Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  We didn’t knock off that night till past ten. By then the two engines were in position. All we had to do the next day was connect them up, fix the airscrews and prepare the plane for the first test. “Think she’ll make it, Tubby?” Saeton asked.

  “She’d better.” Tubby spoke through his teeth and there was a gleam in his eyes as he stared up at the plane as though already he saw her winging into Gatow on those two engines we had sweated blood to produce.

  I knew then that everything was all right. In one day Saeton had quietly and unobtrusively overlaid Tubby’s bitterness with enthusiasm for the plane and an overwhelming interest in the outcome of the flight.

  December 28—a Tuesday—was the last day of preparation. As the light faded out of the sky we slid back the doors of the hangar and started up the two motors. The work bench whitened under a film of cement dust kicked up by the backlash of the two props. Nobody cared. Tubby and I stood in the dust and grinned at each other as Saeton revved the motors and the whole fuselage quivered against the grip of the brakes. As the noise died down and the props slowly jerked to a standstill, Tubby gripped my arm. “By God!” he said. “They work. It’s good to see something you’ve made running as smoothly as that. I’ve never built an engine from scratch before,” he added.

  We were building castles in the air that night as we sat over the remaining bottle of Scotch. The airlift was only our springboard. Between us we swept past the work-out into the airways of the world. Saeton’s imagination knew no common bounds. He drew a picture for us of planes tramping the globe, able to cut steamer rates as well as steamer schedules, of a huge assembly line turning out freighters, of a gigantic organisation running freight to the ultimate ends of the earth. “The future of the passenger plane lies in jets,” he said. “But freight will go to any company that can offer the lowest rates.” He was standing over us and he leaned down, his eyes shining, and gripped the two of us by the shoulder. “It’s queer. Here we are, just three ordinary types—broke to the wide and living on credit—and to-morrow, in the air over this derelict airfield, we shall fly the first plane of the biggest freight organisation the world has ever seen. We’re going to be the most talked-of people in the world in a few months’ time. It’s been tough going up here.” He grinned. “But not half as tough as it’s going to be. You’ll look back on this period as a holiday when we start to get organised.”

  And then, with one of those abrupt changes of mood, he sat down. “Well, now, let’s get to-morrow sorted out. To begin with I’d rather not taxi out of the hangar. You never know, something may go wrong and she may swing. Neil. You know the Ellwoods. Suppose you go down and arrange for them to send one of their tractors up here. I’d like it here by eight.” He turned to Tubby. “Ground tests will take most of the morning I expect. But I’d like to be in the air by midday. How are we fixed for petrol? Are all the tanks full?”

  Tubby shook his head. “No. Only the main tanks. They’re about two-thirds full.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “What about checking over the controls?” Tubby asked. “I’d like to run over the plane itself.”

  “We did it after she was flown in,” Saeton said.

  “Yes, I know, but I feel——”

  “We haven’t time, Tubby. She came in all right and we went over her before we finally closed the purchase. If she was all right then, she’s all right now. Neil, go and fix that tractor, will you? The sooner we get to bed the better. I want everyone to be fresh to-morrow.” He jerked back his chair and got to his feet. “A lot depends on it.” He pushed his hand through his thick hair and grinned. “Not that I shall get much sleep. I’m too darned excited. I haven’t felt so excited since I did my first solo. If we pull this off——” He laughed nervously as though he were asking too much of the gods. “Good-night.” He turned quickly and went out.

  I glanced at Tubby. He was tying endless knots in a piece of string and humming a little tune. He was nervous, too. So was I. It wasn’t only the test flight. For me there was the future. Membury had been a refuge, and now the outside world was crowding in on us. I pushed back my chair. “I’ll go and arrange about the tractor,” I said, but I was thinking of Else. I needed to feel that there was somebody, just one person in the world that cared what happened to me.

  The Manor seemed in darkness, but I could hear the sound of the light plant and when I rang Else opened the door to me. “I was afraid you might have gone already,” I said.

