Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel

by Helen Simonson

  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.

  “If we just keep dividing things up, each generation more people demanding their share of the goodies, it just all vanishes as if it never mattered.”

  “It’s about redistributing the wealth,” she had argued.

  “No, it’s about the Pettigrew name dying out; about forgetting my father and his father before him. It’s about the selfishness of the current generation destroying the remembrance of the past. No one understands stewardship anymore.”

  “You are so adorable when you’re being so damn conservative and uptight!” She laughed. She made him laugh too. She made him sneak off his base to see her. She made him wear improbable shirts and bright socks off duty. Once she called him from a police station after a student protest and he had to show up at the night sergeant’s desk in his full dress uniform. They let her go with just a lecture.

  After they were married, there were some years of heartache as children refused to gestate, but then Roger happened at the very last gasp of fertility, and at least, with only one child, there were no arguments over assets. In memory of Nancy’s ideas on generosity, he had dutifully added to his own will a nice little sum of cash for his niece, Jemima. He had also specified that Jemima should receive the second-best china service from his maternal grandmother. Bertie had often hinted that he liked those plates, but the Major had been doubtful of placing vintage Minton, however faded and crazed, in the care of Marjorie. She broke dishes so often that every dinner party at Bertie’s house was served on a different china pattern.

  Having an updated will and precise instructions was always a priority for the Major. As a military officer (in harm’s way—as he liked to put it), he had found it a great comfort to open his small iron strongbox, spread out the thick pages of his will, and read over the list of assets and distributions. It read like a list of achievements.

  He would just have to be very clear with Marjorie. She was not thinking straight right now. He would have to explain again the exact nature of his own father’s intention. He would have to make things clear to Roger as well. He had no intention of battling to reunite the pair of guns, only to have Roger sell them after his death.

  “Ah, there you are, Major,” said a voice. He sat upright and blinked in the strong light. It was Mrs. Ali, holding her large tote bag and a new library book. “I didn’t see you at the car park.”

  “Oh, is that the time?” said the Major, looking in horror at his watch. “I completely lost track. My dear lady, I am so horribly embarrassed to have kept you waiting.” Now that he had unconsciously achieved what he would never have dared to deliberately contrive, he was completely at a loss.

  “It is not a problem,” she said. “I knew you’d be along eventually and, as the day has turned out so unexpectedly nice, I thought I’d take a brief walk and maybe start my book.”

  “I will, of course, pay for the car park.”

  “It’s really not necessary.”

  “Then will you permit me to at least buy you a cup of tea?” he asked, so quickly that the words pushed and elbowed each other to get out of his mouth. She hesitated so he added: “Unless you’re in a rush to get home, which I quite understand.”

  “No, there is no rush,” she said. She looked left and right along the promenade. “Perhaps, if you think the weather will continue to hold, we could walk as far as the kiosk in the gardens?” she said. “If you feel up to it, of course.”

  “That would be lovely,” he said, though he had a suspicion that the kiosk served its tea in polystyrene cups with some kind of preserved creamer in those little tubs that were impossible to open.

  The promenade, when traversed from east to west as they were doing, formed a scrolling three-dimensional timeline of Hazelbourne-on-Sea’s history. The net-drying sheds and the fishing boats drawn up on the shingle, where the Major had been sitting, were part of the old town, which huddled around small cobbled alleys. Lopsided Tudor shops, their oak beams worn to fossil, contained dusty heaps of cheap merchandise.

  As one walked, the town grew more prosperous. In the middle, the Victorian pier’s copper roofs, white wooden walls, and curlicued wrought-iron structure sat out over the Channel like a big iced cake. Beyond the pier, the mansions and hotels became imposing. Their stone porticos and dark awnings hooded over long windows implied a certain disapproval of the transient activities going on within lushly carpeted interiors. Between hotels that each occupied a full block were open squares of villas or wide streets of sweeping townhouse façades. The Major thought it such a shame that the elegance was hopelessly marred these days by the serried ranks of cars, angle-parked this way and that, like dried herring in a crate.

  Beyond the appropriately named Grand Hotel, the town’s march through history was abruptly interrupted by the sudden swell of the chalk cliffs into a vast headland. The Major, who often walked the entire promenade, never failed to ponder how this might represent something about the hubris of human progress and the refusal of nature to knuckle under.

  Recently he had begun to worry that the walk and the hypothesis had become so inextricably linked that they looped through his mind like madness. He was quite unable to walk and think about the racing results, for example, or about repainting his living room. He tried to put it down to the fact that he had no one with whom he could discuss the idea. Perhaps, if they were at a loss for conversation over tea, he might bring it up with Mrs. Ali.

  Mrs. Ali walked with a comfortable stride. The Major shuffled his feet trying to fall in with her rhythm. He had forgotten how to let a woman dictate the pace.

