by Giles Foden
“So, you live here now?” I asked awkwardly as we walked into dusky light outside the wind tunnel. One of the workers from the factory was painting the number 52 on a large flying boat mounted on trestles.
“Yes,” she replied. “But in Seaview, not Cowes. I couldn’t face going back to Scotland, not after losing another baby. I had all our belongings sent down.”
“We could meet again,” I said. “Talk things over…”
She shook her head. “Look, do you want a lift or not?”
“Yes, of course. Thank you.” We began walking towards the vehicle. “It seems like fate,” I continued, “you coming here like this.”
She looked at me, swinging the suitcase a little menacingly. “Fate? Wallace hated that word.”
“But he thought everything was determined.”
“Not exactly.” We got into the car, a little blue Morris with red seats. I slung my kitbag into the back and she passed the suitcase over the steering wheel to me, so it rested squarely on my lap.
“You mean he thought everything was determined, but not exactly?”
She frowned. “I mean he didn’t think about it like that, in a religious way. He once said fate depended on the unpredictable relationship of different physical scales.”
She put the key in the ignition. “You know what else he once said to me?”
“What?”
“That if anyone wanted to apply his number across a large space, the thing to do was to take the weather readings in the centre of each adjacent quadrant of the atmosphere, not do the whole thing.”
“I’m not sure that would work,” I said. “There would be too many distortion errors in the rest of the quadrant.”
“But worth a try, when you are in a bind, if you could simulate quasi-random turbulence of the outside parts?”
“Yes, I suppose…”
I suddenly felt extremely weary. I was unable to expel from my head the vision of Allied soldiers being dragged by the rip tide, mouths agape as, raked by machine-gun fire from the shore, they were tipped out of their landing craft into the waves. A tide of men, turning the wavetops red.
Gill carried on speaking in neutral, emotionless tones. “Well, I have brought something that might help. When we were in Scotland, and you came, and Wallace told me of his suspicions of you, part of me wanted him to help you. I was always a bit frustrated that he had gone to ground in Kilmun not fully recognised for his achievements. Now that he is dead, I want him to have a legacy. And that is what I have brought you. At least, I hope so. Open the suitcase, Henry.”
Perplexed, I clicked the brass clasps and lifted the lid. Inside, to my great surprise, laid out in the original green baize mould, were the eight shell cases I had last seen in Ryman’s study. I looked across at Gill for an explanation. I had a peculiar sensation of impending judgement, as if I were about to go before the beak.
She smiled unnervingly, as if pleased to see me foxed. “Wallace used these to simulate the action of turbulence round the central calculation in each quadrant. That is how he got round the problem of crossing from one weather system to the next.”
“But how?” I said, taking the largest shell case out of the mould. Even as I did so, I began to have an inkling of the answer, for inside the shell case I felt weight shift; there was also a sandy, tinkling noise, like that heard in a kaleidoscope, or a box of seeds.
“Give it to me,” commanded Gill. “And cup your hands.” Again I had the feeling of going before the law.
I did as she said, and she began unscrewing the end of the shell. With very careful movements she tipped out some of its contents into the receptacle of my joined palms. What spilled out were tiny brass digits, pressed out of sheet metal. Inside the shell were hundreds more.
“He had them precision-made in Germany, and collected them from there after his trip to Poland in 1939. That was partly why he went to Berlin.”
Suddenly, as if in a flash of revealed knowledge, I began to see the shape of the method, but Gill was a long way ahead of me. “It’s very important you don’t lose any,” she explained, touching the mound of numbers in my hands with a finger. “Each shell case contains a different amount of digits, so within a certain range you can choose the minimum and maximum values for each set of numbers you want. Wallace used to shake the shell case like a maraca, pour out a pile of these on a table, then close his eyes to pick out an amount of digits determined by the nature of the underlying calculation.”
I was amazed she had such a grasp of it all. “Those digits effectively become the seed for further calculations,” she continued, speaking in the same authoritative tone.
