Mac hung up as quietly as he could and checked the clock. 6:35am.
Five minutes on the phone had seemed like ten. So much, too much, was going on. So much happening at once, there was so much to keep a grip of at once, his hand had that slight tremor it began when his marriage was breaking up. It rested on the phone as he looked through the window into the street below, as though to prevent it leaping up against his ear to command his time and attention and fill his mind.
A fighting east wind hurled big raindrops against the hotel opposite his flat. The executioner’s wind his General Foreman called it, the one that cuts through you. Water filled the drainage channels at the road’s edge and swirled over the gratings before disappearing through the gully frames and away. It was black as pitch outside the cones of the streetlights.
Paul’s mother had answered and called him to the phone. Mac had diverted him from the site on the Black Isle to the new job in Ness, East Sutherland. From the Williamson house in Dingwall it would take him just over an hour to get to the site. The new sub-agent, Trevor Sharp, was staying in the hotel there until he found digs. If the weather up north was as bad as here in Inverness, if it continued through the day, nothing much would be done on the ground but at least they would get to know each other. They could take refuge in one of the huts and go over the drawings. The sub-agent/engineer relationship, one of the most important on site, would begin to be established. Paul wasn’t required on the Black Isle job any more, not really. So Mac made the decision at four in the morning when he would have been better asleep.
Today he, Mac, would not be able to make a start before 8:30, desperately late at a time when he was vulnerable. He was still quantifying materials for the buyer, which would have been done, done, if Alan Syme had not paid off his site agent after the Syme Atwood take-over. Now his workload was huge. The job was so tightly priced even a few per cent saved on materials here and there would make a difference. Syme’s first visit to the office three months before, its tone and force, had shaken him. The new order wasn’t properly established then, but the old one was certainly destroyed.
Syme had spent six hours grilling him about Strath Construction’s operational set-up. There had been no preliminary conversation, no exploring of any social overlap. On the second day Syme had laid down the law about the immediate future, downgraded him from Contracts Manager to Site Agent and introduced him to his new boss, James Swann. Swann had told him he would be spending all his time out on the sites, not to come in to the office unless he was told. Angrily, wearily remembering, Mac shook his head. He had to prove himself again.
‘Dad!’
Alison was in the doorway, wide-awake, bare-foot, cleaning her glasses on the hem of her pyjama top. She was fourteen. When she stayed in his flat, those too few occasions, it always surprised him how grown up she was, the big advance from last time. Soon there would be boys. Oh yes, there would be boys.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Sorry, Ali. Did I waken you?’
‘I’m worried about you. There’s something on your mind.’
‘Just work, Sweetheart. Changes happening. Remember I told you? It’s not pleasant. I’ll come through.’
‘You wouldn’t lie, would you? It’s not about Mum and you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t lie to you, not after all we’ve been through. It’s not about Mum and me.’
Her eyes behind her glasses were bright, alert to every nuance in his voice.
‘You’re not going back to sleep, are you – want some tea?’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it. You sit down, Dad.’
Alison went through to the kitchen and made tea. When she came back she sat opposite him, on the floor with her back against the other chair.
‘So what’s happening?’ she asked.
‘The new owners aren’t happy about the way things have been run. My old boss is gone. They’ve put a new man in his place. My Agent has been sacked as well.’
‘Mr Matheson is gone? I liked him.’
‘We all did. The new man isn’t like him. He has to get results quickly. We’ve been losing money; that’s how Syme and Atwood could buy us. He has to turn that round.’
‘You must want that too.’
‘That’s right. It’s in everybody’s interest to turn it round.’
‘Could he sack you too?’
‘No, Sweetheart. I have a contract.’
He was half lying to her. More likely they would try to sicken him off. There would be compensations but they would not be so very great and he couldn’t afford not to earn. Where he would go afterwards he didn’t know, nowhere in the Highlands. There was war damage to be repaired in the Middle East where he had worked before, although that was in a time of peace. He had already put out feelers and some opportunity might come up, but the sand and the flies would mean being away from Alison, losing what little of her teenage years he was entitled to.
‘But he could make it – difficult for you?’
Mac hesitated too long. Alison pushed herself across the floor and leaned half against his chair, half against his leg. She rested her head against him and he put his hand on her shoulder, looked down at her hair that was so like Patricia’s hair.
