by Giles Foden
Whybrow waved a dismissive hand at the Waafs. ‘Give us a minute, will you.’ He gestured peremptorily at the red balloons on the ceiling. ‘Send up one of those and get me a cloud height estimation.’
Without saying a word, Joan tugged on one of the strings, Gwen seizing the balloon as it came down. It more or less filled the doorway as she took it out, holding it before her as if she were a waitress with a tray. Joan followed.
Once they had left, Whybrow turned to me, folding his hands on his RAF tunic with the air of someone about to make a speech. ‘I don’t quite understand why a Type 3 outstation need be set up in Wallace Ryman’s garden, but who am I to reason why? Apparently you are a “bright young thing” who needs careful handling. A real scientist, Sir Peter said, as if the rest of us aren’t. Well, young man, I’ll be expecting the very best from you, as from any other observer.’
‘Of course, sir,’ I said, putting a deliberate meekness into my voice. Whybrow was more or less irrelevant so far as my true task was concerned, but there was no point in antagonising him for the sake of it. And there could, after all, I thought then, be some way in which I might need his help.
‘Right, then. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Have you sent up any sondes yet?’
‘I haven’t any hydrogen.’
‘We sent over all the requisites.’
‘I have never made it before. The tanks came ready supplied at Kew.’
He laughed abruptly, as if pleased to discover I wasn’t such a know-it-all after all. ‘Then you had better come with me.’
Leaving the farmhouse, we walked through the mud that divided the Nissen huts, all of which were of uniform height. The hydrogen shed was much bigger. From a kind of gable at one end of it, the tower of the cloud searchlight rose, giving the whole complex the air of a makeshift airfield.
‘Gwen! Joan!’ shouted Whybrow.
He called again. A red balloon appeared from behind one of the huts. Eventually the balloon entered the cloud.
‘Three hundred and ten feet, sir,’ said Joan emerging from the hut, followed shortly afterwards by Gwen.
They both, I would later learn, came from landed families in Norfolk. The sort of stylish women to whom everything came easily, they seemed odd candidates to be stuck up in this backwater. But then, war did that to all of us, moving us around its chessboard in ways we never expected.
‘Jolly good,’ said Whybrow nasally. ‘Now, I’d like you, one or other of you, or both, to show our new arrival how to make hydrogen. Then send him to Mr Pyke up at Loch Eck.’
He turned to me. ‘Sir Peter said I was to introduce you to someone from Combined Ops’ Experimental Section who is up here. Strange fellow, Pyke. Very hot to use science for war, and clever with it. Anyway, good luck!’
On this oddly cheery note, Whybrow made his way back to the Ops Room, his square back framed in the rectangle of light between two Nissen huts. Without saying anything to me, the two women began walking in the direction of the tall hydrogen shed.
Falling into pace behind them, I couldn’t help noticing their fine shoes were covered in mud. They were court shoes, but fine ones, not the standard, pump-like things that most of the Waafs wore, which looked like comical black frogs.
‘Shame to cover such nice shoes in mud,’ I said to their backs. ‘They look rather expensive. You ought to be in wellies, with this lot.’
‘Not likely,’ said Joan over her shoulder. ‘We wouldn’t be seen dead in wellies.’ It struck me as odd that she should speak for them both.
‘Hydrogen shed,’ Gwen announced bluntly. They both spoke in this clipped, staccato manner. She pushed against the door and I followed them inside.
The lights flickered on to reveal a large warehouse-like space. At one end were some stairs leading up to the gable, out of which a mezzanine floor projected. There was a balcony there with something vertical behind, just showing in the darkness above the lights: a suspended row of aluminium-shaded lamps, looking like soldiers’ helmets hanging from wires. The floor space below, empty in the centre, was lined with steel drums of caustic soda and piles of cylinders for storing hydrogen.
‘This is the generator,’ said Joan. She indicated another drum, smaller and thicker than those in which the caustic soda was stored. It was sealed with a screw-down lid, out of which projected a black rubber tube.
