An exclusive seasonal short story: Pashmina by Ronald Frame

Published on Friday 18 December 2009 19:14

THE box, in its silver and gold wrapping paper, lay under the Christmas tree, tantalising Tricia.

On Christmas morning, when the family unwrapped their presents, she kept that one for last.

She carefully removed the paper, prolonging the anticipation. She recognised the box at once, which shop in Edinburgh it had come from.

"Goodness, Douglas! I hope we can afford this!"

She eased up the lid. Inside were several layers of white tissue paper.

She breathed in the expensive smell of the shop, which she tried to visit whenever she was in Edinburgh but only to browse round.

She prised back the sheets of paper.

With her fingertips she felt the softness of the softest wool. The finest cashmere.

She saw what it was.

"A pashmina!"

But at the same instant her excitement faded.

She also saw the colour that it was.

Green.

She hardly ever wore green. Her friends long ago used to tell her that it didn't suit her.

She glanced up. Douglas's eyes were also narrowing as he looked at the emerald-bright pashmina she held in her hands. Had he forgotten she didn't wear green? Or had he subconsciously thought he would fill a gap in her wardrobe, where green should have been?

"This is a first," she said to him, thinking as she spoke it was a dud remark to make. She could have been talking about the luxurious pashmina or, equally, about its colour.

"Do you like it?" Douglas asked her. After the initial look of something like puzzlement, he was smiling now. Maybe in the shop it had looked less green, a meeker green. This green as she looked closer was quite – well, glaring. How did you describe it? Emerald, or chartreuse? Lime? It was all of these, as she lifted the box and daylight played across the goats' hair. It was an exotic, scintillating green that belonged to the tail feathers of some proud strutting peacock.

Tricia flaffed about for something to say.

"Well, this'll brighten me up on dark days, won't it!"

She was trying to think what she could wear it with. The green certainly had presence. But she was a mauve and taupe person, she liked soft colours that blended discreetly with one another. Carnbeg colours. Softer tones, so shop assistants told her, flattered her complexion.

She unfolded the pashmina and wrapped it round her shoulders. She concentrated on the luxuriant feel of the wool, the generous size, the sense of plenty but also the featherlight weight. It was beautifully warm.

"Aren't I lucky?" she said.

She certainly would have been, she thought, if only the stole had been a different colour.

Maybe she needed a bit of a shake-up, though? Perhaps she had got stuck in a rut with those familiar safe colours?

But when she looked in the mirror, she did get a bit of a shock. She saw a confused expression on her face: like Douglas's puzzlement earlier, seeing what came out of the nest of tissue paper.

I'll get used to it, Tricia told herself. Sometimes you have to live with something before you adjust.

But she could tell, just by glancing at her reflection, that it would require a great deal of adjusting. Her face looked pale and gaunt against the brightness of the green, and a bit more lined too. She would need to rethink what she put on her face. If she did that, she would be fighting against the pashmina – and against her own better judgment. Any green looked gaudy on her, that was the big problem.

And somehow in the mirror the pashmina's colour looked more green!

Could she suggest to Douglas that she took it back? ("My husband didn't realise when he bought this …") Would the shop exchange it? If it hadn't been out of its box, if the seal hadn't been broken, then they might well have done.

She also didn't want to hurt Douglas's feelings. Presumably he had done his best for her. If he had consulted her beforehand, then it wouldn't have been a surprise.

Did a present need to be a surprise? Hmm.

This was the first time he had got it wrong. Certainly the girls had been with him on the other occasions, to tell him what they thought Mum would like or what would suit her. Christmas shopping this year he had been on his own, down in Edinburgh for one of his business meetings. Maybe there hadn't been very much time for him to get along to the shop and then to make up his mind. There might have been a green pashmina in a window, or on display inside the shop: and because it had looked so effective there, under spotlights, he would have somehow failed to appreciate the over-the-topness of the colour when he was looking at it in his own home, being worn by his wife.

"It's lovely," Tricia said, meaning to convince herself as well, and planting a kiss on Douglas's cheek.

"As lovely as my new leather gloves and hat?"

"Of course it is."

She had always longed for a pashmina, without making a song and dance about it. Most women wanted one too. For months she had been eyeing a cheaper version (lavender) in a big store in Perth, rubbing her fingers on it every time she passed, and would always end up feeling selfish and thinking the money should be spent on necessities instead.

She'd get used to the colour, of course she would.

SHE had a try-out when some of Douglas's family came later in the day, and they went for a walk down into town and home again before they sat down to eat.

Wrapping herself up to the chin, she was as warm as toast. The colour – turned up a few tones in the December sunshine – got a little forgotten as she caught up on all the family news.

Next day, Boxing Day, it was the turn of her mother and her awkward brother to visit. Adam in typical fashion said "Oh, a pashmina" in that disapproving tone she knew to recognise, where others only heard an innocuous-sounding "Oh, a pashmina". Luxuries and fripperies he thought decadent, as did his bolshy friends, and Tricia wondered why on earth she had him to the house every festive season – she should have invited his ex, Gail, a nice girl who'd had the good sense to leave him and had got herself back among normal people again. As if to defy Adam she wore the pashmina, hoping its unashamed greenness hit him in the eye, when they took themselves out for the customary trek round the reservoir.

However, the real test for the pashmina – and her courage – would be when she went out on her own, without the chatter and vague air of combat in the air around her.

