Hammond Innes - Air Bridge

By the time Saeton came back with a police inspector and a sergeant I had the flame going and was cutting across a piece of scrap metal. ‘Just routine,’ the

Inspector said as he asked for our identity cards. He glanced at them idly, talking to Saeton all the time. ‘Thought we’d take a look round Membury before we packed it in. But he’ll be out of the district by now. Probably out of the country in some private plane. Still, we’ll just take a look round — in case. Quite a handy place, an old aerodrome, for a man to lie up.’ He handed back our cards. ‘No fear of his pinching your plane, anyway, sir. Can’t fly a plane with two of its engines missing, can you?’

‘No,’ Saeton answered and he didn’t join in the Inspector’s good-humoured laughter.

They left then and I put the flash-mask aside and got back to my lathe with a feeling that the last hurdle had been overcome. I was safe now. So long as I remained at Membury I was safe.

But as we worked on in the evening I was conscious of Carter watching me periodically from the other end of the bench. We knocked off at about eight. I was pretty tired by then and I might have felt depressed, but Saeton clapped his hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re a better acquisition than I’d dared to hope,’ he said, and that word of praise lifted me above physical tiredness. ‘It’s a pity though,’ he added.

‘What’s a pity?’ Carter asked.

‘That Dick Randall doesn’t know anything about engineering,’ he answered. ‘If he could understand just how much we’ve achieved in one single day with the three of us working without interruption for meal-getting, then he’d realise how close we are to success.’

It was cold outside the hangar and the biting north wind made the cut on ray forehead ache as though the bone had been smashed. Back at the quarters there was a smell of roasting chicken. We cleaned ourselves up and then gathered in the front room. The trestle table had been covered. It was only an old curtain, but it gave it a more friendly air. The table was laid for four. Saeton crossed to a cupboard and brought out glasses and a bottle of whisky. ‘I thought you were broke,’ Carter said.

Saeton laughed. ‘Only bankrupts can afford to be spendthrifts.’ But though he laughed, there was no laughter in his eyes. ‘No point in hoarding when Randall may sell us out tomorrow.’

The click of high-heeled shoes sounded on the concrete of the passage outside and Saeton sprang to open the door.

Diana Carter was such a contrast to her husband that she produced in me a sense almost of shock. She was a product of the war, a hard, experienced-looking woman with a wide, over-thick mouth and hennaed hair. There was nothing homely about her. She swept in, a flash of red dirndl skirt and tawny hair with eyes that matched the green of her jersey and a motion of the body that was quite uninhibited. Her glance went straight to Saeton and then fell to the bottle. ‘What are we celebrating, Bill?’ Her voice was deep and throaty with just the trace of an American accent.

‘The fact that we’re broke,’ Saeton answered, handing her a glass. ‘Randall’s selling us up tomorrow. Then you and Tubby can go and raise a family in peace.’

She made a face at him and raised her glass. ‘You’ll talk him out of it,’ she said. ‘But I’ll need some cur-tains, tablecloths, bed-linen and china. I’m not going to live in a pig-sty. And we’re short of beds.’ Her gaze had fastened on me. It was a curiously personal stare and her green eyes were a little too narrow, a little too close.

Saeton introduced us. Her eyes strayed to the adhesive tape across my forehead. But all she said was, “Where is he going to sleep?’

‘I’ll fix him up,’ Saeton answered.

She nodded, her gaze concentrated on him. ‘Two months, you said, didn’t you, Bill?’ There was a sort of breathlessness about her that contrasted pleasantly with the essentially masculine atmosphere of the hangar. And the gleam of excitement in her eyes made me think she found it more interesting keeping house for three men on this lonely airfield than sharing a flat in London with a girlfriend. ‘Who’s the girl that comes with the milk and eggs in the morning?’ she asked.

‘Oh, she works at the farm,’ Saeton answered carelessly. ‘Her name is Else.’

‘She behaved more like a camp-follower than a land-girl.’ She was looking at her husband as she said this, but then she switched her gaze back to Saeton. ‘Yours?’

‘Really, Diana!’ Saeton picked up the bottle and refilled her glass. ‘Have you managed to make the room opposite habitable?’

‘After nearly a day’s work — yes. Was she cook here before I came?’

‘She came in and did things for us in the evening sometimes,’ Saeton admitted. ‘By arrangement with the farm.’

‘I thought she looked at me like a cat that sees the cream whipped away from under her nose.’ It wasn’t said banteringly. Her tone was hard and her eyes searched her husband’s face. ‘I guess I dug in my heels just in time.’ There was a bitter clutching in her voice. She was the sort of woman who would always be wanting the thing that had just been put out of her reach. Slowly she turned and faced Saeton again. ‘Is she foreign? She has a queer way of talking.’

Saeton nodded. ‘Yes, she’s German. A D.P. Her name is Else Langen.’ He seemed reluctant to talk about her. ‘Suppose we have some food now, Diana?’

She nodded and finished her drink. As she turned to go, she paused. ‘So long as I’m here tell her to confine her activities to outside help.’

Saeton laughed. ‘I’ll tell her.’ And he went on chuckling quietly to himself after Diana had left the room, as though at some private joke.

To my surprise Diana proved to be a good cook. The meal was excellent, but before it was over the warmth of the oil stove and the whisky had made me drowsy. I’d had a long day and not much sleep the night before and as they were planning to start work again at seven, I decided to go straight to bed. Saeton fixed me up with a camp bed in one of the back rooms. But for a long time I lay awake, hearing the murmur of their voices. It wasn’t so much the cold that seeped up through the canvas of the bed that kept me awake as the fact that so much had happened since I had arrived at Membury. My mind was chock-full of half-digested impressions, all of them slightly fantastic, like a dream.

But the thing that stood out in my mind was that this was the beginning of a new life for me. I was safe up here at Membury. Whatever the future of Saeton’s outfit, it served my purpose. I’d stay here for a time and then, when the hunt had died down, I’d leave and get a job. I wouldn’t bother about flying. I’d go back to engineering. My day’s work had taught me that I was still an engineer, and there was no shortage of jobs for engineers.

The only thing that worried me as I drifted off to sleep was that Saeton’s company would pack up before it was safe for me to venture again into the outside world. All that seemed to stand between it and failure was the personality of the man. And yet, somehow, that seemed sufficient.

We breakfasted next morning at six-thirty. Diana got the meal for us, an old blue dressing-gown over her nightdress, her face freshly made-up. We ate in silence by the light of an oil lamp, the threat of foreclosure hanging bleakly over the table, like the reluctant daylight. Diana’s eyes kept straying to Saeton’s face as though searching for something there that she needed. He didn’t once look up. He ate with the fierce concentration of a man to whom the act of feeding is a necessary interruption to the day’s work. Tubby Carter, on the other hand, ate with a leisurely enjoyment.

As I went down the passage after breakfast to get my overalls, I passed an open door and paused at the sight of a bed made up on the floor in the far corner. Hanging on the wall was the jacket Saeton had worn the previous night. The man had given me his own camp bed. I don’t know whether this had any direct bearing on my actions later, but I know that at the time it made me feel part of a team and that from that moment I wanted Saeton to win out and get his plane on to the airlift.