Wish You Were Here

17

IT WASN’T THE cow disease that had swung it for Tom. For Tom the trigger had been Luke. In more senses than one.

Michael pulled Tom out of school when he turned sixteen, to be a prisoner with his brother on Jebb Farm. No more making hay with schoolgirls. He might have made his escape — by the same route he eventually took — even then. But he waited till his father wouldn’t have the power to haul him back, till he was his own free man. And perhaps, even with Vera gone and life at Jebb like a lost cause, it was still not yet a clear thing. He bided his time. Sixteen to eighteen. In between, there’d been an ongoing cattle disease, but also there’d been Luke.

A sort of sliding scale: that sloping line between them. As Tom got bigger, the way it was between Tom and Luke became like the way it once had been between Jack and Tom. When Tom left school to take up full-time attendance at Jebb Farm, Luke somehow became Tom’s dog.

And Jack hadn’t minded even that. Luke had been the farm dog, the family dog (and he’d been around almost as long as Tom), but he’d been, especially, Jack’s. Sitting there in the back of the pick-up, ears flapping, as they’d bumped over to Ellie’s. But then he’d become Tom’s. It was Luke’s own choice and doing, and who could have said exactly when, or why, the crossover occurred? But it was how it was. Maybe it was that Tom had that bit of a mum about him, so Luke hung around Tom because Luke too missed Vera. Or maybe it was that Luke had worked out, just as Jack had, that Tom, though he was the younger brother, was simply superior at most things, including — and one of Luke’s functions was to be a gun dog — being a better shot.

But then Luke had got sick. He wasn’t young any more. This was some while after the cow disease first struck, but you might have said that Luke, though he’d taken his time, had only come up with his own disease in sympathy. He got sick anyway, just slow and sluggish sick, not mad sick, but he steadily got worse and, on top of it, he seemed to be going blind. They didn’t know what to do except hope the thing would solve itself, or that he wouldn’t linger, Luke would just spare himself and die. They were all thinking still, of course, of the last time, not so long ago, when there’d been a death pending in the house.

But it had just dragged itself out. Luke dragged himself out. It got a bit too much to take.

One heavy, sullen August morning Michael drove the pick-up into the yard, fetched a spade from the lean- to and put it in the back, then went into the house, unlocked the gun cabinet between the kitchen and the stairs and carried the shotgun out to the pick-up too. Jack and Tom were both in the yard at the time, but felt from the way their father was looking and moving that they shouldn’t speak. Then Michael went into the kitchen where Luke was by now confined to his blanket in a corner — beyond even padding his way to the door — and lifted him up and carried him out and put him in the back of the pick-up along with the spade.

He hadn’t said a word, but now he stared at Jack and Tom in a pausing-for-breath way, as if he might have had a statement prepared. But what came out was: ‘No, neither of you’s coming with me.’ Both brothers were looking hard at their father and both had perhaps stepped forward, perhaps more to restrain him than to join him, but this is how Michael chose to interpret the situation. Then something in Tom’s eyes, or something in his own thoughts, must have made Michael change his mind, because before he got back behind the wheel he said to Tom, and not to Jack, ‘Okay, if you must. Fetch another spade.’

Maybe that was all it was. He was thinking it would be quicker work, and not so much that by then Luke had become Tom’s dog. But if so, he might just as well have picked Jack or told them both to go and grab spades.

And then Michael, with Tom and Luke and the shotgun and two spades, had driven off.

Later, though not all at once, Tom told Jack everything — or everything that he wanted to tell him — but the scene itself, from which Jack was excluded, has only ever, like some other scenes from which he was absent yet which were crucial to his life, played itself out in his imagination, seeming each time to be both real and unreal.

But there’s no doubt that he heard the shot. His ears had been straining for it. And, later on, he saw the little mound of freshly patted-down earth. Luke had been too weak to raise his head above the side of the pick-up as it drove away, so that he and Jack could take a last look at each other, and Jack realised when it was too late that he hadn’t even been allowed the chance to say goodbye to him or give him a final stroke. His father had driven off fast, over-revving the engine, as if there were no time to lose or as if he were afraid of changing his mind.

Then Jack was alone in the deserted yard, with the receding sound of the pick-up jolting its way down the hill. In the muggy air, a hatch of flying ants was buzzing round him. His mother, he knew, would have found where the nest was, then boiled the kettle. But Jack just stood, listening, in the yard.

Tom said they’d driven down Barton Field, his father stamping on the brake, past the big oak, to the low, flat corner by the wood where the ground, even in summer, was nearly always soft. Then they’d stopped and Dad had gone round to gather up Luke, who must by then have formed his own conclusions. Tom didn’t say if anything had been spoken on the way down or if, at this point, there’d been any argument. You don’t have a tug-of-war with a sick animal. Dad had carried Luke a few yards from the pick-up and put him on the grass. Then he’d gone back for the gun. Tom said he hadn’t wanted to touch it himself, he hadn’t made any move in that direction.

