“Are you all right, Ernest?” said Jasmina. He blinked away the scene, not sure whether it was a real memory or just a vision. The smell of chalk faded from his nostrils and he waited for the pangs of sorrow to overwhelm him. He was surprised to find that he could summon no more than the kind of faint disappointment one might feel upon finding a favorite sweater accidentally boiled along with the white laundry and shrunk to a felt mess sized for a small terrier.
“Am I medicated with something?” he asked from behind his closed lids and Roger said he would check the chart. “I can’t seem to feel anything.”
“Oh, my God, he’s paralyzed,” said Roger.
“No, I mean about the gun,” said the Major. “I don’t feel as upset as I should.”
“You’ve longed for that pair since I can remember,” Roger said. “You used to tell me over and over how Grandfather split them up but the day would come when they would be reunited.”
“I longed for the day when I could look important to a lot of people who I felt were more important than I,” said the Major. “I was arrogant. It must be genetic.”
“That’s a nice thing to say to someone who’s kept vigil at your pillow all night long,” said Roger. “Hey, look, I got a text from Sandy.”
“Didn’t you just propose to another woman?” asked Jasmina.
“Yeah, but I had a lot of time to think last night and I figured a long text from the bedside of my dying father might do the trick.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said the Major. “You could have impressed her with your eulogy.”
“I’m sorry you lost the gun your father gave you, Ernest,” said Jasmina. “But you lost it saving a life, and you are a hero to me and to others.”
“Actually, I lost Bertie’s gun,” said the Major. He yawned and felt himself growing sleepy. “Happened to be the closest one to grab. That’s not my gun at the bottom of the English Channel.”
“Are you serious?” said Roger.
“And I’m glad,” said the Major. “Now I won’t have to be reminded that sometimes it might have been more important to me than my brother.”
“Oh, shit!” said Roger looking up from his keyboard. “Now we have to pay Marjorie fifty thousand pounds and have nothing to show for it.”
“I expect the insurance company will take care of that,” said the Major. He struggled to stay awake so he might keep looking at Jasmina’s face smiling at him.
“What insurance?” asked Roger, incredulous. “You had them insured all this time?”
“Insurance was never the issue,” said the Major, closing his eyes. “When my father died, my mother kept paying the premiums, and when she died so did I.” He opened his eyes briefly to say something important to Jasmina. “I take great pride in never leaving a bill unpaid—it makes the filing messy.”
“You are tired, Ernest,” she said. “You should rest after all this excitement.” She laid her hand along his cheek and he felt as a small child feels when the night’s fever is cooled by the touch of a mother’s hand.
“Must ask you to marry me,” he said as he drifted away. “Not in this dreadful room, of course.”
When he woke again, the lights were dim in the wards and the nurse’s desk could be seen as a glow at the end of the corridor. A lamp burned low on the bedside table and he could feel the hospital’s central heating breathing as quietly as the patients in the calm of the night shift. A figure sat in a chair at the end of his bed; he called softly, “Jasmina?” The figure came closer until he could see it was Amina, in a hospital gown and robe.
“Hi,” she said. “How you feeling?”
“Fine,” he whispered. “Should you be out of bed?”
“No, I snuck out.” She sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “I had to come and see you before I left. To thank you for saving Abdul Wahid and for everything else you’ve tried to do.”
“Where are you going?” he asked. “You’re getting married tomorrow.”
“I’ve decided I’m not going to get married after all,” she said. “My aunt Noreen is picking me up first thing and then George and I’ll be off to her flat before anyone can make a fuss.”
“But why on earth would you do that?” he asked. “There are no impediments left to your marriage. Even Abdul Wahid’s parents are on your side now.”
“I know,” she said. “They keep apologizing and coming in and out with gifts and promises. I think they’ve already agreed to put George through medical school.”
“They didn’t know about the old lady, I’m sure,” said the Major. “Such things are unimaginable.”
“It happens more than you think,” she said. “But I’ve accepted they didn’t intend it. They’re deporting the old bag today.”
“Isn’t she going to jail?” asked the Major.
“They couldn’t find a weapon and I told them it was an accident.” Amina gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly where the knitting needle was. “I didn’t want more shame for Abdul Wahid, and I like his family feeling obligated to me.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, and she nodded. “So why leave now?” She sighed and picked pills of fabric from the thin hospital blanket.
“Almost dying makes you see things differently, doesn’t it?” She looked at him and he saw tears in her eyes. “It feels like I’ve loved Abdul Wahid forever, and I thought I’d give up anything to be with him.” She pulled harder at the blanket and a small hole appeared as the threads parted. The Major was tempted to still her ravaging hand but did not want to interrupt. “But can you really see me spending my life in a shop?” she asked. “Stocking shelves, chatting to all the old lady customers, going over account books?”
“Abdul Wahid loves you,” he said. “He came back from the very edge of existence for you.”
