Wish You Were Here

by Graham Swift

  He simply turned and walked away. He didn’t care if everyone was watching him. Didn’t mind the feeling of needles in his back, the feeling of being a deserter. Didn’t mind if there were all sorts of other things he still should have done or was expected to do. He simply walked away.

  As Tom once had simply fucking walked away.

  He reached the car, ripped off his jacket, flung it, with the medal still in the top pocket, on the back seat, and started the engine. He knew he’d already passed from people’s sight after rounding the building. He was back in the inconspicuous, unceremonial world of car parks. He reversed out and drove off along the route by which (it seemed now long ago) he’d driven in. Had barriers come down to prevent his departure, he would have put his foot down and burst through. But he passed Control of Entry without incident (was Exit also controlled?) and reached the main gate, after which he could accelerate and just drive. He drove through the camp-like town with a distinct sense, now, of being an escaper—word would surely be put out about him—then sped into open country. He knew he had to find the M4, then just point west.

  He couldn’t have given any coherent reason for his fugitive haste, which didn’t diminish even when he was free of the town, but a strange, hounding explanation came to him even as he drove. It was the hearse. He had to get away from the hearse. It would be making this same journey too—M4, M5—and though, by definition, a hearse was a slow vehicle, he was afraid of its coming up behind him, of seeing it in his mirror, bearing down on him. This was all crazy and unlikely. It wouldn’t even have left yet, and it would surely have to travel, at least at first—and no doubt in company with the others—at a solemn snail’s pace. But the thought of its somehow gaining on him, of encountering it at any point on the journey now before him, afflicted him like a nightmare.

  Only moments ago he’d actually wanted to be in the hearse. That was his rightful place. Having held that coffin and having wanted not to let go, how could he be afraid now of being followed by his own brother? But that was the point. He’d separated himself from his brother (and what was new about that?). He had to be in this damn Cherokee. Therefore he had to avoid the hearse and its pursuing indignation. To put distance in between.

  But he’d hardly gone five miles, and he couldn’t have said where it was—it was somewhere in the unknown heart of England—before he’d had to pull over into a lay-by while a series of great, wracking shudders made him, stopped as he was, hang on to the steering wheel as if he might wrench it off.

  21

  BUT IT WOULDN’T have worked anyway, would it? If he’d had to get up and make a speech and had said that Tom had always been stirred by those two Luxton boys of long ago. Because that would have been like saying that Tom had really wanted to go off and get himself killed as well. As he had done. And what kind of war, exactly, had Tom been going off to fight when he’d slipped out of Jebb Farm thirteen years ago? What kind of war, exactly, had he even been fighting now?

  At least those two Luxton lads had known the score. Maybe.

  It wouldn’t have worked because it wasn’t true. But it wouldn’t have worked, anyway, because Jack Luxton could never have got up to make a speech—before lords, ladies and colonels—even to save his own damn life.

  He looks now through the rain-spattered cottage window and remembers pulling up in the car, among strange, bare fields, just to shake and weep. Tom was the traitor, my lords and ladies, Tom was the deserter, the runaway. Running away from the war against cow disease and agricultural ruin. And against his own embattled father.

  Good luck, Tom.

  One morning, at milking (by then they had a sort of herd again and they could sell the milk), Tom had told him the whole story. About his trip to Exeter to buy a suit, more than a year before. About how he had it all planned now, for his eighteenth birthday. His own man. December 16th. Bugger Christmas. And bugger birthdays, if it came to it. What kind of birthday did anyone get, these days, at Jebb Farm?

  The cows had twitched and steamed in the stalls. It would have been this time of year—November, not so long after Remembrance Day, when Tom would have worn that suit, only the second time for the purpose.

  ‘This is just for your ears, Jack.’

  ‘And the cows’,’ Jack might have said if he’d had the quickness of mind.

  Though Jack had needed to think quickly, and seriously, enough that morning. And one of his first thoughts was that Tom hadn’t had to say a thing. Tom might have just cleared off, according to his plan, leaving him, Jack, as surprised and left in the lurch as their father was going to be. But Tom was telling him now, so Jack had thought, because Tom was a brother. He’d been saving it up and it had been a matter, perhaps, of careful timing, but Jack didn’t want to go into that. Tom was telling him now.

