The Separation (36 page)

I knew then what must be happening. Somehow, I had awoken that morning not to my own reality but to another lucid imagining.

Jack saluted me.

There was another noise downstairs. I went quickly towards the apparition of Jack, pushed past him, terrified of meeting his gaze, and swept by him without our touching. The house was mine; it smelled and sounded and felt as normal as ever. How was I imagining it? I was determined to get away from Jack, to escape from the house, seek the cold air outside, break out of the hallucination. I hurried down the stairs. As I passed the door to the living-room I saw Birgit, standing with her back towards me, bending over something that was spread out on the table, apparently reading it. I stopped at the doorway.

‘Birgit! You’re here too?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She straightened and turned towards me, pressing her hands down against her sides, stretching her shoulders.

‘You said you were going out. I heard you-’

‘JL, what’s the matter?’

‘JL? Why do you call me that? I’m Joe!’

‘My God! I thought-’

I glanced down at myself, the tie, the shirt, the blue unyielding cloth of the tunic. I felt the cap on my head, saw the shining toes of the black shoes. I moved away from Birgit and looked at the long bevelled mirror that hung on the wall in the hallway, next to the front door. Jack’s exact likeness stared back at me, his military bearing, his fresh and slightly rakish good looks, his strong hands. I lowered my face so that I should see no more of him.

vii

It was the morning of the day after we heard about Coventry, as dawn was breaking. I was on my side of the bed, lying on my back, wide awake. The room was almost in darkness but the bright, lucid images of the hallucination still dazzled me. As I had found when I was in the ambulance, the transition from one reality to the other made me feel as if I had been kicked back in time: a few tentative steps taken along a path, then a sudden jolt and a return to the place from where I had begun. Now Birgit was sleeping beside me, the weight of her arm thrown across my stomach and pressing down on it. She was large and warm against me. I felt isolated and frightened, taking no comfort from her closeness, the intimacy with which we slept. I groaned aloud, realizing that these imaginings were exposing my own worst fears to me. She had called me JL. Why? I felt Birgit stirring, probably woken by the noise I had made. She nuzzled her face against mine as she woke, affectionate and happy to find me there. She rolled against me, her soft breast resting on my arm, her belly pressing against my side. A few seconds later we were both fully awake, sitting up and leaning back against the hard wooden headboard of the bed. Birgit turned on the lamp on her side of the bed and pulled her woollen cardigan around her shoulders. It was eight-fifteen. Dawn came late because of daylight saving time, extended into the winter months. Somewhere in the distance we could hear the engines of a large aircraft droning low over the mountains.

The images of my hallucination tormented me: they seemed so real, so plausible. I
had felt
the coarseness of the uniform’s fabric against my skin. The house was exactly as I knew it, as I saw it then. My brother Jack was someone I knew better than almost anyone else in the world. I began to tremble, unable to understand or accept what it meant, or what was happening to me. I put my arm around Birgit, pressing her to me. She cuddled up against me, clearly unaware of what was going through my mind. After a while I left the bed and went along the landing to use the toilet. When I returned Birgit was sitting fully upright. Her hair was untidy from sleep, her eyes looked puffy. I noticed that she was resting one of her hands across her stomach.

I turned on the overhead light, scraped a chair across to the wardrobe and climbed up to reach inside the shelf at the top.

‘Joe, what is it you doing up there? Come back to bed.’

‘I’ve got to resolve this,’ I said grimly. By pushing my arm all the way in, I made contact. I felt the cap at once, then groped around for the rest of the garments I had imagined. There was one other garment, lying underneath the cap. I pulled it out, with the cap. The cap, a stiff shirt. Not everything. Enough, though, enough to make the point.

‘Who put these in here?’ I said, shirt in one hand, cap in the other. I held them up to her, almost a threat.

‘Of course, I did.’

‘They’re JL’s, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are they doing here in our house?’

‘I’m looking after them for him.’

‘What? Why should you look after clothes for my brother?’

