Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (6 page)

He did not hear or sense Mrs. Ali’s presence in the empty store and so, rather than scour each aisle, the Major made his way as casually as possible back toward the bulk sales area, quite ignoring the tea canisters near the front counter and cash register. Beyond this area was the shop office, a small area hidden behind a curtain of stiff vertical vinyl panels.

He had inspected the prices on each stack of bulk items and had shifted to reviewing the ham-and-egg pies in the back-wall dairy case when Mrs. Ali finally appeared through the vinyl, carrying an armful of Halloween-themed boxes of mini apple pies.

“Major Pettigrew,” she said with surprise.

“Mrs. Ali,” he replied, almost distracted from his purpose by the realisation that American Halloween hoopla was making inroads into British baked goods.

“How are you?” She looked around for somewhere to put the boxes.

“Fine, fine,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for your kindness the other day.”

“No, no, it was nothing.” She seemed to want to wave her hands but, encumbered by the pies, she could only waggle her fingertips.

“And I wanted to apologise – ” he began.

“Please don’t mention it,” she said, and her face tightened as she looked past his shoulder. The Major felt between his shoulder blades the presence of the nephew. He turned around. The nephew seemed bulkier in the narrow aisle, his face shadowed by the bright daylight from the shop front. The Major moved aside to let him pass, but the young man stopped and also stepped aside. An invisible pull invited the Major to pass him and exit the shop. His body, stubborn with the desire to stay, kept him planted where he was.

He sensed that Mrs. Ali did not wish him to go on with his apologies in front of her nephew.

“Again, I just wanted to thank you both for your kind condolences,” he said, particularly pleased with the ‘both’, which dropped in softly, like a perfectly putted golf ball. The nephew was forced to nod his head in appreciation.

“Anything we can do, you must just ask, Major,” said Mrs. Ali. “Beginning, perhaps, with some fresh tea?”

“I am running a little low,” said the Major.

“Very well.” She lifted her chin and spoke to the nephew while looking at a space somewhere over his head. “Abdul Wahid, would you fetch the rest of the Halloween specials and I’ll take care of the Major’s tea order?” She marched past both of them with her armful of cake boxes and the Major followed, squeezing by the nephew with an apologetic smile. The nephew only scowled and then disappeared behind the vinyl curtain.

Dumping the boxes on the counter Mrs. Ali rummaged behind it for her spiral-bound order book and began to leaf through the pages.

“My dear lady,” began the Major. “Your kindness to me – ”

“I would rather not discuss it in front of my nephew,” she whispered and a brief frown marred the smoothness of her oval face.

“I don’t quite understand,” said the Major.

“My nephew has recently returned from his studies in Pakistan and is not yet reacquainted with many things here.” She looked to make sure the nephew was out of earshot. “He is having some worries about his poor auntie’s well-being, you know. He does not like it when I drive the car.”

“Oh.” It was slowly dawning on the Major that the nephew’s concerns might include strange men such as himself. He felt disappointment sag his cheeks.

“Not that I have any intention of paying the least heed, of course,” she said, and this time she smiled and touched a hand to her hair as if to check that it was not escaping its tightly coiled, low bun. “Only I’m trying to reeducate him slowly. The young can be so stubborn.”

“Quite. I quite understand.”

“So if I can do anything for you, Major, you must just ask,” she said. Her eyes were so warm and brown, the expression of concern on her face so genuine that the Major, after a quick look around himself, threw caution to the winds.

“Well, actually,” he stammered. “I was wondering if you were going to town later this week. It’s just that I’m still not feeling well enough to drive and I have to stop in and see the family solicitor.”

“I usually go in on Thursday afternoons but I can possibly – ”

“Thursday would be fine,” said the Major quickly.

“I could pick you up around two o’clock?” she asked.

The Major, feeling very tactful, lowered his voice. “Perhaps it would be most convenient if I waited at the bus stop on the main road – save you driving all the way up to me?”

“Yes, that would be perfectly convenient,” she said, and smiled. The Major felt that he was in danger of smiling like a fool.

“See you Thursday, then,” he said. “Thank you.” As he left the shop, it occurred to him that he had failed to buy any tea. It was just as well really, since he was amply stocked for his own needs and visited only by those who brought their own. As he strode back across the village green, he was aware of a lighter step and easier heart.

