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.