But not this winter. Obviously. Or it had seemed unavoidably obvious to him. But not to El ie, apparently.
And that was the start of al this.
HE LOOKS NOW at the rain-swept caravans. The tug of it, stil . Lookout Cottage up here, the caravans down there, no more than little white oblongs at this distance. The joke was that he had a telescope constantly trained, he wasn’t just Farmer Jack, he was also sometimes the commandant.
Driving down or strol ing down every day to see if al was wel . In fine weather, dressed the part: shorts and Caribbean shirt (extra-large) and one of those basebal caps they’d had run up, free for every guest, with LOOKOUT
and the lighthouse motif—gold on black—above the peak.
Thirty-two units. Al “top of the range,” he could truthful y say, even if the range wasn’t quite the topmost one. He could never have said that about the milking machinery at Jebb.
The tug he’d never expected. Empty half the year, but then sometimes, strangely, as now, al the more tugging.
Occupied for the other half by this shifting temporary population—migrants, vagrants, escapers in their own country.
It was only ever an encampment down there, that was the feel of it, like the halt of some expeditionary, ragtag army. It might al be gone in the morning—any morning—leaving nothing but the tyre marks in the grass. That was the tug.
Not cattle, not even caravans, but people.
5
ELLIE SITS in the wind-rocked, rain-lashed Cherokee, in the lay-by on the coast road at Holn Cliffs, thinking of her mother.
The car is pointing in the direction of Holn itself and so in what, on any day til now, she might have cal ed the direction of home. And on a clear day it would be perfectly possible to see from where she sits not just the fine sweep of the coastline, but, on the hil side running up from the Head, the distant white speck of Lookout Cottage. It had been built there, after al , with a now-vanished lighthouse above it, because of the prominent position. And on a clear day, a fine summer’s day say, it would be equal y possible to see from Lookout Cottage the distant glint and twinkle of cars—with perhaps an ice-cream van or two—lined up in the lay-by at Holn Cliffs while their occupants admired the view.
Today there is no view. Even Holn Head is just a vague, jutting mass of darker greyness amid the general greyness, and El ie can only squintingly imagine that at a certain point, through the murk beyond her windscreen, she can see the pinprick gleam of the lit-up windows of the cottage.
The wipers are on, though to little effect. Thirty yards along the lay-by, barely visible, is another parked car, a silver hatchback, doing what El ie is apparently doing, and El ie feels, along with an instinctive solidarity, a stab of envy. Only to be sitting out the storm.
How could Jack have said what he said?
El ie hasn’t seen her mother for over twenty years—and can never see her again—so that to think of her at al is like seeing distant glimmers through a blur. Yet right now, as if time has performed some astounding, marooning loop, thoughts of her mother—and of her father—have never been so real to her.
How could Jack have said it?
ELLIE’S MOTHER DISAPPEARED, one fine late-September day, from Westcott Farm, Devon, abandoning her husband, Jimmy, and her only child, El ie, when El ie was barely sixteen, and though she would never see her again, El ie would come to know—familiarly and grateful y—where her mother had eventual y made her home. El ie’s mother once lived in that cottage whose lights El ie can only imagine she sees, and had she not done so, El ie and Jack could never have made it their home as wel .
Though now El ie wonders if it is any sort of home at al .
The exact cause of her mother’s sudden flight al those years ago El ie would never know, but it had to do with a figure whom El ie, back then, would sometimes cal , when in intimate conversation with Jack Luxton, her mother’s
“mystery man”—using that phrase not so much with scorn but with a teasing fascination, as if she would quite like a mystery man of her own.
Her father must have had some clue who the man was and even communicated indirectly with his runaway wife on the subject, if only to become an official y divorced man and get back the sole title to Westcott Farm. But his lips remained sealed and, anyway, not long before her father’s death, El ie was to discover that her mother had replaced that original mystery man with someone else and had lived with him on the Isle of Wight.
A few miles along the coast road behind her, in a cemetery in Shanklin, El ie’s mother—or her ashes—lies buried, under a memorial slab placed there by her then husband, whom El ie would one day refer to as “Uncle Tony.” El ie has lived now for over ten years in her mother’s and Uncle Tony’s former home, but has never been to see her mother’s nearby resting-place, and until recently this would only have expressed her mixed feelings about her once renegade mum: blame, tempered with unexpected gratitude and—ever since that September day years ago—
an odd, grudging admiration. She hadn’t quite condemned, but she hadn’t quite forgiven either, and she wasn’t going to go standing by any graves.
And until recently this would only have expressed El ie’s position general y. The past is the past, and the dead are the dead.
But two mornings ago when Jack had departed, al by himself, on an extraordinary journey whose ultimate destination was a graveside, El ie had felt rise up within her, like a counterweight, the sudden urge to pay her long-withheld respects. She’d even had the thought: As for Jack and his brother, so for me and my mum. The only trouble was that she didn’t have the car, Jack had it, and she’d baulked at the idea of getting the bus. But she has the car now—she has unilateral y commandeered it—and, only within the last desperate hour, El ie has attempted that aborted journey once again. And failed.
SHE’D DRIVEN BLINDLY hither and thither at first, sometimes literal y blindly, given the assaults of the rain, and because much of the time her eyes were swimming with tears. How could Jack have said that? But then how could she have said what she’d said, and how could she possibly, actual y act upon it? Then the thought of her mother had loomed, even more powerful y, once more. Shanklin. Forget Newport. Forget Newport police station. That had just been a terrible, crazy piece of blather. Shanklin. And now, after al , might real y be the time.
Hel o Mum, here I am at last, and look what a mess I’m in.
Any advice? What now? What next?
And if no answer were forthcoming, then at least she might say: Thank you, Mum, thank you anyway. I’m here at least to say that. Thank you for deserting me and Dad al those years ago. Thank you for leaving me to him, and to the cows. And the cow disease. Thank you for being a cow yourself, but for coming right in the end, even if you never knew it. Thank you for giving me and Jack—remember him, Jack Luxton?—these last ten years. Which now look like they’re coming to an end.
And thank you, if it comes to it, for offering me your example.
Rol ed up in the back of the car is one of the oversized umbrel as they’d had made for use around the site and to sel in the shop. Yel ow-gold segments alternating with black ones displaying a white lighthouse logo—meant to represent the vanished beacon—and the word LOOKOUT at the rim. The umbrel as matched the T-shirts and the basebal caps and the car stickers—al things that (like the name “Lookout” itself) had been her ideas.