Turbulence Page 5

  The troopships were the most impressive of all, being as stately as their names: Queen of Bermuda, Aquitania, Empress of Britain… Filling the air with grey smoke, they were carrying armies from the Empire and the United States, either to ready themselves in training camps in the Cowal and points north, or on their way out to fighting in various theatres of war.

  Ryman had set out to develop a numerical system that would complement the FitzRoy and Norwegian methods and possibly supersede them, by manipulating the quantities and limits of weather systems mathematically. His number, more properly a ratio, as I think I have said, was at the heart of this. It showed the rate of turbulence in an evolving weather system, dramatising the relationship between wind and heat as a number on a positive or negative scale.

  Surrounded by all that rope and ships, I suddenly saw an easy way to explain it all to myself, as a kind of springboard for the more difficult task that lay ahead. When the Ryman number is positive, turbulence is decreasing, because the flow is dynamically stable. Cold air is reducing the roughening effect produced when wind goes over surfaces or when one wind hits another coming from a different direction. It’s like a tug of war – a rope being pulled between these wind irregularities and the calming effects of cold – and the cold is winning.

  When the number is negative, turbulence is increasing. The flow is dynamically unstable. Buoyancy effects associated with higher temperatures combine with wind irregularities to produce larger, faster-spinning eddies. Then it is like a race between two ships. The ship of wind-generated turbulence versus the ship of temperature-generated turbulence.

  But just as there must be a finishing line to a race, so turbulence always becomes exhausted, locally speaking. It cascades down from big eddies to small ones before the process begins again somewhere in the wider system. Effectively, as I had said to Sir Peter in my interview, the kinetic energy of eddies in one place is converted into potential energy that will make turbulence in another place. It is like expelling a troublemaker from one school only for him to join another and make trouble there – not that turbulence should always be considered as trouble. Far from it.

  Hearing shouts, I looked out across the water. Thronging the decks with their green helmets and uniforms, soliders were waving to us from one of the vast troopships. Some of the other passengers waved back, and then the shock of the leviathan’s bow wave reached us and began rocking the Wee Lorne. Soon I would see the anchorages of some of these monstrous ships in Holy Loch (my own destination) and Loch Long.

  As we moved from side to side, it struck me that the difference between the two vessels was nothing compared with the difference between what I understood then, concerning Ryman and his number, and what I would need to understand and be capable of if I was really to supply what Sir Peter wanted: Ryman numbers for a geographical space that might be subject to any number of contrasting, altering weather systems over a five-day window.

  The maths alone was mind-boggling. The time period over which the evolution of any eddy can be predicted is generally comparable with its own life-span, which is why averages are used in weather forecasting. But what Sir Peter wanted was very specific, and you just can’t use averages to predict the specifics of the next generation of eddies, any more than you could use an average to predict the life-story of an individual human being. All you can do is show the likely dominance of one pattern over others …

  As this thought went through my head I became aware that we were approaching the settlement of Dunoon, sometimes referred to as the ‘capital’ of Cowal. But before we could pull in we had, like all the other ships, to pass through the naval boom. This was a barrier of mines and deep baffles which stretched across from Castle Rock at Dunoon to Cloch Point on the Renfrewshire coast. Its purpose was to prevent enemy U-boats attacking the naval bases, anchorages and training facilities in the lochs above. An armed tug – the boom boat, as I’d later learn to call it – had the job of opening a gate in the cordon to let us in.

  Once this had been done, we swung in to Dunoon pier. A majestic Victorian construction made of thick wooden planking, it supported a pier house painted brown and white, with a clock tower on top, together with a balustraded promenade running from one side to the other. Underneath the promenade were tobacco and sweet kiosks, together with toilets, a ticket booth and the harbour master’s office. There were gulls everywhere, stalking the wooden decking or skulking among the barnacle-encrusted uprights which supported it. Beyond the pier was a large green mound with a small castle on top, its flagpole flying the saltire. This mound dominated the whole town which spread out below it.

