“It was lucky you had a spare pudding.” The Major had searched Roger’s cupboards but found only assorted nuts and a large brown bag of biscotti.
“Thank my niece for always sending me a hamper instead of visiting,” said Grace, lifting her glass of champagne in response. She had brought a large tote bag filled with the pick of the hamper and had already spread crackers with smoked oysters, tipped cranberry sauce with spiced orange into a cut-glass dish, and set the Cornish cream to chill on the scullery windowsill. There would be Turkish delight and shortbread for later, and a half bottle of port to aid digestion. The Major had even managed to work out how to use Roger’s stereo system, which had no visible buttons and was controlled from the same remote control as the fireplace. After a few false starts—a moment of loud rock music and leaping pyrotechnics in the pebble basket being the worst—he had managed to arrange both a low fire and a quiet Christmas concert from the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
The Major did not have to go and wake his son: the phone rang and he heard Roger pick it up. He was putting the finishing touches to the table and knocking about Grace’s carefully placed sprigs of holly, when Roger appeared, neatly dressed in a navy sweater and slacks and smoothing down his hair.
“Thought I heard you earlier,” said Roger, looking with some queasiness at the table. “You didn’t make dinner, did you?”
“Grace and I made it together,” said the Major. “Are you up for champagne, or would you like a plain club soda?”
“Nothing for me just yet,” said Roger. “I can’t really face it.” He shifted from foot to foot in the manner of a hovering waiter. “Grace is here, too?”
“She’s done most of the cooking and supplied the pudding,” said the Major. “Why don’t you just sit down and I’ll ask her to join us.”
“Only the thing is, I didn’t realize you’d be going to all this trouble,” said Roger. He was looking out the window now and the Major felt a slow but familiar sinking feeling. “I thought it was all canceled.”
“Look, if you can’t manage to eat, that’s perfectly understandable,” said the Major. “You’ll just sit and relax and maybe later you’ll feel like having a turkey sandwich or something.” Even as he said this, he felt as if Roger were slipping away from him somehow. There was a look of absence in the eyes and the way he stood, balanced on the balls of his feet, suggested that either Roger or the room was about to shift sideways. In the absence of any imminent earthquake, the Major could only assume that Roger was about to move. A small car pulled up outside, the top of its roof only just visible over the gate.
“It’s just that Gertrude is here to pick me up,” said Roger. “I was awfully cut up about the row with Sandy, you see, and Gertrude was so understanding …” He trailed off. The Major, feeling rage stiffen the sinews of his neck and choke his speech, said, in the quietest of voices, “Grace DeVere has made you Christmas dinner.” At that moment, Grace came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
“Oh, hello, Roger, how do you feel?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” said Roger. “I’m very grateful about the dinner, Grace, only I don’t think I can eat a thing right now.” He looked out of the window and waved at Gertrude, whose head was now smiling above the gate. She waved back and the Major raised a hand in automatic greeting. “And my father didn’t tell me you were here, you see, and I promised Gertrude I’d go to the manor and play bridge.” A faint redness about the ears told the Major that Roger knew he was behaving badly. He pulled out his cell phone as if it were evidence. “She’s being so good calling me and trying to take care of me.”
“You can’t go,” said the Major. “Out of the question.”
“Oh, he mustn’t stay because of me,” said Grace. “I’m quite the interloper.”
“You are no such thing,” said the Major. “You are a very true friend and—we consider you to be quite family, don’t we, Roger?” Roger gave him a look of such crafty blandness that the Major itched to slap him.
“Absolutely,” said Roger with enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t go if Grace wasn’t here to keep you company.” He went around the couch, took Grace’s hand, and gave her a loud kiss on the cheek. “You and Grace deserve to enjoy a nice dinner together without me groaning on the couch.” He dropped her hand and sidled toward the hallway. “I wouldn’t go at all, but I promised Gertrude and her uncle that I’d make up the numbers,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few hours, tops.” With that, he disappeared into the hall and the Major heard the front door open.
“Roger, you’re being an ass,” said the Major, hurrying after him.
“Make sure you leave me all the cleaning up,” said Roger, waving from the gate. “And if you decide not to wait for me, just leave the door on the latch.” With that he jumped in Gertrude’s car and they drove away.
“That’s it,” said the Major, stamping his way back into the living room. “I am done with that young man. He is no longer my son.”
“Oh, dear,” said Grace. “I expect he is very unhappy and not thinking straight. Don’t be too hard on him.”
“That boy hasn’t thought straight since puberty. I should never have allowed him to resign from the Boy Scouts.”
“Would you like to eat dinner, or should we call the whole thing off?” Grace asked. “I can just put everything in the fridge.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” said the Major, “I don’t think I can stand that awful Christmas tree a minute longer. What say you we wrap everything in foil and organize a relocation to Rose Lodge where we can have a real fire, a small but living Christmas tree, and a nice dinner for the two of us?”
“That would be lovely,” said Grace. “Only perhaps we should leave something here for Roger when he returns?”
