The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ monks in traditional masquerade costumes. Two men in grotesque masks swayed in front of the blaze, followed by vultures’ heads, towering stags, fluttering peacocks and a paper dragon with thirty human legs, its body lit from within so it glowed like a dancing lava stream. The looming mask faces, all giant eyes and teeth and lolling tongues, seemed more real than reality. The dark mass of trees and prickling sky closed, then receded. The music pounded in her head. She was going to faint. Gripped by panic Nerys stared round, but she could see no one she recognised. The ground tilted and yawned, a giant bird’s head pecked in her direction, and she fell forwards into nowhere.

      FOUR

      When Nerys came round, it was to see a circle of Ladakhi faces peering down at her. Her head was resting in someone’s lap.

      ‘Tell them to step back and give her some air, for God’s sake.’

      It was a relief to hear Myrtle’s voice, and then to see Archie McMinn holding back the onlookers. A bottle of smelling salts was waved under Nerys’s nose and she coughed violently. She tried to sit up and Evan’s face came into focus. He was kneeling beside her, distress in every line of his body. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

      ‘What for?’ Myrtle wanted to know. It was Myrtle’s lap Nerys was lying in, and Myrtle’s hand on her forehead.

      ‘Archie, make all these people go away, can’t you?’ she ordered.

      There were fireworks going off somewhere close at hand, showers of crimson sparks falling out of the sky. The commissioner arrived, his face blooming even redder with embarrassed concern.

      ‘Mr Watkins, we’ll organise a stretcher party to carry your wife into the house.’

      Nerys fought her way to a sitting position. ‘I’m all right now. Please let me get up.’

      Several pairs of arms supported her, some urging her upwards and others restraining her. Nerys twisted so she could see Myrtle’s face. She looked straight into her eyes. ‘Help me,’ she begged.

      Myrtle understood what was needed. She supported Nerys as she got to her feet and let her lean on her arm. ‘I think you can walk, can’t you? That’s good. Come inside the house with me.’

      ‘Nerys …’ Evan began.

      But she didn’t have the strength to reassure him, not at this moment, or to smooth over the acute discomfort her fainting in public would have caused him. ‘I’ll be all right with Mrs McMinn.’ She tried to smile. ‘I fainted, that’s all. It’s nothing.’

      ‘Myrtle will take care of her, old chap,’ Archie said, in a tone that implied they shouldn’t involve themselves in women’s business.

      With Nerys still leaning on Myrtle’s arm they began to walk slowly, the commissioner sailing ahead of them, like an ice-breaker cutting through the floes of the crowd. When they reached the veranda he explained that every guest bedroom in the house was occupied: would Mrs Watkins mind if he escorted them to his own quarters? He added that a runner had been sent to fetch the Leh doctor, who unfortunately happened not to be at the Residency this evening.

      Myrtle put her hand on his arm. ‘Won’t you go back to your guests now, and let your bearer look after us?’

      He looked thoroughly relieved at the suggestion. A moment later a servant showed the two women into a masculine bedroom with the shutters closed against the noise of the party. Nerys saw polo prints on the walls, a brass-framed bed, and a pair of highly polished tall boots with the knobs of boot trees protruding. Luckily there was a day-bed with a plaid rug folded on it, pushed back against a wall. She didn’t think she could have made herself comfortable on the commissioner’s own bed.

      Myrtle shook out the rug. ‘Lie down here. Could you drink a glass of water? Or maybe some sweet tea?’

      Nerys ran her tongue over dry lips. ‘You’ve been so kind. This afternoon, and now.’

      Myrtle sat beside her, took her hands and massaged some warmth into them. ‘You need looking after. Is Leh quite the right place for a woman in your condition, even a missionary’s wife?’

      Nerys couldn’t stop herself. She tried, drawing up her shoulders and clenching her jaw, but it was too late. The first sob caught in her chest and then exploded out of her. Tears rushed out of her eyes and poured down her face. She gasped, between sobs, ‘I’m not … I’m not expecting a … baby. I was, but I lost it.’ The words were half obliterated and she gave up the attempt to speak. It was a relief to cry. It was the first time she had wept properly since the miscarriage.

      The other woman enveloped her in a hug, the warmest embrace Nerys had had for long weeks. Myrtle whispered in her ear, ‘Oh, God, how clumsy of me, how stupidly clumsy. Please forgive me. I just assumed. Was it bad? It must have been, and you haven’t properly recovered, have you? You poor, poor thing. Go on, cry all you can.’

      She held on to her and stroked her hair, muttering soothing half-sentences, and Nerys went ahead and cried like a two-year-old.

      At last, the sobbing slowed and stopped. Nerys lifted her head, revealing a streaming red face. The collar and yoke of Myrtle’s blouse were soaked, but Myrtle only dug in the pockets of her flannel trousers and produced a large linen handkerchief. She dried Nerys’s cheeks before putting it into her hands. ‘It’s one of Archie’s. Little lacy things are no good out here, are they? It’s camp laundered too, scented with eau de kerosene. Go on, blow.’

      Nerys blew hard, and then sniffed. She realised she felt distinctly better. ‘I’ve been very feeble today, haven’t I? It’s not the impression I wanted to give, honestly. It’s not what I’m really like.’

      ‘Feeble, eh? Living up here, cut off all winter, 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, СКАЧАТЬ