Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Chapter 14

“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.”

“More like a universal hysteria,” said the Major. “It’s hundreds of yards to the edge.”

“Do you not find it even the slightest bit disorienting?” asked Mrs. Ali, surveying the smooth grass running away to the abrupt drop-off. “I can almost feel the earth spinning beneath my feet.”

“That’s the power of it,” said the Major. “Draws people here.” He looked out at the green cliff and the enormous bowl of sky and sea and reached for the appropriate quotation.

“Clean of officious fence or hedge,

Half-wild and wholly tame,

The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge

As when the Romans came.”

“I expect Roman women also cried out to their children to be careful,” said Mrs. Ali. “Is that Kipling?”

“It is,” said the Major, pulling a small red volume of poetry from his pocket. “It’s called ‘Sussex’ and I was hoping to share it with you over our tea today.” She had called to cancel their planned reading, explaining that she had volunteered to take little George out for the afternoon. The Major, refusing to be disappointed for a second Sunday, found himself asking if he might come along.

“How amazing it is that we ever planned to read it indoors,” said Mrs. Ali. “It has so much more power out here where it was made.”

“Then perhaps we should walk about after Master George, and I might read you the rest of it?” said the Major.

When the poetry had been read, the kite had been tossed several dozen times into the air, and George had run until his small legs were exhausted, the Major suggested that they get some tea. They settled, with tea and a plate of cakes, at a sheltered table on the terrace of the pub that was absurdly built right on the headland. Mrs. Ali’s cheeks were warm from the walking, but she looked a little drawn. George swallowed a bun almost whole and drank a rather flat glass of lemonade before wandering off to view a puppy being walked nearby.

“My nephew suggested we come here,” said Mrs. Ali. “He says he walks up here all the time after mosque because here he can imagine that Mecca is just over the horizon.”

“I think France might be in the way,” said the Major, squinting at the horizon and trying to imagine the correct bearing for Saudi Arabia. “But on a spiritual level, there is something about the edge of the land that does make one feel closer to God. A sobering sense of one’s own smallness, I think.”

“I was very glad he wanted George to see it,” she said. “I think it is a good sign, don’t you?” The Major thought it might have been a better sign had the young man shown George the place himself, but he did not want to spoil Mrs. Ali’s afternoon.

“I must thank you again for putting up my nephew,” she said. “It has allowed George and Amina to be with us and has allowed Abdul Wahid to get to know his son.”

The Major tested the color of the tea and gave the pot a dissatisfied stir. “I am glad he doesn’t object to Amina being in the shop.”

“A shop is a curious thing,” said Mrs. Ali. “I have always found it to be a tiny free space in a world with many limits.”

“More complicated, then, than just selling eggs and working through the important holidays?”

“A place of compromise,” she added. “It’s very hard to put into words.”

“Compromises are often built on their being unspoken,” said the Major. “I think I understand you perfectly.”

“I could never talk to my nephew about it,” she said. “Yet I will whisper to you that I pin my hopes on the space of the shop allowing Abdul Wahid to see where his real duty lies.”

“You believe he loves her?” asked the Major.

“I know that they were very much in love before,” she said. “I also know that the family has gone to many lengths to separate them.”

“He seems to believe that despite your good offices, your late husband’s family will never accept Amina,” he said as he poured the tea. Mrs. Ali accepted a cup of tea, her fingertips meeting his on the edge of the saucer. The Major felt a skip in his veins that could only be happiness. She seemed anxious at his question and hesitated, drinking some tea and carefully placing her cup back on the tea tray before answering.

“I am afraid that I have been very selfish,” she said.

“I cannot allow you to suggest such a thing,” said the Major.

“It is true,” she said. “I have told Abdul Wahid that I have written to the family—and I have written.” Here she paused again. She wrapped her arms around her chest and gazed out at the vista. She did not look at the Major as she continued. “But each day I have been somehow too busy to post the letter.” She fumbled in a small handbag and withdrew a thin envelope, very creased and folded. Turning to him, she held it out. The Major took it gently from her fingers.

“A letter unposted is a heavy burden,” he said.

“Each day that passes I feel heavier,” she said. “I feel the weight of knowing things cannot go on as they are. But at the same time, each day I feel a lightness I had almost forgotten.” She gazed at George, who was crouched on the grass, talking to the boy with the puppy while the puppy jumped at both their knees.

“How long can you continue to postpone the necessary conversation?”

“I was hoping you might reassure me that I can postpone it forever,” she said. “I am afraid that the letter will undo all.” She turned to him, a wistful smile hovering on her lips.

“My dear Mrs. Ali …”

“I am afraid everything will be taken from me,” she said in a quiet voice. The Major felt a desire to throw the offending letter into the nearby rubbish bin along with the paper plates and sticky ice cream wrappers.

