The Separation (41 page)

We heard the Manchester guns first: the sharp, shattering bangs, easily distinguished from the sounds of the bombs going off. As always, it was an encouraging noise, lending the sense that the bombers would be warded off. But then, over the racket of the guns, we heard the first bombs as they fell and exploded in the streets.

I could not lie still in the dark with a raid going on so close and despite Birgit’s protests I wriggled away from her, crawled into our darkened hallway and found my coat and shoes. I let myself out of the house. In the dark I crossed the lane and moved up to a mound of earth which I knew would give me a clear view to the north and west.

The sky was rodded with white shafts of searchlights. Bright flashes of anti-aircraft shells exploded briefly in the air by the cloudbase. Trails of tracer bullets raced upwards. The city was already spotted with bright points of orange fire. A glowing static fireball rested in the centre of the city, like a small sun that had alighted there. As I watched, more bombs went off, more fires took hold.

‘Manchester’s getting it again,’ a man’s voice said beside me. ‘Not as big a raid as last time, but getting it bad.’

I nodded my agreement in the darkness and turned towards the sound of the voice. He was standing behind me but there was not enough light from the fires to illuminate his features.

‘Second time since Christmas, isn’t it?’

‘So it is.’

‘I missed the others,’ I said, but as I spoke I realized who the man must be. I said, ‘Isn’t that you, Harry?’

‘That’s right. You’re an old hand at the raids, your missus tells me. Away down south and all that.’

‘I was working.’

‘In London, wasn’t it? Or was it in Wales? Doing a bit of rescuing?’

‘A bit of that,’ I said, finding myself falling into the rhythms of his speech. ‘I’m not going back for more.’

‘You should be down there in Manchester tonight. Looks like they could use an expert like you.’ There was a taunt in his voice, a sort of mocking challenge. He was beginning to needle me.

‘Not now,’ I said.

‘Not your sort of place, is it? Manchester?’

‘I was injured and I’m still suffering the after-effects, if you must know. I’ve had enough for a while. Maybe you should go and volunteer’

‘Not me. I’ve too much to do around the village. Birgit told me you’d been injured. Then you went off vanishing, and that. Your baby’s due next month, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Last week in May’

‘Glad you’re back in the village, Joe,’ Harry said. ‘Birgit needs you with her. Husband shouldn’t be away, at a time like this.’

‘What did you say?’

‘None of my business, I know, but -’

‘That’s right. It’s none of your damned business.’

‘I’m round the village most of the time, Joe, and you’re not. I hate to see a nice young woman alone, baby on the way, and that.’

‘Look, Harry-’

We both ducked reflexively as one of the larger German bombs exploded not far away. London people called them parachute mines: they threw up a distinctive white-yellow ball of explosive fire when they went off. A second or two later, the sound and the blast from the bomb came at us, banging me backwards from where I was standing. I stumbled, recovered my balance and crouched down so that I could watch the rest of the raid.

‘A close one, that,’ Harry said. ‘Still, you must be like those Londoners, used to this kind of thing.’

‘It’s as bad there as it is here,’ I said. ‘But London is bombed most nights.’

‘They’ll be all right. Expect you will be too, when the war’s over. You off on another trip soon, then?’

We stood there together, watching the fires spread, seeing the huge funnels of dark smoke rising, sometimes even glimpsing some of the raiding planes if they swooped low enough to be lit up by the fires on the ground. The explosions were merging into one long roar. A big raid. The second in a month.

‘You want to stay out here and watch a bit longer?’ Harry said. ‘I could go in and see if Birgit’s all right.’

‘What?’

‘It’s no trouble to me. Quite a few times while you’ve been away I’ve been round while there’s been an alert. Just to make sure she’s managing OK. She’s all right with me. Mum and me can take care of her. Don’t you worry, Joe. If anything else happens to you while you’re working, and that, and you don’t come back afterwards, I’ll take care of Birgit. Be my pleasure. She needs a man to look after her.’

