Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

been awake the whole time. He had forgotten to leave a light on and the brick and tile facade of Rose Lodge was barely visible in the sliver of moonlight.

“What a charming house,” said Sandy. “It’s bigger than I expected.”

“Yes, there were what the Georgians called ‘improvements’ to the original seventeenth-century house which make it look more imposing than it is,” said the Major. “You’ll come in and have some tea, of course,” he added, opening his door.

“Actually, we won’t come in, if you don’t mind,” said Roger. “We’ve got to get back to London to meet some friends for dinner.”

“But it’ll be ten o’clock before you get there,” said the Major, feeling a ghost of indigestion just at the thought of eating so late.

Roger laughed. “Not the way Sandy drives. But we won’t make it unless we leave now. I’ll see you to the door, though.” He hopped out of the car. Sandy slid over the gear shift into the driver’s seat, legs flashing like scimitars. She pressed something and the window whirred down.

“Good night, Ernest,” she said, holding out her hand. “It was a pleasure.”

“Thank you,” said the Major. He dropped her hand and turned on his heel. Roger scurried behind him down the path.

“See you again soon,” called Sandy. The window whirred shut on any further communication.

“I can hardly wait,” mumbled the Major.

“Mind your step on the path, Dad,” said Roger behind him. “You ought to get a security light, you know. One of those motion-activated ones.”

“What a splendid idea,” he replied. “With all the rabbits around here, not to mention our neighborhood badger, it’ll be like one of those discos you used to frequent.” He reached his door and, key ready, tried to locate the lock in one smooth move. The key grated across the plate and spun out of his fingers. There was the clunk of brass on brick and then an ominous quiet thud as the key landed somewhere in soft dirt.

“Damn and blast it,” he said.

“See what I mean?” said Roger.

Roger found the key under the broad leaf of a hosta, snapping several quilted leaves in the process, and opened the door with no effort. The Major passed into the dark hallway and, a prayer on his lips, found the light switch at first snap.

“Will you be okay, Dad?” He watched Roger hesitate, one hand on the doorjamb, his face showing the nervous uncertainty of a child who knows he has behaved badly.

“I’ll be perfectly fine, thank you,” he said. Roger averted his eyes but continued to linger, almost as if waiting to be called to account for his actions today or to have some demands made of him. The Major said nothing. Let Roger spend a couple of long nights tossing with a prickling conscience along with those infernal and shiny American legs. It was a satisfaction to know that Roger had not yet lost all sense of right and wrong. The Major was in no mind to grant any speedy absolutions.

“Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“I want to,” insisted Roger. He stepped forward and the Major found himself teetering in an awkward angular hug. He clung to the heavy door with one hand, both to keep it open and to prevent himself falling. With the other he gave a couple of tentative pats to the part of Roger’s back he could reach. Then he rested his hand for a moment and felt, in his son’s knobby shoulder blade, the small child he had always loved.

“You’d better hurry now,” he said, blinking hard. “It’s a long drive back to town.”

“I do worry about you, Dad.” Roger stepped away and became again the strange adult who existed mostly at the end of the telephone. “I’ll call you. Sandy and I will work out our schedules so we can come down and see you in a couple of weeks.”

“Sandy? Oh, right. That would be delightful.” His son grinned and waved as he left, which reassured the Major that his dryness of tone had remained undetected. He waved back and watched his son leaving happy, convinced that his aging father would be buoyed up by the prospect of the visit to come.

Alone in the house he felt the full weight of exhaustion settle on him like iron shackles. He considered stopping in the living room for a reviving brandy, but there was no fire in the grate and the house suddenly seemed chill and dark. He decided to go straight to bed. The small staircase, with its faded oriental runner, loomed as steep and impassable as Everest’s Hillary Steps. He braced his arm on the polished walnut banister and began to haul himself up the narrow treads. He considered himself to be generally in good health and made a point of doing a full set of stretching exercises every day, including several deep knee bends. Yet today—overcome by the strain, he supposed—he had to pause halfway up the stairs to catch his breath. It occurred to him to wonder what would happen if he passed out and fell. He saw himself lying splayed out across the bottom treads, head down and blue in the face. It might be days before he was found. He had never thought of this before. He shook his shoulders and straightened up his back. It was ridiculous to think of it now, he reprimanded himself. No good acting like a poor old man just because Bertie had died. He took the remaining stairs with as regular and fluid a step as he could manage and did not allow himself to puff and pant until he had gained his bedroom and sunk down on the soft wide bed in relief.

Chapter 3

Two days passed before it occurred to the Major that Mrs. Ali had not called in to check on him and that this had caused him a certain disappointment. The paper boy was quite well again, judging by the ferocity with which the Times was thrown at his front door. He had had his share of other visitors. Alice Pierce from next door had come round yesterday with a hand-painted condolence card and a casserole dish of what she said was her famous organic vegetarian lasagna and informed him that it was all over the village that he had lost his brother. There was enough of the pale brown and green mush to feed an army of organic vegetarian friends. Unfortunately, he did not have the same kind of Bohemian friends as Alice and so the dish was now fermenting in his refrigerator, spreading its unpleasant plankton smell into the milk and butter. Today, Daisy Green, the Vicar’s wife, dropped by unannounced with her usual entourage of Alma Shaw and Grace DeVere from the Flower Guild and insisted on making him a cup of tea in his own house. Usually it made the Major chuckle to see the trinity of ladies going about the business of controlling all social and civic life in the village. Daisy had seized the simple title of Flower Guild chairwoman and used it to endow herself with full noblesse oblige. The other ladies swam in her wake like frightened ducklings, as she flew about offering unsolicited advice and issuing petty directives which somehow people found it easier to follow than refuse. It amused him that Father Christopher, the Vicar, thought he chose his own sermons and that Alec Shaw, retired from the Bank of England, was made to join the Halloween Fun Committee and host junior petanque on the village green despite being almost medically allergic to children. It amused him less when, treating their spinster friend as a project, Daisy and Alma would ask Grace to play her harp or greet people at the door at various charity events, while consigning certain other unattached ladies to cloakroom and tea serving duties. Even today, they had conspired to make a presentation of Grace. She was fully primped, her slightly elongated face made papery with pale powder and a girly pink lipstick, a coquettish scarf tied in a bow under her left ear as if she were off to a party.

Grace was actually quite a sharp and pleasant woman at times. She was very knowledgeable about roses and about local history. The Major remembered a conversation they had enjoyed in the church one day, when he had found her carefully examining seventeenth-century wedding records. She had worn white cotton gloves to protect the books from her fingers and had been unconcerned about her own clothes, which had been coated with soft dust. “Look,” she had whispered, a magnifying lens held close to the pale brown ink scribbles of an ancient vicar. “It says, ‘Mark Salisbury married this day to Daniela de Julien, late of La Rochelle.’ This is the first record of Huguenots settling in the village.” He had stayed with her a half hour or so, watching her page reverently through the subsequent years, looking for hints and clues to the tangle of old families in the area. He had offered to lend her a recent history of Sussex that might be of use, only to find that she had a copy already. She also owned several more