The old woman moved her head from side to side awkwardly. ‘Just a little. Just for one cup.’ Her beady eyes fastened on me. ‘Soil ich aufbleiben um den Herrn hinauszulassen?’ Else spoke quickly to her in German and the old woman laughed. ‘So!’ She stared at me as though I were some strange animal. ‘I do not meet one like that.’ And still laughing to herself she sidled out and closed the door.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
Else looked across at me. ‘She is worried for me, that is all. I tell her you are quite safe, but-’ She turned away to hide her smile.
Her smile made me angry. ‘Why didn’t you tell her what happened when you took me to listen to the frogs?’ I demanded.
‘If I tell her that,’ she said over her shoulder as she poured out the coffee, ‘then she will want to see you go. And you must sleep. You look tired. I also am tired. I have to be up at six to catch the lorry to Gatow.’
I brushed my hand across my face. I was tired. ‘Can you really put me up for the night?’
‘Of course. If you do not mind the couch there. It is hard, but it is all right. I have to sleep there myself several times. Now, drink this please while it is hot.’
‘But-’ I stared at her. ‘You mean sleep here — in this room?’
She looked up at me quickly. ‘Have you some place in Berlin you can go then?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’ve no place I can go now.’
‘Very well then. It is settled. You sleep on the couch and I go back to my bed.’ She went over to the bed and ripped off two of the blankets. ‘There. We share the bedclothes. All right?’ She put them on the couch. ‘I am sorry I am not able to give you a room for yourself. Once we have the whole floor — seven rooms with bathroom, kitchen, everything. But part of the house is destroyed and there are many families homeless. So now, all I have is this one room.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is all right. But I do not like to share my kitchen with other peoples. Please, you will excuse me, but I am cold.’ She slipped into the bed and reached for her coffee cup. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’
I felt in my pocket. The nurse had given me a packet. ‘Yes, here we are.’ She took one and I lit it for her. Her eyes watched me over the flame and then she blew out a long streamer of smoke. ‘Oh, it is so good to have a cigarette. I do not have one since I leave England.’
‘Don’t you get any at Gatow?’ I asked.
‘No. They do not give us any. I do not think there are very many for your own people.’
‘Is the work hard?’
‘No. Just checking the manifest of the cargo, so that nothing is missing. But it is a long time I am there and it is very cold on the airfield.’
I had sat down on the edge of the bed to drink my coffee. Perhaps it was the closeness — maybe it was just the strangeness of the circumstances, the two of us sharing that one room. At any rate that was the end of our small talk. There seemed nothing really to say and I sat there staring at her and absorbing the warmth of the coffee. Tired though I was I found the blood hammering in my veins. I suddenly found I wanted her. I wanted her more than I’d wanted anything in my life before. For the moment it seemed as though her competence and self-sufficiency were swept aside. She was just a rather pathetic, very attractive girl, sitting up in a double bed — and I wished to God she was sitting there waiting for me. But somehow I could do nothing about it. I didn’t want to do anything to break the mood of that moment. If I had touched her I think she would have responded. But if that had happened then something would have gone that I desperately wanted. Instead of touching her, I said, ‘Else, you’ve got to help me.’
She frowned and pulled her dressing-gown closer round her. ‘To find your friend Carter?’ she asked with a queer lift of the eyebrows that gave her a puzzled look.
I nodded. ‘I’ve got to get him out of the Russian Zone.’
‘It means so much to you?’ The softness disappeared from her face. ‘What happens if we do not get your friend out?’
‘He may die,’ I said.
‘And if he die, what happens then?’
‘There’ll be no evidence to support my report of what happened.’
‘And Saeton will go on flying my father’s engines?’
‘Yes. He’ll get away with the whole thing.’
She nodded as though that were the answer she had expected. ‘All right. I will do what I can.’
I started to thank her, but she cut me short. ‘I do not do this thing for you, Neil. I do it because I wish to destroy Saeton.’ Her hands were fastened tightly on the bedclothes, the cigarette burning unheeded in the saucer as she stared past me to the lamp. ‘He has taken everything that is left of my father — the work we do together. I hate him. I hate him, I tell you.’ She spat the words out through clenched teeth in the intensity of her feeling. ‘He has no soul. He is a monster. That night you come to Membury, I offer him — I offer him myself. I know he want me. I do not love him. But I think I will barter my body for the recognition I want of my father’s work. Do you know what he do? He laugh in my face.’ She relaxed slowly and picked up her cigarette. ‘Then you come into the hangar. After that I telephone to Reinbaum to go ahead and smash his company.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘But you save it for him. Then he crash and I think that is the end of him. But you save him again.’ She gave me a wry little smile. ‘And now you wish me to help you. That is very funny.’ She sat for a moment, quite still. Then with a quick movement of her fingers she stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Okay, Neil. I do what I can. Now we must get some sleep. If I find somebody to take us into the Russian Zone it will be at night because it will be for the black market — perhaps tomorrow night.’
‘You think you can find somebody?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Ja. I think so. I have many friends among the drivers at Gatow. I will find someone who goes near Hollmind. There are many trucks going from the Western sectors into the Russian Zone. The Russians do not mind because they get things they want that way. I shall find someone.’
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I began, but she stopped me. ‘You do not have to thank me. I do not do this for you. Goodnight.’
She snuggled down into the bedclothes. I had got to my feet and for a moment I stood there, hesitating, staring down at her. It seemed to me there were two Elses — the girl who excited me and was sweet and gentle, and the German who was revengeful and who would stop at nothing to do what she thought was right for her country and her father. ‘Goodnight.’ I turned heavily away and blew the lamp out.
In the heavy curtained darkness of the room I undressed to my underclothes and curled myself up on the couch under the blankets. It was bitterly cold in that room. It ate right into my bones. But then I thought of Tubby alone out there in that German farmhouse, desperately hurt, and the cold didn’t seem so bad. I prayed that Else would find some means of getting me there so that I could bring him back, so that I could prove that what I had said was true.
Neither the cold nor the constant racket of the airlift overhead kept me awake for long. I slept and in a moment it seemed the lamp was lit again and the old woman was in the room, talking to Else. I turned over and opened my eyes. Else was already up, brushing her hair. The old woman was standing by the door, a spluttering candle in her hand. ‘I hope you are not too cold, Herr Fraser?’ she said in German. It may have been my fancy but I thought her gnarled features had an expression of contempt as she said something very rapidly to Else.
‘What did she say?’ I asked as the bundle of old clothes disappeared through the door.
Else was giggling to herself. ‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘She made some crack,’ I said.
‘You really wish to know?’ She was smiling. ‘She say you are not much like our boys, that if you are typical English then she do not understand how you win the war. Did you sleep well?’