Jack rocked Tom in his cradle. Also, when he was al owed to, he would pick Tom up and carry him around.
He’d even sometimes kiss Tom on his funny little head.
He’d grip Tom under his shoulders and—standing himself at his ful eight- or nine-year-old height—lift him right up so his legs dangled. At eight or nine, Jack had possessed his window of opportunity for doing such things, before his dad had begun to frown on them.
But he’d never said, later, to Tom, even if Tom perhaps might have imagined it: “Tom, I rocked you once. In that cradle.” He’d never said, “I dangled you.” How could he ever say it? And now he never would. And he’d never know if his mother had ever said it for him. Never in Jack’s hearing anyway.
How could he have said it, or when? When they were down in the woods, shooting? Or sharing the milking? Or when Tom had come home from school, down the track from the gate, after his hand had been up Kathy Hawkes’
skirt? “Tom, I once—”
Or before Tom climbed, for the last time, up that same track, that December night? Though how could he have said it then, of al times? Though perhaps he had said it—
thought it anyhow—into his pil ow. As he’d said it to himself, a thousand times, while just watching Tom grow.
ELLIE WANTED A CHILD, children, he knew that. And he didn’t. For his own reasons, but for reasons that El ie knew perfectly wel in her way. He simply hadn’t wanted any more of himself, of his own uprooted stock, after Tom had left and then he and El ie had left too. And Dad had gone anyway.
He hadn’t wanted any passing on.
“No more Jebb, no more Luxtons, El .”
It was how he’d felt. And it was part of an unspoken pact between them, along with the caravans and the cottage and the holidays in the Caribbean. Along with the steep learning curve and the lightening up. He wasn’t conceding quite everything.
The subject had certainly hovered between them, that afternoon at Jebb in the Big Bedroom, as the word
“caravans” had hovered, as if that word itself might even have been a code for it. What better place for it to hover than in that big bed? And it had been a real enough prospect then. As real and as natural as that oak tree beyond the window. And El ie wouldn’t have so long, perhaps. Her window of opportunity. Jesus, she might have been planning something right then.
But the subject had only hovered, then flitted away. To be considered later, maybe. One thing at a time. And he had a lot to consider. Everything he was looking at, for a start, everything you could see from that window. And that letter.
Over in the corner, in the shadows, the wooden cradle would stil have been there. And El ie’s eyes, that afternoon, had been doing their roaming. She’d never seen the inside of Jebb Farmhouse at such close quarters before. She must have noticed the cradle. And she might have made some joke, as her way of broaching the subject, about him once having been in it, and look at the bloody size of him now. But she hadn’t broached the subject. So she must have seen his thinking, his position on it, already in him. Or decided to leave it til later. Enough work for one summer’s day.
But she must have noticed that cradle, and maybe her simple thought was: Wel , Jack once had his damn baby.
And that was why she’d said that thing about Tom. “Forget him, Jack.” Or she might have just thought: Time enough, time enough stil . Not yet twenty-eight and in peak condition.
Her eyes had done their roaming anyway. When he and El ie came, about a year later, to do the sel ing—separately but together, as it were—before they had al those people round (their eyes roaming too), he’d said, “And what about al the stuff? I mean the stuff inside, the furniture.” He hadn’t meant the stuff at Westcott, that was El ie’s business. So why should he have asked on his own account about Jebb, as if he needed her instruction?
“You sel it too, Jack. We sel it too.” She’d even looked a little impatient with him. “You might be surprised what you get for some of those things. I’d say you’ve got enough there to fil a whole antiques shop.”
And so, because El ie had given him the go-ahead and because anyway it was like giving her a sort of sign, he’d sold the cradle. What would they want with a cradle?
Though it had cost him a wrench, a hel of a wrench.
But he hadn’t sold the shotgun. Or the medal.
13
WHEN ELLIE HAD SHUT THE DOOR behind Major Richards—it was she who’d shown him out, she could see Jack wasn’t up to it—she’d felt, for the first time since that letter had arrived, like crying herself. This was different from the letter.
It was different when a man in a uniform turned up at your front door. You knew then it wasn’t just a piece of paper.
And it wouldn’t just blow away as pieces of paper could.
Of course she could remember Tom. Little Tom, then big Tom, just as big as his brother. Big enough, certainly, to go off and be a soldier. When Jack had told her—but only after it had happened—that this was what Tom had done and that he, Jack, had known al about it beforehand, she’d breathed, she couldn’t help it, a grateful sigh. She’d been surprised, but she’d been glad, though she’d tried not to show it. There wasn’t any reason to be cut up about it—if, so it seemed, Jack wasn’t. If it was what Tom had wanted and planned and he’d gone and done it, then good luck to him. And if Jack had been in on it and wasn’t cut up about it, then so much the better.
It was Michael Luxton who’d been cut up about it, and had taken it out on Jack. But Jack had just taken that in his turn, so it seemed, as if he were doing it for Tom’s sake, not even tel ing his dad, til he thought it was safe, where Tom had gone. Though he’d told her, one January afternoon at Westcott. “He’s joined the army, El . You don’t know that I told you this.” As if his dad might have come round and throttled it out of her.
. . .
THAT DAY , that January afternoon, had in fact been one of the better, brighter days of her life. She’d squeezed and hugged Jack’s big, familiar body with a new eagerness (had he noticed?), but also with a delicacy, as if he might have been bruised by real blows from his father. Michael Luxton, it was true, could sometimes scare her. He wasn’t scary in any obvious way, but he could sometimes frighten her. If there should be a choice of fathers with whom you’d have to live alone for the foreseeable and barely thinkable future, then she’d choose her own father, smal and nimble, not towering and looming. Smal and sly and with a regular glint of mischief in his face, which she knew was a mask (even though she could be a sucker for it), a bravado put there mainly by alcohol. Her father owned her, but he didn’t scare her. She’d choose him of the two. But then she’d chosen Jack, who could sometimes look the image of his father.
“This is just between you and me, El .”
She’d run her palms softly over his big frame as if she’d never done it before. Their situations were the same now, equal. They each had to shoulder their fathers, just their fathers. Tom was gone. A soldier. One of the better days of her life. Though she could feel, beneath the skin, beneath the imaginary bruises from his father, the wound of Tom’s departure hidden in Jack’s heavy flesh.
It was a grey, bitter January afternoon, the heater ticking in her bedroom—“their bedroom”—and somewhere out in the cold of the farm, if he was only consulting his hip flask in the Land Rover, her dad was keeping his distance, as usual, so they could have the house. It was how he kept her there—it was the deal. What a pittance of a deal. And, Jesus, they were both twenty-six.