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Names of people in this story are entirely fictitious, as are references to events, places, organizations and newspapers with similar or identical names. Real places mentioned are nothing like their geographical counterparts, Bossington and Tiverton in particular.
The sky is mostly grey, with less than an octal of blue. But, to the more observant, it is composed of a multitude of tones of grey, some quite dark, mostly low and ragged as if some vandal has torn a large dirty sheet into shreds and thrown them up into the air, defying their grandiose white brethren to dare move faster than them. Some of the grey clouds show no signs of this vandalism, but hang in the sky, with gentle undulations, waves on a strangely inverted sea, their crests and dips changing hue but never moving except as a mass, and appearing as if they are captured on the film of a black-and-white photographer. Others are almost pure white, majestically towering for the stratosphere, with hints of shadows caused by their own irregularities and by the presence of others further to the west, casting their spells over them.
Where they are visible, the tops of some of the taller white clouds have a suggestion of pink in them. It will soon be dusk.
Ten minutes pass, unnoticed by the clouds, but changing their colours and shapes for ever.
The whiteness in the towers becomes whiter than the most optimistic washing detergent advertiser could hope for; their pink is pinker than any little girl’s prettiest party dress; and there are hints of orange too, but more orange than anything València or Sevilla, California or Florida could produce. The dark grey soiled-sheet fragments become darker; the artist reaches for her tube of black to add to the tint she has previously been using for them, and starts a new sketch. The forms of the waves don’t change, except that their shades become more pronounced but skimpier; the dips are darker and the crests appear in contrast much lighter; but whether they are, the black-and-white photographer cannot say, for he is moving on, with a nod out of politeness to the artist, the beauty of the changing colours not of much interest to the monochrome film in his camera. He has often seen her painting, but apart from the odd nod and smile, they are strangers, both relative newcomers to the village.
The lower waves of cloud are dispersing, evaporating into the evening sky. The majestic towers of cumulonimbus have developed an anvil; both the photographer and the artist note that there will probably be a thunderstorm in the east, near Bristol or maybe Taunton, for exactly how far away they are is unknown to them.
The blue sky develops suggestions of its own — pale orange and yellow, and then brown. The artist with her full palette of colours available remains, almost every tube of paint with its cap removed, the spectrum of hues giving her cause to capture as much as she can before everything dies away. Her stack of whitewashed hardboard ‘canvases’ is almost used up.
The trees below, a few minutes ago all shades of green, and the buildings, mostly low and white-painted, are now just silhouettes against the background. In one or two windows appear yellowy glows as electric lights are switched on. Others flash in shades mostly of blue; some people are watching television. Street lights, starting from an invisible pink, gain energy and soon imbue the outsides of the houses and everything around with their brilliant, horrible sodium yellowness.
The white towers, the grey waves, and the torn sheet are now all as one, having let the pinks, yellows, oranges, browns and finally the dark greys dissolve. They are all indistinguishably black against the backdrop of stars, revealing their presence only by what constellations they choose to hide. There are distant flashes of lightning in the east but no sound of thunder in Bossington.
With nobody willing to observe them many of these clouds too decide to evaporate slowly away, revealing just a darkness above with a sprinkling of silver stars, and a hint of the deepest blue in the west. The photographer having gone, the artist collects up her equipment and departs too; she has captured that blue so many times before, and the constellations, retaining the reality and mixing with it some of the mythology that gave them their names.
Now the sky is quite clear except on the eastern horizon where the lightning continues, and elsewhere the stars are as bright as they ever can be above the hideous, but no doubt useful street lights. There is no moon, though Venus hangs low in the western sky, obscured by the sodium glow to all but the keenest-eyed, and Jupiter is there too, not particularly bright, and to be found only by those who are intimate with the night sky.
Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, all is black, except the sky with its stars and planets. No sodium street lights, no flickering televisions, no electric lights. And the storm over Bristol has ceased too, though here only the artist notices that.
