“Abdul Wahid, what are you doing?” shouted Jasmina. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“I want her taken away,” said Abdul Wahid, quietly refusing to look at her. “She should not have to endure this.”
“So you don’t want to talk to her?” asked Brian. “That’s fine. If I have the Major here take her away, will you agree to talk to me—just for a bit?” Abdul Wahid seemed to consider this option carefully.
“Please, Abdul Wahid, come home,” said Jasmina. She was crying and the Major reached out a restraining arm, fearing she would try to rush at her nephew. “I won’t leave you.”
“I would prefer to talk to the Major,” said Abdul Wahid. “I will not talk to you.”
“So I’ll get your aunt away to somewhere dry and warm and you’ll sit tight and chat with this gentleman?”
“Yes,” said Abdul Wahid.
“He’s got a gun, you know,” said Brian. “You sure you can trust him?”
“What are you doing?” whispered the Major in fierce anxiety. “Are you trying to provoke him?” Abdul Wahid, however, actually produced one of his short barking laughs.
“Are you afraid he has come to shoot me?” he asked. “It would not exactly spoil my plans now, would it?”
“Okay, then,” said Brian. “I think we can make that deal.” He turned to the Major and whispered. “His laughing is a good sign. I think we should play along.”
“I won’t leave,” said Jasmina. She turned her tearstained face to the Major and he felt the full enormity of what would come next. “I could never forgive myself.”
“If you don’t leave, you may never forgive yourself,” said Brian. “Best thing to do is give them what they want, within reason. No promises, though.”
“If I leave him in your hands and you can’t keep him safe …” she began. She turned her face away, unable to continue.
“You may very well never forgive me,” finished the Major. The words tasted bitter in his mouth. “I do understand.” She looked at him and he added, “Whoever stays, whoever goes, I fear his death would come between us just the same, my dear.” He took her hand in his and squeezed it. “Let me play the man’s part now and fight for Abdul Wahid and for us, my love.”
“Here you are,” said Brian, taking something from a large backpack. “Sometimes they like a cup of tea. I always keep a thermos handy.”
He waited while Brian and Jasmina climbed the slope, stopping to collect the dazed but conscious old woman on their way. They did not look back. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Abdul Wahid, who remained motionless. Finally, he turned and walked slowly downhill, flanking left to come parallel to the young man while maintaining a respectful distance.
“Thank you,” said Abdul Wahid. “This was no place for a woman like my aunt.”
“This is no place for any of us,” said the Major, peering into the abyss of churning whitecaps and jagged rocks that seemed to suck at his feet from hundreds of feet below. “All this drama is very bad for the digestion.” He stretched his back. “Come to think of it, I didn’t have much lunch.”
“I am sorry,” said Abdul Wahid.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked the Major. “That man Brian gave me a thermos of tea and I have some Kendal Mint Cake.”
“Are you mocking me?” said Abdul Wahid. “Do you think I’m a child, to be persuaded with food?”
“Not at all,” said the Major, abandoning the casual approach at once. “I’m just terrified, as you might expect—and a little cold.”
“Is it cold? asked Abdul Wahid.
“It’s very cold,” said the Major. “Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere warm and talk things through over a nice hot dinner?”
“Did you see Amina?” asked Abdul Wahid. The Major nodded. “Will she live?” he added.
“She asked for you in the ambulance,” said the Major. “I could take you to her. I have my car.” Abdul Wahid shook his head and rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes.
“It was never meant to be,” he said. “Every day more complication, more compromise. I see that now.”
“That’s just not true,” said the Major. “You’re talking like a fool.” He felt the note of desperation in his own voice.
“So much shame,” he said. “It hangs around me like chains. I ache to scrape it all off in the sea and be clean for—” He stopped abruptly and the Major sensed he felt unworthy to even mention the name of his creator.
