His hearse—Tom’s hearse—was there. Tom’s transport was waiting. That “side of things,” Major Richards had already whispered to him, was in place, there was nothing Jack needed to do. Al the same, actual y to see the hearses was heart-stopping, and Jack felt he should at some point at least make contact with the driver. He should slip him a twenty. Would twenty be enough?
On one of his earlier phone cal s, Major Richards had delicately explained that normal y on these occasions there would be no flowers. These occasions weren’t funerals in themselves and the army didn’t deal in flowers. But Jack could see now, placed in readiness beside two of the hearses, a smal , defiant offering—a cluster’s worth—of flowers. He felt a moment’s abject misery and humiliation (and sympathy for his upstaged hearse driver). He’d have had to peer very hard indeed to see the single wreath he’d ordered (though he’d specified large) to await the coffin’s eventual arrival in Marleston.
THE PADRES in their fluttering surplices had walked out to the plane. Everyone was straining to see inside it. Though everyone knew. There was now a general barking of orders. Three detachments of six bare-headed soldiers marched out towards the plane, each led by a bare-headed officer. Other officers, with caps on, stood to attention near the ramp leading into the plane and now and then performed strange gestures with their swords. Positioned on the tarmac, in red tunics and white-and-gold helmets, was a smal -scale version of a military band.
The first party of bearers moved into the plane. Then a bugle blew as the first coffin, completely wrapped in a Union Jack, was carried off. Jack felt there was a sort of silent gasp, an invisible but detectable flinching among the relatives’ group. He’d been told, and it was in the Order of Ceremony, that Tom’s coffin would be the last. He didn’t know why, and hadn’t asked, and didn’t know if it was in any way significant or even constituted an honour, but he felt, now, that the two preceding coffins would prepare him.
The other two soldiers were cal ed Pickering and Ful er.
Before this event and throughout its duration it never quite got home to Jack that these men, having been privates, would have been in his brother’s charge. He had among the relatives a technical, proxy seniority. But he felt like the lowest of the low.
The bearers stood for a moment at the foot of the ramp, close to the padres, while the officer for the bearer party took his place behind the coffin. Then a single muffled bass drum began to beat the rhythm of the slow march, fol owed by a muted growling of brass instruments, and the coffin was carried along a careful y planned route so that it passed in front of the heavyweight uniforms on the platform
—al standing at a salute—then in front of the civilian party, before delivery to its hearse.
When the drum began, Jack felt it was being struck inside his chest, and though he was required to do nothing more than stand and look, he couldn’t prevent his arms going stiff at his sides, the thumbs pointing downwards, he couldn’t prevent himself lifting his chin and pul ing back his shoulders and coming to an instinctive, irresistible attention. This he did for al three coffins. And the fact was they were al the same. They were, al three, just Union-Jacked boxes borne on six shoulders and looked interchangeable.
This
was
both
bewildering
and
unexpectedly consoling. Each coffin received an equal and undiscriminating ful ness of attention, as if there might have been a bit of each man in each box.
But Tom’s coffin, Jack realised, had a genuine distinction in being last. There was nothing else now, in reserve, on which the onlookers might unload and exhaust their emotion. It was the final chance for everyone to focus their feelings. It was also, specifical y, why Jack was here.
The bugle sounded again, for Tom’s coffin. It was a recognisable bugle cal , though Jack couldn’t think of its name: Reveil e. When it sounded, some second person inside him, it seemed, gave a little inner cry. He hoped that none of the group in front would now turn and give him, however wel intended, sympathetic looks. None did. They were looking at Tom. They were thinking of Tom for him.
The drum was pounded again. In the minutes that fol owed, almost every remembered moment he’d spent with Tom seemed to flow through him in a way he couldn’t have predicted, wil ed or even wished. Yet he was also aware of al the time they’d not spent together. He thought of the letters he’d written to Tom, with great difficulty, and the letters he’d never written. And the letters he’d never got back. He thought of the things that had and hadn’t passed between them and that, perhaps, didn’t matter now. The things that Tom had never known and the things that he, Jack, had never known. He had gone into caravans. Tom had gone into battle.
He thought of the last time he’d stood like this—though it wasn’t like this at al —at his own father’s funeral, when Tom wasn’t there. The whole vil age saw that Tom wasn’t there.
But Tom, everyone knew by then, was in the army. He thought of how he would have to stand there again, very soon—he would have to go through it al again. He thought of those Remembrance Days. Marleston churchyard. The grey and yel ow lichen on the memorial, the rasp of leaves.
He thought of how if he was required, fol owing this ceremony, to make a speech, he would say how Tom, his little brother Tom, had always wanted to be a soldier, ever since he’d learnt about his two great-uncles who’d died in the First World War and how one of them had won the DCM. Or some such crap. He’d say it. Though thank God that he didn’t have to make a speech. How could he, Jack, ever make a speech? How could anyone ever make a speech? But he’d brought that medal with him. He couldn’t say why. He could hold it up, for effect, in his speech. He touched it now in his breast pocket.
He thought of the bar in the Crown. Jimmy Merrick in a suit. He thought, or tried to think, as he’d tried to think many times before now, of Tom’s last moments, but he couldn’t think of them, couldn’t imagine them, his mind flicked away.
He thought, as the coffin passed directly in front of him and he wanted to touch it, to be one of the six bare-headed soldiers or somehow al of them: what would his mum think
—his and Tom’s mum—to see both of them now?
When al three coffins had been transferred to their hearses a tense silence remained. This was, Jack understood, a prearranged part of the proceedings (it was like those Remembrance Days), but it was also like a natural, inevitable response. How could this thing simply end? After delivering the coffins, the parties of bearers had formed up, each in two ranks with their officers before them, beyond the hearses, at an angle to them, like some third, flanking group of onlookers. Then a separate detachment of soldiers, with rifles, had formed up in front of the hearses.
By now Jack had noticed that the three drivers of the hearses were not (of course) alone, each had—what would you cal them?—a co-driver. It was a mark of respect and standard practice. No man should be asked to drive a corpse across the country alone. Alone, as it were. But Jack had imagined Tom’s hearse having a solitary driver because he’d imagined that driver being himself. Each pair of drivers stood now, erect and stil , by the rear of each hearse. Had they been instructed to do this? Was it regular undertaker’s training?