“If only it were possible to ignore them entirely,” he said.

“That will not do,” said Mrs. Ali. “I know my nephew, who has his own doubts to overcome, will not be able to proceed without his father’s blessing.” She took the envelope back and pushed it into her handbag again. “Perhaps we will see a postbox on our way home.”

“I hope your letter will meet with a more friendly reaction than you imagine,” said the Major.

“My faith does permit the occasional miracle,” said Mrs. Ali. “My hope is that they will see they have been unjust. Of course, if that fails to work, I am prepared to bargain on a more temporal level.”

“One really shouldn’t have to bargain with one’s family like a used-car salesman.” The Major sighed. With acknowledged cowardice, he had ignored two phone calls from Marjorie, finally finding a use for the incoming number display on his phone. He felt that he could no more hold off an inevitable confrontation about the guns than frail Mrs. Ali could hope to hold back the fury of her family.

“Someone must stand up for George,” she said. “It is not permitted in Islam to let a child carry the weight of a parent’s shame on his shoulders. He had to witness his grandmother’s funeral shunned by all but a handful of people. It was a great dishonor.”

“Terrible,” said the Major.

“I am afraid my husband’s family may have increased the shame by spreading certain untruths,” said Mrs. Ali. “I know Abdul Wahid understands this, and I believe it will help him decide to put things right.”

“He does seem fond of her and the boy,” said the Major.

“I am glad that you say that,” said Mrs. Ali. “I was hoping you might talk to him for me. I think he needs a man’s perspective on this.”

“It’s not really my place,” began the Major, horrified at the thought of talking about such intimate matters. He would not have been able to broach such a subject with his own son, let alone the stubborn and reticent young man currently using his guest room.

“With your military background, you understand better than most men the concept of honor and pride,” said Mrs. Ali. “In the end, I am a woman and I would throw away every shred of pride to keep this little boy with me. Abdul Wahid knows this and therefore mistrusts my ability to see his point of view.”

“I’m not an expert on the faith behind his sense of duty,” said the Major. “I could not instruct him.” Yet he felt his opposition melting under the warm satisfaction of hearing Mrs. Ali’s compliment.

“I ask you only to talk to him as one honorable man to another,” said Mrs. Ali. “Abdul Wahid is still exploring his relationship to his faith. We all pick and choose and make our religion our own, do we not?”

“I can’t imagine the various ayatollahs or the Archbishop of Canterbury agreeing with you,” said the Major. “I believe you are being unorthodox.”

“I am being realistic,” said Mrs. Ali.

“I had no idea shopkeepers were so heretical,” said the Major. “I am quite astonished.”

“Will you talk to him for me?” she asked, her brown eyes unwavering.

“I will do anything you ask,” he said. He read gratitude in her face. He wondered if he might also be seeing some happiness. He turned away and made himself busy poking at a large weed with the tip of his stick as he added, “You must know that I am entirely yours to command.”

“I see chivalry lives on,” she said.

“As long as there’s no jousting involved, I’m your knight,” he said.

Just as the Major was thinking that he could not remember, in recent years, a more satisfying Sunday afternoon, a woman walked across the grass below them and pulled the small boy and his puppy away from George. They moved off toward the car park as if to leave, but a couple of hundred feet away she stopped and shook the boy by the arm, her angry face close to his as she spoke to him. The boy was then released again to run with his dog. George, who had stood up and watched as they walked away, now came slowly back to the table with his shoulders hunched.

“What happened, George?” said Mrs. Ali. “Was that woman rude to you?” George shrugged.

“Speak up, now,” said the Major, trying to keep his voice from being too gruff. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said George. He sighed. “His mum just said he wasn’t allowed to play with me.”

“The ignorance of some people,” said the Major, half-rising from his seat. He saw now that it was the woman who had been screaming earlier, the mother of Eddie. He would have bounded after her only she was very large and, though a slow and lumbering woman, was likely to be belligerent.

“I’m sorry, George,” said Mrs. Ali. She placed a hand on the Major’s arm as if to restrain him and the Major sank back onto his seat.

“Back home no one plays with me, either.”

“Surely you must have many friends,” said the Major. “Fine young men just like you?”

George gave him a pitying glance, as if he himself were the old man, and the Major an ignorant child. “If you have a mum but not a dad, they don’t play with you,” he explained. “Can I have another bun?” The Major was so stunned he passed the plate without thinking. It was only as George sank his face into the icing that the Major remembered how he had never allowed his own son more than a single treat at tea and had sometimes, at suitably random intervals, made him do with no treats at all in order to avoid spoiling him. In this case, another cake seemed the only remedy to hand.

