Dad had the cartridges in his pocket and while he stood and loaded the gun—both barrels, just in case—he told Tom to get the two spades from the back. Jack asked Tom how their father had spoken, and Tom had thought for a bit and said he’d spoken like he was giving orders. This wasn’t a nice thing for either of them (or for Luke) and there was no way of speaking about it nicely. Al of which Jack could understand. Then Tom had added that his father had spoken like a complete bastard.
Tom said that while Dad loaded the gun Luke had just sat there on the grass where he’d been put. It’s true, he couldn’t move much now anyway, but he’d just sat there like a good dog sits, front legs out before him, waiting for what’s next. Of course, he was perfectly familiar with that gun.
Jack asked Tom (though he already knew the answer) if he thought that Luke knew, al along. Tom said, of course.
Of course Luke knew. Luke was half blind and he hadn’t made a move, but Tom said he was sure Luke knew, even as they’d bumped down Barton Field. And Jack knew he hadn’t needed to ask.
But Jack would never be sure about the next bit in Tom’s description. Though why should Tom have made it up? Tom might have just said that Dad had simply walked towards Luke, aimed and fired. But Tom said that, after loading the gun and snapping it shut, Dad had turned in Luke’s direction, paused for half a second, then turned again and held out the gun to him. He’d offered it—if “offer” was the right word—to Tom.
Tom said that he couldn’t tel , even after thinking about it, if his father had only just got the idea then or if he’d had it in his mind al along, and that was why he’d wanted Tom—
Tom specifical y, for some reason—to be with him. He’d got the idea, perhaps, looking at them both in the yard, and he’d singled out Tom.
Jack had thought (to be charitable) that it was possible Dad had held out the gun to Tom because he’d realised suddenly he couldn’t do it himself. But Tom had read Jack’s thought and said it wasn’t like that at al . There’d been a look in his father’s face, a tone in his voice. He’d said,
“Here. You do it.” It wasn’t an offer, it was another order.
Then Tom said, “Like an even bigger bastard.” Tom couldn’t do it, anyway. He’d just stood in front of his father and shaken his head. He couldn’t put a finger on that gun. And maybe—though Tom didn’t say this, it was one of those things Jack’s imagination had to supply—Tom was never meant to. It was just a bluff, a game, to make Tom feel like a worm, to make him wish he could disappear into the ground.
Several seconds passed anyway, Tom had said, while Luke sat there, not moving, and his father had stil held out the gun.
Then, according to Tom, Dad had said, “No? Can’t do it?
But it needs to be done.” And then he’d turned, taken a few quick strides forward and shot Luke between the eyes. One shot was enough.
And up in the yard, in that stil air, Jack had heard the shot clearly enough, like something hitting his own skul .
Tom said—it was plainly difficult for him to give these details or even to remember them precisely, and Jack would come to know how he felt—that Luke had never turned away as Dad came towards him with the gun, though at the very last moment he might have lowered his head. He just might. He couldn’t be sure either if, just a fraction before he’d fired, Dad had said, “Goodbye, Luke.” Or if it was a fraction afterwards. Or if he’d just imagined that Dad had said it. (Jack, listening to Tom, thought: Tom said it, Tom said it himself. He said it aloud or just inside, but Tom said it himself.)
But after firing the shot, Tom said, Dad had turned and even as he broke open the gun and fished out the unspent cartridge, said, clearly enough, “And I hope one day, when it’s needed, someone wil have the decency to do the same for me.”
DAD HAD WALKED BACK to the pick-up to stow the gun. Then he’d grabbed the spades lying in the grass and held one out for Tom. Tom didn’t say if he held it out in the same way as he’d held out the gun, or if he’d said anything along the lines of: “I hope you can do this.” But it seemed that from that point on there hadn’t been much conversation except for Dad saying, “Deeper.” Then again, “Deeper.” Tom said it was a good, safe grave, it wouldn’t get disturbed by some fox coming out of the wood.
Final y Dad had said, “Deep enough.” Then he’d gone to pick up Luke, or what was left of him, and, kneeling and stretching, had lowered him in. Dad had done the shooting and Dad had done the burying. But he’d said to Tom,
“Okay, now fil it in.”
Then he’d gone to the bottom gate, into Brinkley Wood, where the little ril ran through the ditch at the edge of the trees, to clean himself up. Tom said there’d been a lot of blood and stuff left on the grass. The crows and buzzards and the weather would have to take care of that. Tom said it looked like where a ewe had dumped an afterbirth.
They’d both patted down the last soil with their spades. If there was a question of a marker—a gravestone—it was never discussed. There’d be a little grown-over hump, anyway, in the corner of the field. They’d hardly forget the spot.
Then they’d driven back to the house with the gun and the spades, and with the air—Jack could see this as they pul ed into the yard—thick between them. He didn’t understand the thickness of it til Tom, and it took a little time, had given his ful account.
But the air (stil busy with flying ants that had escaped that kettle) was thick and heavy anyway, heavy with the sultry August weather, but heavy with the strange, hol ow weight of there being three of them now where once there’d been four. Just as once there’d been four of them where once there’d been five.
18
JACK DROVE OFF the ferry into the hurrying morning streets of Portsmouth. No one had detained him or regarded him with special interest, but he whipped his sunglasses from the dashboard not just against the glare of the low sun. His instinct was to hide his face. It was absurd to think of being recognised, but in his white shirt and black tie, even inside the car, he felt painful y conspicuous. He had safely got ashore, but at any point now, he felt, as he strove to navigate the currents of purposing traffic around him, he might be stopped and asked to explain his own particular purpose. And how would he do that?
I am going to meet my brother.
As the ferry docked, the bal of fear had tightened in his stomach. He told himself, for no clear reason, that the innocent have nothing to fear.
He looked frantical y for road signs—his instinct also being, on finding himself in the middle of a city, to get out of it fast. Portsmouth was not the biggest of cities, but it was more than big enough for Jack, who in al his years—save in appreciating that most of the Lookouters came from them—had rarely had to deal with cities. The word “city” itself was foreign to him, as was the word “citizen,” though that second word, he somehow appreciated too, hung, almost like its explanation, over this journey.
When, some eight years ago, in order to take a holiday in the Caribbean, Jack had acquired a passport, he’d understood that he was now a citizen. It said so. Not so long before, the very idea of possessing a passport would have seemed ridiculous. A farm was its own land, even its own law, unto itself. And as for being a “citizen”—citizens hardly lived on farms. Though, apparently, you didn’t need to live in a city to be a citizen. Or even require a passport. A passport merely confirmed something that came with you.