It was getting on for 6:30am and it was Friday. I had only six hours sleep behind me but there was no time for another long morning of coffee and regret. Past the curtains, through the window, the sky was black as pitch. The pane had an edge of rime that would melt when the sun hit it. I woke thinking about the pumping station. There were another two, maybe three days in it. Derek the steelfixer was desperate to get on but before he could put his bars down the joiner had to get the soffit shutter in. To do that the walls had to be up.
Big Swannie, the new Contracts Manager, had given the Agent a bollocking about the time I was taking. The Agent, Mac, is a survivor from the old company and a gentleman. I tell him about safety considerations and the Clerk of Works breathing down my neck and he understands. I tell him about rain, how it washes the mortar away quick as I can put it down and the weather being too cold to make the stuff anyway and he accepts. When he passes these things on to Swannie he gets bawled out. Swannie sent him across the site to tell me to bring my other squad in. I told him it would make no difference; they couldn’t change the weather. I didn’t say they’re working on a factory extension where they are under cover and the steady money isn’t something I am going to risk. I’m losing enough on this job as it is. When he asked me if he should bring someone else in, Healey’s men for example, I gave him the hard look. I don’t work with other builders. Healey’s just a brickie anyway.
I got up feeling dried out and sick, picked my clothes off the floor and threw the switch on the electric fire. Through in the kitchen I washed my hands and face and made a long spit into the sink. Light was breaking over MacRae’s shed. This place is too far out of town but it’s cheap. It was good to see the lambs being born and all the work that goes into the harvest, but a farm in winter is a bleak place.
Some mornings the mucus hangs off the beasts’ noses in thick icicles. They hate the cold. They suffer, same as us workers. My hands go raw in the cold air, handling the bricks. Safety gloves have no heat in them. Real gloves get worn to nothing in half a shift. All around the cofferdam the ground is churned up. Wet clay climbs your legs and drops into your wellies. Turn your socks down over the tops and they get clarted with mud. I have bald rings round my calves where it rubs. My feet are filthy all the time. Wellies with steel toecaps freeze your toes and the steel cuts in when you walk. The teachers and the office workers don’t know.
I made coffee and toast and gave myself ten minutes. There was a steady, acute thump on the right side of my forehead and my stomach was turning over. The toast went dry in my mouth, the tea acid in my stomach. I managed to finish both and threw a panadol down. Back in the room I put on trainers and a leather bomber jacket; I like to look halfway decent going back and forth.
The cold air hit me as I was locking up, so icy it picked out the rim of the nostrils and the quick of the nails. Worse than that was where it dug right into the body’s core and made me know that I am limited. There is only so much in there. Not everything can be borne. Worse than that was the blow to morale. This was what I had to look forward to all day, these conditions, losing myself in work, doing the best I could against boredom. All I want is to get on with it when I’m out there. Instead I spend half the day taking blows and waiting.
The light in the shed went on and MacRae’s boy, Neil, came out of the house and across the track to feed the beasts. He seems to like what he does. Maybe it’s the prospect of owning the place when the Old Man gives up, or maybe he pretends just enough to get by. The beasts get excited when they hear him, moving around in their stalls. He tells me they show affection. Because he brings them food they think he’s their friend. He gave me a wave. We don’t say much.
In winter I drive a lot in unlighted areas and on farm tracks. This is what it is to be a builder in the Highlands. For this reason I always buy a white van, it’s more visible in the dark. The present van is four years old and going on for 85,000 miles done. It’s becoming unreliable. Soon it will have to go. This means another bank loan. For the same reason it’s streaked with mud half way up its sides, right up to the Master Builders sign. I keep up with membership. It separates me from the Healeys of the building world when it comes to fine work.
What I like best is handling good facing bricks, keeping them dead plumb, dead square, matching in the coloured pointing. Being in the Master Builders keeps me in good with the architects, the ones who do one-off, individual houses. I like to think of these houses standing a hundred years from now. There was a time I wanted to sign my walls like paintings so people would know who built them. I take the same attitude into this other, heavier, work. It doesn’t matter that it’s a chamber that’s going to be buried and filled with sewage. Some day after I’m dead it might be emptied and someone will go in and see. Nobody alive cares but Harry the Clerk of Works and he claims he’s responsible for everything that’s done right and none of the rest. It’s an ego trip for him now where it used to be a religion.
The engine started third turn but the windscreen and the air-blower were both icy. I had to sit freezing in the stale fug left over from Malky’s cigarettes, gunning the engine until it warmed up. When a soft patch appeared in the middle I went outside with the cloth and made it just big enough to see through. Back inside the van my head felt like it was going to split as I leaned over the wheel and peered into the headlight beams. I turned round the farmhouse and onto the track and headed out.
Grass in the middle of the track was coated with frost; the van lurched from side to side in the ruts. Now and again the lights picked out sheep eyes in the field. There’s something hellish about a split eyeball staring at you from a sea of darkness. Listening to Malky puts these ideas in my head. He reads horror comics, collects videos like Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man. You could think he believes in that stuff. At the end of the farm track I turned on to the single-track road and, at the bottom of that, the main road into town. I drove through with the wipers going, gradually clearing the screen, past the police station and away.
