Air Bridge

CHAPTER FOUR

It wasn’t until the following day that I realised how much Diana had been doing for us. It wasn’t only that she’d cooked our food, made our beds, kept the place clean and neat and done all the little odd jobs that are so boring and yet are an essential part of the act of living. She’d done more than that. By her brightness, her cheerfulness — her mere presence — she had cushioned the tense exhaustion of our effort. She had provided a background for us in which we could momentarily relax and gather strength for another day’s sustained effort. The place seemed flat without her.

I cooked the breakfast that morning. Tubby hadn’t got back until the early hours. He looked all in when I called him. His round, friendly face was hollow and drained of all its natural cheerfulness. And Saeton looked like death when he came across from the hangar. His face was grey and the corners of his eyes twitched nervously. He was suffering from a hangover.

But I think it was more than that. He was hating himself that morning. There was something inside of him that drove him on. It wasn’t exactly ambition. It was something more urgent, more essentially a part of his nature — a frustrated creative urge that goaded him, and I think he’d been fighting it through the long, drunken hours of the night. He wasn’t a normal human being. He was a cold, single-purposed machine. And I think that part of him was at war with his Celtic blood.

It was the grimmest Christmas I have ever had. We spent the day in bench tests on the new engine and in getting the first engine in position in the nacelle. The hangar was equipped with overhead gear for this purpose. It had been a maintenance hangar in the days when the Americans had had the aerodrome. Without that gear I don’t know how we should have done it. But no doubt Saeton had thought of that when he decided to rent the hangar. I was looking after the commissariat and though it was all canned food that I served it took time. I was thankful that we were so near the end of our work.

It wasn’t only the fact that Diana had gone. There was Tubby. No set-back ever discouraged him and his cheery grin had seen me through many bad moments. But now his end of the bench was silent. He didn’t whistle any more and there was no friendly grin to cheer me. He worked with stolid, urgent drive as though the work itself, as well as Saeton, stood between him and his wife. It was only then that I realised how much I had leaned on his good-natured optimism. He had never asked me any questions. To this day I don’t know how much he knew about me. He had just accepted me and in his acceptance and in his solid ordinariness he had created an atmosphere that had made the aerodrome reality and the past somehow remote.

That was all gone now. A sense of impermanence crept into the hangar as though we were on the fringe of the outside world and I began to worry about the future, wondering whether, when we flew out of Membury, the police would get on my trail again. I suddenly found myself in dread of the outside world.

That first day after Diana’s departure was hell. A tenseness brooded over us in the din of the hangar where the new engine was being run in on the bench. But on the following day Saeton had recovered from his hangover. He came down at six-thirty and got our breakfast. He didn’t talk much but a quiet, steadying confidence radiated from him. I never admired him more than I did then. The following day would see the work of installation completed. He was face-to-face with the first test flight. Three years of work were concentrated on the results of that one day. The previous flying tests had resulted in the plane crashing and the man’s nerves must have been stretched to the uttermost. But he never showed it. He set out to instil confidence in us and renew our interest and enthusiasm. A forced cheerfulness would have been fatal. He didn’t make that mistake. He did it by the force of his personality, by implanting in us his own feelings. The mood sprang from deep within him and was natural and real. I felt as though he had stretched out his hand to lift me up to his own pitch of excitement. And Tubby felt it, too. It didn’t start him whistling again at his work and there was no good-natured grin, but as we heaved on the pulley chains to jockey the second engine into position for lowering into its nacelle I suddenly realised that his heart was in it again.

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 op 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 tomorrow, 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow.’ 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. ‘Goodnight.’ 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 tomorrow.’

‘To bring the airplane out of the hangar?’ I nodded. ‘We’re flying tests tomorrow.’ ‘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 skiing 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 believe in. I think my father was very impressed. It was the first time he discovered 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 regime, 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 Cross 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 died 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 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. ‘Goodbye, Else.’

‘Goodbye?’ Her fingers touched mine. They were very cold despite the warmth of the fire. ‘Yes. I suppose it is goodbye.’

‘Will you give my message to Colonel Ell wood? 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 tomorrow?’ 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 knows it is his work.’ The last few words were little more than 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 Hitler-Jugend 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 plane 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 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.’

He flung my hand off. ‘So she’s got round you, as she got round Randall — as she nearly got round me. She’s just a little tart trading her body for the glorification of the fatherland.’

I felt a sudden urge to hit him. ‘Don’t you understand anybody?’ I exclaimed through clenched teeth. ‘She loved her father. Can’t you understand that all she wants is recognition for his work?’

‘Recognition!’ He gave a sneering laugh. ‘It’s Germany she loves. They killed her father, bur still it is Germany she thinks of. She offered to be my mistress if I’d, allow the Rauch Motoren to manufacture the engines. My engines! The engines Tubby and I have worked on all these years! She traded on my weakness, on the fact that I was alone up here, and if Diana hadn’t come-’ He half-shrugged his shoulders as though shaking off something he didn’t like. ‘Her father has got about as much to do with these engines as you have.’

‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘it was his prototype you stole-’

‘Stole! Damn it, man, a country that has gone through what we have on account of the blasted Germans has a right to take what it wants. If Professor Meyer had completed the development of those engines-’ He stopped and stared at me angrily. ‘You bloody fool, Neil. Why waste your sympathy on the girl or her father? She was a good little Nazi till the S.S. took Meyer to Dachau. And Meyer was a Nazi too.’ His lips spread in a thin, bitter smile. ‘Perhaps you’re not aware that Professor Meyer was one of the men who developed the diesel engine for use in bombers. London is in his debt to the tune of many hundreds of tons of bombs. My mother was killed in the blitz of 1940.’ He turned away, his shoulders hunched, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and walked across the tarmac to the hangar. I followed slowly, thinking of the tangled pattern of motive that surrounded these engines.

For over an hour Tubby worked on the engine. Then he checked over the others. It was just on one o’clock when he climbed down and pulled the gantry away. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing more I can do.’

‘All right,’ Saeton said. ‘Let’s have a bit of food.’ His voice was over-loud as though by speaking like that he could convince us of his confidence. I glanced at the plane. The rain clouds had broken up and she was caught in a gleam of watery sunlight. It was one thing doing ground tests, quite another to commit ourselves to the take-off. But she looked just like any other

Tudor. It was difficult to realise, seeing her standing there on the tarmac, that this wasn’t to be a routine flight.

