Greenhush Novel Part II

Part 2: Prologue

The wind was blowing relentlessly over the coarse heather, reeds and occasional scraggy grasses on the moor tops. Yet after an almost complete absence of two thousand years, the young branches of both deciduous and fir trees were starting to offer some resistance to the wind. Sapling trees were seizing the opportunity of the milder climate to once again spread across the empty slopes of the North York Moors, despite the efforts of mankind.

The bells in the Norman church proudly announced the quarter hour on the side of a somewhat sheltered valley. The double-bell chimes managed to reverberate around the stone-constructed village houses, cobbled footways, and asphalt roads with neatly mowed verges devoid of mud and banks of weeds to attenuate the sound. Without modern insulation and double glazing, two or three hundred of the residents could have heard the chime, just as they had for centuries past. Yet in the years of the third millennium, only one person happened to notice the marking of time: a teenager waiting at the chunky oak bus stop. Despite the Kings of Leon wailing directly into her ears, a quiet lull in the music allowed the first external clang to pass through her headphones.

She frowned at the intrusion to her music and checked the village clock against her phone. She sighed at the confirmation, hoping that her bus had not gone early and was just late, wondering whether to panic or wait. She looked around, but she was alone. She stared wistfully at her phone screen, willing a way for her to track the flow of rural transport.

As the student stood undecided whether or not to wait longer, the mid-morning light noticeably faded to a murky haze. Where there had been clear air and clouds last time she had looked up, the air above the rows of cottages on either side were now filled with dark foreboding. A touch of puzzlement and worry crossed her face as she tried to explain this sudden, unexpected darkening. Her diagnosis was soon confirmed, as a few high-energy splats of rain hit her hand and face, flung by gusts of wind that were channelled around the natural and man-made valley features. She stepped back into the cover of the shelter, deciding to give the bus a few more minutes after all.

From the vantage of a gritstone boulder perched on the hillside above the village, time and whether the bus was early or late had a different perspective. The squall of dark cloud that was just passing over the village had been visible for some time above the horizon as it cleared the distant Pennine Dales and had rapidly traversed the upper Vale Of York on its quest to deliver its load of rain as far as it could. From the timeframe of the boulder however, the thousand years or so of comings and goings in the cluster of village dwellings halfway down the hillside was just a fraction of mankind’s history. 

The gritstone boulder was created by a rare storm in the arid desert at the heart of the supercontinent of Pangea, trapped far from the nearest ocean by the North American continental plate to the west, the Europe plate to the east and Africa to the south. The storm washed desiccated rock and salts down the future River Rhine, passed dinosaurs fleeing the flood, and out into a delta in a shallow tropical sea that would become the future North Yorkshire, adjacent to where the Atlantic Ocean was just starting to form as America headed west. The thick layer of almost cementitious course sand and grit settled and was compressed, sandwiched between other layers of mud shale and sands. 

The strata of the low-lying delta were later squeezed upward to form the moors, becoming rippling foothills to the Alps, as Africa decided against dispersal and crunched back into Europe.

The boulder, therefore, found very different conditions when it was plucked from its birthing place by a massive glacier. A river of ice was streaming down from the Scottish and Norwegian mountains to the north, but encountered the rock block of the North York Moors, which refused to be bulldozed aside. The obstinate hills forced the flow of ice to divide and go round the moors; down the Vale on one side and down the North Sea on the other. Yet the thickness of the ice almost matched the height of the moors, so stepping from one to the other may have been relatively easy for a mammoth on a mission. But at a pace much slower than any mammoth, the vengeful ice ripped at the flanks of the moors, creating vertical walls of rock. 

From the top of such a rock face, the boulder was snatched into the turbulent world of ice and was ground against adjacent rocks. Yet it wasn’t dragged far. Light reached the boulder and on the ice surface it was pushed sideways, out of the flow into a water-filled valley. As the ice continued to lose its grip, the boulder, now in the backwater, was dumped and partially buried with other ground-up fragments, marooned high on a ridge between a valley and the Vale.

The barren land evolved, following temperature and climate changes from ice to heat and back to ice again. In the warm interglacial period, trees that covered the hillside where the boulder had come to rest struggled with the heat and had to give way to scrubland as fires swept through the forests. The hills became home to hyenas, looking down on the grassy vales of Yorkshire, watching hippopotamus, rhino, bison and elephants. Yet the sheets of ice gradually returned as the earth wobbled on its axis and voyage round the sun, making tiny but significant adjustments to the warmth received in the northern hemisphere. However, this time the boulder stood safe just clear of the new glacier and the ensuing perched lakes of water trapped against the north bulwark of the moors. These lakes of meltwater gradually, then in spectacular torrents, carved through the hills as the landscape returned to yet another interglacial period.  

Yet things were different this time. The occasional group of Neanderthal humans were now replaced by tribes of Mesolithic hunters, carrying yet more of their tools. One group started assembling each year on the patch of rocky high ground, elevated above the fearsome, forested and boggy plain below. They gathered hazel nuts on the hillside, but also started to use their timber and stone tools with sharp-edged flint to clear competing rowan trees and to spread the hazel shoots. They met up with others who were hunting and fishing in the valley beck, flowing between ponds still trapped by dams of glacial debris. One year, the tribe examined the top of the boulder and dug it free from the surrounding debris with antler picks and dragged it over, proudly setting it as a mark on the observation point.

These Mesolithic Stone Age nomadic tribes, and later Neolithic Stone Age people, along with their Bronze Age successors who invaded as mounted hoards from the east, set up and settled in villages on the moors. It was easy for them to clear tree roots and plant seeds in the thin soils of the moor tops above the cloying clays left by the ice. They dug the turf and turned it over to form ordered lines of ridges with deeper soils between drainage furrows. They set up industries to provide flints, salt and axe heads for their well-ordered communities. They buried their dead in cists then tumuli. But the thin soils were doomed. The cooling weather and lack of glacial clays and silts meant the crops and rain soon drained the soils of nourishment, until it was washed or blown away, exposing underlying stones. The process could not be reversed by piling the exposed stones into clearance cairns, so the settlements gradually moved from the hills down the valley and into the vale beyond.

However, the slow cooling as the climate headed gradually back towards the next ice age came to a sudden halt. These humans had learnt to transfer matter from one time zone to another, which started to change the planet. They dug up pockets of exposed coal to feed their fires and kilns. Bigger coal, oil and gas fields were developed, which exploited carbon captured and stored in hot climates, hundreds of million years ago, and released it into the atmosphere of their temperate era as greenhouse gases, with obvious consequences. The usual minute changes in temperatures rapidly became exponential heating. The humans knew that they were lazily harvesting forbidden fruit that would transform and overheat their world, but that did not stop them. The almost free supply of energy was just too good to resist, regardless of the consequences to others. 

So the meta-stable conditions meant that the African grasslands could be rapidly returning to North Yorkshire. Winter droughts when verdant protection was absent had already allowed the dried soils to simply blow away, and unheard-of winter forest and moorland fires had already started. The wet peatlands were already doomed by the forecast temperatures, with the released methane expected to join the already excessive greenhouse gases. This was no minor adjustment of radiation from north to south, and this time the temperatures would soar throughout the world, making much of the surface uninhabitable. With no will to even slow down the rate of increase and no conceivable method to reverse what they were doing, these humans were creating truly interesting times. Only the rocks would be able to see the future.

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Chapter 21 – Yorkshire

The start of Rhan’s next adventure was fitted in as a stop-off on her return north to Sunderland. She grabbed her belongings from the porters’ lodge, but had trouble deciding what to wear for her Yorkshire trip. She worried that George’s house would be more formal than her uncle’s, and anxiety about introductions drove her to retreat into her traditional black attire. The long train journey provided a useful opportunity to sit and consider all that had been happening over the past term – the unreality of her rowing successes only seemed more extreme when she was removed from the Oxford bubble.

She read George’s detailed instructions with a smile, marvelling over his uncharacteristic attention to detail for her visit. It certainly made her feel appreciated and calmed her nerves at the prospect of staying with his family. As directed, Rhan prepared to get off the train a bit beyond York, when she could see the Pennines to the west and the Moors to the east side of the train. In the manner almost of a stranger or cousin, he gave her a kiss on both cheeks on the platform and led her to a green MG with its top down. As Rhan got closer she noted that one wing of the car was black and was evidently still a work-in-progress. The chrome bumpers were hardly shining bright, but the prospect of a fun ride was exciting. She could tell he was very proud as he stowed her bags in the car, even if he came over as grumpy.

‘Getting texts from you while you’ve been in that rowing camp of yours was like getting blood from a stone,’ he complained. ‘What’ve you been doing? Who did you watch the boat race with? Did y’ever think of me?’ he demanded.

‘Well I had plenty to distract me, but if you must know, you were never really forgotten. I spent most of my time watching the race with Claire – who you know – but I had a fascinating time. Was it good to see your girlfriend again?’ Rhan went on the attack. She decided not to point out that George’s Oxford accent had slipped somewhat after just a few days back up north.

‘It’s been good – we’re quite good friends now and she wanted to know all about you.’

He smiled at her as they stood either side of the low, open-top car and added, ‘But it hasn’t stopped me missing you every few minutes.’

‘I’m pleased to hear that you are suffering as well,’ Rhan laughed, lowering herself into the sports car as gracefully as she could. ‘But apart from help with your maths, your practicals and other aspects of your university life, which aspects of me do you miss?’

‘Oh God, what a question!’ he replied, looking straight at the road ahead as they drove through the town. ‘Well, the thing I’m still missing most in this open car is the scent of your breath; it’s like summer heather. You look fantastic from every angle, you taste better than chocolate ice-cream, the sound of your voice calms me down…what’s left? Oh, touch, well that’s great whether we are fighting, sitting close on a lecture hall bench or cuddling or whatever. Is that enough for you?’ She nodded, smiling.

After over-indulging in such personal conversation, talk was then dominated by the car and whether she needed an extra scarf or hat. It was indeed freezing once they started to move faster in the cool spring air. As they drove down winding back roads, Rhan was delighted to be able to look up and search the trees for the signs of spring that she had noted in the south. The blackthorns had a sprinkling of tiny flower buds, which stood white against the dark hedges and other trees that were still starkly dormant. Hanging catkins decorated the hazels, which suggested that not all the trees were as dead to the awakening world as they appeared.

‘I have to say, it is relaxing to be here,’ Rhan admitted, loudly enough to be heard once they were clear of the town. ‘I find it mentally exhausting being away from you.’

George threw back his head and laughed at Rhan’s confession. He then kept up an excited commentary on the scenery, the car, his home, his family and his hopes for the next few days. At each viewpoint, the moors loomed closer, rising dramatically from the vale. His village sat on the side of a nibble taken out of the hills, where two valleys met. As they drove up into the centre of the village, George waved a greeting at almost everyone.

They mounted a steep drive, and Rhan could again see the hills, which were now close; they appeared to rise sharply just beyond a short-cropped green field, framing the village houses on three sides. Her study was interrupted by the appearance of George’s sister, Grace, who had reddish long hair; and their mother June, whose hair was shorter and dark. They came to greet her through a heavy oak front door. Rhan was delighted at how enthusiastic they were to meet her, despite the circumstances of George bringing home a rather strange female university colleague – but their welcome was nothing compared with Hamish’s. The terrier was ecstatic to meet a visitor who already knew his name and what he liked most. After a few seconds of being fussed over, the dog started sprinting around in excited circles, to the amusement of all.

The house felt both airy and homely, with views that looked up at the moors from every room. This was further captured on the walls by large, realistic oil paintings of surrounding villages and landscapes of the moorland in a range of seasons, many blanketed in snow, which Grace proudly presented as her mother’s work.

June plied Rhan with many questions about life at university, her rowing and her tutorials, obviously keen to hear aspects of her son’s life from a new source. George had clearly told his mother that Rhan was a distinguished rower who was not recognised by her own college, so Rhan described the rowing camp, and her first trip to London for the boat race. She decided not to brag about the two days she had spent with hopefuls for the National squad, who wanted her back for further trials and were offering to pay all rowing expenses. She knew enough about George’s home life to be able to strike up easy conversations with June and Grace, while George fetched Rhan’s various bags that were stashed in the car.  

‘Your father’s down the garth,’ June informed George as he wandered into the kitchen from his tasks. You can take him down a cup of tea and introduce Rhan. He needs help topping the ash trees before they drop heavy branches onto the sheds.’ With some reluctance, Rhan moved away from the log-burning cooker in the kitchen, which had only just started to warm her after the chilly journey. She made the mistake of rejecting offers of drab but warmer clothing that George then cheerfully claimed.  

On their way down the long, narrow garden, George showed off the various apple, plum and cherry trees of various ages, which were only starting to consider blossoming. The nut trees were heavy with long catkins on hazels, chestnuts bore round husks, but there was nothing yet on the young walnut trees. Rhan was most interested in the views of the bleak moors, visible beyond the garden hedges. She briefly shook the hand of George’s father, William, and exchanged pleasantries as he stood sipping his coffee at the foot of a tall ladder.

After a few minutes, Rhan watched while George, strapped into a safety harness, wielded a handsaw from the top of the ladder. George was dressed up in insulated Muck boots, an old coat that had belonged to his grandfather, leather gauntlets and a cap. Rhan was still wearing her presentable dark coat, scarf and thin shoes, so she was relieved when, after a short stint, George came down again and thoughtfully pointed out her condition. ‘Poor Rhan is still freezing after the MG. Look, we’d better go in.’

‘OK, that’s fine. It’s good to meet you, Rhan.’ George’s father reluctantly admitted defeat.

Even with a mug of tea in front of the stove, Rhan still felt chilled to the bone. Accustomed to rowing with river ice on her oar, and braving the North Sea over Christmas, she felt ashamed that she was so cold in George’s house.

‘Can I borrow your boots, George?’ she enquired politely.

‘Of course, there are several pairs you could try on out there.’ He indicated the porch.

Wearing padded boots, coat and hat, she felt ready for the challenge of helping with the sawing. Despite confessing her inexperience at both sawing and heights, her offer to don the safety harness and have a go up the ladder was gratefully accepted by William, who yielded the saw and the ladder.

Rhan started to feel warm blood circulating again after just a few minutes of sawing above her head, while George’s father held the ladder below. The fear of falling was receding rapidly too, as she concentrated on branches at a higher level. She soon grew tired and hot and threw down the furry hat that had been perched ridiculously on top of her headscarf to allow the heat to escape. She was getting complaints from muscles in her body that were neither employed in rowing or in gym machines. She was glad to follow advice as the blade started to jam, and she rotated the saw around the branch for different angles of attack, changing arms as the opportunity allowed. Her skill in sawing had to be learnt from scratch, so using her left arm was no great problem.

‘Goodness Rhan! You’re doing an amazing job,’ George’s father complimented her as she lowered down a length of the central trunk on a rope. ‘Is that what rowing does for you? You’ve obviously been exercising hard at that camp of yours. So does this mean that you stand a chance of a Blue in your second year, despite your late start?’

‘Yes, but I have also benefited from two days’ coaching this week with the National coaches. It’s not likely to come to much, but I had fun with my friend Esther in the trials.’

‘Blimey! George never mentioned that.’

‘No, none of my college knows. There will be problems ahead, but so far keeping a secret of my strange ability to row has been a major advantage, especially as the National coaches will drop most of us after the next sessions in a few weeks’ time.’

‘What are you two up to?’ George was calling from halfway to the house. ‘Dad, you need to let her go; you can’t enslave an unsuspecting friend. She’s hardly spoken to Mum, or me.’

‘I’m fine George! This is fun and I am warming up at last,’ Rhan called back from the top of the ladder. George retreated into the house.

‘You’ve done well, but I think you need to come down from up there!’ George’s father affirmed after a while. ‘You must be shattered and will soon start to let go of things that need to be held, and vice versa, if you get my drift. Don’t forget to unclip. OK, I have the ladder.’

‘Yes, one does lose perspective of safety after a while. I was terrified and clung onto everything when I came up. Climbing down now!’

‘You are full of surprises, Rhan. I gather that you’re a Syrian Christian – are you very religious?’

‘Actually, I generally go to the Catholic chaplaincy with George and others from the college, and occasionally to the Greek Orthodox on St Giles. It is mainly a cultural thing I suppose. My aunt and uncle are relatively strict Muslims, and as a small compromise, I agreed to carry on wearing traditional Syrian Christian dress and to keep my head covered around the college. I have taken that in rather a literal sense, so I use western styles for sport outside of college life. It must all seem so petty.’

‘I don’t fully understand. George mentioned that some of your family came from Sunderland before Syria?’

‘Well my grandmother came from County Durham, so the family links enabled my uncle to return; he now has a small engineering business in Sunderland. He became a Muslim, while his sister, my mother, remained a Christian. I suppose that my sister and I have followed that lead; she has become very interested in Islam, largely through the influence of the man she intends to marry. I must be a disappointment to my Sunderland family.’  

‘From what I have heard of you, I bet they are very proud,’ William reassured her before continuing. ‘Is there any chance you can hold the ladder, while I climb up and saw those last lower branches? I’m afraid there will be plenty of sawdust coming your way. Let me know if you start to get too cold.’

‘I will enjoy cooling off! Will this ash tree definitely die?’ she asked from the base of the shortened ladder.

‘Well, I’m not certain,’ he responded between struggles with branches. ‘As you see, it’s close to the shed and some branches are dead and others are already a problem as they damage the felt roof. Keeping trees to a manageable height is almost a full-time job here. Watch out for this coming down!’ He paused his answer as Rhan pushed the lowered branch to the side, but then continued.

‘Ash was called “the widow maker” because ash branches and trunks can snap at any provocation, leaving the tree surgeons in real danger! That is a serious problem with die-back so trees need to be felled while safe. Can you manage to pull that branch out of the way please?’

He went on. ‘We try to use timber for structural engineering to store the carbon. Ash is as strong as green oak, according to some engineering research carried out in the 1960s, backed up by tests my office carried out with a full-scale test rig. We would like to use local hardwoods in buildings as a low-carbon alternative to steel. It’s stupid to let the timber rot away or burn it. That simply releases all the carbon stored in trees. We’ve learnt nothing since Dutch Elm disease.’

‘Are you suggesting that these logs that we have cut from this tree could be used as structural members?’ Rhan asked in surprise. ‘We never discuss anything like that at university.’

 ‘Yes, that trunk there…what, three metres long and 250 millimetres in diameter, could support a two or three-storey building as a post. Those curved bits would make excellent knee bracing between posts and beams to stabilise the posts and to provide wind bracing. But ash needs to be sawn correctly because it doesn’t half shrink, twist and split! Like most timbers ash has many contradictions that we haven’t worked out yet!’ William kept up his lecture from the top of the ladder, stopping occasionally to clear the lighter branches.

 ‘The portable test rig at work can test real beams up to six metres long. Would you believe that the correct orthodox method to assess the quality and capacity of the timber is by a simple visual inspection? So if you took a large section like the one you lowered down, one would never know about the defects hidden inside until it failed and you found that it had grown around a poly bag or something stupid.

‘We have only covered the simple concepts, so far,’ Rhan said, expressing interest while trying to clear branches and holding the ladder at the same time.

‘We need to know so much more about the engineering properties of our natural resources if we want to cut carbon emissions,’ William continued. ‘The trouble is that we don’t even know what we don’t know, and little or no research is being carried out. There is no commercial body to push the use of British hardwoods, yet country estates could make fortunes. Without any proper research, both the British Standards and the recent Eurocodes totally neglect most local hardwood timber. It illustrates nicely how any move for engineers to cut carbon is blocked!’

‘Blocked by whom?’ Rhan was fascinated to hear this.

‘Well anyone who wants to stand against green engineering, I suppose – especially anyone related to steel and concrete. I have noted that the steel and carbon industries never attack each other but they both denounce timber. The high-carbon industries have control of funding, research, committees and the status quo. As relatively few people believe we need to tackle climate change, any committee will inevitably include climate sceptics.’

She looked at him to check he was being serious, but let him continue.

‘The timbers that I find best, in terms of looks and properties, are sycamore and beech. They don’t split too badly if one relieves the stresses with a saw cut, and they both have a tight grain with a lovely honey colour, once waxed. Branch coming down! Such hardwoods dry in months, while oak dries in years. Another coming down!

‘So I would prefer to save oak for external use, where it’s ideal and the only durable timber around here. Using green oak beams to support masonry is a real problem as large beams shrink over a decade or so. Unfortunately, high-carbon materials such as steel or concrete are usually specified, so we just burn this brilliant timber and make more steel beams. It’s all crazy!’

Rhan had been surprised to find that she didn’t need to speak; she could just listen to new areas of engineering that would never be covered at university. She was, however, shocked into responding.

‘So after so much talk about climate change over the decades, there are still no moves to allow low-carbon design by engineers. That sounds worse than I thought possible!’

‘Yes it’s shocking, especially as the UK’s treaty obligations are only met if the carbon stored in trees is stored for the foreseeable future. In the case of ash like this tree, it decays from the pith and starts to have a hollow core once it’s more than just forty years old – just a bit older than this tree. There’s no chance of saving that carbon, particularly with ash die-back, if we don’t prepare to use the bulk of the timber. It was the same for Dutch elm disease; the vernacular barns and some houses around here used beams from ash or elm branches until the 20th century. The elm timber decays quickly if wet, but often lasted a couple of hundred years in the dry, despite beetle attack. In a modern, dry, centrally heated house, these local hardwoods would last forever. More branches coming down! I’ll climb down now and give you a hand to clear the mess.’ While they carried and sawed the branches, she returned to the subject.

‘What about the relative costs of timber or steel beams? Is timber expensive?’

‘Dirt cheap at firewood prices. Ash and sycamore are cut down as weeds around here, so unless it’s top-quality furniture or violin grade, the cost of green timber is not an issue. Timber dried for a year or so in barns goes for three times the price and can cost more than steel, but it’s still cheaper than buying a steel beam and spending time trying to clad it to look like wood. There are still too many clients and architects who are stuck in the 1990s’ antiseptic style of the Ikea era and want to avoid the natural look of timber. Most of my clients are very reluctant to use anything other than steel. Architects and owners can be horrified by the idea of posts in rooms to reduce spans, yet on the next project the interior designer can introduce fake columns and partitions,’ he laughed. ‘That’s even true when restoring historic castles! The conservation establishment effectively vetoed reinserting timber on one project and insisted on steel and concrete that had been labelled the previous year as “inappropriate” for that monument.’

‘Why?’ Rhan asked, perplexed and wanting to show interest. William stopped working while he recalled the phrase.

‘They said timber would be pastiche! It goes to show how far we have to move with such attitudes.’

As they were piling the branches for burning and storing the structural timber to dry, an old-fashioned bell rang from the house and the two of them tramped to supper through the gloom of the evening, feeling very content with their labours. Rhan also felt very satisfied that she had learnt of so many engineering and sustainability issues with such little effort.

Chapter 22 – Licence to Kill                                                                           

The atmosphere at supper was light-hearted and fun. Although this was her first meal there, Rhan quickly gained the impression that the family knew about her and she soon relaxed, feeling like an honoured guest. June had prepared a lovely meal for them which included homemade bread straight from the oven. They talked about their college and the characters that George had previously described. George’s family were keen to get more views of the Marxist, the rough Cornishman, the sophisticated chemist and some of the girls they had heard about from George. George’s father, William, was interested in the engineering course. Grace, who was still at sixth-form college, wanted to hear about the life her brother was leading and the various pubs and drinking exploits. 

Although George and Rhan were excused from clearing up at the end of the meal, Rhan insisted on staying to help, on the grounds that it would make George help too. Grace was delighted to find a comrade in arms against her brother.

The evening was not yet fully dark when George and Rhan wandered back down the garth through the orchard to the old agricultural sheds where George’s father was siphoning cider from one jar to another. He was pleased to have help with holding the tubes in place and extracting them at the right moment to avoid transferring the sediment. This time Rhan had grabbed the tatty old nylon gardening coat; she was very glad of its insulating qualities on her shoulders.

‘This is one of the few relatively consistent harvests that we manage to produce in this garden,’ William explained, pointing at the cider. ‘We’ve just finished off last year’s eating apples but still have cooking apples. Yet in some years I have had to beg for apples to keep up cider production when we’ve had a poor crop. It must be really difficult being an agricultural producer, particularly with bees and weather-sensitive crops. Global warming has not sorted out the spring frosts that kill our blossom. Our hazel and walnuts are probably the most consistent products here.’

‘He’s not joking!’ Grace announced as she entered the shed behind them. ‘We plant three bags of spuds and harvest two! After Dad prunes an apple tree, it takes nine years to recover!’ she laughed.

‘Yes I’m afraid there is so much more to this “grow your own” than I imagined,’ conceded her father. ‘God help us if, or when, we have a shortage of food, as our vegetable patch only provides food for a couple of weeks a year, so we’d be doomed without the nuts. My concern is that in the near future, the Gross National Produce, which we as a country can eat, may be much more important than the Gross National Product that we currently hear about so much.’

‘Absolutely!’ Rhan exclaimed. ‘Our economics friends at college spend their lives discussing GNP, yet it will have little relevance when food runs short. The people of Syria simply seek security and food and hardly have a nation, never mind a GNP.’

There was a short pause after this surprising outflow; George and Grace said nothing.

‘It’s so refreshing to hear of a youngster taking an interest,’ their father responded encouragingly with a laugh.

 ‘Well, George may have told you that I am particularly interested in climate change,’ Rhan continued awkwardly, yet pleased to be discussing the subject. ‘We never learn anything useful about changing climate on our engineering course. In the Middle East, my family have, over the generations, experienced the terror of social and political collapse several times. They – and most recently my parents – needed to face the possibility that all normal life was over and that we had to make the hardest decision of all: when to run. My fear is that environmental change could mean even worse social upheaval and that everyone will need to run, yet there may be few places to go.’

‘There’s Scotland,’ piped up George, yet Rhan gave him a look which she hoped was withering, knowing that he was being facetious. Grace added a slap on his arm for good measure.

