The weather broke in mid-October, and the Fratellini hypothesis came back into the headlines, swept there by the blizzards that ranged over continental North America and continued unchecked across the Atlantic to Europe. In London, the first morning, there were three inches of snow, soon churned into mud and slush by the rush-hour traffic, but augmented, as the leaden morning wore on, by fresh falls. The wind was cold, from the north-east. Before midday, the evening papers were talking of Fratellini’s winter. The following morning, with snow still coming down, there was fuller coverage and more speculation. McKay called Andrew into his office where, Andrew observed, the large print of the Utrillo snow scene in Montmartre had been replaced by a Renoir of a girl in the long summer grass. McKay valued art for its thermal effects.
‘I’ve been looking at your notes,’ McKay said, ‘for the Fratellini thing. I thought we might rush it through for Friday.’
McKay had assigned it to him, as a low priority project, some weeks earlier. He objected:
‘We’re short of a lot of background material still.’
‘Such as?’
‘We wanted film of Fratellini himself, and of the Observatory. The team that’s gone out for the new Vatican excavations was going to handle that as well.’
McKay wagged his thin face in negation. ‘We shall have to do without them. Topicality comes first. Next week the whole thing may be forgotten. Can you make up ten minutes?’
‘I should think so. How long do we give Wingate?’
‘Christ, do we have to use him again?’
‘We’ve paid for him.’
‘These term contracts are a mistake. There are some faces and voices that just don’t wear well. Wingate’s got one of each. All right, give him three minutes – and make sure he doesn’t overrun.’
‘He knows his stuff.’
McKay said gloomily: ‘I despise that kind of mind. We’re all a knowing lot of bastards in this trade – we have to be – but at least we only claim to know things on a superficial level. These science journalists talk as though they know the lot. I’d like to see him drop a really monumental clanger.’
‘It wouldn’t do the programme any good.’
‘Well, he could drop it in his weekly sermon in the Sunday press. Can I leave all this to you, Andy?’
‘Yes. Do you want a cancellation cabled to the team in Rome?’
‘Cancellation?’
‘Of the Fratellini interview, since we shan’t have time to use it.’
McKay considered this. ‘No, I should let it stand. We may be able to use it some time. In the spring, maybe. A retrospect on the Fratellini Winter.’
‘If there is one.’
McKay shrugged. ‘On “What Happened to the Fratellini Winter”, then. We can use it either way. Besides, Bill Dyson’s got a girl-friend in Milan. He’d never forgive me if I lost him a chance of looking her up.’
Over the week-end, the snow stopped falling. There was a thawing rain on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and on Monday it was clear and cold, with small clouds skating over a chill blue sky. In the pub where David and Andrew met, by contrast, it was warm and stuffy, apart from occasional piercing draughts when the street door was opened.
‘A whisky chaser,’ David suggested, ‘against that Fratellini Winter?’
‘Just this one, then. I’ve got some work this afternoon.’
‘So have I, but I’ll see it better through a slight haze. I saw your programme on Friday.’
‘Did you? Any comments?’
‘You were spreading a certain amount of alarm and despondency, weren’t you? Talking about ice ages.’
‘Did it worry the Home Office?’
‘Not officially. Quite a talking point, though. And I’m told Harrods had a run on skis the next morning.’
‘Trevor Wingate’s the trouble. We’ve contracted for a dozen appearances and we have to use him or forfeit the money. It would be better to forfeit, but the accounts people would never stand for it.’
‘I don’t like that grin of his,’ David said. ‘Too much of the sneer in it.’
‘Not telegenic at all, but it took us several programmes to realize that. It does sometimes. All we can do is feed a line into him that will capture audience interest on its merits. So we gave him the new ice age hypothesis to put over.’
‘You probably scared some timid viewers.’
‘We did say it was extremely unlikely.’
‘In small type. What really came over was the pictures of glaciers rolling down the Welsh mountains and polar bears sunning themselves on the ice in the Pool of London.’
‘We’ve always prided ourselves on our impact value.’
‘I’ve been looking things up,’ David said. ‘There seem to be a number of different theories as to what caused the ice ages, but the fluctuation in solar radiation one is among the healthiest. A bloke called Penck worked it out. Do you realize that an overall drop of about three degrees really could bring the glaciers back to northern Scotland?’
‘I’ve done some homework, too, remember,’ Andrew said. ‘Precipitation counts for more than temperature levels in producing ice caps. Siberia’s as far north as Greenland, and as cold, but there’s no Siberian ice cap. The moisture-bearing clouds don’t penetrate so far into the land mass.’
‘Well, hell’s flames, we’re not likely to run short of moisture-bearing clouds in these offshore islands, are we?’
‘Anyway, the drop’s inconsiderable. Fratellini figures on a fall of between two and three per cent in the solar energy reaching the outer layers of the atmosphere. There’s a normal variability of about three per cent due to local and temporary fluctuations in the sun.’
‘But we are going to be colder. That’s definite, isn’t it?’
‘A white Christmas or two, perhaps. We might even roast an ox on the Thames again. Most authorities seem to agree with Fratellini that the fluctuation’s likely to be short-lived – less than six months probably.’
‘But it might last longer?’
‘In the last six and a half centuries there have been two advances and two retreats by the European glaciers. They increased in the western Alps at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and retreated again in the fifteenth. Towards the end of the sixteenth century they advanced again, in both the eastern and western Alps, and in Iceland. They went on advancing up to the first half of the nineteenth century, and then turned tail. The icepacks have been retreating all over the world since then. It might be time for them to make another small advance.’
‘Worth a flutter in home heating appliances on the Stock Exchange?’
‘As long as you understand that it’s a flutter. If it’s only a temporary downward swing, as the climatologists think, there may be an upward swing to follow. Sunburn lotions may pay off better. The trend has been towards higher temperatures for the last century.’
‘I preferred the programme,’ David said. ‘Not polar bears, perhaps, but think of a cold clear frozen Thames, voices hushed in the quiet air, the tinkle of sleigh-bells, maybe, along the Embankment.’
‘I didn’t know you were such a sentimentalist.’
‘All we cynical realists are. It’s our only defence against ourselves. I used to keep a collection of Christmas cards: the kind with snow scenes – peasants gathering firewood against the sunset, cottages on the edge of the woods, coaching inns … You know.’
‘And robins.’
‘No, no robins. One has one’s standards.’
‘What happened to the collection?’
‘I got discouraged. My elderly aunts died, or went religious and sent artistic Nativity scenes. All I get now are classical reproductions and would-be humorous things. It didn’t seem worth going on.’
‘I’ll look one out for you this year.’
‘That’s a kind thought.’
Andrew looked at his watch. ‘Time I was getting back. I suppose you don’t feel like a bachelor evening tonight – a quiet pub-crawl? Carol’s going over to Ealing to visit a rather revolting woman she used to go to school with.’
David shook his head. ‘I can’t make tonight. Why not drop in on Maddie – you could cheer each other up.’
‘Perhaps. I’ll see.’
In the end, though, he did not. Instead, he came across one of a party of young Nigerians, who were over as a television study group, wandering aimlessly about the studios. He asked Andrew directions, in cultured English and a voice somewhat melancholy in tone, and on impulse Andrew asked him to come and have dinner. He took him to his Club, chiefly in the hope of encountering the Secretary, an Anglo-Indian who disliked the black races as much as Andrew disliked him. The hope was unfulfilled, but the young Negro’s naïvety and gratitude were pleasant, and the evening passed well. Carol was not yet in when he got home. He went to bed, and was almost asleep when he heard her opening the front door.