‘I’ll survive. Commitment is the name of the game.’
‘You’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘You’re strong.’
He squeezed her shoulder. ‘You’re encouraging me. Don’t you know it’s supposed to be the other way round? How are you getting on with Ronnie?’
She squeezed his leg in return. ‘Mum asked me not to talk about that.’
‘Okay.’
‘He’s all right. We don’t have much in common. He’s not remotely like you. He likes football.’
‘Ugh! Listen, if you ever hear them up to anything at night I want you to bang on the wall and shout through that you’re trying to sleep.’
‘Dad, that’s really embarrassing! What time are you leaving in the morning?’
‘I’ll take you into the Academy. Then go straight to Ness.’
‘Will the new man be there, the one who got your real job?’
‘Did Mum tell you that?’
‘What’s he like?’
‘His name’s James Swann. You can call him James.’
‘I’d rather call him Mr Swann. I don’t like him.’
‘You haven’t met him. He’s a bit younger than me; thirty-eight or nine, sandy hair, gets angry easily. He’s got a nervous tic that gets worse when he’s excited. Wait till you see; the men will give him some nickname.’
‘Blinky Jimmy!’
He put his hand on her head and shook. ‘You’ll get me into trouble, you. The partner flew back down to Leicester last night. Who knows what’s in their minds down there? They’re extending their Scottish operation. Actually they call it ‘North,’ meaning from the north of England up. They’ll have longer term plans.’
‘Will you be part of them?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. If not, just another couple of years.’
‘What happens then?’
‘You’ll be old enough to leave school. You can get a job, move in here and look after me.’
‘You’re terrible.’
‘Don’t monopolise the shower this morning,’ he told her, but she did.
As usual she tried his patience in the morning. It was the headspace she took up when his mind wanted to range through site deliveries, human resource, plant locations and returns, storage of materials, programmes, progress, valuations, the overall consumption of Strath Construction by Syme Atwood, the future – what future? – the end of his career in the Highlands. They needed a Scottish base to bid for the string of coastal sewage treatment plants the Authority was obliged to build and already they had two. Their methods worked.
With Ewan Matheson gone he was the firm’s oldest hand. At 44! Damnation, but he could see the future only too well. Big Swannie was the new Contracts Manager. Trevor Sharp was young, bright, an Honours Graduate, recently Chartered, uncontaminated by Strath Construction thinking. He would be the Agent who finished this job. It was written in the stars. Mac would be lucky to survive. Swann was a Contracts Manager looking for a Directorship. He would want Mac out and Trevor remade in his own image.
Alison was Mac’s priority. He had to remember that and give her his full attention. Getting into the car he realised they had hardly spoken since that early morning cup of tea.
‘We’ve hardly spoken,’ he observed, driving off.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told him. ‘If we were together all the time we probably wouldn’t speak at all.’
How did it happen, the development that occurred in the big leaps of time they were apart? The brassiere had appeared from nowhere. That was Mum’s business anyway, but she could have given him some kind of warning, some kind of discussion, about the sudden alteration in shape. She knew about sex, sometimes he felt she knew more than him. They joked about it. Of course, the break up had primed her early. Soon she would be experimenting with boys, perhaps already was. Time apart from her went by in great soaring leaps with brief, longed for, touchdowns and painful pushoffs.
She kissed him on the cheek and stepped out into the rain.
Her ears were pierced! He noticed as she leaned out of the car. How could he have missed it? Why hadn’t she said? No one told him these things. There was no preparation.
‘When will you be home?’ she asked. ‘Must run.’
‘8:00. No, 7:00. Make that 6:30pm.’
Driving out of town and across the Kessock Bridge the rain eased and by Tain he had driven out of it. His heart lightened. Paul and Trevor would be, at least should be, setting-out the wayleave fences over the hill. He broke the speed limit to get to site by 10:25, smashing his record, rounding the bend that revealed the new site establishment beside the A9 dual carriageway, the hill to his left between it and the works in Glen Struie. Eventually the pipeline would come down there and cross the road. What a hell of sliding mud it would turn into if it rained, he reflected.
He turned carefully off the road and into the new compound. The compound fence was complete, the first fence to be established. Looking beyond it, down past where the settlement tanks would go, and the outfall, the oil rigs seem surprisingly close to shore.
