Major Richards had explained that there would be rifle shots—it was a tradition of the regiment and had been done in the Peninsula (an old foreign war). But, even with their preparatory commands and dril , the shots came like jolts. The relatives again seemed to buckle, as if they were being fired at themselves. The noise of the shots rattled round the sky—even this big wide sky—as if it couldn’t find a way out, the echo of the last shots stil trying to flee as the next were fired.
THEN IT WAS OVER. The whole thing was, as it were, stood at ease and dismissed. The army had discharged its obligations and returned these three soldiers to their civilian claimants. Repatriation was complete.
Even now, for a moment, the civilian group seemed not to want to move. Then it began an impetuous, almost mutinous surge towards the hearses. Having seen, til this point, only the backs of heads, Jack noticed now several tear-stained, choked and ravaged faces. He saw handkerchiefs. He also noticed several cameras being fumblingly produced and held up. He thought of Major Richards’s words. If I were you. But he felt like scum for even imagining he might now simply peel away. He was caught in the general drift. And there were the hearse drivers to acknowledge.
But none of those things, Jack knew, was what impel ed him. He wanted to be near the coffin, as near as he could get. He wanted to touch it. The previously solemn and restrained gathering of relatives was now mil ing round the three hearses like visitors let into some show. The drivers stood back like mere attendants. So too did al the military personnel. It seemed that this was one part of the programme that had not been rigorously planned. The cameras flashed and clicked. The names—names and nicknames—of the other two soldiers were suddenly being cal ed, like strange animal cries. Jack felt he could not open his mouth now to say the word “Tom”—he had done the right thing, perhaps, to say it in the car in the car park—but he was saying it inside. He felt like scum, nonetheless, because al the attention was on the other two hearses, al the name-cal ing was directed at them. Because they had those tributes of flowers. Because his drivers, the pair of them, must surely be ashamed to be driving his hearse, to have got this job of the three.
He was Jack Luxton, Corporal Luxton’s brother—people knew by now—and he stuck out plainly with his height and his size, but he would surely go down in people’s memories, Jack thought later, as the mysterious man who simply came and went al by himself, the mysterious man who’d stood at the back, but had gone up afterwards to the hearse where his brother’s coffin lay, to the open rear door, and simply bent and touched the coffin—no, held it, clung to it, for several long, gluing seconds, gripped the two wooden corners nearest to him with his big thick hands as if he might never let go.
Many of those around him saw him do this. Just stand there like that, attached to the coffin. Then when they looked for him again a little later—he’d disappeared.
The two drivers, realising who he must be, had simply stepped aside. The flag had been removed. There was just the bare wood, with a brass plate (and no garlands). This was different from the other two coffins—and everyone would notice and remember this too—and was al , in fact, according to Jack’s instructions. Major Richards had explained on the phone that, in this exceptional instance (since the hearses weren’t provided by the army), the flags would be either retained or, according to the bereaved’s wishes, removed and folded by the bearers and presented to the mourning parties. Major Richards hadn’t pushed it either way, but Jack had felt again that it was as if he’d been told he was free to step down, though the done thing was not to move.
But Jack had said—it had just come out, it was one of his occasional, forceful blurtings—that he didn’t want the flag. If it was his say-so, then he was saying so. He didn’t want it left on the coffin, and he didn’t want it himself. He said—
and this had just come out too—that he wanted it given to the “battalion.” He’d used Major Richards’s word. He wanted the battalion to have it.
And what would he have done with it? Where would he have put it? They didn’t have a flagpole, he thought once again. But, anyway, he didn’t want the present of any flag.
Major Richards, down the phone, had been silent for a while, then had said (with a detectable but awkward sigh of relief), “That’s—a fine gesture, Mr. Luxton. But, if you should change your mind …”
HE WRENCHED HIS HANDS from the coffin, from its bare wood, then turned to the two drivers. He was surprised by the sudden outward authority and decisiveness he seemed now to have acquired. Had it come from the coffin? He shook the drivers’ hands. He said, “I am Tom Luxton’s brother, Jack Luxton. I am very grateful.” It seemed oddly like the reverse of the hand-shaking he’d done a little while ago inside the building. It seemed as if he were some senior, elevated dignitary acknowledging these two black-clad drivers in their great loss. He felt a sudden pity, but also an admiration, even a strange envy for these men who would have to drive his brother’s body, sitting with it behind them, for some hundred and fifty miles. He had a sudden sense too of having imposed on them outrageously and of having ducked out of what should have been his own task.
Had it been possible—had the coffin fitted—he might have offered to lower the back seats in the Cherokee and take over their job.
But they’d looked at him as if they might have saluted.
They said, “Sir,” and “Mr. Luxton.” He wanted to gather these men, too, into his arms. But, instead, he took his wal et from his back pocket, opened it and felt the edges of the notes inside. He didn’t care if this were the right thing or not. And he didn’t care that it would be forty now, for the two of them, not twenty. When would this ever happen again?
He’d had no idea what his incidental expenses might be for this extraordinary journey, but he’d drawn out a good wad of cash just in case. It was only money that would have been spent in St. Lucia.
He handed them each a twenty. They might have made some smal , token gesture of protest, but they said, “Thank you, sir … Thank you, sir,” as if he’d pinned a medal on each of them. And he had a medal too.
“Wil I—see you tomorrow?” he said.
“Al Saints’, Marleston. Ten-thirty,” one of them quickly said. “We’l be two of the bearers.”
He would be a bearer himself, he knew this, along with five undertaker’s men (Babbages had arranged it)—not having anyone else he could easily ask or choose. Wel , Jack thought now, three of the party had been shown how the thing could be done. Should he make that joke? Would they al expect another twenty tomorrow? That would be a hundred al round, on top of this forty.
“It wil be an honour, Mr. Luxton,” one of them said. It was what they always said, perhaps, what undertakers were trained to say, but it occurred suddenly to Jack that these men might actual y have volunteered for this job. They’d never done anything like it before. Nor had Jack. It seemed that both of them were a little awed by what they’d witnessed. It couldn’t surely be that they were in awe of him, Jack, for being the brother of a man who’d died in the service of his country. Couldn’t they see he felt like scum?