Turbulence (24 page)

By the time it had turned half past eight, Stagg had had enough. ‘This is ridiculous!' he cried. ‘Listen, all of you. In half an hour I have to present an agreed forecast to General Eisenhower. Help me, please.'

Gagging, he banged down the phone and rushed outside. I heard him being sick on the ground, the retching noise making my own stomach turn.

‘Boy,' said Krick. ‘That is one angry man. I don't know why he's getting so pissed. Maybe we need to accept that we're never gonna agree.'

‘Now that I agree with,' said Petterssen.

They both laughed, a little cruelly to my mind, and then the door of the hut opened.

‘I'm sorry, Meadows,' Stagg said, coming back in, wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘It's those things.' He flapped the
vomit-stained hankie at the weather charts. ‘I'm not sure I can stand to look at another one. Tell them they can put their telephones down. I'm going to have to wing it again.'

He left the room. After doing as he said, I sat studying the WANTAC figures. There was a mystery there, that much was certain. Whether it had to do with the instruments themselves or was a factor of narrowly adjacent turbulent fluxes – in which case Ryman's number would come into play – I did not know. But I was determined to find out.

At about 11 p.m. Stagg came back from seeing Eisenhower. He seemed a little more relaxed. He told me that he had broadly confirmed yesterday's forecast and, therefore – at least from a weather perspective – the impossibility of invasion on Monday. ‘I took more of the Dunstable view and said the situation was now potentially full of menace. Eisenhower asked me about the weather for Tuesday. I told him that would be pure guesswork at this stage, but added that the weather on Tuesday and Wednesday is unlikely to be any worse than on Sunday and Monday.'

‘What did Eisenhower say?' I asked.

‘Nothing. He just said nothing. And according to General Bull, D-Day is still on for Monday.' Stagg walked up to the little window of the hut and looked out into the night sky, which showed no signs of disturbance. ‘You know, I have almost given up hope that we will get it right. Some of those bloody generals simply look outside, see fine weather and say, go!'

‘Look,' I said, summoning up courage before that formidably tempestuous personality. ‘I really think you should let me have a look at those WANTAC instruments. They have arrived now.'

‘And what do you propose?' Stagg asked, gritting his teeth as if to prevent angry words from flying between them.

‘There is a wind tunnel and the other necessary equipment
at the Saunders-Roe factory across in Cowes. I could be there and back in a day, taking the gauges with me. I will do some tests and the results will tell us whether WANTAC's readings have been mistakes or genuine. We will know whether it was a case of the instruments or the weather.'

It seemed like an age before he replied. I remember he appeared to shiver as he sat there in that hut on the bluff, as if trembling under the weight of the responsibility that had been placed upon him.

‘Very well, Henry. One day only, mind.'

The wind tunnel at Saunders-Roe was octagonal in cross-section and about forty feet long. Constructed in perspex, so that experiments could be viewed from outside, it had a useable floor area twelve feet across and there was a door at each end. Wind was blown down the tunnel by a heavy-duty electric fan. Turbulence was produced by its three vanes, shaped to act as aerofoils, the angle of which could be adjusted to produce the required frequency and amplitude of perturbation.

Earlier that morning, grateful there were not many people about because it was a Saturday, I had already tested the barometers in a pressure chamber on the site. They worked perfectly. Now it was a question of letting winds of different speeds run past the anemometers I had set up in the tunnel, to see how they performed.

I could see down the tunnel, the length of which was illuminated by incandescent lamps flaring overhead. I switched on the fan and, with a roar, the blast began. It was jolly hard work, writing down the measurements on each dial – the wind kept flipping up my notepad – but very quickly I came to the conclusion that the WANTAC anemometers, too, could be trusted.

If it wasn't a question of instrument error, then it could only be the weather itself that was responsible for the anomalous readings. I was so excited that, with the man-made wind still roaring about me, I paced up and down behind the installations like a boy on the beach pointing out ships in a storm, trying to calculate what this meant for Monday's invasion. The
coming weather suggested by WANTAC was still not yet calm enough to make landings possible; but it looked as if more favourable conditions were coming, and soon.

The question was still
when
? Working out how long it would take for the calmer weather to reach the Channel would involve analysis of the range of values of the Ryman number, but there was very little time to do the calculations. How could I possibly do all that maths in one day? It seemed impossible as a solo effort.

As I was deliberating whether it might be feasible, the door at the other end of the tunnel opened and somebody walked in. At first I thought it was the tunnel supervisor at Saunders-Roe, who had greeted me when I first arrived – there had been no sign of Mr Blackford – but it was a woman carrying a small brown-leather suitcase.

She wore a woollen black coat and a long knitted red scarf tied loosely round her neck, streaming out behind her like a windsock in the onrushing gale. The coat was open, revealing a blouse with a high white collar, a V-neck jumper, and a skirt reaching almost to the floor. The suitcase was swinging like a pendulum.

