Taking the Heat

by Paul McDermott

  There was no way he was going to be refused on the following departure two hours later, but he was still forced to wait to one side until every vehicle with advance reservation had been called forward and parked. He was then assigned a dark, narrow and inconvenient space as far as possible from a stairwell leading to the main deck. Once there, a swift glance at the outrageous price tariffs in all the restaurants was enough for him to refuse to contribute more than the price of a cup of indifferent coffee towards the early repayment of the country’s national debt. Futile, perhaps, but Eddie felt it was his only opportunity to make any sort of protest against that unmistakeably French raison d’être, xenophobia.

  ***

  “Eddie’s written again, Brenda. You should come and hear what he says.”

  There was something in Dave’s tone of voice, something Brenda had never heard before, and it caused her to choke back the vague, unsolidified but negative feelings Eddie’s name always inspired in her. She nodded and sat with Dave at the kitchen table.

  “Not a postcard this time, and not an email, either!” Dave waved the evidence in the air, a quality pale-blue envelope with a discreet but distinctive watermark and carrying a first-class UK stamp. He already had the contents of the envelope in his hand.

  Dear Dave, Brenda,

  I’m guessing that you won’t have expected a second mailing from me while I’m making a relatively short trip back from mid-France.

  I value my friends, particularly because I’m not easy to get along with. I know this for a fact. With neither family nor siblings to confide in, I need to tell someone this, so nobody starts an unnecessary manhunt.

  I’m doing this by snail mail for two reasons.

  First, I’m old-fashioned enough to enjoy sending and receiving what I consider proper letters once in a while. Emails might be faster and more efficient, but like the song says, they ‘don’t got no soul’.

  Second, the extra day or so before you receive this will give me more time to think about what I’m doing…

  Which, you’ll be relieved to hear, is neither illegal nor dangerous!

  Recent lurid headlines about extravagant, unjustified bonuses paid to certain (senior) bankers have told one side of a story that needed to be told. Unfortunately, the situation for someone such as myself in a relatively junior position is nowhere even remotely close to being a bed of fragrant roses, caviar and champagne.

  I got the bullet a couple of days before I was due to go on holiday. With no family to talk with, I kept my mouth shut. It was too late to cancel anyway, so I thought I’d give myself time to think. I’m convinced I’m being hung out to dry along with other juniors. I managed to check higher up the food chain, and there’re no casualties amongst the senior partners. Make of that what you will. I know how it feels to me!

  At least the redundancy pay’s generous enough to cover me for a few months. I just want you to know that I’ll be travelling most of the time, and as I’ve no job to come home to, I might not bother coming back to Liverpool immediately if I get prompted to turn aside and go wherever my wanderlust takes me. Mortgage and utilities are all on the drip feed at the bank, but can I ask you to check the house for mail occasionally? There’s a spare key to the back door in a tobacco tin on the workbench in my garage (I think I always knew I’d bottle it and end up asking this favour by post!)

  Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for some time. I’m not feeling suicidal. I won’t do anything stupid, and considering my lack of any family to keep in touch with, there really isn’t anyone else I can turn to.

  As ever,

  Eddie

  Dave surprised himself by managing to read the full letter aloud to Brenda without welling up in floods of tears or losing his voice entirely for other emotional reasons. He generally succeeded in presenting a cheerful, practical façade to the world, but he didn’t fool Brenda as often as he fondly imagined in this respect. She cut him some slack in this tiniest of attempts at deception. She had to. Her opinion of ‘Loner Eddie’ had altered, positively and permanently, with every phrase of his letter.

  “That must have been really, really difficult for him to write,” she said, after a few moments of thoughtful silence.

  “Amazing. I really thought I knew whatever there was to know about Eddie,” Dave said. “Just goes to show, people always have the capacity to surprise and amaze you!”

  “I have to agree.” Brenda felt a little embarrassed that she’d quite possibly misjudged someone she’d never understood properly until now. “What was that he said about wanderlust and going off the radar?”

