David John - Flight from Berlin

They walked towards the Hindenburg. To the left of the field, the doorway of the nearest hangar was open, revealing the vast nose of the Graf Zeppelin. The tiny figures of some mechanics were making checks on a propeller-engine car, but otherwise the field and two hangars were deserted, giving a deep stillness to the place.

As they reached the ship the contours of the immense hull spread out above them like the surface of another planet. Eckener led Denham to a small ladder hanging down from the control car, and up they climbed into the nerve centre of the Zeppelin.

Inside, the fittings were of gleaming aluminium, like those of a rocket ship in Flash Gordon. An array of instruments controlled the ship’s course, speed, and buoyancy. Eckener pointed out each in turn. At the front of the bridge was the rudder wheel that steered with the aid of illuminated gyrocompasses; on the left was the elevator wheel, which maintained altitude and trim. Above these were the ballast control levers, and a gas-cell pressure gauge with warning lights that flashed-the very latest in long-distance airship-flight technology. A telegraph, like those on ocean liners, sent messages to the propeller-engine cars. But most dramatic of all, high, slanted windows surrounded the bridge, giving a superlative view onto the world: left and right, below, and far into the horizon, so that any approaching lightning storms could be circumnavigated. Everything smelled metallic and new.

Denham felt as if he were in a dream. In another life he’d have been a Zeppelin commander, he realised. The age of fast, luxury Zeppelin travel had begun. He imagined fleets of these giant ships linking the distant continents of the earth. Their time was at hand. They were the future.

‘How about a spin over the lake,’ he joked, knowing the ship couldn’t go anywhere without some three hundred ground crew present.

‘How would you like to fly next Saturday?’ Eckener said, slapping his shoulder. ‘The Hindenburg will make a pleasure trip over the opening ceremony of the Olympiad in Berlin. And in the meantime, enjoy a few days here on the lake, as my guest of course.’

‘I would like that very much,’ Denham said.

‘Excellent. There will be a movie crew on board, too.’

This man is the other Germany, Denham thought. The Germany of decent, kind people who stand like rocks against the flow of the times.

In the navigation room next to the bridge, Eckener motioned for him to sit at the chart table. A golden light burnished the dials and switches of the radio instruments. The old man’s face seemed rejuvenated in the sunset. At sixty-eight he had the appearance of a man years younger, though his hair and goatee beard were white. His face was large, jowly, and intelligent, with flinty blue eyes, one of which, disconcertingly, was higher than the other.

‘Let’s have a schnapps,’ he said, unlocking a drawer and taking out a bottle and two glasses. ‘I sometimes permitted the night watch a nip on board the Graf at the end of the shift. It gets very cold over the Atlantic in spring.’ They toasted each other in silence, and knocked it back. ‘And now, my dear Richard, I have something for you.’ He opened a cupboard beneath the table to reveal a small safe. ‘I keep a precious relic in this chest, but by rights it belongs to you.’ He turned the dial slowly. ‘The combination is five-ten-nineteen-thirty.’

Denham was puzzling over why the doctor should give away the numbers to his private safe, when it struck him. They made the date of his father’s death. Eckener removed a small felt bag and handed it over with what seemed to Denham a look of earnest pity. He opened it and a pocket watch fell into his hand.

‘I’ve been waiting for a chance to give it to you in person,’ Eckener said.

For a fleeting moment he had a sense that his father was present in the room, as though he’d slipped in through some fissure in time. The watch lay cool in his palm. He turned it over and saw in tiny engraved italics the words:

For Arthur Denham-On his retirement-Royal Airship Works-Cardington

An overpowering sense of love and loss welled inside him. His eyes filled, and hot tears rolled freely down his cheeks. Eckener put his arm around Denham’s shoulders.

‘You were young to lose your father.’

‘Not that young. I am forty next year.’

Denham fell silent for a while, staring at the watch as he turned it over in his hand.

‘I thought there was nothing…’

‘It was found near the site,’ Eckener said. ‘Somehow it must have been thrown clear.’

Later, as they walked back across the Zeppelin field in the gloaming, Denham turned to look again at the Hindenburg. Dully it reflected the purple light.

Eleanor, paddling her legs as hard as she could, strained against the rope that attached her waist to the side of the tiny swimming pool on deck. But it was no use. As the ship pitched and rolled, she found herself flailing in two feet of water at one end of the pool, with six feet at the other end, before it all slopped back the other way. She stood up and undid the rope.

‘Another twenty minutes, please.’ The women’s swimming coach was pacing the edge of the pool.

‘I can’t train like this.’

‘It’s the only pool we’ve got for the next few days.’

‘Yeah, with water straight from the goddamned icebergs.’

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘For a shower,’ Eleanor said, plucking up a towel. ‘And a cigarette.’

She headed along the deck, leaving a trail of wet footprints. A fresh wind had been blowing all afternoon, whipping spray from the crests of the waves high into the air. Patchworks of cloud skittered overhead, breaking now and then to admit flashes of hot sunshine that coloured the ocean a deep verdant green. The ship was making slow progress as it seesawed through the weight of wind and water.

As she turned the corner towards the stairs that led back to D deck- smack- her shoulder collided with a strapping blond running laps.

‘Hey, mister,’ she said, clutching her shoulder. ‘Oh. Sorry, Helen.’

‘No problem, sis,’ the woman growled and continued her lolloping stride.

Her guess was that poor Helen Stephens, the hundred-metre champion from Missouri, was forever being mistaken for a guy, but she didn’t seem to care. All the same, her flat-chested manliness was sure to raise eyebrows when they got to Berlin. Helen had even more brawn than her archrival, Stella ‘the Fella’ Walsh.

Eleanor washed her hair as best she could under the thin trickle, then slipped into her bathrobe and lit a Chesterfield. The cabin vibrated from the hum of the engines below. One by one, she pulled out the gowns hanging in the tiny closet, cocking her head as she appraised each in turn, before settling for a shining pearl grey chiffon number to wear with her white-sable stole. She laid it on her bed and was choosing some jewellery when Marjorie and Olive returned.

‘So, guys,’ she said, ‘how was your turn in the Olympic paddling pool?’

Marjorie stared at Eleanor, wide-eyed. ‘Is that what you’re wearing to dinner?’

‘Sure. Why, what are you wearing?’

‘Our team uniforms.’

Eleanor wouldn’t even be joining them for dinner if Mrs Hacker hadn’t ordered her to be present for Brundage’s speech. But she had no intention of sticking around afterwards for whatever entertainment the team had organised. The playwright Charlie MacArthur, whom she’d run into on deck earlier, had invited her to join him and his wife, Helen Hayes, for a little drink with the press corps up in first class. Now that sounded like a party worth going to.

There was a knock on the door, and the cabin boy entered, smirking, with Eleanor’s curling tongs.