“Thank you for your quick thinking, Major,” said Mrs. Ali. To his surprise, she seemed to be herding him toward the door also. “Did you need anything before you go? I’m going to shut the shop for a little while.”
“I just came to see if Amina needed a lift back to town,” the Major said. “There are no buses in the afternoon today.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Amina. She looked at Mrs. Ali. “I had better go if the Major is willing to drive us home.”
“No, you must stay and we will talk some more,” said Mrs. Ali.
“She should leave and go back to her mother,” said Abdul Wahid in a fierce, low voice.
“My mother died two months ago,” said Amina, speaking just to him. “Thirty years in the same street, Abdul Wahid, and only six people came to the funeral. Why do you think that was?” Her voice cracked, but she refused to look away from him. To break the painful silence, the Major asked, “Where is George?”
“George is upstairs, out of the way,” said Mrs. Ali. “I found him some books to look at.”
“I am sorry that your mother had to bear that shame,” said the nephew. “But it was none of my doing.”
“That’s what your family would say,” said the girl, tears now making tracks down her thin cheeks. She picked up her backpack. “George and I will go now and you will never have to be bothered by us again.”
“Why did you have to come here at all?” he asked.
“I had to come and see for myself that you don’t love me.” She wiped at her face with the cuff of her shirt and a streak of dirt made her look like a small child. “I never believed them when they said you left of your own accord, but I see now that you are the product of your family, Abdul Wahid.”
“You should go,” said Abdul Wahid, but his voice cracked as he turned his head away.
“No, no, you will stay and we will go upstairs with George and have something to eat,” said Mrs. Ali. “We will not leave things like this.” She looked flustered. She chewed her bottom lip and then projected toward him a smile that was painfully false. “Thank you for your offer, Major, but everything is fine here. We will make our own arrangements.”
“If you’re sure,” said the Major. He felt an unseemly fascination, like a driver who has slowed down to peer at a road accident. Mrs. Ali moved toward the door and he had no choice but to follow. He added, in a whisper, “Did I do wrong in bringing her here?”
“No, no, we are delighted to have them,” she said loudly. “It turns out that they may be related to us.” A last puzzle piece slipped into place and the Major saw in his mind an image of little George frowning and looking so much like Abdul Wahid. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mrs. Ali’s face was a mask of exhausted politeness and he did not want to say something that might break the fragile veneer.
“Extra relatives are useful, I suppose—additional bridge player at family parties, or another kidney donor,” he babbled. “I congratulate you.” A small smile lifted her weary face for a moment. He wished he could hold her hand and ask her to unburden herself to him, but the nephew was still glowering.
“Thank you also for your chivalrous deception about the dance, Major,” added Mrs. Ali. “I’m sure the ladies meant well, but I am glad to decline their request.”
“I am hoping you will not prove me a liar, Mrs. Ali,” he replied, trying to speak quietly. “It would be my honor and pleasure to escort you to the dance.”
“My aunt would not dream of attending,” said Abdul Wahid loudly. His jaw quivered. “It is not appropriate.”
“Abdul Wahid, you will not attempt to lecture me on what is appropriate,” said Mrs. Ali sharply. “I will rule my own life, thank you.” She turned to the Major and extended her hand. “Major, I accept your kind invitation.”
“I’m much honored,” said the Major.
“And I’m hoping we can continue to discuss literature,” she said in a clear voice. “I missed our Sunday appointment very much.” She did not smile as she said it and the Major felt a sting of disappointment that she was using him to wound her nephew. As he raised his hat to say goodbye, he noticed that the tension had returned. Or perhaps tension was the wrong word; as he walked away he thought that it was more like a low-grade despair. He paused at the corner and looked back. He was sure the three people in the shop had many hours of painful discussion ahead of them. The shop window revealed nothing but patchy, glittering reflections of street and sky.
Chapter 12
It was not cricket season, so the Major was confused for a moment by the muffled sound of wickets being hammered into turf. The sound shivered along the grassy rise of the field at the bottom of the garden and flushed a few pigeons from the copse on the hill. The Major, carrying a mug of tea and the morning paper, went down to the fence to investigate.
There was not much to see, only a tall man in rubber boots and a yellow waterproof coat consulting a theodolite and a clipboard while two others, following his directions, paced out lengths and hammered bits of orange-tipped wood into the rough grass.
“Major, don’t let them see you,” said a disembodied voice in a loud stage whisper. The Major looked around.
“I’m keeping my head down,” said the voice, which he now recognized as belonging to Alice from next door. He walked toward the hedge, peering to see where she was.
“Don’t look at me,” she said in an exasperated tone. “They’ve probably spotted you, so just keep looking about as if you’re alone.”
“Good morning to you, Alice,” said the Major, swallowing some tea and “looking about” as well as he could. “Is there some reason we’re being so covert?”
“If we’re going to take direct action, it won’t do for them to see our faces,” she explained, as if to a small child. She was crouched on a folding camp stool in the tiny space between her own compost box and the hedge that divided her garden from the field. She did not seem bothered by the slight tang of rotting vegetables. Risking a quick glance, the Major saw a tripod and telescope poked into the greenery. He also noticed that Alice’s attempts at discretion did not extend to clothing, which included a magenta sweater and orange pants in some kind of baggy hemp.