  Dave took the letter out again. “He says not to worry if we don’t hear from him for a while. If he thinks he’s got enough in his suitcase to cover his immediate needs, there’s no compelling reason for him to come back. It’s the height of the holiday season, and we’ve already agreed the weather’s better in the UK than it is anywhere else in Europe at the moment.”

  ***

  Eddie would definitely have argued about that statement. He’d been on deck as the ferry approached Dover, and he’d been appalled to see the irreversible damage done to the famous White Cliffs by violent, unpredictable winter storms gouging deep ravines, carved by a greedy giant in his favourite local cheese. The cliffs were being undercut and one day would just collapse into the sea.

  He then had to endure the further inconvenience resulting from the treatment he had been subjected to by the French authorities, which meant he was one of the last to disembark. Inevitably, he was in the longest and slowest queue to be inspected at Customs, and when the driver of the vehicle immediately in front of him appeared to have mislaid some—or possibly all—of his documents, it didn’t surprise Eddie in the least.

  It was well into the afternoon before he left the port and pulled into the first filling station he came to. He hadn’t yet decided where he was going, but he wasn’t paying motorway prices for fuel, and he wasn’t heading north, either. Nothing personal. He hadn’t suddenly developed a hatred for his birthplace, but Liverpool seemed far too boo-ooring for words just now. Mentally, he flipped a coin.

  Heads. West.

  At the cash desk, he glanced to his left, and on impulse added a road map of Devon and Cornwall to his fuel bill. He knew nothing of the region, but he had a vague memory of something to do with…was it Arthur, the whole Camelot thing? Fact or fiction, myth or reality, it lifted his spirits a fraction, and he drove onwards in a much better mood, despite the weather.

  Chapter Five

  “What’s the Sci-Bar topic tonight, Joey?”

  Dave and Brenda generally made an effort to arrive early on Philosophy in Pubs evenings. Dave insisted on using the bus so he could drink in his favourite CAMRA pub with a clear conscience.

  Joey was setting up a couple of visual aids. “Believe it or not, I’ve got some evidence from our very own facilities at Bidston Hill showing earth tremors which have been recorded this week at no less than four different places here on the UK mainland!”

  “You’re joking! Earthquakes? Surely not!”

  Joey grinned. “We aren’t exactly sitting over a major fault, like the tectonic plates grinding at each other in the Pacific or the San Andreas Fault in the States, but the bedrock beneath the UK is, in geological terms, relatively young, and there can be half a dozen in any given week. Almost all of them are too small to notice—we only know about them from the extremely sensitive seismic recorders we have available. Still, the graphs don’t lie. They’re all here, from all over the country.”

  “There’s one here in Cumbria—that’s not too far away!” Dave said.

  “Yes. It happened while I was watching the dials yesterday afternoon, but it was so small I might not have noticed it at all if I hadn’t been online at the time.”

  The week’s selection of amateur philosophers began to fill up the Higher Room. Brenda secured a table and Dave trotted back downstairs to refill their glasses.

  “Guess who walked in while I was getti
ng served!”

  Brenda had no difficulty guessing the answer to her husband’s conundrum. Measured to the apex of his Stetson, a seven-foot apparition of white leather had followed Dave up the stairs.

  “We played a set at a pub in Liverpool last night, and some guy said this place sells the best beer in town, soooooo…”

  “Well, that’s true enough, Errol. And it gives me the chance to return the very generous Southern hospitality you showed us last Sunday evening.”

  “So, what’s this all about? Some sort of club? A meeting? It’s not AA or something o’ that nature, is it?” The twinkle in Errol’s eyes showed he didn’t think that for a second.

  “Well, it’s a sort of a club, I suppose,” Dave said. “Think of it as an informal way of making science interesting for Joe Public. And the speaker’s brought some actual footage, evidence of earthquakes, believe it or not, one of them quite close by during the past week.”

