‘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.’