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.’