"Innes, Hammond - Air Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Hammond)

She nodded, her gaze concentrated on him. 'Two months, you said, didn't you, Bill?' There was a sort of breathlessness about her that contrasted pleasantly with the essentially masculine atmosphere of the hangar. And the gleam of excitement in her eyes made me think she found it more interesting keeping house for three men on this lonely airfield than sharing a flat in London with a girlfriend. 'Who's the girl that comes with the milk and eggs in the morning?' she asked.

'Oh, she works at the farm,' Saeton answered carelessly. 'Her name is Else.'

'She behaved more like a camp-follower than a land-girl.' She was looking at her husband as she said this, but then she switched her gaze back to Saeton. 'Yours?'

'Really, Diana!' Saeton picked up the bottle and refilled her glass. 'Have you managed to make the room opposite habitable?'

'After nearly a day's work - yes. Was she cook here before I came?'

'She came in and did things for us in the evening sometimes,' Saeton admitted. 'By arrangement with the farm.'

'I thought she looked at me like a cat that sees the cream whipped away from under her nose.' It wasn't said banteringly. Her tone was hard and her eyes searched her husband's face. 'I guess I dug in my heels just in time.' There was a bitter clutching in her voice. She was the sort of woman who would always be wanting the thing that had just been put out of her reach. Slowly she turned and faced Saeton again. 'Is she foreign? She has a queer way of talking.'

Saeton nodded. 'Yes, she's German. A D.P. Her name is Else Langen.' He seemed reluctant to talk about her. 'Suppose we have some food now, Diana?'

She nodded and finished her drink. As she turned to go, she paused. 'So long as I'm here tell her to confine her activities to outside help.'

Saeton laughed. 'I'll tell her.' And he went on chuckling quietly to himself after Diana had left the room, as though at some private joke.

To my surprise Diana proved to be a good cook. The meal was excellent, but before it was over the warmth of the oil stove and the whisky had made me drowsy. I'd had a long day and not much sleep the night before and as they were planning to start work again at seven, I decided to go straight to bed. Saeton fixed me up with a camp bed in one of the back rooms. But for a long time I lay awake, hearing the murmur of their voices. It wasn't so much the cold that seeped up through the canvas of the bed that kept me awake as the fact that so much had happened since I had arrived at Membury. My mind was chock-full of half-digested impressions, all of them slightly fantastic, like a dream.

But the thing that stood out in my mind was that this was the beginning of a new life for me. I was safe up here at Membury. Whatever the future of Saeton's outfit, it served my purpose. I'd stay here for a time and then, when the hunt had died down, I'd leave and get a job. I wouldn't bother about flying. I'd go back to engineering. My day's work had taught me that I was still an engineer, and there was no shortage of jobs for engineers.

The only thing that worried me as I drifted off to sleep was that Saeton's company would pack up before it was safe for me to venture again into the outside world. All that seemed to stand between it and failure was the personality of the man. And yet, somehow, that seemed sufficient.

We breakfasted next morning at six-thirty. Diana got the meal for us, an old blue dressing-gown over her nightdress, her face freshly made-up. We ate in silence by the light of an oil lamp, the threat of foreclosure hanging bleakly over the table, like the reluctant daylight. Diana's eyes kept straying to Saeton's face as though searching for something there that she needed. He didn't once look up. He ate with the fierce concentration of a man to whom the act of feeding is a necessary interruption to the day's work. Tubby Carter, on the other hand, ate with a leisurely enjoyment.

As I went down the passage after breakfast to get my overalls, I passed an open door and paused at the sight of a bed made up on the floor in the far corner. Hanging on the wall was the jacket Saeton had worn the previous night. The man had given me his own camp bed. I don't know whether this had any direct bearing on my actions later, but I know that at the time it made me feel part of a team and that from that moment I wanted Saeton to win out and get his plane on to the airlift.

There was no hesitation when we reached the hangar, no discussion. We went straight on with the jobs we had left the night before. But as we worked I was conscious of a mounting tension. Several times Saeton paused and glanced impatiently at his watch. A nerve twitched at the skin of his temple. But he worked steadily, unhurriedly, as though the day stretched ahead with absolute security.

Diana brought coffee shortly after eleven. She tossed the morning paper to me with a little secret smile and then turned to Saeton. 'Well, he's here.'

'Randall?'

'Yes.'

'Then why the devil didn't you bring him up here with you?'

'I told him to wait. He's talking to that girl from the farm. I thought you'd like to know he's got someone with him.'

1 'Someone with him?' He jerked round towards her, 'A man?'

'Yes.'

'What sort of a man?'

'Short, slightly bald, with glasses and'