Page 31 of The Sky Beneath Us
Themi picks it up, a look of wonder spreading across her features. She gets to her feet and crosses the room to the fireplace. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there’s a little niche set into the stones forming the back wall of the house, camouflaged by the years of accumulated soot. She reaches into it. Then she returns to the table and sets the shoe’s twin down beside it. The leather is cracked and blackened with age, but it’s unmistakeably the other half of the pair.
‘These shoes were mine,’ she says. ‘My mother told me my Aunt Hetty sent them out to us when I was born. I wore them when I learned to walk, but quickly outgrew them. So my mother put the single shoe in the wall. She said it was a Scottish tradition, to protect us from evil spirits and keep us safe. I never knew what happened to the other shoe. But now here it is. You have reunited us with it, just as you’ve reunited us with our Scottish family, DaisyDidi. Thank you.’
‘I guess Violet must have sent it back to Hetty for safekeeping. There were envelopes of seeds in the box with all the papers, too. And some of her paintings of wildflowers.’
‘Did you bring them with you as well?’ asks Themi, her eyes bright with curiosity.
I shake my head. ‘No, the seeds were ruined and the pictures are still in the library at Ardtuath. But we can send them to you if you like.’
She smiles. ‘You will bring them next time you come, maybe?’
Her words take me by surprise. I’d always thought of this trip as a one-off, the holiday of a lifetime. It hadn’t occurred to me that finding family here has set in place new connections, like strings of prayer flags stretching across the miles, linking us forever. ‘Next time,’ I say. And I grin, thinking how Mum and my girls would love to meet their Sherpa cousins.
‘Now,’ Themi says. ‘Pema will make us some more tea and I will tell you what I know of my mother’s life here in Phortse.’
I pull out a pen and a pad of paper to take notes so that I can transcribe them later and send them to Mum. And then, in that little one-roomed house, as the flames dance and leap in the fireplace and the mountain wind whispers outside against the stones, carrying upon it the voices of long-departed souls, she begins to tell me the rest of Violet’s story.
When it’s time to go, she holds up a hand and says, ‘Wait.’ She goes over to the large plastic drum in the corner and begins to unscrew the top. Her arthritic hands can’t get a proper grip, though, so Pema helps her.
‘These drums were once used by climbing expeditions to transport food and equipment up to Everest Base Camp,’ Pema explains. ‘Nowadays, though, they use weatherproof bags. So we’ve recycled the bins. You’ll find one in just about every house in Phortse. They make good storage, stop the damp getting in.’
Themi reaches into the drum and brings out a plastic bag. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Take these away and read them.’
She and Pema smile as I look up at them in wonder. Because the bag contains a small pile of notebooks, made fromloktapaper. And I realise I’m holding in my hands the next instalment of Violet’s journals.
Violet’s Journal
THURSDAY, 17THOCTOBER, 1929
Today is the first day of the month of Kartik, in the season of Sharad or early autumn. This is a beautiful time of year, perhaps made all the more so by the fact that Hemanta and Shishir – the seasons of late autumn and winter – will soon be here. I think I’m looking forward to my first Himalayan winter with equal measures of fascination and trepidation. My main consideration will be keeping Themi warm and well fed.
My baby flourishes. She’s a darling, loved by everyone in the village and passed from arm to arm by the Sherpa mothers who are helping me learn how to raise my child. Dawa and Palden continue to help and support me. Their kindness and generosity are quite astonishing, and I must confess I feel closer to them than I ever have to my own parents. How can it be that these two people, who’ve only known me for a few months, so readily welcome my presence in their lives? Perhaps it’s simply the Sherpa way. Acceptance is an important foundation of their faith and that enables them to focus on the day-to-day challenges of having a warm shelter and food on the table each evening. Surviving in this place, on the very edge ofhuman endurance, strips away any unnecessary pretensions and preoccupations.
It’s the season of the harvest and, whilst the nights are bitterly cold, the days are awash with warm sunlight. I turn my face to it, knowing I’ll store these golden moments away, just as we store away our caches of foodstuffs, to help sustain me in the months ahead. We work in the fields every day gathering in the crops, digging up the potatoes and preserving everything we can forage in preparation for winter, and all the while Themi snuffles and coos contentedly, tied to my back in a shawl of soft yak’s wool.