‘Hmm, yes,’ his father responded, ignoring the squabbling. ‘I’m afraid there are few places as good as the British Isles, and Scotland has the best potential. It seems unfair on the rest of the world, considering how Britain started climate change with industrialisation.’

‘It is so strange to hear your father saying the same as me,’ said Rhan as she shot another reproachful look at George.

‘I know, I know,’ George sighed. ‘Climate change was made in Britain.’

‘Can I just ask?’ Rhan paused before plunging into her question. ‘Do you still have some hope that something can be done?’

George’s eyebrows shot upward in surprise, but he said nothing. Grace quietly slipped away.

‘Well it’s a brave question which I have never heard anyone ask!’ The older man stopped clearing away the siphoning paraphernalia and sat down on one of the massive timber beams that were stacked around the sides of the long agricultural shed. ‘Oh, by the way Rhan, this is one of those ash timber beams we were talking about,’ he added before addressing her question. ‘This one is around six metres long. Lovely aren’t they, compared with a steel section?’

With a slight change in tone, William turned to the matter of interest.

‘Well, if our planet was the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, we’ve not only been re-arranging the deckchairs, but are still planning the following week’s menus and events. And now we are continuing to stoke the boilers while heading into more ice fields. We may have cut some of our coal burning, but we’ve done little else and have no plans to prepare for the bad years that are to come.’

William patted the beam contemplatively.

‘There’s no way now to avoid major warming. I was told over twenty years ago, in 1996 – by a climate scientist from Oxford University as it happens – that we had ten years to change our ways if we were to avoid a major disaster. By 2006, it was clear that we had missed the chance of avoiding that disaster, and since then we have just been banging nails into our children’s coffins,’ he laughed without mirth. ‘After two or three decades, nearly all the powerful politicians are more interested in avoiding rather than taking effective action. No voters call for action.’

Rhan was heartened to hear statements from William that were not shielded by polite fudging. She found it refreshing that someone other than David was arguing against denial and unwarranted optimism, or was not suggesting that it was all a waste of time, as in George’s case.

‘The next couple of decades will be “interesting times” regardless,’ William continued. ‘It might be totally demoralising once society realises that everything will only get worse. Almost everything will suddenly be seen to be vulnerable, judged by today’s standards. There will be massive breakdowns in lifestyles, morality and stability. I presume that you know this better than any of us, Rhan?’

At this bidding, pictures of warfare in Aleppo from the web and imagined images of her bombed house were conjured.

 ‘Dad, that’s not the issue,’ drawled George, bringing her back to the present. ‘Rhan asked what can be done. She knows how doomed we are – we discussed that, literally to death, last term. Tell her whether or not you have any ideas that will help, then we can go somewhere warmer.’

‘Ah. OK – my approach. Well I would start by simply rationing the use of dangerous fossil fuels that eventually produce greenhouse gases. Each person would have an allowance for emissions and anything beyond that would need to be purchased from those willing to sell, after payment of tax, of course. Carbon ration would allow our society to face the issue of dangerous greenhouse emissions from the bottom up; from people’s demand, rather than the top-down taxation approach attempted so far.’

‘Come on Dad. You sound like our friend Tom with such communist-like diktats. No peacetime democratic government would be allowed to intervene like that. There is no war to justify rationing.’

‘Well, people are already dying because we have not waged war against those who want to destroy the planet. Why should we be allowed to burn as much carbon as we want, knowing it will kill others in time?’ There was no response, so William carried on.

‘The sooner we exchange our persecution of developing countries and the younger generation for a war against climate change, the better. We’ll be fighting for land and food soon enough.’

Rhan was gazing at George, recalling their previous extraordinary conversation in the pub with David so many weeks before, and wondering just how bad the future was going to get. However, William was suggesting a much more palatable line.

‘I personally would much prefer to see the beginning of defined rationing than the main alternative approach, which involves taxing carbon at its sale, at the border or within the companies that supply it. I just never thought it would work…and it hasn’t. Any government that imposes high tax on fuels tends to meet opposition soon enough. And besides, I’m not sure that meddling with the costs will be at all effective at cutting the quantity of fossil fuel extracted to zero. As the infrastructure is in place, there will still be suppliers who can pump oil, bleed off gas or dig up coal for next to nothing.’ William shrugged with a wan smile. Rhan had not fully understood the taxation approach but she let it pass, allowing him to continue.

‘We need a bold fix rather than a minor short-term adjustment, so I don’t see any option that leaves out rationing. As George inadvertently implies, it will engender a war spirit.’

George snorted.

‘I am glad you’re here, Rhan, as it’s forcing George, for the first time, to listen.’

Rhan adjusted the coat around her shoulders and sat down on the low bench opposite, which she guessed was a chunky beam that had been set aside to dry. It had a smooth, rich grain with a deep honey colour. She glanced at the still-standing George, who stifled his arguments so that his father could continue.

‘That’s one of the sycamore beams. It’s a real surprise – strong and beautiful, yet normally chopped down as a weed and burnt. It’s similar to beech but slightly richer in colour in my opinion.

‘Anyway, as George points out, no one is prepared to vote to save the planet. I kept thinking that voters would care,’ he sighed, ‘but I agree I was wrong! Even the most religious or caring people have other causes to fight. Safeguarding the future of the earth can always be postponed to another day!’

Rhan nodded, encouraging William to continue.

‘Political leaders realise that people may be prepared to vote for self-sacrificing financial restraint or even war, but won’t vote at all for carbon restraint or climate balance. The reasons are extraordinary, but not really understood.’

 ‘So you agree that nothing will happen?’ George pounced.

‘I’m afraid that I have recently come round to that possibility, George. But for myself, I’ll never accept the “do nothing” approach. We must keep fighting. I can’t accept that turkeys would actually vote for Christmas – that our generation would prefer to destroy the future for both our children and ourselves, just so we can enjoy the pampering for a few more years. Is our whole morality so superficial that we are happy to kill people indirectly? Any good we do now will reduce the severity of what is to come.’

‘Yet you think people would accept carbon rationing?’ Rhan asked, trying hard to concentrate on the positive aspects. ‘Is this worldwide or just in Britain? I thought it had been tried but it failed?’

 ‘Well I can’t speak for anyone, never mind other countries,’ George’s father said emphatically, ‘but I think a system that is just and relatively equitable for all would go down very well, and it could and should start here in the UK.’ He pointed down at the ground with a short stab.

‘At present, it is difficult to ask anyone to give up on, say, a flight to the Caribbean or Turkey on moral grounds, when colleagues or neighbours will burn that saved carbon. We all think “we’re worth it”. If there was moral stigma, supported by knowledge that such a flight would involve subsequent cutting of car mileage or reducing central heating to avoid paying through the nose for the extra carbon credits, then there would be every reason for people to cut carbon emissions.’

‘Rationing has been tried. It failed.’ George sighed in a derisory manner. He moved across and sat down next to Rhan on the sycamore beam.

‘You’re dead right about the European business rationing system,’ his father persisted, talking enthusiastically to Rhan. ‘It was set up for businesses within the EU to trade companies’ carbon emissions. Unfortunately, it was initially sabotaged at the outset by politicians and technocrats who had no interest in penalising their leading companies for a greater good that few believed in. Anyway, that top-down system only affected the senior management of the largest companies and was of no interest to their shareholders or customers.’ William waved his hands in exasperation before expressing his new hope. ‘Actually I hear it’s starting to work, so it might be useful for the major producers, but it’s of no interest to most mortals.

‘I want to see a bottom-up approach, with each and every individual having a personal interest, and rationing would create that. If the UK, the country that started the industrial revolution, led the way on this, others would follow.’ William looked up at Rhan to see what impression he was making. It was his son however, who responded.

‘Just think how much legislation would be needed, Dad,’ George pointed out, shaking his head.

‘Well we introduced many laws and convoluted incentives and tax measures around the millennium for business to cut carbon. We then subsequently just changed our minds to please politicians, voters, consumers or industries, yet there was a will and some action for a short while.’

‘But since then, this country voted to leave Europe to avoid such a direction. It’s just not going to happen!’ George said exasperatedly. ‘The people who voted for Brexit to recreate an island state – they won’t be bothered about the rest of the world, will they?’

There was a sudden silence while they considered this and its implication.

‘There will be opposition, I agree,’ William conceded at last. ‘But there needs to be something to ration the number of fellow human beings we will each indirectly kill, just because we can afford the petrol or whatever.’

Rhan examined the sycamore grain in the beam beneath her, while George held his tongue so she could hear the arguments.

 ‘The main problem is that capitalism has broken down. It costs so little to dig up coal or release gas or oil from the ground where the carbon has been trapped for hundreds of millions of years. We are happy to pay for extraction but no one ever pays for clearing up the problem by re-storing the carbon for even the short or medium term.

The value of carbon emissions needs to swing up from 30 pence per tonne or whatever meaningless value it currently has, towards the true cost of recapturing a tonne of carbon – probably around £300 per tonne or perhaps £1,000?’

 William raised his eyebrows to invite bids on a more realistic value.

‘Well there is no price,’ George affirmed. ‘It’s currently an infinite sum because there is no real market. No one’s putting carbon back after burning oil, gas or whatever.’

‘A bit like the waste from nuclear fuels,’ Rhan added.

‘Hopefully a price to store spent nuclear products and contaminated material would follow suit. We could then compare the whole-life processes of burning and subsequent storage of both nuclear fission, and the burning and capture of fossil fuels. The economic data would appear very different from our current defective system.’

‘Sounds expensive for both,’ George retorted.

‘Rationing would provide an incentive to develop capturing and storing carbon. The government could ease off its half-hearted attempts to plan and subsidise the green economy and let new developments take over to avoid the greenhouse gas ration. Rationing would ease the shock to individuals and their suppliers in the transitional period to a no-emission economy.’

 ‘How would it work?’ Rhan asked politely.

‘Well, let’s just think what would happen if any government announced that it wanted to act on global warming by rationing carbon emissions,’ William said eagerly. ‘It could start at say five tonnes of CO₂ per adult for the first year, which I think is around the average current emission level that people can individually control, excluding several tonnes of CO₂ emissions outside their immediate control. A fraction of that would be allocated for children.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ Rhan said, glancing at George.

‘There would a warning of subsequent annual cuts in the ration, so people could prepare. Such cuts could be, say, as much as a tonne per year, given the precarious condition of the world. Alternatively, other aspects of our total carbon footprint could also be added to bring down other high-carbon elements. Meat for example could be added to reduce agricultural greenhouse emissions, along with other products containing plastics, cement or metals.’

‘There would need to be a referendum or an election,’ George got in. ‘And who would vote for rationing?’

‘It’s too cold in here to debate that,’ William suggested, rubbing his hands together. ‘Let’s just imagine that people realised they were voting for or against the younger generation, or that it followed the lines of the argument for and against slavery and was eventually passed. But, once rationing was foreseeable, then there would be a sudden economic rush.’

‘From the rush to spend?’ asked Rhan.

‘Well a bit of that,’ William agreed. ‘Mostly it would be preparations. The point is that each person, each voter, will immediately demand that their politicians should supply low-carbon electricity, buses, trains and insulation to keep their constituents’ carbon expenditure down in both winter and summer heatwaves.

 ‘They’ll demand that their heating and other power is low carbon, not just low cost. Investment capital will flood into the low-carbon economy. The power of the grid will be loosened so it will be delivery of low-carbon power that is important. You young engineers will be rushing round installing pumped storage schemes to regulate the peaks and troughs of electricity supply and to save wasted overproduction. Each community will want their local wind turbines and solar panels on their roof to be able to operate off-grid so life can continue in a sustainable manner.’

Both youngsters were now listening intently at the new ideas, which continued to flow as William expounded his solution for the planet.

‘Once rationing starts, those with a prolific lifestyle will see that they are fighting public opinion and are letting down their neighbourhood. They’ll feel the cost and the shame of driving past the queue for the bus. People will be ashamed to admit they’re jetting off on holiday. Carbon credits, just like cigarettes, will need to carry a death warning.

‘The poorest in society would benefit enormously from rationing as they’d be most likely to have unused emission allowances to sell, especially if they had no car and tended not to fly. The richest would like it because with land they could make use of their capacity to produce green energy and to produce low-carbon products. I still don’t think the rich should be allowed to use negative-carbon products to offset their private jets, however. That would give a very bad impression.’

William patted the beam he was sitting on to indicate the new currency and looked up from delivering his message, clearly expecting a hail of abuse from George.

Taking advantage of the silence, he continued in a slightly rushed manner as he collected stuff to take back to the house.

‘If we adopted a ration system, then everyone would have a vested interest, and it would become self-policing in a manner surpassing smoking bans and recycling of waste. As happened in the war years, money would become almost secondary to the carbon rations. Employment would be good, as projects would employ people, rather than carbon-consuming machines – a bit of a step backwards in industrial terms. Everything would slow down because, while time currently means money, time would then be allocated for the most low-carbon approach. As long as the speed of the dentists’ drill was not restricted, then life could improve – well, in my opinion anyway.’

‘Mmm,’ Rhan sounded thoughtfully.

George was less reserved. ‘Well I can see it might be fun to try, but it won’t happen, will it?’

‘Probably not. My hope rested on the saying, “cometh the hour, cometh the man”…oh, or woman…but no one stepped forward. Climate deleted from every agenda! All we needed was one politician in this country, one Churchillian leader, or one William Wilberforce with the backing of a few moral assistants and we might’ve had a tiny chance to save our society. It might have been possible to change the future of the world. The key aspect is that a fair rationing system would allow us to enter the new era in a positive manner.’

‘You totally ignore the selfish nature of humans,’ George argued, raising his voice slightly.

‘Yes, but you don’t appreciate how the mood of society can suddenly change, if the need arises, and I think this is relevant both worldwide and in the UK. Going back to what you know – just look at how the most selfish individuals have become fastidious with sorting their rubbish and recycling. And no one thought that smokers would be prepared to simply stop smoking in pubs and public places. Yet those major changes to lifestyles were adopted with little compunction for marginal gains. Imagine what we would do if we knew that giving up hydrocarbons might just save our nephews, nieces, children and grandchildren.’

‘But how long would it take to set up such a system for rationing if a government wanted to act?’ Rhan asked doubtfully, in an effort to keep George out of the argument.

‘I think that the fossil fuel retailers and airline ticket sales operators could set something up very easily, in just a few weeks if there was no choice. Collecting carbon credits would be just like collecting Tesco vouchers or whatever, and would be hardly different from managing and transferring VAT.’ William was grinning now, enjoying the conversation. ‘It could start simply with government stamps, as in the last war, but records of allocation would be easy in the digital age.’

With the conversation in a more relaxed mode, Rhan returned to absentmindedly tracing the grain on the honey-coloured sycamore beam, glancing sporadically at George and William as he developed his concept.

‘There would be a real buzz that would shrug off all thought of negative inflation and recession. There would be a boom in construction and the housing market as people prepared and swapped properties so they could work from home or be near the office or a bus route. There would be real demand for solar panels, electric cars and the like. Town property would need to be adapted back to residences to cut commuting. But in London there would be demand for the release of all those empty properties, owned by the rich of the world as a one-way bet in the only capital city with a climate change flood barrier. Squatters’ rights could be thrust into the spotlight!’

‘So you think the selfish attitude would just melt away?’ George asked, eventually exasperated into breaking his silence. ‘You think we could or would want to just take such unilateral action regardless of trade arrangements? You think that the oil industry would just accept a curtailment of their trade?’

 ‘Nothing is as fixed as you think,’ replied William, apparently unsurprised by George’s harsh questions. ‘Ask Rhan whether such issues were considered in Syria once the crisis came. Under the right conditions, and with the right leadership, the selfish spirit would disappear and be replaced by a national sense of purpose. You’d be amazed. The invasion of the Falkland Islands and the death of Princess Di both illustrated just an inkling of what could be possible. Even the most self-centred climate sceptic wouldn’t dare step out of line or be caught cheating on their carbon credits once they were seen to be harming the next generation, and once “greenhush” was denounced.’

Rhan smiled and nodded at the obvious point. She was now gazing at the various bikes scattered around the shed while William continued.

‘The essential ingredient would be fairness,’ William explained. ‘It would be very different from previous initiatives – knowing that equitable measures were being taken by all, for the good of all. Rationing could be a great leveller. Of course, the landed rich would have more room for wind turbines or whatever, but just look at who benefits from solar panels now – it’s not the poor.’

The older man was enjoying the chance to preach his message.

‘With the first post-industrial economy, the UK would have the opportunity to build a whole new series of industries. Of course, there would be big losers: the airlines would mourn the loss of jobs as Britain gave up the race to remain a hub airport for Europe and the southern holiday destinations would miss our trade. Coal is dead and buried but the chemical industries and almost every business I can think of could adapt to new approaches and still make money. Scrap metal merchants would continue to flourish with the new demand for reuse rather than recycled materials.’

George winked at Rhan to indicate he could see the conjuror’s trick, but that he was still enjoying the show.

‘My industry, construction, has done next to nothing to reduce the carbon footprint of structures. Yet we would face boom times. There is so much to do to prepare for a new hot planet and to cut carbon. We would be constructing pumped air or water power plants to store offshore energy, opening new railway lines remote from rising seas, creating new flood bunds with tax-free inert dumping to protect huge tracts of the country from those rising seas, setting up new industries and housing in places that would minimise emissions of works and industry.’

Rhan was nodding now as he spoke, hearing what she expected.

‘The northern powerhouse would revert to its roots. If the northern streams once powered manufacturing with dozens of mills and then hydroelectric turbines, then all we need is engineers with the correct skills to reinstate the power source that every village and every valley once provided. We can’t perhaps match the generation of the power we currently have, but we can use technology to fit the solution to the problem.

‘Once materials are required to be low carbon…well, human input becomes a secondary rather than a prime consideration.’ William pointed dramatically to the beams they were sitting on. ‘No one wants my air-dried beech, sycamore and ash beams, simply because we are accustomed to steel beams and have misguided views on risks. We need to make the risk or certainty of killing someone far away in place and time simply unacceptable. We also need to change the architectural fashion to fit resources.’ He sighed, aware that George was dying to vent his opposing views. ‘In my office we could design buildings around the available timber or whatever second-hand steel beams the client can salvage. It’s essential that we stop using high-carbon newly-made steel throughout, just because our economy is set up that way. Carbon-free would mean jobs for all and horror at the current CO₂ throw-away society.’ He slapped the chunky timber beam he was sitting on.

‘You’re so deluded Dad,’ George blurted at last. ‘You’ve been proved wrong for decades now – no one’s going to even start giving up carbon. There are too many vested interests and far too much apathy. Cutting high-carbon industry wouldn’t seem viable. Just look at the steel industry. Would any government allow all high-carbon industry to simply flow to China or wherever?’

‘No, that’s just my point. We could find a way if we wanted! Steel works are usually near hills and above deep mines, so local supplies of tidal or wind power could be stored and regulated by the pumped storage, in a simple, proven approach to provide peak power to regulate supplies while we wait for the expected batteries to be developed. With power from the Dogger Bank wind farm out in the North Sea, we’ll need clever solutions to regulate the power.’

Rhan saw the conversation starting to veer off, and wanted to prevent the father-son dispute she felt she was creating.

‘I can see that, as George points out, politicians have no mandate to introduce green measures. If rationing was introduced…there would be an incentive to catch up on the ingenuity from a century ago, before the apparent ease and simplicity of fossil fuels removed incentives. Shall we go in?’ she added unexpectedly.

With nods all round, they shut out the lights and headed into the dark garden, where George, bringing up the rear, grabbed Rhan’s hand. She was pleased by the gesture and glad of a guiding arm. She wanted reassurance and affection from George and the sudden transition into the dark had left her bewildered.

‘George may scoff,’ William persisted in the darkness. ‘And it may already be too late, but I’m convinced that rationing’s the only way to control carbon emissions in an equitable manner. Another key benefit, though, is that it will help society get ready and prepare for the shock and stress once things get awkward.’

‘Well that was really interesting.’ Rhan expressed her thanks while squeezing George’s hand as he steered her around the apple trees towards the lights of the house.

‘I’m afraid that you two are almost the first to listen to my cranky ideas!’ William said, a faint silhouette ahead of them. ‘Others have advocated the rationing of course…but not many. It’s one of around a hundred measures I would introduce to soften the impact of what lies ahead.’

‘Well that’s fine then,’ George’s sarcasm cut in. ‘No one is going to accept even step one, never mind the rest!’

‘What are the other measures?’ asked Rhan, releasing George’s hand in both annoyance and because their way was now lit from the house windows.

‘Well most are relatively minor, but we may have just seven good years left to get ready for seventy years of absolute hell. Almost any preparations might have a big impact and would cost little if started early. For example, I would ensure that every property with a garden and any village green or park or highway verge had to have a fixed number of productive fruit or nut trees depending on its size, unless the owner gets planning consent to avoid the regulation. Bigger gardens will need more on a ratio basis. The point is that the resilience of the country needs to be enhanced, and the sooner that process starts, the better. My walnut trees take fifteen years to produce, so laws are needed urgently if we can just get past sceptics like George.’

‘Hang on! I believe in global warming!’ George exclaimed as he followed Rhan through the garden door. ‘It’s people I don’t believe in. I actually think it would be fun to start getting ready.’

Chapter 23 – A Walk Back to the Bronze Age                                       

The next morning after breakfast, George and Rhan pulled on boots again. They stood outside waiting for Grace in the bright early-morning sunshine, looking across the fields at the elongated shadows cast by the spring sunrise climbing over the hills. Looking in the other direction, they gazed with fascination at a grey sea of cloud that isolated them from the plain below. Even as they watched, they could make out the sun beating back the mist and revealing more trees in the valley, yet Rhan felt relieved not to be taking the open-top car back down into the cold mass of fog. Up here, under a blue sky, they were the lucky ones.

Once assembled, they set off with the Cairn terrier leading the way – or at least the way he wanted them to go. ‘No Hamish, not that way today,’ or ‘Wait for us!’ were much-repeated phrases at the start of the walk.

They walked along an alleyway between high sandstone walls and dived into a covered passageway, cut like a tunnel through a terrace of houses. They found themselves at the village centre, to be met again by patches of bright, warm sunshine between long, cold shadows cast by the buildings. The cheerful light glistened and sparkled in ice coatings to the side of a flow of water running down the verge of the road.

‘There used to be a village stream,’ George explained. ‘It was confined in Victorian times to a stone culvert, but it keeps fighting to run free again on the surface.’

At the village centre, two roads from the moors met the road down into the fog-covered vale below. A stone pillar surrounded by three layers of stone plinths made up a village cross, but Rhan’s younger guide rushed ahead, keen to show her a more primitive uncarved stone predecessor that stood sadly across the road, next to a closed-up shop. Both the lonely pagan stone and the once upmarket general store spoke of past eras for the staid village centre. Grace made Rhan peer through the grimy glass shop window to inspect the massive brass cash till and the rows of haberdashery drawers, which could have belonged in some museum or costume-drama film set. George tugged Rhan’s coat sleeve and they were soon pursuing the dog up through the village.

‘So how many of these are second homes or holiday lets?’ Rhan asked her guides. George replied with a laugh.

‘It’s more like third or even fourth homes, never mind second homes. They’re only visited for a week or so a year, if that. Thank God, there’re not too many so far – probably around one in twenty, but still crazy!’

They left the tightly packed terraced houses and the more spread-out recent developments as they climbed towards the bright moors. On most sides, they were accompanied by clear winter sunlight, with a crystal blue backdrop that picked out the woods and hills above in sharp focus. Yet the sun, whose slanting rays had vanquished most of the early frost, still had a fight on its hands. An intimidating bank of fog appeared intent on smothering the low-lying world below, forcing the walkers to quicken their steps even as they discussed which fields and sections of the village behind them had been enveloped since their start.

Leaving the road, they followed a stream, splashing through the gurgling ice-rimmed shallows or walking beside deeper pools. They climbed the slope of a large dam and were soon walking beside a reservoir, lined along the far shore by larch and pine trees, with immaculate symmetrical reflections in the still water.

‘It’s very full,’ observed Rhan, looking at the water disappearing into the overflow beneath the mock-gothic tower beside the dam.

‘Well this isn’t used,’ George answered before his sister could respond. ‘Our water now comes from cleaner boreholes miles away and is pumped to the village. What you see here is only for people to walk round. It’s the last modern reservoir above the village. We wonder how long before it’ll be scrapped.’

‘But I thought that upland storage was the big thing to cut flooding of lowlands?’ Rhan asked in surprise.

‘Yeah, but the owners, the water authorities, want to destroy dams,’ George explained, looking at the water, whose surface was now steaming under the influence of strong sunlight. ‘It cuts down on maintenance and responsibility. The trouble is they allow water levels to stay permanently full – much higher than when the water was being used, so there’s no bloody storage capacity.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Then the dams overtop when we get hit by the new storm cells that liven up our weather nowadays. They then demolish. That’s engineering for you!’

He pointed to the hillside opposite. ‘See that valley with the mist halfway up it? It once had two other reservoirs, but the second one is being bulldozed this year.’

Grace took over again. ‘Yup, Dad rants that the reservoirs could’ve made electricity for us, and a dam above another nearby village saved a farmer’s life by slowing a flash flood – before they demolished it. Whatever…the main drag is that we lose our best swimming lake! Hamish, where are you? Hamish, here!’

‘That makes no sense,’ Rhan responded, shocked. ‘I used to visit precious water supplies with my father. Did you know that he was a water engineer, Grace?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Grace ignored the dog and fell into step by Rhan. ‘So your father – that’s why you’re an engineer? All that Maths and Physics, ugh!’

‘I was the only girl in school to study those subjects!’ laughed Rhan.

‘Oh my God! That sounds lonely…or did you have someone special?’

There was a slight pause while Rhan worked out what she was being asked.

‘No, I was just really quiet. The thought of having a boyfriend never bothered me.’

