Wish You Were Here

15

SO, THREE DAYS AGO, Jack had driven off alone in the same dark-blue Cherokee that Ellie has driven off in now.

It was not yet six-thirty. Still dark. But he’d been awake since five, staring at the luminous face of his still-primed alarm clock. Fear, among many other fears, of being late had made him decide on a perhaps excessively early start. And he was gripped by a strange mood of secrecy. He’d slipped out quietly, carrying just a small holdall and his black parka jacket (it was the right colour at least — and since when had Jack Luxton had use for a proper overcoat?).

Ellie hadn’t come to the door to see him off. She hadn’t even stirred or muttered a word as he’d crept from the bedroom, choosing for some reason to tread softly when he might have thumped about assertively. But he hadn’t believed she was asleep. When he’d stepped outside — she still hadn’t appeared — and crossed to the parked car, he’d wondered if she was nonetheless listening, intently, to his every sound. Or if, in fact (though he hadn’t demeaned himself with any pathetic backward glance), she’d even got up to part the curtains and watch him leave. From this same window from which he watches for her now.

He sees himself now, as if he might be Ellie watching his own departure, beginning that journey all over again. He sees himself covering every mile, every strange, bewildering stage of it again, even as he waits now for Ellie’s return. He hadn’t known then, as he departed, if he would return. Or if Ellie would be there if he did. That was how it had seemed.

With him, as was only natural on such a journey, had been his mobile phone. Who knows, he might have needed to call Major Richards, to say he’d broken down. (Or to say he’d been suddenly, unaccountably, taken ill.) Also, of course, he might have needed, or wanted, to communicate with Ellie. Or she with him. But, just before leaving, he’d made sure it was switched off, meaning to keep it so. If she couldn’t even say goodbye to him.

It’s switched off, emphatically, now.

The air had been fresh and a little damp, with the hint of a quickening dawn breeze. He could barely make out, white as they were, the caravans below, but, beyond the lights of Sands End and Holn, it was just possible to discern the faint sheen of the sea — dotted anyway by the small, almost motionless lights of distant shipping that, now and then, if only because they reminded him of the former purpose of the place where he lived, Jack would find oddly comforting.

He wore a white shirt and his only suit, which, fortunately, was a charcoal grey. Along with the strange sensation of stealth as he’d moved round his own home had gone an equally unaccustomed demand for dignity. He’d dressed carefully. He still hardly ever wore a suit. This was not the same suit his mother had once bought him in Barnstaple, but it reminded him of it and of being viewed by his mother when he’d emerged from the curtained cubicle in Burtons. Her little, approving nod. So what would she think now?

He’d thought, as he dressed, of the empty hearse that must have left Barnstaple by now. Or would it have been driven up, so as to be sure, the night before? Either way, it had better be there.

He put on his black tie, arguing with himself as to whether he should do this now or at a later stage. The knot took two attempts. The small holdall, with a change of clothes in it, was the same one that served as a carry-on bag on their winter holidays. It had been to the Caribbean and back several times.

He’d stood for a while by the front door, wondering whether to call up to Ellie — even to go up to her before he left. But he wasn’t going to call up if she wasn’t going to call back. And he wasn’t going to go up if Ellie wasn’t going to say, ‘I’ll be thinking of you, Jack. And I’ll be thinking of Tom.’ That would have been enough. But she wasn’t going to say it now if she hadn’t said it already, he knew that. And if she could say it at all, then she’d be coming with him now. She’d be standing beside him, glancing in the mirror by the front door, dressed and a bit breathy, a touch of scent in the air. Like when they left on their winter breaks.

‘All set, Jacko? Tickets? Money? Smile?’

He’d shut the front door quietly behind him — he could have chosen to slam it — as if he might, indeed, have been intending to leave undetected. Like Tom, that night years ago. He couldn’t help but remember it. That night he’d been lying awake in bed, listening for every small sound. The last sounds of Tom he’d ever heard.

He started the engine, but coasted almost silently, on the brakes, slowly down the twisting hill. With his lights on, the sea had disappeared, but as he pointed east the sky in that direction showed a dim, feathery mix of greys and pinks above a just-emerging horizon. He had to arrive before eleven-thirty and in good time, but, even allowing for the crossing and the traffic there might be on the other side, it hardly seemed necessary to be leaving in darkness. From Portsmouth it was some eighty miles. But (unlike Ellie) he’d never lost the farmer’s habit of being up with, or before, the dawn. In the summer he’d sometimes sit outside the cottage with a mug of tea at five in the morning, wondering how long it would be before the first of those caravanners (and every unit might be occupied) would make a move. Lazy buggers. But they were on holiday, they didn’t have to hurry, their days were their own. They were having fun — thanks to him and Ellie. There’d be just the mew of gulls and, in the quiet, as if it too had barely woken, the faint, sleepy wash of the sea.

In any case, best to be early. The Isle of Wight to Oxfordshire: it was unknown country to him. Like the Isle of Wight had once been. Never mind the bloody isle of St Lucia. It was all unknown country now.