Turbulence Part 14

Sir Peter lit a cigarette, the flame of the lighter illuminating his long white face. "He was a complex man. In August 1939-you may not know this-he went to Danzig. Just before the German invasion of Poland. I believe he wanted to witness the prelude to war for himself. As part of his so-called peace studies."

I suddenly remembered the box file, Visit to Danzig and Berlin Visit to Danzig and Berlin, which I had seen in the study and never looked at.

"On the way back, he visited Berlin," continued Vaward. "There he met the well-known Quaker Corder Catchpole. Now Catchpole is a conchie, like most of them: he served with Ryman in the Friends Ambulance Unit in the Great War. By 1939 Catchpole was Quaker amba.s.sador in Berlin. He was trying to prevent the onset of war by keeping open some unofficial channel of communication. He was someone our agents followed as a matter of course. When he met up with Ryman, we became aware that n.a.z.i intelligence were also on to him. They already wanted Ryman, you see, they knew about the importance of his work. Most of the great German scientists with an interest in weather, like Theodore von Karman, had fled for America in the thirties, so they were backward in this area. I suspect there was an idea that Ryman could be turned because of his pacifist convictions. And when one of our people heard him bid farewell to his hotelier in Berlin with the words, "Heil Hitler and King George"-frankly, we began to worry about his allegiances, too. But the fact is, he wouldn't have anything to do with anything military on either side."

I told Vaward about the box file. "Yes, we have seen that," he said. "Intelligence went through the house. It's just a few newspaper articles about Danzig, including one by Ryman himself, describing the visit. We have also spoken to Mrs Ryman about her husband's sympathies."

I felt protective towards her. "I hope you were considerate."

As I spoke, I felt again, in the very crypt of my soul, that immense longing which found its object in Gill.

He nodded, a forbearing smile pa.s.sing over his moon-like face.

"Do you know what has happened-with the pregnancy?" I asked. "Is she back in Scotland?" I had a vision of her back up in that bleak house alone.

"I don't know about the baby. Only that she has decided to stay in the Isle of Wight permanently."

"Do you by any chance have the address, sir? I'm conscious I ought to communicate with her."

"I am sure you are. But I am afraid I don't."

He lit another cigarette, the tip of his tongue showing as he put it to his lips.

"Er," I said, feeling emotionally exhausted, "may I have one of those, sir?"

"Why yes, of course. Expect you need it." He leaned across and lit it for me. The manilla folder slid off his lap and fell to the floor, revealing more pages from Whybrow's typewriter. There seemed to be acres of the stuff, fanning out across the carpet.

"d.a.m.n," said Sir Peter. "Pick up those, will you?"

He looked down at the papers as if they were things of no importance, and gathering them up I affected a similar disdain, making a show with my eyes of not being interested in their contents.

"Now, tell me, Meadows," he said, once I'd handed the folder back to him. "Did you or didn't you manage to find out anything more about applying the Ryman number to an invasion site?" He was looking at me not like the man holding out the lifeline, but the one who was in need of it.

I knew that now was my opportunity. "I did find out something, sir. Ryman spoke to me at length just before he died."

A flush of excitement pa.s.sed over Sir Peter's pallid face. "About how his number might help us find the right date for the landings?"

"Yes, though I think date is the wrong way of thinking about it, at least insofar as planning an invasion goes."

"Well, what is the right way, then?"

"When I spoke to him about the landings specifically, he said the most important thing was not the date but the data."

A tone of crossness entered Sir Peter's voice. "What does that mean?"

"I'm coming to it, sir. He meant that it was our observations that were most likely to wrong-foot us, that we would do better by adopting a retrospective view than a prospective one."

"The Americans are already doing that with their a.n.a.logue models. Using historical data statistically to extrapolate how current weather will develop."

"With the greatest respect to our allies, I don't think that is what he was talking about. He would say that you could have hundreds of years of data and still get it wrong. You might pick up some quasi-periodic phenomena but the singularities, the weather frequencies on given calendar days, could be completely against the grain."

"Meadows, I am so much more aware of that than you can imagine. What exactly are you bringing me here? How does it relate to the range of applicability of the Ryman number for amphibious landings?"