  “I leave on Monday,” she said. “You wish to come in?” She held the door open for me and I went through into the lounge where a great log blazed in the open hearth. “Colonel and Mrs. Ellwood have gone out for this evening.” She turned quickly towards me. “Why have you come?”

  “I wanted to arrange with Colonel Ellwood for a tractor to-morrow.”

  “To bring the airplane out of the hangar?”

  I nodded. “We’re flying tests to-morrow.”

  “Das ist gut. It will be good to see those engines in the air.” Her tone was excited. “But——” She hesitated and the excitement died out of her, leaving her face blank and miserable. “But he will not be here to see.” She turned back to the fire and almost automatically took a cigarette from the box on a side table and lit it. She didn’t speak for a long time, just standing there, drawing the smoke into her lungs and staring into the fire. Something told me not to say anything. Silence hung between us in the flickering firelight, but there was nothing awkward about it. It was a live, warm silence. And when at length she spoke, the intimacy wasn’t broken. “It has been such a long time.” The words were whispered to the fire. She was not in the room. She was somewhere far away in the reaches of her memory. She turned slowly and saw me again. “Sit down, please,” she said and offered me a cigarette. “You remember I ask you not to come here again?”

  I nodded.

  “I say that a wall separates us.” She pushed back her hair with a quick, nervous gesture. “I was afraid I will talk to you because I am too much alone. Now you are here and——” She shrugged her shoulders and stared into the fire again. “Have you ever wished for something so much that nothing else matter?” She didn’t seem to expect a reply and after a moment she went on. “I grew up in Berlin, in a flat in the Fassenenstrasse. My mother was a cold, rather nervous person with a passion for music and pretty clothes. My brother Walther, was her life. She lived through him. It was as though she had no other existence. My father and his work did not mean anything to her. She knew nothing about engineering.” She shifted her gaze from the fire and stared at me with a bitter smile. “I think I was never intended to be born. It just happened. My father never spoke about it, but that I think is what happen, for I was born eight years after my brother when my mother was almost forty.” Her smile ceased suddenly. “I think perhaps it was a painful birth. I grew up in a world that was cold and unfriendly. I seldom saw my father. He was always working at some factory outside Berlin. When I left school I took a secretarial course and became a typist in the Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz A.G. There I fell in love with my boss.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It was not difficult for him. I had not had much love. He took me away to Austria for the ski-ing and for a few months we shared a little apartment—just a bedroom really. Then he got bored and I cried myself into a nervous breakdown. That was when I first really met my father. My mother did not wish to be bothered with me, so she sent me to stay with him in Wiesbaden. This was in 1937.”

  Her gaze had gone back to the fire. “My father was wonderful,” she went on, speaking slowly. “He had never had anyone to help him before. I looked after the flat and did all his typing. We made excursions down the Rhine and took long walks in the Black Forest. His hair was white even then, but he was still like a boy. And for my part, I became engrossed in his work. It fascinated me. I was not interested in men. I could not even bear for a man to touch me any more. I lived and breathed engineering, enjoying the exactness of it. It was something that had substance, that I could belie
ve in. I think my father was very impressed. It was the first time he discover that women also have brains. He sent me to the University at Frankfurt where I took my engineering staatsexamen. After that I return to Wiesbaden to work as my father’s assistant in the engine works there. That was in 1941. We were at war then and my father is engaged on something new, something revolutionary. We work on it together for three years. For us nothing else matters. Oh, I know that my father does not like the régime, that he is in touch with old friends who believe that Germany is doomed under Hitler. But apart from the air raids, it is quiet at Wiesbaden and we work at the designing board and at the bench, always on the same thing.”

