The Kashmir Shawl (29 page)

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Authors: Rosie Thomas

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: The Kashmir Shawl
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‘Is there likely to be any home leave for the regiment?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’ She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘That’s what I hear. Ralph hasn’t mentioned anything.’

‘All right.’ There was a pause before Myrtle went on, ‘This is a rather personal question, I know, but we’re having no more secrets. How do you know it isn’t Ralph’s baby? He was here in Srinagar all summer. The timing would be right. And if it were his, he’d be rather pleased, wouldn’t he? Especially if it’s a boy, I should think. And even if it’s not his, with Ravi Singh being so light-skinned … It wouldn’t be the first time in history such a thing has happened, would it?’

Nerys had said nothing but she tried to flash a warning to Myrtle. Be careful. Don’t assume more than you can know.

It was too late. Caroline’s face crumpled and her empty coffee cup fell from her fingers and rolled on the rug. Her hands came up to her mouth and her whole body shook.

‘What is it?’ Myrtle cried. ‘What have I said?’

‘It can’t be Ralph’s baby, you see. That’s just it.’

‘Can’t?’ Myrtle persisted.

It was Nerys who stood up, retrieved the cup and put it back on the brass tray, then went to sit at Caroline’s side. She took the girl’s hands and looked into her ravaged face. ‘I think I understand,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to.’

Caroline seemed reassured by this. She collected herself and firmly shook her head. ‘No, I want to –
need
to talk about it. I came over here to Mrs McMinn, I mean Myrtle, and to you, because I knew I must. There hasn’t been anyone I could ’fess up to before, and that’s what has made it so bad. I mean, my stepmother has been decent enough, but she’s at home and I’m here, and we’ve never had that sort of a motherly conversation. That’s to say, before Ralph and I were married I knew I had to arrange matters so when I was in Delhi to buy my wedding
dress I saw the doctor there – Mrs Fanshawe gave me an address – and he fixed me up with the hideous rubber thing you’re supposed to put in.’

Her eyes held Nerys’s.

A three-letter man, Nerys remembered. That was what Archie McMinn had called Captain Bowen.

‘I had it in its box on our wedding night, all ready to put in like the doctor told me. But Ralph had drunk too much and he more or less passed out. I wasn’t all that surprised, I’d seen him drinking before, so I tried to laugh about it the next day, you know, saying something about making up for lost time. Ralph didn’t think it was funny, not at all. He made an excuse that night about feeling ill, and slept on the camp bed. After a few more days I didn’t think it was funny either. I’d be putting talcum powder on the rubber thing, and going to bed in my pretty nightdresses, and my husband never did what he was supposed to.’

‘Never?’ Myrtle whispered. Nerys could see how difficult it was for her friend to imagine such a thing. For herself, it wasn’t such a leap.

Caroline held up her head. ‘Never.’

‘My poor duck.’ Myrtle sighed.

‘I thought it must be me. Not that I was thinking I might be repulsively deformed or anything like that – I was at boarding school and I’d seen everyone else so I knew I was actually on the decent side of ordinary, if that doesn’t sound too conceited. I mean, just not being
alluring
enough. But after a while I started to think, Bloody hell, if I want to and he doesn’t, that can’t all be my fault, can it? Sometimes we’d get near to it, but I always felt he was closing his eyes so as to be somewhere else while it was happening, and never managing to detach himself quite enough actually to be able to
do
it. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes, it makes sense,’ Nerys assured her.

‘Well, after the honeymoon he was mostly with the regiment anyway. Ralph’s a soldier, so was his father, and his father, all
the way back to the battle of Waterloo or some such, and soldiering comes first, before everything else. He took the trouble to warn me about that, before we got engaged, and I was keen enough on being married to convince myself I could either change him or live with it. I mean, being realistic, how many other proposals was I going to get? I’d come all the way out here and I couldn’t go on living at the Residency for ever. Ralph was quite handsome and he seemed to want me.’

Even Nerys understood that an ambitious soldier would need a wife. The colonel and the colonel’s lady. Caroline would have been a very suitable choice.

Caroline looked down at her engagement and wedding rings. ‘It was a happy ending, wasn’t it? I was going to be Ralph’s wife, the mother of his sons. Oh,
God
.’

The tears started up again, running down her smooth pink cheeks. Myrtle passed her a handkerchief and said, ‘What about Ravi Singh?’