“Direct action?” asked the Major. “What kind of—”
“Major, they’re surveying for houses,” said Alice. “They want to concrete over this entire field.”
“But that can’t be true,” said the Major. “This is Lord Dagenham’s land.”
“And Lord Dagenham intends to make a pretty penny from selling his land and building houses on it,” said Alice.
“Perhaps he’s just putting in new drains.” The Major always found he became deliberately more cautious and rational around Alice, as if her woolly enthusiasms might seep into his own consciousness. He liked Alice, despite the handmade posters for various causes that she taped in her windows and the overblown appearance of both her garden and her person. Both seemed to suffer from a surfeit of competing ideas and a commitment to the organic movement.
“Drains, my arse,” said Alice. “Our intelligence suggests there’s an American connection.” The Major felt a shift again in his gut. He was miserably sure she was right. There was a slow murder going on all over England these days as great swaths of fields were divided into small, rectangular pieces, like sheep pens, and stuffed with identical houses of bright red brick. The Major blinked hard, but the men would not disappear. He felt a sudden desire to go back to bed and pull the covers up over his head.
“Since they’ve seen your face, you might as well go and interrogate them,” said Alice. “See if they crack under direct confrontation.”
The Major walked around into the field and asked to speak to the man in charge. He was directed to the tall man, in glasses and a neat shirt and tie under his yellow coat, who seemed perfectly pleasant as he shook hands but politely refused to explain his presence.
“I’m afraid it’s all quite confidential,” he said. “Client’s all hush-hush.”
“
I quite understand,” said the Major. “Most people round here have a quite ridiculous dislike of any kind of change and can make themselves a nuisance.”
“Well, exactly,” said the man.
“When I shoot with Dagenham on the eleventh, I’ll have to ask him for a private peek at the plans,” said the Major. “I’m quite interested in architecture—in an amateur capacity, of course.”
“I can’t promise they’ll have all the architectural plans by then,” said the man. “I’m just the engineer. We have to do all the top fields, and then there’s the traffic studies for the commercial area, which takes time.”
“Yes, of course the commercial will take some months, I imagine.” The Major felt quite faint. Behind him, he could feel Alice’s eye at the telescope watching. “What should I tell people if they ask?”
“If they’re persistent, I tell ’em it’s drains,” said the man. “Everyone’s in favor of drains.”
“Thanks very much,” said the Major, turning away. “I’ll tell Lord Dagenham you’re on top of things.”
“And tell ’em not to try pulling out my stakes,” said the man. He cocked his head at the buzz of a small plane approaching and jabbed his thumb skyward. “Aerial photos of every completed site. Usually beats the local vandals.”
Back behind his own gate, the Major felt a small spasm of grief. He had been feeling better in recent days and it was a surprise to find that his sorrow over his brother had not gone away but had been merely hiding somewhere waiting to ambush him on just such an occasion. He felt his eyes water and he pressed the fingernails of his free hand into his palm to stop it. He was keenly aware of Alice, crouched behind the hedge.
“My informant is back,” said Alice into a cell phone. The Major was sure she would have preferred a two-way radio. “I’ll debrief right away.”
“I’m afraid you may be right,” said the Major, being careful not to look down at her. He gazed instead at the sunlit rear façades of the houses camped out like so many sleeping cows along the edge of the field. “It’s houses for sure—and some commercial component.”
“Good God, it’s a whole new town,” said Alice into the phone. “Not a moment to lose, of course. We must take action right away.”
“If anyone asks you, please tell them I said it was drains,” said the Major, preparing to retire to the house for a second cup of tea. He felt quite ill.
“You can’t just walk away from this,” said Alice. She stood up, phone still pressed to the ear. He wondered who was on the end of the phone and pictured a group of faded hippies, with ripped jeans and balding heads. “You must join us, Major.”
“I’m as upset as you are,” said the Major. “But we don’t have all the facts. We should contact the council and find out where we stand regarding planning permission and so on.”
“Okay, the Major will head up communications,” said Alice into the phone.
“No, really …” began the Major.
“Jim wants to know if you could whip up a few posters,” Alice said.
“That would be rather too arty for me,” said the Major, wondering who Jim was. “Not one for the Magic Markers.”
“The Major is reluctant to join us, officially,” said Alice into her phone. “With his connections, maybe he can be our unofficial man on the inside?” There was some excited chatter from the other end of the phone. Alice looked the Major up and down. “No, no, he’s completely reliable.”
She turned away and the Major could barely hear what she was saying behind the broad curtain of her curly hair. He leaned toward her. “I’m prepared to vouch for him,” he heard her say.
The Major found it slightly preposterous but touching that Alice Pierce should be vouching for him. He could not be sure that he would be able to do the same for her if called upon. He perched on the side arm of the bench that sheltered under the dividing hedge and let his head flop onto his chest with a sigh. Alice shut her cell phone and he could feel her looking at him.
