Chapter 28
CHAPTER
It’s after five o’clock when Dougie, opening the door to the professor’s office, quietly taps.
‘Knock, knock.’
I’m not sure if he does the rounds with anybody else, but I’m forced to tolerate his interruptions.
Clicking his fingers like he’s impatient or anxious or both, he looks over my shoulder to my screen. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I’ve done five more weeks.’
‘You’re a legend.’
‘Sometimes I think I’m a mug.’ I roll my shoulders. ‘Can you remind me why you’re so desperate to get this data?’
‘Desperate?’ His laugh is stilted. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘These deadlines seem harsh. Especially given your other work.’
Walking to the window, Dougie stares at the strip of path outside. When he turns, he’s still uptight, but hiding it more believably.
‘I want Seb to be satisfied with our work.’
‘Didn’t we agree it’s not my work?’
He holds up three fingers. ‘Scout’s honour, I won’t say a word.’
Bringing up a file, I point out two squiggly lines. ‘We now have sufficient data to plot water and air temperatures from the seventies to the nineties.’
‘Impressive.’
It is impressive, but I don’t see that in Dougie’s expression. Goodness knows what he puts in his reports to Sebastien, but at least the raw data is accurate.
‘How often do you send these out?’
‘Most nights.’
Pushing off from the table, I wheel my chair sideways. ‘The data will be open to interpretation, but the variations in temperature are in line with what we’d expect.’
‘How’s the penguin poo quotient?’
‘Plenty of data on that too.’
‘Good to know.’ Yet another attempt at a smile. ‘When is Seb back?’
‘You’d know that better than I would. End of November, isn’t it?’ I indicate my keyboard. ‘If you want this spreadsheet tonight, I’d better get back to work.’
‘It’s a shame he won’t get the opportunity to thank you.’
‘That doesn’t worry me.’
Dougie is at the door when he turns. ‘Are you getting along any better?’
‘Same, same.’ I keep my tone light.
We’re halfway through November, and this is the third time Sebastien has called since he left. I lift my legs onto the bed and lean against the wall. What would he say if he knew I was wearing his jumper over my pyjama top?
‘How is Casey?’
‘I miss you,’ he says.
Robin whistles as she walks from the bathroom to her room.
‘That’s not something I can talk about now.’
‘Is Robin there?’
‘More or less.’
‘I have a question.’
‘You always ask questions.’
‘Tell me about the white-tailed eagle.’
‘Haliaeetus albicilla is the largest bird of prey in Norway.’
He grumbles. ‘You know.’
‘I looked up Norway’s birds just in case you asked about them. The white-tailed eagle is protected.’
‘I want to protect you.’
‘Sebastien! I don’t need that.’
‘Say my name again.’
‘Do I pronounce it incorrectly?’
‘I want you to trust me.’
‘Isn’t it enough that I looked up your eagle?’
Silence. Then, ‘Have you forgiven me?’
‘As you won’t explain why you took my work away, no, I haven’t.’
‘Robin said you and Dougie are friends.’ I imagine his frown.
‘I see more of Kingsley, who said I should remind you to do the exercises for your ankle.’
‘Has Matilda called?’
‘I called her last night.’
‘Do you have the invoice for the vet?’
‘It’s not as bad as I thought it might be. I’ll manage.’
‘I can help.’
‘No.’
Another grumble. ‘What else do you know of the white-tailed eagle?’
We know this territory. This is safe. ‘It was threatened due to habitat destruction in wetlands, lakes, bogs and rivers. The eagles also suffered through pesticide use. They were poached and killed for sport, or because they were seen as a threat to other animals. Did you see them when you stayed at your grandfather’s cabin? ’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Can I ask you something about the flight desensitisation homework I’ve set for myself?’
‘Should you do that alone?’
‘I read or watch videos early in the morning, then I talk them through with the gentoo. Not that they listen, but it’s instructive to me.
This week, I’m researching gliders, the light aircraft kind of glider that doesn’t have an engine.
And from what I can work out, gliders use warm rising air in the same way that birds do.
An eagle would feel a push under its wings.
It might circle on currents while it hunts prey.
It’d stay in the column of air and gain height. That’s thermal lift, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ A smile in his voice.
‘Tell me about a glider’s wings.’
‘They’re long and light and pyriform shaped.’
‘That’s like a teardrop.’
‘At speed, the air will flow over and beneath the wing and that creates the lift to keep the glider airborne. In this way, it can fly hundreds of kilometres.’
‘What if the glider relying on thermal lift was thousands of feet in the air and the weather changed so the sun wasn’t out to warm the ground?’
‘The thermals would die out.’
‘Would the glider crash?’
‘With speed and airflow over the wings, a pilot will have control of the plane.’ He speaks firmly. ‘It will land safely.’
‘Good to know.’
‘Did a plane tow the gliders you watched in your videos?’
‘The plane roused the demons, so I pulled the plug.’
‘Can you tell me about the demons?’
‘I don’t ever talk about them.’
‘Not even to the penguins?’ He’s probably not smiling, just being pedantic, but imagining the potential lift of his lip gives me courage.
