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Rosie Thomas The Kashmir Shawl Dedication For my father The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter. Contents Dedication One Mair made the discovery on the last day at home… Two Back in Leh, Mair spent a day trying to find… Three He had taken their candle behind the screen with him. Four When Nerys came round, it was to see a circle… Five To get across the mountains from Leh to Srinagar, Mair’s… Six The two women picked their way between tables and parasols,… Seven The band struck up and the maharajah himself led out… Eight Solomon and Sheba was close-moored in a line of other… Nine ‘It’s not too cold,’ Rainer insisted. ‘Zahra’s Shawl’ Ten Winter came. In early December 1941 Japanese troops invaded Malaya. Eleven Two days after Christmas, Nerys and Rainer drove the little… Twelve A startling crash in the undergrowth, then a long rattle… Thirteen The chapel was small, austere and brown-varnished. The windows were… Fourteen ‘Do you know for certain?’ Myrtle asked. A plume of… Fifteen He was as handsome as always, and as secretive. She… Sixteen The launch drew closer, its bow pennant drawn taut by… Seventeen The tiny coronet of blue flame seemed too fragile to… Eighteen Mair spent that Christmas with Dylan, Jackie and their smaller… Nineteen The house was in a leafy street in south Delhi,… Acknowledgements About the Author Other Books by Rosie Thomas Copyright About the Publisher ONE Mair made the discovery on the last day at home in the old house. The three of them were upstairs in their father’s bedroom. They had come together for the melancholy business of sorting and clearing their parents’ furniture and possessions, before closing up the house for the last time and handing over the keys to the estate agent. It was the end of May and the lambs had just been taken away to market. Out on the hill the sheep were bleating wildly, loud, incessant and bewildered cries that were carried in with the scent of spring grass. Mair had made a pot of tea and laid a tray to carry upstairs to her sister Eirlys. Their brother Dylan came behind her, ducking as he had had to do from the age of thirteen in order to avoid hitting his head on the low beam on the landing. Eirlys’s energy was prodigious, as always. The floor of the bedroom was squared with neat piles of blankets and pillows, towers of labelled boxes, crackling black bags. She stood at the foot of the bed, resting a clipboard on the bedpost and frowning as she scribbled amendments to one of her lists. With the addition of a white coat and a retinue of underlings, she could easily have been on one of her ward rounds. ‘Lovely,’ she murmured, when she saw the tea. ‘Don’t put it down there,’ she added. Dylan took a cup and wedged himself on the windowsill. He was blocking the light and Eirlys flicked an eyebrow at him. ‘Drink your tea,’ he said mildly. ‘Go mad, have a biscuit as well.’ Mair sat down on the bed. The ancient pink electric blanket was still stretched from corner to corner, and she thought of the weeks of her father’s last illness when she had come home to the valley to nurse him, as best she could, and to keep him company. They had enjoyed long, rambling conversations about the past and the people her father had once known. ‘Did I ever tell you about Billy Jones, the auctioneer?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘He had a stammer.’ ‘How did he manage?’ Over the top of his spectacles her father had glanced at her. ‘We weren’t in such a hurry, you know, in those days.’ In the low-ceilinged room the old man seemed very close at hand, and at the same time entirely absent. Eirlys was pointing out which bundles were to be taken away to charity drop-offs and what exactly the house-clearance people could be left to deal with. There was a question about the linen bed-sheets that had been stored in the same cupboard for as long as they could all remember and were mysteriously kept for ‘best’, probably according to some long-ago edict of their mother’s. But when the sisters had unfolded the top sheet they saw that it was worn so thin in the middle that the light shone straight through. Eirlys pursed her lips now and briskly consigned it with its partner to one of her graded series of bin-bags. The sun was slanting through the window, painting Dylan’s jumper with a rim of gilded fuzz. Mair found that she couldn’t sit still any longer and let the wave of memories engulf them all. She jumped up and went to the bow-fronted chest of drawers facing the end of the bed. Their mother had inherited it from her own mother – she remembered hearing that. Gwen Ellis’s clothes had been stored in here after her death, until at last her widower and her elder daughter had recovered sufficiently to be able to give them away. The pair of split drawers at the top was empty. Eirlys had even removed the lining paper. The middle one had recently held their father’s vests and pants and folded shirts. As he had grown weaker, Mair had helped him dress in the mornings. In the vain hope of making his bones feel warmer, she would hold the underclothes in front of the electric fire before handing them to him. A heap of these things now lay on the floor. ‘We’ll have to put those bits and pieces of his in the bag for recycling.’ Eirlys nodded. ‘They’re no good for anything else.’ Mair slid open the bottom drawer of the chest. She saw a few yellowing pillow-cases, and the tablecloth with the cut-work centre panel that was taken out once a year without fail to be smoothed over the Christmas dinner-table. The white fabric was stained in places with rust. Reaching beneath the cloth, her fingers came into contact with tissue paper. She lifted out the cloth to investigate what