Saeton had brought a loaf and some cheese and butter up from the quarters. We ate it in the hangar, none of us talking, all of us, I think, very conscious of the emptiness of the place and of the aircraft standing out there on the apron waiting for us. As soon as we’d finished we got into our flying kit and went out to the plane. Saeton insisted we wear our parachutes.

Once more we sat in the cockpit — Saeton and I the pilots’ seats, Tubby in the well between us — the engines ticking over. Saeton’s hand reached out for the throttle levers. The engines revved and we moved away across the apron, along the perimeter track and swung on to the runway end, the concrete stretching ahead of us, a broad white path shining wet in sunlight. ‘Okay?’ Saeton looked at us. His jaw had broadened with the clenching of the muscles. His features looked hard and unsmiling. Only his eyes mirrored the excitement that held him in its grip.

‘Okay,’ Tubby said. I nodded. Again Saeton’s hand reached up for the throttle levers, pressing them slowly down with his palm. The four motors roared in unison. The fuselage shuddered violently as the thrust of the props fought the brakes.

Then he released the brakes and we started forward.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous — even a little scared. But it was overlaid by the sense of excitement. At the same time it was difficult to realise fully the danger. Viewed from the cockpit all the engines looked ordinary standard models. There was nothing to bring home to us the fact that those inboard engines were the work of our own hands — only the memory, now distant, of the countless hours we’d worked at them in the hangar. In a sense it was nothing more than I’d done hundreds of times before — a routine take-off.

I tried to concentrate on the dials, but as we gathered speed my eyes strayed to the concrete streaming beneath us, faster and faster, and thence to the ploughed verge of the runway and to the woods beyond. I caught a glimpse of the quarters through a gap in the trees. It suddenly seemed like home. Would we ever again sit at the trestle table drinking Scotch in celebration of success? Would we again lounge in those hard, uncomfortable chairs talking of a huge freighter fleet and our plans for a constant stream of aircraft tramping the globe? And as these questions appeared in my mind, my stomach suddenly became an empty void as panic hit me. Suppose those pistons I’d worked on when I first arrived were not quite true? Suppose … A whole stream of ugly possibilities flooded through my mind. And what about the engine that had been completed before I arrived? My hands tightened automatically on the control column as I felt the tail lift.

I glanced at Saeton. His face was tense, his eyes fixed unblinkingly ahead, one hand on the throttles, the other on the control column. I saw his left foot kick at the rudder to counter a sudden swing of the tail. The end of the runway was in sight now. It ran slightly downhill and a bunch of oaks was rushing to meet us.

No chance now of pulling up. We were committed to the take-off. The new starboard engine was still running a little rough. The tail swung. Left rudder again. I held my breath. God! He was leaving it late. I should have been watching the rev counters and the airspeed indicator. But instead my eyes were fixed on the trees ahead. They seemed to fill all my vision.

Then the control column eased back under my tense, clutched hands. The wheels bumped wildly on a torn-up piece of concrete. The starboard motor still sounded rough, the tail swung and the engine notes changed to a quieter drone. We were riding air, smooth, steady, the seat lifting me upwards as the trees slid away below us. Through the side window I saw Membury dropping away to a black circle of plough criss-crossed by the white pattern of runways and circled by the darker line of the perimeter track, the hangars small rectangles that looked like toys. We were airborne and climbing steeply, the full thrust of the motors taking us up in a steady, circling climb.

I glanced at Saeton. His body had relaxed into the shape of his seat. That was the only sign he gave of relief. ‘Check undercarriage up,’ he shouted to me as he levelled out. I glanced out of the side window. The starboard wheel was up inside the wing casing and I nodded. His eyes remained hard and alert, scanning the instrument panel. Tubby was jotting down notes as he read the dials. Oil Pressure 83-Oil Temp. 68-Coolant Temp. 90-Revs 2,300, with the exception of the inboard starboard engine, which read 2,270-Vacuum Pressure 4 1/2 ins. — Height 1,500. We cruised around for a bit, checking everything, then we began to climb. Oil Pressure 88-Oil Temp. 77-Coolant Temp. 99-Revs 2,850 plus 9-Vacuum Pressure 4 1/2. I glanced at my watch. Rate of climb 1,050 feet a minute.

At 6,000 Saeton levelled out. ‘Okay to cut out the other motors?’ He glanced down at Tubby, who nodded, his face unsmiling, his eyes almost lost in their creases of fat as he screwed them up against the sun which drove straight in through the windshield. At the same moment I saw the outboard engine slow. The individual blades of the prop became visible as it began to feather. The noise in the cockpit had lessened, so had the vibration. We were flying on our own motors only. Airspeed 175. Height 6,300. Still climbing. Swindon lay below us as we turned east, banking sharply.

The two motors hummed quietly. Saeton pulled back the control column. The nose of the plane lifted. We were climbing on the two engines only. Six thousand five hundred. Seven thousand. Eight thousand. Rate of climb 400 feet per minute. Half a dozen banking turns, then a long dive to 4,000 and up again. The motors hummed happily. The starboard engine was a shade rough perhaps, and engine revs were a little below those of the port motor. But there was plenty of power there.

Saeton levelled out. ‘I could do with a cigarette.’ He was grinning happily now, all tension smoothed out of his face. ‘From now on we can forget all the hours we’ve slaved at those engines. They’re there. They exist. We’ve done what we set out to do.’

Tubby was smiling, too, his face wreathed in a happy grin. He hummed a little tune.

We swung south over White Horse Hill. The racing gallops at Lambourne showed like age-old tracks along the downs. Climb, turn, dive — for two hours we flew the circuit of the Marlborough downs. Then at last Saeton said, ‘Okay. Let’s go back and get some tea. Tomorrow We’ll do take-off and landing tests. Then we’ll try her under full load and check petrol consumption.’

‘I want that starboard motor back on bench tests first,’ Tubby shouted.

Saeton nodded vaguely. For him it was all settled. He’d proved the motors. It only remained to get them to the highest pitch of efficiency. ‘Okay,’ he answered. ‘We’ve plenty of time. I’ll fix airworthiness tests for the latter part of next week.’ He eased the control column forward and we slid down towards the rounded brown humps of the downs. Ramsbury airfield slid away beneath us, the Kennet showing like a twisting ribbon of steel in the cold light of the sinking sun. Membury opened out on the hill ahead of us. The two outboard motors started into life.

‘Ready to land?’

We nodded.

Saeton looked down through the side ‘There’s a bottle of whisky down there.’ He grinned as we peered down at the felted roof of our quarters. ‘Pity Diana isn’t here to see this.’ He said it without thinking. I glanced at Tubby. His face gave no sign that he’d heard, ‘Better get your undercarriage down,’ Tubby said.

