Wish You Were Here (13 page)

Time was still on her side, she’d thought, so far as that gap in the picture went. Time and a change of scene. But she’d been twenty-seven then, she was pushing forty now. Years had passed. And though Jack had come out of the shell of his past long ago, even become a new kind of man (all that too had seemed the result of her wishing it), she knew that the obstacle was still Tom, who was still in the picture though out of it.

So when that letter had arrived, via Jebb Farmhouse, saying, with deepest regret, that Tom was dead, Ellie had
felt her hopes fly up once again. Though she hadn’t shown it. It wasn’t so difficult to disguise the feelings she’d always disguised. On the other hand, she wasn’t going to disguise them now to the extent of shedding false tears. Even when Jack had suddenly broken down in tears in a way she’d never seen before.

Her hopes had soared. She couldn’t help it. Tom was truly out of the picture now. Her mind had even foolishly raced ahead—even as Jack, holding that letter, had begun to tremble. She and Jack were in the clear now. Tom would never show up. And, who knows, one immediate, unstoppable effect of all this might be that she would suddenly get her long-thwarted wish. Jack might swing now completely the other way. Who knows, in just a few weeks’ time, in St Lucia, at the Sapphire Bay, in their air-conditioned bungalow with the hot night outside, they might get down to serious work on it. If it was a boy, they might call it Tom, if that’s what he wanted. She wouldn’t mind.

And if it was a girl (she didn’t care) they might call it Vera. Or Marilyn.

All this had flashed through her mind as she’d watched Jack Luxton tremble, then begin to shake, then spill over into tears. It wasn’t a familiar sight, or a pretty one. She’d put her arms round him and felt his big bones grate inside him.

And then, just as quickly, her thoughts had dropped back, sunk back into her own bones, as she’d understood a bigger truth that would only grow bigger, clearer in the hours, days, that would follow. That though Tom wasn’t coming back, yet he
was
coming back. So far as Jack was
concerned, he was coming back big-time. He was coming back to bloody haunt them.

She’d seen the bit of Jack that belonged to Tom, even though he was dead, only growing bigger and the bit of Jack that was hers only growing smaller.

And then Jack had said that thing about St Lucia.

In Ellie’s life, and she was only thirty-nine, there’d been, up to now, only three significant written communications. One was the letter just received by Jack. The second had been that miraculous letter from Uncle Tony’s lawyers. But the first and incomparably the most important at the time had been the postcard that had come once from Jack. She could still see its bluer-than-blue sea and sky and curving beach and crescent of white cliffs, like someone’s broad smile. And she could still see the face of her mother, Alice Merrick, as she still was then, who’d handed it to her one morning with a smile.

How her heart had soared. Seethed and soared. Ellie, at that time, had never seen the sea. Now here she was with Jack, living right by it. Sands End, the Sapphire Bay. One sea or another.

So when she’d shut the front door behind Major Richards, she’d felt like crying herself, having her own portion of tears. Not for poor Tom Luxton, but for all the stupid, patient, stubborn lengths a woman will go to for a man. All the things she will do. All her life long. When he wasn’t even, perhaps, when you stood back and looked, that much to speak of really, that much to bloody write home about. Other women might say, ‘
Him?
’

But he’d been all that she had and most of the time, truly, all that she wanted to have. How her fingertips had searched his big body. If only she could have all of him. And she’d thought once that at last she even had that, and had made a whole future for both of them.

‘Dear Ellie, Wish you were here.’

W
HEN HE WATCHED
Ellie close the door behind Major Richards, Jack was still trembling inside. He felt as if he’d just been told again that Tom was dead, and this time it was real. The first time had been just a rehearsal, a sort of fire drill. But he knew he shouldn’t cry again, not in front of Ellie. Once was enough and even then he’d been brief. It hadn’t helped the first time. It didn’t help anyway.

So he hadn’t, though it had cost him a struggle. He’d looked at Ellie, who’d remained standing oddly by the front door, her back to it, as if there was something bad beyond it, though she’d looked, too, as if she were struggling with something inside her. It was the real shock and truth of it all, perhaps, only now getting through. But he didn’t get up to go to her. He knew that something had come between them since that letter. All it took was a letter. But there was an invisible wall. If he walked across to her now, he’d hit it.

