Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

by Helen Simonson

  “I get all my ordinary food and stuff delivered in London,” said Roger. “A girl comes and puts it all away in the right place. I mean, I don’t mind popping in the gourmet store for a browse around the aged Gouda, but who wants to waste their time buying cereal and washing-up liquid?”

  “How do you think other people manage?” said the Major.

  “They spend their whole lives toddling down the shops with a little string bag, I expect,” said Roger. “Sandy took care of it and I haven’t had time to get a system in place, that’s all.” He took a piece of toast and the Major poured him tea with no milk and cut up a small, slightly withered orange. “I don’t suppose you could pick me up a few things, say on a Friday?” he added.

  “No, I couldn’t,” said the Major. “My string bag is quite at capacity as it is.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Roger. “Do I have any aspirin in the cupboard?”

  The Major, who had inventoried the cupboards and swept all the dirty dishes into the dishwasher before Roger had rinsed off his soap, produced a large bottle of aspirin and rinsed a glass for water.

  “Thanks, Dad,” said Roger. “What are you up for so early for, anyway?”

  The Major explained, in as vague a way as possible, that he needed to leave earlier on Thursday in order to visit a friend on the way to Scotland and that he would need Roger to be up with the dawn.

  “Not a problem,” said Roger.

  “Considering the difficulty I just had in rousting you from your slumbers at eleven o’clock,” said the Major, “I’ll need some more reassurance.”

  “It’s not a problem because I’m not going to drive up with you,” said Roger. “Gertrude’s been asked to go up early and she wants me to go with her.”

  “You’re going with Gertrude?” repeated the Major.

  “You’ll be happy to know I ordered a whole picnic for the trip,” said Roger. “I’m going to whip out my hamper of cold mini pasties and duck confit on soft rolls with sour cherry chutney and seal the deal with a split of chilled champagne.” He rubbed his hands with anticipatory glee. “Nothing like a nice long road trip to advance romantic activities.”

  “But you asked to ride up with me,” said the Major. “I was counting on two drivers so we wouldn’t have to stop.”

  “You never did like to stop anywhere,” said Roger. “I remember that trip to Cornwall when I was eight. You wouldn’t stop for the bathroom until Stonehenge. I really enjoyed the searing pain of that bladder infection.”

  “You always remember things out of proportion,” said the Major. “It cleared right up with the antibiotics, didn’t it? And besides, we bought you a rabbit.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll take Gertrude and a duck leg and avoid kidney stones,” said Roger.

  “Don’t you think it’s unconscionably soon to be pursuing another woman?” asked the Major. “Sandy only just left.”

  “She made her choice,” said Roger. The Major recognized, with a rueful smile, that his son’s words sounded familiar. “I’m not going to let the grass grow,” he added. “Mark to market and move on, as we say about a bad deal.”

  “Sometimes it’s a mistake to let them go, my boy,” said the Major. “Sometimes you have to go after them.”

  “Not this time, Dad,” said Roger. He looked at his father with some hesitation and then lowered his head, and the Major understood that his son did not believe he welcomed awkward confidences.

  “I would like to know what happened,” he said, turning away to wash dishes. It had always been easier to get Roger to talk when they were driving in the car or engaged in some other activity that did not require eye contact. “I grew to quite like her.”

  “I screwed it all up and I didn’t even know it,” said Roger. “I thought we’d agreed on everything. How was I supposed to know what she wanted if she didn’t know herself until it was too late?”

  “What did she want?”

  “I think she wanted to get married, but she didn’t say.” Roger munched on his toast. “And now it’s too late?”

  When Roger spoke again, his usual bravado was replaced with a note of seriousness. “We had a little mishap. No big deal. We agreed on how to handle it.” He turned back to the Major. “I went with her to the clinic and everything. I did everything you’re supposed to do.”

  “A clinic?” The Major could not bring himself to ask more plainly.

