by Graham Swift
Her heart hammers and, as she mounts the hill proper, still sheathed by the high banks which only give way at the bend by the old chapel, it seems she has no choice but also to go down that hill Jack once went down, alone on foot. To enter that dark but silvery, frosty tunnel that he must have gone down again and again in his mind. And, in truth, in her mind, she’s often gone down it with him, holding his hand and hoping that what was there at the bottom of the hill might not, this time, be there. Even wishing she might have gone down it with him that first time when it wasn’t in the mind but entirely, terribly real, so at least he might not have been alone, at least she could have been with him.
But how could that ever have been? And she wasn’t even with him yesterday, or the day before. And now she may have to go down that dark tunnel all by herself—Jack can’t be with her—and see what he saw at the end of it.
35
THE CARAVANS loom through the greyness. Jack feels an ache for them. What will become of them? More to the point, what will become of all their would-be occupants in the season to come? Only November, but the bookings sheets are already filling up with the names of regulars: the same again next year, please. What will they think? What will they do when they find out, via the reports that will surely cause some noticeable blip on the national news? If they missed the other thing or failed to make the connection, then they surely won’t miss this.
‘Tragedy in the Isle of Wight’. Or (who knows?) ‘The Siege of Lookout Cottage’.
Jack doesn’t want to disappoint any of them—the Lookouters in their scattered winter quarters all over the country. It seems for their sakes alone he might almost decide not to do what he intends. But nor, mysteriously, does he want to disappoint the caravans themselves, which he has come to see, now more than ever, as patient, dormant, hibernating creatures needing their summer influx of life. Who will look after them now?
‘The Lookout Caravan Park is closed till further notice.’ Pending future ownership. But who, with such a blot upon it, will want to take it over? A taint, a curse, and a lot more glaring than a hole in a tree.
The rain batters the window. Always, of course, the gamble of the weather. No, he couldn’t guarantee it. Even farmers had never found a way of doing that. A risk you took, no money back. And it cut both ways: a wet July, a sudden spate of cancellations. And what could you say to those who braved it? There’s always Carisbrooke Castle. Have you been to Carisbrooke Castle? Did you know (Jack certainly hadn’t known till it became part of his rainy-day patter) that Charles I had once ruled England, or thought he did, from Carisbrooke Castle?
Always an eye on the weather. Even in August it could sweep in, just like now. No, not called the Lookout for nothing. But on a good Easter, say, in good spring weather, when they started to show up in numbers, knowing they’d hit it right, it was like turning out the heifers for the first time. They felt it, you felt it. Even the caravans felt it.
He looks at them from the window, as if he’s abandoned them and they know it. Only the rapid events of the last two hours, only the shifting and sharpening of his basic plan, mean that he’s here now and not down among them, with the gun, even in this weather. That his brains, and all that they’ve ever comprehended, aren’t already strewing one of them.
He might have done it on his return, had Ellie not been at home. And he might even have done it now, in her absence. He might have damn well walked down the hill, even in this rain, the gun under his parka, and taken the keys and chosen any one of the thirty-two. Pick a number. And that surely would have marred for ever the prospects of the Lookout Park. No chance, then, of happy holidays to come.
But he needed Ellie. He needs her now. He fully understands it. That final, still solvable complication. He needs her to be here. If he has gone mad, then he’s also rational. He needs her to return and, if she returns, to return alone. He’s prepared to deal with all comers, seriously prepared: a whole box of cartridges, this upstairs position.
But he thinks—he could almost place a bet—that Ellie will return, and alone, and that it won’t be long now. Delayed only by this evil weather, sent this way and that by the weather, like some desperate yacht (he’s sometimes watched such a thing from this very window) trying to make it round Holn Head.
It was all a hysterical bluff, perhaps. But he isn’t bluffing. And he needs her.
Jack hasn’t changed the will he made soon after their arrival in the Isle of Wight. There’d be no reason—or opportunity—for doing so now, but he momentarily thinks of how he sat one day with Ellie in the offices of Gibbs and Parker (the same firm who’d acted for Uncle Tony) and of how the solicitor, Gibbs, had delicately pointed out that they should include in both their wills a standard provision for their dying at the same time or nearly so.
