Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“No little Gregory today?” the Major asked, sitting himself on a wooden chair at the breakfast table in the window nook.

“One of my friends is picking him up from school,” she said. “They’ve all been very good about babysitting and bringing over salads and stuff. I haven’t had to cook dinner in a week.”

“Quite the welcome break, then?” said the Major. She gave him a withering look. The kettle began to boil; she produced two chunky malformed mugs in a strange olive hue and a flowery box of tea bags.

“Chamomile, Blackberry Zinger, or burdock?” she asked.

“I’ll have real tea if you have it,” he said. She reached high into a cupboard and pulled out a tin of plain tea bags. She dropped one in a cup and poured boiling water up to the brim. It immediately began to give off a smell like wet laundry.

“How is your mother doing?” he asked.

“It’s funny how people keep asking me that. ‘How’s your poor mother?’ they say, as if I’m just some disinterested observer.”

“How are you both doing?” he offered, feeling his jaw twitch as he bit back a more resentful retort. Her broad hint of people’s insensitivity did not extend to asking how he was coping.

“She’s been very agitated,” Jemima confided. “You see, there might be an award coming-from the Royal Institute of Insurance and Actuarial Sciences. They called three days ago, but apparently they can’t confirm yet. It’s between Dad and some professor who created a new way of hedging life insurance premiums of Eastern European immigrants.”

“When will you know?” he said, wondering why the world always seemed to wait until death to give anyone their due.

“Well, the other man suffered a stroke and he’s on a breathing machine.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“If he’s still alive on the twenty-third of the month, the end of their fiscal year, then Dad’s a sure thing to get the award. Posthumous is preferred, it seems.”

“What an appalling thing.”

“Yes, horrible,” she agreed. She sipped her tea, pulling the tea bag aside by its string. “I even called the hospital in London, but they refused to give me any information on his condition. I told them they were being very inconsiderate, given my poor mother’s suffering.”

The Major jiggled his own string in the cup. The swollen belly of the bag rolled in the brown water. He found himself at a loss for words.

“Ernest, how lovely to see you. You should have called and let us know you were coming.” Marjorie came in wearing a voluminous black wool skirt and a ruffled blouse of black and purple that looked as if it had been whipped up out of funeral bunting. He stood, wondering whether the circumstances required him to hug her, but she slipped behind the counter with Jemima and the two of them looked at him as if he had come to buy stamps at the post office. He decided to adopt a brisk tone of business.

“I’m sorry to just barge in like this, Marjorie,” he said. “But Mortimer Teale and I have begun the estate work and I did want to just clarify one or two little matters with you.”

“You know, Ernest, that I have no head for these things. I’m sure you can leave most of it to Mortimer. He’s such a clever man.” She picked at the tangle of string amid the junk pile but let it drop again.

“That may be, but he is not a member of the family and therefore may not be able to interpret some of the niceties-or to allow for some of the intentions, so to speak.”

“I think my father’s will is very straightforward,” said Jemima, her eye beady as a gull eyeing a bag of garbage. “We don’t need anyone upsetting Mother by raising questions for the sake of it.”

“Exactly,” said the Major. He breathed slowly. “Much better to sort it all out within the family. Keep it all away from any unpleasantness.”

“It’s all unpleasant anyway,” said Marjorie, wiping her eyes on a paper towel. “I can’t believe Bertie would do this to me.” She erupted in hoarse, unpleasant sobbing.

“Mother, I can’t bear it when you cry,” said Jemima. She held her mother by the shoulders, simultaneously patting her while keeping her at arm’s length. Jemima’s face was screwed up into an expression of distress or disgust; the Major couldn’t really tell.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he began. “I can come back later.”

“Anything you have to say to Mother you can say now, while I’m here,” said Jemima. “I won’t have people bothering her when she’s alone and vulnerable.”

“Oh, Jemima, don’t be so rude to your uncle Ernest, dear,” said Marjorie. “He is one of our only friends now. We must depend on him to look out for us.” She dabbed her eyes and gave a close approximation of a tremulous smile. The Major could see a hint of steely resolve burning under the smile, but it put him in an impossible position. He was quite unable to come up with any decent way of asking for his gun in the face of his brother’s crying widow.

He saw the gun slipping away, the velvet depression in the double gun box permanently empty and his own gun never to be reunited with its partner. He felt his own loneliness, felt that he would be bereft of wife and family until claimed by the cold ground or the convenient heat of the crematorium furnace. His eyes watered and he seemed to smell ash in the potpourri scent of the kitchen. He rose again from his chair and resolved never to mention the gun again. Instead, he would slip away to his own small fireside and try to find consolation in being alone. Perhaps he would even place an order for a single gun case, something with a simple silver monogram and a lining more subdued than dark red velvet.

“I’ll not trouble you any more with this,” he said, his heart full with the pleasant warmth of his sacrifice. “Mortimer and I will file all the appropriate paperwork; nothing we can’t resolve between us.” He walked over and took Marjorie’s hand. She smelled of her freshly painted mauve nails and a hint of lavender hair spray. “I will take care of everything,” he promised.

“Thank you, Ernest,” she said, her voice faint, her grip strong.

“So what about the guns?” asked Jemima.

“I’ll be going along now,” he said to Marjorie.

“Do come again,” she said. “It is such a comfort to me to have your support.”

“But let’s sort out about the guns,” said Jemima again, and it was no longer possible to block out her voice.

“We don’t have to go into that right now,” said Marjorie through compressed lips. “Let’s leave it until later, all right?”

“You know Anthony and I need the money right away, Mother. Private school isn’t cheap, and we need to get a deposit down early for Gregory.”

The Major wondered whether the nurse at the clinic could have been wrong about his perfectly fine EKG. His chest felt constricted and liable to flower into pain at any moment. They were going to deny him even his noble sacrifice. He would not be allowed to withdraw without addressing the subject, but instead would be forced to verbalize his renunciation of his own gun. The feeling in his chest flowered not into pain but into anger. He drew himself up at attention, a move that always relaxed him, and tried to maintain a blank calm.

“We’ll deal with it later,” said Marjorie again. She seemed to pat Jemima’s hand, though he suspected it was really a nasty pinch.

“If we put it off, he’ll only get some other idea in his head.” whispered Jemima, in a voice that would have carried to the back of the Albert Hall.

“Am I to understand that you wish to discuss my father’s sporting guns?” The Major, enraged, tried to keep his voice as calm and clipped as that of a brigadier. “I was, of course, not going to bring it up at this difficult time-”