Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson Read Free Book Online

fingers at the large green stone brooch at her high-collared neck. She cast her eyes down at the carpet, as if looking for a thread of conversation in the geometric patterns of the faded Bokhara. The other ladies busied themselves with their teacups and there was a palpable desire in the room for the conversation to move on. Grace, however, could not find her way out.
    “Was his family with him at the end?” she said, looking at him desperately. He was tempted to tell her that no, Bertie had died alone in an empty house and been discovered weeks later by the charlady from next door. It would be satisfying to puncture the vapid conversation with the nail of deliberate cruelty. However, he was aware of the other two women watching her struggle and doing nothing to help.
    “His wife was with him when they took him to the hospital and his daughter was able to see him for a few minutes, I understand,” he said.
    “Ah, that’s wonderful,” she said.
    “Wonderful,” echoed Daisy, and smiled at him as if this wiped away any further obligation to be sad.
    “It must be a great comfort to you to know he died surrounded by family,” added Alma. She took a large bite from a fat dark chocolate biscuit. A faint chemical odor of bitter orange reached the Major’s nostrils. He would have liked to reply that this was not so, that he was pierced with pain that no one had thought to call him until it was all over and that he had missed saying goodbye to his younger brother. He wanted to spit this at them, but his tongue felt thick and useless.
    “And of course he was surrounded by the comfort of the Lord,” said Daisy. She spoke in an awkward rush as if she were bringing up something vaguely impolite.
    “Amen,” whispered Alma, selecting a creme sandwich.
    “Oh, go to hell,” whispered the Major into the translucent bottom of his teacup and covered his muttering with a cough.
    ∗
    “Thank you so much for coming,” he said, waving from the doorstep and feeling more generous now that they were leaving.
    “We’ll come again soon,” promised Daisy.
    “Lovely to see the Vierge de Clery still blooming,” added Grace, touching her fingertips to a nodding stem of white cabbage rose as she slipped through the gate behind them. He wished she had spoken about the roses earlier. The afternoon might have passed more pleasantly. Of course it wasn’t their fault, he reminded himself. They were following the accepted rituals. They were saying what they could at a time when even the finest poetry must fail to comfort. They were probably genuinely concerned for him. Perhaps he had been too churlish.
    It surprised him that his grief was sharper than in the past few days. He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child’s maths book. Instead, it was almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full both of heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it. If Mrs. Ali had dropped in – and he felt again the slight pique that she had not – she would have understood. Mrs. Ali, he was sure, would have let him talk about Bertie. Not the deceased body already liquefying in the ground, but Bertie as he was.
    The Major stepped out into the now empty garden to feel the sun on his face, shutting his eyes and breathing slowly to lessen the impact of an image of Bertie in the ground, cold green flesh softening into jelly. He folded his arms over his chest and tried not to sob aloud for Bertie and for himself, that this should be all the fate left to them.
    The warmth of the sun held him up and a small brown chaffinch, worrying the leaves of the yew, seemed to chide him for being lugubrious. He opened his eyes to the bright afternoon and decided that he might benefit from a short walk through the village. He might stop in at the village shop to purchase some tea. It would, he thought, be generous of him to make a visit and give