Christopher Priest - The Separation

The letters were not our only reminders of war. Even without the outward signs - the apparently endless list of rules and restrictions that were announced on the wireless every day, the rationing of food and clothing, the depressing news of cities being bombed and ships being sunk, the constant activity of warplanes overhead - even without them I had to live with a sense of disquiet that my weeks in London had somehow allowed the war to infiltrate me.

I felt that my pacifism paradoxically turned me into a carrier of war, in the way some people, immune from disease, become carriers and transmitters of that disease.

Wherever I went, wherever I looked, signs of the conflict sprang into existence around me. I loathed, feared and dreaded war, yet I could not escape from it even when I slept. I often dreamed of fires, explosions, collapsing buildings, high-pressure jets of water playing against crumbling walls, the sounds of sirens, whistles, shouts; in the middle of most nights I would wake up in a sweat, then lie there in the dark, trying to tell myself it was only a dream. I was repelled by the images, but at the same time I knew that I had become addicted to the dangers of war, something it was almost impossible for me to admit. I was safe at home with Birgit - or as safe as any civilian could be - but I ached to abandon the safety and throw myself into hazard once again.

I had been home only a day or two when we heard on the wireless that the city of Coventry had been completely destroyed by the Luftwaffe in a single night of bombing.

In the morning of the day after we heard the news about Coventry, I was woken up by Birgit climbing out of bed and moving quietly around our bedroom, apparently trying not to wake me. It was starting to turn to daylight outside. Birgit was dimly silhouetted against the curtains as she dressed. I admired the shape of her womanly figure, her enlarging breasts, her thickening trunk.

‘What are you doing?’ I said, before she left the room.

She looked back in surprise, apparently unaware until then that I was awake. ‘I have to go shopping. It’s important to be in the queues early, before everything sells out. Tomorrow I can’t, because I am teaching. So I go now.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, because already I had been at home long enough for me to start feeling trapped by the house.

‘No. This I want to do on my own.’

I argued with her for a while but she continued to move purposefully about the house and soon she left, promising to return as soon as possible. I followed her to the door and watched as she walked briskly along the lane towards the bus stop on the main road. I went back to bed and read the morning newspaper, delivered after Birgit left. The news from Coventry was depressing and worrying, as the rescuers went about their necessary searches through the damage. With those hundreds of people killed and acres of property destroyed, what would Churchill order as a reprisal? I feared the retribution of a warmonger. The war was out of hand. Some people said that it could not be worse than the endless succession of night-time attacks on our cities, but I believed both sides capable of more. I dreaded to think what it might be.

When I was dressed I made myself a cup of tea, then returned to our bedroom. Standing on the chair, I reached up to the shelf at the top of the wardrobe, groping into the back for the RAF cap that had been hidden there before. Rather to my surprise, I discovered that the cap was stacked on a small pile of clothes that were neatly folded. I pulled out what I could find and laid everything on the bed.

There appeared to be a complete uniform. As well as the cap there was a shirt, a pair of stiffly pressed trousers, a belt, a tunic, a tie and a pair of brightly polished black leather shoes. The tunic bore the twin ‘wings’ sewn over the breast pocket, signifying that the wearer was a qualified pilot. There was also the ribbon of a decoration, but I was unable to identify it.

I closed my mind to all the implications of the uniform being in my house. Instead, I quickly removed my own clothes and put on the RAF outfit. I stood in front of the full-length mirror, clad in the coarse stiffness of the unfamiliar clothes, staring at the transformation they wrought on me. I turned away and looked back over my shoulder. I stood in profile, squaring my shoulders. I tilted my head up, as if scanning the skies. I saluted myself. Engines seemed to roar enthrallingly around me; distant explosions echoed.

I heard a movement outside the room. I froze, fearful of being caught in a guilty act, but my mood quickly turned to curiosity and irritation. Who would be in the house?

I strode to the door, feeling in those two or three paces that the crisp uniform gave my movements a quasi-military bearing, and pulled it open.

My brother Jack was standing on the landing at the top of the stairs. He was dressed in his uniform. We stood and faced each other, mirror images of each other.

I knew then what must be happening. Somehow, I had awoken that morning not to my own reality but to another lucid imagining.

Jack saluted me.

There was another noise downstairs. I went quickly towards the apparition of Jack, pushed past him, terrified of meeting his gaze, and swept by him without our touching. The house was mine; it smelled and sounded and felt as normal as ever. How was I imagining it? I was determined to get away from Jack, to escape from the house, seek the cold air outside, break out of the hallucination. I hurried down the stairs.

As I passed the door to the living-room I saw Birgit, standing with her back towards me, bending over something that was spread out on the table, apparently reading it. I stopped at the doorway.

‘Birgit! You’re here too?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She straightened and turned towards me, pressing her hands down against her sides, stretching her shoulders.

‘You said you were going out. I heard you-’

‘JL, what’s the matter?’

‘JL? Why do you call me that? I’m Joe!’

‘My God! I thought-’

I glanced down at myself, the tie, the shirt, the blue unyielding cloth of the tunic. I felt the cap on my head, saw the shining toes of the black shoes. I moved away from Birgit and looked at the long bevelled mirror that hung on the wall in the hallway, next to the front door. Jack’s exact likeness stared back at me, his military bearing, his fresh and slightly rakish good looks, his strong hands. I lowered my face so that I should see no more of him.

It was the morning of the day after we heard about Coventry, as dawn was breaking. I was on my side of the bed, lying on my back, wide awake. The room was almost in darkness but the bright, lucid images of the hallucination still dazzled me. As I had found when I was in the ambulance, the transition from one reality to the other made me feel as if I had been kicked back in time: a few tentative steps taken along a path, then a sudden jolt and a return to the place from where I had begun.

Now Birgit was sleeping beside me, the weight of her arm thrown across my stomach and pressing down on it. She was large and warm against me. I felt isolated and frightened, taking no comfort from her closeness, the intimacy with which we slept. I groaned aloud, realizing that these imaginings were exposing my own worst fears to me. She had called me JL. Why? I felt Birgit stirring, probably woken by the noise I had made. She nuzzled her face against mine as she woke, affectionate and happy to find me there. She rolled against me, her soft breast resting on my arm, her belly pressing against my side.

A few seconds later we were both fully awake, sitting up and leaning back against the hard wooden headboard of the bed. Birgit turned on the lamp on her side of the bed and pulled her woollen cardigan around her shoulders. It was eight-fifteen. Dawn came late because of daylight saving time, extended into the winter months. Somewhere in the distance we could hear the engines of a large aircraft droning low over the mountains.