The Kashmir Shawl (47 page)

Too quick, much too little. Caroline’s sharpened senses told her that it was worth far more. She held out her hand for the ruby.

‘Three hundred,’ he snapped.

She stared. ‘Three thousand.’

‘Five hundred. Last word.’

After that it was only a matter of bargaining. Finally the man gave a surly nod. He went into the back of the shop and
Caroline guessed that he was opening a safe. A moment later he was laying out a pair of thousand-rupee notes, pink and crisp instead of the ragged and filthy low-denomination notes in general circulation. Two little oval profiles of the king. Caroline tucked them away in her skirt pocket as the dealer dropped the ruby into a tiny bag.

Outside the shop she took a deep gulp of air. The sky had turned the colour of lead and a sinister breeze blew up the alley, presaging a storm. Ten yards off a thin-legged beggar sat on a step, his head hanging. Caroline edged by him and followed the familiar route past the tailor’s shop.

When she reached home she locked the bungalow doors. She hid the rupees in the camphor-scented drawer where she stored the folded items of her trousseau, including the nightgown she had worn on her wedding night. Just a glimpse of it was enough to make her slam the drawer shut. She crawled under the bedclothes and lay there, shuddering and listening to the roll of thunder. The thought of what she had just pulled off drew a gasp of wild laughter, but as soon as the laughter petered out she began to cry.

Nerys was surprised and pleased when Caroline asked if she might come with her to visit the girls in Kanihama. They took the bus as far up the valley as it went, and from there one of Nerys’s friends from an outlying farm gave them a lift in his old van. The back was piled with sacks of rice, a chicken coop lashed on top. The two women squeezed into the passenger seat, gripping its sticky sides to keep their balance as the truck swayed through the slides of mud and rock created by the recent rain. Nerys chatted to the driver, laughing and resorting to sign language whenever her vocabulary failed her. Caroline sat and seemed to listen, but her body was tense.

The square at Kanihama was decorated with fallen leaves, and clouds hid the brown folds of the mountains. The house where Nerys had lived and where Zahra had been born was
occupied now by some of the dye-workers. Nearby a billy-goat tethered to a pole browsed a bare circle of earth.

‘Ness!’

Farida and Zahra came running at her, followed by Faisal and the others. Caroline stood a little to one side, fixedly smiling as the children pulled at Nerys’s hands and searched her pockets for treats. Nerys hugged Farida, then swung Zahra off her feet. She kissed the child’s sweet-scented neck and tried to pass her straight to Caroline, but Zahra recoiled and hid her face against Nerys’s shoulder.

‘It’s all right. I don’t want to hold her,’ Caroline insisted.

Most of the women were out in the fields, but a small deputation of men led by Farida’s grandfather, Zafir, came out of the prayer room to receive the visitors. They were led into one of the houses and seated on the best rug while tea was prepared. Nerys and Zafir exchanged polite remarks about the approach of winter.

‘Do they remember me?’ Caroline whispered to Nerys, as the tea was poured.

‘Yes. But your relationship to Zahra is not discussed, even if they bring to mind the connection between you. That’s because they’re not very interested. These are simple people, and their immediate family structures are far looser than ours. The weather and the crops, tending the animals, enough money to feed themselves, that’s what concerns them.’

At the word
money
Zafir pointed his black beard towards them.

‘The shawl,’ Caroline said distinctly. ‘The beautiful shawl, do you remember? I saw it being woven. It must be finished by now.’

The word
shawl
provoked an instant response. Zafir gave an order and a man left the room. Nerys sipped her tea in the ensuing silence.

Three minutes later the man came back, accompanied by the pale-faced weaver and two other young men. They brought a folded linen cloth, carried on the weaver’s outstretched
forearms as if it were a religious relic. When he stooped at the women’s feet and began to unfold the cloth, Nerys shot a warning glance at Caroline.

The last fold of linen was turned back.

