But, in any case, and almost in the same hot breath, she’d grabbed her handbag, her keys were in it, and opened the door and walked out to the car from which he’d stumbled only the night before. And had got in and screamed off. The rain was only just starting to spit, from a darkening sky, but by the time she got to the main road it was coming down in great slapping squalls, like a warning. But she could hardly turn round now, just because of the weather. And, almost because of it, she drove madly on.
31
ELLIE SITS BY Holn Cliffs. And Jack sits, looking towards her but not knowing it, and seeing again for a moment that white gate at Jebb, though not his now washed-away hand-prints.
Everything is mad now, everything is off its hinges. He’d gone to bury Tom, but now all the things that had once been dead and buried had come back again, and there was only one way forward, he was sure of that. Even Tom himself hadn’t been really buried. He was with him now, in this cottage, he was sure of that too, even if he hadn’t seen him. It was Tom’s trick, Tom’s choice, to appear or not, he knew that by now. Tom might be standing even now at his shoulder. A sniper.
If Ellie had come with him, if she’d only come with him, then perhaps between the two of them they might have buried Tom properly. As they’d been trying to bury him, not properly, for years. Then none of this might be happening. But Tom wasn’t the only one, it seemed to him now, that they’d tried to bury not properly. And he’d gone and said so.
Everything is off its hinges. But his mind is quite clear and steady and decided. As if some last forbidding gate has now been simply opened for him. All he has to do is walk through, and shut it.
Breakfast was spread over the table. It still is. The smell of bacon reaches him even now.
‘In his tea, Ell. In his breakfast. In his fucking bacon and eggs.’
He knew that he was off his rocker, right off it. But it was the only way he could get to do—calmly and coolly—what he had to do. The trouble was that Ellie had been here. If she hadn’t been, he could have done it already, last night. He could have got the gun. But Ellie was here. But, still, that was all right. It was better, even. He’d seen that it was only proper that Ellie was here. It removed one important complication. He’d slept on it—beside her, though hardly aware of her, so deeply and committedly had he slept. He hadn’t had a single dream. Then he’d thought it out further, lying in bed, while he’d heard her in the kitchen below. There had to be an explosion. An explosion before the explosion—what a policeman might call a ‘domestic situation’.
He hadn’t reckoned on Ellie’s doing, and doing so quickly, what often happens in such situations: storming off. And with a threat, a further complication, on her lips.
‘I’m not saying he didn’t die of what he did. I’m just saying you speeded the process up.’
‘You’re off your rocker, Jack.’
But he knew that. He had to be. Ellie was looking at him as she’d never looked at him before, but he supposed it must be the same the other way round.
‘It’s not true, then?’
‘How dare you?’
‘It’s not true?’
‘Jack. Jack—come back to me. Of course it’s not true. Of course it’s not fucking true. It’s about as true as me saying you killed your dad.’
He hadn’t expected that. He wasn’t sure if it further complicated or only clarified the situation. If it was even the nub of the matter.
‘He shot himself, Ell.’
‘Exactly. As true—as fucking mad—as me saying you got the gun and did it yourself.’
He stared at Ellie. She thought that might settle it. Tit for tat. She thought that might end this whole situation. All this would be a joke.
And how could he be mad, if he was so clear-headed?
‘Well, if it comes to it, how do you know I didn’t? How do you know I didn’t?’
It was a subject they stayed clear of, his father’s death. As if to enter it might mean reliving it. But hadn’t he been doing just that recently? Wasn’t he doing it even now?
‘Of course you didn’t.’ Ellie gave a strange, dry, quivery laugh.
‘How do you know?’
‘Jack—is this all to do with Tom?’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know. I know you.’
But she was looking at him as though she was no longer certain on that last point. And whatever Ellie knew, she didn’t know and couldn’t know what had only ever been in his head.
Even Jack himself couldn’t be sure of how it really was.
That it wasn’t the shot that woke him. He’d been awake, perhaps for some time, before the shot. Had he even heard his father creeping—as once he’d heard Tom creeping—from the house? In his terrible dream in Okehampton he’d even heard the little squeak, from below, of the gun cabinet. Was it a dream? Or the dream of a dream that he’d had that night, before, in fact, the shot had woken him? Or was it simply how it had been?
In his dream, in any case, he hadn’t heard the shot. There wasn’t yet any shot. He’d heard his father’s movements downstairs. He’d heard the kitchen door open, even the blunt scuff of Wellington boots on the frozen mud in the yard. And before he’d dressed and gone downstairs himself, before he’d hurried down Barton Field, a torch in his hand and his heart in his throat, he’d stood on the landing and seen the left-open door of the Big Bedroom, and gone in.
He wasn’t sleep-walking, surely. He hadn’t switched on any lights, but he’d seen, even so, that extra blanket on the bed. Yes, there was a moon by then and, despite the cold, the curtains hadn’t been closed—or else they’d been only recently pulled back. So he was able to see, with just the aid of the moon, the tartan pattern of the blanket.