T
hursday morning, the Major surfaced from sleep to the sound of rain hammering at the eaves like fists. It was also dripping, in an infuriatingly random and unmusical pattern, onto the weak spot on the window sill where the wood was beginning to soften. The bedroom swam in blue darkness and from the stuffy cocoon of his blankets he could picture the clouds dropping their heavy loads of water as they bumped against the flank of the Downs. The room, with its heavy beams, seemed to be actively sucking in all the damp. The blue-striped wallpaper looked yellow in the strange rainy light and ready to peel itself off the thick plaster walls under the weight of the moist air. He lay in a stupor, sunk in the clumped duck-down pillow, and watched his hopes for the day being washed away down the bubbled glass of the window.

He cursed himself for having assumed the weather would be sunny. Perhaps it was the result of evolution, he thought – some adaptive gene that allowed the English to go on making blithe outdoor plans in the face of almost certain rain. He remembered Bertie’s wedding, almost forty years ago: an alfresco luncheon at a small hotel with no room in the boxy dining room for fifty guests seeking shelter from a sudden thunderstorm. He seemed to remember Marjorie crying and an absurd amount of wet tulle whipped around her angular frame like a melting meringue. He was not usually such a fool about rain. When he played golf, he made sure to carry a pair of his old army gaiters with him, ready to strap them around his socks at the first sign of a shower. He kept a rolled-up yellow raincoat in the boot of his car and had a collection of stout umbrellas in the front hall rack. He had been teased at many a cricket match, on blazing hot days, for always carrying a small folding stool that held a plastic poncho in a zippered side pocket. No, he had not even considered the question of weather or so much as looked at the paper or the six o’clock news because he had wanted today to be sunny and, like King Canute demanding that the sea withdraw, he had simply willed the sun to shine.

The sun was to have been his excuse to turn a borrowed car ride into something more. An invitation to walk the seafront would have been entirely appropriate, given the beauty of the day. Now a walk was out of the question and he was afraid that an invitation to afternoon tea in a hotel would reflect too much presumption. He sat up rather suddenly and the room swam around him. What if Mrs. Ali used the rain as an excuse to telephone and cancel entirely? He would have to reschedule his meeting with Mortimer or drive himself.

Assuming she did not cancel, there were certain adjustments to be made to his grooming and wardrobe. He got up, slipped his feet into Moroccan leather slippers, and padded over to the large pine wardrobe. He had planned on a tweed jacket, wool slacks, and a splash of celebratory aftershave. However, the tweed gave off a faint odor when moist. He didn’t want to fill Mrs. Ali’s small car with a smell like wet sheep dipped in bay rum. He stood for a moment and ruminated.

In the dresser mirror on the opposite wall he caught the dark image of his face, barely lit by the dull morning. He peered closer, rubbing his short, bristled hair and wondering how he could possibly have become so damn old looking. He tried a smile, which got rid of the dour look and slight jowls but crinkled the skin around his blue eyes. He was partly convinced that it made an improvement and tried several degrees of smile before he realised he was being absurd.

Nancy would never have put up with him being so vain and neither, he was sure, would Mrs. Ali.

Reconsidering his wardrobe possibilities, he decided that today would be the perfect opportunity to wear the expensive acrylic sweater that Roger had given him last Christmas. He had thought its slim fit and black-on-black diamond pattern too young, but Roger had been enthusiastic.

“I got this directly from an Italian designer we financed,” he had said. “All over London there are waiting lists for his pieces.” The Major, who had bought Roger a waxed-cotton rain hat from Liberty and a rather smart leather edition of Sir Edmund Hillary’s account of Everest, thanked Roger graciously for the wonderful thought. He thought it rude to air his opinion of men who would put their name on a waiting list for a jumper, and besides, it was obviously a big sacrifice for Roger to give it away. After the New Year, he had consigned the pink-and-green-striped box to the top shelf of the wardrobe. Today, he felt that a little youthful style might be just the thing to counter a potentially damp social setting.

Rummaging among the tightly packed hangers for a clean white shirt, he thought again that it was probably time he went through his wardrobe and threw some things out. He thought of Marjorie stripping her built-in closets of Bertie’s clothes. She was a practical woman, Marjorie. This was probably to be admired. He envisioned the boxes, labelled in fat black pen, full of clothes for the next church jumble sale.