After a minute a few feeble candles appear; front doors open and puzzled occupants look cautiously outside to see if it’s just theirs or has everyone’s power gone. Some call out to neighbours as they see other candles.
“That you, Wilf? Is your electricity off too?”
“Yes, looks like it’s general. Thought it was the mains fuse at first.”
“Phone’s dead as well. I was going to ring the Electric to find out when it’s coming back on.”
“Bit odd, that. The phone doesn’t usually go off at the same time as the mains. Different circuits, I thought.”
“I thought that, too. P’raps the phones work off the electric power station that’s gone on the blink.”
“Yes, but that’s what the National Grid’s for — if one power station packs up, the rest take the strain.”
In a few houses dim lights move about as people search for their own long-forgotten supplies of candles. They bought up dozens of boxes when they were on a three-day week during the miners’ strike, and they used only a handful of them then. Now, nearly forty years later they’ve come in useful, if only they can find the wretched candles and hope that they still work, before they run out of matches. They knew Mr Heath was good for something!
“Still there, Wilf?”
“Yes, why?”
“Can’t get anything on the tranny either.”
“What, no transistor radio?”
“Right, not even a hiss, and I’m sure the batteries are OK because the wife was using it only this morning.”
“Maybe she left it on and drained the battery. Hang on a mo, I’ll check mine.” He goes indoors and comes back a half minute later. “You’re right. Nothing there either. Can’t understand it.”
“Just a thought... I wonder if the red light on the top of Selworthy Beacon, on the wireless transmitter, is on.” He goes cautiously out into the street where he should be able to see the mast and looks up. “No, not a sausage! I don’t understand it. That’s supposed to have its own power supply, so that it’s always on to warn aircraft.” And then an afterthought: “Wonder if it’s affecting the hospital...”
Too busy worrying about transistor radios, telephones, televisions, transmitter warning lights, candles and the hospital, nobody notices that one of the stars in the sky has disappeared — not something enough to casually draw the attention of the man-in-the-street. Except for two people with eagle eyes.
A year previously this particular star was first seen by astronomers over the northern hemisphere, and as far south as Ursa Major — the Big Dipper — could be observed in the southern hemisphere’s early winter, and it was measured and remeasured, its spectrum analysed and reanalysed, and it was deemed to be a typical T-class brown dwarf star, probably only a few light-years from the solar system, very close, but nothing extraordinary. The only puzzle to astronomers was that nothing had been charted in that location on any sky atlas, of all stars down to magnitude 17. This was unusual, and even an investigation of that part of the sky on old photographs taken by the Hubble telescope and by the largest earth-based telescopes failed to show anything up. It should have been seen before; that was the mystery. It was suddenly there, and of magnitude 4, but should have been seen ages ago when it was much fainter if it was a variable star, certainly within the scope of Hubble and other telescopes, especially so in view of its believed closeness to the Earth, and now declared probably to be our nearest neighbour, closer than Proxima Centauri. Initially some have suggested it is a nova — a ‘new’ star, but it has none of the characteristics of a nova — totally the wrong spectrum, the wrong light-curve; the only explanation is that it has emerged from behind a dust cloud. Its appearance merited a paragraph in a few of the newspapers, a couple of sentences on the radio and television news, and a short note from Sir Patrick Moore on The Sky At Night, but nothing much more publicly.
But the sky is full of mysteries, most of them much more interesting to astronomers than a previously unobserved ordinary brown dwarf star.
Or is it?
Normal variable stars wax and wane, but this one has suddenly vanished — has it gone back into its dust cloud?
At Tiverton in Devon in 2002 the Government provided most of the funds for the setting up of a new University, the University of Exmoor. Its bias is towards the study of pure and applied sciences, though there are also several departments devoted to the arts, humanities, languages and other subjects, to encourage people living in the rural south-west to be able to study near to their own homes.