My head had to focus through the last night’s drink, quick movements would set it spinning. Concentration is a struggle at the best of times. My head goes everywhere when I’m driving, the job I’m going to, the last job, the next job, the number two squad, measurements. The wife doesn’t invade the way she used to now she gets her money straight from the Bank. I don’t see her any more and, if I don’t see her, she fades. This morning I felt so rough I had to force all of my mind on to the road, deeply aware of my hands on the wheel, of gripping too hard; the tyres on the asphalt, how any sudden movement could have the van weaving.
Malky was waiting outside the garage in the Muir, just across from the pub where I’d left him. It almost looked like he’d spent the night in there and staggered out in the morning. We were both far gone when I took him home. The difference was he would have stopped then. Sandra would have made sure he was fed and clean before she put him to bed. She’d turn him out to meet me in the morning, knowing I would be up for work no matter what. Against that I went home to more vodka. Whoever invented Thursday pay for the troops should be shot.
Malky climbed down into the passenger seat. Neither of us said anything. I took off and gave him the look that said, safety belt – on. He pulled it across and pushed the catch home. I got us out of town and put the foot down. Malky reached into his pocket, took out a packet of cigarettes and fumbled one out. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He put the packet away and fumbled in the other pocket for matches. When he’d lit up and was shaking the match out he looked at the ashtray. It was full. He rolled down the window and tossed the match out. Without thinking he took the ashtray out of its holder and emptied it out of the window also. The driver behind us made angry shapes with his mouth. I let him pass and turned off the main road, taking the country roads. It would put ten minutes driving on the journey but the other driver’s mobile phone could mean the police. Then there were tyres, brakes, all these things. But the MOT was up to date.
Malky took out his comic and settled down. He’s as much gorilla as man. In this respect, as well as reliability and hunger for work, he’s good to have around. There are Agents who dispute the measure, knowing they can sit on their lies and stare you down if you want to work for them again. Him just standing there when I hand it over makes a difference. Nothing needs to be said.
There are other builders the agents know will do the job quicker than me if they can get the Clerk of Works to accept the rubbish they put down. These guys would intimidate me off the job if they could get away with it. Not while Malky’s around. Even Healey’s Brendan respects him and Brendan’s a pig when he’s battling. He’s loyal to me; I think he loves me in a way. Sandra knows she can trust me. She knows he’ll get his full money every week, and that I’ll drop him close to home. I don’t usually bring him back exhausted and caked in mud or pished. It’s only when times are thin I take on the heavy stuff, the pipelines, the roadworks. Most of the time he comes home from a nice house-building job, reasonably clean. More and more though, it’s the heavy stuff I get.
The site is on a hill above the Beauly Firth. It’s a sewer main, nearly three miles long, with staged pumping stations to get the stuff back up through the town and over the top. This means pipelaying going at the same time as building. Ductile iron pipes six metres long, gravel bedding, trench supports, all have to be trafficked along the temporary road. At the same time there are tracked excavators moving back and forth, cranes and piledrivers at the chambers, bricks and cement mixers. The Contractor’s wayleave across the fields, the work space, is too narrow. With the pipe track open, pipe bedding on one side, arisings on the other, there’s no room for the excavator to travel along and back. Conn has had the fence down three times, and he’s a magic driver.
This is just one way the job is going wrong but it was the Client who arranged the access. Big Swannie is claiming delay and disruption. At present he doesn’t know if he’ll get his money back. This means a lot of tension between Swannie, his Agent, and the Engineer’s staff. It means he’s tight with his payments to the subbies and the suppliers. On top of this there are other bad things happening. Fact is, the job has gone to hell. My contract is to build walls to the main chamber, a big deep one, below the village. Everything about the job is vile. All I want is to build the thing once and correct, I mean to my own standards, get out and never go back.
There is a rough car park outside the compound. We stopped there and got changed at the back of the van. The sun was up but the air was still cold. Clear sky, it was a high-pressure day, a good day for work if I could only get going. Three long huts sit inside the compound beside the fence; one for the agent and setting-out engineer, another for Harry. The third is for the troops. The troops’ had an outside cludge with the pan full to the top with pish and floating turds. There are people you tell these things and they don’t believe these conditions exist. Some poor mug was going to have to dig down outside, break open the pipe and take the contents up his arm. It wouldn’t be Malky. They couldn’t give me enough money to make him do it. Inside the hut is where the men hang their jackets and change. This is where they sit when they’re rained off. The Agent had let the filth rise in the place for fear of spending Swannie’s money. Malky and I were having none of this. We changed into oversocks still wet with yesterday’s sweat, wellies, donkey jackets, and walked the mile or so to the cofferdam. I carried my tools on my back. Malky carried the flask and sandwiches Sandra had made for us.
It was still a quarter before eight. Only Derek the steelfixer was on site. Derek is the hardest man I’ve ever met. He picks a frozen bar up first thing, when it’s coated white with frost, and just holds it tight in his hands. I tried to do this once. It felt like burning, like gripping a hot poker. I couldn’t straighten my hand for half an hour. He says he only has to go through this first thing and after that there’s no more pain. He was sorting out 30mm bars with his boy. This looked like roof steel for the Pumping Station, which meant he would be delivering the bars sometime through the morning. One of them at each end, they carted them across to the gate where the crane could pick them up from outside. I like Derek, but I’m afraid of him too. I once saw him go to town on a concrete ganger who was pushing him on for bonus. The ganger spent the night in hospital. Pride wouldn’t let him say anything. The police were never brought in. Derek doesn’t drink any more, doesn’t swear or gamble. I keep in as best I can. Healey does the same.
