Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

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.

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.