Christopher Priest - The Separation

‘Manchester’s getting it again,’ a man’s voice said beside me. ‘Not as big a raid as last time, but getting it bad.’

I nodded my agreement in the darkness and turned towards the sound of the voice. He was standing behind me but there was not enough light from the fires to illuminate his features.

‘Second time since Christmas, isn’t it?’

‘So it is.’

‘I missed the others,’ I said, but as I spoke I realized who the man must be. I said, ‘Isn’t that you, Harry?’

‘That’s right. You’re an old hand at the raids, your missus tells me. Away down south and all that.’

‘I was working.’

‘In London, wasn’t it? Or was it in Wales? Doing a bit of rescuing?’

‘A bit of that,’ I said, finding myself falling into the rhythms of his speech. ‘I’m not going back for more.’

‘You should be down there in Manchester tonight. Looks like they could use an expert like you.’ There was a taunt in his voice, a sort of mocking challenge. He was beginning to needle me.

‘Not now,’ I said.

‘Not your sort of place, is it? Manchester?’

‘I was injured and I’m still suffering the after-effects, if you must know. I’ve had enough for a while. Maybe you should go and volunteer’

‘Not me. I’ve too much to do around the village. Birgit told me you’d been injured. Then you went off vanishing, and that. Your baby’s due next month, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Last week in May’

‘Glad you’re back in the village, Joe,’ Harry said. ‘Birgit needs you with her. Husband shouldn’t be away, at a time like this.’

‘What did you say?’

‘None of my business, I know, but -’

‘That’s right. It’s none of your damned business.’

‘I’m round the village most of the time, Joe, and you’re not. I hate to see a nice young woman alone, baby on the way, and that.’

‘Look, Harry-’

We both ducked reflexively as one of the larger German bombs exploded not far away. London people called them parachute mines: they threw up a distinctive white-yellow ball of explosive fire when they went off. A second or two later, the sound and the blast from the bomb came at us, banging me backwards from where I was standing. I stumbled, recovered my balance and crouched down so that I could watch the rest of the raid.

‘A close one, that,’ Harry said. ‘Still, you must be like those Londoners, used to this kind of thing.’

‘It’s as bad there as it is here,’ I said. ‘But London is bombed most nights.’

‘They’ll be all right. Expect you will be too, when the war’s over. You off on another trip soon, then?’

We stood there together, watching the fires spread, seeing the huge funnels of dark smoke rising, sometimes even glimpsing some of the raiding planes if they swooped low enough to be lit up by the fires on the ground. The explosions were merging into one long roar. A big raid. The second in a month.

‘You want to stay out here and watch a bit longer?’ Harry said. ‘I could go in and see if Birgit’s all right.’

‘What?’

‘It’s no trouble to me. Quite a few times while you’ve been away I’ve been round while there’s been an alert. Just to make sure she’s managing OK. She’s all right with me. Mum and me can take care of her. Don’t you worry, Joe. If anything else happens to you while you’re working, and that, and you don’t come back afterwards, I’ll take care of Birgit. Be my pleasure. She needs a man to look after her.’

I turned to face him, but he was already walking away from me, down the lane, losing himself in the dark.

‘Just you keep away from Birgit, Harry!’ I shouted after him, but there was no reply.

I turned back to watch the rest of the raid, but I found that while the last exchange with Harry had been going on the attack had come to an abrupt end. One by one the stalks of light from the searchlights were switched off, the flames died down, the smoke drifted away, the drone of the engines receded into the distance. The great urban sprawl of Manchester became dark again, blacked out in the night.

We were in the narrow triangular space beneath the stairs, our arms around each other, our unborn baby fretting between us. Birgit was asleep but I snapped awake. I held tight, forcing myself to be still, not to move suddenly so that I might wake her. The baby kicked at me, a small but distinct pressure against my side.

The night was silent. What happened to the raid? There had been the sirens, sounding the alert, but because the authorities never knew exactly where the German planes were heading there were a lot of false alarms. Had there been an all-clear yet? I was testing my memory for reality. Birgit and I had left our bed when the siren sounded, so that had been real. After that, though? The raid, the conversation with Harry outside in the night?

I could hear no engines, guns, bombs, sirens.

This lucid hallucination was the first I had suffered since I went to Portugal. I had begun to believe I was over them.

For the second time, as it seemed, I disentangled myself from Birgit’s arms and slid along the hard mattress on the floor. She groaned in her sleep, shifting to the side, helping me shuffle away from her. I pulled on my coat and shoes, again. I went quickly to the door, opened it and listened in the night. All was darkness and silence. I stepped out into the cold air, crossed the lane and scrambled up the mound from where I could command a view of the plain below.

Everything was in darkness, blacked out, huddling in the night, silenced by the fear of raiders. I glanced back at the bulk of the Pennine hills beyond our house: it was possible to make out the curve of the moors against the slightly less dark sky.

While I stood there, shivering, I heard the all-clear: the first single-note sound drifted in on the wind from miles away, but one by one the other sirens on their town hall roofs, their fire station gantries, their school outbuildings, their church towers, took up the eerie but comforting message. No raid after all, they said; not tonight. Maybe somewhere else is getting it, but not here, not now. It’s safe to leave shelter, to return to your beds.

I went back into the house, secured the door, and returned to the space beneath the stairs. Birgit was half awake, because of the sirens. I cuddled her fondly and helped her climb the stairs, taking her first to the lavatory then back to our bed. We crawled between the cold sheets, Birgit moving around many times while she tried to make her distended belly comfortable. I pressed against her, holding her, trying to warm her with my own chilled arms and legs.

The next morning, while Birgit was taking a bath, I went to my bureau in the corner of the living room. I took Dr Burckhardt’s letter from the lockable, central drawer.

I read again his expression of thanks, the request for me to stand back from normal Red Cross duties for a while, the continued payment of my wages. His plain letter, handwritten and hurried in tone, was for me a guarantee of reality. It was a link back through unreliable memories to that memorable conference in Lisbon. I was not misremembering that. I had been there and it had really happened.

I felt that a sign of my improvement was the fact that I was starting to recover from the attacks more quickly. As the day went by I was able to forget the hallucination about the air raid and I began to wonder instead what I could do to occupy my time until I heard from Dr Burckhardt.

I was idle and useless around the house, aggravating a situation I did not properly comprehend. It was not a happy period. During the week that followed my spectral vision of the air raid Birgit and I argued many times, over trivial matters and large ones. We spent time in separate parts of the house. I felt we were becoming strangers to each other and I had no idea what I could do about it. I was miserable when I thought about what she and I were becoming. All the excitement of knowing each other, all trust, all familiarity, most of the love, had been beaten out of us by the experience of war. Only the unborn child, restless in her belly, remained to link us together. But what would happen after he or she was born?