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘When I have a panic attack, it induces a migraine; you’ve seen that firsthand.’ I lean back, rest my head against the wall. ‘The demons I see aren’t real, I get that, but the pain they inflict is real. One night—’ I blow out a breath. ‘You don’t need to hear this.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I wasn’t doing well when I came out of detention, but Carol, my friend Beau’s mother, took me in.
Something set me off and the migraine I had, the pain and vomiting, was terrible.
When Carol took me to the hospital, the doctor told her my blood pressure was so high they thought something else was going on and called a neurologist. He confirmed it was simply a migraine. I manifest pain through—’
‘Demons.’
‘As soon as I see the first one, I know that more are going to come. It’s like watching the set-up to a horror movie.’
‘What do they do?’
‘They light some kind of fire, like the furnace of a steam train, inside my head. And then they get their pitchforks … Did I tell you they had pitchforks with five prongs? They carry them over their shoulders when they march.’
‘Demons and pitchforks.’ No hint of a smile now.
‘They sit around the furnace in a circle, though when things are bad, it’s more like they’re sitting around an inferno in tiered seats in a stadium.
Anyway, one by one, they put their pitchforks into the fire and heat them till they’re fiery red.
Meanwhile, other demons march into my head, and I know they’re going to do the exact same thing. ’
‘This happened on your flights? And on the ship?’
‘The demons attack from inside my head. Sometimes they fight to get out, but as soon as they’re out, they fight to get in again.’
‘How do they do this?’
‘Through my eardrums and eyeballs.’
‘Fuck.’
‘It’s a hot mess.’
A long silence. ‘I wish I were with you.’
I wish you didn’t know half the shit you know about me. I wish it wasn’t there to know.
I pull the sleeves of his jumper over my hands. ‘It sounds silly out loud. Maybe you should talk now.’
‘About gliders?’
I wriggle down the bed and lie on my side. ‘Have you flown one?’
‘Many times.’
‘You have to wait for the right conditions, don’t you? The sun heats the ground and creates a rising bubble of air.’
‘When the warm air cools and condenses, it forms a cumulus cloud.’
‘Those clouds tell you where you’ll find a thermal lift.’
‘A pilot will fly towards the cloud, and the glider will climb with the warm rising air. An altimeter measures the altitude of the glider. A variometer measures rates of change in air pressure. It tells the pilot whether the glider is ascending in rising air or descending in sinking air. The variometer makes beeping sounds and this guides the pilot.’
‘You fly from cloud to cloud?’
‘I could explain better in Norwegian.’
‘Or French or German.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘As I don’t speak any of those languages, you’ll have to try in English.’
‘A thermal is like a petrol station. It lets you climb, sometimes to four or five thousand feet. From this height, while searching for another thermal to climb, you could descend to two thousand feet.’
‘Then what?’
‘Lisse …’
‘Tell me.’
‘You find more rising air and climb, or you land the glider.’
I think about that. ‘I know about ridge lift too.’
A sigh. ‘Do you want to fly in a glider?’
‘I hoped it might be easier because it doesn’t have an engine.’ I exhale a shaky breath. ‘Maybe not.’
‘Tell me about ridge lift.’
‘Wind can blow up and over a ridge and down the other side and when that happens, it can create an area of lift that gliders can fly in.’
‘The wind creates a band of rising air that can be used to gain height. Do you know about wave lift?’
‘That sounded the most dangerous of all.’
‘Why?’
‘The wind blows against the side of a mountain, then up and over the mountain and down the other side.’
‘Pilots search for a lenticular cloud, a flat cloud, that will allow a slow climb. Birds rely on air lift too.’
‘A hummingbird hovers, a pelican glides and owls swoop.’
‘A bird’s wings would deflect the air downwards, so the reaction force is upwards, and that force would support the bird’s weight.
When birds flap their wings, they propel themselves forward by accelerating air backwards.
That generates thrust. Different wing shapes lead to different ways of flying. ’
Robin whistles as she walks past my door. The fridge door opens and closes.
‘Smaller birds often fold their wings against their bodies, which makes them fast and manoeuvrable so they can fly through tighter spaces,’ I say.
‘For large birds, soaring will be more efficient because flapping burns energy. A raptor, like Norway’s white-tipped eagle, will have passive soaring wings that extend when they carry prey. ’
‘Your seabirds?’
‘Gulls and albatross have long and narrow active soaring wings. Migratory birds, because they fly long distances, will usually have swept-back wings. Falcons, built for speed, have those wings too.’
‘Like a jet.’
‘When you go back to flying jets, do you think you’ll be nervous?’
He pauses. One second, two seconds, three. Even though I can’t see him, I sense his pain. I also sense he won’t answer my question.
‘A glider’s wings are like a soaring bird’s wings,’ he says.
‘Yes.’ I swing my legs onto the floor and line up my feet. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Lisse? What have I done?’
I hesitate in the way he often does. ‘You keep a lot to yourself.’
‘The ship leaves in six days. I’ll call when I know what time I’ll be in.’
Cups rattle in the kitchen. The kettle hums. ‘Robin is waiting. I have to go.’