  And that meant that Tom was really putting before him a whole set of alternative positions. Like the position of saying: You can’t do this, Tom, you can’t bloody do it. Or the position of simply ratting on him to his father. Or the position of thinking why hadn’t he, Jack, done something like this years ago and left Tom to Michael’s mercy? Or the future position (the not-so-distant future, it now seemed) of being left, himself, to Michael’s mercy and having to pretend he’d never known a damn thing about it.

  But none of these theoretical positions had really exercised Jack much at the time, because of the overriding position Tom was putting him in, which was the position of trust. Tom hadn’t had to say a word. But what are brothers for?

  The steady hiss and clank of the machinery, the familiar parade of swollen udders and the splat of cow shit had seemed, for Jack, to say that though Tom had just announced, in effect, a division, a parting in their lives, nothing was altered, everything would stay the same. Or the same as the cow disease and the price of calves had left it. Or the same for him at least, Jack. Since he wasn’t going anywhere.

  His own man.

  He’d said, not stopping in his work, ‘I understand, Tom. I understand what you’re telling me.’ In the middle of milking you can’t pause, sit back and say, ‘Let’s talk this over properly.’ Maybe Tom had reckoned on that.

  They’d both had to raise their voices through the sound of the machinery. That noisy old machinery. It was like speaking in whispers while shouting. Then after some moments, when the last udders were being relieved of their burdens, he’d said, ‘Okay, Tom. You can rely on me. Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘And with the cows,’ he might have said, if he’d had the wit for it.

  Jack could never have got up to make a speech if he’d tried. But Jack had thought he could never write the letters he’d had to write, more or less a year later, to Tom, not even knowing then where they would find him (or, now, if they’d reached him at all). About the death of Michael Luxton. Which had required an inquest. How did you write to your brother about such a thing? But not only that. About the fact that Michael had made a will, as farmers do, and in his will, according to its latest revision, he’d left everything (such as it now was) to his first-born. No mention of his second.

  ‘All yours, Jack.’

  Tom had never actually said those words. Or said, in some other form, that it was the deal between them—if he was to go and Jack was to stay. But Tom had never written back to him, or shown up for the funeral, for whatever reasons, perhaps simply practical or perhaps—uncompassionate. There’d been two letters to write to Tom. One about the death and the inquest. One to tell him the verdict (though was there any doubt?) and to tell him, consequently, the details of the funeral. And of the will.

  Babbages, Barnstaple. November, 1994. The month, so it seemed, of funerals. And Ellie had been there—had helped him, steered him through it all, been at his side then. But no Tom, for whatever reason, perhaps merely military. And no word from him. And hadn’t that settled the matter? Wasn’t that even Tom’s way of saying it again—what he’d never actually said in the first place? All yours, Jack—and you’re welcome to it.

  And El
lie had said, said it more than once: ‘Forget him.’

  Tom was the deserter, the traitor? But if so, Jack was a traitor too, for covering for him. Or Jack was doubly loyal. To Tom, for not betraying him, and to Dad, or to the farm, for staying put himself.

  One late December afternoon—it was the eve of Tom’s eighteenth birthday—Tom and Jack had spoken to each other, knowing that this was the moment for their saying goodbye. Tom was to slip out at three the next morning (Michael could sometimes stir at four, even in December) and Jack was to pretend that he’d been sleeping, as he usually did till his dad’s stirrings roused him, like a log.

  They were once again in the milking parlour, making sure they were out of their father’s earshot. Jack at this point had asked Tom to write to him and let him know where he was. Tom had said of course he would. And so he had, using the non-interceptible method of sending the letter to Jack care of the tiny and soon to be closed subpost office in Polstowe (where their mother had once been a girl), and letting him know the postal particulars by which he, Jack, could write to him in future. But that was all Jack ever heard from Tom after he left.