“I know something of shame,” said the Major. He had intended to point out that suicide was not allowed in Islam, but a restatement of rules he already knew did not seem constructive in the immediacy of wind, rain, and a sheer drop of five hundred feet. “How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.” As he risked a peek over the sharp chalk edge, his stomach churned at the jagged teeth of rocks waiting below them and he almost lost his train of thought. “I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn’t have to look at us all the time.”
“You speak of general burdens, Major. What of the individual shame that burns the soul?”
“Well, if you want specifics,” began the Major, “look at this gun of which I’m so proud.” They both considered the rain beading on its polished stock and dull steel barrel. “My father, on his deathbed, gave one of these guns to me and one to my younger brother and I was consumed with disappointment that he did not give me both and I chewed on my own grievance as he lay dying before me and I chewed on it while I wrote his eulogy and damn me if I wasn’t still chewing on it when my own brother died this autumn.”
“It was your right as the eldest son.”
“I was more proud of these guns than I was of your aunt Jasmina. For the sake of these guns, I let down the woman I love in front of a whole community of people, most of whom I can barely tolerate. I let her leave, and I will never get rid of that sense of shame.”
“I let her leave so that I could acquire all her worldly possessions,” said Abdul Wahid quietly. “With death, this debt will also be wiped out.”
“This is not the solution,” said the Major. “The solution is to make things right, or at least to work every day to do so.”
“I have tried, Major,” he said. “But in the end I cannot reconcile my faith and my life. At least this way, the debt of honor is paid and Amina and George can go on with their lives.”
“How is suicide to be reconciled?” asked the Major.
“I will not commit suicide,” said Abdul Wahid. “It is haram. I will merely pray at the edge and wait for the wind to carry me where it will. Perhaps to Mecca.” He opened his arms and the heavy shirt billowed and snapped in the wind like a luffing sail. The Major felt the tenuous connection of conversation was slipping away from him. He looked around and thought he saw some heads bobbing behind bushes. He waved energetically, but this proved to be a mistake. Abdul Wahid also saw the volunteers and he lost all trace of animation from his face.
“You have kept me too long, Major,” he said. “I must go to my prayers.”
As he stepped forward, the Major fumbled in his pocket for cartridges and stuck two in the barrels, snapping the shotgun closed with one hand. Even against the rising moan of the wind it made a satisfactory crack. Abdul Wahid stopped and looked at him as the Major took two long steps downhill and began to sidle up between Abdul Wahid and the cliff edge. He was miserably aware of the crumbling and uneven nature of the ground, and his inability to look behind him made his legs tighten until his right calf muscle cramped. Abdul Wahid smiled gently at him and said, “So, Major, you do intend to shoot me after all?” He opened his arms wide until the wind buffeted his shirt and he stumbled forward a step.
“No, I do not intend to shoot you,” said the Major. He stepped uphill and turned the gun around in his hands prese
nting the stock end to Abdul Wahid. “Here, take this.” Abdul Wahid caught the gun as it was pushed into his stomach. He held it, puzzled, and the Major stepped back, uncomfortably aware of the barrels pointing at his chest. “Now I’m afraid you are going to have to shoot me.”
“I am not a man of violence,” said Abdul Wahid, lowering the gun slightly.
“I’m afraid you have no choice,” said the Major. He stepped forward again and held the barrel end of the gun against his own chest. “You see, I cannot let you go off this cliff and I intend to spend all night, if necessary, standing between you and the edge. Thus you will not be blown over by accident at any point. Of course, you can always jump, but that was not your plan, was it?”
“This is silly. I could never hurt you, Major.” Abdul Wahid stepped back half a pace.
“If you die here today, your aunt Jasmina will be lost to me, and I do not want to live without her.” The Major struggled to keep his voice even. “Also, I will not face your son, George, and tell him I stood by and let his father kill himself.” He stepped forward again, pushing Abdul Wahid back. Abdul Wahid moved his hands to grip the gun more comfortably. The Major prayed his fingers were not near the twin triggers.
