Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

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.

“Dad, it’s a unique opportunity. This old woman has her aunt’s cottage—rent with option to buy—and she doesn’t want to use an estate agent. We could save all kinds of fees.”

“Good for you,” said the Major. “But without an estate agent, can you be sure the price is fair?”

“That’s the point,” said Roger. “We have a chance to get it locked up now, before someone makes her see what it’s really worth. It sounds perfect, Dad, and it’s only a few minute away, near Little Puddleton.”

“I really don’t see why you need a cottage,” said the Major. He was familiar with Little Puddleton, a village whose large contingent of weekenders had spawned several arty pottery shops and a coffeehouse selling hand-roasted beans at exorbitant prices. While the village hosted some excellent chamber music at a gazebo on the green, its pub had moved toward selling moules frites and little plates of dinner on which all the food was piled on top of each other and perfectly round, as if it had been molded inside a drainpipe. Little Puddleton was the kind of place where people bought fully grown specimens of newly hybridized antique roses in all the latest shades and then, at the end of the summer, wrenched them from their glazed Italian jardinières and tossed them on the compost heap like dead petunias. Alice Pierce, his neighbor, was quite public in her annual compost heap raids and had presented him last year with a couple of bushes, including a rare black tea rose that was now flourishing against his greenhouse.

“You must know that you and your friend would be perfectly welcome here at Rose Lodge,” he added.

“We talked about that,” said Roger. “I told Sandy there was plenty of room and I was sure you’d even consider sectioning off the back part of the house to make a separate flat.”

“A separate flat?” said the Major.

“But Sandy said it might look like we’re trying to shuffle you off into a granny annex and we probably should get a place of our own for now.”

“How considerate,” said the Major. Outrage reduced his voice to a squeak.

“Look, Dad, we’d really like you to come see it with us and give us your approval,” said Roger. “Sandy has her eye on some cow barn near Salisbury, too. I’d much rather be near you.”

“Thank you,” said the Major. He was well aware that Roger probably wanted money more than advice; but then, Roger was as just as likely to ask for money for the cow barn in Salisbury, so perhaps he really did want to be close to home. The Major’s heart warmed at this flicker of filial affection.

“Sussex is such an easier drive, not to mention that if I put in a few years at your golf club now, I may have a shot at membership in a serious club later on.”

“I don’t quite follow you,” said the Major. The flicker of filial love went out like a pilot light in a sudden draft.

“Well, if we go to Salisbury I’ll have to be on waiting lists for golf there. Your club isn’t considered too prestigious, but my boss’s boss plays at Henley and he said right away he’d heard of you. He called you a bunch of stubborn old farts.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” said the Major, trying to catch up.

“Look, Dad, can you come and help us meet Mrs. Augerspier in Little Puddleton on Thursday?” said Roger. “We’ll just give it the once-over—nose around for dry rot and that sort of thing.”

“I have no expertise in these matters,” said the Major. “I don’t know what has potential.”

“The potential’s not the issue,” said Roger. “The issue is the widowed Mrs. Augerspier. She wants to sell the cottage to the ‘right’ people. I need you to come with us and be your most distinguished and charming self.”

“So you would like me to come and kiss the hand of the poor widow like some continental gigolo until she is confused into accepting your meager offer for a property that probably represents her entire nest egg?” asked the Major.

“Exactly,” said Roger. “Is Thursday at two good for you?”

“Three would be better,” said the Major. “I believe I have an appointment in town at lunchtime that may run on a bit.” There was an awkward silence. “I really can’t change it,” he added. It was true. Much as he was not looking forward to escorting Grace to meet Mrs. Ali’s catering friend, he had agreed to her request and could not face her disappointment if he tried to weasel out now.

“I suppose I’ll have to call and see if I can change our appointment,” said Roger. The tone in his voice said he doubted that his father had any appointments of particular importance but that he would be generous and humor the old man.

Mrs. Ali was in the living room waiting for him to bring in the tea. He stuck his head around the door and paused to notice what a lovely picture she made as she sat in the old bay window, bent over an old book of Sussex photographs. The sun, striking in through the wobbly glass, made the dust motes shimmer and edged her profile with a light gold brushstroke. She had arrived wrapped in a shawl of deep rose, which now lay draped about the shoulders of a wool crepe outfit in a blue as dark and soft as twilight.