  “A woman’s clinic,” said Roger. “Don’t make a face like that. It’s absolutely acceptable these days—woman’s right to choose and all that. It’s what she wanted.” He paused and then amended his language. “Well, we talked about it and she agreed. I mean, I told her it was the responsible thing to do at this stage on our careers.”

  “When was this?” asked the Major.

  “We found out right before the dance,” said Roger. “Took care of it before we came down for Christmas, and she never told me she didn’t want to go through with it—as if I’m supposed to have magic powers of detection, like some psychic Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I think you’re confusing two concepts,” said the Major, distracted by the metaphors.

  “I wasn’t confused,” said Roger. “I made a plan and I stuck to it and everything seemed fine.”

  “Or so you thought,” said the Major.

  “She never said a word,” said Roger. “Maybe she was a bit quiet sometimes, but I couldn’t be expected to know what she was thinking.”

  “You are not the first man to miss a woman’s more subtle communication,” said the Major. “They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns.”

  “Exactly, I think,” said Roger, and then he added, “I asked her to marry me, you know? On Christmas Eve, before the party at Dagenham’s. I felt bad about the whole thing and I was prepared to move our plans along.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but a crack in his voice betrayed him and the Major was suddenly flooded with feeling and had to dry his hands on a towel. “I mean, I told her maybe we could even try again next year, if I got promoted through this Ferguson deal.” He sighed and his eyes assumed a dreamy look that might have been emotion. “Maybe a boy first, not that you can really control these things. A boy called Toby and then a girl—I like Laura, or maybe Bodwin—and I told her we could use the little bedroom here as a nursery and then maybe build on a playroom, like in a conservatory.” He looked with confusion at the Major. “She slapped me.”

  “Oh, Roger,” said the Major. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “I ask her to marry me and she acts like I’ve asked her to eat human flesh or something. I’m laying out my hopes and plans and she’s screaming at me that I’m so shallow a minnow would drown in my depths. I mean, what does that even mean?”

  The Major wished he had known, coming upon Sandy in the darkened house that night. He wished he had said something at the dance, when Mrs. Ali thought Sandy seemed troubled. They might have really done something then. He wondered whether it was his fault Roger had the perceptiveness of concrete.

  “I think perhaps your timing was not sensitive, Roger,” said the Major quietly. He felt, in the area of his heart, a slow constriction of sorrow for his son and wondered where or when he had failed, or forgotten, to teach this boy compassion.

  “Anyway, who needs that kind of drama,” said Roger. “I’ve had plenty of time to consider and now I’m thinking seriously about making a go of things with Gertrude.” He looked more cheerful. “There’s still a lot of mileage in leveraging an old country name like hers, and she’s always adored me. Under the right conditions, I might be prepared to make her very happy.”

  “You can’t negotiate love like a commercial transaction,” said the Major, appalled.

  “That’s true,” said Roger. He seemed perfectly happy again and rummaged in the bag for an apple. “Love is like a big fat bonus that you hope kicks in after you negotiate the rest of the term sheet.”

  “There is no poetry in your soul, Roger,” said t
he Major.

  “How about ‘Roses are red, / violets are blue, / Sandy is gone, / Gertrude will do’?” suggested Roger.

  “It really won’t do, Roger,” said the Major. “If you don’t feel any real spark of passion for Gertrude, don’t shackle yourselves together. You’ll only be dooming both of you to a life of loneliness.” He smiled wryly to hear himself repeating Grace’s words as his own. Here he was dispensing them as advice when he had only just taken them in as revelation. So, he thought, do all men steal and display the shiny jackdaw treasure of other people’s ideas.

  As the Major was preparing to leave, Roger suddenly asked him, “Where are you diving off to, anyway? Who’s this friend you’re off to visit?”

  “Just someone who relocated up north. Grace wanted me to check in on her.”

  “It’s that woman again,” said Roger, narrowing his eyes. “The one with the fanatic nephew.”

  “Her name is Jasmina Ali,” replied the Major. “Please show enough respect to remember her name.”

