Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (27 page)

“You can’t expect my fiancée to share this house with some strange shopkeeper’s assistant from Pakistan,” Roger spluttered.

“I quite understand,” the Major said. “Unfortunately, I had already invited him to stay and I’m afraid it’s not possible to throw him out because my son does not approve.”

“For all we know, he could be a terrorist,” said Roger.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Roger, go and see your painters before they have to rush off to touch up the Vatican or whatever,” said the Major, in a harsher tone than he had intended.

He took the tea tray back to the kitchen. There was a muffled argument in the living room and then Roger stuck his head around the kitchen door to say that he and Sandy were off but would indeed be back to stay the night. The Major only nodded in reply.

He was sad at his own outburst. He wanted to feel the kind of close bond with Roger that Nancy had enjoyed. The truth was that now, without his wife to negotiate the space that they occupied as a family, he and Roger seemed to have little common ground. If there had been no bond of blood, the Major felt now, he and Roger would have little reason to continue to know each other at all. He sat at the table and felt the weight of this admission hang about his shoulders like a heavy, wet coat. In the shrunken world, without Nancy, without Bertie, it seemed very sad to be indifferent to one’s own son.

“W
hat’s this plastic thing for?” asked George, handing the Major an intricately die-cut disc that had come with the kite purchased especially for the afternoon’s expedition.

“Probably just part of the packaging,” said the Major, who had improvised as well as he could, given that the assembly instructions were in Chinese. The cheap purple and green kite fluttered against his hand. He released the rudimentary catch on the spool and handed it to George. “Ready to take it up?”

George took the spool and began to walk backward, away from the Major, across the rabbit-cropped grass. The park, busy with families on this fine Sunday, occupied the whole top of the broad headland to the west of the town. It was good for kites but not so good for balls, many of which were at that very moment careening downhill where the land tilted sharply, on one side dipping to the weald and on the other to the edge of the high cliff. Signs warned people that the white chalk face was always being slivered away by the action of the sea and the weather. Small crosses and bunches of dead flowers made cryptic reference to the many people every year who chose this spot to plunge to their deaths on the jagged rocks below. Every mother in the park seemed to feel the need to call to her children to stay away from danger. It formed a background chorus louder than the sea.

“Eddie, come away from the edge!” shouted a woman from a neighbouring bench. Her son was spinning his arms like a windmill as he ran about after a small dog. “Eddie, I’m warning you.” Yet she did not bother to get up from the bench, where she was engaged in eating a very large sandwich.

“If they are so afraid for their children, why did they insist on coming?” asked the Major, handing Mrs. Ali the kite to launch. “Are you ready, George?”

“Ready!” said George. Mrs. Ali tossed the kite into the air, where it hovered for a fluttering moment and then, to the Major’s immense satisfaction, soared into the sky.

“That’s the ticket,” called the Major as George ran backward, unspooling more line. “More line, George, more line.”

“Don’t go too far, George,” called Mrs. Ali in a sudden anxiety. The she clapped a hand over her mouth and turned wide eyes of apology to the Major.

“Not you as well?” he said.

“I’m afraid it must be a trick of nature,” she said, laughing. “The universal bond between all women and the children in their care.”

“More like a universal hysteria,” said the Major. “It’s hundreds of yards to the edge.”

“Do you not find it even the slightest bit disorienting?” asked Mrs. Ali, surveying the smooth grass running away to the abrupt drop-off. “I can almost feel the earth spinning beneath my feet.”

“That’s the power of it,” said the Major. “Draws people here.” He looked out at the green cliff and the enormous bowl of sky and sea and reached for the appropriate quotation.

∗

Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge As when the Romans came
.

∗

“I expect Roman women also cried out to their children to be careful,” said Mrs. Ali. “Is that Kipling?”

“It is,” said the Major, pulling a small red volume of poetry from his pocket. “It’s called ‘Sussex’ and I was hoping to share it with you over our tea today.” She had called to cancel their planned reading, explaining that she had volunteered to take little George out for the afternoon. The Major, refusing to be disappointed for a second Sunday, found himself asking if he might come along.

