be photographs, as wel as some words from relatives and commanding officers. Major Richards had asked Jack if, for the purpose, there were any particular words he wished to say. Then Jack had found Major Richards suggesting—composing—a statement for him. It seemed to Jack that Major Richards had already had the statement ready in his head. It was a bit like writing that postcard to El ie.
It was at this point that Major Richards might have produced the photos in his brown wal et, but since he saw by now that Jack’s whole body was trembling, decided against it and simply said that when the thing appeared in the newspapers they should be prepared for there being pictures.
The photograph of Tom—of Corporal Luxton—showed a man wearing a badged beret, moulded very familiarly to his head, and a camouflage shirt, the sleeves rol ed up neatly above his elbows. The arms were thick, so was the face.
And the expression was—expressionless. There was no hint of a smile, no hint of anything in particular. You couldn’t have said: This man could be my friend or, on the other hand, my enemy. Though you might have said this man would be good to have on your side in a fight. A word you might have used was “solid.” But the man in the photograph certainly wasn’t little.
Jack had looked at the photograph and recognised, of course, the man he was looking at. Yet at the same time it had seemed appropriate for him to ask, deep inside: Do I know this man? Can this man real y be my brother? He’d wanted the face to have some indication in it that Tom might have known, when the photo was taken, that one day his brother would look at it.
Among the many strange feelings Jack had felt since that letter had arrived was the feeling that
He felt simply smal . So when El ie had used that word, he’d felt she might as wel be using it of him.
Do I know this man? But he’d felt just the same about El ie, he realised, when she’d demanded to be counted out.
Do I know this woman? This unwavering woman. There’d been an odd touch about El ie, in fact, of the man in the photograph. You wouldn’t want to mess with that man. He might even shoot you, no questions asked. Similarly, if El ie could be so unbudging about a thing like this, then there was no saying what else she might do. Or—he’d think later
—might have done already.
The words he’d final y spoken in reply to El ie hadn’t sounded like his own words. He couldn’t have imagined himself ever saying them or ever needing to. He’d drawn a big breath first.
“I’m asking you, El ie, if you’l come with me to my brother’s funeral. If you’l be with me when I get his coffin.” He’d felt when he said these words a bit like he felt when things occasional y got out of hand down at the site and he had to step in—usual y with remarkable effectiveness—and deal with it. So why, when he said them, had he also felt smal ?
“And I’m saying,” El ie had said, “that I can’t.” They’d stared at each other for a moment.
“Okay, El ,” he’d said. “If that’s how you feel. I’l go by myself.”
15
SO, three days ago, Jack had driven off alone in the same dark-blue Cherokee that El ie has driven off in now.
It was not yet six-thirty. Stil dark. But he’d been awake since five, staring at the luminous face of his stil -primed alarm clock. Fear, among many other fears, of being late had made him decide on a perhaps excessively early start.
And he was gripped by a strange mood of secrecy. He’d slipped out quietly, carrying just a smal holdal and his black parka jacket (it was the right colour at least—and since when had Jack Luxton had use for a proper overcoat?).
El ie hadn’t come to the door to see him off. She hadn’t even stirred or muttered a word as he’d crept from the bedroom, choosing for some reason to tread softly when he might have thumped about assertively. But he hadn’t believed she was asleep. When he’d stepped outside—
she stil hadn’t appeared—and crossed to the parked car, he’d wondered if she was nonetheless listening, intently, to his every sound. Or if, in fact (though he hadn’t demeaned himself with any pathetic backward glance), she’d even got up to part the curtains and watch him leave. From this same window from which he watches for her now.
He sees himself now, as if he might be El ie watching his own departure, beginning that journey al over again. He sees himself covering every mile, every strange, bewildering stage of it again, even as he waits now for El ie’s return. He hadn’t known then, as he departed, if
With him, as was only natural on such a journey, had been his mobile phone. Who knows, he might have needed to cal Major Richards, to say he’d broken down. (Or to say he’d been suddenly, unaccountably, taken il .) Also, of course, he might have needed, or wanted, to communicate with El ie. Or she with him. But, just before leaving, he’d made sure it was switched off, meaning to keep it so. If she couldn’t even say goodbye to him.
It’s switched off, emphatical y, now.
THE AIR HAD BEEN FRESH and a little damp, with the hint of a quickening dawn breeze. He could barely make out, white as they were, the caravans below, but, beyond the lights of Sands End and Holn, it was just possible to discern the faint sheen of the sea—dotted anyway by the smal , almost motionless lights of distant shipping that, now and then, if only because they reminded him of the former purpose of the place where he lived, Jack would find oddly comforting.
He wore a white shirt and his only suit, which, fortunately, was a charcoal grey. Along with the strange sensation of stealth as he’d moved round his own home had gone an equal y unaccustomed demand for dignity. He’d dressed careful y. He stil hardly ever wore a suit. This was not the same suit his mother had once bought him in Barnstaple, but it reminded him of it and of being viewed by his mother when he’d emerged from the curtained cubicle in Burtons.
Her little, approving nod. So what would she think now?
He’d thought, as he dressed, of the empty hearse that must have left Barnstaple by now. Or would it have been driven up, so as to be sure, the night before? Either way, it had better be there.
