Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel Page 12

  “Dad, it’s a unique opportunity. This old woman has her aunt’s cottage—rent with option to buy—and she doesn’t want to use an estate agent. We could save all kinds of fees.”

  “Good for you,” said the Major. “But without an estate agent, can you be sure the price is fair?”

  “That’s the point,” said Roger. “We have a chance to get it locked up now, before someone makes her see what it’s really worth. It sounds perfect, Dad, and it’s only a few minute away, near Little Puddleton.”

  “I really don’t see why you need a cottage,” said the Major. He was familiar with Little Puddleton, a village whose large contingent of weekenders had spawned several arty pottery shops and a coffeehouse selling hand-roasted beans at exorbitant prices. While the village hosted some excellent chamber music at a gazebo on the green, its pub had moved toward selling moules frites and little plates of dinner on which all the food was piled on top of each other and perfectly round, as if it had been molded inside a drainpipe. Little Puddleton was the kind of place where people bought fully grown specimens of newly hybridized antique roses in all the latest shades and then, at the end of the summer, wrenched them from their glazed Italian jardinières and tossed them on the compost heap like dead petunias. Alice Pierce, his neighbor, was quite public in her annual compost heap raids and had presented him last year with a couple of bushes, including a rare black tea rose that was now flourishing against his greenhouse.

  “You must know that you and your friend would be perfectly welcome here at Rose Lodge,” he added.

  “We talked about that,” said Roger. “I told Sandy there was plenty of room and I was sure you’d even consider sectioning off the back part of the house to make a separate flat.”

  “A separate flat?” said the Major.

  “But Sandy said it might look like we’re trying to shuffle you off into a granny annex and we probably should get a place of our own for now.”

  “How considerate,” said the Major. Outrage reduced his voice to a squeak.

  “Look, Dad, we’d really like you to come see it with us and give us your approval,” said Roger. “Sandy has her eye on some cow barn near Salisbury, too. I’d much rather be near you.”

  “Thank you,” said the Major. He was well aware that Roger probably wanted money more than advice; but then, Roger was as just as likely to ask for money for the cow barn in Salisbury, so perhaps he really did want to be close to home. The Major’s heart warmed at this flicker of filial affection.

  “Sussex is such an easier drive, not to mention that if I put in a few years at your golf club now, I may have a shot at membership in a serious club later on.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” said the Major. The flicker of filial love went out like a pilot light in a sudden draft.

  “Well, if we go to Salisbury I’ll have to be on waiting lists for golf there. Your club isn’t considered too prestigious, but my boss’s boss plays at Henley and he said right away he’d heard of you. He called you a bunch of stubborn old farts.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” said the Major, trying to catch up.

  “Look, Dad, can you come and help us meet Mrs. Augerspier in Little Puddleton on Thursday?” said Roger. “We’ll just give it the once-over—nose around for dry rot and that sort of thing.”

  “I have no expertise in these matters,” said the Major. “I don’t know what has potential.”

  “The potential’s not the issue,” said Roger. “The issue is the widowed Mrs. Augerspier. She wants to sell the cottage to the ‘right’ people. I need you to come with us and be your most distinguished and charming self.”

  “So you would like me to come and kiss the hand of the poor widow like some continental gigolo until she is confused into accepting your meager offer for a property that probably represents her entire nest egg?” asked the Major.

  “Exactly,” said Roger. “Is Thursday at two good for you?”

  “Three would be better,” said the Major. “I believe I have an appointment in town at lunchtime that may run on a bit.” There was an awkward silence. “I really can’t change it,” he added. It was true. Much as he was not looking forward to escorting Grace to meet Mrs. Ali’s catering friend, he had agreed to her request and could not face her disappointment if he tried to weasel out now.

  “I suppose I’ll have to call and see if I can change our appointment,” said Roger. The tone in his voice said he doubted that his father had any appointments of particular importance but that he would be generous and humor the old man.