  Dunoon had long been a holiday resort for Glaswegians, chief jewel in the necklace of villages and towns strung along the Firth of Clyde below the Cowal hills. Most of the passengers disembarked here – along with sacks of coal, bundles of ironware, mail bags and crates of beer. I had hoped then to continue my journey to Kilmun, which was just across the opening to Holy Loch, but was informed by the steward that Kilmun pier was closed for repair. I would have to get off at Blairmore, just a little ‘furth’ doun the watter’, as he put it.

  It was no great delay. In a few minutes, passing under some of the finest mountain scenery I’d seen outside Africa, the Wee Lorne was cranking towards a craggy foreshore where, with foam washing under its stanchions, Blairmore’s own pier jutted out into the foot of Loch Long.

  I decided I would go straight to Ryman’s house, reasoning that, if the building in which I was to live was nearby, I could make myself known to him in the course of establishing myself in my new home.

  5

  I stood motionless on the planks of the pier, squinting at the plumes of smoke rising from the stacks of the departing Marchioness of Lorne. Its decks were still full of folk bound for Arrochar at the head of the loch and other destinations in between. A fine sight, that twin pillar of blackish-greyish-whitish smoke – leaning at first then streaming backwards, so that it lay horizontally against the clouds.

  The steam plumes began to move eastward, back towards the Firth and Glasgow. They would, I knew, break up during the twenty-five miles between here and the city, separating as atmospheric diffusion took effect. I watched only the first stage as the plumes bent at the near end, becoming like question-marks in the sky.

  A large, dark seabird – a great skua? – flew among the swirling shapes, to the disintegration of which its own powerful wingbeats were contributing further dispersive energy. Soon the objects of this dark interpreter’s attention – I could hear it calling now, a harsh hah-hah-hah – would become something else, chemically and physically altered by the more powerful forces of the surrounding air.

  As I walked up the pier, from behind the little stone hut at the end a strange sight appeared. An anachronism … a horse and trap … The animal was stamping and steaming, blowing a little bubble of froth from its mouth. I stared at the little spoked wheels of the trap. It took me a few seconds to rationalise it. Blairmore time, it seemed, was a long way behind London time – by a half a century at least!

  Stepping out from behind the horse, a rough, gypsy-looking man in his forties completed the Victorian picture. Lifting his whip in salute, he gestured to the back of the trap. He wore a tweed cap and chewed on a pipe – it stuck out of his unshaven, windswept face like a branch from a pollarded tree. He struck me as a not very prosperous farmer, with a dash of drover or poacher.

  ‘The Ryman house, Kilmun, please,’ I said, as he stowed my heavy leather suitcase in a net in the back of the gig, which already contained several parcels and a crate. I climbed aboard, he sat beside me, and with a touch of the whip the wheels were turning and we were on our way.

  His name was Mackellar – he gave no first name – and he was, as I had guessed, a farmer. ‘I meet the ferry whenever she comes in,’ he said. ‘Pick up the messages, passengers. The messages I pick up for nothing, passengers are fourpence.’

  He gave me a hard, sidelong look. ‘Ye have it?’

  I nod
ded, gripping the black-lacquered wood of the seat as we clipped along by the lapping water.

  ‘You’ll be the weather man, is that no’ right?’ he asked.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘They’ve put in a’ this equipment for you. On my land. My building as well. Compulsory order. No rent, mind, but that’s the government for you, war or no war.’ He gave the horse a tap with the crop and our pace increased with a jolt.

  I shifted in my seat. ‘Sorry about that. But it is important work, you know.’ I tried to think of a simple way to describe it. ‘If there is to be rain, we forecast it to warn the soldiers.’

  He gave me another sidelong look, and tapped the horse’s flank again. ‘Dae the soldiers no have mackintoshes, then?’

  I smiled and turned my attention to the passing country. Once we had left the little hamlet of Blairmore, my spirits were lifted to see the loch beach on one side and the high hills thick with trees on the other. Scattered scraps of cirrus, the thread-cloud, garlanded sunlit, spruce-covered hilltops. Some showed signs of forestry work, with gaps where trees had been cut down.

  ‘First time up in these pairts, then?’ asked Mackellar.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was brought up in Africa.’

