Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel

by Helen Simonson

  “Perhaps I might make you some suitable offer myself,” said the Major. He was not sure he sounded very convincing. The figures were already turning in his head and he failed to see immediately how he might part with a substantial cash sum. He lived very well off his army pension, a few investments, and a small annuity that had passed to him from his paternal grandmother and which, he was forced to admit, had not been discussed as part of his parents’ estate. Still, dipping into principal was not a risk he cared to take in anything but an emergency. Might he contemplate some kind of small mortgage on the house? This prompted a shiver of dismay.

  “I couldn’t possibly take money from you,” said Marjorie. “I won’t take it.”

  “In that case—”

  “We’ll just have to be smart and get the highest price we can,” said Marjorie.

  “I think we should call the auction houses,” said Jemima. “Get an appraisal.”

  “Look here,” said the Major.

  “Your grandmother once sold a teapot at Sotheby’s,” said Marjorie to Jemima. “She always hated it—too fussy—then it turned out to be Meissen and they got quite a bit.”

  “Of course, you have to pay commission and everything,” said Jemima.

  “My father’s Churchills are not being put on the block at public auction like some bankrupt farm equipment,” said the Major firmly. “The Pettigrew name will not be printed in a sale catalog.”

  Lord Dagenham quite cheerfully sent off pieces of the Dagenham patrimony to auction now and then. Last year a George II desk of inlaid yew had been shipped off to Christie’s. At the club, he had listened politely to Lord Dagenham boasting of the record price paid by some Russian collector, but secretly he had been deeply distressed by the image of the wide desk, with its thin scrolled legs, duct-taped into an old felt blanket and upended in a rented removal van.

  “What else do you suggest?” asked Marjorie. The Major suppressed a desire to suggest that they might consider removing themselves to hell. He calmed his voice to a tone suitable for placating large dogs or small, angry children.

  “I would like to suggest that you give me an opportunity to look round a bit,” he said, improvising as he went. “I actually met a very wealthy American gun collector recently. Perhaps I might let him take a look at them.”

  “An American?” said Marjorie. “Who is it?”

  “I hardly think the name will be familiar to you,” said the Major. “He is—an industrialist.” This sounded more impressive than “builder.”

  “Ooh, that sounds like it might do,” said Marjorie.

  “Of course, I would have to take a look at Bertie’s gun first. I’m afraid it is probably going to need some restoration work,”

  “So I suppose we should just give you the gun right now?” asked Jemima.

  “I think that would be best,” said the Major, ignoring her sarcasm. “Of course, you could send it to be restored by the manufacturer, but they will charge you rather steeply. I am in a position to effect a restoration myself at no cost.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Ernest,” said Marjorie.

  “It is the least I can do for you,” said the Major. “Bertie would expect no less.”

  “How long would this take?” asked Jemima. “Christie’s has a gun auction next month.”

  “Well, if you want to pay out over fifteen percent in commissions and accept only what the room will offer on the day …” said the Major. “Personally, I cannot see myself consigning my gun to the vagaries of the market.”

  “I think we should let Ernest handle it,” said Marjorie.

  “As it happens, I will be attending Lord Dagenham’s shoot next month,” continued the Major. “I would have an opportunity to show my American friend how the guns perform as a pair.”

  “How much will he pay?” asked Jemima, demonstrating that her mother’s inclination to discuss money in public was evolving down the generations. No doubt little Gregory would grow up to leave the price tags hanging from his clothes and the manufacturer’s sticker still glued to the window of his German sports car.

  “That, my dear Jemima, is a delicate subject best broached after the guns have been displayed to their finest advantage.”

  “We’ll get more money because you shoot grouse in the mud all day long?”

  “Ducks, my dear Jemima, ducks.” He tried a brief chuckle, to confirm an air of disinterest, and felt almost confident that he would win the day. There was such greed shining in both pairs of eyes. For a moment he understood the thrill of a master con artist. Perhaps he had the touch that would make old ladies believe they had won the Australian lottery, or lead them to send funds to release Nigerian bank accounts. The newspapers were full of such accounts and he had often wondered how people could be so gullible. Yet here and now, so close he could smell the gun oil, was the opportunity to load Bertie’s gun into his car and drive away.