Even in the dimness of the room, the shawl shimmered like light on water. The weaver shook it out so the colours danced in the air. The other two young men caught the corners and brought the piece closer to show off the design. These were the embroiderers who had sat for a whole year, one end apiece, to work over the woven blossoms with their intricate stitches. The shawl wasn’t just their work, though. It also belonged to the spinners and dyers, and the
talim
man who had drawn up the intricate pattern for the weaver to follow. It was the prize possession of the entire village, their collective investment in the
kani
tradition that was steadily fading away. Nerys saw the weaver’s pitifully thin shoulders and his eager eyes, and she had to blink away the tears from her own.

The head man thrust a corner of the shawl towards them, pointing with his blackened fingernail at a mark stitched there, like a double BB with one B reversed.

‘This man. Fingers like butterfly wing. So light,’ Zafir said.

‘I want to buy it.’

‘Caroline, you can’t possibly, it’ll cost the earth,’ Nerys whispered. ‘It’s years and years of their work.’

‘How much?’

The weaver and the two embroiderers drew in a huddle behind Zafir. There was a fierce muttering between them. Stonyfaced, Zafir turned back to the two women. ‘One thousand five hundred rupees.’

Nerys did the mental arithmetic. ‘That’s nearly a hundred and twenty pounds. We’ll never be able to bargain …’

‘Here,’ Caroline said. From the pocket of her blue tweed coat she brought out an envelope, opened it and produced the two crisp notes. The men stared, but Zafir’s hand was already outstretched. Nerys was sure that in all their lives they had never seen so much money.

‘Tell them to keep the rest. Tell them it’s for taking care of Zahra. I want her to stay here with them, where she’ll be safe.’

Caroline stumbled to her feet. She made her way to the door, leaving behind her the shawl, the money and Nerys.

When Nerys finally emerged she had the shawl with her, wrapped once more in its protective linen. Caroline was looking towards the stream as it splashed down through the rocky gorge. Under the chinar tree the children were playing a game with sticks and stones.

‘When does the snow come?’

It was October. ‘In a month or so.’ After that the roads would be difficult or impossible to negotiate until the spring thaw.

Caroline nodded, as if her attention was far away. ‘It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? I always thought so.’

Their van driver had finished his delivery of chickens and had collected a row of baskets filled with red apples. She put her hands into the empty pockets of her tweed coat and began to pick her way through the drifts of leaves towards him. As she passed the children she stopped for a long moment, but Zahra was gurgling with laughter as Farida rolled pebbles at her. She picked up the roundest, whitest one and threw it at the tree trunk, never even glancing at Caroline.

Nerys was treated differently. As soon as they saw she was leaving they ran at her full tilt, and she had a word and a sweet for all of them. They knew that Nerys always came back, so there was no serious outcry when she left.

The van swayed down the track. Nerys tried to pass the wrapped-up shawl to Caroline, but she shook her head. ‘That’s Zahra’s dowry. I want you to keep it safe for her.’

‘Of course I will. Caroline, the money …’

‘Let’s just say it was a legacy. That’s it. A legacy. From my fairy godmother.’

Nerys didn’t like the wild sound of Caroline’s laughter.

By early November, the mountains were cloaked in snow once more and the old brown city creaked with frost. There were already predictions that this year the lake would freeze for the first time since the Christmas cricket match.

One afternoon Caroline came home to the bungalow after visiting Myrtle and Archie and found the house-boy kneeling on a folded rice sack beside the blackened bed of marigold stalks. He was polishing a pair of army boots as if he wanted to rub the leather away. Shivering, she clicked open the front door. ‘Ralph?
Ralph?
’

There was an army cap on the rickety hat stand.

The man looking up at her from the armchair was almost unrecognisable.

His face was little more than a death’s head with eyes bulging out of purple sockets. His head was almost bald, except for a few colourless strands, and the exposed scalp was raked with livid scars. Caroline ran to him but the spectre raised his crossed arms. She wasn’t sure if it was to fend her off or an automatic reaction to protect his brittle body from potential assault.

She stopped short and dropped to her knees on the hearthrug. She put one hand out to touch his knee and felt the raw bone through the khaki.

He said, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper, ‘I’m sorry not to give you any warning. There was a plane coming up with a spare seat at the last moment, so they put me in it.’

