Christopher Priest - The Separation

We said what we felt we were expected to say.

‘Now, we can’t let this remarkable achievement of yours pass,’ said Selwyn-Thaxted. ‘We’d be pleased if you would join us this evening. Just a little celebration at the embassy. The ambassador would like to meet you and there will be members of the German government present.’

Out of the corner of my eye I detected Joe stiffening.

‘What kind of celebration would it be?’ he said. ‘We were planning - ’

‘A quiet reception. It’s not every day that we have Olympic medal-winners to show off, so we like to make the most of them when we can. Your sculling colleagues will be there, the equestrian team, Harold Whitlock, Ernest Harper, many more. The evening clearly wouldn’t be complete without you.’

Joe said nothing.

I said, ‘Thank you, sir. We’d enjoy that.’

‘Excellent,’ Selwyn-Thaxted said, beaming at us as if he meant it. ‘Shall we say from about six o’clock onwards? No doubt you know the British Embassy, in Unter den Linden?’

He smiled sincerely again, then turned away towards somebody else, raising a hand in simulated greeting. He went back to the group with whom he had been standing when we arrived. They moved off at once. When I turned to speak to my brother, Joe had already walked away. I saw him striding at great speed past the marshals by the entrance to the enclosure. His head was lowered. I went after him, but within a few seconds he vanished into the crowds that were standing about in the park outside.

I went into the pavilion, changed into my street clothes, collected Joe’s gear as well as my own and walked down to the U-Bahn to catch a subway train back to the Sattmanns’ flat. By the time I arrived, Joe had already packed his belongings and his bags were stacked in the hallway. He looked impatiently at me then went back into the room we had been using. I followed him in and swung the door to behind me.

Birgit was practising her music in one of the rooms at the front of the apartment. The sweet sound was muted when the door closed.

‘What’s going on, Joe?’

‘I feel I should ask you that. Have you any idea, any idea at all, what’s been happening here at the Olympics?’

‘I know you don’t like the idea that the Games are a Nazi showpiece.’

‘So you’re not as blinkered as I thought.’

Joe, we came here to row. We can’t get involved in politics. We don’t know enough about it.’

‘Maybe there are occasions when we should.’

‘All right. But any country that hosts the Olympics uses the Games as a way of promoting itself to the world.’

‘This isn’t just any country’ Joe said. ‘Not now, not anymore.’

‘Look, you knew that before we left home. In effect we both made the decision to be part of it when we were selected.’

"Did you realize who that was, who handed us the medals?’

‘I didn’t recognize him. I assumed it was someone from the government.’

‘It was Hess. Rudolf Hess.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He’s one of the most powerful Nazis in Germany.’

‘But that doesn’t affect us, Joe! It wouldn’t have made any difference if Hitler himself had given us the medals. We’re of no importance to the Nazis. We’re simply here to compete in the Games and when they’re over we’ll go home. We had to go through with the ceremony. Are you suggesting we should have turned our backs on that?’

‘Didn’t you even think we might?’

‘What good would it have done? President Hoover went to Los Angeles four years ago. You presumably didn’t object to that, so how can you object to Hitler turning up at his own Games?’

‘How can you not?’

‘You didn’t say anything at the time.’

‘Neither did you.’

We both stood there angrily in that pleasant room overlooking the broad parkland, hot in the late afternoon sun. Birgit’s plaintive music could still be heard, a little louder than before: it was a piece she played every evening, Beethoven’s Romance No. 1. I noticed that the draught had moved the door ajar. Because I knew that the family who were our hosts could all speak English, I quietly pushed the door and closed it properly.

We argued on, but there was no shifting Joe from his position. He intended to leave for home more or less straight away. I put up objections: our shells were with the scrutineers, the van was parked close to the Olympic Village, we still had some kit at the pavilion. No matter what, we couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Jimmy Norton, the coach. Joe shrugged the objections away, saying he would deal with them all. He said he was going to retrieve the van, pick everything up and set off for England at once. He planned to drive all night and with any luck would have crossed the border out of Germany by the next morning.

All he would say about my position was that if I wanted to leave with him I’d be welcome. If not, I’d have to find my own way home with one of the other teams.

Meanwhile, I was becoming as stubborn as him. If the British Olympic Committee wanted us to stay on for the closing ceremony, then we should do that. And then there was the reception at the British Embassy, which we would have to attend in less than an hour.

Finally, we reluctantly settled on the inevitable compromise that satisfied neither of us. Joe agreed to delay his departure until after the embassy reception, which I would go to on my own while he collected our property and loaded the van. We would then leave Berlin together. But if I was late meeting him after the party, or missed him somehow, he would set off without me.

While we had been arguing, Birgit’s violin had fallen silent.

I settled down in an angry mood to pack my belongings. An atmosphere of resentment hovered in the room around both of us. I put on a clean shirt and jacket and the only necktie I had brought with me. I slipped my medal into my pocket.

I wanted to see the Sattmanns before I left, to say goodbye and thanks. I particularly wanted to see Birgit again, one last time. I went from room to room, but the place was empty. It felt too silent, making me wonder how much of our argument had been audible. To leave without giving thanks to these long-term friends of my mother’s was grossly discourteous, it seemed to me. It added to my sense of outrage at Joe, but there was no longer any point in arguing with him.

I went down to the dusty street outside, where the air was still stiflingly hot at this hour. I walked to the S-Bahnhof.

At the end of June 1941, nearly five years after Joe and I competed in the Olympics, I was recovering in a convalescent hospital in the Vale of Evesham. Gradually my memory was sharpening up. I was confident that this alone meant that I was on the mend, that I could soon return to my squadron. I was at last walking without crutches, although I did need a stick. Every day I took a turn about the gardens and every day I was able to walk a little further. The solitude gave me the chance to think, to remember what my life had been before the crash. The mental exercise began as a desperate quest to find myself there in the past, but as the days slipped by I took a real interest in discovering what had happened to me.

I remembered, for instance, that on the morning before that last raid I had woken up early. The squadron had not been on ops the night before, having been stood down in mid-afternoon.

In the indescribably heady mood of release that followed a stand-down I drove into Lincoln with Lofty Skinner and Sam Levy to see the early-evening showing of Santa Fe Trail, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Afterwards we went to a fish and chip shop for our dinner, walked around the quiet evening streets of Lincoln for a while, then decided to return to the airfield in time to watch the Whitleys of 166 Squadron - with whom we shared the airfield at Tealby Moor - taking off for their own raid. By ten-thirty the airfield was quiet again and I went to my hut to sleep. I slept so deeply that not even the sound of the Whitleys returning in the early hours woke me.