Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“So let’s get the tray and the guns and round up the dancers,” agreed Dagenham. “Then we make sure we include the doctor and his wife here, and Mrs. Ali who looks so lovely, and we’ll have a fine story.”

As they walked away, taking Roger with them to fetch the guns from backstage, Mrs. Khan touched up her hair with her hands and sidled toward Daisy.

“Oh, we don’t want to be in the limelight,” she simpered. “Perhaps just in the back row?”

“Where your presence will no doubt still radiate,” said Mrs. Ali.

“I am surprised you didn’t know the old man was unstable,” said Sadie Khan in an icy voice. “You are so intimate with the Rasools.” She leaned closer to Daisy to add: “It’s so hard to be sure about one’s suppliers these days.”

“The photographer’s almost ready,” said Roger, coming up to them, bearing the box of guns in his arms. “We’re getting set up for the presentation and pictures.”

“I will not appear in the picture,” said Mrs. Ali.

“Is that for religious reasons?” asked Roger. “Understandable, of course.”

“No, I am disinclined to be paraded for authenticity,” said Mrs. Ali. “You will have to rely on Saadia for that.”

“Oh, how very tiresome,” said Daisy Green. “It really isn’t polite to come to our party and then complain about everything.”

“Daisy, there’s no need to be rude,” said Grace. “Mrs. Ali is my good friend.”

“Well, Grace, that should tell you that you need to get out more,” said Daisy. “Next you’ll be having the gardener in for tea.” There was an instant of stunned silence and the Major felt compelled to interject a rebuke.

“I think Grace is entitled to have anyone she likes to tea,” he said. “And it’s no business of yours to tell her otherwise.”

“Of course you do,” said Daisy with an unpleasant smile. “We are all aware of your proclivities.”

The Major felt despair strike him like a blow to the ear. He had defended the wrong woman. Moreover, he had encouraged Daisy to further insult.

“Major, I wish to go home,” said Mrs. Ali in an unsteady voice. She looked at him with the smallest of painful smiles. “My nephew can drive me, of course. You must stay for your award.”

“Oh no, I insist,” he said. He knew it was imperative to persuade her, but he could not avoid a quick glance toward Roger. He was not about to abandon his gun box to Roger while both Marjorie and Ferguson were still in the building.

“You must stay with your friends and I must run and catch up with Abdul Wahid,” she said. “I need to be with my family.”

“You really can’t leave now, Dad,” said Roger, in a urgent whisper. “It would be the height of rudeness to Dagenham.”

“At least let me walk you out,” said the Major as Mrs. Ali walked away.

As he hurried after her, he heard Sadie Khan speaking. Daisy’s response, in a crystal voice, carried over the music and voices: “Yes, of course, you would be so much more suitable, my dear, only we are quite oversubscribed in the medical professions and the club works so hard to promote diversity in the membership.”

Out in the cold night, the stars were abundant in a way that increased the pain of the moment. Mrs. Ali paused on the top step and the Major stood at her shoulder, mute with humiliation at his own foolishness.

“We are always talking outside like this,” she said at last. Her breath steamed in the cold and her eyes shone, perhaps with tears.

“I made a mess of everything, didn’t I?” he said. Below them, Amina and Abdul were arguing as they walked down the driveway. Mrs. Ali sighed.

“I was in danger of doing the same,” she said. “Now I see what I must do. I must put an end to the family squabbling and see those two settled.”

“They are so different,” he said. “Do you think they can live together?”

“It is funny, isn’t it?” she said in a quiet voice. “A couple may have nothing in common but the color of their skin and the country of their ancestors, but the whole world would see them as compatible.”

“It’s not fair,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?”

“Maybe, while they disagree about some big issues, they share the small pieces of their culture without thinking. Perhaps I do not give that enough weight.”

“May I come and see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“I think not,” she said. “I think I shall be busy, preparing to go to my husband’s family.”

“You can’t be serious. Just like that? What about our Sunday readings?”

“I will think of you whenever I read Mr. Kipling, Major,” she said, with a sad smile. “Thank you for trying to be my friend.” She offered her hand and he again put it to his lips. After a few moments, she tugged it gently away and stepped down to the driveway. He wanted so much to run down after her but he found himself fixed where he was, standing in the light of the doorway with the music spilling around him and the crowd waiting for him inside.

“I could come down early,” he called after her. “We could talk.”

“Go back to your party, Major,” she said. “You’ll catch cold standing in the dark.” She hurried down the driveway and as she disappeared, blue dress into deep night, he knew he was a fool. Yet at that moment, he could not find a way to be a different man.

Mrs. Ali left the village. The Major did not see her go. He had meant to go down to the shop and visit her, but his anger and despair at having made such a mess of the evening seemed to help bring on the full-blown cold she had so carelessly predicted and he lay in bed for three days. As he dozed in rumpled pajamas and furred teeth, ignoring the shrill rings of the telephone and the torturing tick of his bedroom clock, Mrs. Ali went north to her husband’s family and, by the time he was well enough to walk down to the village, it was too late.

The Major put his head down and prepared to battle through the tinsel storm that passed for Christmas now in an England that he remembered had once been grateful for a few pairs of wool socks and a hot pudding with more raisins than carrots. He woke each day hoping to feel fully recovered from his illness but could not shake a dry cough and a persistent lassitude. He felt buffeted to the point of collapse by the tinny music in the stores and streets. The more the crowds in the town caroled and laughed and loaded themselves, and their credit cards, with bags of presents, cases of beer, and hampers containing jars of indigestibles from many nations, the more he felt the whole world become hollow.

Holiday preparations in Edgecombe St. Mary seemed to elbow aside all other concerns. Even the campaign against St. James Homes seemed to be muted. The “Save our Village” posters that had sprung up right after the shooting party were hardly noticeable in windows amid all the flashing fairy lights, the lurid lawn displays of inflatable Santas, and the electric-twig reindeer with endlessly grazing heads. Even Alice Pierce had taken down one of her three posters and replaced it with a painting on wood of a dove carrying a ribbon that read “Joy to the World.” It was illuminated at night by the pinkish glow of two bare compact fluorescent bulbs, mounted on a board below together with a timer that turned them on and off at excruciatingly slow intervals.

At the village shop, which the Major avoided as long as possible, Christmas decorations helped obliterate any trace of Mrs. Ali. A forest of foil dangly things and paper chains and large crêpe-paper balls promoting a beer had transformed the shop into a festive horror. There were none of Mrs. Ali’s handmade samosas next to the packaged meat pies in the cold case. The large caddies of loose tea behind the counter had been replaced by a display of chocolate assortment boxes of a size guaranteed to cause acute happiness followed by acute gastric distress in small children. The modest, hand-wrapped gift baskets, which the Major had decided to stock up on for the holidays, had been replaced by large cheap commercial baskets painted in garish colors and crowned with yellow cellophane; each was skewered by a bamboo stick adorned with a plastic teddy bear made furry with what appeared to be wallpaper flocking. Who would possibly take pleasure in a bear-on-a-stick was a mystery the Major could not comprehend. He stood staring through his glasses at the poor things until a hard-featured old woman who was knitting behind the counter asked him if he wanted to buy one.