Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“You are very kind, Major and I think you, too, are perfectly fine as you are.” She rose to take their empty plates to the kitchen. “And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.”

“Touché,” he said.

After dinner, he sat in an armchair while she clattered dishes and made tea in her small kitchen. She would not let him help, and it was difficult to make conversation through the small pine-shuttered hatch in the wall, so he dozed, hypnotized by the fierce blue cones of the gas fire’s flames.

“Anyway, Amina says Jasmina’s not coming to the wedding,” said Grace through the hatch. He raised his eyes abruptly, knowing that he had heard but not registered a much longer sentence of which this was merely the footnote.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t hear.”

“I said I had hoped to see Jasmina again when she came for the wedding,” said Grace. “When she wrote to me, I wrote back right away and asked her to please come and see me.” Her face disappeared from the hatch again and the Major could hear the squeaks and clicks of the dishwasher being set into operation.

“She wrote to you?” he asked the room at large. Grace did not answer, being engaged with maneuvering a silver tea tray too large for her narrow, sharp-cornered hallway. He went to the door and received the tray from her, angled to squeeze in at the door jambs.

“I really should get a nice little melamine tray,” she said. “This one is so impractical, but it’s about the last thing of my mother’s that I’ve kept.”

“She wrote to you?” The Major tried to keep his voice casual even as his throat constricted with the sudden hurt this information caused him. He concentrated on the task of fitting the tray within the raised brass rail of the coffee table.

“She wrote to me right after she left and apologized for running off without saying goodbye. I wrote back, and I sent a Christmas card-nothing religious on it, of course-but I haven’t heard from her since.” Grace stood smoothing her skirt down toward her knees. “Have you heard from her?” she asked and he thought she stood a little too still as she waited for a reply.

“I never heard from her,” he said. The gas fire seemed to hiss at him unpleasantly.

“It’s all a bit strange,” she said and, after a long moment of quiet: “You still miss her.”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, fumbling for a suitable reply.

“You miss her,” repeated Grace and now her eyes were firmly fixed on him. His own gaze wavered. “You are not happy.”

“It is a moot point,” he said. “She made her choice very clear.” He hoped this was enough to change the subject, but Grace only walked over to the window and pulled aside the lace curtain to peer out into the featureless night. “One feels quite powerless,” he admitted.

The room pressed in on him. The oval mantel clock ticked on oblivious to the shift in tension in the room. The flowered wallpaper, which had seemed cozy, now breathed dust onto the dull carpet. The teapot cooled and he could almost feel the cream drifting to scum on the surface of the milk jug. He felt a sudden horror at the thought of his life boxed into a series of such rooms.

“I have a feeling she is not happy where she is,” said Grace. “You should look in on her on your way to Scotland. Aren’t you going up for some shooting?”

“It’s not my place to interfere,” he said.

“It’s a pity you can’t just storm in and fetch her back,” said Grace. “She could be your very own damsel in distress.”

“Life is not a Hollywood film,” he snapped. He wondered why on earth she was pushing at him like this. Couldn’t she tell he was ready to declare his affection for her?

“I’ve always admired you for being a sensible man,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t like to speak up, but usually I can tell that you know the right thing to do.” He sensed that what was coming might not be a compliment. However, she seemed to catch herself; she merely sighed and added, “Perhaps none of us knows the right thing to do.”

“You’re a sensible woman, too,” said the Major. “I didn’t come here tonight to talk about Mrs. Ali. She made her choice and it is high time I moved on and made some choices of my own. Do come and sit down, dear Grace.” He patted the armchair next to his and she came over and sat down.

“I would like you to be happy, Ernest,” she said. “We all deserve that.” He took her hand and patted the back of it.

“You are very good to me, Grace,” he said. “You are intelligent, attractive, and supportive. You are also very kind and you are not a gossip. Any man who is not a fool would be happy to call you his own.” She laughed, but her eyes seemed to be brimming.

“Oh Ernest, I think you just listed the perfect qualities in a neighbor and the worst possible qualifications for passion.” He was shocked for an instant by the word “passion,” which seemed to crash through several conversational boundaries at once. He felt himself blushing.

“You and I are perhaps too-mature-for the more impetuous qualities,” he said, stumbling to find a word other than “old.”

“You must speak for yourself,” she said gently. “I refuse to play the dried rose and accept that life must be tepid and sensible.”

“At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?” She hesitated and they both felt the weight of the word hang between them. A tear made its way down her cheek and he saw that she had continued to avoid face powder and that she looked quite beautiful even in the rather overly bright room.

“You are mistaken, Ernest,” she said at last. “There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.” Her voice had a gentle finality, as if he were already putting on his coat and leaving her. Some contrary spirit, perhaps his own pride, he thought, made him stubborn in the face of what he knew to be true.

“I came here tonight to offer you my companionship,” he said. “I had hoped it would lead to more.” He could not honestly repeat the word “marriage” as he had planned a much more gradual increase in intimacy and had not indeed prepared any irrevocable declarations.

“I will not have you, Ernest,” she said. “I care for you very much, but I do not want to make any compromises with the rest of my years.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, like a child, and smiled. “You should go after her.”

“She will not have me either,” he said, and his gloom betrayed the truth of everything Grace had said. He looked at her, horrified, but she did not seem angry.

“You won’t know that if you don’t ask her, will you?” said Grace. “I’ll go and get you her address.”

Grace hugged her arms about her as she watched him try to pull on his coat in the hallway without putting an elbow through one of the many small prints hanging on the wall. He set a sheep on a crag rattling in its black frame and she stepped to steady it. Close to her like this, he was overwhelmed with shame at the shabbiness of his own behavior and he put a hand on her arm. For an instant, all they had said hung in the balance; he had only to squeeze her arm and she would lose her resolve and take him after all. Such an awful fragility of love, he thought, that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior. She pulled away from him and said, “Be careful on the step, it’s very icy.” He had a witty comment to add, inviting her to take a slap at him or something, but he thought better of it.

“You are a remarkable woman, Grace,” he said. Then he hunched his shoulders against the cold and his own failings and stepped into the night.