Air Bridge Read online

  “Did you bring her here, Diana?” Saeton’s voice was harsh.

  “Yes. She wanted to see you.”

  “I don’t care who she wanted to see,” he stormed. “Get her out of here.” He got control of himself and turned to me. “Take her outside and find out what she wants. I won’t have people walking in and out of this place as though it were a railway station.” But almost immediately he changed his mind. “All right. I’ll talk to her.” He strode down the hangar. The girl hesitated, her eyes lingering a moment on the litter of the work bench, then she turned and followed him.

  “That’s a queer girl,” Diana said to her husband. “When Randall was here she hung around the quarters like a cat on hot bricks. After a time she went out on to the airfield, and the next I saw of her she came flying through the woods, her face white and her eyes wet with tears. Has she been in a concentration camp or something?”

  “Her father died in one,” Garter answered. “That’s all I know.”

  Saeton came back then, his face angry, the muscles at the side of his jaw swollen with the clenching of his teeth.

  “What did she want?” Diana asked.

  He didn’t appear to hear her question. He strode straight past her and seated himself at the bench again. “Will you bring lunch for the three of us up here at one-thirty,” he said.

  Diana hesitated. But his manner didn’t encourage questions. “All right,” she said and left the hangar. I turned back to my lathe, but all the time I was trying to remember the scrap of conversation I’d overheard that night in the hangar.

  Twice I glanced at Saeton, but each time his expression stopped me from putting the question that was on the tip of my tongue. At length I said, “Who is that girl?”

  His head jerked up. “That was Else,” he said.

  “What was her father’s work?”

  His fist crashed down on the bench. “You ask too many damned questions,” he shouted.

  I felt the shock of his violence as though it was a physical blow and went quickly over to the lathe. But a moment later he was at my side. “I’m sorry, Neil,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry if I lose my temper now and then.” His hand reached out and gripped my arm and he waved his free hand to the litter of parts on the bench. “I feel sometimes as though these were my organs and I was being slowly manufactured and pieced together. If anything happened to prevent the completion of the whole thing——” He didn’t finish and the grip on my arm slowly relaxed. “I’m a bit tired, that’s all. It’ll be like this until we’re in the air.”

  III

  TIME STOOD STILL for me on Membury aerodrome in the weeks that followed. November slid into December and I scarcely noticed it. We rose at six and started work at seven. There was coffee around eleven and we had our lunch and our tea at the work bench. Breakfast and dinner were the only meals we had back at the quarters, dinner anywhere between seven-thirty and nine according to how the work ran. Tempers were short and the working hours long, and though Diana Garter talked about Prince Charles and the fighting in Palestine and the opening of Tegel airport, it meant nothing to me, for I didn’t read the papers. My life was the cold, grey cavern of the hangar; I lived and dreamed engineering and the world outside Membury ceased to exist.

  And yet through it all ran a thread of pure excitement. Saeton never gave me a briefing on the engines. He left me to find out for myself and as the Satan Mark II, which was what he called it, took shape under our hands, my sense of excitement mounted.

  The difference lay mainly in the system of ignition and the method of fuel injection. High pressure injectors delivered filtered fuel to the combustion chambers. Injector timing replaced ignition timing and there was a complicated system for metering the fuel, the flow having to be adjusted constantly in relation to altitude. It was essentially a compression ignition motor and though it was a long way removed from the diesel design, it was soon clear to me that the man who had made the original design must have been a diesel expert.

  It took us just over five weeks to build that second engine and all the time it was a race—our skill against my bank balance, with the airlift date looming ever nearer.

  It was a queer life, the four of us alone up on that derelict airfield, held there by Saeton’s tenacity and the gradual emergence of that second engine. I got to know Tubby Carter and his wife well, and they were as different as two people could be. Maybe that was why they had got married. I don’t know. They were an oddly assorted pair.

  Tubby was a stolid, unimaginative man, round of face and round of figure with rolls of fat across his stomach and sides that gave him the appearance of a man-sized cupid when stripped. His nature was happy and friendly. He was one of the nicest men I have ever met, and one of the most uninteresting. Outside of flying and engineering, he knew nothing of the world, accepting it and ignoring it so long as it let him get on with his job. What had caused this un-enterprising son of a Lancashire poultry farmer to take to flying I never discovered. He had started in a blacksmith’s shop and when that closed down he had got a job in a foundry producing farm equipment. He was one of those men who shift along on the tide of life and the tide had drifted him into a motor factory and so into the engineering side of the aircraft industry. That he started to fly because he wanted to would have been quite out of character. I imagine it just happened that way and his stolidity would have made him an ideal flight engineer in any bomber crew.

  When I think of Tubby, it is of a happy child, whistling gently between his teeth. He was like a fat, cheerful mongrel, something of a cross between airedale and pug. His eyes were brown and affectionate and if he’d had a tail it would have wagged every time anybody spoke to him. But when I think of him as a man, then it is only his hands I remember. His hands were long and slender, and quite hairless like the rest of him—very different from Saeton’s hands. Give those hands a piece of metal and ask them to produce something out of it and he grew to man’s stature in an instant, all his being concentrated in his fingers, his face wreathed in a smile that crinkled his eyes, and his short, fat lips pursed as he whistled endlessly at the work. He was a born engineer, and though he was a child in other respects, he had a streak of obstinacy that took the place of initiative. Once he had been persuaded on a course of action, nothing would deflect him. It was this tenacity that made one respect as well as like him.