They’d done two things. They’d got married (his declaration at Brigwell Bay was almost a proposal) and, being man and wife and business partners, they’d made wills. It was a flurry of wills—Michael’s, Uncle Tony’s, Jimmy’s—that had brought them to this new life, so they were not unfamiliar with such things, and for Jack this sensible if slightly grim undertaking had even been comforting.
Simple, reciprocal wills in favour of each other, with the provision in his case that, should he die having survived Ellie and without children, everything would go to Tom.
That provision had strangely consoled him, even though it rested on the dreadful precondition of both Ellie’s and his own death, and had sown in his mind the exonerating notion that Tom might one day come to own Lookout Cottage and run the Lookout Caravan Park—not a bad prospect for an ex-soldier. As Tom was eight years his junior it was not improbable that Tom might survive him. On the other hand, as Tom was a serving soldier … But when Jack’s mind turned in that (improbable) direction it flicked away.
It was a notion he never mentioned to Ellie and which he didn’t indulge so much himself, since it had its morbid aspects. But it was really a hope, a dream, a variant of a simple, secret wish: that one day Tom might just appear. One day he might just stick his head round the cottage door.
And it was all one now: the notion and the wish and the contents of his will—even that gruesome addition Gibbs had advised, which, in theory, would have speeded Tom’s inheritance.
He’d sometimes embroidered the wish with fanciful details—Tom might have become an officer, with a peaked cap, or he might have quit soldiering and signed up as a gamekeeper—but the fantasies had always stopped as soon as he thought: But what might Ellie feel if Tom were suddenly, actually to show up? And they’d vanished completely whenever he reflected: And what might be Ellie’s secret wish?
People can help in all kinds of ways, Jack thinks, by dying—death is a great solution. That doesn’t mean you should anticipate or wish it. But he’s past the point of separating wishes and reality, and, perched at this window with a gun on the bed behind him, he’s all anticipation.
But people also didn’t help by dying. Because someone had to pick up the pieces. It was a bastard thing to inflict on anyone that they should pick up the pieces, a bastard thing. Jack knew this. He and Ireton had picked up the pieces, so to speak, yesterday, though neither of them had resented Tom for it. Tom hadn’t meant it or been a bastard about it. It wasn’t Tom’s fault. They’d put the pieces on their shoulders and Jack had wondered if Ireton had thought (but surely he would have done) about other pieces they’d once had to pick up.
And it could be said now that Jack Luxton had picked up everyone’s pieces. He knew about picking up pieces, and for that reason he wasn’t going to inflict the same thing on Ellie. He’d make sure he’d never inflict such a thing on her.
He looks at the empty caravans. And what will Ireton think, he briefly considers, when he finds out? As he surely will. What will he think? Jesus God, he’ll think, I was with him only yesterday, I was right beside him. And what will Ireton think (though Jack doesn’t really believe it’s likely now) if a squad car of armed police is involved?
&nbs
p; Could Ellie really have done it—said it? On a Saturday morning, on this filthy-wet morning, in a police station? And even have added: ‘I don’t like to say this—but there’s a gun in the house. He’s got a gun.’?
Jack doesn’t really think it’s likely, but he’s prepared. A whole box of cartridges, some in his pocket. And he thinks it’s likely, in any case, that Ellie will have remembered the gun.
The rain stops beating against the window. It’s only a fleeting break in the storm, a parting of dark clouds to reveal paler ones behind, but Holn Head suddenly emerges in its entirety and the caravans seem to gleam for a moment almost as if the sun is shining on them.
Do caravans know things, have feelings, premonitions? It’s a stupid thought, like wondering if the dead can know things (and Jack is trying very hard now not to think of his mother). Do caravans know when a death is going to happen?