Saeton laughed. ‘If you think I’m going to prang the thing now, you’re wrong.’ His hand reached down and found the undercarriage release switch automatically. He pulled it up and glanced out of his side window. Then he turned quickly, peered down at the lever and jerked at it. In the tenseness of his face I read sudden panic. I turned to my own side window and craning forward, peered back at the line of the wing. ‘The starboard wheel is down,’ I reported.

Saeton was flicking at the switch. ‘It’s the port wheel,’ he said, staring out of his window. ‘The bloody thing’s jammed.’ I don’t think he was frightened for himself. The panic that showed in his face was for all our achievement that could be set at nought by a crash landing.

‘I told you we ought to check over the plane,’ Tubby shouted back, peering forward over the lever.

‘That’s a hell of a lot of use now,’ Saeton’s voice rasped through his clenched teeth. ‘Neil. Take over. Climb to 7,000 whilst we try and sort this bastard out. Tubby, see if she’ll come down on the hand gear.’

I felt the control column go slack under my hands as he eased himself out of his seat. I took hold of it, at the same time reaching out for the throttle levers. The engines responded to my touch and Membury dropped away from us as I pulled the control column back and climbed under full power, banking steadily. Saeton and Tubby were trying to wind the port wheel down, but the handle seemed to be alternately jamming and running free.

At 7,000 feet I levelled out. They had the floorboards up and Tubby was head down in the gap. A steady blast of bitterly cold air roared into the cockpit. For an hour I stooged round and round over Membury. And at the end of that hour Tubby straightened up, his face blue with cold and stood there blowing on his ringers. ‘Well?’ Saeton demanded.

Tubby shook his head. ‘Nothing we can do,’ he said. ‘The connecting rod is snapped. A fault probably. Anyway, it’s snapped and there’s no way of lowering the port side undercarriage.’

Saeton didn’t speak for a moment. His face was grey and haggard. ‘The best we can hope for then is to make a decent pancake landing.’ His voice was a flat monotone as though all the weariness of the last few weeks had crowded in on him at this moment. ‘You’re absolutely sure there’s nothing we can do?’ he asked Tubby.

The other shook his head. ‘Nothing. The connecting rod has snapped and-’

‘All right. You said that once. I’m not that dense.’ He had pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. He handed it to me. I took one and he lit it for me. It was a measure of his acceptance of the facts of the situation. He would never have smoked in the cockpit unless he had abandoned all hope.

‘The light’s fading,’ I said. ‘And we haven’t much gas left.’

He nodded, drawing in a lungful of smoke.

‘Better make for Upavon,’ Tubby shouted. It was an R.A.F. Station and I knew what was in his mind. There would be crash squads there and ambulances.

‘No. We’ll go back to Membury,’ Saeton answered. ‘You two get aft. Have the door of the fuselage open. I’ll take you over the airfield at 3,000 feet. Wind’s easterly, about Force 2. Jump just before I cross the edge of the field.’ He climbed back into his seat. ‘All right, Neil. I’ll take over now.’ I felt the pressure of his hands as he gripped the other control column and I let go of mine. Tubby started to protest, but Saeton rounded on him. ‘For God’s sake do as you’re told. Jump at the edge of the field. No point in more than one of us getting hurt. And as you so tactfully point out, it’s my fault. Of course we should have checked the plane.’ Out of the tail of my eye I saw the starboard wheel folding into the wing again.

‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ Tubby said. ‘I didn’t mean-’

‘Don’t argue. Get aft. You, too, Fraser.’ His voice was almost vicious in his wretchedness. And then with that quick change of mood: ‘Good luck, both of you.’

I had hesitated, half-out of my seat. His face was set in a grim mask as he stared straight ahead of him, thrusting the control column forward, dipping the nose to a long glide towards the airfield. Tubby jerked his head for me to follow him and disappeared through the door that communicated with the fuselage. ‘Good luck!’ I murmured.

Saeton’s eyes flicked towards me and he gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’ve had all the good luck I need,’ he snarled. I knew what he meant. Whether he came out of the plane alive or dead, he was finished. For a moment I still hesitated. I had a crazy idea that he might intend to crash the plane straight into the ground.

‘What the hell are you waiting for?’

‘I think I’d better stay,’ I said. If I stayed he’d be forced to make an attempt to land.

He must have sensed what was at the back of my mind, for he suddenly laughed. ‘You don’t know very much about me, do you, Neil?’ The snarl had gone out of his voice. But his eyes remained hard and bitter. ‘Go on. Get back aft with Tubby, and don’t be a fool. I don’t like heroics.’ And then suddenly shouting at me: ‘Get aft, man. Do you hear? Or have I got to come down there myself and throw you out?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Ever jumped before?’

‘Once,’ I answered, my mind mirroring the memory of that night landing in the woods of Westphalia, hanging in the straps with my parachute caught in a tree and my arm broken.

‘Scared, eh?’ The sneer was intentional. I knew that. He was goading me to jump. And yet I reacted. I reacted as he wanted me to because I was scared. I’d always been scared of having to bale out after that one experience. ‘Of course I’m not scared,’ I snapped and turned and moved awkwardly to the fuselage, the weight of my parachute bouncing against my buttocks.

Tubby already had the door of the fuselage open. The rush of air made it bitterly cold. The plane was turning now over the hangars, losing height rapidly. He didn’t say anything. You haven’t room for anything else in your mind when you are faced with a jump. We caught a glimpse of the quarters, looking very neat and snug in its little patch of trees. I could even make out the hen-run at the back with the white dots of two or three fowl. Then we were banking for the run-in. The trees slid away under us. I saw the snaking line of the road coming up from Ramsbury. Then, over Tubby’s shoulder, I made out the edge of the airfield. He glanced at me with a quick, nervous grin, gripped my arm tightly and then, still looking at me, fell outwards into space.

I watched his body turn over and over. Saw his hand pull at the release of his parachute. The canopy of nylon blossomed like a flower and his body steadied, swinging rhythmically.

We were right over the airfield now. My limbs felt cold and stiff. The sweat stood out on my forehead. I heard Saeton scream at me to jump, saw him clambering out of the pilot’s seat. He was going to leave the controls, come aft and throw me out. I closed my eyes quickly, gripped ‘the cold metal of the release lever and fell forward into the howl of the slipstream. My legs swung over the back of my neck. Opening my eyes I saw the sky, the sun, the horizon coming up the wrong way as though I were in a loop, the airfield rolling under me. Then I jerked at the release; jerked at it again and again in desperate fear that it wouldn’t work.