The access road was all churned up by trucks, but still hard after the overnight freeze. In the wheel ruts there were knee-deep frozen ponds. Below us was the chamber compound and the cofferdam, the fence, the tops of the cofferdam piles. The ground was shiny with tiny ice pools where our boot prints had filled and frozen over. We couldn’t hear the pump going. When we got down we found it had been turned off overnight. This happened every so often. When the locals had been without sleep for long enough one of them would come down and shut it off.
The access width isn’t the only thing wrong with the contract. On Day One the pipelayers had come across a thick gravel band about a metre below the surface. When the trench was opened it spilled ground water and kept spilling. Big Swannie turned purple. The Engineer said he should have expected this; Swannie said there was no way he should have expected it. Instead of dragging a trench box along to hold up a dry excavation he had to close pile and try to control the flow with pumps. When that didn’t work he had to well-point. This is costing a fortune. The pipelayers are champing for bonus. Brendan, building the shallow chambers, is held up. This is why he has his eye on my job. The Pumping Station is four metres deep so has to be close-piled anyway. Swannie, being Swannie, bought in piles that had been used a dozen times before. Here and there the clutches have opened and water pishes in but this isn’t so bad as in the trenches. I got Malky to dig a sump in the corner and drop the pump rose in. We covered it with gravel and, okay, the pump now handles the flow when it’s working. But some bastard turned it off.
The water level in the cofferdam had stabilised near the top of the wall. Last time this happened the wall wasn’t so high and it spilled over and filled the chamber. This time it had only filled between the cofferdam piles and the bricks. Malky tried to turn the starting handle to get the pump going, but the works were frozen. He gathered a few rags together, soaked them with diesel and started a fire under the thing. I drew the hap off the previous day’s work and folded it into a corner, went out over the gangway and dropped on to the top scaffold staging inside the chamber.
By this time there was enough light to see to the bottom. It was deep shadowed but I couldn’t make out any water. I took out my torch and climbed down to the next level. The wall looked sound. There was no glisten on the pointing where the torchlight hit it, no white efflorescence growing on the face. When I ran my hand across it came back moist, but I put this down to condensation. The next level was the same. My heart was thumping. This was a natural test for the wall and it looked like it was going to be okay.
Down on the base, where the outside pressure was greatest, it was difficult to tell. I laid my donkey jacket on the slab, got down on my belly and shone the torch all around the bottom course. It was bone dry, as far as could be seen. All around me were bits of scaffolding, dog ends, lumps of mortar, broken bricks. Here the smell of dampness and cement was strongest, that cold talc smell. It came into my head as awareness of place. I was here again, at work, a sort of home. I would always return.
Looking up at the patch of sky past the scaffold opening I could see it was beginning to cloud over. It would rain before the end of the day; maybe there would be snow. Up above, the pump started, slowly at first then more steadily. The gravelly roar arrived over the top of the wall, followed by the coughing noise it made when it started throwing water out into the ditch.
I climbed back up and laid out my tools on the top staging. It looked good, the whole thing looked good. The time spent was worth it. If Healey had built it, the way he was building the small chambers, the courses would have been all over the place. Water would be coming through and it would never seal. Harry would have accepted none of it but the wall would be up – built. Eventually the Engineer would have settled for the best he could get, knowing it would never be seen except by some future workman with other things on his mind if he was down there at all.
I opened my bag at the corner of the staging where I couldn’t trip over it. Between the piles and the walls the water level was steadily falling. Malky was filling the mixer with diesel. We had an alkathene pipe running overground beside the track from the mains connection. Naturally it was frozen. We’d have to wait for the sun to free it if we were going to use it to make mortar according to spec. He turned the tap to the on position and left it. The water would announce its own arrival. Meantime he shovelled sand and cement into the bucket and gave it a few turns.
I got him to hold one end of the steel tape at the two near chamber corners and checked the diagonals. I knew I’d done this the previous night and that I would do it again last thing as well as several times through the day. The sizes can’t change but I check them anyway. I’m obsessive about checking. When I’ve nothing positive to do I go check something. In the van I find myself wondering if I checked sizes before I finished, if I packed my tools right, if I locked up properly. I wake up thinking about these things. The following morning it always turns out I have. I mean it – always.
The Contractor’s troops were starting to drift out of the hut and about the site. I had asked the Agent for a crane but it hadn’t appeared. It was tied up with the pipelayers. As usual he was pressing me on time but not providing the plant when it was needed. It would have to track across half the site to get here. If Brendan was involved there was no telling when it would arrive. He would tie it up as long as he could. I climbed out of the Chamber again while Malky took a Stanley knife to the plastic on the first palette of bricks. He passed them to me in pairs and I tossed them on to the staging.
This was coarse but I couldn’t wait. As usual there was big wastage. I would have to build the broken bricks in as best I could and drop the rest into the chamber. The troops would clear them out before the joiner came in. After a while we got a rhythm going and got the bricks across. I climbed back on to the staging, put the string lines up and tested them with the long bead.
