Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

by Helen Simonson

  Old Mr. Tewkesbury, Mortimer’s father-in-law, had represented, if not a different breed entirely, then at least a happily mellowed and more intelligent version of the square’s inhabitants. The Tewkesburys had been lawyers here since before the turn of the century and had been the Pettigrew family lawyers for nearly as long. They had grown in stature along the way by performing admirably in their work and declining all opportunities at self-aggrandizement. Father, son, and grandson had quietly given of their time to civic duties (free legal advice to the town council being just one of their causes) but had resisted all calls to stand for office, lead a committee, or appear in the paper. As a boy, he remembered, he had been impressed by Tewkesbury’s unhurried speech, sober clothes, and heavy silver fob watch.

  He had been puzzled, as had Bertie, when Tewkesbury took in Mortimer Teale as an associate. Teale had come out of nowhere to attach himself to the Tewkesbury daughter and only heir, Elizabeth. People said he was from London, which they mentioned with a twist of the lips as if London were the back alleys of Calcutta or some notorious penal colony, like Australia. Mortimer favored loud ties, liked his food to the point of fussiness, and bowed and scraped in front of clients in a way that gave the Major his only opportunity, outside of the Sunday Times crossword, to use the word “oleaginous.” He had married Elizabeth, and had squatted like a well-fed cuckoo in the midst of the Tewkesbury clan until he had managed to bury old Tewkesbury. Rumor was that he had added his name to the brass doorplate while the family was at the funeral.

  The Major had considered finding himself a new solicitor but had not wanted to break with his own family’s tradition. In more honest moments, he admitted to himself that he had not wanted to face telling Mortimer. Instead, he had reminded himself that Mortimer had done nothing but excellent work, which was true, and that it was uncharitable to dislike a man for wearing purple spotted pocket squares and having sweaty palms.

  “Ah, Major, so nice to see you even under such sad, sad conditions,” said Mortimer, advancing across the deep green office carpet to clasp the Major’s hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “Your brother was a fine, fine man and it was a privilege to call him a friend.” Mortimer threw a glance at the wall, where pictures of himself with various local officials and minor dignitaries were hung in gilded frames. “I was telling Marjorie only yesterday that he was a man who could have achieved much prominence if he had had the inclination.”

  “My brother shared Mr. Tewkesbury’s dislike of local politics,” said the Major.

  “Quite right,” said Mortimer, settling back down at his mahogany desk and waving at a club chair. “It’s an appalling mess. I keep telling Elizabeth I would resign completely if they would let me.” The Major said nothing. “Well, let’s get this started, shall we?” He took a thin cream-colored file from a desk drawer and slid it across the vast expanse between them. As he reached, his plump wrists strained out of his stiff white cuffs and his jacket wrinkled up about his shoulders. He opened the file with his thick fingertips and turned it around to face the Major. Light finger marks now decorated the plain typed page headed “Last Will and Testament of Robert Carroll Pettigrew.”

  “As you know, Bertie has named you the executor of this will. If you are willing to serve in this capacity, I will have some forms for you to sign. As executor, you will have a couple of charitable bequests and small investment accounts to oversee. Nothing too arduous. As executor you are traditionally entitled to a small compensation, expenses and so forth, but you may wish to waive that …”

  “I’ll just read it, then, shall I?” said the Major.

  “Of course, of course. Just take your time.” Mortimer sat back and laced his hands across his bulging waistcoat as if preparing to take a nap, but his eyes remained sharply focused across the desk. The Major stood up.

  “I’ll just take it over here and get some light on it,” he said. It was only a matter of feet to the large window overlooking the square, but the few paces created some imagined privacy.

  Bertie’s will was only a page and a half, with plenty of white space between the lines. His possessions were transferred to his loving wife and he asked his brother to be his executor in order to relieve her of administrative burdens during a difficult time. There was a small investment account set up for Gregory and any other grandchildren who might arrive later. There were also bequests to three charities: their old prep school got a thousand pounds and both Bertie’s church and the parish church of St. Mary’s C of E at Edgecombe St. Mary received two thousand. The Major chuckled to see Bertie, who had long ago acceded to Marjorie and become an active Presbyterian, hedging his bets with the Almighty. When he finished reading, the Major went back and read the will again, to make sure he hadn’t missed a paragraph. Then he just pretended to be reading, in order to give himself time to quell his confusion.

  The will made no mention of any bequests of personal items, to anyone, offering only a single line: “My wife may dispose of any and all personal effects as she deems fit. She knows my wishes in these matters.” This bluntness was out of keeping with the rest of the document; in its few words, the Major sensed both his brother’s capitulation to his wife and a coded apology to himself. “She knows my wishes,” he read again.

  “Ah, tea; thank you, Mary.” Mortimer broke his careful silence as the thin girl who worked as secretary came in with a small gilt tray containing two cups of tea in bone china mugs and a plate with two dry biscuits. “Is the milk fresh?” he fussed, his voice signaling that it was high time Pettigrew finished his reading and got down to business. The Major turned reluctantly from the window.