Suddenly my shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, the inside of my legs cut by the hard pull of the straps. My legs fell into place. Sky and earth sorted themselves out. I was dangling in space, no wind, no sound — only the fading roar of the plane as it climbed, a black dot over the far side of the airfield. Above me the white cloud of the parachute swung gently, beautifully, the air-hole showing a dark patch of sky. Twisting my head I saw Tubby touch the ground, roll over and over in a perfect drill landing. Then he was scrambling to his feet, pulling in his parachute, legs braced against the drag of it, emptying the air till it lay in an inert white fold at his feet.

Travelling with the light wind the air was quite still. It was as though I were suspended there over the airfield for all eternity. There seemed to be no movement. Time and space stood still as I dangled like a daylight firework. The drone of the plane had died away. It had vanished as though it had never been. The stillness was all-pervading, pleasant, yet rather frightening.

Though the movement was imperceptible my position gradually altered in relation to the ground. I was gliding steadily along the line of the east-west runway. I tried to work out my angle of drop in relation to the trees bordering the airfield near the quarters. But it was quite impossible to gauge the rate of fall. All I know is that one moment I was dangling up there, apparently motionless, and the next the concrete end of the runway was rushing up to meet me.

I hit the concrete with my legs too firmly braced for the shock. I hit it as though I’d jumped from a building into the street. The jar of the touchdown ran up my spine and hammered at my head and then all was confusion as my parachute harness jerked me forward. I had the sense to throw up my arms and duck my head into the protection of my shoulder as I hit the concrete.

I remember being pitched forward and over and then there was a stunning blow on the front of my head and I lost consciousness.

I couldn’t have been out for long because I came round to find myself being slowly dragged along the concrete by my shoulders. I dug my hands and feet in, anchoring myself for a moment. Blood ran down my face and dripped into a crack in the concrete. Somebody shouted to me and I caught hold of the strings of the parachute, struggling to fold it as I’d been taught to do. But I hadn’t the strength. I dropped back, half-unconscious, a feeling of terrible lassitude running along my muscles.

The pull of my shoulders slackened. Somebody stooped over me and fingers worked at the harness buckles. ‘Neil! Are you all right? Please.’

I looked up then. It was Else. ‘What — are you doing here?’ I asked. I had some difficulty in getting my breath.

‘I came to see the test. What has happened? Why have you jumped?’

‘The undercarriage,’ I said.

‘The undercarriage? Then it is not the engines? The engines are all right?’

‘Yes, the engines are all right. It’s the undercarriage. Won’t come down.’ I looked up at her and saw that she was staring up into the sky, her eyes alight with some emotion that I couldn’t understand. ‘Why are you so excited?’ I asked her.

‘Because-’ She looked down at me quickly, her mouth clamped shut. ‘Come. I help you up now.’ She placed her hands under my arms. The world spun as I found my feet and leaned heavily against her, waiting for the aerodrome to stop spinning. Blood trickled into my mouth and I put my hand to my forehead. It was the old cut that had reopened and I thought: This is where I came in. ‘What about Tubby? Is he all right?’

‘Yes. He is coming here now.’

I shook the blood out of my eyes. A small dot was running down the runway. He shouted something. I didn’t understand at first. Then I remembered Saeton and the aircraft. Ambulance! Of course. The quarters were not five hundred yards away. ‘Quick, Else. I must get to the phone.’ A muscle in one of my legs seemed to have been wrenched. It was hell running. But I made it in the end and seized hold of the telephone. My voice when I spoke to the operator was a breathless sob. She put me through to the Swindon hospital and then to the fire brigade. Tubby came in as I finished phoning. ‘Ambulance and fire brigade coming,’ I said.

‘Good! You’d better lie down, Neil. Your head looks bad.’

‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘What about the plane?’ The need for action had given me strength.

‘Saeton’s stooging round over the field at about 5,000 feet using up his remaining gas.’ He turned to Else. ‘You’d better get some water on to heat. He may be a bit of a mess when we get him in.’ She nodded quickly and hurried out to the kitchen. ‘What’s that girl doing here?’ he asked me. But he didn’t seem to expect an answer, for he went straight out to the airfield. I followed him.

Looking up into the sun brought a blinding pain to my eyes, but by screwing them up I could see the glint of the plane as it banked. The air was very still in the shelter of the woods and the sound of the engines seemed quite loud. Time passed slowly. We stood there in silence, waiting for the inevitable moment when the plane would cease its interminable circling and dive away over the horizon for the final approach. My legs began to feel weak and I sat down on the ground. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down?’ Tubby asked. His voice sounded irritable.

‘I’ll stay here,’ I said. I wasn’t thinking of Saeton then. I was thinking of the plane. There it was, flying perfectly. Only that damned undercarriage stood between us and success. It seemed a hard twist of fate.

‘I have arrange plenty of hot water.’ It was Else. She had a steaming bowl with her and she plumped down beside me. ‘Now we can fix that cut, eh?’ I winced as the hot water touched the open cut across my forehead. The water smelt strongly of disinfectant. Then she bandaged my head and it felt better. ‘That is finished. Now you look like you are a wounded man.’

‘So I am,’ I said. Her face hung over me, framed by the darkening blue of the sky. She looked young and soft and rather maternal. My head was in her lap. I could feel the softness of her limbs against the back of my skull. We should have been lying like that in a hay field in May. The distant drone of the aircraft was like the sound of bees. I caught the gleam of its wings just beyond her hair.

‘Where the devil’s the ambulance?’ Tubby demanded. ‘He’s coming in now.’

I glanced at my watch. It was twenty minutes since I’d phoned. ‘They’ll be here in about ten minutes,’ I told him.

He grunted a curse. They’ll be here too late then.’

I could see the plane gliding over Ramsbury, a black dot against the sunset. I thought of the engine we had laboured to complete all these weeks, of Saeton alone up there at the controls. The pain of my head was nothing then. My eyes were trained on the sky over Ramsbury and every fibre of my being was concentrated on the plane, which was banking sharply as it disappeared behind the trees, turning for the final approach.

It seemed an age before it appeared again. Then suddenly it was there over the end of the runway, hanging like a great, clumsy bird over the trees, dropping towards the concrete, its landing flaps down, the props turning slowly. I scrambled to my feet and began to run. Tubby was running, too. Saeton levelled out for the touchdown and as the gap between plane and concrete lessened, the aircraft seemed to gather speed till it was rushing towards us.