“I’ll leave him a note suggesting he find the turkey’s other wing,” said the Major darkly. “It’ll be like dinner and party games all in one.”
Chapter 20
Soon after the New Year, the Major admitted to himself that he was in danger of succumbing to the inevitability of Grace. Their relationship had developed a gravitational pull, slow but insistent, as a planet pulls home a failing satellite. In his unhappiness, he had allowed this slow drift to happen. After their Christmas dinner, at which he offered a profusion both of champagne and apologies, he had allowed her to bring him a cold game pie in aspic on Boxing Day. He also accepted her invitation to “just a quiet, early supper” on New Year’s Eve and invited her to tea on two occasions in return.
She had brought him a draft of an introduction to the small book she was compiling on her research into local families and, with a tremble in her voice, asked if he might be willing to take a look at it for her. He had agreed and had been pleasantly surprised to find she wrote quite well, in a journalistic way. Her sentences were plain but managed to avoid both academic dryness and the excess of purplish adjectives he might have feared from an amateur lady historian. With his help, he thought, it might find publication in some small way. He was pleased that they would have this work between them during the dark months of winter.
Tonight, however, would be the second time this week he had been asked to dinner at her house and had accepted. This, he realized, merited closer examination of his own intentions.
“I saw Amina and little George at the mobile library this morning, picking out some appalling books,” said Grace as they finished up their plates of steamed haddock, buttered potatoes, and a homemade winter salad. “I can’t imagine who thinks it’s suitable to teach reading through a book of pop-up potty monsters.”
“Indeed,” said the Major, busy picking plump golden raisins out of his salad. They were one of the few things he couldn’t abide; with Grace he felt comfortable enough to remove them. She would not comment, but he had an idea that she would make sure to leave them out next time.
“I told the librarian she should exercise more control,” continued Grace. “She said I was welcome to take over if I didn’t like it, and I should be gr
ateful it wasn’t all just DVDs.”
“Well, that was very rude of her.”
“Oh, I deserved it completely,” said Grace. “It’s so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one’s own shortcomings, isn’t it?”
“When one has as few shortcomings as you, Grace, one has leisure to look around and make suggestions,” he said.
“You are very kind, Major and I think you, too, are perfectly fine as you are.” She rose to take their empty plates to the kitchen. “And after all, everyone needs a few flaws to make them real.”
“Touché,” he said.
After dinner, he sat in an armchair while she clattered dishes and made tea in her small kitchen. She would not let him help, and it was difficult to make conversation through the small pine-shuttered hatch in the wall, so he dozed, hypnotized by the fierce blue cones of the gas fire’s flames.
“Anyway, Amina says Jasmina’s not coming to the wedding,” said Grace through the hatch. He raised his eyes abruptly, knowing that he had heard but not registered a much longer sentence of which this was merely the footnote.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t hear.”
“I said I had hoped to see Jasmina again when she came for the wedding,” said Grace. “When she wrote to me, I wrote back right away and asked her to please come and see me.” Her face disappeared from the hatch again and the Major could hear the squeaks and clicks of the dishwasher being set into operation.
“She wrote to you?” he asked the room at large. Grace did not answer, being engaged with maneuvering a silver tea tray too large for her narrow, sharp-cornered hallway. He went to the door and received the tray from her, angled to squeeze in at the door jambs.
“I really should get a nice little melamine tray,” she said. “This one is so impractical, but it’s about the last thing of my mother’s that I’ve kept.”
“She wrote to you?” The Major tried to keep his voice casual even as his throat constricted with the sudden hurt this information caused him. He concentrated on the task of fitting the tray within the raised brass rail of the coffee table.
“She wrote to me right after she left and apologized for running off without saying goodbye. I wrote back, and I sent a Christmas card—nothing religious on it, of course—but I haven’t heard from her since.” Grace stood smoothing her skirt down toward her knees. “Have you heard from her?” she asked and he thought she stood a little too still as she waited for a reply.
“I never heard from her,” he said. The gas fire seemed to hiss at him unpleasantly.
“It’s all a bit strange,” she said and, after a long moment of quiet: “You still miss her.”
“I’m sorry?” he asked, fumbling for a suitable reply.
“You miss her,” repeated Grace and now her eyes were firmly fixed on him. His own gaze wavered. “You are not happy.”
“It is a moot point,” he said. “She made her choice very clear.” He hoped this was enough to change the subject, but Grace only walked over to the window and pulled aside the lace curtain to peer out into the featureless night. “One feels quite powerless,” he admitted.
The room pressed in on him. The oval mantel clock ticked on oblivious to the shift in tension in the room. The flowered wallpaper, which had seemed cozy, now breathed dust onto the dull carpet. The teapot cooled and he could almost feel the cream drifting to scum on the surface of the milk jug. He felt a sudden horror at the thought of his life boxed into a series of such rooms.
“I have a feeling she is not happy where she is,” said Grace. “You should look in on her on your way to Scotland. Aren’t you going up for some shooting?”