  “Are there not a couple of omissions?” he enquired at last.

  “I think you’ll find all the required language is there,” said Mortimer. The Major could see he had no intention of helping smooth over the awkwardness of asking about the Major’s own interests.

  “As you know, there is the matter of my father’s sporting guns,” he said. He could feel his face flushing with heat, but he was determined to be direct. “It was understood by all, of course, that the guns were to be reunited upon the death of either one of us.”

  “Ah,” said Mortimer slowly.

  “I was under the impression that Bertie’s will would contain explicit directions in this matter—as my own will does.” He stared hard. Mortimer put down his tea with care and pressed his fingertips together. He sighed.

  “As you can see,” he said, “no such provision was included. I did urge Bertie to be as specific as possible about any items of value that he might wish to pass on …” His voice trailed off.

  “Those guns were passed on to us in trust by my father,” the Major said, drawing himself up as far as possible. “It was his dying wish that we share in them during our lifetimes and that we reunite them to pass on down the generations. You know this as well as I.”

  “Yes, that has always been my understanding,” agreed Mortimer. “However, since your father gave you the guns in person, during his illness, there was no such direction in his will and therefore no obligation …”

  “But I’m sure Bertie put it in his will,” he said, annoyed to find a begging tone creeping into his voice. Mortimer did not answer at once. He gazed up at the brass chandelier as if searching for the exact parsing of his next words.

  “I can say very little,” he finally offered. “Let us say only that, in the broadest sense possible, the leaving of any specific assets away from a spouse may become an issue of loyalty for some couples.” He grimaced in conspiratorial fashion and the Major caught the faintest echo of Marjorie’s shrill voice ringing off the plain paneling of the office.

  “My sister-in-law …?” he began. Mortimer held up a palm to stop him.

  “I cannot make any comment on client discussions or enter into any suppositions, however hypothetical,” he said. “I can only say how sorry it makes me when my hands are so tied that I cannot even warn a good client that he should perhaps consider a
ltering his own will.”

  “Everyone knows that gun is mine,” said the Major. He was hurt and angry to the point of feeling faint. “It should have been mine in the first place, you know—oldest son and all that. Not that I ever begrudged Bertie his share, only he never was a shooting man.”

  “Well, I think you should have a friendly chat with Marjorie about it,” said Mortimer. “I’m sure she would want to work out something. Perhaps we should hold off finalizing the executor position until this is sorted out?”

  “I know my duty,” said the Major. “I will do as my brother asked of me regardless of this matter.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Mortimer. “Only it might be considered a conflict of interest were you to intend any claim against the estate.”

  “You mean go to court?” said the Major. “I wouldn’t dream of dragging the Pettigrew name so low.”

  “I never thought you would,” said Mortimer. “It would have been terribly awkward having to represent one side of the family against the other. Not at all in the Tewkesbury and Teale tradition.” He smiled, and the Major had the suspicion that Mortimer would love to represent Marjorie against him and would use every scrap of prior knowledge about the family to win.

  “It is unthinkable,” he said.

  “Well, that’s settled, then,” said Mortimer. “Just have a chat with Marjorie, will you? That way, we know there’s no conflict of interest on your part. I must get the probate filed soon, so if you could get back to me …”

  “And if she doesn’t agree to give me the gun?” said the Major.

  “Then, in the interest of expediting probate, I would advise you to decline the executor position.”

  “I can’t do that,” said the Major. “It’s my duty to Bertie.”

  “I know, I know,” said Mortimer. “You and I are men of duty, men of honor. But we live in a different world today, my dear Major, and I would be remiss as a solicitor if I did not then advise Marjorie to challenge your fitness to serve.” In an attempt to sound delicate, he squeezed the words out of his mouth like the last of the toothpaste from the tube. His face wore the glazed expression of someone calculating how much of a smile to deliver. “We need to avoid even the semblance of any dishonorable intentions. There are liability issues, you understand?”

  “Apparently, I understand nothing,” said the Major.

  “Just talk to Marjorie and call me as soon as you can,” said Mortimer, rising from his chair and holding out his hand. The Major also stood up. He wished he had worn a suit now, instead of this ridiculous black sweater. It would have been more difficult for Mortimer to dismiss him like a schoolboy.

  “This should not have happened this way,” said the Major. “The Tewkesbury firm has represented my family’s interests for generations….”

  “And it is our privilege to do so,” said Mortimer, as if the Major had complimented him. “We may have to be a bit more bound by the rule book these days, but you can be sure that Tewkesbury and Teale will always try to do their best for you.” The Major thought that perhaps after this was all settled he would do as he should have done in the first place and find himself another solicitor.

  Stepping out of the office into the square he was momentarily blinded. The fog had been pushed back from the sea, and the stucco fronts of the villas were drying to pale tones in the afternoon sunshine. He felt the sudden warmth relax his face. He breathed in and the salt water in the air seemed to wash away the smell of furniture wax and avarice that was Mortimer Teale’s office.