  Mrs. Ali was in the living room waiting for him to bring in the tea. He stuck his head around the door and paused to notice what a lovely picture she made as she sat in the old bay window, bent over an old book of Sussex photographs. The sun, striking in through the wobbly glass, made the dust motes shimmer and edged her profile with a light gold brushstroke. She had arrived wrapped in a shawl of deep rose, which now lay draped about the shoulders of a wool crepe outfit in a blue as dark and soft as twilight.

  “Milk or lemon?” he asked. She looked up and smiled.

  “Lemon and a rather embarrassing amount of sugar,” she said. “And when I visit friends with gardens, I sometimes beg them for a mint leaf.”

  “A mint leaf?” he said. “Spearmint? Pineapple mint? I also have some kind of invasive, purple cabbage–like oddity my wife swore was mint, but I’ve always been afraid to eat it.”

  “It sounds very intriguing,” she said. “May I take a look at this strange plant?”

  “Of course,” said the Major, grappling with the sudden change in program. He had been saving an invitation to see the garden in case of a sudden lapse in conversation later. If they toured the garden now, the tea might become stewed and undrinkable; and what would he do later, in the event of an interminable pause?

  “Just a quick peek, so the tea doesn’t spoil,” she added as if she had read his mind. “But perhaps later I might impose on you for a more complete tour?”

  “I would be delighted,” he said. “If you’d like to step through the kitchen?”

  By going through the kitchen and the narrow scullery, he reasoned, they could see the side garden, which contained the herbs and a small gooseberry patch, while leaving the full vista of the back gardens to be enjoyed later, from the dining room’s French doors. Of course, there was really only a low hedge separating the two parts, but as Mrs. Ali viewed the low mounds of mints, the variegated sage, and the last few tall spikes of borage, she was kind enough to pretend not to look over the hedge at the roses and lawn.

  “This must be your alien mint,” she said, bending to rub between her fingers the ruched and puckered surface of a sturdy purplish plant. “It does seem a bit overwhelming for your average cup of tea.”

  “Yes, I’ve found it too pungent for anything,” said the Major.

  “Oh, but I think it would be excellent for perfuming a hot bath,” said Mrs. Ali. “Very invigorating.”

  “A bath?” said the Major. He fumbled to produce some further remark that might be suited to casual discussion of perfumed bathing. He understood suddenly how one could feel naked under clothes. “Rather like being a human tea bag, isn’t it?” he said. Mrs. Ali laughed and tossed the leaf aside.

  “You’re quite right,” she said. “And it’s also an awful bother to pick all the soggy bits of leaves out of the drain afterward.” She bent down to pick two pale leaves of peppermint.

  “Shall we go in and drink our tea while it’s fresh?” he asked. He waved his left arm toward the house.

  “Oh, did you hurt your hand?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, it’s nothing.” He tucked it quickly behind his back. He had hoped she wouldn’t see the ugly pink sticking plaster mashed between his thumb and forefinger. “Just gave myself a bit of a whack with the hammer, doing a little carpentry.”

  The Major poured them each a second cup of tea and wished there were some way to stop the late afternoon light from traveling any further a
cross the living room. Any moment now and the golden bars would reach the bookcases on the far wall and reflect back at Mrs. Ali the lateness of the hour. He feared she might be prompted to stop reading.

  She had a low, clear reading voice and she read with obvious appreciation of the text. He had almost forgotten to enjoy listening. During the dusty years of teaching at St. Mark’s preparatory school, his ears had become numb, rubbed down to nonvibrating nubs by the monotone voices of uncomprehending boys. To them, “Et tu Brute” carried the same emotional weight as a bus conductor’s “Tickets, please.” No matter that many possessed very fine, plummy accents; they strove with equal determination to garble the most precious of texts. Sometimes, he was forced to beg them to desist, and this they saw as victory over his stuffiness. He had chosen to retire the same year that the school allowed movies to be listed in the bibliographies of literary essays.

