Wish You Were Here

by Graham Swift

  And only the next morning, which was also grey, damp and still, a smart black saloon had driven up the winding road from Holn, which Jack surveys now, and after making the climb in a slow, unfamiliarised fashion, had pulled up in the turning-space opposite the cottage. Jack had watched it, from this very window. On a still day any car ascending the hill—it was a rare enough event—would announce its approach, even if you weren’t already waiting. Then he’d watched an army officer get out, reaching as he did so for his peaked cap on the passenger seat and for a brown leather document wallet beneath it.

  Jack had been informed of this visit and the timing was spot-on, it was eleven-thirty almost exactly. But when he saw the officer emerge from the car, Jack, who thinks now that Ellie might return in convoy with a squad car, was for a moment in no doubt that the officer had come to arrest him, to take him prisoner or to do whatever army officers were empowered to do. To have him shot, possibly. Yet at the same time, when he’d seen the khaki uniform, he’d had the distinct thought: Tom might have done this. Tom might have driven up one day, out of the blue. He might have turned out, who knows, to have become an officer.

  But the officer, whose name was Major Richards—and Jack had spoken to him the preceding day, as requested, on the phone—was in his early fifties and, before he’d put on his cap, Jack could see that his hair was grey and receding and that he looked, in some ways, more like a visiting doctor or some peculiarly burdened schoolmaster than an army officer.

  Major Richards had stood for a moment and put his cap on very squarely, pulled his tunic straight and, tucking the wallet under his arm, had coughed into his hand. Then he’d walked the few paces to the front door of Lookout Cottage not quite as if he were marching, but as if ceremony and dignity were not out of place and he knew he might be being watched.

  Major Richards had explained, even rather insisted, on the phone that this was how the battalion did things. A personal visit, regardless of how notification had actually been made, to express the battalion’s condolences and sympathies—and loss, and gratitude. And to explain related matters. In the circumstances, nothing less was proper, and he was the appointed visiting officer. So Jack had found himself agreeing to an imminent visitation by the army. He hadn’t consulted Ellie, but he’d said after putting down the phone, and repeating Major Richards’s words almost exactly, that it was how they did things and he’d agreed to it.

  So they’d had to tidy up the place—though it was not an inspection—and Ellie had put on something smart and vaguely solemn—she chose her black skirt and pale-grey V-neck with her imitation pearls—to go with Jack’s black trousers and white shirt (things he was never normally seen in), and they’d both prepared to pretend that this was how they always loafed around the cottage on a weekday morning. Ellie had looked at him with a strange, appraising tenderness as they’d dressed in this unusual way. It was like the day they got married. And even as Major Richards strode towards the front door, Jack, having descended the stairs, was on the other side of it, waiting in his crisp white shirt and, in spite of himself, not quite resisting the urge—he’d feel it again in the coming days—to stand to attention.

  Major Richards had said, ‘Mr Luxton?’ And had asked very formally if he might come in and, when he did, had removed his cap with a distinct and formal gesture. It had been on his head for just the few steps he’d taken from his car. He’d shaken their hands and at once, while still on his feet, had expressed again, to them both, the battalion’s profound regrets and condolences. He’d said that Corporal Luxton was a brave and exemplary soldier who’d done his duty to the utmost, so that the army was proud of him, and that this was a great blow to everyone.

  Jack had lost the immediate sensation of being under arrest or that he was about to have some order barked at him, but he’d felt that, though it was he who’d shown in their visitor and introduced him to his wife, it was more as if Major Richards was greeting them and ushering them into his world. Everything was the wrong way round.

  Only when Major Richards had sat down, placing his cap very carefully on another seat close by and the leather wallet on his knees and meanwhile accepting cordially Ellie’s offer of a cup of tea, did the thing relax, if such a thing can relax. With his cap off, he didn’t seem so intimidating.

