The Kashmir Shawl Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 Conversefor 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,