  “Hey, the place ain’t gonna fall down ’round our ears, is it?”

  Hearing this, Joey strolled over to welcome Errol personally. “Relax, friend! Earth tremors they may be in name, but they’re nowhere near the strength and severity of world disaster scenes. You’re more than welcome tonight—we don’t very often have guests from over the pond at the Ship!”

  “Errol Dwight—came to England about five years back on vacation and forgot to go home, I guess. Don’t get beer like this back in Arkansas, I can tell ya!”

  “Although he’s too modest to tell you how well he plays trumpet,” Dave added. “He fronts the Magnolia Jazz Orchestra—we met up last week in Southport.”

  Joey nodded. “Heard you on the radio once or twice. I don’t get out to concerts much, I’m afraid, but jazz is easy listening when I work late at night. Anyway, I think we can make a start.” He turned and walked back to the end of the room. “Good evening, all, and thanks for coming! For those who don’t know, I’m Doctor Joey Hart…”

  ***

  “So, is there any danger we could experience a major quake—or seismic event, I think you called it—here in the UK?” The question came from the back of the room.

  Joey took off his glasses and polished them for a couple of seconds before answering. “It would be a very brave man who dared say ‘never’ to that, but if we look at all the written records we have, we’re living in a pretty stable part of the world.

  “The UK sits comfortably on bedrock, which is quite young, geologically speaking. The tremors we’ve measured are small change compared to the headline-grabbing disasters reported elsewhere, but by studying them, we can figure out how to tackle more violent quakes. Ideally, we would then be in a position to assist with an emergency anywhere in the world.”

  It might have been the mellow feeling generated by the consumption of alcohol, or the very British tendency to sympathise with the underdog or anyone less fortunate, but Joey’s suggestion that there were humanitarian reasons for studying the effects of earthquakes and other tremors was warmly applauded, and the meeting dissolved into smaller discussion groups loosely based on each table in the room.

  “There’s only one problem with setting up a response team to deal with emergencies, Joey.”

  “One problem, Errol? I can think of half a dozen straight off the top of my head.”

  “I’m thinking more along practical lines—perhaps thousands might be more accurate.”

  “Aha! Filthy lucre raises its ugly head again, I see! Yes, Errol, cash is always the problem we can’t walk away from.”

  “Do you have any idea how much you’d need to seed your scheme?”

  Joey almost dropped his glass and stared at Errol. “There didn’t seem much point. We’re probably talking telephone numbers, quite honestly, and it’s not going to happen overnight.”

  “Humour me anyway.” Errol’s lazy Southern drawl demanded an answer. Joey scratched his head.

  “First and foremost, there’s manpower, the people who make up the team, or teams—I can’t see a team of less than six being effective in dealing with any emergency.”

  “And you can’t hope to provide just the one team because misfortunes never come singly. So two, maybe three teams, and they’ll all need training to deal with a variety of different situations, basic first aid, firefighting and half a dozen other scenarios—”

  “Is there some point in this, Errol? All we’re doing is adding more and more to the cost of the project.”

  “Joey, you need to for-ma-late a business plan if you ever want to go ahead with this, and the most important item on a BP is the cost.”

  “That’s true enough, I suppose.”

  “Now, I ain’t on the Forbes List, but I ain’t broke either. How’d you think I afford to be on a five-year vacation and cover the cost of running a jazz orchestra?” Errol placed his glass on the table and locked his gaze with Joey’s. “Give me a figure—a realistic one—and maybe we can make a deal. You talk about telephone-number accounts. The Dwight family is what we in the Confederacy still call old money, and the number of zeroes on the page won’t necessarily be a problem.”

  Joey stared right back at Errol, speechless. “You’re serious.”

  Errol shrugged. “People tell me you can’t take it with you, and I’m never gonna spend all I inherited. If I find a worthy cause I think deserves a few dollars to give it a helping hand…”

  “But we’ve only met this evening, for the very first time. You know nothing about me! I could be the most devious con-man in Liverpool.”