  “It remains entirely up to you, dear ladies,” he said, tugging at his jacket hem in preparation for departure. “I see no downside for you in my restoring the gun and then allowing one of the richest gun collectors in the United States to see the pair perform in the proper setting of a formal shooting party.” He saw the shoot: the other men congratulating him as he modestly denied that his was the largest bag of the day. “I believe the dog has mistaken this fine mallard drake of yours as being mine, Lord Dagenham,” he might say, and Dagenham would take it of course, knowing full well it had fallen to Pettigrew’s superior twin Churchills.

  “Do you think he’d pay cash?” asked Jemima, recalling his full attention.

  “I would think he might be so overwhelmed by the pageantry of the event to offer us any amount we name—in cash or gold bars. On the other hand, he may not. I make no promises.”

  “Let’s try it, then,” said Marjorie. “I would like to get the most we can. I’d like to take a cruise this winter.”

  “I advise you not to rush into anything, Marjorie,” he said. He was playing now; risking a prize already won just for the thrill of the game.

  “No, no, you must take the gun with you and look it over, in case it does need to be sent somewhere,” said Marjorie. “We don’t want to waste any time.”

  “It’s in the boot cupboard with the cricket bats,” said Jemima. “I’ll run and get it.”

  The Major reassured himself that he was largely telling the truth. He would be showing the guns to Ferguson, even though he had no intention of letting them be bought. Furthermore, he could hardly be expected to take the moral high road with people who would keep a fine sporting gun thrown in the back of a shoe cupboard. He was, he decided, doing the same thing as rescuing a puppy from an abusive junkyard owner.

  “Here we are,” said Jemima, pointing a quilt-covered bundle at him. He took it from her, feeling for the thick stock and pointing the barrel end toward the floor.

  “Thank you,” he said, as if they were handing him a gift. “Thank you very much.”

  Chapter 8

  It was just a cup of tea and a chat. As the Major mounted the step stool for a better view of the top shelf of the china cupboard, he chided himself for fussing over the arrangements like some old maid. He was determined to be completely casual about Mrs. Ali’s visit. Her voice on the telephone had asked in a most straightforward manner whether he might have any time on Sunday to offer her his insights on the Kipling book, which she had just finished. Sunday afternoons the shop was closed, and she implied that her nephew was used to her taking a couple of hours to herself. He had replied in a careful offhand that Sunday afternoon might suit him and that perhaps he would rustle up a cup of tea or something. She said she would come around four, if that was convenient.

  Of course, the thick white earthenware teapot immediately developed an ugly chip in the spout and, despite several scourings, would not come clean inside. He realized that it must have been chipped for some time and that he had closed his eyes to its shortcomings in order to avoid the search for a new one. Twenty years ago
, it had taken Nancy and him over a year to find a plain vessel that kept the heat in and did not dribble when poured. He considered running to town in the few days remaining, but he already knew it would be impossible to find anything among the florid ranks of pots that multiplied like mushrooms in stores dedicated to “home design.” He could see them now: pots with invisible handles; pots with bird whistles; pots featuring blurry transfers of ladies on swings and curly handles awkwardly balanced. He settled instead on serving tea in his mother’s silver.

  The silver teapot, with a good plain belly on it and a small frill of acanthus leaves around the lid, immediately made his teacups look as thick and dull as peasants. He considered using the good china, but he did not feel he could pull off a casual image while bearing in a tray loaded with fine, gold-rimmed antiques. Then he had remembered Nancy’s cups. There were only two of them, bought at a flea market before she and he were married. Nancy had admired the unusually large blue and white cups, shaped like upside-down bells, and accompanied by saucers deep enough to use as bowls. They were very old, from when people still tipped their tea into the saucer to drink. Nancy had got them cheap because they did not quite match and there were no additional pieces.

