Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Chapter 24

The Major knew he was driving faster than was safe in the growing darkness of the lanes, but he felt no fear. There was only concentration and the trees, hedges, and walls tumbling by. The engine’s roar was fury enough. No need for either of them to speak. He could sense Jasmina shivering beside him but did not take his eyes from the road. He kept his mind only on the task at hand and as they surged from the carelessly flung outskirts of the town onto the bare grass road to the cliffs, he felt a soldier’s pride at an assignment well executed.

“What if we’re too late?” whispered Jasmina. The anguish in her voice threatened to tear his composure to shreds.

“We must refuse to imagine it and concentrate only on the next step and then the next,” he said, swinging the car into the empty car park. “We do what we can do, and the rest is God’s problem.”

The cliff on which they had strolled so happily with little George lay in gloom under gray clouds that streamed and feathered at the edges in the growing wind and hung down swollen underbellies black with rain. Out in the channel, curtains of rain already brushed the choppy sea. It was neither dark enough for the lighthouse lamp to make any impression nor still light enough to inspire hope. A gust splattered cold rain on the windshield as they got out.

“We need coats,” the Major said, and hurried to the back of the car.

“Ernest, there’s no time,” she said, but she hovered at the edge of the road waiting for him. He strapped his game bag across his chest, slung his gun slip over one shoulder, and picked up his shooting coat and hat. When he handed Jasmina the coat, he hoped the gun was unobtrusive over his shoulder. She seemed not to notice as she put the coat on. “It’s so empty now.” She scanned the endless grass for signs of Abdul Wahid. “How will we find them?”

“We’ll head up to that vantage point,” he said, putting on his hat and looking at the small knoll with its low stone wall and pay telescope. “Always see more from high ground.”

“Oi! Where d’you think you’re going?” A short man emerged from one of the small buildings adjacent to the darkened public house. “Too windy to be safe out there tonight.” He wore stout boots and jeans with a short work coat and a large reflective vest that made his ample torso resemble a pumpkin. Some sort of harness jingled its loosened buckles around the folds of his waist and he carried a clipboard and wore a two-way radio on a lanyard.

“I’m sure you’re right,” said the Major, “but we’re searching for a young man who may be despondent.”

“There’s no time.” Jasmina was pulling on his arm. “We have to go.”

“Jumper, is he?” said the man, consulting his clipboard. Jasmina moaned slightly at the word. “I’m with the Volunteer Suicide Emergency Corps so you come to the right place.” He made a note on the clipboard with his pen. “What’s his name?”

“His name’s Abdul Wahid. He’s twenty-three and we think his elderly great-aunt is with him.”

“Not many people jump with their auntie,” said the man. “How d’you spell Abdool?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake just help us look for him,” said Jasmina.

“We’ll start searching,” said the Major. “Can you round up some more volunteers?”

“I’ll put out the call,” said the man. “But you can’t go out there. It’s not safe for the general public.” He stepped in front of them and made a sort of herding motion with his arms as if they were sheep to be corralled.

“I’m not the general public, I’m British army, rank of major,” said the Major. “Retired, of course, but in the absence of any proof of your authority, I’ll have to demand you step aside.”

“I see someone down there, Ernest.” Jasmina dodged sideways and began to cross the road. The Major created a diversion by saluting the clipboard man and receiving an uncertain hand waggle in response, then followed her.

A man became visible, running toward them up the incline from an area of thick scrub. It was not Abdul Wahid. This man also wore a reflective vest and the Major prepared to avoid him but he was waving his cell phone in a way the Major understood as an urgent signal for help.

“Oh, no, not him again,” said the clipboard man, who was puffing along behind them. “You know you’re not allowed up here, Brian.”

“No bloody phone reception again,” said Brian. Although he was a compact, fit-looking man, he put both hands on his knees and bent over to catch his breath after the uphill climb. “Got a jumper south of Big Scrubber,” he went on, pointing with a thumb back over his shoulder. “Can’t get near to talk him in. Some old lady with a weapon and a foul mouth threatened to stick me in the gonads.”

“It’s Abdul Wahid,” said Jasmina. “He’s here.”

“You’re under caution not to do any more rescues, Brian,” said the clipboard man.

“So you’re not going to come and help me grab her?” asked Brian.

“We’re not to approach people with visible weapons or obvious psychiatric disorders,” said the man, with the pride of someone who has memorized a handbook. “We have to call for police backup.”