  She threw her cigarette into the fire. Her face was very pale, her eyes almost luminous in the firelight as she turned to me. “They came when we were working in the engine shop—two officers of Himmler’s S.S. They arrested him there in the middle of our work. They said he was something to do with the attempt on Hitler’s life. It was a lie. He had nothing to do with the conspiracy. But he had been in contact with some of the people who were involved, so they took him away. They would not even wait for me to get him some clothes. That was on the 27th July, 1944. They took him to Dachau and I never saw him again.” Her lips trembled and she turned away, stretching her hand down for another cigarette.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Nothing. There was nothing I could do. I try to see him, of course. But it is hopeless. I can do nothing. Suddenly we have no friends. Even the company for whom he has worked for so long can do nothing. The Herr Direktor is very sympathetic, but he has instructions not to employ me any more. So, I go back to Berlin, and a few days later we hear my father is dead. It means little to my mother, everything to me. My world has ceased. Within a month Walther also is dead, shot down over England. They give him the Iron Gross and my mother has a breakdown and I have to nurse her. Her world also is gone. Her son, the pretty clothes, the music and the chatter all have disappeared and the Russians take Berlin. I do not think she wished to live any longer after Walther’s death. She never leave her bed until she die in October of last year.”

  “And you looked after her all that time?” I asked, since she seemed to expect some comment.

  She nodded. “I have never been so miserable. And then, when she is dead, I begin to think again about my father and his work. I go to Wiesbaden. But the designs, the experimental work is all disappeared. There is nothing left. However, the Rauch Motoren is still in business and they are willing for me to try to——” Her voice died away as though she could not find the right words.

  “To try and recover the engines?” I suggested.

  “Ja.”

  “And that is why you are here at Membury?” It was so obvious now she had told me about her father, and I couldn’t help but admire her pluck and her tenacity.

  She nodded.

  “Why have you told me all this?” I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders and kicked at the big oak log, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. “I do not know.” Then she suddenly flung up her head and looked straight at me almost defiantly. “Because I am alone. Because I have always been alone since they took him away. Because you are English and do not matter to me.” She was like an animal that is cornered and has turned at bay. “You had better go now. I have told you, we are on two sides of a wall.”

  I got slowly to my feet and went towards her. “You’re very bitter, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Bitter?” Her eyes stared at me angrily. “Of course, I am bitter. I live for one thing now. I live for the day when my father’s work will be recognised, when he will be known as one of the greatest of Germany’s engineers.” The fire suddenly died out of her and she turned away from me. “What else have I to live for?” Her voice sounded desperately unhappy.

  I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder, but she shook me off. “Leave me alone. Do not touch me.” Her voice was sharp, almost hysterical. And then in a moment her mood changed and she turned towards me. “I am sorry. You cannot help. I should not have talked like this. Will you go now, please?”

  I hesitated. “All right,” I said. Then I held out my hand. “Good-bye, Else.”

  “Good-bye?” Her fingers touched mine. They were very cold despite the warmth of the fire. “Yes. I suppose it is good-bye.”

  “Will you give my message to Colonel Ellwood? We would like his heaviest tractor at the airfield at eight o’clock.”

  “I will tell him.” She lifted her eyes to mine. “And you fly the test to-morrow?” Her fingers tightened on my hand. “Alles gute!” Her eyes were suddenly alive, almost excited. “I will watch. It will be good to see those engines in the air—even if no one know it is his work.” The last few words were little more than a whisper.

  She came with me to the door then and as she stood there framed in the soft light of the lounge, she said, “Neil!” She had a funny way of saying it, almost achieving the impossible and pronouncing the vowels individually. “If you come to Berlin sometimes I live at Number Fifty-Two, Fassenenstrasse. That is near the Kurfurstendamm. Ask for—Fraulein Meyer.”

  “Meyer?”

  “Ja. Else Meyer. That is my real name. To come here I have to have the papers of some other girl. You see—I am a Nazi. I belong to the Hitlerjugend before—before they kill my father.” Her lips twitched painfully. “Good-bye,” she said quickly. Her fingers touched mine and then the door closed and I was alone in the dark cold of the night. I didn’t move for a moment and as I stood there I thought I heard the sound of sobbing, but it may only have been the wind.