‘I’m sure you can guess. I shouldn’t have let him make love to me but I couldn’t stop it happening. I felt as if I was in heaven. The glamour, first of all. Everything was such fun and nothing took any effort, not like at my house where even the damned kitchen-boy ignores what I tell him to do and the dust lies an inch thick. Ravi has legions of bowing servants, and a string of sweet ponies, and a chauffeur to take him wherever he wants to go in his big car. The food’s all divine, and you should just see the silks and the silver, and he can be more idiotic and funny than any Englishman you’ve ever met.’

‘He has the time to devote to it,’ Myrtle said drily.

‘I know, I know. And he took ages to seduce me, really he did. It wasn’t crude or too insistent, nothing like that. He’d just kiss the inside of my wrist – here – and then quickly cover that precise square inch of skin with my cuff, humbly, as if I’d allowed him a glimpse of the most beautiful treasure in the world. It went on like that for weeks, a tiny bit further each time, and always making me laugh and bringing me heavenly
presents and telling me … telling me all the things that I had imagined Ralph saying.’

Nerys thought of Rainer and the Kanihama picnic. The only difference was that she was by this time a shade more sceptical about men and sex than Caroline Bowen was. She felt herself redden, and hoped that Myrtle wouldn’t notice and wonder why.

Caroline lifted her head. ‘When it did happen, it was wonderful,’ she insisted. ‘I want you to know that I don’t regret it, although I’m in such a damned awful mess now.’

Nerys was listening intently.

‘It was at his family’s summerhouse, in the country. When Ravi took off my clothes the air was like silk over my arms and legs. Nothing was going to spoil that moment –
nothing
. I felt as beautiful as a painting, and as powerful as a queen. He was doing me honour, you know.’

Myrtle and Nerys were silenced. Love had temporarily made a pretty, round-faced, unlucky English girl into something close to a tragic heroine.

Myrtle found her voice first. ‘You didn’t have your cap with you, of course? The hideous rubber thing in its box?’

‘No.’

‘And, of course, Ravi didn’t make himself responsible for any arrangements of that sort?’

‘No.’

Myrtle sighed.

Caroline quickly added, ‘The times after that I mostly used it. Well, I did sometimes. The trouble is that it’s just not very romantic, is it? If it was with one’s husband, I’m sure it would be all right. He’d be used to you going off into the bathroom and fishing around.’

Nerys couldn’t help but smile at her.

‘Then I began to notice that each time I was with him, Ravi made it less of a ceremony. I wanted him more and more, so much that I actually ached for him. I used to babble stupidly about loving him, I couldn’t stop myself, and he edged further
and further away. One day when we were alone together, and I was already beginning to guess I might be pregnant, he looked at his watch instead of undressing me and said that he had to go riding.

‘At the Residency party I drank some cocktails for courage and when he asked me to dance I tried to talk properly to him. But, oh, the ice of it. I’d never have imagined he could be so cold, while I was just burning up with fury and fear. That was when you two rescued me. Since then, I’ve been sitting in our dismal empty house, praying for a miracle. But they don’t happen. So I’m pretty much in the mire, aren’t I?’

‘Do you really love Ravi?’ Nerys asked. She had seen the man’s cold, aquiline face and proud bearing.

‘Of course I do. Desperately,’ Caroline flung back, but Nerys suspected that she was clinging to love itself rather than Ravi. That was quite a good thing.

‘All right. Let’s work out what we can do,’ Myrtle said. Caroline gave her a grateful look. ‘Is it too late for us to find someone who can help, do you think?’

‘I’m afraid it is,’ Nerys said. She was firm because it was highly unlikely that any proper doctor would agree to perform a late abortion on a healthy woman, and she couldn’t bear even the thought of the clumsy unofficial alternatives. The other two regarded her steadily.

‘When Evan and I were in Shillong I worked at the mission hospital, in the delivery ward. I saw the results of a couple of botched attempts to get rid of babies. I don’t ever want to see another.’

‘You are a midwife?’ Myrtle gaped. ‘I must say, that’s jolly useful.’

‘No, I’m not. I helped out, that’s all.’

‘Even so.
I
’ve never seen a baby born.’

‘Neither have I,’ Caroline said. She turned pale at the thought of what lay ahead, but Myrtle was now all briskness.

‘Take that woolly thing off, Caroline, and stand up. Turn sideways and let’s have a look at you.’

