‘Nerys? Are you with us?’ Myrtle persisted.
They exchanged glances, acknowledging the calculations that they were separately making, and the responsibility for Caroline Bowen and her baby that they would be assuming from now on. ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Count on me.’
Caroline’s face was brightening. ‘You’re so good, both of you. I’ve never in my life had friends like you.’ She squeezed their fingers so hard that Nerys feared for the blood flow. ‘Friends for ever,’ she declared.
‘I
am
clever, aren’t I?’ Myrtle laughed.
That evening, Nerys and Myrtle sat down alone to dinner.
Across the starched tablecloth Nerys said, ‘What exactly are you planning? If we’re going to be co-conspirators, you know, you’d better tell me everything.’
Myrtle twisted her glass, examining the lights reflected in the depths. ‘I want to help Caroline, of course. It’s a rotten situation for her.’ Then, in a lower voice, she said, ‘Archie and I haven’t been able to have a child of our own. You’ll have guessed that. Archie has always told me that he couldn’t countenance adoption. You know, another man’s child—’ She broke off, sighing in a way that was quite unlike her. But then she lifted her chin and looked straight at Nerys. ‘But perhaps if there is a baby, a real one, needing a loving home, he might see it differently. There’s a chance, isn’t there?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
Knowing Archie, who was outwardly the mildest but also the most strong-minded of men, Nerys was doubtful. But seeing the brilliance of Myrtle’s eyes she couldn’t find it in herself to say so. Her own thoughts were racing on.
A baby, newborn and needing a home. If in the end Myrtle couldn’t step in, she could offer to do so herself. An orphan, an Indian baby, how could Evan refuse to help?
‘Whatever happens, we’ve got to look after poor Caroline,’ Myrtle said.
‘Will you tell me something? What does Archie mean by a three-letter man?’
Myrtle lifted one dark eyebrow. ‘It means a queer,’ she explained.
‘I thought that was probably it.’
Mair sipped at a glass of warm gin slightly diluted with flat tonic water. Caroline Bowen’s eyesight was obviously troubling her because she had to angle her head away from her enviably straight spine just to hold her visitor in partial focus. Mair had begun to explain her mission to Ladakh and Kashmir, but it was too long-winded and she could see that the old lady wasn’t following her.
‘What did you say? I’m sorry, I don’t get many visitors,’ she broke in, before Mair had half finished.
The plump attendant had gone away after pouring the gin, but now she shuffled back. She looked discouragingly at Mair. ‘I told you. Mrs Bowen is tired today.’
Mair drew her chair closer, taking care not to knock the stool supporting the bandaged leg. ‘I’m the one who should be apologising, barging in on you like this.’
Caroline Bowen’s smile broke through her confusion. Like a reflection in rippled water, Mair caught a surprising glimpse of the young woman she had once been. A momentary half-recognition snagged in her mind but it was gone as soon as she reached for it.
‘Oh, I’m jolly glad to have some company. Aruna and I get pretty bored here on our own, you know. Won’t you tell me
your name again? My memory’s absolutely shocking, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s Mair.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s Welsh.’
The white head tipped again as she peered through invisible mists. ‘Welsh, eh?’
‘Mrs Bowen, do you remember as far back as the 1940s? My maternal grandparents were out in Srinagar in those days, with the Welsh Presbyterian Mission, and I’m trying to trace them. I know it’s a very long shot, but I thought you might just remember something …’
It was as if the mist thinned to allow Mrs Bowen a glimpse of a familiar view.
‘Who were they? Who did you say? I was here, you know – 1941, 1942. Such times, they were. My husband was Indian Army. He was in the defence of Singapore against the Japanese. So many brave men died.’
‘Was your husband killed?’
Across the room, Aruna made a move.
The white head turned, the eyes dim and almost sightless again. ‘Ralph? No. He was very brave – he won the MC. I’m sorry, dear, I don’t know anyone … What name did you say? Has our friend got enough to drink, Aruna? Where have you gone?’
‘Oh, yes, this is plenty for me,’ Mair said quickly. She made a move to gather herself before taking her leave, and Caroline looked up anxiously.
‘Don’t go just yet. It’s heavenly to have a chat like this.’