“I know. No pressure on me, then?” She tried to smile but failed. “But it’s not enough to be in love. It’s about how you spend your days, what you do together, who you choose as friends, and most of all it’s what work you do. I’m a dancer. I need to dance. If I give it up to spend my life wrapping pork pies and weighing apples, I will come to resent him. And even though he says I can dance as well, he expects me to be his partner in the shop. He would come to resent me, too. Better to break both our hearts now than watch them wither away over time.”
“What about George?”
“I wanted a proper family for George, with Mummy and Daddy and a puppy and maybe a little brother or sister. But that’s just a framed picture on some mantelpiece. It’s not real, is it?”
“A boy needs a father,” said the Major.
“If I didn’t know that better than anyone, I’d have been off to London tomorrow,” she said. She hugged her arms tentatively around her chest and she spoke in a way that made him believe she had given the matter a great deal of consideration. “Most of the people who’ve flung that at me over the last few years haven’t the faintest bloody idea what they mean by it. They have no idea what it’s like to grow up without one, and half of them can’t stand their own fathers.” There was silence; the Major thought of his father’s remoteness.
“I think that even if you dislike them, knowing one’s parents helps a child understand where he or she came from,” said the Major. “We measure ourselves against our parents, and each generation we try to do a little better.” As he said this he wondered again whether he had failed Roger.
“George will have both parents; they just won’t be under one roof. He’ll have me and his auntie Noreen in town and he’ll have his father over in Edgecombe along with Jasmina. I hope you’ll look in on him, too. He should learn to play chess.”
“Jasmina has fought so hard for the two of you,” said the Major quietly. “She will be devastated.”
“Sometimes you can’t fix everything,” said Amina. “Life isn’t always like books.”
“No, it’s not.” He considered the ugly popcorn Styrofoam of the ceiling tiles but could find no inspiration there to change her mind.
“I appreciate how much Jasmina has tried to do for us,” she said. “I want George to have all the family he can get.”
“I hesitate to speak for anyone but myself,” he said. “I have not yet had the chance to officially ask Jasmina to marry me.”
“You old dog,” she said. “I knew you two were off doing it somewhere.”
“Setting aside your crude manners for the moment, young lady,” he said in as severe a voice as he could manage, “I would like to assure you that you and George will always be welcome in our home.”
“You are a very good man, for an old git.” She stood up and leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead. The Major wondered again at how much love and grief could feel the same as he watched her walk away down the darkened corridor, her legs reflecting their long dancing shadows in the watery polish of the linoleum.
Epilogue
The view from the book-lined room that now went by the name “The Squire’s Morning Room” took in the comings and goings on the terrace and lawn of the manor house. The Major had a full view of Mrs. Rasool, resplendent in saffron coat and billowing lime-green silk trousers, who seemed to be arguing loudly and happily into a tiny black headset. The microphone part rested on her cheek like a fat fly. She waved a clipboard and two tuxedoed helpers rushed to assist more guests to the semicircle of white folding chairs arranged in front of a low dais surmounted by a plain canvas campaign tent which flapped in the light breeze of the May afternoon. The Major, half hidden behind the pale linen drape, was glad to have a moment of silent reflection before the wedding. It was meant as a small and deliberately casual gathering of friends, and everything, including the sunny weather, appeared to be cooperating. Yet he still felt the festivities as an impending squall and braced for the ceremonies to break upon his head.
He heard the door open; turning, he watched Jasmina slip into the room and gently close the door. She was dressed in a coat and trousers of old silk that glowed with the ruby-dark softness of fine port. A spider’s web of a scarf in a pale Wedgwood blue was spun about her head like a vision. She trod softly across the carpet in low slippers and came to stand at his shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
“I thought it wrong to leave even one small tradition unbroken,” she said, smiling. She took his arm and they both watched for a while in silence as the guests gathered.
Roger was talking with the musicians—a harpist and two sitar players. Roger ran his hand over the strings of a sitar and the Major assumed he was checking the musician’s tuning and opining on the music selections. The groom’s side of the chairs was filling up, the men largely invisible between the large bobbing hats. The Major spotted Grace talking to Marjorie, whose hat shook violently with her muttering. The Major could only assume her acceptance of the coming nuptials did not preclude a continued gossiping about their unsuitability.
The Vicar hung about looking lost. Daisy had refused to attend. Alec and Alma were here not speaking to each other in the front row. The Major was very grateful to Alec for standing up for their friendship and quite demanding that his wife accompany him, but now they would all have to put up with her rigid face and her sighs of mortification. As they watched, Alice from next door billowed out from the wide French doors, wearing some kind of batik tent and a pair of hemp sandals. She was accompanied by Lord Dagenham, just back from his annual spring visit to Venice, who had sent word that he would like to receive an invitation but who now seemed rather bewildered to find such strange people waiting on his back lawn.
“Do you suppose Dagenham likes what the Rasools have done with the place?” asked the Major.