Dad had the cartridges in his pocket and while he stood and loaded the gun — both barrels, just in case — he told Tom to get the two spades from the back. Jack asked Tom how their father had spoken, and Tom had thought for a bit and said he’d spoken like he was giving orders. This wasn’t a nice thing for either of them (or for Luke) and there was no way of speaking about it nicely. All of which Jack could understand. Then Tom had added that his father had spoken like a complete bastard.

Tom said that while Dad loaded the gun Luke had just sat there on the grass where he’d been put. It’s true, he couldn’t move much now anyway, but he’d just sat there like a good dog sits, front legs out before him, waiting for what’s next. Of course, he was perfectly familiar with that gun.

Jack asked Tom (though he already knew the answer) if he thought that Luke knew, all along. Tom said, of course. Of course Luke knew. Luke was half blind and he hadn’t made a move, but Tom said he was sure Luke knew, even as they’d bumped down Barton Field. And Jack knew he hadn’t needed to ask.

But Jack would never be sure about the next bit in Tom’s description. Though why should Tom have made it up? Tom might have just said that Dad had simply walked towards Luke, aimed and fired. But Tom said that, after loading the gun and snapping it shut, Dad had turned in Luke’s direction, paused for half a second, then turned again and held out the gun to him. He’d offered it — if offer was the right word — to Tom.

Tom said that he couldn’t tell, even after thinking about it, if his father had only just got the idea then or if he’d had it in his mind all along, and that was why he’d wanted Tom — Tom specifically, for some reason — to be with him. He’d got the idea, perhaps, looking at them both in the yard, and he’d singled out Tom.

Jack had thought (to be charitable) that it was possible Dad had held out the gun to Tom because he’d realised suddenly he couldn’t do it himself. But Tom had read Jack’s thought and said it wasn’t like that at all. There’d been a look in his father’s face, a tone in his voice. He’d said, ‘Here. You do it.’ It wasn’t an offer, it was another order. Then Tom said, ‘Like an even bigger bastard.’

Tom couldn’t do it, anyway. He’d just stood in front of his father and shaken his head. He couldn’t put a finger on that gun. And maybe — though Tom didn’t say this, it was one of those things Jack’s imagination had to supply — Tom was never meant to. It was just a bluff, a game, to make Tom feel like a worm, to make him wish he could disappear into the ground.

Several seconds passed anyway, Tom had said, while Luke sat there, not moving, and his father had still held out the gun.

Then, according to Tom, Dad had said, ‘No? Can’t do it? But it needs to be done.’ And then he’d turned, taken a few quick strides forward and shot Luke between the eyes. One shot was enough.

And up in the yard, in that still air, Jack had heard the shot clearly enough, like something hitting his own skull.

Tom said — it was plainly difficult for him to give these details or even to remember them precisely, and Jack would come to know how he felt — that Luke had never turned away as Dad came towards him with the gun, though at the very last moment he might have lowered his head. He just might. He couldn’t be sure either if, just a fraction before he’d fired, Dad had said, ‘Goodbye, Luke.’ Or if it was a fraction afterwards. Or if he’d just imagined that Dad had said it. (Jack, listening to Tom, thought: Tom said it, Tom said it himself. He said it aloud or just inside, but Tom said it himself.)

But after firing the shot, Tom said, Dad had turned and even as he broke open the gun and fished out the unspent cartridge, said, clearly enough, ‘And I hope one day, when it’s needed, someone will have the decency to do the same for me.’

Dad had walked back to the pick-up to stow the gun. Then he’d grabbed the spades lying in the grass and held one out for Tom. Tom didn’t say if he held it out in the same way as he’d held out the gun, or if he’d said anything along the lines of: ‘I hope you can do this.’ But it seemed that from that point on there hadn’t been much conversation except for Dad saying, ‘Deeper.’ Then again, ‘Deeper.’

Tom said it was a good, safe grave, it wouldn’t get disturbed by some fox coming out of the wood.

Finally Dad had said, ‘Deep enough.’ Then he’d gone to pick up Luke, or what was left of him, and, kneeling and stretching, had lowered him in. Dad had done the shooting and Dad had done the burying. But he’d said to Tom, ‘Okay, now fill it in.’

Then he’d gone to the bottom gate, into Brinkley Wood, where the little rill ran through the ditch at the edge of the trees, to clean himself up. Tom said there’d been a lot of blood and stuff left on the grass. The crows and buzzards and the weather would have to take care of that. Tom said it looked like where a ewe had dumped an afterbirth.

They’d both patted down the last soil with their spades. If there was a question of a marker — a gravestone — it was never discussed. There’d be a little grown-over hump, anyway, in the corner of the field. They’d hardly forget the spot.

Then they’d driven back to the house with the gun and the spades, and with the air — Jack could see this as they pulled into the yard — thick between them. He didn’t understand the thickness of it till Tom, and it took a little time, had given his full account.

But the air (still busy with flying ants that had escaped that kettle) was thick and heavy anyway, heavy with the sultry August weather, but heavy with the strange, hollow weight of there being three of them now where once there’d been four. Just as once there’d been four of them where once there’d been five.