centre of town, she gazed round her in fascination. It was the end of September, and she saw that Leh’s short tourist season was practically over. Already many of the craft shops and travel agencies lining the road had rolled down and locked their permanent metal shutters ready for winter, and the Internet cafés that catered to backpackers and trekkers were almost deserted. The high peaks ringing the town glittered with fresh snow, and the poplar trees in hotel gardens rustled with dry golden leaves.

In a month’s time the real snows would come, and the high passes linking the Ladakhi capital with the Vale of Kashmir to the west and Himachal Pradesh to the south would be impassable until the spring thaw came. For six months the only way into Leh would be by air, as Mair had arrived yesterday, flying from Delhi into the little airport beside the Indus river. As she walked she was trying to picture what it would be like here in midwinter, when the narrow alleys of the town would be clogged with snow and the roof of each house piled high with sheaves of dried fodder for the family’s animals. But she was distracted. The imminent disappearance of tourists meant that the town’s salesmen were urgently trying to make a last few rupees. In the main street three of them cut off her progress with a practised pincer movement.

‘Hello, madam, where you from? Look at my shop, please.’

‘I have beautiful pashmina, I make you a very good price today.’

The third man pouted when she experimentally shook her head. ‘But looking is free, madam. Just looking. What is the great hurry?’

She was in no hurry, that was true. Laughing, she followed the nearest merchant up the steps into his cluttered shop and let him show off his stock. From Tibet there were trays of silver, coral and turquoise jewellery, from China painted Thermos flasks and furry nylon blankets in electric hues. There were prickly hats and waistcoats, locally knitted from goat’s hair, woven bags with tassels, and racks of T-shirts in every size and colour – mostly bearing a machine-embroidered yak on the front and the slogan ‘yak yak yak Ladakh’. Her eyes were acclimatising to the dim light of the shop’s interior. Against the walls there were ramparts of samovars and copper dishes and crewel-work rugs.

‘It’s very nice. Thank you for showing me. I’m not shopping today, though.’

The man was Kashmiri, and therefore born to sell. ‘You want pashmina.’ It wasn’t a question. At the back of the shop floor-to-ceiling shelves were stuffed with layers of folded fabric.

‘Show me.’

Immediately he began to whirl shawls off the shelves. A drift of colour built up on the tiny counter, yellows and blues and fuchsia pinks. ‘See? Feel, beautiful. Best quality. Pure pashmina.’

Mair knew a lot more about fine shawls than she had done four months ago, when the exquisite piece that was now locked in the hotel safe had first come into her possession. She understood the quality of the craftsmanship, and its likely value. ‘Pure?’ she said. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, pure silk pashmina mix. Twelve hundred rupees. Look, this pink one and this lovely blue-turquoise. Christmas is coming, think of gifts for your friends. Three for three thousand.’

‘Do you have any
kani
woven shawls? Or embroidered pieces?’

The man looked up. ‘Ah, yes. You know the best, madam. I show you.’

He unlocked a cabinet and brought out another pile. Like a magician he shook out more coloured breadths of fabric, whisking and flourishing them in front of her. Mair picked up the nearest one and let the folds slide through her fingers. She bent her head briefly to examine the floral design in reds and violet, then wound the shawl over her shoulders.

‘So nice,’ the Kashmiri approved. ‘These colours just right for you.’

It was nothing like the other one. This fabric felt stiff, lumpy around the margins of the flowers, and it hung awkwardly, with none of the fluid drape of her shawl. When she took it off again she could almost hear the crackle of the fibres. She didn’t know for sure how the design had been woven, but from a glimpse of the reverse it looked like cheap machine work. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

‘Nine thousand. Good price.’ He knew she wasn’t going to buy. ‘And this one, see, embroidered. By hand, all of it.’

Royal blue, this time, with a band of white flowers sewn at either end. The flowers had certainly been done by hand, but the design was haphazardly stitched and threads trailed on the reverse. The outlines of the blocked pattern were visible beneath the stitching. It could not have been more different from the other, on which the double band of floral embroidery was worked over the woven design in the same shades and in stitches so tiny that they were invisible to the naked eye, all of it executed so perfectly that the right side and the reverse were indistinguishable. The effect of such minute and effacing work was to emboss a broad swathe of the woven pattern, giving the paisley shapes and entwined foliage an opulent three-dimensional effect.

‘It’s very nice,’ Mair repeated.

The man looked offended. She wanted to get out of the shop now, back into the sunshine. She picked out a pair of coral earrings from the display stand next to the door, paid for them quickly and made her escape.

‘Come back soon,’ the merchant called after her.

The other two salesmen reattached themselves to her side, but half-heartedly. She was able to sidestep them and make her way on down the sunny, dusty street past a row of women sitting at the kerbside with baskets of cauliflowers and apples for sale. Shoeshine men with their brushes and tins of polish set out on squares of sacking tried to attract her attention, even though her scuffed Converse were clearly visible. Scooters and rickshaws jolted over the potholes in the road. The noise of traffic was deafening. Mair peered up the shadowed alleyways leading off the street and chose one at random to explore. A mangy dog loped by, its distended teats swinging.