‘You must be a really nerdy swot, like bro.’

‘He is no swot now. I have to nag and bribe him to get practicals and tutorials done; we only just scrape through. Everything and everyone is relative I suppose,’ Rhan mused as she waited for her study partner, who kept stopping to look and poke at things beside the stream, much to the annoyance of his sister. The stream passed through a gap between steep hillocks that stood sentinel either side of the beck.

‘Um, this was from an older generation of dams – one of several,’ George announced, flicking a look at Rhan, which suggested this was not just a stopping point on the tour, but a useful diversion to break up the girls’ discussion. ‘The village was a typical early-industrial Yorkshire town. There was alum mining and linen weaving, which then moved from cottages or large shared attics into mills powered by waterwheels. This was one of three historic dams. They powered two or three waterwheels – another linen factory down there in the fog had another three wheels. Then there was a flour mill between them.’

‘Don’t forget the bottom flour mill with all the stones, which still has a real living miller in the house next door!’ his sister prompted. ‘And the two hydro generators.’

 ‘What?’ Rhan’s flagging interest was suddenly piqued again.

‘Oh, the big houses reused old alum dams or made new ones for electricity,’ George explained. ‘They owned the streams and could afford dynamos to light their houses before the National Grid arrived. But as the big modern dams are redundant, this beck produces nothing. When the power fails, the pumps close off, and so does our water.’

‘Welcome to the real unsustainable world,’ Rhan said, cutting across his musings. ‘In Iraq, we only had electricity and water for an hour or so a day, if things were going well. Most of my friends from Syria will have forgotten what electricity can do!’

‘And then you come to the UK,’ George took over. ‘And we can’t think of life without such comforts. The latest problem is that we even need it to open our electric doors and gates. Without power, we can’t even find out what’s going on once the local phone masts, the internet and our digital radios fail.’

‘So?’ Grace said.

Smiling, Rhan responded, deflating the family tension. ‘Well it’s heaven here with or without power. Just the sound of water ­– it’s so peaceful! Which way now?’

Saving their breath for the walk, they climbed through a steeply sloping wood of Scots Pines and a field of rough grass before clambering over a final drystone wall. Jumping down, they were suddenly on the open moor, and were wading through a blanket of calf-high bush that Rhan was informed was called heather.

‘In August the whole lot turns shocking pink and purple,’ Grace called out, sweeping her arm to the horizon and breaking into a run. Rhan bounded after, laughing at both the exhilaration of being part of a rolling hillside that went on and on into the sunlight, but also laughing at the short-legged dog who was bouncing his way through the heather. They headed towards a collection of five or six stones, grouped together on a slight rise. One of the stones was standing, while the rest were inclined at varying angles or laid flat.

‘What are these?’ Rhan asked as they slowed their run.

‘Stones!’ George responded unhelpfully, arriving from behind.

‘How do you put up with him, Rhan?’ Grace took a symbolic swipe at her brother, but continued in an authoritative manner. ‘There are lots of stones peeking out of the heather if you look. On this side of the valley, every stone must have meant something. They were dug up and dragged into position, some just a metre or so but others much further. Well,’ she paused, giving herself time to look at the stones before them and then rushed on through her description. ‘These are standing stones and along with all those along the edge of the ridge – they’re probably Neolithic, which means late Stone Age. They were here to impress, I think. If we had time to look in the heather, we would see the pits they came from – they usually look like they were dug yesterday. Let’s see, the stones are sometimes decorated – well those,’ she pointed doubtfully at some worn dimples in the top side of a rock, ‘could be old cup holders, as George used to call them, but then they could just be natural.

 ‘Oh, look at this!’ Grace exclaimed after a few moments from the far side of one of the stones. ‘Even George couldn’t say so many chiselled marks were natural; there’s twenty or so orientated in – what? – three different directions.’

‘Yup, man-made! Not a bad find, sis.’

‘But what does it mean? Why has someone done this?’ Rhan asked, shaking her head in puzzlement.

‘It’s conceptual art, from thousands of years ago,’ Grace explained.

‘Unfortunately the instructions to the concepts have been lost,’ George added smugly. ‘It’s not art. I think it was for counting; over on that sunny hill beyond that arm of new fog, I know of a stone where there are six pairs of cup holders. It was obviously a calculator, used back in the pre-metric days, when everything was by the dozen.’

‘That fog is definitely getting closer,’ Rhan remarked with unease, cutting off George’s hypotheses. ‘It is amazing, but what happens if it keeps rising?’ She watched the ill-defined shadows of white-grey, with wispy outriders, march into the valley below them, flowing in from the ocean of fluff in the plain below. Ahead, a white army used a different route to infiltrate across and below them, cutting them off from the highest moors.

‘We lose the sunshine, unless the sun wins and burns it all away,’ George replied flippantly. ‘It’s only cloud without the will to fly, to quote Bill Bryson.’

Rhan turned and started in surprise. From their high position looking out over the fog towards distant hills, she saw something massive in the clear sunlight above the dense ocean of fog. ‘What was that?’ she called.

The three of them stood, rooted to the spot, while something large and heavy rose lazily up out of the mist a few miles away, leant over and sank back down, like a jumping whale or a badly tossed caber at a Scottish Highland Games. A few seconds later, it happened again.

‘It’s the top of one of the wind turbines!’ Grace burst out, laughing. ‘We can only see the blade that’s raised!’

‘My God, that’s cool!’ George studied the process a few more times. ‘It’s great to see them on clear days, right up into County Durham.’

‘That is amazing,’ Rhan murmured, rooted to the spot until urged into action by George.

‘Come on! I want to show you some of the Bronze Age roundhouses we think we’ve found while you’ve been wasting your time at rowing camp.’

A rapid stride across the flat upland took them to a shelf of land where grass and moss grew beneath a bank of heather. George and Grace dragged their visitor around an unimposing circle of stones edging a low-lying patch of dark green grass, set slightly lower than the surrounding moss and sparse bracken stalks.

‘This is one of five or six houses in this settlement,’ George reported as Rhan counted seven paces across the diameter and checked it again in another direction. ‘They are really spread out, so there could be others in the bracken and heather. They usually have this diameter but some are up to twelve metres. They have a varying number of stones around the edge, every metre or so, and usually a central collection of stones. We don’t have the earth bank walls they have in Scotland, or the upright stones they have on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. We can only see these low stones now because soil levels have dropped.’ George walked into the middle where he could reconstruct the building by drawing in the air.

‘The edge stones must have been bearing pads for the timber rafters, spanning into the middle,’ suggested the trainee engineer. ‘If the stones took the axial thrust, they could’ve done without a central post – but it would have been easier to build, and more sturdy if there was a post in the middle here, on that central stone. I presume the door would be on the low east side, so they could have coffee on the terrace in the morning.’

After a pause, George lightened his tone slightly to indicate a joke. ‘Oh I’m wrong there! The Parisi tribe were from the Iron Age, so these residents, if they were from the Bronze Age, would have had to wait a thousand years for their coffee and Gauloises cigarettes. Besides, in the Iron Age, the Parisi tribe were just south of this area when the Romans arrived and this bit of Yorkshire was part of the rival Northumbrian Briganti tribe. That’s their military road coming out of the mist on the far side, taken over from the Bronze Age. On a good day, we reckon we can see its route across the flat valley, right to where it crossed the River Tees at Yarm.’

‘OK,’ Rhan responded suspiciously as she wandered around. ‘I agree there is a bit of a circle here, but there are more impressive stones aligned just outside the circle. They appear to enclose a more rectangular shape. What does that mean?’

‘Our theory is that…’ George started, but Grace interrupted with an answer she had waiting.

‘I think they’re stables or pens to keep the animals at night.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ her brother suggested uncertainly. ‘Those other stones could be in two lines down there. They look like they could be the beginning of our Bronze Age double wall rather than another building.’ George indicated other aligned stones in the heather below the house. ‘We haven’t tried to join the dots yet. It’s all like a Sudoku…any guesses are just that, pencilled ideas, until we have a complete row. Even then it’s only our creation, but it makes dog walking more fun finding this stuff.’

‘Well, the stones across there are on a curve rather than a straight line.’ Grace continued the argument, leaving Rhan in the dark. ‘And they’re much too far apart, so they’re not the double wall. They may be earlier Neolithic.’

‘Let’s keep going,’ George suggested, breaking into a run again. ‘We need to show Rhan some sections of that double wall. It’s just across here and down.’

The two girls followed George across the flat, slowing over the lip of the moor top through broken areas of hillside, where George paused to continue the guided tour. ‘What do you think of these little quarries, Rhan? We used to think they could be Bronze Age, along with the roundhouses scattered all over, this hillsiand de to build the double wall you’ll see soon. There are little quarries all along the escarpment and there are extraordinary fine knitting–needle–like chisel marks on some.’

 They dropped down below the quarries on the lip of the escarpment, slithering down a rough and steep slope, pock-marked by holes. George stopped at the edge of two holes divided by a ridge or short wall of rock.

‘The quarries here could be older though, from the Neolithic,’ he said, pointing at the dividing rock. ‘Look at that partially hacked-out stone! It was intended to be a standing stone around two metres long. It still needs trimming on this side and it’s still attached to the outcrop of rock along the bottom. There are others down there. I bet the quarrymen were pissed off when they heard no one wanted these massive stones, after all that work! “Sorry mate, haven’t you heard? The Stone Age is over so our time’s up and we’re done for. At seven o’clock this morning we started the Bronze Age. So no one wants your massive stone monuments any more – they are just too inconveniently heavy.”’ 

‘That is amazing,’ Rhan remarked, appraising the wasted effort. ‘It was quite an industry!’

‘That’s a point,’ George said thoughtfully. ‘No one thinks of stone quarrying in the Stone Age as an industry, apart from all the flint that was imported from Lincolnshire or somewhere to here. Yet even in the Bronze Age, hacking stones, or even nicking them from the Neolithic sites, must’ve been the major industry, besides farming.’ There was a pause as Rhan considered what life must have been like until George tore off again. ‘Come on, you have to see our wall. Run before the mist arrives! Hamish, come on boy!’

‘This wall we’re going to see – it isn’t just ours, Rhan,’ Grace explained breathlessly as they bounced down the steep hill through the spongy heather and into beds of dead and brittle bracken. ‘The biggest stones, the Seven Sisters and bits of dyke were well known…but we’re still claiming most of it…where we’ve found extra sections…and pushed the bracken down for the first time.’

Rhan made no response, waiting until they stopped their reckless descent near the base of the steep slope amid another jumble of worn and venerable standing stones. She immediately started to examine the large relics.

George was delighted by Rhan’s evident interest.

 ‘Just stand here on this bracken mound, Rhan! You’ll see how the best-known and tallest Seven Sister stones actually align themselves into two rows of vertical standing stones, two metres apart – you can see another five brothers on one side and seven or eight sisters on the other. It’s flipping obvious now, but it took Linda, an archaeologist who Dad used to chat with on the bus commute to town, to point it out.’

‘Oh yes!’ Rhan exclaimed enthusiastically, holding his shoulder for balance. ‘I can see smaller ones as well, peeking out of the reeds and that bracken stuff.’

‘You’ve got it. The stones aren’t quite touching – they‘re spaced at around half-metre centres,’ George told her quietly while Grace took no notice. ‘OK, now follow the lines of stones down and you’ll see more on the same alignments. There’s a stretch towards the bottom where many stones were robbed for that square Viking building area to the right, but see how the two lines tie into that dyke beneath the hawthorn tree.’ Rhan leant against his back, following his arm pointing across the hillside, waiting for him to continue. ‘Archaeologists say stone and gravel were piled up between the standing stones, dug from ditches on each side – typical of Bronze Age cross-ridge dykes.’ She nodded, listening in silence, not wanting to interrupt his description. ‘Except this wall crosses the side of a valley, not a ridge, and it crosses earlier roadwhollow ways and cuts through much earlier-looking stuff!

‘We’ve found the two lines extend into that bog, but the stones are now coming out of it each year as the swamp dries out. You may be able to see more stones where the walls pop up on the far side of the bog, just by that group of hawthorn trees and that rough area of boulders.’ There was a pause until Rhan nodded slowly again, holding on to his pointing arm.

 ‘The alignment is less clear-cut beyond, along that steep slope where the bracken is still deep, but we think the double walls drop into that foggy valley, almost a kilometre away.’

‘This is fantastic!’ Rhan enthused. ‘It’s the stuff of goose bumps!’

‘It’s even weirder when you think of the effort they needed to construct this wall,’ George suggested. ‘It could’ve taken many gangs of workers decades upon decades to cut out the stone, fetch it down from up there, and to build this, all without even a JCB. If each stone took a team two or three weeks to quarry, fetch, and place, they may have managed, say, twenty a year. And how many stones? One kilometre, two, four thousand stones,’ he calculated using his fingers. ‘This double wall could have taken two hundred years for one team of say four people to construct – or perhaps forty people twenty years – about one generation!’

‘You’re right – it is weird,’ Rhan agreed. ‘The cost on the community looking after forty workers not producing food or anything useful must have been amazing.’

‘Or, I could be wrong,’ George admitted. ‘If they just took the stones that had been quarried by someone else, it would have only taken a year or so.’ Rhan ignored this throwaway comment.

Grace called over to provide more useful background data. ‘That’s the ancient track George mentioned. It was a motorway, before the Romans marched along it and long before it became the “Drover’s Road”. So all of this wall might’ve been security or even advertising for pubs, burger bars or pizza huts selling stuff at a service station down in the valley by the stream. The people up here may have been pretty well off if commuters had to pay tolls. So that may have funded the wall, or maybe they had an EU grant!’

Rhan laughed at her young guide’s portrayal of history.

‘Or an army of slaves,’ George added ominously.

‘But what was this double wall for?’ Rhan asked them both. ‘Where does it go? And why? And how come you know so much?’

Grace had wandered off below again, so George, still standing close to Rhan, was pleased to answer her. 

‘Well, we revealed most of it over many years of taking Hamish for a walk. See that mound of bracken on the line of the stones on this side?’ He pointed at the nearest of many humps of bracken. ‘If you stomp that down, I bet you’ll expose another stone. Then within a few weeks of letting the air into the old bracken leaf, it’ll dry up and just blow away, leaving the stone on display. We know so much because we’re currently top experts in the world on this site, so it’s easy – we can just make it up!’ he shrugged. ‘We soon find something else that shows whether we’re right or wrong.’

Rhan struggled to grasp the flood of information as George continued his sporadic narration.

‘That’s the fascinating thing about this hidden valley: we can see who did what and when, relatively speaking, give or take the missing Iron Age. Ground levels are back to their ancient positions so word of mouth, history books and common sense allow us to guess the date of recent excavations, and ancient dykes or tracks. We have First World War practice trenches from the early 1900s, Victorian and Georgian quarries and dams from the 1800s and late 1700s, a couple of farm footprints on the edge of the moor from God knows when and that Viking longhouse from the first millennium. Before that we have nothing in the valley from the Iron Age, but loads of recognised Bronze Age dykes, roundhouses and burials. So older stuff with bigger and more stone must be from the Neolithic Stone Age. Simple!

‘That footprint of a “Viking” building area to the right down there for example.’ George indicated with a nod of the head. ‘It’s been looked at by several archaeologists in previous decades, but another archaeologist family friend, Richard, visited recently and says it’s just the right shape for a Saxon or Viking longhouse. It would be old anywhere, but it’s modern around here and fits with missing stone from the double wall! Cool eh? It must have felt a bit isolated having a house up here, as we think the valley was otherwise deserted, but all that third-hand Bronze Age stone must’ve been just too convenient and tempting not to use. Oh, and it was able to make use of a water channel from four thousand years earlier to save having to wait a thousand years for someone to invent running water!’

‘Besides, Rhan, George was a nerd who read all those Horrible Histories books.’ Grace built up the picture from ten paces away. ‘He spent years fighting Assyrians, Babylonians and whatever in one of those Empire Earth computer games! Our parents still laugh at his cataloguing of events when he was little – he used to bring his history picture books to them to complain about errors on early civilisations.’

Rhan put her hand to her mouth, chuckling and gazing at her tutorial partner in surprise, while Grace continued.

‘Mum publishes books on archaeology, and dad is a conservation engineer, so they know some stuff, but we think most of this would blow the minds of archaeologists. We have no reputation, so we can come up with wild ideas.’ Grace was gradually walking closer while still searching the ground. ‘We knew we needed to find the Bronze Age roundhouses up there sooner. They had to live somewhere if they built all of this wall. It just took us longer to find than expected. Now we know what to look for, we find new ones most weekends, dotted around wherever the ground levels out. If you think it would be a good place to camp, there’s almost always a house nearby, or so we think.’

Rhan looked between brother and sister, wondering who provided the more compelling story as Grace continued their apparent competition to drag their guest back into prehistory. Grace started pointing at new features that Rhan would never have noticed. 

‘As George mentioned, our latest idea is to work out whether water channels you can see there, with a line of reeds crossing the slope diagonally, were used by the roundhouses, or whether it was just the Neolithic Stone Age people who bothered to construct elaborate cold-and-cold running water systems. Those green areas above us seem to be well-watered paddocks, which we guess the Bronze Age animals carried on using after they took over.’

Grace’s tone changed briefly as she pointed at a smudge of grey near the ridge.

‘Oh Rhan, have you seen the herd of cattle over there? They have really woolly coats – you should see the calves, they are so sweet…anyway, we’re hoping that there are too many crazy coincidences for us to be completely wrong all the time. But just wait ‘til you see the really freaky stuff from the Neolithic.’

‘Stop talking and come and see!’ George was again very keen to continue his guided tour and strode off, talking as he walked, leading the girls up and across the hillside towards the cattle, which were lowing loudly.

‘This is where the double wall crossed an older “hollow way” that links to what we call the Neolithic ceremonial walk, going straight up the hillside through that green paddock area with bits of old walls and Grace’s water channels. You can see the bigger two-metre-long fallen Neolithic stones spaced out every five or six metres, although it’s still a bit uncertain. At the top though, near those cows, most of the Neolithic stones are still standing. They run next to a long-known Bronze Age “cross ridge dyke”. We’ve found another dyke, which goes back along the ridge towards those first roundhouses we saw!’

Rhan began to laugh at the enthusiastic outpouring of extraordinary data, punctuated by more ridiculous sketches in the air as George painted a picture of the ancient landscape. She bit her lip and kept her questions until she had a chance.

 ‘What is a dyke for and what is a hollow way?’

 ‘A hollow way’s just an ancient track, worn down by use, with large stones shifted to the side,’ came the enthusiastic reply from Grace. ‘The tracks had dual carriageways or even three lanes for the steep bits and they seem to have been used like railway tracks, so one or two people could direct a whole herd. And a dyke is a mound with a ditch on one side. Up there the ditch was on the inside, presumably to keep their animals from wandering away.’

‘We’ve got monuments here that could span two, three or four thousand years before Rome was founded,’ George boasted to Rhan, who was now exploring as she listened. ‘We have cist graves for hundreds of common people. But, we do the finding, not the digging, so we could be wrong. Mind you, even removal of the bracken was like excavating…you should’ve seen it when the live bracken was higher than your head and the dead bracken leaf more than your knee height. It took some stomping. Stones used to be found then lost for months. But now the level of most of the ground has dropped all by itself…you can see the exposed roots of dead or dying trees left on the surface. Look, the biggest tree over there fell down last winter. The bases to the standing stones and even the bottom of pits appear to be at the same level as they were five thousand years ago on the sides of the hills. We see different things each time we come up, as the landscape changes from month to month and year to year.’

‘Anyway Rhan,’ George continued with a mischievous grin. ‘I know you’ll be interested to hear that one of the main reasons we’re finding so much stuff so easily is because of climate change…that and those shaggy-haired cattle over there and because much of the bracken has been poisoned.’ George now had Rhan’s full attention as they climbed slowly, and his sister had wandered off still further.

‘And…they say it was climate cooling that drove people off the high moors.’ George played a trump card again. ‘It was half a degree warmer when people lived up here.’

‘Hang on! Warmer than when?’ Rhan immediately took the bait. ‘We now have more than a degree of warming from pre-industrial times, so it will be much warmer this year than when these hills were occupied!’

‘Yup,’ conceded George, nodding. ‘Most Bronze Age civilisations collapsed when it got cooler. Same as in the Iron Age when the Roman Empire started to collapse. Now we’ve the opposite problem with mega global warming, so there’ll be unstoppable demand to move back up here!’

‘Cool! So if Rhan’s right,’ Grace said as she wandered near to them again, searching the ground, ‘it might explain why the bogs are disappearing and we can see more of this old stuff again.’

‘Live peat bogs like cool wet zones,’ George continued. ‘So we’re seeing the moors change to shrubland…or do I mean scrubland? But I’m afraid it’s more likely that we’ll see all the peat burnt away sooner or later. It gets really dry now, even in winter. And once lit, up’ll go the moor tops and all that stored carbon. If it doesn’t burn it just blows away. Grace isn’t kidding – we’ve lost half a metre or so of soggy bracken soil in the last year or so.’

‘But isn’t peat on moors one of the biggest stores of carbon in the country?’ Rhan asked. ‘So is anything being done to fix the peat bogs and stop the release of methane?’

‘Well, the short-term solution is to re-soak the ground, which may last a few years. But for the long term…’ George put his hands on his hips, considering the problem. ‘I suppose rewilding with trees might just help fix the peat bogs and stop the release of methane. Old peat beds can survive at depth and are one of the more difficult soils for us to engineer, according to Dr Graham. But others think trees would exacerbate the problem. No one seems to know.’

His study partner smiled at references to a bit of their geotechnical engineering lectures, which had meant little to her at the time. She hadn’t really known what peat had meant, but she now had a peaty-black leg to show there was at least one patch where the drying process had been held up.

 ‘I’ll go with the trees!’ Grace declared. ‘Getting lost in a gigantic forest would be fun.’ She had a more romantic take on events, until she had a second thought. ‘But the gamekeepers burn the trees anyway – they make money from shooting grouse, so they don’t want to see trees…or other wildlife. You should see the lines of wire snares they leave, to throttle foxes, badgers and Hamishes.’ Grace wrapped her hands around her own throat to indicate the process, and then rushed over to stroke the dog.

‘Could they make money from tourism?’ Rhan asked, shocked at the negative publicity for the open landscape.

‘Well, these ruins are hardly as grand as the reconstructed Stonehenge, and the biggest stuff here has been pushed over and never reset,’ George pointed out. ‘And there are other moors with better rock carvings. You’re seeing stuff in transition but next year there’ll be grass turf on most of this area.’

Rhan looked puzzled at George’s explanation, so he carried on.

‘Well the biggest Neolithic stones have been allowed to fall over or have been pushed over. The builders of a Christian chapel on the other side of that hill would hardly want to see this pagan extravaganza, would they? But the Bronze Age people may also have had it in for their Neolithic predecessors. They probably wanted to obliterate the splendid works of the ancients with their massive walls, tightly-packed stone towns and stone-lined procession routes, not to mention their bloodline.’ He looked around at the remaining landscape, hemmed in by the encroaching fog. ‘It’s uncomfortable knowing about previous civilisations that lasted for thousands of years. So all their messages to the future – to now – with their indecipherable artwork and major monuments, have simply been ignored or…’

‘I thought people are writing books about the Bronze Age like never before?’ Grace interrupted from her search above them.

‘Yes,’ her brother conceded reluctantly, drawing out the word. ‘I’m not sure how much interest there’d be in all our roundhouses here, but there’ll be even less interest now our society is on the slide. We should’ve been planting the moors so we can move back up here in a couple of decades’ time, but the planning laws will insist we try to resist the inevitable heating world. It’ll be cooler and damper for crops like wheat up here when things really heat up, but without preparation, the soil will still be rubbish, so the sooner trees return the better. I’m not sure the adders will like it.’ 

‘Are there many snakes?’ Rhan enquired.

‘They’re intimidating,’ George replied. ‘They sunbathe at waist-height on the mounds of moss or on rocks. Ma doesn’t let us bring Hamish up here in the summer, so we tend to keep to the moor tops once the frogs and toads come out of hibernation.’

‘Hey, come and look at this!’ Grace demanded excitedly. ‘I think it’s another roundhouse.’

George and Rhan strode across and were soon assessing the stones that Grace pointed out in a rough circle, where the mossy ground was replaced by dark, green grass.

‘Grace House!’ Grace claimed.

‘Well if that is a hut, what about those?’ Rhan asked, looking at an adjacent set of stones. ‘Actually, do you think there may be two more circles? The grass extends under them both.’

‘Yup,’ George confirmed, pulling a yellow box out of his pocket. ‘Grace House and Rhan Houses or…Numbers 1, 2 and 3 Reservoir Crescent View. Great finds!’

‘I am honoured,’ Rhan laughed, glowing with pride. ‘Is this how you find stuff?’

‘Sure is,’ called Grace. ‘But we’ve never found three roundhouses close together before, have we George?’

Her brother became business-like, ignoring the question. ‘I’ll record their coordinates, if you could take pictures of each other in your houses from different angles. We could call these 1 to 3 Wall View Crescent!’ he suggested, typing into the GPS box. ‘At last, we seem to be starting to find the houses for those that lived and worked up here. They used to say that ancient people didn’t live up here and only visited to bury their dead, but…well, you’ve seen the massive works.’ George concentrated on the GPS before continuing. ‘We’re starting to balance the number of tumuli, where they buried their dead, with the number of huts we think the Bronze Age people lived in.’ He waved his hand down below them and up ahead. ‘We can start by showing you a few of the best tumuli or barrows. Most Some are marked on the maps but we’ve found many more recently – the ‘rents and us. What we don’t get is that the experts say the tumuli were also built before Bronze Age people arrived, which messes thing up. Anyway, let’s go before we get smothered. That bank of mist is winning out.’

Hamish had been sitting patiently and obediently to mark one of Grace’s house stones for the photographs, but bounded off with the three who were now glad to be climbing again as the cool fog started closing in on their heels. The air was no longer bright and sunny and they were glad of the warming exercise. It was some time before Rhan worked out who the “rents” were, but she was glad she had not asked once she’d worked out the answer.

