Air Bridge Part 18

To have no friends, no sense of security, in a city occupied by one's own people is not pleasant. There was no one I could turn to. I thought of Diana's brother - Harry Culyer. Maybe he was still in Berlin. But would he believe me when my own people didn't? And to contact any of the Allied headquarters and clubs would only be putting me back into the situation from which I had just been at such pains to escape.

I don't know what made me think of it. Maybe it was the prost.i.tute who murmured in English, 'Hallo, darling,' from the shadowy gloom of the sidewalk. The soft .warmth of her voice came like the nuzzling of a friendly b.i.t.c.h. And when I didn't turn away the dim shadow of her slunk to my side. 'You are American?' she asked. The power of the dollar was strong on the Kurfurstendamm.

'No. English,' I answered.

I saw her eyes, soft and hungry in the darkness, looking me over and noting my clothes. Probably she thought I was a deserter. Deserters would be bound to make for the Kurfurstendamm. But she asked no questions. All she said was, 'You come with me, honey? I have a room only two blocks away and it is comfortable.'

I didn't answer because her German accent had started a train of thought in my mind.

'Please come.' Her voice was suddenly desperate. 'I have been here all evening and I am hungry. You take me to a cafe. I know somewhere is cheap, very cheap.' Her hand reached out and slid along my arm. 'Please, honey. I sing for you, too, perhaps. I was in opera once. I only do this when my baby and I are hungry and n.o.body will pay to hear me sing. My name is Helga. You like me? I give you love and music - you forget everything. Come on, honey.' She dragged at my arm. 'Please, honey.'

'Where is the Fa.s.senenstra.s.se?' I asked.

'It is just near here. You wish to go? I take you if you wish.' The voice was harder now, desperately urgent. 'Please. It is cold standing here. Please, honey.'

'All right,' I said. 'Take me there.'

'Okay.'

We moved off together up the wide cleft of the Kurfurstendamm, her hand clutching my arm. She was tall and her hip was level with mine, pressing against it. She hummed a little aria, something from Verdi. 'Where is this place you wish to go, honey?' she said, stopping at a corner. 'Here is the Fa.s.senenstra.s.se. It runs right across the Kurfurstendamm. Which part do you wish?'

'I want Number 52,' I said. 'It's near the Savoy Hotel.'

'Ach. So! Das Savoy. It is this way.'

She took me down a tram-lined street and underneath the iron girders of a railway bridge, and then we pa.s.sed the Hotel Savoy and were at Number 52. She stared at the blank face of the closed door. 'Why you bring me here?' she asked. 'This is not a club. We cannot eat here. Why you bring me, eh?'

'I have a friend here,' I said and tugged at the old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 hoa.r.s.e 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.

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 hinauszula.s.sen?' 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 G.o.d 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.'