by Graham Swift
Well, he had come back. And he hadn’t. And now it seemed she might sit here in this lay-by for ever.
25
JACK SWUNG THE Cherokee back onto the road and sped off as if from some delay not of his own making. He’d wasted valuable time getting choked up. Part of him recognised that it was the whole point of this journey, to get choked up. It was its essence. But some other part of him was now trying to outdrive this immobilising stuff inside him. He looked in the mirror, half expecting to see the black hearse on his tail.
The road was clear, in both directions. The November day was brightening again, the grey clouds breaking, so that a whole hillside would suddenly light up while everything else seemed to darken.
He crossed the infant River Thames, back into Wiltshire, but the countryside, the passing signs to innocent-sounding villages, now vaguely oppressed him, unlike when he’d left the motorway to drive north in the morning. He was relieved when he joined the M4 and was sucked into its tunnelled anonymity. He saw himself as a mere moving speck on a map—the blue line of the M4 draped like a cable across the land. The road was everything and, despite the names that loomed at junctions, might have been anywhere. Chippenham? Malmes-bury? Where the hell were they?
But for the first time he became conscious of the empty seat beside him, of the pointedness of its emptiness. What was Ellie doing now? The Isle of Wight seemed already far away, as far away, almost, as Iraq. He couldn’t imagine what Ellie was doing now. He couldn’t imagine that she was sitting now at the Lookout, trying to imagine what he was doing. Wishing that, after all, she was sitting next to him.
Was she packing her bags?
It seemed to him that there was now a difference, a gap, between Ellie and him as plain as that strip of choppy sea he’d crossed this morning. For her, Tom’s death meant quite simply that Tom was gone now for good and was never coming back. He could see that this was a perfectly sound position. But for him it meant just as simply—though it was a position much harder to argue for—that Tom had come back. He understood it truly now. He’d come back as surely as if that letter announcing his death had really been Tom himself knocking on the door. Can I come in? It was as if Tom, whom he’d lived without for thirteen years, could no longer, now he was dead, be lived without. He’d been trying to drive away from this nonsensical, pursuing fact, and yet it was true.
There was even a simple test. He asked himself a question that, lurking inside him though it may have been, he hadn’t dared confront till now. Perhaps it had only become a question since he’d made his bolt for it, after the ceremony, back there. Who would he rather have right now—right now between junctions 17 and 18—in that empty seat beside him? Ellie? Tom?
It wasn’t an easy question or even a fair one. For a moment he failed to answer it. But then, for a clear second or two, and by way of an answer, Tom was there. He had a corporal, in battle gear, sitting beside him while he drove, under a brightening sky, down the M4. This was the first time this had happened on his journey, and it wouldn’t be the last. Jack wasn’t frightened or even surprised. He was even relieved. He didn’t need now to worry about the hearse, about outstripping it, because Tom was with him anyway.
It’s because he’s really come back, he thought. It’s because I touched the coffin and held it. Like a kind of contamination, but a good one.
Then he thought: Am I going mad?
Last night (was it only last night and not last week?), when Jack had asked Ellie one last time—he wasn’t going to insist or demand—if she’d come with him, she’d shaken her head and taken a deep, exasperated breath, as if she might have been going to say, ‘It’s him or me, Jack.’ He was sure she was going to say it, that was the look in her eyes, but she hadn’t said it.
And he should never have said that thing, at the start, about St Lucia. Then Ellie would be with him now. He’d seen the same look come into her eyes then—as if, strangely, now Tom was dead, she could no longer rely on his absence. And hadn’t he just proved her right? The simple word was ghost.
‘So what are you going to do, Jacko? Mope around here all winter?’
The word was ‘mourn’, he’d thought. Mourn, not mope. But he couldn’t say it—‘Mourn, not mope, Ellie.’ The word had stuck in his throat. Like St Lucia hadn’t.
And if Ellie were with him now, sitting right beside him, would that mean Tom wouldn’t be, couldn’t be? That there couldn’t be any ghosts? Now all the other ghosts, it suddenly seemed to him, were waiting for him too—sensing his approach, beyond the end of this blue, snaking motorway. Including Jimmy Merrick, with an extra, needly twinkle in his eye. ‘What—no Ellie with you, boy?’
