Jack had lost the immediate sensation of being under arrest or that he was about to have some order barked at him, but he’d felt that, though it was he who’d shown in their visitor and introduced him to his wife, it was more as if Major Richards was greeting them and ushering them into his world. Everything was the wrong way round.
Only when Major Richards had sat down, placing his cap very careful y on another seat close by and the leather wal et on his knees and meanwhile accepting cordial y El ie’s offer of a cup of tea, did the thing relax, if such a thing can relax. With his cap off, he didn’t seem so intimidating.
Looking at them both very attentively, his eyes making regular sweeps between them, Major Richards had reiterated the point about the battalion liking to do things this way. He apologised for the letter’s having reached them by its delayed and roundabout route. He apologised (though it wasn’t his fault) for the need for the letter at al . In most cases, the news, the sad news itself, would be communicated directly, and very quickly, in person. There were what he cal ed “army families.” Jack understood that he and El ie, if they were a family at al , were not an “army family.” In other cases, Major Richards had explained, it was only wise to avoid what might be a wasted or impractical initial journey. As to his own journey right now (since El ie had kindly enquired), it had actual y been quite short—not that shortness mattered: Wiltshire, not so far from Salisbury, to the Isle of Wight.
AND NOT SUCH an unpleasant one, Major Richards might have added, if the circumstances had been different. He might have said something complimentary about the real y remarkably pleasant situation they had here. The fine view, even on a grey day like today. As he’d parked the car he’d noticed the caravans, in their neat rows, down below.
HE’D LOOKED at Jack and El ie attentively, as if silently confirming permission to proceed, then had unzipped his leather wal et. He’d said that Corporal Luxton had been kil ed, as stated in the letter, on the fourth of November and at approximately three p.m., local time. It was not possible for him to give many details at this point—he was obviously just a home-based officer—but he could confirm that Corporal Luxton would have died instantly, on active, front-line duty, and that his record was such that he would undoubtedly have been promoted soon to sergeant. He’d been trained as a sniper—had himself been a trainer of snipers—but had been kil ed when the armoured vehicle he was in had triggered an exceptional y lethal roadside bomb. Two other members of his section had been kil ed and two wounded, one seriously. It was a very grave incident and a very great loss. These were things, nonetheless, that soldiers in Iraq risked every day.
Major Richards had left a little measured pause, though he did not actual y say, “Do you have any questions?” Then, taking out a pen and one of the documents from his wal et, but with an air of being ready to reverse or modify these simple actions if necessary, he’d said that he was sorry to have to ask for such information at such a time, but there were certain matters he needed to confirm.
That Corporal Luxton was never married.
“No,” Jack said, though he wouldn’t have known.
Had no children?
“No,” Jack said again, though he might have said, “Not that I know of.”
Or other dependants?
“No,” Jack said.
Parents?
It seemed to Jack that Major Richards had somehow delayed this question and that he might have done so in some knowing or meaningful way. That it might even be a trick question.
“Dead,” Jack had said. It was surely the correct and the quickest answer, but the word came oddly and echoingly from his lips, as if Vera and Michael might have died, too, in an armoured vehicle in Iraq.
“There are no other relatives,” Major Richards had then asked, “or persons close to Corporal Luxton whom you feel should be informed—I mean, official y informed, other than by yourself?”
“No,” Jack had said.
“You are, in fact, the only living relative?”
“Yes,” Jack said, huskily, as if this might be another trick question, an even trickier question. He felt quite clearly now that he was under suspicion, if not under interrogation or on trial. So he was surprised when Major Richards suddenly said, using words he’d used before, but looking at him directly, in a different, softer way, “Let me offer you my personal condolences.” He said it as if he, Major Richards, might have suddenly become a relative of the kind just denied, some sort of temporary father, and might have wished even to reach out and grasp Jack’s arm, so conveying that he understood that Jack was of the same stuff as the dead man being referred to, that he, Jack, and Tom were interchangeable. The Luxton brothers.
And Jack would never forget it. As he’d never forget that moment, looking from this window, when after the black saloon had stopped in the turning-space—the same turning-space that is now, beneath him, a lacework of ruffled puddles—he’d had the impossible thought that this figure in a uniform might be Tom.
Jack had felt himself starting to tremble again, under Major Richards’s gaze, as he’d done under El ie’s gaze when they’d both first read the letter, and he’d started to want Major Richards to leave.
But Major Richards, now handing Jack a number of papers from his wal et, which were Jack’s copies to keep, had begun to explain that “because of the circumstances on the ground” it was not possible to say as yet exactly when Corporal Luxton would be repatriated, but that it would be soon and that Jack would be kept closely informed. There would be a ceremony, of course, and al due assistance would subsequently be given, fol owing the coroner’s release, in whatever funeral arrangements might be decided upon. Meanwhile, Jack shouldn’t hesitate to cal at any time.
This was adding little to what had been said in the letter, and Jack was able to wonder, as Major Richards spoke, whether
the
unspecified
delay
and
the
word
“circumstances” and that strange phrase “on the ground” (where else did circumstances happen?) might al be to do with the fact that there was no body real y, or not in the usual sense of that word, or that the manner of Corporal Luxton’s death, and his comrades’, might not have been so instant after al . That the “incident”—that word had been used at some point—required the army’s own careful investigation.
No one yet had used the word “body.”
But mainly Jack was trying to control the trembling of his own body.
Perhaps Major Richards saw this. He saw anyway (and he was not unpractised in this observation) that this visit, though there were other matters stil to be dealt with, shouldn’t be extended very much further. He’d brought with him, for example, just in case, copies of recent photographs of Corporal Luxton, but he quickly calculated that this wouldn’t be the moment to produce them from his wal et. The principal purpose of his visit, that it should simply have been made, was fulfil ed. The battalion had been represented in person and in uniform. This, Major Richards knew, was, among his several duties, the most important and most symbolic, and often the most difficult.