Hitler’s Speech, Manchester Guardian
. . . On March 15, Hitler spoke of little else except ‘wild outrages’ perpetrated by the Czech people on the Germans, and the ‘cries for help’; he declared that he had been compelled to order the German army to invade Bohemia in order to ‘disarm the terrorists and the Czech forces.’ He claimed to have ‘destroyed an instrument that was used against Germany in a war.’
He went on to claim that Czecho-Slovakia had split up herself and that it was therefore natural that Germany should annex Bohemia and Moravia where she had interests a thousand years ago. It is so simple.
Hitler says that he is accused of threatening war, but that he has gained his successes, immense successes, without war. He says to President Roosevelt that he has waged no war, that he abhors war, and that ‘I am not aware for what purpose I should wage war at all.’ Yet his neighbours arm industriously; some join a coalition that has no reason for its existence except in fear of him. There can be no war unless he himself makes it.
The news, how it haunted Audrey. Mandatory conscription meant that Britain would have over a million men in service by the end of the year; a major military power, they said. Meanwhile, surgeons were practising operating with gas masks to see if they could manage, elaborate plans were being made for London to become a “shadow city” with the evacuation of its populations and businesses to other parts of England. And Spencer Tracy arrived in London for a weekend holiday and was met with a “vulgar display” by those in the crowd who “whooped” in excitement when he arrived on the Queen Mary boat-train.
A holiday was what she needed.
Perhaps she could be lured to the spas in Budapest, also known as “The Effervescent City,” which according to the papers was “bubbling with health and gaiety.” Enough, she thought. Escape is what she wanted, not a holiday.
It was this way after the Great War, this thinking. The need to escape.
Her motorcycle. The war done and gone, and all she’d seen, all she’d done, could not be put into any sequence of words her family would understand.
Blood. Torn lives. The ravages of war.
There was much to talk about, but nothing to say, so she’d bought a motorcycle, another impulsive decision, but what could she do? Panniers packed with a few books and some clean knickers, and she was off to Southwold. Only she thought to stop off and see her family on the way, because she was thrilled to be riding this beautiful beast of a machine, despite the piercing sleet that doused her on that road through the village of Billings and her laughing like a fool while mud splattered across her face. She wasn’t thinking beyond the joy of it, the fierce and relentless wind battering her, the constant thundering vibration that held her body to the machine, shaking it into existence; it was possible to get lost in such jubilance.
Southwold beckoned while her family quavered. It was a mistake, she knew, too late. Her mother’s hand held at her mouth, her eyes floating in tears that didn’t fall. Her father pacing, working up an argument that might bring her back to their way of thinking.
Their way of thinking.
She needed to understand her own way of thinking, so she donned goggles and cap, checked the map, and roared off to Southwold. To the sea, and to her friend Mary, who’d also driven an ambulance in the war, and who insisted that Audrey visit when it was over. The sea will do you good, she’d said.
Four days it took. Stops in Tonbridge, in Tiptree, with a visit to the Wilkin jam factory, two nights in Wickham. Her hands shaking, her knees collapsing under her whenever she stood after a long ride, the steady blast of the engine ringing in her ear long after she’d turned the engine off.
But the ride itself.
Flying through the back roads of the South Downs, the rush of the hills, the pit of her stomach dropping on the way down, the juddering like a constant mantra: “you’re alive, you’re alive.” A stop at a roadside café for a bacon bap, just outside Ardleigh, the proprietor squealing when she’d discovered the driver was a woman. “On the house, love,” she’d said, pressing the sandwich in her hand. The farmer who pulled out of his lane too quickly, his own metal beast, a Fordson tractor, forcing Audrey into the hedgerow, picking hawthorn twigs off her suit, not feeling the bruises that would bloom later. Head over handlebars, a miracle she wasn’t hurt, but she could take a knocking about, it was the least she could do, because it was the men she thought of. Those men, those reckless pilots. She’d spent the night at the farmer’s, his wife had served pie while he fixed the fender the Fordson had twisted. His wife had eyed her as though she were feral at first, the accent marked Audrey, but when she told the woman she’d been to war, spotting medals on the mantelpiece, the mood softened. My brother, the woman had beamed, but her face had dropped as she’d leaned in, explaining that his head wasn’t quite right since the war. And Audrey, touching the woman’s arm, had told her that was common enough.
The road had flattened out as she entered East Anglia, and that one day, her arms well used to the steering, she had pushed harder, feeling the constant resistance on her body, the thrust of the machine reaching into her heart as if it had a hand in its running as well. A flock of sparrows had erupted around her, sheep had darted from the road, that was when she knew the world to be hers—in that moment, on that A-road shared with cyclists, motor cars, horses, and even some workmen who’d spotted her a cup of tea because the air was damp with the wind off the North Sea. They hadn’t believed her about the heated suit and kept shaking their heads in exaggerated disbelief after she showed them how she plugged it in at night, ready for the morning.
That feeling was the closest she got to driving an ambulance, the closest she got to feeling as though her body itself were on fire, a feeling she came close to that one time Frank took her flying. But like then, and like the war, she knew it wouldn’t last, she could not sustain this level of exhilaration. When she’d arrived in Southwold, her skin chafed, her bones like iron weights, she had collapsed in bed and slept until the next day.
This memory seemed an escape in itself. Who was this woman she once was who crossed the countryside astride a motorcycle? She hardly recognized herself. How brave she’d been. She had not seen this version of herself for a very long time. It was a lure, this memory. Tugging at her as if there might be a way to relive it.
But escape was not possible. Not now. She was needed. She would summon a different sort of bravery tomorrow.