Wish You Were Here

Al this had flashed through her mind as she’d watched Jack Luxton tremble, then begin to shake, then spil 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 fol ow. 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 smal er.

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 stil see its bluer-than-blue sea and sky and curving beach and crescent of white cliffs, like someone’s broad smile. And she could stil see the face of her mother, Alice Merrick, as she stil was then, who’d handed it to her one morning with a smile.

How her heart had soared. Seethed and soared. El ie, 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 al the stupid, patient, stubborn lengths a woman wil go to for a man. Al the things she wil do. Al her life long. When he wasn’t even, perhaps, when you stood back and looked, that much to speak of real y, that much to bloody write home about. Other women might say, “Him?”

But he’d been al that she had and most of the time, truly, al that she wanted to have. How her fingertips had searched his big body. If only she could have al 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 El ie, Wish you were here.”

14

WHEN HE WATCHED ELLIE close the door behind Major Richards, Jack was stil 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 dril . But he knew he shouldn’t cry again, not in front of El ie. 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 El ie, 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 al , 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. Al it took was a letter. But there was an invisible wal . 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. El ie had stood there in that strange way by the door.

He’d thought: Is she going to cry now, is she final y 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 fol owed, and when, the next day, Major Richards had cal ed again, El ie 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 fol owing 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 formal y 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, real y, 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 normal y 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 ful 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 fol owing the ceremony and that the costs of this transportation, as wel as al 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 undertaker—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.