Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

The Major sighed. He was a man who always tried to do his duty without regard for gratitude or even acknowledgment. Surely he could not have inspired resentment from Bertie all these years?

At no time had the Major allowed himself to feel guilty about being the eldest son. Of course the order in which one was born was random, but so was the fact that he had not been born into a family with a title and vast estates. He had never felt animosity toward those who were born into great social position. Nancy had argued with him about it when they first met. It was the sixties, and she was young and thought love meant living on baked beans and the moral directives of folk music. He had explained to her, very patiently, that keeping one’s name and estate going was an act of love.

“If we just keep dividing things up, each generation more people demanding their share of the goodies, it just all vanishes as if it never mattered.”

“It’s about redistributing the wealth,” she had argued.

“No, it’s about the Pettigrew name dying out; about forgetting my father and his father before him. It’s about the selfishness of the current generation destroying the remembrance of the past. No one understands stewardship anymore.”

“You are so adorable when you’re being so damn conservative and uptight!” She laughed. She made him laugh too. She made him sneak off his base to see her. She made him wear improbable shirts and bright socks off duty. Once she called him from a police station after a student protest and he had to show up at the night sergeant’s desk in his full dress uniform. They let her go with just a lecture.

After they were married, there were some years of heartache as children refused to gestate, but then Roger happened at the very last gasp of fertility, and at least, with only one child, there were no arguments over assets. In memory of Nancy’s ideas on generosity, he had dutifully added to his own will a nice little sum of cash for his niece, Jemima. He had also specified that Jemima should receive the second-best china service from his maternal grandmother. Bertie had often hinted that he liked those plates, but the Major had been doubtful of placing vintage Minton, however faded and crazed, in the care of Marjorie. She broke dishes so often that every dinner party at Bertie’s house was served on a different china pattern.

Having an updated will and precise instructions was always a priority for the Major. As a military officer (in harm’s way-as he liked to put it), he had found it a great comfort to open his small iron strongbox, spread out the thick pages of his will, and read over the list of assets and distributions. It read like a list of achievements.

He would just have to be very clear with Marjorie. She was not thinking straight right now. He would have to explain again the exact nature of his own father’s intention. He would have to make things clear to Roger as well. He had no intention of battling to reunite the pair of guns, only to have Roger sell them after his death.

“Ah, there you are, Major,” said a voice. He sat upright and blinked in the strong light. It was Mrs. Ali, holding her large tote bag and a new library book. “I didn’t see you at the car park.”

“Oh, is that the time?” said the Major, looking in horror at his watch. “I completely lost track. My dear lady, I am so horribly embarrassed to have kept you waiting.” Now that he had unconsciously achieved what he would never have dared to deliberately contrive, he was completely at a loss.

“It is not a problem,” she said. “I knew you’d be along eventually and, as the day has turned out so unexpectedly nice, I thought I’d take a brief walk and maybe start my book.”

“I will, of course, pay for the car park.”

“It’s really not necessary.”

“Then will you permit me to at least buy you a cup of tea?” he asked, so quickly that the words pushed and elbowed each other to get out of his mouth. She hesitated so he added: “Unless you’re in a rush to get home, which I quite understand.”

“No, there is no rush,” she said. She looked left and right along the promenade. “Perhaps, if you think the weather will continue to hold, we could walk as far as the kiosk in the gardens?” she said. “If you feel up to it, of course.”

“That would be lovely,” he said, though he had a suspicion that the kiosk served its tea in polystyrene cups with some kind of preserved creamer in those little tubs that were impossible to open.

The promenade, when traversed from east to west as they were doing, formed a scrolling three-dimensional timeline of Hazelbourne-on-Sea’s history. The net-drying sheds and the fishing boats drawn up on the shingle, where the Major had been sitting, were part of the old town, which huddled around small cobbled alleys. Lopsided Tudor shops, their oak beams worn to fossil, contained dusty heaps of cheap merchandise.

As one walked, the town grew more prosperous. In the middle, the Victorian pier’s copper roofs, white wooden walls, and curlicued wrought-iron structure sat out over the Channel like a big iced cake. Beyond the pier, the mansions and hotels became imposing. Their stone porticos and dark awnings hooded over long windows implied a certain disapproval of the transient activities going on within lushly carpeted interiors. Between hotels that each occupied a full block were open squares of villas or wide streets of sweeping townhouse façades. The Major thought it such a shame that the elegance was hopelessly marred these days by the serried ranks of cars, angle-parked this way and that, like dried herring in a crate.

Beyond the appropriately named Grand Hotel, the town’s march through history was abruptly interrupted by the sudden swell of the chalk cliffs into a vast headland. The Major, who often walked the entire promenade, never failed to ponder how this might represent something about the hubris of human progress and the refusal of nature to knuckle under.

Recently he had begun to worry that the walk and the hypothesis had become so inextricably linked that they looped through his mind like madness. He was quite unable to walk and think about the racing results, for example, or about repainting his living room. He tried to put it down to the fact that he had no one with whom he could discuss the idea. Perhaps, if they were at a loss for conversation over tea, he might bring it up with Mrs. Ali.

Mrs. Ali walked with a comfortable stride. The Major shuffled his feet trying to fall in with her rhythm. He had forgotten how to let a woman dictate the pace.

“Do you like to walk?” he asked.

“Yes, I try to get out early three or four times a week,” she said. “I’m the crazy lady wandering the lanes in the dawn chorus.”

“We all ought to join you,” he said. “Those birds perform a miracle every morning and the world ought to get up and listen.” He was often up at night, toward the later hours, pinned to his mattress by an insomnia that seemed equal parts wakefulness and death. He could feel his blood running in his veins, yet he could not seem to move a finger or toe. He would lie awake, eyes scratchy, watching the dim outline of the window for any sign of light. Before any hint of paleness, the birds would begin. First a few common chirpings (sparrows and such); then the warbles and peepings would become a waterfall of music, a choir sounding from the bushes and trees. The sound released his limbs to turn and stretch and expelled all sense of panic. He would look to the window, now pale with singing, and roll over into sleep.

“All the same,” she said, “I probably should get a dog. No one thinks dog owners are crazy, even if they walk out in their pajamas.”

“What book did you pick today?” he asked.