Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Chapter 20

Soon after the New Year, the Major admitted to himself that he was in danger of succumbing to the inevitability of Grace. Their relationship had developed a gravitational pull, slow but insistent, as a planet pulls home a failing satellite. In his unhappiness, he had allowed this slow drift to happen. After their Christmas dinner, at which he offered a profusion both of champagne and apologies, he had allowed her to bring him a cold game pie in aspic on Boxing Day. He also accepted her invitation to “just a quiet, early supper” on New Year’s Eve and invited her to tea on two occasions in return.

She had brought him a draft of an introduction to the small book she was compiling on her research into local families and, with a tremble in her voice, asked if he might be willing to take a look at it for her. He had agreed and had been pleasantly surprised to find she wrote quite well, in a journalistic way. Her sentences were plain but managed to avoid both academic dryness and the excess of purplish adjectives he might have feared from an amateur lady historian. With his help, he thought, it might find publication in some small way. He was pleased that they would have this work between them during the dark months of winter.

Tonight, however, would be the second time this week he had been asked to dinner at her house and had accepted. This, he realized, merited closer examination of his own intentions.

“I saw Amina and little George at the mobile library this morning, picking out some appalling books,” said Grace as they finished up their plates of steamed haddock, buttered potatoes, and a homemade winter salad. “I can’t imagine who thinks it’s suitable to teach reading through a book of pop-up potty monsters.”

“Indeed,” said the Major, busy picking plump golden raisins out of his salad. They were one of the few things he couldn’t abide; with Grace he felt comfortable enough to remove them. She would not comment, but he had an idea that she would make sure to leave them out next time.

“I told the librarian she should exercise more control,” continued Grace. “She said I was welcome to take over if I didn’t like it, and I should be grateful it wasn’t all just DVDs.”

“Well, that was very rude of her.”

“Oh, I deserved it completely,” said Grace. “It’s so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one’s own shortcomings, isn’t it?”

“When one has as few shortcomings as you, Grace, one has leisure to look around and make suggestions,” he said.

“You are very kind, Major and I think you, too, are perfectly fine as you are.” She rose to take their empty plates to the kitchen. “And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.”

“Touché,” he said.

After dinner, he sat in an armchair while she clattered dishes and made tea in her small kitchen. She would not let him help, and it was difficult to make conversation through the small pine-shuttered hatch in the wall, so he dozed, hypnotized by the fierce blue cones of the gas fire’s flames.

“Anyway, Amina says Jasmina’s not coming to the wedding,” said Grace through the hatch. He raised his eyes abruptly, knowing that he had heard but not registered a much longer sentence of which this was merely the footnote.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t hear.”

“I said I had hoped to see Jasmina again when she came for the wedding,” said Grace. “When she wrote to me, I wrote back right away and asked her to please come and see me.” Her face disappeared from the hatch again and the Major could hear the squeaks and clicks of the dishwasher being set into operation.

“She wrote to you?” he asked the room at large. Grace did not answer, being engaged with maneuvering a silver tea tray too large for her narrow, sharp-cornered hallway. He went to the door and received the tray from her, angled to squeeze in at the door jambs.

“I really should get a nice little melamine tray,” she said. “This one is so impractical, but it’s about the last thing of my mother’s that I’ve kept.”

“She wrote to you?” The Major tried to keep his voice casual even as his throat constricted with the sudden hurt this information caused him. He concentrated on the task of fitting the tray within the raised brass rail of the coffee table.

“She wrote to me right after she left and apologized for running off without saying goodbye. I wrote back, and I sent a Christmas card—nothing religious on it, of course—but I haven’t heard from her since.” Grace stood smoothing her skirt down toward her knees. “Have you heard from her?” she asked and he thought she stood a little too still as she waited for a reply.

“I never heard from her,” he said. The gas fire seemed to hiss at him unpleasantly.

“It’s all a bit strange,” she said and, after a long moment of quiet: “You still miss her.”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, fumbling for a suitable reply.

“You miss her,” repeated Grace and now her eyes were firmly fixed on him. His own gaze wavered. “You are not happy.”

“It is a moot point,” he said. “She made her choice very clear.” He hoped this was enough to change the subject, but Grace only walked over to the window and pulled aside the lace curtain to peer out into the featureless night. “One feels quite powerless,” he admitted.

The room pressed in on him. The oval mantel clock ticked on oblivious to the shift in tension in the room. The flowered wallpaper, which had seemed cozy, now breathed dust onto the dull carpet. The teapot cooled and he could almost feel the cream drifting to scum on the surface of the milk jug. He felt a sudden horror at the thought of his life boxed into a series of such rooms.

“I have a feeling she is not happy where she is,” said Grace. “You should look in on her on your way to Scotland. Aren’t you going up for some shooting?”

“It’s not my place to interfere,” he said.

“It’s a pity you can’t just storm in and fetch her back,” said Grace. “She could be your very own damsel in distress.”

“Life is not a Hollywood film,” he snapped. He wondered why on earth she was pushing at him like this. Couldn’t she tell he was ready to declare his affection for her?

