The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas

the only British woman for a couple of hundred miles, single-handedly running a mission school, tra-la. Yep. I’d say that’s as weak as water.’ Myrtle was smiling as she thumbed the last tears from Nerys’s cheek. ‘Take me, by comparison. Lotus-eating half the year on the lake in Srinagar, then venturing out for a dainty hunting trip with just five servants, eleven ponies and my devoted husband. You make me feel feeble, my girl. Feeble and spoilt.’ In an automatic gesture she reached with her fingers to twist her pearl necklace.

      Nerys’s stomach turned over. She realised that, as well as being covered with dust and grass stalks, her cream cardigan was hanging open. Her hands clutched the place where the brooch had been. ‘It’s gone!’ she cried.

      Myrtle burrowed in the opposite trouser pocket. She held out the circlet in the palm of her hand. ‘It had come undone. You were lucky it didn’t skewer you through the heart when you fainted dead away.’

      They looked at each other, and then they began to laugh. Myrtle comically scratched her hair so it stood up in a cocks-comb, and Nerys rocked back against the buttoned cushion of the day-bed. They were still laughing when the commissioner’s bearer knocked at the door. ‘Madam, doctor here.’

      Dr Tsering bustled in, looking puzzled. He was the only doctor in Leh and, like the commissioner, he spent just a few weeks of the year in town. Nerys knew that he was overwhelmed with sick people clamouring for cures for all their ailments before the snow came – as if leprosy or TB could be cured with a brown bottle of pills – and she regretted that he had been summoned all the way to the Residency to attend to her trivial problem. She collected herself. ‘I am much better,’ she said.

      ‘Laughter very good treatment, ma’am,’ he answered. He unclipped his bag and uncoiled a stethoscope. ‘Now, lying back, please.’

      Four days later Dr Tsering paid Nerys another visit, this time at the mission, and declared that she was fit to travel.

      In surprise she protested, ‘But I’m not planning to travel anywhere.’

      Myrtle’s company had restored her spirits. They had enjoyed their hours of what Archie McMinn called pincushion time, although the only actual sewing they did was to make simple costumes for a playlet acted by the children. Mostly they had played games with the smallest infants, and walked in the bazaar, and exchanged details of their contrasting histories. Nerys had talked about Wales, and startled herself by describing the low grey crags and mist-filled valleys with a longing she didn’t even know she had been feeling.

      In turn Myrtle explained that she was the daughter of an Indian Civil Service official, and her childhood had been parcelled out between relatives in England and annual visits to India. ‘I didn’t see much of my ma and pa,’ she said succinctly.

      Archie was a railway engineer, and in a few days’ time his annual long leave would be over. Myrtle and he were going back to Srinagar, and Nerys already knew how much she would miss her new friend.

      Archie had been busy every day, paying off his hunting servants and pony men, making arrangements for the heads he had bagged, engaging more men for the return journey to Kashmir, and visiting the commissioner and the other Leh notables. But one morning, looking grave after returning from the Residency, he strolled from the mission veranda into the room where Evan’s predecessor’s old wireless stood. ‘It would be useful to get the BBC news,’ he murmured.

      ‘That wireless has never worked, I’m afraid,’ Evan explained stiffly. ‘Not in our time.’

      Archie nodded, and unscrewed the back to investigate the innards. Within an hour he had established that there was nothing wrong except that the massive battery was flat. The Residency had a wireless and so did the Gomperts, so the most important news from the outside world reached them quite quickly, but for everything else the Watkinses had to wait for newspapers and letters to make their way overland. Evan agreed that it would be most useful if the mission’s wireless could be coaxed back into service. That same day, four coolies and a bullock cart ferried the weighty lead-acid battery down to the Indus, where it was hooked up to the water-powered generator. The next day, accompanied by a parade of dancing children, it made the reverse journey.

      With the children still looking on, Archie went to work with pliers and a screwdriver. After a few minutes a sudden torrent of static burst out of the fretwork front panel. The startled audience screeched and fell over each other to get away from it. He twisted the knobs and the static dissolved into a babble of voices, and then the jaunty cadence of an English folk song. The children’s eyes widened with amazement.

      Archie brushed his palms together. ‘There we are.’

      That evening after Diskit had cleared the dinner plates, they pulled their chairs close to the dusted and polished set and listened to the news.

      German troops had reached Leningrad, and the city would soon be surrounded. The European war was creeping closer. Even Leh no longer felt removed from the threat.

      Evan slid a bookmark between the pages of his Bible before he closed it. ‘Nerys, I think it would be a good idea if you were to go with Mr and Mrs McMinn to Srinagar. Mr McMinn has kindly offered to escort you.’

      Nerys let her knitting drop. Myrtle’s eyes met hers, and she read surprise in them. This was an idea the two men had hatched, without reference to their wives. Dr Tsering was evidently in on the plot too. To contain her anger she made herself count five stitches in her work, then asked composedly, ‘Why would I do that?’

      ‘You might enjoy a short holiday, and it would consolidate your strength before the winter.’

      ‘And what about you?’

      He paused, then said, ‘We have spoken about this, my dear. I am going out of Leh to visit a few of the villages, and the more far-flung settlements. I must take the Lord to the people, not sit here expecting the people to come to the Lord.’

      Out of the corner of her eye Nerys saw Archie McMinn stretch out his long legs. She resumed her steady knitting. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘we shouldn’t bore our guests with this debate. We can talk about it later.’

      Myrtle said gently, ‘I would love to have your company, Nerys. If it’s helpful for you to know that.’

      But later, once Evan had brought the shaft of cold air into their bed, enquired if Nerys was ready and blown out the candle, he merely said, ‘Goodnight, my dear.’

      She turned her head on the pillow and glared at his dark shape. ‘Is that all?’

      He drew away from her, by no more than half an inch, but she felt it. That small movement told her everything. Evan no longer saw her as his companion and supporter but as yet another source of anxiety. He would feel easier without her, and he would be freer to carry the mission work out of Leh. He didn’t want to abandon her altogether, though. To send her off to Srinagar with the McMinns must seem the perfect solution. She could follow his thinking exactly, and all she could really object to was his suggestion that what she needed in order to recover from the loss of their baby was a lakeside holiday without him.

      ‘All?’

      ‘I don’t want to go to Srinagar. Thank you for thinking of it, but I don’t want to go anywhere if it means leaving you behind.’

      ‘Separation is one of the penalties of the work I do, Nerys.’

      He was like a wall, she thought. A blank wall that shut out the view, and endlessly denied that there was anything to be seen.

      She tried another tack. ‘What about my schoolchildren?’

      ‘I expect they will enjoy a holiday too.’ He sighed with the beginnings of exasperation. ‘I don’t know why you are objecting to the idea. I thought you would be pleased. You like Mrs McMinn, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes, very much.’

      ‘Then go and stay with her, enjoy a rest, recuperate. I will cover the ground between here and Kargil more slowly, and investigate the work that might be done in future, if we ever have more people. Then