He parked where he could and entered his hut. The desk was in place, a seat, drawing board and empty filing cabinet but it was still icy cold. John Kelly hadn’t turned the electric heater on. These plasterboard boxes didn’t retain the heat. They needed a constant supply of energy. He went back to his car for his coat and, inside again, put it on and stood by the window.
The troops were working on the other compound huts and laying out materials. Beyond them were the shoreline and the North Sea. His own hut, which he would share with Trevor, was the first of four to be complete. Paul would share with the General Foreman, John Kelly. Beside that would be Stores and beside that again, the mess. The greater part of the area would be given over to larger items that wouldn’t fit in to the Stores hut, reinforcement steel, shuttering frames, diesel tank, huge segmented chamber covers that would be cast onto the underground pumping stations. The concrete batcher was also up, but had no sand or aggregate in its bins yet.
The car park had been scraped down and roughly levelled by a JCB, arisings piled in a heap of frost-bound lumps at the far end of the compound. The same machine was standing by a pile of road stone, the driver waiting while a layer of geotextile was rolled out before starting to spread. There wasn’t nearly enough space, but there never was. They would get by. Meantime he was chilled to the marrow. At the door he called to John Kelly and pointed to the generator.
Kelly checked the fuel level and mouthed the word ‘okay’. He inserted the starting handle and took it in both hands, his shoulder muscles bunching under his shirt as he pressed metal against cold metal and the handle slowly, reluctantly, turned. The man was as strong as an ox. Another turn, another, and he threw the switch. The genny coughed and shuddered and shivered into life, the hut light went on and, in a minute, the metal front of the heater expanded and boomed outward.
John Kelly’s dark face was weather beaten and seamed and ancient and looked like it had been carved from bogwood somewhere in ancient Ireland. His was the way of the shortcut and speedy finishing but they understood each other and, usually, made it work.
Mac used his mobile phone to call Paul. As expected, he and Trevor were on the other side of the hill. He was thinking about driving round, giving the hut time to properly warm when James Swann’s car pulled up. Swann climbed out of the car with his briefcase under his arm, scowling at Kelly and the troops as he locked the car door. Something between anxiety and challenge went through Mac but he knew it would be better not to confront him. The man was always energised and restless, always on the cusp of anger. He could do violence; at least he gave that impression. If it came to blows Mac would probably come off best, or so he felt, although Swann was a couple of years younger and half a head shorter and broader in the shoulder. But, there would be no winning that one. One blow and he would be down the road.
If it was only that simple, he thought – but the name of the game was commitment, even when it was reduced to humiliation and endurance. There could be no resolution other than one that came through events and, for the present, he would have to absorb, simply absorb. Already, since the takeover, he had it down to a fine art. Swann inside dropped his briefcase on Mac’s desk, eyes ranging, blinking, around the four bare walls.
‘Where’s Trevor?’
Mac decided not to give a ‘good morning’ either. ‘Round at Struie, with Paul.’
Swann looked out of the window.
‘Joiners. These are the eight we carry on the books?’
Mac joined him by the window. ‘All steady types, reliable. Good men.’
As they watched, one of the joiners held out a hand to check for rain and looked at the sky. He said something to the others and pointed to the corner of the compound where the mess hut was to go.
‘Not that good, or we couldn’t have bought you.’ Swann looked at him pointedly. ‘Or maybe it’s Ewan Matheson you blame. What do you say, Mac? Was it the workforce or the management lost all that money?’
Mac knew he couldn’t defend the slackness that had crept into the company over the last three years.
‘Maybe it was just luck.’
‘Luck has to be managed out of the picture.’
‘We took a hit on the Gairloch road when we under priced the rock items. There was ten times as much as the Document predicted. If we’d overpriced by just a few pence we would have made the hit.’
‘You could have fought that.’
‘We did. We lost.’
Satisfied, his point made, James Swann held a hand over the radiator to make sure it was working.
‘Tea? Coffee?’
‘Later. I want to see the two tanks. You drive.’
As Swann pulled round his safety belt Mac reversed carefully past the joiners and turned towards the road. He slipped into first gear and wobbled slowly across the uneven ground to the gate. Another lorry was approaching. He reversed while John Kelly waved it in, pulled forward again and made his right turn on to the dual carriageway.
