Christopher Priest - The Separation

‘I think I was dreaming,’ I said, as I realized how unexpectedly seriously they were treating my outburst. ‘A nightmare, something like that.’

The words sounded unconvincing as I spoke them. It had not felt like a dream at all, but flowed seamlessly from the same reality in which I now inexplicably found myself for a second time. Dreams are odd but concise, but that had been different. I remembered lying for long, empty hours on this hard shelf while we drove through the night, halfway between sleep and awareness, bored and restless, anxious to be home. It had been so unexceptional that it had not occurred to me to question it. When we reached Manchester - as I thought I was numb with exhaustion, but relieved to be there. I took a second wind, walking slowly to the main station to catch the first train out to Macclesfield. It had been dull, everyday, with a background of lucid thoughts, not concise, not at all odd, not dreamlike in any way that I usually experienced dreams. Had I dreamt the cold train with the dirty windows? Had I imagined walking up the long hill of Buxton Road, in that revitalizing autumnal morning?

It was as if I had slipped suddenly back in time, out of one reality into another. But which reality, now, was the one I should believe in?

Ken and Phyllida were watching me, concerned. They made me feel as if I were a patient in a hospital bed, called upon to describe mysterious symptoms. I tried to make myself sound as ordinary and conversational as possible.

‘How far have we travelled?’ I said. ‘I mean, since we stopped in Birmingham?’

‘Not far,’ said Ken. ‘We went through Walsall about fifteen minutes ago. That’s only a few miles north of Birmingham.’

‘I think I had a bad dream,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve alarmed you both.’

‘I’ll stay awake with him, Ken,’ Phyllida said. ‘Let’s get back to base as soon as we can.’

I wanted to protest that they were treating me like a patient, but in fact I had no idea what had been happening to me in the last few days. In this sense, like so many real patients, I was to a large extent at their mercy. Phyllida lived in Bury, north of the city, and Ken, who was due to be posted back to London, was planning to lodge with her and her parents for the next two days. After a look at the map, they decided they could make a detour and drop me off at my house. I was relieved to hear it. I ached to be home. I didn’t want to have to experience the long wait in Manchester all over again, or the slow train journey home afterwards. I had only just done that.

We were soon under way again. Phyllida tried to keep me talking as we drove along. We were both worn out. I was thinking that so long as I maintained awareness, watched what was happening, kept answering Phyllida’s questions, then the continuity of my real life could not be broken. Inevitably, though. Phyllida’s conversation lapsed. She lost her train of thought several times and I knew she was struggling to stay awake. I told her I was feeling OK, that if she wanted to take a nap I’d be fine lying there on my own. She shook her head and said that she and Ken had been advised to keep me under observation all the way home, but her voice was slurred. After a few more minutes she did stretch out on the hard shelf, pulling one of the blankets over her. Soon she was asleep, lying there with her mouth open, one arm dangling over the side of the shelf. I became introspective, thinking about that lucid illusion and wondering what it might mean.

We rumbled into Macclesfield as dawn was breaking. I moved around on the shelf of the ambulance as soon as I noticed daylight starting to show through the high slit windows, sitting up so that I could peer through the small window that looked out to the front, over the driver’s head. Not surprisingly, perhaps because of the hour, there was virtually no other traffic out there. The one or two vehicles we did see were military ones. It was a grey, cold morning, with a sharp wind sending raindrops against the ambulance’s windscreen in short, diagonal lines, jerkily moving until swept away by the wipers. A few hours earlier, when I had dreamed or imagined so clearly this same morning, it was sunlit and mist-shrouded, promising autumnal brightness. Not now. The appearance of the countryside was more or less unaffected by the war, but in the towns many houses had their windows boarded up, their gates and doors padlocked. We saw no evidence of bomb damage in Macclesfield, but dreary signs of the war were everywhere: shelters, concrete road barriers, the general drabness created by the lack of advertising signs and shop-window displays. We were approaching the second winter of the war and there was little relief from the grimness. Ken halted the ambulance in Hibel Road, opposite the courthouse, its memories still fresh for me of the tribunal I had been forced to attend earlier in the year. I walked around to the front of the vehicle and sat in the cab with Ken for the last part of the way.

As we drove noisily up the long hill I was looking ahead for the first glimpse of the house, wondering again, this time with a low feeling of dread, what I would find when I arrived. At such an early hour Birgit would almost certainly still be asleep. I let my thoughts drift no further than that.

At Ken’s insistence we drove along the narrow lane to the front of the house. I clambered down from the ambulance and collected the small bag of belongings I had brought with me. The noise of the idling engine seemed to me loud enough to wake everyone in the village. Phyllida moved forward to take my place in the driver’s cab. I waved and mouthed my thanks to them both, and turned to the house. I opened the door with my key.

Into the familiar sense of home. Everything looked tidy, clean, attended to. I heard footsteps on the boards above me and Birgit appeared at the top of the stairs. She was a light sleeper and the sound of the ambulance had woken her. She was pulling on the long dressing-gown I had given her the previous Christmas, wrapping it around her nightdress. Her hair was awry, her cheeks were flushed. My first impression was how happy she looked, how well. Still beautiful! I realized how much I had been missing her, how much my absence turned in on itself, creating a vacancy in my life. She was smiling, hurrying down the stairs, greeting me with arms upraised.

I took her in my arms, smelling her familiar scents, the touch of her face against mine. She still felt warm from the bed. Without saying anything we kissed and held each other, touching, tasting, clinging on. She was soft and large in my arms.

Then she laughed and pressed my hand against her belly.

‘Can you feel the baby yet?’ she said. ‘This is my surprise for you, my darling!’

‘What?’ I said stupidly.

‘I have just found out! Only since two days ago. I am already nearly two months pregnant!’

That was her surprise for me, that cold November morning.

It was a cool, rainy autumn that year, the wind battering constantly against the west-facing side of the old house, insinuating bitterly cold draughts into every room. The view of the Cheshire Plain, which had always inspired me, was obscured by mist or low cloud every day. Our bedroom was at the back of the house, yet the cold seeped in there too.

I was allowed a week of sick leave by the Red Cross so I took advantage of it, sleeping late every morning, keeping Birgit close beside me. We both disliked slipping out of our warm bed into the icy room, walking on bare floorboards because we had not been able to afford carpets or rugs, then going shivering into the toilet, which was situated on the weather side of the house, or downstairs where the floors were of stone. For the first two or three days we were as happy as we had been in the first weeks we were married. The silent presence of our baby son or daughter, growing daily, at last presented us with a certain future. The prospect of becoming a father gave me a lot to think about: simple joy at the prospect of having a child, of course, with deeper fears about finding myself inadequate to the task of fatherhood. Beyond that, there were the larger worries: what right did we have, for instance, to bring a child into a world of warfare and fear? But the excitement tended to make up for everything. We would doubtless cope. For Birgit, additionally, the pregnancy felt like a new protection for her against the risk of internment. She showed me letters she had received from the Home Office while I was in London - the officials never said as much, but it seemed she was still being classed as Category ‘C’, unlikely to be taken in unless she transgressed against the law in some undefined way.