Part 10 (1/2)

Three.

Freezing cold, head thumping, I woke up at dawn to see the boom boat moving aside the gate in the line of mines across the water, all under a deck of stratus, the sheet- or layer-cloud. The boom boat was admitting a grey frigate. I was watching the wars.h.i.+p's wake, that perfect expression of turbulence in action, and wondering through the agony of my hangover what I would think in future of last night's fiasco and this whole strange situation I found myself in, when I suddenly realised there was something wrong with the way the wake was bubbling up. There was a line of extra foam down the middle of the frigate's serrated trail. What I saw was the retrograde fur on the back of a Rhodesian ridgeback.

For a moment I thought it was the remnant of my drunken odyssey, making me hallucinate, but then I was certain. There was something else down below: it could only be a U-boat, using the frigate as a s.h.i.+eld to get through the boom into the network of lochs in the Cowal. Getting to my feet unsteadily, I ran as quickly as I could up Argyll Street to HMS Osprey Osprey and informed the sleepy rating at the reception. and informed the sleepy rating at the reception.

”You're drunk, man, I can smell the whisky off you,” he replied, looking at me cold-eyed. ”Had too much of a good time at the dance, did you? You better b.u.g.g.e.r off quick or I'll have you arrested.”

”I am not not drunk,” I shouted across the desk, though I expect he could indeed smell alcohol as he said. ”Come on, go tell them now. I'm in the Met, I know what I saw.” drunk,” I shouted across the desk, though I expect he could indeed smell alcohol as he said. ”Come on, go tell them now. I'm in the Met, I know what I saw.”

Grumpily he went into the depths of the 's.h.i.+p' before returning a few minutes later. ”Well, I told them, chummie. I don't see as they're going to take any notice of you, seeing as I also said you smells like a still, but I 'ave told them.”

He had hardly finished speaking when a loud explosion sounded on the water. We both ran outside to hear another explosion and see a large column of foam erupt from the river. Then another came, and another, and finally a much louder noise, shattering the windows of houses along the quay. A siren sounded and air-raid wardens with gas masks and helmets began to run about.

The rating grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, making my head-already reverberating from the boom of the depth charges-ache all the more. ”You were right! You were right! There was an enemy craft below. We've got 'im.”

So it proved. The all clear was given. With a gathering crowd of townsfolk and naval staff emerging from Osprey Osprey, we watched as a large pool of oil and pieces of debris began to float up in the vicinity of the explosions. The frigate, standing by to pick up survivors from the stricken submarine, gave several blasts on its foghorn and a large cheer went up throughout the town. My hangover rapidly dispersing on account of adrenaline, I felt as if the cheer were for me in person. Visions of a medal flashed before my eyes, of congratulations from Sir Peter, of adulation from Gwen and Joan, from the whole female population of the Cowal, in fact. There was no need to return to London with the Ryman number pinned on my chest. I could just live here all my life, being bought drinks in pubs, feted for ever as the man who saved Dunoon.

And it was beginning right now. Not so reluctant now, the rating pulled me over to meet the officer he had informed-tall, strikingly handsome Captain Scott-Clark, who shook my hand enthusiastically. ”Very clever of you to spot that. We've had a lot of difficulty with subs hiding from radar in the wake of s.h.i.+ps. Now, I don't want to take anything away from what you did, but we did know the U-boat was following. It was a trap-we just had to get her far enough away from the mines of the boom before setting our charges.”

As quickly deflated as I had become elated, I slunk off and found the motorcycle where I had parked it by the Pavilion the previous night. Riding up Argyll Street, past FH Carey the tobacconist, Abel the chemist, Muirhead the grocer, and then the NAAFI run by the local scout troop, I wondered if I was ever going to distinguish myself. Mathematics? The Sheepshanks Prize felt a long way away. I certainly wasn't excelling as an amateur spy, and now my efforts as a spotter of submarines had been dashed.

Maybe, I reflected as I chugged under the hills between Dunoon and Kilmun, I would have to become a tobacconist, chemist or grocer. Or even a Scoutmaster.

I pa.s.sed Kilmun church. What about a priest? I could give up all idea of s.e.xual conquest and become a priest. A monk like my teachers at Douai. But I could hardly remember my Hail Mary in those days.

