‘
Pherans
?’ she asked, with what she hoped was wide-eyed innocence.
‘That’s right. The three of you looked like a row of galleons under sail at the club yesterday afternoon, and I’m sure there will be questions in the book about the heating because lady members seem obliged to wear their outdoor garments in the drawing room. Hmm?’
‘I feel the cold,’ Nerys offered.
She had acquired a
kangri
and was genuinely glad of it. The fire-pot was a bulbous earthenware container, about the size – well, she admitted to herself, with a flicker of laughter, about the size of a full-term pregnancy – encased in a wicker basket. Every morning Majid filled it with a scoop of glowing embers from the stove in the kitchen boat and brought it to her bedroom. She hugged it against her belly while she summoned up the resolve to slide from under the blankets and dive into her clothes, and once she was dressed she settled it within her various layers before scuttling down the chill planks to the saloon, where the stove was already glowing and Myrtle was huddled beside the coffee pot. Myrtle wore a lambskin hat with flaps that covered her ears, and a pair of fleece-lined gloves with the fingertips cut off so she never had to remove them. Within a radius of three or four feet of the stove it was warm enough to sit and talk, but beyond that lay the realm of ice.
Rainer merely shook his head. He curled a long arm and rubbed his hair so that it stood out like a mane. ‘Have I ever listed the four principles of stage magic for you? Please stop me if I have.’
‘No, I don’t believe so.’ Nerys was already laughing. They were always having conversations like this, mock-solemn and formal, yet bubbling under the surface with amusement and flirtation.
‘The four principles,’ he counted them off on his fingers, ‘are misdirection, distraction, disguise and simulation. If, for
example, you tell an audience that a jug seemingly full of white liquid is in fact full of milk, that audience will automatically believe you because their collective mind looks no further. I think you three ladies are cleverly employing all four principles to your own ends. As a professional I admire the technique, but as a friend I cannot help feeling somewhat excluded.’
The plaintive note he managed to project made Nerys laugh harder. ‘It’s not my secret to share,’ she protested.
‘Ah, well, then. But if I were to offer a fellow illusionist’s advice, it would be, ah, that too
much
of a distraction only attracts attention.’
‘I see. Thank you,’ she said.
That evening she warned Myrtle and Caroline that Rainer had been asking questions. She thought it would be a good idea to tell him what was happening because he might be useful to them in the future.
Caroline was uncertain. ‘Is he discreet?’ she asked.
Nerys said that she was absolutely sure he was, and Myrtle had something else to add. ‘Rainer Stamm is one big secret himself. You remember those two Americans we met at his house, Nerys?’
She did, and Myrtle smiled. ‘One of them had had a couple of Scotches, and took rather a shine to me.’
Nerys remembered that, too.
‘Well. I thought he might be a spy, but
he
believes that Rainer really is one.’
Nerys was amused. ‘Our side or theirs, do you think?’
Caroline looked from one to the other. ‘Surely he’d be on our side. He couldn’t be a Nazi, could he? Even though he’s Swiss?’
Myrtle patted her hand. ‘I should think all the best spies have that couldn’t-possibly-be quality, darling. But don’t worry. I’m inclined to trust Mr Stamm, and Nerys is right – he could be helpful to us.’
It was agreed that Nerys should take him into their confidence.
She was at Rainer’s house the next evening, while Myrtle and Caroline were putting in an appearance at a sale of handicrafts and gifts to raise funds to send sweets and cigarettes to the men in Malaya. Myrtle had said that she for one didn’t care if she never saw another item of local papier-mâché, and certainly didn’t intend to present anyone she knew with a pen tray or a card holder. If she received any such Christmas gift herself, they should take note, she would wait for the lake to thaw and then pitch it in.
Caroline nodded. ‘I shall remember that,’ she said.
Myrtle and Nerys were sometimes unsure whether she was joking or merely being solemn.
It was very cold in Rainer’s room. The sky beyond the uncurtained window was a shower of stars, hollow with frost. They were sitting looking out at the black river water and the yellow points of lamplight showing from houses on the opposite bank. In their wire cage, the pair of white doves he used for some of his tricks were asleep with their heads beneath their wings.
‘Who is the father?’ Rainer asked, once Nerys had outlined the facts.
