Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (43 page)

“I suppose not,” agreed the Major.

“Besides, it will be only the quietest of ceremonies.” Dave slurped at his tea. “I was willing to bankrupt myself to do it right, but my wife says they will prefer not to make a fuss in the circumstances. So it will be almost nothing – just a token exchange of gifts and not an ounce more than what is proper.” He paused and then looked at the Major with an eyebrow raised in significance. “Besides, we feel it is important for our Jasmina to make a clean break with the past if she is to be happy in her future.”

“A clean break?” asked the Major. Dave Ali sighed and shook his head in what appeared to be pity.

“She insisted on taking on a large burden when my brother died,” he said slowly. “A burden no woman should be asked to carry. And now we want only for her to lay down such responsibilities and be happy here in the heart of family where we can take care of her.”

“That is very generous of you,” said the Major.

“But old habits linger,” said Dave. “Myself, I look forward to the day when I can turn over our whole business to Abdul Wahid and retire, but no doubt I, too, will get under everyone’s feet and have a hard time handing over the decisions to others.”

“She is a very capable woman,” said the Major.

“In time we hope she will learn to be content here at home. She is already indispensable to my mother and she is reading the Qur’an to her every day. I have refused to put her in one of our shops. I have told her now is her time to sit back and let others take care of her. So much better to be happily at home, I tell her. No taxes or bills to pay, no books to balance, no one expecting you to know all the answers.”

“She is used to a certain independence,” the Major said.

Dave shrugged. “She is coming around. She has stopped suggesting to my poor wife new ways to run our inventory systems. Instead, she is obsessed with getting her own library card.”

“A library card?” asked the Major.

“Personally, who has time to read?” he said. “But if she wants one, I tell her she is welcome to it. We are very busy right now, what with the wedding and opening a SuperCentre next month, but my wife has promised to help her establish proof of her residency and then she will be able to sit home and read all day.”

They were interrupted by a commotion in the hallway. The Major couldn’t make out any of the words, but he heard a familiar voice cry out, “This is ridiculous. I will go in if I please,” and then the door opened and there she was, Mrs. Ali, still wearing a coat and scarf and carrying a small bag of groceries. Her cheeks were flushed, either from the argument or from having been outside, and she looked at him as if she were hungry to see all of him at once. Behind her, the young pregnant woman whispered something that made Mrs. Ali flinch.

“It’s fine, Sheena, let her come,” said Dave, getting up and waving as if to dismiss her. “It will do no harm to greet an old friend of your uncle Ahmed’s.”

“It is you,” she said. “I saw a hat in the hallway and I knew at once it was yours.”

“We did not know you were back from your errands,” said Dave. “The Major is passing by on his way to Scotland.”

“I had to come and see you,” said the Major. He wanted desperately to take her hand but he restrained the impulse.

“I was just telling the Major how much you enjoy your reading,” said Dave. “My brother used to tell me, Major, how Jasmina was always buried in reading. “So what if I have to do a little more so she can read. She is an intellectual,” he would say.” His voice twisted with an unmistakable sarcasm at the word ‘intellectual’ and the Major was gripped with an intense dislike of the man. “I’m only sorry he worked himself so hard,” added Dave mopping with his handkerchief again. “Taken so early from us.”

“That is despicable even for you,” said Mrs. Ali in a low voice. There was a pause as they looked at each other with equally locked jaws. “Sheena told me you had a business meeting,” she added.

“Sheena is very cautious,” said Mr. Ali, addressing the Major. “She worries about protecting everyone. Sometimes she even makes people wait in the street for me.”

“Grace wanted me to come and see you,” said the Major to Mrs. Ali. “I think she was expecting you to write.”

“But I did write, several times,” she said. “I see I was right to worry when I received no reply.” She gave her brother-in-law a look of mild disdain. “Is this not strange, Dawid?”

“Shocking, shocking – the post office is very bad these days,” agreed her brother-in-law, pursing his lips as if he did not like being addressed by his real name in front of an outsider. “And I speak as someone who has three sub post offices. We can only put the mail in the bag, but after that we’re not responsible.”

“I would like to talk to the Major for a few minutes alone,” said Mrs. Ali. “Should we speak here, or should I take the Major on a walk to show him the neighbourhood?”

“Here will be fine, just fine,” said Dawid Ali in a hurried tone. The Major saw, with a mixture of amusement and hurt, that he was appalled at the thought of them promenading in front of the neighbours. “I’m sure the Major has to leave very soon, anyway – the afternoon traffic is so bad these days.” He went to the frosted doors and slid them open. “So we will leave you to chat about old times for a few minutes.” In the back room, a television played low and an old lady sat in a wing chair, a walking frame positioned in front of her. She looked half dead, slumped in the chair, but the Major saw her black eyes swivel toward them. “If you don’t mind, I will not ask Mummi to turn out of her chair. She will not disturb you.”