Once they regained the top plateau, they ran across the very short heather to two circular mounds, and George showed Rhan a hidden third, all with different forms of construction. The hidden one was almost flat, surrounded by a stone kerb and a water-filled ditch. Another had a hollow, circled by two ditches and mound walls, while the third was a stone-covered mound around fiveour paces across. 

‘It’s strange how each tumulus is so different. You would think that Uncle Bob would get the same as Grandpa?’ Rhan mused.

‘Very odd,’ George agreed. ‘From the twenty five or so in this valley, hardly any two are the same. Some tumuli still have the borrow pits nearby where they dug out the stone – they rarely got round to backfilling, the messy bastards! Down there’s an almost square one, which might have had stone side walls. We only have one tumulus that’s a textbook classic; the rest must’ve been made or designed to measure, just like the graves for the lesser members of the family we might see later.’

 ‘They certainly liked great views from their tumuli,’ Grace commented in a low voice, obviously talking about the interned chiefs, before continuing in a more flippant tone. ‘But we’ve found lots of new ones all down the hillside and in the valley bottom just by the car park, so perhaps some preferred ice cream vans to a good view! These mounds up here would be a great place to be buried, but perhaps not today. We’ve been caught by the fog at last.’

‘It’s going to be cold,’ George said. ‘We seem to be back into yesterday’s weather. Are you going to be warm enough Rhan? Let me.’

Rhan was happy to let George wrap the borrowed woollen scarf around her head and tuck it into her jacket, as though she was a little girl again. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Grace smiling at her brother’s mollycoddling.

As Rhan studied the ancient burial mounds, it became possible to look up directly at the fading sun. It turned orange, then a ghostly red before the silhouette of the great disc disappeared into the roof of fog over their heads.

‘So this is what “Fog on the Barrow Downs” was all about,’ Rhan exclaimed, standing on top of the largest tumulus.

‘Was that The Hobbit or Fellowship of the Ring?’ enquired Grace.

‘Fellowship!’ Rhan and George chimed.

‘Can I just check: you know your way back, don’t you?’ Rhan asked uneasily as they started to walk downhill into an unyielding wall of fog. ‘The swirls of mist are spooky…Oh God, what was that?’

She stopped dead. A disembodied yet distinct voice from the mist called out.

‘Go back – go back!’

It was answered by another on their other side.

‘Go back – go back!’

Hamish dashed off to investigate. There was a whirring noise followed by a third warning, further off. Rhan stood still, shocked, peering into the mist for at least one of the voices. She then thought to look at the brother and sister and relaxed as she realised they were struggling to repress their laughter.

‘It’s just grouse. This whole moor’s protected so they can be shot,’ Grace explained, adding, ‘Their call’s really eerie, isn’t it?’

‘You two are enjoying my unease and are showing off,’ Rhan chided them. ‘OK, it is scary, but it is also exhilarating and it’s a totally new experience for me.’

‘Sorry, but it was fun.’ George linked her arm in his and a few seconds later Grace had grabbed her other arm. Walking three abreast made it difficult to wade through the heather over the rough terrain, but it was cosy, until they had to split up to navigate a descent. They were now walking in swirling, dense cloud of drizzle that numbed the senses and made it hard to keep balance, leading to frequent stumbles. Rhan concentrated on looking at her feet and tried to ignore the inhuman calls of the grouse to “go back”. She even enjoyed the bickering of her guides, as the two constantly debated their best route or even where they were. In this featureless world without paths, encircled by just a few metres of grey, the slope of the ground was the only clue to their location.

Chapter 24 – The Neolithic Community

It was Grace who was the first to fall as they descended from the tumuli-decorated ridge, carving a tunnel through the impenetrable blanket of wet grey mist. She tripped over a stone buried in the heather, but managed to keep her balance as she half fell, half jumped to land on her feet in a little squared pit. The knee-deep reeds and grassy bottom contrasted with the enveloping heather. George chuckled as he looked about in the mist. ‘Great! Grace appears to have found the necropolis we were looking for!’

Rhan peered at the depression in the ground, which she thought looked recent. She then noted that it had stone sides and a leaning standing stone at one corner. She was horrified as it dawned on her that her new friend had stumbled into a grave, even though Grace seemed in no hurry to get out again.

‘You think that’s a grave? Why?’ Rhan asked.

‘Ma says that the burnt remains of commoners where left in cists like this down south,’ Grace lectured from the bottom of the pit. ‘There’s around thirty or so graves on this hillside. They’d have been visible from that ancient motorway we saw earlier, but not today.’

‘There are other burial sites of a similar size on that hillside and a much bigger one with hundreds of cists just over that hill.’ George directed Rhan with his hand again, which in the mist had absolutely no relevance to anyone. Both Grace and Rhan chuckled at his behaviour.

They went from hollow to hollow, inspecting a good handful of graves, delighted with Rhan’s interest, as their guest gave a running commentary on her discoveries.

‘So most appear to have been cut into the bedrock on the side of a hill, leaving two or three stone sides which could be the natural bedrock as well. That could suggest quarrying? But then some have a standing stone right beside the hole. On the downhill side, there is sometimes a smaller stone, but it is missing in that one, and that one. Could these graves be just places where stones have been extracted?’

‘You have to decide,’ George responded, without committing himself.

‘Oh, that stone could have been a lid! I see your point. This one is big, yet that one is tiny.’

‘Come on, Rhan, we’ve got something more to show you.’ With renewed purpose and a definite direction in the reduced mist, Rhan was led down a hill, up the far side and across a plateau, where George restarted the grand tour.

‘We’ve circled round and are just above the double wall again. Look first at all these quarries just below the crest.’ They picked their way between quarry pits some three or four metres wide and a metre deep, similar to those they had seen earlier in the walk. ‘We used to think these quarries were for the double wall, but it appears they’re not.

‘Are you sure these are old?’ Rhan asked, deciding to question the wisdom of her guide.

‘Just look at some of the stones that’ve been left by the pits,’ George suggested. ‘OK, the pits could’ve been dug last year, but look there – that stone’s fallen over, yet it’s weathered both on its tip where it stood, and also on its side after it fell or was pushed over. It’s been there for many centuries. No one has suggested that they did much up here in medieval times, which would mean it was quarried in ancient times. Anyway, come down here and see where most of the stones went.’

They walked down the drop, which was strewn with boulders or partially shaped stones and pits to a flatter area. The mist allowed Rhan to see that it was just above the bottom of the slope.

‘Stand on that stone there!’ George ordered. ‘You on that corner Grace, and I’ll take this one.’

‘I see your point,’ Rhan declared with some relief after a few moments of feeling stupid. ‘We are at the corners of walls, presumably to a house. That unoccupied corner is built up with several courses. It’s…’ She stopped, left her perch on the lowest stone corner and paced to each of the others. It’s six metres by seven. Quite big! Is that an internal wall and a small room in that corner??’

‘Yeah, we haven’t figured that out yet,’ Grace responded shaking her head. ‘We call this East House. Just look. Those stones below this wall that we’re stood on make a curve, which we think could’ve made a yard. Shall we carry on down?’

 ‘Look around you now, Rhan!’ George said enigmatically after just a few careful paces. The ground sloped gently and Rhan peered into the mist, which was more consistent and less confusing than it had been on the plateau they had just crossed.

‘There are stones everywhere!’ Rhan exclaimed as she obligingly and energetically scampered around in the mist, through a landscape of craters and boulders, while making sure she kept within sight of her guides. She felt relieved that the dog decided to join her and was sniffing around while the others stood watching. ‘Some stones are piled in mounds, but others are in lines.’

 She paused now and then to kick piles of dead bracken away, which were either soggy or dry enough to turn to powder and revealed yet more underlying stones. Keen not to be alone, she continued to report her findings, aware that the brother and sister seemed to be waiting on her observations. She began to think that everything she had seen previously on the walk had just been preparation for a test at this site.

‘Large-faced stones…shaped…some with chisel marks. Some of these line walkways or hollows in the ground…sunken areas, similar to those grave hollows. What did you call them? Oh yes, cists. Except the low bits…they are larger and longer, like passageways, formed with massive stone sunken kerbs. The heaps, and the gaps between hollows, have smaller, partly shaped stones. What a waste of good stone! How strange! Are these more graves or is this a quarry, or a stone dressing area for your double wall?’

There was no reply from the two watching guides.

‘Well, I know you are waiting for me to say it’s a town or something, but you two are presumably keeping something from me,’ Rhan complained eventually.

‘No, we don’t know anything,’ George laughed while Grace shrugged her shoulders. ‘This stonework was only revealed when the bracken started to die off a few years ago and it’s still emerging, so we just wanted to hear your views without influence. We’ve probed the ground and there is usually soil rather than rock underneath, so your guess of a quarry is no good. These stones were presumably from those quarries just up there, so were dragged down here for a purpose.’

There was a long pause before Rhan spoke again.

‘If these lines were the foundations to walls of ancient houses like that East House you showed me, and the hollows were the gaps between them, then …that would mean that all the rest of these stones, as far as I can see in this fog, are also probably ruins of stone houses. How unusual would a town be? How many houses are there?’

Rhan paused. ‘I remember my mother saying that in Syria, the rectangular houses were older than the round houses.’ She looked up to see George raise his eyebrows at his sister.

‘My mother used to translate for tours sometimes,’ she continued, aware that she had spoken so rarely about her mother. ‘So is this a wrecked version of Skara what’s-it in Scotland? Surely someone would know if this was an ancient town or village?’ She was waving her arm as she spoke, amazing herself at what she was suggesting.

‘Skara Brae is in Orkney on the top of Scotland,’ George helped. ‘We visited a few years ago and there are spooky similarities that could be just coincidences in the layout of the passages, if that’s what they are. Skara Brae has eight surviving buildings and was Neolithic, say five thousand years ago, before the Bronze Age. They weren’t meant to have stone towns like this around here in Neolithic times, just timber settlements. Then the Bronze Age had the roundhouses that we’ve found.

‘But that could be all wrong. Someone spent decades quarrying all the stone for this town, temple or whatever. And except at East House, where you’ve just seen up to three or four courses of stone in one corner, not much has survived above the foundations. Anyway we’ve started to call this settlement Scarth. We thought at first it was a necropolis, didn’t we Gracie? But we wanted to see if you thought it was a village as well. We’ve plotted around ten roughly rectangular houses like East House, along with their attached curved walls that could be outside yards, but we keep finding new outlying houses. I think there are at least sixteen, maybe twenty houses. You won’t appreciate it now Rhan, but this was a great place to live. It gets sun from dawn to dusk but is sheltered by that hill we’ve just come down. It’s a pretty dry spot so they just had to be inventive to get water here.’

‘How come you have never mentioned this to me before?’ Rhan demanded of George. ‘Who knows of this site?’

‘Well,’ Grace intervened, defending her brother at first but then dumping him in it. ‘The hillside is known to be of interest for its archaeology, but the site was covered with bracken. No one seems to have explored this place as much as us. You’ve had the up-to-date tour – except for the stuff George told me not to tell you ‘til the end. It was in New Scientist a few months ago.’

Rhan looked from one to the other and back again, waiting for an explanation. Grace looked at her brother who just smiled, so she began.

‘It’s beginning to make Game of Thrones look like a picnic compared with what may have happened here.’ Grace had obviously planned a theatrical beginning. ‘The Neolithic people, who built the later bits of Stonehenge and who we reckon lived in these houses and put up the biggest and best lines of standing stones and water channels around here – they may have been wiped out really quickly, or at least the men. There was a version of the Black Death and then a vicious tribe from the east who swept right through Europe and brought the Bronze Age, and all that. They say that genetic tests show they had few of their own women, but took the local women. The men’s genes seem to have stopped dead.’

‘That’s dreadful,’ Rhan said, looking at the mist all around the stones, as though it hid a host of eastern riders. ‘All the men killed?’

‘It was Genghis Khan, minus three thousand years,’ George confirmed. ‘They probably invented cavalry, and I guess had bronze swords and survived the Black Death by living in isolated circular huts, like those we saw earlier. This cheek-to-cheek community, if it was a Neolithic town, would have been a death trap during a Black Death outbreak. It might explain why this township could have been systematically destroyed and left with hardly any stone on another. It all sounds a bit far-fetched, but…it’s more likely they just had timber walls and we only see the foundations. We’ll have to wait for an archaeological dig.’

 ‘It’s freezing. Let’s go!’ Grace had clearly had enough and led them down the slope.

‘I’ve been looking forward to showing you this ever since our second day together, Rhan,’ George confessed as they started to follow his sister. ‘A couple of years ago, Pa brought some engineers and the landowner up here, but you’re one of just a handful to see this place…you’re the first outside the family who we’ve shown East House since the bracken died back. So that makes you the first to be relatively sure of what you saw!’

‘Well I have no knowledge,’ said Rhan, defensively. ‘It seems strange to be at the forefront of a major find that no one else knows about. One always thinks that the experts know everything already – it’s a bit like climate change. Even admitting we are in trouble feels like a step beyond sanity.

‘So this sunken bit between walls…’ Rhan stopped walking, taking in her surroundings as best she could in the mist. ‘We are now walking the streets of an ancient town! You think you may have your very own metropolis, which…’

‘Oh you need to look at these lines of reeds,’ George interrupted as they crossed a nondescript patch of short turf, bare of stones but with a few scraggy clumps of dark green stems marching diagonally across the slope. ‘Grace has mentioned water courses. This one collects water from three tiny streams and takes it to the two bottom houses of the Scarth village just below us – those stones there. We haven’t worked out whether it was clean running water, or a flush system like they had in the toilets in the medieval monastery at the bottom of the hill.’

‘My father would have loved the water system. But how come this area is almost paved?’ Rhan asked, realising she was not likely to see much more of the water channel.

‘It’s that Bronze Age double wall again,’ he repeated, and stuck both arms out at right angles indicating where the wall traversed the hillside. ‘They had more stone than they knew what to do with here where the wall passed through the Scarth town. So they appear to have done something new – we don’t know what.’ He shrugged. ‘But as you say, it’s almost a paved area that links the truncated bottom of the Scarth community site – cut off by the Bronze Age wall.’   

Rhan became distracted as she looked into the mist. ‘Hang on Grace, wait for us! Where are you?’

The walk down was hazardous on the rock-strewn hillside, and the swirling mist appeared to be thicker again as they descended. After a while, the lack of visual references made Rhan feel dizzy again, and peering at the heather beneath her feet was no real solution. She and George were happy to use the excuse to hold hands, while Grace still walked slightly ahead, often discussing, or arguing, over the best direction with George. They walked much further than they had expected and Rhan detected satisfaction in both of them when they reached a series of three steep dykes, with deep ditches between, almost as high as a person.

‘So what are these?’ Rhan demanded yet again of George, as they stopped on the ridge between two deep ruts. Only Grace’s head could be seen in the trough just below them.

‘Well they could be defensive dykes,’ he replied. ‘But they’re the “railway tracks” that Grace described earlier. They divide and cross just over there, where that extra track comes up from the valley, so they’re probably just ancient hollow ways, formed by repeatedly driving animals from the moor to the beck for a drink over many centuries. There must’ve been a hell of a lot of traffic to warrant a down track, a fast up track and a crawler lane! Or perhaps they kept changing track when a previous route became too muddy? We’ve had a large herd of those woolly-coated cattle on this moor for a decade or so and their tracks have made no impression at all, so it would’ve taken centuries or thousands of year to cut tracks this deep. Come on, let’s keep moving, we’re nearly down.’

Chapter 25 – A Mesolithic Hotspot

They took the downward hollow way at the junction, which led them to a modern, stony track. It was with some relief that they stepped from that onto the smooth asphalt surface of a narrow road. A little way along the narrow winding road, the teasing mist lifted for a few seconds to reveal a gravel parking area beside the road. There were only two remaining cars from several that they had seen earlier from the moor. They walked across the car park to inspect the beck that ran cheerfully along the other edge of the stony area.

‘Guess what archaeologists found when they laid down this car park?’ George asked.

‘I don’t think I know of this,’ Grace complained.

‘A Neolithic shopping centre?’ Rhan responded, laughing.

‘An Iron Age chariot park?’ Grace joined in.

‘No and no,’ George replied, also laughing. ‘Nothing from the Iron Age except perhaps a few bumps that may have been a Celtic mill right against the beck just over there. , and from the Neolithic, only a boulder stone they excavated and dumped beside that kissing gate to the reservoir. It was decorated with rock art. We know of tumuli and Bronze Age hut circles on nearly every mound that climbs clear of the bog and the stream, but the archaeologists only looked under the car parkweren’t looking for any of that. Their trial pits found rakes of Mesolithic stuff.’

‘Who were they again?’ Rhan asked, starting to feel overwhelmed again.

‘The Mesolithic were Stone Age before the Neolithic Stone Age,’ George explained, and Rhan noticed that Grace was for once listening keenly to her brother. ‘The Mesolithic were hunter-gatherers who had no fixed homes, but they were clearly pretty rooted here, especially on the side of the beck. The only other people who were interested in this area were the early industrialists who just flooded the area with that dam we saw earlier to feed the waterwheels. The archaeologists reckon the area is littered with thousands of worked flints, or microliths – some were formed into knives and arrowheads. One of our neighbours in the village used to say the whole moor is also strewn with flints. We’ve not found any, but I can show you one we were given. This valley was clearly a popular place for them. They could’ve been here longer than all the subsequent periods of mankind since then, so no wonder they dropped so many tools.’

 ‘So come on you two,’ Rhan teased. ‘You have shown me Bronze Age and Neolithic houses. Don’t tell me you haven’t found a Messy…a cosy Mesolithic settlement where I could grab a coffee?’

Grace smirked but said nothing.

‘Well…’ George was clearly thinking on his feet and trying to remember. ‘The trial pits found lots of placed stones, usually inclined rather than flat. They didn’t say they were houses, but now I think about it, I bet they could’ve been elements of dwellings. Reconstructions from Ireland show wigwams made of sticks.’

‘So no “show houses” from the Mesolithic?’ Rhan joked.

‘Not sure,’ he smiled in reply, but furrowed his brow. ‘Their houses looked similar to the Bronze Age hut circles, but were less substantial with weedier rafters. I wonder if some of our circles just over there could’ve been Mesolithic rather than Bronze Age.’ He paused to consider this, before continuing.

‘There are also loads of small standing boulders in and around this valley, which we always assumed were Neolithic, as they seemed earlier than the Bronze Age-shaped works.’ He pointed at some mounds raised above the bog beside the road where occasional stones stood proud of the bare grassy hillock in a forbidding manner, framed against a misty backdrop. ‘But as they’re not the Neolithic’s two-metre best efforts, they could be older. Who knows? Shall we go?’    

 ‘It feels even more desolate here than up on the moor!’ Grace declared once they were walking back down towards the village. ‘This is a real honey trap – and might have been a few thousand years ago, as well. Kids used to come from all over in the summer to play in the stream, try to catch minnows, build dams and climb the rock slopes and quarries. We used to love it and Dad claims he used to cycle up here most days when he was a kid. Nowadays you don’t see so many children up here.’

‘Computer games?’ Rhan asked.

George laughed, but his sister continued.

‘Maybe, but the biggest downer must be the parking tickets that hit families the most. The authorities only allow parking in the car parks, which take a fraction of the demand. They’re empty today, but in good weather places are grabbed early by walkers and cyclists. Unsuspecting latecomers tend to park on the road verges and then get slapped with a parking ticket. No one expects fines without double white lines!’

‘You have to feel sorry for the poor bastards,’ George said, endorsing his sister. ‘They get the message that they’re not welcome in the countryside.’

‘Careful you two!’ Rhan warned. ‘You are talking to someone who was largely restricted to playing in a back yard in Sunderland. We made the most of it with obstacle courses, and I used to love the monkey bars or the “spikes of doom”, as we called them. If you touched the ground under the monkey bars,’ she explained to Grace, ‘we pretended you were impaled on spikes like on that Prince of Persia video game. It was a real treat to visit somewhere as exciting as this. But being fined would certainly have killed the fun and cut further trips, I suppose.’

They returned down the road through the tunnel of fog at a sharper pace to keep warm.

‘Tell you what Rhan,’ George confided as he linked her arm. ‘I learnt a lot today showing you round.’

‘What! How come?’ Rhan felt puzzled and suspicious.

‘It gave me perspective. Until we started to talk about the earlier hunter-gather civilisation, I had never put the archaeological report I’d read several years ago in context with what we’ve found in the last year or so.’

‘Yeah,’ his younger sister called over her shoulder as she walked along the empty road ahead of them. ‘We started looking for the Bronze Age double wall. And that led us to the earlier Neolithic stone village and more water channels, more tumuli…ploughing, cist, whatever. It sort of made sense. But I didn’t know about that earlier hunter stuff George was telling you about.’

‘That’s what I was trying to say,’ George agreed. ‘If you add the even earlier few thousand years, then we have a complete picture that sort of fits together.’

‘Quite a representation,’ Rhan suggested in a mocking tone. ‘If your theories are correct, you have a complete record of prehistory and its associated climate, right here in this valley and hillside. The question is, are you two geniuses or just over-imaginative kids?’

‘Probably both,’ George admitted. ‘We have the pluck to be imaginative but without scraping around we don’t have the evidence from findings. They looked for stuff before building the car parks, but then just buried the evidence. It’s not like it’s exciting Roman or medieval remains.’ 

‘Following your theories though,’ Rhan mused, ‘there were hunter-gathers here, living in simple wooden tents. Then a village or town that had fixed stone bases for large rectangular house walls, yards and streets between the houses. So the Neolithic really invested in their future to justify quarrying the stone and constructing a system for running water. It’s just like now.’

‘Not quite!’ Grace responded smugly. ‘There’s a big difference between running water and hot running water.’

Rhan ignored the interruption as she tried to concentrate. ‘Then there was something dreadful – plague and war you say, with genocide? But the new people stepped backwards and were happy to live in simple huts again with no facilities at all, whether hot or cold, apart from bronze knives. So how come no one is interested?’

‘I suppose it’s just too long ago,’ George suggested. ‘People can’t or don’t want to relate to prehistory.’

‘That makes no sense.’ Rhan pulled her arm away in annoyance. ‘We are rapidly heading into a major extinction, so we should know how things used to be, and may be again,, before rather than after, we hit the destruct button. We spend money and carbon exploring the solar system looking for a Planet B, but don’t explore the ground beneath our feet.

‘George!’ Rhan’s step faltered and Grace turnedglanced round. ‘You did mention your interest in ancient history and the Neolithic after all. I just remembered. It was in our first term in Danny and Tom’s room when Chris was talking about the collapse of civilisations and Bede from Northumberland.’

‘Oh yeah, but I can’t remember exactly what I said,’ he replied. ‘The point is I agree with you. The anthropology needs…’

‘The study of mankind!’ Rhan interpreted for Grace who had glancedlooked round, puzzled.

‘Yeah,’ George continued. ‘So if ever the history of civilisation is useful it would be now when everything is going to change. The history of development would be so much more relevant than the dates and doings of kings and queens and the big battles that history teaches. The Mesolithic lasted several thousand years, longer than the rest of our time combined. But for us, it’s only in the last few years, and even in our lifetime, that we’ve been really determined to fuck it upruin our civilisation.’

Grace had put on headphones and was walking ahead in her own world. After a few minutes of walking in silence, Rhan asked the question that was on her mind.

‘George, how can you be both apathetic and pessimistic? You are so much more sceptical about the climate than anything else. How come?’ 

‘I suppose it’s because there’s no way forward. So few people believe that we even have a problem. It’s only nutters like my father who say anything. You know that everybody else just pretends there’s nothing to worry about. If they do know then they pretend we’re already doing something.’

‘Well I have to agree,’ said Rhan thoughtfully. ‘But your approach is so different from someone like David’s, say. Why don’t you think it’s worth my while getting involved?’

There was a pause again while they marched past a noisy stream gushing down the hillside through the coarse grass above them. It splashed into a culvert beneath the road, and Rhan could hear it issue on the far side to continue its exuberant cascade down the hillside into the valley below.

‘I’ll tell you my first example,’ George began. ‘At school in the sixth form, we entered a national competition – I think it was called “Solutions to the Planet” or something like that. We had to invent something or investigate something that would help. Our team constructed a tubular screw that was similar to one we’d seen in a science museum, one that pumped water. A bit like an Archimedes screw, but hadmade with three parallel sets of plastic pipe in a wooden frame fixed around old bike wheels at each end. Water from a stream entered at one end, and went down the screw which then rotated, driving a small generator taken from a computer printer. It stood clear of the stream, and was held by the bike wheel hubs.

‘We made videos of us in the construction process, with it turning with water taken from that mill down there. One of us put together a cool PowerPoint showing how it could be used on about twenty or so streams around here. It cost less than thirty quid to build. We even had an REM soundtrack to the last video at the end of the presentation.’

He started to sing to Rhan, which came as light relief to her after his previous descriptions.

‘It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.’

 He continued his story. ‘So our team did really well and we got to the finals, which was in the House of Commons at Westminster. It was brilliant. We got a guided tour of the palace. We met MPs and former Ministers. We had to present in the Grand Committee room with four or five other teams. The judging panel was made up of two older men – London university professors from the Royal Academy, and a young female engineer.’

Rhan glanced at George, impressed. ‘God, that must have been frightening!’

‘It was great! Being down in London on a school day with three mates was good fun. Anyway, we soon realised there wasn’t much competition from the other schools. Their efforts, concepts and presentations were rubbish. But then we got a surprise and realised things were not going to go well.

‘One younger group of kids were proposing to write a children’s book about a group of penguins and how the penguins’ lives were changed by the global warming. It was then that the two professors each stood up and told the school team that there was no justification or proof for suggesting that climate change was real. Can you imagine that? The whole competition was meant to be about climate change, or so we’d thought. It was a vicious attack. We felt really sorry for the poor kids.’

