Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (37 page)

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“Nonsense! No one’s leaving until we have dessert and then make our presentation to Major Pettigrew,” said Daisy. “Where is that caterer? Where is the band?”

“I am here and ready to get my team back to work,” said Mrs. Rasool, appearing at Daisy’s side. “We will finish the job in the same professional manner we began.” She turned to the waiters. “Do you hear me, boys? Get straightened up and start resetting those tables. No more nonsense now, please. Ladies – please let your young men go backstage and have a good drink and we’ll start the dessert procession.”

The band gathered and began a particularly objectionable polka; to the Major’s surprise, the waiters began to move. There were some muttered words among them, but they obeyed Mrs. Rasool, some picking up tables and the rest disappearing out into the kitchen. The lunch girls, more truculent and louder in their comments, were disinclined to leave their injured friends, but half of them complied while the others led away their aggrieved warriors to be comforted in the backstage room. The guests began to filter toward the bars, and a few club members helped to pick up tables. A groundskeeper two-stepped his way across the dance floor with a huge wet mop and disappeared through a French door into the night.

“Mrs. Rasool, you should have been a general,” said the Major, deeply impressed as the room began to assume normality and a parade of lunch ladies entered bearing tiered stands of petits fours.

“Major Pettigrew, my apologies for the disturbance,” said Mrs. Rasool, drawing him aside. “My father-in-law has been very frail lately and the sight of all the dead bodies came as a shock to him.”

“Why do you apologise?” said Abdul Wahid, startling the Major, who had not seen him approach. “Your father-in-law spoke nothing but the truth. They should be apologising to him for making a mockery of our land’s deepest tragedy.”

“You have no right to call it a mockery,” said Amina, her voice wobbling from exhaustion and anger. “I worked like crazy to make a real story out of this piece.”

“Abdul Wahid, I think you should take Amina home now,” said Mrs. Ali. Abdul Wahid looked as if he had plenty more to say, and Amina hesitated. “Both of you will leave now. We will not discuss this further,” added Mrs. Ali, and some steel in her tone, which the Major had never heard before, caused them to do as she said.

“Look here, normally I’d say the show must go on,” said Lord Dagenham. “But maybe we just drop it and avoid any further controversy? Give the Major his tray on the quiet.”

“That would be fine with me,” said the Major.

“Nonsense!” said Daisy. “You can’t let some old man’s aspersions drive you from the stage, Major.”

“If you do, people may think there is some kind of truth to his view,” said Ferguson.

“Well, I don’t see how anyone could be insulted,” said Roger. “My grandfather was a hero.”

“I’m sure you can understand that many people still grieve for those who were murdered during this time,” said Mrs. Ali in a conciliatory tone. “Thousands died, including most on your grandfather’s train, it seems.”

“Well, you can’t expect one man to have defended a whole train, can you?” said Roger.

“Certainly not,” said Dagenham, clapping the Major on the back. “Personally I think he would have been quite justified in jumping out a window and saving his own skin.”

“Pity he didn’t have more warning,” said Ferguson. “He could have organised the passengers to tear up the seats and use them to barricade the windows. Maybe made some crude weapons or something.”

“You must be American,” said Mrs. Ali. She looked angry now. “I think you’ll find that works a lot better in the movies than in a real war.”

“Look, the truth belongs to the guy who’s best at sticking to his story,” said Ferguson. “We see a picture of all of us in the paper with that silver tray, Double D, then this dance was a big success and this little contretemps never happened.”

“So let’s get the tray and the guns and round up the dancers,” agreed Dagenham. “Then we make sure we include the doctor and his wife here, and Mrs. Ali who looks so lovely, and we’ll have a fine story.”

As they walked away, taking Roger with them to fetch the guns from backstage, Mrs. Khan touched up her hair with her hands and sidled toward Daisy.

“Oh, we don’t want to be in the limelight,” she simpered. “Perhaps just in the back row?”

“Where your presence will no doubt still radiate,” said Mrs. Ali.

“I am surprised you didn’t know the old man was unstable,” said Sadie Khan in an icy voice. “You are so intimate with the Rasools.” She leaned closer to Daisy to add: “It’s so hard to be sure about one’s suppliers these days.”

“The photographer’s almost ready,” said Roger, coming up to them, bearing the box of guns in his arms. “We’re getting set up for the presentation and pictures.”

