I saw nothing of my brother Joe during the early months of hostilities and was completely out of touch with him at the time he was killed. After our falling-out at Christmas 1939 we went our separate ways, cursing each other, misunderstanding each other. We were no more deeply alienated from each other at the time of his death than before, but our separation added an extra ingredient of despair to my loss.
Our row had simmered for years, ever since our escape from Germany with Birgit. In practical terms, that adventure turned out to be greater in anticipation than in reality. When we arrived in Hamburg, we went to the docks area and located the ship we had been told about, the Swedish motor vessel Storskarv. We reported to the shipping office, still with no concrete plans about how we hoped to smuggle Birgit aboard, and discovered that Herr Doktor Sattmann had managed to make arrangements by telephone ahead of our arrival. Our passages were booked, the papers were in order. We crossed the North Sea in some luxury, our equipment van buried deep in the hold of the ship.
The real upheaval did not begin until we were safely back in Britain, and then it took me some time to realize what was going on.
The ship docked after midnight. Our parents were waiting in the bleak dockside buildings in Hull to greet us. It became a family event: Mum and Dad had been on a trip to Germany four years earlier when they had stayed in Berlin with the Sattmanns. While we were waiting for our van to be lifted out of the ship’s hold we sat in the dreary hall of the waiting area and Birgit passed Mum a long letter written by her parents. My mother glanced through it and began to cry. Then she put it aside, most of it unread, and cheered up suddenly. Everyone was speaking German, hugging each other. Joe told them of the way Birgit had hidden, the daring escape from Berlin. I felt removed from the reunion, increasingly conscious that most of these arrangements had been made without anyone telling me. It made me see myself in the same way that they perhaps saw me: Joe was obviously to be trusted with the task of helping Birgit escape, while I was kept in the dark.
I contented myself by watching Birgit, wondering how I could claim her now we were all safe in Britain.
We drove home to Tewkesbury. Joe and Birgit travelled in the back of our parents’ car, while I drove the equipment van alone. I was filled with excitement: hopes and plans circled around insistently in my mind, all focused on Birgit, my fantasies of love and romance, of easing her away from Joe and taking her for myself.
All this was to be quickly dashed. Long before three months were up Birgit was married, but not to me. She and Joe married quietly in Tewkesbury Register Office and went to live temporarily at my parents’ house. By then I was already back in Oxford, in turmoil, fretting about my life, about Birgit, about Joe, about having been forced to give up rowing, about wanting to fly about the mounting pressure on me to take my studies seriously. It was too painful to think about Birgit, so I tried to close my mind against her.
With the outbreak of war, everyone’s life changed. Like many people, I found a renewed purpose to my own life in fighting a war I had not started, did not want and barely understood. War simplifies problems, sweeping up a multitude of small ones and replacing them with great concerns. To many people the shift in personal priorities was almost welcome. I was among them. A process of immense social and political change was about to flow through the country, and there was no stopping or questioning it. Of that process I was a tiny part, as were we all. No one understood at the time what was going on, even though we experienced it every day. All we knew was that Hitler had to be fought and the war seen through to the end. Only afterwards would we be able to look back and begin to comprehend what had happened, what had changed.
18
In a way that had rapidly become familiar to me, my first warning that I was required for duty came in a telephone call from the Air Ministry. I was in the Officers’ Mess at RAF Northolt, relaxing with some of the other officers. Even though I was in a somewhat anomalous position compared with theirs, because they were on operational duty while I obviously was not, I was starting to get to know the other men. The war brought circumspection to us all, so apart from the most general enquiries when I first arrived no one asked me what I was actually doing. To them, I was the group captain on staff duties, who came and went in official cars. Now it was about to happen again.
The mess steward approached me discreetly and told me I was wanted on the telephone. I went to a small office at the back of the building, where a certain white telephone was located.
After I identified myself with the usual codeword, I was told that a car would be collecting me at six o’clock that evening. I was to pack for at least two overnight stays, perhaps longer. It was unusual for them to call for me at this time of day, but apart from that there did not seem to be anything special about the mission. I assumed that another provincial tour was about to take place. I went to my room, bathed and shaved and put on my uniform. The Air Ministry car arrived at exactly five minutes to six.
As soon as we left the base and turned away from London I guessed that we were going to Chequers again, but we drove on into the evening shades for much longer than I had expected. It was dark when we arrived at our destination, but once again there was a ritual with an armed guard post set in the grounds of what was apparently a large country house.
Once I was inside the house I was informed that dinner was about to be served. A manservant showed me to a tiny guestroom where I deposited my overnight bag, then he led me downstairs to the dining-room, a long hall, panelled and tapestried, high-ceilinged with a gallery running around three sides. Two long tables were set, side by side, with many people already sitting down and sipping a watery brown soup. Winston Churchill was one of the diners, seated about halfway along the table next to the huge, blacked-out windows, talking rapidly to the heavily bearded man sitting at his left.
I was ushered to a place on the second table, with my back to the Prime Minister, but I could clearly hear his voice over the general hubbub. Because of the echoes in the high-ceilinged room I could not make out his actual words, but the sound of his familiar voice was unmistakable.
Later, when the party moved to a large lounge next to the dining-hall, where after-dinner drinks were served, we were sitting or standing about in a much more informal way and I was able to take a good look at the Prime Minister.
By this time I had spent many hours in the company of his double. The resemblance between the two men was uncanny. The famous baby face, the wispy hair, the pugnacious jaw and down-turned lower lip, the way of walking and using his hands, all these made the two men almost indistinguishable. When we were out in public, more obvious props would misdirect the eye: the distinctive high-crowned hat, the cane, the bow tie, the cigar. Now that I could see the real Winston Churchill, though, the differences were easy to spot. The Prime Minister was a slightly smaller man, his head closer to his shoulders, his waistline more stocky. He turned his head with a particular mannerism the actor had not mastered and his expression changed in many lively ways when he spoke.