In the course of the ride home, as my hangover returned with a vengeance, the Virgin merged-across an imperceptible mental boundary-with that other Mary, she under whose statue I'd had my appointment with Messrs Whyte & Mackay.

That was a long time ago. But I can still remember that hangover coming back, borne like Satan on the clouds of my pipe smoke. It was painful. It was superfluous. It piled Pelion on Ossa. It was nasty-like a sneak thief returning to steal something that had belonged to him in the first place, left by accident at a premises he has already burgled. Yes, it was a supreme hangover, as only a spirits hangover can be.

The remainder of the month pa.s.sed in a similar alcoholic fug. Alcohol and nicotine, too. My household G.o.ds. I remember looking at a piled-up ashtray of cigarette ends and bottle tops and thinking what a salad of despair it was.

MARCH.

One.

According to my diary, I worked begrudgingly on local upper-air forecasts for Whybrow, my calculations punctuated by meals and the thump of logs coming down the chute. I wrote that this noise reminded me of the sound the African villagers' pestles made in the mortars in which they ground their maize, which first had to be laid out and dried on straw mats in the sun, each kernel having been picked off the cob by hand.

The foresters worked hard, too. Sometimes I'd see them pa.s.sing to and fro, carrying tools or provisions for their camp. I myself ate well in Kilmun (much better than I had in London). With scones or porridge for breakfast next to my tea, corned beef sandwiches for lunch and mutton or herring or haggis for supper, it was as if the whole providence of Scotland was in my mouth. Now and then I grilled a lamb chop, and there was always fresh mackerel from the loch to be had. Ryman sometimes left vegetables from his garden on my doorstep.

But despite all these kindnesses I felt beached, becalmed. The only respite came from my beginning to study, in what would soon seem in retrospect a very amateur way, the weather patterns that would relate to an invasion across the Channel. It made me realise again how tough the challenge was going to be, with or without the help of the Ryman number.

One Sat.u.r.day, in search of entertainment, I went with Mackellar to Dunoon, where there was a race meeting and fair. He had his dog in tow, I my equations-and my frailties, for I'm embarra.s.sed to say I got blotto again in the course of this expedition. But some things still stand like cromlechs in the memory through the haze of whisky and beer. Mackellar writing out his bets with a licky old stub of pencil. The trainers with their trilbies and medal-like pa.s.ses. The jockeys' coloured silks fluttering in the wind. Little men carrying big saddles out of the weighing room, leading their mounts into the parade ring, their hard human faces contrasting with the beauty of the horses'.

Round the edges of the racecourse, excited children capered through the inexhaustible fair, sucking on ice-cream cones, chewing on liquorice, jumping on the merry-go-round-I remember it was painted in uncontrollable swirls of gold and yellow-and pelting small wooden b.a.l.l.s at a coconut shy. Soldiers with roll-up cigarettes in their mouths were walking their tottering sweethearts into tunnels of love or showing off on test-your-strength machines, lifting up the heavy rubber mallet to send a projectile up a column-at the top of which a bell sounded, if reached.

Ignoring the bustle around them, a pair of pipers played, the distinctive mournfulness of their appalling noise-it was like a cat being hit with a poker-quite at odds with the chaotic jollity going on around them.

Though no boundary could be distinguished between them, the two crowds-the crowd of racegoers and the crowd of fairgoers-moved round each other independently as if in a kind of dance. I have often thought since that the movement of crowds might be a.n.a.lysed in the same way as particles in a weather system. That day, more foolishly, I thought the same kind of approach might be taken with a horse race.

Mackellar and I took up a position on the rail, near to the starting line. Finally the hullabaloo of those around us was silenced by the sound of the starter's call. It was David Rennie up there on the rostrum, not in milk-spattered overalls nor his Home Guard uniform, but sporting now a splendid set of tweeds. The sight of him, hand aloft, made me think of Ryman's weather conductor, the wizard of storms, the king of turbulence, controlling all from his pulpit in the Albert Hall. And then of Pyke-that was the tweeds, I suppose. It struck me then that Pyke was the opposite of Ryman. Two geniuses landed on the Cowal sh.o.r.e, one hot for peace, the other for war.

