The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas

spiritual experiences of her life. Did Mair practise? Really not? Had she never felt the call to do so? Did she know that one of His Holiness’s summer residences was actually here in Leh? Had she seen the huge golden Maitreya out at Thikse Gompa?

      ‘Yes,’ Mair managed to say to the latter. Brisk massaging of her foot and ankle was showering the floor with dead skin and caked foot cream.

      Karen’s leg was undergoing the same treatment. She paused in her monologue and turned her glancing attention to the young girl, who had come back with a small selection of polishes on the tea tray. ‘Pink or red, do you think?’

      ‘Red,’ Mair replied automatically.

      ‘Hmm. Yeah, but I’m going to go for the pink. Don’t want to frighten the ponies, do I? Lotus, what colour are your toes?’ she called.

      ‘Pink, shiny,’ Lotus chirped.

      ‘How pretty. Daddy will love them.’

      ‘And now you’re going trekking.’

      Karen waved a languid hand. ‘That’s my husband’s partiality. It’s a reasonable trade-off, I guess. My monasteries for his mountains. Although we met in New York, we’re based in Geneva right now because Bruno is Swiss. These days, he gets to go skiing and mountain climbing pretty regularly from home, but we agreed that this holiday shouldn’t be all Buddhist. Lotus would protest about that too, although she’s generally pretty easy-going. Not that she looked that way when you saw her this afternoon, I admit, but she doesn’t often freak out like that.’

      ‘You’ll take her on the trek with you?’

      Karen looked surprised, then shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not? Bruno carries her in a backpack most of the way. Everywhere we go, Lotus comes along. That way you get a balanced, open-minded kid.’

      The child wriggled away from her admirers and came to show off her manicure, spreading her small hands on Mair’s knees and beaming up at her. The ribbons fluttered in her ringlets. There was logic in Karen’s theory, Mair thought. She remembered her first glimpse of the little family in the bazaar and the intimacy that had impressed her then. Lotus was certainly the most confident two-year-old she had ever met.

      ‘You look lovely,’ Mair told her. ‘Just like a picture.’

      ‘Oui – comme Maman,’ Lotus agreed, admiring herself in the mirrors.

      The door of the salon opened, setting the lace curtains fluttering. A dark head and shoulders were framed in the doorway. ‘Karen?’

      Karen glanced up from her scrutiny of her toenails. ‘Hi. Did you get everything fixed up already?’

      ‘Pappy.’ Lotus dashed across and leapt into her father’s arms. He swung her off her feet. ‘Jumping lady,’ she clamoured, pointing at Mair. ‘Jumping high.’

      ‘Bruno, this is Maya,’ Karen called. ‘My new friend.’

      ‘Hello,’ the man said, nodding at her. There was a smile buried in him, Mair thought, but it wasn’t close enough to the surface to break through. She started to explain her name, which Karen hadn’t quite caught.

      Mair was Welsh for Mary. When she was young she had tried to persuade her friends to adopt this more sophisticated version, but it had never caught on. ‘Mair, Mair, pants on fire,’ the local kids used to chant. She didn’t actually utter any of this, though. Something about Bruno Becker’s level, interrogative stare silenced her.

      ‘Mair,’ she said quietly. ‘Hello.’

      The introductions were cut short because the beauty-parlour staff were shooing Bruno out of the door. Ladies Only Beauty clearly meant what it said.

      He carried Lotus with him. He indicated to his wife that they would see her back at the hotel when she was ready. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said, over his shoulder, to Mair, and was gone. The introduction of a new friend of Karen’s was clearly nothing unusual.

      Karen stretched out her toes and smiled. ‘Peace. That means you and I can go and eat cakes once we’re through here. We can have a proper talk.’

      Mair felt like a pebble being tumbled along by a tsunami, but Karen Becker was too insistent – and too interesting – for her to make any real attempt at resistance. In any case, what else would she be doing?

      Once their toenail polish had dried to Karen’s satisfaction they strolled down a nearby alley to the German bakery. Over apple cake and coffee Karen confided that she had wanted to come to this part of the world for years, really ever since she had gotten interested in the Buddhist way in her early twenties. So far it had totally lived up to her expectations. These places were holy – they touched your soul directly. You hardly ever encountered that depth of spirituality in Europe, did you? And never in the US of A. Not that she had ever recognised, anyway, Karen concluded. Did Mair – was she pronouncing it right? – did she know what Karen meant?

      Mair thought of the whitewashed hilltop gompas she had visited in the last few days. The dark inner rooms with dim wall paintings and statues of the Buddha were thick with the scent of incense and wood ash, their altars heaped with offerings, often touchingly mundane ones like packets of sweet biscuits or posies of plastic flowers. The murmured chanting of monks rose through the old floors, and windows gave startling views of braided rivers and orchards far below. There was a divinity here, she reflected, but more than anything it troubled her with its elusiveness.

      At one monastery the guide had beckoned her into the kitchen where an old monk was tranquilly preparing the community’s dinner. With a wooden ladle he scooped water from a bucket into a blackened pot set on a wood-fired stove. Cold balls of rice were gathered into cloths ready for distribution. Kneeling beside him at a rough table, a boy monk of about ten chopped vegetables from the monastery garden. The old man nodded to indicate that he was satisfied with the effort as successive handfuls of carrot and onion were dropped into the pot. The two worked in silence, and it had occurred to Mair that, apart from her presence, this scene would have been exactly the same two or three hundred years ago. The monks’ quiet service to the unending routines of cooking and providing for others had touched her more eloquently than any of the religious rituals.

      She tried to describe this tiny epiphany to Karen.

      ‘But I understand completely,’ Karen interjected. She reached out and covered Mair’s fingers with her own. ‘There are many paths to recognition, but they are all the same road. You do know what I’m talking about. I was sure you would. I felt it in you as soon as I saw you.’

      ‘Even though I was turning somersaults?’

      ‘Because of that, as much as anything else. Why suppress what you wanted to emote? You are the complete you. I endorse that.’

      Bruno wasn’t spiritual in the same sense that she was, Karen continued, but he understood where she was coming from because he related to the mountains. They were his temples, and he made his own pilgrimages among them. ‘Take Lotus, for example. I believe in letting her experience the whole world as essentially benign. I want her to grow up as far as possible without fear, without unnecessary restrictions, without petty rules, so she can become her intended self within the stream.’

      Mair wondered if Lotus – quite understandably – dealt with excess benignity by having a tantrum or two.

      They had finished their coffee and cake. Karen dotted up the last of the crumbs with a fingertip and licked it. She said, ‘I must go. What are your plans? We’ll be out of town for four or five days.’

      ‘I’ve got some stuff to look into here. I don’t know how long that’ll take.’

      Karen studied her, her finger still resting against her lips. Mair noticed how the two or three other tourists in the bakery couldn’t help gazing at her companion.

      ‘You’re very mysterious, you know,’ Karen said.

      ‘No, I’m not,’ Mair protested.

      ‘But you’ve never let on why you’re