“I don’t need a chaperone,” said Mrs. Ali in a fierce whisper.

“Of course not,” said Dawid. “But we must allow Mummi to think she is useful. Don’t worry,” he added to the Major, “she’s as deaf as a post.”

“I must thank you for your hospitality,” said the Major.

“I doubt we’ll see you again, clean break and all that,” said Dawid Ali, holding out his hand. “It was a pleasure to meet such an acquaintance of my brother and an honour that you should come so far out of your way.”

∗

After Dawid Ali had whispered a few words to his mother and left the back room, the Major and Mrs. Ali moved as far away as possible from the open doors and sat on a hard bench in the bay window. She still held her shopping bag and now she placed it under the bench and shrugged off her coat. It fell carelessly behind her.

“I feel as if I’m just dreaming that you’re here,” she said.

“I don’t think they’d like it if I pinched you,” he replied. They sat in silence for a moment. It seemed to the Major that it was necessary to break out of the usual kinds of small talk and make some declaration, some demand, but for the life of him he could not find the words to begin.

“That stupid dance,” he said at last. “I never got the chance to apologise.”

“I do not blame you for the rudeness of others,” she said.

“But you left,” he said. “Without saying goodbye.” She looked out of the window and he took the opportunity to study again the curve of her cheek and the thick lashes of her brown eyes.

“I had allowed myself to daydream,” she said. “A fleeting sense of wonder.” She smiled at him. “I woke up to find myself a practical woman once more and I realised something else.” Her smile faded and she looked serious, like a swimmer who commits to dive in, or a soldier to whom the order to open fire has just been given. “I threw in my lot with the Ali family a great many years ago and it was time to pay that debt.”

“When you sent back the Kipling, I thought you despised me.” He was aware that he sounded like a wounded child.

“Sent it back?” she asked. “But I lost it in the move.”

“Abdul Wahid handed it to me,” he said, feeling confused.

“I thought it was in my small bag with all my other valuables, but after I got here I couldn’t find it.” She widened her eyes and her lips trembled. “She must have stolen it from me.”

“Who?”

“My mother-in-law, Dawid’s mother,” she said, nodding toward the back room. The Major tried to share her outrage, but he was too happy to discover that she had not meant to return his book.

“Your letters go missing, you are kept from your nephew’s wedding, you are asked to leave your home,” he said. “You cannot stay here, my dear lady. I cannot allow it.”

“What would you have me do?” she said. “I must give up the shop, for George’s sake.”

“If you’ll allow me, I will take you away from here right now, today,” he said. “Under any conditions you like.” He turned and took both her hands in his. “If this room were not so ugly and oppressive, I would ask you something more,” he said. “But my need to get you out of here is more important than any considerations of my own heart and I will not burden your escape with any strings. Simply tell me what I have to do to get you out of this room and take you somewhere where you can breathe. And do not insult me by pretending that you are not suffocating in this house.” His own breath came heavy now and his heart seeming to knock about in his chest like a trapped bird. She turned on him eyes wet with tears.

“Are we to run away to that little cottage we once talked about? Where no one knows us and we send only cryptic postcards to the world? I should like to go there now and be done with everyone for a while,” she said. He gripped her hands tightly and did not turn when he heard a wail from the other room, which was the old lady gabbling in Urdu and calling “Dawid! Come quick!”

“Let’s go now,” he said. “I shall take you there, and if you want we’ll stay forever.”

“What about the wedding?” she asked. “I must see them safely married.”

“Or we’ll drive to the wedding!” he shouted happily, abandoning all sense of decorum in his excitement. “Only come away now and I promise, whatever happens, I will not abandon you.”

“I will go with you,” she said quietly. She got up and put on her coat. She picked up the bag of groceries. “We must leave now, before they try to stop me.”

“Shouldn’t you pack a bag?” he asked, flustered for a moment by the transformation of a momentary passion into cool reality. “I could wait for you in the car.”

“If we stop for reality, I will never leave here,” she said. “It is too sensible to stay. Aren’t you expected in Scotland? Am I not to help with dinner and then read the Qur’an aloud? Is it not raining in England?” It was in fact now raining, and the fat drops splattered on the window like tears.

“It is raining,” he said. He looked out the window. “And I am expected in Scotland.” He had forgotten all about the shoot and now, glancing at his watch, he saw that assuming they kept the usual absurdly early hours, he would likely not make it in time for dinner. He turned to see her teetering on her feet. At any moment she would sink onto the bench and the madness of running away would be gone. Her face was already losing its animation. He recognised the tiny moment before his failure would be understood and accepted. He hung in the space of the room, on the cusp of the silence between them and the wailing from the back room. Feet pounded in the hall. Then the Major leaned forward, reached out a hand, and fastened it around her wrist, hard. “Let’s go now,” he said.

“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 mobile 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 neighbouring window was a ramshackle blue casement, fitted with several extra pieces of wood on one side and missing glass in one of the panes.