The Separation by Christopher Priest Read Free Book Online Page A

their medal in a fraction under eight minutes, although that was on a downstream course. Earlier in the summer, similarly downstream on the Thames near Oxford, Joe and I had cleared eight minutes five. We knew that this was not our limit, not the best we could do. Athletic performance is all about gradual improvement, not suddenly achieving an outstanding performance in a fluke that cannot be repeated. For the past three months we had been steadily building our speed, reducing our times.
    Mr Norton encouraged us to focus our minds forward to the day of the heats, trying to think ourselves into the first race, leaving the times to set themselves.
    The heat was five days away. On the first full day of training our best time was eight minutes thirty, on lake water without perceptible currents.
    The next day we covered four full courses: our best time was eight minutes twenty-two. By the fourth day we could touch eight minutes nineteen every time we tackled the course.
    7
    Five years later I was in hospital in rural Warwickshire, working backwards to memory. I understand now that my memories arrived in the wrong order. Maddeningly, I remembered the end of the incident first, with no recollection of what had led up to it.
    There was a slamming noise, a loud crash made by the shrapnel as it burst through the fuselage a couple of feet behind me, low down, somewhere underneath, bursting through into the Wellington’s belly. Just by the navigator’s table, close by the wing spar. The rear gunner, Kris Galasckja, crawled forward from his turret and reported over the intercom that Sam Levy looked as if he was dead. There was blood covering his maps, Kris said. I was watching the dials, seeing the airspeed fall away, the altimeter begin a slow, unstoppable circling decline, our precious height being eaten away gradually by gravity’s suck. Down below I glimpsed the irregular black line of the German coast as we limped west, across the North Sea towards England.
    A few minutes later Kris came back on the intercom and said he thought Sam was going to be all right. He’d taken a bang on the head but was breathing OK. Kris said he was going to drag him around so he could lie more comfortably on the floor, next to the hatch.
    I ordered Kris back into his turret to keep an eye open for fighters. They often patrolled over the sea, waiting for our bombers as we straggled home out of formation. For the next few moments I could feel the crew moving clumsily around in the fuselage behind me, the trim of the plane affected by their changing positions. No one said anything, but I could hear their breathing in the intercom headphones clamped against my ears.
    By the time they settled down our height had fallen to below twelve thousand feet and was still dropping slowly. There was no extra power in the engines. The flaps were so stiff I could hardly move the stick. The crew began jettisoning unused ammunition, kit, flares, anything removable, the cold night air blasting in not only through the holes in the fuselage but from the open hatch behind me. We droned on, following our long downwards trajectory with its inevitable end, delaying it as long as possible. An hour passed, deluding me into thinking we might be going to make it after all. We were down to four thousand feet by then. The port engine began to vibrate and overheat. Colin Anderson, wireless operator, came on the intercom and said he thought it was time to break radio silence, to send a mayday, and how about it?
    ‘We’re still a long way out to sea,’ I said. ‘Still got to be careful. Anyway, what makes you think I’m going to let the kite crash?’
    ‘Sorry, JL.’
    We all wanted to get home. We hung on silently.
    But a minute or so later the port engine began to falter. I changed my mind and gave Col the order to send the mayday. With three thousand feet to go, the night-dark sea passing in and out of sight through low clouds, I switched on the emergency beacon and ordered the