Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

And if the gate was beyond opening, there was still the option — though he’d have to leave the car by the road like some glaring advert of his presence — of climbing over and walking down. Gates were there to be climbed over. And even if the Robinsons were, by some unlikely chance, actually in occupation — so what? They’d get a surprise. Would they call the police? (The police would be Ireton.) I’m Jack Luxton. Remember me? I sold you this place. I was passing, and I thought I’d—. I’ve just buried my brother.

So there was nothing to stop him. He stood by the gate, putting his hands on it, gingerly at first. His hands just straddled the black name on the top rail. He felt again the wood of the coffin under his palms.

Tom would have climbed over the gate, Jack was sure of it, quickly dropping his backpack over first, like a thief. But on that dazzling morning, so like this one, he, the big obedient brother, had opened the gate for his father, then, before going to re-join him, had swung it shut, a great fiery rush, despite the coldness of the air, billowing inside him.

He stood in his funeral outfit, his white shirt and black tie matching the white paint and black lettering, the medal still in his top pocket. His mother had once told a story about the medal, which had ended at this very spot. Though it wasn’t a true story, it had never happened. It wasn’t even possible for it to happen. It was his mother’s invention.

His grip tightened on the rail. The Cherokee chugged expectantly beside him. It seemed to be begging a decision — climb over, for God’s sake! Drive away! But he could do neither, as if he might stay here, stuck for ever. At the same time, he had the growing conviction that some hurriedly organised posse of funeral attenders might be heading, even now, down the road from Marleston to round him up.

He gave the gate a sudden heaving shake, as if he might have ripped it from its hinges, then turned and got back in the car, slamming the door behind him as though slamming a gate upon himself. His hands gripped the steering wheel as fiercely as they’d gripped the rail, and perhaps half a minute passed as he remained staring at the alien black-and-white structure that had so effortlessly defeated him.

He saw in his head the old bare-wood gate. His eyes were blurred, in any case. Thus he failed to notice that he’d left behind two distinct, even identifying indications of his presence.

No traffic had passed in either direction while he’d been stopped and no traffic, pursuing or otherwise, was visible as he set off again, so no one was to know about this almost immediate interruption to his headlong flight (though a whole crowd had witnessed that). But at least until the next rain — which in a day’s time would come sweeping in on the back of south-westerly gales — anyone (including the owners of Jebb Farmhouse, had they been in occupation) might have seen two hand-prints on the top rail, one either side of the black-lettered name. They’d been made by large hands that had obviously grasped the rail with some force, and they were hands that had recently plainly been in contact, for whatever reason, with reddish-brown earth.

He flung the car back onto the road. There were already traces of the same red earth on the steering wheel and when, a little later, as he drove, he violently yanked off his black tie, he left a similar smudge on the white collar of his shirt.

So, he’d at least confirmed one thing. The last time he’d touched and passed through that gate — not that gate but the old one — had truly been after he’d taken his last-ever look at Jebb Farm. At least Ellie had been with him then. She’d already taken her last look at Westcott, and without much difficulty, it seemed. And as they’d left Jebb together (various items that had escaped the auctioneer’s hammer — including a shotgun and a medal in a silk-lined box — in the back) she was in the driving seat, because he’d expressly wanted to be the one to get out and open and close the Jebb gate for the last time and take a last look down the track.

Ellie had been with him then. They were driving to the Isle of Wight. It had been all Ellie’s doing. He’d stood beside her while her father was buried. More to the point, he’d helped carry the coffin.

Now, with a great, unearthly howl that no one heard, he drove madly on.

ELLIE SITS IN the lay-by near Holn, not driving anywhere.

When Jack had returned in the dark last night she couldn’t help having the thought: a wounded soldier. That was how the sight of him, in the beam of light from the cottage door, had framed itself for her, as he’d slowly emerged from the car in which she sits stranded now. He’d looked shattered, exhausted. But what had she expected, after such a journey? A wounded soldier. Even so, there he was.

Or was he? For two days she’d lived with the possibility that he might not return at all, but one possibility she clearly hadn’t anticipated was that he might return, but that he wouldn’t be Jack, or not the Jack she knew. And in the eyes of the strange figure who’d blundered towards her she’d seen, she thought, his anticipation of yet another possibility: that he might return to find her gone. But how could that be? Hadn’t he read or listened to any of those messages?

And since she was there, why hadn’t he looked pleased to see her, or at least relieved?

Even so. There he was, and so was she, standing in that doorway where she hadn’t stood, it’s true, to watch him go. If she hadn’t been watching then, she was watching now — had been watching and waiting, in fact, for a good half-hour. Knowing only what he’d said before he left, that he’d booked himself on the four-thirty Friday ferry, she’d been waiting in an agony since five-thirty (which would have been pushing it, it’s true). She’d even gone up to the bedroom window so as to spot his lights as soon as they came up the hill.

And Jack, Ellie thinks now, must have seen, as he passed this lay-by, the distant lights of the cottage. A pretty sure sign that someone was there and waiting for him. But had he been looking and did he care?

And what difference did it make, now, if he were never to know how anxiously she’d watched and waited? How she’d seen at last his lights — at such an hour they could only be his — take the turn for Beacon Hill, then travel, like the passage of some luminous, scurrying animal, up the first, hidden stretch of road before appearing, with a full blaze, at the bend by the old chapel. How she’d said aloud, ‘Jack. Jack,’ and how she’d sprung up, to run downstairs, to be at the door, to put right, to reverse all the events of two mornings before.

A casserole was on in the kitchen. A bottle was on the table. All the lights were on. He would surely have understood that she was there. Now he was too. And as she’d stood in the doorway she’d said again, ‘Jack, my Jack.’ Had he even heard?

It had even seemed, as he walked towards her, that he was sorry not to find her gone.

Though what had she expected? And what, since she hadn’t gone with him, did she deserve? But he was here. Or, say, half here. The other half she might still have to wait for. She’d fed him and put him to bed, realising that she couldn’t demand much more of him, in his condition, than his presence. ‘Ask me later, Ell. Ask me tomorrow.’ Realising also that she couldn’t expect much talk from him now, when two mornings ago he hadn’t had a single word from her.

She’d put him to bed. And he’d slept, in fact, for over twelve hours, not surfacing till after nine (which wasn’t like him at all). But if she’d hoped that a good sleep would really bring him back to her and if she’d hoped that a good breakfast — an all-day breakfast if necessary — would get them talking as they should talk, she was wrong.