It was nearly 9:00am and nothing was done. I had come in wanting to lay bricks from 8:00am right through until the light stopped us. Now we were ready to start but the water pipe was still blocked. I got Malky to lower a bucket down between the cofferdam and the wall. The ground water was pure as anything that comes out of the tap. So long as Harry wasn’t around we could use it. I made a start scraping out between yesterday’s courses, making ready for pointing, while Malky finished the mix. When it was ready he tipped it into the barrow and pushed it across the gangway. I took the mortar board from its lean against the wall and put it down on the staging and Malky dropped the first mix on the board. Now I was cooking.
I filled the trowel with mortar and dropped it on the wall head and spread it. Malky makes good mortar. You can tell by looking at the colour and feeling the way it slides off the blade. It would pass any test Harry could dig out of his books. Malky’s been working with me for three years and the time we spent mixing on the early jobs, just doing it over and over until it was right, was well spent. He gets it right first time, every time. Never mind the state of his head, that it’s full of drink or Sandra’s been nipping it.
I positioned the first of the new bricks, the most important of the day, in a stretcher across two headers. The trowel edge showed it flush with them, both ends. The string showed a dead level. This was the one to take care with. The rest would be easier. I moved out of thought and into rhythm – spread the mortar – pick up the next brick – mortar its leading edge – lay the brick – check the string. Now again, faster this time. Scrape the wall clean where the mortar runs down. Don’t let the drips and snotters take a set. Keep going. Merciless with the lash, as Harry says.
This was the best of it, working steadily – no thought required. It all happened between the hand and eye like they spoke to each other. Malky lit a cigarette and sat on the palette with his comic. I wouldn’t have to tell him when to start the next batch.
The pump revved up as it started sucking air. This meant the water level in the cofferdam was down to sump level. There was still water pishing through the clutches on to the concrete base but the pump had beaten the flow. Malky hung his donkey jacket over the fence gate, folded his comic into a pocket. He picked up a shovel and climbed down the ladder we had tied to the cofferdam walings. This was at the corner we had part backfilled with a gravel and sand mix. With just about his body’s width to turn in I could hear him digging his small hole, leaning the shovel against the steel piles and fumbling at his belt. Sound travels between the hard surfaces like it was a tunnel. I picked up another brick, mortared one edge, and laid it. When he got back he went straight to shovelling sand and cement into the mixer. Without warning the hose started throwing out water. Just in time, as it happened.
Malky picked up our two safety helmets from the corner of the compound and smacked them together to catch my attention. When I looked up he tossed mine down for me to catch. I looked along the track to see Harry’s white helmet bobbing up and down, then his duffel coat. When he arrived Malky was feeding water into the mixer from the hose and I was dipping from the knees, head up to keep the helmet steady, as I lifted the bricks. He made his cursory hello with Malky and crossed the gangway. I was ready to move the string line again. This time I hung the plumbs as well. Harry nodded approval and put his ruler between the strings and the bricks, nodding again and again. Keep going, he said. Merciless with the lash.
I respect Harry, and because I respect him I enjoy his approval. We have long conversations about building. He’s worked on buildings all over Britain, big architectural projects, London docklands, big new houses, specialist work on ancient buildings. When he goes on about the time he was in West Africa I kid him about ‘that big pyramids job in Egypt’. He knows all there is to know about building, all the mortar mixes, how to colour them. We talk and talk about these things. He knows all the bonds. No point arguing about what English bond really is, or garden bond, or the rest. He quotes chapter and verse. Better than that though, he’s done it all. He also knows all the ways to cheat, so if you try he generally finds you out. Harry and Healey’s men are in a permanent state of war. Harry would hunt them off the job if he could but, of course, Big Swannie likes speed. I know if Harry wasn’t so precious about the quality of brickwork in this chamber I’d be off the job. That’s not why I keep in with him though; we have an affinity. By God, he likes to talk. Some time in the pub we’ll really get down to it.
After he checked the strings and the diagonals he walked all the way round the cofferdam, looking down on the wall head. Any one can lay English bond when the wall only goes to a one-brick width. Its when you step out another brick or, worse, half a brick, it gets difficult. This is when the likes of Healey’s men get lost, building on that extra width as just another skin, not building it in. All the extra strength it has then comes from the brick’s weight, not the build. It’s just two walls leaning against each other. What I had built was the true English bond. Harry knew this. He went round and round the cofferdam admiring. When he had done all this we talked for a while about the site, what was going on, all that was going wrong.
Harry hates Healey more than I do. He has no time for Kelly, the General Foreman, either. To his face he tells him he leaves lousy work behind. The true bottom-acid of his bile though, is kept for Swannie. Harry despises the profit motive that is all James Swann lives for. On a slightly lesser ranking of hatred is his own boss, the Resident Engineer, who forever compromises on standards and pays out for bad workmanship over Harry’s head. Meantime Malky made a roll-up and took out his comic. He knew Harry valued him as much as the turds he’d just buried on the base of the cofferdam. This meant they paid each other no attention. To Malky the Clerk of Works was just another delay. To Harry, Malky was a talking shovel and the less it talked the better.
After a while Harry moved off along the track to the pipelaying operation and we got back to work. As Malky tipped the next batch onto the board the general foreman appeared. Kelly looked nervous. He knew I didn’t like to be interrupted and that I wasn’t under his control like the other troops. The Agent wanted to see me in his office. I used up the batch, making no haste to do what I was told, making sure that every brick was laid just so, before rinsing my hands under the hose and walking up the track. Malky set to making himself useful while I was gone, hosing down the mixer and brushing the cement slurry into the cofferdam. If I was away long enough he would know to take his tea so we could start again when I got back.