‘He ... he brought them one day. The shirt needed washing and the cap had to be cleaned. He asked me to keep them there for him. He has others at the airfield.’

‘So Jack’s been at the house? While I wasn’t here!’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s been going on between you two?’

‘Nothing going on! What do you think of it?’ She moved in the bed, shifting her weight on to her legs, which she folded beneath her so that her body was more erect. She tensed her shoulders momentarily, then relaxed. JL is your brother! You have been away. Week after week after week! What do you think I do? I have no friends here. No one in the village, in England. Everyone who meets me hears my voice and thinks I am a spy for Hitler! I am the Nazi with the husband who does not fight. People whisper. They think I can’t hear. Your parents don’t speak to me. My mother and father are dead, so it is thought. I’m on my own here, all the hours in the day, then the night, then the day again. Perhaps there is a letter from you will come, perhaps not. If not, I can play music for no one to hear. Or catch the bus and go to the shops where there is nothing to buy. Some life I lead!’

‘What about Jack?’ I said. ‘You know how Jack and I feel about each other. Why has he been coming here while I’m away?’

‘It’s always away you have been! JL is on leave only here a day or two, here another day, what they allow him. He has no choice in the matter. Once, he wrote to me and asked me if he could spend his leave with you and me, with us both, because he didn’t want to go home. But you were in London. I didn’t know how to contact you in time and he sounded desperate. He wanted to be away from the air base for a while, so I said yes. He came.’

Just once?’

‘No, he has been here three times. Maybe more.’

‘You never told me.’

‘Maybe five times. You are never here so I can tell you.’

‘And he leaves his clothes in the bedroom.’

‘No! What do you think? What are you accusing me of?’

Something like this can rarely be resolved properly in a marriage. The stakes are so high that pursuing it leads to areas from which you cannot retreat. So, while I could, I did retreat from the terrible consequences of what I was thinking. Birgit and I were drawn together by larger events: the dangers of the war, the coming of our new baby, the love we had felt for each other for so long. I could not bear to think of anything or anyone disrupting them, least of all my own brother. My row with Birgit caused a long silence of bitter feelings that lasted all day.

Following that there was a quiet truce in the evening; that night we made love. I spent the next two days convalescing as best I could and reported back to the Red Cross office on the following Monday morning.

12

Extract from
Germany Look East! - The Collected Speeches of Rudolf Hess,
selected and

edited by Prof. Albrecht Haushofer, University of Berlin Press, 1952; part of Hess’s speech at

Leipziger Triumphsportplatz to Hitlerjugend[Hitler Youth], May 1939, concerning the then

Deputy Führer’s wish for peaceful co-existence with Britain and its Empire:

‘[For those of us who squatted in our dug-outs with our faces in the mud, for those who listened with stilled breath while the bullets of the English enemy sang through the air above our heads, for those who suffocated in our gas-masks, for those who lay in shell craters through the freezing nights, the Great War brought one passionate conviction. I carry that belief close to my heart even now. It is carried also by the Leader, who fought valiantly for the Fatherland in the same war. That conviction is this.

‘[War against the English race must not be fought by German people. Our argument is not with another Nordic race! Our argument is elsewhere!

‘[We saw, in that most terrible war, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of young German men and boys. Each of them loved the Fatherland, as you and I love the Fatherland. Yet they died! They did not shirk their duty. They did not hide. They did not even ask why they had to make the ultimate sacrifice.

‘[It falls to us, this new generation of German national patriots, to give them the answer. England is not our enemy!

‘[We seek space to live. We wish the development of the German race. If the English give us the free hand we need, we will have no dispute with them. If war is to come, it will be their choice, not ours. We who survived the landmines and the shells and the gas of the Great War say again and again: we will spare the world another war.

‘[But only if England allows it!

‘[Heil Hitler!]’

13

Holograph notebooks of J. L. Sawyer

viii

I arrived at RAF Kenley in the early hours of the morning, with another Red Cross official called Nick Smith, after a lengthy and hazardous journey through the heavily bombed suburbs of Brixton and Streatham.