  His wife was so different it was almost unbelievable. Her father had been a railroad construction engineer. He had been killed when she was seventeen, crushed by a breakdown crane toppling on its side. In those seventeen years she had travelled most of America and had acquired a restless taste for movement and the atmosphere of the construction camps. Her mother, who had been half-Italian, had died in childbirth and Diana had been brought up in a masculine world. She had many of a man’s qualities—a decisiveness, the need of a goal to aim for and a desire for strong leadership. She was also a woman, with a good deal of the hot passion of the Italian.

  After her father’s death she became a nurse. And when Pearl Harbour came she was one of the first to volunteer for overseas service. She had come to England as a Waac in 1943 and had been stationed at a B17 station near Exeter. That was where she had met Tubby. They had met again in France and had been married at Rouen in 1945. Later she had worked for a short time in the Malcolm Club organisation, whilst Tubby was flying with Transport Command.

  I have said that she was a hard, experienced-looking woman. Certainly that was my first impression. But then I had expected somebody altogether younger and softer. She was several years older than Tubby and her life had not been an easy one. Her brother had been working for the Opel people in Germany, and with no family and no friends, she had been very much on her own in the big hospital in New York. She would never talk about this period. She had endless stories to tell of the railroad camps and of her service life in Britain, France and Germany. But I never heard her talk of her life in that New York hospital.

  Tubby she treated rather as a child
. I learned later that she had had an operation that had made it impossible for her to have any children of her own. Whether this had anything to do with it, I don’t know. But I do know this, that right from the start she was fascinated by Saeton. She breathed in the atmosphere of drive and urgency that he created as though it were life itself. I had a feeling that in him she found all the excitement of her girlhood again, as though he recreated for her the life she had led with her father on the railroads of America.

  But though I got to know these two well, Saeton himself remained a mystery. What his background was I never discovered. It was as though he had sprung like a phoenix from the flames of war complete with his looted engine and the burning dream of a freighter fleet tramping the airways of the world. He’d talk and he’d conjure visions, but he never talked about himself. He had been a test pilot before the war. He knew South America, particularly Brazil, and he’d flown for an oil company in Venezuela. He’d done some gold prospecting in South Africa. But as to who his family were, what they did and where he’d been born and brought up, I still have no idea. Nor have I any knowledge of how he came to be a pilot.

  He was the sort of person that you accept as a finished article. His personality was sufficient in itself. I felt no urge to rummage around the backstairs of his life. He seemed to have no existence outside of the engines. He even slept with them after that scene with Randall as though he were afraid an attempt might be made to steal them. When he had warned me that his temper would be short until we were in the air, it was no understatement. His moods were violent and when nervous or excited he used his tongue like a battering ram. I remember the day after I had promised to finance the company he came up to me as I was working at the lathe. “I think you agreed to cover us over the building period.” His voice was angry, almost belligerent. “I want some money.”

  I began to apologise for not having settled the financial details with him before, but he cut me short: “I don’t want your apologies. I want a cheque.” The rudeness of his tone jolted me. But it was typical of the man, and if I expected deference on account of my financial standing in the company he made it clear I wasn’t going to get it.

  He wanted the money right away to meet some bills and I had to go back to the quarters for my cheque book. That was how I first came into real contact with Else, the fifth character in this extraordinary story. She was standing at the entrance to the quarters, calling for Diana.

  “She’s just taken coffee up to the hangar,” I said.

  The girl turned at the sound of my voice. She wore the same brown overall that she’d worn the previous day when Diana had brought her to the hangar and in her hands she held four very still but sharp-eyed fowls. “I have bring these,” she said, making a slight movement of her hands that caused the one cockerel to beat his wings angrily.

  “I didn’t know we were having a feast to-night,” I said.

  “No, no. Mrs. Carter start to keep chicken for you, I think.” The girl’s voice, with its marked foreign accent, was like a breath of the old life, a reminder of brief meetings in bars and hotel bedrooms that is all in the way of memories that most pilots take out of the cities where they touch down.

  “She’ll be back in a minute,” I said. “If you and the chickens can wait.” I started to move through the door and then stopped and we stood there for a moment smiling at each other, not saying anything.

  “You are partners with Mr. Saeton now?” she said at last.

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and her gaze strayed to the trees that screened us from the hangar. Her face was rather square, the cheekbones high, the skin pale and dappled with freckles. Her nose tipped up slightly at the end as though she’d pressed it too often against windows as a kid. She wore no make-up and her eyebrows were thick and fair, like the untidy mop of her hair that blew in the wind. She turned to me slowly and her lips parted as though she were about to say something, but she just stood there looking up at me with a frown as though by staring at me she could resolve some riddle that puzzled her. Her eyebrows were dragged down at the corners and her eyes shifted from the adhesive tape on my forehead to meet mine with a direct, level gaze. They were the colour of mist in a mountain valley—a soft grey.