  Looking at them both very attentively, his eyes making regular sweeps between them, Major Richards had reiterated the point about the battalion liking to do things this way. He apologised for the letter’s having reached them by its delayed and roundabout route. He apologised (though it wasn’t his fault) for the need for the letter at all. In most cases, the news, the sad news itself, would be communicated directly, and very quickly, in person. There were what he called ‘army families’. Jack understood that he and Ellie, if they were a family at all, were not an ‘army family’. In other cases, Major Richards had explained, it was only wise to avoid what might be a wasted or impractical initial journey. As to his own journey right now (since Ellie had kindly enquired), it had actually been quite short—not that shortness mattered: Wiltshire, not so far from Salisbury, to the Isle of Wight.

  And not such an unpleasant one, Major Richards might have added, if the circumstances had been different. He might have said something complimentary about the really remarkably pleasant situation they had here. The fine view, even on a grey day like today. As he’d parked the car he’d noticed the caravans, in their neat rows, down below.

  He’d looked at Jack and Ellie attentively, as if silently confirming permission to proceed, then had unzipped his leather wallet. He’d said that Corporal Luxton had been killed, as stated in the letter, on the fourth of November and at approximately three p.m., local time. It was not possible for him to give many details at this point—he was obviously just a home-based officer—but he could confirm that Corporal Luxton would have died instantly, on active, front-line duty, and that his record was such that he would undoubtedly have been promoted soon to sergeant. He’d been trained as a sniper—had himself been a trainer of snipers—but had been killed when the armoured vehicle he was in had triggered an exceptionally lethal roadside bomb. Two other members of his section had been killed and two wounded, one seriously. It was a very grave incident and a very great loss. These were things, nonetheless, that soldiers in Iraq risked every day.

  Major Richards had left a little measured pause, though he did not actually say, ‘Do you have any questions?’ Then, taking out a pen and one of the documents from his wallet, but with an air of being ready to reverse or modify these simple actions if necessary, he’d said that he was sorry to have to ask for such information at such a time, but there were certain matters he needed to confirm.

  That Corporal Luxton was never married.

  ‘No,’ Jack said, though he wouldn’t have known.

  Had no children?

  ‘No,’ Jack said again, though he might have said, ‘Not that I know of.’

  Or other dependants?

  ‘No,’ Jack said.

  Parents?

  It seemed to Jack that Major Richards had somehow delayed this question and that he might have done so in some knowing or meaningful way. That it might even be a trick question.

  ‘Dead,’ Jack had said. It was surely the correct and the quickest answer, but the word came oddly and echoingly from his lips, as if Vera and Michael might have died, too, in an armoured vehicle in Iraq.

  ‘There are no other relatives,’ Major Richards had then asked, ‘or persons close to Corporal Luxton whom you feel should be informed—I mean, officially informed, other than by yourself?’

  ‘No,’ Jack had said.

  ‘You are, in fact, the only living relative?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said, huskily, as if this might be another trick question, an even trickier question. He felt quite clearly now that he was under suspicion, if not under interrogation or on trial. So he was surprised when Major Richards suddenly said, using words he’d used before, but looking at him directly, in a different, sof
ter way, ‘Let me offer you my personal condolences.’ He said it as if he, Major Richards, might have suddenly become a relative of the kind just denied, some sort of temporary father, and might have wished even to reach out and grasp Jack’s arm, so conveying that he understood that Jack was of the same stuff as the dead man being referred to, that he, Jack, and Tom were interchangeable. The Luxton brothers.

  And Jack would never forget it. As he’d never forget that moment, looking from this window, when after the black saloon had stopped in the turning-space—the same turning-space that is now, beneath him, a lacework of ruffled puddles—he’d had the impossible thought that this figure in a uniform might be Tom.

  Jack had felt himself starting to tremble again, under Major Richards’s gaze, as he’d done under Ellie’s gaze when they’d both first read the letter, and he’d started to want Major Richards to leave.

