Christopher Priest - The Separation

I dozed for a while longer, then pottered contentedly about the kitchen, eating toast, drinking tea and looking through the letters that arrived while I was away. After that I took a bath. Because it is a fine, warm day I stood for a while in our garden, enjoying the sunshine, looking down at the plain of Cheshire, relishing the silence.

Later on in the morning I made an unusual find. I’m still puzzling over what it means.

Some of the furniture in this house was here when we moved in. Among the better pieces is an immense old oak wardrobe in our bedroom. (We can’t imagine how anyone got it into the house and up the stairs, except in pieces.) We keep most of our clothes inside it. This morning I was searching around on the deep shelf that runs from side to side across the top, hoping to find an old jacket of mine, when my hand rubbed against something made of fabric, but stiff and round. It had been placed right at the back of the shelf, apparently put there deliberately so it would be hard to find. I had to stretch right in to get hold of it. It was an RAF officer’s peaked cap, complete with badge.

I looked at it with interest, turning it around in my hands. I had never been so close to any part of a military uniform before. The cap was almost new, in excellent condition, with only a couple of small darkened streaks on the inner sweatband to show that it had been worn a few times. I tried it on, experiencing a frisson of something (embarrassment? excitement?) as I did so. It was a perfect fit. I looked at myself in the mirror, startled by the way it seemed to change the shape of my face.

I didn’t want B to find me with the cap, so I put it back where I found it. I have said nothing to her about it, but I can’t help wondering if she knows it’s there.

August 18, 1940

The war has taken a new turn: the German bombers are ranging more extensively across the country, seeking other targets. So far they appear not to be aiming deliberately at civilians, but there have been many reports that some of the German planes jettison their bomb loads as soon as they are attacked by British fighters. As a result, a number of bombs have gone off in the countryside. We have always thought that the remoteness of our house would give us a measure of safety from the bombs, but we are forced to recognize that nowhere is safe. The German raiders appear almost everywhere: we have heard of air raids in Scotland, in Wales, in the London area, in the extreme south-west. Of course, the towns along the south coast are attacked almost every day. Then there is the fear of a parachute attack. For obvious reasons, parachutists will land in open countryside in remote areas. The country is already rife with rumours about parachutists being seen. So far there has been no substance to any of these stories, but with an enemy like Hitler anything is possible.

Shortages in the shops continue and are getting worse.

Tomorrow I have to return to London.

September 2, 1940

Many more days have slipped by, unrecorded here. I am stuck in London, with no hope of a return home for as far as I can see ahead. I had no idea of the sheer chaos war could bring.

Every day I travel to the Red Cross depot in Wandsworth, where I am assigned to an ambulance. With at least one trained medical orderly, sometimes with two, I then drive all day, ferrying victims of the fighting to whichever is the closest hospital.

Like many other married couples, B and I have been forced into war separation. When you find a few minutes to chat to the people you’re billeted or working with, the consequences of being away from home are the most pressing subject. Most people now see their home life as something that is possible only for short periods of time, a weekend snatched from the everyday chaos, an overnight stay while passing through. Almost everyone you meet has been mobilized away from their own districts. Women are on farms or working in factories, while many of the men are in the forces or in one of the support organizations: manning the anti-aircraft batteries, patrolling for Air Raid Precautions, on nightly fire-watching duties, drilling with the Home Guard, on stand-by with the Emergency Rescue teams or working with the fire service. Everyone is on the move, with no permanence or stability. We are obsessed by the threat of invasion, by the air raids, by the battles going on overhead. Every day, they say, the country is growing stronger, is becoming better prepared. Every day that Hitler does not send his invasion forces is another day gained, a bonus, a growing of strength.

I feel no fear. Nobody feels fear. I remain a pacifist but pacifism is not based on fear. Nor is it based on the opposite. Churchill remains in power, leading the country with suicidal defiance, almost taunting Hitler to try his best to destroy us. He was born to fight war. Every so often we hear on the wireless the words that Churchill chooses to say to us. You cannot ignore what he says because of the poetic grace and power with which he speaks his unpretentious and inspiring words. Everyone you speak to is moved by his speeches. I do not know what I think any more. Except the basics, which never change.

Rumours abound: distant cities have been raided, with horrific results, tonight a thousand bombers will be coming to London, Dover has been bombed flat, German troops have been seen in the Essex seaside towns. For a while you believe the stories. Then the BBC news gives another version of events and you believe that instead. I’m fortunate in that the Red Cross is well informed. It is fairly easy for me to establish the truth, or something close to it. So far, things do not seem to have been too bad for civilians.

Shipping and airfields are bombed every day. At night the German bombers fly across all parts of the country, but they are more of a nuisance than anything: the sirens go off in the evening, so that people’s lives are interrupted. Little damage is done. A few bombs are dropped here and there. In places they drop propaganda leaflets, which instantly become objects of derision. You grow tired of hearing jokes about people using them as toilet paper.

So, each morning comes. I take out the ambulance and its medical crew, liaise with our army escort - needed in case we are sent to a crash-landed German plane in which crew members may have survived - then head for the towns and suburbs on the edge of London: to Croydon, Gravesend, Bromley, Sevenoaks. This is where most of the battle casualties are found. We pick up airmen who have been shot down, staff who were working at the factories and other installations under attack, those civilians unfortunate enough to have been injured by a crashing plane or a stray bomb or fallen shell.

Most of the bombing continues to be against ‘military’ targets - airfields, oil-storage depots, factories - but in an increasing number of incidents it looks as if the Germans deliberately cast their bomb loads wide. Houses, schools and even hospitals in the general area of the main targets are being damaged or destroyed with increasing frequency. And as is obvious to all of us, more and more towns are being treated as targets.

At first the bombing attacks were confined to the ports: Dover and Folkestone have suffered terribly, but they are the nearest British towns to the Luftwaffe bases in France and have an obvious strategic value. Then the areas of attack spread rapidly along the coast: Southampton and Portsmouth were bombed. After that the Germans turned on the towns alongside the Thames estuary, the threshold of the capital. What next?

September8, 1940

It is a Sunday afternoon. I woke up an hour or so ago after one of the hardest and longest days of my life.

I spent the daytime in the usual round of duties, this time in Chatham on the south side of the Thames estuary. Because of its naval yard the town has become a regular target for the Luftwaffe. As evening came I drove back to London, returned my ambulance to the yard in Wandsworth and caught the Underground back here to my lodgings at the YMCA. I had been home no more than a couple of minutes when the air-raid sirens started again. I was summoned back to Wandsworth immediately. Within half an hour a major attack was taking place on the docks and warehouses in the East End. I was there all night, finally reaching my bed at 5 a.m.