Wish You Were Here

left. He filtered off the M4 onto the M5, confused by the lanes.

Bristol, Avon-mouth, Portishead. The sea could not be far away. A different sea from the one he’d seen and crossed this morning. The Bristol Channel. The map of England wheeled in his head. Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol. He was on an island. And he was in Somerset now, a sign told him. The West Country. Clevedon, Weston-super-Mare.

He’d never been to Weston-super-Mare, but the name smacked of caravans.

Beyond Taunton—most of his motorway driving was behind him now—he pul ed into a service station, needing to piss and eat. It was more that he was empty than hungry.

He needed to fil himself as he might have needed to fil the car. He needed to drain himself, though he felt already drained. In the Gents he could have sworn that, again, for just a moment, he’d seen Tom, three urinals along. Desert camouflage, slung rifle. Had he simply imagined it this time?

He walked back out towards the cafeteria, past a row of busy, brightly coloured miniature cars on stands, each occupied by an eager child who could only just have been released from a real car. He was stil feeling, himself, though he was on his feet, the sway and thrum of being on the road. The cafeteria was a near-replica of the one he’d sat in, near Newbury, this morning, but now he wondered how many of those around him—or how many of those who would pass through here today—would have some link, no matter how remote (a cousin, a brother-in-law) with someone in Iraq. There ought to be a badge, perhaps, a means of recognition. No there shouldn’t. If there was a war on terror, that would be a stupid idea. Could bombs go off in motorway service stations?

That place in Oxfordshire, he thought, had been like a great big bloody service station—for the services.

It was not quite three o’clock, but the day was waning.

The light outside seemed fragile and taut, already preparing to depart. He’d made good time and there was now no particular need to rush, but he had an odd fear of having to drive in the dark. Though he wasn’t afraid of seeing Tom again. It had happened twice now, so the possibility was strong. He was no longer afraid of the hearse—which, even while he sat here, might whizz sneakily past. Perhaps, in some quite feasible and arguable way, Tom was no longer in the hearse. He stared at the empty chair beside him, which stayed empty.

It was clearly something Tom had control over, not him.

He pushed aside his plate, got up and walked back to where he’d parked. It was distinctly cold now. The sky was virtual y clear and the edges of things had sharpened. His thin shadow, like a pointer on a dial, went before him across the car park. He stil wore the black tie, not even loosened. His suit, which he’d have to wear tomorrow, would now be hopelessly creased. He laid the jacket again on the back seat. The medal went back into his shirt pocket.

Only a few minutes and a few miles further on, he crossed into Devon. “Welcome to Devon.” Did he feel he’d come home? Did he feel he’d crossed a special line?

Within half an hour, on the outskirts of Exeter, he turned off the end of the motorway onto the westbound A30. The possibility had certainly occurred to him of exiting at an earlier point and taking a route along slower country roads that would eventual y have led him into landscapes that he knew. But he instinctively wanted to stave off til tomorrow—

and even then, perhaps, to keep it as brief as possible—

encountering any views that were familiar. This wasn’t memory lane. The dual carriageway of the A30, as wel as being fast, had the numbing virtue of being like any busy trunk road anywhere.

But even as he sped along it, he began to see, on his right, a certain kind of bulging hil , a certain kind of hunched, bunched geography that he intimately recognised, and ploughed and scooped out of it, here and there, were areas of bare earth with a familiar ruddy hue. In the late-afternoon light it even seemed to glow. These sights brought an unexpected tightness to his throat. “Earth with dried blood in it,” Michael Luxton had once moodily said.

The sky was darkening, with a reddish tinge to match the scours among the hil s. He switched on his side lights. On the left, Dartmoor loomed. Its distant, cloud-hung outline had once been the regular sight at Jebb. So, he couldn’t deny it, he was back now. On the other hand, he had never been to Dartmoor, and he was about as close to it now as he’d ever been. Though it had been constantly there once, on the horizon, it might as wel have been the Isle of Wight.

And he’d understood that it was a tourist place, where holidaymakers went in the summer. Also a place, he’d understood, where there were signs saying, “Army: Keep Out.”

BEFORE DAY HAD QUITE given up to night, he turned off the A30 and descended into the nestling town of Okehampton.

He was now in a place he knew, though not wel . Even Okehampton—like Barnstaple or Exeter—had been a rare excursion. He had dim memories of being taken there to see his mother’s Aunt Maggie. A bus ride, shops, a cream tea in a cafe with rickety chairs. But hotels didn’t feature in his memories. There’d been no reason for them to. In al his life—and despite being himself in the business of providing accommodation—Jack had only ever stayed in three different hotels, and al of them had been in the Caribbean.

Now he was to stay in a hotel less than twenty miles from where he was born.

He’d chosen the Globe Inn from a website, back at the Lookout. Since El ie wasn’t coming, he wasn’t interested in anywhere smart, just a place for the night. He’d almost self-denyingly gone down-market. Should he sleep in luxury while his brother slept in a coffin? He’d chosen Okehampton because it was about the right distance from Marleston. It might have been Barnstaple, which was nearer, but he’d plumped for Okehampton. He was definitely not going to stay anywhere in the direct vicinity, certainly not in the Crown (if they had such a thing as a room). Technical y, there would stil be people around who, in the circumstances, might have put him up. But that thought—he was Jack Luxton who’d cleared off over ten years ago—horrified him.

He knew now in any case, as he entered Okehampton, that he might as wel have made no booking and taken pot luck. Okehampton in mid-November was not exactly in demand. The streets were scarcely busy, despite some glittery gestures in shop windows to a Christmas stil weeks away. And when he found the Globe Inn, parked in its yard of a car park, and entered through its rattling front door, he was glad, at least in one sense, that El ie wasn’t with him.

Her tastes and requirements had been raised considerably in recent years. So had his, it was true, to keep up with hers. But now his had rapidly dropped away, though with no real sense of indignity, as if he felt that he deserved something only just above the lowest.