“Milk or lemon?” he asked. She looked up and smiled.

“Lemon and a rather embarrassing amount of sugar,” she said. “And when I visit friends with gardens, I sometimes beg them for a mint leaf.”

“A mint leaf?” he said. “Spearmint? Pineapple mint? I also have some kind of invasive, purple cabbage–like oddity my wife swore was mint, but I’ve always been afraid to eat it.”

“It sounds very intriguing,” she said. “May I take a look at this strange plant?”

“Of course,” said the Major, grappling with the sudden change in program. He had been saving an invitation to see the garden in case of a sudden lapse in conversation later. If they toured the garden now, the tea might become stewed and undrinkable; and what would he do later, in the event of an interminable pause?

“Just a quick peek, so the tea doesn’t spoil,” she added as if she had read his mind. “But perhaps later I might impose on you for a more complete tour?”

“I would be delighted,” he said. “If you’d like to step through the kitchen?”

By going through the kitchen and the narrow scullery, he reasoned, they could see the side garden, which contained the herbs and a small gooseberry patch, while leaving the full vista of the back gardens to be enjoyed later, from the dining room’s French doors. Of course, there was really only a low hedge separating the two parts, but as Mrs. Ali viewed the low mounds of mints, the variegated sage, and the last few tall spikes of borage, she was kind enough to pretend not to look over the hedge at the roses and lawn.

“This must be your alien mint,” she said, bending to rub between her fingers the ruched and puckered surface of a sturdy purplish plant. “It does seem a bit overwhelming for your average cup of tea.”

“Yes, I’ve found it too pungent for anything,” said the Major.

“Oh, but I think it would be excellent for perfuming a hot bath,” said Mrs. Ali. “Very invigorating.”

“A bath?” said the Major. He fumbled to produce some further remark that might be suited to casual discussion of perfumed bathing. He understood suddenly how one could feel naked under clothes. “Rather like being a human tea bag, isn’t it?” he said. Mrs. Ali laughed and tossed the leaf aside.

“You’re quite right,” she said. “And it’s also an awful bother to pick all the soggy bits of leaves out of the drain afterward.” She bent down to pick two pale leaves of peppermint.

“Shall we go in and drink our tea while it’s fresh?” he asked. He waved his left arm toward the house.

“Oh, did you hurt your hand?” she asked.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing.” He tucked it quickly behind his back. He had hoped she wouldn’t see the ugly pink sticking plaster mashed between his thumb and forefinger. “Just gave myself a bit of a whack with the hammer, doing a little carpentry.”

The Major poured them each a second cup of tea and wished there were some way to stop the late afternoon light from traveling any further across the living room. Any moment now and the golden bars would reach the bookcases on the far wall and reflect back at Mrs. Ali the lateness of the hour. He feared she might be prompted to stop reading.

She had a low, clear reading voice and she read with obvious appreciation of the text. He had almost forgotten to enjoy listening. During the dusty years of teaching at St. Mark’s preparatory school, his ears had become numb, rubbed down to nonvibrating nubs by the monotone voices of uncomprehending boys. To them, “Et tu Brute” carried the same emotional weight as a bus conductor’s “Tickets, please.” No matter that many possessed very fine, plummy accents; they strove with equal determination to garble the most precious of texts. Sometimes, he was forced to beg them to desist, and this they saw as victory over his stuffiness. He had chosen to retire the same year that the school allowed movies to be listed in the bibliographies of literary essays.

Mrs. Ali had marked many pages with tiny slips of orange paper and, after some prompting from him, she had agreed to read from the fragments that interested her. He thought that Kipling had never sounded so good. She was now quoting from one of his favorite stories, “Old Men at Pevensey,” which was set soon after the Norman Conquest and had always seemed to the Major to express something important about the foundations of the land.