Was he going mad?
Bristol, like some phantom presence—a thickening of traffic and junctions—passed somewhere on his left. He filtered off the M4 onto the M5, confused by the lanes. Bristol, Avonmouth, Portishead. The sea could not be far away. A different sea from the one he’d seen and crossed this morning. The Bristol Channel. The map of England wheeled in his head. Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol. He was on an island. And he was in Somerset now, a sign told him. The West Country. Clevedon, Weston-super-Mare. He’d never been to Weston-super-Mare, but the name smacked of caravans.
Beyond Taunton—most of his motorway driving was behind him now—he pulled into a service station, needing to piss and eat. It was more that he was empty than hungry. He needed to fill himself as he might have needed to fill the car. He needed to drain himself, though he felt already drained. In the Gents he could have sworn that, again, for just a moment, he’d seen Tom, three urinals along. Desert camouflage, slung rifle. Had he simply imagined it this time?
He walked back out towards the cafeteria, past a row of busy, brightly coloured miniature cars on stands, each occupied by an eager child who could only just have been released from a real car. He was still feeling, himself, though he was on his feet, the sway and thrum of being on the road. The cafeteria was a near-replica of the one he’d sat in, near Newbury, this morning, but now he wondered how many of those around him—or how many of those who would pass through here today—would have some link, no matter how remote (a cousin, a brother-in-law) with someone in Iraq. There ought to be a badge, perhaps, a means of recognition. No there shouldn’t. If there was a war on terror, that would be a stupid idea. Could bombs go off in motorway service stations?
That place in Oxfordshire, he thought, had been like a great big bloody service station—for the services.
It was not quite three o’clock, but the day was waning. The light outside seemed fragile and taut, already preparing to depart. He’d made good time and there was now no particular need to rush, but he had an odd fear of having to drive in the dark. Though he wasn’t afraid of seeing Tom again. It had happened twice now, so the possibility was strong. He was no longer afraid of the hearse—which, even while he sat here, might whizz sneakily past. Perhaps, in some quite feasible and arguable way, Tom was no longer in the hearse. He stared at the empty chair beside him, which stayed empty.
It was clearly something Tom had control over, not him.
He pushed aside his plate, got up and walked back to where he’d parked. It was distinctly cold now. The sky was virtually clear and the edges of things had sharpened. His thin shadow, like a pointer on a dial, went before him across the car park. He still wore the black tie, not even loosened. His suit, which he’d have to wear tomorrow, would now be hopelessly creased. He laid the jacket again on the back seat. The medal went back into his shirt pocket.
Only a few minutes and a few miles further on, he crossed into Devon. ‘Welcome to Devon.’ Did he feel he’d come home? Did he feel he’d crossed a special line? Within half an hour, on the outskirts of Exeter, he turned off the end of the motorway onto the westbound A30. The possibility had certainly occurred to him of exiting at an earlier point and taking a route along slower country roads that would eventually have led him into landscapes that he knew. But he instinctively wanted to stave off till tomorrow—
and even then, perhaps, to keep it as brief as possible—encountering any views that were familiar. This wasn’t memory lane. The dual carriageway of the A30, as well as being fast, had the numbing virtue of being like any busy trunk road anywhere.
But even as he sped along it, he began to see, on his right, a certain kind of bulging hill, a certain kind of hunched, bunched geography that he intimately recognised, and ploughed and scooped out of it, here and there, were areas of bare earth with a familiar ruddy hue. In the late-afternoon light it even seemed to glow. These sights brought an unexpected tightness to his throat. ‘Earth with dried blood in it,’ Michael Luxton had once moodily said.
The sky was darkening, with a reddish tinge to match the scours among the hills. He switched on his side lights. On the left, Dartmoor loomed. Its distant, cloud-hung outline had once been the regular sight at Jebb. So, he couldn’t deny it, he was back now. On the other hand, he had never been to Dartmoor, and he was about as close to it now as he’d ever been. Though it had been constantly there once, on the horizon, it might as well have been the Isle of Wight. And he’d understood that it was a tourist place, where holidaymakers went in the summer. Also a place, he’d understood, where there were signs saying, ‘Army: Keep Out’.