The Astrophysics Department was set up for the beginning of the 2007/2008 academic year, and has had only a handful of undergraduate students in each year, mostly of rather poor quality. Initially they came under the wing of the Department of Physics. There are no post-graduates yet, until 2010, as the courses have not been completely finalised nor the appropriate staff employed. The Head of the Department is Dr Ivan Bassinger, a divorcee, of late middle age, and formerly a lecturer at a much older University in the north of England. His initial objective for setting up post-graduate courses will, he hopes, in turn attract a better class of undergraduates, who will in turn improve the quality of students he can attract as post-graduates.
Unlike similar courses in other educational establishments, he is looking for graduates from diverse backgrounds, not just mathematics, physics and other similar disciplines, but also from the arts, languages and humanities. Where their present skills do not encompass scientific subjects like physics, mathematics or electronics, he has liaised with other departments of the University who will offer the appropriate foundation courses. He, in turn, will offer courses in his own area to other scientific departments, to the benefit of their own researchers.
Students in Bassinger’s Department of Astrophysics are offered the possibility of collaborating with other similar establishments in Britain and abroad, both by attending conferences and, he hopes, eventually being able to host them. Both theoretical and practical studies are part of all courses, as are seminars where different research groups can exchange ideas. Where his researchers lack necessary skills, such as communication or writing formal research papers, they will be given access to those who can provide these skills, either in other departments of the University or through commercial service providers.
Those are his aims, and impressive and challenging they are.
For several weeks last summer Ivan Bassinger devoted what spare time he could examining the newly found star in Ursa Major, by now dubbed ‘2009UMa7’. He used his 12-inch Dobsonian telescope, which cost him personally just under £1,000, and another £1,800 for additional equipment like a range of eyepieces, spectrographs, digital cameras and other instruments. Unfortunately there were all too few clear nights for observing, and in any case, he has been spending much of his time planning his ambitious programme of undergraduate and research courses.
His Dobsonian has shown that 2009UMa7 has a magnitude of 4.6; it has no discernible disc, which is not surprising in view of the short exposure time he has used. It also has no observable planets nor any accompanying star. The sky in its vicinity is completely dark, except for a dim object which passed by during one of his observations, and was almost certainly a nearby asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter.
He has had almost no time to analyse the results of his observations, but was able to present to the University’s governing Fellows the benefits that could be accrued by giving his students properly planned access to the world’s finest telescopes, like the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a matter which was argued over and again by the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Bassinger and the senior Fellows, mostly because of its cost to the meagre budget of the Science department. The VLT array, at an altitude of 2,600 metres, is at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of Chile, where the air is so clear that even the Milky Way can cast a shadow; it consists of four individual telescopes that can be used in concert or individually.
Or even the Hubble Telescope.
He has had twenty applications for the first post-graduate course that is due to start in October, none from present undergraduates. Several he dismisses immediately, some he calls for an interview, and eventually he is left with seven likely candidates. Three of them have already accepted places at other Universities, provided that their undergraduate degrees are sufficiently good. Leaving four.
On 20th June he telephones all seven offering them places on the Astrophysics post-graduate research programme and reminds them that the course will start on 20th September and they should arrange their own accommodation before then; the University Accommodations Bureau is available if they need it. Research projects that will be considered are in:
On 21st June the Black-Out starts.
In the community where Wilf and his neighbours and the black-and-white photographer and the artist live, there are two exceptions to the general ignorance of the star — the disappearing star is noticed by our painter of cloud formations. Not only is she interested in cumulus, stratus, cirrus and all the other vapours of the sky, but she also is a keen amateur astronomer with something of an astrologer in her. The star was new to her a year ago. She does not follow scientific literature nor read newspapers or magazines, so she knows nothing of the scientists’ explanations — or rather excuses — for the star’s appearance last year. But she has a clear recollection of how this part of the sky should look, and frequently takes her plain notepad up the hill above the village and above her cottage, where the light pollution is less, to sketch the sky. By candle-light she searches through her sketches and notes for the date of the first time she saw the star. And she confirms that she has never seen anything there before.