“Worked out mathematically?” I asked, looking at the pile of numbers still cupped in my palm.
She nodded. “Right. Put those back carefully. We have to get you to the ferry.”
When we got to the pier, she would not allow me to kiss her, simply turning away with a melancholy smile and heading back to the Morris. Still hopeful of possibility even then, I watched her drive away.
I spent the journey across the Solent in a whirl of emotion mixed with mathematical thought. It was as if, finally, two parts of my brain had come together…Full of regret and sadness, and excitement and relief, carrying Gill’s suitcase in my hand and the kitbag of instruments over my shoulder, I arrived back at Southwick just in time for the Saturday night conference.
The weather outside the hut was still good, and the wartime measure of setting British Summer Time two hours ahead of GMT meant that there was still plenty of light, even at 9 PM. To a layman it would have looked all fine and dandy to launch an invasion on Monday—but the charts confirmed yesterday’s view of coming storms.
I heard from one of the navy forecasters that Stagg had become indisposed—I imagined him vomiting again—during the 6 PM conference while I was away. Yates had had to take over as controller.
But Stagg was back in his seat now. Things did not look good for Monday. The Admiralty’s pessimism had worsened to meet Dunstable’s. They also described another significant new storm which had formed in the US, to the east of the Great Lakes, which was moving towards the Atlantic and would soon come to dominate. Petterssen’s upper-air work supported the rapid arrival of this ‘Storm E’, as we termed it.
Krick, as if beginning to accept the situation, made no mention of the ‘finger of high pressure’ he had maintained would insulate the Channel from the earlier oncoming Irish cold front. But he still thought it was OK to go. Out of solidarity, not conviction, he was persuaded by Stagg and Yates to allow a unanimous ‘no’.
The WANTAC figures were still out of kilter, new instruments notwithstanding, which I took as further confirmation that the earlier readings were accurate.
After the conference I told Stagg what I’d discovered at Saunders-Roe. “We can trust WANTAC, in my view. But I don’t know what it means yet. I have a suspicion that a ridge of high pressure might be developing there. More like a little tube than a ridge, maybe, but something. I tried to work it out on the ferry, but I need more time.”
Ignoring the technical details of what I said relating to WANTAC, he gave me a sour look. “Time is exactly what we don’t have.” There was no point in telling him about Gill and the shell cases yet.
Keeping my counsel, I then accompanied Stagg and Yates to the door of the supreme commander’s meeting down in the main house. As they were about to enter, Admiral Creasy bowled up the corridor. “Hello, chaps. Some reassuring news for us tonight? You look happier than when you went out yesterday, I must say.”
Stagg gave him a forbearing smile. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very much happier, sir.”
“Well, we’ll soon know the worst,” said Creasy in reply, and they entered the meeting room. I waited outside with the other aides, but I knew what Stagg would tell the assembled bigwigs. That the weather over the British Isles in the next few days would be subject to complex patterns of turbulence, with force 5 winds in the Channel, much low cloud and risk of fo
g in sea areas. In fact, a series of three depressions were strung across the Atlantic and the result would be rough seas—far too rough for landing on Monday—and too much cloud for successful bombing operations or landing troops from air.
After the meeting, at about 11 PM, Stagg told me what had happened. Eisenhower had asked if there was a chance the forecast might be more optimistic tomorrow and Stagg had explained that the whole weather situation was extremely finely balanced. Last night, he had thought that there might be the slightest tip to the favourable side, but now it had gone too far to the other side for it to swing back again. Leigh Mallory, speaking for the RAF, had enquired what the conditions would be like for heavy bombers, then Eisenhower had again asked if Stagg felt he might be a bit more positive tomorrow (Sunday).
“I’m afraid not, sir,” was all Stagg could say—adding to me, outside afterwards, “I’ve a feeling they are going to postpone. I get the sense Monty wants to go whatever, but Eisenhower is listening to us.”
“But putting the ships back into harbour will cause mayhem.”