Then the belly hit the concrete. Pieces of metal were flung wide. There was a horrible scraping. But when the sound reached me the plane had bounced several feet above the runway. It came down then with a splintering crash, swivelling round, the fuselage breaking up as the tail disintegrated, grinding the concrete to puffs of powder, the metal sheeting stripping from her belly like tinplate. She slewed broadside, tipping crazily, righted herself, straightened up and broke in half. The appalling grinding sound went on for a second after she had stopped. Then there was a sudden, frightening silence. The plane lay there, a crumpled wreck, unnaturally still. Nothing moved. The sunset was just as red, the trees just as black, nothing had changed as though the aerodrome had taken no interest in the accident. Somebody had pranged a plane. It had happened here countless times during the war. Life went on.

Tubby was running towards the machine. For a second I stood rooted to the spot, my stomach quivering in expectation of the sudden blossoming of the wreck into a blazing fury of fire. But it just lay there, inert and lifeless, and I, too, started to run.

We got Saeton out. There was a lot of blood, but it was from his nose. He was unconscious when we laid him on the concrete, his hand badly cut and a livid bruise across his forehead. But his pulse beat was quite strong. Tubby loosened his collar and almost immediately his eyes opened, staring up at us blankly. Then suddenly there was life behind them and he sat up with a jerk that brought a groan from his lips. ‘How’s the plane? Is she-’ His voice stopped as his eyes took in the wreck. ‘Oh, God!’ he murmured. He began to swear then — a string of obscene oaths that ignored Else’s presence and were directed solely at the plane.

‘The engines are all right,’ Tubby said consolingly.

What’s the good of engines without a plane?’ Saeton snarled. ‘I got the tail too low.’ He began swearing again.

‘You better lie back,’ Tubby said. There’s nothing you can do about the plane. Just relax now. The ambulance will be here in a minute.’

‘Ambulance?’ He glared at us. ‘What damn’ fool phoned for an ambulance?’ He got out his handkerchief and wiped some of the blood from his face. ‘Get down to the main road and stop them,’ he ordered Tubby hoarsely. ‘Tell them it’s all right. Tell them there wasn’t any crash after all — anything, so long as you get them away from here without them coming on to the airfield.’

‘But even if you’re all right, there’s Neil here needing treatment,’ Tubby said.

‘Then take him with you and pack him off to hospital. But I don’t want them on the field. I don’t want them to know we’ve crashed.’

‘But why?’ Tubby asked.

‘Why?’ Saeton passed his hand across his eyes and spat blood on to the concrete. ‘I don’t know why. I just don’t want anyone to know about this. Now for God’s sake stop arguing and get down to the road.’

Tubby hesitated. ‘That nose of yours looks as though it’s broken,’ he said. ‘And there may be some-thing else-’

‘There’s nothing else broken,’ Saeton snarled. ‘If there is I’ll get to a doctor under my own steam. Now get going.’

Tubby glanced at me. ‘I’m all right,’ I said. He nodded and started at a steady trot across the field towards the quarters. Saeton struggled to his feet and stood there, swaying weakly, staring at the wreckage, bitter, black despair in his eyes. Then, as he turned away, he caught sight of Else and his thick hands clenched with sudden violence of purpose. ‘I thought you were going back to Germany,’ he said hoarsely.

‘I go on Monday.’ Her eyes were wide and she looked frightened.

‘Wanted to be in at the death, eh? You timed it nicely.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You do not understand, eh?’ he mimicked her crudely. ‘I suppose you don’t understand what happened up there?’ He was moving towards her, staggering slightly, the sweat standing out in great drops on his forehead and running down into his eyes. ‘Well, the connecting rod was snapped. We couldn’t lower the undercarriage. That surprises you, eh? You didn’t know the connecting rod was broken.’

The expression on his face held me rooted to the spot. It was a bloody mask of hatred. Else stood quite still, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open. And then suddenly she was talking, talking fast, the words tumbling out of her as though in themselves they could form a barrier between herself and what was moving so inevitably upon her. ‘I do not touch your plane. I have nothing to do with what has happened. Please. You must believe me. Why should I do this thing? These are my father’s engines — my father’s and mine. I wish them to fly. I wish to see them in the air. It is all I have left of him. It is the work we do together. He was happy then, and I was happy also. I want them to fly. I want them-’

‘Your father’s engines!’ The contempt in his voice stopped her like a slap in the face. ‘They’re my engines. Mine. Your father’s engine wouldn’t work. It crashed. I broke my leg trying to fly the bloody thing. It was no good. We had to start again. All over again. A new design.’

She flung up her head then, facing him like a tigress defending her young. ‘It is not a new design. It is different, but it is the same principle. Those engines belong to him. They are-’

He laughed. It was a wild, violent sound. ‘You’ve smashed what I’ve lived for for three years. You’re happy now, aren’t you? You think now that Germany will get control of them again. But she won’t.’ He was very close to her now. ‘You tried to kill us. Well, now I’m going to-’

‘That’s a lie!’ she cried. ‘I have nothing to do with it. Nobody has touched the airplane.’

‘Then why are you here — on the spot, gloating-’

‘Oh, will you never understand?’ she cried furiously. ‘I come to see them up there in the air. They are my father’s work. Do you think it is no excitement for me to see them fly? Please, I have nothing to do with the crash.’ His hands had reached out to her and gripped her shoulders. She was suddenly pleading. ‘I have done nothing — nothing. You must believe what I say.’ ‘

But he didn’t seem to hear her. ‘You tried to kill us,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘You tried to smash everything I have worked for. First you try to bribe me with your body. Then you try to get control of my company.

When you don’t succeed you try to destroy what I’ve worked for. If you can’t get what you want you must destroy it. That is the German in you. Everything you touch, you destroy. And always you work for Germany.’

‘Not for Germany,’ she cried. ‘Only for my father. Everything I do, I do for my father. Why could you not give him the credit for what he do?’

‘You’re a part of the Germany I’ve hated since I was a kid,’ he went on, his voice thick as though clotted with blood, his hands gripping her violently, fumbling blindly for her throat. ‘My father in one war, my mother in another. All you can do is smash and break things. And now I’m going to break you — break you in little pieces.’

Her eyes stared wildly as his blunt fingers dug into her neck. Then she began to struggle, and in that instant I came to life and moved forward. But I needn’t have bothered. His hands clawed at her clothes and his body slowly sagged against her, his knees giving under him and pitching him forward on to his face.