She goes outside to take another look at it. Then she hurries indoors to find her most recent notebook — she was right! Not only has that part of the sky changed, but also the new star has gone. Vanished! And around where it was there are none of the usual faint objects, individual distant stars, clusters of stars, nor galaxies that she could normally see on a fine night through her small telescope. Is a cloud hiding that part of the Great Bear? If so it isn’t moving at all, just covering the new star and its environs. And moving with it across the sky.
The other exception is the photographer, who has also seen that this particular star has vanished.
And on the Earth there is a big problem — it is affecting the entire globe, not just Wilf and his neighbours and the artist and photographer.
Nothing that relies on electricity is working anywhere. No country in the world has access to any electrical power. No generator produces electricity, so no communications systems work; no radio, no television, no telephones, fixed or mobile, no internet, nothing that relies on satellite communications. No batteries work, nor generators of any kind. And there is no power for electric ovens, freezers, or any other such things. It is as if Faraday and all his contemporaries and successors never existed.
A few people are gradually finding that they can use gas-powered heaters, but that isn’t of much use to most who might just have an old Primus stashed away somewhere, but with no gas cylinders, of course.
Car lights go out and vehicles crash into each other or into obstacles all over the place, and all aircraft in flight lose contact with the ground-stations that are supposed to control them. Several planes that are in the process of landing crash as runway lights are suddenly extinguished and they lose all their control systems, as does just about everything else on the ground. Some high in the sky have well-experienced navigators who try to remember the old navigation systems — using the stars, but their engines lose all power and they are doomed to crash into the sea or onto whatever happens to be below them when they finally glide out of control to altitude zero.
Ships at sea cannot navigate at all, because their compasses, too, fail, as well as their engines, and they drift on the currents until eventually they are grounded. Some people are lucky, and can get ashore; others are not, as their ships hit rocks or run aground violently. Orienteers on the ground have the same trouble, as does every person relying on anything magnetic. Lifts crash to the bottoms of their shafts, and people are trapped wherever they happen to be, if it is reliant on electricity or magnetism. Some happy train enthusiasts on a Steam Special near Crewe are killed and many injured as their ancient locomotive crashes into the rear of a stationary electric train; none of the signals have informed the driver that he is to stop, and there are no tail lights on the electric train.
The plugs have been pulled on everything. All electromagnetic forces seem to have completely lost their strength.
For millennia, the perceived wisdom was that the Sun orbited the Earth; but it didn’t.
For two centuries, Newton explained the laws of motion until Einstein came along; and then his laws didn’t work, well not completely.
For decades, Einstein’s laws were held to apply universally, until quantum mechanics came along; and then relativity was found to be incompatible with this new science. Scientists are still looking for the theory that unites these concepts, both of which have their fervent advocates.
Science changes, but the vanishing of the electromagnetic force is just too much to swallow. It is also impossible to understand or research. The problem for scientists is that so much of their science relies on or uses electromagnetism — computers, almost all their laboratory equipment, even the drives on their telescopes. And there is no contact with any artificial satellites. Everyone feels totally isolated and helpless, especially without their computers.
Some scientists at a few Universities have tried to understand what has occurred; some tentatively reach the conclusion that the laws of physics have somehow been affected; of the four fundamental forces of nature — weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravitational — one has just gone. There is no other explanation apparent that takes all the changes into account. But that is impossible!
Or is it?
Though most of their constituents are just bewildered, politicians and bureaucrats the world over are in a state of panic. Without computers and mobile telephones all their electronic systems are useless. Anarchy could be reigning out there! How can the people expect to carry on their lives without instructions and guidance? They have seen the chaos and devastation caused by earthquakes and floods. Without efficient direction, how can their citizens live? The bicycle and rowing boat seem to be the only means of transport available. Of what use are they to the commuters into Wall Street or Canary Wharf? And if they do manage to get there, what is there for them to do with their dead electronic toys? No wonder the politicians and managers panic: they have no-one to pass laws for, nor jobs to do. Governments, where they can, try to invent action plans for coping with the crisis, as none of their existing contingency plans envisages a calamity of these proportions.
