The Kashmir Shawl (35 page)

There was no diffident
my dear?
about Rainer, and not a flicker of embarrassment. He could be ardent at one moment and at the next he might break off to talk about the significance of America’s entry into the war, or to enquire casually if Nerys was hungry. He could get up from the bed and wander away naked to find a plate of food. If she was eating, or had just dressed herself, he would slide urgent hands inside her clothes
or lick the nape of her neck. She realised that, for Rainer, sex was on the same spectrum as eating or arguing, and after Evan’s guilt and inhibitions such freedom was a revelation. And it was highly endearing. Yet, oddly, all their physical intimacy didn’t seem to bring Rainer closer.

He was massively
there
, a dense slab of muscle under warm skin, but no deeper knowledge of him emerged from their long kisses, or from the way that their limbs twined in an attempt to get closer and deeper. It was like the reverse of a honeymoon, Nerys decided, with amusement. While he had courted her, there had been the promise of a perfect fusion of minds as well as bodies. That had been her romantic dream. Now that they were greedily exploring each other, and she discovered what pleased her as well as him, it was as if the erosion of mystery nudged him further away from her.

She remembered his words, ‘I can’t stay in one place,’ and that warning seemed more intelligible now. She felt it was quite likely that, any minute now, Rainer would step into one of his own painted boxes and disappear.

Nerys tried to explain to Myrtle and Caroline what was happening.

Myrtle caught Nerys’s face between two hands and looked hard at her.

‘Are you running away from him? Is that what this mad Kanihama scheme is really about?’

‘No, I’m not. It’s nothing to do with Rainer. I want to be useful, you know that, and I can’t do it here, not by going with the wives to charity sales and first-aid demonstrations and committees.’

This came out sounding like a criticism of Myrtle, not just her friends, and Nerys regretted it immediately. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You’re a missionary’s wife.’

And now the mistress of a magician, neither of them added.

‘I am,’ Nerys acknowledged.

It was a time of general uncertainty, so one more area of confusion seemed hardly remarkable.

Myrtle had had no recent news of Archie. ‘He’ll write when he can,’ she said, and always changed the subject.

‘You’re so brave,’ Caroline declared, when she heard about Nerys going to Kanihama. Her round face had grown rounder and was permanently pink these days as the flush of pregnancy deepened. She was worried that her house-boy spied on her and that the
dhobi-wallah
or the woman who did her sewing must have guessed her secret. ‘What am I going to do?’ she cried.

Myrtle was helping Nerys to pack, and Caroline was sitting in an armchair. Her eyes were shiny with tears and her voice shook with anxiety.

Myrtle told her firmly, ‘You are quietly moving in here with me. Majid is discreet, Rainer and I will look after you, and Nerys is only a few miles away.’

There was no definite news of Ralph Bowen, either. With the rest of his Indian Army regiment, he was in the thick of the battle for Singapore.

Nerys was ashamed to catch herself wondering whether it would be for the best if he were killed in action, but then Myrtle confessed to the same dark thought.

‘God help us all.’ She sighed. ‘Nerys, you won’t make the same mistake as Caroline did, will you?’

‘I will not,’ Nerys assured her. She had her own talcum-powdered device in its box, and used it.

‘All right. Let’s go out and buy what you’ll need to set up your home in the hills,’ Myrtle said. She brightened up at the prospect of shopping.

On 1 January 1942, a day of heavy frost, Nerys moved into the village house. It consisted of one room with a door that opened straight off the square and a single window, and another room that was hardly more than an alcove leading out of the first. The familiar audience of villagers gathered to watch as she and Rainer staggered from the truck with a charpoy, sheets and blankets, food and clothes, pans and floor coverings and
armfuls of rough woven tent fabric to hang against the crumbling walls and keep out the wind.