The office and stores compound was buzzing. Troops were going in and out to pick up bags of cement, bits of pipe and fittings, all the rest of it. Derek was nowhere to be seen but the chamber steel lay stacked beside the fence, waiting to be lifted. I guessed the mobile crane that was bouncing down the hill was coming to do the job. One of the flat lorries wouldn’t be far away. The Agent’s Ford and Swannie’s Beamer were parked outside the hut. The Agent would be in fear and trembling. What I felt I wouldn’t show. I made a loud knock on the door and waited for the shout.
Swannie was at the filing cabinet when I went in. The Agent was standing beside his desk instead of sitting, looking like something spare. Swannie told him to make coffee and pushed the cabinet drawer shut with a bang. Everything he did was like this. Every gesture was an assertion of position. Every look was half assessment, half threat. The Agent put a mug of coffee on the desk for Swannie and gave me one too. He didn’t make one for himself. He would know Swannie’s way the way I knew the ways of all Swannie’s kind. If he gave himself coffee he would receive the hard look. Then there would be something menial he would have to do in front of me. If he tried to find something to do for himself he would be told to do something else. If he so much as wanted to go for a shite he would be told to wait.
I stood quiet while Swannie sat and read from a file, sipped at his coffee, lit a cigarette. Humiliation was his favoured currency. I got the name right in my head, Mr Swann, and tried to look casual. Finally he got round to it.
He wanted the chamber roof cast on Tuesday; it would be an all-day pour. This meant the steelfixers in on Monday, the joiners before them on Sunday. Obviously he was going to defy the no-Sunday-work rule that was usual in this area. For the joiners to work on Sunday I had to be finished by Saturday night. I don’t like to work Saturdays. I like football. As does Derek, but he wouldn’t be required until Monday so long as his steel was beside the Chamber tonight.
There was no chance of me finishing in daylight, or even by the end of Saturday unless I worked on. This meant lights. He was having Brendan bring them to the chamber as we spoke. I put down my mug to go but Swannie wasn’t having this. Before I could leave he had to harangue me about my inadequacies. I stood and took it. This is what you do if you want to work. Of course Pat Healey is his boy and his men are favoured. If it wasn’t for Harry’s perfectionism on this brick chamber in particular I’d be off the site. None of this needed said.
I made my second skin and let it all blow past me. I would work on under lights into Friday night. Next day, Saturday, I would come in and work to a finish. No matter what I did or didn’t like. There would be nothing extra on the rate. This is how it would be. My increment of hate for Swannie was just one of many on a hoard he had been growing over the weeks. He didn’t care. Right now though, what was uppermost in my mind was the chamber compound where Healey’s men were erecting the lights. I was thinking about Malky. I was thinking about trouble.
Outside in the compound Derek had reappeared and was organising the steel lift on to a flat lorry. I stopped to tell him what was happening with the chamber. Of course he already knew. So would the joiner. I was last. I was weak enough to unload on him about Swannie, about the hate that was building up in me. Derek was impassive, as tough of mind as of body. He takes it all and gets on. He knows he works for money and hardening his mind against humiliation is as necessary as hardening his hands. A straight face dealing with Swannie, and for that matter Healey, is as necessary as a straight back for lifting steel bars. These are the necessaries – tough hands to do the work, and thick skin to endure the insult.
When I got back Malky was facing off three of Healey’s men with the mixer’s starting handle. Saying nothing he stood inside the gate with his legs flexed. They had the jeep and trailer. Bits of lighting equipment stuck out from the sides like a spider’s legs. Brendan was laughing at him, sneering at him and calling him out. If they were to get in to the compound before the mortar had set on the last course they could do damage. They might do damage anyway. Healey would like us to be slowed down. The walls were up so far even Brendan could finish them. Swannie would like this too. Healey was his boy.
I never forgot this – Healey was his boy.
Malky’s expression didn’t change, never showed the doubt I knew he would feel, the anxiety when I wasn’t there. He’s a soldier. When they got out of the jeep and started unloading the equipment he moved nervously from side to side on the balls of his feet. Anything could happen. I hurried down. Walking from the other side I could see Harry. Finished at the small chambers he was heading back to the huts.
We got to the stand-off together, Harry’s presence changing everything. Of course he had it all sussed. He took out his date-and-time camera and snapped the walls as they stood, gave me a few words of appreciation. He said he’d be back in the afternoon and moved on. Malky threw the starting handle beside the mixer and let Healey’s men in. They weren’t likely to try anything now.
I looked at my watch. It was coming on for 12:00pm. Better we were out of the way. I gave Malky the nod and packed my tools on to my back. It was worth an hour to keep out of these guys’ way. At the van we ate the pieces Sandra had made and got out of our wellies. Instead of drinking the tea I drove us to the pub. If we were working late the tea would be good to have at about 4:00pm.
The corner before The Islander has an electricity sub-station I did work on years ago. There’s every reason I might park the van there if anyone was wondering. We walked the rest of the way. Annie behind the bar knew us by this time, knew to pour a pint of lager for Malky as we came in, a big Whitbread for me. I got us a bridie each, to sit on top of Sandra’s pieces, and we hid in a corner out of the way. The more I thought about James Swann the more I churned inside.