It is said a horse's face will tell you about the outcome of the race in which it is about to partic.i.p.ate. This was one of Mackellar's methods. He looked for 'generous eyes', he said, and I guffawed, not realising he was offering this homespun wisdom only in response to the abstract idiocies with which I'd regaled him on the way here, and the sums I'd been feverishly scrawling on the back of the racecard since we arrived.

He had breathed scepticism as he sat in front of me in the trap, and he exuded it now as he stood next to me on the rail, watching me do more calculations on the back of the card. Of course I lost, as many times as he won.

When we got back from the course, having celebrated Mackellar's successes in the pub, his wife was waiting for us, leaning over the gate with her long white hair hanging down like bunches of bleached-out seaweed. The sun shone through it, the last of the light, for dusk was advancing.

Mackellar held up a fistful of notes. ”And you say he brings bad luck!” he said to her.

She gave me a look, half-mad, half-sneering. ”I didnae say he brought bad luck. I said he should keep them round him close. I said that they could be in danger.”

Uttering an indecipherable curse, Mackellar punched her on the shoulder. ”Am I in danger, wummin? Stoap yer nonsense.” Mrs Mackellar slipped, staggered, and then fell down, dirtying her red coat in the mud.

It must have been quite a forceful blow as she was a heavy lady. She pulled herself up on the gate, staring at me with fire in her eyes, then turned and walked back to the farmhouse. Mackellar followed her, looking as if he meant to beat her further.

It was a wretched scene, turning my gut. I realised I had as little notion of their marriage as I did of the Rymans'.

Two.

I didn't have much idea about making hydrogen either. I was cooking some up in the cot-house, a couple of weeks after the trip to the races. Distracted by all that had happened, and depressed by my continuing failure to elicit anything useful from Ryman, I overdid the catalyst. didn't have much idea about making hydrogen either. I was cooking some up in the cot-house, a couple of weeks after the trip to the races. Distracted by all that had happened, and depressed by my continuing failure to elicit anything useful from Ryman, I overdid the catalyst.

The noise in the drum was terrific. The reaction was too violent. I had put my foot on the safety weight but it blew off all the same, throwing me to the floor. One of my feet was soaked in caustic soda up to the ankle and I had to be rushed to hospital in Dunoon. An ambulance came to pick me up.

The whole episode was both embarra.s.sing and extremely painful. The doctor said I would have a scar on my ankle: one prediction, at least, that has been proven true. The only bright spot in the whole story was that I received a lot of visits and fond attention from Joan and Gwen. One or other, and sometimes both, came and sat by my bed each morning.

I was there for about a week. Whybrow visited and gave me a ticking off, saying he hoped I would learn from the experience. What a snake that man was. Constantly removing and replacing his spectacles as he spoke to me, saying he had had 'so many complaints' about my dealings with other Met staff, and that on visiting 'the scene of the accident' he was 'dismayed' to find so many empty bottles of alcohol lying about. I felt like telling him next time I'd leave some full ones there for him.

Ryman was equally critical when he arrived to take me back to Kilmun. ”Very silly thing to have happened. I've cleaned up the place for you. Neutralised the caustic soda.” I was so miserable I didn't even reply when he said this next to me in the car, still less start harping on about his b.l.o.o.d.y number again.

It was strange, returning to the cot-house. Once Ryman had gone I lay on the bed, feeling sorry for myself. Looking back, it seems rather melodramatic. I suppose at base I felt my career was not progressing and that I was spending the war stuck in a bog. I was beginning to wish I had never come to Scotland at all, and instead stayed with Stagg in Kew. But, of course, he wasn't there any more either. He'd moved to an American air base near Twickenham, from where he was preparing for the invasion forecast.

I had recently had a note from him, but not about D-Day. It was something related to our previous work together which had been pa.s.sed back to him: a problem which defence radar was beginning to get on cloud reflections-at that time they were described by the radar people as 'angels'-and the scattering of radio signals in the lower atmosphere. I was able to give a satisfactory answer, which I suppose stood me in good stead with Stagg later on.

My mind went back to our farewell, which took place between my meeting with Sir Peter and my flight north in Reynolds's plane. I'd been a bit nervous about telling Stagg I'd taken another job. He was quite a puritanical character, deadly serious, and a dedicated worker.