Graham Swift - Wish You Were Here

He might have done it on his return, had Ellie not been at home. And he might even have done it now, in her absence. He might have damn well walked down the hill, even in this rain, the gun under his parka, and taken the keys and chosen any one of the thirty-two. Pick a number. And that surely would have marred for ever the prospects of the Lookout Park. No chance, then, of happy holidays to come.

But he needed Ellie. He needs her now. He fully understands it. That final, still solvable complication. He needs her to be here. If he has gone mad, then he’s also rational. He needs her to return and, if she returns, to return alone. He’s prepared to deal with all comers, seriously prepared: a whole box of cartridges, this upstairs position.

But he thinks — he could almost place a bet — that Ellie will return, and alone, and that it won’t be long now. Delayed only by this evil weather, sent this way and that by the weather, like some desperate yacht (he’s sometimes watched such a thing from this very window) trying to make it round Holn Head.

It was all a hysterical bluff, perhaps. But he isn’t bluffing. And he needs her.

Jack hasn’t changed the will he made soon after their arrival in the Isle of Wight. There’d be no reason — or opportunity — for doing so now, but he momentarily thinks of how he sat one day with Ellie in the offices of Gibbs and Parker (the same firm who’d acted for Uncle Tony) and of how the solicitor, Gibbs, had delicately pointed out that they should include in both their wills a standard provision for their dying at the same time or nearly so.

They’d done two things. They’d got married (his declaration at Brigwell Bay was almost a proposal) and, being man and wife and business partners, they’d made wills. It was a flurry of wills — Michael’s, Uncle Tony’s, Jimmy’s — that had brought them to this new life, so they were not unfamiliar with such things, and for Jack this sensible if slightly grim undertaking had even been comforting.

Simple, reciprocal wills in favour of each other, with the provision in his case that, should he die having survived Ellie and without children, everything would go to Tom.

That provision had strangely consoled him, even though it rested on the dreadful precondition of both Ellie’s and his own death, and had sown in his mind the exonerating notion that Tom might one day come to own Lookout Cottage and run the Lookout Caravan Park — not a bad prospect for an ex-soldier. As Tom was eight years his junior it was not improbable that Tom might survive him. On the other hand, as Tom was a serving soldier … But when Jack’s mind turned in that (improbable) direction it flicked away.

It was a notion he never mentioned to Ellie and which he didn’t indulge so much himself, since it had its morbid aspects. But it was really a hope, a dream, a variant of a simple, secret wish: that one day Tom might just appear. One day he might just stick his head round the cottage door.

And it was all one now: the notion and the wish and the contents of his will — even that gruesome addition Gibbs had advised, which, in theory, would have speeded Tom’s inheritance.

He’d sometimes embroidered the wish with fanciful details — Tom might have become an officer, with a peaked cap, or he might have quit soldiering and signed up as a gamekeeper — but the fantasies had always stopped as soon as he thought: But what might Ellie feel if Tom were suddenly, actually to show up? And they’d vanished completely whenever he reflected: And what might be Ellie’s secret wish?

People can help in all kinds of ways, Jack thinks, by dying — death is a great solution. That doesn’t mean you should anticipate or wish it. But he’s past the point of separating wishes and reality, and, perched at this window with a gun on the bed behind him, he’s all anticipation.

But people also didn’t help by dying. Because someone had to pick up the pieces. It was a bastard thing to inflict on anyone that they should pick up the pieces, a bastard thing. Jack knew this. He and Ireton had picked up the pieces, so to speak, yesterday, though neither of them had resented Tom for it. Tom hadn’t meant it or been a bastard about it. It wasn’t Tom’s fault. They’d put the pieces on their shoulders and Jack had wondered if Ireton had thought (but surely he would have done) about other pieces they’d once had to pick up.

And it could be said now that Jack Luxton had picked up everyone’s pieces. He knew about picking up pieces, and for that reason he wasn’t going to inflict the same thing on Ellie. He’d make sure he’d never inflict such a thing on her.

He looks at the empty caravans. And what will Ireton think, he briefly considers, when he finds out? As he surely will. What will he think? Jesus God, he’ll think, I was with him only yesterday, I was right beside him. And what will Ireton think (though Jack doesn’t really believe it’s likely now) if a squad car of armed police is involved?

Could Ellie really have done it — said it? On a Saturday morning, on this filthy-wet morning, in a police station? And even have added: ‘I don’t like to say this — but there’s a gun in the house. He’s got a gun.’?

Jack doesn’t really think it’s likely, but he’s prepared. A whole box of cartridges, some in his pocket. And he thinks it’s likely, in any case, that Ellie will have remembered the gun.

The rain stops beating against the window. It’s only a fleeting break in the storm, a parting of dark clouds to reveal paler ones behind, but Holn Head suddenly emerges in its entirety and the caravans seem to gleam for a moment almost as if the sun is shining on them.

Do caravans know things, have feelings, premonitions? It’s a stupid thought, like wondering if the dead can know things (and Jack is trying very hard now not to think of his mother). Do caravans know when a death is going to happen?

At Jebb it was something there was always plenty of opportunity to think about — to observe and assess — if you wanted to. Did cattle know things? Did they know when trouble, death even (as it quite often could be) was on its way? Did they know the difference between madness and normality? A cow was only one notch up, perhaps, in thinking power, from a caravan. At Jebb, Jack had occasionally thought that he wasn’t that many notches up from a cow. All the same, he knew things. Did they know things? Luke had known things, Jack had never doubted that. Luke had surely known, when Dad had bundled him out to the pick-up. He’d known.

For an instant Jack sees himself driving again the old rust-pocked pick-up, with Luke in the back, over to Westcott, over to Ellie, not knowing, any more than a cow might know, that thinking of doing just what he was doing then might one day be one of his last thoughts.

And Luke not knowing then, either, that the last ever journey he’d make would be in that pick-up.

But as Jack has these thoughts about the pick-up he sees the rain-drenched Cherokee emerge from behind the old chapel building and, travelling fast, start to mount the steep last section of the hill beneath him.

The rain has already resumed and Jack can’t see Ellie herself, still some hundred yards away, through its blur and through the wet windscreen in front of her. But there certainly aren’t any police cars. No sirens. No lights, save Ellie’s own. Jack decides accordingly, if for no other reason than last-minute tidiness, to slip the box of cartridges into his sock drawer.

Then he turns from the window to pick up the gun and, as Ellie drives the final yards, walks with it to the bedroom door, to the top of the stairs, then down them. No police, just Ellie. The air still reeks of bacon. He’ll need to be very quick and decisive, but he feels quite calm. He’ll need to appear with the gun only when she’s shut the door behind her. If she calls out ‘Jack?’ or ‘Jacko?’ he’ll need to ignore it. Or perhaps, as he emerges through the doorway from the foot of the stairs, he’ll say, ‘Here I am, Ell. I’m here.’