I turned to face him, but he was already walking away from me, down the lane, losing himself in the dark.

‘Just you keep away from Birgit, Harry!’ I shouted after him, but there was no reply. I turned back to watch the rest of the raid, but I found that while the last exchange with Harry had been going on the attack had come to an abrupt end. One by one the stalks of light from the searchlights were switched off, the flames died down, the smoke drifted away, the drone of the engines receded into the distance. The great urban sprawl of Manchester became dark again, blacked out in the night.
xv

We were in the narrow triangular space beneath the stairs, our arms around each other, our unborn baby fretting between us. Birgit was asleep but I snapped awake. I held tight, forcing myself to be still, not to move suddenly so that I might wake her. The baby kicked at me, a small but distinct pressure against my side.

The night was silent. What happened to the raid? There had been the sirens, sounding the alert, but because the authorities never knew exactly where the German planes were heading there were a lot of false alarms. Had there been an all-clear yet? I was testing my memory for reality. Birgit and I had left our bed when the siren sounded, so that had been real. After that, though? The raid, the conversation with Harry outside in the night?

I could hear no engines, guns, bombs, sirens.

This lucid hallucination was the first I had suffered since I went to Portugal. I had begun to believe I was over them.

For the second time, as it seemed, I disentangled myself from Birgit’s arms and slid along the hard mattress on the floor. She groaned in her sleep, shifting to the side, helping me shuffle away from her. I pulled on my coat and shoes, again. I went quickly to the door, opened it and listened in the night. All was darkness and silence. I stepped out into the cold air, crossed the lane and scrambled up the mound from where I could command a view of the plain below.

Everything was in darkness, blacked out, huddling in the night, silenced by the fear of raiders. I glanced back at the bulk of the Pennine hills beyond our house: it was possible to make out the curve of the moors against the slightly less dark sky.

While I stood there, shivering, I heard the all-clear: the first single-note sound drifted in on the wind from miles away, but one by one the other sirens on their town hall roofs, their fire station gantries, their school outbuildings, their church towers, took up the eerie but comforting message. No raid after all, they said; not tonight. Maybe somewhere else is getting it, but not here, not now. It’s safe to leave shelter, to return to your beds.

I went back into the house, secured the door, and returned to the space beneath the stairs. Birgit was half awake, because of the sirens. I cuddled her fondly and helped her climb the stairs, taking her first to the lavatory then back to our bed. We crawled between the cold sheets, Birgit moving around many times while she tried to make her distended belly comfortable. I pressed against her, holding her, trying to warm her with my own chilled arms and legs.

xvi

The next morning, while Birgit was taking a bath, I went to my bureau in the corner of the living room. I took Dr Burckhardt’s letter from the lockable, central drawer.

I read again his expression of thanks, the request for me to stand back from normal Red Cross duties for a while, the continued payment of my wages. His plain letter, handwritten and hurried in tone, was for me a guarantee of reality. It was a link back through unreliable memories to that memorable conference in Lisbon. I was not misremembering that. I had been there and it had really happened. I felt that a sign of my improvement was the fact that I was starting to recover from the attacks more quickly. As the day went by I was able to forget the hallucination about the air raid and I began to wonder instead what I could do to occupy my time until I heard from Dr Burckhardt. I was idle and useless around the house, aggravating a situation I did not properly comprehend. It was not a happy period. During the week that followed my spectral vision of the air raid Birgit and I argued many times, over trivial matters and large ones. We spent time in separate parts of the house. I felt we were becoming strangers to each other and I had no idea what I could do about it. I was miserable when I thought about what she and I were becoming. All the excitement of knowing each other, all trust, all familiarity, most of the love, had been beaten out of us by the experience of war. Only the unborn child, restless in her belly, remained to link us together. But what would happen after he or she was born?