They’d both listened to the sounds of Major Richards starting his car, turning it and driving off down the road to Holn. Ellie had stood there in that strange way by the door. He’d thought: Is she going to cry now, is she finally
going to cry for Tom, so I don’t have to? But she hadn’t cried, not then, nor at any point in the days that followed, and when, the next day, Major Richards had called again, Ellie had picked up the phone and more or less handed it straight to Jack as if it were some matter that was none of her business. ‘Major Richards,’ she’d said as if Jack now had friends in high places.

Major Richards had told Jack he could now confirm that Corporal Luxton’s repatriation, along with that of the two soldiers who’d died with him, would take place on the following Thursday. He’d given the name of an airbase that Jack had vaguely heard of, though he wouldn’t have been able to place it in Oxfordshire. Major Richards had also explained that because of the unusual delay in arranging repatriation (he didn’t explain that this delay was partly down to the delay in contacting Corporal Luxton’s next of kin) and because, meanwhile, thorough post-mortem procedures had been completed overseas, the Oxfordshire coroner, having read the MOD report and satisfied himself of the facts, would be prepared to grant an effectively immediate release. That is, an inquest would be formally opened and at once adjourned on arrival of the repatriation flight, while the bodies could proceed directly, for their funerals, to their respective undertakers.

Major Richards pointed out that, in his experience, this was quite exceptional—for the civil authority to accept the military authority’s findings—and even suggested, in his tone, that Jack ought, really, to be grateful. Jack, who had his own experience of coroners and inquests, didn’t feel it was exceptional. Or, rather, he felt
that everything was now exceptional, so exceptionality had become the norm.

Major Richards was spared from explaining, as he normally had to, though often hinting that it wasn’t a recommendation, that next of kin had the right to view the body while it rested in the coroner’s care. In this instance such a matter would be between Jack and his undertakers. But Major Richards hoped it had never entered Jack’s head.

The situation, anyway, was that Jack was now free to make plans for Corporal Luxton’s funeral—in which, of course, there would be full cooperation. In case Jack hadn’t understood these last remarks, Major Richards spelt it out that Jack would need to decide whether he wanted a private funeral or a funeral with military presence. This could be arranged. That in any case an undertaker’s hearse would need to be at the airbase to receive the coffin following the ceremony and that the costs of this transportation, as well as all the costs of Jack’s and Mrs Luxton’s ‘compassionate travel’, would be met by the army.

Jack (after a silence) had found himself saying the word Devon. The funeral would be in Devon. He’d even blurted out to Major Richards the name of an under-taker—since, limited as Jack’s dealings were in many areas, he’d had dealings in this area, too, before. Babbages in Barnstaple. He’d had to arrange once, with Babbages, his father’s funeral. He knew the ropes in this area. On the other hand, the ropes now were rather different. Then again, his father’s ropes hadn’t been so simple.

Jack had said, ‘Marleston. Marleston, north Devon.’ Then explained for Major Richards’s benefit that the
nearest large town was Barnstaple. At the same time Jack had thought: the Isle of Wight to Oxfordshire, then to Marleston and back again. It would mean at least one night away somewhere.

Major Richards had explained that Jack and Mrs Luxton would be sent further, full details of the ceremony. And of course a formal invitation. To Jack, the word ‘invitation’ didn’t seem like a word that went with the army, though in this case it didn’t seem like the right word anyway. Major Richards had said that meanwhile he’d continue to ‘liaise’ (which seemed a real army word) by phone and even, if convenient, by a further visit, and that Jack shouldn’t hesitate if there were anything he wished to ask.

Though this last point was one Major Richards had made before, in person and with genuine kindness in his voice, Jack somehow felt that, now, it really meant its opposite: that the decent thing was actually to hesitate completely—not to ask anything at all. It was as if Major Richards had become his commanding officer and had just said that any man was free, of course, to back out if he wished, but the decent thing was not to. It was like a test of soldiership.

It had always been, in any case, Jack’s basic position in life to hesitate to ask too many questions. He knew that he would never ask (though he would certainly wonder) exactly how—let alone why—his brother had died (he knew that the army would prefer him not to ask such questions). In the same way that he’d never raised with Ellie the question, the peculiarity of their two fathers dying in such quick succession. Was death so infectious?