"The connection is not yet fully formed in my mind, but...Well, because turbulence, as measured by the Ryman number, moves between one geographical area and the next, vertically as well as horizontally, the issue of adjacency is key. Ryman kept mentioning transport barriers, the layers which separate turbulent fluxes. He said that, as well as separating areas of turbulence, these barriers could also be corridors conveying it. These throughways and fences between different weather types are very important, he said. Some might be as narrow as a hundred feet."

Sir Peter was becoming increasingly testy. "Barriers? Corridors?"

"They're related, sir. It's a matter of perception. Interpretation of the future depends on the medium through which one refracts the past."

"I have no doubt it does, Meadows. Instinct tells me that probably all the things you are saying are perfectly right. But you try convincing military men of theoretical constructs like those-especially if they look at your personal record and see what a dunce you have been, practically speaking. Stagg has requested you join him on the invasion weather group and I have to say I'm really not sure about that any more. But...tell me again, about the corridor-barriers. What do they mean for a soldier, Meadows, or an airman?"

I took a deep breath. "The fact that they can be corridors as well as barriers explains some of the super-fast weather changes that have puzzled forecasters in the past. We have to alter our data gathering and our models accordingly-make sure we realise what we are looking at. Look harder, and be prepared to approximate where we cannot measure."

His moon-white face suffused with red. "Look harder! Approximate! That is all you have learned? I send you all the way up to western Scotland and all you come back with is that things can change quickly and we need to improve our instruments and models? And, if that doesn't work, make a guess?"

I was shocked at the sudden disappearance of Sir Peter's customary leisurely tolerance, but I was determined to stand my ground. I knew in my bones that what Ryman had told me was important-even if all it amounted to was, 'Be very careful what you do with your data'.

I knew I had to stand up for myself. "Sir, this is important. I think it is what you wanted. These barriers can be paths along which pa.s.s significant fluxes of their own-sometimes with ma.s.s and momentum as large or larger than the adjacent flows which they separate."

"So you say, but what useful truth am I meant to take away from it for forecasting for the invasion?" His voice, challenging when he had previously spoken, then continued in a different tone, half plaintive, half bitter. "Current discussions between the forecasters on Stagg's team are extremely dynamical, if you'll excuse the pun. The end result is the meteorological equivalent of the Tower of Babel."

One of the clocks made a whirring noise, as if resetting a spring inside itself. As the sound ended, I suddenly became aware of an altering of positions. I realised Sir Peter was tacitly pleading with me to take away from him the avalanche of anxiety about the landings which was being piled up on him by overbearing military superiors and by weather forecasters mired in deep disagreement.

Certain of the abiding Tightness of Ryman's conception, I felt able to speak with authority, as if I were not Sir Peter's junior but his equal. "It's more of an approach than discrete knowledge. In music, it would be something like a fugue."

The director gave a very deep sigh. "Meadows, have you any idea what Admiral Vian, or General Montgomery, or Air Marshal Tedder, still less Eisenhower himself, would say to me if I presented a fugue as our modus operandi? All they want is reasonable practical a.s.surance of fine weather for a period of three to five days. What I have discovered, and the reason I sent you up to Ryman, is that we don't actually have any methodology for prediction beyond a day or two-apart from the American system of historical statistics, which our people don't think a safe basis. But at least it's a system. You've made some clever theoretical points in the mid-ground between science and philosophy, but I can't see how any of it can be stiffened into practicality."

"There is one way, sir."

"What?"

"This. We ma.s.sively increase our instrumentation within a thousand-mile radius of the invasion site, taking special care to look out for the dialogic characteristics of these barrier-corridors. An increase in the volume and flow of positional information is the only way of taking account of the increase in complexity implied by what Ryman says."

Giving a cry of disillusion, Sir Peter flung himself backward into the depths of the armchair. "Hah! I have got weather ships dotted between Reykjavik and New York in predetermined positions in the Atlantic. I have got daily meteorological reconnaissance flights going out under that vulgar appellation met rec from airstrips all over Britain and the Empire. You can see them for yourself on that map up there."