  It was a long time before I got to sleep that night. It was such a pitiful story, and yet I couldn’t blame Saeton. I was English—she was German. The wall between us was high indeed.

  Next morning the memory of her story was swamped in the urgent haste of preparations for tests. It was a cold, grey day and it was raining. A low curtain of cloud swept across the airfield. But nobody seemed to mind. Our thoughts were on the plane. Apparently Else had delivered my message, for promptly at eight o’clock a big caterpillar tractor came trundling across the tarmac apron leaving a trail of clay and chalk clods on the wet, shining surface of the asphalt. We slid the hangar doors back and hitched the tractor to the plane’s undercarriage.

  It gave me a sense of pride to see that gleaming Tudor nose slowly out of the hangar. It no longer had the toothless grin that had greeted me every morning for the past five weeks. It was a complete aircraft, a purposeful, solid-looking machine, fully engined and ready to go. The tractor dragged it to the main runway and then left us.

  “Well, let’s get moving,” Saeton said and swung himself up into the fuselage. I followed him. Tubby wheeled out the batteries and connected up. First one engine and then another roared into life. Saeton’s hand reached up to the four throttle levers set high up in the centre of the windshield. The engine revs died down as he trimmed the motors. Tubby came in through the cockpit door and closed it. “What about parachutes?” he asked.

  Saeton grinned. “They’re back in the fuselage, you old Jonah. And they’re okay. I packed them myself last night.”

  The engines roared, the fuselage shivering violently as the plane bucked against the wheel brakes. I was in the second pilot’s seat, checking the dials with Saeton. Tubby was between us. Fuel, oil pressure and temperature gauges, coolant temperature, rev meters—everything was registering correctly. “Okay,” Saeton said. “Ground tests.” He released the brakes and we began to move forward down the shining surface of the runway. Left rudder, right rudder—the tail swung in response. Landing flaps okay. Tail controls okay. Brakes okay. For an hour we roared up and down the runways, circling the perimeter track, watching fuel consumption, oil indicators, the behaviour of the plane with four motors running and then with the two new inboard engines only. Tubby stood in the well between the two pilots’ seats, listening, watching the dials and scribbling notes on a pad.

  At length Saeton brought the p
lane back to the apron opposite the hangar and cut the engines. “Well?” he asked, looking down at Tubby. His voice seemed very loud in the sudden silence.

  For answer Tubby raised his thumb and grinned. “Just one or two things. I’d like to check over the injection timing on that starboard motor and I want to have a look at the fuel filters. We got a slight drop in revs and she sounded a bit rough.”

  Saeton nodded and we climbed out. As we did so I saw a movement in the trees that screened the quarters. It was Else. Saeton had seen her, too. “What’s that girl doing up here?” he muttered angrily. Then he turned quickly to me. “Did you tell her we were flying tests this morning?”

  “Yes.” I said.

  “I thought I warned you to keep away from her.” He glared at me as though I were responsible for her presence there on the edge of the airfield. Then he switched his gaze to the fringe of trees. Else had disappeared. “It’s about time the authorities took some action about her.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “She’s here on false papers. Her name isn’t really Langen.”

  “I know that—now,” I said. And then suddenly I understood what he was driving at. “Do you mean to say you’ve reported her to the authorities?”

  “Of course. Do you think I want her here, snooping around the place, sending reports to the Rauch Motoren. They’d no right to let her into the country.”

  “Haven’t you done that girl enough harm?” I said angrily.

  “Harm?” He glanced at me quickly. “How much do you know of her story?” he asked.

  “I know that it was her father who designed these engines,” I said. “She worked on them with him.” I caught hold of his arm. “Why don’t you come to terms with her?” I said. “All she really wants is recognition for her father.”