∗

He was unusually fidgety by lunchtime and jumped when the phone rang. It was Alec wondering whether he was up to playing a round of golf despite the rain.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you before,” Alec said. “Alma gave me a full report. Said you appeared to be holding up?”

“Yes, thank you,” he said.

“I should have called you sooner.” The Major smiled to hear Alec strangling himself on his own awkwardness. They had all stayed away; not just Alec, but Hugh Whetstone, who lived in the next lane, and the entire golf club group. He didn’t mind. He had done the same in the past; stayed away from the nuisance of other people’s losses and let Nancy deal with it. It was understood that women dealt better with these situations. When old Mrs. Finch died, just down the lane, Nancy had brought soup or leftovers to Mr. Finch every day for two or three weeks after the funeral. The Major had only raised his hat once or twice when he met the old man while out walking. Old Finch, as emaciated as a stray cat and looking completely unfamiliar with his whereabouts, would give him a blank stare and continue walking in wobbly curves along the middle of the lane. It was quite a relief when his daughter put him in a home.

“I have to pop into town and see the family solicitor,” he said. “Maybe next week?” He tried to play golf once a week – a challenge in the unpredictable autumn weather. With Bertie’s death, he had not been near the club in nearly two weeks.

“Ground may be soggy today, anyway,” said Alec. “I’ll get us an early tee-off time for next week and we’ll see if we can’t get in a full round before lunch.”

∗

By two o’clock the clouds had given up their roiling and simply sat down on the land, transforming the rain into a grey fog. It was like a cold steam room and it pinned in place every odour. The Major was still screwing up his nose against the ripe smell of urine long after a wandering collie dog had left his mark on the corner post of the wooden bus shelter. The rough three-sided wooden shed with its cheap asphalt roof offered no protection from the fog and leached its own smell of creosote and old vomit into the dampness. The Major cursed the human instinct for shelter that made him stand under it. He read the deeply gouged historic record left by the local youth: ‘Jaz and Dave’; ‘Mick loves Jill’; ‘Mick is a wanker’; ‘Jill and Dave.”

Finally the small blue car came up over the swell of the hill and pulled up. He saw her wide smile first and then the scarf of brilliant peacock blues and greens loose on her smooth black hair. She reached over to release the passenger door for him and he bent down to climb in.

“I’m sorry, let me just move these,” she said, and scooped two or three plastic-covered library books out of his way.

“Thank you.” He tried to settle, without too much creaking, into the seat. “Let me hold those for you.” She gave him the books and he was conscious of her long smooth fingers and short nails.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you. It’s very kind of you.” He wanted to look at her but he was very aware of the narrow confines of the car. She put the car in gear and pulled sharply away from the curb. The Major held on to the door while fixing his gaze on the books.

They were thick, the covers old and blank under the yellowed plastic. He turned them sideways: a Colette novel, de Maupassant stories, a poetry anthology. To the Major’s surprise, the de Maupassant was in French. He flicked though a few pages; there was no English translation.

“You certainly didn’t get these books from the mobile library van,” he observed. Mrs. Ali laughed and the Major thought it sounded like singing.

Every Tuesday a large green and white travelling library would take up position in a lay-by near the small estate of council houses on the edge of the village. The Major generally preferred to read from his own library, where Keats and Wordsworth were soothing companions and Samuel Johnson, though a good deal too self-important, always had something provocative to say. However, he thought the concept of the mobile library was a valuable one, so he visited regularly to show his support, in spite of having quickly exhausted the slim selection of older novels and being completely horrified by the lurid covers of the bestsellers and the large shelf of romance novels. On his last visit to the van, the Major had been browsing a fat book on local birds while a small boy with a green and dripping nose sat in the ample lap of his young mother and sounded out words in a board book about trains. The Major and the librarian were just exchanging a smile that said how nice it was to see a child doing something other than watching TV, when the boy took exception to something in the book and ripped the back cover right off. His mother, furious and blushing under the shocked look of the librarian, slapped the boy soundly. The Major, trapped behind both the prostrate child hiding under a table and the large backside of the cursing mother who was trying to drag him out where she could smack him more conveniently, could only hold on to a metal shelf himself and try to keep his sanity as the boy’s howls reverberated around the metal van like a war.