When we’re not working in the fields, Dawa and I carry armloads of washing down to the ice-cold river in the valley far below the village and then lug them back up again, damp and heavy, to be spread in the sun to dry. Fetching water is another daily chore, as is gathering juniper twigs and yak dung for fuel, and preparing and cooking meals. And so I hardly have a moment to think and I fall into my bed each night to sleep in the sweet oblivion of exhaustion. But I welcome that because, at the moment, focusing on the simple tasks that need doing each day helps me to walk through the pain and grief of losing Callum. It’s the way we do things here in the mountains: slowly, slowly, one foot in front of the other.
It’s hard and sometimes lonely too. But the reward for this hardship is a freedom to be myself, unlike any I’ve known before.
When the harvest is safely in, I will ask Palden to show me the way back to the valley filled with flowers. This will be the perfect time to start mapping the botany there and to collect seeds from the purple cranesbill and blue poppies that I saw growing there in such profusion back in the spring.
Daisy – April 2020
The next day I wake up early. Something’s different, but it takes me a few moments to work out what it is. And then I realise. Instead of the mutterings of the wind walkers, carried on the constant buffeting of the wind against the walls of the house, there is silence. The air in my bedroom is milder too and so where usually I would pull the blankets around me and linger in bed, reluctant to brave the bitter cold, I jump up and pull on my clothes. Downstairs, the others are still asleep. I let myself out, quietly pulling the door closed behind me, and walk a little way up the hill.
At the top of the village, I perch on a wall beneath a string of faded prayer flags and look around. This view can’t have changed much since Violet’s day, and I feel closer than ever to her as I take in the sights and sounds of the village as it awakens. A raven calls from the branches of a birch tree, asking ‘Why? Why?’ and I remember one of Jack’s anagrams: SILENT = LISTEN.
Most of the snow has melted now at this level and the fields are a rich brown, ready for planting. The sky overhead is still empty of clouds and aeroplane trails, and the wall of soaring white peaks dazzles against it. The first wisps of smoke drift from chimneys here and there, suddenly blooming into unruly billows as the kindling takes, before the fires begin to blaze with more heat and the smoke-swirls fade to a faint haze. The sun pulls itself above the ridge lineand I hear the calling of birds and the faint clank of yak bells as the animals rouse themselves and begin to graze. I lift my face to the warmth of the new day, basking in the golden light.
A woman emerges from her house, tying on her apron, and then brushes her long black hair, twisting it into a braid and pinning it at the nape of her neck. She pulls the loosened strands from the brush, casting them away for the birds to use as nesting material, then shakes out a blanket and spreads it over a wall to air in the sun, before disappearing back behind the cloth curtain covering the doorway of her house. A man passes just below me on the path, carrying a bamboo basket of fodder on his back as he goes to feed his yaks, gently nudging aside the babies who crowd round him with curiosity as he approaches. Then the first sounds of Dipa busying herself with her pots and pans in the teahouse kitchen reach my ears, and I climb down from the wall and go to see if I can lend a hand with the breakfast.
The Wi-Fi is working well today and I’m able to send my email to Mum with what Themi has told me so far of Violet’s life here. I push my luck, sending a few photos of the village as well, but am expecting no response as it must be the middle of the night in Scotland. So I almost jump out of my skin when my phone actually rings with an incoming call.
‘Mum!’ I say, excited to hear her voice again. ‘What are you doing up at this time? Sorry if I woke you.’ But the smile on my face quickly fades at her quavering words.
‘Daisy, my darling, it’s so good to hear you. But we’re worried about Davy. He’s caught the virus. He’s been feeling bad for a few days, but then yesterday he was really struggling to breathe. We managed to get an ambulance to come, and they’ve got him in the hospital now. I’m not allowed to go and see him, though.’ Her voice breaks with worry and exhaustion and she starts to cry.
‘Mum ... it’s okay.’ But it’s not okay and my words sound hollow, even to my own ears.
