Part 13 (1/2)

I pressed the plunger. Up they went then, from behind the line of trees, dipping and drifting, one after another...a host of cracker balloons, each packing a charge, each with a sting in its tail.

I came out from among the trees to see Ryman running back towards the rising tail of the last balloon, his face full of fury. What was he doing? It was as if he wanted to pluck the offending weapon from the sky. Some of the balloons had already begun to detonate. The plane, coming in on its second pa.s.s, was now faced with a line of balloons rising through the air at irregular intervals, with the wind making it impossible to predict where they would rise.

Crack! Crack!

At every level they were going off. Large patches of red fire in the sky. Crack! Crack! Then white flashes as the magnesium caught and flared. Then white flashes as the magnesium caught and flared.

They made a tremendous noise. The sky quickly filled with smoke and the air was acrid with the smell of burning petrol. I heard an exultant laugh come out of my throat.

Black smoke was falling. Through the pall I saw Ryman, closer now. Above him, the plane's engine droned. To my dawning horror, I glimpsed Ryman standing in the path of one the balloon wires, the last in the sequence, which had drifted down. It missed him. As it pa.s.sed by him the tail made a loud pop and burst into flames. I saw Ryman flinch and duck, and then, to my relief, straighten up amid the new puff of black smoke, apparently unharmed.

At that moment, however, the wind changed. The balloon doubled back in his direction, its wire swinging from side to side, the blackened carton spinning round. Twisting as it followed the eddy-driven movement of the balloon from which it was suspended, with the remains of the carton acting as a sort of anchor on which the wind could catch, the copper-wire aerial caught him round the neck, looping rapidly round. All this happened in an instant. I watched, stupefied, as the balloon began dragging him along the field. There was a ghastly comedy in the mechanical movement of his legs.

I ran towards him. What on earth did he think he was doing?

Above us other balloons continued to blow. Flaring pieces of magnesium were tumbling onto the gra.s.s beside me. When I reached Ryman his face was bright red. His weight had anch.o.r.ed the balloon a little, but he was still sliding across the field. I grabbed hold of his kicking legs and pulled him down to me, clawing frantically at the wire around his throat.

I was making things worse. The wire grew tight. A noose. A killing snare like one of Mackellar's for the rabbits. My knees began to shake. I felt the kizunguzungu kizunguzungu feeling returning. feeling returning.

Ryman was frothing at the mouth. I tried again to pull the balloon down, but now it made no difference to the tension on the wire, which had knotted itself and drawn close. Panicking, I twisted the wire tightly with my fingers, still trying to loosen it, but all that happened was that it bit deeper into his Adam's apple, crus.h.i.+ng his windpipe. His eyes bulged and his face began turning from red to blue. Ryman's head slumped forward, a trickle of blood at his nostril.

It was no use. I needed something to sever the wire. Leaving him suspended, I ran to the cot-house to search for a suitable tool. I remember frantically sweeping everything off my desk and overturning half a dozen crates before I eventually found a pair of tinsnips. I rushed back outside in a daze to find Ryman's body still hanging from the balloon, wreathed in smoke. Stumbling and falling on the gra.s.s, the plane still swooping overhead, I ran back to release him. I snipped the wire above him and he fell to the ground, enabling me to get at the strangling copper. But I was too late. His face remained as swollen as the balloon whose aerial had just garrotted him. I think he must have been dead even before I'd run to the house. Moaning, I fell to my knees by the body. The earth seemed to quake, as if rocks deep below were being rent asunder.

The plane pa.s.sed overhead again. At that moment there was another explosion in the air. I looked up. One of its engines was smoking-I a.s.sumed from drawing into its propeller housing another wire and carton, followed in short order by a hydrogen balloon, just as intended.

But there was no grand finale, at least not then. The Junkers just seemed to wobble for a moment, then sailed on imperturbably into the blue light of the horizon, leaving me and my disaster to run their course. What I did not see, what happened later, in another part of the picture, were parachutes opening, men falling to earth.

Nine.

The rest of the day pa.s.sed in a blur of ambulance men and vehicles and police. I half-dragged, half-carried Ryman's body to the cot-house, laying it on the gra.s.s outside, then went inside to make the necessary telephone calls. Afterwards, appalled at myself, I sat beside the body on the porch, unable to look at the face. Something inside me had broken.

Confirmed in a sense of personal futility, I sat on the step as the officials went to and fro. Later the Mackellars appeared-they had been at the agricultural market in the town and had just come back in the trap.

