moment of loud rock music and leaping pyrotechnics in the pebble basket being the worst—he had managed to arrange both a low fire and a quiet Christmas concert from the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
The Major did not have to go and wake his son: the phone rang and he heard Roger pick it up. He was putting the finishing touches to the table and knocking about Grace’s carefully placed sprigs of holly, when Roger appeared, neatly dressed in a navy sweater and slacks and smoothing down his hair.
“Thought I heard you earlier,” said Roger, looking with some queasiness at the table. “You didn’t make dinner, did you?”
“Grace and I made it together,” said the Major. “Are you up for champagne, or would you like a plain club soda?”
“Nothing for me just yet,” said Roger. “I can’t really face it.” He shifted from foot to foot in the manner of a hovering waiter. “Grace is here, too?”
“She’s done most of the cooking and supplied the pudding,” said the Major. “Why don’t you just sit down and I’ll ask her to join us.”
“Only the thing is, I didn’t realize you’d be going to all this trouble,” said Roger. He was looking out the window now and the Major felt a slow but familiar sinking feeling. “I thought it was all canceled.”
“Look, if you can’t manage to eat, that’s perfectly understandable,” said the Major. “You’ll just sit and relax and maybe later you’ll feel like having a turkey sandwich or something.” Even as he said this, he felt as if Roger were slipping away from him somehow. There was a look of absence in the eyes and the way he stood, balanced on the balls of his feet, suggested that either Roger or the room was about to shift sideways. In the absence of any imminent earthquake, the Major could only assume that Roger was about to move. A small car pulled up outside, the top of its roof only just visible over the gate.
“It’s just that Gertrude is here to pick me up,” said Roger. “I was awfully cut up about the row with Sandy, you see, and Gertrude was so understanding…” He trailed off. The Major, feeling rage stiffen the sinews of his neck and choke his speech, said, in the quietest of voices, “Grace DeVere has made you Christmas dinner.” At that moment, Grace came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
“Oh, hello, Roger, how do you feel?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” said Roger. “I’m very grateful about the dinner, Grace, only I don’t think I can eat a thing right now.” He looked out of the window and waved at Gertrude, whose head was now smiling above the gate. She waved back and the Major raised a hand in automatic greeting. “And my father didn’t tell me you were here, you see, and I promised Gertrude I’d go to the manor and play bridge.” A faint redness about the ears told the Major that Roger knew he was behaving badly. He pulled out his cell phone as if it were evidence. “She’s being so good calling me and trying to take care of me.”
“You can’t go,” said the Major. “Out of the question.”
“Oh, he mustn’t stay because of me,” said Grace. “I’m quite the interloper.”
“You are no such thing,” said the Major. “You are a very true friend and—we consider you to be quite family, don’t we, Roger?” Roger gave him a look of such crafty blandness that the Major itched to slap him.
“Absolutely,” said Roger with enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t go if Grace wasn’t here to keep you company.” He went around the couch, took Grace’s hand, and gave her a loud kiss on the cheek. “You and Grace deserve to enjoy a nice dinner together without me groaning on the couch.” He dropped her hand and sidled toward the hallway. “I wouldn’t go at all, but I promised Gertrude and her uncle that I’d make up the numbers,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few hours, tops.” With that, he disappeared into the hall and the Major heard the front door open.
“Roger, you’re being an ass,” said the Major, hurrying after him.
“Make sure you leave me all the cleaning up,” said Roger, waving from the gate. “And if you decide not to wait for me, just leave the door on the latch.” With that he jumped in Gertrude’s car and they drove away.
“That’s it,” said the Major, stamping his way back into the living room. “I am done with that young man. He is no longer my son.”
“Oh, dear,” said Grace. “I expect he is very unhappy and not thinking straight. Don’t be too hard on him.”
“That boy hasn’t thought straight since puberty. I should never have allowed him to resign from the Boy Scouts.”
“Would you like to eat dinner, or should we call the whole thing off?” Grace asked. “I can just put everything in the fridge.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” said the Major, “I don’t think I can stand that awful Christmas tree a minute longer. What say you we wrap everything in foil and organize a relocation to Rose Lodge where we can have a real fire, a small but living Christmas tree, and a nice dinner for the two of us?”
“That would be lovely,” said Grace. “Only perhaps we should leave something here for Roger when he returns?”
“I’ll leave him a note suggesting he find the turkey’s other wing,” said the Major darkly. “It’ll be like dinner and party games all in one.”
Chapter 20
Soon after the New Year, the Major admitted to himself that he was in danger of succumbing to the inevitability of Grace. Their relationship had developed a gravitational pull, slow but insistent, as a planet pulls home a failing satellite. In his unhappiness, he had allowed this slow drift to happen. After their Christmas dinner, at which he offered a profusion both of champagne and apologies, he had allowed her to bring him a cold game pie in aspic on Boxing Day. He also accepted her invitation to “just a quiet, early supper” on New Year’s Eve and invited her to tea on two occasions in return.
She had brought him a draft of an introduction to the small book she was compiling on her research into local families and, with a tremble in her voice, asked if he might be willing to take a look at it for her. He had agreed and had been pleasantly surprised to find she wrote quite well, in a journalistic way. Her sentences were plain but managed to avoid both academic dryness and the excess of purplish adjectives he might have feared from an amateur lady historian. With his help, he thought, it might find publication in some small way. He was pleased that they would have this work between them during the dark months of winter.
Tonight, however, would be the second time this week he had been asked to dinner at her house and had accepted. This, he realized, merited closer examination of his own intentions.
“I saw Amina and little George at the mobile library this morning, picking out some appalling books,” said Grace as they finished up their plates of steamed haddock, buttered potatoes, and a homemade winter salad. “I can’t imagine who thinks it’s suitable to teach reading through a book of pop-up potty monsters.”
“Indeed,” said the Major, busy picking plump golden raisins out of his salad. They were one of the few things he couldn’t abide; with Grace he felt comfortable enough to remove them. She would not comment, but he had an idea that she would make sure to leave them out next time.
“I told the librarian she should exercise more control,” continued Grace. “She said I was welcome to take over if I didn’t like it, and I should be grateful it wasn’t all just DVDs.”
“Well, that was very rude of her.”
“Oh, I deserved it completely,” said Grace. “It’s so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one’s own shortcomings, isn’t it?”
“When one has as few shortcomings as you, Grace, one has leisure to look around and make suggestions,” he said.
“You are very kind, Major and I think you, too, are perfectly fine as you are.” She rose to take their empty plates to the kitchen. “And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.”
“Touche,” he said.
After dinner, he sat in an armchair while she clattered dishes and made tea in her small kitchen. She would not let him help, and it was difficult to make conversation through the small pine-shuttered hatch in the wall, so he dozed, hypnotized by the fierce blue cones of the gas fire’s flames.