She did as she was told, awkwardly smoothing her skirt over a small protuberance. Yes, Nerys thought. Sixteen or seventeen weeks into what was probably a healthy pregnancy. Caroline was slim, but she looked strong and resilient. Even so, she was going to need proper medical care.

Myrtle nodded. She was clearly thinking hard. ‘Would you want to keep the baby? I mean, after it’s born.’

‘I’ve tried hard enough to stop it, haven’t I? There’ve been weeks and weeks when I’ve thought of nothing but how to get rid of it. But now …’ she placed one hand on her belly ‘… I’m confused. It’s growing. I can feel it. But it can’t be Ralph’s, and I know he’ll never, never accept what I’ve done, so if I want to keep my life as it is I’ve got to hide this from him. I suppose Ravi might have acknowledged the baby as his, at least in some way, but only as a bastard, never as part of his family. He’d never marry me, even if I could get a divorce. I’ve stopped even dreaming about that,’ she concluded.

‘I don’t think you should let Ravi Singh know anything whatsoever,’ Myrtle warned her. ‘That wouldn’t be helpful.’

‘What do you think would be the best outcome for you, Caroline?’ Nerys asked.

She gave a small, mirthless laugh. ‘Apart from discreetly losing the baby, you mean? I suppose it would be for me to give birth, secretly if possible, and to find a good adoptive home for the baby, perhaps where I could even visit from time to time. Otherwise, I don’t know. I suppose for Ralph to come back after the war, and for us to try again, harder, to be married in the way I believe we both hoped for at the outset.’ Her lower lip protruded, making her look like a vulnerable child. ‘But that’s really rather a lot to be wishing for, isn’t it?’

Nerys’s heart twisted with sympathy. Caroline Bowen was a simple girl who in the end wanted simple things. A husband, love, a family. Was she any different herself?

Myrtle was smiling and her eyes had begun to sparkle. She had lost the bored expression that had marked her more often since Archie had left. She linked a hand with each of the others
and drew them into a close circle. ‘We’re on our own for the rest of the winter. Ralph is in Malaya, Archie’s somewhere in the east and Evan isn’t coming down from Kargil until the spring thaw. So, united we stand, and this is what we’re going to do. We’ll
all
be pregnant.’

Nerys said, with a dry catch in her throat, ‘I don’t know quite how we’ll achieve that.’

‘Of course you and I won’t actually be, unfortunately, but we’ll look as if we are. Wrapped up in a
pheran
all winter, with a fire-pot to nurse, who’s to know the difference? I’ve often looked at the Kashmiri ladies and thought as much. Caroline, you’ll stay out in the married quarters for just as long as you can hide the pregnancy and convince all those gossiping wives that everything is as usual. Then as soon as that gets too difficult you can claim you’re lonely living without Ralph and move in here with me.’ She waved a hand. ‘There isn’t really room for the three of us in the poor old
Garden
, but we’ll find a way round that when we need to. At the same time Nerys and I will also be pretending to get plumper and slower, and we’ll wrap ourselves up so much that if there is any talk, or any question about where a mysterious baby might actually have come from, no one will be able to point more than the finger of suspicion at anyone.’

She crowed with pleasure at her plan. ‘Aren’t I a genius? Go on, tell me.’

Nerys said, ‘They say madness and genius are closely related. I know which is my verdict.’

Wide-eyed, Caroline was weighing up the idea.

Myrtle swept on: ‘You and I, Caroline, can go down to Delhi a couple of times, shopping or visiting. No one will bother us at my house, and you can see a doctor while we’re there. Maybe in the last month we’ll have to take you to stay somewhere else, away from the watching eyes. Then, when the baby’s due, Delhi again. After that, we can look for foster parents, with a view to adoption. There’s a war on. Babies are going to be orphaned, aren’t they?’ Her face was almost feverishly bright now.

Ah, Nerys thought. ‘Myrtle?’ she prompted gently.

Myrtle and she had never discussed why the McMinns had no children, even when Myrtle had looked after her following her own miscarriage. She had guessed that they had been unable to, for whatever reason, and because her own loss was so often in her mind she had avoided the question.

Myrtle only held up her hand. Her eyes were fixed on Caroline’s face. Caroline gnawed her lip. Her situation was desperate enough for her to try anything.

‘It might work,’ she said at last.

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