A police car had drawn up on the verge, the two officers looking carefully at their traffic controls. One had a 60m tape in his hand. The other held a drawing. They were about to go over all the details. Mac put his mobile phone in its recharging holster on the dash and pressed 3. John Kelly answered.
‘John,’ he said. ‘Police checking the controls. Who put the cones out this morning.’
‘Me.’
The GF sounded as if he was speaking from inside a diesel barrel.
‘Trevor and Paul set it out yesterday. The chalk marks on the kerbs were all clear enough. It should be okay.’
‘Good.’ Mac pressed the off-button.
‘You weren’t sure?’
‘First time, it was worth checking. What I wanted to know was that Trevor and Paul did it together. If it was just Paul I would have worried.’
‘Who have you got on 1 and 2?’
‘My daughter. My wife.’
‘I thought you were apart.’
‘We are.’
Mac tried not to let his hands tighten on the wheel, tried not to show how this needless probe had got through his defences and, worse, called forth his answer. This one had taken him by surprise. He drove with his stomach churning, knowing he had just accepted another humiliation: accepted when he might have deflected. To make it worse it felt as if he had accepted on behalf of Alison.
Ness amounted to two hundred or so houses exposed to the elements just before the Point. Mac slowed down and turned into the hotel car park. When he had turned the engine off and taken his pair of lifting irons out of the boot they crossed the road to the septic tank. The wind from the North Sea whipped at their trouser legs, their coats, chilling them.
‘The executioner’s wind that cuts through you,’ Mac said.
‘And blows the smell back into the village. No wonder they complain.’
Mac pointed at the rubble that had been placed around the concrete tank to protect it and hold it in place.
‘All these boulders were taken from the road widening about thirty years ago. The tank was built at the same time.’
He inserted one of the lifting irons into an opening on the first cover, turned it in its socket and gave a light tug upwards. It eased slightly in its frame.
‘Good, it should lift,’ he said. He put the other iron in its socket and looked at James Swann. ‘I can’t do it alone.’
They each took a wide, knees bent, stance and hauled the heavy frame upwards to swing it over and across. Peering through the triangular opening into the dark entry chamber their eyes slowly adjusted. Below them the inlet channel from the village ran into two pipes, each one entering a different side of the tank. As they watched, a large thick turd floated through and dropped into the settlement chamber.
James Swann looked along the line of the tank, past the built up ground on to the stony beach where the outfall pipe lay exposed on the surface. The pipe was rotted and broken and faecal matter was lying in lumps between the stones.
‘Hasn’t been emptied since it was built,’ Mac said, taking himself upstream of the entry chamber, making a large circle with his hands. ‘This is where we build the interception chamber.’ He turned to look along the shore towards the compound, John Kelly and the troops small in the distance.
‘So we build a new chamber here and a pipeline to meet the new pipeline that will come over the hill from Struie to the compound area. When the new Works is in operation we’ll empty this tank, knock its top in and backfill. Basically hide it. The estimators haven’t put much in for landscaping but if we skimp it’s this we’ll be judged by.’
‘We want paid for that,’ Swann told him. ‘I’ll get Trevor to go over the document, see if he can find an opening.’
Mac didn’t point out this was his job. Intended or not the message was all too plain.
‘Now,’ said Swann, ‘round the hill to the other tank.’
As he drove towards the Point and the corner that would take them on to the Struie road Mac looked north, along where the coast doubled back on itself, at the Sutherland cliffs that eventually ran up to Caithness.
‘Beautiful country,’ he said, but James Swann didn’t reply.
The Struie Burn broke over boulders, running almost transparent in the winter light, its bank lined with leafless alders and willows.
‘This river could hardly be cleaner,’ Swann said.
‘I wouldn’t drink it. You’ll see why when we get to the village.’
Half way along the road they drove past where the fencers were laying out their materials to start on the way-leave and, shortly after, drew up beside a dilapidated mesh fence with a Water Authority sign placed inside. The septic tank was a concrete box cut into the bank, half the size of the Ness tank. The outfall pipe dropped directly into the river. They got out of the car and entered the compound, Swann waving his hand in front of his face.
‘What do they eat around here? Road kill?’