“I know you love this village more than anyone,” she said. “And I know how much Rose Lodge means to you and your family.” She spoke with an unusual gentleness. He swiveled to look at her and was touched to see it was entirely genuine.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been quite a while in your house, too.”
“I’ve been able to be very happy here,” she said. “But it’s only been twenty years, which hardly counts in this village.”
“It makes me feel old and foolish—I assumed progress couldn’t touch our little corner of the world,” he said.
“It’s not about progress,” she said. “It’s about greed.”
“I refuse to believe Lord Dagenham would give up his lands like this,” said the Major. “He’s always supported the countryside. He’s a shooting man, for heaven’s sake.” Alice shook her head as if at his naïveté.
“We’re all in favor of preserving the countryside until we see how much money we can make by adding on, adding up, or building down the back of the garden. Everyone’s green except for their one little project, which they assure us won’t make much difference—and suddenly whole villages are sprouting attic windows and two-car garages and mum-in-law extensions.” She rubbed her hands through her hair, shaking out the curly mass and smoothing it backward. “We’re all as guilty as Dagenham—he’s just on a bigger scale.”
“There is his obligation to stewardship,” said the Major. “I’m sure he will realize and change his mind.”
“When that fails, we fight,” she said. “It’s never over until you’ve charged the bulldozers and been thrown in jail.”
“I admire your enthusiasm,” said the Major. He stood up and threw the dregs of his tea over a dead dahlia. “But I cannot, in good conscience, assist you with any civic unrest.”
“Civic unrest? This is war, Major,” said Alice, chuckling at him. “Man the barricades and break out the Molotov cocktails!”
“You do what you must,” said the Major. “I shall write a stern letter to the planning officer.”
That afternoon, the Major walked down to the postbox with his letter and stood for some time, envelope in hand. Perhaps he had been too blunt in his request. He had excised the words “we demand” from several places and replaced them with “we request” but still he felt he was putting the planning officer on the spot. At the same time, he had feared Alice would not look kindly on his being overly polite, so he had added a phrase or two about the need for transparency and the council’s responsibility for the stewardship of the land. He had toyed with “sacred land” but to avoid confusion with fields owned by the church had made it “ancient” at the last minute. He had also debated copying the letter directly to Lord Dagenham but decided that this might be put off, perhaps until a date after the duck shoot, without any serious moral compromise. The insertion of a crisp folded letter into a fresh envelope always gave him pleasure, and as he looked at the envelope now, he decided his words were adequately composed and the letter suitably concise and grave. He popped the envelope into the box with satisfaction and looked forward to the entire matter being resolved in an amicable manner between reasonable men. The letter posted, he was free to look at the village shop and decide, as if hit by a sudden idea, to go in and inquire after Mrs. Ali and her nephew.
Inside the shop, Mrs. Ali was seated at the counter pushing small squares of silk into the raffia baskets that she usually filled with sandalwood candles and packets of tuberose and eucalyptus bath salts. Wrapped in cellophane and a silk bow, they were popular gifts. The Major had bought two the year before to give to Marjorie and Jemima for Christmas.
“Those sell quite well, I believe,” he said, by way of greeting. Mrs. Ali looked startled, as if she had not paid attention to the doorbell. Perhaps, he thought, she had not expected to see him.
“Yes, they are the favorite last-minute purchase of people who have entirely forgotten the person for whom they must buy,” said Mrs. Ali. She appeared agitated, twirling a completed basket at t
he end of her long slender fingers. “There is profit in panic, I suppose.”
“You appeared to be somewhat in distress yesterday,” he said. “I came to see whether everything was all right.”
“Things are … difficult,” she said at last. “Difficult, but possibly also very good.” He waited for her to elaborate, finding himself curious in a way that was entirely unfamiliar. He did not change the conversation, as he would have done if Alec or some other friend had ventured to hint at some personal difficulty. He waited and hoped that she would continue.
“I’ve finished polishing the apples,” said a small voice. The boy, George, came from the back of the store holding a clean duster in one hand and a small green apple in the other. “This one is much smaller than the others,” he added.
“That is just much too small to sell, then,” said Mrs. Ali. “Would you like to eat it up for me?”
“Yes, please,” said George, his facing breaking into a large grin. “I’ll go and wash it.” He walked to the back of the shop. Mrs. Ali watched him all the way and the Major watched her as her face relaxed into a smile.
“I would say you have a special touch with children,” said the Major. “However, in the case of straight bribery one should reserve judgment.” He had meant to make her laugh, but when she looked up at him her face was grave. She smoothed her hands along her skirt and he noticed that her hand trembled.
“I have to tell you something,” she began. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but if I do, perhaps it will help make things real….” Her voice died away and she examined the backs of her hands as if searching for her lost thought among the faint blue veins.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he said. “But be assured anything you choose to tell me will be kept in complete confidence.”
“I am in some confusion, as you can see,” she said, looking at him again with just a hint of her usual smile. He waited. “Amina and George stayed with us last night,” she began. “It turns out that George is my great-nephew. He is Abdul Wahid’s son.”