Rainer hammered the drapes into the old wooden beams, spread out the rugs and got the squat iron stove going for her. It was identical to the one Diskit had tended in the kitchen at Leh, as introduced by the Moravian missionaries. He carried water from the well while Nerys made up her bed and slipped her
kangri
between the blankets. She was so used to carrying it within her
pheran
that she felt light and girlish without its bulk swaying in front of her. She lit the paraffin lamp and a series of candles, and the rough little place looked suddenly homely. Rainer’s tin kettle began to whistle on the stove, and she laughed again at the familiar sound. There was only one chair, so he sat on the floor resting his back against her knees while they drank their tea. She knotted her fingers in his tawny hair.

Making a home together that they were not going to share seemed of a piece with the honeymoon that hadn’t revealed the man. She watched the candles flicker and wondered, if she were actually married to him, whether the entire marriage would have the same quality. She concluded that it would, but the thought didn’t in any way diminish her feeling for him.

Rainer reached up and clasped her hand. ‘Shall I stay?’ he murmured. The charpoy was inviting and the room hadn’t warmed up yet. But this wasn’t busy Srinagar. Nothing that she did in Kanihama was going to pass unnoticed. She remembered what had been dealt out to the yarn-spinner. ‘Better not.’ She smiled, with regret.

‘And will you come to Srinagar?’

‘When I can.’ Even in the depths of winter, farm vehicles and traders made their way up and down the Vale, and she thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to pay for a ride.

‘I’ll bring you food and supplies and news as often as I can.’

‘Will you be able to get enough petrol?’

‘I have useful contacts,’ he answered, tapping the side of his nose with a knowing air.

Nerys assumed that he meant his tough-looking American friends. Since Christmas he had met them several times, and she hadn’t asked any questions.

‘Are you sure I can leave you here, my sweet girl?’

His words and his concern touched her. She kissed the top of his head and he twisted to scoop her into his arms.

After he had gone, she blew out all the candles except one. She lay down in bed and looked at the shadows. There was no sound except the wind scraping in the branches of the trees, and she realised that she was happy. She wouldn’t have gone back to the houseboat on the lake, even if she could.

The days and then the weeks slowly passed.

There were plenty of times during that cold January when she would gladly have run away, but she stayed put. At first it was enough of a battle to eat, keep warm and sleep, and to see Faisal and Farida. The baby turned a corner, began to thrive, and soon became part of the small tribe of infants who were carried or propped up or left to sleep as the village work went on around them. In time Faisal also became less sad. He learnt that Nerys’s door led to food and warmth and unfamiliar games, even music and singing, and he came so regularly that he almost lived under her roof. Tentatively at first, and then with more confidence, some other children followed him. They sat in a row on her floor and she told them stories, taught them a clapping song, or drew pictures. Up from Srinagar came Rainer with crayons and paper, sometimes a bag or two of sweets, and once a dozen brightly coloured balloons. That was a day to remember.

Nerys looked up one afternoon and saw one of the mothers peering in at her. They had sold her milk and vegetables and yoghurt, and let her collect wood for her fire, but this was the first time anyone had come to visit. The woman pulled her shawl across her face and drew back as soon as Nerys noticed her, but Nerys insisted she come inside and drink tea. They managed a stilted conversation, with more gestures and smiles
than words. After that, some others came with their children. By the beginning of February, Nerys had the beginnings of a classroom set up in a room in one of the bigger houses. She had nothing at all, far less even than in her primitive schoolroom at the Leh mission, but for a couple of hours each day she did her best to entertain a dozen infants. They sat there, round-eyed, staring or laughing at her, but the next day they remembered what she had done, and if she changed a tune or a story mime there would be an outcry.

There was a school in a village further down the valley, but it was a long walk in midwinter snow and most of the parents preferred to keep their children at hand to watch the animals, or to mind the even tinier ones. Some of the bigger boys went further away to the
madrasah
, but not all the families were able to manage the fee.

Nerys’s sketch of a school was regarded with suspicion at first but then, seemingly almost overnight, it was accepted and she was part of the village.

‘English,’ said Faisal’s grandfather, Zafir. ‘Please teach some English.’

The British were no longer particularly welcome in Kashmir and it was accepted that soon they would leave the Vale and India itself, but everyone still coveted the passport to prosperity represented by their language. She did what she could, returning to the choruses of
hat, shoe, finger, nose
that reminded her of Leh, and therefore – constantly – of Evan.

