Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  I hadn’t tasted cream in years and I was still eating when she returned. “You like to take some back with you? Mrs. Ellwood will not mind. She is a very ’ospitable woman.”

  “No. No thanks.” I should have to explain to Saeton where it had come from.

  She looked at me with a slight frown, but she made no comment. “Come. I take you to the pond. It is very funny there at night. The frogs croak and there are many wild things.”

  We went round behind the outbuildings, through the farmyard and out into a grass field. “There are mushrooms here in the autumn. What is your name?”

  “Neil. Neil Fraser.”

  “Do you like working at the airfield?”

  “Yes.” I spoke without thinking, conscious only of her nearness and of the fact that she hadn’t hesitated to come out with me.

  “It is going well, I hope?”

  “Yes. Very well.”

  “When will you have finished the engines?”

  I took her hand. Her fingers were warm and soft in mine. She raised no objection.

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What was it you asked?”

  “When will you finish? When do you fly?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “In about a month.”

  “So soon?” She fell silent. We were in the woods again now on a path that ran downhill. The night air rustled gently among the tall, spear-like shafts of the osiers. I tightened my grip on her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice, for she asked if I were a flier and then began to talk about her brother who had been in the Luftwaffe.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  She was silent for a moment, and then she said. “He is dead. He was shot down over England.” She glanced up at me, her face serious. “Do you think we shall ever be at peace—Germany and England?”

  “We’re at peace now,” I answered.

  “Oh, now! Now you are the victors. You occupy us with your troops. But it is not peace. There is no treaty. Germany is not permitted to join any international organisation. We cannot trade. Everything is taken from us.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t interested in a political argument. I didn’t want to be reminded that she was German. I just wanted her companionship, her warmth, the feel of her close to me. The screen of osiers parted and we were looking down a steep bank to a dew pond. It was fringed with reeds and the still surface in the centre was like a plate of burnished pewter reflecting the stars. “It is beautiful here, yes?” The cry of a night bird jarred the stillness and a frog croaked. The stillness and the wintry beauty of it brought the blood hammering to my throat. I reached out and caught her by the shoulder, twisting her round so that her neck lay in the curve of my arm. Then I bent and kissed her.

  For a moment she was limp in my arms, her lips soft and open against mine. Then her body became rigid and her mouth tightened. She fought me off with a sudden and intense fury. For a moment we struggled, but she was strong and my passion subsided with the obstinacy of her resistance and I let her go. “You—you——” She stood there speech less, panting with the effort she had made. “Because I am German and you are English you think I should lie on my back for you? Verfluchter Kerl! Ich kasse Sie!” She turned, tears of anger on her face, and fled up the path. In an instant the screen of osiers had swallowed her and I was alone by the pond with the protesting croak of the frogs.

  Saeton was just leaving when I got back to the quarters. “What have you been up to?” he said, looking up at me from under his shaggy eyebrows. “That cut of yours has opened up again.”

  I put my hand to my forehead and my fingers came away sticky with blood. Else must have scratched the scab as she fought me off. “It’s nothing,” I said. “A branch of a tree caught me, that’s all.”

  He grunted and went out into the night towards the hangar. As I passed the door of the Carters’ room I heard Diana say, “All right. But any time I like the Malcolm Club will …” I was back in the tense atmosphere of our own little world and I’d destroyed my one chance of escape. I went to bed feeling depressed and angry with myself, for Else had been right—I had treated her as though she were a piece of occupied territory to be bought for a bar of chocolate.

  The next day we had visitors. Diana rang through on the field telephone. “There’s an R.A.F. officer here and a Mr. Garside of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. They want to speak to Bill.” I had answered the phone and I passed on the message to Saeton. He jumped to his feet as though I’d cracked a stock whip. “Tell her they’re not to come up here. I’ll see them over at the quarters.” He searched quickly along the bench, picking up odd parts that lay amongst the junk at the back. “Tubby. Take these out the back somewhere and hide them. Go over the whole bench and see that there’s nothing left of the old engine here. I’ll hold them at the quarters for five or ten minutes.”

  “They may only have come to check over the plane prior to airworthiness tests,” Tubby said.

  “Maybe. But I’m taking no chances. You’d better keep in the background, Neil.”

  He hurried out of the hangar and Tubby searched frantically along the bench, picking up parts and stuffing them into a canvas tool bag. I stood watching him, wondering whether my identity had been discovered.

  Tubby had barely returned from hiding the bag when Saeton brought the two men into the hangar. “These are my two engineers,” he said. “Carter and Fraser. Tubby, this is Wing-Commander Felton, R.A.F. Intelligence, and Garside, Civil Aviation. Well, now, what exactly do you want to look at?” Saeton was forcing himself to be genial, but I could see by the way his head was hunched into his shoulders that he was angry.

  “Well, if you did take it, I don’t imagine you’d be fool enough to leave the prototype lying about,” the R.A.F. officer said. “We’d like to have a look at the design you’re working on.”

  “I’m sorry,” Saeton said. “That’s the one thing I can’t allow you to do. You can have a look at the finished engine, but the design remains secret until we’re in the air.”

  “You’re not being very helpful,” the Intelligence Officer said.

  “Why should I be?” Saeton demanded angrily. “A German company complains that an English concern is working on a pet project of their own and immediately they have the support of our own people and you come rushing up here to investigate.”

  “As far as I’m concerned the Germans can stew in their own juice,” Felton replied. “But they’ve persuaded Control Commission the matter needs investigating. My instructions come from B.A.F.O. H.Q. Garside here is acting at the direct request of Control Commission.”

  “Have the Rauch Motoren sent over the plans of their prototype?” Saeton asked.

  “No.”

  “Then how can you check from my plans whether I’ve lifted their design?”

  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 redrawn.”

  “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 pigeonhole 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 Dick,” 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 repetition 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 space of a small mess.

  But he had that essential stolidity, that Saxon aversion for the theatrical. The scrape 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 muffled the sound of her sobs.

  Saeton’s fingers slowly released their grip of my wrist. “Damn all women to hell!” 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 passion. “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. God! 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 hell 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 assembly 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 ever she came here—a restlessness, an urge for a change. I thought by bringing her 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 time 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.