*

When he came off the phone, Jack explained to Ellie that they were bringing Tom home. He’d been given a date. There would be a ceremony, at some airbase. And they were free to make immediate arrangements for the funeral.

So far, there hadn’t been much discussion between them about this inevitable prospect. It would have to be at Marleston, of course, Jack now said. It was his decision. Though he wondered soon afterwards—and he wonders still now—how different it might have been if he’d said that they should have the thing done locally. For the closeness and the convenience. At least then Ellie might not have wriggled out. Though would she have liked the idea either?

In the twenty-four hours following Major Richards’s visit Jack had felt that invisible wall settle only more rigidly between them—the wall, so he might have thought of it, of Ellie’s failure to reach out and comfort him. Except it sometimes seemed—it was like an unjust reversal of the situation—that this might stem from some baffling failure on his part to comfort her.

As if he should have said, ‘I’m sorry, Ell. I’m truly sorry.’ Without knowing what for.

A local funeral. A cremation even. So then they might have scattered the ashes—scattered Tom—over Holn Head. Or into the waves at Sands End. Stood together on the beach. Or in among the caravans. But Jack didn’t like the idea of cremation. It called up bad pictures. Being a farmer, he naturally went for burial. And he had the distinct feeling that Tom might have been half-cremated already.

But, anyway, Marleston. Where else? He might have said: where all the rest of them are. All Saints’ churchyard.

They would have to go to this—ceremony. Then they’d have to go on to the funeral in Marleston. They’d have to find somewhere to stay. Though, of course, they’d be just a mile or so from Jebb and Westcott, their former places of residence.

It was important to Jack, though it was also natural, that when he explained these things he used the word ‘we’, just as Major Richards had said ‘you and Mrs Luxton’. In the pit of his stomach there was starting to form a tight ball of fear about this journey, this two-stage journey as it now turned out—about all the things, known and unknown, that it would entail. He hadn’t yet begun to contemplate every daunting detail. Yet it had to be done. It was, though the word was hardly good enough, a duty. And it wasn’t as if he, Jack, was being asked, like his brother, to enter a war zone, and so was entitled to this onset of fear. They’d have to go to a couple of places in England, that’s all, one of them very familiar. And Ellie, Jack told himself, would be beside him.

But Ellie, apparently, had other notions. Ellie, when he gave this account of some of the necessary consequences of his brother’s death, took rapid and rather violent exception to his use of the word ‘we’.

‘Who’s this “we”?’ she suddenly demanded. ‘Who’s this “we”?’ He saw her again, closing the door behind Major Richards, but remaining pressed against it and, so it seemed, trying to resist some further attempt at entry.

‘Leave me out of this, Jack. I can’t come with you.’

Jack was totally unprepared for this, but there was no mistaking the firmness of her position.

‘I just can’t. He’s not my little brother.’

He understood that she was backing out. It was a
legitimate option, though he hadn’t offered it—as if he were Ellie’s commanding officer. He hadn’t said he was asking for volunteers and that any man or woman was of course free to opt out. His big mistake, maybe. If he’d said, ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, Ell,’ then perhaps she would have come. It was how such things worked. But he hadn’t said it and she hadn’t done the decent thing anyway. She hadn’t even backed out decently.

Setting aside the fixed look on her face, Jack couldn’t be sure which of her words struck the hardest. That she wasn’t going to come? That he could no longer take the word ‘we’, meaning Ellie and him, for granted? That Tom wasn’t her brother? That last statement was of course entirely correct, but Jack felt there was a sense, in this particular case, in which Tom
was
Ellie’s brother, in which anyone as close to the matter as Ellie was would have felt, at least for a short while: ‘this is my brother.’ He felt another tremor of that bewildering need to comfort her.

Since Jack was a man already hit hard, he was, in one sense, numbed and immunised against these further blows Ellie was now delivering. But afterwards he realised that it was the word ‘little’ that had hurt him the most. Ellie hadn’t had to say that. Yet it was the word, it seemed, she’d used with the greatest force. ‘Little.’