“It’s not like they send a bloody SWAT team, Jim,” said Brian. “You could save ten people in the time it takes you to call two constables in a Mini Cooper.”

“Is it a knitting needle?” asked the Major.

“Is it that clump of trees?” asked Jasmina simultaneously.

“Yeah, Big Scrubber—or maybe it’s an ice pick,” said Brian.

“Don’t tell them,” fumed Jim. “They’re the general public.”

“Are you going to radio for help or do I have to go to the phone booth and ask the Samaritans to relay the message?” asked Brian.

“Reception’s better at HQ,” said Jim. “But I can’t go unless you all come with me. No civilians allowed.” He sidled over and stood downhill of Jasmina as if preparing to grab her. “The days of vigilantes like Brian are over.”

“Please, I have to go to my nephew,” cried Jasmina.

“Brian, you seem to me to be a man of action,” said the Major, unsleeving his gun as casually as possible and breaking it gently over the crook of his elbow. “Why don’t you take Jim to get reinforcements and the lady and I will go down and quietly persuade the elder lady to behave.”

“Shit,” said Jim, staring mesmerized at the shotgun. Jasmina gasped and then used the opportunity to turn and run down the slope.

“Shit,” said the Major. “I have to go after her.”

“So go,” said Brian. “I’ll make sure clipboard Jim makes the right calls.”

“It’s not loaded, by the way,” called the Major as he began to hurry after Jasmina. He omitted to mention the cartridges in his pocket. “Only, the old lady already stabbed one person with that needle.”

“I didn’t see any shotgun,” said Brian, waving him away.

As the Major broke into a run, ignoring the danger of turning an ankle on the many rabbit holes, he heard Brian say, “And Jim’ll back me up, because otherwise I’ll tell them how he lets me rescue people on his shifts and takes all the credit.”

“That was one time,” said Jim. “The girl was so out of it I didn’t even know she’d already been rescued. I spent two hours talking to her.”

“Yeah, I heard she almost decided to kill herself all over again,” came the faint reply, and then the Major reached the outer rim of the bank of gorse and scrub trees and their voices disappeared.

Behind the scrub, he saw Jasmina’s small Honda half buried in gorse; a great furrow of mud behind it indicated that it had slid and swerved before coming to a stop. Perhaps Abdul Wahid had planned to simply drive to Mecca.

Abdul Wahid was kneeling close, but not dangerously close, to the edge of the cliff some two hundred feet away. He seemed to be praying, bending his head to the ground as if unaware of any drama in his surroundings. Closer to the Major, two islands of gorse created a narrowing of the grass and here the old lady stood guard, her face as hard as ever but now animated by the sharp in and out of her breath as she pointed her knitting needle toward Jasmina. She held it professionally—pointing down from her fist and ready to thrust like a dagger—and the Major felt sure she was very capable at using it.

“Auntie, what are you doing?” called Jasmina, speaking into the wind and spreading her hands in a gesture of placation. “Why must we be out here in the rain?”

“I’m doing what none of you knows how to do,” said the old lady. “No one remembers what it is to have honor anymore.”

“But Abdul Wahid?” she said. Then she raised her voice and called out to him, “Abdul Wahid, please!”

“Don’t you know better than to disturb a man at prayer?” asked the old woman. “He prays to take the burden on himself and restore the family honor.”

“This is insane. This is not how things are resolved, Auntie.”

“This is how it has always been done, child,” said the old woman in a dreamy voice. “My mother was drowned in a cistern by my father when I was six years old.” She crouched on her heels and traced a circle in the grass with the tip of her needle. “I saw. I saw him push her down with one hand and with the other he stroked her hair because he loved her very much. She had laughed with the man who came selling carpets and copper pots and handed him tea from her own hands in her mother-in-law’s best cups.” She stood up again. “I was always proud of my father and his sacrifice,” she said.

“We are civilized people, not some rural peasant family stuck in the past,” said Jasmina, her voice choked with horror.

“Civilized?” hissed the old woman. “You are soft. Soft and corrupted. My niece and her husband are weakened by decadence. They complain, they make their little schemes, but they offer only indulgence for their son. And I, who should be eating figs in a garden of my own, must come and set things right.”

“Did they know you would do this?” asked Jasmina. The old lady laughed, an animal cackle.

