Wish You Were Here (31 page)

The Robinsons, he supposed, weren’t around. This was their summer place. It was November. Or their weekend place, and it was a Friday morning. In any case, he imagined they wouldn’t be here, not now. Definitely not now. They would have read their newspapers, put two and two together and—if they’d had any notion at all of driving down this weekend—would have chosen to avoid any awkward association with the property they’d bought. A funeral in the village. Not their affair.

They wouldn’t be here. They’d be safe in their other house, their main house, in Richmond (it had sounded to Jack like a place where rich people lived and had stuck in his mind).

So there was nothing, in theory, to stop him from opening the gate and driving down. Except the wired-up booby trap of the gate itself. Except, even if he got past that, a possible minefield of burglar alarms further down the track. But who would blame him, on this of all days, who would accuse him of unlawful intentions? Trespassing, intruding? On his own birthright?

And if the gate was beyond opening, there was still the option—though he’d have to leave the car by the road like some glaring advert of his presence—of climbing over and walking down. Gates were there to be climbed over. And even if the Robinsons were, by some unlikely chance,
actually in occupation—so what? They’d get a surprise. Would they call the police? (The police would be Ireton.) I’m Jack Luxton. Remember me? I sold you this place. I was passing, and I thought I’d—. I’ve just buried my brother.

So there was nothing to stop him. He stood by the gate, putting his hands on it, gingerly at first. His hands just straddled the black name on the top rail. He felt again the wood of the coffin under his palms.

Tom would have climbed over the gate, Jack was sure of it, quickly dropping his backpack over first, like a thief. But on that dazzling morning, so like this one, he, the big obedient brother, had opened the gate for his father, then, before going to re-join him, had swung it shut, a great fiery rush, despite the coldness of the air, billowing inside him.

He stood in his funeral outfit, his white shirt and black tie matching the white paint and black lettering, the medal still in his top pocket. His mother had once told a story about the medal, which had ended at this very spot. Though it wasn’t a true story, it had never happened. It wasn’t even possible for it to happen. It was his mother’s invention.

His grip tightened on the rail. The Cherokee chugged expectantly beside him. It seemed to be begging a decision—climb over, for God’s sake! Drive away! But he could do neither, as if he might stay here, stuck for ever. At the same time, he had the growing conviction that some hurriedly organised posse of funeral attenders might be heading, even now, down the road from Marleston to round him up.

He gave the gate a sudden heaving shake, as if he
might have ripped it from its hinges, then turned and got back in the car, slamming the door behind him as though slamming a gate upon himself. His hands gripped the steering wheel as fiercely as they’d gripped the rail, and perhaps half a minute passed as he remained staring at the alien black-and-white structure that had so effortlessly defeated him.

He saw in his head the old bare-wood gate. His eyes were blurred, in any case. Thus he failed to notice that he’d left behind two distinct, even identifying indications of his presence.

No traffic had passed in either direction while he’d been stopped and no traffic, pursuing or otherwise, was visible as he set off again, so no one was to know about this almost immediate interruption to his headlong flight (though a whole crowd had witnessed that). But at least until the next rain—which in a day’s time would come sweeping in on the back of south-westerly gales—anyone (including the owners of Jebb Farmhouse, had they been in occupation) might have seen two hand-prints on the top rail, one either side of the black-lettered name. They’d been made by large hands that had obviously grasped the rail with some force, and they were hands that had recently plainly been in contact, for whatever reason, with reddish-brown earth.

He flung the car back onto the road. There were already traces of the same red earth on the steering wheel and when, a little later, as he drove, he violently yanked off his black tie, he left a similar smudge on the white collar of his shirt.

So, he’d at least confirmed one thing. The last time he’d touched and passed through that gate—not
that
gate
but the old one—had truly been after he’d taken his last-ever look at Jebb Farm. At least Ellie had been with him then. She’d already taken her last look at Westcott, and without much difficulty, it seemed. And as they’d left Jebb together (various items that had escaped the auctioneer’s hammer—including a shotgun and a medal in a silk-lined box—in the back) she was in the driving seat, because he’d expressly wanted to be the one to get out and open and close the Jebb gate for the last time and take a last look down the track.

