—death is a great solution. That doesn’t mean you should anticipate or wish it. But he’s past the point of separating wishes and reality, and, perched at this window with a gun on the bed behind him, he’s al anticipation.
But people also didn’t help by dying. Because someone had to pick up the pieces. It was a bastard thing to inflict on anyone that they should pick up the pieces, a bastard thing.
Jack knew this. He and Ireton had picked up the pieces, so to speak, yesterday, though neither of them had resented Tom for it. Tom hadn’t meant it or been a bastard about it. It wasn’t Tom’s fault. They’d put the pieces on their shoulders and Jack had wondered if Ireton had thought (but surely he would have done) about other pieces they’d once had to pick up.
And it could be said now that Jack Luxton had picked up everyone’s pieces. He knew about picking up pieces, and for that reason he wasn’t going to inflict the same thing on El ie. He’d make sure he’d never inflict such a thing on her.
He looks at the empty caravans. And what wil Ireton think, he briefly considers, when he finds out? As he surely wil . What wil he think? Jesus God, he’l think, I was with him only yesterday, I was right beside him. And what wil Ireton think (though Jack doesn’t real y believe it’s likely now) if a squad car of armed police is involved?
Could El ie real y have done it—said it? On a Saturday morning, on this filthy-wet morning, in a police station? And even have added: “I don’t like to say this—but there’s a gun in the house. He’s got a gun”?
Jack doesn’t real y think it’s likely, but he’s prepared. A whole box of cartridges, some in his pocket. And he thinks it’s likely, in any case, that El ie wil have remembered the gun.
THE RAIN STOPS BEATING against the window. It’s only a fleeting break in the storm, a parting of dark clouds to reveal paler ones behind, but Holn Head suddenly emerges in its entirety and the caravans seem to gleam for a moment almost as if the sun is shining on them.
Do caravans know things, have feelings, premonitions?
It’s a stupid thought, like wondering if the dead can know things (and Jack is trying very hard now not to think of his mother). Do caravans know when a death is going to happen?
At Jebb it was something there was always plenty of opportunity to think about—to observe and assess—if you wanted to. Did cattle know things? Did they know when trouble, death even (as it quite often could be) was on its way? Did they know the difference between madness and normality? A cow was only one notch up, perhaps, in thinking power, from a caravan. At Jebb, Jack had occasional y thought that he wasn’t that many notches up from a cow. Al the same, he knew things. Did they know things? Luke had known things, Jack had never doubted that. Luke had surely known, when Dad had bundled him out to the pick-up. He’d known.
For an instant Jack sees himself driving again the old rust-pocked pick-up, with Luke in the back, over to Westcott, over to El ie, not knowing, any more than a cow might know, that thinking of doing just what he was doing then might one day be one of his last thoughts.
And Luke not knowing then, either, that the last ever journey he’d make would be in that pick-up.
But as Jack has these thoughts about the pick-up he sees the rain-drenched Cherokee emerge from behind the old chapel building and, travel ing fast, start to mount the steep last section of the hil beneath him.
The rain has already resumed and Jack can’t see El ie herself, stil some hundred yards away, through its blur and through the wet windscreen in front of her. But there certainly aren’t any police cars. No sirens. No lights, save El ie’s own. Jack decides accordingly, if for no other reason than last-minute tidiness, to slip the box of cartridges into his sock drawer.
Then he turns from the window to pick up the gun and, as El ie drives the final yards, walks with it to the bedroom door, to the top of the stairs, then down them. No police, just El ie. The air stil reeks of bacon. He’l need to be very quick and decisive, but he feels quite calm. He’l need to appear with the gun only when she’s shut the door behind her. If she cal s out “Jack?” or “Jacko?” he’l need to ignore it. Or perhaps, as he emerges through the doorway from the foot of the stairs, he’l say, “Here I am, El . I’m here.” It’s as though something he can’t prevent is simply happening to him. Though everything is quick, there also seems ample time to do it in. He has the spare cartridges in his pocket, but he hopes it wil be as unfumbled and clean as possible. His own death he is ready for. He could have done it already. He might even have done it yesterday, if he’d busted through that gate—and if he’d had a gun with him—but that would have been inconsiderate to al concerned, including the bloody Robinsons.
And he’d needed this gun.
He can bear the thought, very easily now, of the world without him, of the world carrying on without Jack Luxton, but he can’t bear the thought of El ie having to carry on in it without him, of a world with El ie but not him in it, and of El ie having to pick up his pieces. He knows he can’t inflict it on her, it would be a crime.
Which leaves only one option. And final complication.
Also, if he deals with El ie first, he knows he won’t hesitate to deal with himself, he’l do it al the quicker. Not that in his case it wil be so mechanical y simple to do, but he’l make sure it’s done. He knows that it can be done.
Now that it’s happening it doesn’t feel mad at al , it even feels—only right. As if his death has arrived in the form of El ie and there’s no getting away from it and no other way he would wish it. And she’l understand perfectly, he knows that too, even as he lifts the gun. From the look in his face, in his wal of a face, she’l know what he’s doing. He’s sparing her. He’s sparing her from finding what he once had to find and look at. He’s simply sparing her. This was always a double thing, just him for El ie and El ie for him, and there are two barrels to this shotgun.
He hears, through the sound of the rain, the approaching car and decides—a sudden, impetuous change of plan—to come forward, raising the gun, from his position of concealment at the foot of the stairs. Only to see Tom standing with his back pressed against the inside of the front door through which El ie must enter, in a barring posture that’s vaguely familiar.
He’s in his ful soldier’s kit, head to toe, he’s in the clothes he died in, and in his face and his eyes, too, he looks like a soldier.
And this time he speaks, though it’s hardly necessary.
He says, “Shoot me first, Jack, shoot me first. Don’t be a fucking fool. Over my dead fucking body.”
36
ELLIE TURNS by the old chapel and makes the final climb to the cottage. Never in al her life has she felt so monstrously late for anything, and so absolute is her hurry that she takes this itself to mean that the worst must be true. Why else should she be hurrying? It’s a false logic, but persuasive.
On the other hand, if the worst is true, hurrying can make no difference.
No amount of hurry, however, can reverse the recent sequence of events. She simply shouldn’t have left. She shouldn’t be travel ing in this direction at al . Two mornings ago it was her crime to stay, today it was her crime to leave. And she has never in any serious way walked out on Jack before. She has never even thought of it, though now it might already be her irrevocable situation: life without Jack.