“No one wants to know, but then I come—when there are too many puppies in the litter, when a daughter has something growing in the belly. And after I visit they never speak, but they send me a small goat or a piece of carpet.” She ran her fingers slowly up the shaft of the needle and began to creep forward across the grass, waving the tip of the needle as if to hypnotize. “They will cry and rant and pretend to be ashamed but you will see, they will give me my own small house now in the hills and I will grow figs and sit all day in the sun.”

The Major stepped from behind the bushes and planted his feet firmly apart, resting his right hand on the stock of the shotgun still broken across his arm. “This has gone quite far enough, madam,” he said. “I’ll ask you to throw down your needle and wait quietly with us for the police.” She fell back a few steps but regained her composure and a leer crept slowly up the left side of her face.

“Ah, the English Major,” she said. She waved her needle like an admonishing finger. “So it is true, Jasmina, that you ran away from your family in order to fornicate and debauch yourself.”

“How dare you,” said the Major, stepping forward and snapping the shotgun together.

“Actually, you’re quite right, Auntie.” Jasmina’s eyes flashed with anger. She stepped forward and held her chin high, her hair whipping about her face in the wind. “And shall I tell you how delicious it was, you with your shriveled body and your dried-up heart, who have never known happiness? Would you like to hear how it is to be naked with a man you love and really live and breathe the sensuality of life itself? Should I tell you this story, Auntie?”

The old woman howled as if racked with pain and leaped toward Jasmina, who planted her feet and held out her arms and showed no intention of dodging. Quick with fear, the Major swung up his gun with a shout and, running forward, butted the edge of the stock against the old woman’s head. It was only a glancing blow, but her own momentum made it enough. She dropped the needle and crumpled to the ground. Jasmina sat down abruptly in the grass and began to laugh, an ugly robotic laugh that suggested shock. The Major bent down to pick up the fallen knitting needle and slid it into his game bag.

“What were you thinking?” he said. “You could have been killed.”

“Is she dead?” asked Jasmina.

“Of course not,” said the Major, but he was anxious as he felt the old lady’s leathery neck until he found a pulse. “I do try to avoid killing ladies, no matter how psychotic they may be.”

“You’re a useful sort in a fight,” said the now familiar voice of Brian. He advanced from behind a bush and bent down to peer at the old woman. “Good work.”

“Where’s the other chap?” asked the Major.

“He’s radioed the other volunteers but he’s still waiting for backup,” said Brian. “Shall we go and have a bit of a chat with your nephew and see what he wants?”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked the Major.

“No, can’t say I do,” said Brian cheerfully. “I must’ve talked about fifty people down off this bloody cliff in the last ten years, and for the life of me I couldn’t tell you how. Bit of a gift, I suppose. Main thing is to act casual and not make any sudden moves.”

Together they walked cautiously down the slope toward Abdul Wahid. He had finished his prayers and was standing with unnatural stillness, gazing out to sea. He did not hunch his shoulders or fold his arms against the cold, although he wore no coat. Only the embroidered hem of his long heavy tunic snapped in the wind.

“He put on his wedding clothes,” said Mrs. Ali. “Oh, my poor, poor boy.” She stretched out her hand and the Major reached to catch her arm, fearing she might run the last hundred yards or so.

“Easy, now,” said Brian. “Let me get his attention.” He stepped forward and gave a low whistling sound as if, thought the Major, he was calling a gundog to heel. Abdul Wahid turned slightly and saw them.

“Hullo there,” said Brian. He held a hand up in a slow wave. “I was just wondering if I could talk to you a minute.”

“I suppose you want to help me?” asked Abdul Wahid.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Brian. “What do you need?”

“I need you to get my aunt away from here,” said Abdul Wahid. “I don’t want her to see.”

“Abdul Wahid, what are you doing?” shouted Jasmina. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“I want her taken away,” said Abdul Wahid, quietly refusing to look at her. “She should not have to endure this.”

“So you don’t want to talk to her?” asked Brian. “That’s fine. If I have the Major here take her away, will you agree to talk to me—just for a bit?” Abdul Wahid seemed to consider this option carefully.

“Please, Abdul Wahid, come home,” said Jasmina. She was crying and the Major reached out a restraining arm, fearing she would try to rush at her nephew. “I won’t leave you.”