“You must see that your sense of shame will not die with you, Abdul Wahid. It will live on in your son and in Amina and in your aunt Jasmina. Your pain will haunt their lives. Your wish for death today is a selfish act. I am also a selfish man—from these years of living alone, I expect. I do not want to live to see this happen.”
“I will not shoot you.” Abdul Wahid was almost crying now, his face twisted with anguish and confusion.
“Either shoot me or choose to live yourself,” said the Major. “I can’t face your aunt any other way. How strange to think that we come as a pair now.”
Abdul Wahid gave a bellow of anguish and threw the gun away from him onto the ground. The butt end hit first and the gun gave a roaring boom and discharged what the Major registered as a single barrel.
He felt a white-hot sear of steel shot through his right leg. The force of the close range spun him around and he fell heavily, slipping in the grass. As he rolled, he felt the ground disappear under him. His legs slipped over the edge of the chalk into empty air. There was no time to feel any pain as he scrabbled above his head with his hands and felt his left elbow bump a metal stanchion that had once held a wire fence. He grabbed the stanchion. It held briefly against the tug of his body as he rolled over and then it began to move, the metal squeaking like a dull knife. In an instant, a body landed on his left lower arm and fingers dug at his back to find any grip. His legs jackknifed and his left knee struck the cliff with a pain that flashed like a light in his head. The Major heard the clatter of stones preceding him over the edge. It was so fast there was no time for thought. There was only a brief feeling of surprise and the smell of cold white chalk and wet grass.
Chapter 25
The Major was keen to push away the nagging idea of pain, which started to seep into his head along with the light. It was comfortable in the warm darkness of sleep and he struggled to stay down. A murmur of voices, a clattering of metal carts, and the brief percussion of curtain rings swept aside made him think he might be surfacing into an airport lounge. He felt his eyelids flutter and he tried to squeeze them shut. It was his attempt to roll over that shocked him awake with a tearing pain in his left knee and an ache on his right side that made him gasp. He scrabbled with his hand and felt thin sheet over slippery mattress and knocked it against a metal post.
“He’s waking up.” A hand held his shoulder down and the same voice added, “Don’t try to move, Mr. Pettigrew.”
“Isss Major …” he whispered. “Major Pettigrew.” His voice was a hoarse whisper in a mouth that seemed to be made of brown paper. He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue felt like a dead toad.
“Here’s something to drink,” said the voice as a straw snagged on his lip and he sucked at lukewarm water. “You’re in the hospital, Mr. Pettigrew, but you’re going to be fine.”
He slipped away again into sleep, hoping that when he awoke again it would be into his own room at Rose Lodge. He was quite annoyed to discover later the same cacophony of institutional sounds and the pressure of fluorescent lights against his eyelids. This time he opened his eyes.
“How are you feeling, Dad?” said Roger, who, the Major could see, had spread the Financial Times over the bed and was using the Major’s legs to prop up the pages.
“Don’t let me keep you from the stock tables,” whispered the Major. “How long have I been here?”
“About a day,” said Roger. “Do you remember what happened?”
“I was shot in the leg, not the head. Is it still there?”
“The leg? Of course it is,” said Roger. “Can’t you feel it?”
“Yes, of course I can,” said the Major. “But I didn’t want any nasty surprises.” He found it quite exhausting to speak but he asked for some more water. Roger helped him sip from a plastic cup, though most of it dribbled uncomfortably across his cheek and into his ear.
“They dug a whole lot of shot out of your leg,” said Roger. “Lucky for you it missed any arteries, and the doctor said it only clipped the edge of the right testicle, not that he expected it mattered much to a man your age.”
“Thanks very much,” said the Major.
“You also tore up the ligaments in your left knee pretty badly, but that surgery is considered elective so they said either it’ll heal on its own or you can join a waiting list and get it in about a year.” Roger leaned over and, to the Major’s surprise squeezed his hand and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine, Dad.”
“If you kiss me like that again, I’ll have to assume you’re lying and that I’m actually in the hospice,” he said.