He would approve of what she was doing. That, at least.

Only Farida remained aloof and silent. Sometimes she hovered in the doorway, but then she would whirl away and not reappear for a day.

Rainer brought news of the Japanese bombings of Singapore and the fighting in the Libyan desert, messages from Myrtle and Caroline, and a warning that he too might soon be leaving Srinagar.

‘Where are you going?’ Nerys asked.

‘I have some skills that the military can use. Like you, I want to make myself useful,’ was all he would say.

When she wasn’t with the children, she loved to watch the shawl-makers at work. She discovered the dye workshop at the edge of the village where a stream ran between jaws of ice and rock. She saw the spun yarn immersed in copper vats that simmered on wood fires, sending great clouds of mingled steam and smoke into the colourless sky. The dye workers prodded their cauldrons with long sticks, fishing out the hanks of yarn to examine the depth of colour. The pure water and natural dyes gave the rose-pinks, blues and ochres the clarity she had admired in the weaving room back in the village. The dyers were more gregarious than the
kani
craftsmen, who were too intent on their bobbins to take any notice of her coming and going, and she was soon an accepted presence in the steam-filled shed.

It took a little more time before the women tried to show her how to spin, and then there was much hilarity because her efforts were so clumsy.

In all this time the peacock’s feather shawl grew by a narrow hand’s breadth.

The weaver was a thin young man who always wore a red skullcap. He rubbed his eyes, and looked up at the white mountains to rest them for a precious minute.

One morning in the middle of February Nerys woke up to daylight instead of greyish dawn.

It wasn’t late. The boy who drove the goats from their barn to the grazing every morning had just passed – she could hear their bells and his low whistles as the flock streamed uphill. She never needed to look at her clock up here because the time of day was evident from what was going on in the neighbouring houses or out in the fields. The days were lengthening and although the cold seemed just as implacable there was a difference in the light that suggested winter might some day turn to spring. The thought of this gave her a quiet beat of happiness as she got dressed. Through her window she could see the wide-branched chinar tree planted at the centre of the rough
square, and it became easier to recall its welcome summer shade.

She stoked the fire in the iron stove, dipped a jug into her water bucket, filled a tin kettle and placed it on the heat. When the water finally boiled she made tea and sat in her chair, wrapped and hooded in her
pheran
, warming her hands on the cup.

Faisal would be here at any moment.

She had no sooner thought of him than she heard the scuffling of small feet and an urgent rattle at the door. The little boy bounded in to crouch next to her and close to the stove’s warmth. She solemnly wished him good morning.

‘Good
morning
,’ he repeated proudly, in his singsong voice. His English words were accumulating fast.

In just two months, he had grown taller and straighter. He didn’t rock himself or linger in the shadows at the corner of the room. This morning he was happily rolling a ball, humming to himself and keeping only half an eye on Nerys and the preparation of porridge and eggs.

‘Hungry?’ she asked him, tapping her hands to her mouth to reinforce the question.

‘Yes, please,’ he answered, as she had taught him to do, but his attention was still on his game.

Faisal was good company. He was alert, he loved playing and imitating, and he learnt everything she taught him with incredible speed. She missed Myrtle and Caroline, and Rainer’s visits were limited by the availability of fuel for the Ford, but it was Faisal’s rapid progress that convinced her she had done the right thing in leaving Srinagar.

The rice porridge steamed in what had become a lemon-rind slice of sunlight. She gave Faisal his spoon and they sat down at her plank table to eat.

‘Good?’

‘Good.’ He beamed.

She took a mouthful, and above the voices of two women carrying water and a cock crowing, she heard the approach of
a vehicle. Before it turned into the square and rattled to a halt, she already knew that it was the Ford.

‘Car,’ Faisal said.

Nerys got up and hurried outside. With Rainer in the cab of the truck were Myrtle and Caroline. She ran across to them. Myrtle flashed a warning glance at her and she saw that Caroline’s face was as white as chalk. Rainer didn’t smile a greeting.