He pointed at a weather map on the wall, hardly visible behind the array of clocks. "Not to mention every RAF station across Britain, from Langham in Norfolk to St David's in Wales, from Wick in Scotland to Chivenor in Devon, doing their THUMs. I've got data coming in from submarines in the Mozambique Channel and the Red Sea. I've got daily indications of weather from the resistance fighters in France, steamship captains in the Persian Gulf and Chindits in a.s.sam. I've access to the full weather forecasts of the Red Army and bits and pieces from both Chiang Kai-shek and the communists in China. I have all this and yet you say I am data spa.r.s.e?"

If my security clearance had been higher he might have added what has since become public knowledge-that he also had Enigma's decrypts of German meteorological reports from U-boats and British weather spies in the depths of Poland and Belgium, sending up from clandestine aerials quick-burst radio transmissions which were picked up by our bombers as they pa.s.sed overhead.

Nonetheless, I was still surprised by the freedom with which he bandied about what must have been cla.s.sified information. All over the country posters were asking "Do You Know One of These?" and showing below cartoon characters such as Mr Know-All, Miss Leaky Mouth, Mr Glumpot, Mr Secrecy Hush Hush and Mr Pride in Prophecy-"He knows what the Germans are going to do and when they are going to do it. He knows where our ships are and what Bomber Command is going to do"-yet here was a senior official talking without a care, albeit to one who had signed the Official Secrets Act.

Vaward followed up his long, baying speech by saying loudly, almost shouting, "And do you know what? Scientifically speaking, you are right! Because, scientifically speaking, one can never never have enough data. But these military men have a different culture-bend everything to the task, that's their view. Every piece of data gathered must work actively towards victory. That is the end of their hypothesising, not scientific truth in the abstract." have enough data. But these military men have a different culture-bend everything to the task, that's their view. Every piece of data gathered must work actively towards victory. That is the end of their hypothesising, not scientific truth in the abstract."

I spoke softly, feeling like a doctor at the bedside of a patient. "I don't want to be a pessimist, sir. I simply report to you what Ryman told me. I'm sorry. I wish it were more momentous, but there it is. His main interest was the causes of war. Meteorology, once a pa.s.sion, seemed to have become a distraction."

A clock sounded, and Sir Peter seemed to take it as a sign to calm down. "I still think there is much more to be found out about that number," he said, lighting another cigarette. "I was rather hoping you'd be the one to spill the beans." He gave a sigh, blowing out smoke. "Perhaps it will have to wait till after the war."

Feeling a wave of self-disgust pa.s.s through me, I watched the smoke curls unwind themselves as they rose to the ceiling.

"Here," said Sir Peter gruffly, seeing me look and proffering his cigarette case, which I availed myself of. "A more immediate question," he continued, "is what are we going to do with you now? I have two choices for you. The first is that you join Mr Stagg again. He has taken charge of the meteorological planning for the invasion of Europe and is in dire need of a personal a.s.sistant. He has asked for you, as I say, and it's not a bad idea, given that you know him already and are familiar with complex forecasting techniques. But I have also had a query from Combined Operations. Apparently Geoffrey Pyke, whom I understand you met in Dunoon, has asked that you be the meteorologist on something they are up to in Canada. They won't tell me what, exactly, but it concerns ice."

My mind went back to the pub. So Habbakuk was something to do with ice, then.

Sir Peter continued. "So those are the two options. Despite your idiocy with that plane, I would be sad to lose you. My personal preference is that you help with the weather planning for the invasion. The greater urgency is there, no doubt about it. But I've always made it my policy to allow every man to choose his own destiny. That way he can find out what line of work he is really cut out for."

I watched him write an address on a sc.r.a.p of paper. "Pyke says you are to go to this address in Smithfield."

His tired white face regarded me in the gloom. "Once you have done so, and talked to him, make your choice, Meadows. Let my secretary know, and she will make the necessary arrangements."

"Thank you, sir. I will try to make the right decision."

"Miss Clements will see you down," he said, ushering me to the door. I felt he wanted to be rid of me now, but he had one last thing to say. "For G.o.d's sake, try not to kill anyone else. I've had the devil of a time extracting you from this mess."