But more than that. He’d gone into the room—or in his dream he had. And he’d stood by the window, where his father, perhaps, would have stood only moments before, and seen what his father would have seen: the moon, over the oak and the frost-gripped valley. But more than that. He’d been just in time to see—or he’d seen in his dream—from above and behind, his father’s tall black form, his whole body first, then just his shoulders and head, disappearing as he descended the upper section of Barton Field. The moon was almost full and its light was coming brightly off the frost. So it was even possible to see his father’s inky, night-time shadow slipping out of sight, rippling down the slope after him, and to see the footprints, like black burn holes in white cloth, that he left behind.
Even to see what he was carrying.
And Jack hadn’t moved. He’d stood there at the window—as he’d stand, years later, at a white-painted gate—thinking: Shall I? Shan’t I? Thinking: Will he? Won’t he? Can I? Can’t I?
He couldn’t have said (it was like other passages of time that night) how long he’d stood there, as if hypnotised, as if in his mind—but wasn’t he dreaming anyway?—he might still have been back in bed and asleep, not knowing that any of this was really happening. Till the sound of the shot—but had he even seen, from the window, the quick poke of light?—had woken him, out of all dreams, into truth.
But Ellie couldn’t have known any of this.
‘How do you know I didn’t, Ell? How do you know I didn’t march him down that field and make it look as though he’d done it himself?’
It was no surprise, though he hadn’t reckoned on it, that at that point she’d simply got up, grabbed her handbag and fished in it quickly to make sure she had her car keys. Did she look frightened? Of him—for him? No, she looked furious. She looked a little mad herself. If he’d already got hold of the gun he might have stopped her, he might have brought this thing to an end, there and then, as intended. But she was standing between him and the door, and how could he have got the gun and loaded it without her getting away first?
He should have got the gun to begin with. He should have crept down the stairs, as his dad had crept down the stairs, and somehow got the gun from the cabinet and loaded it (both barrels) before she’d even called up
that she was putting breakfast on. He should have just appeared in the doorway, in his dressing gown, with the gun. But he knew he couldn’t have done it like that, without any explosion first.
So it was good, in fact—he thought now—that it had all blown up and she’d gone.
She’d clutched her car keys. For a moment they’d stared at each other, not like two people who’d known each other all their lives, but like two nameless enemies who’d come face to face in a clearing. Jack understood that to prevent Ellie leaving he’d have to use physical force, his big weight, against her. But he’d never done that, in all the time he’d known her, and couldn’t do it now. Even though, if he’d had the gun—
‘Where are you going, Ell?’
Outside, the clouds were thickening, but the rain hadn’t begun.
‘Where am I going? Where am I going? Ha! I’m going to Newport police station. I’m going to tell them what you’ve just told me. I’m going to tell them what you are.’
And she looked like she meant it. She really did. She looked like she was going to fetch the police.
She walked out. Slammed the door. The wall seemed to shake. He heard the Cherokee snarl off. Rain started to pepper the window. He’d thought: this had caught him out, this had upset plans. Then he thought: no it hadn’t. After a little while, after hearing only the wind and the rain, after switching off the grill section of the cooker, where several rashers of bacon still waited, warm, well-crisped and untouched, he went to the gun cabinet. He got the gun, he got the box of cartridges. When had he last fired this gun? There’d been every reason to get rid of it. There’d been every reason not to. The last thing his father had touched.
He went up to the bedroom and put the loaded gun on the bed. Put some cartridges from the box in his pocket. This was actually better, this was good. He was prepared now, he was calm. The weather had gone wild, but he was calm. And, whether she’d do or not what she’d said she’d do, Ellie, he was sure of it, would soon have to come circling back. There was even a sort of justice to it. As if her journey was just a smaller, tighter version of his.
32
THE ROBINSONS had bought Jebb Farmhouse over ten years before Jack stood by the white gate bearing that name, and it was the Robinsons, Clare and Toby, who’d made the extensive and costly renovations, few of which Jack was to see, since he didn’t go beyond the gate, but which entailed having the drive (it had ceased to be the ‘track’ and become the ‘drive’) properly surfaced—which Jack did see—and the gate itself.
There had been the purchase, and there had been the renovations. Their investment had turned into an investment of time as well as money. After a lengthy planning and permissions stage, the building work—including a new extension (which they called the guest wing), a total overhaul of the original house, the demolition of the outbuildings, the construction of a double garage and the laying out of the gardens, turning-area and drive—took, all told, well over two years. So that their actual period of occupancy and enjoyment had really been only seven years, and then mostly in the summers.
Nonetheless, they spoke now of their ‘Jebb years’, their ‘Jebb life’. Toby said, in his credit-claiming way, that it had ‘paid off’. Clare, who’d always been the more effusive, felt she was justified in having imagined it from the start not just as their possession, but as a permanent legacy to be passed on through future generations of the Robinson family—their place, their ‘country place’.
But Clare would always remember (and always keep to herself) the day—though it was little more than a moment—when this whole vision had seemed to totter and shake, all its radiance had faded. And this had occurred, oddly, during one blissfully sunny weekend when everything in the picture was complete and just as she would have wished. It was only ever, she told herself, some weird sensation inside her. It was nothing, surely, to do with the place. But it was lingering enough in its effect for Clare to ask herself: Is there something wrong with me? Am I cracking up? And since her answer to those questions was a robust no, it must then be to do with the place. This place into which they’d put so much.