  ‘Africa, eh? That’s a fair distance, eh? Well, you’ll find difference, tha’s for sure. Sun and cloud always smirring each other here.’

  Coming round Strone Point – which separated the foot of Loch Long from the opening into the Holy Loch – we passed into a long strip of road half covered with vegetation.

  ‘The folk here call this Midge Lane,’ said Mackellar, who seemed to switch randomly between Scots and English. ‘Fine now, but gin the wind dinna blaw nae mair, the midgies come. They ging oot for biting the incomers.’

  There was a pause as I tried to translate this to myself. During the hiatus the clipping noise of the horse’s hooves filled the hedge-lined lane. A dog barked as we passed a gate and the horse shied, pulling at the leather traces.

  ‘Don’t be frichtened,’ Mackellar said, softly. ‘He disnae like the dugs. Nor the midgies either. Great smokin’ crowds of them, we get here.’

  ‘I saw something like that in Africa,’ I said eventually, remembering my boyhood in Nyasaland. ‘On a large lake there, they have big clouds of midges.’

  Mackellar gave a low chuckle.

  ‘Ah dinna ken aboot Africa, but ah’ll tell ye whit’s whit aboot the midgies here. Ye’ll see if ah’m wrang. I swear if ye leave the midgies alane, they willnay bother ye. They come tae where there’s chappin’ in the air, so though they micht dance aboot ye, keep still yersel. Every dunt ye gie them, they’ll gie ye back wi interest. Whit’s mair, they love the mochy weather, so gin the sun comes oot, ye gae oot too. And they dinnae fly ower salt watter.’

  He gave the horse a proper crack with the whip and round the bluff, as if by inches, Holy Loch angled into view. I saw the heads of two seals stick up out of the water. They looked like soldiers’ helmets.

  ‘Why’s it called Holy Loch?’ I asked.

  Mackellar shrugged. ‘Thair’s mony a tale.’ He did not elaborate.

  The Loch was dominated by the sight of three grey navy ships, each with a covey of submarines moored alongside. The village of Kilmun was strung out in front of them.

  We weren’t supposed to talk about ship names then – there were warning posters about this everywhere – but I would soon learn that the motherships were HMS Forth, Titania and Alrhoda. From here the submarine clutch would disperse on their deadly and dangerous missions into the Atlantic Ocean, many never to return.

  ‘Ye have business wi’ the Prophet?’ asked Mackellar.

  ‘You mean Professor Ryman?’

  ‘We ken him as the Prophet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He gies us advice,’ said my nut-brown chauffeur. ‘When tae plant oor crops. When the moon’ll mak a cow drap her calf. When the salmon run’ll start. How tae mak your ain weedkiller and whit’ll keep the midges aff ye. That sort a thing.’

  ‘But surely country people know all that anyway?’

  ‘Auld wives’ tales,’ he said dismissively, upturning the prejudice I had formed of him. ‘Folklore and the like. God knows, my wife has faith in it. She thinks milk boiling o’er means somebody is going to fall ill, that snails an’ smoking are unlucky, an’ maist of a’ that if the burds skirl before a flaw, a stronger blaw’s on its way, sic as could tip ye heelstergowdie.’

  After asking him what ‘heelstergowdie’ meant, I deciphered all this as meaning something like ‘if the birds whirl around before a squall, a stronger wind is on its way, such as might tip you head over heels’. He invariably spoke the Scots more quickly than the English.

  ‘But I prefer the Prophet’s predictions,’ he continued. ‘He goes about with a gun. Ye’ll see for yourself soon enough.’

  The earlier sun had gone. The Holy Loch looked cold and grey now, its surface flecked by a raking pattern of white cat’s paws, every rippling line and distortion derived from physics and chemistry, even the clouds reflected in its waters.

  ‘That’s where the Prophet lives,’ said Mackellar, pointing with his whip as we approached a solid, square magnolia-painted house set among gardens and situated a little way back from the road behind a stone wall. ‘My ain farm’s just beyond.’

