The Kashmir Shawl (21 page)

The band played a little louder, in a faster tempo, and the chandeliers sparkled even more brightly.

‘Shall we dance?’

It wasn’t like any other dance, in her extremely limited
experience of such things. His right hand grasped hers at the proper angle and with the required firmness, and she felt the warmth of his fingers through her white kid glove. His left hand rested precisely in the small of her back and its caress made her sharply conscious of the three discrete layers – in her mind she counted them – of slippery fabric that separated her naked flesh from his.

They skimmed over the floor. When she finally met her partner’s eyes, she saw they were bright with pleasure and amusement. He was humming the waltz tune under his breath and he was so close to her that she felt these vibrations pass from his ribcage into her own body, connecting the rhythm of their steps so that they turned as one person, perfectly attuned and with their eyes still locked together. He was a good enough dancer to convince her that she was just as good.

Nerys thought she had better say something. ‘Your rope trick was very clever.’

‘Thank you. You must let me show you some of my other effects.’

‘Are you a magician, then?’

‘There’s nothing magical about magic, that’s the sad secret. It’s all practice and presentation.’

‘Oh dear. And I believed that my blowing on the knot was what did it.’

‘Perhaps it was,’ he murmured.

When the waltz ended they stood in a bubble of quiet, hands clasped, until the next began. They chatted now as they danced, like friends.

It was a little while – or perhaps a long time – later that Nerys noticed Myrtle watching them from the edge of the floor, her head cocked to one side and the light catching her diamond dress clips.

‘We have attracted the attention of your chaperone,’ Rainer Stamm said.

Nerys drew back from him, pretending to be offended.
‘Mr Stamm, I’m a married woman. I have no need of a chaperone.’

His laugh rose from the same place as the humming. ‘Won’t you please call me Rainer?’

‘Yes, Rainer.’

‘Nerys,’ he repeated softly, fitting the syllables to the music. ‘So, Nerys …’

With a catch on the
r
and a sibilant finish, she thought his pronunciation made her prosaic name sound beautiful. ‘May I ask you something?’ she began, and he inclined his head even closer. ‘The children I was with when you rescued me the other evening, the smallest ones, did you see them?’

‘I didn’t rescue you. But, yes, I saw them.’

‘I’d been at their house because they were trying to sell me a shawl. They’re very poor.’

‘Many people in Srinagar are very poor.’

‘I know that. It just happened that this family found me, and I feel that I let them down.’

In the intervening days, she had thought a good deal about the little family and their one bare room, the girl’s sharp-faced persistence and her mother’s exhausted smile.

‘What is it you want to do for them, Nerys?’

‘I’m a missionary’s wife,’ she began.

Rainer spun her into a turn a little faster than necessary and his hand weighted her spine. ‘Are you? So you want to convert them, is that it?’

‘No. It’s not that I don’t support my husband’s mission, of course, but I don’t have quite the same … the same desire to save souls.’

‘Assuming that they are not already saved by a different route?’

‘Yes, if you like. Last year we lived in Leh.’

He looked at her and she noticed now that his eyes were the colour of barley sugar. ‘I know Leh.’

‘I taught the school there. I don’t have any illusions about the value of what I was doing, but it was better for the children
than nothing at all. They were fed a decent meal, and we played games and sang.’

‘There are schools in Srinagar.’

She sighed. ‘Yes. Of course there are.’

Another dance was ending and there was a drift of people towards the supper room. Nerys caught sight of the girl Myrtle and she had met at the club – Caroline Bowen, that was her name – standing in the centre of the room. There were two bright red patches on her cheekbones. Her partner was a tall, conspicuously handsome and autocratic-looking young Kashmiri man, who now gave her an exaggerated bow and stepped backwards.

Nerys felt the minute disturbance of the air as Rainer’s fingers traced her spine without actually touching it. She had to make herself concentrate on his words as his other hand gently released hers.

‘It sounds as if these people are pashmina-fibre spinners. The sad truth is that the traditional work they contribute to,
kani
shawl production, is beautiful and slow and no longer much sought after. The mills in England and Scotland can reproduce the old designs much more cheaply, and they turn out Kashmir-look shawls for a fraction of the price. The goods are exported back east, and the local people are squeezed out of the market.’

