Wish You Were Here

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“In his tea, El . In his breakfast. In his fucking bacon and eggs.”

He knew that he was off his rocker, right off it. But it was the only way he could get to do—calmly and cool y—what he had to do. The trouble was that El ie had been here. If she hadn’t been, he could have done it already, last night.

He could have got the gun. But El ie was here. But, stil , that was al right. It was better, even. He’d seen that it was only proper that El ie was here. It removed one important complication. He’d slept on it—beside her, though hardly aware of her, so deeply and committedly had he slept. He hadn’t had a single dream. Then he’d thought it out further, lying in bed, while he’d heard her in the kitchen below.

There had to be an explosion. An explosion before the explosion—what a policeman might cal a “domestic situation.”

He hadn’t reckoned on El ie’s doing, and doing so quickly, what often happens in such situations: storming off.

And with a threat, a further complication, on her lips.

“I’m not saying he didn’t die of what he did. I’m just saying you speeded the process up.”

“You’re off your rocker, Jack.”

But he knew that. He had to be. El ie was looking at him as she’d never looked at him before, but he supposed it must be the same the other way round.

“It’s not true, then?”

“How dare you?”

“It’s not true?”

“Jack. Jack—come back to me. Of course it’s not true.

Of course it’s not fucking true. It’s about as true as me saying you kil ed your dad.”

He hadn’t expected that. He wasn’t sure if it further complicated or only clarified the situation. If it was even the complicated or only clarified the situation. If it was even the nub of the matter.

“He shot himself, El .”

“Exactly. As true—as fucking mad—as me saying you got the gun and did it yourself.”

He stared at El ie. She thought that might settle it. Tit for tat. She thought that might end this whole situation. Al this would be a joke.

And how could he be mad, if he was so clear-headed?

“Wel , if it comes to it, how do you know I didn’t? How do you know I didn’t?”

It was a subject they stayed clear of, his father’s death.

As if to enter it might mean reliving it. But hadn’t he been doing just that recently? Wasn’t he doing it even now?

“Of course you didn’t.” El ie gave a strange, dry, quivery laugh.

“How do you know?”

“Jack—is this al to do with Tom?”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I know you.”

But she was looking at him as though she was no longer certain on that last point. And whatever El ie knew, she didn’t know and couldn’t know what had only ever been in his head.

Even Jack himself couldn’t be sure of how it real y was.

THAT IT WASN’T THE SHOT that woke him. He’d been awake, perhaps for some time, before the shot. Had he even heard his father creeping—as once he’d heard Tom creeping—

from the house? In his terrible dream in Okehampton he’d even heard the little squeak, from below, of the gun cabinet.

Was it a dream? Or the dream of a dream that he’d had that night, before, in fact, the shot had woken him? Or was it simply how it had been?

In his dream, in any case, he hadn’t heard the shot. There wasn’t yet any shot. He’d heard his father’s movements downstairs. He’d heard the kitchen door open, even the blunt scuff of Wel ington boots on the frozen mud in the yard. And before he’d dressed and gone downstairs himself, before he’d hurried down Barton Field, a torch in his hand and his heart in his throat, he’d stood on the landing and seen the left-open door of the Big Bedroom, and gone in.

He wasn’t sleep-walking, surely. He hadn’t switched on any lights, but he’d seen, even so, that extra blanket on the bed. Yes, there was a moon by then and, despite the cold, the curtains hadn’t been closed—or else they’d been only recently pul ed back. So he was able to see, with just the aid of the moon, the tartan pattern of the blanket.

But more than that. He’d gone into the room—or in his dream he had. And he’d stood by the window, where his father, perhaps, would have stood only moments before, and seen what his father would have seen: the moon, over the oak and the frost-gripped val ey. But more than that.

He’d been just in time to see—or he’d seen in his dream—

from above and behind, his father’s tal black form, his whole body first, then just his shoulders and head, disappearing as he descended the upper section of Barton Field. The moon was almost ful and its light was coming brightly off the frost. So it was even possible to see his father’s inky, night-time shadow