  “Do you like to walk?” he asked.

  “Yes, I try to get out early three or four times a week,” she said. “I’m the crazy lady wandering the lanes in the dawn chorus.”

  “We all ought to join you,” he said. “Those birds perform a miracle every morning and the world ought to get up and listen.” He was often up at night, toward the later hours, pinned to his mattress by an insomnia that seemed equal parts wakefulness and death. He could feel his blood running in his veins, yet he could not seem to move a finger or toe. He would lie awake, eyes scratchy, watching the dim outline of the window for any sign of light. Before any hint of paleness, the birds would begin. First a few common chirpings (sparrows and such); then the warbles and peepings would become a waterfall of music, a choir sounding from the bushes and trees. The sound released his limbs to turn and stretch and expelled all sense of panic. He would look to the window, now pale with singing, and roll over into sleep.

  “All the same,” she said, “I probably should get a dog. No one thinks dog owners are crazy, even if they walk out in their pajamas.”

  “What book did you pick today?” he asked.

  “Kipling,” she replied. “It’s a children’s book, as the librarian took pains to inform me, but the stories are set in this area.” She showed him
a copy of Puck of Pook’s Hill, which the Major had read many times. “I only knew his Indian books, like Kim.”

  “I used to consider myself a bit of a Kipling enthusiast,” said the Major. “I’m afraid he’s rather an unfashionable choice these days, isn’t he?”

  “You mean not popular among us, the angry former natives?” she asked with an arch of one eyebrow.

  “No, of course not …” said the Major, not feeling equipped to respond to such a direct remark. His brain churned. For a moment he thought he saw Kipling, in a brown suit and bushy mustache, turning inland at the end of the promenade. He squinted ahead and prayed the conversation might wither from inattention.

  “I did give him up for many decades,” she said. “He seemed such a part of those who refuse to reconsider what the Empire meant. But as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy. It’s so hard to maintain that rigor of youth, isn’t it?”

  “I applaud your logic,” said the Major, swallowing any urge to defend the Empire his father had proudly served. “Personally, I have no patience with all this analyzing of writers’ politics. The man wrote some thirty-five books—let them analyze the prose.”

  “Besides, it will drive my nephew crazy just to have him in the house,” Mrs. Ali said with a slight smile.

  The Major was not sure whether to ask more about the nephew. He was extremely curious, but it did not seem his place to enquire directly. His knowledge about the families and lives of his village friends was acquired in bits and pieces. The information was strung like beads out of casual remarks, and he often lost the earlier information as more was added, so that he never acquired a complete picture. He knew, for example, that Alma and Alec Shaw had a daughter in South Africa, but he could never remember whether the husband was a plastic surgeon in Johannesburg or a plastics importer in Cape Town. He knew that the daughter had not been home since before Nancy’s death, but this information came with no explanation; it only resonated with an unspoken hurt.

  “Do you have other nephews and nieces?” he said. He worried that even this vague politeness seemed to echo with questions about why she had no children, and to suggest rudely that she must of course come from a large family.

  “There is only the one nephew. His parents, my husband’s brother and his wife, have three daughters and six granddaughters.”

  “Ah, so your nephew must be their golden boy?” said the Major.

  “He was my golden boy, too, when he was little. I’m afraid that Ahmed and I spoiled him terribly.” She hugged her book a little tighter to her chest and sighed. “We were not blessed with children of our own, and Abdul Wahid was the very image of my husband when he was small. He was a very smart boy, too, and sensitive. I thought he would be a poet one day.”

  “A poet?” said the Major. He tried to picture the angry young man writing verse.

  “My brother-in-law put a stop to such nonsense once Abdul Wahid was old enough to help in one of their shops. I suppose I was naïve. I wanted so much to share with him the world of books and of ideas and to pass on to him what I was given.”

  “A noble impulse,” said the Major. “But I taught English at a boarding school after the army and I can tell you it’s pretty much a lost cause, getting boys over ten to read. Most of them don’t own a single book, you know.”

  “I cannot imagine,” she said. “I was raised in a library of a thousand books.”

  “Really?” He did not mean to sound so doubtful, but he had never heard of grocers owning large libraries.

  “My father was an academic,” she said. “He came after Partition to teach applied mathematics. My mother always said she was allowed to bring two cooking pots and a picture of her parents. All the other trunks contained books. It was very important to my father that he try to read everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, literature, philosophy, science—a romantic quest, of course, but he did manage to read an astonishing amount.”

  “I try to manage a book a week or thereabouts,” said the Major. He was quite proud of his small collection, mostly leather editions picked up on his trips to London from the one or two good book dealers who were still in business around Charing Cross Road. “But I must confess that these days I spend most of my time rereading old favorites—Kipling, Johnson; there’s nothing to compare with the greats.”

