The Kashmir Shawl. Rosie Thomas
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She hoped the spectators would quickly move away.
‘It seems to have done the trick. Can I give you a hand with these?’ Mair brushed dirt off her hands and picked up the shopping, leaving the mother to scoop up her daughter and settle her across her hip with the same easy movement she had used in the bazaar.
‘Jumping lady,’ said the child in wonder, stretching a small hand to pat Mair’s face.
‘That’s right,’ her mother agreed. ‘Pretty amazing, huh?’ Her voice had a touch of the American south in it.
‘As a matter of fact it was rather shaky. I’m not quite sure what came over me. I wanted to stop your daughter crying.’
The other woman sighed. ‘You and me both. She’d set her sights on being with her dad this afternoon and ended up stuck with me instead. He’s gone to sort out guides and ponies – we’re leaving on a trek tomorrow. That’s what all this shopping’s about – what do you take in the way of supplies? Where are you heading? I’m Karen Becker, by the way. And this is Lotus.’
Lotus raised her hand and gave a queenly wave.
‘Mair Ellis. Hello, Lotus.’ Mair smiled.
The child was extraordinarily beautiful, with a broad forehead and a mouth like a cherub’s in a Renaissance painting.
‘I was on my way to get a cup of tea,’ she added.
Karen nodded across the road. ‘Great. We’re going to the salon, Lo, aren’t we? We have to get ourselves a pedicure before we trek a single step. Come with us, and we can chat. I’m sure they’ll give you tea.’
Mair was glad to escape from the staring crowd. The two women stepped over the gutter and picked their way between bullocks and auto-rickshaws to a glass-fronted shop with windows heavily draped in lace. ‘Ladies Only Beauty’, said the sign in the window.
Inside they found a cracked floor, not noticeably clean, dusty bare shelves, and a row of barber’s chairs. There was a smell of old-fashioned perming lotion mingled with incense and boiled laundry. A small flock of women in bright saris instantly surrounded Lotus, lifted her out of Karen’s arms and bore her off to the back of the shop. They started combing her white-blonde hair with trills of admiration. Lotus accepted the attention as no more than her due.
A smiling girl with a red-cheeked, perfectly round Tibetan face relieved them of the shopping. A moment later they were installed in adjacent chairs, facing their reflections in a blotchy mirror.
‘Go on. You may as well.’ Karen grinned.
Mair allowed her Tibetan attendant to unlace her Converse for her, then to steer her feet into a pink plastic foot spa. The motor thrummed under her soles and the water seethed. The whole scene was so incongruous that she couldn’t help laughing.
In the mirror Karen’s blue eyes met hers. ‘Tell me. You must be something like a capoiera dancer, right? We saw some of those street performers in Rio. Have you been there? A-mazing. I’d so love to be able to move like that. Not in a million years, though.’
Mair laughed again. ‘What? No, I’m not any kind of dancer. I worked in a circus years and years ago.’
‘In a circus? Do you come from a circus family? Go on, your dad was the lion tamer, wasn’t he, and your mom was the lady in spangles who did pirouettes on the elephant’s back? You were born in a showman’s caravan, and as soon as you could walk you were dressed up in a tiny costume for the parade. Don’t tell any of this to Lotus, please – it’ll only give her ideas.’
Karen had plenty of imagination herself, evidently. Mair was fascinated by her spectacular looks and her vivacity, but she wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. ‘Nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid. My father was a farm-supplies salesman and my mother was a primary-school teacher in North Wales.’
‘So, how come?’
Mair might have deflected these questions, but she was the one who had been guilty of exhibitionism and she thought the least she could do was give a straight answer. ‘I was a rebellious child, and I’d been threatening for so many years to run away and join a circus that when the time actually came it would have been a loss of face not to do it. Ours was quite a right-on show. No lions. In fact, no animals at all, because that would have been cruel. My friend and I had a trapeze act, and in the kids’ show we were the clowns as well. We did that for about four years, and then it was time to grow up.’
‘I see.’ Karen’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do I believe all this? Or is it one of those versions of oneself that one does for passing encounters with strangers? If it is, I’ll find out, I’m warning you. We’re going to be friends. I’m always right about these things.’
A young girl arrived balancing a tin tray of tea glasses. Mair took one and sipped. The tea was milky and thick with sugar, but it was welcome. Her attendant lifted one of her feet out of the bath and dried it in her lap. Then she set to work slathering on handfuls of some gritty potion.
Karen chatted on: ‘How could I pass up the chance of making friends with someone who turns somersaults in the air before she’s even spoken?’
Across the room, Lotus had a dozen ribbon bows in her hair. Her tiny fingernails were being dabbed with glitter polish.
Mair decided it was time to seize the conversational initiative. ‘What are you doing in Leh?’ she asked.
Karen’s eyes widened. Her face in the mirror became a pale, intent oval. ‘We arrived here from Tibet. I’m a Buddhist, you see. It’s been a pilgrimage for me.’ She began to talk about the monasteries she had visited, and the devotions she had made. She had been blessed by the senior lama after the annual unveiling of a spectacular thangka painting, which had been one of the most spiritual experiences of her life. Did Mair practise? Really not? Had she never felt the call to do so? Did she know that one of His Holiness’s summer residences was actually here in Leh? Had she seen the huge golden Maitreya out at Thikse Gompa?
‘Yes,’ Mair managed to say to the latter. Brisk massaging of her foot and ankle was showering the floor with dead skin and caked foot cream.
Karen’s leg was undergoing the same treatment. She paused in her monologue and turned her glancing attention to the young girl, who had come back with a small selection of polishes on the tea tray. ‘Pink or red, do you think?’
‘Red,’ Mair replied automatically.
‘Hmm. Yeah, but I’m going to go for the pink. Don’t want to frighten the ponies, do I? Lotus, what colour are your toes?’ she called.
‘Pink, shiny,’ Lotus chirped.
‘How pretty. Daddy will love them.’
‘And now you’re going trekking.’
Karen waved a languid hand. ‘That’s my husband’s partiality. It’s a reasonable trade-off, I guess. My monasteries for his mountains. Although we met in New York, we’re based in Geneva right now because Bruno is Swiss. These days, he gets to go skiing and mountain climbing pretty regularly from home, but we agreed that this holiday shouldn’t be all Buddhist. Lotus would protest about that too, although she’s generally pretty easy-going. Not that she looked that way when you saw her this afternoon, I admit, but she doesn’t often freak out like that.’
‘You’ll take her on the trek with you?’
Karen looked surprised, then shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not? Bruno carries her in a backpack most of the way. Everywhere we go, Lotus comes along. That way you get a balanced, open-minded kid.’
The child wriggled away from her admirers and came to show off her manicure, spreading her small hands on Mair’s knees and beaming up at her. The ribbons fluttered in her ringlets. There was logic in Karen’s theory, Mair thought. She remembered her first glimpse of the little family in the bazaar and the intimacy that had impressed her then. Lotus was certainly the most confident two-year-old she had ever met.
‘You