A few people, mostly those who live off the land, can cope, and by bartering with their neighbours can exchange sacks of wheat for a sheep or pig. In fact in many places bartering becomes the order of the day. What use are credit cards and bank accounts when they are totally inaccessible?
The photographer walks down his lane the day after the Black-Out begins, to call on the artist. They have never actually had a conversation before, even though they are both single, live not far apart, and have similar artistic sides to their characters. They are both loners, though they do occasionally manage a simple ‘hello’ or a smile when they recognise one another. This time the photographer’s visit has a purpose.
“Are you all right, Miss..., Mrs...,” he asks awkwardly. He retired some years ago from a dull office job in Exeter, and had saved just enough to buy a small cottage in Bossington, a coastal village in north Somerset between Porlock and Minehead, and to follow his passion for photographing nature. He has fallen in love with the Exmoor landscape, the cliffs and coves on the Bristol Channel; and the never-ending assortment of clouds and skyscapes.
From the bottom of the previous column
“Miss Gentry,” she clarifies his nervous uncertainty. “Please call me ‘Gert’, though. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I was born with it. My father was a very staid clergyman, and I’m afraid I inherited some of his traits, including a very staid name, Gertrude!”
“Pleased to meet you, Gert. Don’t apologize about your name, just think of it as dignified. I’m Harry Highgate, so call me ‘Harry’. I’ve been a widower for forty years since my Penelope died of breast cancer when she was very young.” A small tear comes to his eye. “In those days cancer was a taboo subject; we just called it ‘the big C’ if we had to mention it.
“But anyway, I came down to see if you were all right, what with the power cuts everywhere, it seems. I thought you were alone, so...”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you for being so kind and considerate to think of me. I am just mystified about all this.” She retired only last year, from an equally boring office job in Bristol, with a pension that just let her buy a cottage and follow her passion for impressionist art. What attracted her to Bossington was essentially the same as for Harry — their artistic eyes are similar though their chosen media are different.
“Me too; it is a complete mystery. No signals on any of the television or radio channels that I could find. So no news!”
“Oh, I haven’t got a television, just an ancient radio that hardly picks up anything except whatever they broadcast from that transmission tower on the top of the Beacon. It seems to swamp the whole radio and most of it is horrible popular music, so I never listen. But ‘they’ will keep writing to me to ask why I haven’t got a television licence! Don’t they know that some people prefer not to waste their time in that fashion? If I want to waste my time, I shall do it in my own way, on my own terms, by committing to canvas what I see; or perhaps, what I want to see.” She smiles mischievously. “So now when I get one of their stupid letters I just throw it away; I’ve given up writing to them telling them the folly of their ways!”
“I’m not so nearly talented as you, I’m sure. I let the photographic film capture what I see.” He pauses for a moment. “One question, though. It may seem odd but did you see that star in the Great Bear? It suddenly appeared about a year ago, and last night it just disappeared. I saw that you were still painting when I packed up, but just before I got home, I looked up, and the star had just gone. I quickly took some photographs of that part of the sky, just as I had when it appeared so unexpectedly.”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure when it first appeared. I thought it was a nova, a ‘new’ star. And I noticed it last night; I was more interested in the cloud formations and the beautiful tones of sunset. I’m sure I exaggerate them in my paintings, but I paint what I see or, as I said, what I want to see. But, yes, I did see that the new star had suddenly vanished. When I got home I looked at some of my paintings and sketches of the sky in that region, and I saw that it had appeared some twelve months ago, and had disappeared last night.”
“So mysterious! But it was never very bright until then, when I first saw it. I’m probably overestimating its importance, or my lack of knowledge. I’m too old to worry about a star I haven’t seen before.”
“Thank you for coming, Harry, and talking this over with me. I was starting to think that I was going a bit soft in the head. I’m rather relieved that you saw what happened too.”
“Oh, that’s no problem. I would like to talk to you some more, with permission.”
“Of course! I can show you some of my paintings and sketches. Would that amuse or bore you, do you think?”
