Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (48 page)

“This is silly. I could never hurt you, Major.” Abdul Wahid stepped back half a pace.

“If you die here today, your aunt Jasmina will be lost to me, and I do not want to live without her.” The Major struggled to keep his voice even. “Also, I will not face your son, George, and tell him I stood by and let his father kill himself.” He stepped forward again, pushing Abdul Wahid back. Abdul Wahid moved his hands to grip the gun more comfortably. The Major prayed his fingers were not near the twin triggers.

“You must see that your sense of shame will not die with you, Abdul Wahid. It will live on in your son and in Amina and in your aunt Jasmina. Your pain will haunt their lives. Your wish for death today is a selfish act. I am also a selfish man – from these years of living alone, I expect. I do not want to live to see this happen.”

“I will not shoot you.” Abdul Wahid was almost crying now, his face twisted with anguish and confusion.

“Either shoot me or choose to live yourself,” said the Major. “I can’t face your aunt any other way. How strange to think that we come as a pair now.”

Abdul Wahid gave a bellow of anguish and threw the gun away from him onto the ground. The butt end hit first and the gun gave a roaring boom and discharged what the Major registered as a single barrel.

He felt a white-hot sear of steel shot through his right leg. The force of the close range spun him around and he fell heavily, slipping in the grass. As he rolled, he felt the ground disappear under him. His legs slipped over the edge of the chalk into empty air. There was no time to feel any pain as he scrabbled above his head with his hands and felt his left elbow bump a metal stanchion that had once held a wire fence. He grabbed the stanchion. It held briefly against the tug of his body as he rolled over and then it began to move, the metal squeaking like a dull knife. In an instant, a body landed on his left lower arm and fingers dug at his back to find any grip. His legs jackknifed and his left knee struck the cliff with a pain that flashed like a light in his head. The Major heard the clatter of stones preceding him over the edge. It was so fast there was no time for thought. There was only a brief feeling of surprise and the smell of cold white chalk and wet grass.

T
he Major was keen to push away the nagging idea of pain, which started to seep into his head along with the light. It was comfortable in the warm darkness of sleep and he struggled to stay down. A murmur of voices, a clattering of metal carts, and the brief percussion of curtain rings swept aside made him think he might be surfacing into an airport lounge. He felt his eyelids flutter and he tried to squeeze them shut. It was his attempt to roll over that shocked him awake with a tearing pain in his left knee and an ache on his right side that made him gasp. He scrabbled with his hand and felt thin sheet over slippery mattress and knocked it against a metal post.

“He’s waking up.” A hand held his shoulder down and the same voice added, “Don’t try to move, Mr. Pettigrew.”

“Isss Major…” he whispered. “Major Pettigrew.” His voice was a hoarse whisper in a mouth that seemed to be made of brown paper. He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue felt like a dead toad.

“Here’s something to drink,” said the voice as a straw snagged on his lip and he sucked at lukewarm water. “You’re in the hospital, Mr. Pettigrew, but you’re going to be fine.”

He slipped away again into sleep, hoping that when he awoke again it would be into his own room at Rose Lodge. He was quite annoyed to discover later the same cacophony of institutional sounds and the pressure of fluorescent lights against his eyelids. This time he opened his eyes.

“How are you feeling, Dad?” said Roger, who, the Major could see, had spread the
Financial Times
over the bed and was using the Major’s legs to prop up the pages.

“Don’t let me keep you from the stock tables,” whispered the Major. “How long have I been here?”

“About a day,” said Roger. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I was shot in the leg, not the head. Is it still there?”

“The leg? Of course it is,” said Roger. “Can’t you feel it?”

“Yes, of course I can,” said the Major. “But I didn’t want any nasty surprises.” He found it quite exhausting to speak but he asked for some more water. Roger helped him sip from a plastic cup, though most of it dribbled uncomfortably across his cheek and into his ear.

“They dug a whole lot of shot out of your leg,” said Roger. “Lucky for you it missed any arteries, and the doctor said it only clipped the edge of the right testicle, not that he expected it mattered much to a man your age.”

“Thanks very much,” said the Major.