Before day had quite given up to night, he turned off the A30 and descended into the nestling town of Okehampton. He was now in a place he knew, though not well. Even Okehampton—like Barnstaple or Exeter—had been a rare excursion. He had dim memories of being taken there to see his mother’s Aunt Maggie. A bus ride, shops, a cream tea in a cafe with rickety chairs. But hotels didn’t feature in his memories. There’d been no reason for them to. In all his life—and despite being himself in the business of providing accommodation—Jack had only ever stayed in three different hotels, and all of them had been in the Caribbean. Now he was to stay in a hotel less than twenty miles from where he was born.
He’d chosen the Globe Inn from a website, back at the Lookout. Since Ellie wasn’t coming, he wasn’t interested in anywhere smart, just a place for the night. He’d almost self-denyingly gone down-market. Should he sleep in luxury while his brother slept in a coffin? He’d chosen Okehampton because it was about the right distance from Marleston. It might have been Barnstaple, which was nearer, but he’d plumped for Okehampton. He was definitely not going to stay anywhere in the direct vicinity, certainly not in the Crown (if they had such a thing as a room). Technically, there would still be people around who, in the circumstances, might have put him up. But that thought—he was Jack Luxton who’d cleared off over ten years ago—horrified him.
He knew now in any case, as he entered Okehampton, that he might as well have made no booking and taken pot luck. Okehampton in mid-November was not exactly in demand. The streets were scarcely busy, despite some glittery gestures in shop windows to a Christmas still weeks away. And when he found the Globe Inn, parked in its yard of a car park, and entered through its rattling front door, he was glad, at least in one sense, that Ellie wasn’t with him. Her tastes and requirements had been raised considerably in recent years. So had his, it was true, to keep up with hers. But now his had rapidly dropped away, though with no real sense of indignity, as if he felt that he deserved something only just above the lowest.
This was Tom’s homecoming and he’d gone for cheapness. But it wasn’t Tom who’d be staying here.
The Globe was little more than a pub, but its lack of any style was vaguely comforting and as he entered, there, briefly, was Tom again, behind the cubicle-like reception desk. As if his brother was there to welcome him (though with a chin-strapped helmet on). He was standing with his hands resting on the wooden counter. Then he was gone.
Jack pressed the bell on the counter—though without supposing this would resummon his brother—and a woman waddled into view and smiled. This also comforted Jack and made him put aside his feeling of foolishness at having booked in advance.
He gave his name and heard it being drawled back to him. ‘Lu-uxton’. He had a momentary terror of being found out. She’d surely have read the name in the local paper, where it must have been a story. But the voice (which had something in common with his own) had no particular meaning in it. She took a key from the rack behind her and smiled again. ‘Breakfast in the back bar—that way—seven to half-past nine.’ He wondered if he were the only guest.
The room was better than he’d expected, much better than the mere cell he felt was his due. There was a large window, beneath it a radiator that was barely warm. He found a plug-in heater that made ticking noises, and drew the curtains. Then he lay sprawled for several moments on his back on the bed, closing his eyes. The bed seemed to tremble and rock under him as if he were still travelling. He saw the plane parked out on the tarmac.
He got up again quickly, as if to rest was fatal. His watch showed it had just gone five. In his bag he had a change of clothes, for this one evening, so that he could preserve his suit, with a fresh white shirt for the morning. The medal had been in his top pocket when he entered the hotel. He put it now on the bedside table. He undressed and hung up his suit. In the bathroom his nakedness, in a strange mirror, among strange angles and surfaces, suddenly perplexed and alarmed him. Would that hearse have arrived yet? Should he have been there for it, waiting in the twilight? He wouldn’t have liked to drive a big hearse through the high, narrow lanes around Marleston, let alone with darkness coming on. He saw its headlights rippling along the rooty banks.
