Tubby raised his eyes and looked at Saeton. But I don’t think he saw him. His hand strayed to the leather belt that supported his trousers. ‘I thrashed her,’ he said in the same flat tone. ‘She’s packing now.’
‘Packing?’ Saeton’s voice was suddenly hard and crisp. In that moment he seemed to shake off all the effects pi the drink.
‘I’ve telephoned for a taxi.’
Saeton strode over to him and caught hold of him by his jacket. ‘You can’t walk out on me now, Tubby. In a few days we’ll be making our first test flight. After all this time.’
‘Can’t you forget about your engine for just one night?’ Tubby’s voice was tired. There was a sort of hopelessness about it. ‘I want some money, Saeton. That’s what I came up to see you about.’
Saeton laughed suddenly. ‘There isn’t any money. You know that. Not until we’re on the airlift.’ The sudden sense of domination was back in his voice and I knew that he had seen how he could keep Carter with us.
‘How much do you want, Tubby?’ I asked, feeling for my wallet.
Saeton rounded on me, his face heavy with anger. ‘If you think the two of us can get the plane into the air, you’re crazy,’ he said. ‘For one thing the margin of time is too small. For another there may be alterations to make. Neither you nor I-’ He turned away with a quick, angry shrug.
‘How much do you want?’ I asked again.
‘A fiver.’ He came across to me and I gave him the notes. ‘I hate to do this, Neil, but…’ His voice tailed away.
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘Are you sure that will be enough?’
He nodded. ‘It’s only to get Diana to London. She’ll stay with her friends. She’s got a job waiting for her. It’s just to see her through for a few days. She’s going back to the Malcolm Club. She worked for them during the war and they’ve been wanting her back ever since the airlift got under way.’ He stuffed the money into his pocket. ‘She’ll pay you back.’
He turned to leave the hangar, but Saeton stopped him. ‘They employ girls at the Malcolm Club, not engineers. What are you going to do?’
Tubby looked at him. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said. ‘I promised I’d see you into the air and I’ll keep my promise. After that-’
But Saeton wasn’t listening. He came across the hangar like a man who had been reprieved. His eyes were alight with excitement, his whole face transfigured. ‘Then it’s okay. You’re not walking out on me.’ He caught hold of Tubby’s hand and wrung it. ‘Then everything’s all right.’
‘Yes,’ Tubby answered, withdrawing his hand. ‘Everything’s all right, Bill.’ But as he turned away I saw there were tears in his eyes.
Saeton stood for a moment, watching him go. Then he turned to me. ‘Come on, Neil. Let’s have a drink.’ He seized hold of the opened bottle of Scotch. ‘Here’s to the test flight!’
There was only room for one thing in the man’s mind. With a sick feeling I turned away. ‘I’m going to bed,’ I said.
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.