Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Chapter 22

“I need to find a telephone,” he said. They were out of the city, heading west, and already, through the slightly open window, the gloom of the afternoon seemed colder and cleaner. “I’ll have to find a pub or something.”

“I have a phone.” She rummaged in her shopping bag to produce a small cell phone. “I think they got me one to keep track of me, but I make sure never to turn it on.” As she fiddled with it, the phone gave a series of jangled beeps.

“Horrible things,” he said.

“Ten phone messages,” she said. “I suppose they’re looking for me.”

At an exit that said “Tourist Information,” he pulled into a small car park with toilets and an old railway car turned into an information booth. It was closed for the winter and the car park was empty. While Mrs. Ali went to use the facilities, he poked at the tiny number buttons and managed, on his second attempt, to reach the right number.

“Helena?” he said. “Ernest Pettigrew. Sorry to call so out of the blue.”

By the time Mrs. Ali came back, her hairline damp from where she had splashed her face with water, he had detailed directions to Colonel Preston’s fishing lodge and knew that the key was under the hedgehog by the shed and that the paraffin lamps were kept in the washtub for safety. Helena had been graciously uncurious about his sudden need to use it, though she had refused the excuse of his offer to fetch the Colonel’s fly rod.

“You know perfectly well if he ever got hold of it, he would have to face the fact that he’s never going to use it,” she said. “I’d like him to keep his dream a little longer.” As he said goodbye, she added, “I won’t tell anyone why you called,” and he was left looking at the phone and wondering whether the Colonel’s whispered stories about Helena might be correct after all.

“We’re all set,” he said. “It’s another hour or two’s driving, I’m afraid. It’s just—”

“Please don’t tell me where it is,” she said. “That way I can disappear even from myself for a while.”

“No heating, of course. Probably a bag of coal in the shed. Not much fishing in the winter.”

“And I brought food,” she said, looking at the shopping bag as if it had suddenly appeared. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but apparently I’m making us a chicken balti.”

He put the bag in the boot, the better to keep the milk and chicken cold. He saw a glimpse of tomatoes and onions and he smelled fresh cilantro. There seemed to be some spices and dried leaves in small plastic bags and he felt the squashy contours of a bakery bag containing something that smelled of almonds.

“Perhaps we should stop and get you some—some things,” said the Major, stumbling over images of ladies’ underwear in his mind and wondering where to find the shops.

“Let’s not spoil the madness of escape with a trip to Marks and Sparks,” she said. “Let’s just drive right off the map.”

The lodge was more a tumbledown sheep shed, its thick stone walls topped with a crooked slate roof and its original openings crudely filled with an assortment of odd windows and doors, salvaged from other properties. The front door was heavy oak and carved with acorns and a medallion of leaves, but the neighboring window was a ramshackle blue casement, fitted with several extra pieces of wood on one side and missing glass in one of the panes.

The light had all but gone from behind the mountains looming in the west, and a gibbous moon was making its humpbacked way into the sky. Below the lodge, a rough lawn led down to a narrow cove on a lake that seemed to open out like a sea in the darkness. The Major peered at the soft darker rounds of the trees and bushes crowding the property for a sharper silhouette that might signify a shed. He was about to announce a grid-by-grid search for the promised stone hedgehog when it occurred to him that the broken window might allow entry.

It was cold now and Mrs. Ali stood shivering in her thin wool coat, the tail of her scarf flapping in a sharp wind off the lake. She had her eyes closed and breathed deeply.

“Cold enough for a frost tonight,” he said. He moved toward her, worrying that she was horrified at the state of the place. “Perhaps we ought to go back to the village we passed and see if there’s a bed and breakfast?” She opened her eyes and gave him an anxious smile.

“Oh, no, it’s just so beautiful here,” she said. “And to tell the truth, even at my advanced age and in the middle of such a ridiculous adventure, I don’t think I can quite face checking into a hotel with you.”

“If you put it like that.” His cheeks flushed warm in the darkness. “Though I don’t know if you’ll feel that way if we find squirrels in there,” he said, worried about the broken casement. He tightened his grip on the pencil-thin torch he had extracted from its place in the glove compartment and wondered whether the batteries were fresh or whether they were chalky with dribbled acid. “I suppose we’d better mount an expedition to the interior.”