‘I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you that.’
‘I can probably guess.’
‘You probably can. You don’t miss much.’
There was a small silence. Rainer’s mood could dip into sudden melancholy. ‘I do miss things,’ he said, in a low voice.
‘I didn’t mean that sort of missing …’
‘I know what you meant.’ He leant forward. Nerys was swathed in blankets as well as all her clothes, and his hand slipped between the outer layers to find hers and then clasp it. ‘You are warm.’
‘I am. Mine is an exceptionally good
pheran
. I don’t even need my
kangri
in here.’
‘This plan is Myrtle’s, I take it?’
‘Yes. But we are all agreed. Any one of us could be pregnant, or all three, or none.’
‘Aren’t you worried about your reputation, Nerys?’
‘No,’ she said, after reflection. She didn’t care what Srinagar might think.
He came a little closer, his head blotting out the window and the stars. ‘Mrs Watkins,’ he whispered. Briefly, he lifted her hand to his lips.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Rainer was looking at her with minute attention. She didn’t believe that anyone else had ever looked at her with this degree of precise and steady scrutiny. ‘Nerys, you do understand what is happening between the two of us, don’t you?’
‘Of course. I’m not Caroline Bowen,’ she said, with a touch of heat. He couldn’t think she was so innocent or so obtuse as
not
to know.
Not rebuffed in the least, he smiled. ‘You are a thousand times more desirable than Mrs Bowen, pretty and English and adorably pliant though she is.’
They sat quietly for a moment. Nerys’s pulse steadied until she could hear the creak of old wood and the gentle hiss of the fire, not just the pounding of her heart.
Understanding what was happening meant acknowledging the moral dilemma that faced her, but it was also to do with anticipation; the fine control of a serious decision weighed in the balance. To become Rainer’s lover – or not – was her choice as much as his, that was what he was indicating, and she was intoxicated by the oxygen of independence that it gave her. She had a sense of the meek selves, the effacing and mildly baffled versions of herself, that had advanced to this point. As if she had been a caterpillar, then a frozen chrysalis, and now was on the brink of becoming a surprising butterfly.
She sat upright. ‘I think we both understand quite well,’ she said. She held out the small, thick green glass that he had given her and indicated that she would take another half-inch of Rainer’s French cognac. Decent drink of any kind was becoming hard to find in Srinagar. Then she settled herself in her cocoon of blankets, her back comfortably against the wormy old
panelling. Brandy fumed pleasantly in her head as she sipped it. ‘Do you know,’ she said, in amusement, ‘that various people suspect you of being a spy?’
‘Do they, indeed?’
‘And are you?’
He enjoyed his reputation, she could see that. He almost tossed his mane.
‘No, my darling. I’m a mountaineer, and a magician.’
‘In that order?’
‘Always in that order. I make my living as a stage illusionist and I have given shows all over Europe. I could mention crowned heads, if I were trying to impress you. But, in my heart, the mountains are always first. I will get to Nanga Parbat whatever the British have to say, and I will claim the peak for my friend Matthew Forbes.’
Images of cruel white peaks as jagged as sharks’ teeth glimmered in Nerys’s head, and anxiety stirred. She didn’t want even to imagine Rainer meeting the same fate as Matthew. ‘When?’
He laughed at her, widening his red mouth, pleased to note her concern. ‘When I can. But now, with the war so close,’ he shrugged, ‘I have other concerns. I wish to help the Allies, naturally. The alternative is not to be thought about. I am an expert in camouflage, and in other forms of deception that may have a military value, and I have offered my services to the British. But, as you can see, they have not yet taken me quite seriously.’ He waved his hand at the room, and its strange clutter of painted props.
‘They ought to,’ Nerys said. She wasn’t quite sure whether or not she believed Rainer’s innocent account of himself.
He lowered his voice. ‘Thank you. We shall see. In the meantime … I find that Srinagar draws me, and holds my heart in a way that I never expected.’
A small silence fell as they turned their heads in the same arc to gaze over the lights in the labyrinth of the old town.
‘I need your help,’ Rainer said, after a while.
‘Of course I’ll help you. Tell me how.’