For a while Clare actually contemplated having to tell her husband that she was very sorry, but she no longer felt—comfortable—at Jebb. But that, of course, would suggest that there really was something wrong with her, since no one else was having any problem. And how would Toby take it? Rich as he was, he’d spent more money than she cared to calculate on what might now become, thanks to her, a failed enterprise. And he’d doubtless choose to say that he’d really only done it all for her—because she’d got so gooey-eyed about it in the first place.
But he might also be—she knew her husband—rather witheringly pragmatic. It was his way with anything that went wrong. The facts were that he’d blown one year’s bonus to make the purchase, another year’s on the renovations. If they had to give up on the place (if she really felt like this) then it wouldn’t have broken the bank. (He was a banker.) And, the way prices had moved, they might still make a bit on the sale.
‘No permanent damage’, he might even say—though perhaps implying that she might be the one who was permanently damaged. What was the matter with her? And such magnanimity, she knew, might only be a convenient tactic. He could afford to be agreeable. In the early stages of the building work, Clare had come to realise that he was using their expensive project as a sort of shield for his ongoing affair with Martha, his PA (though in the time it took to finish the renovations she acquired some loftier status). It deflected attention from it—it quite often meant that Clare would be down there, with the children, when he wasn’t. But it was also a sort of pay-off. How could she complain, when he lavished so much on his family?
Clare even wondered if her moment—her ‘shiver’, as she would think of it—hadn’t really been to do with her suppressed recognition that the Martha thing wasn’t just a temporary toying (it had gone on and on like the building work), and that though they’d bought this solid and beautiful portion of countryside, her marriage was really a rather flimsy, unlovely affair. She pretended and even believed, most of the time, that this wasn’t so. For the sake of the children, of course, but also because she’d been given the bribe of this handsomely refurbished farmhouse in its splendid setting.
*
Fortunately, her ‘moment’ was isolated enough for none of these awful showdowns—with either her husband or herself—to occur. When Jack stood by the gate, the Robinsons still possessed Jebb Farmhouse, though they were not in residence at the time. Toby and Clare remained married (though the Martha thing still went on). The three children—and there had only been two when the purchase was made—had now enjoyed several happy summers at Jebb. So had their parents.
Clare, masking her feelings, had been pragmatic in her way too. Before making any foolish announcements, she’d waited for a recurrence of her ‘shiver’. None had come, which perhaps indicated it was all a nonsense in the first place. Time had passed and, in the absence of any further symptoms, she’d almost been able, until very recently, to forget her temporary, perhaps imaginary disease.
And what she’d experienced recently wasn’t really like that first shiver at all. It was, in the first instance, only a letter, an unopened letter, that had nothing to do with her. They’d been at Jebb during the children’s half-term break. It had coincided with Guy Fawkes’ Night and Toby had made quite a thing of the fireworks. Then a letter had arrived, which only she had noticed and which she’d quickly redirected. They received very little mail at Jebb and, by now, virtually nothing relating to the former occupant, but the letter had borne the name Luxton and also the words ‘Ministry of Defence’.
She’d wondered what the connection could possibly be with a now long-defunct farm, but she’d felt conscientiously impelled to see that it was forwarded at once. She’d crossed out the address, written in the one they still had for the Isle of Wight (assuming it still applied) and, on the pretext of some other errand, driven straight up to Marleston to re-post
it. Perhaps it was more a case of wanting it, for some curious reason, out of the way as soon as possible and it was almost a relief when she dropped it in the village box. No one else knew about it.
Then only days later, back in Richmond, she’d glanced at a newspaper and spotted a name and a face, and this time felt a true shiver. The name was Luxton again, and the face was even faintly familiar, though it plainly wasn’t the face of a farmer. For a while the cold sensation had concentrated in her hand.
She wished at once that she’d never seen the item in the paper. So often, you looked at a newspaper without noticing half of what was there, and what you don’t see can’t trouble you. But she’d seen it. And now she wondered what she should do about it. Though there was nothing, really, that could be done about it.
But she felt distinctly disturbed. She felt that at least she should mention it to Toby. Had he noticed it—and drawn the same conclusion? But she knew that if she did mention it, he would say he hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t remembered the name, whether he actually had or not. And she knew that if she spelt it out for him (let alone mentioned the redirected letter) he would simply shrug. So what? He might even look at her as if she were behaving pretty strangely.
The Robinsons, as Jack recalled, had been very concerned about ‘security’ (it was one of their words), and solid evidence of their concern was that heavy white gate with its built-in electronic features. ‘Control of Entry’, Jack had momentarily thought. But the Robinsons had reflected that while a gate that couldn’t be opened might deter intruders in a vehicle, it was no barrier to intruders on foot. In such an event—and assuming the intruders would trip the alarms in the house and grounds—it was important, when the Robinsons were not in residence, that the police could get through the gate and so catch the thieves red-handed.