cones, belching lorries, and sterile motorway service areas? He looked to their shining examples as he endured the ugly concrete girdle of London’s M25, reminding himself that at least it kept the heaving flabby suburbs from spilling out and suffocating what was left of the countryside. He tried not to lose courage as the south fell away and the motorways became one speeding blur of giant lorries, all racing north as if they had a thousand miles to cover and donated organs in the back instead of cargoes of cold tea, frozen chickens, and appliances. In the fluorescent lighting and faint bleach smell of an anonymous service area somewhere in the Midlands, where he was just another gray-haired old man with a plastic tray, his doubts threatened to overwhelm him.
He hadn’t let anyone know he was coming. What if Mrs. Ali wasn’t even home? The siren call of Scotland with the promised castle banquet and shooting in the heather almost turned his head, but as he put his thumb too vigorously through the cover of a little plastic tub and sprayed his jacket with milk, it came to him that it was precisely Mrs. Ali who made the world a little less anonymous. She made him a little less anonymous. He gulped his tea—not difficult, as it was little better than tepid—and hurried out to get back on the road.
He felt self-conscious cruising the streets looking for the right road and house number from the letter Grace had given him. Mrs. Ali’s neat handwriting was crumpled under his fingers on the steering wheel as he checked the thin page again and again against the streets outside. The people on the pavements were now mostly dark-skinned women with children and babies in pushchairs. Some wore the headscarf arrangement of observant Muslims. Some sported the short puffy jackets and gold earrings fashionable among the universal young. He thought he saw a few heads turn to watch him as he passed a knot of young men huddled around the raised bonnet of a car. He overshot the house but was too embarrassed to drive around the block again. Instead, he slipped into an open parking space.
The long street was anchored at one end by a couple of large Victorian mansions, now crumbling and forlorn. At the other end a brick wall indicated the perimeter of a redbrick housing estate filled with six-story blocks of flats and narrow terraced houses. Metal window frames and blank front doors in one of three colors suggested the limits, artistic and budgetary, of the local housing authority’s imagination. Between these representatives of the high and low points of the industrial age was the long row of semi-detached houses built for a prewar middle class of rising aspirations: three bedrooms, two parlors, and indoor plumbing, all serviced by a “daily” maid.
Some of the semis had been heavily improved since their heyday and were all but unrecognizable beneath their vinyl double-glazed windows, boxy side extensions, and glassed-in front doors. The few that retained their original wooden window frames also had peeling paint and a variety of haphazard window coverings that suggested bedsits. Worst of all, to the Major’s eyes, many of the houses, affluent or not, had cut down flowering front yards and paved them over to park multiple cars up against the windows.
The Ali family’s house was one of the more prosperous. It retained half a garden with a gravel area on which stood a small two-seater sports car. The elegant effect of the car and the new white-painted windows was overshadowed by the neighboring house, which bore leaping dolphins on its gateposts and purple shutters around dark wood window frames. The Major was just allowing himself a small sniff of disapproval at such obviously foreign excess when a white woman with streaky hair and a pink fur jacket over green jeans tripped out of the front door in her black patent boots and drove away in a small green car with an “Ibiza Lover” bumper sticker.
Mentally apologizing to the rest of the neighborhood, the Major marched up to the heavy oak door of the Ali house and stood on the doorstep, staring at the ordinary brass circle of the door knocker. He remembered standing with Mrs. Ali outside the golf club, both of them tense with anticipation. He was sure, now, that life could never live up to its anticipatory moments and he became quite certain that today would be a disaster. He looked behind him, thinking perhaps he should make a run for his car. A young man passed slowly on a bicycle, chewing gum and staring at him. The Major nodded and, feeling too embarrassed to shuffle away, turned back to knock at the door.
A young pregnant woman answered. She wore fashionably tousled hair tucked loosely into a scarf and a soft black maternity dress over black-and-white-patterned leggings. Her brown face was attractive but blunt and bore more than a passing resemblance to Abdul Wahid’s.
