just hung there, Jack Luxton, like some big baby being dandled, or rather—with that thing above—like some big baby being delivered by a stork. Thinking, if he was thinking anything: I’m Jack Luxton, but I can do this. Sixteen stone and six foot one, size-eleven feet, but light as a feather really, light as air.
As he’d been carried up he could see inland, beyond the resort’s perimeter. He could see that the resort, withits bright greens and blues, was like an island on the edge of an island. Somewhere in the distance there were slants of smoke. They were burning crop waste maybe.
And all the time he would have been floating up there and all the time he and Ellie would have been lying there in the hot sun at the Sapphire Bay, thinking of chilled champagne for heroes at dinner, Tom would have been in the hot sun, in Iraq.
She shouldn’t have said that thing about the off season. But suppose this had come in August. In full swing. What would they have done? Carried on? Carried on, but hung a flag at half-mast at the site? They didn’t have a flag. They didn’t have a flagpole. He was sometimes known as the commandant and the site office was sometimes known as the guardhouse, but they didn’t have a flagpole. Maybe they should have thought of it, as a feature, along with all the other stuff, a Lookout flag fluttering in the breeze, gold on black, like the baseball caps.
Carried on, but explained? Carried on and faced the questions, sympathy, puzzlement—when it became not just their private news but an item, with names and photos, in the papers? The papers available in the site shop. We never knew Jack had a brother, he never said. A brother in the army. Jesus.
Would it have clouded
their
holiday mood? Could they have fired up those barbecues in quite the same way?
But it had come in November, and by the spring it would all be history. And if the regular Lookouters, meanwhile, had noticed it at all, seen the name in thepapers and made the link, then he and Ellie might have dealt with the questions, such as they might be, faced any music, without being still in the immediate shock.
Though, now, Jack thinks, they won’t have to face any music at all.
He looks down at the site. It was what they’d done, with a lot of help from ‘Uncle’ Tony, whom neither of them had met, since he was dead, but who’d lived here once, so it had emerged, with Ellie’s mum (her third husband and with this one, it seemed, she’d landed squarely on her feet), and run the Sands, as it was then.
People could help by dying, by dying at the right time. Had that always been Ellie’s position? Even with this?
And perhaps those regular Lookouters, scattered now in their homes round the country, wouldn’t have noticed. Though they’ll notice
now
, Jack thinks, they’ll notice
this
story. That other story, it wasn’t such a big one, not even necessarily headlines these days, though Luxton wasn’t such a common name.
There was a war going on, that was the story. Though who would know, or want to know, down here at Sands End? A war on terror, that was the general story. Jack knew that terror was a thing you felt inside, so what could a war on terror be, in the end, but a war against yourself? Tom would have known terror, perhaps, quite a few times. He’d have known it, very probably, all too recently. It was saying nothing, perhaps, to say that he’d also have been trained to meet it.
Does Jack feel terror right now, with a loaded gunbehind him? Oddly, no. Terror isn’t the word for what he feels. Has he ever known terror? Yes.
What they meant, of course, was a war on
terrorism
. But then it became a matter of who and where, of geography. Was it conceivable that terrorists—Islamic extremists—might want to operate out of a holiday facility on the Isle of Wight? Or, on the other hand, want to crash a plane into it? Target a caravan site? He didn’t think so.
Yet it was sometimes, nonetheless, a subject among the
As he’d been carried up he could see inland, beyond the resort’s perimeter. He could see that the resort, withits bright greens and blues, was like an island on the edge of an island. Somewhere in the distance there were slants of smoke. They were burning crop waste maybe.
And all the time he would have been floating up there and all the time he and Ellie would have been lying there in the hot sun at the Sapphire Bay, thinking of chilled champagne for heroes at dinner, Tom would have been in the hot sun, in Iraq.
She shouldn’t have said that thing about the off season. But suppose this had come in August. In full swing. What would they have done? Carried on? Carried on, but hung a flag at half-mast at the site? They didn’t have a flag. They didn’t have a flagpole. He was sometimes known as the commandant and the site office was sometimes known as the guardhouse, but they didn’t have a flagpole. Maybe they should have thought of it, as a feature, along with all the other stuff, a Lookout flag fluttering in the breeze, gold on black, like the baseball caps.
Carried on, but explained? Carried on and faced the questions, sympathy, puzzlement—when it became not just their private news but an item, with names and photos, in the papers? The papers available in the site shop. We never knew Jack had a brother, he never said. A brother in the army. Jesus.
Would it have clouded
their
holiday mood? Could they have fired up those barbecues in quite the same way?
But it had come in November, and by the spring it would all be history. And if the regular Lookouters, meanwhile, had noticed it at all, seen the name in thepapers and made the link, then he and Ellie might have dealt with the questions, such as they might be, faced any music, without being still in the immediate shock.
Though, now, Jack thinks, they won’t have to face any music at all.
He looks down at the site. It was what they’d done, with a lot of help from ‘Uncle’ Tony, whom neither of them had met, since he was dead, but who’d lived here once, so it had emerged, with Ellie’s mum (her third husband and with this one, it seemed, she’d landed squarely on her feet), and run the Sands, as it was then.
People could help by dying, by dying at the right time. Had that always been Ellie’s position? Even with this?
And perhaps those regular Lookouters, scattered now in their homes round the country, wouldn’t have noticed. Though they’ll notice
now
, Jack thinks, they’ll notice
this
story. That other story, it wasn’t such a big one, not even necessarily headlines these days, though Luxton wasn’t such a common name.
There was a war going on, that was the story. Though who would know, or want to know, down here at Sands End? A war on terror, that was the general story. Jack knew that terror was a thing you felt inside, so what could a war on terror be, in the end, but a war against yourself? Tom would have known terror, perhaps, quite a few times. He’d have known it, very probably, all too recently. It was saying nothing, perhaps, to say that he’d also have been trained to meet it.
Does Jack feel terror right now, with a loaded gunbehind him? Oddly, no. Terror isn’t the word for what he feels. Has he ever known terror? Yes.
What they meant, of course, was a war on
terrorism
. But then it became a matter of who and where, of geography. Was it conceivable that terrorists—Islamic extremists—might want to operate out of a holiday facility on the Isle of Wight? Or, on the other hand, want to crash a plane into it? Target a caravan site? He didn’t think so.
Yet it was sometimes, nonetheless, a subject among the