They’d both drifted into the trade for the same simple reason: it was available work, which not everyone wanted, and they’d both thought of it as a stop-gap. Now they’d both become stuck, at assistant level, in a business that they knew very often ran in families, and both wondered exactly what the future held. They’d worked together often now.
They were mates. It was not beyond them to think, in this case: suppose it was your brother. Nor beyond them to think that they might have been out there, in Iraq. There was no cal -up, of course, and they’d opted years ago for this other, though now it seemed not entirely unconnected, form of employment. Corporal Luxton had been not quite thirty-one.
Being undertaker’s men, they were not unfamiliar with ceremony, but they’d never been at anything like this before, and the chances that they might ever again were thin. You couldn’t deny it was a privilege and an honour, it was certainly something special—to pick up the body of a soldier who’d actual y died, in action, for his country. But both Dave’s and Derek’s thoughts when they went in this direction tended to get a little lost. He’d been carried off that plane, anyway, here in Oxfordshire, wrapped in a bloody great Union Jack. Which had then been whisked smartly off the coffin by those same six soldiers who’d done the bearing, like some precious tablecloth that had to be put away in a drawer. Which had presumably been at the request of the bereaved—that man who’d just stomped off.
So they might have been a little miffed. The two of them had just been denied the opportunity of driving a coffin, draped in a Union Jack, halfway across England. Which would certainly have turned heads. More than a hearse usual y does.
And, when you thought about it, to anyone turning their head, it could only have meant one thing.
But now that they’d met Jack and seen him clutch the coffin like that and then each shaken his big hand, they weren’t so sure if they felt cheated or in fact glad at not having the flag. They weren’t sure either, from what they’d occasional y seen on the ten-o’clock news, if even words like “in action” were quite the right words to be thinking of.
They had to be thinking of making their departure, anyway. A sudden chil breeze swirled through the crowd round the hearses, fluttering skirts, lifting ties from jackets, making hands go to hats. The weather was changing. They had to show respect, of course, to these other two lots. The original plan, so they’d understood, was for a slow initial procession, the three hearses one behind the other, through the main gate and through the town. They’d been looking forward to that. But how would that look now: two coffins with flags and one without? And, again, there was no book of rules. They had to take some initiative—a little like Jack.
But too quick an exit wouldn’t do either. It wasn’t so often you got to be in the presence of three deceaseds, and neither Derek nor Dave was sure of the strange, clinging mood around them. Their hearse, with its unadorned coffin
—and now without its principal attending mourner—made them feel like poor relations at a wedding. On the other hand, they drew a vague sense of precedence from the fact that their coffin was a corporal’s, as against two privates’.
They had the rank. And from the evident fact that even the army, in ful parade splendour, seemed to have handed over command now to a few men in plain black. The decision was theirs and they felt strangely stirred by the possibility of unilateral action.
They looked at each other, then at their watches, like skippers judging the tide. It had already been agreed that Derek would do the first shift of driving. As, with appropriate, unhurried dignity, they got into their seats and started the engine, they were briefly the centre of a re-solemnised attention, everyone automatical y standing upright and stil . And no doubt of puzzlement too, but they couldn’t help that. They were in charge of Tom Luxton.
They moved off and crept back along their route of entry.
It was not as anticipated. Al the same, people going about other random business stopped and stood, a little nonplussed, as they passed, those in uniform saluting promptly enough, despite the absence of the flag. It was like being temporary, absconding royalty. They reached the main gate, then continued to creep—a touch more right foot perhaps—through the strange semi-military town, where again, on either side of them, there was some half-surprised but guessing observance, even scattered saluting. As if their one vehicle were a whole procession.
Only with the town behind them did they begin to pick up speed. Nothing crazy, of course. In their calculations as to when to leave, they’d given due attention to Jack’s prior departure. Abrupt as it had been, it was in a way a good thing—signal ing that they too, if they wished and dared, were free to go. But they had to give him a head start. It was unlikely—it would be like the tortoise catching the hare
—that they’d catch him up. But they didn’t want to find themselves (though they had no idea what car he was driving) coming up behind him. He would be making essential y the same journey and there was only one real route. Get past Swindon, then M4, M5.
Why they felt there shouldn’t be this mutual sighting they couldn’t have explained, but they felt it. Why shouldn’t two brothers, in these circumstances, have kept as close to each other as possible? If you could put it like that. If Jack Luxton had insisted on driving in convoy with them (in front or behind), they’d have had to respect it. Though it would have been awkward.
As it was, they knew they had to press on, being as discreet and minimal as possible about their swap-overs and comfort breaks. You couldn’t drive a hearse for a hundred and fifty miles just any old how. Though neither of them had in fact driven a hearse nearly this far before.
As they gained the open road, an unaccustomed taciturnity clung to them, which didn’t just have to do with what was behind their backs. They were used to that and used, whenever there was a chance and no one was looking—as now on a country road—to breaking the rules of decorum. To having a chat about this or that.
But this was different. A hard act to fol ow. As broad, rol ing vistas opened up before them, as they crossed from Oxfordshire into Wiltshire, clouds breaking over the hil s to let through beams of sunshine, they both withdrew into themselves, became thoughtful, even grave.
The truth was they’d both been affected by what they’d seen. It was not possible to disregard, as they normal y could, what they had in the back. It had come out of that plane, it had been flown al the way from Iraq. It? Now it was nudging, as it were, at their shoulders. They didn’t have the Union Jack and that meant that anyone seeing them would have the usual thoughts that people have when they see a hearse with a coffin inside. They wouldn’t imagine or guess.
So only they would know, just the two of them, exactly what they were carrying halfway across the land.
The thought was a sobering one, as was the actual length of the journey in prospect—in such special company.
Though they would never talk about it and though they eventual y broke this meditative hush, both Derek and Dave would feel that in this journey they formed a definite bond with their cargo. It didn’t happen on the usual short trips, quite the opposite. But this was like having a third person along for the ride, there were definitely three of them. The conversation, or concatenation of unspoken thoughts, was somehow three-way.