“I’ll get you some sheets and let you settle in,” said the Major.
“Thank you,” said Abdul Wahid.
When the Major came back with the linens, and a thin wool blanket that he had selected instead of a silk eiderdown, Abdul Wahid had already settled in. On the chest were laid out a comb, a soap dish, and a copy of the Qur’an. A large cotton dishtowel, printed with calligraphy, had been hung over the picture. The prayer rug lay on the floor, looking small against the expanse of worn floorboard. Abdul Wahid sat on the edge of the bed, his hands on his knees, staring into thin air.
“I hope you’ll be warm enough,” the Major said, placing his bundle on the bed.
“She was always so beautiful,” whispered Abdul Wahid. “I could never think straight in her presence.”
“The window rattles a bit if the wind gets round this corner of the house,” the Major added, and went over to tighten the catch. He found himself slightly unnerved at having the intense young man in his home and, for fear of saying something wrong, he decided to play the jovial, disinterested host.
“They promised me I would forget her, and I did,” said the young man. “But now she is here and my brain has been spinning all day.”
“Maybe it’s a low-pressure system.” The Major peered out through the glass for signs of storm clouds. “My wife always got headaches when the barometer dropped.”
“It is a great relief to be in your home, Major,” said Abdul Wahid. The Major turned in surprise. The young man had stood up and now made him a short bow. “To be once again in a sanctuary far from the voices of women is balm to the anguished soul.”
“I can’t promise it will last,” said the Major. “My neighbor Alice Pierce is rather fond of singing folk music to her garden plants. Thinks it makes them grow or something.” The Major had often wondered how a wailing rendition of “Greensleeves” would encourage greater raspberry production but Alice insisted that it worked far better than chemical fertilizers, and she did produce several kinds of fruit in pie-worthy quantities. “No sense of pitch, but plenty of enthusiasm,” he added.
“Then I will add a prayer for rain to my devotions,” said Abdul Wahid. The Major could not determine whether this was intended as a humorous remark.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. “I usually put on a pot of tea around six.” As he left his guest and proceeded down to the kitchen, he felt in his bones the exhaustion of such a strange turn of events.
And yet he could not help but register a certain sense of exhilaration at having thrust himself into the heart of Mrs. Ali’s life in such an extraordinary manner. He had acted spontaneously. He had asserted his own wishes. He was tempted to celebrate his own boldness with a large glass of Scotch, but as he reached the kitchen he decided that a large glass of sodium bicarbonate would be more prudent.
Chapter 13
Saturday morning was sunny and the Major was in the back garden, forking a pile of leaves into a wheelbarrow, when his son’s raised voice from the house snapped him to attention and caused him to drop the entire load with a half-formed oath. Having no idea that Roger would follow through on his threat to visit, the Major had not told him that there would be a guest in the house. From the continued shouts inside, accompanied by what sounded like a chair being overturned, the Major surmised that he might need to run if he were to save both Roger and his houseguest from a skirmish.
As he hurried toward the door, he cursed Roger for never bothering to phone but always turning up unannounced whenever he felt like it. The Major would have liked to institute some rational system of pre-visit notification, but he never seemed to find the right words to tell Roger that his childhood home was no longer available to him at all hours. He was unaware of any established etiquette as to when a child should be stripped of family privilege, but he knew the time had long since passed in this case.
Now he would be stuck with Roger pouting as if he owned the place and the Major and his guest were the interlopers. As he reached the back door, Roger came panting through, his face red and furious and his fingers poised over his cell phone. “There’s a man in the house claims he’s staying here,” said Roger. “Sandy’s keeping him talking but I’ve got the police on speed dial.”
“Oh, good heavens, don’t call the police,” said the Major. “That’s just Abdul Wahid.”
“Abdul what?” said Roger. “Who the hell is he? I almost hit him with a dining chair.”
“Are you quite mad?” asked the Major. “Why would you assume my guest is some kind of intruder?”
“Is that any more absurd than assuming my father has suddenly become friendly with half the population of Pakistan?”
“And you left Sandy alone with my ‘intruder’?” asked the Major.
“Yes, she’s keeping him occupied, talking to him about handmade clothing,” said Roger. “Spotted that his scarf was some vintage tribal piece and quite calmed him down. I ducked out just to check he was on the up and up.”
“So much for chivalry,” said the Major.
“Well, you said yourself, he isn’t dangerous,” said Roger. “Who the hell is he and what’s he doing here?”
“I don’t see that it is any of your concern,” said the Major. “I am simply helping out a friend by putting up her nephew for a couple of days, a couple of weeks at most. She wanted to invite the fiancee to move in and—It’s a bit complicated.”
He felt himself on shaky ground. It was hard to defend his invitation when he himself did not fully understand what Mrs. Ali was trying to accomplish in immediately moving Amina and George into the flat above the shop. She had stared hungrily at little George, and the Major had not recognized the look until later. It was the same look Nancy had sometimes given Roger, when she thought no one was looking. She had looked that way on the day of his birth and she had looked at him just the same as she lay wasting away in the hospital. In that bleach-scented room with its flickering fluorescent light and its ridiculous new wallpaper border bursting with purple hollyhocks, Roger had chattered on about his own concerns as usual, as if a cheery recitation of his promotion prospects would wipe out the reality of her dying, and she had gazed at him as if to burn his face into her fading mind.
“It sounds quite ridiculous,” said Roger, speaking in such an imperious tone that the Major wondered how he would react to a swift butt on the shins with a rake handle. “Anyway, Sandy and I are here now, so you can use us as an excuse to get rid of him.”
“It would be entirely rude to ‘get rid’ of him,” said the Major. “He has accepted my invitation—an invitation I might not have made had I known you were coming down this weekend.”
“I did say we’d be down to visit soon,” said Roger. “I told you at the cottage.”
“Alas, if I planned my weekends around the hope that you would carry through on a promise to visit, I would be a lonely old man sitting amid a growing tower of clean bed linen and uneaten cake,” said the Major. “At least Abdul Wahid showed up when invited.”
“Look, I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice chap, but you can’t be too careful at your age,” said Roger. He stopped and looked around as if to detect eavesdroppers. “There have been many cases of elderly people taken in by scam artists.”
“What do you mean, ‘elderly people’?”
“You have to be especially careful about foreigners.”
“Would that apply equally to Americans?” asked the Major. “Because I spot one of them now.” Sandy was standing in the doorway. She appeared to be examining the long curtains and the Major wished that the pattern of poppies had not faded to rust all along the edges.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Roger. “Americans are just like us.”
As his son greeted Sandy with a kiss on the lips and an arm around the waist, the Major was left to gape at such a peremptory dismissal of any distinction of national character between Great Britain and the giant striving nation across the Atlantic. The Major found much to admire in America but also felt that the nation was still in its infancy, its birth predating Queen Victoria’s reign by a mere sixty years or so. Generous to a fault—he still remembered the tins of chocolate powder and waxy crayons handed out in his school even several years after the war—America wielded her huge power in the world with a brash confidence that reminded him of a toddler who has