  Tom said he would just take the clothes he’d be in—several layers, for the cold—and a backpack with extra stuff. It would soon be the army’s job to clothe, feed and house him. He’d hoof it through the night, then get the first bus to Exeter. He’d already, by the time they’d spoken, hidden a pack of sandwiches and a thermos inside the Big Barn at the far side of the yard. It was like the usual rations he might have taken with him to do some job on the far side of the farm. He’d breakfast on the march.

  Jack had said that thing about writing, and had remembered that first card to Ellie (seeing again the little fold-down table), but there was another written message that had gone with that moment in the parlour. It was almost Tom’s eighteenth birthday. It was true what Tom had said: no one bothered about birthdays these days at Jebb, they hadn’t since Vera had died. But Jack had found a moment, all the same, to go into the Warburtons’ store at Leke Hill Cross. Would they have any cards, even one for eighteen? Yes, they had. Inside the card it said: ‘You’re Eighteen! Now the World is Yours!’

  Jack had desperately hoped when he’d entered the store that neither Sally nor Ken Warburton would be behind the till, so there’d have to be some conversation about Tom being eighteen now. Though he was prepared to pretend to either of them—since he was prepared to pretend to his father. But he was in luck. The shop and the whole forecourt, it seemed, was being minded by a girl who looked hardly out of school, though Jack vaguely knew her name was Hazel and she must be Tom’s age, give or take, and, while he glanced at her black-sweatered breasts (and she looked at him as if he were an old man), wondered if Tom had been there.

  Jack had added some words of his own to the card and given it, sealed in its envelope, to Tom that afternoon and said, ‘Happy birthday.’ Tom had looked at Jack and after a short, questioning pause had said he wouldn’t open it yet, since it wasn’t yet the day, was it? He’d open it in the morning. And Jack had said, ‘Okay.’

  Then Tom had said, ‘Well, I suppose this is when …’

  And Jack had said, ‘I know.’ Then he’d said, ‘Good luck, Tom. I’ll be thinking of you.’ Which was a foolish thing perhaps to have said, because it was exactly what he’d written in the card.

  And it was a foolish thing perhaps to have given Tom that card at all. Since it turned out, the next morning, that Dad had actually got Tom a card too. It went against all recent custom but, as Dad himself put it, ‘It was his bloody eighteenth.’ But by this time it was apparent, anyway, that Tom had disappeared. So Michael had been able to make a big demonstration of the card he’d specially bought for Tom: by ripping it up in front of Jack. What’s more, it was the same card, the same card with a gold, embossed ‘18’ on it and the same message inside, that Jack had bought, and that Dad, too, must have dropped into the store at Leke Hill Cross to buy. Had that girl noticed?

  Jack, of course, hadn’t said and couldn’t say anything about his own card. But this had only meant that his father was able to round on him and demand: and where was his card then? If he’d known nothing about all this, where the hell was the card that Jack had got for Tom? And Jack could only answer that, well, he’d forgotten it was Tom’s birthday.

  *

  Tom, holding the unopened envelope in the milking parlour, had said, ‘I’ll be okay. I’ll be thinking of you too.’ And he’d looked at Jack with a look, Jack thought, that wasn’t just a brother’s look but perhaps a sort of son-and-father look too. Then he’d said, ‘Thanks, Jack. Thanks for everything. I won’t forget you.’ And Jack had never ceased to wonder about that remark.

  Then they’d hugged. Jack couldn’t remember who’d put their arms out first and perhaps it didn’t matter. The last time they’d hugged each other was when Vera had just died.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ Tom had said.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ Jack had said.

  Jack hadn’t had to repeat it, like some pre-agreed appointment, but he knew why he was doing so, though he didn’t actually say the words: ‘I’ll be awake, Tom.’

  And so he was. He’d stayed awake pretty well all through the night—which was rare for him—just to be sure. He was awake at three o’clock to hear Tom’s stealthy departing movements, while he himself remained motionless and as if asleep.