“I don’t think you need ask. Farewell, Miss Gert. We will meet again soon I hope.” And so he leaves, with her calling “Please call me Gert” after him.
It is a month later.
Western society has changed from a hi-tech to a primitive existence. Many people have died — the lack of hospital facilities, the need to live by one’s own wits, the absence of any effective policing to protect the old and infirm from vandals and thieves — many things have conspired to wreck the lives of the most vulnerable and of those too who never considered themselves at any sort of risk. The non-existence of any form of transport except by foot and bicycle has virtually eliminated any long-distance communication, though a few hopeful and hardy souls have crossed narrow strips of water, such as the English Channel and the straits separating mainland Scotland from its islands, by rowing or sailing. They’d hoped that the catastrophe was limited to their own environment, but in vain.
The Third World doesn’t really notice very much difference; the ‘rich’ West has joined them in their ways of living from hand to mouth.
Wilf and his neighbours are sitting in his garden — for it is a beautiful, clear afternoon, though rather cool — playing a game. There is nothing else for them to do, and without electricity and all its comforts they might as well indulge themselves in some diversion. The world is about to die, apocalypse now! As a more-or-less self-contained community they are fairly self-supporting in their lives, and the bartering system seems to be working. The local bank manager, a lawyer who lives in the village and the parish clerk have even set up the ‘Bossington pound’, based on their estimate of the assets and integrity of individuals. Each is nominally valued at £1 or a multiple thereof, and is a substitute for credit cards and cheques. The ‘notes’ are signed by the dignitaries who set up the system, and the intention is that if, if, life ever returns to normal they would be converted back to Sterling currency.
The game Wilf and his friends are playing is rather silly but a few bottles of beer help, warm, of course because of the lack of refrigeration. They have guessed that anyone on board an aeroplane was doomed on that night when everything went dark, so what better than to speculate on who might have succumbed to the catastrophe, or rather, who they hoped had.
Wilf begins: “How about the Prime Minister for starters?”
“Yes,” his neighbour, Clifford, adds, “and all his cabinet.”
“No, not the young one with a nice smile,” Wilf’s wife objects. “He shouldn’t go. He’s too good-looking!”
“You never told me you fancied him,” Wilf exclaims. “You unfaithful old woman!”
“You’ve been cuckolded, Wilf,” another, Fred, jokes. “All right, all the government except her toy-boy!”
“And those God-almighty self-pompous television journalists.”
“Not the brave ones who report on wars and things; they don’t deserve to go.”
“And all so-called film stars!”
“Oh, no. We’re never going to agree on that. I bet there’s some my missus fancies there, too,” Wilf adds.
“And some of the birds, too,” adds Clifford, the neighbour with the ‘tranny’.
“Poncy footballers that get paid millions.”
“And their useless girl-friends. ‘WAGS’ they call them; don’t know why.”
“Wives And Girlfriends!”
“Hang on! This is getting ridiculous. We might find it easier to decide who we’d like to survive. The list’d be shorter.”
“Well I like that lad who’s new at the butcher’s; he can stay. He’s supposed to be the boss’s nephew. Nice looking boy.”
“We were getting rid of all the politicians just now. There’s that Scotch bloke...”
“Scottish bloke, you mean, or Scot. ‘Scotch’ is whisky.”
“Or eggs.”
“...All right, the Scottish politician who seems to make a lot of sense; can’t remember his name, Charles something, or James.”
“Let’s stick to individuals, not whole types of people. Otherwise there wouldn’t be enough planes to put them on before they crashed.”
“Right, all politicians can’t be bad. Let’s start again. The Prime Minister.” There is silence for half a minute.
“Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
“John Wayne.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Nobody knows for sure.
“Russell Crowe.”
“Oh, yes; him definitely.”
“I disagree. He’s quite a good actor.”
“Says you!”
“That fat woman who reads the News.”
“Which Channel?”
“Oh, the BBC, I think; or ITV.”
“Well that’s a lot of help for us to know who you mean! There’s no TV now, anyway, so it doesn’t matter!”
“It might be Sky.”
