only be appropriate.
But it was among al the other stuff (from farm machinery to teaspoons) that El ie had “sorted out”—for auction, for sale, for ditching, for sending to charity (charity!), as part of what she cal ed her clean sweep.
“A clean sweep, Jacko, a clean sweep is what we need.” Wel , it hadn’t included that gun.
When Tom had final y let Jack in on his plan of making off from Jebb—only a few weeks before it was carried out—
he’d said that it was on the day that he’d washed and ironed Luke’s blanket that he’d real y made up his mind. It was the army for him—if he’d have to be patient for a while yet. The army could take him in. No more Jebb. By the time he told Jack, he’d long since found out al about it and got the forms that would take effect when he was eighteen. One day, a couple of months after Luke was shot—November and Remembrance Day were coming up—Dad had given him time off and a handful of grudging twenties (it was meant to square things between them perhaps) and told him to go to Barnstaple and get himself a suit. He couldn’t turn up in his school blazer any more. But Tom had actual y got the bus to Exeter, bought a suit in an Oxfam shop, kept the cash left over, and walked into a recruitment office.
So now he knew what he’d need to do.
Maybe the army likes a man who not only knows how to shoot, but who knows the value of a blanket, who takes good care of a blanket. Blankets go with the army.
Whenever Jack remembered Tom ironing that blanket and folding it up so careful y and holding it, as if it might have been Luke himself, across his arms, there was something about it he could never place. But now he can. It was as if he was handling a flag.
20
IT WASN’T LIKE GATWICK AIRPORT. It
Lodged in Jack’s mind for some days had been the almost calming notion “airfield,” suggesting something grassy and forgotten, but this place, he realised at once, was anything but peripheral. This place in the centre of England was a hub, and—clearly—seriously and constantly busy. It had, he soon saw, its own terminal, check-in areas and car-rental facilities and the air had the blast and tang about it of ceaselessly refuel ed, long-range activity. So that, though he’d never been anywhere like it before, he was reminded of nothing so much as that first passage, with El ie, through Gatwick Airport.
He felt, al over again, as if he might be about to enter for the first time that ominous opening cal ed “Departures” and then (after much nerve-wracking queuing and waiting) find himself strapped in the long, imprisoning tube of an aircraft, about to be hurled into the sky. El ie had gripped his hand with sheer, brimming excitement—it was a bit like when she’d first yanked him up the stairs at Westcott Farmhouse
—but he’d gripped hers, though trying not to show it, like some great big boy holding on to his mum. He’d been suddenly, acutely aware of the immense desirability of taking a holiday in a caravan.
But the big, obvious difference about this place was that none of its manifest and elaborate purposefulness had to do with the taking of holidays.
. . .
HE FOUND THE MAIN GATE, then found Control of Entry—this was where he had to show his passport and other documents. He was spoken to at this point, so he thought, with a marked deference and ushered on as if he might have been a VIP. At the same time he had the feeling that his own reason for being here was just one, unusual reason in a general ungentle pressing of reasons. The place hadn’t shut down because of why he was here.
Temporary arrowed signs indicated “Ceremony of Repatriation.” Among other things he’d been sent by Major Richards was a “Visitor Pack,” with a map, directions and a check list. There was also an “Order of Ceremony” and a
“Provisional List of Those in Attendance.” It had al amounted to too much to carry on his person, and he’d shoved the bulk of it in the side pocket of his holdal , thinking even then that it was not unlike the wad of stuff you take with you, along with your passport, through Departures. But, of course, his business now was the seemingly much simpler (and usual y paperwork-free) business for which, in fact, Jack had never entered an air terminal before: the business of Arrivals.
I’m here to meet my brother.
The sudden proximity of it, the realisation that he would have to do this incontestably personal thing, but in these heartlessly impersonal surroundings, hit him like some actual col ision—even as he drove at a careful five miles an hour, peering hard through the windscreen for further signs.
He found what seemed to be the appropriate car park.
Despite his fear of being early, it was now nearly a quarter past eleven. The final miles of the journey had been along the slowest roads and he’d cut it, in the end (though he wasn’t entirely sorry), a little fine. The car park was almost ful and he had to search for a space. People—some in remarkable costumes—were converging from it towards an ordinary glass-doored entrance nearby, but as if they might be approaching a cathedral. This clearly wasn’t some smal event. But of course it wasn’t.
After switching off the engine he lingered in the safety of the car, as though some desperate, final choice stil remained open to him. Then he took several deep, involuntary, labouring breaths and with each one said aloud, hoarsely, “Tom.” Then—he wasn’t sure if he said it aloud too, in a different tone, or simply thought the word:
“El ie. El ie.”
He eyed himself in the driving mirror, smoothed his hair, fingered his tie for the hundredth time. At Control of Entry he had already put on his jacket. Such documents as he thought he might stil need were in its inside pockets.
Official invitation. Order of Ceremony. Passport (you never knew). The letter from Babbages. In another pocket was his silenced mobile phone. But he was hardly going to activate it now.
From his shirt pocket he took the medal, warm to his touch, and slipped it into the empty breast pocket of his jacket. He could not have said why. So it would be closer to Tom. Then he got out of the car and locked it.