  But Major Richards, now handing Jack a number of papers from his wallet, which were Jack’s copies to keep, had begun to explain that ‘because of the circumstances on the ground’ it was not possible to say as yet exactly when Corporal Luxton would be repatriated, but that it would be soon and that Jack would be kept closely informed. There would be a ceremony, of course, and all due assistance would subsequently be given, following the coroner’s release, in whatever funeral arrangements might be decided upon. Meanwhile, Jack shouldn’t hesitate to call at any time.

  This was adding little to what had been said in the letter, and Jack was able to wonder, as Major Richards spoke, whether the unspecified delay and the word ‘circumstances’ and that strange phrase ‘on the ground’ (where else did circumstances happen?) might all be to do with the fact that there was no body really, or not in the usual sense of that word, or that the manner of Corporal Luxton’s death, and his comrades’, might not have been so instant after all. That the ‘incident’—that word had been used at some point—required the army’s own careful investigation. No one yet had used the word ‘body’.

  But mainly Jack was trying to control the trembling of his own body.

  Perhaps Major Richards saw this. He saw anyway (and he was not unpractised in this observation) that this visit, though there were other matters still to be dealt with, shouldn’t be extended very much further. He’d brought with him, for example, just in case, copies of recent photographs of Corporal Luxton, but he quickly calculated that this wouldn’t be the moment to produce them from his wallet. The principal purpose of his visit, that it should simply have been made, was fulfilled. The battalion had been represented in person and in uniform. This, Major Richards knew, was, among his several duties, the most important and most symbolic, and often the most difficult. But Major Richards was only too aware that soldiers had to do far tougher things.

  It was now very unlikely that Major Richards, who quite frequently regretted the course of his career and the fact that he was not by now a colonel, would be called upon to do those far tougher things. And, of course, demanding as it was, being the messenger was far easier than being the receiver. He made conscious efforts to remind himself of this.

  On a number of occasions now—and recently these occasions had intensified—Major Richards had been required to announce the actual news in person himself. Of a death (not so often, thank goodness), of a wounding or hospitalisation. Since, with the army’s increasing tendency to merge regiments, his duties effectively operated at brigade level (though he still thought of himself as ‘First Battalion’) and since he’d been deemed good at them, he was not inexperienced. There could be a wife, small children. Or just parents, brothers, sisters. The average age of a soldier meant that his family might very often still all be in one place. This could be both convenient and not. You might walk in on some cluttered, ordinary domestic scene. Everyday havoc. They would always look guilty and apologise for the mess.

  He’d taught himself always to look them directly in the eye. Of course, it helped you, but didn’t help them, that they invariably guessed why you were there, as soon as they saw you in your cap. They often even said the words for you: the worst words—which he might be able to correct. Not killed, no. But if it was the worst, or even not (not killed, no, just paralysed) then the reaction could go any way, any old way at all. If, say, it was a young mother and two toddlers. They could explode straight away, or later. Sometimes they could tell you, and it was an order you couldn’t disobey, to make a swift exit. You had to be ready and alert.

  It gave Major Richards little satisfaction that he’d acquired the tactical if hardly military skill of knowing when to beat a retreat. Having sat in Lookout Cottage for barely half an hour and having drunk the statutory (but decent) cup of tea, he sensed the need to exercise this ability once again.

  Major Richards had never been in Iraq or Afghanistan or indeed in any place where, at the time, actual explosions had occurred and bodies been fragmented. He’d missed the Falklands, as a junior officer—which, for a while, had rankled. Even his tours in Northern Ireland had been quiet. But he had, in recent months, been an intimate witness to some immediate consequences of what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had, as it were, been present at several scenes of devastation, enough to know that such scenes were proliferating and increasingly pockmarking the land (though they were as nothing, he understood, to the frequency of such scenes in Iraq or Afghanistan). Enough to give him a curious sense of the country in which he dwelt and to which he owed a soldier’s allegiance.