‘They told me you were still too weak to travel. I can’t believe you’re here. Thank God you’re alive.’

His mouth opened in a version of a smile, revealing that he had lost several teeth. ‘Just about. You look well, Caroline. You look … pretty.’ Ralph lifted a strand of her hair, as if he couldn’t quite believe in its bright blondeness. He twisted it round his forefinger, stopping just short of pulling it, and she remembered that Ravi had done exactly the same thing.

Her face instantly boiled scarlet. She jerked backwards and gave a gasp as the hair tore from her scalp. She fell back on her heels and Ralph stared at her.

‘Let me – let me get you something to eat,’ she stammered. ‘There’s … chocolate. Or honey, Kashmiri honey, you like that.’

She saw that already she irritated him.

‘I can’t eat very much,’ he snapped.

Caroline bit her lip. ‘Tell me what I can do for you. Please, Ralph.’

His head fell back and his eyes closed. That single exhausted movement told her that what he had been through, the darkness she could only guess at, had opened a chasm between them. She knew with sudden and absolute certainty that, whatever she might do and however hard she tried, she would never be able to please him now.

All right, she thought. But I’ll try. I’ll make that my penance.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ he said.

FIFTEEN

March 1945

He was as handsome as always, and as secretive. She could hardly believe that he was really here in Srinagar. He had materialised in the flesh, just like Miss Soo Ling in the sliding box or the doves in one of his stage tricks.

Nerys let Rainer lead her through the streets near Lal Chowk until they reached an ordinary little
dhaba
, a place where tradesmen from the nearby workshops came to swallow a plateful of cheap food. He pulled out a metal chair for her at a plywood table.

‘What would you like?’ he asked. ‘Champagne?
Pâté de foie gras
?’

She laughed. ‘Yes, please. And then strawberries and cream. Rainer, I can hardly believe it. Are you really here?’

He extended his hand so she could check its solid warmth. She clasped it between both of hers, just for one second, which was as much as she could allow herself.

He looked fit, windburnt and as tightly coiled as a spring. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ he said.

She had received a scribbled note, delivered by one of the urchins from the bazaar. Without stopping even to look in the mirror she had set out to Lal Chowk. He was waiting for her in the middle of the teeming square at the centre of the city,
as if to underline physically what she already knew – that their weeks together had been the very heart of her time in Kashmir.

‘As if I was going to choose not to, perhaps.’

He looked into her eyes. ‘It might have been difficult for you. Is your husband in Srinagar?’

‘Yes. He’s very busy.’

There had been no need to lie to Evan about where she was going because he hadn’t asked. She hesitated and then added, ‘Rainer … nothing has changed. I’m doing what I always intended to do. I am the missionary’s wife and helper. Now and always.’

‘I know. I know, I know, I know. But I can still love you, can’t I? I went away because it would have been impossible to stay and watch you being Evan’s wife, and all I learnt was that wherever I am I feel the same. I do try to look upon loving you as a blessing, you know. It makes me a better person, probably.’

They laughed at the
probably
.

Rainer wasn’t unhappy, she could see that. It wasn’t his way.

The simple joy of seeing and being with him swelled inside her, making her feel light and easy as she hadn’t done for months.

A dish of onions and limes was placed in front of them, followed by a bowl of
dhal makhani
and a basket of hot
naan
bread. Rainer demolished the food without looking at it, as if finishing it off were a task that must be completed. Nerys sipped cardamom tea.

‘Tell me about everything,’ he demanded. ‘How are you? I want the truth, too.’

Nerys’s smile faded a little. It had been a hard winter.

‘No, wait a minute. I’ve got something for you,’ he said. He opened the inside pocket of his coat and slipped a small brown-paper folder across the table.

The three women on the houseboat veranda were laughing at a forgotten joke, with lotus leaves and a stretch of lake water spread behind them. It was a charming photograph, capturing
the happy glamour of the old days on the
Garden of Eden
. Nerys looked across the table. ‘Is it mine? To keep?’ she asked.

‘Of course. I’m only sorry that it has taken me so long to come and give it to you in person.’