‘You’re joking!’ Rhan muttered. ‘Did no one say anything?’

‘No. The MPs, who’d spoken all about climate change at the introductions, had left and only returned for the award, so probably were left unaware of the direction of the competition. The organisers said nothing. We decided to try to avoid mentioning climate in our talk and to pass quickly over slides that covered it, but our project set out to save carbon, so we had no chance.

‘The winning team came from a Catholic girls’ school. They proposed creating charity boxes for mums and babies suffering poverty in the developing world. There was already a similar scheme up and running, so the girls just decided which items to put in or leave out of their boxes – stuff to increase the chances of their babies surviving the first few weeks – I can’t remember much.

‘We should’ve won just with our multimedia presentation, never mind all the work we’d put in to developing our idea. It could have been a great new low-tech power source, but anything to do with stopping climate change faces massive opposition. You know it Rhan.’

‘So was there no feedback or anything?’ she asked, ignoring his accusation.

‘Well, while having tea afterwards, Don from our team started seeing someone from the girl’s team, and that seemed the most important achievement. We didn’t mind, but the female engineering judge came up and apologised. She said she didn’t understand how we didn’t win.’

The conversation stalled.

‘So,’ Rhan suggested after a while. ‘If your invention had won, would all the farmers now be making money day and night from the little streams running through their land?’

‘Maybe.’ George laughed and sang, ‘and I feel fine…’

Rhan laughed uneasily.

The sight of houses at the roadside materialising from the fog, and their return to civilisation, was as welcome to them as their escape had been on the outward trip earlier that morning.

Grace and George threw off their boots and vanished into the house, mumbling something about a treat for the dog and coffee. Rhan listened to tapping sounds from the mist, which she decided must be a woodpecker, as well as the mournful cry of a bird that she had learnt was a curlew.

She was struggling to pull off her boots at the back door when she almost felt the air around her lighten and change. Looking up she saw the jaded reappearance of the sun, piercing the thinning fog. Wisps of mist were evaporating from the field in front of her, steadily revealing surrounding hills, already basking in the warm sunlight. The curlew glided almost overhead along the edge of the fog – a relatively large brown bird with its wings curved and angled backwards, its long beak bent downward – still calling out a melancholy ‘welcome back to the sunny side’.

Rhan gratefully peeled off the scarf and coat that George had wrapped around her. The bright surroundings started to weaken memories of the shadowy morning, leaving Rhan wondering how much of the ghostly remains from long-forgotten civilisations had been real.

Chapter 26 – Progenicide                                                                                         

‘So why do you have this interest in climate change?’ June asked in the kitchen after Rhan had offered to help prepare a salad. George had been dispatched to the shed to see if any of the stored cooking apples were still usable. 

‘It is like an unwanted religious vocation,’ Rhan answered in her usual formal English. ‘I cannot ignore the way we hardly dare even discuss global warming. The less we acknowledge the problem, the worse it will be. It was George who pointed this out to me, but he is dreadfully fatalistic. He was suggesting this morning that the moors would burn away soon, now that they are no longer cold and wet. That would release huge quantities of carbon dioxide with dreadful consequences to the planet and the lives of many. I find it hard to accept that we should do nothing.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ June acknowledged.

Rhan concentrated on cutting lettuce leaves into the sink but then continued talking to June, much to her own surprise.

‘I suppose I also feel as if I owe it to my parents. For the sake of our safety they sent my sister and me away, sacrificing our last months together. I suppose I feel that God must have saved me from a life in a refugee tent for a purpose. Through some miracle, I am at one of the world’s most prestigious universities at the heart of the Western establishment…Do you have a drainer? Oh…I mean a colander.’ She paused while June handed her one, and they exchanged smiles. ‘I feel that I have a calling – and it will not involve being a merchant banker, or getting married like my younger sister. Still, working for the environment will be a much less drastic vocation than becoming a nun, or working in a refugee camp like my great grandmother.’

‘Well that’s a tragic and dramatic answer!’ June responded. ‘How do you get on with your uncle and aunt in Sunderland?’

‘They are great, and so kind. It’s very good of them to look after us – but both my sister and I realise that we need to be moving on so they can have their house back.’

‘I’m pleased they let you visit us,’ June said uncertainly, obviously wondering how Rhan could be allowed to stay with a male friend.

‘Mmm,’ Rhan mumbled while she decided what to say. ‘I have not let them know how short our university terms are. They don’t know about the rowing camp, never mind my visit here. I hope you are not too shocked? I tell myself that my parents would take a very different line from my uncle and aunt.’ 

‘Well, I can see your logic, but please consider this as another home. It’s been very reassuring having you look after George. We started to hear about you from George’s first call home, so we feel we know you pretty well.’

Well that’s strange, thought Rhan, furrowing her brow as she considered this silently. It was almost a week before he spoke to me! Then she said aloud, ‘I think he mostly looks after me rather than the other way around; he introduced me to friends, he looked after me when I was ill, and he…’ Rhan faltered, deciding not to mention that George did most of their washing. ‘He is so much more domesticated than me, as you are probably noticing.’

June smiled, looking at the lettuce Rhan had dumped into a wooden bowl. ‘You could slice up some of the eating apples to decorate the top. There are some walnuts from our tree in that bowl if you’d like to crack a few and add them.

‘Anyway, we’re pleased he’s found someone to care about, but I get the impression that he leans on you to get him through the workload. After his initial excitement, he was pretty depressed by the work until you helped him out. We’re not sure that he’s a natural engineer, but it’s a good degree as far as I can make out. So are you are looking for an engineering career that relates to climate change?’

‘Probably, but my graduation is still more than three years away. I worry that each year is critical with climate change; Syria had its first drought from 2008, so things will be desperate by the time I graduate, even without wars to make things so much worse. Our friends in Oxford are getting fed up with me always talking about global warming, but I believe that I will need to do something sooner rather than later. I fear that George is hardly going to be enthusiastic if I become a green campaigner, yet he knows more than me about the subject.’

‘Well George likes to absorb information. But would you be the sort of campaigner who chains themselves to an oil rig or would you join a university climate group? You seem to have had something to do with George going vegetarian, although he claims it’s just incidental. There are plenty of other green things you could do too.’

‘I am not that brave! Deceiving my aunt, uncle and sister and coming here to find out more was a big step for me. The carbon footprint of an engineer will be vast compared with any domestic saving I could make, so I hope to save the planet by working from within my profession, rather than through major demonstrations.’

‘Oh yeh?’ Grace stood in the doorway. ‘Joining a major demo sounds more fun – it’d be cool to know an eco-criminal. Ma, have you seen my phone?’ 

While the lost mobile was tracked down, Rhan hurried upstairs to fetch a few printouts from her bag. Guessing their content, George and Grace teased Rhan for still wanting to talk to their father about climate change.

 ‘Look, rather her than us, Gracie,’ George took Rhan’s side, if somewhat lamely. ‘All we ask, Rhan, is that you try not to encourage him!’

Leaving the banter in the kitchen, a gentle reminder from June alerted William that he needed to help Rhan with her questions.

‘I presume George told you that I wanted to ask you more about global warming?’ Rhan asked as she gingerly entered the living room. The moors outside were now a black silhouette against a darkening sky. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Ah yes, carry on. Take a seat,’ he beckoned. ‘It’s not often – no in fact, after twenty-five or so years, you are probably the first person I’ve come across who has actually volunteered to discuss climate change. It’s even rarer to find a young person with interest!’

‘Yes, I am afraid I need to realise that few wish to discuss the climate,’ Rhan responded, smiling. ‘George tries to tell me that global warming is a taboo subject that is only suitable for discussion between consenting adults.’

George’s father chuckled, laid his laptop down and pressed the remote, which silenced the early evening weather forecast. There was the sound of wheezing from logs on the fire and the soft murmur of voices from George, Grace and their mother next door. Rhan sat on a well-worn leather sofa, leaning forward and studying the patterns on the Turkish carpet. The older man sat in an armchair, resting his feet on a footstool, which was also covered in part of an old Persian carpet.

It feels like Bag End, and the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo, Rhan thought. Yet there is no magic power here to set evil to right.

‘Oh, congratulations!’ her host said, making Rhan wonder what was coming next. ‘I gather you and Grace bagged three new roundhouses on your visit to the moors today. That’s impressive – I’m looking forward to seeing them. There’s certainly plenty to discover about the ancient civilisations up there.’    

‘It was absolutely fascinating.’ Rhan smiled as she recalled the morning’s walk, which still seemed unreal. ‘George said the Bronze Age people came off the moors when the temperatures dropped. Yet we are now soaring past those high temperatures again. It was fascinating to imagine how their landscape might have looked, through George and Grace’s eyes.’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It hasn’t taken us long to move into uncharted history up there. You will have noticed that the oldest civilisation – the Neolithic – appears to have the architectural and civil engineering attributes most similar to our own period.’ Rhan nodded slowly while he continued.  

‘Time clearly does not offer a progression of improvement, so it is easy to imagine someone, in another five thousand years, looking at one of our towns or villages and wondering what happened to cause massive and drastic regression in our civilisation.’

He looked around the room at the walls, imagining what the house would look like as an ancient ruin.

‘I understand you think it will get much hotter – and that you believe we will have a tipping point upon us – in the next few years?’ Rhan asked uncertainly, hoping to get away from the archaeology.

‘Well, tipping points appear to be really unfashionable at present,’ William started in a light-hearted manner. ‘We are told we need to take the fear out of climate change, which I think means ignoring the risks. Yet that’s against a backdrop where global warming, as we know it, tends to be either simply denied, or set aside to be dealt with by negotiation at some future point, currently set at 2030 or 2050.’ Before continuing, he smiled briefly at his own joke – the concept of negotiating with the climate.

‘Tipping points have been considered to be an unknown and unacceptable hypothesis that need only concern troublemakers. Those troublemakers, on the other hand, have started to talk of “cascades” of tipping points, now that CO₂ levels and temperatures are already going up by leaps and bounds.’ He stroked his chin, contemplating the future. ‘I suppose tipping points were more of a worry when it was hoped that we had a chance to keep warming to a reasonable level. Cascades suggest the prospect of jumping from crisis to crisis without any ability for mankind to regain control.’

‘Is it that bad?’ Rhan murmured, shocked – despite her expectations – by the implication of what he was saying.

‘It’s not good,’ he responded. ‘I think we are standing on a cliff edge. From all the various scenarios produced by the IPCC, ranging from what – 0.5° to 5°C of warming or more?’ He glanced at Rhan, who made no response, so he went on. ‘I collected opinions from world experts, who have written briefing papers for my civil engineering journal. They seemed to confirm that there are just so many dangers. It means we have little chance of achieving anything but the worst possible outcomes rather than the official predictions that have been hopelessly optimistic and never stood a realistic chance of coming true. Dangers that were not well defined have been simply ignored.’ He sighed and leaned back, raising his eyes and shaking his head.

 ‘I suspected the news was not going to be good,’ Rhan acknowledged, adjusting her headscarf as though she could protect herself from their discussion. ‘I printed these out and wondered if I could discuss them with you.’ She held up the papers. ‘I looked at the PIOMAS graphs for the Arctic ice, following a tip from George.’

 She smoothed out two sheets before passing them to William.

‘There’s my version of a simple graph showing two downward curves: the percentage volume and the percentage area of summer Arctic ice against time. It uses the 1980 figure as 100%.’

‘Ah yes, interesting,’ he responded. ‘These cover the timeframe of my working life since starting on the Thames Barrier in 1980. It’s probably coincidental that changes in the ice are assumed to have started around then, as sea levels were already rising. The plunge in the volume curve is most alarming isn’t it?’

‘Yes!’ Rhan agreed emphatically. ‘It appears to me very unlikely that the downward dive towards zero could ever recover. I find it hard to believe that the summer ice can survive for more than a decade.’

‘Quite! And once the ice goes, we will then see the irrefutable evidence that we have irreversibly changed the planet. But what amazes and frightens me is that even the committees at the IPCC prepared the ground in 2014 for failure, suggesting that loss of the Arctic ice over a few months of the year will not be too significant. For a few years many scientists believed and assured us that the IPCC warnings were too pessimistic and alarmist. They suggested that as the planet was heating only slowly, the earth could shrug off the laws of thermodynamics. Once again everyone could believe there was no problem, the ice would not melt, the depths of the oceans would postpone the need for action. Now recent temperatures are shooting up again, so….’

He leaned forward, rubbing his forehead with one hand, before continuing.

‘I’m afraid that both your generation, and even mine, are likely to see amazing and dreadful things. As you are no doubt aware, almost everyone, including scientists and engineers, have convinced themselves that there is no immediate danger. Nothing is meant to happen for decades, but the majority are wrong – we have woken the giant. Every land between the Arctic and the Antarctic have all the signs of climate change, so the whole world population is being stupidly suicidal.’

‘You don’t have hope for the Paris Accord then?’ Rhan asked, pulling back into the recess of the sofa.

‘Reluctant proposals from Paris to cut carbon emissions by 2030 or 2050 will seem almost irrelevant by the time the deadlines arrive. All current talk of having ten years to start going in the correct direction has no basis. We needed to have started ten or twenty years ago, not in a few years’ or decades’ time when my generation have all retired. We are the feckless post-war generation who only look after ourselves. As George pointed out, my hopes for action soon are pure folly. To use another saying, here we are, not even aware that the horse essential for the next generation has bolted, and we have absolutely no intention of closing the stable door.’

William turned his palms upwards. ‘The laws of physics will drag us down. We think mankind does not need nature. We think we can put everything right again, given enough money. But that’s just not going to be possible. The science just isn’t there, never mind the engineering to change the planet back to previous normality. We can only save pockets like London for a few decades.’

He stopped, looking at Rhan and waiting to see if he had said enough or too much. After a few seconds of silence, she took the initiative again.

‘A real question that I am trying to answer is what might happen in the next decade, at the start of my working life. For example, what do you think will happen once the Arctic sea ice goes? We – George and I, when I could get him in a serious mood – talked about it being like losing an efficient cooling sunhat. I could find no real predictions of what is in store for us on the other side of that tipping point, other than more tipping points. How did we get here?’

‘Your working life will be different from mine,’ he acknowledged, contemplating what she had asked. ‘It’s going to be a shock once people realise that we are now on a constant slide to disaster.

‘As an engineer I see big differences between the risks…I mean probabilities, stated in the IPCC reports and the probabilities that engineers routinely address when trying to avoid dangers. The IPCC scientists assume that probabilities of less than 1 percent for dangers to the planet are deemed unworthy of worrying about. Engineers go to great lengths to avoid risks such as 0.01 percent if several lives are at stake. Where major loss of life is possible, engineers aim for probabilities of less than one in a million. The trouble is that the IPCC are only criticised by the media when they overestimate the dangers, yet nothing is mentioned when their “worst credible” predictions are exceeded within weeks of publication. It should have been alarming.’

‘But surely the scientists carried out the research on what will happen?’ Rhan persisted. ‘The technical papers must be out there?’

William considered the issues for a few moments. ‘Well, in the early years I believe that climate models tended to avoid the incredible scenarios and had the excuse not to spend time analysing conditions that were considered just too dangerous and stupid to contemplate. Then I suppose they avoided items with too many parameters that would be difficult to justify against attacks from sceptics. Greenland and the Arctic just felt too big to melt except over thousands of years, even though there were clear signs in the rocks that they were wrong. We keep seeing the mechanisms for change only when they are upon us: we know sea levels can rise quickly, yet we have done nothing when it would cost little.

‘I’m afraid, Rhan, that the future will be a very frightening and depressing place. Our civilisation and society will alter with remarkable speed. There are too many calamities waiting to pile in and make global heating worse, as nature starts to add to our greenhouse gases. Once we have totally lost control, we’ll have the obvious excuse to stop even trying to cut the emissions we can control.’

Rhan nodded, her chin on her hand, recalling what she knew of the impacts of removing the reflective ice sun hat that would no longer cool the Arctic; the decaying permafrost in the surrounding tundra; and the unstable clathrate compounds lying frozen on seabeds. She said nothing and let him continue.

‘So returning to your question about conditions beyond the summer Arctic tipping point once we first have zero ice – I think that the loss of reflective surface will affect us all in the northern hemisphere much, much more than current models predict. With  so much summer ice being lost each year and no effective buffer of latent cooling, the autumn, spring and winter ice will then be on a downward plummet too. My guess is that by around 2035, the Arctic Ocean will be almost ice-free throughout the year; I could be very wrong but the risk is far from negligible. Yet I have no proof – it’s just my opinion.

‘There are, of course, plenty of experts who also believe that current predictions appear farcically optimistic. Then beyond that, there’s no way the Greenland ice sheet will take hundreds or thousands of years to melt once it’s surrounded by an almost tropical sea.’

‘So the current predictions of just a few hundred millimetres of sea rise within my lifetime are also likely to be just stupidly dangerous?’ Rhan suggested.

‘Absolutely! Sea-level rises and land sink at those rates were predicted for the Thames Barrier four decades ago. By the time you’re my age, you could be looking at sea level rises of a metre every twenty years, like in previous geological periods when climatic conditions flipped around.’

 ‘I hope you are wrong. Articles that I have read still talk in terms of a fraction of a metre this century. But if you are right, then what? Will people take it all in their stride? How will they react?’ She tried to keep him on the track she wanted. ‘What will it feel like, or what will we see as the Arctic ice is replaced by water?’

‘I’m not sure that I’m the person to ask about people’s reactions,’ he replied, smiling and shaking his head. ‘I’ve been alarmingly correct at predicting the physical realities of global warming over the past twenty years, but I warn you that my predictions of society’s reactions have been utterly incorrect at every turn so far.’

‘I appreciate that the issue will continue to be waved aside as someone else’s problem,’ Rhan said. ‘Yet without an ice cap on the world, as you say, everything could start to feel different very quickly. I suppose I am worried that attitudes to death and immigration will harden even faster.’

William nodded and carried on. ‘Without the cooling ice, the deep oceans and shallow seas will start to act very strangely. I’m pretty confident that no one knows with any certainty at all what will actually happen to the weather once the ice is gone – we will clearly face a completely new set of rules. Our weather and farming patterns will be in a real dither within a rapidly heating process overall.

‘I mean, we’ve only just started to understand how the high-level jet streams in the skies above are behaving in the new warm-Arctic conditions. The oceanic drifts are just as complicated so I doubt we have any idea what will happen to world weather. I mean, who would’ve predicted a few years ago that the British Isles could be affected by something as unlikely as low pressure in the sea off the Russian north coast? I don’t think there was even much of a coastline just a few years ago. The science and predictions are all too recent. I have a feeling that the weather here in Britain will change as drastically as elsewhere in the world.’

Rhan nodded. ‘Yes, isn’t it the case that temperature differences between the equator and the North Poles tend to power the south-to-north wind in our hemisphere? With gravitational acceleration, that creates the jet stream with the Coriolis Effect.’ She held out her thumb and first two fingers at right angles to work out the directions, amazed to find that she had learnt something relevant in her unfathomable theoretical maths that year. ‘Rapid warming at the North Pole means that the jet stream is now sluggish and lackadaisical – more like a lowland river, prone to big meanders and oxbow lakes that leave stranded pockets of hot or cold air in strange places.’

He laughed admiringly at her knowledge and enthusiasm, just as there was a fumble at the door, which opened to Grace’s call of ‘Gin and tonic!’ She entered, bearing two glass tumblers with fizzing ice. She handed them to her father and their visitor.

‘Brilliant! Thank you,’ William enthused.

‘Having fun?’ Grace asked Rhan.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Rhan replied rather stiffly, then chuckled as she realised that she had continued to hold her hand with fingers and thumb extended at right angles.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then.’

There was a pause as Grace left before Rhan started up again.

‘A balmy north Arctic Ocean is still difficult to imagine,’ she said. ‘I can see how a lack of mixing air and water will create massive hotspots that will bring the threatened hurricanes to Europe and surges of water levels up or down the North Sea. But what will happen when the north Atlantic drift hits the Pacific equivalent coming up from the other side of the Arctic Ocean, when there is no ice barrier?’

 ‘I have no idea!’ William admitted straight away. ‘Good question. All I know is that there will be plenty of work for engineers fighting the new weather conditions and sea levels.’

‘So what about countries without resources to construct barriers for rising sea levels?’ Rhan asked in a forced neutral tone.

‘I suppose that flooded cities and water taxis will become much more common,’ he suggested, sipping from his drink. ‘Some of the best land will be lost, so farming will have a dreadful time, resulting in food being a major issue again.’

‘You mentioned 5° or more. Just how hot do you think it will get, and what will that mean? You think our whole society is at risk? She glanced doubtfully at the dark, cold evening through a gap in the curtains. ‘Actually, I suppose I also want to know what it will mean to us, to Syria…and what we need to do to survive here in the UK?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here,’ was his immediate, flippant answer. ‘Your generation have been very unlucky to follow my generation.’ 

After a couple of seconds’ contemplation, William got up, threw a couple of logs on the fire and then grabbed the discarded computer again, searching as he spoke.

‘Comparing relative temperatures in one region for a given mean temperature rise is well illustrated and readily available from the IPCC; I presume you’ve seen those coloured graphs of the world? Gaining understandings of just how hot, or when the heat will reach those temperatures and the resulting dangers, are difficult subjects to grasp. A few good books try to fill in the gaps, such as Six Degrees and The Last Generation. However, I have a different slant here that may interest you. There it is!’

After a bit of tinkering with his laptop and pleased with his find, he showed a table to Rhan on the screen.

‘This will not answer your questions directly, but it gives an engineer’s perspective on what we face. These are sets of opinions, mostly from engineers, that I’ve collected in surveys. You’ll see that they date from…ah yes, 2008 up to 2015. It may seem strange, but I think that the responses from these very small samples might be as close as you will get to answers for your questions.’

Rhan sat on the edge of her seat again, looking at a column of questions on one side of the table, with columns of percentage values next to the questions. The headers at the top of the table indicated different types of average and quartiles. It dawned on her that William had actually asked engineers to provide percentages as answers for around twenty different questions. She decided to concentrate on the most frequent responses while William started to explain what she was looking at.

‘The first questions just cover general issues, effectively asking whether they believe in global warming – around a third considered it a serious issue. That’s much higher than a random sample, but still lower than might be expected at a special lecture on the subject.’

Rhan grinned, wondering over the implications, but not interrupting. 

‘The last set of questions deal with professional approaches on what engineers should do about it. It’s the middle subjects that cover aspects of your areas of interest: temperature rise and the impact. For example, on migration…Question 4 covered displacement for a two-degree rise in temperature…the averaged answers indicate that between 10 and 20 percent of the world population will have to move – that’s around eight hundred million to one, and a half billion people. Does that sound plausible to you? I gather it’s a similar percentage to the migration from the Irish famine in the nineteenth century, when around 10 percent of the population moved, and just as many died.’

‘Ah yes, George sent me that figure last holiday,’ she replied. ‘The results seemed reasonable, even just considering the populations that will be affected by inundation from rising sea levels. Yet the numbers were provided by engineers who know nothing special?’

‘Absolutely, but engineers are used to assessing risks by plucking data from the air. The inundation of coastal areas will certainly be significant. Just look at the vulnerability of East Yorkshire and York itself once we have a few metres of rise. Yet even with such relatively obvious risks, there are again no moves to prepare slowly at negligible cost. Anyway engineers aren’t alone in having such concerns. I’ve done larger surveys among non-engineers – school kids and adults – and they produced similar results. The strange thing is that where we’ve been able to benchmark the engineers’ predictions – well, on ice melt – they turned out to be more accurate than the IPCC official consensus of expert advice!’

‘Really?’ Rhan asked, still not giving the results much credence. ‘Ah, these subjects cover engineers’ expected outcomes from temperature rises.’ She pointed at rows on the table.

‘You’ve got it! That question indicates that around a third of the world’s population would be at risk from 3° rise – that’s around three billion deaths!’

‘The same fraction as from the Black Death?’ Rhan suggested quickly. He nodded before continuing, pointing to the next relevant question.

‘But if you look at that question, once we get to 3°C, there is almost an even chance that temperatures will shoot up further to a 5° rise.’ He looked up to conclude. ‘Some scientists are only now, a decade or so later, starting to acknowledge that 4°C or more is now a very real possibility by 2100. Yet I sat on an engineering task force that recommended engineers should at least assess risks for 4° by 2040! As you point out, these are just engineering opinions, with or without positive feedback and tipping points, but…’ He paused, shrugging. ‘I’ve no data above 5°C, but the engineers thought that once we reach that temperature, less than half the population would survive.’

He pointed to the last outstanding question. Rhan responded immediately, as she had already been staring at thate result on the screen.

‘These are not good odds!’ she declared, as she moved her drink to one side to focus on the future prospects. ‘We are already set for rises of 2° or 3°C unless we find a magical cure for the atmosphere.’ Rhan sat forward, studying the data on the screen. ‘Once there, we could expect one in three people to die? Yet these survey results suggest there are groups of engineers who would give no better odds than the toss of a coin that we can stop global warming at 3°C of warming before we reach 5°. Then half of everyone will die.’

‘That’s what the opinions showed,’ William confirmed. ‘On the projections that I’ve read for 3° of warming, you wouldn’t want to see how much worse everything will get. The Amazon rainforest would be doomed, so further disaster there. The rains would move northward into Canada and that would be repeated all over the world. The productive land would be too hot to grow wheat, and the new moderate zones wouldn’t have adequate soils! Starvation would haunt most lands. Huge populations would be looking for food. Technology would have no chance against such changes in both nature and society. I think that things will be at least as bad as those opinions.’

‘My God!’ she muttered, going through the table slowly. ‘I suppose, if I was asked…I would suggest even worse figures! Many people, if not most, probably live in coastal cities around the world, or in regions that will be hit by severe drought, so I can see how most of the world would need to move. A death rate of half the world for 5° seems possible then, or perhaps probable. That leaves the question of when? When will this happen?’

