Air Bridge Part 5

The Intelligence Officer glanced at his companion. 'According to my information,' Garside said, 'they claim that the plans were looted with the prototype.'

'The plans can be withdrawn.'

'The designer is dead. The fools arrested him in the middle of his work for alleged complicity in the July 20 bomb plot.'

'Then they've only themselves to blame,' Saeton said.

'How did you know that it was the Rauch Motoren who had lodged the complaint?' the R.A.F. officer asked.

'I've admitted already that it was seeing their prototype that gave me the idea,' Saeton answered. His voice was quiet. He was keeping a tight hold of himself. 'The same company has already made an effort to get control of my outfit through a gentleman called Reinbaum who now holds the mortgages on the plane and equipment here.' He turned and faced the two of them. 'What exactly are the authorities trying to do? Do they want a German company to produce a new type of aero engine in preference to a British concern? Carter and I have worked for nearly three years on this. If we'd pinched their prototype and it was so far advanced that they were ready to go into production with it, surely we'd have been in the air now, instead of mortgaged to the hilt and still working to produce a second engine?'

The two men glanced at each other. 'So long as it can't be proved that you looted the thing. . .' The R.A.F. officer shrugged his shoulders. 'The trouble with Control Commission is that they think in terms of supporting the Jerries. You don't have to worry as far as I'm concerned, Saeton. Three years ago I was bombing the beggars and if you'd looted the complete article ...' He turned to his companion. 'What's your view, Garside?'

The other looked helplessly round the hangar. 'Even if it was looted,' he said slowly, 'it would be very difficult to prove it now.' He turned to Saeton. 'In any case, you've done three years' work on your engines. My advice is, get it patented as soon as possible. Doubtless the Patents Office will compare your design with the German company's, if they can produce one and if they put in a claim.'

'I notified Headquarters at the time I saw the Rauch Motoren prototype,' Saeton said.

The R.A.F. officer nodded. 'Yes, I've looked over your report. Had the devil's own job digging it out of its pigeon hole in the Air Ministry. You acted perfectly correctly as far as the authorities were concerned. You don't have to worry about that. But as Garside says -get your patents. Every day you delay, German pressure is becoming more effective.' He held out his hand to Saeton. 'Well, good luck!'

'You'd better come and have some coffee before you drive back,' Saeton suggested and he shepherded them out of the hangar.

'Well, what's all that about, Tubby?' I asked as the door of the hangar closed behind them.

'Just that our problems won't be over even when we get into the air,' he answered and went back to the bench.

Saeton was looking pleased with himself when he came back. 'What I didn't tell them,' he said with a grin, 'is that the designs are already with the Patents Office. If the German company want to put in a claim they'll have to get busy.'

'Do you think Randall had anything to do with that visit?' Tubby asked.

'Randall? Of course not. If they got hold of Randall, then there would be trouble.'

At dinner that night he announced that he was going to London. 'I want to have a word with d.i.c.k,' he said. 'Also it's time I saw the patents people.'

Diana paused, with her fork half-way to her mouth. 'How long will you be gone, Bill?' Her voice was tense.

'A couple of days.'

'Two days!'

It's strange how you can live with people and not notice what's happening right under your nose because it happens so gradually. Tubby glanced at his wife, his face pale, his body very still. The atmosphere had suddenly become electric. In the way she had spoken she had betrayed herself. She was in love with Saeton. And Tubby knew it. Saeton knew it, too, for he didn't look at her and answered too casually: 'I shall be away one night. That's all.'

It was queer. Nothing of any importance had been said, and yet it was as though Diana had shouted her infatuation from the middle of the runway. She had stripped herself naked with that too interested, too tense query and her repet.i.tion of the time as though it were eternity. Silence hung over the table like a storm that has revealed itself in one lightning stab but has still to break.

Tubby's hand had clenched into a fist and I waited for the moment when he'd fling the trestle table over and round on Saeton. I'd seen men break like that during the war, sane, solid men pushed over the edge by nerves strung too taut through danger, monotony and the confined s.p.a.ce of a small mess.

