something grand in front of you Brits. You smell a man’s class like a bloodhound smells rabbit.”
“I didn’t mean to imply anything…” the Major stumbled.
“Yep—that’s the Fergusons, plain old brick-and-mortar builders.”
“Mr. Ferguson can trace his lineage to the Ferguson clan of Argyll,” said Hugh Whetstone, who tried to ferret out the genealogy of everyone he met so he could use it against them later.
“Not that they were very happy to hear it,” Ferguson said. “My ancestor faked his own death in the Crimea and ran off to Canada—gambling debts and a couple of husbands on the warpath, so I believe. Still, they were pretty happy with my offer on the castle at Loch Brae. I’m going to look into restoring the shoot up there.”
“The Major is a shooting man, too. Quite a decent shot, if I may say so,” said Lord Dagenham. “He can drop a rabbit at a hundred yards.”
“You country people are amazing,” said Ferguson. “I met a gamekeeper last week, shoots squirrels with a King James II ball musket. What do you shoot with, Major?”
“Just an old gun that belonged to my father,” replied the Major, so upset to be lumped with some eccentric old villager that he would not give Ferguson the satisfaction of trying to impress him.
“He’s being modest as usual,” Dagenham said. “The Major shoots with a very nice gun—a Purdey, isn’t it?”
“A Churchill, actually,” said the Major, slightly annoyed that Dagenham had automatically mentioned the more famous name. “Lesser known, perhaps,” he added to Ferguson, “but they’ve made their share of exquisite guns.”
“Nothing like the workmanship in an English best gun,” said Ferguson. “At least, that’s what they say when they insist on taking a year or two to make you a pair.”
“Actually, I may be in the happy position of reuniting my pair.” The Major could not resist the opportunity to give this information directly to Lord Dagenham.
“Well, of course,” said Lord Dagenham. “You inherit the other one from your brother, don’t you? Congratulations, old man.”
“It’s not all quite settled yet,” said the Major. “My sister-in-law, you know…”
“Oh, quite right to take a few days. Lots of feelings after a funeral,” said Father Christopher. He hinged his long angular frame forward over the bar. “Can we get a round, Tom? And do you have a table for Lord Dagenham?”
“A matched pair of Churchills’,” said the American, smiling at the Major with slightly increased interest.
“Yes, 1946 or thereabouts. Made for the Indian market,” said the Major, not allowing even a hint of pride to show through his modesty.
“I’d love to see them in action sometime,” Ferguson said.
“The Major often comes over and has a go with us,” said Dagenham. “Glass of cabernet please, Tom—and what’ll you have, Frank?”
“Then I’m sure I’ll be seeing you at Double D’s shoot on the eleventh.” Ferguson stuck out his hand and the Major was forced into a ridiculous display of pumping, as if they had just made a pact to sell a horse. Dagenham stuck his own hands in his jacket pockets and looked awkward. The Major held his breath. He was aware of a certain personal humiliation, but he was equally anxious about his lordship. Lord Dagenham was now in the terrible position of having to find a gracious way to explain to his American guest that the shooting party in question was strictly for business colleagues, mostly down from London for the day. It was appalling to see a good man so trapped by the ignorance of the bad-mannered. The Major considered jumping in to explain the situation himself, but did not want to suggest that his lordship was unable to extricate himself from situations of tangled etiquette.
“Of course you must come if you can, Pettigrew,” said Dagenham at last. “Not much of a challenge, though. We’ll only be taking the ducks off the hill pond.”
Dagenham’s gamekeeper raised three varieties of duck on a small pond tucked into a copse that crowned a low hill above the village. He incubated abandoned eggs, fed the ducklings by hand, and visited every day, often with delighted schoolchildren from the Hall in tow, until the ducks learned to waddle after him as he called to them. Once a year, Dagenham held a shoot at the pond. The gamekeeper, and some young helpers hired for the day, scared the ducks off the pond with yelling and thrashing about with rakes and cricket bats. The birds circled the copse once, squawking in protest, and then flew back directly into the path of the guns, urged home by the gamekeeper’s welcoming whistle. The Major’s disappointment at never being invited to this more elaborate shoot, with its early morning meeting on the steps of the Hall and huge breakfast party to follow, was slightly mitigated by his contempt for so-called sportsmen who needed wildfowl driven right onto the gun barrel. Nancy had often joked that Dagenham should buy the ducks frozen and have the gamekeeper toss a handful of shot in with the giblets. He had never quite been comfortable laughing with her at this, but had agreed that it was certainly not the sporting match of man and prey to which he would be proud to lend his gun.
“I’d be delighted to come,” said the Major.
“Ah, I think Tom has our table ready,” said Dagenham, ignoring the expressions of hope on the face of the Vicar and Whetstone. “Shall we?”
“See you on the eleventh, then,” said Ferguson, pumping the Major’s hand again. “I’ll be on you like a bear on honey, getting a good look at those guns of yours.”
“Thank you for the warning,” said the Major.
“I thought you said there was some difficulty about the gun?” Alec asked in a quiet voice as they chewed their sandwiches and refused to steal glances at Lord Dagenham’s party. Whetstone was laughing more loudly than the American in order to make sure the entire room knew he was at the table. “What are you going to do if you can’t get it?” The Major now regretted mentioning Bertie’s will to Alec. It had slipped out somewhere on the back nine when he was overcome again by the injustice of the situation. It was never a good idea to confide in people. They always remembered, and when they came up to you in the street, years later, you could see the information was still firmly attached to your face and present in the way they said your name and the pressure of their hand clasping yours.
“I’m sure there will be no problem when I explain the situation,” said the Major. “She’ll at least let me have it for the occasion.” Marjorie was always very impressed with titles, and she was not aware of Lord Dagenham being a reduced kind of gentry, with all but one wing of the Hall let to a small boarding school for children aged three to thirteen and most of the lands lying fallow, producing only EU subsidy payments. He was sure he could talk up his lordship to the heights of an earl and impress upon Marjorie the privilege accorded the entire family by the invitation. Once the gun was in his hands, he would be quite happy to draw out any discussion of ownership— perhaps indefinitely? He ate his sandwich more quickly. If he hurried, he might see Marjorie this afternoon and put the whole matter to rest.
“Ah, Major, I was hoping to catch you.” It was Grace, standing awkwardly by the bar, her large handbag clutched in crossed hands like a flotation cushion. “I managed to get Mrs. Ali on the telephone about the dance.”
“Very good,” said the Major in a voice as neutral as he could manage without being actively dismissive. “So you’re all set, then?” He hoped Dagenham’s table was not in earshot.
“She seemed rather stiff at first,” said Grace. “She said she didn’t really do catering. I was quite disappointed, because I thought she and I were on quite good terms.”
“Can we buy you a drink, Grace?” Alec said, waving half a sandwich at her from the Major’s other side. A speck of dark pickle landed dangerously close to the Major’s arm.
“No, thank you,” she said. The Major frowned at Alec. It was not kind of him to make such an offer. Grace was one of those rare women who maintained a feminine distaste for being at the bar. There was also the impossibility of a lady climbing onto the high stool in any dignified manner and she would feel keenly the absence of another woman to chaperone.
“Anyway, then the strangest thing happened. I mentioned your name—that you and I were working on this together—and she suddenly changed her tune. She was most helpful.”
“Well, I’m glad you got what you needed,” said the Major, anxious to end the matter before Grace inferred anything from her own observation.
“I didn’t know you knew Mrs. Ali…?” She was hesitant, but there was a definite question in her voice, and the