One evening, while I was listening to the BBC, I heard a report of the previous night’s RAF attack on the north German port of Kiel. It was described in the usual confident terms of the propaganda issued by the Air Ministry: the raid was pressed home by the crews with great skill and determination and while under attack from intense anti-aircraft fire. The target was described, as always, as a military one. In this case, many port installations and German army supplies had been damaged or destroyed. But the BBC

also said that the damage had been widespread - surely that would mean many of the bombs fell outside the port area? Then there was the admission that more of our planes than normal had been shot down. It sounded as if the German night fighters had been unusually effective. Inevitably, my thoughts turned to Jack. It is true that I did not often think about him deliberately, but that was because it was easier not to. For many years we had been so close: inseparable, our parents used to say about us. Some identical twins were like that. We did everything together, tied by an instinctive sense of kinship, of inherent oneness. We both tended to drift in a state of abeyance if we were separated. At school the teachers made us sit in different classes, but as soon as the breaks came we were together again. Because of that constant intimacy we grew up without many friends, our closeness not only self-sustaining but excluding too. It continued into early adulthood: when we were rowing together we used to say we were one mind in two bodies. But for the last five years, since our return from the Olympics, we had been almost completely separated, first by choice then more recently by the conditions of war.

Had we been drifting in abeyance once more, without each other? Because of my idleness around the house I began to think so, at least of myself. I thought back over my year of active pacifism, going it alone, or trying to, when most of the other men of my age were in the forces. None of my beliefs had changed, but I did begin to wonder if I had been approaching the problem the right way. Then there was Jack. Since the war began I had been making assumptions about him and his motives, but I knew that deep down we had to be much the same. We were much the same in so many other things. We had the same father, came from the same family tradition of tolerance, liberal conscience, anti-warfare. What might he be going through, while he flew against the enemy?

I had pushed Jack away from my conscious thoughts. I already knew how the war encouraged the temptation to avoid important decisions, to put things off, to try to suppress feelings, to stop worrying about this or that. But how could I have done that to Jack? The news of the raid on Kiel - in itself one more attack in a war filled with such attacks - reminded me yet again of the peril that he was facing in the RAF. I assumed that as an operational pilot he would be fully engaged in the bombing campaign. Every time he went on a raid his life was at risk.

I held secret knowledge that would affect him. Peace was imminent, while warfare continued. Danger remained until the last shot was fired, the last bomb dropped.

16

Selection of entries from the diaries of Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels (Bundesarchiv, Berlin,

1957), translated into English by T. F. Henderson. During this period Dr Goebbels was

Gauleiter of Berlin and Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
.
March 28, 1941 (Friday)

Yesterday: Overthrow of the corrupt king of Yugoslavia. New King Peter is only seventeen years old. Churchill welcomes his coup as of the arrival of a saviour.

No air incursions overnight; news from Bulgaria as excellent as expected; more good news from Libya; we have made both these triumphs public. The Italians not doing so well in Abyssinia, but we need more details.

Working madly at full stretch, before a flying trip to Wilhelmshaven to inspect bomb damage. Already we are rebuilding the city, using the damage as an excuse to get rid of many outdated buildings and to remove the undesirables who live in them. Back by plane to Hamburg, then train to Berlin. I am asked to review the cases of Betzner and two other ‘poets’, sentenced to prison for inappropriate activities. They are all swine who deserve longer sentences than the court was able to give them. Have ordered an investigation into their family backgrounds. There’s always something you can find out about scum like these.

Haushofer came to my office in the evening. Says that rumours of peace are running riot all over the USA, but that they appear to stem not from us but from London. Hess’s ranting about a peace party in Britain takes on a semblance of reality. At the same time, Roosevelt is thoroughly insulting. He claims the Reich’s wish for peace is not sincere. This is the sort of bumpkin we have to deal with.
April 4, 1941 (Friday)

Yesterday: A great gloom has descended over England as our successes continue. Twenty thousand tons of their shipping have been sunk in one day. More advances in the desert; the British are in complete retreat and surrendering on all sides. Where will we keep the extra prisoners? No incursions by air. We continue to smash the English cities. Half the population of Plymouth is homeless, the rest are suffering abject misery and screaming for surrender.