The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ time. Because of the party tomorrow, the Residency was unfortunately already overcrowded.

      She said at once, ‘They must stay here.’

      The Watkinses had welcomed very few visitors to the mission, because most of the Europeans passing directly through Leh either went to the Residency or stayed with the Gomperts. Henry Buller’s house was generally better avoided. She was already running through in her head what needed to be done. Air the sheets, light the fire under the boiler so there would be enough hot water. Jugs and basins. Towels, a posy of flowers for the bedroom table. How to add some elegant touch to their sparse menus for the next few days?

      ‘Diskit, first thing tomorrow you will clean bedroom. Wash floor, all dusting, inside cupboard, everywhere.’

      Diskit nodded, serious at the importance of this charge. ‘My cousin, tell sahib on road?’

      ‘Yes, yes.’ Nerys turned to one of the men on the bench. ‘Go back to the camp, say they are welcome here. Can you remember that? Welcome.’

      When she had finally gone to tell him the latest, Evan had still been sitting at the table with the remains of dinner at his elbow. ‘Where is Diskit? What do we pay her for? Am I to do the washing up, or might she find the time?’

      ‘Evan, we’re going to have guests tomorrow.’

      He had listened with a frown. Nerys’s reaction had been curiosity followed by anticipation, but his was defensive. The arrival of strangers in their home meant disruption and threatened worse: exposure, or some unnamed humiliation. His expression had made Nerys want to draw his head against her breasts and stroke his greying hair, telling him that he shouldn’t worry or fear so much, but there was no longer any protocol between them for such a move. The weariness that she had felt earlier had descended on her again.

      ‘Diskit will come in a moment. Her cousin brought a message from the road, and I gave her a list of things to do before the morning. I’m going to bed now, Evan. Tomorrow will be a busy day.’

      ‘I won’t be more than half an hour,’ he had called after her.

      Now sleep was a long way off. Nerys battled her rising resentment that Evan had slid so easily into unconsciousness while she lay wide awake and lonely, and increasingly disturbed by the latest disagreement between them.

      She wondered if her husband was even aware that they had fallen so far out of sympathy with each other. It was quite possible, she reflected, that she didn’t come high enough on his list of considerations to have made any recent impression at all.

      Stop it, Nerys warned herself. You will only cause more destruction if you think like that.

      Sleep. Just try to sleep.

      Her bones ached with the effort of not touching her husband’s oblivious body. She was too tired to let herself relax. The hours crawled by until the cocks started crowing.

      It was a little past the usual time for lunch when the travellers arrived. Nerys had taught the youngest children’s class, and she had told the older ones that they could go home once they had eaten their rice and lentils. The stragglers were still playing and chasing each other in the mission courtyard when laden horses picked their way to the street gate. Nerys and Evan heard the usual confused shouting and barking dogs that meant something out of the usual was happening. The schoolchildren crowded at the stone gateway and Nerys hurried across the cobbles to greet the guests.

      She saw a trim man in well-cut riding clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, and a woman holding the bridle of her pony and affectionately rubbing its nose. She was wearing puttees and breeches, and a long muslin veil was tied over her sola topi. A string of bearers and pony men were bringing up mud-and dust-caked bags. The woman looked up and saw Nerys. At once she passed the bridle to a pony man and with one gloved hand she rolled up her veil. She smiled a broad, frank smile, held out both hands and grasped Nerys’s. ‘Mrs Watkins, thank you so much for rescuing us like this,’ she said, in a warm, husky voice. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to Archie and me. One more night in a tent would have killed me off.’

      She was about Nerys’s height. Her eyes were the colour of peat, framed by arched black eyebrows. When she took off her sola topi it was a surprise to see that her dark hair was cropped short, like a man’s, but even in her riding clothes there was nothing else that was mannish about her. She had a luscious figure, with a narrow waist and long legs that were elegant even in breeches under a rough tweed coat.

      ‘Welcome to the mission.’ Nerys smiled back at her. ‘It’s not the Savoy, but it’s better than the dak bungalow.’

      The man had issued crisp instructions to his servants and now he came to introduce himself. ‘Mrs Watkins? How d’you do? I’m Archie McMinn. We’re in your debt.’ He was sandy-haired, tanned from the sun, with good-humoured blue eyes and a growth of wiry beard. He spoke with a slight Scots accent.

      ‘Myrtle. I’m Myrtle.’ His wife laughed.

      ‘Nerys.’ As they shook hands Nerys had an odd sense of recognition, as if she knew this woman already. She looked at Myrtle McMinn and she thought distinctly, I knew you must be somewhere. Here you are at last.

      She only said, ‘Come inside. You’ll want hot water, food on china plates, and clean sheets. I remember what it feels like, camping for weeks on end.’

      Evan came out into the courtyard, standing like a dark pillar in the sun. He shook hands with the newcomers, telling them that the Presbyterian mission was their home for as long as they needed it. Nerys gave him a quick smile of gratitude. Mission children slid between the four of them, gaping at the McMinns. Myrtle peeled off her gloves and rummaged in the pockets of her coat, bringing out sweets and distributing them between a thicket of hands.

      ‘Julley, all of you.’ She held the bag upside-down and shook it to show that it was empty. The children fell in behind her and followed her to the door of the house. Nerys firmly told them that it was time to go home, and shooed them away. She led the McMinns to their room.

      ‘You’ve made it so pretty,’ Myrtle cried. ‘Look, Archie. What luxury.’

      Nerys told them that Diskit would come with hot water and they were to ask her if there was anything else that they needed. Archie McMinn said that all they required was the pair of canvas holdalls that their bearer would carry in, once the worst of the dust and mud had been brushed off them. Everything else, including his game heads, would be taken with the ponies to camp near the polo ground at the southern edge of town.

      ‘His game bag is really all that matters, you see,’ Myrtle teased. ‘Two heads of giant mountain sheep with curly horns, two pairs of magnificent antler tops attached to their stags, and every other beast that was included in Archie’s permit as well. Otherwise we’d still be out there, you know.’

      ‘It was a shooting expedition, dearest girl,’ Archie said calmly. ‘What else did you expect?’

      The McMinns gave a relaxed impression. They were easy with each other, Nerys thought, happy to have reached civilisation and company after their demanding excursion into the mountains. But she thought they would have been just as happy to find themselves alone together. Diskit brought in the first of a series of hot-water jugs, and Nerys left the guests to change.

      Their arrival had lightened the tense atmosphere in the mission house. Diskit was singing as she crossed the passage, and Evan didn’t ask how much longer it was going to be before he could have his СКАЧАТЬ