  “What were you doing up at the hangar the other night?” I had asked the question without thinking.

  Her lips moved slightly at the corners. She had a very mobile mouth. “Perhaps I ask you why you run away, eh?”

  For an instant I thought she had connected me with the police inquiries in the neighbourhood. But then she asked, “Are you an engineer?” and I knew it was all right.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you work on the engines with Mr. Saeton?”

  I nodded.

  “Then perhaps we meet again, yes?” She smiled and thrust the birds into my hands. “Will you please give these to Mrs. Carter.” She half-turned to go and then hesitated. “When you do not know what to do with yourself, perhaps you come and talk with me. It is very lonely up here sometimes.” She turned then and walked across the clearing and as I watched her disappear amongst the trees I felt excitement singing through my blood.

  The story of Else Langen was a jig-saw puzzle that I had to piece together, bit by bit. I asked Saeton about her that night, but all he’d say was that she was a German D.P. “Yes, but what’s her story?” I persisted. “Tubby says her father died in a concentration camp.”

  He nodded.

  “Well?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. “Why are you so interested in her?” he demanded. “Have you been talking to the girl?”

  “I had a few words with her this morning,” I admitted.

  “Well, keep clear of her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I tell you to,” he growled. “I don’t trust her.”

  “But you had her cooking here for you.”

  “That was——” He stopped and his jaw stiffened. “Have some sense,” he added. “The girl’s German and this engine we’re working on was first designed in Germany.”

  “Is that why you’re sleeping up at the hangar now?” I asked. “Are you suggesting that the girl——”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” he snapped. “I’m just telling you to keep clear of her. Or is it too much to expect you to keep your hands off a woman for five weeks?”

  The sneer in his voice brought me to my feet. “If you think——”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Neil. Sit down. All I’m asking you to do is not to get talking to anyone outside of the four of us here. For your sake as well as mine,” he added pointedly.

  I might have taken his advice if the monotony of our life hadn’t got on my nerves. Perhaps monotony is the wrong word. It was the tension really. The work itself was exciting enough. But we never relaxed. The four of us were cooped up together, never leaving the aerodrome, always in the same atmosphere of pressure, always in each other’s company. Within a fortnight the strain was beginning to tell. Tubby ceased to whistle at the bench and his round, cheerful face became morose, almost sulky. Diana did her best, but her chatter was hard and brittle against the solid background of long hours in the hangar. Saeton became impossible—tense and moody, flying into a rage at the slightest provocation or at nothing at all.

  The atmosphere got on my nerves. I had to find some relaxation, and automatically it seemed I began thinking of Else more and more often. It is very lonely up here sometimes. I could see the lift of her eyebrows, the smile in her eyes and the slight spread of the corners of her mouth. When you do not know what to do with yourself. … The invitation couldn’t have been plainer. I brooded over it at my work, and particularly I brooded over Diana’s suggestion that the girl had been a camp-follower. Saeton hadn’t denied it. In the end I asked Tubby about it. “I wasn’t interested in her, if that’s what you mean,” he answered. “I don’t go for foreign women.”

  “What about Saeton?” I asked.

  “Bill?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I wo
uldn’t know.” And then he added almost viciously. “They all fall for him. He’s got something that appeals to women.”

  “And she fell for him?”

  “She was always around before Diana came.” He glanced up at me from the fuel pump he was assembling and his eyes crinkled. “The monastic life getting you down? Well, you shouldn’t have much trouble with Else. Randall used to take her out in his car when he visited us up here.”

  It was a warm, soft night despite a clear sky and after dinner I said I’d take a stroll. Saeton looked across at me quickly, but he said nothing and a moment later I was striding through the still dampness of the woods, my heart suddenly light with the sense of relief at escaping at last from the atmosphere of the aerodrome. A track ran from the quarters down to the road and a little farther on I found the gates of the Manor. A light shone through the trees and the gentle putter of an electric light plant sounded across the silence of the lawns. An owl flapped like a giant moth to the shelter of the trees.

  I went round to the side of the house, and through an uncurtained window saw Else standing over a table rubbing salt into a large ham. Her sleeves were rolled up and her face was flushed. She was a big, well-built girl with a full bosom and wide shoulders. She looked soft and pleasant, working there in that big kitchen and I found myself tingling with the desire to touch her, to feel the warm roundness of her body under my hands. I stood there for quite a while, watching her, liking the capable movements of her hands and the glowing concentration of her features. At length I moved to the door and knocked.

  She smiled when she saw who it was. “So! You have become bored, eh?”

  “I thought you might like to come for a walk,” I said. “It’s a warm night.”

  “A walk?” She looked up at me quickly. “Yes. Why not? Come into the kitchen whilst I go and dress myself in some clothes.”

  It was a big kitchen, warm and friendly, with bacon hanging from hooks in the ceiling and bunches of dried herbs and a smell of chicken. “You like cream?” She produced a bowl full of thick cream, a loaf of bread and some home-made jam. “Help yourself, please. I will be one minute, that is all.”