“How amazing it is that we ever planned to read it indoors,” said Mrs. Ali. “It has so much more power out here where it was made.”

“Then perhaps we should walk about after Master George, and I might read you the rest of it?” said the Major.

∗

When the poetry had been read, the kite had been tossed several dozen times into the air, and George had run until his small legs were exhausted, the Major suggested that they get some tea. They settled, with tea and a plate of cakes, at a sheltered table on the terrace of the pub that was absurdly built right on the headland. Mrs. Ali’s cheeks were warm from the walking, but she looked a little drawn. George swallowed a bun almost whole and drank a rather flat glass of lemonade before wandering off to view a puppy being walked nearby.

“My nephew suggested we come here,” said Mrs. Ali. “He says he walks up here all the time after mosque because here he can imagine that Mecca is just over the horizon.”

“I think France might be in the way,” said the Major, squinting at the horizon and trying to imagine the correct bearing for Saudi Arabia. “But on a spiritual level, there is something about the edge of the land that does make one feel closer to God. A sobering sense of one’s own smallness, I think.”

“I was very glad he wanted George to see it,” she said. “I think it is a good sign, don’t you?” The Major thought it might have been a better sign had the young man shown George the place himself, but he did not want to spoil Mrs. Ali’s afternoon.

“I must thank you again for putting up my nephew,” she said. “It has allowed George and Amina to be with us and has allowed Abdul Wahid to get to know his son.”

The Major tested the colour of the tea and gave the pot a dissatisfied stir. “I am glad he doesn’t object to Amina being in the shop.”

“A shop is a curious thing,” said Mrs. Ali. “I have always found it to be a tiny free space in a world with many limits.”

“More complicated, then, than just selling eggs and working through the important holidays?”

“A place of compromise,” she added. “It’s very hard to put into words.”

“Compromises are often built on their being unspoken,” said the Major. “I think I understand you perfectly.”

“I could never talk to my nephew about it,” she said. “Yet I will whisper to you that I pin my hopes on the space of the shop allowing Abdul Wahid to see where his real duty lies.”

“You believe he loves her?” asked the Major.

“I know that they were very much in love before,” she said. “I also know that the family has gone to many lengths to separate them.”

“He seems to believe that despite your good offices, your late husband’s family will never accept Amina,” he said as he poured the tea. Mrs. Ali accepted a cup of tea, her fingertips meeting his on the edge of the saucer. The Major felt a skip in his veins that could only be happiness. She seemed anxious at his question and hesitated, drinking some tea and carefully placing her cup back on the tea tray before answering.

“I am afraid that I have been very selfish,” she said.

“I cannot allow you to suggest such a thing,” said the Major.

“It is true,” she said. “I have told Abdul Wahid that I have written to the family – and I have written.” Here she paused again. She wrapped her arms around her chest and gazed out at the vista. She did not look at the Major as she continued. “But each day I have been somehow too busy to post the letter.” She fumbled in a small handbag and withdrew a thin envelope, very creased and folded. Turning to him, she held it out. The Major took it gently from her fingers.

“A letter unposted is a heavy burden,” he said.

“Each day that passes I feel heavier,” she said. “I feel the weight of knowing things cannot go on as they are. But at the same time, each day I feel a lightness I had almost forgotten.” She gazed at George, who was crouched on the grass, talking to the boy with the puppy while the puppy jumped at both their knees.

“How long can you continue to postpone the necessary conversation?”

“I was hoping you might reassure me that I can postpone it forever,” she said. “I am afraid that the letter will undo all.” She turned to him, a wistful smile hovering on her lips.

“My dear Mrs. Ali…”

“I am afraid everything will be taken from me,” she said in a quiet voice. The Major felt a desire to throw the offending letter into the nearby rubbish bin along with the paper plates and sticky ice cream wrappers.

“If only it were possible to ignore them entirely,” he said.