“I’ve always admired you for being a sensible man,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t like to speak up, but usually I can tell that you know the right thing to do.” He sensed that what was coming might not be a compliment. However, she seemed to catch herself; she merely sighed and added, “Perhaps none of us knows the right thing to do.”

“You’re a sensible woman, too,” said the Major. “I didn’t come here tonight to talk about Mrs. Ali. She made her choice and it is high time I moved on and made some choices of my own. Do come and sit down, dear Grace.” He patted the armchair next to his and she came over and sat down.

“I would like you to be happy, Ernest,” she said. “We all deserve that.” He took her hand and patted the back of it.

“You are very good to me, Grace,” he said. “You are intelligent, attractive, and supportive. You are also very kind and you are not a gossip. Any man who is not a fool would be happy to call you his own.” She laughed, but her eyes seemed to be brimming.

“Oh Ernest, I think you just listed the perfect qualities in a neighbor and the worst possible qualifications for passion.” He was shocked for an instant by the word “passion,” which seemed to crash through several conversational boundaries at once. He felt himself blushing.

“You and I are perhaps too—mature—for the more impetuous qualities,” he said, stumbling to find a word other than “old.”

“You must speak for yourself,” she said gently. “I refuse to play the dried rose and accept that life must be tepid and sensible.”

“At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?” She hesitated and they both felt the weight of the word hang between them. A tear made its way down her cheek and he saw that she had continued to avoid face powder and that she looked quite beautiful even in the rather overly bright room.

“You are mistaken, Ernest,” she said at last. “There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.” Her voice had a gentle finality, as if he were already putting on his coat and leaving her. Some contrary spirit, perhaps his own pride, he thought, made him stubborn in the face of what he knew to be true.

“I came here tonight to offer you my companionship,” he said. “I had hoped it would lead to more.” He could not honestly repeat the word “marriage” as he had planned a much more gradual increase in intimacy and had not indeed prepared any irrevocable declarations.

“I will not have you, Ernest,” she said. “I care for you very much, but I do not want to make any compromises with the rest of my years.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, like a child, and smiled. “You should go after her.”

“She will not have me either,” he said, and his gloom betrayed the truth of everything Grace had said. He looked at her, horrified, but she did not seem angry.

“You won’t know that if you don’t ask her, will you?” said Grace. “I’ll go and get you her address.”

Grace hugged her arms about her as she watched him try to pull on his coat in the hallway without putting an elbow through one of the many small prints hanging on the wall. He set a sheep on a crag rattling in its black frame and she stepped to steady it. Close to her like this, he was overwhelmed with shame at the shabbiness of his own behavior and he put a hand on her arm. For an instant, all they had said hung in the balance; he had only to squeeze her arm and she would lose her resolve and take him after all. Such an awful fragility of love, he thought, that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior. She pulled away from him and said, “Be careful on the step, it’s very icy.” He had a witty comment to add, inviting her to take a slap at him or something, but he thought better of it.

“You are a remarkable woman, Grace,” he said. Then he hunched his shoulders against the cold and his own failings and stepped into the night.

Telling Roger that the journey to Scotland would include a detour to visit Mrs. Ali was not the sort of thing one could successfully manage on the telephone. So, on the Sunday before, the Major tapped lightly on the door knocker at Roger’s cottage. The frost was still deep and the sun only a vague promise in the mid-morning sky; he blew on his hands and stamped his feet against the cold as he looked with dismay at the window boxes with their withered holly and dead white roses left over from Christmas. The windows looked smeary, too, and mud on the doorstep suggested that no one was taking care of the place now that Sandy was gone.

He tapped again, the sound reverberating like a pistol shot in the hedges, and saw a twitch of curtain in the cottage opposite. Footsteps, banging, and a muttered curse preceded Roger, who opened the door wrapped in a duvet over flannel pajamas and sporting flip-flops over his socks.

“Aren’t you up?” asked the Major, feeling cross. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

“Sorry, bit of a hangover,” said Roger, leaving the door wide open and trailing back into the living room, where he collapsed onto the couch and groaned.

“Is this becoming a daily condition for you?” asked the Major, looking about him at the room. Takeout containers sat congealing on the coffee table. The Christmas tree still bristled with black intensity, but its feet were covered in dust. The couch and chaise had slid away from their razor-sharp alignment and now sat askew on the rug, as dazed as Roger. “This place is a disgrace, Roger.”

“Don’t shout. Please don’t shout,” said Roger, covering his ears. “I think my ears are bleeding.”

“I am not shouting,” said the Major. “I don’t suppose you’ve had breakfast, have you? Why don’t you get dressed while I clear up and make some toast?”

“Oh, leave the clearing up,” said Roger. “I have a cleaning lady who comes tomorrow.”

“Does she really,” replied the Major. “My, how she must look forward to Mondays.”

When Roger had finished emptying the hot water tank and, from the smell of him, using some expensive men’s shower gel, no doubt packaged in a gleaming aluminum container of sporty design, he wandered, squinty-eyed, into the kitchen. He had put on tight jeans and a close-fitting sweater. His feet were bare and his hair combed back in wide stiff lines. The Major paused as he spread some thin toast with the last scrapings of a margarine substitute. “How come you have all these foreign designer clothes and yet you have no food and your milk is sour?”

“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 the 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.