Turbulence by Giles Foden

Author:Giles Foden
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Historical - General, Historical fiction, Meteorologists, Technological, Scotland, English Historical Fiction, Fiction, Fiction - General, Literary, Atmospheric turbulence, Operation Overlord, Historical, War & Military, General, Weather forecasting
ISBN: 9780307592774
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-17T01:33:46.341000+00:00

Four

Driving back to Kilmun on the motorcycle, I considered the quantity on which Whybrow had so eloquently discoursed. Time was not something so easily reducible to definition as the old fool seemed to think. It has been described as a river which carries us along. Or—and this was my present state on the pillion, amused but also unnerved by my superior’s outburst—a road on which one travels. Neither of these explanations is adequate, especially for those highly absorbent events which return unbidden to mind years later, like my parents’ death. And, I remember thinking, it’s not just the most important events that return like that…

My philosophical divagation was interrupted by the sight of Pyke, kneeling by the roadside, changing a tyre on his Humber motor car.

“Can I give you a hand?” I said.

He was glad of the help, but said very little as we replaced the tyre.

“Anything the matter?” I asked eventually.

He straightened up. “Leviathan, my sea lion, is dead. Blown up by a mine. My mine. Bits all over the bay.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“As I am. It was my own fault. A failure of science.”

“What will you do now?”

“I’m driving down to London. Mountbatten has got the go-ahead from Churchill and Roosevelt for my project.”

“That thing you called Habbakuk?”

He nodded. “Can’t say anything else just yet, but I may be in touch.”

“And your friend?”

“Julius is back in Cambridge. That reminds me. We had a strange visit from the wife of your man Ryman. She brought us a blood sample. Some of it in a test-tube in a solution of citric acid. More on a handkerchief. She wanted Julius to test them.”

“For what?” I asked, alarmed.

“Rhesus compatibility. Blood groups. Julius recently made some new discoveries about blood structure, though I don’t know she knew that. Rather odd. He took it all in his stride, of course.”

“She does know,” I said, my mind whirring. “I told her myself.”

“I’m going to be late,” said Pyke, looking at his watch. “Must get on. I’m down to see Lord Louis, as I say. The only person in authority who has ever listened to my ideas. God knows, sometimes you’d think the government wants actively to prevent the use of science in this war.”

He threw the jack into the boot of the car, slammed it, and came round to the front to take his seat. “Goodbye, then, Henry.”

I put my hand on the window-sill. “Wait. Julius…did he test the blood?”

“I don’t know. He took it to Cambridge with him in a thermos flask. I don’t know what he told Ryman’s wife.”

He started the engine and drove off. I remounted my motorcycle and continued my journey.

A little further on, puzzling over what Pyke had said as I rode along, I was signalled off the road by two army motorcyclists coming towards me. They demanded I show them my papers. Important dignitaries were coming by shortly.

“Brass hat parade,” one of the soldiers explained. “You’ll have to come off the road.”

We stayed on the verge to watch the convoy past.

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