They’d both had to raise their voices through the sound of the machinery. That noisy old machinery. It was like speaking in whispers while shouting. Then after some moments, when the last udders were being relieved of their burdens, he’d said, “Okay, Tom. You can rely on me. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“And with the cows,” he might have said, if he’d had the wit for it.
JACK COULD NEVER have got up to make a speech if he’d tried. But Jack had thought he could never write the letters he’d had to write, more or less a year later, to Tom, not even knowing then where they would find him (or, now, if they’d reached him at al ). About the death of Michael Luxton. Which had required an inquest. How did you write to your brother about such a thing? But not only that. About the fact that Michael had made a wil , as farmers do, and in his wil , according to its latest revision, he’d left everything (such as it now was) to his first-born. No mention of his second.
“Al yours, Jack.”
Tom had never actual y said those words. Or said, in some other form, that it was the deal between them—if he was to go and Jack was to stay. But Tom had never written back to him, or shown up for the funeral, for whatever reasons,
perhaps
simply
practical
or
perhaps—
uncompassionate. There’d been two letters to write to Tom.
One about the death and the inquest. One to tel him the verdict (though was there any doubt?) and to tel him, consequently, the details of the funeral. And of the wil .
Babbages, Barnstaple. November 1994. The month, so it seemed, of funerals. And El ie had been there—had helped him, steered him through it al , been at his side then.
But no Tom, for whatever reason, perhaps merely military.
And no word from him. And hadn’t that settled the matter?
Wasn’t that even Tom’s way of saying it again—what he’d never actual y said in the first place? Al yours, Jack—and you’re welcome to it.
And El ie had said, said it more than once: “Forget him.” Tom was the deserter, the traitor? But if so, Jack was a traitor too, for covering for him. Or Jack was doubly loyal.
To Tom, for not betraying him, and to Dad, or to the farm, for staying put himself.
ONE LATE DECEMBER AFTERNOON—it was the eve of Tom’s eighteenth birthday—Tom and Jack had spoken to each other, knowing that this was the moment for their saying goodbye. Tom was to slip out at three the next morning (Michael could sometimes stir at four, even in December) and Jack was to pretend that he’d been sleeping, as he usual y did til his dad’s stirrings roused him, like a log.
They were once again in the milking parlour, making sure they were out of their father’s earshot. Jack at this point had asked Tom to write to him and let him know where he was.
Tom had said of course he would. And so he had, using the non-interceptible method of sending the letter to Jack care of the tiny and soon to be closed sub-post office in Polstowe (where their mother had once been a girl), and letting him know the postal particulars by which he, Jack, could write to him in future. But that was al Jack ever heard from Tom after he left.
Tom said he would just take the clothes he’d be in—
several layers, for the cold—and a backpack with extra stuff. It would soon be the army’s job to clothe, feed and house him. He’d hoof it through the night, then get the first bus to Exeter. He’d already, by the time they’d spoken, hidden a pack of sandwiches and a thermos inside the Big Barn at the far side of the yard. It was like the usual rations he might have taken with him to do some job on the far side of the farm. He’d breakfast on the march.
Jack had said that thing about writing, and had remembered that first card to El ie (seeing again the little fold-down table), but there was another written message that had gone with that moment in the parlour. It was almost Tom’s eighteenth birthday. It was true what Tom had said: no one bothered about birthdays these days at Jebb, they hadn’t since Vera had died. But Jack had found a moment, al the same, to go into the Warburtons’ store at Leke Hil Cross. Would they have any cards, even one for eighteen?
Yes, they had. Inside the card it said: “You’re Eighteen!
Now the World is Yours!”
Jack had desperately hoped when he’d entered the store that neither Sal y nor Ken Warburton would be behind the til , so there’d have to be some conversation about Tom being eighteen now. Though he was prepared to pretend to either of them—since he was prepared to pretend to his father. But he was in luck. The shop and the whole forecourt, it seemed, was being minded by a girl who looked hardly out of school, though Jack vaguely knew her name was Hazel and she must be Tom’s age, give or take, and, while he glanced at her black-sweatered breasts (and she looked at him as if he were an old man), wondered if Tom had been there.
Jack had added some words of his own to the card and given it, sealed in its envelope, to Tom that afternoon and said, “Happy birthday.” Tom had looked at Jack and after a short, questioning pause had said he wouldn’t open it yet, since it wasn’t yet the day, was it? He’d open it in the morning. And Jack had said, “Okay.”
Then Tom had said, “Wel , I suppose this is when …” And Jack had said, “I know.” Then he’d said, “Good luck, Tom. I’l be thinking of you.” Which was a foolish thing perhaps to have said, because it was exactly what he’d written in the card.
AND IT WAS A FOOLISH THING perhaps to have given Tom that card at al . Since it turned out, the next morning, that Dad had actual y got Tom a card too. It went against al recent custom but, as Dad himself put it, “It was his bloody eighteenth.” But by this time it was apparent, anyway, that Tom had disappeared. So Michael had been able to make a big demonstration of the card he’d special y bought for Tom: by ripping it up in front of Jack. What’s more, it was the same card, the same card with a gold, embossed “18” on it and the same message inside, that Jack had bought, and that Dad, too, must have dropped into the store at Leke Hil Cross to buy. Had that girl noticed?
Jack, of course, hadn’t said and couldn’t say anything about his own card. But this had only meant that his father was able to round on him and demand: and where was his card then? If he’d known nothing about al this, where the hel was the card that Jack had got for Tom? And Jack could only answer that, wel , he’d forgotten it was Tom’s birthday.
TOM, holding the unopened envelope in the milking parlour, had said, “I’l be okay. I’l be thinking of you too.” And he’d looked at Jack with a look, Jack thought, that wasn’t just a brother’s look but perhaps a sort of son-and-father look too.
Then he’d said, “Thanks, Jack. Thanks for everything. I won’t forget you.” And Jack had never ceased to wonder about that remark.
Then they’d hugged. Jack couldn’t remember who’d put their arms out first and perhaps it didn’t matter. The last time they’d hugged each other was when Vera had just died.
“Three o’clock,” Tom had said.
“Three o’clock,” Jack had said.
Jack hadn’t had to repeat it, like some pre-agreed appointment, but he knew why he was doing so, though he didn’t actual y say the words: “I’l be awake, Tom.” And so he was. He’d stayed awake pretty wel al through the night—which was rare for him—just to be sure. He was awake at three o’clock to hear Tom’s stealthy departing movements, while he himself remained motionless and as if asleep.