It wasn’t that he wanted the work moved along, or that we were going to lose the best part of the weekend for nothing extra on the rate. All that’s part of the game. It was the lack of respect for craftsmanship. It was for not recognising it in the price. It was for the victory it handed to the likes of Pat Healey, the triumph of crap over quality. The no-respect was handed on to me and through me to Malky; through Malky to Sandra and the boys. Come to that, through me to the ex, and the girl. No-respect was the message sent to the whole worthwhile world of doing and making and being.
Malky soon had his nose in his comic but his lips weren’t moving. I’ve long since stopped asking what he gets out of these things, how he can go over the same pictures over and over again. As I looked at him, wondering how to start a conversation without spilling out all this bile or going over some old well-rutted ground yet again, he fumbled his cigarettes out of his pocket, lit up and dropped the spent match into the ashtray without looking. Malky knows the score. He takes just the one pint, usually doesn’t even finish it. He was smoking away, drinking very slow, keeping his eye on the page and never looking at me all the while. Yes, Malky knows the score. I got another big Whitbread from the bar and watched the hands on the clock go round.
Harry put his head through the door and went away again. I would have liked to speak to him. He has his difficulties with the Resident Engineer. Harry stands for quality in workmanship, standards. He takes a stand on all these things. I know, I’ve watched. Time after time the RE makes his compromises and pays out on crap. The job moves along, eventually it will be built and it will work. It always does. The public will judge on what it sees on the surface, a gardening job, a paint job, whatever. The public couldn’t care less about what it can’t see.
Yes, I would have liked to talk with Harry over a few pints. The times we’ve spoken on the scaffolding, the things he’s said about Healey, hinted at about the RE, tell me he’s a craftsman and a true believer in craft. We could get on all right, talking about jobs we’ve been on – that big pyramid contract in Egypt. I want to know how he handles the humiliation of working for lesser men. Does the Engineer speak to him like he was dirt? Does Swannie? Mac is okay. The two of them, Harry and the agent, get on okay. They have cups of tea and jammy buns at their Thursday meetings. I guess the both of them are prisoners just as much as Malky and me. They can say what they like, agree what they want, it’s Swannie and the Engineer, the guy in Glasgow, the guy above the RE, doing the business.
Two pints is the usual limit, but it was Friday and we were working on. I took another Whitbread. Malky didn’t want any. He hardly touched what he had. As I say, he knows the score. Half way through this third I wanted more, but I was all bagged up with gas. I left the bottle about a third full but, while Malky was calling Sandra to say we’d be late, took a vodka at the bar, trebled it with lemonade and threw it down. Outside, the cold air was like a slap across the face. The clouds had closed up and there was a bitter wind. We checked the road both ways, if the worst came to the worst Malky could drive. No police. We drew our jackets in tight and hurried to the van.
Swannie’s beamer was away from the compound when we got back. He would be off to another site to give another Agent a late, surprise visit. This is his way, he turns up at odd times to keep them on their toes. He walks his Agents and foremen at breakneck speed around the sites, questioning everything, criticising every decision, listing everyone’s inadequacies, pushing anger out all the time, turning on his heel, suddenly rearing up like he’s about to do violence. As far as I know he’s never landed a blow. Through the office window we could see the Agent tidying his desk. Friday afternoon, soon he would be away. Probably he would drop in on the Saturday to see what was doing. We would be here, along with maybe a few of Healey’s men. Derek would be at the football. That was why he had the mobile crane down at the Pumping Station when we got back, unloading reinforcement to make a quick start on Monday morning.
The crane was covering most of the gateway with the flat lorry just in front. Derek was up on the flat, tying on the steel for the lift. His boy was in the compound, organising the landing and doing the untying. They were going to take at least a half hour. In that time all we could do was lay out the tools, break open another palette and throw more bricks down on to the staging. After that we were standing.
Half the day had disappeared this way and now the wind was cutting through us. Across the Firth there was cloud half way down the hill above Beauly and wisps of snow were drifting across the water and on to the site. Seeing how it was going the pipelayers wrapped up for the day. So did Healey’s men, calling out to Malky as they walked past. Malky turned his back on them. Sooner or later there would be trouble. Probably it would not come on the site. Most likely it would burst out of nothing in a pub. Sooner or later, though, it would come.
Healey’s men hadn’t set out the lights as they should. They’d just dumped them. As soon as Derek’s lorry was rolling along on the ruts in the access track, back to the compound, we put them up ourselves. Malky filled the genny with diesel and pushed the button. The lights flashed once and came on first time. Now we were ready to go. I took my frozen arms and legs on to the staging and set up the string lines again. My fingers were stiff and clumsy but that would pass when the work started properly. Harry’s presence had prevented Healey’s men from doing any damage to the morning’s work. It was only after Malky had shovelled sand and cement into the mixer we discovered what they had done. The starting handle was missing. They had taken it, or dropped it down a hole somewhere, or buried it, or whatever – but it was gone.
Already the natural light was fading. Snow was blowing in more steadily. I manhandled the mortar board on to its edge on the staging and leaned it over in Malky’s direction. He got his hands out wide around the edge and lifted enough for me to get my hands round it down below. Together we managed to heave it over the gangway without dropping it into the cofferdam.
