tweaked at her lips, and her eyes had taken his measure.
“You can’t expect my fiancee to share this house with some strange shopkeeper’s assistant from Pakistan,” Roger spluttered.
“I quite understand,” the Major said. “Unfortunately, I had already invited him to stay and I’m afraid it’s not possible to throw him out because my son does not approve,”
“For all we know, he could be a terrorist,” said Roger.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Roger, go and see your painters before they have to rush off to touch up the Vatican or whatever,” said the Major, in a harsher tone than he had intended.
He took the tea tray back to the kitchen. There was a muffled argument in the living room and then Roger stuck his head around the kitchen door to say that he and Sandy were off but would indeed be back to stay the night. The Major only nodded in reply.
He was sad at his own outburst. He wanted to feel the kind of close bond with Roger that Nancy had enjoyed. The truth was that now, without his wife to negotiate the space that they occupied as a family, he and Roger seemed to have little common ground. If there had been no bond of blood, the Major felt now, he and Roger would have little reason to continue to know each other at all. He sat at the table and felt the weight of this admission hang about his shoulders like a heavy, wet coat. In the shrunken world, without Nancy, without Bertie, it seemed very sad to be indifferent to one’s own son.
Chapter 14
“What’s this plastic thing for?” asked George, handing the Major an intricately die-cut disc that had come with the kite purchased especially for the afternoon’s expedition.
“Probably just part of the packaging,” said the Major, who had improvised as well as he could, given that the assembly instructions were in Chinese. The cheap purple and green kite fluttered against his hand. He released the rudimentary catch on the spool and handed it to George. “Ready to take it up?”
George took the spool and began to walk backward, away from the Major, across the rabbit-cropped grass. The park, busy with families on this fine Sunday, occupied the whole top of the broad headland to the west of the town. It was good for kites but not so good for balls, many of which were at that very moment careening downhill where the land tilted sharply, on one side dipping to the weald and on the other to the edge of the high cliff. Signs warned people that the white chalk face was always being slivered away by the action of the sea and the weather. Small crosses and bunches of dead flowers made cryptic reference to the many people every year who chose this spot to plunge to their deaths on the jagged rocks below. Every mother in the park seemed to feel the need to call to her children to stay away from danger. It formed a background chorus louder than the sea.
“Eddie, come away from the edge!” shouted a woman from a neighboring bench. Her son was spinning his arms like a windmill as he ran about after a small dog. “Eddie, I’m warning you.” Yet she did not bother to get up from the bench, where she was engaged in eating a very large sandwich.
“If they are so afraid for their children, why did they insist on coming?” asked the Major, handing Mrs. Ali the kite to launch. “Are you ready, George?”
“Ready!” said George. Mrs. Ali tossed the kite into the air, where it hovered for a fluttering moment and then, to the Major’s immense satisfaction, soared into the sky.
“That’s the ticket,” called the Major as George ran backward, un-spooling more line. “More line, George, more line.”
“Don’t go too far, George,” called Mrs. Ali in a sudden anxiety. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and turned wide eyes of apology to the Major.
“Not you as well?” he said.
“I’m afraid it must be a trick of nature,” she said, laughing. “The universal bond between all women and the children in their care.”
“More like a universal hysteria,” said the Major. “It’s hundreds of yards to the edge.”
“Do you not find it even the slightest bit disorienting?” asked Mrs. Ali, surveying the smooth grass running away to the abrupt drop-off. “I can almost feel the earth spinning beneath my feet.”
“That’s the power of it,” said the Major. “Draws people here.” He looked out at the green cliff and the enormous bowl of sky and sea and reached for the appropriate quotation.
“I expect Roman women also cried out to their children to be careful,” said Mrs. Ali. “Is that Kipling?”
“It is,” said the Major, pulling a small red volume of poetry from his pocket. “It’s called ‘Sussex’ and I was hoping to share it with you over our tea today.” She had called to cancel their planned reading, explaining that she had volunteered to take little George out for the afternoon. The Major, refusing to be disappointed for a second Sunday, found himself asking if he might come along.
“How amazing it is that we ever planned to read it indoors,” said Mrs. Ali. “It has so much more power out here where it was made.”
“Then perhaps we should walk about after Master George, and I might read you the rest of it?” said the Major.
When the poetry had been read, the kite had been tossed several dozen times into the air, and George had run until his small legs were exhausted, the Major suggested that they get some tea. They settled, with tea and a plate of cakes, at a sheltered table on the terrace of the pub that was absurdly built right on the headland. Mrs. Ali’s cheeks were warm from the walking, but she looked a little drawn. George swallowed a bun almost whole and drank a rather flat glass of lemonade before wandering off to view a puppy being walked nearby.
“My nephew suggested we come here,” said Mrs. Ali. “He says he walks up here all the time after mosque because here he can imagine that Mecca is just over the horizon.”
“I think France might be in the way,” said the Major, squinting at the horizon and trying to imagine the correct bearing for Saudi Arabia. “But on a spiritual level, there is something about the edge of the land that does make one feel closer to God. A sobering sense of one’s own smallness, I think.”
“I was very glad he wanted George to see it,” she said. “I think it is a good sign, don’t you?” The Major thought it might have been a better sign had the young man shown George the place himself, but he did not want to spoil Mrs. Ali’s afternoon.
“I must thank you again for putting up my nephew,” she said. “It has allowed George and Amina to be with us and has allowed Abdul Wahid to get to know his son.”
The Major tested the color of the tea and gave the pot a dissatisfied stir. “I am glad he doesn’t object to Amina being in the shop.”
“A shop is a curious thing,” said Mrs. Ali. “I have always found it to be a tiny free space in a world with many limits.”
“More complicated, then, than just selling eggs and working through the important holidays?”
“A place of compromise,” she added. “It’s very hard to put into words.”
“Compromises are often built on their being unspoken,” said the Major. “I think I understand you perfectly.”
“I could never talk to my nephew about it,” she said. “Yet I will whisper to you that I pin my hopes on the space of the shop allowing Abdul Wahid to see where his real duty lies.”
“You believe he loves her?” asked the Major.