  Mrs. Ali had marked many pages with tiny slips of orange paper and, after some prompting from him, she had agreed to read from the fragments that interested her. He thought that Kipling had never sounded so good. She was now quoting from one of his favorite stories, “Old Men at Pevensey,” which was set soon after the Norman Conquest and had always seemed to the Major to express something important about the foundations of the land.

  “‘I do not think for myself,’ ” she read, quoting the knight De Aquila, master of Pevensey Castle, “ ‘nor for our King, nor for your lands. I think for England, for whom neither King nor Baron thinks. I am not Norman, Sir Richard, nor Saxon, Sir Hugh. English am I.’ ”

  The Major gulped at his tea making an unfortunate slurp. It was embarrassing but served to quell the “Hear, hear!” that had leaped unbidden to his lips. Mrs. Ali looked up from her book and smiled.

  “He writes characters of such idealism,” she said. “To be as grizzled and worldly as this knight, and yet still so clear in one’s passion and duty to the land. Is it even possible?”

  “Is it possible to love one’s country above personal considerations?” said the Major. He looked up at the ceiling, considering his answer. He noticed a faint but alarming brown stain that had not been there last week, in the corner between the window and the front hall. Patriotism was momentarily dangled in the scale against urgent plumbing concerns.

  “I know most people today would regard such love of country as ridiculously romantic and naïve,” he said. “Patriotism itself has been hijacked by scabby youths with jackboots and bad teeth whose sole aim is to raise their own standard of living. But I do believe that there are those few who continue to believe in the England that Kipling loved. Unfortunately, we are a dusty bunch of relics.”

  “My father believed in such things,” she said at last. “Just as Saxons and Normans became one English people, he never stopped believing that England would one day accept us too. He was only waiting to be asked to saddle up and ride the beacons with De Aquila as a real Englishman.”

  “Good for him,” said the Major. “Not that there’s much call for actual beacon-watching these days. Not with nuclear bombs and such.” He sighed. It was a pity, really, to see the string of beacons that ran the length of England’s southern shore reduced to pretty bonfires lit for the benefit of TV cameras on the Millennium and the Queen’s Jubilee.

  “I was speaking metaphorically,” she said.

  “Of course you were, dear lady,” he said, “But how much more satisfying to think of him literally riding to the top of Devil’s Dyke, flaming torch at the ready. The jingling of the harnesses, the thudding of hoofbeats, the cries of his fellow Englishmen, and the smell of the burning torch carried next to the banner of St. George …”

  “I think he would have settled for not being so casually forgotten when the faculty agreed to meet for a drink at the local pub.”

  “Ah,” said the Major. He would have liked to be able to make some soothing reply—something to the effect of how proud he would, himself, have been to partake of a glass of beer with her father. However, this was made impossible by the awkward fact that neither he, nor anyone else he knew, had ever thought to invite her husband for a drink in the pub. Of course that was entirely a social thing, he thought, not anything to do with color. And then, Mr. Ali had never come in himself, never tried to break the ice. He was probably a teetotaler, anyway. None of these thoughts was in the least usable; the Major was mentally a hooked carp, its mouth opening and closing on the useless oxygen.

  “He would have liked this room, my father.” He saw Mrs. Ali’s gaze taking in the inglenook fireplace, the tall bookcases on two walls, the comfortable sofa and unmatched armchairs, each with small table and good reading lamp to hand. “I am very honored by your graciousness in inviting me into your home.”

  “No, no,” said the Major, blushing for all the times it would never have crossed his mind to do so. “The honor is mine, and it is my great loss that I did not have the chance to host you and your husband. My very great loss.”

  “You are too kind,” she said. “I would have liked Ahmed to see this house. It was always my dream that we would buy a small house one day—a real Sussex cottage, with a white boarded front and lots of windows looking out on a garden.”

  “I suppose it is very convenient, though, living directly above the shop?”