  She made him tea in them one afternoon, just tea, carried carefully to the small deal table set by the window in her room. The landlady, who had been persuaded by his uniform and quiet manners that he was a gentleman, allowed him to visit Nancy’s room as long as he was gone by nightfall. They were used to making love in the strong afternoon sunlight, smothering their giggles under the batik bedspread whenever the landlady deliberately creaked the floorboards outside the door. But that day the room was tidy, the usual debris of books and paints cleared away, and Nancy, hair smoothed back into a loose ponytail, had made them tea in the beautiful translucent cups, which held a scalding heat in their old porcelain and made the cheap loose tea glow like amber. She poured him milk from a shot glass, careful not to splash, her movements as slow as a ceremony. He lifted his cup and knew, with a sudden clarity that did not frighten him as much as he might have expected, that it was time to ask her to marry him.

  The cups trembled in his hands. He bent down to put them carefully on the counter, where they looked suitably inert. Nancy had treated the cups lightly, sometimes serving blancmange in them because of their happy shape. She would have been the last to insist on treating them as relics. Yet as he reached for the saucers he wished he could ask her whether it was all right to use them.

  He had never been one of those people who believed that the dead hung around, dispensing permissions and generally providing watchdog services. In church, when the organ swelled and the chorus of the hymn turned irritating neighbors into a brief community of raised hearts and simple voices, he accepted that she was gone. He envisaged her in the heaven he had learned about in childhood: a grassy place with blue sky and a light breeze. He could no longer picture the inhabitants with anything as ridiculous as wings. Instead he saw Nancy strolling in a simple sheath dress, her low shoes held in her hand and a shady tree beckoning her in the distance. The rest of the time, he could not hold on to this vision and she was only gone, like Bertie, and he was left to struggle on alone in the awful empty space of unbelief.

  Silver teapot, old blue cups, no food. The Major surveyed his completed tea preparations with relief. The absence of food would set the right casual tone, he thought. He had the vague idea that it was not manly to fuss over the details as he had been doing and that making finger sandwiches would be dubious. He sighed. It was one of the things he had to watch out for, living alone. It was important to keep up standards, to not let things become fuzzy around the edges. And yet there was that fine line across which one might be betrayed into womanish fretting over details. He checked his watch. He had several hours before his guest arrived. He decided that perhaps he would undertake a brief, manly attempt at carpentry and fix the broken slat in the fence at the bottom of the garden and then spend some time taking his first good look at Bertie’s gun.

  He had been sitting in the scullery, in the same fixed position, for at least ten minutes. He remembered coming in from the garden and taking Bertie’s gun out of its quilt wrappings, but after that his thoughts had wandered until his eyes, focused on the old print of Windsor Castle on the wall, began to see movement in its brown water stains. The Major blinked and the spots resumed their inert positions in the pitted paper. He reminded himself that such lapses into moments of slack-jawed senility were unbecoming to his former rank. He did not want to become like Colonel Preston. He did not have the necessary interest in house plants.

  On Fridays, twice a month, the Major visited his former CO, Colonel Preston, who was wheelchair-bound now with a combination of Alzheimer’s and neuropathy of the legs. Colonel Preston communicated with a large potted fern named Matilda and also enjoyed watching wallpaper and apologizing to house flies when they bumped into closed windows. Poor Colonel Preston could only be roused to any semblance of normality by his wife, Helena, a lovely Polish woman. Shaken on the shoulder by Helena, the Colonel would immediately turn to a visitor and say, as if in the middle of a longer conversation, “Got out just ahead of the Russians, you know. Exchanged the dossiers for permission to marry.” Helena would shake her head in mock despair, pat the Colonel’s hand, and say, “I worked in my father’s sausage shop, but he remembers me as Mata Hari.” Helena kept him freshly bathed, in clean clothes, and on his many medications. After every visit, the Major pledged to exercise more and do crossword puzzles, so as to stave off such weakening of the brain, but he also wondered with some anxiety who would wash the back of his neck so well if he were incapacitated.

