Part 12 (1/2)

Five.

It had certainly been an extraordinary day-an extraordinary few days, I reflected, arriving back at the cot-house on the motorcycle. And what had happened to spring? I lit a fire to drive off the effects of the sea mistvalley fog and made myself a corned beef sandwich. Later that night there was a knock on the cot-house door. It was Ryman, and he began by begging for a drop of drink like a Glasgow tramp, though not exactly in the manner of one.

”Would you by any chance have any alcohol in the house? Something has happened again which must make me break my ordinance of self-denial.”

I settled him down with a whisky in the most comfortable chair I could find. He stared at the floor for a long time.

”Gill has gone,” he muttered finally.

”I know. I pa.s.sed her in Mackellar's trap. I'm surprised you didn't take her in the car, given her condition.”

”You know that too, then. Petrol ration. We've run out.”

”I could have got some from Dunoon for you.”

A look of misery pa.s.sed over his face. ”This is her seventh pregnancy, Henry. All the others have resulted in miscarriages.”

Something landed on the slates above us-a rook? a windblown branch?-but it was as if the very sky had cracked. He began speaking quickly. All that was interior came into the open air. ”We always wanted a child. She's thirty-five now; she'll try again next year, too, if this one does not survive. She says it's her duty and she will not s.h.i.+rk from it. That is why she has gone south.”

”To the Isle of Wight.” I said.

”Yes. As you know, the Blackfords, her family, live there. They usually nurse her afterwards. The miscarriages are happening earlier and earlier, so she has gone down in good time, in expectation of the worst.”

”Perhaps it will be different this time.”

”I doubt it. It is a matter of faith alone for us now. There is clearly some scientific reason for what has been happening. It is do with blood and how it is structured into different groups. The rhesus factor, which you know about. A very new area of study. So...we have sent samples of our blood to that man Julius Brecher, whom you mentioned.”

”And mine, too, I hear,” I said.

Ryman looked sheepish. ”Ah, yes. Sorry about that. It was Gill's idea to do it like that. She reads a lot of novels. I myself would have asked you directly. The point is, we thought...”

His voice trailed off. I put another log on the fire and waited for him to continue, which in due course he did. ”The point is that we hoped, if it happened again, if the baby died, you might, er, stand in. We wanted to get your blood tested for the purpose.”

”Stand in for a baby?” For one bizarre moment I thought they meant to adopt me.

”What? No. We mean, we wondered...if you would...with Gill. We wondered whether would you...with my wife, in order that she might conceive a child? If it all goes wrong this time, I don't think either of us could go through it again. So...well, we have at least established your blood is not contradictory. Mine is, you see.”

Shocked, I took a large gulp of whisky and stood up to pat my pockets nervously, searching for cigarettes.

”That's very bad for your health,” observed Ryman from his seat, watching me light up once I had found them.

I gave a burst of laughter at this. He gave me a hurt and angry look and rose to his feet himself.

”I'm glad you find this all so amusing,” he said, facing me.

”Wait.” I put a hand on his shoulder. ”I just thought it was funny that you should be thinking about my health at a time like this. I meant nothing by it.”

He sat down again, sniffing. ”I see. Well, it's natural that the mind should seek refuge at times of distress in its most familiar habits, and one of mine is to tell people when they are doing things that are bad for them.”

Then it was his turn to laugh, bitterly. ”There I go again. Gill says I am always doing this. a.n.a.lysing future outcomes. She thinks it is because my mind's always working so hard that we are not able to have children. As if my whole body were taken up with thinking.”

Tears ran down his cheeks as he spoke.

”That's nonsense, sir,” I said, as kindly as I could manage.

He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, smiled weakly at me, then abruptly stood up again and left.

Six.

I spent the night in turmoil. In the morning, further to discomfit me, as it seemed, the Junkers rumbled over again. So much had taken place that I had almost forgotten about it. I jumped out of bed just in time to watch it whoosh over my head, the cameras on its wingtips clearly visible this time. The rest of the day was spent drawing charts-not because I was mindful of Whybrow's incontinent warning but because I had to take my mind off everything that had happened-in particular the thought of poor Gill and the baby, and Ryman's peculiar request. The two seemed in no way commensurate. spent the night in turmoil. In the morning, further to discomfit me, as it seemed, the Junkers rumbled over again. So much had taken place that I had almost forgotten about it. I jumped out of bed just in time to watch it whoosh over my head, the cameras on its wingtips clearly visible this time. The rest of the day was spent drawing charts-not because I was mindful of Whybrow's incontinent warning but because I had to take my mind off everything that had happened-in particular the thought of poor Gill and the baby, and Ryman's peculiar request. The two seemed in no way commensurate.