“You gave me a fright, what can I say.” He folded up the newspaper as if embarrassed by his moment of affection. “You’ve always been an unmovable rock in my life and suddenly you’re an old man wearing tubes. Quite nasty.”
“Nastier still for me,” said the Major. He struggled a moment to ask the questions to which he was not sure he could bear the answers. He was tempted to feign sleep again and put off the bad news. It must be bad, he thought, since there was no sign of other visitors. He tried to sit up and Roger reached over to a button on the wall and the bed raised him into a slanted position.
“I want to know,” he began, but he seemed to choke on his own voice. “I must know. Did Abdul Wahid jump?”
“Considering he shot my father, I wouldn’t have cared if he had,” said Roger. “But apparently he threw himself down as you went over and grabbed you just in time. It was touch-and-go, they said, what with the wind and the slippery rain, but some guy named Brian threw himself on Abdul and then some other guy came with a rope and stuff and they dragged you back and got you on a stretcher.”
“So he’s alive?” asked the Major.
“He is, but I’m afraid there’s some very bad news I have to tell you,” said Roger. “I was going to wait until later, but—”
“Amina’s dead?” asked the Major. “His fiancée?”
“Oh, the girl who got knitted?” said Roger. “No, she’s going to be fine. They’re all with her one flight up in women’s surgical.”
“All who?” said the Major.
“Mrs. Ali, Abdul Wahid, and that George who keeps dunning me out of pound coins for the vending machine,” said Roger. “Then there’s the auntie—Noreen, I think—and Abdul’s parents. It’s like half of Pakistan is up there.”
“Jasmina is there?” the Major asked.
“When she can bear to be away from you,” said Roger. “When I got here last night, they were still trying to pull her off your body, and I can’t seem to get rid of her.”
“I intend to ask her to marry me,” said the Major, his voice curt. “No matter what you think.”
“Don’t start getting all excited. That testicle is still in traction,” Roger said.<
br />
“What’s in traction?” asked a voice and the Major felt himself blush as Jasmina came around the curtain wearing a big smile and a shalwar kameez in a yellow as soft as butter. Her hair was damp and she smelled of carbolic soap and lemons.
“You finally went home and took a shower, then?” asked Roger.
“The matron said I was frightening all the visitors with my bloodstained clothes. She let me use the doctors’ shower.” She came to the side of the Major’s bed and he felt as weak as the day she had held him up, faint from hearing about Bertie’s death.
“He didn’t jump” was all he managed to say as he clutched her warm hand.
“No, he didn’t,” she said. She gripped his hand and kissed him on the cheek and then on the lips. “And now he owes you his life and we can never repay you.”
“If he wants to repay me, tell him to hurry up and get married,” said the Major. “What that boy needs is a woman to order him around.”
“Amina is still quite weak, but we hope they will be married right here in the hospital,” Jasmina said. “My brother and sister-in-law have vowed to stay on as long as it takes to see them settled.”
“It all sounds wonderful,” said the Major. He turned to Roger, who was fiddling with his mobile phone. “But you told me there was bad news?”
“He is right, Ernest,” said Jasmina. “You must prepare yourself.” She looked at Roger, and he nodded as if the two of them had spent some time discussing how to tell a sick man something awful. The Major held his breath and waited for the blow.
“It’s the Churchill, Dad,” said Roger at last. “I’m afraid in the commotion of saving you, it got kicked aside or something and it slid over the edge and Abdul Wahid says he saw it smashing on the rocks on the way down.” He paused and lowered his head. “They haven’t found it.”
The Major closed his eyes and saw it happen. He smelled again the cold chalk, felt the futile scrabble of his legs trying to gain some purchase and the agonizing slow slipping of his body as if the sea were a magnet pulling at him and, at the edge of his vision, he could see the gun slipping faster, smooth against the wet grass as it inscribed one slow circle on the edge and then went ahead of them over the cliff.