‘Wait until you hear. You may change your mind. Because of my various projects I am eager to maintain cordial relations with the Resident, your friend Mr Fanshawe.’
‘He’s hardly my friend. I’m not even on the social scale,’ Nerys protested.
‘Mr Fanshawe has asked me to put on a morale-raising magic performance on Christmas night at the Residency. It will be for the entertainment of the staff and their families, what’s left of the regimental headquarters, Srinagar society of a certain sort. You will easily imagine.’
Nerys could.
‘To manage a show properly, however, I will need a stage assistant. It’s usual for the assistant to be female, and preferably of exotic extraction. Mysterious Madame Moth, Miss Soo Ling straight from Shanghai, that sort of thing.’
‘I see. Rainer, I’ve never been on a stage in my life. And Welsh is not exotic.’
‘You are not following me. The four principles, remember? Disguise. You will have to remove your
pheran
, I’m afraid, but it can be replaced by flowing robes. Chinese, I think definitely. A little round black hat, a mask. Charming.’
‘Will I be sawn in half?’
Their eyes met.
‘I haven’t devised the programme yet. That may only be the beginning. And I am not an amateur, Mrs Watkins. We shall rehearse, and rehearse, and then rehearse some more. Are you willing?’
‘Ready, and more than willing,’ she managed to answer.
And later, when she mentioned that Myrtle was nostalgic for the glamorous pre-war ice parties, Rainer said that in return for Nerys’s services as stage assistant he would come up with an idea for a Christmas celebration.
Nerys reported all this back to Myrtle and Caroline before they set off for Delhi, avowedly to retreat from the punishing cold and to shop for Christmas, but in fact discreetly to consult a doctor about the progress of Caroline’s pregnancy.
‘You seem very happy,’ Myrtle said, looking at her face.
‘Yes,’ Nerys agreed simply.
‘Are you in love with him?’
Nerys glanced round to make sure that Caroline was out of earshot. ‘I don’t think that would be entirely welcome.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question. Have fun, remember. Caroline and I will be back in Srinagar on the twenty-third.’
The excursion to Delhi was not enjoyable. The journey, by road and then train, was excruciatingly slow and uncomfortable, and Caroline was anxious and tearful. The Hindu doctor they had found examined her and brusquely informed her that she was quite healthy and could expect to deliver in approximately fourteen weeks’ time. He was more interested in where she planned her confinement, and wanted to know why, if her husband was in the army, she was not under the care of the military hospital.
They hurried away, and Caroline declared that whatever else happened she wasn’t going anywhere near that doctor ever again. Even worse, on their way back through Connaught Place from his office to Myrtle’s bungalow, Caroline stopped to lean against a pillar and catch her breath. Delhi was warm after Srinagar and they had had to put aside their
pherans
, swathing themselves instead in loose silk duster coats and trailing scarves. At that very moment there was a cry of recognition. A woman stepping out of her car at the kerb turned out to be the sister of the major’s wife, Caroline’s next-door neighbour.
‘How divine to see you both. Are you going out to tea? Would you like a lift?’
Caroline told Nerys that she jumped six inches in the air, absolutely certain that she had been resting with her hand on the top of her bulge. The woman was staring at their unconventional turn-out. It was only through Myrtle pretending to be ill, claiming that she was going to be sick or perhaps faint, that they managed to make their escape into the crowds.
‘Our driver is waiting. Do give my best wishes to Mrs
Dunkeley,’ Caroline called over her shoulder, adding, ‘That poisonous witch,’ for only Myrtle to hear.
Myrtle told Nerys, ‘Delhi’s too dangerous. There are too many people with nothing to occupy them but gossip. Unless Caroline spends the next three months in purdah inside the
Garden of Eden
, sooner or later someone we know will catch a glimpse of her and within minutes the entire Empire will hear of it.’
Nerys agreed. ‘We’ll think of something,’ she said.
At eleven o’clock sharp on Christmas Eve, in crackling cold under a colourless sky, two teams assembled on a swept-clean expanse of lake ice directly in front of the
Garden of Eden
. Rainer’s idea was a cricket match.
The Residency staff seized on his scheme with enthusiasm, and had in the end taken it over from him.
‘After all, I am only Swiss. What do I know of team sports?’ Rainer murmured.