  Chapter 5

  To tell Mortimer that he had never begrudged Bertie the gun had been a damn lie. Sitting on the seafront, his back pressed against the wooden slats of a park bench, the Major turned his face up to the sun. The sweater absorbed heat as efficiently as a black plastic bin liner, and it was pleasant to sit tucked away in the lee of the fishermen’s black-tarred net-drying sheds, listening to the waves breaking themselves to pieces on the shingle.

  There was a generous spirit about nature, he thought. The sun gave its heat and light for free. His spirit by contrast was mean, like a slug shriveling on the bricks at midday. Here he was, alive and enjoying the autumn sunshine, while Bertie was dead. And yet even now he couldn’t give up the niggling annoyance he had felt all these years that Bertie had been given that gun. Nor could he shake the unworthy thought that Bertie knew and was now paying him back for his resentment.

  It had been a midsummer day when his mother called him and Bertie into the dining room, where their father lay wasting away from emphysema in his rented hospital bed. The roses were very lush that year, and perfume from the nodding heads of an old pink damask came in at the open French doors. The carved sideboard still displayed his grandmother’s silver soup tureen and candlesticks, but an oxygen pump took up half the surface. He was still angry at his mother for letting the doctor dictate that his father was too frail to sit up in his wheelchair anymore. Surely there could be only good in wheeling him out to the sunny, sheltered corner of wall on the small terrace overlooking the garden? What did it matter anyway, if his father caught a chill or got tired? Though they cheerfully congratulated his father every day on how well he was doing, outside the sickroom no one pretended that these were anything other than the last days.

  The Major was a second lieutenant by then, one year out of officer training, and he had been granted ten days’ special leave from his base. The time had seemed to flow slowly, a quiet eternity of whispers in the dining room and thick sandwiches in the kitchen. As his father, who had sometimes failed to convey warmth but had taught him duty and honor, wheezed through the end of his life, the Major tried not to give in to the emotion that sometimes threatened him. His mother and Bertie often crept away to their rooms to wet pillows with their tears, but he preferred to read aloud at his father’s bedside or help the private nurse in turning his emaciated body. His father, who was not as addled by his disease as everyone assumed, recognized the end. He sent for his two sons and his prized pair of Churchills.

  “I want you to have these,” he said. He opened the brass lock and pushed back the well-oiled lid. The guns gleamed in their red velvet beds; the finely chased engraving on the silver action bore no tarnish, no smudge.

  “You don’t have to do this now, Father,” he said. But he had been eager; perhaps he had even stepped forward, half-obscuring his younger brother.

  “I wish them to go on down through the family,” said his father, looking with anxious eyes. “Yet how could I possibly choose between my two boys and say one of you should have them?” He looked to their mother, who took his hand and patted it gently.

  “These guns mean so much to your father,” she said at last. “We want you to each have one, to keep his memory.”

  “Given to me by the Maharajah from his own hand,” whispered their father. It was an old story so rubbed with retelling that the edges were blurry. A moment of bravery; an Indian prince honorable enough to reward a British officer’s courageous service in the hours when all around were howling for Britain’s eviction. It was his father’s brush with greatness. The old tray of medals and the uniforms might desiccate in the attic, but the guns were always kept oiled and ready.

  “But to break up a pair, Father?” He could not help blurting out the question, though he read its shallowness in his mother’s blanched face.

  “You can leave them to each other, to be passed along as a pair to the next generation—keep it in the Pettigrew name, of course.” It was the only act of cowardice he had ever seen from his father.

  The guns were not listed as part of the estate, which was passed to his mother for her lifetime use and then to him, as the eldest son. Bertie was provided for out of small family trusts. By the time their mother died some twenty years later, the trusts had eroded to an embarrassing low. However, the house was decrepit too. There was rot in some of the seventeenth-century beams, its traditional Sussex brick-and-tile-hung exterior needed extensive repairs, and their mother owed the local
council money. The house still looked substantial and genteel among the smaller thatched cottages in the lane, but it was more of a liability than a grand inheritance, as he had told Bertie. He had offered his brother most of their mother’s jewelry as a gesture. He had also tried to buy his brother out of the gun, both then and several other times over the years when Bertie had seemed hard up. His younger brother had always declined his generous offers.

  A gull’s guttural scream jolted the Major. It was waddling along the concrete path, wings spread wide, trying to bully a pigeon away from a hunk of bread roll. The pigeon tried to pick up the bread and flap aside, but the roll was too large. The Major stamped his foot. The gull looked at him with disdain and flapped backward a few feet, while the pigeon, without so much as a glance of gratitude, scooted its bread down the path like a tiddlywink.

  The Major sighed. He was a man who always tried to do his duty without regard for gratitude or even acknowledgment. Surely he could not have inspired resentment from Bertie all these years?

  At no time had the Major allowed himself to feel guilty about being the eldest son. Of course the order in which one was born was random, but so was the fact that he had not been born into a family with a title and vast estates. He had never felt animosity toward those who were born into great social position. Nancy had argued with him about it when they first met. It was the sixties, and she was young and thought love meant living on baked beans and the moral directives of folk music. He had explained to her, very patiently, that keeping one’s name and estate going was an act of love.