‘I have a friend here,’ I said and tugged at the old-fashioned bell-pull. Then I pulled out my Deutschmark and gave her twenty. She stared at them. ‘Go and get something to eat,’ I said. ‘And thank you for showing me the way.’
Her eyes looked up into my face unbelievingly. ‘You do not want me?’ She evidently saw that I didn’t for she made no protest. Instead she reached up and kissed me. ‘Danke schon.’ She turned away quickly and as the sound of her high heels faded away into the darkness I wondered whether perhaps she really was an opera singer with a baby and no job.
There was the rattle of a chain from the other side of the heavy door and then it opened, just a crack, and a woman’s voice, old and hoarse and rather frightened, asked me what I wanted.
‘I am a friend of Fraulein Langen,’ I answered in German. ‘I wish to see her please.’
‘I do not know any Fraulein Langen.’
The door was closing and I put my foot against it.
‘Fraulein Meyer, then.’ And I added quickly, ‘I have come all the way from England to see her.’
‘Aus England?’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘You are English?’ The old woman spoke the words slowly as though she had learned the language at school.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am an English flier. Neil Fraser, tell her.’
The door opened to the full extent of the securing chain. Beady eyes stared at me through the crack. ‘You do not look to be very English,’ she said suspiciously. ‘Where in England do you meet Fraulein Meyer?’
‘At Membury,’ I answered. ‘I have had an accident. That’s why I’m dressed like this.’
‘Membury! So! It is very late, but come in. Kommen Sie herein.’ The door opened. She closed it hastily behind me and in the darkness I heard the rattle of bolts and chain. ‘We must be very careful. The Russians, you know. It is terrible. They come and take people away.’ An electric torch gleamed faintly. ‘Poor Fraulein Meyer. So pretty, so clever! And all this trouble over her.papers.’ I followed the old woman’s shapeless figure up the stairs. The sound of our footsteps on the bare boards was very loud in the stillness of the house. ‘I do not like to think what the Russians do to her if the English send her to the East Sector police. The Russians are brutes — Schweinehunde. They rape everyone.’ A door opened as the torch finally gave out. A match spurted and rose in a steady flame as a candle was lit.
‘Was ist los, Anna?’ It was Else. Though I couldn’t see her I recognised her voice.
‘Ein Mann aus England. Herr Fraser. Er sagt er kennt Sie von Membury her.’
‘Herr Fraser?’ Else’s tone was suspicious. The flame of the candle was lifted to my face. Through it I saw that she was peering at me with wide, frightened eyes, her dressing-gown clutched tightly round her. ‘Neil! It is you?’ She began to laugh then. I think it was relief at finding it really was me. ‘You look so funny. Why are you in Berlin? And why do you dress yourself up in the uniform of the Wehrmacht?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Another long story? That is what you say before. Remember?’
‘May I come in? I want to talk to you.’
‘Yes, of course. I have only a bedroom now, but-’ She glanced uncertainly at the old woman. ‘So many peoples in Berlin have no homes,’ she murmured. Then she glanced up at my face again and saw the bandages. ‘You have hurt yourself again also.’
‘I had an accident,’ I said.
‘Come in then,’ she said and pushed open the door of her room. ‘Anna. Have we any of that coffee left?’
‘Ja, but for two cups only,’ the old woman answered.
‘It is so difficult now in Berlin. This blockade — it is worse than-’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Let us have the coffee, Anna. When it is finish, it is finish.’
‘Schon.’ The old woman tapped her torch on the banisters and it flickered into doubtful life. As she hobbled off down the stairs Else led me into her room and shut the door. It was a big room, furnished as part bedroom and part sitting room, with a couch under the window, a dressing-table covered with photographs and a big double bed in the corner. It had the fierce, penetrating cold of a room that has had no heat in it for a long time. ‘Is your head all right?’ she asked. ‘Can I do anything for it?’
‘No, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘They fixed it for me at Gatow.’
‘Gatow! When do you arrive at Gatow?’
‘This morning.’
‘So! It is you I see standing outside the Malcolm Club.’
I stared at her, remembering the girl checker with her face covered in coal dust. ‘Are you working with the German Labour Organisation?’ I asked.
‘Ja.’ She laughed. ‘It is what you peoples call a very small world, eh?’
‘But why?’ I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I must work. Also I wish to be at Gatow to see if Mr Saeton get on to the airlift. It is most important that I find this thing out.’
‘Well, he is. I’ve seen him today.’
She nodded. ‘He make the first flight two days ago. And he has my father’s engines. I know them by the sound. Tell me something, please. How does he manage to fly again so quickly? His own plane is crashed. It was finished. This cannot be the same airplane.’
‘It isn’t,’ I said.
‘But how does he get another? He have no money. You tell me so yourself. Did you get it for him?’
‘Yes,’ I said. She stared at me angrily and I added, ‘Do you know what the word blackmail means?’
She nodded.
‘Well, he blackmailed me into getting him another plane. I stole it off the airlift for him.’
‘You stole it? I do not understand.’
I told her briefly what had happened then and when I had finished she stood there staring down at the flame of the candle. ‘He is mad, that one,’ she breathed. She turned to look at me and the corners of her mouth turned up momentarily in a smile. ‘I think perhaps you are a little mad also.’
‘Perhaps I was,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how glad I was to find that Tubby was alive.’
She nodded slowly.
‘The trouble is Saeton won’t do anything to get him out. He can’t think of anything but the engines.’
She swung round on me. ‘He is crazy. He is crazy, I tell you. It is as though — as though when he steal my father’s work he start somethings and now he cannot stop.’
Her words were an echo of my own thoughts. My mind was on Tubby and I was wondering what Saeton would do when he discovered I had made a written report. He would brazen it out, say that I was suffering from delusions as a result of the crash, but all the time he would be thinking of Tubby out there in that farmhouse, the one man who by his mere existence threatened the whole future of what he was striving for. And as I thought about this, Saeton loomed in my mind as a sort of monster — a man who, as Else said, had started something that he could not stop. ‘I must get Tubby out,’ I said.
‘Is that why you come to see me?’
I nodded, dimly aware that she wanted some other explanation of my visit. But I was too tired to pretend. Everything I had done since waking up in Gatow sick bay had been done because of Tubby. I was responsible for what had happened. I had to get him out. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ I said.
‘Why should I?’ Her voice was harder now. ‘His wife work at the Malcolm Club. Let her help him.’
‘But she thinks he’s dead. I told you that.’
‘If his wife think he is dead, why should not I?’
I stepped forward and caught her by the shoulders. ‘You’ve got to help me, Else.’
‘Why?’ She was staring up at me, her eyes wide, almost calculating.
Why? I dropped my hands to my side and turned away. Why should this German girl I had met two or three times help me? ‘I don’t know why,’ I said.
There was a knock at the door and the old woman came in with the coffee on a tray and a small oil lamp. ‘Hier ist Ihr Kaffe, Fraulein Else.’ ‘Do you keep some for yourself, Anna?’ Else asked.