“Oh, George, your mother and your aunt Noreen love you so much, and your nanni loved you very much,” said Mrs. Ali, running around the table and falling to her knees on the slightly dirty concrete to wrap her arms around the boy. “And I love you very much as well.” She kissed his face and stroked his hair while George squirmed and tried to keep the bun from tangling in her long hair. “You mustn’t lose sight of that when people are cruel.”

“You seem like a very intelligent little chap,” said the Major as Mrs. Ali released George from her hugs. The boy looked with some suspicion at the Major, who decided not to offer the “sticks and stones” advice he had intended but instead reached toward George’s dirty, sticky hand and said, “I would be honored if you would consider counting me as a friend.”

“Okay,” said George, shaking hands. “But what else can you play besides kites?” Mrs. Ali laughed while the Major did his best to maintain a grave and thoughtful expression.

“Have you ever played chess?” he asked. “I could teach you, I suppose.”

On the way home, George slept in the backseat, tired from all the running and filled with cake. The Major drove as scenic a route as possible; Mrs. Ali seemed entranced by the high banks and snug cottages of the less-traveled lanes. She spotted an old round postbox at a crossroads and he stopped the car so she could post her letter. He held his breath as she stood for a moment, letter in hand, her head curved in thought. He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability of its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one’s words could not be taken back, one’s thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face. As she dropped the letter in the box, all the sun seemed to drain out of the afternoon.

The question of how to begin a casual conversation designed to persuade a young man to accept a stranger’s guidance on life-altering decisions plagued the Major for several days. There seemed to be few opportunities, even if one could find the appropriate words. Abdul Wahid rose very early and left without so much as a cup of tea. He returned late most days, having already had his dinner at the shop, and slipped up at once to his room where he read from his small stack of religious books. His arrival home was often signaled only by a small token of thanks left on the kitchen table: a parchment paper twist of some new tea blend, a package of plain shortbread, a bag of apples. The only strangeness was the sight of his empty shoes lined up at night by the back door and the faint hint of a lime-based aftershave lingering in the bathroom, which Abdul Wahid left wiped and spotless each morning. The Major despaired of finding an opening and in order to fulfill his promise to Mrs. Ali, he began to keep the teapot primed and a kettle warm on the stove, while he lurked about in his own scullery hoping to waylay his guest coming through the back door.

One evening when it was raining heavily, the Major found his chance. Abdul Wahid was delayed in the back hall by the need to shake out and hang up his dripping rain jacket. His shoes must have been soaked through, for the Major heard him stuffing them with crumpled newspaper from the recycling basket. Transferring the kettle to a hotter plate on the Aga, the Major set the teapot in the middle of the table and put out two large mugs.

“Won’t you join me in a mug of hot tea?” he asked as Abdul Wahid entered the kitchen. “It’s a rough night out there.”

“I do not want to give you any trouble, Major,” said Abdul Wahid, hesitating. He seemed to be shivering from the cold. The thin sweater he wore over his shirt was hardly adequate, thought the Major. “Your hospitality is already more than I deserve.”

“You would be doing me a great favor, sitting down for a while,” said the Major. “I’ve been by myself all day today and I could use the company.” He poked up the fire as if the matter were already settled. As he bent over the smoking logs, he realized that his suggestion of loneliness was true. Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife. He even missed Roger and how the house used to ring to the kicking shoes of grubby boys playing up and down the stairs. He was sorry now for the many times he had rebuked Roger and his friends—he had underrated the joy in their rowdiness.

Abdul Wahid took a seat at the kitchen table and accepted a cup of tea. “Thanks. It’s pretty damp out tonight.”

“Yes, not too nice,” agreed the Major, wondering if they would be stuck for long in the inevitable loop of weather talk.

“It is funny that you are tired of spending the day alone,” said Abdul Wahid. “While I am tired of being around a busy shop filled with chattering people all day. I would love to trade with you and have time to myself for reading and for thinking.”

“Don’t rush to trade places with an old man,” said the Major. “Youth is a wonderful time of vigor and action. For possibilities, and for collecting friends and experiences.”

“I miss being a student,” said Abdul Wahid. “I miss the passionate discussions with my friends, and most of all the hours among the books.”

“Life does often get in the way of one’s reading,” agreed the Major. They drank their tea in silence as the logs cracked and spat in the flames of the fireplace.

“I am sorry to leave you to your solitary days, Major, but I have decided to move back to the shop,” said Abdul Wahid at length. “I have burdened you with my presence too long.”

“Are you sure?” asked the Major. “You really are welcome to stay on here. Roger and Sandy have no real intention of visiting more than a few nights, I guarantee, and you are welcome to any books on my shelves.”

