Wish You Were Here

by Graham Swift

  Coming back through the wood. The crack of twigs. Luke snuffling through the dead leaves ahead of them. Tom was only twelve, thirteen. Mum was still alive. It wasn’t even a thought: that she might not always be. Mum had raised Luke herself, from a pup—the only one they’d kept from big old Bessie’s last litter.

  Tom didn’t have his height yet and Jack would sometimes think that the difference in scale between him and Tom was like the difference in scale between Tom and Luke. But Tom had the two pigeons.

  Through the trees and from all sides of the valley would come now and then the small, bouncy ‘pop-pop’ of other guns. Sunday-morning shooting. The farming fraternity would call it ‘going to church’. The wood, on a still, grey morning, with the pillars of trees, was not unlike a church. ‘The farming fraternity’: that was a phrase Dad would sometimes use, keeping a straight face, though you knew he thought it was a joke of a phrase.

  Along the track to the gate, then up the steepening slope of Barton Field, past the big oak, breathing hard, their throats taking in the cold air and sending it out again as steam. Jack had the gun—it was heavy, for a boy, to carry up the hill—but Tom had the pigeons. And then at some point, before the farmhouse came into view above them, beyond the rise and swell of the field, they’d stop to draw breath, and Tom would untie one of the pigeons and give it to him. True to his word. ‘Here, Jack.’ The dead black eye of the pigeon in Jack’s hand would look at him as if to say, ‘And I won’t say a word either.’ Then they’d carry on up the hill, all the valley and the far hills opening up behind them as they climbed, they didn’t have to look behind to know it.

  Pigeon pie that evening.

  Pigeons. Sandcastles. And, it couldn’t be denied, girls too. Quicker and better. Too young then, at twelve. Probably. But he was already going to Abbot’s Green School, waiting every morning by the Jebb gate for the school bus to swing round the bend and scoop him up. Half a dozen or so already inside, two or three girls among them. Kathy Hawkes from Polstowe.

  Once, five or six years before, the same bus with the same driver, Bill Spurell, would have picked up Jack and, a little further down the Marleston road, Ellie Merrick. But with that eight-year gap between them, Tom didn’t have any big brother around to cramp his before-and-after-school activities, and even perhaps by the time he was thirteen, by the time Mum had died, he would already have got started. Maybe saying to himself that, given the new situation, given that Mum wasn’t around and Dad wouldn’t waste a chance to haul him out of the classroom, he’d better make the most of his opportunity. He’d better make hay, while he could, with schoolgirls. What other kind of girl was there going? And maybe girls go for a boy who’s just lost his mum, they can’t help it. It’s a sure-fire recipe, and Tom knew it. Maybe that’s why he could crack those eggs so damn neatly.

  He got through them anyhow, girls, while he could. It wasn’t for Tom like it was for him, Jack, with Ellie: the feeling that this one, the one that seemed to have been put there specially in front of him, was the one he should take, for keeps if he could. And he’d better not move on and see what else might be going, because he might end up having nothing. Her being his age, too, and just across that boundary hedge. Not just an after-school thing. The two of them down in Brinkley Wood sometimes, not shooting pigeons, or going to church exactly.

  He’d always thought he should stick with Ellie. Generally speaking, Jack was a sticker, a settler. He didn’t have the moving-on instinct, or he never really thought he could move on. Whereas Tom, clearly, was a mover-on, in more ways than one. By the time he was eighteen, very clearly. A mover-on and leaver-behind. And no doubt as a soldier he’d have got his quota of passing female company, as soldiers do, no difficulty. And that would have suited him and was just as well, now. No sticking, nothing for keeps. Like pigeons.

  Would he have stayed clear of Ellie? She was eight years older and she was his brother’s—say no more. But would Ellie have stayed clear of Tom? It might have made a change. He could almost see it from Ellie’s point of view.

  But he knew, now, that nothing had happened, he was sure now of that. Though it would have been a strange comfort all the same, if Ellie had broken down and confessed: ‘Oh, Jack, there’s something I’ve never told you …’ If he’d been able to put his arms round her and say, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Or even: ‘I always had a feeling.’ If it had meant that Ellie could have wept too over his little lost brother, last-but-one of all the Luxtons. And if it had made her say, like she should have done, that yes, of course, she’d come with him, she’d be with him, no question, on that awful bloody journey.

