Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“Actually, there’s an American chap who’s interested in buying them and I’m going to show them off as best I can,” he said.

“Are you really going to sell them?” asked Roger, looking instantly more cheerful. “That’s excellent news. Jemima was starting to get worried that you’d run off with them.”

“You’ve been talking to Jemima behind my back?”

“Oh, it’s not like that,” said Roger. “It’s more-Since the funeral, you know, we thought it might be useful to keep in touch since we both have parents to take care of. She has her mother to worry about, and I-well, you seem all right now, but then so did Uncle Bertie. You never know when I might have to jump in and take care of things.”

“I am rendered speechless with gratitude by your concern,” said the Major.

“You’re being sarcastic,” said Roger.

“You’re being mercenary,” said the Major.

“Dad, that’s not fair,” said Roger. “I’m not like Jemima.”

“Oh, really?” said the Major.

“Look, all I’m asking for is that when you sell the guns, you consider giving me a bit of a windfall you don’t even need,” continued Roger. “You have no idea how expensive it is to be a success in the city. The clothes, the restaurants, the weekend house parties-you have to invest to get ahead these days, and quite frankly it’s embarrassing just to try and keep up with Sandy.” He sat down and his shoulders slumped. For a moment he looked like a rumpled teenager.

“Perhaps you need to moderate your expectations a little,” said the Major, genuinely concerned. “Life isn’t all about flashy parties and meeting rich people.”

“That’s what they tell the people they don’t invite,” said Roger, sunk in gloom.

“I would never attend a function to which I had found it necessary to inveigle an invitation,” said the Major. As he said this, he reassured himself that he had done nothing to precipitate his own invitation. It had been, he remembered, an entirely spontaneous gesture from Lord Dagenham.

Sandy came back down the stairs and they ceased speaking. A hint of fresh cologne and lipstick brightened the air in the room and the Major made a note to open the windows more often. He worked hard at keeping the place clean and polished but perhaps, he thought, a certain stale quality was inevitable when one lived alone.

“We should be going if we want to speak to the painters before they leave,” said Sandy.

“You’re right,” said Roger.

“You told Abdul Wahid you would probably be staying here?” said the Major. Roger and Sandy traded a guarded look. The Major felt like a small boy whose parents are trying to shield him from grownup conversation.

“I did explain to him that we would need a place to stay while the cottage is under renovation,” said Roger. “He quite understood that it wouldn’t be convenient having us all here, what with the shared bathrooms and so on.”

“You are completely right,” said the Major. “As I told Abdul Wahid, you and Sandy will be much happier staying down at the pub.”

“Hang on a minute,” said Roger.

“You must ask the landlord for the blue room, my dear,” said the Major to Sandy. “It has a four-poster and, I believe, one of those whirlpool tubs of which you Americans are so fond.”

“I’m not staying at the damn pub,” said Roger, his face a picture of outrage. It was not noble, of course, to take pleasure in the discomfort of one’s own flesh and blood, but Roger had been altogether too forward and needed a firm check.

“It is true that the whirlpool tub does reverberate through the public end of the bar,” said the Major, as if pondering the subject deeply. He noticed that Sandy was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Laughter tweaked at her lips, and her eyes had taken his measure.

“You can’t expect my fiancée to share this house with some strange shopkeeper’s assistant from Pakistan,” Roger spluttered.

“I quite understand,” the Major said. “Unfortunately, I had already invited him to stay and I’m afraid it’s not possible to throw him out because my son does not approve,”

“For all we know, he could be a terrorist,” said Roger.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Roger, go and see your painters before they have to rush off to touch up the Vatican or whatever,” said the Major, in a harsher tone than he had intended.

He took the tea tray back to the kitchen. There was a muffled argument in the living room and then Roger stuck his head around the kitchen door to say that he and Sandy were off but would indeed be back to stay the night. The Major only nodded in reply.

He was sad at his own outburst. He wanted to feel the kind of close bond with Roger that Nancy had enjoyed. The truth was that now, without his wife to negotiate the space that they occupied as a family, he and Roger seemed to have little common ground. If there had been no bond of blood, the Major felt now, he and Roger would have little reason to continue to know each other at all. He sat at the table and felt the weight of this admission hang about his shoulders like a heavy, wet coat. In the shrunken world, without Nancy, without Bertie, it seemed very sad to be indifferent to one’s own son.

“What’s this plastic thing for?” asked George, handing the Major an intricately die-cut disc that had come with the kite purchased especially for the afternoon’s expedition.

“Probably just part of the packaging,” said the Major, who had improvised as well as he could, given that the assembly instructions were in Chinese. The cheap purple and green kite fluttered against his hand. He released the rudimentary catch on the spool and handed it to George. “Ready to take it up?”

George took the spool and began to walk backward, away from the Major, across the rabbit-cropped grass. The park, busy with families on this fine Sunday, occupied the whole top of the broad headland to the west of the town. It was good for kites but not so good for balls, many of which were at that very moment careening downhill where the land tilted sharply, on one side dipping to the weald and on the other to the edge of the high cliff. Signs warned people that the white chalk face was always being slivered away by the action of the sea and the weather. Small crosses and bunches of dead flowers made cryptic reference to the many people every year who chose this spot to plunge to their deaths on the jagged rocks below. Every mother in the park seemed to feel the need to call to her children to stay away from danger. It formed a background chorus louder than the sea.

“Eddie, come away from the edge!” shouted a woman from a neighboring bench. Her son was spinning his arms like a windmill as he ran about after a small dog. “Eddie, I’m warning you.” Yet she did not bother to get up from the bench, where she was engaged in eating a very large sandwich.

“If they are so afraid for their children, why did they insist on coming?” asked the Major, handing Mrs. Ali the kite to launch. “Are you ready, George?”

“Ready!” said George. Mrs. Ali tossed the kite into the air, where it hovered for a fluttering moment and then, to the Major’s immense satisfaction, soared into the sky.

“That’s the ticket,” called the Major as George ran backward, un-spooling more line. “More line, George, more line.”

“Don’t go too far, George,” called Mrs. Ali in a sudden anxiety. The she clapped a hand over her mouth and turned wide eyes of apology to the Major.

“Not you as well?” he said.

“I’m afraid it must be a trick of nature,” she said, laughing. “The universal bond between all women and the children in their care.”