Part 3 (1/2)

”Ye have business wi' the Prophet?” asked Mackellar.

”You mean Professor Ryman?”

”We ken him as the Prophet.”

”Oh.”

”He gies us advice,” said my nut-brown chauffeur. ”When tae plant oor crops. When the moon'll mak a cow drap her calf. When the salmon run'll start. How tae mak your ain weedkiller and whit'll keep the midges aff ye. That sort a thing.”

”But surely country people know all that anyway?”

”Auld wives' tales,” he said dismissively, upturning the prejudice I had formed of him. ”Folklore and the like. G.o.d knows, my wife has faith in it. She thinks milk boiling o'er means somebody is going to fall ill, that snails an' smoking are unlucky, an' maist of a' that if the burds skirl before a flaw, a stronger blaw's on its way, sic as could tip ye heelstergowdie.”

After asking him what 'heelstergowdie' meant, I deciphered all this as meaning something like 'if the birds whirl around before a squall, a stronger wind is on its way, such as might tip you head over heels'. He invariably spoke the Scots more quickly than the English.

”But I prefer the Prophet's predictions,” he continued. ”He goes about with a gun. Ye'll see for yourself soon enough.”

The earlier sun had gone. The Holy Loch looked cold and grey now, its surface flecked by a raking pattern of white cat's paws, every rippling line and distortion derived from physics and chemistry, even the clouds reflected in its waters.

”That's where the Prophet lives,” said Mackellar, pointing with his whip as we approached a solid, square magnolia-painted house set among gardens and situated a little way back from the road behind a stone wall. ”My ain farm's just beyond.”

On a hillside above Ryman's home (which was Georgian, I suppose, with two bay windows), I saw another wall and beyond that a farmhouse and outbuildings. There were also stables and a cowshed and a barn stacked with hay, together with some gla.s.shouses. In the field between the farm and Ryman's house stood a much older stone building, beside a trough at which two Highland cattle were drinking. Higher up ran a stripe of beech trees. Mackellar told me there was a stream in the middle of the beech wood, with a small bridge across it.

Further still up the hill was the forestry: line after line of forbidding spruce, broken only where logging had taken place-and also by a long steel chute. It looked like a child's slide. ”The foresters use tha' for getting the wood out,” explained Mackellar, seeing me looking.

We had stopped at the wrought-iron gate of the Ryman house, which was decorated with a solar design surrounded by signs of the zodiac. I wondered for a second if I had strayed into a location with laws other than those of Newton, a place of signs and wonders, a glen of omens. But then I saw a sundial in the garden and also a large telescope on a pedestal, and somehow with those instruments rationality rea.s.serted itself.

”That building next to the tree, the auld cot-house, that's where they put your kit,” said Mackellar, pointing up the hillside. ”There's a bed, but I cannae say it looks very comfortable. I'll take you there.”

”No, no thank you,” I said. ”I may as well pay the professor a visit now I'm here. But if you could take up my suitcase, I'd be most grateful.”

”That I'll dae,” said Mackellar gruffly.

I climbed down from the trap.

”Now the Prophet,” he said, raising his whip for emphasis, ”he disnae like folk to bang at the door.” He paused. ”So you must go in sleekit-like. He'll like you mair, if you make it so,” he added.

The farmer followed this statement with a thrusting movement of the other hand that needed no interpretation. I searched in my pocket for the fare and gave it him. As the trap made its way up to my new home I walked up to the front door of Ryman's house.

I was about to knock when I remembered Mackellar's warning. I pushed against the heavy black door. It was locked.

Behind me, from somewhere across the loch or deep up the Firth, I heard a s.h.i.+p's foghorn sound. It was like the groan of a dying mammoth or mastodon, as if some early drama of evolution was being played out across the archipelagic waters of the Cowal. I stood and waited, feeling uneasy again. This really did, after all, seem an odd, obscure place for the logical transparencies of science to have triumphed, as far from the mechanistic projections of the Ryman number as could be imagined.

Six.

Hearing a sound, I turned to see a tall woman emerge from an outhouse behind me. Her blonde hair was sc.r.a.ped under a scarf and she wore a woollen jumper, corduroy trousers and Wellington boots. She was carrying an empty hand seed sower, an instrument that allowed one to control the flow of seeds through different outlets. There was something about her that was immediately rea.s.suring.

She gave a start when she saw me, then smiled. ”I'm supposed to be propagating cabbages,” she said, lifting up the sower's funnel-shaped spout and peering at me mischievously through it. She held out a hand. ”But I've lost the packet that the seeds are in. Gill Ryman. And you must be...?”

”Henry Meadows. I'm from the Met Office. I'm staffing the radio equipment in Mr Mackellar's field.”

Gill Ryman. Eyes the colour of the sea and just as changeable, but brighter. Lines of care on her brow and, yes, she looked tired, but she was intriguing as well as rea.s.suring-most of all those eyes, which were filled with the fierce energy of true believers. I didn't know, then, quite how unquenchable was the faith of this bright-eyed huntress of seed, whom I would so terribly harm. It was her faith that saved me, not my own. And it was her intelligence which cracked the number. But on first meeting her, I got no sense of either of these things; she was, instead, the object of misdirected melancholic longings, feelings that I only half understood myself.

Her hand was cold and slightly calloused as I shook it. I noticed there was scrollwork on the front of her jersey. She was attractive, quite a big woman overall, but also, in an odd way, angular. The mixture gave a sense of strength and frailty in balance, as if she were both fern and flower; it made you wonder what lay beneath.

”Oh, that's you, is it?” She took off the scarf, shook out her locks, then looked me up and down, like a farmer inspecting a bullock at market. ”We noticed the men from the ministry had been busy. My husband once worked for the Met Office.”

”Well, that's why I'm here,” I said. ”I mean, at your door. I'm a follower of his weather work.”

”Really? But he gave all that up ages ago. He concentrates on his peace studies now.”

Peace studies. How strange that sounded in wartime. A blasphemy. For a moment I was lost for anything to say. I didn't want to arouse suspicion.

”All the same,” I said eventually, ”I am very interested in his mathematics.”

”I can't promise he will see you, but do come in.”

I stepped towards the front door again.

”Oh, we don't use that one,” she said. ”This way.”

I followed her round to the back. I found myself gazing at her well-covered form. She had a roundness across the hips; otherwise she was bony, all knees and elbows and shoulders. Behind the house, stretching up a hillside towards the low stone building and Mackellar's, were vegetable gardens in which I noticed a tall labourer digging.

”That's the cot-house up there,” she said, gesturing at the old stone building as she opened the back door. Cot-house. Mackellar had used the same odd term, which I later learned was just an old word for a dwelling on agricultural land. The little black Highland cattle I'd seen earlier had moved closer to the stone structure. Now they were gathering round it, angling down their malevolent-looking horns as if they might lift it from its ancient foundations.

”Those are our gardens in between.” My gaze drew back down nearer, to the old man, digging.

”Parsnips,” added Mrs Ryman by way of explanation as I followed her into the hall. Directly, something hit me on the head.

”Sorry. Should have warned you. That's my husband's special heating system. It hangs from cables. Don't ask me how it works.”

A series of pipes, supported by wires, ran down the centre of the hallway. The whole place smelt strongly of steam and chemicals. I followed her through into a large country kitchen.

”Cup of tea?”

”Yes, please.” The kitchen was rather spartan. ”Excuse me, but-is your husband here?”

”He's always here,” she said. ”That was him, digging in the garden.”

”That was Professor Ryman?” I was amazed.