was past.
There must be no end of caravan sites cal ed the Sands, she’d said, but the Lookout would stand out.
It could work two ways, he’d said, “Lookout”—attempting another of those solemn-faced jokes of the kind his father once made.
El ie had shrugged. So, didn’t he like the name of the cottage? It wasn’t the name they’d given it, after al . Lookout Cottage (usual y known as just “The Lookout”). They could always change the name of the cottage. El ie was al for change. She was his wife now. She’d laughed—she’d changed her name to Luxton.
But they hadn’t. Perhaps they should have done. And before the new season began, for the sake of uniformity but also novelty, and because El ie thought it sounded better than the Sands, the site had become, on the letterhead and the brochure and on the sign over the gate, as wel as in plain fact, the Lookout Park.
And it was lookout time now al right.
2
MY ELLIE. She’d changed her name (at long last) to Luxton, just as, once, his mother had done. And “Luxton,” so his mother had always said, was a name to be proud of. It was even a name that had its glory.
BOTH JACK AND TOM had grown up with the story, though, because of the eight years between them, not at the same time. But after Tom was born it acquired the double force of being a story about two brothers. It was Vera who mainly had the job of tel ing it, shaping it as she thought fit—though there wasn’t so much to go on—for the ears of growing boys. Their father may have known more, but the truth was that, though the story had become, quite literal y, engraved, no one had ever completely possessed the facts.
There was a medal kept at Jebb Farmhouse, up in what was known as the Big Bedroom: a silver king’s head with a red-and-blue ribbon. Once a year, in November, it would be taken out and polished (by Vera, until she died). Jack and Tom had each been given, and again by Vera, their separate, private, initiatory viewings. It was anyway for al to see that among the seven names, under 1914–18, on the memorial cross outside Al Saints’ church in Marleston vil age there were two Luxtons: “F.C. Luxton” and “G.W.
Luxton,” and after “G.W. Luxton” were the letters “DCM.”
. . .
ONCE, most of a century ago, when wild flowers were blooming and insects buzzing in the tal grass in the meadows along the val ey of the River Somme, two Luxton brothers had died on the same July day. In the process, though he would never know it, one of them was to earn a medal for conspicuous gal antry, while the other was merely ripped apart by bul ets. Their commanding officer, Captain Hayes, who had witnessed the act of valour himself, had been eager, that night, to write the matter up, with his recommendation, in the hope that something good—if that was a fair way of putting it—might come of the day’s unspeakabilities. But though he knew he had two Luxtons under his command, George and Fred, he had never known precisely which was which. In their ful kit and helmets they looked like identical twins. They
But the two Luxton boys were now equal y dead anyway.
So he had opted for George (it was the more patriotic name), intending to corroborate the matter the next morning, if he had the chance, before his dispatch was sent. There had been much else to concern him that night.
But he never did have the chance, since by seven a.m.
(another radiant summer’s day, with larks), not long after blowing his whistle yet again, and only obeying a futile order that elsewhere along the line had already been cancel ed, Captain Hayes too was dead.
So it was George, not Fred, who got a DCM—which was only one medal down (Vera liked to make this point) from a VC—and neither brother would ever dispute it.
No then-surviving or subsequent member of the Luxton family ever had cause to chal enge what was set down in the citation and carved in stone. No one else had contested it, though no one had suggested, either, that Fred was any sort of slouch. They were both heroes who’d volunteered and died for their country. It was the general, unspoken view of the slowly diminishing group who gathered every November round the Marleston war memorial that al those seven names on it were the names of heroes. Many not on it had been heroes too. There was perhaps a certain communal awkwardness about the local family names that were represented (only the Luxtons featured twice), perhaps even a particular awkwardness about George’s DCM—as if it had been merely attention-seeking of him to capture single-handedly an enemy machine-gun and hold it under impossible odds (so Captain Hayes had written) til he was cut down by crossfire. On the other hand, it would have been in the shabbiest spirit not to honour a thing for what it was. George Luxton and his DCM were in fact the reason why— even long after another world war—many residents of Marleston vil age and its vicinity turned up in November with their poppies when otherwise they might not have done. The Luxtons themselves, of course, were always there. George Luxton (which was not to forget Fred) was the vil age hero and no one (not even Jimmy Merrick of neighbouring Westcott Farm) could deny that he was the Luxtons’ claim to fame.
Only Jack knows, now, how Vera told the story. He never confirmed it expressly with Tom. On the other hand, he had no reason to suppose that Tom didn’t get exactly the same rendition. His mother had given Jack the plain—proud, il ustrious—facts, a man’s story coming from a woman’s lips. And al the better for it, Jack would later think. His dad would have made a mumbling hash of it. At the same time, like some diligent curator, she’d placed the medal itself before him. Jack couldn’t remember how old he’d been, but he’d been too young to recognise that he was going through a rite of passage arranged exclusively for him. It was probably early one November, around the time of Guy Fawkes’ Night, when they’d light a bonfire at the top of Barton Field, his dad (it was stil just the three of them) having splashed it first with paraffin. So in Jack’s mind Remembrance Day was always linked with flames and fireworks.
Whenever it was, his mother hadn’t played up the soldier-boy side of things, nor had she played it down. But when she’d finished, or when Jack had thought she’d finished, she’d added something that, much later, he realised was entirely her own. That was the story of George and Fred, his mother had said, that’s how it was: George won a medal, but they were both brave men. And if, his mother had gone on, those two boys (she’d made the point that they weren’t much more than boys) had made it home together after the war, one with a medal and one not, what would have happened, she felt sure, would have been this. They’d have stopped at the gate up on the Marleston road before walking down the track and George, who had the medal, would have pul ed it from his pocket and would have broken it in two. Then he’d have said, “Before we go any further, Fred, this is for you.” And given his brother half the medal.
“What’s mine is yours,” he’d have said. Then they’d have walked on down the track.
