The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  It was Karen Becker, zipped up against the cold in a duvet jacket, her hair bundled under a fleece cap.

  ‘How was the trek?’ Mair asked, as they fell into step.

  Karen gurgled with dismay. ‘Full on, and then some. We went up high and there was snow up to my knees. Everything in the tent froze overnight. Bruno adored every second of it, naturally.’

  ‘And Lotus?’

  ‘She was good. But Lo’s always pretty good, and she likes the snow. Look, why don’t we meet tomorrow? I’d say come over tonight but Bruno’s got some work thing to sort out, endless phone calls to make, and that’s not easy around here, as you know.’

  Mair did know. All foreign mobile phones were automatically blocked and the only way to make calls other than from a phone shop was by buying a Jammu and Kashmir mobile. She hadn’t done that, and she was feeling the lack of communication with home. The power supply was too variable to make email a reliable option either.

  ‘I’m leaving on the bus for Srinagar in the morning.’

  ‘Nooo,’ Karen wailed. ‘Don’t do that. You mustn’t. I’ve heard it’s a terrible ride.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be an adventure.’

  Karen put her arm through Mair’s. ‘I’ve got a much better idea. Stay one more day, and come to Kashmir with us. We’ve booked a car. There’s room if you don’t mind sitting in the back with Lo and me.’

  Mair hesitated. ‘What about Bruno?’

  Karen twitched her elegant shoulders. ‘He’ll be fine with it. He likes meeting new people just as much as I do.’

  Mair’s first impression of Bruno Becker had suggested otherwise, but she didn’t say as much. ‘Well … it’s tempting. I’m not so sure about the bus, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Hey, then it’s a deal. We’ll pick you up at your hotel, day after tomorrow. It’ll be early, I’m warning you. Bruno’s a complete fanatic about that sort of thing.’

  It seemed that the arrangement was made.

  Karen danced along the edge of the dirt road, waiting for a truck to grind by. ‘How was your week, by the way?’

  Mair began, ‘It was interesting. I found out some history …’

  But Karen was already crossing through the cloud of exhaust fumes. She waved back at Mair. ‘Great. See you tomorrow.’ An auto-rickshaw driver had spotted her and swerved to a halt. Karen leapt aboard without negotiating the fare. Mair continued in the opposite direction towards the twinkling lights of the bazaar.

  With a day to spare, she went back to the Internet café. In an email to Hattie she described the discovery of the chapel and the ruined mission building, but only in the lightest way. Even to Hattie, she wasn’t willing to admit quite how intriguing the story of the shawl had become to her. She clicked send, while the power held.

  Then she checked her inbox. The messages scrolled in, arriving at a pace slower than that of a limping man carrying a cleft stick. She saw one from Dylan and opened it with delight. Her brother wasn’t a regular correspondent, but his occasional emails gave her more pleasure than anyone else’s.

  This time there was only one disappointingly short paragraph, but it promised that she would be interested in the attachment.

  Dylan had taken away their father’s small collection of photographs, stored over the years in a couple of old shoeboxes in Huw’s chaotic study. He had said vaguely to his sisters that he would go through them when he had an hour to spare, and would scan the good ones into an iPhoto album for them both. It was the kind of assignment he excelled at. Eirlys had replied that she was grateful for the offer, because she’d never have time to do it herself. Dylan had smiled covertly at Mair, and she had been struck then by his increasing resemblance to their father. How unwittingly you stepped into your parent’s skin, she thought. Probably by now she was more like her mother than she would ever know.

  Smiling, Mair set about opening Dylan’s jpeg attachment. At first the system refused to co-operate, but she kept trying until she succeeded.

  She stared. The photograph was an old black-and-white snapshot, faded and creased. Three women were grouped against a background of water partially covered with lily-pads. The upper left-hand corner of the view was cut off by a diagonal of carved woodwork, so it looked as though the three had been caught on a balcony overlooking a lake. The woman in the middle was posing with her chin up, darting a look of frank amusement straight into the camera’s eye. Her wide mouth had full lips that looked black, but must actually have been painted with dark red lipstick. Her wavy dark hair was swept up at the sides and her striking appearance was emphasised by the wide lapels and exaggerated shoulders of her chic jacket. There was a deep shadow in the V of her neckline.

