Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“ What do you mean?” asked the Major. He felt a sensation in his stomach as if he were descending in a slow lift. “Was this last Sunday?” Roger had called to apologize for not visiting, but they had been tied up all day getting the widow Augerspier moved out of the cottage. They were too exhausted, he had said, to do anything but drive straight back to London.

“Yes, Sunday afternoon. The fact is, he seemed to think he could just sign something and be done,” said Alec. “Rather got the secretary’s back up, I’d say.”

“Oh, dear,” said the Major, sighting away down the fairway with his club. “I suppose I forgot to mention anything. I’ll have to smooth things over.”

“I think it got smoothed over,” said Alec. “Lord Dagenham’s niece, Gertrude, came in and it was all kissy-kissy and so on. Secretary seemed quite mollified.”

“That was very nice of her,” said the Major. “I mean, I hardly know the woman. I suppose my help with the dance is appreciated after all.”

“At the same time, you might want to mention to Roger that we don’t allow those newfangled club heads.”

“He brought clubs with him?” asked the Major, unable to hide the dismay in his voice.

“Oh, I’m sure he wasn’t expecting to be able to play,” said Alec diplomatically. “Probably thought of running his kit by the pro, only since it was Sunday the pro shop was closed.”

“I’m sure that’s so,” said the Major, miserably wondering if there was a limit to Roger’s self-absorption. “I’ll have a chat with him.” He savaged his ball with a clout that sent it arcing high and into the rough on the right of the fairway.

“Oh, rotten luck,” said Alec and the Major wondered if he meant unlucky in golf or unlucky with offspring. Both, the Major felt, were accurate today.

Amina and George were not in the Grill when the Major finished his round. He made a halfhearted effort to look around the tables and thought he might be able to avoid all obligation with a quick dash through the lobby.

Her voice reached him through the lobby doors and caused several members to raise their heads from their chocolate sponge puddings.

“No chinless flunky in a bow tie tells my son to wait by the servants’ entrance.”

“It’s not ‘servants’,’ it’s ‘service’ entrance,” corrected the diminutive club secretary, a piggy-eyed man who wore his green club blazer like holy vestments and was now hopping from foot to foot in unseemly anger. “The main entrance is for members and their guest only, not workers.”

“No one tells my son he’s a servant, or a ‘worker’ neither!” Amina was holding George behind her and now dropped her heavy gym bag on the floor right at the secretary’s feet. He leaped back in shock. “We were asked to help out and no one is going to treat us like dirt.”

“Young woman, you are an employee,” stuttered the secretary. “You will not speak to me with such insolence, or you will be terminated with cause.”

“Bloody terminate me, then, you old git,” said Amina. “Better do it fast. From the color of your face, you’re going to drop dead any second.” The secretary’s face had indeed flushed an unusual purple, which extended up to the scalp under his thin sandy hair. It clashed with his tie. The Major was frozen to the spot with horror at the argument. Roger’s gaffe was enough earn him a stern lecture from the secretary, and now his name was linked with this young woman’s rudeness. He had not suffered such a confrontation in thirty years.

“I demand that you leave the premises immediately,” said the secretary to Amina. Puffed up to his maximum chest capacity, the Major thought he looked like a plump squirrel.

“Suits me fine,” said Amina. She picked up her bag and swung it onto her shoulder. “Come on, George, we’re out of here.” She held George’s hand and stalked out of the front door.

“But that door’s for members…” came the secretary’s feeble cry.

The Major, who had been frozen to the spot, now became aware that to the diners behind him, he might seem to be cowering behind the Grill door. He feigned peering at his watch and then patted his pockets as if he might be looking for some forgotten item and turned on his heel to go back through the Grill and out onto the terrace. His only hope was to bundle the girl and her son into his car and leave without anyone seeing.

Amina was waiting for him in the car park, leaning on a concrete post with her arms wrapped across her chest. He noticed that she was not wearing a warm enough coat and her hair had begun to wilt in the chill drizzle. George was squatting at her feet, trying to protect his book from the rain. There was no avoiding her, so the Major waved as if nothing had happened. Amina hoisted the huge gym bag onto her thin shoulder and joined him at his car.

“I thought you had gone,” he said as he unlocked the car. “I looked all over for you.”

“Got kicked out,” she said, tossing her heavy, clinking bag in the boot on top of his clubs. “Some flunky in a bow tie suggested we wait by the servants’ entrance.”

“Oh dear, I’m sure he wasn’t trying to be offensive,” said the Major, who was sure of no such thing. “I’m so sorry you felt…” He searched for the right word; “excluded” and “unwelcome” were too accurate to provide the comfortable vagueness he sought. “… bad.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t have space in my head to put up with harmless old gits trying to make me feel bad,” said Amina, folding her arms. “I’ve learned to tell the difference between the people who can really hurt you and those who just want to look down their noses.”

“If they’re harmless, why confront them?” asked the Major, thinking again of the seething tea lady on the seafront.

“Because they’re bullies, and I’m teaching George not to put up with bullies-right, George?” she said.

“Bullies have no brains,” repeated George from the backseat. The scribble of pencil against paper indicated that he was still drawing.

“They expect you to slink away or tip your cap or something,” said Amina. “When you spit back at them, they get all flustered. Bet you’ve never tried it, have you?”

“No, I suppose I was raised to believe in politeness above all,” said the Major.

“You ought to try it sometime,” she said. “It can be really funny.” There was a weary tone to her voice that made the Major doubt she found it as amusing as she claimed. They drove in silence for a while and then she shifted in her seat to look at him. “You’re not going to ask me about George, are you?” she asked in a low voice.

“None of my business, young lady.” He tried to keep any judgment out of his tone.

“Women always ask,” she said. “My aunt Noreen is having migraine attacks from all the scandalized ladies dropping by to ask her about me.”

“Nasty things, migraines,” said the Major.

“Men never ask, but you can see they’ve made up a whole story about me and George in their heads.” She turned away and placed her fingers where the rain ran sideways along the glass of her window. The Major’s first impulse was to claim he had never given it a thought, but she was very observant. He wondered what truthful comment he could make.

“I’m not going to answer for men, or women, in general,” he said after a moment. “But in my own case, I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one’s problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.” He paused while he negotiated a particularly tricky, right-hand turn across the busy road and into the shortcut of a narrow back lane. “Personally, I have never sought to burden other people with my life history and I have no intention of meddling in theirs,” he added.