“The Queen and Philip.”
“No, not them! I’m a Royalist!”
“Well I think they should all go, whole lot of ’em, spongers on the rest of us. Royals!” he adds contemptuously.
“We’re getting back to whole groups of people. We said we’d stick to individuals.”
“The Prince of Wales, then, talking to lettuces!”
“Not William and Harry, though. They’re nice young boys.”
“Boys? They’re older than that! They’re older than the new boy at the butcher’s.”
“Well, men, then.”
“That horrible man on the X Factor.”
“The Ironmonger in the High Street. He always short-changes.”
“That’s true; I overheard him bragging to his missus only last month how he’d given old Widow Browne in Back Lane change from a fiver when he’d been given a tenner!”
“Never liked him since he first came here thirty years ago.”
“No, bloody newcomers! He ought to be reported to the Police, if we had any. Good job there aren’t any hooligans round here; Constable Plod wouldn’t be much good!”
“Mind you, the ironmonger’s wife is all right; he dominates her, I reckon; I wouldn’t be surprised if he beats her up. Poor woman.”
“I heard she died in a car crash that night the lights went.”
They all fall silent in her memory. The game has gone far enough.
Harry calls on Gert one morning and asks her if she would show him some of her paintings. On hearing his request, her face brightens up. Nobody has ever asked to see them before. Several years ago she had hawked a few of what she considered to be her best ones, the most saleable ones, round some art galleries in London, but nobody showed any interest; she wasn’t a ‘name’. At best, they told her, she might get a few tens of pounds, maybe a hundred if the right buyer came along. One of the kinder, less snooty dealers suggested she tried an auction room, but he said he wasn’t optimistic; or a local art exhibition.
“It might be exciting to see some of your pictures from the night everything went dark,” Harry suggests.
“Yes, what fun. We could compare them with your photographs of that evening. Did you capture the sky where the star was?”
“Yes, I did. There is something rather odd about them, though. But first, can I please see your paintings?”
“Indeed. I always make a note of when and where each one is painted or sketched, and anything else that will help me remember what was happening at the time. They are numbered on the back and then I can keep tally of each one in my notebook.”
She finds her notes, and the numbers corresponding to the pictures. Then she goes into a back room, her ‘studio’ as she likes to call it, and returns with a group of about six paintings, all created on that evening.
“Sometimes I work in oils or even water-paint or pencil, but that night I was using acrylic paints, my favourite. I can’t afford proper canvas with all the stretching equipment and other paraphernalia, so the rough side of a piece of hardboard is my usual field, the shiny side whitewashed if I’m using water or pencil. Here they are from that awful night.”
“These are marvellous, beautiful even, most impressionistic. You know, a hundred years or more ago you’d’ve been up there with Picasso, Gauguin, Manet, Degas and all the rest.”
“Well thank you, Harry.” Her face reddens.
“No, they really are exceptional. Have you got a magnifying glass, by any chance? Or a microscope would be even better.”
“Yes, there’s a glass in that drawer, by your left arm, if you would be so kind.”
He opens the drawer and finds the magnifier immediately. He closely examines the last painting, especially in the area of the sky where the star was. “I’m not sure... I just wonder...”
“Yes, yes?” Gert eagerly asks what he means.
“What is that little mark of green, just there?”
“Where? Let me see. Oh I don’t recall exactly. I am very impulsive. If I think a little splodge of green would look right somewhere, I just add it. It doesn’t have to be anything.”
“But do you remember anything that made you put that green mark there?”
“Well, no, I don’t think so,” she adds after some thought. “Is it important what an old woman daubs onto her sketch?”
“My dear lady, ‘old woman’ no, and ‘daub’ never!” Harry flatters her, but not in a pompous or mocking way. “I have taken the liberty — I hope you don’t mind — of bringing with me some of the photographs that I have taken over the years of that part of the sky.”
“Oh, how exciting!” Then she returns to his earlier question. “Why did you mention a microscope just now?”
“Have you got one, by any chance?”