He could indeed twist the lock from inside the window; he pushed open the door and stepped into the deeper cold of the lodge. The torch gave only a thin bluish beam and he felt his way forward with hands outstretched to ward away the unexpected bang on the knee or knock of head on low beam. The light danced over glimpses of table and chairs, a broken-backed wicker sofa, an iron sink with cotton-curtained cabinets. A large fireplace loomed sooty and dark in one corner, smelling of damp coal. It had been disfigured on one shoulder by the addition of a galvanized container cemented directly into a hole in the chimney so that the heat of the fire could warm water. A couple of pipes with stopcocks led to the unseen bathroom facilities and the welcome possibility of at least a quick sponge bath. An arched opening showed the briefest glimpse of a bedroom. Through another strange arrangement—one patio slider and one French door jumbled together—the lake shone silver and a broad triangle of moonlight fell across the floor and showed large baskets stuffed with fishing gear, dropped as casually as if the owner were going out on the lake again directly. The Major found matches in the obvious place, a tin on the mantelpiece, and, in the low-ceilinged laundry room past the sink area, the promised zinc washtub filled with three paraffin lamps.

“I hope you’re not expecting this place to look any better in the light,” he said as he struck a match and reached for the glass shade of the nearest lamp.

She laughed and said only, “I haven’t smelled a paraffin lamp since I was a small child. My father would tell us how it was discovered by an alchemist in ninth-century Baghdad who was trying to distill gold.”

“I thought it was a Scotsman who invented it,” said the Major, burning his thumb and dropping the match as he fumbled with the second lamp. “But then the most amazing things were being made in the east while we were still getting the hang of wattle-and-daub and trying to find our runaway sheep.” He struck a new match. “Unfortunately, none of it counted in the end unless you got your patents in ahead of the Americans.”

With the lamps offering their wavering yellow light and a coal fire leaping in the brick hearth, the room began to lose some of its damp crypt smell.

“It’s quite charming in here if one squints.” He was opening a bottle of claret that had been meant as a gift to his Scottish host.

“As long as one wipes everything before touching it,” she said, sliding onions into a pan of butter. The rickety stove was powered by a rusty bottled-gas tank just outside the kitchen window. “The dust seems to be years thick.”

“My former C.O., Colonel Preston, has been frail for a couple of years now,” said the Major, looking at the assembled fly rods on the wall. “I doubt he’ll ever visit here again.” He walked to the hearth and tested the water heater with the back of his hand. Then he stood with his back to the blaze and sipped wine from a tea mug and looked at how her hands chopped tomato with a smooth twist and fall of the knife and how she cocked her head in concentration.

“Pity, really; he talks about this place as you or I might talk of—Well, of wherever was the most important place in the world to us.” He felt a sadness for the Colonel but it could not hold his attention, because her hair was escaping from its pins and now she stopped to push some strand off her forehead with the flat of her arm. The chicken and spices hissed into the pan and as she covered it with a baking sheet, he could not remember any other place to which he had any attachment at all. The world seemed to have shrunk to fit quite perfectly inside the room.

“And do you have such a place?” she asked, lowering the flame under the pan and straightening up with a smile. “I know I do not seem to belong anywhere.”

“I always supposed it to be Edgecombe St. Mary,” he said. “My wife is buried in the churchyard, you know, and I have a second plot there.”

“That’s one way to feel rooted to a place,” she said. Then she made a horrified O with her lips while he laughed. “No, that came out all wrong,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said. “That is exactly what I meant. I always thought it important to decide where one would be buried, and then one could sort of work life out backward from there.”

They ate, mopping up the sauce with sweet almond rolls and drinking the wine. She accepted a cup for the purpose of warding off the dampness and drank it cut with water, like a Frenchwoman. “So, if you want to be buried in Sussex, you probably wouldn’t move to—say—Japan?” she said.

“I refuse to answer, on the grounds that I may now prefer to just stay here with you and thereby deprive both Edgecombe and Tokyo of my presence,” he said.

“But we will not stay here, Major.” Her voice was sad. “Just like the Colonel, we will have to leave and never see it again.”

