Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

Only with the town behind them did they begin to pick up speed. Nothing crazy, of course. In their calculations as to when to leave, they’d given due attention to Jack’s prior departure. Abrupt as it had been, it was in a way a good thing — signalling that they too, if they wished and dared, were free to go. But they had to give him a head start. It was unlikely — it would be like the tortoise catching the hare — that they’d catch him up. But they didn’t want to find themselves (though they had no idea what car he was driving) coming up behind him. He would be making essentially the same journey and there was only one real route. Get past Swindon, then M4, M5.

Why they felt there shouldn’t be this mutual sighting they couldn’t have explained, but they felt it. Why shouldn’t two brothers, in these circumstances, have kept as close to each other as possible? If you could put it like that. If Jack Luxton had insisted on driving in convoy with them (in front or behind), they’d have had to respect it. Though it would have been awkward.

As it was, they knew they had to press on, being as discreet and minimal as possible about their swap-overs and comfort breaks. You couldn’t drive a hearse for a hundred and fifty miles just any old how. Though neither of them had in fact driven a hearse nearly this far before.

As they gained the open road, an unaccustomed taciturnity clung to them, which didn’t just have to do with what was behind their backs. They were used to that and used, whenever there was a chance and no one was looking — as now on a country road — to breaking the rules of decorum. To having a chat about this or that.

But this was different. A hard act to follow. As broad, rolling vistas opened up before them, as they crossed from Oxfordshire into Wiltshire, clouds breaking over the hills to let through beams of sunshine, they both withdrew into themselves, became thoughtful, even grave.

The truth was they’d both been affected by what they’d seen. It was not possible to disregard, as they normally could, what they had in the back. It had come out of that plane, it had been flown all the way from Iraq. It? Now it was nudging, as it were, at their shoulders. They didn’t have the Union Jack and that meant that anyone seeing them would have the usual thoughts that people have when they see a hearse with a coffin inside. They wouldn’t imagine or guess. So only they would know, just the two of them, exactly what they were carrying halfway across the land.

The thought was a sobering one, as was the actual length of the journey in prospect — in such special company.

Though they would never talk about it and though they eventually broke this meditative hush, both Derek and Dave would feel that in this journey they formed a definite bond with their cargo. It didn’t happen on the usual short trips, quite the opposite. But this was like having a third person along for the ride, there were definitely three of them. The conversation, or concatenation of unspoken thoughts, was somehow three-way.

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?

CORPORAL LUXTON, 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.