Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

never have dared to deliberately contrive, he was completely at a loss.

“It is not a problem,” she said. “I knew you’d be along eventually and, as the day has turned out so unexpectedly nice, I thought I’d take a brief walk and maybe start my book.”

“I will, of course, pay for the car park.”

“It’s really not necessary.”

“Then will you permit me to at least buy you a cup of tea?” he asked, so quickly that the words pushed and elbowed each other to get out of his mouth. She hesitated so he added: “Unless you’re in a rush to get home, which I quite understand.”

“No, there is no rush,” she said. She looked left and right along the promenade. “Perhaps, if you think the weather will continue to hold, we could walk as far as the kiosk in the gardens?” she said. “If you feel up to it, of course.”

“That would be lovely,” he said, though he had a suspicion that the kiosk served its tea in polystyrene cups with some kind of preserved creamer in those little tubs that were impossible to open.

The promenade, when traversed from east to west as they were doing, formed a scrolling three-dimensional timeline of Hazelbourne-on-Sea’s history. The net-drying sheds and the fishing boats drawn up on the shingle, where the Major had been sitting, were part of the old town, which huddled around small cobbled alleys. Lopsided Tudor shops, their oak beams worn to fossil, contained dusty heaps of cheap merchandise.

As one walked, the town grew more prosperous. In the middle, the Victorian pier’s copper roofs, white wooden walls, and curlicued wrought-iron structure sat out over the Channel like a big iced cake. Beyond the pier, the mansions and hotels became imposing. Their stone porticos and dark awnings hooded over long windows implied a certain disapproval of the transient activities going on within lushly carpeted interiors. Between hotels that each occupied a full block were open squares of villas or wide streets of sweeping townhouse facades. The Major thought it such a shame that the elegance was hopelessly marred these days by the serried ranks of cars, angle-parked this way and that, like dried herring in a crate.

Beyond the appropriately named Grand Hotel, the town’s march through history was abruptly interrupted by the sudden swell of the chalk cliffs into a vast headland. The Major, who often walked the entire promenade, never failed to ponder how this might represent something about the hubris of human progress and the refusal of nature to knuckle under.

Recently he had begun to worry that the walk and the hypothesis had become so inextricably linked that they looped through his mind like madness. He was quite unable to walk and think about the racing results, for example, or about repainting his living room. He tried to put it down to the fact that he had no one with whom he could discuss the idea. Perhaps, if they were at a loss for conversation over tea, he might bring it up with Mrs. Ali.

Mrs. Ali walked with a comfortable stride. The Major shuffled his feet trying to fall in with her rhythm. He had forgotten how to let a woman dictate the pace.

“Do you like to walk?” he asked.

“Yes, I try to get out early three or four times a week,” she said. “I’m the crazy lady wandering the lanes in the dawn chorus.”

“We all ought to join you,” he said. “Those birds perform a miracle every morning and the world ought to get up and listen.” He was often up at night, toward the later hours, pinned to his mattress by an insomnia that seemed equal parts wakefulness and death. He could feel his blood running in his veins, yet he could not seem to move a finger or toe. He would lie awake, eyes scratchy, watching the dim outline of the window for any sign of light. Before any hint of paleness, the birds would begin. First a few common chirpings (sparrows and such); then the warbles and peepings would become a waterfall of music, a choir sounding from the bushes and trees. The sound released his limbs to turn and stretch and expelled all sense of panic. He would look to the window, now pale with singing, and roll over into sleep.

“All the same,” she said, “I probably should get a dog. No one thinks dog owners are crazy, even if they walk out in their pajamas.”

“What book did you pick today?” he asked.

“Kipling,” she replied. “It’s a children’s book, as the librarian took pains to inform me, but the stories are set in this area.” She showed him a copy of Puck of Pook’s Hill, which the Major had read many times. “I only knew his Indian books, like Kim.”

“I used to consider myself a bit of a Kipling enthusiast,” said the Major. “I’m afraid he’s rather an unfashionable choice these days, isn’t he?”

“You mean not popular among us, the angry former natives?” she asked with an arch of one eyebrow.

“No, of course not…” said the Major, not feeling equipped to respond to such a direct remark. His brain churned. For a moment he thought he saw Kipling, in a brown suit and bushy mustache, turning inland at the end of the promenade. He squinted ahead and prayed the conversation might wither from inattention.

“I did give him up for many decades,” she said. “He seemed such a part of those who refuse to reconsider what the Empire meant. But as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy. It’s so hard to maintain that rigor of youth, isn’t it?”

“I applaud your logic,” said the Major, swallowing any urge to defend the Empire his father had proudly served. “Personally, I have no patience with all this analyzing of writers’ politics. The man wrote some thirty-five books—let them analyze the prose.”

“Besides, it will drive my nephew crazy just to have him in the house,” Mrs. Ali said with a slight smile.

The Major was not sure whether to ask more about the nephew. He was extremely curious, but it did not seem his place to enquire directly. His knowledge about the families and lives of his village friends was acquired in bits and pieces. The information was strung like beads out of casual remarks, and he often lost the earlier information as more was added, so that he never acquired a complete picture. He knew, for example, that Alma and Alec Shaw had a daughter in South Africa, but he could never remember whether the husband was a plastic surgeon in Johannesburg or a plastics importer in Cape Town. He knew that the daughter had not been home since before Nancy’s death, but this information came with no explanation; it only resonated with an unspoken hurt.

“Do you have other nephews and nieces?” he said. He worried that even this vague politeness seemed to echo with questions about why she had no children, and to suggest rudely that she must of course come from a large family.

“There is only the one nephew. His parents, my husband’s brother and his wife, have three daughters and six granddaughters.”

“Ah, so your nephew must be their golden boy?” said the Major.

“He was my golden boy, too, when he was little. I’m afraid that Ahmed and I spoiled him terribly.” She hugged her book a little tighter to her chest and sighed. “We were not blessed with children of our own, and Abdul Wahid was the very image of my husband when he was small. He was a very smart boy, too, and sensitive. I thought he would be a poet one day.”

“A poet?” said the Major. He tried to picture the angry young man writing verse.

“My brother-in-law put a stop to such nonsense once Abdul Wahid was old enough to help in one of their shops. I suppose I was naive. I wanted so much to share with him the world of books and of ideas and to pass on to him what I was given.”

“A noble impulse,” said the Major. “But I taught English at a boarding school after the army and I can tell you it’s pretty much a lost cause, getting boys over ten to read. Most of them don’t own a single book, you know.”

“I cannot imagine,” she said. “I was raised in a library of a thousand books.”

“Really?” He did not mean to sound so doubtful, but he had never heard of grocers owning large libraries.

“My father was an academic,” she said. “He came after Partition to teach applied mathematics. My mother always said she was allowed to bring two cooking pots and a picture of her parents. All the other trunks contained books. It was very important to my father that he try to read everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, literature, philosophy, science—a romantic quest, of course, but he did manage to read an astonishing amount.”

“I try to manage a book a week or thereabouts,” said the Major. He was quite proud of his small collection, mostly leather editions picked up on his trips to London from the one or two good book dealers who were still in