Mackellar strode across the gra.s.s towards me, the whip from the trap in his hand. Someone had obviously told him that I was responsible for what had happened. At first, craggy-faced and trembling with anger under his flat cap, he just stood there in front of me where I sat on the step. I was about to say something when he lifted the whip and began swiping me with it, uttering curses as he did so. I cowered on the step, curling fetally under the rain of stinging blows.

Eventually-and it seemed like an awfully long time-a pair of policemen pulled him off me.

I wiped blood off my face and sat back on the step, caught in a terrible immobility of misery and pain. I was almost grateful for the pain, not feeling sufficiently self-lacerated for what had happened. Just a terrible numbness and dizziness: oh yes, a vicious return of that.

The ambulance took Ryman's body. His gla.s.ses fell off as they loaded him onto it. With tears running down my bleeding face, unable to watch any more, I stood up and went into the cot-house. I washed my face and staunched some of the bleeding with a towel. I looked awful.

Questions surged into my mind...What had all this been for? I must, I thought, send a telegram to Gill at once. But what could I possibly say to her? The prospect of facing Sir Peter also terrified me. Had I got what he wanted? If so it was at a great cost. As I was standing in front of the mirror, a policeman appeared, telling me I had to go with him to Dunoon.

From that moment a stream of further misery flowed. First of all I had to face Mrs Mackellar, who was waiting outside the door. Her wild white hair more awry than ever, and her ragged red coat flaring out behind her like the tail of a banshee, she came up to me as I was being put into the police car. She was carrying her hazel herd-stick and I thought for a second she was about to continue the work her husband had started, but all she did was lean her Gorgon-like face into the car window.

Nodding to herself more than me, she said, ”I was right about you. Dangerous.” They were sentiments that I could only agree with.

I was then driven to Dunoon for questioning. I told the inspector who interrogated me that I was doing my duty in trying to down a German plane. It was four hours before I was released. Four hours being quizzed and signing statements. In the end my explanation that the whole thing had been an awful accident was accepted. On being released I was given instructions to report to Whybrow, of all people.

I did not care very much what that idiot thought, though I was worried about the extent to which he could colour Sir Peter's opinion. But Whybrow was not full of the malevolent satisfaction I was expecting. It was as if he was as shocked as I by what had happened.

He said in mild tones that I should go back to London immediately and see Sir Peter. ”It seems to me,” he continued, ”that you've behaved extremely irresponsibly. In this as in other matters. I shall be making a full report to the director.”

I went in search of Joan and Gwen, but on climbing to the makes.h.i.+ft studio in the observation tower I found it quite bare. The mattresses, the mirrors, the easel and other painting equipment-everything was gone. I climbed back down and went to the Waafs' quarters to ask.

A sullen looking girl with pins in her hair came to the door. She told me that Gwen and Joan had been transferred to another unit. Whybrow had kept his promise. That was why he had been so anodyne. He must have known I would come in search of them.

I returned in a box-like green bus to Kilmun to pack, in preparation for my journey south. As I walked up through the village for the last time, someone opened a window and shouted something down at me.

”Murderer!”

That was the word.

Ten.

Dawn and the beginning of my long journey south for a reckoning with Sir Peter brought only more shame. As I was waiting for the ferry to Gourock, who should appear but Minister Grant, the cleric who had left Ryman's table in such a rage.

The bombast seemed to have gone out of him. ”I did not rub along well with him myself, as you will be aware. But he was a popular figure here. Do you know, they used to call him the Prophet? So I am afraid there is a deal of animosity towards you. Really, it is a good thing you are leaving.”

I nodded distractedly, looking at the ferry as it drew close to the quay, propeller and exhausts churning up the water as the captain manoeuvred the vessel into position.

Grant told me that Ryman's body had been removed to a funeral parlour. ”He left instructions in his will that he was to be cremated. A rationalist to the end.”

”Mrs Ryman has been informed, then?”

”So I understand.”

”Will she be coming back?”

”I don't know.” And then he gave me an imperious look, full of all the authority of the Kirk. ”What I do know is that her husband is dead because of a schoolboy prank. Was that what you came here for?”

”Of course not. I came to learn-to predict the weather.”

Now the old Grant came back, the Grant of the dinner table and the Old Testament. ”You should read your Job, young man. 'Great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. For he saith to the snow, fall on the earth; likewise to the shower of rain...Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge?'”

No.

I do not know them.

I cannot compute them.