  In the dim light of the scullery, the Major straightened his shoulders and made a mental note to first inventory all the prints in the house for damage, and then get them looked at by a competent conservator.

  He turned his attention again to Bertie’s gun, lying on the counter. He would try not to waste any more time wondering why Bertie had neglected it all these years and what it meant that the gun lay unwanted in a cupboard even as Bertie rejected cash offers from his own brother. Instead, he focused his attention on a dispassionate inspection of the parts that might need repair.

  There were cracks in the grain, and the wood itself was gray and dry. The ivory cap on the butt was deeply yellowed. He cracked the action open and found the chambers dull but thankfully free of rust. The barrel looked straight, though it had a small grouping of rust spots, as if it had been grasped by a sweaty hand and not wiped down. The elaborate chase work, a royal eagle entwined with persimmon flowers, was black with tarnish. He rubbed a finger under the eagle’s flailing talons and sure enough, there was the trim and upright “P” monogram, which his father had added. He hoped it was not hubris to experience a certain satisfaction that while maharajahs and their kingdoms might fade into oblivion, the Pettigrews soldiered on.

  He opened the gun box, lifted out the sections of his own gun, for comparison. They slid together with well-oiled clicks. Laying the two guns side by side, he experienced a momentary lapse of faith. They looked nothing like a pair. His own gun looked fat and polished. It almost breathed as it lay on the slab. Bertie’s gun looked like a sketch, or a preliminary model done in cheap materials to get the shape right and then discarded. The Major put his gun away and closed the box. He would not compare them again until he had done his best to restore Bertie’s gun to its finest possible condition. He patted it as if it were a thin stray dog, found in an icy ditch.

  As he lit the candle to warm the oil and took his leather case of cleaning implements out of the drawer, he felt much more cheerful. He had only to strip the gun down and work at it piece by piece until it was rebuilt just the way it was intended to be. He made a mental note to allow himself one hour a day for the project and he felt immediately the sense of calm that comes from having a well-designed routine.

  When the phone rang in the early afternoon, his cheerfulness overrode his natural sense
of caution at hearing Roger’s voice on the other end. He was not even upset by the worse than usual quality of the connection.

  “You sound as if you’re calling from a submarine, Roger,” he said chuckling. “I expect the squirrels have been chewing on the lines again.”

  “Actually, it may also be that I have you on speaker,” said Roger. “My chiropractor doesn’t want me holding the phone under my chin anymore, but my barber says a headset encourages oily buildup and miniaturization of my follicles.”

  “What?”

  “So I’m trying to get away with speakerphone whenever I can.” The unmistakable noise of papers being rustled on a desk, amplified by the speakerphone, sounded like one of Roger’s elementary school plays in which the children made thunderstorms by rattling newspapers.

  “Are you busy with something?” said the Major. “You can always call another time, when your paperwork is finished.”

  “No, no, it’s just a final deal book I have to read—make sure all the decimal points are in the right place this time,” said Roger. “I can read and chat at the same time.”

  “How efficient,” said the Major. “Perhaps I should try a few chapters of War and Peace while we talk?”

  “Look, Dad, I just called to tell you some exciting news. Sandy and I may have found a cottage on the Internet.”

  “The Internet? I think you’d better be very careful, Roger. I hear there is nothing but con games and pornography on that thing.”

  Roger laughed and the Major thought of telling him about the dreadful incident of Hugh Whetstone’s single entanglement with the World Wide Web but realized that Roger would only laugh all the harder. Poor Hugh’s book order had resulted in six unnoticed monthly credit card charges for membership to a furry friends website that turned out not to be one of his wife’s animal charities after all, but a group with distinctly more esoteric interests. It was more discreet to let the story drop anyway; it had been passed around the village as a friendly warning, but there were a few people who now called their dogs to heel when passing Whetstone in the lane.