“‘I do not think for myself,’ ” she read, quoting the knight De Aquila, master of Pevensey Castle, “ ‘nor for our King, nor for your lands. I think for England, for whom neither King nor Baron thinks. I am not Norman, Sir Richard, nor Saxon, Sir Hugh. English am I.’ ”

The Major gulped at his tea making an unfortunate slurp. It was embarrassing but served to quell the “Here, here!” that had leaped unbidden to his lips. Mrs. Ali looked up from her book and smiled.

“He writes characters of such idealism,” she said. “To be as grizzled and worldly as this knight, and yet still so clear in one’s passion and duty to the land. Is it even possible?”

“Is it possible to love one’s country above personal considerations?” said the Major. He looked up at the ceiling, considering his answer. He noticed a faint but alarming brown stain that had not been there last week, in the corner between the window and the front hall. Patriotism was momentarily dangled in the scale against urgent plumbing concerns.

“I know most people today would regard such love of country as ridiculously romantic and naïve,” he said. “Patriotism itself has been hijacked by scabby youths with jackboots and bad teeth whose sole aim is to raise their own standard of living. But I do believe that there are those few who continue to believe in the England that Kipling loved. Unfortunately, we are a dusty bunch of relics.”

“My father believed in such things,” she said at last. “Just as Saxons and Normans became one English people, he never stopped believing that England would one day accept us too. He was only waiting to be asked to saddle up and ride the beacons with De Aquila as a real Englishman.”

“Good for him,” said the Major. “Not that there’s much call for actual beacon-watching these days. Not with nuclear bombs and such.” He sighed. It was a pity, really, to see the string of beacons that ran the length of England’s southern shore reduced to pretty bonfires lit for the benefit of TV cameras on the Millennium and the Queen’s Jubilee.

“I was speaking metaphorically,” she said.

“Of course you were, dear lady,” he said, “But how much more satisfying to think of him literally riding to the top of Devil’s Dyke, flaming torch at the ready. The jingling of the harnesses, the thudding of hoofbeats, the cries of his fellow Englishmen, and the smell of the burning torch carried next to the banner of St. George …”

“I think he would have settled for not being so casually forgotten when the faculty agreed to meet for a drink at the local pub.”

“Ah,” said the Major. He would have liked to be able to make some soothing reply—something to the effect of how proud he would, himself, have been to partake of a glass of beer with her father. However, this was made impossible by the awkward fact that neither he, nor anyone else he knew, had ever thought to invite her husband for a drink in the pub. Of course that was entirely a social thing, he thought, not anything to do with color. And then, Mr. Ali had never come in himself, never tried to break the ice. He was probably a teetotaler, anyway. None of these thoughts was in the least usable; the Major was mentally a hooked carp, its mouth opening and closing on the useless oxygen.

“He would have liked this room, my father.” He saw Mrs. Ali’s gaze taking in the inglenook fireplace, the tall bookcases on two walls, the comfortable sofa and unmatched armchairs, each with small table and good reading lamp to hand. “I am very honored by your graciousness in inviting me into your home.”

“No, no,” said the Major, blushing for all the times it would never have crossed his mind to do so. “The honor is mine, and it is my great loss that I did not have the chance to host you and your husband. My very great loss.”

“You are too kind,” she said. “I would have liked Ahmed to see this house. It was always my dream that we would buy a small house one day—a real Sussex cottage, with a white boarded front and lots of windows looking out on a garden.”

“I suppose it is very convenient, though, living directly above the shop?”

“Well, I’ve never minded it being a little cramped,” she said. “But with my nephew staying … And then, there is really very little room for bookshelves like these.” She smiled at him and he was very happy that she shared his appreciation.

“My son thinks I should get rid of most of them,” the Major said. “He thinks I need a wall free for an entertainment center and a large TV.”

Roger had, on more than one occasion, suggested that he pare down his collection of books, in order to modernize the room, and had offered to buy him a room-sized television so that he “would have something to do in the evenings.”

“It is a fact of life, I suppose, that the younger generation must try to take over and run the lives of their elders,” said Mrs. Ali. “My life is not my own since my nephew came to stay. Hence the dream of a cottage of my own has reawakened in my mind.”