  “What are you doing, Dad?” said Roger. “Wasn’t the golf club fiasco enough to warn you off? She’s a bad idea.”

  “Chimpanzees writing poetry is a bad idea,” said the Major. “Receiving romantic advice from you is also a bad, if not horrendous, idea. Spending an hour dropping in on an old friend is a good idea and also none of your business.”

  “Old friend, my arse,” said Roger. “I saw how you looked at her at the dance. Everyone could see you were ready to make a fool of yourself.”

  “And ‘everyone’ disapproved, of course,” said the Major. “No doubt because she is a woman of color.”

  “Not at all,” said Roger. “As the club secretary mentioned to me in private, it’s not remotely a question of color but merely that the club doesn’t currently have any members who are in trade.”

  “The club and its members can go to hell,” said the Major, spluttering in anger. “I’ll be glad to watch them throw me out.”

  “My God, you’re in love with her.”

  The Major’s immediate reaction was to continue to deny it. While he tried to find some intermediate response, something that would express his intention without exposing him to ridicule, Roger said, “What on earth do you hope to accomplish?” The Major felt a rage unlike anything he had felt toward his son before and he was provoked into honesty.

  “Unlike you, who must do a cost-benefit analysis of every human interaction,” he said, “I have no idea what I hope to accomplish. I only know that I must try to see her. That’s what love is about, Roger. It’s when a woman drives all lucid thought from your head; when you are unable to contrive romantic stratagems, and the usual manipulations fail you; when all your carefully laid plans have no meaning and all you can do is stand mute in her presence. You hope she takes pity on you and drops a few words of kindness into the vacuum of your mind.”

  “Pigs’ll fly before we see you at a loss for words,” said Roger, rolling his eyes.

  “Your mother rendered me silent the first time we met. Took the witty repartee right out of my mouth and left me gaping like a fool.”

  The Major remembered her thin blue dress against an intense green summer lawn and the evening sun catching at the edges of her hair. She held her sandals in one hand and a small cup of punch in the other and she was screwing up her lips against the sweet stickiness of the foul drink. He was so busy staring that he lost his way in the middle of a complicated anecdote and had to blush at the scathing guffaws of his friends, who had been depending on him for the punch line. She had pushed into the circle and asked him directly, “Is there something to drink other than this melted-lolly stuff?” It had sounded like poetry in his ear and he had steered her away to the host’s pantry and unearthed a bottle of Scotch and let her do all the talking while he tried not to gaze at her dress skimming the soft pyramids of her breasts like a scarf forever falling from a marble-sculpted wood nymph.

  “What would Mother think about you chasing all over England after some shopgirl?” asked Roger.

  “If you say ‘shopgirl’ one more time, I shall punch you,” said the Major.

  “But what if you marry her and she outlives you?” Roger asked. “What happens if she won’t give up the house and—Well, after all the fuss you made about the Churchills, I don’t see how you can just hand everything over to a complete stranger.”

  “Ah, so it isn’t a question of loyalty as much as of patrimony,” said the Major.

  “It’s not the money,” said Roger indignantly. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “These things are never neat, Roger,” said the Major. “And speaking of your mother, you were there when she begged me not to remain alone if I found someone to care for.”

  “She was dying,” said Roger. “She begged you to marry again and you swore you wouldn’t. Personally, I was mad that we wasted so much valuable time on deathbed promises both of you knew were untenable.”

  “Your mother was the most generous of women,” the Major said. “She meant what she said.” They were silent for a moment and the Major wondered whether Roger was also smelling again the carbolic and the roses on the bedside table and seeing the greenish light of the hospital room and Nancy’s face, grown as thin and beautiful as a painted medieval saint, with only her eyes still burning with life. He had struggled in those last hours, as had she, to find words that were not the merest of platitudes. Words had failed him then. In the awful face of death, which seemed so near and yet so impossible, he had choked on speech as if his mouth were full of dry hay. Poems and quotations, which he had remembered using to soothe others on those useless condolence notes and in the occasional eulogy, seemed specious and an exercise of his own vanity. He could only squeeze his wife’s brittle hand while the useless pleadings of Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night …,” beat in his head like a drum.