  Why the hell hadn’t she, anyway?

  And, really, he wouldn’t have minded, now, if she’d confessed at the time or if Tom had even given it as one of his reasons: ‘I’m getting out of your way, Jack, if you know what I mean. No more stepping on your territory. She’s all yours now.’

  Everything would be all his.

  Always the feeling, even when Tom was several jumps ahead, that he was Tom’s protector. So if Tom had taken a turn or two with Ellie, it would have been like teaching him how to shoot pigeons.

  When Tom was born Jack was eight, and he hadn’t expected, any more than anyone else, that he’d ever have a brother. But then there was this tiny, gurgly, spluttery baby, and there was Vera, looking for a while as if she’d been pulled through a baler. And for a short period of his life Jack had felt not so much like a brother, but—long before Tom would show the same aptitude—like a bit of a mother. And a bit of a father. There were times when, since he was only eight, he’d find himself alone with his mother and this new little pink-skinned bundle.

  Up in the Big Bedroom, stowed away in a corner, was an old-fashioned wooden cradle—hardly more than two thick chunks of wood joined in a ‘V’ and fixed to a pair of rockers. Everyone knew it was very old. Like so much else in that room, like the big bed itself and the old wooden chest, it was an heirloom, and there was no saying how many Luxtons had been rocked in it. Those two Luxton lads on the war memorial, surely. And Michael had been rocked in it, which was very hard to imagine. It was very hard to imagine any big-framed Luxtons ever squeezing themselves into a cradle.

  But Jack had been cradled in it, and had been told so. When he was still only eight it was not so impossible to conceive of having once been in it. But now there was Tom in it anyway, fitting it perfectly.

  And Jack had rocked him. Pretty often. Like a mother. In fact, few things were better and sweeter for Jack when he was eight years old than to be told by his mother that he could rock Tom for a bit, if he wanted to. It wasn’t really a matter of permission or even of invitation, but there was a thrill in receiving the prompting, and nothing was better and sweeter, Jack felt, than to be rocking Tom under his mother’s gaze, to feel and to hear the tilt and gentle rumble as the cradle, and Tom with it, swayed from side to side.

  Jack rocked Tom in his cradle. Also, when he was allowed to, he would pick Tom up and carry him around. He’d even sometimes kiss Tom on his funny little head. He’d grip Tom under his shoulders and—standing himself at his full eight- or nine-year-old height—lift him right up so his legs dangled. At eight or nine, Jack had possessed his window of opportunity for doing such things, before his dad had begun to frown on them.

  But he’d never said, later, to Tom, even if Tom perhaps might have imagined it: ‘Tom, I rocked you once. In that cradle.’ He’d never said, ‘I dangled you.’ How could he ever say it? And now he never would. And he’d never know if his mother had ever said it for him. Never in Jack’s hearing anyway.

  How could he have said it, or when? When they were down in the woods, shooting? Or sharing the milking? Or when Tom had come home from school, down the track from the gate, after his hand had been up Kathy Hawkes’ skirt? ‘Tom, I once—’

  Or before Tom climbed, for the last time, up that same track, that December night? Though how could he have said it then, of all times? Though perhaps he had said it—thought it anyhow—
into his pillow. As he’d said it to himself, a thousand times, while just watching Tom grow.

  Ellie wanted a child, children, he knew that. And he didn’t. For his own reasons, but for reasons that Ellie knew perfectly well in her way. He simply hadn’t wanted any more of himself, of his own uprooted stock, after Tom had left and then he and Ellie had left too. And Dad had gone anyway. He hadn’t wanted any passing on.

  ‘No more Jebb, no more Luxtons, Ell.’

  It was how he’d felt. And it was part of an unspoken pact between them, along with the caravans and the cottage and the holidays in the Caribbean. Along with the steep learning curve and the lightening up. He wasn’t conceding quite everything.