But there was no sign of Miss Clements when I emerged. I stood under the portrait of Fitz-Roy, reconsidering my options for a moment. Right then, having had more than enough of weather, it was to ice that I was tending, somewhere clean and simple without the problematical involutions of the atmosphere and the dangerous gloss of an invasion. But I owed Sir Peter a great deal for his having taken my side in all that had happened.

I pressed the b.u.t.ton for the lift to the ground floor. The door opened and there, like a genie from a bottle, Miss Clements appeared, carrying the score for Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance Pirates of Penzance. Suddenly fluent, romantically speaking, I forgot for a second the horror of Ryman's death, and the urgency of D-Day, and the ingenious plans of Pyke.

Miss Clements, it emerged in conversation, belonged to an amateur dramatics group. She had a rehearsal that evening. I knew the piece well, we used to do it at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge. Mentioning the weather duet in Act I as my cue- How beautifully blue the sky, How beautifully blue the sky, The gla.s.s is rising very high, The gla.s.s is rising very high, Continue fine I hope it may, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday. And yet it rained but yesterday. Continue fine I hope it may, Continue fine I hope it may, And yet it rained but yesterday And yet it rained but yesterday I stood for a while chatting with her, the lift door bouncing against my open palm.

Oh to be there again, to see her face. Clear, fine-textured, with a hint of sensuality, such as invited one's gaze to linger longer than was strictly polite. I would give up all my lamplit answers, any number of proofs and academic honours, to heave anchor for the past and see that face again. It makes me wish I had brought a ca.s.sette of G&S, not Haydn, with me on this voyage. But it is no matter. The words come back una.s.sisted across the fields of the ocean and the music does too: the mind's strong poetry, hoving across the deep-stretched years into this c.o.c.ktail of wood and ice, this drinker of dolour and dollars, this knocker-back of riyals and heavy fuel oil, this vessel which we have christened Habbakuk Habbakuk: Did ever pirate loathed Did ever pirate loathed Forsake his hideous mission Forsake his hideous mission To find himself betrothed To find himself betrothed To a lady of position? To a lady of position? Ah yes! Ah yes! Ah yes! Ah yes! Ah yes! Ah yes!

Choir-voices of the sea...

I take out my pipe now and remember the time we said goodbye-for the last time. Through a tobacco fog I see her again, her face as ma.s.sive in my mind's eye as the back of the mysterious cetacean monster which has returned to our side, that gigantic bull of a sperm whale which appeared at the start of the journey and seemed like a moving land.

Now it seems like a continent.

Twelve.

A light, fresh breeze was funnelling down Kingsway as, jolly from flirting and still humming to myself, I emerged from Adastral House. Looking back, I am shocked I could have forgotten Ryman's death so blithely, even if for a moment. But there were distractions...The breeze was carrying a scent of green apples from a grocer's trolley stall and cinnamon from a baker selling hot cross buns. The buns were laid out on greaseproof paper on lattice trays. I bought one and it was delicious. I could mention the sticky glaze on top, the way the light crust broke in, but the real thing I remember was the burst of sweetness when I hit a currant. light, fresh breeze was funnelling down Kingsway as, jolly from flirting and still humming to myself, I emerged from Adastral House. Looking back, I am shocked I could have forgotten Ryman's death so blithely, even if for a moment. But there were distractions...The breeze was carrying a scent of green apples from a grocer's trolley stall and cinnamon from a baker selling hot cross buns. The buns were laid out on greaseproof paper on lattice trays. I bought one and it was delicious. I could mention the sticky glaze on top, the way the light crust broke in, but the real thing I remember was the burst of sweetness when I hit a currant.

But maybe I am being too hard on myself-eating, drinking, most of all s.e.x, those activities ease the turbulence of the flesh, allowing us, briefly, apparent escape from the burden of soul.

As I ate and walked, I recalled something Ryman had said about consciousness being like the berries in jam-that sometimes we are in the berry, sometimes in the jam, with the difference being that the 'berries' are the exterior surfaces of consciously directed thoughts (such as one might explore while pursuing a line of research) whereas the jam is what we're mostly paddling around in. But now and then we hit upon a berry we were not expecting and that sends us down a train of a.s.sociative thought, enabling us to leap from berry to berry like someone crossing a stream by stepping stones.