“I will not appear in the picture,” said Mrs. Ali.

“Is that for religious reasons?” asked Roger. “Understandable, of course.”

“No, I am disinclined to be paraded for authenticity,” said Mrs. Ali. “You will have to rely on Saadia for that.”

“Oh, how very tiresome,” said Daisy Green. “It really isn’t polite to come to our party and then complain about everything.”

“Daisy, there’s no need to be rude,” said Grace. “Mrs. Ali is my good friend.”

“Well, Grace, that should tell you that you need to get out more,” said Daisy. “Next you’ll be having the gardener in for tea.” There was an instant of stunned silence and the Major felt compelled to interject a rebuke.

“I think Grace is entitled to have anyone she likes to tea,” he said. “And it’s no business of yours to tell her otherwise.”

“Of course you do,” said Daisy with an unpleasant smile. “We are all aware of your proclivities.”

The Major felt despair strike him like a blow to the ear. He had defended the wrong woman. Moreover, he had encouraged Daisy to further insult.

“Major, I wish to go home,” said Mrs. Ali in an unsteady voice. She looked at him with the smallest of painful smiles. “My nephew can drive me, of course. You must stay for your award.”

“Oh no, I insist,” he said. He knew it was imperative to persuade her, but he could not avoid a quick glance toward Roger. He was not about to abandon his gun box to Roger while both Marjorie and Ferguson were still in the building.

“You must stay with your friends and I must run and catch up with Abdul Wahid,” she said. “I need to be with my family.”

“You really can’t leave now, Dad,” said Roger, in a urgent whisper. “It would be the height of rudeness to Dagenham.”

“At least let me walk you out,” said the Major as Mrs. Ali walked away.

As he hurried after her, he heard Sadie Khan speaking. Daisy’s response, in a crystal voice, carried over the music and voices: “Yes, of course, you would be so much more suitable, my dear, only we are quite oversubscribed in the medical professions and the club works so hard to promote diversity in the membership.”

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Out in the cold night, the stars were abundant in a way that increased the pain of the moment. Mrs. Ali paused on the top step and the Major stood at her shoulder, mute with humiliation at his own foolishness.

“We are always talking outside like this,” she said at last. Her breath steamed in the cold and her eyes shone, perhaps with tears.

“I made a mess of everything, didn’t I?” he said. Below them, Amina and Abdul were arguing as they walked down the driveway. Mrs. Ali sighed.

“I was in danger of doing the same,” she said. “Now I see what I must do. I must put an end to the family squabbling and see those two settled.”

“They are so different,” he said. “Do you think they can live together?”

“It is funny, isn’t it?” she said in a quiet voice. “A couple may have nothing in common but the colour of their skin and the country of their ancestors, but the whole world would see them as compatible.”

“It’s not fair,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it?”

“Maybe, while they disagree about some big issues, they share the small pieces of their culture without thinking. Perhaps I do not give that enough weight.”

“May I come and see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“I think not,” she said. “I think I shall be busy, preparing to go to my husband’s family.”

“You can’t be serious. Just like that? What about our Sunday readings?”

“I will think of you whenever I read Mr. Kipling, Major,” she said, with a sad smile. “Thank you for trying to be my friend.” She offered her hand and he again put it to his lips. After a few moments, she tugged it gently away and stepped down to the driveway. He wanted so much to run down after her but he found himself fixed where he was, standing in the light of the doorway with the music spilling around him and the crowd waiting for him inside.

“I could come down early,” he called after her. “We could talk.”

“Go back to your party, Major,” she said. “You’ll catch cold standing in the dark,” She hurried down the driveway and as she disappeared, blue dress into deep night, he knew he was a fool. Yet at that moment, he could not find a way to be a different man.

M
rs. Ali left the village. The Major did not see her go. He had meant to go down to the shop and visit her, but his anger and despair at having made such a mess of the evening seemed to help bring on the full-blown cold she had so carelessly predicted and he lay in bed for three days. As he dozed in rumpled pyjamas and furred teeth, ignoring the shrill rings of the telephone and the torturing tick of his bedroom clock, Mrs. Ali went north to her husband’s family and, by the time he was well enough to walk down to the village, it was too late.

