Part 11 (1/2)

”Good a.n.a.logue of the effect of friction on human affairs,” he said.

”What?”

”Running through tussocky gra.s.s.”

It was then that the Junkers converted for meteorological and photographic operations appeared in the sky again, coming down low over the field. I could have sworn the pilot was looking at us as he swooped by, but Ryman dismissed the idea. Perhaps it brought the war too close for comfort.

He was equally dismissive as, ducking down, I told him I had seen the same plane twice before. The only action he took was to throw down his meteorological gun on the gra.s.s, I presume so it would not be thought an offensive weapon.

”Do not mistake randomness for intention,” he shouted over the engine noise as the plane made another pa.s.s. ”Conventional sapience has it that because we have an enemy, he has turned up in this particular spot of air to fight us; it is just as likely he happened to be flying overhead.”

I was astonished he could talk such nonsense, at such a time. ”Don't you think we had better find cover?” I shouted back, cowering under the sonorous clatter of the plane.

But Ryman stood stock still, his silhouette a perfect target. Not wis.h.i.+ng to appear cowardly, though that is what I felt, I straightened up and followed suit. We waited for the plane to bank again at the end of its box of sky. But it didn't, instead continuing into the middle distance.

”No need,” said Ryman, watching the cross of the wings and tail. ”It's going now.”

He was right. Its growl diminis.h.i.+ng, the aircraft progressed in the same direction until it merged into the horizon.

Only when the noise of the engine had gone did I speak again. ”Common things are common. Rare things are rare. As I've said, I've seen this plane twice before. It's rare to see a German plane over Kilmun. That suggests it is here for a reason, not by chance.”

Ryman shook his head and bent down to pick up the gun. He began reloading it with metal spheres. ”You are exhibiting a very human tendency-to underestimate randomness.”

”But it's not random!” I said in frustration. ”This is the third time he has been here. The Home Guard has already been alerted. We should get someone to come and shoot him down.”

”Not under my auspices.”

I could not believe that someone could continue to hold such ideas when Allied troops were dying. ”Don't you feel it's your duty to fight for your country?”

”On the contrary. It's my duty to stop the fighting. Or at least, to minimise the harm done by fighting. But that doesn't mean I'm a coward. I joined the Quaker ambulance corps in the first lot, you know. n.o.body in the Friends Ambulance Unit was a coward.”

”I didn't say you were a coward,” I mumbled, suddenly unsure of my ground.

He ceased counting ball bearings for a moment. ”But I can tell you I was frightened. It was the most terrifying experience of my life.”

”What did it involve, being in that unit?”

”Our job was to bring the seriously wounded from the poste de secours poste de secours, in the forward trenches, back to the nearest hospitals. I will never forget the stench of charred flesh and the poor men in the back crying out every time you went over a pothole. The traffic was pretty chaotic in the roads behind the trenches. Staff cars, lorries, ambulances like ours, tanks, horses and carts, too, and the wounded tramping through the mud. Once, during a bombardment, I ran over a man with an amputated leg. He had a crutch and this...stump. The bandage unwound from it, trailing into the puddles...”

Clearly distraught, he took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed his eyes. ”I rather hoped to get a leg knocked off myself. Then I could go home with a clear conscience. I was so sick of seeing things smashed and burned. That cursed war! After a while nothing happened in it but casualties. It seemed to go on largely because of inertia; the original causes, though not forgotten, faded into the background. There could have been peace much earlier if the leaders had agreed to have it, rather than carrying on so that they could say they won...”

He paused and looked at the ground as if to recover a distant scene, not from memory but from h.e.l.l.

”Sometimes, going down Dead Man's Alley, as we called it, I had to drive round the bodies of sentries and horses that I'd seen alive on the way up. I was a bad driver, anyway, because I saw my dream instead of the traffic.”

”Your dream?”

”The system. My theory of numerical weather prediction. I wrote the first draft during the battle of Champagne. Lost it for a while after that, then found it in my living quarters under a heap of coal.”

”I'd love to read through some of your equations,” I said, sensing an opportunity. ”Is that when you came upon the Ryman number?”

He took off his gla.s.ses again and looked at me searchingly. ”I told you-I don't call it that...”

”I have to confess that I don't exactly understand how to connect up a range of its values,” I said, pressing on.

I could see him studying me, looking me in the face. Did he suspect something? ”It's just a measure,” he said evenly. ”A measure of changing conditions. Surely you know that?”