“True.” He looked around at the fire’s dancing shadows on the thick stone walls and the pools of light on the low ceiling from the lamps and the single candle guttering in a broken saucer. They had laid the bedroom’s duvet over the back of the sofa to air, and its red flannel added to the warmth in the room. “You must give me time to think,” he said.

“My husband’s body was sent back to Pakistan for burial, something I do not wish for myself, and so I cannot rest next to him. Nor can I be buried in a pretty Sussex churchyard,” she said.

“On some days, days that his wife thinks are bad but which perhaps are good, my friend the Colonel is quite convinced that he is back here,” said the Major.

“So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?”

“Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more?”

“There are real-life complications,” she said, laughing. “Can you imagine if the whole world decided tomorrow to move to a fishing lodge in the English countryside?”

“It’s Wales, actually,” said the Major. “And they do get a bit funny if there are too many visitors.”

He gave her the nicer of his two pairs of pajamas, navy cotton piped in white, as well as his camel robe and a pair of wool socks for her feet. He was glad he had packed the extra set after all. Nancy had often chided him for what she called his meticulous overpacking and his insistence on carrying a hard-sided leather bag for all trips. He couldn’t abide today’s travelers with their huge squashy duffel bags crammed with athletic shoes, balled-up tracksuits, and stretchy multipurpose trousers and dresses made out of special travel fabrics, with hidden pockets, which they wore indiscriminately to theaters and nice restaurants.

From a separate compartment, packed in an oilcloth bag that had belonged to his father, the Major produced a leather wash kit and, with some embarrassment at the intimacy, laid out soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and a small Egyptian cotton towel he always carried for emergencies.

“I’ll just run out to the car,” he said. “I have an extra toothbrush in my breakdown kit.”

“Along with a small barrel of brandy and a spare Shakespeare?” she asked.

“You’re laughing at me,” he said. “But if I didn’t have a blanket in the car I’d be pretty cold tonight on that couch.” He thought she blushed, but it might have been the candle flickering on her skin.

When he returned she was dressed in his pajamas and robe and was combing out her hair with his small, inadequate comb. The wool socks flopped around her slender ankles. The Major felt his breath falter and a new tension vibrate through his limbs.

“It’s a very uncomfortable couch,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight and as she raised her arms to flip her hair back, he was aware of the curves of her body against the smooth cotton of the borrowed pajamas and the soft robe. “I’m not sure you’ll be warm enough.” The Major felt it was vital to nod, and not to let his jaw fall open while he did so.

“Toothbrush,” he said with difficulty. He held it out by the very tip of the handle because he knew it was important, if he was to keep his composure, that her fingertips not touch his. “Lucky thing the blanket is cashmere. I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”

“You must at least take back your robe.” She stood and slid the robe off her shoulders and the Major found this so sensual that he dug his fingertips into his palms to keep the heat from rising in his face and body.

“Very kind of you.” Panic threatened to overwhelm him just from being close to her. He backed away toward the bedroom and the tiny bathroom beyond. “I’d better say good night now, just in case you’re asleep.”

“It’s so beautiful I’d like to lie awake and watch the moon on the water all night,” she said, advancing on the bedroom.

“Much better to get some rest,” he said. He stumbled away from her, found the bathroom door with some effort, and clawed his way in. He wondered just how long he might have to hide out in the bathroom pretending to wash before she would be safely asleep. For a moment, he wished he had brought something to read.

The soap and water revived him and also made him feel foolish. Once again, he had allowed his fears, and in this case, perhaps his fancies, to overwhelm his more rational self. Mrs. Ali was no different from any other woman, he reminded himself, and in a low whisper he lectured the face in the dim mirror. “She’s deserving of protection and respect. At your age you should be perfectly able to share a small cottage with a member of the opposite sex without getting all carried away like a pimply teenager.” He frowned at his face and ran a hand through his hair, which stuck up like a stiff brush and needed cutting. He decided to make an appointment with the barber when they got back. After a final deep breath, he resolved to march through to the sitting room, uttering a cheery good night as he went, and to allow no more nonsense from himself.

As he walked out into the small bedroom, carrying the lamp, she was sitting up in bed with her knees hugged to her chest and her chin dropped onto them. Her hair spilled around her shoulders and she seemed very young, or perhaps just very vulnerable. When she looked up at him, he could see her eyes shining at him.