“After that incident with the schoolchildren and the ducks, he should think himself lucky things have arranged themselves so profitably,” replied Jasmina. The local authorities had come to hear of the duck shooting fiasco and had promptly closed the school. It was only recently, as part of a long-range plan instituted by Gertrude, the wife of the Laird of Loch Brae, that the Rasools had quietly leased all but the east wing as a country house hotel, allowing ample funds for Lord Dagenham to go back to dividing his time between Edgecombe and other society haunts. It seemed only appropriate that this eclectic affair should be their first catered wedding.
The bride’s guests—a very small party made up of an assistant imam named Rodney, Amina and her auntie Noreen, Mrs. Rasool’s parents, and the man who supplied the shop with frozen produce and had begged to come—now began to cluster on the terrace as if held behind an invisible rope. Abdul Wahid was to lead them to their chairs in a small traditional procession at the appropriate time. He stood to one side with his usual frown, as if he disapproved of all the chattering frivolity around him. He did not look over at Amina. They had developed a strict policy of mutual avoidance, so rigid as to show clearly that they still felt a strong attraction. No doubt, thought the Major, Abdul Wahid also disapproved of the number of dimpled knees and ample matronly bosoms on display in the groom’s section. Abdul Wahid tousled the hair of his son, who leaned comfortably against him, knotted tie all askew. George seemed wholly impervious to all the activity and was reading a large book.
The Major sighed and Jasmina laughed at him and took his arm.
“They are a motley and ragged bunch,” she said, “but they are what is left when all the shallow pretense is burned away.”
“Will it do?” said the Major, laying his hand over her cool fingers. “Will it be enough to sustain the future?”
“It is more than enough for me,” she said. “My heart is quite full.” The Major heard a catch in her voice. He turned to face her and pushed back a stray tendril of hair from her cheek, but he said nothing. There would be time to speak of Ahmed and Nancy in the ceremonies to come. At this moment, there was only the pause of quiet reflection pooling between them like sunlight on carpet.
Outside, the harpist improvised a wild glissando. Without looking, the Major could sense the guests sitting taller and gathering their attention. He might have preferred to stay in this room forever and gaze at this face which wore love like a smile about the eyes, but it was not possible. He straightened his own shoulders and offered her his arm with a formal bow of the head.
“Mrs. Ali,” he said, delighting in using her name one last time, “shall we go forth and get married?”
Acknowledgments
A long time ago, a stay-at-home mother in Brooklyn, who missed her busy advertising job, stumbled into a writing class at New York’s 92nd Street Y looking for a creative outlet. It’s been a long journey since and, as in any good story, I would not have made it without the help of many strangers and friends. So thank you all.
Thank you to my Brooklyn writing community, including writer Katherine Mosby, who first taught me to appreciate the beauty of the sentence; Christina Burz, Miriam Clark, and Beth McFadden, who make up the decade-old writing group with whom I trade blunt criticism and cheap wine; and early readers Leslie Alexander, Susan Leitner, and Sarah Tobin.
Thank you to the accomplished writers who have taught me through the Southampton Writers Conference and the Stony Brook Southampton MFA program. Special acknowledgment to Professor Robert Reeves, teacher, friend, and shameless promoter. He never stops believing in his students. He never wears socks. Thanks also to Roger Rosenblatt and Ursula Hegi; Melissa Bank, Clark Blaise, Matt Klam, Bharati Mukherjee, Julie Sheehan, and Meg Wolitzer; and writing friends Cindy Krezel and Janis Jones.
Thanks to the Bronx Writers Studio, which gave me a First Chapter Award in 2005. Julie Barer read that first chapter and waited three years for the rest of the novel. Thank you, Julie—I now know what it must feel like to win the lottery. Thanks to Susan Kamil, who makes me laugh so much I’d do anything she asks. Fortunately she is also a brilliant editor, so it all works out. Paragraph, workspace for writers, provided me a desk and a community. William Boggess, Noah Eaker, and Jennifer Smith made life easy with their editorial assistance.
In cyberspace, thanks to Tim at timothyhallin
an.com for butt-kicking writing advice.
My parents, Alan and Margaret Phillips, always believed I could write and have always supported me. Love to them, to my sister, Lorraine Baker, and also to David and Lois Simonson, who took in an alien daughter-in-law.
Our wonderful sons, Ian and Jamie (who hold the rights to Major Pettigrew action figures), teased me mercilessly until the manuscript was done. My husband and best friend, John Simonson, has always understood this story inside and out and I can never thank him enough—for everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HELEN SIMONSON was born in England and spent her teenage years in a small village in East Sussex. A graduate of the London School of Economics with an M.F.A. from Stony Brook Southampton, she is a former travel advertising executive who has lived in America for the last two decades. A longtime resident of Brooklyn, she now lives with her husband and two sons in the Washington, D.C., area. This is her first novel.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Helen Simonson
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simonson, Helen.
Major Pettigrew’s last stand : a novel / Helen Simonson.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-965-9
1. Country life—England—Fiction. 2. Retirees—Fiction.