Kani
: that was what the child had kept saying.

Nerys glanced round the room, at the wives, the bold, flirtatious girls and all their conscious displays of fashion, probably not quite the latest thing – even she was aware of that – because of the distance from Europe and the demands of the war but, still, there was so much money here.

‘Are you rich, Nerys?’ Rainer was asking.

She shook her head. ‘The opposite.’

His face softened and she noticed the pale creases around his lips and eyes where the sun hadn’t quite reached. ‘Maybe there is something you could do for this family. I am too distracted to talk about it now, watching out for the cavalry
officer who’s going to pounce at any second and claim you for his partner.’

‘I don’t know any cavalry officers.’

‘I am relieved to hear it. May I escort you to supper, madam?’

Nerys took the arm he held out. She felt giddy from the way their connection was racing ahead of her, hurdling the fences of convention and galloping towards – she didn’t know where or what. She must tell Rainer that Evan would soon be arriving in Srinagar and make it clear that they planned to return to Leh, most probably now in the spring, to continue the work of the Nonconformist outreach there. That would be quite proper.

There was a sudden disturbance in the centre of the room.

A girl’s voice had been raised briefly and now there was a whisper as the crowd parted.

Nerys first saw the aquiline man with the imperious bearing, smiling in his formal long silk coat. Then came Caroline Bowen, her head down to hide her flushed face. She was walking away from him so fast that the heel of her shoe snagged the train of her dress and she almost stumbled. Nerys caught her arm and held her as she passed, and they swayed awkwardly before the girl regained her balance. ‘So sorry,’ she cried. She looked as if she might burst into tears or into a hoot of laughter, as if she didn’t know which way her emotions might swing.

‘Are you all right?’ Nerys asked.

‘Perfectly,’ she insisted, with an air of wild gaiety. ‘Perfectly. Hot, you know. Fresh air.’ She fanned her fingers in front of her face and broke away from them both.

‘Let me come with you,’ Nerys said. Making her way out of a knot of watching faces, some smirking, some concerned, others flatly curious, came Myrtle. They fell in on either side of Caroline and the three women swept out of the room. Nerys just had time to glance back over her shoulder at Rainer, who calmly nodded.

In the Residency’s wide entrance hallway there were fewer
inquisitive onlookers. Myrtle steered Caroline’s gloved elbow. ‘You know the house. Where can we go that’s private?’

The girl hesitated. She looked much closer to tears than hysterical laughter now. ‘I can’t think. Wait a minute – there’s the salon.’

She led the way. A closed door was guarded by a Residency servant in scarlet livery, but he bowed respectfully and opened it for them as soon as he recognised Caroline.

The Residency salon was a replica of an English country-house drawing room. There were sofas with chintz covers, backed by tables piled with books and magazines. A grand piano stood in the curtained window bay and only the flowers, scarlet cannas, puckered cockscombs and vivid gladioli, instead of sweet peas and delphiniums, gave a clue that this was not the home counties. Myrtle steered their charge to one of the sofas and sat her down. At once Caroline’s whole body began to shiver. She put her hands up to her face and smothered a sob as tears ran down her cheeks and soaked into her gloves.

Myrtle took hold of her shoulders and briskly shook her. ‘Listen to me. You cannot, you
must
not, make a spectacle of yourself like this. Never again. Do you understand me? However bad it is – and you’d better tell us right now just how bad – you have to keep up public appearances. That is your
job
. Your husband is an Indian Army officer, you are a family friend of the Fanshawes. At the very least you owe them all dignified behaviour. You owe yourself much more than that, incidentally.’

The girl’s sobs grew louder. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she choked. ‘I love him.’

Myrtle sighed. She patted Caroline’s silky pale shoulder and waited while the storm of sobbing reached its peak and then showed signs of blowing itself out. She shook a starched handkerchief out of her evening bag and handed it to her.

‘Should I go?’ Nerys murmured.

‘Yes,’ Caroline gulped.

Myrtle said, ‘No. Nerys is a friend and you need more than one, my girl. Are you ready for a glass of water?’

‘I’d rather a whisky.’

‘I think you’ve had enough to drink.’