What was in that coffin? He ran the tap. And those other two coffins—with their flags still wrapping them—where were they now? Pickering, Fuller. He’d scarcely given them a thought.
He lay in the bath, his knees raised so it could contain his length. The water had gushed and was hot. How had Tom died? The bath was better, safer than the swaying bed. He felt like a man on the run. He felt a great desire not to know who he was.
It was barely seven when he went out. There was no waddling woman, though there was chatter from along the hallway and the noise of a TV. So he hung on to his key. He’d picked up the medal again and put it in the zip-up pocket of his parka jacket. He didn’t dare not have it about his person. It was like carrying a key. He had only one plan. To find a pub—definitely not the Globe itself—a pub that did food. To drink as much as it took, then to get back and crash into bed with as little as possible still stirring in his brain.
He was lucky with the pub. It was called the Fox and Hounds and was barely three minutes from his hotel. It had, at this early-evening hour, just the right number of customers, so that he wouldn’t stand out nor, on the other hand, be swamped. Furthermore, one of the other customers, he almost casually observed now, was Tom. Still in his battle kit, but leaning against the bar like some regular, one hand plunged into one of many pockets as if he might have been jingling loose change, or perhaps a hand grenade. He’d looked round as his brother came in, as if to say, ‘Jack! What’ll you have?’ Then, as before, he was gone.
Jack ordered a pint and saw that there were plastic menus on the tables. He didn’t care: any food. He took a table by the wall. The wall had fake black beams running down it and in between were framed pictures of hunting scenes that were standard issue for pubs in country towns. He drank the first pint fairly quickly, then, when he went to the bar for a second, ordered the steak and chips. Fox and hounds, steak and chips. From the feel of the beer inside him, he reckoned another pint after this, or a large scotch, should be sufficient. He generally knew his limits. As many of the Lookouters who went to the Ship at Sands End could vouch, Jack wasn’t a big drinker—two pints sipped slowly. His big body seemed to contain them easily, but not to need any more. But now he was drinking to a purpose.
Someone had left a convenient copy of the Daily Express on one of the other tables, to give him something to do. He looked at it, rather than read it. Fortunately, it was yesterday’s news. He didn’t want to look at any local paper. He didn’t want to look at the television when he got back to his room. There was no tel
evision—it was something he’d consciously checked—in this bar. He wanted to be disconnected. Yet the voices around him were like voices he’d once known and he had the feeling again that he might suddenly be recognised. Equally, he had the thought that he was sitting—quite unnoticeably, in fact—in an ordinary pub in Okehampton when only seven or eight hours ago he’d been mingling with lords and ladies and generals and God knows who. He’d been where drums had been beaten, bugles blown and swords had flashed.
Guess where I’ve been today?
Was it the beer starting to work? In the wrong direction? While he waited for his food and looked at the Daily Express—though as if the newsprint might have been mere gauze—it seemed suddenly to Jack that he was perfectly capable of becoming one of those strange men in pubs who can rear up suddenly and accost others with their uninvited stories, their riddles, or their sheer, frothing rage. That sort of thing could happen, after all, at the Lookout (it could happen in the Ship, but then it was not his business). The furies that a fortnight’s holiday could sometimes, oddly, release. The pressure-cooker of a caravan under three days of rain. It seemed strange to Jack that he could actually exert a calming influence in such situations—or maybe just look like a man no one would want to take on. A gangster even, apparently. He’d entered that hardly intimidating hotel like a mouse.
He was better at stopping fights, perhaps, than picking them, better at quelling anger than venting it. Yet now he felt he could almost go up to the bar and thump it and be one of those desperate, belligerent men. He might get out the medal, unlock it from his clenched and brandished fist. ‘See this? See this, everyone? See what I’ve got here?’
A girl appeared from nowhere, bearing his steak and some cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin. Black skirt and white blouse. Her brief attentiveness (though she would never know it) entirely defused him. She gave him, as she put down his plate, a quick, direct smile. He couldn’t see why he deserved it or why it should have come just as his thoughts had begun to boil. Did he look as if he needed soothing? That was two warm female smiles he’d had in the last two hours. Did he look as if he needed mothering?