Christopher Nicole - Her Name Will Be Faith

Jo was fascinated. Not only by the subject itself, which she had never really considered in any depth before, but by the total knowledge and expertise which flowed from the man. He was an expert. As well as being one of the most attractive men she had ever met. But that was dangerous thinking in her present state of mind.

“So,” he was saying, “back in the days when radio was first developed, and as accurate weather forecasts became important to shipping, and sport, and of course aviation, and folks realized that long-range forecasting could even save lives, a whole series of these weather reporting stations I was talking about were set up. There were even ships at sea, whose business was to maintain a certain position and do nothing but report on the weather. So a regular series of observations could be obtained from very far away, and an idea of what was happening there fitted into an overall picture of what the weather was doing everywhere else, in what direction and how fast the systems were moving, what wind strengths could be anticipated, etcetera. But of course those are all virtually obsolete now. Since the Hitler War, radar has been developed to such an extent that we can look hundreds of miles out to sea, and in the last thirty years or so we’ve had the spread of satellite observation. From a satellite you can look across several hundred miles of weather at a glance. Take that picture, for instance…” he indicated the huge framed photograph hanging on the wall above his head.

Jo did indeed look at it. She had noticed it when she first sat down, and had intended to bring it into the conversation as soon as she could. It was an enlarged photograph of the Gulf of Mexico, taken from a great distance up, in the center of which was a pile of white, rather like a large scoop of whipped cream dropped on to the cardboard, although the cream was clearly rotating in an anti-clockwise direction, while in the center there was drilled a neat little blue hole. “That’s a hurricane,” she said. “The hole is the eye.”

“The first hurricane of 1977,” he agreed. “Named Anita. Now there you have the entire dimensions of the system on one photo. The outer clouds, those things that look like rocks, are over Brownsville, Texas. The hurricane force winds, the edge of that thick white cloud, are hitting the Mexican coast, around Yucatan. And of course the size of the system, and the speed at which it is travelling, is monitored from minute to minute.”

“Gosh,” she said. “That looks absolutely terrifying. Have you ever been in one of those?”

He grinned. “Nope. Nothing like that. Anita was a big storm. She carried sustained winds, for a little while, of 150 miles an hour, which made her a Category Four storm, and in fact, damned near a Category Five. She didn’t make it, but in terms of wind speed she was the biggest storm in the Atlantic area for twenty years.”

“Gosh,” she said again, and paused. “May I ask you a $64,000 question?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you have just convinced me how accurate all your observations and tracking systems are. That being so, how come the forecasts you hear are so often wrong?”

He held up a forefinger. “Not wrong. They are sometimes inaccurate as to timing, and sometimes the weather does quite unpredictable things. I’m afraid not the most sophisticated apparatus in the world can guarantee a system will do what it should do, by all the rules. There are certain rules on which we can rely, as I have outlined. If you have a low-pressure area in the northern hemisphere, the winds will rotate around it in an anti-clockwise direction. There is no possibility of them doing otherwise. Just as winds will always flow from high pressure to low; they will never blow up a pressure gradient. And tides rise and fall in approximately twelve-hour cycles, no matter what the weather may be doing. These are natural laws. But a weather system is its own boss. For instance, we might track a system all the way from its beginning, off, say, the West Coast of Africa, around Cape Verde, and for seven consecutive days it may travel due west at 15 knots. Now, we can say with absolute certainty that there is bad weather coming. And after seven days we might be tempted to say that in twenty-four hours from now the storm center is going to be 360 nautical miles due west of its present position. But at any moment, without warning, it may change course, increase speed, decrease speed, or stop altogether. We do know that there are rivers of air in the atmosphere, along which storm systems flow like driftwood in a river. We also know that tropical storms spawn, and can only flourish, over warm water. But we can still never be absolutely certain what they are going to do next. And incidentally, if you are going to use any of this, be sure you point up the difference between the speed at which the system may be travelling, and the wind speeds it is generating. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the faster a hurricane is travelling the more dangerous it is, whatever the wind speeds circulating round the eye happen to be. That is quite wrong. In fact, in most cases, the reverse is true. Hurricane winds are generated by heat, not by speed. Therefore, the slower a hurricane is travelling, the more time, for instance, it spends over warm water, the stronger the winds round the center are likely to be. Equally, the faster a system is travelling, the faster it will hit you and be on its way again.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think I have it. Gosh…” she looked at her watch. “I have taken up an awful amount of your time. Really, I could sit here and talk to you forever, but…”

“I haven’t told you about hurricanes yet,” he pointed out. “Well, maybe…”

“We can talk about them over lunch,” he told her.

Jo was taken by surprise. She hadn’t had a chance to analyze what she felt about this man, and it was necessary to feel something about him if she was going to write about him. And if she had often lunched with other interviewees, it had never been on a day quite like this, when she should have been supporting Michael at the Four Seasons… and if not, munching a sandwich at the office. But she only hesitated for a moment before accepting — she wanted to feel she could get some of her own back for that slap this morning.

He took her to a trattoria. “I can recommend the pizzas here,” Richard told her, across the red-chequered tablecloth.

“I love good pizza,” she said. “Pepperoni, please. And a salad.”

“Make that two,” he told the waiter. “And will you bring us a bottle of Frascati right away, please?”

“Si, signor.” The boy departed, and returned to uncork and pour the pale Italian wine.

“I don’t like spirits at midday unless I know I can nap it off after lunch.” Richard raised his glass. “Hope you enjoy this.”

Jo sipped, and nodded. “It’s lovely. Very light and refreshing.”

He watched her, as he had throughout the interview. She fascinated him — probably because she was the greatest possible contrast to Pam, in every way, so relaxed and friendly on the one hand, and yet so correct on the other, reserved in her speech and gestures: the idea of her ever rolling around with a beach bum was impossible. “Are you English?” he asked suddenly.

“Heavens! Do I still have an accent?” She laughed and nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“I can’t say you have too much of an accent, but it’s the way you talk, and sit, and your clothes… they look English.”

“They are.”

“And happily married, I would say.”

Jo shrugged. “Isn’t everyone?”

“No,” Richard said briefly. “Tell me about yours.”

Between mouthfuls of pizza, Jo told him a little about herself, how she and her husband had met, her career, surprised by the number of his questions, wanting to believe his apparent interest was genuine. “Now tell me what went wrong with yours?” she asked. And he knew her question was genuine; more than a mere attempt to gain copy for her article.