Saeton had fainted.

Else stared down at him, fear and horror stamped on her face. I think she thought he was dead. ‘I didn’t do anything to the airplane.’ The words were a strangled sob. ‘Neil!’ She glanced wildly at me. ‘Nobody touched the airplane. You must believe that.’

Saeton moved suddenly, his fingers digging into the earth, scrabbling at it as he tried to rise, and when he had pushed himself up on to his knees, she broke and ran.

Tubby came back and we got Saeton to the quarters and put him to bed. His ribs were badly bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken. It was more shock than anything else. Still half-dazed he ordered us to get one of Ellwood’s tractors and have the wreckage dragged into the hangar. He wanted it done that night. He seemed to have an unreasoned, instinctive urge to get the evidence of failure under cover as quickly as possible. It was as though he felt none of his own injuries, only the hurts of the aircraft and wanted to let it crawl away into the dark like a dog to lick its wounds.

By ten o’clock that night it was done and all trace of the crash landing was concealed behind the closed doors of the hangar. The plane was a hell of a mess. The tractor took it in in two pieces, the tail having ripped off completely as soon as we began to drag the wreck along the concrete. Saeton himself came out to the runway to make sure there was no trace of the accident left.

Whether the plan had formed in his mind then, I can’t be certain. Personally, I don’t think so. It was a matter of instinct rather than planning. If nobody knew we had crashed there might still be a chance. At any rate, if the idea was in his mind, it didn’t show that evening as we sat over a drink and tried to sort out the future.

Tubby was through. That was clear from the start. ‘I’m going back to flying,’ he said. His tone was obstinate and quite final. ‘You know Francis Harcourt? He’s got two Tudors on the tanking lift, and he’s back in England now negotiating the purchase of two more.

Just before Christmas he wrote asking me to join him as a flight engineer.’

‘And you’ve accepted?’ Saeton asked.

For answer Tubby produced an envelope from his pocket. It was already stamped and sealed.

‘We’ve still a month before we’re due on the airlift — if we hold the Air Ministry to their first date,’ Saeton said quietly.

‘A month!’ Tubby grunted. ‘Six months wouldn’t see that kite ready to fly — six months and a lot of money.’ He leaned forward and caught Saeton by the arm. ‘Listen, Bill. I’ve worked with you for nothing for just on two years. I haven’t got a bean out of it. If you think I can go on any longer, you’re crazy. Anyway, where the hell would you get the money from? You’ve cleaned me out. You’ve just about cleaned Neil out. We owe money all over the place. The company is broke — finished.’ His voice softened as he saw the bitter set of Saeton’s mouth below the bandages. ‘I’m sorry, chum. I know what this means to you. But you’ve got to face the facts. We can’t go on.’

‘Can’t we? Well, I say we can. I don’t know how — yet. But I’ll find a way. You’ll see me on the airlift next month. I’ll do it somehow.’ His voice was trembling, but it had no conviction, only violence. His fist beat at the table. ‘If you think I’m going to let a little bitch of a German destroy everything I’ve worked for, you’re wrong. I don’t care what it costs me, I’ll get those engines into the air.’

‘How do you know she was responsible for what happened?’ I asked.

‘Of course she was,’ he snarled. ‘Either her or one of the Rauch Motoren agents.’

‘You can’t be certain,’ I said.

‘Can’t be certain! Damn it, man, how else could it have happened? She tracked me down to this airfield. How she did it I don’t know. But suddenly she arrived at the Manor and because we were short-handed I got her to come up and cook and clean for us in the evenings. I thought she was just a D.P. It never occurred to me she was Professor Meyer’s daughter.’

‘When did you discover who she really was?’ I asked.

‘That night you arrived and found us together in the hangar.’ He suddenly clicked his fingers. ‘She must have done it then. It’s the only time she’s ever been alone in the hangar.’

‘Are you seriously suggesting the girl filed through the undercarriage connecting rod?’ Tubby asked.

‘She an engineer, isn’t she? And she had about half an hour up there on her own. She couldn’t be sure the plan to buy up the outfit through Randall’s mortgages would succeed. Anyway, what’s it matter?’ he added, his tone suddenly rising. ‘Finding out whether it was German thoroughness” or a natural break won’t put the crate back into the air. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.’ He spoke through clenched teeth and his hands trembled as he thrust back his chair. I think he was in the grip of a bitter, raging anger, on the verge of tears. The man was dead beat anyway and his nerves must have been just about stretched to the edge of screaming hysteria.

He had risen to his feet and he stood, staring at Tubby. ‘Are you going to post that letter?’

‘Yes,’ Tubby answered.

‘All right.’ The veins on Saeton’s forehead seemed to swell. ‘But remember this: join Harcourt’s outfit and you’re through with this company. Understand?’

‘I understand,’ Tubby said in a level tone.

‘You bloody fool!’ Saeton said, and went out, slamming the door.

I was pretty tired and my head ached. I followed him out and was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow.

I awoke in a mood of despair. My job was gone and I was broke. The future was bleak. I longed to be back at the bench, driven beyond physical endurance to complete something that I believed in.

It was a chill, grey morning, frost riming the windows and the wind moaning round the building. Tubby produced tea and bacon and eggs in a mood of contrition for deserting us. Breakfast did nothing to lift us out of our gloom. We ate in silence and went out to the hangar. I suppose in the five weeks I had been there I had gradually come to identify my future with the plane. Seeing it lying there in the drab light, its metal all broken and twisted, the tail completely severed and lying like a piece of discarded junk gave me a sense of sudden loneliness. This was the end of our work together. We were no longer a team, but three individuals going our own separate ways. It was this, I think, that made me feel so wretched. I’d felt safe here and complete. I’d been doing something I’d come to believe in and there had been a goal to work for. Now there was nothing.

We cleared the torn metal away from the fuselage, working to reach the undercarriage and find out what had gone wrong. It was a useless investigation. Whatever we discovered, it wouldn’t help us. We worked slowly, almost unwillingly, and in silence. Shortly before eleven the phone rang. It was Harcourt asking for Tubby. Saeton and I stood listening. ‘Yes … Yes, I’ll be there. Diana is already in Germany… Well, maybe she’ll fix it to get to the Gatow canteen… Fine. I’ll meet you there.’ Tubby’s eyes gleamed excitedly and he was whistling happily to himself as he replaced the receiver.

‘Well, when do you leave?’ Saeton barked in the hard, impersonal tone he used when he wished to hide his own feelings.