Malky mixed the mortar by hand, shovelling three of sand on to the board, then two of cement, forming it into a doughnut. Water he measured in from the bucket. It was all judgement anyway. He could both tell from the look and the feel of it as the light faded whether the mortar was good. By the time the first brick was down the natural light was almost gone. I struggled against the cold for rhythm and eventually it came and my mind went where it always went, to the nooky. I have a class number on hand, a teacher. I guess she has herself a bit of rough. She’s married. Doesn’t matter. It’s sex she wants from me. The husband sits around all day, behind a desk, in a car. Things like playing squash, going for runs, don’t harden a body like building does.
Sex is where my head wanders when the body works by itself. Malky clicked the safety helmets together. Harry was coming back. I looked up and shook my head. Harry isn’t daft. There was no one else working, nothing but snow was going to fall. What could happen? No one could see us from the road. Better with the woolly hats on, it was warmer. I was into my rhythm by now, didn’t want to stop – mortar the wall head, mortar the brick edge, lay the brick, check the string. Again. Again.
I could hear Harry talking to Malky, trying to get sense from him. He was asking what time we would work to, how we were measuring the mortar mix, if we had enough deisel for the genny. Malky sent him to me for answers. There’s no telling what’s in Malky’s head when he’s not actually shovelling. He has a great capacity for waiting. I waved up with the trowel and Harry came across the gangway and dropped on to the staging. By now the wind was whipping snowflakes across the top of the cofferdam. Harry was coated white down one side. I took a step back to make room for him and hit the kickboard.
I almost went over into the chamber. Harry grabbed my arm and started to speak. Half way through whatever he was saying he stopped and looked into my eyes. His own eyes closed and I could almost read his thoughts through his eyelids. Oh no, he was thinking. Oh no. He went back up and spoke to Malky, pointing in my direction and shaking his head. Then he went away. There was nothing more to be said.
Soon all the natural light was gone and it was black as tar except for our little theatre of light on the side of the hill. I checked my watch; it was past 5:00. We drank Sandra’s tea; Malky as he stood in the snow, me between picking up bricks. Mortar the wall head and the brick edge, lay the brick, check the string; another brick laid. I checked my watch again. It was 6:00.
At 7:00pm I looked up for more mortar. Malky was thick covered with snow. I had some little shelter from the brickwork behind me and from the cofferdam wall. Also I was moving all the time. He was out in the open with no cover at all. As I watched he shivered again, hugely and violently. I called him over into the light. His hands and face were both blue. I got him to pull the hap over from the corner of the compound and we covered our work. There was still tomorrow. We filled the pump with diesel to keep it going through the night. I packed my tools onto my back and turned off the genny. The lights flickered and went out.
We locked the compound, left the padlock key under its stone at the corner and made our way back to the van by torchlight. When we got back to the office compound we could still hear the pump roaring in the sump, but not the ground water pishing through the pile clutches on to the cofferdam base. These had been the ground notes of our day from start to finish.
It was only when we were back at the van, out of our wellies and inside that I realised how deeply the chill had bitten into Malky. Under the window light his hands were still blue. They trembled so much when he tried to light a cigarette I had to strike the match for him. I was frozen but Malky was worse and he was soaked through as well. I drove us back down to the Islander and put a whisky and lemonade into him. I took nothing myself. Soon he’d stopped shivering and was running his hands up over his face and through his hair, shaking his head and grunting. We got back into the van and drove back to the Muir. It being Friday I stopped off at the pub. Malky took another whisky and I had a couple of vodkas.
There was never any doubt about him turning out the next day. I don’t pay him so much he can go past the o/t. Sandra was on my side so long as I kept him in work. Whatever else, she didn’t want him back in the slammer – and without a job it would only be a matter of time. It would be another story if she saw him frozen, or if she knew the sort of heights we sometimes work at, or the state of some of the holes. The Pumping Station wasn’t as bad as most, thanks to Harry.
Malky got involved in a futile discussion about the Rangers with one of the bartenders. These are things I don’t talk about too deeply with him. He gets too excited. I like football but mostly what I care about is work and women. Transfers, results, league positions occupied Malky’s mind when it wasn’t full of horror comics. You’d think the work he did wasn’t horror enough. Sandra still didn’t know we were going out the next day. I got him to call home and tell her, this way she would be settled to the idea by the time I got him home. Of course I would be invited to eat. This was good. I bought him another and, weighing up the drive back to the farm carefully, had another myself.
The two boys met us at the door. Washed and pyjama’d they were ready for bed. It’s always good to see Malky with his family. A different man, he’s responsible, caring. When I’m over I always make a point of giving him his place, of not being the boss. He worships his wife, as well he might. She’s the anchor on his life. Of course seeing them together always stirs up bad thoughts but these have to be lived with and can’t be dwelt on. I accept. With women I am what I am, not capable of respect never mind worship.
Sandra came out of the kitchen to meet us in the living room. The smile fell from her face when she laid eyes on him, caked in mud. When he tried to speak I realised he was drunk and thought it better to say nothing. Although I can hold my drink better than Malky I wouldn’t be far behind. Sandra sat us down and put the boys to bed. She went back into the kitchen and took the dinners out of the oven. The two of us ate in silence. Already Malky was falling asleep. He was eating on automatic pilot by the time we finished. Sandra had the bath running as I went to the door. I tried to kiss her but she was having none of it, and then I was back out in the cold again. Twenty minutes from home, I had two police stations to pass, one further along in the Muir, the other in Conon, before I got to Dingwall. Some day they’ll get me.