“I was thinking about being practical,” she said. “Thinking of how everything is uncertain once we get back to the world.”

“Do we have to think of that?” he asked.

“So I was wondering whether it might be best if you just made love to me now, here, while we’re enjoying this particular dream,” she said. She looked at him with a steady gaze and he found he felt no need to look away. He was grateful to feel a flush of excitement rush through his body like a full tide over flat sand and he saw his ache for her echoed in the high color of her cheeks. There was no panic or fluster in his mind now. He would not diminish her declaration by asking her if she was sure. He merely hung the lamp on a hook in the beamed ceiling and went down on his knees at the bedside to take both her hands in his and kiss them, backs and palms. As he lifted his face to hers and as her hair swung around them like a dark waterfall, he found words suddenly irrelevant and so he said nothing at all.

In the early morning, he stood with a foot raised on a smooth granite boulder by the empty lake and watched the sun dazzle on the frosted reeds and melt the lace of ice on the muddy edge. It was bitterly cold, but he felt the sear of air in his nose as something exquisite and he lifted his face to the sky to feel the warmth of the sun. The mountains across the lake wore capes of snow on their massive rocky shoulders and Mount Snowdon pierced the blue sky with its sharp white ridges. A lone bird, falcon or eagle, with fringed edges to its proud wings, glided high on the faintest of thermals, surveying its kingdom. He raised his own arms to the air, stretching with his fingertips, and wondered whether the bird’s heart was as full as his own as he braced his legs against an earth made new and young. He wondered whether this might be how the first man had felt; only he had always pictured the Garden of Eden as a warm, midsummer experience, ripe with peaches and the drone of wasps in the orchard. Today he felt more like man the pioneer, alone in the harsh beauty of a strange new land. He felt upright, vigorous. He welcomed the stiffness of muscle and the faint tiredness that follows exertion. A pleasant glow, deep in his gut, was all that remained of a night that seemed to have burned away the years from his back.

He looked up the slight rise to the lodge, which slept under eaves crusted with ice. A lazy curl of smoke rose from the chimney. He had left her asleep, sprawled on her stomach, her hair in knots and her arms flung careless around her pillow. Too full of energy to remain in bed, he had, as silently as possible, dressed, fixed the fire, and set a kettle of water over a low flame so it would boil slowly while he took a walk. He would have liked to sort out last night in his mind, to categorize his feelings in some sober order, but it seemed all he could do this morning was grin and chuckle and wave at the empty world in foolish happiness.

As he gazed, the French door was pushed open and she came out of the house, squinting at the brightness. She had dressed and wore his blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was carrying two mugs of tea, which steamed in the air. Smiling under her tangle of hair, she picked her way carefully down the stony path, while he held his breath as if the slightest move might cause her to shy away.

“You should have woken me,” she said. “I hope you weren’t fleeing the scene?”

“I needed to do a little capering about,” he said. “Some beating of the chest and a spot of cheering—manly stuff.”

“Oh, do show me,” she said, laughing while he executed a few half-remembered dance steps, jumped on and off a tussock of grass and kicked at a large stone with a wild hooting. The stone bounced down the shore and plopped into the lake while the Major winced and shook out his injured foot. “Ouch,” he said. “That’s about as much primeval man as I can manage.”

“Do I get a turn?” she asked. She handed him a mug for each hand and then spun herself in wild pirouettes to the shore where she stomped her feet in the freezing waters and let out a long, musical yowling sound that seemed to come from the earth itself. A flight of hidden ducks launched themselves into the air and she laughed and waved as they flew low across the water. Then she came running back and kissed him while he spread his arms wide and tried to keep his balance.

“Careful, careful,” he said, feeling a splash of scalding tea on his wrist. “Passion is all very well, but it wouldn’t do to spill the tea.” As they found two large rocks to sit on and slowly savored their tea and munched on the last two, slightly stale almond cakes, they continued to laugh and to break out, every now and then, into smaller whoops and yells. He offered her a sustained yodel and she sang back to him a phrase or two of a haunting song from her childhood and while the lake lapped at their feet and the mountains absorbed their calls and the sky flung its blue parachute over their heads, he thought how wonderful it was that life was, after all, more simple than he had ever imagined.