Ellie had been with him then. They were driving to the Isle of Wight. It had been all Ellie’s doing. He’d stood beside her while her father was buried. More to the point, he’d helped carry the coffin.

Now, with a great, unearthly howl that no one heard, he drove madly on.

E
LLIE SITS IN
the lay-by near Holn, not driving anywhere.

When Jack had returned in the dark last night she couldn’t help having the thought: a wounded soldier. That was how the sight of him, in the beam of light from the cottage door, had framed itself for her, as he’d slowly emerged from the car in which she sits stranded now. He’d looked shattered, exhausted. But what had she expected, after such a journey? A wounded soldier. Even so, there he was.

Or was he? For two days she’d lived with the possibility that he might not return at all, but one possibility she clearly hadn’t anticipated was that he might return, but that he wouldn’t be Jack, or not the Jack she knew. And in the eyes of the strange figure who’d blundered towards her she’d seen, she thought, his anticipation of yet another possibility: that he might return to find her gone. But how could that be? Hadn’t he read or listened to any of those messages?

And since she
was
there, why hadn’t he looked pleased to see her, or at least relieved?

Even so. There he was, and so was she, standing in that doorway where she hadn’t stood, it’s true, to watch him go. If she hadn’t been watching then, she was watching now—had been watching and waiting, in fact, for a good half-hour. Knowing only what he’d said before he left, that he’d booked himself on the four-thirty Friday ferry, she’d been waiting in an agony since five-thirty (which would have been pushing it, it’s true). She’d even gone up to the bedroom window so as to spot his lights as soon as they came up the hill.

And Jack, Ellie thinks now, must have seen, as he passed this lay-by, the distant lights of the cottage. A pretty sure sign that someone was there and waiting for him. But had he been looking and did he care?

And what difference did it make, now, if he were never to know how anxiously she’d watched and waited? How she’d seen at last his lights—at such an hour they could only be his—take the turn for Beacon Hill, then travel, like the passage of some luminous, scurrying animal, up the first, hidden stretch of road before appearing, with a full blaze, at the bend by the old chapel. How she’d said aloud, ‘Jack. Jack,’ and how she’d sprung up, to run downstairs, to be at the door, to put right, to reverse all the events of two mornings before.

A casserole was on in the kitchen. A bottle was on the table. All the lights were on. He would surely have understood that she was there. Now he was too. And as she’d stood in the doorway she’d said again, ‘Jack, my Jack.’ Had he even heard?

It had even seemed, as he walked towards her, that he was sorry not to find her gone.

Though what had she expected? And what, since she
hadn’t gone with him, did she deserve? But he was here. Or, say, half here. The other half she might still have to wait for. She’d fed him and put him to bed, realising that she couldn’t demand much more of him, in his condition, than his presence. ‘Ask me later, Ell. Ask me tomorrow.’ Realising also that she couldn’t expect much talk from him now, when two mornings ago he hadn’t had a single word from her.

She’d put him to bed. And he’d slept, in fact, for over twelve hours, not surfacing till after nine (which wasn’t like him at all). But if she’d hoped that a good sleep would really bring him back to her and if she’d hoped that a good breakfast—an all-day breakfast if necessary—would get them talking as they should talk, she was wrong.

He didn’t seem to want any breakfast. He still looked like some invalid. It had all suddenly reminded her of when her dad had begun to get ill, years ago, and she’d flitted coaxingly and motheringly around him, thinking foolishly that a good breakfast might put some life back in him. And maybe for Jack there’d been some weird equivalent of the same memory, and that was how it had begun.

‘You wanted him out the way, didn’t you?’

She’d thought at first he’d meant Tom, and then thought: well, so be it, now she had some facing up, owning up to do. Even so, she hadn’t thought that ‘out the way’ meant any more than that.

Then he’d come up with the really crazy stuff.

‘I’ve always wondered, Ell, how come your dad died so soon after mine? Did they have an agreement?’

This wasn’t about Tom’s death at all. Or was it?

