Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“My dear boy,” said the Major. “Is there really any other kind?”

The sun was red, haloed in mist and barely showing over the hedgerows as the Major crunched across the frost-stiffened grass. He had elected to walk up through the fields to the manor house, intending to arrive before the rest of the shooting party. In a dark holly bush a robin was tweedling a solo to the watercolor hills.

The Major had waited too long for the occasion to hurry its beginning or to arrive in a noisy clatter of smoking exhaust and splattered gravel. It was not that he feared that his Rover would make an inadequate impression among the glittering luxury vehicles and four-by-fours of a London crowd. He felt no shallow envy. He simply preferred to enjoy the ritual of the walk. He felt the balance of his guns, cracked open and cradled in the crook of his elbow. Bertie’s gun was now oiled to a deep shine, almost a match for his own gun’s patina. He enjoyed the creaking seams of his old shooting coat and the weight of his pockets. The waxed cotton bulged with brass cartridges laden with steel shot. An old game bag draped its strap and buckle across his chest and flopped on one hip. It would probably not hold game today-Dagenham would doubtless have the ducks retrieved and carried for the guns by the beaters-but it was satisfying to buckle it on, and the bag was a useful place to stash a new foil-wrapped bar of Kendal Mint Cake, his trademark snack at all the shoots he attended. The bar of mint-oil-flavored compressed sugar, which he ordered by mail from the original company in Cumbria, was a tidy food and ideal for offering around, unlike the squashed ham sandwiches some of the farmers pulled from their bags and offered to tear apart with powder-stained fingers. He was sure there would be no squashed sandwiches or lukewarm tea today.

As he swung his boots over a stile and jumped a mud patch, he was sorry that Mrs. Ali could not see him now, decked out as a hunter-gatherer. Kipling would have dressed in much the same manner, he thought, to hunt big game with Cecil Rhodes. He could almost see them, waiting ahead for him to catch up so they might gauge his opinion on Cecil’s most recent difficulties in organizing a new nation.

The Major immediately scolded himself for this momentary fancy. The age of great men, when a single mind of intelligence and vision might change the destiny of the world, was long gone. He had been born into a much smaller age, and no amount of daydreaming would change the facts. Neither would a pair of fine guns make anyone a bigger man, he reminded himself, resolving to remain humble all day despite the compliments he was bound to receive.

On the edge of what remained of the manor house parkland, he entered a short allée of elms, fuzzy with tangled branches, which constituted the truncated remains of what had once been a mile-long ride. It was clear they had not seen the services of an arborist in a decade. Underfoot, the grass was worn from sheep hooves and smelled of dung and moss. Between the trees, crude wire cages and a plastic contraption attached to a small generator bore evidence of the gamekeeper’s duck-raising. The cages were empty now. They would be refilled with hand-raised eggs and chicks in the spring. The gamekeeper, who was also a general maintenance man for the house and grounds, was not to be seen. The Major was disappointed. He had hoped for a discussion about the state of this year’s flock and the layout of the line today. He had entertained a mild thought that after such a talk, he might approach the main gravel courtyard with the gamekeeper in tow and so show the London types immediately that he was a local expert. A rustle in an overgrown wall of rhododendron revived his hopes, but as he assembled a smile and appropriate words of casual greeting, a small pale boy popped out of the hedge and stood staring transfixed at the Major’s guns.

“Hullo, who are you then?” said the Major. He tried not to look pained by the boy’s sloppy school uniform, which featured a frayed shirt collar, stringy tie, and a sweatshirt instead of a proper jumper or blazer. The boy looked about five or six and the Major remembered arguing with Nancy about sending Roger away to school at eleven. She would have had much to say, he thought, about this school and its tiny pupils. He spoke carefully to the boy. “Not a good idea to be playing hide and seek when there’s a shoot about to happen,” he said. “Are you lost?”

The boy screamed. It was a scream like a power saw through corrugated iron. The Major almost dropped his guns in fright.

“I say, there’s no call to go on so,” he said. The boy could not hear him over the roiling of his own howls. The Major stepped back but could not seem to get himself to walk away. The screaming boy seemed to skewer him on sound waves. Overhead, a cloud of ducks flew up like a feathered elevator straight into the sky. The pond was close and the boy’s scream had launched the entire duck brigade aloft.

“Quiet, now,” said the Major, trying for a raised tone of calm authority. “Let’s not frighten the ducks.” The boy’s face began to turn purple. The Major wondered whether he should make a run for the house but he feared the boy would follow.

“What’s going on?” asked a familiar female voice from the other side of the hedge. After some rustling, Alice Pierce pushed her way through, a few twigs catching at the knobby orange and purple yarn flowers that made up an enormous woolly poncho. Alice’s hair was partly controlled by a rolled scarf of brilliant green, and beneath the poncho the Major caught a glimpse of wide green trousers over scuffed black sheepskin boots. “What are you doing here, Thomas?” she asked the boy as she took him gently by the arm. The boy clapped shut his mouth and pointed at the Major. Alice frowned.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Alice,” said the Major. “He just started screaming for no reason.”

“You don’t think a strange man with a pair of huge shotguns might constitute a reason, then?” She raised an eyebrow in mock surprise, hugging the boy hard to her ample poncho. The boy whimpered under his breath and the Major hoped he was being comforted rather than suffocated. The Major was not about to argue with Alice. “Why aren’t you on the bus, Thomas?” she asked, and stroked his hair.

“I’m so very sorry, young man,” said the Major. “I had no intention of frightening you.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here, Major,” said Alice. She looked worried.

“You mean shooting?” asked the Major. “I expect you don’t approve?” Alice said nothing. She just frowned as if thinking something through.

“What are you doing here?” asked the Major. “Are you chaperoning the children?”

“Not really,” said Alice, with an obvious vagueness. “That is to say, I had better get Thomas back to Matron right away.”

There was a further rustling in the hedge and Lord Dagenham and the keeper popped out.

“What the hell was all the racket?” asked Dagenham.

“The Major here frightened Thomas with his guns,” said Alice. “But it’s all right now-we’ve made friends, haven’t we, Thomas?” The boy peeked at the Major from under Alice’s arm and stuck out his tongue.

“They were all supposed to be on the bus ten minutes ago,” said Dagenham. “My guests are arriving now.”

“No harm done,” offered the Major.

“I’m sure it’s not as easy as all that,” said Alice, drawing herself up. “The children are all understandably upset this morning.”

“Good God, I’m giving them a trip to the bowling alley and an ice cream party on the pier,” said Dagenham. “What on earth do they have to be upset about?” Alice narrowed her eyes in a way the Major recognized as being dangerous.