“Yes?” she said.
“Good afternoon, I’m Major Ernest Pettigrew. I’m here to see Mrs. Ali,” said the Major in his most authoritative tone.
“Are you from the council?” said the woman.
“Good heavens, no,” said the Major. “Why, do I look like a man from the council?” The woman gave him a look that said he did. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Ali’s,” he added.
“My mother’s stepped out to the shop,” said the woman. “Do you want to wait?” She did not open the door farther or step aside as she said this, and the Major realized she was looking at him with great suspicion.
“Oh, I don’t want your mother,” said the Major, understanding his mistake. “I’m here to see Mrs. Jasmina Ali, from Edgecombe St. Mary.”
“Oh, her,” said the woman. She paused and then said: “You better come in and I’ll phone my dad.”
“Is she here?” asked the Major as he was shown into the kind of spare, formal front room that is kept exclusively for guests. Two sofas faced each other across the small gas fireplace, each dressed in crimson flocked silk in a pattern of roses and covered in see-through vinyl. Two patterned wall hangings and a large abstract painting that suggested a blue and gray landscape decked the cream-colored walls. There were no books and the various small side tables were decorated with lumps of rock and crystal and bowls of dried seed pods and aromatic twigs. Good-quality fabric blinds under a matching blue fabric pelmet hung at the bay window; opposite the window, frosted French doors surrounded by floor-length blue drapes led to another room. The room’s finest decorative feature was an oriental rug, a glorious riot of pattern hand-woven from a thousand different blue silks. It was a room, thought the Major, which his sister-in-law Marjorie might admire, and while she would never be seen to use vinyl covers on her furniture she would secretly yearn for such spill-proof elegance.
“I’ll get you some tea,” said the woman. “Please wait here.” She left, shutting the door behind her. The Major selected one of two small, straight chairs that stood at one end of the sofas. They were spindly to an alarming degree but he did not trust himself to sit on a sofa without making alarming trouser-on-vinyl noises. The silence in the room settled around him. The street noises were muffled through the double glazing and no clock ticked on the mantel. There was not even a television, though he seemed to hear the jingling of a game show. He listened hard and thought there must be a TV playing deeper in the house, beyond the frosted doors.
He stood up when the door to the hall opened. It was the young woman, coming back with a brass tea tray that held a teapot and two glasses set in silver cup holders. Two small giggling children slipped in behind her and gazed at the Major as if at a zoo exhibit.
“My father will be home right away,” said the young woman, indicating that the Major should sit. “He looks forward to meeting you Mr.—What is your name?”
“Major Pettigrew. Is Mrs. Ali not home?” he asked.
“My father will be here momentarily,” she said again, and poured him a cup of tea. Then, instead of pouring one for herself, she merely shooed the small children out of the room and left, shutting the door again behind her.
A few more silent minutes passed. The Major felt the weight of the room on his head and the pressure of time running through his fingers. He refused to glance at his watch but he could see the other guests arriving in Scotland. No doubt a cold lunch buffet was still set out on a sideboard and guests were seeing to the hanging up of clothes or enjoying a brisk walk around the lake. He had never seen Ferguson’s castle home, but it must of course have both lake and cold buffet. These things could be depended upon. In this room, the Major could depend on nothing. It was all unfamiliar and therefore very taxing. All at once, there was a key in the front door and movement in the hallway. Urgent voices seemed to meet as the front door was opened and fierce whispers accompanied the usual hallway noise of coats and shoes being deposited.
The door opened again to admit a broad-shouldered man with black cropped hair and a neat mustache. He wore a shirt and tie and his breast pocket still bore the plastic name tag that identified him, unexpectedly, as Dave. He was not tall, but his air of authority and slight double chin suggested a man in command of some slice of the world.
“Major Pettigrew? I’m Dave Ali and it’s an honor to have you in my humble home,” he said in a tone that, the Major had observed over the years, was used by those who believe their home superior to most. “I have heard all