Mair was uneasy. There was something not quite normal about Caroline Bowen. Perhaps it was just her great age and her apparent isolation in this sunny, ordinary room. ‘I don’t want to tire you.’
‘That’s quite all right. I have masses of time to rest, you know. What were we talking about?’
‘You mentioned your husband, and the war. Have you been living in Srinagar ever since?’
Again there was a movement from Aruna, this one more definitely an intervention. Caroline lifted her hand.
‘No. I went home in ’forty-five. Myrtle and her husband, they stayed on, but most of us went home. After Partition, of course, everything was quite different. The old India was gone. And Kashmir, ah, a sad story.
You
won’t remember, Aruna, what it was like in those days. We had such fun. Such marvellous times.’ She gave up on the struggle to see the present, and let her head fall back against the chair cushions.
Mair guessed that the images in her mind’s eye were much more vivid.
‘I was ill for quite a number of years. That was unfortunate, of course. I was in a nursing home in England, and you do lose touch. By the time I was well again, or once they’d decided I was well, I should say, I was widowed, and that’s difficult, isn’t it?’
They’d decided?
Mair wondered. Who might
they
be? ‘It must have been.’
‘Are you married, dear?’
Mair smiled at her. ‘No. It’s never happened. Or, strictly speaking, I’ve never reached a point where it seemed important to make that commitment. I’ve had boyfriends, but that’s what they stayed.’
Caroline was delighted with that. ‘How modern. How independent you must be. I’m terribly envious. No widowhood for you, eh?’
‘Not without being married first, I suppose.’
‘That’s marvellous. My advice to you is, stay just the way you are.’
They were both laughing. Once again the younger Caroline shimmered briefly in the old face. This time, Mair almost pinpointed the evasive likeness to someone, but it floated away again. ‘So then what happened?’ she asked.
‘When?’
‘After you were widowed?’
‘Oh, you don’t want to hear about all that. England’s a very different place,
quite
different from the country I grew up in.
By the time I had a chance to look about me I realised that India felt more like home to me than England ever would. So I came back out here, and I’ve stayed ever since. I can manage, even though everything is so expensive.’
‘It’s time for your medicine,’ Aruna said. She picked up a tray, and the almost-empty gin bottle clinked against the empty tonic-water bottle. Mair thought that if Mrs Bowen was living on a small fixed income, her money would certainly stretch much further here in Kashmir than at home in England. Both women watched Aruna as she made her way across the room, evidently on the way to fetch the promised medicine. Mair picked up her rucksack and her brown pashmina.
‘I’d better go.’ And, as she said it, a face came into sharp focus.
She caught her breath in utter astonishment.
She looked at Mrs Bowen, and immediately she was certain. She burrowed in the bag and brought out the familiar bundle. ‘But before I do, may I just show you something?’
She shook out the shawl so that it billowed in the air, then drifted over Caroline Bowen’s lap.
The silence deepened in the quiet room. Slowly Caroline gathered a handful of the soft stuff between her fingers and lifted it to her face. She seemed to inhale the scent trapped in its folds, and then, with a great effort, she focused her eyes on the colours of a Kashmiri summer.
A long time seemed to pass.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘It was with my late grandmother’s things.’
There was a beat before Caroline whispered, ‘I wish I could see you properly.’
Mair knelt down beside her chair. Caroline’s veined claw of a hand reached out and tentatively explored the contours of her cheek and jaw.
She murmured, ‘Welsh, didn’t you say?’
‘Yes. My grandmother’s name was Nerys Watkins. I have a photograph of her, with you, here in Srinagar.’
‘Nerys was my friend. And this,’ she held up a bunched handful of soft wool, ‘this is Zahra’s. Her dowry.’
Caroline’s carer came back with the medicine, and found them with the shawl drawn between them like a narrative.
Winter came. In early December 1941 Japanese troops invaded Malaya. The Indian Army units defending the Malay coast were forced into surrender, and even though they were heavily outnumbered, the Japanese continued their advance down the peninsula towards the Allied stronghold of Singapore. At the same time, almost to the day, Japanese bombs fell on the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor.
The war in Europe had spread to Asia, and in response the Americans began the biggest mobilisation in history.