  The woman on her left was much more girlish in appearance. She was in three-quarters profile, smiling with her eyes turned to her companions, and she had curled pale hair and a swanlike neck.

  The third woman had been captured in a burst of delighted laughter. Her head was thrown back and she looked so alive and full of merriment that it was several seconds before Mair recognised her. It was her grandmother.

  Gazing with increasing fascination into the joyful faces, Mair speculated on what Grandpa Evan could have said from behind the lens to make his wife beam with such clear happiness.

  Or – perhaps the photographer hadn’t been Evan Watkins at all.

  Whereabouts was that stretch of dappled water? It didn’t look like Leh, that was certain.

  Then an idea came to her. There were lakes in Srinagar. Mair referred back to Dylan’s message. He had written,

  This was loose inside an album of Grandpa’s India photographs, mostly very boring. Chapel people standing on steps, looking solemn, etc. So it caught my eye straight away. Who can Grandma’s happy friends be?

  The longer she looked at it, the more enigmatic and intriguing the photograph became. The three young women seemed so absorbed in their friendship, as well as in the immediate comedy of the moment. Their faces shone with so much life, it was hard to believe that the picture had been taken almost seventy years ago.

  Mair badly wanted to find out more about them. The possibility that the picture might have been taken in Srinagar only intensified her desire to get there.

  The Chinese woman who ran the Internet shop frowned at her. Over each work station was a laminated sign that read, ‘No uploding No downloding’.

  Mair pointed from the picture on her screen to the antique printer perched on a bench near the door, and made an imploring gesture to connect them. It wasn’t until she took out her wallet and started peeling off notes that any response came. After that there was an interval of button pressing and cable checking and muttering, and finally a five-by-four print emerged from the slot. It was murkier than the original, and the small size reduced the sheer joyous impact, but it was good enough.

  Mair carried it back to the hotel and put it safely in the envelope that also contained the lock of dark brown hair.

  The Beckers and their driver in the standard-issue white Toyota four-wheel drive drew up in front of Mair’s hotel at six thirty the following morning. Karen waved from the back of the car. ‘All set?’ she called. ‘This is going to be fun.’

  Lotus was strapped into a child’s booster seat. The local driver, clearly already infatuated with the little girl, flashed gold teeth across the seat divide and patted her cheek. Bruno Becker stepped out of the front passenger seat. He looked at Mair with a glimmer of a smile that made him seem slightly more approachable.

  ‘This is very kind of you both,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you’re joining us. Is this everything?’ He indicated her holdall. Mair nodded. She carried her rucksack slung over her shoulder, with the shawl, the lock of hair and the photograph secure inside it.

  ‘You travel light. Karen could take a lesson from you.’ He swung the holdall into the luggage compartment of the Toyota on top of a sizeable pile of baggage.

  ‘Hey, it’s mostly Lotus’s stuff.’ Karen laughed. ‘Come on, jump in
.’

  Mair took her place next to Lotus. The child’s hair was a mass of pale spirals in the steely dawn light.

  ‘Let’s go,’ the driver said. They headed down the main street, past the prayer wheel and the long mani wall. Mair turned to catch a last glimpse of the town. Thick bars of low cloud masked the circle of mountains and the trees were iron-grey scribbles against brown rock. It was very cold, and the streets were deserted.

  Karen tilted her chin to the front seats. ‘They’re worried about the weather,’ she announced across Lotus.

  ‘Forecast of snow,’ Bruno said briefly, without turning his head. ‘We won’t be hanging around on the way up.’

  Mair settled back in her seat. At first the car ate up the miles of valley road along the bank of the Indus. Karen chatted, and Mair passed Lotus items from the inexhaustible supply of toys and books that surrounded her seat.

