Christopher Priest - The Separation

With the tour of the house soon out of the way, we sat together in her stone-flagged kitchen drinking tea. She had no coffee, said how much she missed it, how much she would like to offer me some.

We had much to talk about. We spoke mostly in English and although her manner to me was warm she was clearly holding her feelings back. She treated me like her closest friend, but a friend she kept at a distance. To me, she had never looked more attractive, more so because I could see the signs of recent stress in her appearance. She looked thin and her face fell easily into a troubled look, but to me she was as beautiful as I ever remembered her. Now that I was there with her, though, it was the beauty of reality, not of some lonely, wishful dream. During my noisy motorbike ride across the country I had been harbouring a vision of a passionate, loving reunion with her, but once I was really there all that changed. She made me happy, but it was the happiness of being with her, not of yearning for her.

She told me about her troubles and worries: Joe’s frequent and long absences, the loss of contact with her parents, her fears that they were dead or in one of the Nazis’ concentration camps. More pressing still was her situation here, in England. Our youthful adventure, in which we had smuggled her out of Germany, seemed long ago in the past, but it was a small indicator of the worse trouble that was to come.

When the war broke out, her German birth meant that she faced internment with many other German nationals. Only the fact that she was married to a Briton and had taken out British citizenship saved her from the first round of internments. A second round had followed, two months later, at the time of Dunkirk when the country was rife with rumours of a fifth column. She again managed to avoid that, partly through the intervention of the Red Cross in Manchester, for whom Joe was working. She and Joe had assured the police that she was pregnant, though in fact she was not. Now once again, with the air battles in the south-east of England going on every day and huge numbers of invasion barges being assembled by the Germans in the Channel ports, the British authorities were again casting their net. She had come increasingly to see Joe as her last defence: so long as he was there with her, she had a form of security. But Joe’s work had taken him to London, from which he was rarely able to return. She was existing from one day to the next, waiting for the police to arrive.

‘I am British!’ she said to me desperately, as she wept. ‘I became British because of what I had been. When I was growing up ...[I thought I was German, because that’s how we thought of ourselves, a German family. An ordinary German family. I was a German first who was born a Jew, but still a German]. Then I found out I was only a Jew, not a German at all. So I came to England to escape being German, to escape being Jewish. But here I am not British, not even Jewish, but German again![I fled from Germany because of what the Nazis were doing. Now I am to be persecuted again because they think I am a German spy, a Nazi! I am just a woman with an English husband. Can’t they leave me alone?] Who will look after me, now that Joe is away all the time?’

I had answers to none of this, but I comforted her as well as I could.

She gave me lunch: a simple snack of bread and cheese, with some lettuce she said she had grown in the garden.

Afterwards she said, ‘JL, I want to ask you a favour. A big, big favour.’

‘What would it be?’

Then she retreated, wouldn’t tell me what it was. I didn’t need to be asked, because for Birgit no favour would be too big. A few minutes later, she started again, building it up before she would tell me what it was, explaining that she was so reluctant to ask because she did not want me to think that it was the only reason she was pleased to see me. I assured her that I would not think that. Finally, she came out with it.

‘I want you to walk around the village with me, so that everyone can see me with you. I want them to see you too. They will think they see Joe. Will you do it?’

‘You want me to pretend to be Joe?’

‘A little walk,’ she implored me. ‘Down the lane, past the houses, so people can see I’m not alone. Will you do it for me?’

No favour was too big for Birgit.

But in my RAF uniform I was wrongly dressed for the role of Joe, which meant I would have to change into his clothes. Birgit had already chosen and laid out some of them, which underlined the fact that she had planned the whole thing.

Once we were in the lane she slipped her hand through my arm, squeezing her fingers lightly around my elbow. She leaned affectionately against me. We walked slowly along in the sunshine, looking around at the scenery. The light pressure of her hand on my arm was like a glowing imprint of her. To be seen with this lovely woman, to feel her affectionate touch, her closeness, to see her smile, was like a fantasy come true, even in an imposture. I slowed our pace, wanting to prolong the harmless physical contact with her. If to have her as close as this meant I had to be Joe, then Joe I would be for as long as it took.

Back at the house, we pushed my borrowed motorcycle out of sight and discussed how, in future, I should come and go when I visited. We agreed that unless it was night-time I should change into civilian clothes before I arrived, then be seen in them when I was with her or around the house and garden. The quiet assumptions implicit in these arrangements sent a thrill of anticipation through me.

In the evening Birgit played to me, a Mozart serenade, more Beethoven, the emotionally stirring cadenza from Mendelssohn’s violin concerto.

I stayed overnight, sleeping uncomfortably in an armchair in the living-room. During the day that followed I tackled some of the most urgently needed repairs around the house. I replaced a broken window-pane in Birgit’s studio. I sealed up many of the places where draughts came in through the loose-fitting window-frames. I rehung the front door so that it closed properly. I managed to clear the blockage in the water-heater so that Birgit did not have to heat water on the gas ring. The bathroom, where the walls were being invaded by cracks and a spreading damp mould, was another urgent job to be done, but there was no time for it then.

While I worked, Birgit assisting and cleaning up around me, we talked about Joe, endlessly about Joe. He was an obsession we shared, if for different reasons.

The words poured out of us both: we described what we knew about him to each other, talked about fond memories of good times with him, expressed our thoughts about what he was trying to do with his life and how it felt when he hurt or abandoned the people who loved him most. I told her of the pain I suffered caused by the separation he and I were going through, but also about the ambivalence of the separation, the contradictory needs for closeness and individuality. Birgit said that from the time the war began, when he became a conscientious objector, he had seemed to her remote, awkward, stubborn. She desperately needed and wanted him, but he had become so difficult to live with.

I left her as the evening drew on, hastening back to Tealby Moor at the eleventh hour. I dashed in through the main barrier at the guardhouse with only a few minutes of my leave remaining. After another night of restless sleep I turned my mind to the concerns of the squadron, where the Wellingtons were at last starting to arrive.

Crews were assigned to planes and testing began immediately. All bomber squadrons were under pressure to become operational as quickly as possible. As a result, 148 Squadron was moved back to front-line status when only a handful of the aircraft were ready. My crew was not assigned to one of the first planes, so for a little while longer I was still relatively idle. With another weekend coming I was able to arrange a second forty-eight-hour leave, borrowed Robbie’s motorbike again and rode at high speed to see Birgit. She welcomed me with tears of relief, putting her arms around me and holding me close. She was looking even thinner than before. Exhaustion lined her deep-set eyes and her long dark hair hung shapelessly around her shoulders. My mind’s eye overlaid what I saw with what I knew she was really like. I still thought she was beautiful. I could never forget what had once briefly flared up between us.