The Separation

  ‘Since you mention Churchill, he would never stand for it.’

  ‘Churchill’s already talking.’

  ‘Talking? Churchill is talking to Hitler?’

  ‘Not directly. There are secret peace negotiations going on through intermediaries. This is why it’s dangerous for me to tell you. I’ve already let out more than I should.’

  ‘Your secret’s safe with me, Joe. Even if Churchill went mad and said he wanted to negotiate, the country wouldn’t let him. Not now, not after Dunkirk, not after the Blitz, not after the other sacrifices.’

  ‘It’s about to happen, whatever you say.’

  ‘How do you happen to know this, anyway?’

  ‘I obviously can’t tell you that. I’m only peripherally involved, but I do know what I’m talking about. It’s the real thing. There’s going to be an armistice and it’s going to be agreed soon. Perhaps even by next week.’

  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 again, if only in small things, walking together with my brother, smoking with him.

  ‘All right, let me suppose for one minute it’s true,’ Jack said. ‘What on earth is the point of me knowing it?’

  ‘You’ve got to come off operations, JL. Straight away. Couldn’t you apply for some kind of ground job? Every time you go out on a raid you’re in danger. There’s no point getting yourself killed now.’

  ‘A lot of us tend to think there’s not much point being killed at any time.’

  ‘Why won’t you take me seriously?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘Maybe you mean what you say because you have some special knowledge. Maybe you mean what you say anyway. Maybe you only think you mean it.’ I felt a stirring of resentment, a feeling that probably showed in my face. Jack, apparently reacting to it, went on, ‘All right, Joe, perhaps I even wish you meant it. But I can’t wander into my station commander’s office and tell him I don’t feel like flying any more. He’d take me down to the bar, buy me a beer and tell me not to go around with such bloody silly ideas. Anyway, there’s no point even discussing it. I don’t want to stop flying. What about my crew? Can I tell them too? What about the other crews? I can’t walk away from the squadron because my brother tells me a rumour – all right, passes me some information about the war coming to an end. Do I keep it a secret from the others? Then watch them go on putting themselves in danger? Or do you want us all to walk out?’

  I heard the sound of aero engines in the background, caught by the wind and carried across the flat landscape, a growling reminder of war.

  ‘JL, I simply want you out of danger for a few days. I’ve been sworn to secrecy about the cease-fire, but I have to tell you about it because you’re my brother! I didn’t go so far as thinking about how you might work it out with the air force.’

  It was the longest conversation Jack and I had had in years. We were standing still again, a few feet away from each other, side by side on the grassy verge of the country road. We kept drawing on our cigarettes, using them like punctuation, for emphasis. We weren’t exactly looking each other in the eye, but we were as close as we had ever been since we grew up. I was trying to take his measure, trying to cut through and eliminate the complicated network of memories, childhood, obsessive sports training, falling out, my marriage to Birgit, all the events that lay unfathomably between us, the subjects we were still touchy about, the arguments we never resolved, a maze of alert responses from which we could bounce off irretrievably in the wrong direction, separating us once again. I felt for a moment it might at last be possible to leave that behind us, simply become brothers once again, adult brothers, joined by our resemblance to each other rather than driven apart by it.

  But then he said, ‘You don’t know what the hell the war’s about, do you?’

  The moment of possible healing was lost. We both looked up as a black-painted Wellington bomber roared away from the runway behind us, climbing heavily into the air, drowning us with its ferocious noise.

  I was shaken into wakefulness. A plane was passing low over the pub, the centre of the town, out there in the night. The engine noise vibrated the window glass and shook the floorboards.

  I was not in bed. I had left the bed.

  I was standing in my room at the White Hart, wearing my pyjamas, halfway between the bed and the window, one hand resting on the wall for support. I was blinded by the jolt from bright daylight to night-time darkness, the real world, the illogical reality of my life. Lucidity lay only in the mind.

  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 adjutant’s 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. I 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.

  ‘JL, at least tell me this. Was it you who made Birgit pregnant?’

  A gust of wind made the engines seem louder. The cigarette I had taken from Jack had been in its packet too long, or it had been crushed while it was carried around. It was flattened and loose-packed. When I sucked on it, tiny fragments of glowing tobacco flared up from the end. How long had Jack been smoking? It was the longest conversation I had had with my brother in years. We were standing still again, a few feet away from each other, side by side on the grassy verge of the country road. We kept drawing on our cigarettes, using them like punctuation, for emphasis. We weren’t exactly looking each other in the eye but we were as close as we had ever been since we had grown up. I was angrily trying to take his measure, whether he was lying to me or telling me a simple truth.