  Heavy wagons and army trucks moved by in both directions, and as the road began to climb they passed the rough roadside camps of maintenance gangs who worked to keep the route open. Women as well as men carried stones on their backs or shovelled dirt into potholes.

  ‘What a tough life. Look, that woman’s got a baby on her back,’ Karen breathed. Two more tiny children sat on a rock, watching the steady grind of traffic.

  To increase the general bleakness it began to rain, the swollen droplets bouncing steadily off the windscreen. The wipers hummed and the car slewed over deeper and deeper ruts. They came to a police checkpoint and the driver ferried their passports to a hut for scrutiny, while bored soldiers in camouflage swung their guns to marshal loaded trucks. Beyond the checkpoint was a sign that read, ‘Border Roads Organisation. The Enemy is Watching You.’ The highway ran close to the Line of Control between India and Pakistan, and the heavy Indian Army presence wasn’t window-dressing.

  They drove on, heading steadily westwards as the road began to climb. It edged past huge precipices, the wheels of the Toyota sometimes seeming to hang over the lip as they bucked round yet another blind bend. Mair averted her eyes from the yawning drops, only to gasp as a truck howled round the corner and headed dead at them. Their driver never seemed to flinch as he steered past the oncoming metal with one inch to spare between solid rock or thin air. The road surface became so rough that the passengers had to hold on to the straps to stop their heads hitting the roof. In the midst of this, seemingly lulled by the relentless jolting, Lotus fell asleep.

  ‘Don’t they ever use tarmac around here?’ Karen groaned.

  Bruno looked over his shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t last six weeks. This mixture of stone and compacted hardcore is the only thing that stands up to the weather and the trucks, and it takes constant maintenance to keep the road even this usable.’ That was the longest remark he had made since leaving Leh.

  ‘Uh-huh. Ouch.’ They all bounced in their seats. Stones sprayed from under their wheels and pinged out into space. Far below, Mair caught sight of the pewter thread of a river. She offered up a prayer of thanks that she wasn’t crammed into a forty-seater public bus with an exhausted driver at the wheel.

  ‘The road between Leh and Srinagar only opened to wheeled traffic in the sixties,’ Bruno said. ‘Before that it was a track, and the transport was ponies.’

  ‘However long did it take?’

  ‘It’s two hundred and fifty miles. A week would have been really good going.’

  Mair added, after a moment, ‘In the eighteenth century it was impassable even on horseback. Porters carried everything on their backs, all the way from Tibet to Kashmir. Going this way the traffic was mostly wool, for the pashmina trade.’

  Bruno turned to look at her. For the first time, their eyes met directly. ‘You’re interested in the history of the old trading routes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So am I,’ Karen interjected.

  Her husband swivelled towards her and smiled. Mair realised that he was a noticeably attractive man, and the unease she had felt in the Beckers’ joint presence suddenly lifted. Although at first sight she had envied their intimacy she had begun to suspect that they were actually connected by mutual antagonism as much as shared adoration of their child. But now she thought she must have been mistaken. There was affection as well as amusement in Bruno’s smile.

  ‘I know you are,’ he said warmly.

  Mair peered ahead as they swung round yet another corner and saw, through a slash in the clouds, a white wall of snow in the distance.

  After an hour, Lotus woke up and began to grizzle. She pulled at her seat straps and turned her face away from the drink Karen offered her. ‘We’ll have to stop for ten minutes,’ she told the driver. ‘How far is it now to Lamayuru?’

  The men shook their heads.

  ‘Still far,’ the driver said.

  They pulled in at a roadside tea stall. Rain had turned the road to a wretched ribbon of mud, and sprays of filthy water were flung up by every vehicle that passed. The westbound stream was constant. Mair understood that every driver was under pressure to get up and over the Fotu La before dark or before the snow seriously set in, whichever came first. In the last few minutes the rain had become sleet, hitting the car’s windscreen in dismal splotches.

  Their little group huddled under the canvas shelter. Lotus cheered up as soon as she saw people. Bruno put her down and she set about making new friends while Karen investigated the contents of the stallholder’s saucepans. She chose a thick stew and a ladleful of rice, and fed most of it to Lotus. More cautiously, Mair snacked on a bar of chocolate and a handful of nuts. Their driver stood in the doorway, muttering with the other drivers and surveying the weather.

