Hammond Innes: Air Bridge

‘Don’t be a fool! Get some breakfast inside you. You’ll feel better then.’

But I’d got to my feet. ‘I want to give myself up.’ My voice trembled. It was part anger, part fear. There was something wrong with this place. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the uncertainty of it. I wanted to get it over.

‘Sit down!’ He, too, had risen and his hand was on my shoulder, pressing me down. ‘Nervous reaction, that’s all.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my nerves.’ I shook his hand off and then I was looking into his eyes and somehow I found myself back in my seat, staring at my plate.

‘That’s better.’

‘What are you keeping me here for?’ I murmured. “What are you doing up here?’

‘We’ll talk about it after breakfast.’

‘I want to talk about it now.’

‘After breakfast,’ he repeated.

I started to insist, but he had picked up the paper and ignored me. A feeling of impotence swept over me. Almost automatically I picked up the knife and fork. And as soon as I’d started to eat I realised I was hungry — damnably hungry. I hadn’t had anything since midday yesterday. A silence stretched over the table. I thought of the trial and the prison sentence that must inevitably follow. I might get a year, possibly more after resisting arrest, hitting a police officer and stealing a car. The memory of those eighteen months in Stalag Luft 1 came flooding back into my mind. Surely to God I’d had enough of prison life! Anything rather than be shut up again. I looked across at Saeton. The sunlight was very bright and though I screwed up my eyes, I couldn’t see his expression. His head was bent over the newspaper. The quiet impassive way he sat there, right opposite me, gave me a momentary sense of confidence in him and as I ate a little flicker of hope slowly grew inside me.

‘When you’ve finished we’ll go up to the hangar.’ He lit a cigarette and turned to the inside of the paper. He didn’t look up as he spoke.

I hurried through the rest of the meal, and as soon as I’d finished he got up. ‘Put your jacket on,’ he said. ‘I’ll get your shoes.’

The air struck quite warm for November as we went out into the sunlight but there was a dank autumnal smell of rotting vegetation. A berberis gleamed red against the gold of the trees and there were some rose bushes half-covered with the dead stalks of bindweed. It had been a little garden, but now the wild had moved in.

We crossed the garden and entered a path leading through the woods. It was cold and damp amongst the trees though the trunks of the silver birch saplings were dappled with sunlight. The wood thinned and we came out on the edge of the airfield. The sky was crystal clear, bright blue with patches of cumulus. The sun shone white on the exposed chalk of a dispersal point. Far away, beyond the vast curve of the airfield, a line of hills showed the rounded brown of downland grass. The place was derelict with disuse — the concrete of the runways cracked and sprouting weeds, the buildings that dotted the woods half-demolished into rubble, the field itself all ploughed up for crops. Only the hangar, fifty yards away to our left, seemed solid and real.

‘What’s the name of this airfield?’ I asked Saeton.

‘Membury.’

‘What are you doing living up here on your own?’

He didn’t answer and we continued in silence. We turned the corner of the hangar and walked to the centre of the main doors. Saeton took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the wicket door that I’d pushed open the previous night. Inside, the musty smell of concrete and the damp chill was familiar. Both the inboard engines of the plane were missing. It had a sort of toothless grin. Saeton pressed his hand against the door till the lock clicked and then led the way to the back of the hangar where the workbench stretched along the wall. ‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a stool. He drew up another with his foot and sat down facing me. ‘Now then-’ He took my wallet from his pocket and spread the contents on the oil-black wood of the bench. ‘Your name is Neil Leyden Fraser and you’re a pilot. Correct?’

I nodded.

He picked up my passport. ‘Born at Stirling in 1915, height five-eleven, eyes brown, hair brown.

Picture quite flattering compared with what you look like at the moment.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Back and forth from the Continent quite a bit.’ He looked up at me quickly. ‘Have you taken many planes out of the country?’

I hesitated. But there was no point in denying the thing.

Three,’ I said.

‘I see.’ His eyes didn’t move from my face. ‘And why exactly did you engage in this somewhat risky business?’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘if you want to get me under cross-examination hand me over to the police. Why haven’t you done so already? Do you mind answering me that?’

‘No. I’m quite prepared to tell you why — in a moment. But until I have the answer to the question I’ve just asked I can’t finally make up my mind whether to hand you over or not.’ He leaned forward then and tapped my knee. ‘Better tell me the whole thing. I’m the one person, outside of the organisers of your little racket, who knows that you’re the pilot calling himself “Callahan”. Am I right?’ There was nothing I could say. I just nodded.

‘All right then. Either I can give you up or I can stay quiet. That places me in the position of judge. Now, why did you get mixed up in this business?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Why the hell does anyone get mixed up in something illegal? I didn’t know it was illegal. It wasn’t at first anyway. I was just engaged to pilot a director of a British firm of exporters. His business took him all over Western Europe and the Mediterranean. He was a Jew. Then they asked me to ferry a plane out. They said it was being exported to a country where the British weren’t very popular and suggested that for the trip I used a name that was more international. I agreed and on arrival in Paris I was given papers showing my name as “Callahan”.’

‘It was a French plane?’

‘Yes. I took it to Haifa.’

‘But why did you get mixed up with these people in the first place?’

‘Why the hell do you imagine?’ I demanded angrily. ‘You know what it was like after the war. There were hundreds of pilots looking around for jobs. I finished as a Wing Co. I went and saw my old employers, a shipbuilding yard on the Clyde. They offered me a £2 rise — £6 10s. a week. I threw their offer back in their faces and walked out. I was just about on my uppers when this flying job was offered to me. I jumped at it. So would you. So would any pilot who hadn’t been in the air for nearly a year.’

He nodded his head slowly. ‘I thought it’d be something like that. Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Engaged?’

‘No.’

‘Any close relatives who might start making inquiries if Neil Eraser disappeared for a while?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I answered. ‘My mother’s dead.

My father remarried and I’m a bit out of touch with him. Why?’

‘What about friends?’

‘They just expect me when they see me. What exactly are you driving at?’

He turned to the bench and stared for a while at the contents of my wallet as though trying to make up his mind. At length he picked up one of the dog-eared and faded photographs I kept in the case. ‘This is what interested me,’ he said slowly. ‘In fact, it’s the reason I didn’t ring the police last night and denied that I’d seen anything of you when they came this morning. Picture of you with W.A.A.F. girlfriend. On the back it’s got — September, 1940: Self and June outside our old home after taking a post-blitz cure.’ He held it out to me and for the first time since I’d met him there was a twinkle in his eyes. ‘You look pretty tipsy, the pair of you.’