  On a hillside above Ryman’s home (which was Georgian, I suppose, with two bay windows), I saw another wall and beyond that a farmhouse and outbuildings. There were also stables and a cowshed and a barn stacked with hay, together with some glasshouses. In the field between the farm and Ryman’s house stood a much older stone building, beside a trough at which two Highland cattle were drinking. Higher up ran a stripe of beech trees. Mackellar told me there was a stream in the middle of the beech wood, with a small bridge across it.

  Further still up the hill was the forestry: line after line of forbidding spruce, broken only where logging had taken place – and also by a long steel chute. It looked like a child’s slide. ‘The foresters use tha’ for getting the wood out,’ explained Mackellar, seeing me looking.

  We had stopped at the wrought-iron gate of the Ryman house, which was decorated with a solar design surrounded by signs of the zodiac. I wondered for a second if I had strayed into a location with laws other than those of Newton, a place of signs and wonders, a glen of omens. But then I saw a sundial in the garden and also a large telescope on a pedestal, and somehow with those instruments rationality reasserted itself.

  ‘That building next to the tree, the auld cot-house, that’s where they put your kit,’ said Mackellar, pointing up the hillside. ‘There’s a bed, but I cannae say it looks very comfortable. I’ll take you there.’

  ‘No, no thank you,’ I said. ‘I may as well pay the professor a visit now I’m here. But if you could take up my suitcase, I’d be most grateful.’

  ‘That I’ll dae,’ said Mackellar gruffly.

  I climbed down from the trap.

  ‘Now the Prophet,’ he said, raising his whip for emphasis, ‘he disnae like folk to bang at the door.’ He paused. ‘So you must go in sleekit-like. He’ll like you mair, if you make it so,’ he added.

  The farmer followed this statement with a thrusting movement of the other hand that needed no interpretation. I searched in my pocket for the fare and gave it him. As the trap made its way up to my new home I walked up to the front door of Ryman’s house.

  I was about to knock when I remembered Mackellar’s warning. I pushed against the heavy black door. It was locked.

  Behind me, from somewhere across the loch or deep up the Firth, I heard a ship’s foghorn sound. It was like the groan of a dying mammoth or mastodon, as if some early drama of evolution was being played out across the archipelagic waters of the Cowal. I stood and waited, feeling uneasy again. This really did, after all, seem an odd, obscure place for the logical transparencies of science to have triumphed, as far from the mechanistic projections of the Ryman number as could be imagined.

>   6

  Hearing a sound, I turned to see a tall woman emerge from an outhouse behind me. Her blonde hair was scraped under a scarf and she wore a woollen jumper, corduroy trousers and wellington boots. She was carrying an empty hand seed sower, an instrument that allowed one to control the flow of seeds through different outlets. There was something about her that was immediately reassuring.

  She gave a start when she saw me, then smiled. ‘I’m supposed to be propagating cabbages,’ she said, lifting up the sower’s funnel-shaped spout and peering at me mischievously through it. She held out a hand. ‘But I’ve lost the packet that the seeds are in. Gill Ryman. And you must be …?’

  ‘Henry Meadows. I’m from the Met Office. I’m staffing the radio equipment in Mr Mackellar’s field.’

  Gill Ryman. Eyes the colour of the sea and just as changeable, but brighter. Lines of care on her brow and, yes, she looked tired, but she was intriguing as well as reassuring – most of all those eyes, which were filled with the fierce energy of true believers. I didn’t know, then, quite how unquenchable was the faith of this bright-eyed huntress of seed, whom I would so terribly harm. It was her faith that saved me, not my own. And it was her intelligence which cracked the number. But on first meeting her, I got no sense of either of these things; she was, instead, the object of misdirected melancholic longings, feelings that I only half understood myself.

  Her hand was cold and slightly calloused as I shook it. I noticed there was scrollwork on the front of her jersey. She was attractive, quite a big woman overall, but also, in an odd way, angular. The mixture gave a sense of strength and frailty in balance, as if she were both fern and flower; it made you wonder what lay beneath.

  ‘Oh, that’s you, is it?’ She took off the scarf, shook out her locks, then looked me up and down, like a farmer inspecting a bullock at market. ‘We noticed the men from the ministry had been busy. My husband once worked for the Met Office.’