But he had that essential stolidity, that Saxon aversion for the theatrical. The sc.r.a.pe of his chair as he thrust it back shattered the silence. 'I'm going out for a breath of air.' His voice trembled slightly. That was the only indication of the angry turmoil inside him that and his eyes, which showed bright and angry in the creases of fat. His cheeks quivered slightly as he turned from the table. He shut the door quite softly behind him and his footsteps rang on the frozen earth outside and then died away into the woods.

The three of us sat there for a moment in a stunned silence. Then Saeton said, 'You'd better go and talk to him, Diana. I don't want him walking out on me. Without him, we'd be lost.'

'Can't you think of anything but your engines?' The violence of her emotion showed in her voice and in her eyes.

He looked at her then. There was something in his face I couldn't fathom - a sort of bitterness, a mixture of desire and frustration. 'No,' he said. The one word seemed drawn out of the depths of his being.

Diana leaned quickly forward. Her face was white, her eyes very wide and she was breathing as though she were making a last desperate effort in a race. 'Bill. I can't go on like this. Don't you understand'

'I didn't ask you to come here,' his voice rasped. 'I didn't want you here.'

'Do you think I don't know that?' She seemed to have forgotten my presence entirely. Both of them had. Their eyes were at grips with each other, face to face with something inside them that had to come out. 'But I'm here. And I can't go on like this. You dominate everything. You've dominated me. I don't care how long you're away. But I can't' She stopped then and looked at me as though aware of my presence for the first time.

I started to get to my feet, but Saeton leaned quickly forward and gripped my arm. 'You stay here, Neil,' he said. I think he was scared to be left alone with her. Still gripping my arm as though clutching hold of something solid and reasonable, he turned and looked at her. 'Go and find Tubby,' he said. His voice was suddenly cold and unemotional. 'He needs you. I don't.'

She stared at him, her lips trembling. She wanted to fight him, to beat at his resistance till it was down. But I think the essential truth of his words struck home, for suddenly there were tears in her eyes, tears of anger, and she turned and fled from the room. We heard the door of her room slam and it m.u.f.fled the sound of her sobs.

Saeton's fingers slowly released their grip of my wrist. 'd.a.m.n all women to h.e.l.l!' he muttered savagely.

'Do you want her?' I had put the question without thinking.

'Of course I do,' he answered, his voice tight as a violin string and trembling with his pa.s.sion. 'And she knows it.' He gave a growl of anger and got to his feet. 'But it isn't her I want. Any woman would do. She knows that, too - now.' He was pacing up and down and I saw him feel automatically in his pocket for a cigarette. 'I've been lost to the world up here too long. G.o.d! Here I am with the future almost within my grasp, with everything I've dreamed of coming to the verge of reality, and it can all be thrown in jeopardy because a woman senses my primitive need.'

'You could send her away?' I suggested.

'If she goes, Tubby goes, too. Tubby loves her more than he loves himself or his future.' He turned and looked at me. 'And Diana loves him, too. This is merely' He hesitated. And then almost bitterly, 'You know, Neil, I don't think I'm capable of love. It isn't a word I understand. Else knew that. I thought she'd see me through this period of monasticism. But when it came to the point, she wanted something I wasn't prepared to give her.' He laughed harshly. 'Diana is different. But she's got Tubby. She's driven by nothing more than an urge for excitement. There's that in women, too. The constant craving for novelty, conquest. Why the h.e.l.l can't she be satisfied with what she's got already?' His hand gripped my shoulder. 'Go and find Tubby, will you, Neil. Tell him.. . Oh, tell him what you like. But for Christ's sake smooth him down. I can't get this engine to the flying stage. Nor can you. He's been in it from the beginning. The prototype didn't work, you know. For months I studied engineering, made inquiries, picked other people's brains. I produced a modified version, flew it in an old Hurricane and crashed it. Then I found Tubby and with his genius for improvisation we built one that worked. Go and talk to him. He's got to stay here, for another month at any rate. If he doesn't, you've lost your money.'

