Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

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.

“They surely can’t force you . . .” he began.

“Not legally,” she said. “My wonderful Ahmed broke with family tradition to make sure the shop came to me. However, there are cer­tain debts to be paid. And then again, what is the rule of law against the weight of family opinion?” She made a left turn, squeezing into a small gap in the hurtling traffic of the coast road. “Is it worth the struggle, one must ask, if the result is the loss of family and the breaking of tradition?”

“I’m not feeling as washed out as before,” he said. “You drive very well.”

“I like to drive,” she said, smiling at him. “Just me and the engine. No one to tell me what I should be doing. No accounts, no inventory—just the possibilities of the open road and many unseen destinations.”

“You have family, of course.”

“Yes, quite an extended family.” He detected a dryness in her tone. “But it is not the same as the infinite bond between a husband and wife.”

The age of great men, when a single mind of intelligence and vision might change the destiny of the world, was long gone.

She was a butterfly to their scuffle of pigeons.

You must do me the honour of

I tell myself that it does not matter what one reads—favourite authors, particular themes—as long as we read something. It is not even important to own the books.”

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.

Mrs. Ali was, he half suspected, an educated woman, a person of culture.