Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

‘How do you know?’

‘I know. I know you.’

But she was looking at him as though she was no longer certain on that last point. And whatever Ellie knew, she didn’t know and couldn’t know what had only ever been in his head.

Even Jack himself couldn’t be sure of how it really was.

That it wasn’t the shot that woke him. He’d been awake, perhaps for some time, before the shot. Had he even heard his father creeping — as once he’d heard Tom creeping — from the house? In his terrible dream in Okehampton he’d even heard the little squeak, from below, of the gun cabinet. Was it a dream? Or the dream of a dream that he’d had that night, before, in fact, the shot had woken him? Or was it simply how it had been?

In his dream, in any case, he hadn’t heard the shot. There wasn’t yet any shot. He’d heard his father’s movements downstairs. He’d heard the kitchen door open, even the blunt scuff of Wellington boots on the frozen mud in the yard. And before he’d dressed and gone downstairs himself, before he’d hurried down Barton Field, a torch in his hand and his heart in his throat, he’d stood on the landing and seen the left-open door of the Big Bedroom, and gone in.

He wasn’t sleep-walking, surely. He hadn’t switched on any lights, but he’d seen, even so, that extra blanket on the bed. Yes, there was a moon by then and, despite the cold, the curtains hadn’t been closed — or else they’d been only recently pulled back. So he was able to see, with just the aid of the moon, the tartan pattern of the blanket.

But more than that. He’d gone into the room — or in his dream he had. And he’d stood by the window, where his father, perhaps, would have stood only moments before, and seen what his father would have seen: the moon, over the oak and the frost-gripped valley. But more than that. He’d been just in time to see — or he’d seen in his dream — from above and behind, his father’s tall black form, his whole body first, then just his shoulders and head, disappearing as he descended the upper section of Barton Field. The moon was almost full and its light was coming brightly off the frost. So it was even possible to see his father’s inky, night-time shadow slipping out of sight, rippling down the slope after him, and to see the footprints, like black burn holes in white cloth, that he left behind.

Even to see what he was carrying.

And Jack hadn’t moved. He’d stood there at the window — as he’d stand, years later, at a white-painted gate — thinking: Shall I? Shan’t I? Thinking: Will he? Won’t he? Can I? Can’t I?

He couldn’t have said (it was like other passages of time that night) how long he’d stood there, as if hypnotised, as if in his mind — but wasn’t he dreaming anyway? — he might still have been back in bed and asleep, not knowing that any of this was really happening. Till the sound of the shot — but had he even seen, from the window, the quick poke of light? — had woken him, out of all dreams, into truth.

But Ellie couldn’t have known any of this.

‘How do you know I didn’t, Ell? How do you know I didn’t march him down that field and make it look as though he’d done it himself?’

It was no surprise, though he hadn’t reckoned on it, that at that point she’d simply got up, grabbed her handbag and fished in it quickly to make sure she had her car keys. Did she look frightened? Of him — for him? No, she looked furious. She looked a little mad herself. If he’d already got hold of the gun he might have stopped her, he might have brought this thing to an end, there and then, as intended. But she was standing between him and the door, and how could he have got the gun and loaded it without her getting away first?

He should have got the gun to begin with. He should have crept down the stairs, as his dad had crept down the stairs, and somehow got the gun from the cabinet and loaded it (both barrels) before she’d even called up that she was putting breakfast on. He should have just appeared in the doorway, in his dressing gown, with the gun. But he knew he couldn’t have done it like that, without any explosion first.

So it was good, in fact — he thought now — that it had all blown up and she’d gone.

She’d clutched her car keys. For a moment they’d stared at each other, not like two people who’d known each other all their lives, but like two nameless enemies who’d come face to face in a clearing. Jack understood that to prevent Ellie leaving he’d have to use physical force, his big weight, against her. But he’d never done that, in all the time he’d known her, and couldn’t do it now. Even though, if he’d had the gun—

‘Where are you going, Ell?’

Outside, the clouds were thickening, but the rain hadn’t begun.

‘Where am I going? Where am I going? Ha! I’m going to Newport police station. I’m going to tell them what you’ve just told me. I’m going to tell them what you are.’

And she looked like she meant it. She really did. She looked like she was going to fetch the police.

She walked out. Slammed the door. The wall seemed to shake. He heard the Cherokee snarl off. Rain started to pepper the window. He’d thought: this had caught him out, this had upset plans. Then he thought: no it hadn’t. After a little while, after hearing only the wind and the rain, after switching off the grill section of the cooker, where several rashers of bacon still waited, warm, well-crisped and untouched, he went to the gun cabinet. He got the gun, he got the box of cartridges. When had he last fired this gun? There’d been every reason to get rid of it. There’d been every reason not to. The last thing his father had touched.

He went up to the bedroom and put the loaded gun on the bed. Put some cartridges from the box in his pocket. This was actually better, this was good. He was prepared now, he was calm. The weather had gone wild, but he was calm. And, whether she’d do or not what she’d said she’d do, Ellie, he was sure of it, would soon have to come circling back. There was even a sort of justice to it. As if her journey was just a smaller, tighter version of his.

THE ROBINSONS had bought Jebb Farmhouse over ten years before Jack stood by the white gate bearing that name, and it was the Robinsons, Clare and Toby, who’d made the extensive and costly renovations, few of which Jack was to see, since he didn’t go beyond the gate, but which entailed having the drive (it had ceased to be the ‘track’ and become the ‘drive’) properly surfaced — which Jack did see — and the gate itself.

There had been the purchase, and there had been the renovations. Their investment had turned into an investment of time as well as money. After a lengthy planning and permissions stage, the building work — including a new extension (which they called the guest wing), a total overhaul of the original house, the demolition of the outbuildings, the construction of a double garage and the laying out of the gardens, turning-area and drive — took, all told, well over two years. So that their actual period of occupancy and enjoyment had really been only seven years, and then mostly in the summers.

Nonetheless, they spoke now of their ‘Jebb years’, their ‘Jebb life’. Toby said, in his credit-claiming way, that it had ‘paid off’. Clare, who’d always been the more effusive, felt she was justified in having imagined it from the start not just as their possession, but as a permanent legacy to be passed on through future generations of the Robinson family — their place, their ‘country place’.

But Clare would always remember (and always keep to herself) the day — though it was little more than a moment — when this whole vision had seemed to totter and shake, all its radiance had faded. And this had occurred, oddly, during one blissfully sunny weekend when everything in the picture was complete and just as she would have wished. It was only ever, she told herself, some weird sensation inside her. It was nothing, surely, to do with the place . But it was lingering enough in its effect for Clare to ask herself: Is there something wrong with me? Am I cracking up? And since her answer to those questions was a robust no, it must then be to do with the place. This place into which they’d put so much.