  “Are you all right, Dad? I didn’t mean to be harsh,” said Roger, bringing him blinking to his senses. He focused his eyes and braced one hand on the back of Roger’s couch.

  “Your mother is gone, Roger,” the Major said. “Your uncle Bertie is gone. I don’t think I should waste any more time.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Dad,” said Roger. He seemed to think for a moment, which the Major found unusual, and then he came around the couch and held out his hand. “Look, I wish you luck with your lady friend,” he said. “Now, how about you wish me luck at Ferguson’s shoot? You know how much this Enclave deal means to me.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” said the Major, shaking hands. “It means a lot to me. I do wish you luck, son. I’ll do whatever I can to support you up there.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” said Roger. “Since I’m going up early, there may be some wildfowling, Gertrude says. So how about letting me take up the Churchills?”

  As the Major drove away from Roger’s cottage, leaving his gun box with his delighted son, he had a sinking feeling that he had been manipulated once again. In his mind images played in a tiresome loop. Roger crouched in a duck boat in the foggy dawn. Roger rising to fire at a soaring flock of mallards. Roger toppling backward over the metal bench into the scuppers. Roger dropping a Churchill, with the smallest of splashes, into the fathomless waters of the loch.

  Chapter 21

  Would Don Quixote or Sir Galahad have been able to maintain his chivalrous ardor for the romantic quest, wondered the Major, if he had been forced to crawl bumper-to-bumper through an endless landscape of traffic cones, belching lorries, and sterile motorway service areas? He looked to their shining examples as he endured the ugly concrete girdle of London’s M25, reminding himself that at least it kept the heaving flabby suburbs from spilling out and suffocating what was left of the countryside. He tried not to lose courage as the south fell away and the motorways became one speeding blur of giant lorries, all racing north as if they had a thousand miles to cover and donated organs in the back instead of cargoes of cold tea, frozen chickens, and appliances.
In the fluorescent lighting and faint bleach smell of an anonymous service area somewhere in the Midlands, where he was just another gray-haired old man with a plastic tray, his doubts threatened to overwhelm him.

  He hadn’t let anyone know he was coming. What if Mrs. Ali wasn’t even home? The siren call of Scotland with the promised castle banquet and shooting in the heather almost turned his head, but as he put his thumb too vigorously through the cover of a little plastic tub and sprayed his jacket with milk, it came to him that it was precisely Mrs. Ali who made the world a little less anonymous. She made him a little less anonymous. He gulped his tea—not difficult, as it was little better than tepid—and hurried out to get back on the road.

  He felt self-conscious cruising the streets looking for the right road and house number from the letter Grace had given him. Mrs. Ali’s neat handwriting was crumpled under his fingers on the steering wheel as he checked the thin page again and again against the streets outside. The people on the pavements were now mostly dark-skinned women with children and babies in pushchairs. Some wore the headscarf arrangement of observant Muslims. Some sported the short puffy jackets and gold earrings fashionable among the universal young. He thought he saw a few heads turn to watch him as he passed a knot of young men huddled around the raised bonnet of a car. He overshot the house but was too embarrassed to drive around the block again. Instead, he slipped into an open parking space.

  The long street was anchored at one end by a couple of large Victorian mansions, now crumbling and forlorn. At the other end a brick wall indicated the perimeter of a redbrick housing estate filled with six-story blocks of flats and narrow terraced houses. Metal window frames and blank front doors in one of three colors suggested the limits, artistic and budgetary, of the local housing authority’s imagination. Between these representatives of the high and low points of the industrial age was the long row of semi-detached houses built for a prewar middle class of rising aspirations: three bedrooms, two parlors, and indoor plumbing, all serviced by a “daily” maid.