She looked up, hoping for a simple answer. William answered indirectly.

‘Well, all I know is that 5° is now likely by 2100, and with the tipping points we discussed earlier, I think it’ll be sooner than that.’ He looked up, ready to answer Rhan’s next question.

‘So what did the engineers want to do?’ Rhan asked, looking expectantly at the laptop.

‘Well from my surveys – everything and nothing!’ He laughed suddenly and hollowly. ‘On the face of it they wanted engineers to be fully engaged and taking a lead, yet only a small percentage were prepared to take any meaningful measures!

‘As I mentioned, the earlier results suggested that around a third of respondents could actually be considered sceptics, as they denied that mankind was responsible for global warming! In the more recent surveys, the predicted timescales for the first Arctic ice melt moved into the distant future, even though they had almost the same evidence as you; so a significant portion was convinced that it wasn’t their problem and that we’ll have plenty of time to act, despite the evidence.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘That larger group of opinions was from a wider group of 650 non-engineers, with a high percentage of under-eighteens, and they gave similar results. The results weren’t that different – few actually advocated taking any action! Most climate events I’ve attended say the same – we just need to improve efficiency! Otherwise just carry on as before!’

There was a pause in the discussions while Rhan chewed her lip before continuing on a different tack.

 ‘So your data shows that half the world will kill the other half off, unless something extraordinary happens?’ she demanded bluntly. ‘Genocide, on an unprecedented scale!’

‘Well I think of it as progenicide,’ he suggested quietly, looking at her askance.

‘What?’ she asked, looking at him with a furrowed brow. 

‘Progenicide. I am afraid I decided we needed a new word. My generation, and yours to a lesser extent, inherited a wonderful, vibrant planet, yet we are quite prepared to pass on a doomed world to our children and grandchildren – our progeny. The gist of all these excuses is that our progeny is not deemed worth any effort by our generation. It is perhaps the first case of genocide against our own progeny. Progenicide is what I call it.’

‘Does that have any meaning?’ She smiled weakly, unsure of the direction of the conversation.

‘I suggest progenicide involves…’ He had to stop and think before continuing. ‘Acceptance or active, complicit participation in a lifestyle that will mean the death of our progeny. Even when either poor or rich people are aware of the implications of both overpopulation and global warming, or both, they are prepared to contribute to carbon emissions and add extra mouths to feed and let others in poor countries die for their short-term benefit. We know the lifespan of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so we know that, in the longer term, it will of course result in the death of our own children and grandchildren. Overwhelmingly throughout the world, we have chosen to carry on, regardless of the relatively modest changes that we need to adopt.’

Rhan nodded her recollection of William’s main suggestion of rationing on the previous day, while he continued in a slightly aggrieved voice.

‘Progenicide means that we’ve lost every shred of decency and morality, which used to be taken for granted in most societies. I think it’s the ultimate sin. We would happily kill others and let our own family suffer, just to avoid walking to work, catching a public bus or missing out on a flight to a different part of the world.’

‘Yes,’ she spoke slowly in her old-fashioned and slightly dramatic accent. ‘We discussed the possibility of an intergenerational conflict last term. It may be related to your idea of progenicide. Our friend, David, thought there would need to be wars to prevent people continuing to pump out greenhouse gases, regardless of the impact.’

‘Well I hadn’t conceived of anything quite as drastic as that,’ he conceded. ‘But I have no idea what stopping progenicide would involve. Bombing oil wells and pipelines might come eventually, but too late.’

‘Well in science-fiction worlds, like Alien or Avatar, there are always baddies,’ she responded semi-seriously. ‘They tend to place profit before the future of civilisation. George told me this morning of two scientists who wrecked a school initiative, but are there many engineers who would actively stand against action to reduce global warming?’

‘Oh yes – there are plenty of those in my industry!’ William asserted. ‘After all, we think we have a vested interest in using concrete and steel and very few want to change back to low-carbon techniques and architecture from a hundred years ago, no matter what danger we bring to the next generation.

‘Every other year I stand for election to my engineering committee to act for the climate – I generally get less than 5 percent of votes and come almost last. Yet when I joined, civil engineers claimed to control the natural environment!’ He grimaced. 

‘I was told there were massive procedures on sustainability,’ the student suggested.

‘Sorry,’ William responded sadly. ‘The idea of making structures low carbon in the critical short term never caught on! Instead, codes have been developed to allow projects to have big carbon footprints, yet gain sustainability awards based on future promised efficiencies and sustainable demolition in a century or so. As I said, even on projects such as the restoration of ancient buildings, no one wants to put back the low-carbon timber beams in the original sockets in case it could be mistaken for pastiche. They prefer to rip out the foundations and install brand-new concrete piles, pile caps, slabs and steel columns. On every project I have ever worked on there’s always someone to insist on steel or concrete. After decades of trying, I’ve still to construct a negative-carbon structure.’

‘I had wanted to ask about that,’ Rhan said. ‘Our lecturers continue to teach the old steel-and-concrete approaches. Only George notices.’

He nodded curtly. ‘I’m afraid that in recent years I have also been really disappointed by the way young engineers, just a few years older than you, vote against their own future.’

Rhan glanced at William, before confirming his fears.

‘I have had real trouble trying to find young people who would accept the concept of warming, never mind accept that they needed to take action. I suppose we are still strongly grounded in greenhush.’

William grunted his agreement just as George’s voice called out for supper.

‘Greenhush allows us to pretend that everything is fine,’ he continued. ‘People’s actions suggest that progenicide is a price worth paying if it allows everyone to just carry on as before, even if it’s just for just a few more years.’

He called to George through the closed door as he started to rise. ‘OK, we’re on our way!’

 As he bent down to tend the fire, Rhan quietly brought up the critical question.

 ‘What about my family here in the UK?’ she asked. ‘Will there be war here, and if so, when? Do you think Britain will become somewhere that everyone will fight in and over, if we are going to be less affected than most? Or can we just sit back and watch the rest of the world suffer?’

He looked up, only slightly surprised before answering after a short delay. He was leaning on the mantelpiece, enjoying the heat from the fire whose flames he had just dampened. ‘Well, in both the First and Second World Wars, the UK was said to be on the edge of starvation as supply ships had trouble getting through the submarine blockade. Since then, farmers produce more per hectare, but have then lost good land to developers, and the population has increased of course. I believe we produce around 60 percent of our food, so shortages could be expected within a few years, as previously productive regions such as California and South Australia have started to suffer already – more quickly than the UK.

‘It’s easy to imagine that even Britain would face hunger as soon as there’s a breakdown in the shipping-in of spare food from other countries, unless we start to prepare in the available time. Much of the best land in East Anglia and East Yorkshire are very vulnerable to sea-level rises, yet vast tracts of land that would enjoy a warmer climate, like on the moors here, are still stuck by feudal systems and the enclosures from two or three hundred years ago. There is no investment in land or in low-carbon food or products in the remaining proverbial “seven years of plenty”, so we will go hungry when the seven hundred years of famine hit us.’ He started putting his laptop away.

‘So!’ Rhan concluded, biting the inside of her cheek. ‘My sister and young cousins are almost certainly going to witness this turmoil.’

‘Well, four by 40 is possible – that is, 4°C by 2040 – it would mean things could get very unpleasant soon, but it could be slightly later. All discussions like this tend to end on a high note. It’s so much easier and nicer. But it’s also wrong to just hope for the best. It would be sensible to at least acknowledge that the worst could happen.’

‘At least I know,’ she added with a faint smile. ‘My parents would have been grateful to you for warning me. Thank you.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid that compassion and humanitarian help will fade quickly once the scale of the problem sinks in.’ 

‘And the danger looks like half the world population for 5° of warming?’ She tried to nail down their conservation as she grabbed her neglected glass and took a sip.

‘Yes but the danger is that 5° is still just a figure. Temperatures appear more likely to rise further and quicker if we repeatedly underestimate the problem.’

‘And 4° by 40! That is the scary possibilityint,’ Rhan declared, finally standing up.

‘Yup, we could save a lot of lives if we started to get ready for that,’ William responded positively. ‘And on that note,’ he turned and opened the door, ‘time for supper, don’t you think?’ He smiled as he let Rhan pass.

Chapter 27 – Blame Game                                                          

Rhan, speaking in a sombre tone with brow furrowed, continued the conversation as she and William left the room.

‘You have confirmed much of what I expected about warming, but I have no clear understanding of how we reached this dreadful situation. I just cannot understand how we can be almost irreversibly set on the way to 2°C of warming and several metres of sea-level rise, with all that entails for nearly everyone. Yet I have heard or seen so little discussion, and the subject is effectively taboo. How is this possible?’

‘Yea!’ Grace unexpectedly joined in the conversation as they entered the kitchen. ‘Even in New Scientist there’ve been months with hardly any articles on climate.’

Rhan glanced at her, trying to check whether she was being serious or was mocking her. Grace was leaning against the range, behind a place on the long oak kitchen table which was all set for the meal. Learning nothing from Grace, Rhan was pleased to exchange subtle smiles with George, whom she had missed over the past hour.

‘Well, perhaps we should settle before discussing that,’ her father responded, now also distracted by other things.

‘Oh no,’ moaned George. ‘Don’t tell me you still haven’t put the world to rights?’

 Once everyone was seated around the table and tucking into the meal, June allowed the conversation to drift back to the climate.

‘Rhan, it’s a shame you’re spending your last evening with us discussing such depressing subjects,’ she said. ‘We’re having another round of cards after supper, but in the meantime, did you find out all you need to know?’

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Rhan replied, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to dominate the conversation.’

‘Don’t be silly, this is obviously important, especially for you,’ said June. ‘George has explained what happened to your parents. I’m so sorry. I can understand your anxiety over changes in our society and how that could get worse once hard times set in. I think you’re right to be concerned.’

‘Yes my parents were early victims of the conflict. A shell hit our family home. My sister and I thought our parents had been cruel sending us here to Britain for school. But looking back, I can see how they viewed the dangers of civil war. Their action meant that my sister and I were actually the luckiest from our school in Aleppo. I am sorry to be a bore.’ She apologised again, feeling guilty for introducing such a controversial topic, but was pleased with herself for being able to talk about her parents’ death.

 ‘Well you needn’t try to solve everything on your last evening here. I hope this is only your first visit,’ June continued, glancing at her son. ‘Please come at least every holiday and treat this place as another home.’

‘Great idea!’ Grace exclaimed.

‘Well, I would love to try my skills at that card game we played last night. I will enjoy playing it with my cousins.’ Rhan couldn’t help smiling. ‘I have had kind offers to visit friends from other colleges – Claire, Esther and Chandra – but you have all made me feel very at home here and I would love to return. Perhaps I should plan ahead, and write all the engineering practicals in Arabic so George has to get me here to translate.’

‘You make me sound shallow!’ George protested. ‘I think you should take a full-time job sorting out stuff for next term.’

‘There is always something more immediately urgent than climate change.’ Rhan forced herself to bring the conversation back to the issue that was worrying her. ‘It’s usually something like writing up an overdue practical or packing to go away. Petty things get in the way so we simply ignore the big picture, even when we know it will effectively kill us. The strange thing is – those on the receiving end, those affected by drought and flooding – I bet they see even less of the underlying problems of climate and population.’

‘You know how it works,’ George reminded her. ‘It’s worse than that – the subject is taboo! No one wants to know.’ Then, glancing at his sister, he added, ‘Even Grace is pointing out the lack of media attention, as soon as moorland and forest fires are no longer headlines. We’re happy surviving one day at a time.’

 ‘It involves a “metaphysical disregard for reality”, or something like that,’ George’s father argued emphatically but with a self-critical laugh. ‘That was the phrase used in the book Wild Swans to describe how the Chinese followed Chairman Mao in the Cultural Revolution, regardless of logic and the laws of nature, with the result that millions quietly starved to death.’

‘Yup,’ George said, engaging with his specialist subject. ‘When I was in China, I saw the modern equivalent: miles upon miles of smoking blast furnaces that have now flooded the world with excess, high-carbon steel. But I think other countries, like Australia, are even more reckless by providing coal. They’ve sold their soul in a crazy dash to ruin both their country and the planet for short-term gains; same with the US and Canada and their dash for tar sands and shale gas. So, I’m sorry Rhan, but democracies are happy to elect leaders like Donald Trump just so they don’t have to listen to the likes of my old man.’

 ‘Rhan and I were just discussing this madness,’ his father carried on. ‘Despite warnings, we continue to stoke up global warming, which will now almost certainly create the perfect storm of misery and destruction on a scale that has hardly been seen since the K-T asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs.’

‘Oh come on, Will! You don’t believe that’s inevitable?’ June argued. ‘How come it’s only you who sees the danger? We’re slowly moving in the right direction, aren’t we? And the Paris Agreement targets will kick in at some point, perhaps only as the global warming target of 1.5°C flies past, but still. Did William tell you, Rhan, that he was there, in Paris, speaking for the World Federation of Engineers? It was December…was it 2015? Anyway there were no Christmas lights in Paris after dreadful terrorist massacres.’

‘Unfortunately, those climate targets from Paris were for the medium or long-term politics, but avoided any necessity for action in the here and now,’ William explained critically. ‘Long-term targets will not help Rhan and her generation, especially if those targets are being allowed to lapse.’

 ‘That’s my generation too!’ Grace chipped in. ‘Oh and George’s I suppose…’

‘The key problem,’ George went on with a resigned sigh, ‘is that no one intends to cut emissions, so policies are only agreed on that basis. The whole population would vote against any future, especially if a single ignorant voice or newspaper suggested there was the smallest chance that it would be our children rather than us that’ll pay the price.’

 ‘That’s what Rhan and I have been discussing, along with the power of greenhush,’ his father agreed. ‘We have no other viable plans, but we continue to reject the obvious advice. Option A is to hope it’ll all be fine. Option B is to find an excuse and let others bear the brunt. No one considers Option C, to stop making things worse.’

‘You’re being alarmist again!’ It was Grace this time telling her father off. He shook his head, rejecting her accusation.

‘You should have sat with Rhan when we were discussing the alarmist stuff,’ he replied.

‘Oh, poor Rhan!’ June interceded again. ‘Don’t let William dump responsibility for the whole world on your shoulders. We’re meant to be a scientifically aware nation with a questioning media, yet there is widespread apathy, as George points out. You can’t blame yourself. There’s no government, professional body or world religion that thinks they need to act, except William.’ At this, June smiled wryly. ‘So you need to keep a sceptical hat on too, Rhan.’

 ‘You mention failure of a questioning media,’ her husband added, either ignoring or failing to notice the mild dig. ‘I would go further and suggest that the media was, and still is, largely responsible for the news blackout.’

‘But why? Scare stories sell newspapers and grab listeners, don’t they?’ Grace couldn’t help querying, saving Rhan from asking a similar question. There were shrugs and exhalations around the table until, after finishing the last food on his plate, William related the story.

‘Well, once upon a time, following the 2007 IPCC report, there was widespread shock at what was in store for the planet. Climate scientists had, since the late eighties, been warning that we needed to cut carbon emissions straight away and drastically. Dreadful consequences were threatened, such as one degree of warming by 2035!’ he laughed. ‘We’ve had that rise, but in half that time – yet no one has blinked!

‘Anyway, as I remember it, there was much research and growing momentum for action on many fronts. It was generally accepted that new industries needed to be set up with grants. High-carbon producers would be made to pay. Nearly all the top politicians of every description acknowledged the danger, even if many of the voters were unconvinced; it was all just an Inconvenient Truth, as that film was called.’

He stopped and looked around the table, surprised by the lack of interruption, so he continued.

‘As I mentioned to you earlier Rhan, the 2007 UN report was pathetically weak in my opinion. It left out the big tipping point or cascade risks and painted a very rosy picture. I expected the media to condemn the publication as dangerous. But I keep overestimating society’s common sense when it comes to climate change.

‘Anyway, a few weeks later, as I recall it, a Channel 4 programme called The Great Green…no, The Great Global Warming Swindle, or something like that, suggested that reducing carbon emissions could be expensive. They claimed that the concerns were not absolutely proven. They blatantly extracted edited sentences from longer statements by climate scientists, so their overall meaning was reversed. There were cries of annoyance over the next few days by their unwilling interviewees – but too late. The TV programme initiated a well-orchestrated and well-funded sceptical backlash, and a vehement campaign of widespread climate denial was unleashed.

‘This quickly began to stymie purposeful action. Greenhush was in full bloom. The barrage of criticism against green schemes struck the chord that the public wanted to hear – it suddenly became acceptable to deny the whole concept of global warming. Colleagues, family and friends – even those with scientific training – rejected the whole science. Complete victory to the sceptics. They won. Any meaningful discussion of global warming was effectively silenced in every sphere, and still is.’

‘But it’s mentioned quite often now,’ June protested. ‘OK, not as often as William wants, and they don’t go round telling everyone they’re doomed, but it’s in the media every week or so. What annoys you most is any suggestion that we have plenty of time, isn’t it William? But there used to be complete silence or denial!’

There was an immediate response from her husband.

‘God yes, most key presenters on the BBC and especially Radio 4 were influential in the denial of global warming,’ William responded, becoming more animated. ‘The BBC admitted that the subject of climate change was just too hot to handle, so they peddled the denial message along with everyone else. Even now, there are no real discussions or programmes on it, are there? Some years it has just been nature programmes occasionally mentioning it in passing, but I think even David Attenborough had problems.’

‘William, tell Rhan about the Today programme on Radio 4,’ June explained, although Rhan nodded, indicating her knowledge of it. William grinned before obliging.

‘Well they once pulled the plug on a scientist who tried to warn people about the melting of the Arctic ice. They somehow thought that the scientist was going to say the sea ice was growing, and panicked when he said the opposite. I started taking notes whenever I heard global warming discussed, but it was only a few times a year.’

Rhan turned in her seat, her interest piqued. Grace, who was about to say something, decided better of it.

‘When forced to discuss climate news, the more usual approach involved the interviewer getting the scientist to admit there was some scope for error in the science,’ William continued, pausing to concentrate on passing the vegetarian lasagne around for second helpings. ‘The interviewer would then introduce a climate denier with no relevant credentials – often Nigel Lawson, the ex-chancellor, who was prepared to state emphatically that there was absolutely no risk or danger, that the Arctic sea ice would recover, that the IPCC was stupid, and that everyone could ignore the problem. Lawson’s book, An Appeal to Reason, took the more logical yet terrifying approach. It acknowledged that climate change must be taking place, if that’s what the scientists said. But he suggested that the next generation were just not worth any effort by our generation! In other words, the next generation could sort out our mess.’

There was a series of non-appreciative comments from around the table.

‘Yet there were no complaints?’ asked Rhan, cutting through the noise.

‘Well, Nigel Lawson didn’t actually say that on the radio, did he?’ June explained. ‘The usual approach was for presenters to use a special, bored and resentful manner when speaking about climate change, but they have just ignored the subject whenever possible, just to wind William up! Items of news were read without comment. It was all very effective at maintaining the virtual news blackout.’

‘Well I have also noticed that the subject is never really covered,’ Rhan replied. ‘I have never once heard any climate sceptic being questioned about the reliability of their previous predictions.’

‘You’re right! Isn’t that strange?’ June agreed. ‘No programme has ever considered the former assurances – the sceptics have never had to answer for their brash, negligent statements.’

‘There’ll be a day when they face the music,’ Grace said aggressively. ‘No one can make reckless statements, resulting in disaster and get away, scot-free.’

‘Well, it would be reassuring to know that every statement that is proved to be inaccurate, and every advocate of inaction that proves to be dangerous, will be called to account one day,’ Rhan said emphatically, supporting Grace.

‘Any bold idiot betting with lives and misery should pay the cost if they are wrong,’ Grace went on. ‘I bet the future won’t be kind to them. Anyone siding with mass death for future generations will pay, one way or the other.’

‘Yes, all rules of current justice might change, once things get nasty,’ her father concurred. ‘With properties uninsurable, useless twenty-five-year mortgages and maps needing to be redrawn every ten years for the new coastline, yesterday’s sceptics won’t be able to pretend they knew better. I’ve read some of their books; they have much to answer for.’

‘Well.’ William’s daughter was now giving vent to the injustice to her generation. ‘Just for good measure, both the sceptics and those who listened to them will all be conveniently dumped on an oil baron’s low-lying island, without any means of contributing more greenhouse gas emissions, to wait for the tide to rise…or not if they’re so confident of their assumptions about sea levels.’

‘Bit late by then,’ George responded in a fatalistic voice. ‘It would be great if climate deniers were declared outcasts, but I don’t suppose people can be prosecuted for condemning their grandchildren. Yet how could they claim the next generation can tackle something in a way and on a scale that’s currently inconceivable? To stop the disaster, we should’ve started capturing carbon back in the 1990s, when I was in my cot!’

‘You are right!’ Rhan stated crossly, putting down both her knife and fork more forcefully than she intended. ‘As if we will have the luxury to somehow recapture the huge amounts of carbon released by the previous generation. We will be busy with all hands to the pumps, dealing with droughts, rising seas, mass migration, loss of the best agricultural land, and Mediterranean temperatures – even here. That carbon was stored in fossil fuels over millions of years – does anyone think it can be plucked out of the air and re-stored within a few years?’ Rhan stopped, suddenly realising she needed more information. ‘Has there been any carbon capture and storage?’ she asked, turning to William, who had an answer to hand while Rhan continued to eat.

‘I have read the odd article,’ he reported. ‘I hear that some carbon dioxide captured from a few chemical processes has been pumped into an old saline cavern or an old oil well – I forget the details. There was some good news as the CO₂ was quickly absorbed by the rock. So carbon storage works on a limited scale, but it certainly cannot be plucked out of the air. So the easy answer is no – we have no idea how your generation is expected to capture all that carbon in the atmosphere and store it at a rate faster than it took to release! But as pointed out by sceptics, carbon dioxide is still not even classified as a pollutant. So if there’s little or no compunction or incentive, why bother?’

‘Daft isn’t it!’ June added. Grace just tutted.

Seeing that Rhan had now finished, George got up to finish making the custard while his father started collecting the dirty plates. His mother remained seated, keeping their guest company, but Rhan noted that she supervised from a distance.

‘I read the other month,’ George said over his shoulder, while he stirred the pan, ‘that to store carbon, nature utilises quantum physics in the photosynthesis process. The leaves do something that prevents electrons simply reverting to where they came from. Even then, it would take nature thousands of years. We can’t do that with our current technology.’

‘The more we learn, the more complex we find even the simplest aspects of life on this planet,’ his father re-joined. ‘We cannot challenge God yet.’

‘So you are all confirming what I feared,’ Rhan stated in a tone that was both triumphant at the acknowledgment, and exasperated at the injustice. ‘We are being given an impossible task, which gets harder every year.’

‘Crazy!’ exclaimed Grace, which made Rhan wonder how much even George’s family had discussed the issues previously.

‘It’s a ridiculously optimistic pretence,’ George complained, once he had dumped a hot dish on the mats in the middle of the table with a heavy thud, anxious to withdraw his hands from the inadequate oven gloves. ‘There is no real interest anywhere in controlling temperatures on this planet, so it’s just a useful fabrication that the next generation can put things right. Promises, such as Paris 2015, are based on doing nothing when it would have some effect, yet agreeing that someone, sometime, should take action in a few years’ time, when it’s all too late.’ He returned to the custard and muttered something to his mother about a suitable serving jug. William smiled and nodded.

 ‘We are giving our children and grandchildren limited choices,’ Rhan said bleakly after a short pause, ticking off the options on her fingers. ‘A sentence of an early death; a life of killing; or a life of fleeing and running away, hoping for mercy from others. Just because London feels safe behind the Barrier…’ She stopped, suddenly realising that she had no need to talk and because George was now serving up what he called an apple charlotte and custard.

‘My, that’s magnificent, George!’ his father enthused, suggesting that George might be showing off his domestic skills.

Rhan eyed the sugared bread and jug of custard in front of her with interest. However, once the practical details of serving had been resolved, she returned to the serious issue.

 ‘We were talking earlier about how the sceptics managed to win the technical arguments on climate change, without any science basis. Is that still the case? Are all arguments for inaction on a non-technical basis?’

‘Yeah, what happened?’ Grace was showing interest, despite her previous objections.

 There were a few seconds of surprise at the sudden change in direction of the conversation, before William responded thoughtfully.

‘Well, I suppose that the next aspect of the battle involved the sceptics moving on to the attack. It’s now beginning to look like they had large, secret financial backing. They targeted and ruined the credibility of a few leading climate scientists in cleverly publicised campaigns.’

‘Oh yes. It was the University of East Anglia, wasn’t it?’ June filled in more detail to William’s recollections. ‘An academic was accused of not keeping adequate records, yet his predictions proved correct within months.’

 ‘The attacks were so successful that they resulted in scientists quickly learning to keep their heads down.’

‘All the publicity was one-way, which suited the media,’ June added.

‘Would you believe that even the Church of England, back in 2012, asked me not to rock the boat?’ William said. ‘I was collecting data for that Christian Census on Climate Change event – Rhan and I discussed it earlier.’

‘Oh, was that when George and I distributed service sheets in York Minster?’ Grace enquired. ‘That was fun.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ her father replied. ‘A quarter of responses wanted all-out action by Christian churches, a quarter were sceptical and wanted half measures, and the rest fell between. Anyway, one of the Church’s top climate change advisors was so scared that sceptics would make use of any publicity or data we produced, he actually asked me to stop the ecumenical initiative!’ William shook his head and opened his hands in frustration. ‘So the person responsible for publicising the evils of global warming was actively suppressing discussion of the moral issues. That is probably the best example of definite greenhush – the Church’s guardian angels turned to stone.’

‘Or evil?’ Grace suggested. William nodded and laughed.

‘Didn’t the archbishop then give a sermon that attacked your efforts?’ June asked, recklessly priming her husband.