THIS happened on the 4th of January.

Her friend Caro had phoned her up, and suggested that if she was coming into Carnbeg they should meet up for coffee at the Hydro, in the hotel's new bistro.

Tricia hesitated. Douglas had told her a year ago that he'd had a to-do with the Hydro staff, and he'd been left in no doubt that he was persona non grata. Sometimes his temper did get the better of him, but when she asked him what had happened he didn't go into any detail. "Better that we all give the Hydro a very wide berth," he said; ever since then he hadn't returned – and nor had she. (The girls had slipped back to see friends who used the sports club, but Douglas hadn't been informed of that.)

"Do say you can come, Tricia, I'd love to see you and hear about your Christmas."

She said yes, knowing that Douglas would be off to Glasgow for his job, an early start to the year. He had split with his business partner 18 months before, and was still building things up, hence the overnights away. She never had got to the bottom of what happened with Murray Morton. At one time she and Douglas had seen so much of Murray and Fiona. Since the break-up of the business, the Mortons had moved away. That was ironic, given that it was Fiona who had first encouraged them to leave Perth for life in Carnbeg.

She told Douglas that she was seeing Caro, but not where they had chosen for their rendezvous. She saw him off from the front door, and then went and got ready. She decided against wearing the pashmina, but when she looked out and saw the trees moving in the wind she decided warmth was more important than how she felt she looked.

She was glad of it till the car heater got working. At the Hydro there was a walk uphill from the car park. Credit crunch or not, the place was still busy with festive socialising. She pulled the wrap up to her chin. She still hadn't got used to the colour, and wondered if she ever would.

Caro guessed that it was a Christmas present.

"I saw someone else wearing one when I came in," Caro told her.

"Not green!"

"No. Is this you turning over a new leaf, if you'll forgive the pun?"

"What pun is that?" Tricia asked.

"Leaf. Green."

"I don't think this shade of green is in nature's palette, is it?"

"Well, nature doesn't have a monopoly on nice colours."

Did Caro honestly think this design-studio number was a nice colour?

Tricia followed Caro to the bistro. It was attached to the hotel's new leisure development. Caro was thinking of joining as a member, and waiting to see if they reduced the entry fee.

"I feel it's a bit of an indulgence."

Tricia thought she could get very used to this lifestyle, though, and wished Duncan hadn't had his blow-up with the management.

They were talking when Caro suddenly stopped mid-sentence and nodded across the room.

"What is it?" Tricia asked, following her eyes.

"The woman in the pashmina I was telling you about."

Tricia sat staring.

It was Fiona Morton!

She suddenly remembered, that the Mortons had aunts living here, which was how they had got to know Carnbeg. Two older women appeared behind. Fiona had a strained look, as if she was forcing herself to be on her best behaviour with them.

Tricia drew her chair back, so that she was further out of Fiona's sight range but was still able to watch her.

"The staff know her," Caro was saying.

Caro was listening hard, fascinated for some reason.

"She was a member, she says, but she's had to give up. They've moved house."

Tricia didn't say anything. The fug in her head, left over from Hogmanay, suddenly cleared. It was revealing a truth to her.

Duncan hadn't wanted her to come to the Hydro. Why not? Because he hadn't wanted her to cross tracks with Fiona.

Caro was still listening to the conversation ten yards away, or lip-reading it.

"She says she misses it here. I'll bet."

Why hadn't Duncan wanted her to bump into Fiona?

"She's just popped in today because her aunts – "

Tricia nodded, only half-hearing. She was looking at the pashmina Fiona was wearing. She couldn't take her eyes off it. The colour was perfect: the softest and subtlest mauve.

"Of course," Caro touched Tricia's arm, to get her attention, "it doesn't suit her."

"What – what doesn't?"

"The colour of her wrap. It's all wrong for her."

"How do you know?"

'Well, just look at her bag.'

The bag came into view, from behind Fiona's slim hips and long legs.

It was a big leather hold-all. A very zingy shade of green.

"You could swap them, couldn't you?" Caro laughed. "Your pashmina and hers!"

Tricia wasn't laughing. She couldn't even smile.

She was remembering that look of puzzlement on Duncan's face as she lifted his present out of the tissue paper. A moment later he must have realised what he had done – as Tricia now understood also.

He had bought one pashmina for her, his wife, and he had bought another for the other woman he shared his life with. But somehow the two boxes had got mixed up, and each was wearing the other's pashmina.

Only, of course, that fact couldn't be acknowledged.

It was just at this point that a faint smile came to Tricia's lips. She was thinking of Fiona, obliged to wear mauve and knowing that wearing it must always remind Duncan of his wife.

Meanwhile Tricia was determined that she would learn to carry herself in green, she would force herself, just to embarrass and shame Duncan every time he looked at it. Wearing it to bed and in bed, and then for breakfast, and in the garden, in the car, she would dazzle him with greenness – until he came crawling back with mauve, a brand new pashmina in mauve, just to win himself a quiet life.

But no, it wasn't going to be that simple for him. From now on, Tricia decided, he would have her on his conscience. Day and night Douglas Hamilton wouldn't be allowed to forget the error of his ways.

He would realise that – entirely thanks to him – she had rearranged her shade-chart. And in the process she had surprised even herself.

Now she was a primary person, not pastel.

Very definitely.

She had coped with green. After emerald-chartreuse she quite fancied heading for scarlet.