  “Snake oil salesmen don’t go ’round setting up emergency response teams to react to natural disasters. Nor do they lecture in the science department of a major British university, so let’s get serious for a minute.” A business card appeared from nowhere. “Gimme some kind of ballpark figures and we can discuss it the detail. Now, what’s a man gotta do to get a drink ’round here?”

  A few rounds of real ale later, Dave and Brenda found they’d been conscripted to accompany Errol on a visit to the Bidston Hill Observatory at Joey’s invitation, to get a closer look at the research facilities available.

  “It isn’t just quakes and tremors we’re watching,” Joey said as they ended the evening. “We’re looking at the overall pattern of weather changes, trying to see if it’s possible to predict potential problems before they develop, prevention being better than cure, as the saying goes. But it’s not easy. There are too many variables.”

  “Let’s take it one step at a time,” Errol suggested. “Starting tomorrow—mid-morning okay with you, Joey? Dave, Brenda, I can pick you up. I’ve got the station wagon. We won’t need more than the one car.”

  Chapter Six

  “You got some real nice knickknacks and gewgaws in this observatory, Joey!”

  Errol leaned back as the group settled around an outdoor patio table after Joey’s guided tour of the research centre and coffee was poured. “Anybody mind?” He held up an etui, and when nobody objected, he lit a cheroot. “Joey, this is clearly a much bigger picture than just chasing shadows and recording details of minor rumblings deep underground. You showed us details of research being done all over the world—volcanic activity in Iceland and Italy, strong tides in Australasia, that disastrous earthquake last year in Haiti… Now, remember that none of us—” he nodded to include Dave and Brenda “—are science majors. Do you think there’s any possibility that these events are connected? Or did I read too many DC science fiction disaster comics when I was growing up?”

  “I really wish there was an easy answer to that one, Errol,” Joey said ruefully. “Unfortunately, at the moment, we don’t have sufficient data to make even a qualified guess. Take the volcanoes, for example. We know the one in Iceland erupts roughly every hundred years, and there have been some suggestions of pressure building underground over the last twelve months. It may well blow soon—but ‘soon’ in geological terms doesn’t even guarantee it’ll happen in our lifetime!

  “There are several volcanoes in Italy which erupt regula
rly, and more often than the one in Iceland. These we’ve learnt to contain and control, so as long as they don’t go completely off the scale, we should be able to cope. Once again, the problem is getting an idea of when they might sound off.

  “The earthquake that hit Haiti last year is a different matter, and we have to look some distance from the island group to understand where the problem came from.

  “Several hundred miles from Haiti, deep below the South Pacific, the plates of bedrock beneath Asia and Australasia have been pressing against each other for millennia. When the pressure reaches a critical point, one slips slightly under the other to relieve the stress. Now, basic science has to be mentioned, I’m afraid—remember the phrase ‘action and equal and opposite reaction’ from your schooldays?”

  Nods all around. Joey was relieved.

  “Good! That means I don’t have to explain in detail. Essentially, the energy released when the two plates slip fractionally is translated into a motion wave, which starts travelling in a straight line. Because most of our planet is water, this most often sets up a tidal wave, sometimes a tsunami, which is even more destructive. From time to time, depending on various factors, it can also result in an earthquake. There doesn’t seem to be a way of knowing for certain exactly what the result is going to be in any given situation.”

  “So the place the quake starts from can be some distance from the area affected? Is that right?” Dave asked.

  Joey nodded. “That seems to be the case. Having some idea of what parts of the world are under threat before disaster strikes would be fantastic, but as it stands…” He glanced back into the workshop; something had caught his attention. “Back in a minute—there’s an alert light on one of the weather screens.”

  The visitors followed Joey back indoors, and he indicated the alert light.

  “It’s not that far away—looks like it could be an aftershock from the one in Cumbria last week.”

  “Can you pinpoint it, Joey? Should we be feeling it here?”