Wish You Were Here (21 page)

It was—well, memorable. But more than that. The word was really (though neither of them said it) haunting. When they finally reached their destination, Marleston church, back in Devon, where the coffin would rest overnight, they felt relieved, but also vaguely sorry, even deprived.

By then the sky had cleared and the November afternoon had turned still and chilly. The air in the churchyard smelt smoky and raw. They’d phoned ahead and the rector, Brookes, and some local men were on hand to help with the final carrying into the church. In the fading light it felt like an act of stealth.

They were certainly exhausted. They’d need a drink or two, in the Spread Eagle, once they’d garaged the empty hearse in Barnstaple. Tired as they were, they didn’t wish this long mission to be over. They weren’t at all resentful that they’d have to go back to the church in the morning, to make contact again with Jack Luxton (who hadn’t been sighted en route, so far as they could tell) and to finish the job.

The sky to the west, as they drove the last few miles to Barnstaple, had reddened while the hills had darkened. They’d seen a lot of hills today, a lot of land. Even that seemed haunting now, or haunted. This was Corporal Luxton’s land, his country, as much as theirs. He’d been returned to it—with a little help from them. One of those
ready phrases that had sprung into their heads earlier now seemed as shadowy as the nightfall. Corporal Luxton, who’d ridden with them, must have been a pretty good soldier, especially if he was as big as his brother. But to say, as is said of soldiers, that he’d died for his country—no, that wouldn’t be exactly true, would it?

C
ORPORAL
L
UXTON
, Tom Luxton, then a lance-corporal and between tours, had seen those shots of burning cattle, huge roaring piles, on the TV in a West London pub—tanking up before a night of it—but had simply sniffed, swallowed more beer and said nothing to his mates. Roak Moor, Devon. Foot-and-mouth this time. Well, there were worse sights in the world (Hounslow Barracks, for example). And now he could feel sure—as if he hadn’t known all along—that he’d made the right decision.

But he kept the TV picture of those burning cattle in his head as if it was a real and actual memory, and it was a useful memory to have, somehow, whenever he saw a belch of black smoke, after the explosion, rise up above the flat rooftops, over the palm trees—which was getting to be most days now, sometimes you’d see two, three or more palls of dark smoke. It was a good guide and reference point to have, whenever you had to think of or sometimes look at what those clouds of smoke meant. Burning cattle, slaughtered cattle. Like the ones he’d seen carried off from Jebb Farm because they might be mad.
Not were, but might be. They might have been going to catch or spread the madness.

It was a good guide. Tom could remember another news clip, on the telly at Jebb, when the mad-cow thing was just starting, but in some other part of the country and they hadn’t the slightest idea it was actually going to hit
them
.

It was a clip of a cow, in a pen somewhere, that had got the disease. It was falling down and getting up, then falling down again, its legs skidding sideways. It didn’t know what it was doing, it was going round in circles. It wasn’t a good picture for him and Jack and Dad to be looking at, even if it was only a picture on the telly, and they were all thinking it couldn’t possibly come their way.

And it was pretty much the same when Willis got shot, their first serious casualty. Everyone was dreading carnage, major detonations, someone with a nasty parcel under their shirt. But it was a single bullet, a sniper. No one even seemed to have heard the shot. They just saw Willis acting funny, not being Willis any more, moving around like a big, jerky puppet with some of its strings missing, no one understanding why. A bullet that just nicked his spine, but it was enough. Enough to stop Willis being Willis any more, for the rest of his life maybe. The first of theirs to be shipped home.

And because he was Corporal Luxton now and had to make sure they got that picture out of their heads pretty fast, he’d had to act for them like someone who’d seen this sort of thing before, maybe a dozen times, and knew how to hack it. And the only thing that had helped was that cow on the telly—the memory of sitting round at Jebb and thinking: surely not.

It had flashed through his brain, while God knows what was flashing through Ricky Willis’s brain. That and the fact that he himself was a sniper. Or had been. More of a regular corporal these days, only a part-time sniper. If you were going to shoot a man, then do it cleanly, so he’d never even know about it. It made him angry, that poor bit of snipering. From then on (it was already there, but Willis helped to sharpen it) there was a general feeling that if it was going to be your turn and if it wasn’t going to be something nice, like just a foot or an elbow, then let it be something you’d never know about, not some crap like Willis got.