The Major put his head down and prepared to battle through the tinsel storm that passed for Christmas now in an England that he remembered had once been grateful for a few pairs of wool socks and a hot pudding with more raisins than carrots. He woke each day hoping to feel fully recovered from his illness but could not shake a dry cough and a persistent lassitude. He felt buffeted to the point of collapse by the tinny music in the stores and streets. The more the crowds in the town carolled and laughed and loaded themselves, and their credit cards, with bags of presents, cases of beer, and hampers containing jars of indigestibles from many nations, the more he felt the whole world become hollow.

Holiday preparations in Edgecombe St. Mary seemed to elbow aside all other concerns. Even the campaign against St. James Homes seemed to be muted. The ‘Save our Village’ posters that had sprung up right after the shooting party were hardly noticeable in windows amid all the flashing fairy lights, the lurid lawn displays of inflatable Santas, and the electric-twig reindeer with endlessly grazing heads. Even Alice Pierce had taken down one of her three posters and replaced it with a painting on wood of a dove carrying a ribbon that read ‘Joy to the World’. It was illuminated at night by the pinkish glow of two bare compact fluorescent bulbs, mounted on a board below together with a timer that turned them on and off at excruciatingly slow intervals.

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At the village shop, which the Major avoided as long as possible, Christmas decorations helped obliterate any trace of Mrs. Ali. A forest of foil dangly things and paperchains and large crepe-paper balls promoting a beer had transformed the shop into a festive horror. There were none of Mrs. Ali’s handmade samosas next to the packaged meat pies in the cold case. The large caddies of loose tea behind the counter had been replaced by a display of chocolate assortment boxes of a size guaranteed to cause acute happiness followed by acute gastric distress in small children. The modest, hand-wrapped gift baskets, which the Major had decided to stock up on for the holidays, had been replaced by large cheap commercial baskets painted in garish colours and crowned with yellow cellophane; each was skewered by a bamboo stick adorned with a plastic teddy bear made furry with what appeared to be wallpaper flocking. Who would possibly take pleasure in a bear-on-a-stick was a mystery the Major could not comprehend. He stood staring through his glasses at the poor things until a hard-featured old woman who was knitting behind the counter asked him if he wanted to buy one.

“Good heavens no, no, thank you,” he said. The old woman glared at him. She was evidently able to knit and glare at the same time, as there was no pause in the furious clicking of her needles. Abdul Wahid, appearing from the back, greeted him rather coldly and introduced the woman as one of his great-aunts.

“Pleased to meet you,” lied the Major. She inclined her head, but her smile retracted itself almost at once into a pursing of the lips that seemed her usual expression.

“She doesn’t speak much English,” said Abdul Wahid. “We have only just persuaded her to retire here from Pakistan.” He retrieved a plastic bag from under the counter. “I am glad you came in. I have been asked to return something to you.” The Major looked in the bag and saw the little volume of Kipling poetry that he had given Mrs. Ali.

“How is she?” asked the Major, hoping not to betray any urgency in his voice. The aunt released a torrent of language at Abdul Wahid, who nodded and then smiled apologetically.

“We are all very nicely settled, thank you,” he said and his voice continued to brick up a barrier of cold and indifference between them. The Major could find no crack of warmth on which to turn the conversation. “My auntie wants to know what we can get for you this morning.”

“Oh I don’t need anything, thank you,” said the Major. “I just popped in to – er – see the decorations.” He waved his hand toward an extra-large round paper ball topped with the flat outline of a winking girl with fat lips and an elf hat. Abdul Wahid blushed, and the Major added: “Of course, there can be no question of excess where there is commercial imperative.”

“I will not forget your hospitality this autumn, Major,” said Abdul Wahid. His voice at last offered some hint of recognition, but it was combined with an unanswerable finality, as if the Major were also planning on leaving the village forever. “You were very kind to extend your assistance to my family and we hope you will continue to be a valued customer.” The Major felt his sinuses contract and tears begin to well at the loss of connection even to this strange and intense young man. A lesser man might have grabbed for his sleeve or uttered a plea, for – he supposed he had become used to Abdul Wahid’s presence, if not his friendship. He dove in his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly, apologising for his lingering cold. The auntie and Abdul Wahid both drew back from the invisible menace of his germs and he was able to escape the shop without embarrassing himself.