“Even in your own home, they track you down with the telephone at all hours,” said the Major. “I think my son tries to organize my life because it’s easier than his own—gives him a sense of being in control of something in a world that is not quite ready to put him in charge.”

“That’s very perceptive of you,” said Mrs. Ali, considering a moment. “What do we do to counteract this behavior?”

“I’m considering running away to a quiet cottage in a secret location,” said the Major, “and sending him news of my well-being by postcards forwarded on via Australia.”

She laughed. “Perhaps I may join you?”

“You would be most welcome,” said the Major, and for a moment he saw a low thatched hut tucked behind a gorse-backed hill and a thin crescent of sandy beach filled with wild gulls. Smoke from the chimney indicated a fragrant stewpot left on the wood-burning stove. He and she returning slowly from a long walk, to a lamp-lit room filled with books, a glass of wine at the kitchen table …

Conscious that he was dreaming again, he abruptly recalled his attention to the room. Roger always became impatient when he drifted off into thinking. He seemed to view it as a sign of early-onset dementia. The Major hoped Mrs. Ali had not noticed. To his surprise, she was gazing out the window as if she, too, was lost in pleasant plans. He sat and enjoyed her profile for a moment; her straight nose, her strong chin, and, he noticed now, delicate ears under the thick hair. As if feeling the pressure of his gaze, she turned her eyes back to him.

“May I offer you the full garden tour?” he said.

The flower beds were struggling against the frowziness of autumn. Chrysanthemums held themselves erect in clumps of gold and red, but most of the roses were just hips and the mats of dianthus sprawled onto the path like blue hair. The yellowing foliage of the lilies and the cut-back stalks of cone flowers had never looked so sad.

“I’m afraid the garden is not at its finest,” he said, following Mrs. Ali as she walked slowly down the gravel path.

“Oh, but it’s quite lovely,” she said. “That purple flower on the wall is like an enormous jewel.” She pointed to where a late clematis spread its last five or six flowers. The stems were as unpleasant as rusty wire and the leaves curled and crisped, but the flowers, as big as tea plates, shone like claret-colored velvet against the old brick wall.

“It was my grandmother who collected all our clematis plants,” said the Major. “I’ve never been able to find out the name of this one but it’s quite rare. When it grew in the front garden it generated a lot of excitement among passing gardeners. My mother was very patient about people knocking on the door asking for cuttings.” An image flickered in his mind of the long green-handled scissors kept on the hallstand and a glimpse of his mother’s hand reaching for them. He tried to conjure the rest of her but she slipped away.

“Anyway, times changed,” he said. “We had to move it round the back in the late 1970s, when we caught someone prowling in the garden at midnight, secateurs in hand.”

“Plant burglary?”

“Yes, there was quite a rash of it,” he said. “Part of a larger crisis in the culture, of course. My mother always blamed it on decimalization.”

“Yes. It almost invites disaster, doesn’t it, when people are asked to count by ten instead of twelve?” she said, smiling at him before turning to examine the rough-skinned fruit on one of the twisted apple trees at the foot of the lawn.

“You know, my wife used to laugh at me in just the same manner,” he said. “She said if I maintained my aversion to change I risked being reincarnated as a granite post.”

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said.

“Not at all. I am delighted that we have progressed already to a level of …” He searched for the right word, recoiling from “intimacy” as if it were sticky with lust. “A level above mere pleasant acquaintance, perhaps?”

They were at the lower fence now, and he was aware that one of the nails he had added was bent in half and shining with evidence of his incompetence. He hoped she would see only the view beyond, where the sheep field fell away down a small fold between two hills to a copse thick with oaks. Mrs. Ali leaned her arms on the flimsy top rail and considered the trees, which were now blending to a soft indigo in the fading light. The rough grass on the western hill was already dark, while on the eastern flank it was losing the gold from its tips. The ground breathed mist and the sky showed night gathering intensity in the east.

“It is so beautiful here,” she said at last, cupping her chin in one hand.

“It’s just a small view,” he said, “but for some reason I never tire of coming out in the evening to watch the sun leaving the fields.”

“I don’t believe the greatest views in the world are great because they are vast or exotic,” she said. “I think their power comes from the knowledge that they do not change. You look at them and you know they have been the same for a thousand years.”