Far from Srinagar, Captain Ralph Bowen and his company of the Indian 11th Infantry were drawn back to defend the naval base at Sembawang, in the north-east of the island of Singapore. At the same time Archie McMinn, the Indian Railways engineer, at last succeeded in his attempts to get into uniform. Almost at once he found himself co-ordinating rolling stock and personnel to supply the troops in Malaya, and preparing to evacuate thousands of wounded men in the opposite direction.
Across the Himalayas in Kargil, the conscientious objector Parchedig Evan Watkins preached in an almost empty Presbyterian mission hall, and spent his lonely evenings in the mission’s tiny, bleak residential quarters tuned in to the war news via the Overseas Service of the BBC. His main
consolation, as the cold tightened its grip and the futility of his efforts became harder to deny, was to think of Nerys in the relative comfort and luxury of the Vale of Kashmir. He missed the home she had made for them both in Leh, the noise of small children clapping and singing in her schoolroom, even Diskit’s cooking. He prayed humbly for the gift of fortitude, trudged miles through the icy days to small settlements – whose inhabitants received him with frank bewilderment – and realised how intensely he was looking forward to the coming of spring and the reunion with his wife.
For Nerys, Srinagar had a wintry loveliness that the society migrants of the summer season could hardly have imagined.
Smoke from countless wood and charcoal fires curled into the white skies; bare trees were policed by brooding birds; the clopping of
tonga
horses’ hoofs was amplified by the frozen silence. When she woke up one morning the lake water was filmy, as if covered by a layer of oil. The next day it had developed a skin of thin, glittering plates, like the markings of some huge reptile, and the one after that it was frozen solid. Moorhens and wagtails left necklaces of spiky prints in the powdery rime, and garlands of icicles festooned the houseboats’ carved eaves.
In delight at the beauty of it, she asked Myrtle, ‘Does this happen every year?’
‘Only about every fourth winter. Before the war, in the years when the lake did freeze, there would be skating parties and sleigh rides. One year the Resident – not this one, his predecessor – held a Jacobean ice fair. It was before I was married, and it was sheer heaven. Everyone wore fancy dress and there was a band playing for the skating and dancing, the Residency cooks roasted kids and a lamb on huge spits on the bank and there were chestnuts on braziers out on the ice. It was the best party of the whole year – people came up from Delhi and Jammu especially for it.’
She sighed for bygone days of glamour. ‘There won’t be
anything of the kind this time. There isn’t a soul here and every damned thing is scarce or rationed or unobtainable.’
‘I’m here, and Caroline. We’ll just have to devise an ice celebration of our own. Rainer will help.’
‘I hope so. We need something to look forward to,’ Myrtle agreed. She poured herself some more gin and added a small splash of lime juice.
Rainer had become a regular visitor to the houseboat, appearing at the veranda steps almost as regularly as Caroline did. Myrtle was intrigued by his introductions to Srinagar people on whom she had never set eyes before and who were never going to cross the threshold of the club or pop up at Residency parties.
On the day after Pearl Harbor Rainer took both women to call on his friend the professor. Nerys and Myrtle drank tea with his wife, the musician daughter and other female relatives, while the men sat in another room sharing a pipe and discussing politics and war. Myrtle didn’t protest at this automatic segregation, although Nerys had expected her to do so. The professor’s women were sharp and surprisingly talkative, as well as slyly funny, and when they got back to the
Garden of Eden
that evening Myrtle declared it was the most interesting time she’d spent in ages.
She had decreed that Caroline should also go out and about as much as possible before her shape became too pronounced. As December passed they took tea or coffee in the echoing confines of the club almost every other day, and were becoming such a familiar sight in their usual corner that the handful of regulars did no more than raise a hand as they shuffled past on their way to the bar or the bridge table. Whenever they left the houseboat the women were slow-moving, shapeless mounds of wool, sheepskin, pashmina and thick tweed. Quite quickly, Nerys recognised that Myrtle’s absurd plan was in fact rather a clever one.
However, Rainer had only seen the women together twice before he asked Nerys, the next time they were alone, if she
would please tell him what was going on with Mrs Bowen and the
pherans
.