‘He wants me down at Northolt at ten o’clock tomorrow,’ Tubby answered.

‘Then you’d better get moving,’ Saeton said abruptly.

‘It’s all right. I’ll get a train this evening. I don’t want to leave without knowing what the trouble was.’

‘Hell, man! What difference does it make?’

‘I’d like to know all the same,’ Tubby answered woodenly.

Saeton turned away with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Well, let’s get on with the post-mortem.’

It was useless for him to pretend that he didn’t care what had caused the break. He did care. He was looking for something to fight. He was that sort. But when we got to the connecting rod it showed a clean break and unmistakable signs of faulty casting.

‘So it wasn’t Else after all,’ I said.

‘No.’ He threw the broken rod on to the concrete and turned away. ‘Better see if you can fix Fraser up with a job on the airlift,’ he said to Tubby over his shoulder, and he slammed out of the hangar.

Tubby left that afternoon and with his departure a tense, brooding gloom settled on the quarters. Saeton was impossible. It wasn’t only that he wouldn’t talk. He prowled up and down, constantly, irritably on the move, lost in his own morose thoughts. He was racking his brains for a means of getting on the airlift with the engines by 25th January. Once he turned to me, his eyes wild, his face looking grey and slightly crazy with his nose covered with adhesive plaster. ‘I’m desperate,’ he said. ‘I’d do anything to get hold of a plane. Anything, do you hear?’

At that moment I was prepared to believe he’d commit murder if he were sure of getting another aircraft as a result of it. The man was desperate. It showed in his eyes, in the way he talked. He hadn’t given up hope. I think that was what made the atmosphere so frightening. He wasn’t quite sane. A sane man would see that the thing was impossible. But he wouldn’t he was still thinking in terms of getting those engines into the air. It was incredible — incredible and frightening. No man should be driven by such violent singleness of purpose. ‘You’re crazy,’ I said.

‘Crazy?’ He laughed and his laugh was pitched a shade too high. Then he suddenly smiled in an odd, secretive way. ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I am crazy. All pioneers are crazy. But believe me, I’ll get into the air if I have to steal a plane.’ He stopped then and stared at me fixedly in an odd sort of way. Then he smiled again. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, reflectively. ‘I’ll get on to the airlift somehow.’ He went out then and I heard his feet dragging slowly down the frostbound path until the sound lost itself in the noise of the wind blowing through the trees.

I went down to the Manor to see Else. I wanted to tell her that we knew she had had nothing to do with the failure of the undercarriage, that it was in fact an accident. But she had already gone. She had taken the afternoon train to London because she had to be at Harwich early the following morning to catch the boat. I returned to the quarters feeling that my last link with the past few weeks had gone.

The next two days were hell. I just drifted, clinging desperately to Membury, to the hangar and the quarters. I just couldn’t nerve myself to face the outside world. I was afraid of it; afraid of the fact that I had no job and only a few pounds left in my account. The memory of Else haunted me. God knows why. I wasn’t in love with her. I told myself that a hundred times. But it made no difference.‘I needed a woman, someone to attach myself to. I was as rudderless as the wreck lying in the hangar.

To give me something to do Saeton had told me to get to work with the oxy-acetylene cutter and clean up the mess. It was like operating on the broken body of a friend. We lifted our two engines out of her and she looked like a toothless old hag waiting for the inevitable end. I could have wept for what might have been. A thousand times I remembered those supreme moments up in the air over Membury when we had climbed, superbly, majestically, on the power of the engines we’d made. I had felt then as though all the world lay within my grasp. And now I was cleaning up the wreck, cutting out the sections that had been torn to strips of tin by the concrete of the runway.

Saeton didn’t even pretend that we were working to repair the plane. And yet he wasn’t morose any more. There was a sort of jauntiness in the way he walked and ever)’ new and then I’d catch him watching me with a soft, secretive smile. His manner wasn’t natural and I found myself wishing that he’d begin cursing again, wishing he’d make up my mind for me by throwing me off the place.

Well, I had my wish in the end. He made up my mind for me. But it wasn’t at all the way I had expected it. It was the third evening after Tubby’s departure. We were back in the quarters and the phone rang. Saeton leapt up eagerly and went into the office, the room that Tubby and Diana had had as a bedroom. I heard the murmur of his voice and then the sound of the bell as he replaced the receiver. There was a pause before his footsteps came slowly across the passage and the door of the mess room opened.

He didn’t close it immediately, but stood there, framed in the doorway, staring at me, his head sunk into his shoulders, his chin thrust slightly out, a queer glint of excitement in his eyes. ‘That was Tubby,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s found you a job.’

‘A job?’ I felt a tingle of apprehension run along my nerves. ‘What sort of a job?’

‘Flying for the Harcourt Charter Company.’ He came in and shut the door. His movements were oddly slow and deliberate. He reminded me of a big cat. He sat himself down on the trestle table. His thick, powerful body seemed to tower above me. ‘You’re to pilot one of Harcourt’s new Tudors. I got on to Tubby two days ago about it and he’s fixed it.’

I began to stammer my thanks. My voice sounded odd and far away from me, as though it were somebody else speaking. I was in a panic. I didn’t want to leave Membury. I didn’t want to lose that illusion of security the place had given me.

‘You’re to meet Harcourt at Northolt for lunch tomorrow,’ Saeton went on. ‘One o’clock in the canteen. Tubby will be there to introduce you. It’s an incredible piece of luck.’ The excitement had spread from his eyes] to his voice now. ‘The pilot he had engaged has gone down with pneumonia.’ He stopped and stared at me, his face faintly flushed as though he had been drinking, his eyes sparkling like a kid that sees the thing he’s dreamed of come true at last. ‘How much do these engines we’ve built mean to you, Neil?’ he asked suddenly.

I didn’t know quite what to say. But apparently he didn’t expect an answer, for he added quickly, ‘Listen. Those engines are okay. You’ve seen that for yourself. You’ve got to take my word for it about the saving in fuel consumption. It’s about 50 per cent. Tubby and I proved that in the bench tests on the first engine. Now, suppose we got into the air as planned on January 10-’

‘But we can’t,’ I cried. ‘You know very well-’

‘The engines are all right, aren’t they? All we need is a new plane.’ He was leaning down over me now, his eyes fixed on mine as though trying to mesmerise me. ‘We’ve still got a chance, Neil. Harcourt’s planes are Tudors. In a few days’ time you’ll be at Wunstorf and flying into Berlin. Suppose something went wrong with the engines over the Russian Zone?’ He paused, watching for my reaction. But I didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt ice-cold inside. ‘All you’ve got to do is to order your crew to bale out,’ he went on, speaking slowly as though talking to a child. ‘It’s as easy as that. A little play-acting, a little organised panic and you’ll be alone in the cockpit of a Tudor. All you’ve got to do then is to make straight for Membury.’

