“I’m Dave,” one of them said. “Derek,” the other said.
One was thinnish and sandy-haired, one thick-set and dark. There was no way they could have been taken for brothers. He shook their hands again. They seemed to want it.
“I’m Jack, I’m Jack.” They already knew this, he’d already said it, but he said it again. “Cal me Jack. I’l see you tomorrow, then.”
Then he simply turned away. Walked—sloped, slunk away. He could do nothing else, was good for nothing else.
He’d kept in mind where the car was and had spotted already how he could get to it without having to go through any door. He could cut across a stretch of grass, then slip behind the corner of the building from which they’d al recently emerged.
He simply turned and walked away. He didn’t care if everyone was watching him. Didn’t mind the feeling of needles in his back, the feeling of being a deserter. Didn’t mind if there were al sorts of other things he stil should have done or was expected to do. He simply walked away.
As Tom once had simply fucking walked away.
He reached the car, ripped off his jacket, flung it, with the medal stil in the top pocket, on the back seat, and started the engine. He knew he’d already passed from people’s sight after rounding the building. He was back in the inconspicuous, unceremonial world of car parks. He reversed out and drove off along the route by which (it seemed now long ago) he’d driven in. Had barriers come down to prevent his departure, he would have put his foot down and burst through. But he passed Control of Entry without incident (was Exit also control ed?) and reached the main gate, after which he could accelerate and just drive.
He drove through the camp-like town with a distinct sense, now, of being an escaper—word would surely be put out about him—then sped into open country. He knew he had to find the M4, then just point west.
He couldn’t have given any coherent reason for his fugitive haste, which didn’t diminish even when he was free of the town, but a strange, hounding explanation came to him even as he drove. It was the hearse. He had to get away from the hearse. It would be making this same journey too—M4, M5—and though, by definition, a hearse was a slow vehicle, he was afraid of its coming up behind him, of seeing it in his mirror, bearing down on him. This was al crazy and unlikely. It wouldn’t even have left yet, and it would surely have to travel, at least at first—and no doubt in company with the others—at a solemn snail’s pace. But the thought of its somehow gaining on him, of encountering it at any point on the journey now before him, afflicted him like a nightmare.
Only moments ago he’d actual y wanted to be in the hearse. That was his rightful place. Having held that coffin and having wanted not to let go, how could he be afraid now of being fol owed by his own brother? But that was the point. He’d separated himself from his brother (and what was new about that?). He had to be in this damn Cherokee.
Therefore he had to avoid the hearse and its pursuing indignation. To put distance in between.
But he’d hardly gone five miles, and he couldn’t have said where it was—it was somewhere in the unknown heart of England—before he’d had to pul over into a lay-by while a series of great, wracking shudders made him, stopped as he was, hang on to the steering wheel as if he might wrench it off.
21
BUT IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED ANYWAY , would it? If he’d had to get up and make a speech and had said that Tom had always been stirred by those two Luxton boys of long ago. Because that would have been like saying that Tom had real y wanted to go off and get himself kil ed as wel . As he had done. And what kind of war, exactly, had Tom been going off to fight when he’d slipped out of Jebb Farm thirteen years ago? What kind of war, exactly, had he even been fighting now?
At least those two Luxton lads had known the score.
Maybe.
It wouldn’t have worked because it wasn’t true. But it wouldn’t have worked, anyway, because Jack Luxton could never have got up to make a speech—before lords, ladies and colonels—even to save his own damn life.
He looks now through the rain-spattered cottage window and remembers pul ing up in the car, among strange, bare fields, just to shake and weep. Tom was the traitor, my lords and ladies, Tom was the deserter, the runaway.
Running away from the war against cow disease and agricultural ruin. And against his own embattled father.
Good luck, Tom.
ONE MORNING, at milking (by then they had a sort of herd again and they could sel the milk), Tom had told him the whole story. About his trip to Exeter to buy a suit, more than a year before. About how he had it al planned now, for his eighteenth birthday. His own man. December 16th. Bugger Christmas. And bugger birthdays, if it came to it. What kind of birthday did anyone get, these days, at Jebb Farm?
The cows had twitched and steamed in the stal s. It would have been this time of year—November, not so long after Remembrance Day, when Tom would have worn that suit, only the second time for the purpose.
“This is just for your ears, Jack.”
“And the cows’,” Jack might have said if he’d had the quickness of mind.
Though Jack had needed to think quickly, and seriously, enough that morning. And one of his first thoughts was that Tom hadn’t had to say a thing. Tom might have just cleared off, according to his plan, leaving him, Jack, as surprised and left in the lurch as their father was going to be. But Tom was tel ing him now, so Jack had thought, because Tom was a brother. He’d been saving it up and it had been a matter, perhaps, of careful timing, but Jack didn’t want to go into that. Tom was tel ing him now.
And that meant that Tom was real y putting before him a whole set of alternative positions. Like the position of saying: You can’t do this, Tom, you can’t bloody do it. Or the position of simply ratting on him to his father. Or the position of thinking why hadn’t he, Jack, done something like this years ago and left Tom to Michael’s mercy? Or the future position (the not-so-distant future, it now seemed) of being left, himself, to Michael’s mercy and having to pretend he’d never known a damn thing about it.
But none of these theoretical positions had real y exercised Jack much at the time, because of the overriding position Tom was putting him in, which was the position of trust. Tom hadn’t had to say a word. But what are brothers for?
The steady hiss and clank of the machinery, the familiar parade of swol en udders and the splat of cow shit had seemed, for Jack, to say that though Tom had just announced, in effect, a division, a parting in their lives, nothing was altered, everything would stay the same. Or the same as the cow disease and the price of calves had left it.
Or the same for him at least, Jack. Since he wasn’t going anywhere.
His own man.
He’d said, not stopping in his work, “I understand, Tom. I understand what you’re tel ing me.” In the middle of milking you can’t pause, sit back and say, “Let’s talk this over properly.” Maybe Tom had reckoned on that.