“Yes,” Stagg said dourly.
“And the Germans are bound to get wind of it.”
“Yes,” he said again, more dourly still.
As he recounted all this to me, Stagg and I were making a circuit in the moonlight round the forbidding Victorian mansion that was Southwick. Staff cars—Packards, Morrises, Lea Francises—were drawing up constantly, their tyres crunching on the gravel. Out of one of the cars, looking like Laurel and Hardy, Smuts and Churchill emerged—their faces, flashing in the porch light, were heavy with gloom. We turned away quickly, making another tour of the building, lest the PM should identify the weathermen bringing all the bad news.
“They say Eisenhower complains because Churchill eats all the doughnuts,” whispered Stagg. “And Monty gets cross because Eisenhower smokes.”
Stagg was relieved that he had at last been able to provide them all with an unqualified forecast, even though it probably meant the invasion was off. “I do feel a bit happier,” he said, “but if there is good weather on Monday I’ll hang for it.”
We walked round the house, then towards a lawn at the front. The moon was full, there was almost no wind, the night sky was empty of clouds. Overall, it was almost like one of Ryman’s brief moments of paradise—that condition of ‘just no turbulence’ which is as near to equilibrium as the atmosphere ever comes. Meanwhile we were forecasting thick cloud and strong wind in the Channel by morning. It didn’t seem to stack up. But these background conditions of apparent calm were, in fact, exactly those times during which powerful events fermented. Besides, it was time I crossed my Rubicon.
“I’m going to go back and have one last go at applying the Ryman number in respect of WANTAC,” I said as we looked out over the blackened grounds beyond the lawn we were approaching, where spectral lines of tents ploughed the grass and rhododendron bushes rose like sea monsters.
“Just explain again, can you, to a chump like me, why WANTAC is so singularly important and how it ties up with Ryman?”
“I think the reason WANTAC’s showing different readings is that it is in the midst of one of Ryman’s thin weather boundaries, at the edge of a small area of high pressure which would give us exactly the interval we need. I am satisfied the equipment is working properly, but I still haven’t managed to make the figures stack up in a synoptic model. His number again.”
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t get it,” said Stagg beside me, his feet crunching on the gravel.
“The Ryman number tells you how turbulent a parcel of atmosphere is. The reason Sir Peter sent me to Scotland was to find how wide or tall is that parcel of atmosphere—the range of a given number, as it were. The importance of the WANTAC ship is that its readings may show evidence of the small high pressure interval Eisenhower needs. If it is, end of story.”
“I should get some sleep, if I were you; we’re not yet at the end of any story,” Stagg said curtly.
We were at the edge of the lawn. I kicked the turf with the toe of my shoe.
“Which reminds me,” Stagg continued. “There’s something I have forgotten to tell you. Air Marshal Tedder came up to me after the meeting and said we—I mean the British—ought to put some meteorologists in with the invasion force to take measurements and check how close our forecasts are to the reality on the ground. Apparently the Yanks have two whole squadrons of battlefield weathermen. We’ve run plain out. Tedder spoke to Sir Peter and he rang me, wondering, since you are young and fit and know what we have been up against here, whether you’d like to go in with them? He said he thought it might be a way for you to make amends for that business with Ryman.”
“Did he now?” I instinctively wanted to say no, but instead asked for some time to think it over. In some ways it was an honour to be asked—but I had no military training whatsoever. Feeling exhausted, and overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation, I stared up into the night sky. The stars seemed to shudder, as if feeling the same apprehension.
“I am not a soldier,” I said, as we turned to go back to the house, whose serried windows showed tiny lines of light—not visible from above—at the edges of the blackout blinds.
“That is a drawback,” said Stagg. “But it would be tremendously helpful if someone who was actually involved could compare theoretical forecasts with actuality. Think about it, anyway, as even if we postpone today we are going to have to go in the next three weeks, come what may.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Come what June! Come on, we’d better get back.”