Our passes took us without delay through the security barrier at the Kenley air base. The driver deposited us beside a Nissen hut, in which we found several more civilians who were already waiting. I added my small suitcase to the pile that had been placed next to the main door, then went to stand as close as I could to the stove to warm up after the long drive. I was given a bowl of hot soup and I sipped it gratefully.

I had said nothing to Birgit about the journey I was to undertake, because a flight to Switzerland in the middle of a bitter land and air-war with Germany was obviously hazardous. In the days before the flight I had spent a lot of time studying a map of Europe, trying to work out in advance which route was likely to be the safest, the one that would take us the shortest distance over occupied countries or Germany itself. Landlocked Switzerland did not seem to offer many safe ways in and out. I guessed that the likeliest route would be a long dogleg: down the western coast of France, followed by a sweep eastwards across the area of southern France that was under the control of the Vichy government. The direct route across Germany would be much shorter, but seemed full of dangers.

From one of the windows of the Nissen hut I could see the white-painted aircraft on the apron, waiting for us to board. I couldn’t pick out much more than the plane’s shape, because of the darkness, but I could see there was a great deal of activity going on around it.

‘Gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?’ I turned and saw that two high-ranking RAF officers were standing by the door at the end of the hut. One of them was holding up his hand expectantly. Silence fell. ‘Thank you. We’re going to ask you to climb aboard the aircraft in a moment. I must apologize in advance that the accommodation is a little spartan on board, but the crew have done their best to make you comfortable. Once the plane is in the air, may I ask you to move around the cabin as little as possible? The flight is going to be a long one, so the aircraft is heavily loaded with fuel and if there is too much movement inside the plane it could upset the trim. I’m sure I don’t have to underline that point. In particular, on the subject of moving about during the flight, once you’re on board you will notice that the front section of the cabin has been screened off with curtains. We must ask you not to go through to that part of the cabin until after the aircraft has landed and the other passengers have disembarked. Everything you require will be available in your part of the plane. I think you were also advised to bring sandwiches and drinks with you? Good. You’ll be pleased to learn that there is a toilet on board, and you won’t need a degree in physics to work out how to use it.’

We smiled around at one another nervously, a roomful of men who had obviously all been wondering the same thing. We were soon ushered through another door at the side of the hut and walked in the darkness across the concrete apron to the aircraft.

I was one of the first aboard and so I chose a seat at the back of the plane, next to one of the portholes. I had never been up in an aircraft before, so I was eager to see what I could of the outside world once daylight came. Of the other passengers, I knew only Nick and another Red Cross official whom Nick had introduced me to when we first entered the hut. This was a chap called Ian Maclean from the Edinburgh office. He and Nick took seats a few rows ahead of me. Everyone else on the flight was a stranger to me.

After another long delay the engines started, setting up a great racket and vibration throughout the cabin. Everything was louder and rougher than I had imagined it would be. The engines ran for ages while they warmed up. I was feeling extremely nervous as the plane finally began to move with an unpleasant wallowing sensation along the runway, rocking alarmingly from side to side. Once we left the ground, however, the motion of the aircraft became surprisingly smooth, though not much quieter. I made myself as comfortable as possible in the canvas bucket-seat. Like everyone else I could see from where I was sitting, I kept my thick overcoat on because the cabin was unheated. I stared with interest through the tiny porthole, trying to gain some impression of the dark land below. In fact, while the darkness remained I could see little more than the steady blue-white stab of the exhaust flame from the engine on my side of the aircraft.

When the sun came up at last I saw that we were flying over the sea. I guessed it must be the English Channel, but if so the pilot was taking us across the widest part. Our aircraft droned on and on above the uninspiring sight of grey waves, seemingly immobile below. I was beginning to feel dehydrated and hungry in the chilly cabin, so I dug out my sandwiches and flask of tea.