  The subject had certainly hovered between them, that afternoon at Jebb in the Big Bedroom, as the word ‘caravans’ had hovered, as if that word itself might even have been a code for it. What better place for it to hover than in that big bed? And it had been a real enough prospect then. As real and as natural as that oak tree beyond the window. And Ellie wouldn’t have so long, perhaps. Her window of opportunity. Jesus, she might have been planning something right then.

  But the subject had only hovered, then flitted away. To be considered later, maybe. One thing at a time. And he had a lot to consider. Everything he was looking at, for a start, everything you could see from that window. And that letter.

  Over in the corner, in the shadows, the wooden cradle would still have been there. And Ellie’s eyes, that afternoon, had been doing their roaming. She’d never seen the inside of Jebb Farmhouse at such close quarters before. She must have noticed the cradle. And she might have made some joke, as her way of broaching the subject, about him once having been in it, and look at the bloody size of him now. But she hadn’t broached the subject. So she must have seen his thinking, his position on it, already in him. Or decided to leave it till later. Enough work for one summer’s day.

  But she must have noticed that cradle, and maybe her simple thought was: Well, Jack once had his damn baby. And that was why she’d said that thing about Tom. ‘Forget him, Jack.’ Or she might have just thought: Time enough, time enough still. Not yet twenty-eight and in peak condition.

  Her eyes had done their roaming anyway. When he and Ellie came, about a year later, to do the selling—separately but together, as it were—before they had all those people round (their eyes roaming too), he’d said, ‘And what about all the stuff? I mean the stuff inside, the furniture.’ He hadn’t meant the stuff at Westcott, that was Ellie’s business. So why should he have asked on his own account about Jebb, as if he needed her instruction?

  ‘You sell it too, Jack. We sell it too.’ She’d even looked a little impatient with him. ‘You might be surprised what you get for some of those things. I’d say you’ve got enough there to fill a whole antiques shop.’

  And so, because Ellie had given him the go-ahead and because anyway it was like giving her a sort of sign, he’d sold the cradle. What would they want with a cradle? Though it had cost him a wrench, a hell of a wrench.

  But he hadn’t sold the shotgun. Or the medal.

  13

  WHEN ELLIE HAD shut the door behind Major Richards—it was she who’d shown him out, she could see Jack wasn’t up to it—she’d felt, for the first time since that letter had arrived, like crying herself. This was different from the letter. It was different when a man in a uniform turned up at your front door. You knew then it wasn’t just a piece of paper. And it wouldn’t just blow away as pieces of paper could.

  Of course she could remember Tom. Little Tom, then big Tom, just as big as his brother. Big enough, certainly, to go off and be a soldier. When Jack had told her—but only after it had happened—that this was what Tom had done and that he, Jack, had known all about it beforehand, she’d breathed, she couldn’t help it, a grateful sigh. She’d been surprised, but she’d been glad, though she’d tried not to show it. There wasn’t any reason to be cut up about it—if, so it seemed, Jack wasn’t. If it was what Tom had wanted and planned and he’d gone and done it, then good luck to him. And if Jack had been in on it and wasn’t cut up about it, then so much the better.

  It was Michael Luxton who’d been cut up about it, and had taken it out on Jack. But Jack had just taken that in his turn, so it seemed, as if he were doing it for Tom’s sake, not even telling his dad, till he thought it was safe, where Tom had gone. Though he’d told her, one January afternoon at Westcott. ‘He’s joined the army, Ell. You don’t know that I told you this.’ As if his dad might have come round and throttled it out of her.

  That day, that January afternoon, had in fact been one of the better, brighter days of her life. She’d squeezed and hugged Jack’s big, familiar body with a new eagerness (had he noticed?), but also with a delicacy, as if he might have been bruised by real blows from his father. Michael Luxton, it was true, could sometimes scare her. He wasn’t scary in any obvious way, but he could sometimes frighten her. If there should be a choice of fathers with whom you’d have to live alone for the foreseeable and barely thinkable future, then she’d choose her own father, small and nimble, not towering and looming. Small and sly and with a regular glint of mischief in his face, which she knew was a mask (even though she could be a sucker for it), a bravado put there mainly by alcohol. Her father owned her, but he didn’t scare her. She’d choose him of the two. But then she’d chosen Jack, who could sometimes look the image of his father.

