The protagonist of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is Major Ernest Pettigrew, a 68-year-old widower long retired from the British Army, who lives in a village called Edgecombe St Mary. The novel opens on a day when, having just received the news of his younger brother, Bertie’s demise, he encounters at his doorstep, Mrs Jasmina Ali, the 58-year-old widowed owner of the village shop.
Thus begins the slow-burn love story of an old-fashioned Englishman and an independent-minded woman of Pakistani origin. Major Pettigrew is a stickler for social etiquette and is inordinately-focussed on a pair of vintage Churchill guns his father bequeathed to his brother and himself. Mrs Ali is a woman of quiet dignity and a practical yet empathetic approach even towards her surly nephew who is set to inherit her store.
Published in 2010, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is Helen Simonson’s debut as a novelist. She engages the reader in a story more complex and layered than I expected. It’s a love story that is also a social satire in the disarmingly quaint setting of an English village.
The usual list of stock characters are all present – the snobbish local Lord who is devoted to the village as long as it serves him well, the oddly-attired activist, the obscenely rich American investor with a desire to acquire some old-world class and the typical urbane, social butterfly American love-interest. Other players on this pastoral stage include the golf-playing club members, a gaggle of do-gooder village ladies, and Major Pettigrew’s loud sister-in-law, Majorie and niece, Jemima.
There’s also Major Pettigrew’s only child, Roger who exemplifies everything the older generation holds against younger people. He is obnoxiously ambitious, lacks respect for social propriety and has little time for his father. In a deft twist, the author makes him a foil to his father. They have many similarities, face similar temptations and yet view themselves as being wildly different.
Major Pettigrew is an unlikely hero because he holds many of the flawed ways of thinking that Simonson satirizes. It is his love for Mrs Ali who exists at the sidelines of life in the village that broadens his vision. Spending time with Mrs Ali, over cups of tea and copies of Kipling and long walks in town, gives Major Pettigrew an opportunity to see the biases and prejudices held by his friends and neighbours (most of which are shared by him even if he is too polite to voice them).
Helen Simonson’s novel is about love and family but also colonialism, culture and the smallness of social convention which is often an excuse to exclude people we consider unlike ourselves. Simonson uses her well-intentioned but flawed protagonist to depict a universal truth – that while we see fit to judge others for their actions, we judge ourselves (if at all) on the basis of our intentions.
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’s strengths include dry wit, humour and a charming turn of phrase. I’m reminded of an exchange between Major Pettigrew and his son when Roger and Sandy, his American girlfriend are keen on renting a cottage from a racist old lady. Roger attempts to play down his father’s objections when he says,
“It’s called the real world. If we refused to do business with the morally questionable, the deal volume would drop in half and the good guys like us would end up poor. Then where would we all be?”
“ ‘On a nice dry spit of land known as the moral high ground?’ suggested the Major.”
However, do not pick up Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand expecting pace. In fact, there are some parts which, I found a tad bit too descriptive and frankly, a wee bit slow. Furthermore, this is a character-driven novel which understandably requires it to be more introspective. Sadly, apart from Major Pettigrew, most of the characters are abandoned after establishing one or two traits, robbing them of any sort of depth.
The most disappointing in that respect is Simonson’s treatment of Mrs Ali, a character with great emotional reserve, intelligence and gumption and yet, we never get an insight into her views on anything weightier than Kipling’s writing. I was looking forward to her character to being fleshed out even if only via dialogue since hers is not the character through whose viewpoint we are told the story. Instead, we get description after description of drawing rooms and a fishing lodge.
Nevertheless, this is a heart-warming book about falling in love, cultural barriers and choosing the right thing for oneself and others.
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