How else can I live? Working the way I do, living on my own as I have to, drink is central to the whole thing. Sometimes it’s like it’s what I live for. Monday afternoon, when it was out of my system, I would phone round the architects. One way or another I would get some decent work. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life freezing down holes in the ground.
As I drove I could feel the weight of a good facing brick in my hand. I was colouring the mortar in my head. This is the work I’m trained to do, the work I can talk about all day. Harry knows. Harry respects me the way I respect him. These are the things my mind plays on when it should be on the road. I gave myself a shake and checked the speed, not too fast, not too slow.
At night I drive with my heart in my mouth. Once a prowler fell in behind me, shadowed me from the Muir to Conon, then it put its light on, swept past and away. Some emergency, somewhere else, or I’d have been locked up. It could happen any night, most mornings. I got back to the farm, bounced up the track and climbed out. The beasts were sounding off but that was because the van had disturbed them. Soon they would settle. I wish I could say the same for me.
I took my jacket and trainers off, the only clean things about me, and hung my trousers behind the door. They could be brushed more or less clean on Sunday. There would be no job to go to on Monday. I would wash them then, spend the day on the phone. Inside I switched on the electric fire, threw my underwear into the basket and went directly into the shower.
This was when I discovered how tired I was. With the cement and the mud trickling down into the tray I put my head against the wall and shut my eyes. It felt like they might never open again. At home I wear tracksuit bottoms and an old pullover with elbow patches. I took a bottle of vodka and a bottle of lemonade out of the cabinet before falling onto the settee and jabbing on the TV remote.
This was it. This was it. This part of the day was for me alone. In two hours, maybe less, I’d be in bed. I poured a big one and doubled it with lemonade, flicked across the channels. It was all junk, so I left it where it lay – hospitals, one for the ladies. The vodka went down and I poured another. I had to hold back. There was no point rushing for oblivion, and I had to get out again next day.
I couldn’t settle though. For all I was exhausted, my legs were stiff and my shoulders hurt, I had to get up and walk about. Who the fuck did Swannie think he was? He’d treated me like dirt. He had spoken and I had jumped. For all I had put on a straight face and said little, I had jumped. I knew it and he knew it. There was no hiding it. We both knew. I would be off the job on Monday, never wanting to come back, and I had taken it in silence. He had kept going until he was sure that I was buckled, and sure that I knew it.
Why take it? Because I know, in my heart of hearts, that this is where I am now. This is what I have to do to make any kind of living. There won’t be many more big houses. This is where we were going from now on, Malky and me, down these holes. No more quality work, quality drawings, quality clients, this was another world we had landed in.
In this world the Pat Healeys write the rules. Get it done quick, defend your ground. Get in with the right Contract Managers. Which Contract Managers are the right ones? The animals. I remember something stupid, something about having to operate now, being said on TV while I was running my hands across my face. This was despair. I couldn’t go it for long, not like this. I had to adjust somehow.
I thought about rolling a joint but I know my moods and this one wasn’t right. What I really wanted was to call the girlfriend, to get her over here, but Friday night her husband would be in. There were the kids. What if one of them answered? No, I’d have to wait for Tuesday afternoon like we agreed. It wasn’t sex I wanted. By this time I just wanted to rest my head between her breasts, put my hand between her legs and go to sleep. Just that.
So you’d think I’d sleep well, go out like a light – black velvet until the alarm goes. Not so. The vodka kept me awake. There were all the usual flash memories that won’t give me peace, all with hurt in them – site agents, contracts managers, women, police – the most recent was Sandra crying in the kitchen after I took Malky home.
All night the Pumping Chamber kept coming back, how I’d kept those walls square and plumb from the base right up to these last courses below the roof slab and, damn, I hadn’t checked the diagonals last thing. Through the night the determination grew in me to keep it right all the way to the top, not to compromise. If it took until Tuesday, so be it. If Swannie barred me from all of his sites, that was okay too. I would do it. Then I would never work with these bastards again. I’d get back into buildings, quality buildings, or I’d get out.
Some hope. There’s rent to be paid, money to the wife – and I know from the past that I can’t face the long empty hours being out of a job brings. I’m a worker. Malky and me are both workers. We do it because we do it. There’s no more explanation. We’re workers. So are Swannie and Healey, although they’re animals as well. I’m a master builder. Rest, my God, I needed rest more than I needed money. It was in one of those in-and-out-of-sleep moments I had to face the truth. No, the architects don’t want me any more. Too much drink.
Next day I felt worse, less because of the lack of sleep than because of the vodka. I got up, washed, fed myself. I put on those cold wet clothes again. Malky and I are so close now I can almost feel Sandra pushing him out of bed. He would be at the Muir garage, same as usual. He’s reliable. Sandra and the boys make him that way. They’re his purpose.
The cold hit me again as I was locking the door. It feels like it shrinks your face. The moon sent its white light across the patchy snow in MacRae’s fields. In the corner of the door lintel a cobweb shone like silver. Like me the spider works through instinct. It just gets up and gets on with the job without thought. Every so often it turns out something perfect.
They say there’s no labour without dignity. I don’t see it. Better to be like the spider and not think in those terms. It’s just life, an endless round of work, loneliness, humiliation and drink. The beasts with their frozen snotters have as much dignity. I have a past. I guess I have some kind of a future. The present is in finishing off this chamber with Malky. That’s it. There’s no more.