Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

Major Richards said, ‘Journey okay?’ As if they might have just met for some sports fixture or were about to compare notes on the traffic on the A34. But Jack didn’t mind this at all.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Good.’

After this, Jack was not always sure what Major Richards was saying or what he was saying himself (now and then he opened his mouth and words came out), but he understood that Major Richards was doing his duty, a special kind of duty. He was leading him around, introducing him briefly to people, leading him on again so that no single encounter became too much. He was being a cluster with him and getting him through this thing. And Jack realised that he, too, in spite of himself, was somehow stumblingly doing his duty, which was to be, unavoidably, introduced to people in extraordinary get-ups with extraordinary voices and have his hand shaken as if he himself had done something extraordinary, and have things said to him and over him (while he said, ‘Yes,’ or, ‘Yes, I am,’ or, ‘Yes, it is’) which were no doubt meant to make him feel good.

And Major Richards was definitely being a special cluster with him, because those other clusters surely deserved Major Richards’s attention just as much as, if not more than, he did, though perhaps they didn’t necessarily want it and anyway they had each other. The point soon came, however, when Major Richards piloted Jack towards them. It was what Jack both wanted and dreaded, since what could he possibly say to these poor stricken people which could be of any use to them? Their grief was multiple, if also shared, and they’d see before them just this big, roughish man. Perhaps they’d think: Poor him, all on his own. But what they would also see, Jack felt certain, since it would surely and damningly be glaring out of him, was that he was here to meet his brother, because he had to, though he hadn’t seen his brother for almost thirteen years, hadn’t even written to him for twelve, hadn’t known where he was, and had even tried not to think about him most of the time.

Despite this feeling of being a blatant culprit, Jack had nonetheless wanted to open up his big arms and embrace as many of these people as he could, as if he might have been some returned, lost member of their family. In his head he’d wanted to say, ‘It’s okay. I’m just me. It’s you lot I feel for.’ But what he actually said, over and over again, while shaking more hands and wondering what was showing in his gormless block of a face, was: ‘I’m Jack Luxton. Tom Luxton’s brother. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. I’m Jack Luxton. I’m very sorry.’

Then the hum of voices all around suddenly subsided and it became clear that they were now to proceed outside for the ceremony. For this, with the exception of a few uniformed ushers, the parties of relatives were given precedence and it seemed natural to Jack that he should find himself bringing up the rear. Just as it seemed natural — and reassuring — that outside, in the designated area, he should find himself standing at the edge and at the back of the civilian group. People would have to turn round if they wanted to see him.

He also became separated at this point from Major Richards. But not before Major Richards had said to him, confidentially, ‘Afterwards there’ll be … more.’ Then paused and looked carefully at Jack and said, ‘But I’d just slip away, if I were you.’ Jack wasn’t sure what Major Richards meant by ‘more’, or if Major Richards knew himself, but he felt that these words were perhaps more than Major Richards might have been required to say or even ought to have said (was he under military orders to say only certain things?). But he also felt he might have opened his arms to embrace Major Richards, too. He wondered if Tom, in his last days, in Iraq, had had such a commanding officer.

What followed seemed, at the time and later in Jack’s memory, to go on for an unendurable length, but also not to be nearly long enough, as if this procedure of under an hour was all there might ever be to stand for the whole life of his brother. Inside the building, despite the uniforms, the mood had been unregulated. Outside, everything ceded to military discipline. The air was cool but not cold, a little breezy, the sky overcast with only the weakest suggestion now and then of a break in the clouds. The tarmac was damp and puddled. Earlier in the morning, unlike in the Isle of Wight, there’d been rain. Perhaps it was raining now at the Lookout.

There was that reek of fuel and the sense, after that crowded room, of being on the edge of something huge and remorseless. As if, though this was Oxfordshire, war was being waged only just over the skyline. At ground level, the plane now looked vast, and, with its cavernous rear opening directed at the onlookers (though in the dull light and with the elevation of the fuselage you couldn’t quite see inside), it seemed to Jack that it might be there not to unload, but to gather everyone up. The climax of this event might be when they were all — the generals and earls, or whoever they were, the ladies in hats, the white-frocked padres and the black-clad mourning families — scooped up into the big, dark hold and taken off to Iraq.

The high-rank uniforms and their entourage had formed up separately from the relatives’ group, by a low platform which Jack guessed would be for saluting. Some of the officers detached themselves for particular duties. Jack lost sight of Major Richards. To the left of the relatives’ party, at a little distance, three hearses (this was both a relief to see and utterly distressing) were drawn up in a row facing away from the tarmac, their rear hatches raised in a manner that imitated the solitary aircraft.

His hearse — Tom’s hearse — was there. Tom’s transport was waiting. That ‘side of things’, Major Richards had already whispered to him, was in place, there was nothing Jack needed to do. All the same, actually to see the hearses was heart-stopping, and Jack felt he should at some point at least make contact with the driver. He should slip him a twenty. Would twenty be enough?

On one of his earlier phone calls, Major Richards had delicately explained that normally on these occasions there would be no flowers. These occasions weren’t funerals in themselves and the army didn’t deal in flowers. But Jack could see now, placed in readiness beside two of the hearses, a small, defiant offering — a cluster’s worth — of flowers. He felt a moment’s abject misery and humiliation (and sympathy for his upstaged hearse driver). He’d have had to peer very hard indeed to see the single wreath he’d ordered (though he’d specified large) to await the coffin’s eventual arrival in Marleston.

The padres in their fluttering surplices had walked out to the plane. Everyone was straining to see inside it. Though everyone knew. There was now a general barking of orders. Three detachments of six bare-headed soldiers marched out towards the plane, each led by a bare-headed officer. Other officers, with caps on, stood to attention near the ramp leading into the plane and now and then performed strange gestures with their swords. Positioned on the tarmac, in red tunics and white-and-gold helmets, was a small-scale version of a military band.

The first party of bearers moved into the plane. Then a bugle blew as the first coffin, completely wrapped in a Union Jack, was carried off. Jack felt there was a sort of silent gasp, an invisible but detectable flinching among the relatives’ group. He’d been told, and it was in the Order of Ceremony, that Tom’s coffin would be the last. He didn’t know why, and hadn’t asked, and didn’t know if it was in any way significant or even constituted an honour, but he felt, now, that the two preceding coffins would prepare him.