The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas Page A

could have belonged to any of the various missions to Ladakh, or might not have had any missionary connection at all. But now she knew for sure.
    Seventy years ago Evan Watkins would have preached in the chapel across the lane, and his wife must have tried to teach the children, perhaps in this very room. She tilted her head to listen, as if she could catch the sound of their voices, but all she could hear was dogs barking and the screech and hoot of distant traffic.
    ‘This is what I wanted to find,’ she said quietly, to her companions. After a moment she stooped and replaced the hymnal in its resting place.
    The three of them retreated into the fresh air. Sonam took hold of Mair’s arm. He began to talk with great animation, words pouring out of him as he shook her elbow and peered up into her face. He had no teeth and his face was crosshatched with deep lines, but he suddenly looked much younger than his age.
    ‘Tell me what he’s saying?’ she begged Tsering.
    ‘He remembers the teacher here, when he was small boy. She was nice. She gave the children apples and they sang songs.’
    Nerys Watkins, who had followed her husband to India and brought back the wedding shawl with a lock of hair hidden in its folds.
    ‘That might have been my grandmother. Does he remember her name? What songs did they sing?’
    The shake of the old man’s head was enough of an answer, but another rush of words immediately followed. His hands measured out a chunk of the air and he grinned as he pretended to totter under the weight of it. Remembering the long-agowas a pleasure for him, she understood, just as it had become for her father. Tsering patted his uncle on the shoulder, telling him to slow down.
    ‘He says there was a wireless here, the first one my uncle had ever listened to. He liked the music that came out of it. The wireless was this big, and heavy. It had a battery, and it needed four men and a cart to take that battery all the way down to the river to be charged at the generator. Then the people would come in close and listen with serious faces. The children wanted to laugh, but it was not allowed. That was when there was the war in Europe, and then it came to Asia.’
    Evan and Nerys, listening sombrely to the radio news in one of these low rooms, with the oil lamp throwing their shadows on the wall. She could see them so clearly now, at last: Evan in his preacher’s black, and Nerys with an apron covering her plain skirt and hand-knitted jersey.
    ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘That was when it was.’
    There was nothing more to see in the abandoned compound. Tsering was interested and he made another circuit with her, looking through every doorway, but they made no further discoveries. After his flash of recollection Sonam seemed weary, all his energy spent. Mair gently put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Thank you. I’m glad to have come here.’
    They made their way back down the lane, Sonam walking much more slowly and with his great-nephew’s support. The twilight was deepening and lights shone out of the windows of houses nearer to the cemetery until there was a blink, then another, and the power failed. The single street lamp in the distance went out. Mair and her companions halted under the navy-blue sky as Tsering searched an inner pocket for a flashlight. The old man put out a hand to Mair to steady himself, and she took his arm. Linked together, with the thin torch-beam picking out the deep holes and collapsed walls in their path, they stepped carefully onwards to the road.
    At the junction where she turned off towards her hotel, she said goodbye to the two men. The money she gave Sonamdisappeared in a flash into a slit in his tunic. He grasped her by the wrist and angled his head to peer at her in the gloom. Tsering translated for the last time.
    ‘In those days, the old times, it was very hard to live here. There was not much, for any people. But it was good, just the same.’
    The old man was telling her that