I found Tubby in the hangar and I think it was then that I first really admired him. He was quietly working away, truing up a bearing a.s.sembly that had been giving trouble. He stopped me before I could say anything. 'Bill sent you to talk to me, didn't he?'

I nodded. ,

He put the bearing down. 'Tell him that I understand.' And then, more to himself than to me: 'It's not his fault. It's something Diana wants that he's got. It was there inside her before she ever came here - a restlessness, an urge for a change. I thought by bringing her up here' He moved his hand in a helpless gesture. 'It'll work itself out. She ought to have had a child, but' He sighed. 'Tell Bill it's all right. I won't blame him so long as he gives me no cause. It'll work itself out,' he repeated. And then added quietly: 'In time.'

Saeton left next morning on the old motor bike which was their sole form of transport. And it was only after he'd gone that I realised how much the whole tempo of the place depended on him. Without the driving enthusiasm of his personality it all seemed flat. Tubby worked with the concentration of a man trying hard to lose himself in what he was making. But it was a negative drive. For myself I found the rime hang slowly on the hands of my watch and I determined to go down to the farm that evening and make it up with Else. Somehow I hadn't been able to get her out of my mind. I think it was her presence in the hangar with Saeton that first night that I'd arrived at Membury that intrigued me. The obvious explanation I had proved to be wrong. Now, suddenly, I was filled with an urgent desire to get at the truth. Also I was lonely. I suppose any girl would have done - then. But she was the only one available and as soon as Tubby and I knocked off I went down to the Manor.

The kitchen curtains were drawn and when I knocked at the door it wasn't Else who opened it. A small, grey-haired woman stood framed against the light, a swish of silk at her feet and the scent of jasmine clinging on the air. 'I was looking for Else Langen,' I explained awkwardly.

She smiled. 'Else is upstairs dressing. Are you from the aerodrome? Then you must be Mr Eraser. Won't you come in? I am Mrs Ellwood.' She closed the door behind me. 'You must find it very cold up at the airfield now. I really think Mr Saeton should get some proper heating put in. I've told him, any time he or his friends want a little home comfort to come over and see us.

But he's always so busy.' We were in the kitchen now and she went over to the Aga cooker and stirred vigorously at the contents of a saucepan, holding her dressing-gown close around the silk of her dress. 'Have you had dinner, Mr Fraser?'

'No. We have it later'

'Then why not stay and have some food with us? It's only stew, but' She hesitated. 'I'm cook tonight. You see, we're going to the Red Cross dance at Marlborough. It's for Else, really. Poor child, she's hardly been anywhere since she came to us. Of course, she's what they call a D.P. and she's here as a domestic servant - why do they call them D.P.s? - it's so depressing. But whether she's a servant or not, I don't think it right to keep a young thing shut away here without any life. You people at the aerodrome are no help. We never see anything of you. And it is lonely up here. What do you think of Else? Don't you think she's pretty, Mr Fraser?'

'I think she's very pretty,' I murmured.

She c.o.c.ked an eye at me. She was like a little grey-haired sparrow and I had a feeling that she missed nothing. 'Are you doing anything tonight, Mr Fraser?'

'No, I was just going to'

'Then will you do something for me? Will you come to this dance with us? It would be a great kindness. You see, I had arranged for my son, who works with the railways at Swindon, to come over, but this afternoon he rang up to say he had to go to London. I wouldn't mind if it were an English girl. But you know what country places are. And after all' - she lowered her voice - 'she is German. It would be a kindness.'

'But I've no clothes,' I murmured.

'Oh!' She waved the spoon at me like a little fairy G.o.dmother changing me into evening clothes on the spot. 'That's all right, I'm certain. You're just about my son's size. Come along and we'll see.'

