Wish You Were Here

ie could grab a clump of tissues and hold it out for him.

It should have been like this then, he thinks. Then the weather might have made his tears seem less conspicuous or might have done his crying for him. But, outside, the morning had been merely grey and damply stil .

He couldn’t remember when he’d last cried, not counting when he was a nipper and it was al owable. Or if he’d cried at al since then. But yes he had, of course he had, and he could remember exactly when. Tears on his pil ow. But never in front of anyone. Certainly never in front of El ie. So it had been a shock to her. Perhaps even a disappointment.

Not even when his mum died. He hadn’t let his eyes wel up in front of El ie. As if El ie would have had any softness left for missing mothers. And he’d been twenty-one by then, a man’s age. And now, when he was thirty- nine, he’d felt as El ie put her arms around him just a touch of hardness in them, just the hint of a restraint in their comfort. I’m not your mother, Jack, don’t cry like a baby.

True enough. If it was al his fault, how should tears come into it? Tom had gone off to be a soldier—and he wanted to sit here and cry? He’d dried his eyes before El ie could dry them for him. But he’d known that he hadn’t cried enough, not nearly enough. That little bit of crying had only made him aware that there was a whole lot more crying left inside him, a whole tankful. He’d just put the stopper back on his tears.

As for El ie, her eyes hadn’t even gone dewy.

And that maybe settled something, final y took away, on that painful day, one foolish niggle. Namely, that he’d always wondered and never could quite put the thought aside, whether Tom and El ie had ever … Whether El ie and Tom … On a Wednesday afternoon, say. Given Tom’s general quickness off the mark.

Surely not. Though would he actual y have minded—even that? Just once in a while. If Tom, as it turned out, was going to pack himself off anyway. But the question was more whether he’d have minded to know it now. Now that Tom was packed off for ever. No, he wouldn’t have minded.

He wouldn’t have minded it even back then, if he’d known then that one day Tom would be packed off for ever. What’s mine is yours, Tom.

Surely not. But when Jack, after Tom left, had gone over to Westcott Farm to spend afternoons with El ie, Tom’s name had rarely come up between them. And Jack, with his sliver of suspicion, had supposed this was because El ie would have wanted to stay off the subject, while he didn’t want to force it either. Finished business anyway.

But even on that July afternoon at Jebb, with that other letter in the Big Bedroom, when the subject of Tom should have come up, when he should have brought it up, he’d kept warily silent. It was El ie who’d brought it up for him. “I know what you’re thinking,” she’d said, holding her mug of tea under her chin. “But he made his decision, didn’t he, and when did you last hear a peep out of him? I don’t think you have to tel him anything. Forget him, Jack.” And if she could say that, then perhaps his mind should have been settled al along. At least on that score.

. . .

HE’D WIPED AWAY his tears and El ie’s eyes had stayed dry. Then a silence had stretched between them, a silence in which the look on El ie’s face had seemed to say: Don’t make this difficult, Jack. This is tough news, don’t make it tougher. And even he could see, even then, that it might have been tougher even than this. Tom might have come back in a wheelchair. He might have come back like a big, helpless baby.

Then El ie had gone to fil the kettle. Certain moments in life, it seemed, required the fil ing of a kettle. Kettles got fil ed every day, without a thought, several times over.

Nonetheless, there were certain moments.

He heard the gush of water in the kitchen. It would have been a good inducement and a good moment to shed a few more tears while El ie wasn’t looking. And an opportunity—if that’s how it was—for El ie to do a bit of private gushing herself. But he didn’t think so. He only imagined how her hand might be grasping the tap a bit more tightly and for longer than was necessary.

How many kettles had El ie fil ed? That had been the first ever kettle she’d fil ed at Jebb. And she’d done it stark naked. But she’d fil ed enough kettles for him before that, over the years, at Westcott. And she’d have fil ed enough, anyway, for old man Merrick. He felt, with a letter lying in front of him that weighed, of itself, next to nothing, the weight and strain in her arms of al those kettles El ie would have fil ed for Jimmy Merrick. What had she thought that day when her mum had disappeared? And it was a big old farmhouse-kitchen kettle too, it wasn’t like the natty plug-in thing they had here at the Lookout.

When she came back with the tea he knew it was up to him (if it was al his fault) to break the silence, to say something appropriate to the occasion. He might have said any number of things, poor as he was with words. He might have just said, in fact, “Poor Tom. Poor Tom.” But he felt he might already have said that, during his short burst of tears.

Though the words, if they were there, had got so mixed up with the tears that he wasn’t sure if they’d come out like any sort of words that El ie would recognise. It was just a general choking.

He might have said, “I wonder how, exactly.” Or, “I hope it was quick.” He might have said, looking at El ie, “I hope it was damn wel quick.” He might have said, “Why him?” On the other hand, he might have said, “We always knew it was a possibility, didn’t we, El , something like this?” And added, “But we blanked it out, didn’t we?” He’d thought: this is like the cow disease. It was a strange thought to have, but he’d had it. This was like when the cow disease and its real meaning had hit, and he and Tom had waited for Dad to say something, to gather them round the kitchen table, a proper farmhouse meeting, and give them his word. So what now? So what next?

But Dad had never gathered them round, and his strongest course of action had been to stand in the yard alone and spit.

AND THE TRUTH WAS that while that kettle had boiled and even as these useless thoughts had besieged him, a whole series of practical considerations and estimations had also run through Jack’s head, which had added up to the unavoidable certainty of a journey. A journey that he—he and El ie—would have to make. The certainty of one journey. And the impossibility, under the circumstances, of another.

So, of al the things he might have said, he’d said that stupid thing. Though he’d said it, he remembered, as if he was truly sorry and as if he was breaking now, to El ie, a piece of terrible news.

“I think we’d better cancel St. Lucia.”

And El ie had looked at him as if it might, indeed, have been the worst thing he could possibly have said. And