  Mostly he did what he did by a process of becoming accustomed to it, if you could ever be, and by the application of instinct. He couldn’t say, as a soldier in Iraq might say, that he was trained. Often he felt like a civilian in uniform, a pretend soldier. As to the rights and wrongs, the whys and wherefores, of the operations in the Middle East, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t comment, even when (though it was surprisingly rare, one of the less-encountered complications) they demanded that you did.

  But this case—Corporal Luxton—was really very simple. Just one living relative, as he’d now confirmed. That had its peculiar sadness and bleakness perhaps, but there would be no further family network (it was a sort of comfort) to trouble, no further connections running like underground wires for further domestic detonations to occur. Just one relative and a wife. And—seeing as they’d had time already to absorb the basic news—there’d been no distressing outbursts. None of the howls or moans or terrifying speechlessness he’d sometimes known.

  And, as it happened, he’d never been, in all his life, to the Isle of Wight. When he’d crossed the water, a strange, light-hearted mood had gripped him. Hardly appropriate. But he thought, not for the first time that day, as he strode back to his car, cap on again, shoulders square (he knew from experience that they still might be watching or that, once the door closed behind you and you’d straightened your back, all kinds of collapsing might be going on inside) that, had he not been in uniform, he might have taken the chance for a mooch around. A walk. A breath of sea air. His uniform was the bind. It was so mild and still, the sea, from here, like a sheet of polished steel.

  What a marvellous spot. Lookout Cottage.

  It would hardly have been right to say, on such a day, that he even felt a little envious. It certainly wasn’t typical, not typical at all, of the places he had to visit. Housing estates, military or otherwise. He wondered how someone from a farmhouse in Devon—that was the previous given address (and the man had spoken with a real Devon burr)—came to be living in a cottage in the Isle of Wight and running a caravan site. And what must that be like to do? Not bad at all, maybe. He’d looked again at those white oblongs.

  No outbursts, anyway. The wife had looked pretty steady, in fact, even a little hard-eyed. Well, it wasn’t her boy, just a brother-in-law. No children, apparently. Just them. An odd couple perhaps, something not quite as one between them in the face of this news. But you saw all sorts of things.

  As for him, Jack, the only relative, well yes, that was tough. Your only brother. Your younger brothe
r—Major Richards had reckoned that the gap must be several years. And he’d noticed before he left (it was even why he’d left) something going on inside Jack Luxton, something deep and contained, that might need its outburst at some time. On the other hand he didn’t look like a man given to outbursts, or to much extravagant self-expression at all. He looked pretty hefty and—what was the word?—bovine. He looked—and judging from those photographs still in his wallet his brother had been just the same—like a big strong man.

  12

  QUICKER AND BETTER at just about everything. He would swing that gun, when it was still too big for him, swing it far too much, Jack would think, and fire as if the shot were like a rope that couldn’t help tighten on its target. Rabbit, crow, pigeon. Pigeons were the trickiest. Big, clumsy birds, sitting on the bare branches in Brinkley Wood, sitting ducks you’d think, but they knew when a gun was being pointed. Though not, apparently, when Tom was pointing it. A sniper. Two pigeons dangling by their necks on a string from Tom’s belt, wet with Luke’s saliva. None for himself. Three misses, in his case, all hitting the space where a pigeon had been. But he hadn’t minded. ‘That’s two between us,’ Tom would say, and mean it.

  Walking back through the wood on a grey, hard January morning. Time off, after milking, on a Sunday morning. Time off to be just two brothers. Even Dad could recognise and concede it. Like Mum fighting for those two holidays. After a long, unyielding silence: ‘Well, off you go, then.’ An hour’s shooting on a Sunday morning. Dad wouldn’t come himself, though he was a decent shot. Perhaps he knew that Tom could already outshoot him. And he’d give the permission as if he, Jack, were just a kid too, needing permission, though he was turning twenty now and the idea, the concession, was that he was supposed to be Tom’s teacher. Tom didn’t need his father watching over him. Tom was old enough to learn to shoot and Jack was old enough to be his teacher. As if Tom needed any teaching.