impression at all.
Stop it, Nerys warned herself. You will only cause more destruction if you think like that.
Sleep. Just try to sleep.
Her bones ached with the effort of not touching her husband’s oblivious body. She was too tired to let herself relax. The hours crawled by until the cocks started crowing.
It was a little past the usual time for lunch when the travellers arrived. Nerys had taught the youngest children’s class, and she had told the older ones that they could go home once they had eaten their rice and lentils. The stragglers were still playing and chasing each other in the mission courtyard when laden horses picked their way to the street gate. Nerys and Evan heard the usual confused shouting and barking dogs that meant something out of the usual was happening. The schoolchildren crowded at the stone gateway and Nerys hurried across the cobbles to greet the guests.
She saw a trim man in well-cut riding clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, and a woman holding the bridle of her pony and affectionately rubbing its nose. She was wearing puttees and breeches, and a long muslin veil was tied over her sola topi. A string of bearers and pony men were bringing up mud-and dust-caked bags. The woman looked up and saw Nerys. At once she passed the bridle to a pony man and with one gloved hand she rolled up her veil. She smiled a broad, frank smile, held out both hands and grasped Nerys’s. ‘Mrs Watkins, thank you so much for rescuing us like this,’ she said, in a warm, husky voice. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to Archie and me. One more night in a tent would have killed me off.’
She was about Nerys’s height. Her eyes were the colour of peat, framed by arched black eyebrows. When she took off her sola topi it was a surprise to see that her dark hair was cropped short, like a man’s, but even in her riding clothes there was nothing else that was mannish about her. She had a luscious figure, with a narrow waist and long legs that were elegant even in breeches under a rough tweed coat.
‘Welcome to the mission.’ Nerys smiled back at her. ‘It’s not the Savoy, but it’s better than the dak bungalow.’
The man had issued crisp instructions to his servants and now he came to introduce himself. ‘Mrs Watkins? How d’you do? I’m Archie McMinn. We’re in your debt.’ He was sandy-haired, tanned from the sun, with good-humoured blue eyes and a growth of wiry beard. He spoke with a slight Scots accent.
‘Myrtle. I’m Myrtle.’ His wife laughed.
‘Nerys.’ As they shook hands Nerys had an odd sense of recognition, as if she knew this woman already. She looked at Myrtle McMinn and she thought distinctly, I knew you must be somewhere. Here you are at last.
She only said, ‘Come inside. You’ll want hot water, food on china plates, and clean sheets. I remember what it feels like, camping for weeks on end.’
Evan came out into the courtyard, standing like a dark pillar in the sun. He shook hands with the newcomers, telling them that the Presbyterian mission was their home for as long as they needed it. Nerys gave him a quick smile of gratitude. Mission children slid between the four of them, gaping at the McMinns. Myrtle peeled off her gloves and rummaged in the pockets of her coat, bringing out sweets and distributing them between a thicket of hands.
‘Julley, all of you.’ She held the bag upside-down and shook it to show that it was empty. The children fell in behind her and followed her to the door of the house. Nerys firmly told them that it was time to go home, and shooed them away. She led the McMinns to their room.
‘You’ve made it so pretty,’ Myrtle cried. ‘Look, Archie. What luxury.’
Nerys told them that Diskit would come with hot water and they were to ask her if there was anything else that they needed. Archie McMinn said that all they required was the pair of canvas holdalls that their bearer would carry in, once the worst of the dust and mud had been brushed off them. Everything else, including his game heads, would be taken with the ponies to camp near the polo ground at the southern edge of town.
‘His game bag is really all that matters, you see,’ Myrtle teased. ‘Two heads of giant mountain sheep with curly horns, two pairs of magnificent antler tops attached to their stags, and every other beast that was included in Archie’s permit as well. Otherwise we’d still be out there, you know.’
‘It was a shooting expedition, dearest girl,’ Archie said calmly. ‘What else did you expect?’
The McMinns gave a relaxed impression. They were easy with each other, Nerys thought, happy to have reached civilisation and company after their demanding excursion into the mountains. But she thought they would have been just as happy to find themselves alone together. Diskit brought in the first of a series of hot-water jugs, and Nerys left the guests to change.
Their arrival had lightened the tense atmosphere in the mission house. Diskit was singing as she crossed the passage, and Evan didn’t ask how much longer it was going to be before he could have his lunch. Nerys adjusted the spoons and forks on the table, then went across into the kitchen to check on the thukpa, the local vegetable stew that was Diskit’s most reliable dish.
The guests soon reappeared. Archie had shaved off his beard, exposing a paler crescent of jaw and cheek. Myrtle was still in trousers but they were loose flannels now, worn with a pale shirt and a single strand of pearls. ‘I would have put on a frock,’ she said apologetically to Nerys, ‘but I haven’t got one with me. Do you mind?’
Nerys smoothed the front panel of her old tweed skirt. ‘Of course not. You look … very pretty.’
‘No, I look like my brother.’
Even as she ran her fingers through her short shingle with a dismissive shrug, no one would ever have mistaken Myrtle for a boy.
Evan drew out Myrtle’s chair for her. Both the McMinns bowed their heads while he said a lengthy grace and the thukpa steamed in its bowl. Sun poured in through the small-paned window opposite Nerys, and she was glad to close her eyes for a few seconds and allow its warmth to fall on her eyelids. After her sleepless night she was so tired that she felt not quite real, as if she were missing a physical dimension. When she opened her eyes again, Myrtle was looking at her. Nerys didn’t mind her scrutiny. The feeling of recognition seemed to mean that there was nothing to conceal.
It was a cheerful meal. Evan liked Archie McMinn, that was clear, and he almost laughed at Myrtle’s tales of their adventures. No remote nullah had been left unexplored in Archie’s relentless pursuit of game. The McMinns had waded through rivers and crawled over mountain passes, slid down scree walls on the other side, to camp on bleak plains where hailstorms and gales had battered their tent. There was no firewood, no food for sale or barter, no human life for dozens of miles. Archie was up every morning, regardless of weather, eager with his guns and the huntsmen.
‘Myrtle’s friends are all in Srinagar, playing tennis or drinking cocktails at the club, but she insisted on coming out here with me,’ Archie protested. ‘What is a man to do? I would sacrifice anything for my wife – except sport, of course – but I cannot make a shooting trip comfortable for her.’
Myrtle looked delighted. ‘Do you think I would have missed almost drowning or freezing to death? How many cocktails would it take to create such excitement? I don’t mind coming second to your love of stag hunting, darling. And I know you’ll understand why I had to come.’ She turned to Nerys. ‘Because you have accompanied your husband all the way up here.’
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be left behind,’ Nerys agreed. ‘That wouldn’t make a marriage,