A jug and a pair of cut-crystal glasses stood on a tray. Nerys poured water and put the glass into Caroline’s hand. The girl sniffed dolefully and sipped at it with her head down.

‘Now then.’ Myrtle lit a cigarette. Nerys could hear the music from the ballroom. In the supper interlude, the band was attempting a piece of Debussy, which was less kind to the players’ shortcomings than the dance tunes.

‘I love him,’ Caroline repeated. This time there was a chip of defiance in her voice.

‘All right. If you insist. These things happen.’

Over the girl’s head, Myrtle caught Nerys’s eye. She pulled down the corners of her mouth to underline the seriousness of the situation, but then she countered the effect by winking. ‘But you are British, and married. There are ways to deal with affairs like this, and making a public scene is most emphatically not one of them. What were you thinking of? Do you think Ravi Singh is pleased by your discretion and decorum?’

‘I didn’t mean to make a scene.’

‘You succeeded, though.’ Myrtle’s tone remained frosty, but she took Caroline’s hand between hers and squeezed it. ‘Tell us what’s up, eh? We can work it out between the three of us, you know.’

‘I had a letter from … from my husband. The regiment has been granted a last-minute forty-eight-hour deployment leave, and he will be here tomorrow. I waited until Ravi asked me to dance, and he did that very properly after dancing first with Rosalind Dunphy and Jean Whittaker, so there was no reason for any of those old witches from the club to notice anything. Then I told him. I thought he would … he would …’

Two more tears dropped into the lap of Caroline’s gown.

‘You thought that at the very least he would be jealous, was that it? You dreamt that he might even insist you didn’t see your husband. Your gallant knight was going to sweep you over the pommel of his saddle and gallop off with you. But instead he bowed and changed the subject. Did he comment on the band, or the cold weather, or the war news? And so you screeched out your disappointment and desperation in front of everyone?’

‘It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.’ Caroline had gone so pale that Nerys thought she was going to be sick.

Myrtle circled her with her arm now and drew the girl’s head down on to her shoulder. ‘I’m trying to understand,’ she said gently. ‘You think this is your only hope of love, your first and last and only hope, and you can’t let it go, even though you know somewhere inside you that Ravi Singh isn’t really what you want. But he’s handsome and virile, and he’s whispered to you all kinds of sweet and private things that no one’s ever said to you before, hasn’t he?’

Mute, Caroline nodded.

‘Of course he has. You’re very pretty, and you flatter him. But that’s all it is. Ravi will marry whoever his mother picks out for him. He’s the maharajah’s cousin. He has his place here in Kashmir, even though Srinagar is a troubled city. Whatever dream you may have, however much you may be prepared to give up for him, a divorced English woman doesn’t fit any part of that picture, darling. He’ll take a bride from a Dogra family just like his own, and you two will forget each other.’

‘No.’ Caroline’s head whipped up now. ‘Never.’

Myrtle squeezed her hand again. ‘I think there are two problems here, and you may be tangling them up.’

‘Are there? Am I?’ Now it was Caroline’s turn to be chilly. From her wide blue eyes and curled blonde hair, right down to the single strand of pearls around her pink neck, she seemed to Nerys to be the perfect English rose in India.

‘Yes. One is Ravi, and the crush you have on him. No,
wait a minute, just hear what I’m going to say. The other is Ralph. If you can’t love your husband, you know, darling, if you can’t make it work between the two of you, perhaps you shouldn’t waste your young life in trying. Nothing’s going to be the same after this war as it was before, not even marriage and thinking of England. If you want to leave him, we’ll help you to do it. Won’t we, Nerys? But it’ll be to achieve your independence, not to look to Ravi Singh to prop you up.’

‘
I can’t leave Ralph.
’ Caroline snatched back her hand. ‘That can’t happen.’

‘I see.’ Myrtle chose to overlook the contradiction. ‘Well. I’m glad you’re so clear on that. But if your intention is to be a good wife in the official way, and to hold up your head in Srinagar or wherever Captain Bowen is posted, then you must be discreet. I won’t advise you not to have affairs – you’ve only got to look about you in this place to recognise that I would be wasting my breath with that – but please be careful who you choose. The unromantic truth about romance is that it’s flimsy. Don’t make it your sole support because it won’t bear your weight. As you are already discovering.’