Still he hadn’t yet said anything appalling. She might
even have laughed at him. He’d made a sort of joke. And yes, though she’d never said anything to Jack, she
had
thought at the time that there was a sort of agreement. A connection. The real cause was the state of his liver and the state, on top of that, so it proved, of his lungs. He had lung cancer, the two things were racing each other. Nonetheless, there’d been a trigger. A bad word in the circumstances. Jimmy had started to go downhill soon after Michael’s death. Hardly a cause, but a kind of kinship. It was as if, she’d thought at the time, her father had lost a brother. Or he’d won some contest of survival and had nothing left to prove.

‘It was just how it was,’ she said. ‘You know that. It was just how it happened. He had a bad lung and a bad liver.’

‘And it was handy.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You know what I mean.’

His next words were the same—worse—as if he’d got up, leant across the table and hit her.

‘You helped him along, didn’t you, Ell? You put something in his tea. Or in that flask of his. Wormer, teat dip, I don’t know. Some kind of cow medicine. You put something in his breakfast.’

Strangely, her first thought before she exploded was to continue to picture her father sitting in the kitchen at Westcott, in the chair he always sat in—to think of all those breakfasts she’d cooked for him. Then her second thought was to wonder, almost calmly, whether Jack—or this man in front of her—actually thought she’d put something in
his
breakfast and that was why he didn’t want any.

Then she’d exploded. She might have just laughed. Could you laugh at such a thing? Was Jack—or this man—really saying this? Had he simply come home to her with a great dose of madness? So she said it.

‘Are you mad, Jack? Are you
mad
?’

It was the wrong thing to say, perhaps, to a man who might be really mad. Even to a man who’d come back from all that he must have been through (and she was still to hear about). But she’d said it. And then she’d said, with a great roar of outrage, like some matron barking down a hallway, ‘How
dare
you say such a thing to me? How
dare
you?’

And the madness must have been catching, quickly catching, because only a little while later, after he’d said things to her by way of mad explanation, she’d said back to him, by way of retaliation, things that were equally mad, equally ludicrous and certainly like nothing she’d ever thought might escape her lips.

But, in any case, and almost in the same hot breath, she’d grabbed her handbag, her keys were in it, and opened the door and walked out to the car from which he’d stumbled only the night before. And had got in and screamed off. The rain was only just starting to spit, from a darkening sky, but by the time she got to the main road it was coming down in great slapping squalls, like a warning. But she could hardly turn round now, just because of the weather. And, almost because of it, she drove madly on.

E
LLIE SITS BY
Holn Cliffs. And Jack sits, looking towards her but not knowing it, and seeing again for a moment that white gate at Jebb, though not his now washed-away hand-prints.

Everything is mad now, everything is off its hinges. He’d gone to bury Tom, but now all the things that had once been dead and buried had come back again, and there was only one way forward, he was sure of that. Even Tom himself hadn’t been really buried. He was with him now, in this cottage, he was sure of that too, even if he hadn’t seen him. It was Tom’s trick, Tom’s choice, to appear or not, he knew that by now. Tom might be standing even now at his shoulder. A sniper.

If Ellie had come with him, if she’d only come with him, then perhaps between the two of them they might have buried Tom properly. As they’d been trying to bury him, not properly, for years. Then none of this might be happening. But Tom wasn’t the only one, it seemed to him now, that they’d tried to bury not properly. And he’d gone and said so.

Everything is off its hinges. But his mind is quite clear
and steady and decided. As if some last forbidding gate has now been simply opened for him. All he has to do is walk through, and shut it.

Breakfast was spread over the table. It still is. The smell of bacon reaches him even now.

‘In his tea, Ell. In his breakfast. In his fucking bacon and eggs.’

He knew that he was off his rocker, right off it. But it was the only way he could get to do—calmly and coolly—what he had to do. The trouble was that Ellie had been here. If she hadn’t been, he could have done it already, last night. He could have got the gun. But Ellie was here. But, still, that was all right. It was better, even. He’d seen that it was only proper that Ellie was here. It removed one important complication. He’d slept on it—beside her, though hardly aware of her, so deeply and committedly had he slept. He hadn’t had a single dream. Then he’d thought it out further, lying in bed, while he’d heard her in the kitchen below. There had to be an explosion. An explosion before the explosion—what a policeman might call a ‘domestic situation’.