I wondered if I'd said too much, for he looked me in the face again and fell silent then, which I took to mean we should resume our experiment. After about another half an hour we packed up and I followed him back towards his house, neither of us speaking. Mrs Ryman was watching us from the drawing-room window. With a ray of sunlight falling on her, her pregnant profile was clear now. The light, which gave her hair an auburn, reddish tone, seemed to form an envelope around her.

Glancing at me, Ryman said goodbye and, carrying the meteorological rifle over his shoulder like a soldier, hurried inside.

As I walked back up the hill I turned and saw, framed in that same window, bathed both in that self-same light, him and Gill embracing.

Three.

I didn't see much of Ryman during the next week. Whenever I tried to manoeuvre myself into a position in which I could ask him more about the number, he began making excuses again. I was sure he was now deliberately avoiding me. didn't see much of Ryman during the next week. Whenever I tried to manoeuvre myself into a position in which I could ask him more about the number, he began making excuses again. I was sure he was now deliberately avoiding me.

After a few uncomfortable days of this, I simply accepted the stalemate. Maybe if I sat tight, things would change. But they didn't.

I continued with my cover job as a meteorological observer, now and then dropping down to Dunoon to buy food, pick up my wages or collect more supplies for making hydrogen. I was more careful about that now. On these occasions I always sought out Joan and Gwen, and they invariably welcomed me with a cup of tea and a chat and showed me their latest painting. I suppose I was still hoping I would end up in bed with one or other of them.

It still seemed there might be a chance of that, despite the fiasco of the dance. One Sunday they came for a walk with me in the plantation above the cot-house. I had not yet been into the forest, despite being constantly reminded of its presence by the logs sliding down. The idea was that we would find the foresters' camp on their day of rest. I'd imagined they would greet us in their silent way, and perhaps brew up some coffee.

Well, it was supposed to happen that way but I hadn't quite realised how thickly the trees were planted. The forest was impossible to walk through, because the old stumps of cut trees still stood between the rows, and it was gloomy anyway.

The girls had soon had enough. So we came back and stuck to the beech tree walk, going along by the stream and over the bridge, chatting as we strolled. Entering the glade that was there, I again felt it was somewhere special. A place of mysterious peace. I think they felt it too.

Gwen was particularly friendly to me and it was she who suggested we try sliding down the chute for a lark. I got in first but there was too much friction and I couldn't get down. Then Gwen got in front of me, between my legs, me holding her shoulders. Still we didn't move. Even though I knew that the foresters didn't work on Sundays I began to worry that a log might come down and hit us. Only when Joan joined us did we start to move, slowly at first and then quicker and quicker-”Hold on tight!” Gwen cried-until we came out of the forest and into the sunlit field, speeding past Mackellar's farm and the cot-house and finally Ryman's. Laughing wildly, we tumbled out by the wood stack next to the road.

The jolly mood continued later that evening when I returned to Dunoon with them, and after getting something to eat in a dining room in the town we all went up to their little den in the hydrogen shed. They made Martinis and talked to me about art, now and then getting out crayons and paper and sketching something-a horseman, a fragment of statuary, the torso of a woman with flowing hair-as an explanation of what they were trying to tell me. Or they would refer to the beach picture of the dogs in the breakers, which was still up on the easel.

That picture exerted a powerful influence on me and at the time I could not tell why. Now I realise it was because of Vickers.

Most of their arty talk went over my head. But we continued chatting away until suddenly there was a loud boom in the distance. At first I thought it was another U-boat in the Clyde but it was too far away. We opened up the trapdoors and raised the tower to have a look.

Across the water the searchlights above Glasgow were crisscrossing to and fro, like the limbs of a preyed-upon creature frantically trying to stave off the all-devouring dark. Nearer was a large ma.s.s of light, something burning with a terrible blue colour. Hearing the sound of planes above, and then Dunoon's siren wailing, we climbed down.

”You better stay here,” Gwen said. ”It will be too dangerous to ride back and you've probably had too much to drink anyway. You do rather overdo it.”

I saw them exchange a glance. I thought for a moment that my dreams had come true, but what they meant was that I should sleep in the hydrogen shed and they would go back to their quarters, which is what happened, me bedding down on their biscuit mattresses, driven wild with frustration by Gwen's and Joan's residual perfume in the rug and cus.h.i.+on they gave me to sleep on.

When I emerged the next morning there was another smell on the wind. Something like scorched malt. Whybrow spotted me as I crossed the courtyard. He asked what I had been doing in the hydrogen shed. I explained about the raid.