Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (28 page)

George gave him a pitying glance, as if he himself were the old man, and the Major an ignorant child. “If you have a mum but not a dad, they don’t play with you,” he explained. “Can I have another bun?” The Major was so stunned he passed the plate without thinking. It was only as George sank his face into the icing that the Major remembered how he had never allowed his own son more than a single treat at tea and had sometimes, at suitably random intervals, made him do with no treats at all in order to avoid spoiling him. In this case, another cake seemed the only remedy to hand.

“Oh, George, your mother and your aunt Noreen love you so much, and your nanni loved you very much,” said Mrs. Ali, running around the table and falling to her knees on the slightly dirty concrete to wrap her arms around the boy. “And I love you very much as well.” She kissed his face and stroked his hair while George squirmed and tried to keep the bun from tangling in her long hair. “You mustn’t lose sight of that when people are cruel.”

“You seem like a very intelligent little chap,” said the Major as Mrs. Ali released George from her hugs. The boy looked with some suspicion at the Major, who decided not to offer the ‘sticks and stones’ advice he had intended but instead reached toward George’s dirty, sticky hand and said, “I would be honoured if you would consider counting me as a friend.”

“Okay,” said George, shaking hands. “But what else can you play besides kites?” Mrs. Ali laughed while the Major did his best to maintain a grave and thoughtful expression.

“Have you ever played chess?” he asked. “I could teach you, I suppose.”

∗

On the way home, George slept in the backseat, tired from all the running and filled with cake. The Major drove as scenic a route as possible; Mrs. Ali seemed entranced by the high banks and snug cottages of the less-travelled lanes. She spotted an old round postbox at a crossroads and he stopped the car so she could post her letter. He held his breath as she stood for a moment, letter in hand, her head curved in thought. He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter – the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability of its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one’s words could not be taken back, one’s thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face. As she dropped the letter in the box, all the sun seemed to drain out of the afternoon.

∗

The question of how to begin a casual conversation designed to persuade a young man to accept a stranger’s guidance on life-altering decisions plagued the Major for several days. There seemed to be few opportunities, even if one could find the appropriate words. Abdul Wahid rose very early and left without so much as a cup of tea. He returned late most days, having already had his dinner at the shop, and slipped up at once to his room where he read from his small stack of religious books. His arrival home was often signalled only by a small token of thanks left on the kitchen table: a parchment paper twist of some new tea blend, a package of plain shortbread, a bag of apples. The only strangeness was the sight of his empty shoes lined up at night by the back door and the faint hint of a lime-based aftershave, lingering in the bathroom, which Abdul Wahid left wiped and spotless each morning. The Major despaired of finding an opening and in order to fulfill his promise to Mrs. Ali, he began to keep the teapot primed and a kettle warm on the stove, while he lurked about in his own scullery hoping to waylay his guest coming through the back door.

One evening when it was raining heavily, the Major found his chance. Abdul Wahid was delayed in the back hall by the need to shake out and hang up his dripping rain jacket. His shoes must have been soaked through, for the Major heard him stuffing them with crumpled newspaper from the recycling basket. Transferring the kettle to a hotter plate on the Aga, the Major set the teapot in the middle of the table and put out two large mugs.

“Won’t you join me in a mug of hot tea?” he asked as Abdul Wahid entered the kitchen. “It’s a rough night out there.”

“I do not want to give you any trouble, Major,” said Abdul Wahid, hesitating. He seemed to be shivering from the cold. The thin sweater he wore over his shirt was hardly adequate, thought the Major. “Your hospitality is already more than I deserve.”

“You would be doing me a great favour, sitting down for a while,” said the Major. “I’ve been by myself all day today and I could use the company.” He poked up the fire as if the matter were already settled. As he bent over the smoking logs, he realised that his suggestion of loneliness was true. Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife. He even missed Roger and how the house used to ring to the kicking shoes of grubby boys playing up and down the stairs. He was sorry now for the many times he had rebuked Roger and his friends – he had underrated the joy in their rowdiness.

Abdul Wahid took a seat at the kitchen table and accepted a cup of tea. “Thanks. It’s pretty damp out tonight.”

“Yes, not too nice,” agreed the Major, wondering if they would be stuck for long in the inevitable loop of weather talk.

“It is funny that you are tired of spending the day alone,” said Abdul Wahid. “While I am tired of being around a busy shop filled with chattering people all day. I would love to trade with you and have time to myself for reading and for thinking.”

“Don’t rush to trade places with an old man,” said the Major. “Youth is a wonderful time of vigour and action. For possibilities, and for collecting friends and experiences.”

“I miss being a student,” said Abdul Wahid. “I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books.”

“Life does often get in the way of one’s reading,” agreed the Major. They drank their tea in silence as the logs cracked and spat in the flames of the fireplace.

“I am sorry to leave you to your solitary days, Major, but I have decided to move back to the shop,” said Abdul Wahid at length. “I have burdened you with my presence too long.”

“Are you sure?” asked the Major. “You really are welcome to stay on here. Roger and Sandy have no real intention of visiting more than a few nights, I guarantee, and you are welcome to any books on my shelves.”

“Thank you, Major, but I have decided to live in a small outbuilding we have behind the store,” said Abdul Wahid. “It has a toilet and a small window. Once I have moved out what appears to be a dead tractor and several chicken coops, I believe a fresh coat of paint will transform it into a room just like the one I had at university. It will be a sanctuary until things are decided.”

“You haven’t yet heard from your family, then,” said the Major.

“A letter has come,” replied Abdul Wahid.

“Ah,” said the Major. Abdul Wahid stared into the fire and said nothing, so, after an interminable pause, the Major added: “Good news, I hope?”