  “I can’t believe you admire Samuel Johnson, Major,” she said, laughing. “He seems to have been sorely lacking in the personal grooming department and he was always so rude to that poor Boswell.”

  “Unfortunately, there is often an inverse correlation between genius and personal hygiene,” said the Major. “We would be sorely lacking if we threw out the greats with the bathwater of social niceties.”

  “If only they would take a bath once in a while,” she said. “You are right, of course, but I tell myself that it does not matter what one reads—favorite authors, particular themes—as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.” She stroked the library book’s yellowing plastic sleeve with a look that seemed sad.

  “But your father’s library?” he asked.

  “Gone. When he died, my uncles came from Pakistan to settle the estate. One day I came home from school and my mother and an aunt were washing all the empty shelves. My uncles had sold them by the foot. There was an odor of smoke in the air and when I ran to the window …” She paused and took a slow breath.

  Memories were like tomb paintings, thought the Major, the colors still vivid no matter how many layers of mud and sand time deposited. Scrape at them and they come up all red and blazing. She looked at him, her chin raised. “I can’t tell you the paralyzing feeling, the shame of watching my uncles burning paperbacks in the garden incinerator. I cried out to my mother to stop them, but she just bent her head and went on pouring soapy water onto the wood.” Mrs. Ali stopped and turned to look out over the sea. The waves flopped dirty foam onto the expanse of quilted brown sand that signaled low tide. The Major breathed in the sharp tang of stranded seaweed and wondered whether he should pat her on the back.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, I can’t believe I told you this,” she said, turning back, her hand rubbing a corner of her eye. “I apologize. I’m getting to be such a silly old woman these days.”

  “My dear Mrs. Ali, I would hardly refer to you as old,” he said. “You are in what I would call the very prime flowering of mature womanhood.” It was a little grandiose but he hoped to surprise a blush. Instead she laughed out loud at him.

  “I have never heard anyone try to trowel such a thick layer of flattery on the wrinkles and fat deposits of advanced middle age, Major,” she said. “I am fifty-eight years old and I think I have slipped beyond flowering. I can only hope now to dry out into one of those everlasting bouquets.”

  “Well, I have ten years on you,” he said. “I suppose that makes me a real fossil.”

  She laughed again, and the Major felt that there was no more important and fulfilling work than to make Mrs. Ali laugh. His own troubles seemed to recede as their steps took them beyond the ice cream stalls and ticket booths of the pier. Here they navigated a newly installed series of curves in the promenade. The Major withheld his usual diatribe against the stupidity of young architects who feel oppressed by the straight line. Today he felt like waltzing.

  They entered the public gardens, which began as a single bed crawling with yellow chrysanthemums, and then spread along two ever widening paths to create a long thin triangular space containing several different areas and levels. A sunken rectangle contained a bandstand, set in the middle of a lawn. Empty deck chairs flapped their canvas in the breeze. The council had just planted into concrete boxes the third or fourth set of doomed palm trees. There was an unshakable belief among the council’s executive committee that the introduction of palm trees would transform the town into a Mediterranean-style paradise and attract an altogether better class of visitor.
The trees died fast. The day-trippers continued to bus in, wearing their cheap T-shirts and testing their raucous voices against the gulls. At the far end of the gardens, on a small circular lawn that lay open to the sea on one side, a thin, dark-skinned boy of four or five was nudging a small red ball with his feet. He played as if doing so were a hardship. When he gave the ball a sharp tap it bounced against a low bronze sign that said “No Ball Playing” in raised, polished letters and then rolled toward the Major. Feeling jovial, the Major attempted to chip the ball back, but it bounced sideways off his foot, struck an ornamental boulder, and rolled swiftly under a hedge of massed hydrangeas.

  “Oi, there’s no football allowed ‘ere,” shouted a voice from a small green kiosk with a curly copper roof and shutters, which offered tea and an assortment of cakes.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said the Major, waving his hands to encompass both the gray-faced, plump lady behind the kiosk counter and the small boy, who stood looking at the bushes as if they were as impenetrable as a black hole. The Major hurried over to the hedge and peered under, looking for some flash of red.

  “What kind of park is it if a six-year-old can’t kick a football?” said a sharp voice. The Major glanced up to see a young woman who, though obviously of Indian origin, wore the universal uniform of the young and disenchanted. She was dressed in a rumpled parka the color of an oil spill, and long striped leggings tucked into motorcycle boots. Her short hair stuck out in a halo of stiff tufts as if she had just crawled out of bed, and her face, which might have been pretty, was twisted by a belligerent look as she faced the kiosk worker.

  “There won’t be no flowers left if all the kids trample about with balls all day,” said the kiosk lady. “I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but we try to keep things nice and genteel around here.”

  “What d’you mean by that?” The young woman scowled. The Major recognized the abrasive northern tone he associated with Marjorie. “What are you saying?”