Despite this feeling of being a blatant culprit, Jack had nonetheless wanted to open up his big arms and embrace as many of these people as he could, as if he might have been some returned, lost member of their family. In his head he’d wanted to say, “It’s okay. I’m just me. It’s you lot I feel for.” But what he actual y said, over and over again, while shaking more hands and wondering what was showing in his gormless block of a face, was: “I’m Jack Luxton. Tom Luxton’s brother. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. I’m Jack Luxton. I’m very sorry.”
THEN THE HUM of voices al around suddenly subsided and it became clear that they were now to proceed outside for the ceremony. For this, with the exception of a few uniformed ushers, the parties of relatives were given precedence and it seemed natural to Jack that he should find himself bringing up the rear. Just as it seemed natural
—and reassuring—that outside, in the designated area, he should find himself standing at the edge and at the back of the civilian group. People would have to turn round if they wanted to see him.
He also became separated at this point from Major Richards. But not before Major Richards had said to him, confidential y, “Afterwards there’l be … more.” Then paused and looked careful y at Jack and said, “But I’d just slip away, if I were you.” Jack wasn’t sure what Major Richards meant by “more,” or if Major Richards knew himself, but he felt that these words were perhaps more than Major Richards might have been required to say or even ought to have said (was he under military orders to say only certain things?). But he also felt he might have opened his arms to embrace Major Richards, too. He wondered if Tom, in his last days, in Iraq, had had such a commanding officer.
What fol owed seemed, at the time and later in Jack’s memory, to go on for an unendurable length, but also not to be nearly long enough, as if this procedure of under an hour was al there might ever be to stand for the whole life of his brother. Inside the building, despite the uniforms, the mood had been unregulated. Outside, everything ceded to military discipline. The air was cool but not cold, a little breezy, the sky overcast with only the weakest suggestion now and then of a break in the clouds. The tarmac was damp and puddled. Earlier in the morning, unlike in the Isle of Wight, there’d been rain. Perhaps it was raining now at the Lookout.
There was that reek of fuel and the sense, after that crowded room, of being on the edge of something huge and remorseless. As if, though this was Oxfordshire, war was being waged only just over the skyline. At ground level, the plane now looked vast, and, with its cavernous rear opening directed at the onlookers (though in the dul light and with the elevation of the fuselage you couldn’t quite see inside), it seemed to Jack that it might be there not to unload, but to gather everyone up. The climax of this event might be when they were al —the generals and earls, or whoever they were, the ladies in hats, the white-frocked padres and the black-clad mourning families—scooped up into the big, dark hold and taken off to Iraq.
The high-rank uniforms and their entourage had formed up separately from the relatives’ group, by a low platform which Jack guessed would be for saluting. Some of the officers detached themselves for particular duties. Jack lost sight of Major Richards. To the left of the relatives’ party, at a little distance, three hearses (this was both a relief to see and utterly distressing) were drawn up in a row facing away from the tarmac, their rear hatches raised in a manner that imitated the solitary aircraft.
His hearse—Tom’s hearse—was there. Tom’s transport was waiting. That “side of things,” Major Richards had already whispered to him, was in place, there was nothing Jack needed to do. Al the same, actual y to see the hearses was heart-stopping, and Jack felt he should at some point at least make contact with the driver. He should slip him a twenty. Would twenty be enough?
On one of his earlier phone cal s, Major Richards had delicately explained that normal y on these occasions there would be no flowers. These occasions weren’t funerals in themselves and the army didn’t deal in flowers. But Jack could see now, placed in readiness beside two of the hearses, a smal , defiant offering—a cluster’s worth—of flowers. He felt a moment’s abject misery and humiliation (and sympathy for his upstaged hearse driver). He’d have had to peer very hard indeed to see the single wreath he’d ordered (though he’d specified large) to await the coffin’s eventual arrival in Marleston.
THE PADRES in their fluttering surplices had walked out to the plane. Everyone was straining to see inside it. Though everyone knew. There was now a general barking of orders. Three detachments of six bare-headed soldiers marched out towards the plane, each led by a bare-headed officer. Other officers, with caps on, stood to attention near the ramp leading into the plane and now and then performed strange gestures with their swords. Positioned on the tarmac, in red tunics and white-and-gold helmets, was a smal -scale version of a military band.
The first party of bearers moved into the plane. Then a bugle blew as the first coffin, completely wrapped in a Union Jack, was carried off. Jack felt there was a sort of silent gasp, an invisible but detectable flinching among the relatives’ group. He’d been told, and it was in the Order of Ceremony, that Tom’s coffin would be the last. He didn’t know why, and hadn’t asked, and didn’t know if it was in any way significant or even constituted an honour, but he felt, now, that the two preceding coffins would prepare him.
The other two soldiers were cal ed Pickering and Ful er.
Before this event and throughout its duration it never quite got home to Jack that these men, having been privates, would have been in his brother’s charge. He had among the relatives a technical, proxy seniority. But he felt like the lowest of the low.
The bearers stood for a moment at the foot of the ramp, close to the padres, while the officer for the bearer party took his place behind the coffin. Then a single muffled bass drum began to beat the rhythm of the slow march, fol owed by a muted growling of brass instruments, and the coffin was carried along a careful y planned route so that it passed in front of the heavyweight uniforms on the platform
—al standing at a salute—then in front of the civilian party, before delivery to its hearse.
When the drum began, Jack felt it was being struck inside his chest, and though he was required to do nothing more than stand and look, he couldn’t prevent his arms going stiff at his sides, the thumbs pointing downwards, he couldn’t prevent himself lifting his chin and pul ing back his shoulders and coming to an instinctive, irresistible attention. This he did for al three coffins. And the fact was they were al the same. They were, al three, just Union-Jacked boxes borne on six shoulders and looked interchangeable.
This
was
both
bewildering
and