‘Yes, it was shocking,’ William replied, smiling ruefully. ‘He said that as Christians we shouldn’t look ahead, or measure the height of the mountain until we reach its summit. It might not be as high as we thought. It was God’s problem, not ours!’

‘Oh yes, that was it. Awful!’ June was now more cross than her husband.

George joined in the attack. ‘I know it was a Catholic-led event, but don’t many of the top bishops, and other denominations or religions, effectively have the same utterly destructive approach? As long as we stick to policies such as no birth control, it’s no great sin to ruin the planet and cause the death of billions of poor people and species that we are meant to look after. Overpopulation is a complete no-go area for discussion, yet goes hand-in-glove with climate change to ruin creation.’

‘I have friends who have extreme Christian faiths – and they refuse to worry about climate change,’ Grace confirmed. ‘It’s all “God’s will”.’

‘I have come across that approach at Oxford,’ Rhan agreed. ‘They seem to like the idea that everyone will suffer. However, I joined a very sympathetic Methodist church in Sunderland, which actively campaigns for climate justice.’

‘Oh yes, the Methodists, and the Quakers, seem very progressive, along with some of the Baptists,’ June added.

‘Absolutely!’ her husband endorsed her opinion. ‘I attended a brilliant conference put on by the Quakers up here. ‘I can claim that I have actually seen a Quaker quake! She was a scientist from Somerset or somewhere in the south and had travelled all this way for the day-long conference in York. She broke into tears as she told our group about the life and choices she foresaw for her young grandchildren growing up in a heated world.

‘We Catholics have the Justice and Peace movement, which used to be very focused,’ he continued. ‘I’ve lectured on the Pope’s 2015 encyclical, which repeated a key question from New Zealand bishops over whether it is a mortal sin to contribute emissions that we know will kill people. I’m afraid the encyclical hardly gave an emphatic answer.’

‘Stupid, isn’t it,’ June sighed. ‘If we don’t care about how many die from our indifference, is that better or worse than direct murder?’

‘Very few individuals are aware or have calculated how many deaths their personal or professional carbon emissions are likely to cause,’ William declared. Rhan sat up and looked at him intently, obviously interested in this new line.

‘Oh come on,’ George complained. ‘Don’t start telling us more bad news!’

‘I estimated, back in 2010,’ William persevered, ‘that emissions of twelve tonnes of carbon dioxide per year would kill one other person. The answer felt about right at the time, but that figure will be much worse now, because the timescales for action are so much shorter and carbon concentrations so much worse.’

‘Twelve tonnes per death?’ Rhan repeated.

‘Well if I recalculated it now, few of us would be innocent of murder or manslaughter. Catching an aeroplane, using coal, or – if you’re an engineer, architect or developer – by choosing to use concrete or steel instead of a low-carbon timber alternative. It would all be considered criminal in a just world. I have heard that structural engineers have a carbon footprint of around a thousand tonnes each per year, which could easily be the case. I can save tens of thousands of tonnes if I can prove and persuade a client that a building doesn’t need to be knocked down and reconstructed, but can just be altered instead.’

‘Maybe, but it’s just too socially unacceptable to even notice,’ George suggested. ‘As I keep saying, it’s impossible to think that anyone but a complete nutter would stop flying, no matter what the cost to others.’

‘Yes – I am starting to see that!’ Rhan murmured. ‘I had already heard that it one thousand tonnes a year would need five hundred dedicated vegans to offset each structural engineer! It’s so wrong.’

‘Of course it is.’ George hammered home his point. ‘We will convince ourselves that it’s inevitable and normal for the climate to get worse and worse, but that it’s nothing to do with us. Just look at the way we destroy other bits of the environment such as the fish stocks. I mean, did anyone take the blame when overfishing wrecked the nineteenth-century annual North Sea herring run, with its whole industry and way of life for families around the British Isles? I presume it was just regarded as a temporary poor harvest that never recovered – just one of those things. Dealing with changing weather and stopping refugees from fleeing are becoming everyday parts of life. People will never admit that we have a problem because that would involve admission of guilt. It’s just not going to happen.’

‘No way!’ Grace was horror-struck. ‘Sooner or later it will be taken seriously! Then the sceptics will be in trouble.’

‘I wonder if we can only start to address issues when we have someone else that we can personally blame,’ her father suggested. ‘So far it has worked the wrong way round; we blame the Australians, the Chinese and the Americans, but they refuse to even acknowledge the problem. We can’t punish them, so the process doesn’t work.’

‘And they presumably blame Britain for starting and enforcing the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century.’ Rhan finished off the sentence, recalling several conversations with her friends. ‘We discussed this at college, didn’t we George?’

George nodded, playing with the spoon in his empty bowl.

‘This is a scandal that will have a major effect on everyone,’ June pointed out. ‘It’s not going to be just superficial to the majority, is it?’

‘Yeah well, child abuse, phone-hacking and such scandals, all took time to “blow up” as the scale of the problem was gradually exposed,’ George acknowledged. ‘Maybe it would help if the media had someone definite to blame so they can then see the problem!’

‘Then it’ll be far more vicious than anything previously seen,’ Grace suggested. When no one else spoke, she continued. ‘It’s science-fiction stuff! I wonder if our civilisation will survive. A disaster like this and the scale of the scandal should send ripples forward and backward in time.’ She smiled and added, ‘I’m joking!’

Rhan looked at the girl and nodded, appreciating Grace’s point.

‘Well, I think you’re right,’ William said, also taking it seriously. ‘It should be possible to see this looming in the future from our past stupidity.’

‘Well the blame will be easy,’ Grace blurted out more confidently. ‘The records will all be there! Articles by bullying and uncaring journalists, high spenders on fuels and designers of Dad’s hated high-carbon buildings…whatever. The culprits can’t escape the jaws of time.’

‘Each flight ticket,’ George suggested, ‘should have a warning: “This flight may be used in evidence against you.” It’ll be impossible for anyone, or any company, to claim “not guilty”, won’t it?’

‘A vengeful generation!’ June said, surprised. ‘I suppose it makes a change from apathetic social media watchers,’ she added, smiling. ‘The legal issues could involve things like, “Who should have known what and when?” I suppose that no one capable of booking a flight could claim they knew nothing about climate change, just because they chose to ignore the warnings.’

‘Yeh, they’ll pay for it!’ Grace was now very gung-ho.

George could not resist joining his sister. ‘Agree. The crime could easily be considered too awful to be allowed to go unpunished. There’ve been plenty of examples of retrospective laws in the international courts. Today’s respected leaders of society will be in real trouble.’

‘Well you two have changed your mocking tune!’ June accused her children as she thrust some of the pudding bowls at George to load into the dishwasher.

‘No. Just because we think it right that polluters pay, it doesn’t mean we have to listen to Pa going on about it all the time,’ Grace responded drily.

 ‘Hang on!’ her father retaliated. ‘I detect some major hypocrisy here. Your generation is much more interested in adding to carbon levels than cutting them. I give annual lectures to undergraduates and each year I’m amazed at the apathy. I just wish your generation would learn to engage effectively! You need to sort them out Rhan!’

‘Well, sorry Dad, but your generation is going to get all the blame,’ Grace argued with new vitriol.

‘Well, I concede that there are few in my generation who are blameless,’ William continued as he went to fill the kettle. ‘Even the most ardent advocates for action to save the world pull their punches when it matters to avoid being considered alarmist.’

You can’t blame scientists for being sensitive to attacks by sceptics,’ June intervened.

‘But many are now stupidly optimistic!’ There was much clattering as William stopped talking while he loaded a cafetiere with coffee. ‘Grace, can you pass the coffee cups?’

 ‘The most surprising aspect to me,’ Rhan said, pausing while a cup was placed in front of her, ‘has been how many individual scientists, engineers and academics deny the issue. In a lecture attended by many from all four year groups of our Engineering course, only George had the courage to stand up and point out the obvious. Did you hear that he got into trouble with the Engineering Department, who had brought in a concrete expert to tell us about sustainability?’

Rhan looked around the table and saw blank looks and shaking heads, so continued with her acclaim.

‘He pointed out that the use of concrete could not be sustainable and was only going to make the problem of global warming worse. It was clear that he was the only one in the whole department, including the staff and fourth-year students, who knew what he was talking about.’

‘Good for you, George!’ his mother praised.

‘My God, George – you stood up against climate change!’ his sister was shocked.

‘Well I never!’ George’s father rubbed his hands. ‘After all your abuse about me being a foolish crank!’

‘Yeah well, it was a big mistake,’ George said, deflating his built-up status. ‘It was just the blatant lies and hypocrisy that wound me up.’

‘Looking back, I can see why you thought, or still think, that our generation are quite happy to be witless, ignorant victims,’ Rhan mused.

‘I suppose the fantasy computer games generation would hardly be the obvious candidates to think that the environment beyond the window has any relevance,’ June joined the sad considerations. ‘But George, you clearly influenced at least one person!’ She glanced at Rhan, who blushed and took the opportunity to stand up to help clear the table.

As she helped load the dishwasher, Rhan asked something she had not entirely understood.

‘Our tutor told George off, because the university was following approaches at the professional intuitions. So what did that mean, do you think?’

Rhan realised that a new dispute about taking out the dustbin and fetching logs for the fire was occupying George, Grace and June, which meant that little attention was now being given to their conversation.

 ‘Cards in five minutes!’ Grace called out over the clatter of cutlery and crockery as she left the kitchen to prepare the game.

‘Oxford engineers probably just follow the take-no-action stance of the main institutions,’ William suggested, ignoring the summons.

‘So it has nothing to do with George’s explanation, that Oxford is stuck in the past?’

‘Not in that instance,’ he replied with a hollow laugh. ‘Oxford has many leading climate departments and institutions, as it happens. I’m afraid that engineers also convince themselves that global warming isn’t real and is no threat to the way they operate.’

‘Could engineers be persuaded to save the world?’ Rhan asked, quickly receiving a hearty laugh in response from the old engineer, who was struggling to clean a large baking tray.  

‘No. It would only happen if there was genuine money to pay them, together with threats of harsh lawsuits for any emissions that will kill people in the future. On the Thames Barrier project to stop London flooding, we were paid three times the going rate as an incentive to get it finished before the water arrived!’

‘Oh, he’s not telling you about his time working from boats and tower cranes on the Thames, is he Rhan?’ George was back in disruptive mode. ‘Dad saved London, don’t you know?’

‘But only just in time, I was trying to say,’ William retorted from his station at the sink. Then, ignoring his son, he added, ‘Would you mind passing that last pan Rhan?

‘I’ve had no doubts about climate change after first seeing glacier melt in New Zealand in 1985. Yet, after more than thirty years of clear evidence, I’m afraid that engineers show absolutely no signs of even slowing down contributions to greenhouse gases. We use ever-increasing carbon emissions, in bigger, more imposing buildings, construction of airports for more aircraft, and rail tracks for trains to travel faster. The glass-fronted building designs will be unsuitable in the expected heatwaves, and recent new flood defences will be far too low within a couple of decades.

‘As I said earlier, I’m afraid there’ll be an infinite amount of work for you to save the planet if you go into civil engineering, Rhan!’

The door flew open; Grace was standing there, obviously no longer prepared to join the conversation.

‘Come on, time for cards! You must’ve worked out how the whole world will be ruined by now.’

‘Good timing!’ her father responded. ‘We clearly live in interesting times, so let’s finish on that.’

‘Come on Rhan.’ George grabbed Rhan round the waist and lifted her away from the drying up. ‘Grace is right,’ he proclaimed. ‘If you can’t fix the world in two hours of conversation, it’s not worth saving.’

Rhan glanced at the worried face of June, and decided not to struggle. Laughing, she passed the damp tea towel to the now smiling June as she was carried from the room.

 ‘Well that was a lovely and most interesting meal.’ Rhan thanked her hosts as she pushed her hair back into place under her headscarf as soon she was dropped outside the kitchen. ‘It is disappointing to have it confirmed that nowhere is going to be safe, but it puts my anger at universities into perspective.’

‘Well, I think we need more anger if we are to save anything and anyone!’ William suggested.

‘Rubbish!’ Grace responded emphatically, suddenly thrusting a box of chocolates into Rhan’s arms. ‘Anger’s an emotion caused by lack of chocolate. Luckily, Mum told me to bring these to have with the cards.’

Chapter 28 – Sunderland Star                                                              

‘Try pulling the third stroke slightly further but get that blade out fast, Number 3…yes that’s good. Well done to everyone though, that is really coming together. We have some impressive acceleration.’

The college rugby boat was practising the first few strokes of a race. Rhan was teaching them a new technique that she had learnt just a few days before in Roger’s coaching with the junior Oxford crews. It involved the initial short strokes required to accelerate the boat from standstill to movement before the normal full strokes could be effective. The start of the race was particularly crucial, as Rhan had discovered in the previous term in the chaotic bump races at the lower divisions. She saw no reason to teach the traditional approach if Roger’s technique was better.

‘OK. Hold water. Let’s see three more starts. Take a stroke, bow. Fine. Ready. Steady. Go!’

It was pleasant in the boat. It was Rhan’s first day back at her college – and also her first day of ease after a week of strenuous rowing, both at the university junior squad camp, and in two days of trials with the National team. Before that, she’d started to make friends and had enjoyed training with the Sunderland club, where she jumped from boat to boat wherever there was a slot.

She smiled to herself at the recollection of her reception back at the Sunderland club. Two days after leaving George in Yorkshire, she had presented herself at a summer open day. She hadn’t seen any of the veterans she knew, but guessed the identity of the treasurer, Bob, to whom she handed her sponsorship letter. It had offered to pay club fees and expenses up to £500 for the next three months.

‘OK luv. Ah’ll just get me glasses, but talk to oor Becky at that table first, will yu?’

Rhan had duly approached a woman who was sorting through lists.

‘Rowed afore?’ Becky asked, glancing up at the unusually tall girl, who nodded. ‘How much?’ was Becky’s obvious response.

Rhan gave a convoluted answer about previous experience.

 ‘So yu’ve nay more ‘n six month of rowing!’ Becky announced triumphantly. ‘Fine. We’ll find a place for you in a novice boat if yu pass y’ fitness and the like.’

‘My coach…ergometer results…’ Rhan had quailed pathetically at the prospect of arguing with the officious Becky about her experience and the sets of fitness statistics she had logged. With a defeated sigh, she had turned away and sat down.

‘Fuckin ’ell!’ shouted the treasurer a few minutes later, waving Rhan’s letter and startling the five other young people who were either signing up or helping with the novices. ‘Excuse me French, but does this say what I think it says? Are you in the National squad? And yu ganna muck in wi’ us?’

‘No, I’m only in trials for the squad.’ Rhan had felt very aware that she was the centre of attention, but found it better than being ignored and dismissed. ‘And I suppose I actually joined your club last December, the day you broke your foot. I replaced you in the veteran’s four. Can you take what I owe from the sponsorship?’

‘Orr, watch out Becky!’ Bob had warned in good humour. ‘She’s trouble! I ’avn’t ’ad nowt but gobshite from mi old crew since she upped off back to college! They want ‘er back in my place!’

‘Hold water! Ready. Stroke, bow. Hold. Right – ready, steady, go!’ Rhan, huddled in her dark coat, spoke only quietly into the microphone.

Oxford on the first Saturday before term was warm, especially after Sunderland. It was fun to be lazily coxing and coaching the Rugby Eight again, although the river was ridiculously busy on this first weekend. Finding a quiet spot to practise the starts had been difficult with so many college crews training for the Summer Eights.

Rhan was beginning to take a measure of pride in the eight burly blokes in front of her. They would be in a relatively lowly division, but they had strength and were starting to gain enough skill to apply their energy effectively. With a new lightweight cox they should do very well.

‘Last try, then carry on with a slow and measured “power ten”. Ready. Steady. Go!’

A familiar voice, amplified, drifted only slowly into her consciousness before she sat bolt upright in alarm. There in front of them lay the college First Eight, close to the bank, receiving the same instructions from the towpath above that she had just passed on to her crew. The First Eight were being instructed by their new professional coach, and Rhan’s university trainer, Roger. He was standing just off the towpath, holding his bike in one hand, megaphone in the other, cap tilted back off his head as usual. Rhan pulled her headscarf forward, thanking her luck that he’d never seen her covered up, and adjusted the boat’s course to pass by at a distance.

Roger, however, had other ideas once he spotted the matching college blades. He laid his bike down. ‘Hold on a minute – you must be the Second Eight are you? I saw you practising starts back there – so let’s see how the two boats compare, shall we?’

‘Ease the oars!’ Rhan breathed quietly into the microphone, while Richard, the captain of the First, explained to Roger that they were just the Fourth – the recently assembled rugby crew – rather than the Second Eight. Nevertheless, Roger soon had them manoeuvring alongside the First Eight for a competitive racing start. Rhan found it easy to keep her back to Roger while the crew looked up with interest at the man who was being paid to work miracles over the next few weeks.

She kept a steely silence as Roger shouted, ‘Ready, steady, go!’

Kim, the First Eight cox, screamed encouragement at her crew. The Fourth Eight knew what was wanted and needed no encouragement to show off.

The First Eight had obviously just made the transition to the new starting technique under Roger’s instruction, while most of Rhan’s rugby crew had learned it from scratch that morning and had become relatively proficient at the short, sharp, choppy pulling of the oars. She felt herself flush with both pride and embarrassment to see how quickly they kicked their boat into motion. It got worse – Rhan’s heart sank; this was not meant to happen!

‘OK, hold! Let’s try that again,’ Roger ordered, none too pleased with the result.

After three starts, it was apparent that it was no fluke, and that the First Eight were still the slower boat. On the third attempt, there was no order to hold, and Rhan quietly directed the first power-ten strokes. It was only after five or six strokes that the more proficient First boat started to close the gap.

‘OK, hold it, hold it!’ Roger called. He’d clearly meant to stop them much earlier, and he had to collect his bike and catch up the twenty or so metres while the two crews hugged the bank to let other boats pass. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked, dismounting and letting his bike fall into the long grass again, his cap now pulled well down against the glare of the water.

‘We’re just getting used to your new technique,’ explained Richard, trying to justify the First Eight’s performance. ‘We just need a bit more practice at it. It doesn’t seem as good as the old method of starting.’

‘Mind you,’ Gareth goaded Richard in his sing-song Welsh accent, ‘it was only half an hour ago that we learnt how to start!’

‘Sorry Richard. I just think I’m missing something important here. You see, the Fourth are already using that new technique…which you suggest is not as fast. They’re beating me at my own brand-new game! So, either it’s not so new…or there’s something going on…this Rugby Eight with a heavier boat…and you’ve said only a few weeks on the water for most of them…with little coaching…yet, they’ve just mastered it.’

His rambling musings s subsided, while both crews listened in a silence only broken by the occasional lap of water against the two boats. All felt uneasy under the judgement and incoherent statements of this strange new coach.

Roger was now peering hard at Rhan below him – she could tell by his stance, even though from beneath her scarf she only cast the occasional sideways glance and looked up no higher than his feet. He usually kept his thoughts well hidden, but he evidently had other intentions today as he continued his outspoken review.

 ‘Yet this Fourth Eight…must have had superior training…and from my squad…Bar?’ Rhan could almost hear his mind working it out. ‘Claire said “this college had hidden depths”, didn’t she?’

Everyone was looking up at the coach, talking to himself, using names no one knew. It worked. Rhan gave in and also glanced back up into his face on the towpath behind; she could not suppress a slight smile.

‘Glory be! Thank you Lord!’ Roger exclaimed. He actually pulled off his cap at this point and hit it against his leg in excitement. He rotated on the spot, rubbing his forehead as he turned, so he was ready to address the college captain, his effective employer. He was back to his usual semi-secretive manner.

‘Right Richard! I’m beginning to see a way that your college can avoid humiliation. As you saw, the Fourth, after just a week or so on the water, can beat the First, with a heavier boat, heavier oars, and while dragging a rather overgrown cox as extra useless ballast.’ Rhan watched as several of her crew raised their heads at the abusive language, but the coach continued without much pause. ‘So Captain, if you want me to produce an eight that won’t get bumped down the river, it can be done, but it needs the cooperation of the whole boat club. I need the very best available crew. Is that agreed?’

There were one or two sad nods from Richard and others in the First Eight.

‘No, I’m sorry, but this needs to be agreed by all of you here!’ Roger demanded forcibly, no longer the bumbling academic. There were more nods and calls of agreement this time. The First Eight calls were reluctant, while members of the Rugby Eight suddenly fancied their chances.

‘I’ll try again. This time, please raise your arm if you agree with your captain that I can select the crew that I want. Sorry, we have a mountain to climb, so it’s all or nothing for me. Raise your arm if you agree!’ This time Rhan saw universal assent, including from Kim, the other cox. Rhan’s arms were down, grasping the sides of the boat, but no one noticed her.

All were now looking impatiently up at Roger, who was still waiting. Only Rhan knew why he waited. There was silence, which was getting very awkward again, but still they waited. There was a slight roaring in Rhan’s ears. What would happen if she agreed? Everything would change. She would lose control. Her two or three separate lives would clash, and she would be exposed. Yet, she could become someone of influence. She felt that she was on the edge of a long drop. Now was her chance. She looked up, feeling slightly sick, looking at the trees beyond Roger. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the coach. She nodded just a fraction and glanced at the coach to see if that was enough.

‘Good. See you back at the boathouse,’ Roger proclaimed immediately.

Rhan mechanically gave the instructions that set them off behind the First team. The slight breeze started to clear her head. Feeling a bit emotional, she addressed the microphone.

‘Come on; let’s have some gentle but firm and steady rowing. This is the last time that you will row together, so let’s see what you have learnt.’

On the edge of tears, she recalled Roger’s comments about her being useless ballast and started laughing. Her laughter was perhaps not so silent, because George, most of the way down the boat, and despite the risk to the balance, peered round the rowers between them.

 ‘Don’t take it personally about the ballast, Rhan; that weird coach doesn’t know how much we owe you, it wasn’t personal.’

‘It certainly was personal!’ she muttered to herself, forgetting again that it would be picked up through the microphone.  

There was growing chaos back at the boathouse. The Second Eight had been about to set off in their boat and the Schools’ Eight was waiting to take over the rugby team’s shell for the afternoon. The two crews leaving the water waited to hear their fate after stacking their oars and stowing all but the First Eight boat. Most of the crews were crowded around their captain, Richard. Roger was standing alone, talking on his mobile, which gave him a chance to wander past Rhan and speak to her without much attention.

‘Right, Bar. Sorry to mess up your secret, but can you slip upstairs and prepare your ideal crew? I’ll select the stroke.’

She gave him an ironic smile. ‘OK, but we need members of the Second Eight and Schools’ Eight too. The Schools’ Eight will need to be persuaded.’

‘Good, leave them to me,’ he said as she walked towards the boathouse, and he exchanged a few words with Pat, the boatman, before making an announcement.

‘Right! Schools’ Eight and Second Eight, upstairs if you don’t mind! I need a word with you.’

Rhan noted that George had been watching her from the other side of the large boathouse door. She gave him a short smile as she retreated inside, where she found a blunt pencil, an old envelope and a quiet corner in the empty bar above the boathouse to start working out her ideal crew. She couldn’t help listening to Roger through the lightweight timber partition as he addressed the other two Eights and their coxes, sitting on benches in the adjacent changing room. She presumed everyone else was hanging around downstairs or on the riverbank.

‘Thanks for letting me speak to you.’ Roger’s diffident yet persuasive voice sounded ideal, Rhan thought. ‘I don’t know any of you, and you may not have heard about me. I’m Roger Potts. I’ve been a senior assistant coach to the university, and over the next two months, I’ve been employed by your college to get your First Eight through the Eights Week bumps. A list of the best available crew is being prepared, and I believe that some of you will be selected.

There was scuffling and murmurs, while Roger presumably drew breath.

‘Well done to members of the Second, but I need to address the Schools’ Eight crew. I appreciate that your priority in your last year has been to get the best degree you can this summer. I have also seen why you haven’t thought it worthwhile to row in the First Eight! There was nothing to gain and, let’s face it, a strong chance that the First Eight would be bumped four times in a humiliating plummet out of the top division.’

Roger’s voice paused, but there was no dissent, so he continued.

‘The news is just about to break, and you are the first to hear it. The college has a secret superstar.’

Rhan could not help smiling and blushing at Roger’s statements.

‘I can assure you that anyone in our new First Eight will be rowing behind next year’s current first choice as stroke for a Blue, and the university’s most promising contender as an Olympic squad rower. So there! That’s going to be a surprise for your whole college. The new crew will look nothing like last term’s Torpids team – few will survive.’ Roger ceased talking to allow a babble of questions to be flung at him.

‘Who?’

‘How come no one knows?’

‘Why’s he not already in the crew?’

After a few seconds of ignoring the questions, Roger’s voice cut through the clamour.

‘Well I’m afraid the terms “thoroughbred” and “farmer’s cart” come to mind. You may or may not know that international rowers have no great enthusiasm to row for their college. My arrival here has now sorted that. However, I need your experience too. I can promise you that the new Eight that goes on the water in ten minutes’ time will go down in history. This is a pivotal moment for…’

‘What are you doing up here?’ George’s voice from the open stairs cut through her eavesdropping.

‘Hi,’ she responded in little more than a whisper. As soon as George heard the subject being discussed, he also stopped to listen.

‘…a list of the college’s best rowers, and no one should judge who will or will not be on that list. If your name is included, I promise you will have something to brag about on your CV for the rest of your life. If you decline, you will be giving up being in the crew behind someone who is clearly destined to be a household name in the manner of Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. However, I need to know now, this instant, whether there is anyone who wants to rule themselves out of that new First Eight. The press will be awaiting your decision this very afternoon.’

Rhan had raised her eyes at the way Roger missed out female celebrities such as Helen Glover or Heather Stanning, but then smiled as she perceived Roger’s cunning half-truth and the arguments for more details started again.

