Hammond Innes - Air Bridge

‘Has this happened before?’ I asked thickly.

‘What?’ Her words were half-obscured by the flannel.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said quickly and turned to face the curtains again, the sight of her still a vivid picture on the retina of my brain.

She came and stood over me. I didn’t hear her come across the room, for her feet were bare. I just sensed her standing there, looking down at me. Her fingers touched my hair.

‘Sometimes I think you are very young, Neil. You do not know much about life. Or perhaps it is because we live among the ruins and when you do that you have not many conventions left. Life is very primitive in Berlin — like when we are in a yacht or up in the mountains.’ She turned away with a little sigh. ‘You would have liked it here in Germany before the war.’

She was dressed by the time the old woman brought breakfast up. ‘It is not much,’ Else said, as she handed me a plate of dark bread with a small piece of butter. ‘But you will become accustomed to that if you stay here long.’

I hardly recognised her as the same person. She wore no make-up and she was padded out underneath a dirty raincoat so that she had no shape. Only her hair looked the same, golden silk fa the soft glow of the lamp.

At ten to six she pulled on an old brown beret. ‘Now I must go to catch the truck in the Kurfurstendamm. I think it is best if you do not go out. You have no papers and your shoes do not go with your Wehrmacht coat. Our police are very suspicious.’ I held the door open for her, huddled against the cold in my borrowed greatcoat. ‘Do not worry. I will find some way to get your friend out.’

I touched her hand. It was very cold. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very kind and understanding.’

‘I am not being kind,’ she said almost sharply. ‘I am doing this for myself. I would like to say differently, but-’ She stared at me, her eyes very wide and troubled-looking. ‘But it is the truth.’ Her hand tightened on mine. ‘One thing I wish you to know, however, I am glad it is something you want also. I am glad we both want this.’ She said it quite fiercely as though she were angry with herself for what had gone before. Then she reached up and kissed me, pressing her lips to mine as though this alliance were something she had wanted badly. ‘Do not worry. I fix something.’

‘For tonight?’ I asked.

‘I hope so.’

She smiled and slipped out through the door. ‘Do not go out — please.’ Her footsteps sounded, quick and light on the stairs, disappearing into the dark vault of the house. I heard the front door open and close. Then there was silence and I shut the door and went back into the lamplit room that was so full of the girl who had just left me.

For some time I wandered round it, conscious of the alien heaviness of the furniture, of the photographs and particularly of her things that lay strewn about — clothes, books, sewing, an empty silver cigarette box, hair brushes, washing things, old papers, the tumbled bedclothes, her nightdress and the slippers she’d worn, all the litter of things that were Else when she herself was not there.

It was the photographs that I returned to. They were mostly of a big man with a short pointed beard and a high, domed forehead curving back to a mane of white hair. It was her father and the quiet, serious features with the slight droop at the corners of the mouth, the rather blunt nose and the lines of thought that furrowed the broad forehead reminded me of Else when she was puzzled by something. There was the suggestion of a twinkle in the lines at the corners of the eyes. But the face had none of Else’s fierceness and passion. That she had got from her mother. Professor Meyer was a deeper, more thoughtful person than his daughter. This was particularly noticeable in the photographs of the two of them together. These were holiday snaps taken whilst climbing or on skis. But though the photographs showed her faults more clearly, I was glad of the opportunity to study her father. It explained so much of her that had puzzled me and I could understand more clearly her passionate loyalty to the work that she and this old man who was now dead had done together.

Very conscious of Else’s presence in that room I returned to the couch and for a long time lay huddled under the blankets thinking about her and the peculiar relationship that was developing between the two of us. I tried to analyse my feelings, but I couldn’t and in the end I went to sleep.

I didn’t get up until past midday. The sky was overcast, the battered buildings opposite black in the bitter cold. Overhead the airlift planes droned steadily, but I could not see them. The old woman brought me some food — bread and some soup that was chiefly potatoes. She didn’t attempt to talk to me. There was a barrier between us that was something more than a question of race. I found the answer in an old photograph album tucked away in a bookshelf, a picture of a little girl and an attractive, middle-aged nurse; underneath was written in an awkward, childish hand — Ich und Anna. By five o’clock the light was fading and I could no longer decipher the unaccustomed German print of the book I was reading. I began to pace the room, wondering whether Else would have found transport to take me into the Russian Zone. My mood was a queer mixture of impatience and fear. It was bitterly cold.

Just after six I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. I checked in my pacing and listened. This wasn’t the clumsy sound of wooden clogs on bare boards. It was a man’s tread and he wore shoes. He didn’t belong to the building.

The footsteps stopped on the landing outside and the old woman’s clogs shuffled to the bedroom door. ‘I do not know why she is not back already,’ she said in German. ‘But you can wait for her in her room.’

‘Will she be long?’ the man asked. His German was too lazy, too soft. In a panic I looked round for some place to conceal myself. But I was still standing in the middle of the room when the door opened.

‘She always return at five. I do not know what has happened.’ There was a knock at the door and the old woman opened it without waiting for permission. ‘The gentleman here speaks your language. Perhaps you can talk to him while you are waiting for Fraulein Meyer.’

I had backed away towards the window. The old woman stood aside and Else’s visitor came in. I saw his brown boots and the olive khaki of his trousers — an American. And then I looked at his face. ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. It was Harry Culyer — Diana’s brother. ‘How did you know where I was?’

He stopped, staring at me. ‘What makes you think I did, Fraser?’

‘Didn’t Diana send you?’ I asked.

‘Diana? No, of course not.’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘I might ask you the same question.’ His gaze travelled quickly over the room, missing nothing and finally coming to rest on the Wehrmacht greatcoat I was wearing. ‘So this is where you’re hiding up. They told me at Gatow you’d disappeared from the sick bay.’

‘You’ve been to the airport — today?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve just come from there.’

‘Did you see Diana?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘She knows the truth now, doesn’t she?’ There was a puzzled frown on his face and I added quickly, ‘She knows Tubby is alive now. She knows that, doesn’t she?’ My hands were sweating and I was almost trembling as I put the question.

‘Alive? You know as well as I do he’s dead.’ He was leaning slightly forward, and his grey eyes were no longer friendly. ‘So it’s true what they told me about you.’

‘What did they tell you?’

‘Oh, just that you were a sick man. That’s all.’ He had thrown his hat on to the couch and he lowered his long body down beside it. ‘When will the Meyer girl be back? I guess I must just have missed her at the airport.’