“You also tore up the ligaments in your left knee pretty badly, but that surgery is considered elective so they said either it’ll heal on its own or you can join a waiting list and get it in about a year.” Roger leaned over and, to the Major’s surprise squeezed his hand and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine, Dad.”

“If you kiss me like that again, I’ll have to assume you’re lying and that I’m actually in the hospice,” he said.

“You gave me a fright, what can I say.” He folded up the newspaper as if embarrassed by his moment of affection. “You’ve always been an unmovable rock in my life and suddenly you’re an old man wearing tubes. Quite nasty.”

“Nastier still for me,” said the Major. He struggled a moment to ask the questions to which he was not sure he could bear the answers. He was tempted to feign sleep again and put off the bad news. It must be bad, he thought, since there was no sign of other visitors. He tried to sit up and Roger reached over to a button on the wall and the bed raised him into a slanted position.

“I want to know,” he began, but he seemed to choke on his own voice. “I must know. Did Abdul Wahid jump?”

“Considering he shot my father, I wouldn’t have cared if he had,” said Roger. “But apparently he threw himself down as you went over and grabbed you just in time. It was touch-and-go, they said, what with the wind and the slippery rain, but some guy named Brian threw himself on Abdul and then some other guy came with a rope and stuff and they dragged you back and got you on a stretcher.”

“So he’s alive?” asked the Major.

“He is, but I’m afraid there’s some very bad news I have to tell you,” said Roger. “I was going to wait until later, but – ”

“Amina’s dead?” asked the Major. “His fiancée?”

“Oh, the girl who got knitted?” said Roger. “No, she’s going to be fine. They’re all with her one flight up in women’s surgical.”

“All who?” said the Major.

“Mrs. Ali, Abdul Wahid, and that George who keeps dunning me out of pound coins for the vending machine,” said Roger. “Then there’s the auntie – Noreen, I think – and Abdul’s parents. It’s like half of Pakistan is up there.”

“Jasmina is there?” the Major asked.

“When she can bear to be away from you,” said Roger. “When I got here last night, they were still trying to pull her off your body, and I can’t seem to get rid of her.”

“I intend to ask her to marry me,” said the Major, his voice curt. “No matter what you think.”

“Don’t start getting all excited. That testicle is still in traction,” Roger said.

“What’s in traction?” asked a voice and the Major felt himself blush as Jasmina came around the curtain wearing a big smile and a shalwar kameez in a yellow as soft as butter. Her hair was damp and she smelled of carbolic soap and lemons.

“You finally went home and took a shower, then?” asked Roger.

“The matron said I was frightening all the visitors with my bloodstained clothes. She let me use the doctors’ shower.” She came to the side of the Major’s bed and he felt as weak as the day she had held him up, faint from hearing about Bertie’s death.

“He didn’t jump,” was all he managed to say as he clutched her warm hand.

“No, he didn’t,” she said. She gripped his hand and kissed him on the cheek and then on the lips. “And now he owes you his life and we can never repay you.”

“If he wants to repay me, tell him to hurry up and get married,” said the Major. “What that boy needs is a woman to order him around.”

“Amina is still quite weak, but we hope they will be married right here in the hospital,” Jasmina said. “My brother and sister-in-law have vowed to stay on as long as it takes to see them settled.”

“It all sounds wonderful,” said the Major. He turned to Roger, who was fiddling with his mobile phone. “But you told me there was bad news?”

“He is right, Ernest,” said Jasmina. “You must prepare yourself.” She looked at Roger, and he nodded as if the two of them had spent some time discussing how to tell a sick man something awful. The Major held his breath and waited for the blow.

“It’s the Churchill, Dad,” said Roger at last. “I’m afraid in the commotion of saving you, it got kicked aside or something and it slid over the edge and Abdul Wahid says he saw it smashing on the rocks on the way down.” He paused and lowered his head. “They haven’t found it.”

The Major closed his eyes and saw it happen. He smelled again the cold chalk, felt the futile scrabble of his legs trying to gain some purchase and the agonising slow slipping of his body as if the sea were a magnet pulling at him and, at the edge of his vision, he could see the gun slipping faster, smooth against the wet grass as it inscribed one slow circle on the edge and then went ahead of them over the cliff.