He’d had the thought, later, that the army ought to have its own equivalent of a squad of MAFF slaughtermen to come as quickly as possible and finish off cases like Willis. It would be a mercy, it would save a lot of trouble. It would only be doing what any soldier might sign up for. If you’d do it for an animal.

He’d got the picture of Willis out of his head by remembering that cow. Strange, that it was just a cow on the telly. But then
they
, B Company, were just pictures on the telly for most people back home, though they didn’t get the pictures like they got of Willis. And that picture on the telly at Jebb wasn’t funny. There were real cows across the yard. It wasn’t just a picture, even if they didn’t know the thing was coming smack in their direction. You might have said they’d been served notice.

Or he had. Though he hadn’t yet made up his mind. He’d make up his mind down in Barton Field. What you’d do for an animal. The cow disease, when it came, was like some not quite final warning. A disease had already been eating away at Michael Luxton and was
starting to eat away at him, Tom, too. He’d got it from his dad. Jack was made of tougher stuff, maybe, better stuff than he was. A good brother, a better brother. And a better father, sometimes, than his father.

But after that morning with Dad and Luke in Barton Field he wasn’t going to stick around any longer than he needed, with bad thoughts in his head that he might just one day put into action. Let the cow disease seem like his reason. What should he have said? Why don’t we both do it, Jack, you and me together, why don’t we both just hop it? But he’d looked hard into Jack’s eyes and seen, first, that what he did actually say would be safe with Jack, safe as blank ammunition, and, second, that Jack had never even dreamed of it himself.

Well then, Jack could keep it. Keep what he was leaving. Let that be the deal. He’d never break it or ask for his share back. If that took away the weight of guilt that settled inside him as soon as Jack said, there in the parlour, ‘You can rely on me, Tom.’ If it made Jack the good brother and him the bad one, so be it. If it made Jack the fool and him the smart one, so be it. He’d slipped out of the farmhouse, like a fox from a henhouse, at three a.m. on his eighteenth birthday. His mum had told him once that he’d been born at three a.m., but that had nothing to do with it, it was just a coincidence. And Jack had told him that ‘born’ wasn’t quite the word for it anyway. Jack had said, ‘That’s when you finally came out.’

He had a backpack and he was wearing all those layers—less to carry—against the cold. He had rations (he’d better get used to that word) hidden in the Big Barn. And he had Jack’s birthday card, which weighed next to nothing but was like an extra load of blame to
carry with him. A big gold ‘18’ and a big ‘Good Luck, Tom’ inside. He’d kept it for a long while, hidden in his locker. Signing up on your birthday wasn’t exactly like a birthday. If he’d wanted punishment, to go with his guilt, then he’d get it in the army.

But he certainly no longer had the card by the time he was sitting in that pub, watching those cows burning on the telly. Though maybe the ‘Good Luck’ still applied, now as then. It had stopped him, so far, from being like Willis.

Apart from the card, only three other written messages had ever come his way from Jack. Which wasn’t a complaint, since he, Tom, had never written back—or only the once, and briefly. He’d very quickly found out that he just wanted to be out of communication in this world he’d chosen, this world of strangely unresented punishment, his whereabouts unknown.

Now the World is Yours.

The first letter from Jack had been after two weeks or so, and was just a line hoping he was okay and saying that everything at Jebb was fine—which was surely Jack being a well-meaning liar. And then, since he hadn’t replied to that, there was a long, long gap. It looked like that was that. They’d really said goodbye to each other and known it, that December afternoon in the milking parlour. Meanwhile, he’d been moved around a bit anyway.

Then those two letters had come, soon after each other, the first looking like Jack might have spent a whole week writing it and torn up several versions along the way. But the main item was perfectly clear. That Jack was all by himself now, not counting Ellie (assuming Ellie was still a feature, and how might she not be?). The old
man had cleared off too, so it seemed, in a manner of speaking. And then the second letter had come soon afterwards, about the funeral, since that had to be delayed. And that had included that other item of news: that Michael had left the whole farm—though Jack had seemed to want to emphasise that there was a whole heap of debt to go with it—to Jack and Jack only. Well that was no surprise. That had even been the deal.