And of course the clothes fitted. It was that sort of a night. By the time I had changed the three of them were a.s.sembled in the big lounge hall. Colonel Ellwood was pouring drinks from a decanter that sparkled in the firelight. He was a tall, very erect man with grey hair and a long, serious face. His wife fluttered about with a rustle of silk. And Else sat in a big winged chair staring into the fire. She was dressed in very deep blue and her face and shoulders were like marble. She looked lonely and a little frightened. She didn't look up as I came in. She seemed remote, shut away in a world of her own. Only when Mrs Ellwood called to her did she turn her head. 'I think you know Mr Eraser.' She saw me then and her eyes widened. For an awful moment I thought she was going to run from the room, but then she said, 'Good evening,' in a cold, distant voice and turned back to the fire.

She hardly said a word all through dinner and when we were together in the back of the car she drew away from me and sat huddled in her corner, her face a white blur in the reflected light of the headlights. Not until we were dancing together in the warmth of the ballroom did she break that frigid silence and then I think it was only her sense of loneliness in that alien gathering that made her say, 'Why did you come?'

'I was lonely,' I said.

'Lonely?' She looked up at me then. 'You have your - friends.'

'I happen to work there - that's all,' I said.

'But they are your friends.'

'Three weeks ago I had never met any of them.'

She stared at me. 'But you are a partner. You put up money.' She hesitated. 'Why do you come here if you do not know them?'

'It's a long story,' I answered and holding her close in the swing of the music I suddenly found myself wanting to tell her. But instead I said, 'Else. 1 want to apologise for the other night. I thought' I didn't know how to put it, so I said, That first night I came to Membury - why were you in the hangar with Saeton?'

Her grey eyes lifted to my face and then to the cut on my forehead. 'That also is a long story,' she said slowly. And then in a more friendly tone: 'You are a strange person.'

"Why did Saeton think I was a friend of yours that night?' I asked. 'Why did he call to me in German?'

She didn't answer for a moment and I thought she was going to ignore the question. But at length she said, 'Perhaps I tell you some day.' We danced in silence for a time. I have said that she was a big girl, but she was incredibly light on her feet. She was like thistledown in my arms and yet I could feel the warm strength of her under my hand. The warmth and the music were going to my head, banis.h.i.+ng loneliness and the tension of the past weeks. 'Why did you come to the farm tonight?' she asked suddenly.

'To see you,' I answered.

'To apologise?' She was smiling for the first time.,, 'You did not have to.'

'I told you - I was lonely.'

'Lonely!' Her face seemed to harden. 'You do not know what that word means. Please, I would like a drink.' The music had stopped and I took her over to the bar. 'Well, here is to the success of those engines!' Her tone was light, but as she drank her eyes were watching me and they did not smile. 'Why do you not drink? You are not so crazy about those engines as Mr Saeton, eh?' She used the word crazy in its real sense.

'No,' I said.

She nodded. 'Of course not. For him they are a part of his nature now - a great millstone round his neck.' She hesitated and then said, 'Everyone makes for himself on this earth some particular h.e.l.l of his own. With Saeton it is these engines, ja?' She looked up into my face again. 'When are they finished - when do you fly them?'

I hesitated, but there was no reason why she shouldn't know. Living so close at the Manor she would see us in the air. 'With luck we'll be in the air by Christmas. Airworthiness tests are fixed for the first week in January.'

'So!' A sudden mood of excitement showed in her eyes. 'Then you go on to the . I hope your friend Saeton is happy then.' Her voice trembled slightly. She was suddenly tense and the excitement in her eyes had changed to bitterness.

'Why are you so interested in Saeton?' I asked her.

'Interested - in Saeton?' She seemed surprised, almost shocked.

'Are you in love with him?' I asked.

Her face hardened and she bit at her lower lip. 'What has he been saying?'

'Nothing,' I answered.

'Then why do you ask me if I am in love with him? How can I be in love with a man I hate, a man who has' She stopped short, staring at me angrily. 'Oh!' she exclaimed. 'You are so stupid. You do not understand nothing - nothing.' Her fingers were white against the stem of the gla.s.s as she sought for words.

'Why do you say you hate him?' I asked.