“That will not do,” said Mrs. Ali. “I know my nephew, who has his own doubts to overcome, will not be able to proceed without his father’s blessing.” She took the envelope back and pushed it into her handbag again. “Perhaps we will see a postbox on our way home.”

“I hope your letter will meet with a more friendly reaction than you imagine,” said the Major.

“My faith does permit the occasional miracle,” said Mrs. Ali. “My hope is that they will see they have been unjust. Of course, if that fails to work, I am prepared to bargain on a more temporal level.”

“One really shouldn’t have to bargain with one’s family like a used-car salesman.” The Major sighed. With acknowledged cowardice, he had ignored two phone calls from Marjorie, finally finding a use for the incoming number display on his phone. He felt that he could no more hold off an inevitable confrontation about the guns than frail Mrs. Ali could hope to hold back the fury of her family.

“Someone must stand up for George,” she said. “It is not permitted in Islam to let a child carry the weight of a parent’s shame on his shoulders. He had to witness his grandmother’s funeral shunned by all but a handful of people. It was a great dishonour.”

“Terrible,” said the Major.

“I am afraid my husband’s family may have increased the shame by spreading certain untruths,” said Mrs. Ali. “I know Abdul Wahid understands this, and I believe it will help him decide to put things right.”

“He does seem fond of her and the boy,” said the Major.

“I am glad that you say that,” said Mrs. Ali. “I was hoping you might talk to him for me. I think he needs a man’s perspective on this.”

“It’s not really my place,” began the Major, horrified at the thought of talking about such intimate matters. He would not have been able to broach such a subject with his own son, let alone the stubborn and reticent young man currently using his guest room.

“With your military background, you understand better than most men the concept of honour and pride,” said Mrs. Ali. “In the end, I am a woman and I would throw away every shred of pride to keep this little boy with me. Abdul Wahid knows this and therefore mistrusts my ability to see his point of view.”

“I’m not an expert on the faith behind his sense of duty,” said the Major. “I could not instruct him.” Yet he felt his opposition melting under the warm satisfaction of hearing Mrs. Ali’s compliment.

“I ask you only to talk to him as one honourable man to another,” said Mrs. Ali. “Abdul Wahid is still exploring his relationship to his faith. We all pick and choose and make our religion our own, do we not?”

“I can’t imagine the various ayatollahs or the Archbishop of Canterbury agreeing with you,” said the Major. “I believe you are being unorthodox.”

“I am being realistic,” said Mrs. Ali.

“I had no idea shopkeepers were so heretical,” said the Major. “I am quite astonished.”

“Will you talk to him for me?” she asked, her brown eyes unwavering.

“I will do anything you ask,” he said. He read gratitude in her face. He wondered if he might also be seeing some happiness. He turned away and made himself busy poking at a large weed with the tip of his stick as he added, “You must know that I am entirely yours to command.”

“I see chivalry lives on,” she said.

“As long as there’s no jousting involved, I’m your knight,” he said.

∗

Just as the Major was thinking that he could not remember, in recent years, a more satisfying Sunday afternoon, a woman walked across the grass below them and pulled the small boy and his puppy away from George. They moved off toward the car park as if to leave, but a couple of hundred feet away she stopped and shook the boy by the arm, her angry face close to his as she spoke to him. The boy was then released again to run with his dog. George, who had stood up and watched as they walked away, now came slowly back to the table with his shoulders hunched.

“What happened, George?” said Mrs. Ali. “Was that woman rude to you?” George shrugged.

“Speak up, now,” said the Major, trying to keep his voice from being too gruff. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said George. He sighed. “His mum just said he wasn’t allowed to play with me.”

“The ignorance of some people,” said the Major, half-rising from his seat. He saw now that it was the woman who had been screaming earlier, the mother of Eddie. He would have bounded after her only she was very large and, though a slow and lumbering woman, was likely to be belligerent.

“I’m sorry, George,” said Mrs. Ali. She placed a hand on the Major’s arm as if to restrain him and the Major sank back onto his seat.

“Back home no one plays with me, either.”

“Surely you must have many friends,” said the Major. “Fine young men just like you?”