“I would prefer to talk to the Major,” said Abdul Wahid. “I will not talk to you.”

“So I’ll get your aunt away to somewhere dry and warm and you’ll sit tight and chat with this gentleman?”

“Yes,” said Abdul Wahid.

“He’s got a gun, you know,” said Brian. “You sure you can trust him?”

“What are you doing?” whispered the Major in fierce anxiety. “Are you trying to provoke him?” Abdul Wahid, however, actually produced one of his short barking laughs.

“Are you afraid he has come to shoot me?” he asked. “It would not exactly spoil my plans now, would it?”

“Okay, then,” said Brian. “I think we can make that deal.” He turned to the Major and whispered. “His laughing is a good sign. I think we should play along.”

“I won’t leave,” said Jasmina. She turned her tearstained face to the Major and he felt the full enormity of what would come next. “I could never forgive myself.”

“If you don’t leave, you may never forgive yourself,” said Brian. “Best thing to do is give them what they want, within reason. No promises, though.”

“If I leave him in your hands and you can’t keep him safe …” she began. She turned her face away, unable to continue.

“You may very well never forgive me,” finished the Major. The words tasted bitter in his mouth. “I do understand.” She looked at him and he added, “Whoever stays, whoever goes, I fear his death would come between us just the same, my dear.” He took her hand in his and squeezed it. “Let me play the man’s part now and fight for Abdul Wahid and for us, my love.”

“Here you are,” said Brian, taking something from a large backpack. “Sometimes they like a cup of tea. I always keep a thermos handy.”

He waited while Brian and Jasmina climbed the slope, stopping to collect the dazed but conscious old woman on their way. They did not look back. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Abdul Wahid, who remained motionless. Finally, he turned and walked slowly downhill, flanking left to come parallel to the young man while maintaining a respectful distance.

“Thank you,” said Abdul Wahid. “This was no place for a woman like my aunt.”

“This is no place for any of us,” said the Major, peering into the abyss of churning whitecaps and jagged rocks that seemed to suck at his feet from hundreds of feet below. “All this drama is very bad for the digestion.” He stretched his back. “Come to think of it, I didn’t have much lunch.”

“I am sorry,” said Abdul Wahid.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked the Major. “That man Brian gave me a thermos of tea and I have some Kendal Mint Cake.”

“Are you mocking me?” said Abdul Wahid. “Do you think I’m a child, to be persuaded with food?”

“Not at all,” said the Major, abandoning the casual approach at once. “I’m just terrified, as you might expect—and a little cold.”

“Is it cold? asked Abdul Wahid.

“It’s very cold,” said the Major. “Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere warm and talk things through over a nice hot dinner?”

“Did you see Amina?” asked Abdul Wahid. The Major nodded. “Will she live?” he added.

“She asked for you in the ambulance,” said the Major. “I could take you to her. I have my car.” Abdul Wahid shook his head and rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes.

“It was never meant to be,” he said. “Every day more complication, more compromise. I see that now.”

“That’s just not true,” said the Major. “You’re talking like a fool.” He felt the note of desperation in his own voice.

“So much shame,” he said. “It hangs around me like chains. I ache to scrape it all off in the sea and be clean for—” He stopped abruptly and the Major sensed he felt unworthy to even mention the name of his creator.

“I know something of shame,” said the Major. He had intended to point out that suicide was not allowed in Islam, but a restatement of rules he already knew did not seem constructive in the immediacy of wind, rain, and a sheer drop of five hundred feet. “How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.” As he risked a peek over the sharp chalk edge, his stomach churned at the jagged teeth of rocks waiting below them and he almost lost his train of thought. “I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn’t have to look at us all the time.”

“You speak of general burdens, Major. What of the individual shame that burns the soul?”

“Well, if you want specifics,” began the Major, “look at this gun of which I’m so proud.” They both considered the rain beading on its polished stock and dull steel barrel. “My father, on his deathbed, gave one of these guns to me and one to my younger brother and I was consumed with disappointment that he did not give me both and I chewed on my own grievance as he lay dying before me and I chewed on it while I wrote his eulogy and damn me if I wasn’t still chewing on it when my own brother died this autumn.”

“It was your right as the eldest son.”

“I was more proud of these guns than I was of your aunt Jasmina. For the sake of these guns, I let down the woman I love in front of a whole community of people, most of whom I can barely tolerate. I let her leave, and I will never get rid of that sense of shame.”