Eating my bun as I was, I suddenly remembered something else: a story that Ryman-who had spent some time teaching at Paisley Technical College when he was younger-had told me about boys throwing teacakes at him while he was at the blackboard. We were moving along the beech tree walk, measuring out future memory pace by pace...I remember his tall bush of wiry grey hair moving in the breeze as he spoke...

"I took the affair as a joke, but at the next lecture the bad effects of this were seen. They all brought in buns and pelted me with them. Throughout the term I got used to stale buns. .h.i.tting me on the back of the head intermittently. It kept recurring. I asked each student in turn whether he was responsible and of course they all said no, so I told them that one of their number could add to his ungentlemanly qualities that of being a liar. They just laughed. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw one in the act of throwing. His name was Patrick Latchford. In a moment of madness I seized him and made to drag him towards the door. He grabbed onto his desk and it came off its pedestal, hitting the floor with a loud bang. The lid flew open, scattering buns over the floor. There must have been at least twenty of them. It turned out his father was a baker. Anyway, that was the end of the lecture bun saga."

Ryman had laughed then. It was good to recall him happy for once, and I found myself laughing, too, as I remembered it, though it was the kind of laughter that threatened to turn to tears in an instant. But Kingsway was busy with men and women, many in uniform, and the sun was shining through gaps of loose cloud. Maybe it was a signal one thing at least was going to go right, though in retrospect it's clear I had already received that, back at Adastral House.

I walked on a little, past an umbrella shop, a chop house, then hit Pen Corner-the Waterman's Pen shop on the corner of Kemble Street and Kingsway. In the window were fountain pens, silver and gold. They lay like bullet sh.e.l.ls in their velvet beds and they made me think of the sh.e.l.l cases in Ryman's study. I really should write to Gill; but what could I say? Sorry didn't seem anything like enough. On the contrary, it seemed like an insult.

The streets were filthy, and here and there were holes where there should have been buildings. A man in a brown coat, grey flannel trousers and a shirt with an open collar pa.s.sed me. His right hand was dangling down with the thumb in the fold of a book with green boards, which I recognised as Enquire Within Upon Everything Enquire Within Upon Everything, then a popular t.i.tle. He had the look of a derelict or someone gone AWOL. Watching him pa.s.s, I suddenly became aware again of my own appearance, in particular the cuts on my face. I had not thought about them in the crucial meeting, though she would often joke about them in later years. Strange how different times can come back like this, as if the separate incidents are being reissued fresh.

Waiting for a bus, I took the piece of paper from my pocket and read what Sir Peter had written: Morgan's, Smithfield, no uniform Morgan's, Smithfield, no uniform. I began plotting the journey in my head, stepping closer to the kerb and being jostled by the crowd of waiting pa.s.sengers. I didn't see the bus, which came close enough to me to whip the paper from my hand-and didn't stop anyway. A murmuring grumble, like the beginnings of thunder far off in the sky, went through the knot of people. They were collected round a lamp post in a way that reminded me of the cattle in Kilmun, gathering round a salty post, or the cot-house when the oscillator was pipping.

Catching my breath, I fell to my knees to retrieve the paper from where it lay in the road, flapping like the wing of an injured bird. As I picked it up I became certain that I must throw in my hand with Pyke. Despite the a.s.sertions of special knowledge I had made to Sir Peter, the truth was that I felt that grasping the uncertainty of weather in a way coherent enough for the generals was too much of a challenge. No amount of forecasting skill would ever give reasonable enough a.s.surance to send so many men before gunfire. At least with ice there was some certainty: you knew it was going to melt.

For a second I stood paralysed by the hazy glamour of the ice field which was waiting for me in the future: the wraiths of snowdrift racing from under the paws of torchlit huskies, the sledges moving across the great white desert, the boiling green sea biting at its edges, the heroism of an Amundsen, a Shackleton, a Scott...

Still clutching the note, I made my way towards Holborn, pa.s.sing on the way a pub called The Dagger. The sign above the door showed a knife held by a disembodied, gauntleted hand-some kind of heraldic emblem-with a sort of cloud painted round the p.r.i.c.king-point of the blade.

