Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

And perhaps because he wished it enough or perhaps because, in the event, he was so simply and helplessly dazed and stunned by the whole process, this was how it was.

He turned onto a narrow minor road (there was still the same ivy-shrouded tree stump on the corner), and the matter felt out of his hands. It seemed impossible that the familiar sights now thickening round him could still be here, or else impossible that he’d been away. He surrendered to their ambush. That strange word ‘repatriation’ came again into his head. He said again, softly but firmly, ‘I’m coming, Tom. I’m nearly there.’

And very soon he was. After some more turnings the narrow lanes became the deep single-track trenches he remembered. In summer grass would sprout in the middle. He’d chosen a route that avoided approaching Marleston from the east — past the entrance to Jebb — but, coming to a brow, he spotted through a gateway the church tower, across the valley that included both Westcott and Jebb. Then, having not encountered any other delays since turning off the main road, he immediately came up behind not one, but two, three, four — perhaps more — cars all heading in the same direction, and grasped at once where they must be going, as well as something of the actual numbers at this strictly private event.

He became now part of a general, creeping congestion, as if he were no more than some frustrated minor attender at the occasion ahead. This turned all his other misgivings into a wild exasperation that was outwardly just the self-important rage of someone stuck in traffic. In all his journey so far, even in Portsmouth, there’d been no significant jams. Now here he was, less than a mile from Marleston and crawling. But what could he do? Press his horn? Flash his lights? This was Devon, where both sides of a vehicle almost touched the hedges. Let me through. Let me pass. I’m a brother.

Such was his panic that he wouldn’t clearly recall later precisely how he arrived — how he parked or how he got himself from his car to the church. But he would remember having to say more than once, to clear a path, ‘I’m Jack Luxton, I’m Tom Luxton’s brother.’ Though wasn’t it blazingly obvious? Who else did people think he was?

He would remember noticing that the Crown and the war memorial were still there, still uncannily in place, though he didn’t want to look straight at them, and the same applied to all the milling people — you couldn’t quite call it a crowd, but it certainly wasn’t a handful. Something like a lock in his neck kept his gaze fixed on the gate to the churchyard and, beyond it, the church porch, so that even if he’d wanted to seek out and acknowledge familiar faces, he couldn’t have done so. He was in a tunnel. Pressing on into the churchyard, he registered, at the edge of his vision, the gravestones of his mother and father and, close to them, a specially prepared area with some vivid green carpeting spread over the turf, but he didn’t want to look directly at these things in case they might somehow render him unable to walk.

Then suddenly moving towards him — to meet him but also, it seemed, to rescue him — there was Brookes, in a white surplice that reminded him of those army padres, and with him, like some little unit under his command, a group of men who included Derek and Dave, the hearse drivers (how strangely good it was to see them), and Ireton. Yes, Ireton, in a smart-looking uniform with three stripes on it, Ireton who’d once sluiced down his father’s gore from the bark of an oak tree.

They all looked at him with the relieved and now activated looks of men who’d been waiting, perhaps with mounting anxiety, for nothing other than his arrival, and Jack realised, even as he also seemed to be floating absently and powerlessly, that he was the one who was here to make this thing click and function and cohere. He might have snapped his fingers and given orders if he’d been so disposed.

Derek and Dave greeted him like old friends. Their faces seemed to say, ‘You didn’t think we’d miss it, did you?’ Then Ireton said, deferentially but quickly, like a man not wanting to waste valuable time, ‘I’ll be your other shoulder, Jack, if that’s okay with you.’ Your other shoulder? Then Jack understood. And, though he’d not given any previous thought to who might occupy this position, felt now he could have put his arms round both of Ireton’s dark-blue shoulders and wondered why he’d ever supposed that Bob — Sergeant Ireton — might be here to clap him in handcuffs.

Six men, Ireton rapidly explained: the two of them in front and, behind, four men from Babbages, including Derek and Dave who would take the rear positions. ‘Unless—’ Ireton had hesitated and his head had done a strange swivel towards the crowd (perhaps it really could be called a crowd) standing at a discreet distance though seeming to have the church surrounded. ‘Unless there’s anyone else? Unless you’d like some other arrangement?’

It seemed that everyone was ready to defer to him. He was like a king. At the foot of the church wall, he’d glimpsed, along the whole grey, weathered flank, stacks of resting flowers. Bunches, wreaths, two and three deep.

No, Jack said to Ireton, it was fine. The other two men from Babbages had introduced themselves and he’d shaken their hands and said, ‘Thank you,’ and shaken everyone’s hand and said, ‘Thank you,’ and this had seemed suddenly the most important and exclusively detaining thing, the names and the gripping, knuckly hands of these men.

But Brookes now intervened, pulling up a sleeve of his white robe to look at his watch. ‘It’s just gone twenty past, Jack. Everything’s ready, but we haven’t let anyone in yet.’ He coughed. ‘If you’d like a moment first, just to be alone, the church is all yours. Let us know when you’re ready. Take your time.’

And then there he was, alone but not alone, in the stony hush of the church, with the coffin and the single circle of heavy-smelling white flowers that he’d ordered through Babbages now resting on it. It was the first time it had been like this, just the two of them, and it would never be like it again. He felt for a moment that he was in some box himself. He seemed to need to break through the wall of air that surrounded the coffin before he could put his hands on it (again), then his cheek to it, then his forehead, then his lips. These were actions that he hadn’t planned or foreseen, but was simply commanded by his body to do. He said, ‘I’m here, Tom. I’m here with you.’ Then he said, as if he’d not made something clear, ‘We’re both here.’

The coffin was plain oak. Was it English oak? He felt its smoothness, examined the grain in the wood, breathed the scent of the flowers. It was suddenly like some inextricable riddle Brookes had set him, to be alone like this with the coffin, a dilemma beyond solving. ‘Take your time.’ How could any time be long enough? Yet it had to be limited — outside were all those people. On the other hand, Jack couldn’t find the words, the thoughts or whatever it was, beyond his physical presence, that might have properly filled this unrepeatable interval.

It was extraordinary that while Tom had appeared to him clearly several times in the last twenty-four hours, he was now nowhere to be seen. Was he hiding somewhere else, behind a pillar, in this church? No, Tom was with him, here in this box. All there was of Tom was here. He felt, though he couldn’t see Tom, couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see the signalling flickers in his face, that they were like two people waiting for something together, for the next thing to happen, and neither of them was sure who should make the first move, though it was foolish perhaps to delay. You decide. No, you. A sort of game. So he finally lowered his lips again to the coffin — he had never kissed any piece of wood like this, he had never kissed Tom like this when he was alive, except when he was very small and wouldn’t ever have known about it. Then Jack said, ‘Well, shall we get on with it?’