  “Well, I’ve never minded it being a little cramped,” she said. “But with my nephew staying … And then, there is really very little room for bookshelves like these.” She smiled at him and he was very happy that she shared his appreciation.

  “My son thinks I should get rid of most of them,” the Major said. “He thinks I need a wall free for an entertainment center and a large TV.”

  Roger had, on more than one occasion, suggested that he pare down his collection of books, in order to modernize the room, and had offered to buy him a room-sized television so that he “would have something to do in the evenings.”

  “It is a fact of life, I suppose, that the younger generation must try to take over and run the lives of their elders,” said Mrs. Ali. “My life is not my own since my nephew came to stay. Hence the dream of a cottage of my own has reawakened in my mind.”

  “Even in your own home, they track you down with the telephone at all hours,” said the Major. “I think my son tries to organize my life because it’s easier than his own—gives him a sense of being in control of something in a world that is not quite ready to put him in charge.”

  “That’s very perceptive of you,” said Mrs. Ali, considering a moment. “What do we do to counteract this behavior?”

  “I’m considering running away to a quiet cottage in a secret location,” said the Major, “and sending him news of my well-being by postcards forwarded on via Australia.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps I may join you?”

  “You would be most welcome,” said the Major, and for a moment he saw a low thatched hut tucked behind a gorse-backed hill and a thin crescent of sandy beach filled with wild gulls. Smoke from the chimney indicated a fragrant stewpot left on the wood-burning stove. He and she returning slowly from a long walk, to a lamp-lit room filled with books, a glass of wine at the kitchen table …

  Conscious that he was dreaming again, he abruptly recalled his attention to the room. Roger always became impatient when he drifted off into thinking. He seemed to view it as a sign of early-onset dementia. The Major hoped Mrs. Ali had not noticed. To his surprise, she was gazing out the window as if she, too, was lost in pleasant plans. He sat and enjoyed her profile for a moment; her straight nose, her strong chin, and, he noticed now, delicate ears under the thick hair. As if feeling the pressure of his gaze, she turned her eyes back to him.

  “May I offer you the full garden tour?” he said.

  The flower beds were struggling against the frowziness of autumn. Chrysanthemums held themselves erect in clumps of gold and red, but most of the roses were just hips and the mats of dianthus sprawled onto the path like blue hair. The yellowing foliage of the lilies and the cut-back stalks of cone flowers ha
d never looked so sad.

  “I’m afraid the garden is not at its finest,” he said, following Mrs. Ali as she walked slowly down the gravel path.

  “Oh, but it’s quite lovely,” she said. “That purple flower on the wall is like an enormous jewel.” She pointed to where a late clematis spread its last five or six flowers. The stems were as unpleasant as rusty wire and the leaves curled and crisped, but the flowers, as big as tea plates, shone like claret-colored velvet against the old brick wall.

  “It was my grandmother who collected all our clematis plants,” said the Major. “I’ve never been able to find out the name of this one but it’s quite rare. When it grew in the front garden it generated a lot of excitement among passing gardeners. My mother was very patient about people knocking on the door asking for cuttings.” An image flickered in his mind of the long green-handled scissors kept on the hallstand and a glimpse of his mother’s hand reaching for them. He tried to conjure the rest of her but she slipped away.

  “Anyway, times changed,” he said. “We had to move it round the back in the late 1970s, when we caught someone prowling in the garden at midnight, secateurs in hand.”

  “Plant burglary?”

  “Yes, there was quite a rash of it,” he said. “Part of a larger crisis in the culture, of course. My mother always blamed it on decimalization.”

  “Yes. It almost invites disaster, doesn’t it, when people are asked to count by ten instead of twelve?” she said, smiling at him before turning to examine the rough-skinned fruit on one of the twisted apple trees at the foot of the lawn.

  “You know, my wife used to laugh at me in just the same manner,” he said. “She said if I maintained my aversion to change I risked being reincarnated as a granite post.”

  “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said.