Helen Simonson - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“I hope you’re not expecting this place to look any better in the light,” he said as he struck a match and reached for the glass shade of the nearest lamp.

She laughed and said only, “I haven’t smelled a paraffin lamp since I was a small child. My father would tell us how it was discovered by an alchemist in ninth-century Baghdad who was trying to distill gold.”

“I thought it was a Scotsman who invented it,” said the Major, burning his thumb and dropping the match as he fumbled with the second lamp. “But then the most amazing things were being made in the east while we were still getting the hang of wattle-and-daub and trying to find our runaway sheep.” He struck a new match. “Unfortunately, none of it counted in the end unless you got your patents in ahead of the Americans.”

With the lamps offering their wavering yellow light and a coal fire leaping in the brick hearth, the room began to lose some of its damp crypt smell.

“It’s quite charming in here if one squints.” He was opening a bottle of claret that had been meant as a gift to his Scottish host.

“As long as one wipes everything before touching it,” she said, sliding onions into a pan of butter. The rickety stove was powered by a rusty bottled-gas tank just outside the kitchen window. “The dust seems to be years thick.”

“My former C.O., Colonel Preston, has been frail for a couple of years now,” said the Major, looking at the assembled fly rods on the wall. “I doubt he’ll ever visit here again.” He walked to the hearth and tested the water heater with the back of his hand. Then he stood with his back to the blaze and sipped wine from a tea mug and looked at how her hands chopped tomato with a smooth twist and fall of the knife and how she cocked her head in concentration.

“Pity, really; he talks about this place as you or I might talk of-Well, of wherever was the most important place in the world to us.” He felt a sadness for the Colonel but it could not hold his attention, because her hair was escaping from its pins and now she stopped to push some strand off her forehead with the flat of her arm. The chicken and spices hissed into the pan and as she covered it with a baking sheet, he could not remember any other place to which he had any attachment at all. The world seemed to have shrunk to fit quite perfectly inside the room.

“And do you have such a place?” she asked, lowering the flame under the pan and straightening up with a smile. “I know I do not seem to belong anywhere.”

“I always supposed it to be Edgecombe St. Mary,” he said. “My wife is buried in the churchyard, you know, and I have a second plot there.”

“That’s one way to feel rooted to a place,” she said. Then she made a horrified O with her lips while he laughed. “No, that came out all wrong,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said. “That is exactly what I meant. I always thought it important to decide where one would be buried, and then one could sort of work life out backward from there.”

They ate, mopping up the sauce with sweet almond rolls and drinking the wine. She accepted a cup for the purpose of warding off the dampness and drank it cut with water, like a Frenchwoman. “So, if you want to be buried in Sussex, you probably wouldn’t move to-say-Japan?” she said.

“I refuse to answer, on the grounds that I may now prefer to just stay here with you and thereby deprive both Edgecombe and Tokyo of my presence,” he said.

“But we will not stay here, Major.” Her voice was sad. “Just like the Colonel, we will have to leave and never see it again.”

“True.” He looked around at the fire’s dancing shadows on the thick stone walls and the pools of light on the low ceiling from the lamps and the single candle guttering in a broken saucer. They had laid the bedroom’s duvet over the back of the sofa to air, and its red flannel added to the warmth in the room. “You must give me time to think,” he said.

“My husband’s body was sent back to Pakistan for burial, something I do not wish for myself, and so I cannot rest next to him. Nor can I be buried in a pretty Sussex churchyard,” she said.

“On some days, days that his wife thinks are bad but which perhaps are good, my friend the Colonel is quite convinced that he is back here,” said the Major.

“So he dreams himself the life he cannot have?”

“Exactly. But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical. So tell me, who is to be pitied more?”

“There are real-life complications,” she said, laughing. “Can you imagine if the whole world decided tomorrow to move to a fishing lodge in the English countryside?”

“It’s Wales, actually,” said the Major. “And they do get a bit funny if there are too many visitors.”

He gave her the nicer of his two pairs of pajamas, navy cotton piped in white, as well as his camel robe and a pair of wool socks for her feet. He was glad he had packed the extra set after all. Nancy had often chided him for what she called his meticulous overpacking and his insistence on carrying a hard-sided leather bag for all trips. He couldn’t abide today’s travelers with their huge squashy duffel bags crammed with athletic shoes, balled-up tracksuits, and stretchy multipurpose trousers and dresses made out of special travel fabrics, with hidden pockets, which they wore indiscriminately to theaters and nice restaurants.

From a separate compartment, packed in an oilcloth bag that had belonged to his father, the Major produced a leather wash kit and, with some embarrassment at the intimacy, laid out soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and a small Egyptian cotton towel he always carried for emergencies.

“I’ll just run out to the car,” he said. “I have an extra toothbrush in my breakdown kit.”

“Along with a small barrel of brandy and a spare Shakespeare?” she asked.

“You’re laughing at me,” he said. “But if I didn’t have a blanket in the car I’d be pretty cold tonight on that couch.” He thought she blushed, but it might have been the candle flickering on her skin.

When he returned she was dressed in his pajamas and robe and was combing out her hair with his small, inadequate comb. The wool socks flopped around her slender ankles. The Major felt his breath falter and a new tension vibrate through his limbs.

“It’s a very uncomfortable couch,” she said. Her eyes were dark in the lamplight and as she raised her arms to flip her hair back, he was aware of the curves of her body against the smooth cotton of the borrowed pajamas and the soft robe. “I’m not sure you’ll be warm enough.” The Major felt it was vital to nod, and not to let his jaw fall open while he did so.

“Toothbrush,” he said with difficulty. He held it out by the very tip of the handle because he knew it was important, if he was to keep his composure, that her fingertips not touch his. “Lucky thing the blanket is cashmere. I’ll be perfectly comfortable.”

“You must at least take back your robe.” She stood and slid the robe off her shoulders and the Major found this so sensual that he dug his fingertips into his palms to keep the heat from rising in his face and body.

“Very kind of you.” Panic threatened to overwhelm him just from being close to her. He backed away toward the bedroom and the tiny bathroom beyond. “I’d better say good night now, just in case you’re asleep.”

“It’s so beautiful I’d like to lie awake and watch the moon on the water all night,” she said, advancing on the bedroom.

“Much better to get some rest,” he said. He stumbled away from her, found the bathroom door with some effort, and clawed his way in. He wondered just how long he might have to hide out in the bathroom pretending to wash before she would be safely asleep. For a moment, he wished he had brought something to read.