“And yet how suddenly they can become new again when you see them through someone else’s eyes,” he said. “The eyes of a new friend, for example.” She turned to look at him, her face in shadow; the moment hung between them.

“It’s funny,” she said, “to be suddenly presented with the possibility of making new friends. One begins to accept, at a certain age, that one has already made all the friends to which one is entitled. One becomes used to them as a static set—with some attrition, of course. People move far away, they become busy with their lives …”

“Sometimes they leave us for good,” added the Major, feeling his throat constrict. “Dashed inconsiderate of them, I say.” She made a small gesture, reaching out as if to lay a hand on his sleeve, but circled her hand away. He pressed the tip of his shoe into the soil of the flower bed as if he had spotted a thistle.

After a few moments, she said: “I should be going, at least temporarily.”

“As long as you promise to come back,” he said. They began to walk back to the house, Mrs. Ali drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders as the light faded from the garden.

“When Ahmed died, I realized that we had become almost alone together,” she added. “Being busy with the shop, happy with each other’s company—we had stopped making much of an effort to keep up with friends.”

“I suppose one does fall into a bit of a rut,” agreed the Major. “Of course, I always had Bertie. He was a great comfort to me.” As he said this, he realized it was true. Incongruous as it might seem, given how little time he and Bertie had spent together in recent decades, he had always felt they remained close, as they had been when they were two grubby-kneed boys pummeling each other behind the greenhouse. It also occurred to him that perhaps this only meant that the less he saw of people, the more kindly he felt toward them, and that this might explain his current mild exasperation with his many condolence-offering acquaintances.

“You are lucky to have many friends in the village,” said Mrs. Ali. “I envy you that.”

“I suppose you could put it that way,” said the Major, opening the tall gate that led directly into the front garden. He stood aside and let Mrs. Ali pass.

“And now, just when I am being asked to consider how and where I will spend the next chapter of my life,” she continued, “I have not only had the pleasure of discussing books with you, but I have also been asked by Miss DeVere to assist her and her friends with this dance at a golf club?” She made her statement a question, but he could not begin to think quite what it was or what answer she expected. He felt a strong inclination to warn her away from any such social entanglements.

“The ladies are tireless,” he said. It didn’t sound much of a compliment. “Many, many good works and all that sort of thing.” Mrs. Ali’s smile indicated that she understood him.

“I was told you suggested my name,” she said. “And Grace DeVere has always been very polite. I suppose I am wondering whether this might be a small opening for me to participate in the community. A way to spread some more roots.” They were at the front gate already, and the garden and lane were almost dark. Down the hill, a single band of tangerine light hung low in a gap between the trees. The Major sensed that Mrs. Ali was tethered to the village by only the slightest of connections. A little more pressure from her husband’s family, another slight from an ungrateful villager, and she might be ripped away. Most people would not even take the time to notice. If they did, it would be only to enjoy complaining that her nephew’s morose proprietorship was yet another sign of what the world was coming to. To persuade her to stay, just for the pleasure of having her nearby, seemed utterly selfish. He could not, in good conscience, promote any association with Daisy Green and her band of ladies. He could more easily recommend gang membership or fence-hopping into the polar bear enclosure at the Regents Park zoo. She looked at him and he knew she would give his opinion weight. He fiddled with the latch of the gate.

“I may have inadvertently pledged my cooperation, too,” said the Major at last. “There is a food tasting I appear to have agreed to attend.” He was aware of a slight constriction in his voice. Mrs. Ali looked amused. “It is a great help to Grace that you have been willing to put your expertise at her disposal,” he continued. “However, I must warn you that the committee’s overabundance of enthusiasm, combined with a complete absence of knowledge, may produce some rather theatrical effects. I would hate for you to be offended in any way.”

“In that case, I shall tell Grace to count on us,” she said. “Between the three of us, perhaps we can save the Mughal Empire from once again being destroyed.” The Major bit his tongue. As they shook hands and promised to meet again, he did not express his conviction that Daisy Green might represent a greater menace to the Mughal Empire than the conquering Rajput princes and the East India Company combined.