  He heard Tom creep along the passage and down the stairs. Tom would know, even in the dark, where to put his feet, which steps would creak and which wouldn’t. Those steps were part of him. Jack heard the sounds in the kitchen and then the sounds—this was tricky for Tom because the hinges were far from noiseless—of the door into the yard being opened and closed again. It was all done as quickly and as quietly as possible. If Tom had been a soldier, specially trained for such a night-time operation, you could say he’d done it well.

  Jack thought he heard a few faint scuffs of footsteps as Tom crossed the yard and again as he slipped in and out of the barn. But it wasn’t a case of hearing, so much as of imagining and seeing in his head. It wasn’t difficult to do. For Jack in his head, as for Tom on his feet, the walk up the track would be like going to get the school bus when it was still dark in winter. How many times had both of them done that—always separately, because of those years between them? In the dark, but knowing every step and, because you knew every step, not using a torch, though you had one with you. The small bravery of not using it, not needing or using any light—till the blazing headlights of the school bus, rounding the bend, caught you, like the eyes of some snorting monster, and you’d be gathered up.

  Tom would be thinking perhaps of all that now. Jack couldn’t hear or see Tom’s footsteps, but he could picture them, count them, every one, as if they were his own. He could see as if he were holding, even if it wasn’t needed, a torch for Tom, every thick, ropey rut, hard with frost, and the splays of ice in between. The high, hedged banks on either side, stars peeping through the thorns. The bend where, on the way down, you’d catch your first glimpse of the farmhouse, just its roof and chimney. Or where, on the way up, you’d pause to look back. Would Tom look back? But everything would be in darkness. Or if a moon was up, there’d be the glimmer, maybe, of the roof slates under which he, Jack, was lying.

  One hundred, two hundred paces. Three hundred ascending, lung-rasping paces—to freedom. If that’s what it was. Was the army freedom? Tom must think it was. It wasn’t Jebb Farm. Three hundred paces, his heart thumping, breath smoking. Then the gate.

  Good luck, Tom. He’d said it into his pillow as he counted him up the track and pictured him swinging quickly over the gate—there’d be no opening it. Dropping his pack over first. Then the road towards Marleston. If there was a moon, it would light up the pot-holed surface. In twenty minutes or so he’d pass the churchyard and the war memorial, and his mother’s grave. Would he pause?

  Good luck, Tom. Since when had he, Jack, a grown man, ever whispered into his pillow? Or ever felt hi
s pillow damp beneath his cheek?

  Good luck, Tom.

  He’d said it inside himself the next day, as if for his own preservation, when Dad had gone ballistic, after ripping up that card. And he’d said it many times, over and over, in the weeks, months and even years to come, as if to make something true that wasn’t. Till something he’d really known all along had sunk in on him. That Tom had simply gone, gone his own way. He would never hear Tom’s voice or see his face again.

  22

  MAJOR RICHARDS watched Jack walk away across the grass and disappear behind the corner of the building, and blamed himself. ‘I’d slip away if I were you …’ But that hadn’t meant the man should simply turn tail and make a beeline. ‘Slip away’ implied some tact.

  Major Richards felt vaguely disappointed. Nonetheless, as he watched Jack walk away, he found himself oddly willing him on. He was walking in an intent, obstinate way, like some big child clinging to the absurd hope that he might be invisible. As a soldier might walk, Major Richards thought—though he’d never been in a position to see such a thing—from a battle.

  And there was no question of stopping him. You allowed in a civilian under the sway of great distress what you would never allow in a soldier facing possible imminent death. What you would never have allowed in any of these lads lying here in their shiny black hearses.

  When Jack reached the safety of the building, Major Richards felt a small flutter of relief, even of something like envy.

  *

  Derek Page and Dave Springer, the undertaker’s men from Babbages, also watched Jack turn and walk off across the grass, like a man, it seemed to them, who’d just remembered some other appointment. Then they looked at each other. Well, that was a bit sudden. But it was the privilege of the bereaved to act how they liked (Derek and Dave had seen some examples). They could laugh their heads off if they liked and be excused for it. And he’d done the decent thing, made contact, when that wasn’t in the rule book either, and they’d pocketed twenty each.