I stared at him foolishly. ‘You are crazy,’ I heard myself say. ‘You’d never get away with it. There’d be an inquiry. The plane would be recognised when they saw it again. Harcourt’s not a fool. Besides-’

He stopped me with a wave of his hand. ‘You’re wrong. To begin with an inquiry would show nothing. The crew would say the plane had made a forced landing in the Russian Zone. The Russians would deny it. Nobody would believe them. As for the plane being recognised, why should it? Nobody knows we’ve crashed our machine here. At least they don’t know how badly. All that happens is that a plane disappears on the Berlin Airlift and on January 10 another flies in to take its place. Harcourt’s all right — he gets his insurance. The country’s all right, for the number of Tudors remains the same. God, man — it sticks out a mile. You’ll make a fortune. We’ll both of us make a fortune.’

‘You’d never get away with it,’ I repeated obstinately.

‘Of course I’ll get away with it. Why should they ever suspect anything? And if they did, what then? Look. Part numbers and engine numbers can be altered to those of our wrecked Tudor. Our own two engines will be in her. As for our own plane, we’ll cut it up into small bits. You’ve already started on that work. In a few days we could have the whole plane in fragments. A load of those fragments can be strewn over Russian territory. The rest we’ll dump in that pond over on the far side of the airfield. God! It’s too easy. All I need is for you to fly Harcourt’s plane back here.’

‘Well, I won’t do it,’ I said angrily.

‘Do you want the Germans to be the first to produce these engines?’ His hand came out and gripped my shoulder. ‘Just think before you refuse, Damn it, haven’t you a spark of adventure in you? A slight risk and this country can have the biggest fleet of freighters in the world — a global monopoly.’ His eyes were blazing and I suddenly felt scared. The man was a fanatic.

‘I won’t do it,’ I repeated stubbornly.

‘When you’ve flown the plane in here all we have to do is drop you just inside the British Zone,’ he went on.

‘You report back to Wunstorf with the story that you made a forced landing in the Russian Zone and got back under your own steam across the frontier. It’s child’s play.’

‘I won’t do it.’

He gave an ugly laugh. ‘Scared, eh?’

I hesitated, trying to sort out in my mind whether it was because I was scared or whether my refusal was on moral grounds. I couldn’t sort it out. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be mixed up in anything like this. I wanted to forget that sense of being hunted. I didn’t want ever again to have anything on my conscience, to have to run and hide — I didn’t want to be afraid of the world any more.

He suddenly let go my arm. ‘All right,’ he said, and I didn’t like the softness in his voice and the way he smiled down at me. ‘All right, if that’s the way you feel.’ He paused, watching me with an odd expression in his eyes. ‘Do you remember the other evening I said I’d do anything to get hold of a plane?’

I nodded.

‘Well, I meant that. I meant every word of it. I said I was desperate. I am desperate. If one man’s life stood between me and getting into the air, I’d kill that man. I’d brush him out of my way without a thought. Bigger things than a single life are involved. It’s not just my own future I’m thinking of. Don’t think that. I happen to believe in my country. And I believe that these engines are the greatest contribution I can make to my country. There’s nothing I won’t do to see these engines are operated by a British concern. Nothing. Nothing.’

His voice had risen and there was a wild look in his eyes. ‘Forget about yourself. Forget about me. Won’t you do this for your country?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘God, man! You fought for your country in war. You risked your life. Have some imagination. Can’t you fight for her in peacetime? I’m not asking you to risk your life. All I’m asking you to do is to fly that plane back here. What’s the trouble? You’re not damaging Harcourt. Or is it the risk you’re afraid of? I tell you, there isn’t any risk. Do it the way I’ve planned it and you’re as safe as houses. You’ve nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ I answered hotly.

‘What’s the trouble then?’

‘I just don’t like it and I won’t do it.’

He sighed, and eased himself off the edge of the table. ‘All right. If that’s the way you want it-’ He stood for a moment, looking down at me. The room was suddenly very silent. I felt my nerves tightening so that I wanted to shout at him, to do anything to relieve the tension. At length he said, ‘If you don’t do what I want you to I’ll turn you over to the police.’ He spoke quite flatly and my inside seemed to curl up into a tight ball. ‘You were in a prison camp, weren’t you? You know what it’s like then. Three years in prison is quite a slice out of a man’s life. Do you think you could stand it? You’d go mad, wouldn’t you? You were on the edge of hysteria when you came here. You’re all right now, but in prison-’

‘You bastard!’ I screamed at him, suddenly finding my voice. I called him a lot of other names. I had got to my feet and I was trembling all over, the sweat breaking out in prickling patches across my scalp and trickling down my forehead. I was cold with fear and anger. And he just stood there, watching me, his shoulders hunched a little forward as though expecting me to charge him, a quiet, confident smile on his lips.

‘Well?’ he said as I paused for breath. ‘Which is it to be?’

‘You’re crazy,’ I cried. ‘And you’re trying to drive me crazy, too. I won’t do it. Suppose one of the crew were killed? Suppose they did discover what had happened? And if I did it — then I’d have something on you. You wouldn’t stand for that. Somehow you’d get rid of me. You’re not doing this for your country. You’re doing it for yourself. Your love of power is driving you — driving you over the edge of reason. You can’t get away with a thing like-’

“Which is it to.be?’ he cut in, his lips tightening and his voice suddenly cold and metallic. ‘Do you take this job with Harcourt or do I telephone the police? I’ll give you half an hour to make up your mind.’ He hesitated and then said slowly, ‘Just remember what it’s like to be locked away in a cell, seeing the sun through iron bars, with no hope — and no future when you get out. I’m offering you a flying job — and a future. Now sit down and make up your mind.’ He turned abruptly then and went out.

With the closing of the door the room seemed suddenly empty and silent. The key grated in the lock. It was like the turning of the key in the solitary confinement cells — only there the door had been of metal and had clanged. Stalag Luft 1, with its lines of huts, the barbed wire, the endless march of the guards, the searchlights at night, the deadly monotony, was there in my mind, as vivid as though I had only just escaped. Surely ‹% God I’d had enough of life behind bars. Surely to God….