'Why? Because I offer him the only thing I have left to offer - because I crawl to him like a dog' Her face was suddenly white with anger. 'He only laugh. He laugh in my face, I tell you, as though I am a common Nutte.' She spat the word out as though she were hating herself as well as Saeton. 'And then that Carter woman comes. He is a devil,' she whispered and then turned quickly away from me and stared miserably at the crowded bar. 'You talk of loneliness! That is what it is to be lonely. Here, with all these people. To be away from one's own people, a stranger in a'

'You think I don't understand,' I said gently. 'I was eighteen months in a prison camp in Germany.'

'That is not the same thing. There you are still with your own peoples.'

'Not after I escaped. For three weeks I was alone in Germany, on the run.'

She stared up at me and gave a little sigh. 'Then perhaps you do understand. But you are not alone here.'

I hesitated, and then I said, 'More alone than I have ever been.'

'More alone than' She stopped and gazed at me unbelievingly. 'But why is that?'

I took her arm and guided her to a seat. I had to tell her now. I had to tell someone and she was a German, alone in England my story was safe with her. I told her the whole thing, sitting there in an alcove near a roaring fire with the sound of dance music in my ears. When I had finished she put her hand on mine. "Why did you tell me?'

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't know myself. 'Let's dance,' I said.

We didn't talk much after that. We just seemed to lose ourselves in the music. And then Mrs Ellwood came and said we must go as her husband had to start work early the next morning. In the car going back Else didn't talk, but she no longer shrank into her corner of the seat. Her shoulder leant against mine and when I closed my hand over hers she didn't withdraw. 'Why are you so silent?' I asked.

'I am thinking of Germany and what fun we could have had there - in the old days. Do you know Wiesbaden?'

'Only from the air,' I answered and then wished I had not said that as I saw her lips tighten.

'Yes, of course - from the air.' She took her hand away and seemed to withdraw into herself. She didn't speak again until the car was climbing the hill to Membury, and then she said very quietly, 'Do not come to see me again, Neil.'

'Of course I shall,' I said.

'No.' She said it almost violently, her eyes staring at me out of the darkness. Her hand gripped mine. 'Please try to understand. We are like two people who have caught sight of each other for a moment through a crack in the wall that separates us. Whatever the S.S. do to my father, I am still a German. I must hold fast to that, because it is all I have left now. I am German, you are English, and also you are working' She stopped and her grip on my hand tightened. 'I like you too much. Do not to come again, please. It is better so.'

I didn't know what to say. And then the car stopped. We were at the track leading up to the quarters. 'You can return the clothes in the morning,' Mrs Ellwood said. I got out and thanked them for the evening. As 1 was about to shut the car door, Else leaned forward. 'In England do you not kiss your partners goodnight?' Her face was a pale circle in the darkness, her eyes wide. I bent to kiss her cheek, but found her lips instead. 'Goodbye,' she whispered.

The Ellwoods were chuckling happily as they drove off. I stood watching until the red tail-light had turned into the Manor drive and then I went up the track to the quarters, wondering about Else.

It was to be nearly three weeks before I saw Else again, for Saeton returned the following evening with the news that the Air Ministry now wanted the plane on the airlift by 10th January, and airworthiness tests had been fixed for 1 January, and airworthiness tests had been fixed for 1st January. January.

In the days that followed I plumbed the depths of physical exhaustion. I had neither the time nor the energy for anything else. And it went on, day after day, one week dragging into the next with no let-up, no pause. Saeton didn't drive. He led. He did as long as we did at the bench, then he went back to the hangar, typing letters far into the night, ordering things, staving off creditors, running the whole of the business side of the company. My admiration for the man was boundless, but somehow I had no sympathy for him. I could admire him, but I couldn't like him. He was inhuman, as impersonal as the mechanism we pieced together. He drove us with the sure touch of a coachman who knew just how to get the last ounce out of his horses, but didn't care a d.a.m.n what happened to them in the end so long as he made the next stage on time.