more time, I’m going to slap her silly.”
“Do you hear from Mrs. Ali—Jasmina?” he asked, desperate to bring her name into the conversation. “Perhaps she might return to help you.” Amina hesitated, as if unwilling to say anything, but then added in a rush, “They say if Jasmina doesn’t like where she is, she’ll go to Pakistan and live with her sister.”
“But she never wanted to go to Pakistan,” said the Major, appalled.
“I can’t say for sure. It’s not really my place to get involved.” Here she looked away with what the Major took to be a consciousness of guilt. “She’ll have to work it out herself.”
“Your happiness was important to her,” said the Major, hoping to suggest a similar responsibility in Amina.
“You can’t reduce life to something as simple as happiness,” she said. “There’s always some bloody compromise to be made—like having to work in a godawful shop for the rest of your life.”
“I was supposed to teach George chess,” said the Major. He realized he was clutching for some last continued filament of connection to Jasmina, however tenuous.
“He has a lot going on right now,” she said too quickly. “And he’s spending his free time with his father.”
“Of course,” said the Major. Hope melted in the soft cold of the lane.
He held out his hand and, though she looked surprised, Amina shook it. “I admire your tenacity, young lady,” he said. “You are the kind of person who will succeed in making your own happiness. George is a lucky boy.”
“Thank you,” she said, turning away down the hill. As she left, she turned her head and grimaced at him. “George may not agree with you tomorrow. Now that we live with his father, I’ve told him Christmas is strictly a store decoration. He won’t be getting any of the gifts his nanni and I used to slip under his pillow.”
As she disappeared from sight, the Major found himself wondering whether it was too late to rush to town to buy George a solid but not overly expensive chess set. He quashed this idea with a sigh, refusing to give in to the foolish human tendency toward butting in where one was not wanted. He reminded himself that when he got home, he really should put away the little book of Kipling poems, which he had left on the mantelpiece. There had been no note tucked inside (he had shaken out the pages in hope of some brief parting message) and it was foolish to keep it out as if it were a talisman. He would put it away, and then later he would pop over to Little Puddleton to pick up a Christmas gift for Grace; something plain and tasteful that would suggest a depth of friendship without implying any nonsense. Fifty pounds should cover it. Then he would call in on Roger and let him know he would be bringing a guest for Christmas dinner.
Chapter 19
He thought for a moment that they were not home. A single lamp burned in the window of the cottage, as people like to leave who have gone out and who wish to deter burglars and also not stumble about in the dark when they return. The front hall and bedroom floor were dark and no flicker of television or sound of a stereo gave any sign of life.
The Major knocked anyway and was surprised to hear the scraping of a chair and feet in the passage. Several bolts were drawn and the door opened to reveal Sandy, dressed in jeans and a white sweater, carrying in her hand a large, professional-looking packing tape dispenser. She seemed pale and unhappy. Her skin was scrubbed bare of makeup, and her hair escaped in wisps from the rolled-up scarf she wore as a headband.
“Don’t shoot,” he said, raising his hands a little.
“Sorry, come on in,” she said, laying the dispenser down on a small console table and letting him into the warm hallway. “Roger didn’t tell me you were coming over.” She gave him a hug, which he found disconcerting but not unpleasant.
“He didn’t know,” said the Major, hanging up his coat on a hook made from some bleached animal bone. “Spur-of-the-moment visit. I was just shopping in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop off a couple of gifts and wish you happy Christmas Eve.”
“He’s not here,” she said. “But you and I can have a drink, can’t we?”
“A dry sherry would be welcome,” he said advancing into a very sparsely furnished living room where he stopped in his tracks to peer at a giant black bottle brush that he supposed must be a Christmas tree. It reached the ceiling and was decorated only with silver balls in graduated sizes. It glowed in waves of blue light from the fiber-optic tips of its many branches. “Good heavens, is it Christmas in Hades?” he asked.
“Roger insisted. It’s considered very chic,” said Sandy, busy aiming a remote control at the chimney, where flames lit up in a fire basket of white pebbles. “I was prepared to go more traditional down here, but since it cost a fortune and it’ll be out of fashion by next year, I threw it in the car and brought it down with me.”
“I am usually all in favor of domestic economy,” he said doubtfully as she poured a large sherry over so much ice he would have to drink fast or face complete dilution.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s hideous.”
“Perhaps you can rent it out in the spring to clean chimneys?”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to have you over before.” She waved him to the low white leather couch. It had a short, rounded back and no arms, like a banquette in a ladies’ shoe store. “Roger wanted everything to be done before he showed it off, and then we got stuck with a whole lot of banker dinner parties and such.” Her voice was low and uninflected and the Major worried about whether she was feeling unwell, which might have unknown ramifications for Christmas Day’s dinner effort. She poured herself a large glass of red wine and curled her long legs onto a metal chaise that seemed to be covered in horse skin. She waved her hand around the room and the Major tried to take in the white cropped fur of the rug and the wood-rimmed glass coffee table and the colored metal shades of a standing lamp that bristled like a temporary traffic light.
“Saves on the dusting I suppose, keeping things minimal,” he said. “The floors look very clean.”
“We scraped off seven layers of linoleum and sanded off so much varnish, I thought we were going right through the boards,” she said looking at the pale honey of the wide planks. “Our contractor says they’ll be good now for another lifetime.”
“It’s a lot of effort for a rented place.” The Major had wanted to say something more complimentary and was annoyed that the same old critical language had come from his lips unchecked. “I mean, I hope you get to keep it.”
“Well, that was the plan,” she said. “Now I suppose Roger will try to buy it and flip it.”
“I’m sorry?”
To his surprise, she started crying. The tears ran down her cheeks in silence as she cupped one hand over her face and turned away toward the fire. The wine trembling in the glass in her other hand was the only visible movement. The Major could see misery in the hunch of her back and the shadowed edge of her frail collarbones. He swallowed down some sherry and put his glass very quietly on the coffee table before speaking.
“Something is the matter,” he said. “Where is Roger?”
“He’s gone to the party at the manor house.” Bitterness clipped her words short. “I told him he should go if that’s what he wanted, and he went.”
The Major considered this as he shifted his weight on the uncomfortable leather. It was never wise to get in the middle of a couple who were having a domestic squabble: one inevitably got sucked into taking sides and, just as inevitably, the couple worked things out and then turned on all who had dared to criticize either party. He feared, however, that his son must be at fault if such a self-possessed woman had been reduced to the fragility of glass.
“What can I do to help you?” he asked, removing a clean handkerchief from his breast pocket and offering it to her. “Can I get you some water?”
“Thank you.” She took the handkerchief to wipe her face with slow measured strokes. “I’ll be fine in a minute. Sorry to act so stupid.”
When he came back from the kitchen, which was a sort of space-age farmhouse look with wooden cabinets with no visible legs, she looked strained but controlled. She drank as if she had been thirsty for a while.
“Feeling any better?” he asked.