On our way back to the main house—as we approached that great Victorian lump—we heard heavy running footsteps on the gravel and soon met an out-of-breath General Bull, who said he had been looking for us.
“Don’t disappear like that! I’ve come to tell you, Monday may well be put off. If so, we are back at D minus three again as of today.”
This meant the assault would be on Tuesday, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that. “Because of your forecasts, General Eisenhower is thinking of holding up D-Day on a provisional, hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis,” Bull continued. “We’ll meet at four fifteen tomorrow morning and, depending on what you have to say, the supreme commander will confirm the postponement or not. If appropriate, he will then, or later in the day, decide definitely whether Tuesday will be D-Day.”
It appeared provisional, from the way Bull was talking, but really that was it. Between us, Stagg and I, Krick, Petterssen, Douglas and the Admiralty, in conjunction with thousands of other Allied meteorological staff, had finally caused a decision to be made. It seemed like Ryman’s forecast factory had come true—but for all that we still weren’t sure whether the decision to postpone would be the right one. The sky was practically clear; there was no rain.
“Maybe it is madness to send you on a wild goose chase into France under these circumstances,” said Stagg, once Bull had gone.
“No,” I said. “I’ll go.”
A strange feeling had come over me in the general’s presence. Shaking off my anxiety and tiredness, I suddenly desperately wanted a shot of the action. I wanted to be among the ranks of men whose fates our forecast would determine. I had spent too long among figures of the mathematical type.
But I still had one last set of calculations to make. It was time that everything I had worked for was met directly. This meant facing up to the forecast problems with a new purpose-fulness—acting on what I had learned from Ryman and from the experiment I had conducted at Saunders-Roe, and gaining new meaning and new strength from the conviction that Gill’s gift of the shell cases had supplied.
So I went, that Saturday night, back up to the Nissen hut and began applying the Ryman number to adjacent parcels of atmosphere, all the way from WANTAC near Iceland down to the Channel, using the simulation method Gill had suggested. I was not entirely confident, but I had to try. It seemed to make sense: because it allowed a measure of uncertainty into the calculation, this method was the best way t
o future-proof the forecast.
I needed to inoculate against my dizziness, uncertainty in general as it effectively was, but were the shell cases and their contents really the medicine? They seemed in one light like another type of dizziness in themselves, but maybe that was the point. What the Africans did, in Zomba after the slide, was allow themselves to be bitten by whirligig beetles. The beetles were collected from mountain rivers and pools and held to the breast near the nipple where they bit in a defensive reaction, releasing a powerful steroid.
So the kizunguzungu epidemic ended.
Four
In the early hours of Sunday 4 June, with the 3 AM conference over, I was working bleary-eyed on my equations in the hut on the bluff. Outside, the sentry stirred and the Channel fretted against the boundary shore. The far-called navy was melting towards the battle line, pushing forth tentatively, like the shy anemone, unlocked at on its ocean bed. In France, on the moon-blanched land, waves turned, foam fell, whiting more the sepulchre. Meanwhile on each page, as I was writing, the figures seemed to move. These are the images that return.
An hour or so later Stagg would attend the first of what turned out to be two crucial commanders’ conferences in the library at Southwick. At the first meeting, even though the weather was still fine, Stagg told them he thought it could go bad on Monday, with wind and cloud appearing in four or five hours’ time. Eisenhower confirmed the previous evening’s tentative decision to postpone.
Everything was in the balance, we were indeed not yet at the end of the story. We seemed to be stuck in the middle of the end, waiting for the variables to come into alignment.
I tried not to become frozen in the terrible immobility that this provisionality can entail. Smoking heavily, I continued with my calculations, pen in one hand, cigarette in the other, shell cases and numbers on the table in front of me. I knew I needed to have patience—as every silent sheet could be the one that bore fruit. But first a tree had to grow, hurrying its rivulets of roots and fibres, each one a boundary for the next, across the waiting page. An equation tree, glowing and strong.