‘It’s chaos down in the boathouse below as well,’ George informed Rhan in a low voice, once he had also given up listening. ‘The two Eights are all hanging around squabbling, and the Women’s Eight have started to arrive and are delaying their session to see the action. Poor Richard is trying to get everyone to be patient. Are you all right? What’re you doing with that list?’ Rhan had drawn arrows on an envelope; she now ripped it in two, and started copying her scribbles into a second list while George returned to eavesdropping.

‘I can’t believe the college has a celebrity rower and no one knew!’ A strident voice could be heard in the background. ‘How come? Does even the college captain know?’ George and Rhan couldn’t help but wait for the reply from Roger. George’s brow was furrowed in confusion. Rhan held her breath.

‘Modesty is one answer, but I’m afraid that your college is the butt of much humour in rowing circles – to have an outstanding asset that you don’t even know about. I have a text here from Dumas, the university president. He says…’

Rhan drew breath as she heard Roger gain control again. She grabbed George by the tracksuit bottoms, which he was wearing with his rugby top over his rowing vest.

‘Come with me!’ she ordered him in an imperial yet mysterious whisper that she hardly recognised herself. He followed her obediently and curiously into the empty women’s changing room, where she closed and locked the door. ‘I need your vest and shorts!’ she demanded, without clarifying the issue to the perplexed young man.

‘No way!’ he protested. ‘I might be selected.’ He looked at her unenthusiastic face and added, ‘OK, it’s only an outside chance, but why not?’

‘Look, you are better than some of the current First Eight already.’ Rhan made the effort to be positive. ‘But I am afraid you will not be in the new First Eight this year. Trust me.’ She began undressing, leaving her headscarf in place. He watched in confusion and surprise, but slowly started to copy.

‘I don’t understand’ he gasped distractedly. ‘What is going on Rhan? You know the coach…what’s his name, Robert?’

‘Roger. Yes, he’s been my coach at the holiday training camps since before Christmas. Look, I’m sorry that I have not let you know how I got on – it seemed like bragging and you never asked about my progress.’

‘Fucking hell! Is this all about you?’ George asked, and then answered his own questions without feedback from Rhan. ‘They were talking about you! Roger thinks you’re going to be a famous rower and in the Men’s Eight! My God, is that possible? I suppose…well yes, you will be instantly famous.

‘So that paper and the list – is that the crew? And that’s how Roger knows who to pick without Richard – you’ve been coxing them all. This is amazing – and I had no idea. You’re bloody amazing! I hope you, or Roger, can carry this off.’

‘Oh, Roger always manages to pull off the impossible,’ Rhan replied as she wrapped her long coat over singlet and shorts while George pulled his tracksuit back on. ‘He enjoys starting with a losing hand.’ She slipped out of the changing room, followed at a discreet distance by George, but they could not completely escape back down to the boathouse. Roger was talking to Richard at the top of the stairs and, without looking at her or exchanging a word, Roger held out his hand towards Rhan, who placed the tattered half envelope in it. At the same time, she relieved him of his tweed cap. He looked down at the list, ignoring the loss of hat.

‘Richard Dix! Thank God, you’re on the list,’ the coach affirmed. ‘You clearly merit a place. Well done! Here, what do you think of the rest? I’m hoping you’ll endorse it.’

Richard looked at Rhan in surprise and embarrassment. Roger was not even pretending to have selected the crew. Richard read quickly through it. He looked at Rhan again and went through the list a second time, shaking or nodding his head.

‘Great, but will James and DT cross from the Schools’ crew? Are you sure of these chaps? DT’s in his fourth year and was in France last year, so I’ve never even seen him row. James is by far the best rower in the college and was my predecessor as captain last year with two years’ experience in the First Eight, but he refused a place this year.’

‘Everyone in the Schools’ Eight has just agreed,’ Roger confirmed.

‘God, well done!’

‘So, you’ve taken Danny and Gareth Wright from the rugby crew, allowing me to move to Number 3. It may give us extra strength, but these are new, untested rowers; Danny has only been in a shell a few times, although Gareth rowed last year and perhaps even the year before.’ The coach raised an eyebrow, which managed to suggest that he had no desire to mention the surprises from the practice starts of half an hour ago. Richard clearly received the message because he continued on a different tack, in a slightly aggrieved tone.

‘It’s clear that Rhan here has done a great job coaching the Rugby Eight, and she has coxed all these boats, but she’s only coxed us once, so this is a hell of a leap in the dark.’ The coach again made no reply, so with a sigh, Richard continued with the list. ‘She has brought in one person from the Second Eight, and has left just two of the current First Eight, plus Kim as cox. I presume Jeff Carpenter stays as stroke? His name is missing and the stroke slot is empty. You’ve worked with us for a week now…I don’t understand.’

Roger rubbed the side of his nose and in an apologetic tone finally took some responsibility.

‘I’ve seen your crew on the water three times, and I’m afraid we need this radical shake-up, and you know it too. I asked Rhan here to select the ideal college crew, but the choice of stroke is mine alone.’ Roger grabbed the list and added a name. He looked up saying, ‘Bar, or Rhan as you call her, will stroke.’

‘You’re joking? I didn’t even know she was a rower. No! No way! This is crazy. Sorry Rhan, you….we will be a laughing stock and we’ll be disqualified.’

Roger chose his moment to become serious.

‘Sorry Richard, I’ve just been telling the Schools’ Eight that I can’t start coaching a whole crew in such a short time, but I may be able to teach seven of you to follow the stroke. Now I’ve coached Bar here for six months already. I also told the Schools’ Eight that you’re already a laughing stock for not making use of one of the university’s best rowers.’

Rhan at last plucked up the courage to look back at George, who was smiling and soaking up the conversation. He used the slight pause to help Richard with the news.

‘Richard, she’s bloody good – I saw her race last term. I’m afraid Roger may be right about you being the last university college captain to know about her. I was told to keep it quiet.’ While the bemused captain blinked slowly, trying to comprehend the news, Roger, ignoring George’s contribution, continued on a more aggressive tack.

‘You and your four men’s boats have all agreed to my demand for a new crew. If you don’t agree to my choice, just because I select a girl, my job is at an end. Bar is far too strong to ever row with your Women’s Eight. Rejecting her will mark you as a misogynist, and you can wave goodbye to a normal career in any industry once the press waiting outside get the story. Rhan has a very influential following at both university and national levels. She is without doubt the best person to take control of the boat while it’s on the water, and…’

Roger stopped mid-sentence as they heard footsteps on the stairs. Jeff, the lanky ex-stroke, stuck his head around the corner.

‘Richard. Alice says there are a load of men and women rowing Blues outside the boathouse, including both presidents! What’s going on?’ Jeff looked with puzzlement at Rhan and George standing beyond. Roger nodded, acknowledging that he expected the news.

‘Good. Thanks for letting me know Jeff,’ Richard responded without surprise or encouragement.

The former stroke headed off, obviously disappointed that he was not to be involved with helping Richard select the crew.

‘I sent a few texts,’ Roger confessed. ‘Some of Rhan’s friends among the university rowers are dropping by to see her stroke the Men’s First Eight. That should prevent any committee from throwing the rulebook at you. Your only real choice now is to take the credit and become a hero. Even if my ploy fails in seven weeks’ time, you will still get the credit, with little blame. Otherwise, you can sack me and start again. I think you have only one easy option – just see what happens.’

Richard shook his head and exhaled. ‘As you say, I have no choice, so I heartily agree. I can’t really take this in, but it’s going to be interesting! Shall I go and make the announcements?’

‘Yes, good idea,’ Roger agreed. ‘I suggest that the new First Eight should have a quick half-hour on the water immediately to see how things pan out, if that’s OK. I’ll wait just outside. You can direct the selected members to join me, but give me ten minutes, if you can.’

Richard walked slowly down the stairs into the boathouse holding the list, and everyone fell silent. Rhan, her hair now just tucked into Roger’s cap, sat down in her buttoned-up coat beside George on one of the top stairs to listen to Richard. They were sitting at the rear end of the crowded boathouse. She sent a text while Richard spoke.

‘I’d like to start by thanking the First Eight for their hard work over the previous two terms and I apologise in advance for the disappointment that many of you will feel at this revised crew. We didn’t do well at Torpids and we need fresh blood to challenge at Summer Eights. Without exception, all of our competitors in the top division boats will field stronger crews than last term’s Torpids, with the addition of their university rowers for Summer Eights. So, as I think many of you have already guessed, we are going to take drastic steps and trust our new coach.

‘As I call your name, please collect your oar from the boatman, Pat, and wait at the door. We’ll have a thirty-minute trial for the new First Eight crew.

‘Number 1, in the bow is David Turner, commonly known as DT.’ There was stunned silence. Furrowed eyebrows and slight shakes of the head indicated that they had never heard of him.

‘Blimey!’ gasped DT himself, who in some surprise climbed to his feet from the steps below Rhan and George and rushed through the ranks of the much taller rowers to be handed the Number 1 oar.

‘Good choice!’ one of the Schools’ Eight called out.

‘Yes, well spotted!’ another voice echoed, which made Rhan nudge George with pride in her unlikely selection. DT collected his oar from the boatman and stood by the large doors, watching to see who would join him.

‘A light bowman to match a light stroke. Seems clever,’ was George’s response. ‘Who are you texting at such a time?’

‘My friend Claire from Gloucester Hall, and Esther,’ Rhan replied in a whisper as the captain prepared to make the next announcement. ‘Claire sort of predicted that Roger would find a use for me, so I had to let her know.’ Rhan decided not to namedrop about Esther, the lady president.

‘Number 2 is Danny the mad Cornishman, who strides in from the Rugby Eight,’ Richard continued.

‘Whoor!’ yelled a voice from below that could only have been Danny in surprise and delight, matched by an enormous hearty roar of approval from his former team mates, and a deafening ‘Yeah!’ from George beside her. There were a few negative murmurs.

‘But he’s only been in a boat for a few weeks. How can that be right?’ was the loudest complaint from someone in the Second Eight. Comments fell away when the captain began to give more details.

‘I am very pleased to say that I’ve been selected to be at Number 3. Kim McMahon, you are retained as cox, so please collect my oar for me.’

During the polite clapping, Rhan showed George her phone with a questioning expression over a reply text from Esther, which read, “I know x6!”

‘I guess it means you are the sixth person to tell her,’ whispered George. ‘The news has spread! Is she from Gloucester Hall too?’

Rhan just shook her head slightly.

 ‘Number 4 is Iain Baker, who will transfer from his position as stroke in the Second Eight,’ Roger continued. The lanky, self-conscious Iain was also surprised at his call-up as he edged his way through the politely clapping throng.

‘Oh bugger, they’ve nicked our stroke!’ a Second Eight crew member below them moaned.

‘Well done Iain!’ some of his more generous former crew called out.

 ‘Number 5 is another who has kept his First Eight place – Lucas Bamber, who moves forward from his old place at 7.’

There were several exhalations and exclamations at the implications of this major shift in the boat positions for one of the strongest in the old crew. Polite clapping mainly came from his former First Eight colleagues, who now realised how few places were left for them.

‘Number 6, in the engine room, we have a second oarsman from the Rugby Eight, Gareth Wright!’ Richard was beginning to enjoy his role. Several of the girls, alongside the rugby players, gave the inevitable cries of approval.

‘So does that mean Jeff Carpenter or the Schools’ chap is stroke?’ someone asked at the bottom of the stairs. Rhan glanced down at Jeff, who was leaning confidently against a pillar. Had no one told him of Roger’s promise of a new stroke?

‘Number 7, returning to the First Eight for the third year running and the second person from the Schools’ Eight, is James Nicholson.’

James nodded and moved forward, evidently expecting his recall. No one could argue against his strength and experience.

There was general relaxation as the remaining rowers realised that the selection was all over for them.

‘Where’s Roger? He’s not back!’ a surprised and slightly worried George informed Rhan. ‘He didn’t even stay to watch his new crew being picked.’

‘He will be manipulating other people into managing the next scenes,’ Rhan explained calmly, before half-murmuring to herself, ‘I suppose that means I need to give him more time.’

‘Then we come to Number 8, stroke, the key position!’ the captain continued, building up the tempo and volume of his voice against fading interest. ‘Here we have the biggest surprise yet!’

Jeff Carpenter stopped still, just as he was moving clear of the column. Rhan noted that a shadow seemed to pass over his face as he leant heavily against the steel stanchion again. Perhaps he did know, she thought. There was a long pause. Everyone was looking round trying to think who had been overlooked.

‘So who’s the Blue international?’ one of the exasperated Schools’ Eight asked. ‘Who is it?’

Rhan retained her position on the step beside George, who murmured, ‘Oh my God, Rhan!’  

‘The name I have from the coach for stroke is Rhan Arken.’ There was stunned silence. The exclamations began slowly.

‘What the?’

‘A girl!’

‘And a fresher!’

‘Be serious!’

‘Fucking hell!’

‘Does she even row?’

‘It won’t be allowed! We’ll be thrown off the river!’

All were now looking round for her. Rhan was still sitting at the top of the stairs, but now stood up slowly, her coat still wrapped around her. There were comments, but no clapping or cheers as she descended. She walked, barefoot, down the boathouse towards Pat, the boatman, who stood open-mouthed listening to the mumblings.

‘Daft!’

‘Rhan? She’s just the Rugby cox isn’t she?’

‘A woman in the men’s team!’

‘What does she know about stroke?’

‘She’s that one who’s always banging on about climate change!’

Halfway down the boathouse stood Alice. The lady captain’s unmistakably shrill voice cut through the noise, aimed at Richard, her fellow captain, who made no attempt to reply. ‘This is impossible! She can’t row; she wrecked the balance of our boat and used the excuse of a broken oar for pathetic effort.’

James, the former captain, deliberately placed his oar against the wall in protest. ‘That’s not what we were promised! We were misled,’ he complained.

‘She’s only started to row in the last few months,’ Alice continued, arms now crossed. ‘She wasn’t good enough for our college, so I let her row for another college in Torpids last term. And now, someone’s suggested she should row in the Men’s Eight instead of Jeff. This is madness!’

There was an awkward silence as Rhan came to a stop in front of Alice.

‘And yet, Alice,’ George’s voice boomed, ‘even I didn’t know about the training she’s been getting. She bumped your boat from top of the division clear to the bottom!’ No one was surprised to hear George standing up for his workmate, but his news shocked Alice.

‘You were in that boat that bumped us on the last day?’ Alice demanded of Rhan, outraged. ‘You were meant to be in the novice division.’

‘Sorry Alice, we climbed quickly.’ Rhan spoke for the first time, smiling slightly. She appeared totally composed and unaffected by Alice’s hostility. She nonchalantly slipped off her long black coat, and hung it on a boat rack. Most of her college had never seen her without a coat before, never mind with her hair tucked up into a tweed cap instead of the usual headscarf. Alice’s brow furrowed and she fell silent, taking a step backward to look up at Rhan. The “pathetic” rower now stood tall and continued to walk slowly up to the boatman in just her borrowed cap, rowing vest and shorts.

‘Just look at those shoulders!’ someone blurted.

‘You wouldn’t want to argue with her!’ came another voice.

The stocky boatman, holding the final oar close to his chest, stood gawping up at Rhan. She held out a single arm at a right angle to her body and took the heavy blade in her outstretched hand. There was a flash from a camera, followed by several more from outsiders looking in through the semi-closed sets of bifold doors. Rhan stood, weighing up the beautifully shiny carbon-fibre shaft of the blade. ‘Are you sure I won’t snap this one as well, Pat?’ Rhan asked wryly.

He looked up at her foolishly as she stood still, her arm muscles tense with the weight of the blade.

‘Blimey, so you did fracture that ladies’ shaft! I only gave it a quick look. Number 1 wasn’t it? Well, you won’t break this one…I don’t think so,’ he added less certainly, glancing at Rhan and then resentfully at Alice, before immediately scuttling across the boathouse to look for the broken oar.

Alice’s distinctive voice interrupted again with a different accusation.

‘God! Are you Bar? They’re out there waiting for you! You sometimes stroke for the Women’s Blue boat. No wonder you bumped us! We didn’t stand a chance. You must’ve been stroking for that boat which set a ridiculous record for jumping three divisions in one Torpids week!’

Rhan turned, placing the shaft handle of the oar to the ground so she could look back to the ladies’ captain. She was still wearing a wry smile, which gave Alice the confidence to move on quickly, without waiting for confirmation.

‘Oh my God Rhan! You are Bar!’ Alice screamed excitedly. ‘And in our college!’ Once again, she had an audience hanging on to her every word as she tried to make sense of the baffling revelation.

‘They say you passed up a Blue this year, just to help Esther, the president, with a mutiny. Yet you’d already proved that you were the best stroke! And you’re training with the National squad! You’re going to be a nomination for the university lady president next year – and you’re in our college. This is amazing!’

‘I am not sure all of that is completely true,’ Rhan responded in a bizarre conversational tone. She noted that James had surreptitiously picked up his oar again.

There were several phones out now, taking photos and videos. Alice, however, was still thinking out loud and showing off her knowledge of who’s who.

‘You’re a member of Pinks, the top university sports club, so…oh God, I’m sorry, how embarrassing!’ Alice blushed, obviously recalling incidents from the garden party, but she struggled on. ‘Hey, this is history. You, stroking a men’s crew. Well done Richard – good move. I was chatting to several Blues out there. Esther and Dumas, the presidents, were working on something; it could only have been press releases. This is amazing!’

Rhan lifted her eyebrows and nodded her thanks to Alice for the news. On turning again, she saw a relaxed Roger now waiting by the door.

‘Right, crew!’ Roger took charge. ‘As you may know, there is quite a crowd out there. They include the press, and a TV van is just arriving, so I’m afraid that it’s going to be a very public first trial. I told you that you’d be famous.’ He aimed the last comment at James, who nodded his acceptance.

‘Don’t stop for interviews now, but Richard and Rhan, you’ll need to say a few words on your return.’

Roger then added a few rowing instructions. Rhan recognised his clever means to boost confidence among the nervous new crew members for their first outing in the frighteningly superior First shell. He also made it clear to all that while they were on the water, Rhan rather than Richard had the lead.

‘OK stroke, I want off in twenty-five to the turn, back at thirty-five for a row-past, and I’ll see you down the river. Your sharp, snappy, simple style, OK? Everyone else simply has to follow stroke and pull hard, crisp, slow strokes. You must all be good strong rowers – or you wouldn’t have been on that list. So be confident and pull through hard! We can sort style out later.

‘Now to get to the boat…Richard, I presume that you’ll want the cox leading the crew down in ascending order, but I suggest you bring up the rear with Number 8. So, lead on cox, slowly!’

When Rhan stepped outside, there were two well-ordered lines of around a dozen men and women forming a corridor from the boathouse down the sloping concrete apron to the steps and the floating pontoon. On either side were puzzled students, along with a large party of Asian tourists who were all milling around, looking for entertainment.

The cox and DT were already waiting by the boat when Rhan and Richard, carrying their oars vertically, started down the human tunnel. Rhan was shocked to realise that the lines were made up entirely from the four sets of crews and reserves of the male and female university crew members. There was a photographer with a huge camera, and she spotted the same reporter who had been down in London on the stormy banks of the Thames for the trials.

Despite Alice’s warning about the reception, Rhan was slightly overcome at seeing Dumas close by. She could say nothing – but then neither could he. She simply kissed him on the cheek as he stood at the head of one line. Dumas patted Richard’s shoulder, giving himself time to recover sufficiently to say in a hoarse voice, ‘Nice try Richard, but even with Bar, there’s no way you’re going to bump us. We’ll leave you standing!’

‘Come on Bar, if Dumas gets a kiss, I want one too!’ complained Joe, the university stroke at the end of the other line, whom Rhan had started to walk past. ‘Sorry Richard, but Pip and I will be in the boat behind you, so if you can’t catch Dumas’ college – well I’m afraid we’ll ruin your historic day by bumping you down!’

Rhan and Richard had to progress down both lines, respectively receiving congratulations and bombastic threats. Richard soon enjoyed rebuffing the threats, once he overcame the surprise that his name was already well known.

Rhan heard one of the male student onlookers ask, ‘What’s the fuss?’

Another voice answered. ‘See that girl, that’s Bar. She’s going to be stroking a men’s eight in the top division at the end of this term.’

‘So what? It’s hardly a big deal is it?’

‘Oh yes it is!’ a female voice contradicted him.

The crowd had thickened and Rhan could see that members of her own college had now reinforced the sides of the corridor. With her shrill voice, Alice – now Rhan’s biggest fan – was very recognisable. Friends and rivals from neighbouring boathouses wanted to see the transformation of the boat, and the growing weekend crowd distracted crews out on the river and attracted tourists from along the riverside in ever-swelling numbers.

Rhan and Richard had almost reached the floating pontoon when an explosion of noise reached them from the other side of the river. A well-orchestrated group on the far bank were shouting and screaming. Other students were converging on that side as well to see what they were missing. The sound evolved to a chanting of, ‘Bar, Bar, go! Bar, Bar, go!’ Rhan waved back, not really knowing how many of her old Gloucester crew were over there, but recognising the outline of some her tallest friends.

‘God, Claire’s got a noisy mob!’ Esther complained with a smile at the river end of the line. ‘Good luck Rhan, keep it simple. I don’t want to make matters worse for you, but they’ve set up at least one TV camera and I’m due to be interviewed – “The emergence of women in the historic universities”. It could make the news, here and abroad.’

‘Good, but…’

‘Excuse me madam president.’ The sports reporter was still wearing the same long raincoat, which had been so essential last time Rhan had seen him. ‘Can I have just a few words with the new star?’

‘Fine Ben,’ Esther yielded as she stepped back so that the reporter could get closer to Rhan, who was sitting low in the water fixing her oar into its gate.

‘I’ve done a bit of research since Esther and everyone else managed to keep you and your role hidden at the mutinous January storms. I’m beginning to appreciate now why none of the experienced international rowers was inclined to mention the contribution of an upstart novice at stroke, even if you did have expertise in rough water. My first question is, are you to be called Bar or Rhan? Please tell me something about yourself.’

Rhan, now fixing her feet into the oversized shoes, glanced up at the man standing over her. A chain of college and university rowers were keeping others back, so only the reporter had been allowed to step down off the concrete steps and onto the timber pontoon while the boat was prepared. There were occasional slaps as waves on the river washed against the floating mooring. She knew that several rowers in the crew would be finding this superior shell an intimidating experience, but she told herself that she had messed around in an even more superior craft during the university seat trials. She could relax. She made herself breathe. This was her show.

‘Bar is a nickname,’ Rhan responded, noting that several devices were pointing in her direction. She looked around, but returned to the matters in hand once she had spotted George standing nearby. He appeared proud, but mesmerised by the spectacle. ‘I was born and live in Sunderland, but was brought up in Aleppo. I am now a student of engineering here in Oxford. I gather that I have the honour of being the first woman to row in a college first eight.’

‘Will that be allowed, if it’s a men’s boat?’ the reporter asked, pointing his device towards himself to catch the question, then back at Rhan. 

‘For the good of the college, I am happy to accept the position. I hope that any rule against women will be quickly set aside. I am keen on the publicity to highlight the impact that global warming will have on my generation. The …’

‘Can I ask about your inclusion in the trials for the National starter team after only a few months of rowing?’ the reporter interrupted.

‘I can hardly fill the shoes of my predecessor here for the college,’ she declared, pointing at her feet and smiling as she thought of an answer. ‘Let’s say my concern over global warming is driving me as far as I can go, just so I can have interviews such as this. The main issue is that I row against four by forty.’

The journalist looked gratifyingly baffled at this new technical term, but his interest allowed Rhan to continue.

‘I want to publicise the dreadful risks that my generation face if the older generation do not take real measures to avoid 4° of warming by 2040. I suggest you look at what that would mean to your pension, your family, your mortgage, your retirement and your children and grandchildren.’

 She saw his eyes widen.

‘This is going to be fun,’ she suggested, smiling.

He smiled back uncertainly and muttered, ‘Fascinating!’ as he retreated up the steps.

Rhan was ready, but others were still making adjustments. There was still much sorting out behind her as James was having trouble with adjustments after swapping shoes; he was being helped by Pat, the boatman, and supervised by Roger, who was obviously anxious to be off.

Rhan looked up and spotted the curly head of her friend Tom above the crowd of onlookers and rowers behind George. It was the first time she had seen Tom this term and the first time she had ever seen him down at the river. She flicked her head upwards and smiled. Several on the riverbank turned to see who had the attention of the new star. This gave an opportunity for a striking young lady wearing wire-framed glasses to push forward from beside Tom to the edge of the pontoon near George.

‘Hello Miss Rhan,’ she said. ‘Congratulations! I am Temi from Somerville College.’ Her impressive and enthusiastic voice was heard easily across the pontoon, despite the background noise. ‘My friend Tom says you might give me an interview. I freelance for several outlets.’

‘Definitely!’ Rhan called back. ‘Just talk to Tom and George to arrange it.’ Then, glancing at the reporter and onlookers who were videoing the scene, she called out, ‘I would be pleased to give any interviews, so long as climate change gets a mention.’

Temi nodded her thanks, but then added a question that appeared more personal.

‘Is it true that Eritrea will be in real trouble?’ she asked. ‘That is where I am from.’

‘Yes! Most likely,’ Rhan responded almost straight away. ‘Sorry, every country needs to face the fact that we are facing major irreversible heating, and I would think Eritrea will be particularly bad…although some parts of East Africa are due to get heavy monsoons for a while, I believe.’

‘So Greta the Scandinavian schoolgirl is right to warn us then?’ Temi called back.

‘I have not yet heard of any Greta,’ Rhan admitted, even as she saw her coach stand clear at last. ‘But any warning sounds right.’ She nodded to Temi and smiled at Tom before turning her attention to the cox.

The cox, seeing signals from Roger, sat up and took control. Rhan was soon out on the river, removed from reporters, the crowd, and civilisation – connected only by a refreshing, light breeze. She now focused on how fast and far others in the unfamiliar boat should be reaching forward to replicate her movements as they dropped their blades into the calm, cool water.

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