He felt, al over again, as if he might be about to enter for the first time that ominous opening cal ed “Departures” and then (after much nerve-wracking queuing and waiting) find himself strapped in the long, imprisoning tube of an aircraft, about to be hurled into the sky. El ie had gripped his hand with sheer, brimming excitement—it was a bit like when she’d first yanked him up the stairs at Westcott Farmhouse
—but he’d gripped hers, though trying not to show it, like some great big boy holding on to his mum. He’d been suddenly, acutely aware of the immense desirability of taking a holiday in a caravan.
But the big, obvious difference about this place was that none of its manifest and elaborate purposefulness had to do with the taking of holidays.
. . .
HE FOUND THE MAIN GATE, then found Control of Entry—this was where he had to show his passport and other documents. He was spoken to at this point, so he thought, with a marked deference and ushered on as if he might have been a VIP. At the same time he had the feeling that his own reason for being here was just one, unusual reason in a general ungentle pressing of reasons. The place hadn’t shut down because of why he was here.
Temporary arrowed signs indicated “Ceremony of Repatriation.” Among other things he’d been sent by Major Richards was a “Visitor Pack,” with a map, directions and a check list. There was also an “Order of Ceremony” and a
“Provisional List of Those in Attendance.” It had al amounted to too much to carry on his person, and he’d shoved the bulk of it in the side pocket of his holdal , thinking even then that it was not unlike the wad of stuff you take with you, along with your passport, through Departures. But, of course, his business now was the seemingly much simpler (and usual y paperwork-free) business for which, in fact, Jack had never entered an air terminal before: the business of Arrivals.
I’m here to meet my brother.
The sudden proximity of it, the realisation that he would have to do this incontestably personal thing, but in these heartlessly impersonal surroundings, hit him like some actual col ision—even as he drove at a careful five miles an hour, peering hard through the windscreen for further signs.
He found what seemed to be the appropriate car park.
Despite his fear of being early, it was now nearly a quarter past eleven. The final miles of the journey had been along the slowest roads and he’d cut it, in the end (though he wasn’t entirely sorry), a little fine. The car park was almost ful and he had to search for a space. People—some in remarkable costumes—were converging from it towards an ordinary glass-doored entrance nearby, but as if they might be approaching a cathedral. This clearly wasn’t some smal event. But of course it wasn’t.
After switching off the engine he lingered in the safety of the car, as though some desperate, final choice stil remained open to him. Then he took several deep, involuntary, labouring breaths and with each one said aloud, hoarsely, “Tom.” Then—he wasn’t sure if he said it aloud too, in a different tone, or simply thought the word:
“El ie. El ie.”
He eyed himself in the driving mirror, smoothed his hair, fingered his tie for the hundredth time. At Control of Entry he had already put on his jacket. Such documents as he thought he might stil need were in its inside pockets.
Official invitation. Order of Ceremony. Passport (you never knew). The letter from Babbages. In another pocket was his silenced mobile phone. But he was hardly going to activate it now.
From his shirt pocket he took the medal, warm to his touch, and slipped it into the empty breast pocket of his jacket. He could not have said why. So it would be closer to Tom. Then he got out of the car and locked it.
FROM THEN ON Jack was like a puppet, a lost man, somehow steering himself or letting himself be steered through what lay before him. He might have used, if it had been one of his words, the word “autopilot.” He might have had the same sense of not being himself if he had been cal ed to Buckingham Palace to be knighted by the Queen.
Beyond the glass doors (a sign said “Ceremony Reception”) he was met—and ticked off a list—with an intenser version of the courtesy he’d received at Control of Entry, but with also, he couldn’t help but detect, a faint, disguised relief.
I am Jack Luxton.
There was now ahead of him, through another wide doorway, a throng—he was somehow sucked into it—that included a great many uniforms, some of them of an astonishingly resplendent and seemingly high-ranking nature. His plain suit felt instantly shabby. There were swords, sashes, gold braid—medals—epaulettes. It was fancy dress. Some of the uniforms were so besmothered and encrusted that Jack wondered if they didn’t mark the point where they mysteriously merged with the regalia of dukes and earls. And he’d previously noted, from the List of Those in Attendance, that he would indeed be in the presence of one viscount (whatever a viscount was) and more than one lord. It hadn’t given him any sense of privilege. It had scared him.
Among the uniforms were a number of women in what seemed to Jack extravagant forms of dress and hat, as if this might be a wedding, and wearing also, in some cases, a kind of smile that wasn’t a smile at al and reminded him of zip fasteners. There were also at least two men wearing uniform but with long white lacy surplices on top.
Among it al too, though somehow distinct from it, were two clusters of civilians (that word, like “citizen,” now also forced itself upon him) who seemed to Jack not so unlike himself, either in their clothing or in their air of dazed incomprehension. He instantly knew who they were and instinctively felt it would be good, though also difficult, to be close to them. The two clusters were quite large, both consisting of more than one generation, from grandparents down to smal children. In one case there was a child so smal that it needed to be carried in its mother’s arms. The mother looked not only weighed down, but as if she were standing on ground that had given way. Al the children looked as if they were there by mistake.
This was al suddenly quite terrible: these people, these floundering women (he vaguely grasped that the ones with the hats and smiles must be there to provide some token balance), these children, among al these uniforms. The two clusters seemed both to cling to themselves and to cling, separate as they were, to each other, and Jack realised that he was a third cluster. He was the third cluster, a cluster of one. He felt both a solidarity and a dreadful, shaming isolation, that his cluster was just him.
But at the same time he’d glimpsed something else distinct from the gathering—standing at a distance from it, yet overshadowing it, overshadowing even these important human clusters. On the far side of the large room was a wal of mainly glass, such as you might find near a boarding gate in any airport building. And through the glass, beyond the jostle of heads and hats, could be seen, out on the tarmac, a single large plane. Around it was none of the usual clutter of baggage carts and service vehicles that surrounds a parked plane at an airport, and it was stationed with its nose pointing outwards so that, even from where he was, Jack could see the dark opening into its bel y, beneath the tail, and the ramp leading down.