At Jebb it was something there was always plenty of opportunity to think about—to observe and assess—if you wanted to. Did cattle know things? Did they know when trouble, death even (as it quite often could be) was on its way? Did they know the difference between madness and normality? A cow was only one notch up, perhaps, in thinking power, from a caravan. At Jebb, Jack had occasionally thought that he wasn’t that many notches up from a cow. All the same, he knew things. Did they know things? Luke had known things, Jack had never doubted that. Luke had surely known, when Dad had bundled him out to the pick-up. He’d known.
For an instant Jack sees himself driving again the old rust-pocked pick-up, with Luke in the back, over to Westcott, over to Ellie, not knowing, any more than a cow might know, that thinking of doing just what he was doing then might one day be one of his last thoughts.
And Luke not knowing then, either, that the last ever journey he’d make would be in that pick-up.
But as Jack has these thoughts about the pick-up he sees the rain-drenched Cherokee emerge from behind the old chapel building and, travelling fast, start to mount the steep last section of the hill beneath him.
The rain has already resumed and Jack can’t see Ellie herself, still some hundred yards away, through its blur and through the wet windscreen in front of her. But there certainly aren’t any police cars. No sirens. No lights, save Ellie’s own. Jack decides accordingly, if for no other reason than last-minute tidiness, to slip the box of cartridges into his sock drawer.
Then he turns from the window to pick up the gun and, as Ellie drives the final yards, walks with it to the bedroom door, to the top of the stairs, then down them. No police, just Ellie. The air still reeks of bacon. He’ll need to be very quick and decisive, but he feels quite calm. He’ll need to appear with the gun only when she’s shut the door behind her. If she calls out ‘Jack?’ or ‘Jacko?’ he’ll need to ignore it. Or perhaps, as he emerges through the doorway from the foot of the stairs, he’ll say, ‘Here I am, Ell. I’m here.’
It’s as though something he can’t prevent is simply happening to him. Though everything is quick, there also seems ample time to do it in. He has the spare cartridges in his pocket, but he hopes it will be as unfumbled and clean as possible. His own death he is ready for. He could have done it already. He might even have done it yesterday, if he’d busted through that gate—and if he’d had a gun with him—but that would have been inconsiderate to all concerned, including the bloody Robinsons.
And he’d needed this gun.
He can bear the thought, very easily now, of the world without him, of the world carrying on without Jack Luxton, but he can’t bear the thought of Ellie having to carry on in it without him, of a world with Ellie but not him in it, and of Ellie having to pick up his pieces. He knows he can’t inflict it on her, it would be a crime.
Which leaves only one option. And final complication. Also, if he deals with Ellie first, he knows he won’t hesitate to deal with himself, he’ll do it all the quicker. Not that in his case it will be so mechanically simple to do, but he’ll make sure it’s done. He knows that it can be done.
Now that it’s happening it doesn’t feel mad at all, it even feels—only right. As if his death has arrived in the form of Ellie and there’s no getting away from it and no other way he would wish it. And she’ll understand perfectly, he knows that too, even as he lifts the gun. From the look in his face, in his wall of a face, she’ll know what he’s doing. He’s sparing her. He’s sparing her from finding what he once had to find and look at. He’s simply sparing her. This was always a double thing, just him for Ellie and Ellie for him, and there are two barrels to this shotgun.
He hears, through the sound of the rain, the approaching car and decides—a sudden, impetuous change of plan—to come forward, raising the gun, from his position of concealment at the foot of the stairs. Only to see Tom standing with his back pressed against the inside of the front door through which Ellie must enter, in a barring posture that’s vaguely familiar.
He’s in his full soldier’s kit, head to toe, he’s in the clothes he died in, and in his face and his eyes, too, he looks like a soldier.
And this time he speaks, though it’s hardly necessary.
He says, ‘Shoot me first, Jack, shoot me first. Don’t be a fucking fool. Over my dead fucking body.’
36
ELLIE TURNS BY the old chapel and makes the final climb to the cottage. Never in all her life has she felt so monstrously late for anything, and so absolute is her hurry that she takes this itself to mean that the worst must be true. Why else should she be hurrying? It’s a false logic, but persuasive. On the other hand, if the worst is true, hurrying can make no difference.