  ‘This is just between you and me, Ell.’

  She’d run her palms softly over his big frame as if she’d never done it before. Their situations were the same now, equal. They each had to shoulder their fathers, just their fathers. Tom was gone. A soldier. One of the better days of her life. Though she could feel, beneath the skin, beneath the imaginary bruises from his father, the wound of Tom’s departure hidden in Jack’s heavy flesh.

  It was a grey, bitter January afternoon, the heater ticking in her bedroom—‘their bedroom’—and somewhere out in the cold of the farm, if he was only consulting his hip flask in the Land Rover, her dad was keeping his distance, as usual, so they could have the house. It was how he kept her there—it was the deal. What a pittance of a deal. And, Jesus, they were both twenty-six.

  But Tom was gone, and this was one of the better afternoons. There was more than one kind of soldiering. Not all of it was done by soldiers, or by men. She’d shut her eyes and run her fingers over Jack’s shoulders, down his spine, as a blind person might seek to recognise the shape of something. The shape—the ache in her own flesh—of her love for him.

  Sometimes Ellie could think she didn’t know, she didn’t understand at all, this man she’d known, in fact, as long as she could remember. Since long before he was a man or she was a woman. That was how it was. Man and boy, girl and woman. Sometimes the thought of it, as if they’d been born together, could make her smile, sometimes it would crush her. She knew that other women might have thought: What a shame. What a shame for poor Ellie Merrick that it wasn’t the other way round, that Jack wasn’t Tom. But she’d never, honestly, thought of it like that, and when she imagined those other women, shaking their heads, her blood could gather and she could feel she had claws she might fiercely use in defence of Jack Luxton. She could feel as she supposed Jack must have felt when he copped it from his dad on account of his little runaway brother.

  Ellie didn’t know much about the army, but she could see it was a simple, all-in solution for a man of Tom’s age, and Tom would hardly have been the first. One moment a cowshed in a gone-to-pot farm, next moment a barracks. The main thing was he’d got out. He’d shown it could be done. Tom was not unlike her mother. And Jack might have done the same himself, as much as eight years ago, or more. But then his mother would have still been alive, and Tom would have been barely ten.

  And, anyway, if Jack had ever gone off to join or do anything, it would have meant deserting her, Ellie.

  She didn’t know Jack? She didn’t understand how it truly was with him and her? Oh, but yes she
did.

  Once upon a time, when Ellie was still a pupil, like Jack, at the tiny primary school in Marleston, jealousy had entered her life in the form of an unexpected new arrival at Jebb Farm. At first she’d supposed that this strange, nagging emotion was because she would have liked the same for herself, a little baby brother or sister. Up until then she and Jack had been equal in not having either.

  But no surprise event like the one that had occurred at Jebb Farm was to occur at Westcott Farm and there was certainly fat chance of its ever occurring once, several years later, Ellie’s mother had made her sudden exit. By then, so far as new arrivals went, there was a much greater chance that Ellie herself, if she wasn’t careful, might get pregnant. But by then, too, Ellie had grown up with her jealousy and knew that it wasn’t so much that she wanted any more a little sibling of her own, but that she was jealous of that part of Jack that belonged to his brother.

  How it had once pained her, and how she’d had to hide it, when the three of them—Jack, Tom and Vera—had gone away together those two years running. Only a week, but how her jealousy had seethed. But then how her heart had soared (though she’d never said so) when she’d got that postcard from Dorset.

  ‘We are all living in a caravan called Maralin.’

  Jealousy wasn’t even the word, perhaps, by the time her mother had done her bunk. Ellie had grown up resenting Tom Luxton, resenting him and hiding it. Hiding it to the extent sometimes of even pretending that she too, like his big brother, loved him. Wasn’t he just so lovable? They’d played games, once, she and Jack, of pretending they were Tom’s mother and father.

  Wasn’t he just so adorable? All of which acquired its complication when, many years later, Tom was old enough to be interested in girls—and vice versa. Of course she could see that Tom was the kind of boy any girl would fall for. Fall over backwards, like little Kathy Hawkes. Well, good luck to her. And of course she could see that there was even sometimes just a touch of unease, of jealousy coming in the other direction, from Jack.