I dumbly recognised Gill Ryman. She walked towards me quickly, knocking from side to side, blown off balance by the blast roaring by, her clothes flapping around her.

She looked older, and the clothing pressed hard against her body by the wind confirmed clearly that she was no longer pregnant. Her hair streamed out behind, parallel with the scarf. Behind its knitted length, tassels fluttered in turn, each one trembling its own little wake.

Immobile for a second, I felt as if my confused feelings for her, so long shut away in darkness and sighing, were about to be released; as if a squeezing hand was being released and something springing forth.

‘Gill!' I cried, eventually rushing forward to embrace her. She felt extremely thin. She stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, inert in my arms with the wind tearing at us down the tunnel, plucking at our clothes and hair.

Time seemed to stand still, and then she freed herself from me – pushing me away with the little brown case. I heard myself begin to speak, ‘I'm so sorry … I wrote, just yesterday, but I expect you haven't–'

‘I can't hear you!' Shouting into the wind's roar, she staggered, almost falling down. I clasped her again.

As she spoke, we wheeled about in the rush and she had to hold on to me. I was aware of a blurring of boundaries. It was as if, in that moment, her spirit and mine were clustering together under the influence of something larger – something fundamental in which we were both intimately involved, like molecules moving in the same direction, following the flow of the medium in which they were carried.

‘I'll turn it off,' I shouted back.

I walked to the control panel and reached down for the switch. With an unearthly moan, the fan slowed. The gale ceased. Suddenly, all was quiet.

As I came back towards her, Gill put down the suitcase. She came close, studying me hard, both of us still blinking from the effect of wind. ‘I wrote,' I said, eventually. ‘Not the right words I expect, but … well, I am sorry.'

She covered her ears with her hands. ‘Do stop all that, please.' She was frowning as she did this, and screwing up her eyes.

‘You destroyed me by destroying him,' she continued eventually, letting her hands fall and reopening her eyes, ‘but I have not come here to hear you apologise. You already did that in your letter. And besides, I owe you an apology myself, for that business with the blood and … Embarrassing – I was not myself.'

‘Of course not.'

‘It only came yesterday.' She had taken my letter out of her pocket. ‘My father did not want me to come here today. He refused to bring me. I had to drive myself. He was very fond of Wallace. He holds you entirely to blame for his death.'

I felt nausea in my stomach and a rising whirling in my head. ‘And for your baby's, I gather. I'm so sorry, Gill – if I had thought …'

She shook her head. ‘That was not your fault, though obviously Wallace's death did not help. But I have miscarried on many occasions previously. The rhesus factor – which is why I sat up when I heard you talk about Brecher at lunch that day. This was my eighth, so I am quite used to it by now. But each did seem to happen earlier than the last, which is why I left Kilmun when I did.' She spoke coldly, as if not about herself or her body.

‘I'm so sorry, Gill, all the same. About the child as well as Wallace.'

‘For God's sake!' She stepped towards me, lifting a hand as if to strike me, then reached out for my face, squeezing it hard and painfully between her fingers and thumb. Her face was inches from mine. ‘Shut up. Just shut up.' Then she pushed away from me, shaking her head and falling to her knees on the floor of the wind tunnel, sobbing.

I knelt down beside her, patting her shoulder ineffectually, almost overcome by fugue-like dizziness.

She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, then got to her feet. ‘It's all right, it's all right. I'm sorry. God sees all things; he shall not despise a contrite heart. That is what I keep reminding myself when I think about you, Henry.'

Despite my relief that she seemed to have recovered from the desire to mete violence on me, I recoiled from these devout sentiments. ‘God!' I cried. ‘I wish I knew him. If I had then I
might not have had such cursed luck. I am afraid I have become like Wallace. I don't believe in God any more, after what happened.'

‘Wallace actually saw God in everything,' she said, affronted. ‘It's just that people didn't realise.'

The steel door at the far end of the tunnel banged open. Now it was indeed the supervisor from Saunders-Roe coming in. ‘Everything all right in here?' he called out doubtfully.

‘Yes, fine, thank you,' I replied. ‘I think I'll pack up now. I've got what I came for.'

‘What were you testing?' Gill asked, looking down the tunnel at the anemometers as the supervisor left.

‘Wind speeds on ships. We've been getting errant readings. Well, they seemed errant, but actually I think they are correct. I have now got to work out your husband's number for adjacent areas of the North Atlantic and the Channel. I don't think I've got enough time. I'm afraid I must rush back for the boat to Portsmouth. Gill – I'm working on … well, it's the war.'

‘Of course,' she said. ‘I understand. I can drive you to the pier, if that is any help. You'll make the seven o'clock.'

‘That would be wonderful.'

She dug in a pocket to check for car keys, then picked up the suitcase and began walking to the door of the tunnel. I gathered up my equipment, stowed it in a large kitbag, and then joined her.