There was no sign of the Prophet and, not wis.h.i.+ng to confront in my mind his outlandish suggestion, I didn't seek him out. The whole affair was quite beyond me. There was, in particular, something ghoulish about the idea of arranging, even if provisionally, to put another child in a woman's belly when the one that was already there was not yet dead. It would take great mental and emotional detachment to do that, I thought. Detachment or desperation.

Without stopping for lunch I got my head down again until I was up to date with my work. Whybrow could stuff it all down his gullet for all I cared, but I didn't want him denigrating me to Sir Peter.

I made supper. Potatoes and carrots on the stove, a mackerel Providence had reserved for me at the end of Mackellar's lines. Plus a bottle of beer, and a cigarette for pudding. It was only then, in a tobacco trance, that I conceived of a simple plan to strike back at the German plane using a series of cracker balloons.

I seized upon the notion with dangerous fervour. Now that I look back at this stupid idea, I realise its emotional impetus may have come from Whybrow's implication that I had been neglectful in not helping those people who had rowed across the Clyde following the bombing of the factory in Greenock; and, of course, from wis.h.i.+ng to displace from my mind the business with Gill and the baby. The role of displacement is, it seems to me, just as important in consciousness as it is in the environment, though whether something similar to the distributive working of turbulence takes place in the brain I could not say.

Whatever its mental roots, the practical conception for the plan was derived from the not dissimilar Free Balloon Barrage that I had worked on in my early career at the Met Office. Because the government had ordained it, I didn't think the idea stupid at the time. Now, of course, older and marginally wiser, I would take the fact that the government had ordained it as a fair indication of its likely stupidity.

As to the plan itself-each balloon could be primed to go off at a different height. If I set them up right, perhaps in a line behind the beech tree walk, and detonated them at the correct periods, I might be able to create a barrier into which the Junkers would fly and damage itself. For added nuisance value, the length of the copper-wire aerials beneath the balloons could be increased, in the hope that one of them might get caught up in the plane's propellers. It would all require precise timing-and a lot of balloons.

I broke open all of my crates and worked late into the night, filling balloon after balloon. I used up my whole supply of hydrogen materials, then settled down to sleep with all the balloons nestled around the bed. No smoking now: I'd weighted them all with small sealed cartons of motorcycle oil, mixed with a little petrol. For extra explosiveness, I attached a collar of magnesium to the cartons, which were themselves connected by fuse to the main cracker charge.

I had no idea if my plan would work, but it was surely worth a shot. Calculating the likelihood of one of the balloons actually being hit by the plane was impossible. There were too many variables.

But there could be no harm in trying. That is what I thought, at any rate. Underneath the thought, however, was the vision of a brilliant spectacle, something that would rescue my part in the war and be talked about for generations to come.

Seven.

In the light of day, I felt a twinge of unease about what I was planning. I worried about the waste of materials and the trouble I would get into if it didn't work. Or, indeed, if it did work. But by then, with no clear idea of the significance it would have, I was already committed to the idea. I went to the beech tree walk to set a series of tether switches to which each of the balloons could be attached, enabling them to be released in sequence. I then came back carrying one balloon at a time, each weighted with extra incendiary materials and trailing an extra-long copper-wire tail.

It was quite hard to put all this in place, as a high wind was blowing and each balloon had to be tethered with its burden and tail neatly laid out, to avoid tangles. The tether switches were strings attached to a fuse and a ground-pin, like a tent-pole-I had rigged it up so that each fuse would ignite its neighbour.

I did not finish until eleven, when who should appear but Ryman, walking along the opposite bank of a stream that ran under the beeches. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a thick woollen sweater and carrying a bottle of milk. I quickly crossed over.

”What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing the bundle of leftover tether packets under my arm.