Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

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 television — 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?