  ‘Come on, JL! Was it you?’

  ‘You don’t know what the hell Birgit wants or needs, do you?’ he said, in an almost despairing voice.

  We both turned in surprise as a black-painted Wellington bomber lifted away from the runway behind us, climbing heavily into the air, deafening us with the ferocious noise of its engines. I waved my fist in frustration, knowing what was about to happen.

  As the darkness of the night fell around me a plane was passing low over the roof of the pub, flying across the centre of the sleeping town, out there in the night. The reverberations from the engine noise shook the window glass.

  I was not in bed. I had left the bed. I was standing next to it, wearing my pyjamas, in the narrow gap that ran alongside, halfway between the bed and the window, one of my hands resting on the wall for support.

  I felt stray tobacco strands sticking to my lips. I picked them away with my fingertips, licking my lips to clear them.

  I sagged with depression. I did not try to go back to sleep again but crouched uncomfortably on the floor of the room beneath that small and inadequate window, watching the dawn light slowly spreading across the low grey clouds.

  In the morning, as soon as I heard the landlord moving around downstairs and before there was any risk of the telephone in the bar ringing, I paid my bill at the inn and began the long journey home, following the interminable and indirect train-route across England. It took me another day and a half of tedious travelling and waiting for connections. We were in the first week of May, the month our baby was due to arrive.

  Mrs Gratton and Harry were both in the house when I walked in and they made me a cup of tea. They told me Birgit was asleep upstairs. Everything was going well, Mrs Gratton said, no cause for concern, the baby was due to arrive on time, but they were waiting for a visit from the doctor. Birgit had spent an uncomfortable night.

  I went upstairs as soon as she woke and we spent an hour or more together until the doctor came to visit her. I heard Birgit tell him she was suffering worse back pains than before and that her legs were swollen and were losing sensation. The doctor reassured her it would not be long before her troubles were at an end.

  When everyone had left the house, Birgit gave me the small pile of letters that had arrived for me while I was away. Prominent among them was a letter in a typewritten envelope, posted in London two days earlier. It was from Dr Carl Burckhardt and it requested me to meet him in London in two days’ time.

  18

  Extract from Chapter 6 of The Last Day of War by Stuart Gratton, published by Faber & Faber, London, 1981:

  … some theatres of Luftwaffe operations were quieter than others. All the occupied territories required air cover, although once Operation Barbarossa was confirmed for June 22 and aircraft were needed on the Eastern Front, cover was progressively reduced in certain areas to the minimum operational level.

  One such was Luftflotte 5, which was r
esponsible for the whole north-western German coast from Emden in the west to the northern tip of occupied Denmark. Although bomber Geschwaders of Luftflotte 5 were deployed against British shipping in the North Sea and had attacked British targets such as Hull, Grimsby and Newcastle, the Luftwaffe presence in Denmark was mainly as a defence against RAF minelaying operations in the Kattegat Strait.

  On May 10, 1941, the process of partial withdrawal to Germany had already begun, leaving the night-fighter Gruppen seriously reduced in manpower and machines. That day, Oberleutnant Manfred Losen was a pilot of IV./NJG 35, flying the Messerschmitt Me-109E fighter from Grove airfield on the west coast of Denmark. In the afternoon he and the other members of his Staffel had flown over the sea for a short gunnery calibration and test. They returned to the airfield before 6 p.m. local time for a meal and a rest, before the duties of the night began. He tells the rest of his story:

  ‘I was called in to the battle room by my superior, Major Limmer. His first question was to ask me how long I thought it would take me to get into the air if an Alarm-start was called. I said that I thought the aircraft were already refuelled and the weapons reloaded, so that we could scramble in a matter of minutes. He said that was good and asked me to stay on the alert.

  ‘About half an hour later he called me in again, this time looking frantic. He said, “Something urgent has come up. It’s an unusual job and you must start straight away. There will be no radio ground control, so take all the aircraft you can and report back to me in person when you land.” He went on to explain what we should do. He said that the British had apparently repaired a Messerschmitt Me-110 that had been shot down over England and were flying it in German markings on a special spy mission in our sector. It was due to pass within our range at low altitude in the next thirty minutes. Our orders were to shoot it down. No warnings were to be given.