I stubbed my toe on something and swore. The women laughed maliciously. I peered down to see what had injured me: a lozenge of lead. ‘That’s the safety weight,’ explained Gwen, her tone kinder than before. ‘We’re always doing that. We have a whale of a time doing that.’
She pulled on some rubber gloves and fetched a lump of caustic soda, holding it up to the light as she walked back towards me. It looked like a cake of salt. ‘You don’t want to get this horrid stuff on your skin.’ She put it in the generator, along with some water. ‘Fill to two-thirds.’
‘Add a cupful of iron filings,’ said Joan, leaning over.
‘Ferrosilicon, really,’ said Gwen, watching Joan pour the catalyst into the cylinder. Then, as Gwen moved quickly to screw down the lid, Joan picked up the lead weight next to my foot. She placed it on the rubber tube where it emerged from the lid. Steadying herself by putting out a hand to Gwen’s shoulder, Joan stood on the weight, first with one foot then the other.
‘You have to do this or the weight can come off,’ she said, as the reaction began. Balancing, arms outstretched, she looked like an outsize Christmas fairy. Next to her, inside the cylinder, the recipe for hydrogen fizzed and gurgled.
The reaction came to a peak. Gwen produced an empty balloon from her tunic, knelt down beside the canister and began rolling the nozzle over the stubby tube. ‘You have to thread it on quite carefully,’ she said.
‘Or it can all go wrong,’ added Joan from her pedestal.
I watched the balloon begin to inflate.
‘Hydrogen,’ said Gwen, holding the sides of the balloon with her palms as it filled up. ‘Lightest element in the universe, ta-ra ta-ra.’
‘And the most abundant,’ said Joan, stepping down from the lozenge as the reaction came to equilibrium. ‘Fifteen pounds of it in every human body.’ They sounded like music-hall comedians, limbering up for a punchline.
Gwen unrolled the nozzle of the balloon from its umbilical tube, knotted it and let go. It danced up past the row of lights, rising to the apex of the ceiling.
‘How will you get it down?’ I wondered aloud, watching.
‘We’ll show you,’ said Joan. ‘Come on.’
I stood in the centre of the shed. ‘Isn’t it highly explosive? It could burn on those lights.’
‘Only if there’s a spark,’ said Gwen. ‘Come along.’
I followed them across the cavernous shed and up some narrow stairs that led to the gable end and the balcony. Climbing up through an open trapdoor, I saw there were several steel sheets bolted to the wooden floor as foundations for some kind of structure. It was quite dark up there, but I made out the base of the cloud searchlight tower. Beneath it were two thin mattresses side by side, with pillows and blankets. I was surprised, my mind raced … they surely hadn’t brought me into a bedroom?
‘We sometimes take turns to have a nap up here while on duty,’ Gwen said, by way of explanation. She turned on a little lamp: just a bare bulb fixed to one of the wooden rafters.
In the new light I saw two little bowls of make-up on the floor and a full-length mirror draped with clothing. Under the mirror was a small pile of shoes. There was also an easel and a stack of canvases, together with a palette covered with hardened oil paint of various hues, jam jars full of paintbrushes, and a wooden tray of half-squeezed tubes of paint.
‘We paint up here too,’ said Gwen. ‘We’re artists, you see.’
Even more surprised, I looked at the picture on the easel. It showed a long yellow beach with rolling breakers curved along a bay. Among puddles of seawater in the sand, a couple of black dogs jumped about, chasing salt-wet tails. The dog
s’ tails and the curling breakers mirrored each other, as if the intention was to convey a relationship between them. Behind the dogs, blues and yellows and greens of varying relationships blended into the glow of the horizon.
‘That’s pretty good,’ I said, aware of them looking at me in expectation of an opinion.
‘Not good enough,’ said thin Gwen, and I wondered for a second if she was referring to my response rather than the painting itself.
‘Never is,’ said Joan. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Oh, yes please,’ I replied. ‘Which of you did it?’
‘We do them together,’ Gwen said proudly.
‘That’s unusual.’
‘Maybe. It’s our thing. We hope to apply to the Slade, if this horrid war ever ends.’