No amount of hurry, however, can reverse the recent sequence of events. She simply shouldn’t have left. She shouldn’t be travelling in this direction at all. Two mornings ago it was her crime to stay, today it was her crime to leave. And she has never in any serious way walked out on Jack before. She has never even thought of it, though now it might already be her irrevocable situation: life without Jack.
Her final charge up Beacon Hill is, anyway, quite unlike the slow but deliberate approach of Major Richards last week, which could be said to be the cause of why she is careering up the same road now. Haste, in his case, would have been quite inappropriate, though so too would have been lateness, or any hint of evasion.
For a moment Ellie, who only seconds ago has thought that she is like Jack, heading down that dreadful slope of Barton Field, wishes she might be Major Richards, still making his solemn way to Lookout Cottage. That the sequence and allocation of events might be reassembled. Then all this might be undone and have a second chance to unfold. Or rather Ellie thinks, even as she races in her unmajorly way up the hill, that she would rather be Major Richards, bringing the confirmation of Tom’s death, she would rather be Major Richards with his unenviable duties as the messenger of death than be the woman she is, in the plight she is in, right now.
But it’s as she briefly shares her being with Major Richards that Ellie gets the distinct sensation that she has been preceded, even now, by a military visitation. As if during her absence, her manic driving this way and that and her sitting helplessly near the edge of a cliff, Major Richards has in fact contrived, even in this weather, to pay another, surprise call. To let them know it was all a mistake. That it wasn’t Tom, after all. A mistake of identities. Bodies, you understand. It was some other poor luckless soldier, whose family, of course, have now been informed.
‘Carry on.’ (Major Richards’s cap drips with rain water.) ‘Carry on. As you were.’
And for the first time Ellie realises that she wishes Tom not dead. Truly.
So had she wished him dead? Was that the logic? Had she? Wish you were not here? She wishes him not dead now and for a moment even wishes she might be him. Not Major Richards, but Tom. She wishes she might be Tom, in his soldier’s kit, speeding now up Beacon Hill to prove that Major Richards’s last, swift, miraculous visit, in the middle of a storm, wasn’t itself a deplorable error.
Never, in any case, si
nce the news of Tom’s death, has Ellie felt such a tangible sense of his living presence—a big burly corporal—and to her surprise and in all her haste and terror for another man, and even as she comes to a lurching halt outside the cottage, her eyes and throat thicken and she splutters out as if she might even have been the poor dead man’s wife, lover, mother, sister: ‘O Tom! O poor, poor Tom!’
And no sooner has she done so than the feeling of Tom’s presence (that military presence was his) is gone.
She cuts the engine. The cottage, despite its lit windows, looks deserted. The rain lashes down. The very worst thing now would be to hear a shot from inside. The very best would be to see the door open. The door stays shut.
After her headlong drive, there’s no logical reason for her not to move as fast as she can to open that front door herself. But she stays stuck where she is—how long do you give such a moment?—afraid of what she will find, or longing to remain for a further instant, then a further instant, within the time before she will find it. Or simply willing that other, miraculous thing to occur: that the door will open.
Then it does open.
It is opened slowly and sheepishly, as if, she will think later, by a man emerging half-believingly from some awful place, or a man who, having sought desperate refuge, has just been told that it’s safe now, it’s perfectly safe, to come out. She opens her door too, and perhaps they both look, in looking at each other, as if they’ve seen a ghost. Jack stands in the doorway, and he grasps with both hands and points before him something long and slender which, had the light been even poorer or had she been looking from a different angle, might have made her blood run cold.
But she sees what it is. There’s an identical article in the back of this car.
He struggles to open it, fumbling with the catch. Then he does open it, and disappears for a moment behind its expanding circle. Ellie sees before her, through the pelting rain, a burst of black and yellow segments, with the word lookout, repeated several times at its rim. Then she sees Jack, stepping forward, holding the umbrella uncertainly up and out towards her, in the manner of an inexpert doorman.