A point in s.p.a.ce-but for once I successfully resisted the temptation to go in. Outside, a Guinness delivery lorry was waiting with its engine running, tainting the freshness of the breeze with its exhaust. I watched the greasy black cloud of its emissions drift down a side street into a stand of trees, where it was enmeshed by the moving leaves and branches. The drayman, wearing old green overalls that recalled to me those worn by the foresters in Kilmun, was evidently waiting for someone to emerge, for he began sounding his horn repeatedly, blast upon blast. It was extremely loud.

As I walked away the sound carried after me on the wind, fading until I could no longer be sure if it was a present perception or a memory. It was as if I was in a labyrinth, lost halfway between the mental and physical worlds.

Thirteen.

Pyke's operation was in Smithfield Market, that ancient quarter of London wedged between Clerkenwell, Blackfriars and the City. Walking under its large, ornate hangars, in front of long ranks of butchers in white coats and b.l.o.o.d.y ap.r.o.ns, past glistening chops and chump, haunches and great mounds of diced beef, was like entering a cathedral dedicated to the G.o.d of meat.

At the poultry specialist, glazed duck lay in rows beneath bald chickens suspended from hooks, their plucked puckered skin hanging loose; elsewhere the splayed carca.s.ses of cows and pigs presented their innards to pa.s.sers-by. There was even a pile of pigs' trotters. I stared at it all in wonder.

Most hypnotic of all were the large mounds of stewing meat, chopped up into cubes, which the butchers were slowly moving from one place to another with what looked like garden shovels, all the while making jokes at each other's expense. It did not seem conceivable, in a time of rationing, that so much meat could exist. Did that, I wondered, explain their good humour?

I suddenly felt jealous of these men whose role in life was so clear and unambiguous. But it was not in any way shallow. The casual att.i.tudes of these c.o.c.kney butchers, the way they strolled about with saws and cleavers, caps at jaunty angles on their heads, or stood around drinking cups of tea-tea was the potent cement between them-the barely comprehensible shouts and calls they gave, all this was simply camouflage for a high seriousness of purpose. They were working men who obviously believed in what they did.

Apart from the repartee of the butchers, the other main sound of the market was a tremendous lowing, emanating from yards behind the main halls in which the doomed cows were penned. As I walked past them, some sad-faced, some big and boisterous, I was glad I did not have to kill them myself.

Morgan's was a rather dilapidated steel vault that appeared, from the outside, to be almost completely sealed. But there was a door. The name was stencilled in a patchy red arc of paint across the metal. To one side was a black rubber b.u.t.ton. I pressed it and thought I heard a bell sound inside, but through the market's cachophony I couldn't be sure. It was a while before the door opened, releasing a cloud of frozen air, in the midst of which was a face wearing a flying helmet and goggles.

"Name?" said the apparition, whose body, I now saw, was encased in an RAF-issue electrically heated flying suit.

"Henry Meadows," I replied.

"Come this way, sir." Before us stretched a dimly lit corridor with steel walls. He led me down it to an anteroom, where more fleece-lined flying suits hung on pegs, together with helmets and goggles. "You'll need to put one of these on before I take you down." He almost seemed to stand at attention while I changed into the heavy garment. We returned to the corridor, following it until we came to a pa.s.senger lift. The descent was a long one. Eventually, the lift stopped with a jolt and its doors opened to reveal a small square room, like an airlock. Facing us was a door, sealed like the main entrance.

"Just a minute, sir," said my guardian, pressing another rubber b.u.t.ton. A voice rang out from a loudspeaker grille. "Yes?"

"Verse Six and visitor. Mr Meadows."

"I'll just check with the gaffer," said the voice. We waited in silence in that stifling little s.p.a.ce until the voice came again. "Ask him the name of the sea lion."

My minder invited me to speak into the grille. "It was Lev," I said, leaning forward in the bulky suit. "Leviathan."

The door opened with a hiss to reveal a vast cold-store-much lower in temperature than the corridor-in the midst of which were set up differently sized blocks of ice and other materials, including wood, masonry and concrete. There were various pieces of equipment-long steel basins, electric refrigeration machines, some kind of industrial vice-but I could not work out the purpose of this strange laboratory. Suspended from the ceiling, rows of metal-shaded lamps sent pyramids of light down through the curling air.