  As soon as they had finished, Bruno hurried them back to the car. Karen sighed. ‘What a shame not to be able to see the approach to Lamayuru. In the pictures, it’s set right up on the skyline like a fantasy castle, all spires and turrets.’

  ‘Karen, we really can’t stop at your monastery,’ Bruno said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need to get over the pass as soon as possible.’

  ‘Oh, come on. An hour won’t make any difference.’

  The driver was sitting forwards now, his shoulders hunched close to his ears. The oncoming vehicles all had their headlights on and a long line of their little yellow cones was visible, snaking at an improbable angle upwards into the murk.

  ‘It will, darling.’

  Karen was angry. ‘Listen, what is this? I know it doesn’t interest you much but this is the oldest gompa in Ladakh. It dates from before the tenth century. There are frescos, thangkas, like nowhere else. We’ve got to see it.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  Silence fell, and Mair could feel the silent battle of wills. The wipers smeared away a ruff of sleet that was instantly replaced by another. Lotus quietly sang to her doll.

  ‘It’s just a sprinkling of snow, Bruno. Why are you so cautious all of a sudden?’

  The driver broke in: ‘We go straight to Fotu La. Get down to Kargil.’

  That seemed to settle it. Karen’s jaw set, but she said no more.

  The going got harder but the driver pushed on. Snow was falling now, piling on the heaps of stones at the edge of the road. Fewer vehicles were coming the other way. Mair focused her attention on keeping Lotus occupied, and tried to ignore the precipices that must be only a foot away. It was much more alarming, she discovered, not to be able to see the worst and to be left imagining it.

  She glimpsed another quirky Border Roads sign: ‘Are you married? Divorce your speed.’

  They seemed to have been climbing for a long time. The wheels skidded once, took purchase, and skidded again. Karen’s annoyance at missing the monastery had subsided. Bruno and the driver conferred in low voices. They went more slowly, in the lowest gear, following the tyre marks of the vehicle ahead, which quickly faded to nothing more than faint grey ridges in a grey expanse.

  ‘Snow very bad,’ the driver said abruptly.

  A moment later, on a steep incline, the
Toyota’s wheels spun and the car began to slither backwards. For a panicky moment Karen and Mair’s eyes locked over Lotus’s head. Disorientated, Mair tried to work out on which side of them the drop currently yawned.

  Bruno was already out of the car. He kicked a rock under one of the rear wheels as the driver leapt out to join him. Karen and Mair sat tensely waiting.

  ‘Get out,’ Lotus chirped.

  ‘Not now, honey. Look how hard it’s snowing.’

  The men shovelled roadside dirt under the tyres but the Toyota edged forward only a few yards before it began to slide backwards again.

  ‘No good,’ Bruno shouted through the snow.

  ‘No good,’ the driver agreed.

  The doors slammed.

  ‘We’re not going to make it. We’ll have to go back down.’

  ‘Go back?’ Karen cried. ‘After all this?’

  ‘It’s five miles or so back to Lamayuru. We’ll stay the night there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. It’s either that or spend the night up here in the car. So you’ll get to see your frescos after all.’

  Karen scooped up a double handful of red-gold hair and fastened it back from her cheeks. She flashed a grin at Mair, perhaps realising that she had been intransigent. ‘Sorry about this. But that’s travel, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ Mair agreed.

  The driver made a complicated reverse manoeuvre, slithering in the limited space between rock wall and vanishing road. They began the crawl downhill.

  Mair could see nothing except falling snow. She felt a queasy pressure beneath her diaphragm, like a weight of foreboding.

  The darkness seemed impenetrable. Mair groped her way along the clammy stone wall, trying to remember which way she had come and wishing she hadn’t left her head-torch in the car. She reached a corner, tripped at a shallow step and almost fell, noticing that the air was even icier here. The way to the courtyard must be close at hand.