Christopher Priest - The Separation

I shook my head in frustration and disappointment, still feeling the daylight presence of my brother. I could taste the tobacco in my mouth and throat, felt I should exhale the cigarette smoke I had sucked in as the plane took off behind us. All that smoking, all that talking, somewhere out there in the mind, somewhere in nowhere at all.

I sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about Jack and what he and I had seemed to be discussing. It was a recapitulation of my own preoccupations, of course.

From time to time more planes flew low across the town.

Finally, feeling cold and isolated in the blacked-out night, aware of the silent town out there beyond the small window, I crawled back under the thin blankets, lay still, tried to feel warm again. I was wide awake, replete with unwelcome thoughts. I tried again and again to calm my mind, turned over in the narrow bed, seeking comfort. Time went by - eventually I must have drifted back to sleep.

I was woken by the landlord, hammering on the door of my bedroom and telling me in an aggrieved voice that I was wanted on the telephone. I rolled out of bed, dull with sleep. I followed him downstairs to the small cubicle at the back of the public bar. I picked up the phone. It was Jack.

As he spoke I was looking around at the empty bar room, remembering. I could hardly concentrate on what Jack was saying. I was thinking, This must be another lucid imagining!

Jack fell silent, apparently waiting for my reply. Then he asked me again: what had I wanted when I left the message at the adjutants office? I stumbled out with the words: I need to meet you, it won’t take long, can it be today? Now?

He sounded surprised but quickly agreed that we should meet straight away. He told me he was about to go on leave for forty-eight hours and was anxious to be on his way.

Once again, therefore, I walked the long road that lay between the flat Lincolnshire fields. I had plenty of time to think, to test the authenticity of what was happening. I made a deliberate attempt to observe what was around me, almost to measure it. 1 looked at the sheep as they grazed in the fields, saw the hedgerows that lined the road, felt the texture of the road surface itself, the sound of the light wind in the trees, testing these mundane impressions as if to find flaws in their reality. I was aware of myself: the feeling of the air temperature around me, a minor discomfort in one of my shoes, the aftermath of the greasy, undercooked breakfast grudgingly provided by the pub landlord, a growing impatience to resolve everything with Jack.

I continued to walk along, but instead of being impelled by the urgent need to see Jack, I was now more concerned with the nature of the world around me, the essential quality of its reality. I was certain I had entered another lucid imagining, but if so it was the first time I understood that fact almost from the start. Although I had experienced lucidly, I had never before thought lucidly too.

Was it a sign that the problem was coming to an end?

I carried on walking, the road between hedgerows, the fields, the unilluminating sky, the distant sound of aero engines.

I arrived at the airfield shortly before ten in the morning. I checked my wristwatch to make sure. Jack was already waiting for me outside the main gate. He was smoking a cigarette and had a newspaper folded under his arm. As soon as I saw him I felt a familiar surge of many of my old feelings about him: love, admiration, envy, resentment, irritation. He was still my brother.

He was looking the other way as I was walking towards him. Finally he glanced across and saw me, then looked away again immediately, with a guilty hunching of his shoulder. He took a drag on his cigarette and tossed it on the ground and crushed it beneath his foot. It looked to me unmistakably like a self-conscious signal of rejection. Months of frustration suddenly boiled up in me without warning.

As soon as we were close enough to speak, I said, ‘Look, JL, what’s been going on between you and my wife?’

I winced inside to hear myself say the words. Even to myself I sounded hectoring, weak, irritable, negligible. My voice trembled on the brink of falsetto.

Jack looked startled. ‘Is that what you’ve come all this way to say?’

‘Answer the question. Are you up to something with Birgit?’

‘Hello, Joe,’ JL said calmly. ‘It’s good to see you again after all this time, brother of mine. Couldn’t you even say hello before starting in on me?’

‘You always were a sarcastic bastard.’

‘Joe, for heaven’s sake, calm down!’

I was about to shout something in rage at him, but at the last moment I realized how close we were to the guardhouse by the gate. Several airmen were in view.

‘You’ve got to tell me,’ I said, suddenly finding myself out of breath. ‘What’s been happening at home while I wasn’t there?’

‘Let’s take a walk,’ JL said, inclining his head to indicate we should move away a little, but stubbornly I would not shift. JL turned to face me directly and spoke softly. ‘Birgit’s your wife, Joe. Why do you think I would get involved with her?’

‘Do you deny it?’

‘The way you mean it, of course I deny it.’

‘Do you deny you’ve been to my house while I was away?’

Joe, it’s not what you think.’

‘Don’t tell me what I’m thinking!’

‘You kept going away and Birgit hardly ever knew where you were.’ Jack was keeping the sound of his voice level. It made me listen to what he was saying, even though anger and resentment were still clamouring within me. ‘OK, Joe, some of that time you were missing and that wasn’t your fault, but until the police located you Birgit thought you had been killed. She has no phone at the house, the people at the Red Cross either didn’t know where you were or wouldn’t tell her. And surely I don’t have to tell you what she’s been going through since the war began? Half the people in the village think she’s a German fifth columnist. The government keeps threatening to lock her up. She’s pregnant. She’s convinced her parents have been murdered. You were away somewhere. What she wanted - I’ll tell you what she wanted, though I’m certain that in this mood you won’t believe me. She was lonely, needed a friend and above all else she wanted to speak German for a while.’

‘You went all the way over there and spoke German to her!’

‘She was desperate for company, someone she knew and could relax with. You know that Birgit and I have always been close friends. From all the way back, in Berlin.’

‘You never made much of a secret of it.’

‘Why should I? I’m extremely fond of her. It’s even true I was once madly in love with her, but that was years ago and you put an end to it. She’s been your wife for all this time. Joe, she loves you so much! Can’t you believe I respect that?’

When had Jack been madly in love with Birgit? I hadn’t known that.

‘So what did you two talk about in German?’ I said jealously, wanting to know but also sounding sarcastic. Jack and I were so much alike.

‘I can’t remember. It wasn’t important. Whatever it is that friends talk about.’

‘Important enough for you to travel all that way to visit her.’

Joe, I told you why.’

We had by this time, with unspoken consent, turned our backs on the airfield gate and were walking slowly along the grassy verge. JL offered me one of his cigarettes and we both lit up. I felt a quiet, unexpected surge of sentiment about being a twin brother again, if only in small things, walking together, smoking together. The sound of aero engines struck up again, much closer and louder, caught by the wind and carried across the flat countryside, a growling reminder of war.