Turbulence by Giles Foden Page A

right now. But as I say, we might need a fluid dynamics man. I’ll bear you in mind as there don’t seem to be that many people about with a grasp of these issues.’
    Suddenly Lev roared again. He leaped into the water, springing off with all four flippers, causing an enormous splash. With a valedictory turn of the head and a last look at us from his deep black eyes, he disappeared. I wondered why he should not do so for ever, but I suppose sea lions, just like humans, become inured to patterns of behaviour.
    â€˜Yes,’ Pyke replied, when I asked if he came back because they fed him. ‘But I like to think there is affection there, too.’
    â€˜Cupboard love,’ said Brecher.
    â€˜Your English is improving,’ said Pyke.
    Brecher laughed. ‘Let us go for a drink, my friend.’ He turned to me, the aerial wafting above his head like a giant wizard’s wand. ‘You will come? There is a good pub just up the hill.’
    Pyke picked up the half-finished sandwich and tossed it into the air, where a gull swooped on it. At once I was back on Lake Nyasa, where, out in our boat, my father used to wave chambo that were too small to eat up at the fish eagle, who would lift from his hieroglyphic lakeside tree and break magnificently out of the sublimely blue sky to receive the gift full toss. Chambo is like a perch or bream, but there are plenty of others to choose from: there are more species of fish in Nyasa than any other lake on earth.
    But it was by Loch Eck that Brecher knelt down to gather the sea lion’s reins, and the rare fish in that place was powan or freshwater herring, the descendant of saltwater cousins trapped in the loch when glacial moraines blocked the route to the sea. Looking back, I don’t know which type were the fish we fed the sea lion. I hope it was not that survivor from the age of neanderthal caverns.
    â€˜You can bring that,’ Pyke said, pointing at the crate containing what Lev had not consumed. ‘I’ll have some for supper. Actually, they serve pickled ones in the pub, if you’re hungry. Roll-mops.’
    So I picked up the crate and we walked away from the quay up a steepish hill. On the way, Brecher told me more about his work with crystals, but what I found myself thinking about again was Gwen and Joan’s painting. I think it was that the notion of herring roll-mops reminded me of the picture’s curling dog-tails and breaker tops …
    How foolish I was about those two, how foolish I was altogether. In days since I have often read about Liss and Lambin the papers. I saw them in London a couple of times, at their house in Limerstone Street in Chelsea, and once in the 1960s they dropped in on me in Cambridge and we had tea in my rooms. They were exuberantly dressed in kaftans and beads and taffeta skirts. I remember one of the porters staring at me in surprise from under the rim of his bowler hat as we walked across Trinity Great Court.
    We must have made another strange trio, coming up from Loch Eck to the pub: Pyke carrying the tangle of leather; Brecher with the radio on his back; me with a herring crate. Perhaps Joan was right about scientists. We can seem odd to others – but the truth is that like any part of society we are a mixed bunch.
    The pub was called the Whistlefield Inn. A sign outside showed an old-time drover with his sheep. Pushing open the door, we were immediately surrounded by company: ancient locals in shabby brown jackets, white shirts and wellington boots, and a number of young men with short hair, dressed in US Navy uniforms.
    As well as the ornamental bronzes to be found in most pubs there were buoys, lobster pots, fishing nets, coils of rope and other, stranger objects hung from the ceiling and walls, such as a blunderbuss, a trombone, a sailor’s cutlass and a brass deep-sea diver’s helmet. There was even a small pram. There were framed brocades and unframed oil paintings, all sorts