‘What do you think we should call it?’ Joan asked me.
I looked again at the painting. ‘Dogs in Foam?’ I ventured, and they both laughed, hooting loudly.
On a low table next to the mirror was everything needed for brewing tea. Joan put a small kettle on. The three of us stood slightly awkwardly, waiting for it to boil.
‘What does Whybrow think?’ I asked.
‘What about?’ said Gwen.
‘You two having this little den.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t mind,’ said Joan, pouring hot water into a teapot.
‘He daren’t,’ Gwen said. ‘We think he’s scared of us.’
‘Really?’
‘He says we make him anxious,’ said Joan, pouring, then handing me a mug.
‘Why?’
Neither replied. As we drank our tea, I studied the metal-grid pylon-like tower which rose out of the floor towards the roof, where – bolted on either side of the pitch – there were two more trapdoors. The glass of the searchlight and some meteorological gauges were suspended on a trackway in the middle of the grid, which was raised by a geared winding system.
‘Can I see it work?’ I asked.
‘It’s not worth turning on in the day,’ said Gwen. ‘And at night it attracts bombers, but basically we undo these …’ She climbed onto the grid of the tower and unbolted one of the trapdoors, which fell down with a bang. Cold air rushed down. I could see the sky – and Gwen’s calves.
All in a pickle, I quickly looked down again, trying not to catch the eye of Joan, who was standing next to me. I didn’t quite succeed. I was sure she was smirking. The suspicion began to grow in me that the whole thing had been done for my benefit. Or theirs. Had I been had? I was beginning to see how Whybrow might find them perturbing. They seemed to be the kind of women who could turn men round their little fingers, and enjoy the sport of doing it.
There was another bang as Gwen let down the second trapdoor. Joan grasped a metal handle and began winding the worm gear which raised the tower. It ascended like a theatrical device. I watched as Gwen rose further with the tower until her head poked out of the roof. Her silk-stockinged ankles were now level with my face. I felt overcome by simple lust.
‘Jeepers it’s nippy up here,’ she called.
I stared. There was something hypnotic about the way – like a graph curve, like a continuous function – the material followed the flow of skin and bone.
Things were made worse by Joan’s hand brushing my back as she reached for the handle of the worm gear. ‘You could help,’ she said, starting to wind. ‘This thing hurts my wrist.’
So I wound the tower – and Gwen – down again. Joan was right. It was quite hard, in spite of the gear.
‘In summer,’ said Joan, ‘we can smell jasmine up there on the wind.’
‘Very romantic,’ I said.
‘Whereas in winter we get chilblains,’ said Gwen crisply, climbing down beside us. ‘Joany, we’d better get that balloon.’
I looked over the balcony to the balloon on the ceiling. The suspended lights shone a peculiar red through the rubber, like torchlight through fingers. Gwen appeared, holding a pole with a hook on the end – like a boat gaffe – and Joan leaned out over the balcony to deftly hook the balloon.
‘Yes,’ said Gwen, as she and I descended to the ground floor. ‘No, hand it down. I’ll do it.’
She took the other end of the pole from Joan, who then climbed down herself.
Gwen opened the door of the shed to let the gas out of the balloon, sounding a long, slow exhalation. I imagined the molecules of hydrogen spreading out into the atmosphere and combining with other elements.
‘Whybrow mentioned seeing Pyke from Combined Ops at Loch … Loch …’ I said, frowning and moving my weight from one foot to another as I tried to remember the name.
‘Eck. I’ll show you where to drive,’ said Joan. ‘It’s not far. Pyke is usually on the loch at this time. If he’s not there he’ll be at the Argyll Hotel in town.’
I was pleased it was her. For I have to admit, it was Joan who (in the midst of my ignorance) was stirring my pot then, more than Gwen, despite the business with the stockings. How they will laugh if they ever read this!
We walked through the mud and the old farmyard towards the gate.
‘How will I recognise Pyke?’ I asked.
I swung my leg over the motorcycle.
