Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

When Jack needed to arrange Michael’s funeral he’d had to discuss with Malcolm Brookes, the rector (who would be officiating today), the delicate question — or the notion that had somehow got into Jack’s head — of whether, given the nature of his father’s death, his funeral would actually be allowed. In Church ground. Brookes had expressed his opinion of Jack’s quaint idea in language surprisingly graphic for a clergyman (‘This isn’t the damn Middle Ages,’ Brookes had said), but had then added with a sort of patient smile, ‘Do you think, for any reason, I’m going to keep those two apart?’

So Brookes believed it, then? In the meeting — the re-meeting — of souls. But then, after all, Brookes would.

Death, Jack thought, looking out at brilliant, exposing sunshine in Okehampton, was in many ways a great place of shelter. It was life and all its knowledge that was insupportable.

He thinks the same, looking from his rain-blurred window, now.

*

It was a little past seven-thirty. A faint smell of frying bacon reached him even as he stood surveying the street. Breakfast was being cooked downstairs. And, even in his present state of mind, the smell caused a benign reaction in his stomach. Jack had sometimes been heard to observe — down among the caravans on those dewy August mornings when pans would be generally sizzling — that the smell of frying bacon was the best smell in the world. None of his listeners had ever disagreed. Instead of ‘best’, he might have said (consulting his memory) ‘most comforting’ or ‘most consoling’. Sally Warburton, whose boxfuls of emergency items, that awful morning, had included a fair amount of prime bacon, had been surprised, if also relieved, to see Jack wolf down several rashers. Though it was almost noon by then and the poor man had been up, apparently, since long before dawn.

If they’d all been pig farmers, Sally had thought, if this had just been pig country, none of this would have happened.

But the smell now entering Jack’s nostrils heartened him also by simply suggesting that he might not, after all, be the only guest in the hotel. He would not be alone, perhaps, and so under unrelieved scrutiny by the proprietor or her deputies when he appeared for breakfast. Though not being alone, being under the eyes of other guests, might have its problems too. Before the funeral, this would be the only point at which he’d have to run the risk of other people’s curiosity. Or suspicion.

On the pavement opposite, two early-rising inhabitants of Okehampton had stopped to exchange energetic greetings, as if they might not have met for years. Their reddened, beaming faces seemed to Jack to go with the thought of bacon.

Within half an hour, shaved and wearing a clean white shirt and the dark trousers of his suit, he’d made his way, as advised the night before, to the ‘back bar’. He could as easily have followed his nose.

It was a sunken, low-ceilinged place, which at other times might have been poorly lit, but was now pierced by bands of blinding light from the low sun shining through a gap in the buildings across the street. The shafts caught the polished surface of the bar, where the pump handles had been draped with tea-towels, and the glinting cutlery on several laid-up tables. There was obviously a kitchen close by, since the shafts were full, along with dancing motes, of bluish swirls.

Two of the tables, half in and half out of sunshine, were occupied by solitary men intently chomping food and studying newspapers. Jack was relieved to find that they required nothing more from him than a nod and a muttered, ‘Morning,’ and that, like him, they wore smart, open-necked shirts. They might have been three of a kind. He was in a hotel which in November catered, if it catered for anyone, for travelling reps with limited expense accounts. It seemed suddenly to Jack an innocent and honourable league to belong to, and he began to invent for himself — in case he should come to be questioned — an alias as a salesman. What might it be? Agricultural machinery? No, caravans, of course. All those sites that in winter might be considering replacements. He was travelling — in caravans.

He was also relieved to see that the proprietor seemed to be in sole charge of the kitchen and the serving of breakfast. Hers was at least a familiar face and, so long as she was busy, he felt, an unthreatening one.

He ordered the Devonshire Breakfast. It was no different in its basic components from a breakfast you might have had in any county, but it was, when it came, very good. The bacon in particular was very good. It was so good that for a few minutes, despite what lay before — and behind — him and despite the miserable night he’d passed, Jack’s whole being relaxed into that of a man solely given over to the consuming of breakfast. It really was extremely good. He felt amazingly restored.

But no sooner had he finished eating than he’d looked up and seen, in the small porthole window of the swing door leading to the kitchen, not the face of the proprietor, but the face of Tom, peering in and peering directly at him. Since it was only his face, Jack couldn’t tell if he was in his combat gear again (or if, for example, he was wearing an apron), but he was looking in as a mindful chef might briefly look in to see if the customers — and one particular customer — were happy.

It was Tom who’d made this breakfast, Tom who’d cooked his bacon.

Tom’s face had disappeared. Then Jack, who’d scrupulously avoided the morning papers lying on the bar and had picked up instead an unhelpful brochure—‘Things to Do in North Devon’—had glanced towards the front page obscuring one of his fellow breakfasters and seen the caption ‘Heroes Return’ (it wasn’t the top story, but it was there in the corner) and had also seen the photo. He couldn’t tell which of the coffins it was. Nonetheless, he was sure.

So everything that had happened yesterday was really and undeniably true. It was publicly the case. Though for that man sitting there at his breakfast, concealed by his newspaper, and perhaps for thousands of others doing the same, it was not even drawing his eye.

Less than an hour later Jack drove northwards from Okehampton towards Marleston, the long shadow of the Cherokee leaping out ahead of him. His last act before leaving his hotel room had been to slip the medal into the breast pocket of his suit (his fresh white shirt had no pocket). He was quite sure by the time he settled his bill that the woman really knew who he was, but wasn’t saying. Or, at least, that when she looked later at her paper (hadn’t she looked already?) it would simply jump out at her: Luxton, I thought it rang a bell.

The traffic was light and the road shone. He’d delayed his departure so that he could pace this short final leg comfortably, without having to stop or cruise around to kill time. He filled up with petrol just outside town.

During these few miles Tom didn’t appear at his side again. Jack took this to mean that Tom was now entirely sure that he, Jack, would complete the journey, would keep his appointment. Nonetheless, during this last stage Jack felt constrained to say aloud a number of times, softly but purposefully, ‘I’m coming, Tom. I’m nearly there.’ He would hardly have needed to do this if he’d felt that Tom might in any sense have been his passenger.

Ten-fifteen, he’d reckoned. Ten-fifteen for ten-thirty. He couldn’t, of course, be late, but, just as with yesterday’s ceremony, he didn’t want to be so early as to be trapped by people. He didn’t know how many there would be. A sprinkle, or — given that it was clearly national news — a multitude? He should be just sufficiently early as was decent and as would allow him to make his presence known and to get his practical bearings. Perhaps, he vaguely anticipated, he could then ask to spend a few moments somewhere safely alone.