“Are you all right, Ernest?” said Jasmina. He blinked away the scene, not sure whether it was a real memory or just a vision. The smell of chalk faded from his nostrils and he waited for the pangs of sorrow to overwhelm him. He was surprised to find that he could summon no more than the kind of faint disappointment one might feel upon finding a favourite sweater accidentally boiled along with the white laundry and shrunk to a felt mess sized for a small terrier.

“Am I medicated with something?” he asked from behind his closed lids and Roger said he would check the chart. “I can’t seem to feel anything.”

“Oh, my God, he’s paralysed,” said Roger.

“No, I mean about the gun,” said the Major. “I don’t feel as upset as I should.”

“You’ve longed for that pair since I can remember,” Roger said. “You used to tell me over and over how Grandfather split them up but the day would come when they would be reunited.”

“I longed for the day when I could look important to a lot of people who I felt were more important than I,” said the Major. “I was arrogant. It must be genetic.”

“That’s a nice thing to say to someone who’s kept vigil at your pillow all night long,” said Roger. “Hey, look, I got a text from Sandy.”

“Didn’t you just propose to another woman?” asked Jasmina.

“Yeah, but I had a lot of time to think last night and I figured a long text from the bedside of my dying father might do the trick.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” said the Major. “You could have impressed her with your eulogy.”

“I’m sorry you lost the gun your father gave you, Ernest,” said Jasmina. “But you lost it saving a life, and you are a hero to me and to others.”

“Actually, I lost Bertie’s gun,” said the Major. He yawned and felt himself growing sleepy. “Happened to be the closest one to grab. That’s not my gun at the bottom of the English Channel.”

“Are you serious?” said Roger.

“And I’m glad,” said the Major. “Now I won’t have to be reminded that sometimes it might have been more important to me than my brother.”

“Oh, shit!” said Roger looking up from his keyboard. “Now we have to pay Marjorie fifty thousand pounds and have nothing to show for it.”

“I expect the insurance company will take care of that,” said the Major. He struggled to stay awake so he might keep looking at Jas-mina’s face smiling at him.

“What insurance?” asked Roger, incredulous. “You had them insured all this time?”

“Insurance was never the issue,” said the Major, closing his eyes. “When my father died, my mother kept paying the premiums, and when she died so did I.” He opened his eyes briefly to say something important to Jasmina. “I take great pride in never leaving a bill unpaid – it makes the filing messy.”

“You are tired, Ernest,” she said. “You should rest after all this excitement.” She laid her hand along his cheek and he felt as a small child feels when the night’s fever is cooled by the touch of a mother’s hand.

“Must ask you to marry me,” he said as he drifted away. “Not in this dreadful room, of course.”

∗

When he woke again, the lights were dim in the wards and the nurse’s desk could be seen as a glow at the end of the corridor. A lamp burned low on the bedside table and he could feel the hospital’s central heating breathing as quietly as the patients in the calm of the night shift. A figure sat in a chair at the end of his bed; he called softly, “Jasmina?” The figure came closer until he could see it was Amina, in a hospital gown and robe.

“Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he whispered. “Should you be out of bed?”

“No, I snuck out.” She sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “I had to come and see you before I left. To thank you for saving Abdul Wahid and for everything else you’ve tried to do.”

“Where are you going?”, he asked. “You’re getting married tomorrow.”

“I’ve decided I’m not going to get married after all,” she said. “My aunt Noreen is picking me up first thing and then George and I’ll be off to her flat before anyone can make a fuss.”

“But why on earth would you do that?” he asked. “There are no impediments left to your marriage. Even Abdul Wahid’s parents are on your side now.”

“I know,” she said. “They keep apologising and coming in and out with gifts and promises. I think they’ve already agreed to put George through medical school.”

“They didn’t know about the old lady, I’m sure,” said the Major. “Such things are unimaginable.”

“It happens more than you think,” she said. “But I’ve accepted they didn’t intend it. They’re deporting the old bag today.”

“Isn’t she going to jail?” asked the Major.

“They couldn’t find a weapon and I told them it was an accident.” Amina gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly where the knitting needle was. “I didn’t want more shame for Abdul Wahid, and I like his family feeling obligated to me.”