“It appears the moral objections may be overcome,” said Abdul Wahid. He screwed his face up, as if tasting something sour.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” said the Major. “Isn’t it?” He was puzzled by the fact that the young man seemed so unhappy. “Soon you can be with your son, and maybe even live in the same house instead of the chicken shed.”

Abdul Wahid got up and walked over to the mantelpiece, where he squatted on his heels and held his palms close to the flames.

“I do not think you would be so quick to approve if it was your son,” he said. The Major frowned as he tried to quell the immediate recognition that the young man was right. He fumbled for a reply that would be true but also helpful. “I do not mean to offend you,” added Abdul Wahid.

“Not at all,” said the Major. “You are not wrong – at least, in the abstract. I would be unhappy to think of my son becoming entangled in such a way and many people, including myself, may be guilty of a certain smug feeling that it would never happen in our families.”

“I thought so,” said Abdul Wahid with a grimace.

“Now, don’t you get offended, either,” said the Major. “What I’m trying to say is that I think that is how everyone feels in the abstract. But then life hands you something concrete – something concrete like little George – and abstracts have to go out the window.”

“I did not expect them to agree with anything my aunt proposed,” he said. “I expected them to make my decision easy.”

“I had no idea that you didn’t want to marry Amina,” said the Major. He put down his tea mug, the better to emphasise his attention to the conversation. “I seem to have jumped to a conclusion that was not there.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to marry her,” said Abdul Wahid, returning to his chair. He tented his fingertips and blew on them softly. “In her presence, I’m lost to her. She has such eyes. And then she was always so funny and wild. She is like a streak of light, or maybe a blow to the head.” He smiled, as if remembering a particular blow.

“That sounds suspiciously like love to me,” said the Major.

“We are not expected to marry for love, Major,” said Abdul Wahid. “I do not wish to be one of those men who bends and shapes the rules of his religion like a cheap basket to justify his comfortable life and to satisfy every bodily desire.”

“But your family has given permission?” said the Major. “You have been given a chance.” Abdul Wahid looked at him, and the Major was concerned to see a gaunt misery in his face.

“I do not want to be the cause of my family stooping to hypocrisy,” he said. “They took me away from her because of faith. I didn’t like it, but I understood and I forgave them. Now I fear they withdraw their objection in order to secure financial advantage.”

“Your aunt has offered to support the union,” said the Major.

“If faith is worth no more than the price of a small shop in an ugly village, what is the purpose of my life – of any life?” said Abdul Wahid. He slumped in his chair.

“She will give up the shop,” said the Major. He did not phrase it as a question, because he already knew the answer. That Abdul Wahid should slight, in one sentence, both the sacrifice of his aunt and the pastoral beauty of Edgecombe St. Mary incensed the Major to the point of stuttering. He peered for a long time at Abdul Wahid and saw him once more as a sour-faced, objectionable young man.

“She will give up the shop, which is a huge and generous gift from her,” added Abdul Wahid, spreading his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “There is only the question of where she will live that is to be determined.” He sighed. “But what will I give up in accepting?”

“Your absolute arrogance might be a welcome start,” said the Major. He could not prevent the caustic anger in his words. Abdul Wahid widened his eyes and the Major was maliciously happy to have shocked him.

“I don’t understand,” he said, frowning.

“Look here, it’s all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,” said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. “It’s a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.” He stopped to organise his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. “However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course – you are very neat.” Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown.

“You are very strange,” he said. “Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?”

“No, I think it is admirable,” said the Major. “But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God.”

“I live as simply as I can,” said Abdul Wahid.

“I have admired that about you, and it has been refreshing to my own spirit to see a young man who is not consumed by material wants.” As he said this, the thought of Roger and his shiny ambition made a bitter taste in his mouth. “I am just asking you to consider, and only to consider, whether your ideas come from as humble a place as your daily routine.”

Abdul Wahid looked at the Major with some amusement now dancing in his eyes. He gave another of his short, barking laughs.

“Major, how many centuries must we listen to the British telling us to be humble?”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” said the Major, horrified.

“I’m only joking,” said Abdul Wahid. “You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care – and humility.” He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. “But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?”

“My dear boy,” said the Major. “Is there really any other kind?”

T
he sun was red, haloed in mist and barely showing over the hedgerows as the Major crunched across the frost-stiffened grass. He had elected to walk up through the fields to the manor house, intending to arrive before the rest of the shooting party. In a dark holly bush a robin was tweedling a solo to the watercolour hills.

The Major had waited too long for the occasion to hurry its beginning or to arrive in a noisy clatter of smoking exhaust and splattered gravel. It was not that he feared that his Rover would make an inadequate impression among the glittering luxury vehicles and four-by-fours of a London crowd. He felt no shallow envy. He simply preferred to enjoy the ritual of the walk. He felt the balance of his guns, cracked open and cradled in the crook of his elbow. Bertie’s gun was now oiled to a deep shine, almost a match for his own gun’s patina. He enjoyed the creaking seams of his old shooting coat and the weight of his pockets. The waxed cotton bulged with brass cartridges laden with steel shot. An old game bag draped its strap and buckle across his chest and flopped on one hip. It would probably not hold game today – Dagenham would doubtless have the ducks retrieved and carried for the guns by the beaters – but it was satisfying to buckle it on, and the bag was a useful place to stash a new foil-wrapped bar of Kendal Mint Cake, his trademark snack at all the shoots he attended. The bar of mint-oil-flavoured compressed sugar, which he ordered by mail from the original company in Cumbria, was a tidy food and ideal for offering around, unlike the squashed ham sandwiches some of the farmers pulled from their bags and offered to tear apart with powder-stained fingers. He was sure there would be no squashed sandwiches or lukewarm tea today.