Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernieres

Author:Louis de Bernieres [Bernieres, Louis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE HAPPY DEATH OF THE GENERAL

THE GENERAL, MC, DSO, veteran of Burma and the Malayan Emergency, late of Sam Browne’s Cavalry and the 9th/12th Lancers, goes out into his garden at half past seven in the morning and inhales the air deeply. Across the de Vico fields comes the cuckoo call of Miss Agatha Feakes as she summons her menagerie, and from behind the row of council houses comes the splutter of John the gardener’s secret motorcycle as he sets off to work on the stud farm of the ever-absent Shah of Iran.

The General flexes and stretches the muscles of his arms, and then squats down and bounces against the elastic sinew of his thighs. It would be clear to any observer, should there be one, that here is a man who has been strong and healthy all his life. He is barrel-chested, solid and hairy. There is something faintly simian about both his body and his face. His eyes are small, round and black, and the skin of his back is dark brown from years under the sun both in the tropics and in his Surrey garden, where he cultivates azaleas and hydrangeas in the acidic soil. The General believes in cold showers, the Englishness of God and the civilising effect of the Empire. He loves his country, his wife, his walking stick, his pipe collection, his old black Labrador and his Rover P4. He has had them respectively for eighty-five years, fifty years, forty-five years, forty years, twelve years and ten years. His wife has recently died, taken off by cancer’s cruellest devising, but it doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet, and he still makes two cups of tea in the morning, uncomplainingly removing hers from her side of the bed as soon as it goes cold. He improvises strange crude suppers for both of them, and eats her portion cold for lunch on following days. He has attempted to use the washing machine and has now, on maximum temperature, shrunk all of her old jerseys and cardigans, folding the felted, miniaturised versions back into the woollens compartment of her chest of drawers. Now that she isn’t wearing them, it seems a good opportunity to get them all clean and ready.

Anyone observing the General’s robustness as he deep-breathes in his garden in early summer, amid the blooms of his azaleas, would find it easier to do so on account of his nudity. He has emerged in a state of nakedness out of sheer innocence, and now he goes back indoors with the fixed intention of driving to Haslemere to buy something, although quite what he does not yet know. He scrutinises himself in the hall mirror, and beetles his brows in puzzlement. ‘Dear me, old boy,’ he says to himself at last, ‘you’ve forgotten your tie. Letting yourself go. Can’t have that. Have to give yourself a good dressing-down.’

He strides upstairs, reaches a regimental tie from the wardrobe, realises that he needs a collar around which to tie it and fetches a shirt from its hanger.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.