LITMIR.BIZ

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metal door slid open on runners and Mair stepped into the next section of the plant. She had been aware of the hum of machinery, but she blinked at the sheer size of what lay beyond the door. The machine must have been fifty yards long, a leviathan of rotating belts and spinning flywheels, vast rubber rollers and steaming tanks. At the end of the line was a drying chamber from which the wool emerged cleaner and softer, but still with thick coarse hairs and fragments of dirt trapped in it.

      ‘What now?’ she asked, as she twisted a hank between her fingers.

      A second metal door opened ahead. A wave of humid air, heavy with the smell of wet wool, rolled over her.

      ‘Why is it so hot? And so damp?’ she choked out.

      ‘It is a humidified chamber,’ Tinley said proudly. ‘It makes the wool easier to work. This is the dehairing section, see?’

      They peered into the machinery. At each stage the remaining wool emerged whiter and softer, as the pure fleece – the goat’s innermost insulation against the Himalayan cold – was separated out.

      At the end of the line, after another drying chamber, the belt turned back on itself. One man sat in reverent attendance as the cleansed and blow-dried end product billowed from the jaws of the machinery.

      Mair couldn’t help herself. She stepped forward and plunged her arms up to the elbows into pure pashm. It was like handling a cloud, weightless and pure, and exactly the same colour. She remembered that one kilo of the greasy, reeking wool she had seen at the beginning of the line produced a mere three hundred grams of this airy fleece. ‘It is a kind of magic,’ she agreed.

      Tinley’s eyes glinted. ‘Come with me.’ He settled his baseball cap squarely on his head and led the way out of the processing plant.

      The back lanes were too narrow for two to walk abreast, and were overhung with washing lines, the branches of knotty old trees and the projecting balconies of houses. Tinley walked so fast that Mair had to concentrate on keeping up. At a collapsing set of gates in a whitewashed wall he suddenly stopped and nodded her through. Hens scratched in refuse and the call of the muezzin rose over the housetops.

      ‘Julley,’ Tinley called, to a man leaning on a broom.

      Up four stone steps and through a narrow door, they came into a roomful of women seated at wooden looms. There was a steady creak of floor treadles and the flash of shuttles as they worked. They were weaving plain pashmina lengths, in soft shades of grey and brown. These workers, Tinley told her, were producing shawls for sale through the state-sponsored craft-industry outlets in Leh. ‘Very traditional methods preserved, nice work for women here. They can work what hours they can, make some money, and also take care of families.’

      ‘That’s good,’ Mair acknowledged. But she was puzzled by how different these pieces were from her own.

      They passed through the weavers’ studio and the women looked up at her and smiled as she passed. The front of the building, to Mair’s surprise, opened out on to a view she recognised – the main street, with the minarets of the central mosque rising against the hill crowned with the old palace. Via the backstreet labyrinth they had come into a shawl showroom, lined with the now-familiar shelves. A salesman grinned a flash of gold incisor at her as he began to slide his wares out of their plastic bags.

      Leh could sometimes seem like one large wool-based retail opportunity.

      There was no question of withholding her custom, though, after Tinley had patiently taken her through the manufacturing processes. Mair obediently picked out three shawls: a pearl-grey one for Eirlys, a toffee-brown one for herself, and a cream one for Hattie, which would suit her friend’s dark colouring. She paid twelve thousand rupees in all, and reminded herself that it was not such a great deal of money for all the work that had gone into producing the pashmina fibre.

      The salesman took her purchases away to wrap, and on a sudden impulse Mair opened her rucksack and pulled the folded pouch from the innermost recess. Tinley watched curiously as she unfolded her grandmother’s shawl and gently spread it on the shop’s plain wooden counter. The colours of water and blossom made a pool of brilliance in the subdued light of the shop. The goods on the shelves appeared suddenly drab and coarse in comparison. Tinley gave a sharp sniff as he bent over to examine the shawl more closely, and the salesman swung round to take a look.

      ‘Can you tell me anything about this?’ Mair asked.

      Tinley picked up a small hand lens from behind the counter and minutely examined the weave, running his fingers over the embroidery before flipping the fabric to examine the reverse. He traced the outlines of the paisley shapes and peered even more closely through his lens at one corner of the piece.

      ‘This is Kashmiri work,’ he said. ‘Kani weaving. We don’t do this here in Ladakh.’

      The salesman said something to him.

      ‘You are selling it?’ Tinley casually enquired.

      ‘No. Definitely, no. It belonged to my grandmother. I am … just trying to find out something about the shawl’s history, and maybe through that a little about my grandmother. I never knew her, you see.’

      Tinley put aside his lens and straightened up. ‘Then you must go over the mountains to the Vale of Kashmir,’ he said.

      ‘I think my grandparents were here in Leh, though. During the 1940s. My grandfather was a Christian missionary.’

      ‘A Catholic? Moravians?’

      ‘No. He was Welsh, a Presbyterian.’

      Tinley shook his head, shrugging. This clearly meant nothing to him. ‘The Europeans came, not many stayed. They opened some clinics and founded schools for children and for that we owe them a debt.’ The unspoken rider was that for other things the missionaries had attempted, presumably the work of religious conversion, less gratitude was due.

      Mair said, ‘I wanted to take a look at the European graveyard here, but the gates are always locked and I can’t find out who has the key.’

      Tinley grinned, showing good teeth, and pushed his cap to an angle. He spoke rapidly to the storekeeper and they both laughed.

      ‘That’s easy. Tsering, my friend here, his uncle is the caretaker.’

      The two men exchanged more information and Tinley told Mair that if she came back to the shop tomorrow, perhaps at three o’clock, the uncle would bring the key and take her to visit the graveyard.

      She thanked them both and promised she would be there promptly. She began to fold the shawl again, but Tinley touched her wrist. ‘You have seen this?’ he asked, pointing to one corner of it. He put the lens into her hand, and she leant over to see what she hadn’t noticed before. There was a tiny embroidered symbol, like a stylised butterfly or perhaps the initials BB, with the first letter reversed, and next to it another indecipherable mark. ‘What is it?’

      ‘It is the maker’s signature, and the numbers “42”, which is perhaps the date of completion. It is a fine piece, and it would have taken many months, even years, for the craftsman to weave and then embroider. Probably it was made for a bride, as a wedding shawl for her to take with her to her husband’s home.’

      For Grandmother Nerys Watkins, as a gift from her husband the Welsh Presbyterian missionary? Mair thought the shawl was far too opulent for that. Nothing she had learnt about her grandparents’ circumstances or their restrained faith matched its rarity and value. The mystery seemed only to deepen.

      She put the new shawls into her bag with the precious old one, thanked the shopkeeper, and repeated that she would be back at three the next day.

      Tinley smiled broadly. ‘You must be wearing your new pashmina. The cold weather is coming. Winter is early for us this year.’

      As she walked through the old town the next afternoon, she saw how the place was turning in on itself under a bitter wind scything down off the mountain ice fields. She could smell snow in the air, as Tinley had predicted, and she was glad of

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