And he hadn’t replied to either letter. He hadn’t got on the phone to Jebb Farm. He hadn’t done a single thing about either letter, though he’d stared at them both long and hard enough. Those letters reached him, as it happened, in Germany. Before Bosnia. It would have been difficult, but, with that delay for the funeral, not impossible. And there was such a thing as compassionate leave. And he’d felt compassion, definitely. For his brother.

But he hadn’t done a thing. He hadn’t applied to the CO. He imagined the CO’s face. My old man has shot himself.

He hadn’t lifted a finger. It was a bastard thing to do to Jack, but then, maybe, it had been a bastard thing he’d done in the first place, that night in December.

All yours, Jack. Now it really was, and Ellie’s too, if Jack had any sense. And good luck to them. But it wasn’t his ticket or what he was made for, he knew that too now.

He was a private in B Company, earmarked for the sniper section, currently stationed in Germany, occasionally on active duty with a Helga from Hanover, when he might have been the owner of fifty per cent of Jebb Farm, of a hundred and sixty acres of England. So be it. He couldn’t go back on the deal, and he couldn’t go back anyway to the place itself, compassionately or otherwise.
Couldn’t have gone back to that churchyard to stand by the grave, even for his brother’s sake, and look down and think: it was a fine line, it was a fine bloody line. And Jack maybe thinking it too. And maybe if he didn’t show up and didn’t even send a message it would be like a clear enough last signal. All yours, Jack. Forget about me.

He’d stared at each letter in turn. So his father had done what no one else, now, would have to have the decency to do for him. He’d done the decent thing himself. He’d stared at both letters together. Reading them was a little like reading Jack’s face, but he’d never have to do that any more. He put the letters away, and he never did speak to the CO. Later, he found an opportunity privately to burn them. The barrack room had an old-style stove with a lid. Simple. A small fire, compared with piles of cattle going up in flames. And a small matter, he’d come to think, compared with some of the things that come a soldier’s way. Bosnia. He’d watched those cattle burning on the telly six years later, in the spring of 2001. And it wasn’t so long afterwards that a couple of planes had flown into a couple of big towers—another TV picture to remember—giving a whole new meaning to the act of suicide and having a range of consequences, including ones for British soldiers, which would make a spot of cow disease seem piddling.

And all he’d wanted was the get-out, the complete alternative package. No finer reasons. He’d never once said to anyone that he’d had a great-uncle who’d got the DCM. (Posthumous.) When he’d walked, that icy night, with his backpack, past the war memorial, he’d never turned
his head. He hadn’t felt brave, or even that he was doing something that really took so much initiative.

He’d started life as a soldier by running away. Which was a common enough story. It was what half of B Company had done in their different ways. What were the alternatives? They’d handed over the problem to the army. Take me in, please, sort me out please, the whole package. With some of them you could see, clearly enough, that if it hadn’t been that, it might have been prison eventually, one way or another. You could picture their faces sometimes (and now he was a corporal, he’d sometimes tell them) behind bars.

And that might have been his case too, and it might not have been petty crime either. But that was all taken care of now. He stared at those letters.

But he’d still think about cattle. They haunted him and helped him, gave him a sort of measure. If he wanted, now, to get bad stuff out of his head, bad human pictures, it helped to replace them with cattle. He could still remember the wet jostle of the milking parlour, the smell of iodine and udder. He could still remember that daily treadmill of extracting milk from cows, and the thought that would sometimes come to him while doing it, that it was only the same essential process (so hardly a man’s job) by which human babies were nursed and eased into the world, by which he himself had once been nursed and eased—late and (apparently) tough arrival though he was. And it was a wonder how the grown-up world still needed, by the churn-load, by the tanker-load, this white, soft, pappy baby-juice.

He’d had that thought, especially, after Vera died, and wondered if Jack, in the next stall, was having it too. Their mum had died, but these damn cows still had to calve and be milked. But, at that time, the milking parlour was the best place to be.