‘So, you live here now?' I asked awkwardly as we walked into dusky light outside the wind tunnel. One of the workers from the factory was painting the number 52 on a large flying boat mounted on trestles.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘But in Seaview, not Cowes. I couldn't face going back to Scotland, not after losing another baby. I had all our belongings sent down.'

‘We could meet again,' I said. ‘Talk things over …'

She shook her head. ‘Look, do you want a lift or not?'

‘Yes, of course. Thank you.' We began walking towards the vehicle. ‘It seems like fate,' I continued, ‘you coming here like this.'

She looked at me, swinging the suitcase a little menacingly. ‘Fate? Wallace hated that word.'

‘But he thought everything was determined.'

‘Not exactly.' We got into the car, a little blue Morris with red seats. I slung my kitbag into the back and she passed the suitcase over the steering wheel to me, so it rested squarely on my lap.

‘You mean he thought everything was determined, but not exactly?'

She frowned. ‘I mean he didn't think about it like that, in a religious way. He once said fate depended on the unpredictable relationship of different physical scales.'

She put the key in the ignition. ‘You know what else he once said to me?'

‘What?'

‘That if anyone wanted to apply his number across a large space, the thing to do was to take the weather readings in the centre of each adjacent quadrant of the atmosphere, not do the whole thing.'

‘I'm not sure that would work,' I said. ‘There would be too many distortion errors in the rest of the quadrant.'

‘But worth a try, when you are in a bind, if you could simulate quasi-random turbulence of the outside parts?'

‘Yes, I suppose …'

I suddenly felt extremely weary. I was unable to expel from my head the vision of Allied soldiers being dragged by the rip tide, mouths agape as, raked by machine-gun fire from the shore, they were tipped out of their landing craft into the waves. A tide of men, turning the wavetops red.

Gill carried on speaking in neutral, emotionless tones. ‘Well, I have brought something that might help. When we were in Scotland, and
you
came, and Wallace told me of his suspicions of you, part of me wanted him to help you. I was always a bit frustrated that he had gone to ground in Kilmun not fully recognised for his achievements. Now that he is dead, I want him to have a legacy. And that is what I have brought you. At least, I hope so. Open the suitcase, Henry.'

Perplexed, I clicked the brass clasps and lifted the lid. Inside, to my great surprise, laid out in the original green baize mould, were the eight shell cases I had last seen in Ryman's study. I looked across at Gill for an explanation. I had a peculiar sensation of impending judgement, as if I were about to go before the beak.

She smiled unnervingly, as if pleased to see me foxed. ‘Wallace used these to simulate the action of turbulence round the central calculation in each quadrant. That is how he got round the problem of crossing from one weather system to the next.'

‘But how?' I said, taking the largest shell case out of the mould. Even as I did so, I began to have an inkling of the answer, for inside the shell case I felt weight shift; there was also a sandy, tinkling noise, like that heard in a kaleidoscope, or a box of seeds.

‘Give it to me,' commanded Gill. ‘And cup your hands.' Again I had the feeling of going before the law.

I did as she said, and she began unscrewing the end of the shell. With very careful movements she tipped out some of its contents into the receptacle of my joined palms. What spilled out were tiny brass digits, pressed out of sheet metal. Inside the shell were hundreds more.

‘He had them precision-made in Germany, and collected them from there after his trip to Poland in 1939. That was partly why he went to Berlin.'

Suddenly, as if in a flash of revealed knowledge, I began to see the shape of the method, but Gill was a long way ahead of me. ‘It's very important you don't lose any,' she explained, touching the mound of numbers in my hands with a finger. ‘Each shell case contains a different amount of digits, so within a certain range you can choose the minimum and maximum values for each set of numbers you want. Wallace used to shake the shell case like a maraca, pour out a pile of these on a table, then close his eyes to pick out an amount of digits determined by the nature of the underlying calculation.'

I was amazed she had such a grasp of it all. ‘Those digits effectively become the seed for further calculations,' she continued, speaking in the same authoritative tone.

‘Worked out mathematically?' I asked, looking at the pile of numbers still cupped in my palm.

She nodded. ‘Right. Put those back carefully. We have to get you to the ferry.'

When we got to the pier, she would not allow me to kiss her, simply turning away with a melancholy smile and heading back to the Morris. Still hopeful of possibility even then, I watched her drive away.

I spent the journey across the Solent in a whirl of emotion mixed with mathematical thought. It was as if, finally, two parts of my brain had come together … Full of regret and sadness, and excitement and relief, carrying Gill's suitcase in my hand and the kitbag of instruments over my shoulder, I arrived back at Southwick just in time for the Saturday night conference.

The weather outside the hut was still good, and the wartime measure of setting British Summer Time two hours ahead of GMT meant that there was still plenty of light, even at 9 p.m. To a layman it would have looked all fine and dandy to launch an invasion on Monday – but the charts confirmed yesterday's view of coming storms.