“Thank you, Major, but I have decided to live in a small outbuilding we have behind the store,” said Abdul Wahid. “It has a toilet and a small window. Once I have moved out what appears to be a dead tractor and several chicken coops, I believe a fresh coat of paint will transform it into a room just like the one I had at university. It will be a sanctuary until things are decided.”

“You haven’t yet heard from your family, then,” said the Major.

“A letter has come,” replied Abdul Wahid.

“Ah,” said the Major. Abdul Wahid stared into the fire and said nothing, so, after an interminable pause, the Major added: “Good news, I hope?”

“It appears the moral objections may be overcome,” said Abdul Wahid. He screwed his face up, as if tasting something sour.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” said the Major. “Isn’t it?” He was puzzled by the fact that the young man seemed so unhappy. “Soon you can be with your son, and maybe even live in the same house instead of the chicken shed.”

Abdul Wahid got up and walked over to the mantelpiece, where he squatted on his heels and held his palms close to the flames.

“I do not think you would be so quick to approve if it was your son,” he said. The Major frowned as he tried to quell the immediate recognition that the young man was right. He fumbled for a reply that would be true but also helpful. “I do not mean to offend you,” added Abdul Wahid.

“Not at all,” said the Major. “You are not wrong—at least, in the abstract. I would be unhappy to think of my son becoming entangled in such a way and many people, including myself, may be guilty of a certain smug feeling that it would never happen in our families.”

“I thought so,” said Abdul Wahid with a grimace.

“Now, don’t you get offended, either,” said the Major. “What I’m trying to say is that I think that is how everyone feels in the abstract. But then life hands you something concrete—something concrete like little George—and abstracts have to go out the window.”

“I did not expect them to agree with anything my aunt proposed,” he said. “I expected them to make my decision easy.”

“I had no idea that you didn’t want to marry Amina,” said the Major. He put down his tea mug, the better to emphasize his attention to the conversation. “I seem to have jumped to a conclusion that was not there.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to marry her,” said Abdul Wahid, returning to his chair. He tented his fingertips and blew on them softly. “In her presence, I’m lost to her. She has such eyes. And then she was always so funny and wild. She is like a streak of light, or maybe a blow to the head.” He smiled, as if remembering a particular blow.

“That sounds suspiciously like love to me,” said the Major.

“We are not expected to marry for love, Major,” said Abdul Wahid. “I do not wish to be one of those men who bends and shapes the rules of his religion like a cheap basket to justify his comfortable life and to satisfy every bodily desire.”

“But your family has given permission?” said the Major. “You have been given a chance.” Abdul Wahid looked at him, and the Major was concerned to see a gaunt misery in his face.

“I do not want to be the cause of my family stooping to hypocrisy,” he said. “They took me away from her because of faith. I didn’t like it, but I understood and I forgave them. Now I fear they withdraw their objection in order to secure financial advantage.”

“Your aunt has offered to support the union,” said the Major.

“If faith is worth no more than the price of a small shop in an ugly village, what is the purpose of my life—of any life?” said Abdul Wahid. He slumped in his chair.

“She will give up the shop,” said the Major. He did not phrase it as a question, because he already knew the answer. That Abdul Wahid should slight, in one sentence, both the sacrifice of his aunt and the pastoral beauty of Edgecombe St. Mary incensed the Major to the point of stuttering. He peered for a long time at Abdul Wahid and saw him once more as a sour-faced, objectionable young man.

“She will give up the shop, which is a huge and generous gift from her,” added Abdul Wahid, spreading his hands in a gesture of conciliation. “There is only the question of where she will live that is to be determined.” He sighed. “But what will I give up in accepting?”

“Your absolute arrogance might be a welcome start,” said the Major. He could not prevent the caustic anger in his words. Abdul Wahid widened his eyes and the Major was maliciously happy to have shocked him.

“I don’t understand,” he said, frowning.

“Look here, it’s all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,” said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. “It’s a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.” He stopped to organize his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. “However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course—you are very neat.” Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown.

“You are very strange,” he said. “Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?”

“No, I think it is admirable,” said the Major. “But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God.”

“I live as simply as I can,” said Abdul Wahid.

“I have admired that about you, and it has been refreshing to my own spirit to see a young man who is not consumed by material wants.” As he said this, the thought of Roger and his shiny ambition made a bitter taste in his mouth. “I am just asking you to consider, and only to consider, whether your ideas come from as humble a place as your daily routine.”

Abdul Wahid looked at the Major with some amusement now dancing in his eyes. He gave another of his short, barking laughs.

“Major, how many centuries must we listen to the British telling us to be humble?”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” said the Major, horrified.

“I’m only joking,” said Abdul Wahid. “You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care—and humility.” He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. “But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?”

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