“I let her leave so that I could acquire all her worldly possessions,” said Abdul Wahid quietly. “With death, this debt will also be wiped out.”

“This is not the solution,” said the Major. “The solution is to make things right, or at least to work every day to do so.”

“I have tried, Major,” he said. “But in the end I cannot reconcile my faith and my life. At least this way, the debt of honor is paid and Amina and George can go on with their lives.”

“How is suicide to be reconciled?” asked the Major.

“I will not commit suicide,” said Abdul Wahid. “It is haram. I will merely pray at the edge and wait for the wind to carry me where it will. Perhaps to Mecca.” He opened his arms and the heavy shirt billowed and snapped in the wind like a luffing sail. The Major felt the tenuous connection of conversation was slipping away from him. He looked around and thought he saw some heads bobbing behind bushes. He waved energetically, but this proved to be a mistake. Abdul Wahid also saw the volunteers and he lost all trace of animation from his face.

“You have kept me too long, Major,” he said. “I must go to my prayers.”

As he stepped forward, the Major fumbled in his pocket for cartridges and stuck two in the barrels, snapping the shotgun closed with one hand. Even against the rising moan of the wind it made a satisfactory crack. Abdul Wahid stopped and looked at him as the Major took two long steps downhill and began to sidle up between Abdul Wahid and the cliff edge. He was miserably aware of the crumbling and uneven nature of the ground, and his inability to look behind him made his legs tighten until his right calf muscle cramped. Abdul Wahid smiled gently at him and said, “So, Major, you do intend to shoot me after all?” He opened his arms wide until the wind buffeted his shirt and he stumbled forward a step.

“No, I do not intend to shoot you,” said the Major. He stepped uphill and turned the gun around in his hands presenting the stock end to Abdul Wahid. “Here, take this.” Abdul Wahid caught the gun as it was pushed into his stomach. He held it, puzzled, and the Major stepped back, uncomfortably aware of the barrels pointing at his chest. “Now I’m afraid you are going to have to shoot me.”

“I am not a man of violence,” said Abdul Wahid, lowering the gun slightly.

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” said the Major. He stepped forward again and held the barrel end of the gun against his own chest. “You see, I cannot let you go off this cliff and I intend to spend all night, if necessary, standing between you and the edge. Thus you will not be blown over by accident at any point. Of course, you can always jump, but that was not your plan, was it?”

“This is silly. I could never hurt you, Major.” Abdul Wahid stepped back half a pace.

“If you die here today, your aunt Jasmina will be lost to me, and I do not want to live without her.” The Major struggled to keep his voice even. “Also, I will not face your son, George, and tell him I stood by and let his father kill himself.” He stepped forward again, pushing Abdul Wahid back. Abdul Wahid moved his hands to grip the gun more comfortably. The Major prayed his fingers were not near the twin triggers.

“You must see that your sense of shame will not die with you, Abdul Wahid. It will live on in your son and in Amina and in your aunt Jasmina. Your pain will haunt their lives. Your wish for death today is a selfish act. I am also a selfish man—from these years of living alone, I expect. I do not want to live to see this happen.”

“I will not shoot you.” Abdul Wahid was almost crying now, his face twisted with anguish and confusion.

“Either shoot me or choose to live yourself,” said the Major. “I can’t face your aunt any other way. How strange to think that we come as a pair now.”

Abdul Wahid gave a bellow of anguish and threw the gun away from him onto the ground. The butt end hit first and the gun gave a roaring boom and discharged what the Major registered as a single barrel.

He felt a white-hot sear of steel shot through his right leg. The force of the close range spun him around and he fell heavily, slipping in the grass. As he rolled, he felt the ground disappear under him. His legs slipped over the edge of the chalk into empty air. There was no time to feel any pain as he scrabbled above his head with his hands and felt his left elbow bump a metal stanchion that had once held a wire fence. He grabbed the stanchion. It held briefly against the tug of his body as he rolled over and then it began to move, the metal squeaking like a dull knife. In an instant, a body landed on his left lower arm and fingers dug at his back to find any grip. His legs jackknifed and his left knee struck the cliff with a pain that flashed like a light in his head. The Major heard the clatter of stones preceding him over the edge. It was so fast there was no time for thought. There was only a brief feeling of surprise and the smell of cold white chalk and wet grass.