“It’s not my place to interfere,” he said.
“It’s a pity you can’t just storm in and fetch her back,” said Grace. “She could be your very own damsel in distress.”
“Life is not a Hollywood film,” he snapped. He wondered why on earth she was pushing at him like this. Couldn’t she tell he was ready to declare his affection for her?
“I’ve always admired you for being a sensible man,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t like to speak up, but usually I can tell that you know the right thing to do.” He sensed that what was coming might not be a compliment. However, she seemed to catch herself; she merely sighed and added, “Perhaps none of us knows the right thing to do.”
“You’re a sensible woman, too,” said the Major. “I didn’t come here tonight to talk about Mrs. Ali. She made her choice and it is high time I moved on and made some choices of my own. Do come and sit down, dear Grace.” He patted the armchair next to his and she came over and sat down.
“I would like you to be happy, Ernest,” she said. “We all deserve that.” He took her hand and patted the back of it.
“You are very good to me, Grace,” he said. “You are intelligent, attractive, and supportive. You are also very kind and you are not a gossip. Any man who is not a fool would be happy to call you his own.” She laughed, but her eyes seemed to be brimming.
“Oh Ernest, I think you just listed the perfect qualities in a neighbor and the worst possible qualifications for passion.” He was shocked for an instant by the word “passion,” which seemed to crash through several conversational boundaries at once. He felt himself blushing.
“You and I are perhaps too—mature—for the more impetuous qualities,” he said, stumbling to find a word other than “old.”
“You must speak for yourself,” she said gently. “I refuse to play the dried rose and accept that life must be tepid and sensible.”
“At our age, surely there are better things to sustain us, to sustain a marriage, than the brief flame of passion?” She hesitated and they both felt the weight of the word hang between them. A tear made its way down her cheek and he saw that she had continued to avoid face powder and that she looked quite beautiful even in the rather overly bright room.
“You are mistaken, Ernest,” she said at last. “There is only the passionate spark. Without it, two people living together may be lonelier than if they lived quite alone.” Her voice had a gentle finality, as if he were already putting on his coat and leaving her. Some contrary spirit, perhaps his own pride, he thought, made him stubborn in the face of what he knew to be true.
“I came here tonight to offer you my companionship,” he said. “I had hoped it would lead to more.” He could not honestly repeat the word “marriage” as he had planned a much more gradual increase in intimacy and had not indeed prepared any irrevocable declarations.
“I will not have you, Ernest,” she said. “I care for you very much, but I do not want to make any compromises with the rest of my years.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, like a child, and smiled. “You should go after her.”
“She will not have me either,” he said, and his gloom betrayed the truth of everything Grace had said. He looked at her, horrified, but she did not seem angry.
“You won’t know that if you don’t ask her, will you?” said Grace. “I’ll go and get you her address.”
Grace hugged her arms about her as she watched him try to pull on his coat in the hallway without putting an elbow through one of the many small prints hanging on the wall. He set a sheep on a crag rattling in its black frame and she stepped to steady it. Close to her like this, he was overwhelmed with shame at the shabbiness of his own behavior and he put a hand on her arm. For an instant, all they had said hung in the balance; he had only to squeeze her arm and she would lose her resolve and take him after all. Such an awful fragility of love, he thought, that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior. She pulled away from him and said, “Be careful on the step, it’s very icy.” He had a witty comment to add, inviting her to take a slap at him or something, but he thought better of it.
“You are a remarkable woman, Grace,” he said. Then he hunched his shoulders against the cold and his own failings and stepped into the night.
Telling Roger that the journey to S
cotland would include a detour to visit Mrs. Ali was not the sort of thing one could successfully manage on the telephone. So, on the Sunday before, the Major tapped lightly on the door knocker at Roger’s cottage. The frost was still deep and the sun only a vague promise in the mid-morning sky; he blew on his hands and stamped his feet against the cold as he looked with dismay at the window boxes with their withered holly and dead white roses left over from Christmas. The windows looked smeary, too, and mud on the doorstep suggested that no one was taking care of the place now that Sandy was gone.
He tapped again, the sound reverberating like a pistol shot in the hedges, and saw a twitch of curtain in the cottage opposite. Footsteps, banging, and a muttered curse preceded Roger, who opened the door wrapped in a duvet over flannel pajamas and sporting flip-flops over his socks.
“Aren’t you up?” asked the Major, feeling cross. “It’s eleven o’clock.”
“Sorry, bit of a hangover,” said Roger, leaving the door wide open and trailing back into the living room, where he collapsed onto the couch and groaned.
“Is this becoming a daily condition for you?” asked the Major, looking about him at the room. Takeout containers sat congealing on the coffee table. The Christmas tree still bristled with black intensity, but its feet were covered in dust. The couch and chaise had slid away from their razor-sharp alignment and now sat askew on the rug, as dazed as Roger. “This place is a disgrace, Roger.”
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