So there was one more night I had to spend away. The Red Cross found us rooms in a small hotel away from the town centre. The dock area and much of the business quarter of the city had been destroyed during the Blitz and choices were few. I decided to make the best of it. As soon as I had put my bag in my bedroom I went to find the others downstairs.
At the bottom of the main staircase I saw a tall figure standing by the window, staring out. He was in military uniform and was holding his cap beneath his left elbow. When he heard my footsteps on the stairs, he turned to look at me and quietly intercepted me as I made to pass him.
He said, ‘Are you Mr Joseph Sawyer?’
‘I am.’ I felt the first tremor of concern.
‘I’m Group Captain Piggott, sir, attached to 1 Group, Royal Air Force, in Lincolnshire. I’d like to speak to you privately. I hope it won’t take more than a few moments.’
‘It’s Jack, isn’t it?’ I said at once, responding to the man’s grave tone of voice. ‘You’ve brought bad news about my brother.’
The officer indicated a door leading to a small lounge at one side. He held it open, so that I could walk through ahead of him. He closed the door behind us. Everything about his manner indicated that the news about to be broken to me was the worst.
‘I’m afraid it is about your brother, sir.’
‘Has he been killed?’
‘No, I’m relieved to tell you that he has not. But he has been badly wounded.’
‘How serious is it?’
‘His wounds are extensive but his life is not thought to be in danger. I haven’t seen him myself, but I was able to speak to the doctor in charge before I came here to contact you. Your brother is in hospital and he’s under sedation. He’s young and strong and they believe that in time he will make a full recovery.’
‘Can you tell me how bad his injuries are?’
‘I don’t know the full details, Mr Sawyer, but I was told that among other injuries he has a fractured leg, cracked ribs, a blow to the skull, many cuts and bruises. He was injured when his plane was shot down. He spent about eighteen hours in an emergency dinghy before he was rescued. This is often the fate of our airmen. If we could only find them and transfer them to hospital before they are exposed to the elements for too long, they would be able to recover more quickly However, we do what we can.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘His plane was shot down on Saturday night, early Sunday morning. Your brother had taken part in a successful raid against Hamburg when his Wellington was hit by flak. There was only one other survivor from his plane. The navigator, I believe.’
We stood there in silence for a little while, the air force man standing courteously beside me while I tried to take in the import of his news.
The last raid of the war, Churchill had told me. The last we will be flying, he had said.
xxix
From the time of my accident during the London Blitz, six months earlier, I had not touched a drop of alcohol. There was a deliberate reason for it: I had no idea what triggered my lucid imaginings but they often occurred when I was drowsy or when my attention wandered. Some instinct told me that drinking might increase the likelihood of an attack. It had been reasonably easy to stay away from alcohol since then. At certain times -such as in Stockholm, when many toasts to the peace treaty had been drunk in champagne - it had been possible for me to find a non-alcoholic alternative without making a fuss about it.
But that first night of peace was a special one for everyone: Peace in Europe Day, a time to let your hair down if ever there was one.
After Group Captain Piggott had taken his leave, I tried to decide whether I should make a telephone call to my parents (who had no idea where I was or what I had been doing for the last week) or give up my plans for the evening and find some way to travel across the country to see JL in hospital. I saw a public telephone booth in the lobby of the hotel, so I dialled my parents’ number. There was no answer. I assumed they must have gone to visit Jack in hospital. I was lurking indecisively in the hallway next to the reception area, wondering what to do next, when Mike Brennan, the Quaker adviser from Pittsburgh, saw me. After that, there was no more doubt and no more argument.
In the company of five other members of the Stockholm team, Mike and I set out for a long evening’s celebration on the town. We started in the pub next to the hotel, then followed huge crowds of people as they began to converge on the bomb-damaged city-centre. The whole population, it seemed, was out on a night of revelry like no other they had known for months or years. At midnight we were in East Street, outside the looming, dark shape of the art gallery pressed in a shouting, waving, dancing, sweating crowd. A church clock somewhere struck the hour; we cheered and yelled as lights blazed from every building, the defensive searchlights came on for the last time, criss-crossing the sky above us, and a final defiant cannonade of anti-aircraft shells exploded in the air.
xxx
The next morning was predictably run through with remorse, a groaning discomfort and a renewed determination to get back on the wagon again. Rather to my amazement, I woke up in my own bed in the hotel, having found my way back to it somehow, or having been taken to it.
I leaned over the tiny hand-basin set against one wall to rinse my hair with clean water, then towelled it dry. I washed my face and arms, dried myself briskly. I put on my clothes slowly and carefully.
By mid-morning I was aboard a train heading north out of Southampton, fragile but recovering. I was feeling mildly nauseated all morning, but by midday I was a little better. It was a long time since I had experienced a hangover. I felt detached from reality, wrapped in a shroud of numbed feelings. When I looked at some of the other passengers in the compartment with me, I knew I was not the only one. It had been a memorable evening, what I could remember of it.
The train arrived in Manchester in the late afternoon. I walked across the concourse of London Road Station to where the suburban trains terminated. I was extremely hungry, having skipped breakfast at the hotel and discovered that there was no food available on the train. The snack bar was closed. It was warm in the huge station concourse, the air rich with the steam and coal smell of trains. I had time to step outside to the station approach for a few minutes, breathing the cleaner air, but looking out across the desolate landscape of ruined and burned-out buildings.
Eventually, I caught a local train to Macclesfield.
xxxi
Now comes the final part of my story, almost impossible to write down.
I was in an unsteady emotional state, because of the heavy drinking of the night before, because of the long train journey, because of the lack of food, because of general exhaustion. Perhaps, most of all, because of the stupendous peace treaty that had been attained and the fact that I had played a part in it. I was not ready for what was to happen.
At first, however, I was reassured. Macclesfield’s appearance remained much as I remembered it when I last saw it: no more bomb damage had occurred in the final few days of the war. A place of large factories and silk mills, overlooked by the wild hills of the Pennines, Macclesfield possessed that unique northern English feeling of industry and moorland, a town with a wide bright sky and narrow dark streets. Familiarity wrapped itself around me comfortingly.