“I just remembered that my father had an old one, quite good though, lots of brass to polish — I’m very remiss in that respect. I think it may be in a chest that contains so many of his things. I seem to remember seeing it in there several years ago before I moved here. I even thought of selling it at one time, but it was too precious to me to get rid of. Just a minute and I’ll see if I can locate it.”
She leaves the room, while Harry continues to look at her paintings, especially the one with the green ‘splodge’.
“Here it is. I was right; it was in daddy’s chest. But you didn’t answer my question: why a microscope?”
“Take a look at these photographs,” Harry says, producing an envelope containing about a dozen prints. “They’ve got the date, time, place, exposure, film, etc. on the back. You see, I’m as organized as you!” he laughs.
She looks at the first one. “That’s a part of the Plough, isn’t it? Where the new star appeared.”
“Yes. I took that one just over a year ago, as you’ll see from the note on the back. Can you see any sign of the new star?”
“No, nothing.” She puts the print under the magnifying glass and then under the microscope. “No, nothing in that area that isn’t on the star charts. Just a moment,” and she gets up and disappears. “Here’s an old copy of Norton’s Star Atlas. If we can see it with our eyes or a simple camera, it should jolly well be in here.” She turns to the page that covers the region around the Pole Star. “A few stars in the neighbourhood, but not the special one. See?”
Harry examines the photograph and the star atlas in minute detail. “Nothing there. I didn’t take any more that included that part of the sky until recently, but this is the first with the new star in it.”
“Oh! Magnificent! As clear as...” she forgets the simile “... as clear as whatever things are as clear as!” and they both laugh.
“Might I examine it under the microscope, just in case there’s something we can’t quite see?” He uses the old instrument with great care. “No. There’s nothing odd about it.” She uses the instrument to confirm his conclusion.
The next few are similar to the second photograph, though the two of them are very meticulous in their search for something, anything, that looks strange.
“These last two are the best I could do without electricity. I took them as soon as I noticed that the star had gone. I developed the film using a candle and some grease-proof paper to diffuse the light, and I had to make dozens of prints before these came out right. It’s usually very easy when I can use the equipment in my dark-room — mind you, all my rooms are dark-rooms now — but I had to make lots of calculations and then trials before these came out. In view of the difficulties, I don’t think they are too bad. I couldn’t magnify them, because that needs a good electric light.”
Gert looks at the first of these pictures closely through the magnifying glass. “No, it’s gone. Just a minute, what is that little mark by where it was?”
“That’s what I wondered,” Harry replies. “Let’s use the microscope to see if it is any clearer.”
They both look, taking their time, for it somehow seems to be important.
“I just can’t make it out,” he shrugs after a couple of minutes. “No, nor can I, but there’s definitely something there,” Gert adds.
“Take a look at the other one.”
She looks for quite some time. “It seems to be part of a circle. What do you make of it?”
“That’s what I thought when I first looked at it, but my spyglass is too crude to show much up. That’s why I wanted to show it to you — a second opinion. I’m sure it’s an arc of a circle, very fine, but definitely circular. Would you like me to tell you my other surprise?”
“There’s more?”
“Yes. As I took that photo, I thought I saw a green flash through the viewfinder! And I’m sure it’s the same tone of green as you painted. It seems to me that you either consciously or subconsciously saw the flash — for I’m sure that was all it was — at the same time as me.”
“I wasn’t conscious of the flash, but I imagine it must have registered in my mind for me to have put that mark on the canvas.”
“I think it’s something very important,” Harry announces. “It must have something to do with the Black-Out, I’m sure. What do you think?”
Gert is a little hesitant, but admits: “Yes, I think you may have hit on something there. But what can we do about it? There’s no way of telling anyone, except by word-of-mouth, and that’s just about impossible for conveying important information and questions to people who may be able to shed some light on the subject.”
Harry says: “I will leave you now, but please contact me, as I will you, if any ideas occur. Thank you for a most enlightening conversation. Goodbye, Miss Gentry.”
“Goodbye, Mr Highgate.”