‘There’s no mistaking him,’ she said. ‘He has a messy little beard, wears specs. Looks a bit peculiar. Holes in his suit jacket.’ She giggled. ‘You better watch out or that’s what you will become.’
‘Why?’ I asked, affronted.
‘All you scientists end up that way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have no style. All you think about are your equations.’
‘Ah,’ I said, rising to the challenge. ‘But that is just it, don’t you see? The style is in the equations. Some people write ugly proofs, others do it with panache. I like to think mine are as beautiful as, as – well, anything!’
I watched her face become aghast. ‘Anything? Anything is not beautiful. Only special things are beautiful.’
I felt embarrassed at my inability to express myself. ‘All right, Miss, if you say so. But one day I’ll show you some of those equations and you will see what I mean.’
‘I look forward to it.’
After giving directions to the quay at Loch Eck, she said goodbye to me, then turned and headed back to the station.
I managed to stall the motorbike after just a few yards. As I was sitting in the middle of the road, kicking the starter, I became aware of a detachment of troops marching towards me. American infantry. It was too late for me to move. They separated on either side of me before rejoining; exercise-hardened faces giving no acknowledgement of my presence.
I sat frozen to the seat. I have never seen a statue of a man on a motorbike but that’s what I was, a monument around which they flowed with the molecules of the air. After the rupture, when the men reformed, it was as if there had been no disturbance. Turning on the saddle to watch the soldiers grow smaller down the road, I thought again about the invasion of which they might become a part, for which I was supposed to help predict the weather by unwrapping the mysteries of the Ryman number.
I kicked the pedal. Under gunfire on a beach … I did not envy them that. I kicked the pedal again.
Starting the engine, finally, I was shaken by a grave doubt as to whether anything I could do as a meteorologist could match what would be asked of those soldiers.
9
Loch Eck was a sombre place. Shadows cast by cloud sat on dark green hills rising steeply from black water edged with reeds and rushes. One cloud in particular caught my eye, perched above its hill. It was a member of a class of clouds termed lenticular, so called because they often look like a thick lens with a hole in the middle. They’re unusual in that, although the locality and shape of the cloud remain the same (they frequently cap mountains), the air comprising it is always changing.
I continued on my journey up the loch, at one point having to show my paperwork to a sentry. After riding by the shore for a mile or two, during which time I also passed some navy cadet
s in a heavy wooden rowing boat, I came to an old stone quay, just as Joan had described. Gathering my thoughts, I propped up the motorcycle on its stand and began walking down the ancient blocks of stone.
My eye followed the grey edge of the quay to where it was interrupted by a broad stairway down to the water. At the top of the stairs stood two men, one of whom was holding a pair of leather reins. Something was waving in the wind above them, echoing the shaking rushes by the edge of the loch.
‘Hullo, lend a hand, will you?’ he shouted, seeing me watching.
The speaker was a long-haired, bearded, sallow-faced man in his fifties, possibly older. His greying beard was like a scrappy piece of bush; it was as if it was fighting with his skin rather than growing out of it. The leather reins he was holding stretched out into the loch. Out there, a creature was moving through the water, pulling the leather taut. I walked down towards them.
It was an aerial that I had seen waving. The other man – younger, in his early thirties, and almost shaven-headed – held a handset attached to a radio set in his backpack. The handset had red and yellow buttons. Both men wore tweed suits, which in the younger man’s case looked rather odd; it’s not something you expect, to see the skull beneath the skin of someone in a tweed suit. Next to the two men was a crate containing two dozen or so herring – and next to that stood a tea flask resting on some greaseproof paper, which was half wrapped round an unfinished sandwich.
Without explaining further, the older man handed me one of the reins. The moment I took it there was a sharp jerk that almost sprained my wrist.
‘He tends to get a bit excited in tight places,’ said the man.
‘What is it?’ I asked, bemused, resisting the tug of the rein.
‘It … is Lev,’ said the man. ‘Short for Leviathan. We’re testing the effectiveness of sea lions in guarding harbours against attack. Give him a zap, Julius, will you?’