‘There’s not the same wind to take it away. Look down there, where the pipe discharges into the stream.’ Mac pointed through the water to a smooth layer of silt that covered the stones at discharge point. ‘And look there.’ Faecal lumps were lying along the water line further downstream.
‘They’ll stay there until a big rush comes down. As at Ness the sewage goes straight through. No effective treatment. So we replace the tank with a Pumping Station and lay a new pipe downstream to where you saw the fencers. There the pumping main turns uphill. Top of the hill we build a concrete culvert, then down the other side in a concrete sewer to meet the Ness flow.’
James Swann was hardly listening. ‘This is where the Resident Engineer’s hut goes?’
‘Authority property, so we didn’t have to negotiate.’
‘And well out of the way of most of the works. Good.’
‘Well out of the way.’
‘Trevor and your boy are on the way-leave now? I mean right now. I didn’t see them.’
‘They would be up the hill.’
‘On the other side is the wayleave back down to the compound? I might go back that way on foot?’
‘It’s not set out yet but – sure.’
‘Let’s go see what they’re up to.’
Mac opened the boot and changed into his yellow dayglow jacket. He took out two safety helmets and gave one to James. The two men pulled on wellies and walked back down the road. Above them on the hill the two setting-out engineers were ranging around with tape measures. About a third of the way up a theodolite had been placed over a setting-out peg. The fencers were putting wooden stobs and rolls of wire mesh into a trailer behind a quad ready to carry up.
A second group had already begun at the bottom and were now driving in their third stob. Two holding it in place with stabilisers while a third hammered it into the ground with a 2kg mallet. Swann turned to Mac as they climbed.
‘What century is this? There are machines that push these things into the ground in half the time. Don’t you know we carry safety responsibility for these men?’
‘There isn’t one available this side of Inverness right now, and if there had been it couldn’t have matched Sandy Mac„Kenzie’s price. Take it from me he’ll finish on time if he has to work in the snow.’
Swann lengthened his stride, lifting the uphill pace without answering.
By God, Mac thought, the man could climb. He found himself labouring and breathless. Up ahead Paul and Trevor were squaring off from the pipeline pegs, taping out fence offsets. Swann strode uphill and past them. Mac laboured up and called Paul and Trevor across.
‘Did he speak? Did he say anything?’
‘Didn’t so much as smile,’ said Trevor, respectfully. It appeared Trevor didn’t know he was Mac’s replacement yet.
‘Watch him, boys. He could sack you without an extra blink.’
‘I know it,’ said Trevor.
‘He said something to me,’ said Paul. ‘Accuracy. Just that one word – accuracy.’
Swann was waiting at the top of the slope. ‘They’re working steadily enough anyway.’
‘I’d say they’re committed.’
‘Umh.’
Swann’s eyes were on the animals that grazed the hill. Close to the road there were black cattle; from about half way up it was all sheep.
‘Met the farmers’ agent yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, get on with it. He’d not be the first to see a way-leave slightly out of position and let it go until we couldn’t go back and then stop us and hurt us. Those fences have to be on the nail. Take a tape to a few of the pegs yourself, you and Kelly. Be sure; be absolutely sure. When MacKenzie is done get these two to go over the whole thing again. Make sure everything they do is checked.’
‘Of course’
‘Don’t ‘‘of course’’ me. You’ll have my trust when you’ve earned it, and you’ll never have it all. I’ll always be looking over your shoulder, Mac. Never forget that. This job has a two per cent. It can’t afford mistakes. C’mon, we’ll walk to the other side.’
Mac looked back down the way-leave at Paul and Trevor, down again to the fencers and the Struie road. The engineers would have to pack up in the early afternoon. At this time of year, this far north, the days were short and hard. The air was colder. James Swann would not know to make allowances. But he had already strode off. Mac turned and followed along the line of pegs.
At the seaward side they looked down another steep slope to the compound where Kelly was organising the work force, not doing it well. A flat lorry was waiting at the gate, preventing another lorry from entering. There was a bank of traffic held up on the dual carriageway. One of the joiners took out a tin and began the casual rolling of a cigarette.
‘Behind us,’ said Mac, ‘the route we’ve just walked, is the culvert. I want to do that before the pipelines. Otherwise the ground will turn to slush and we’ll struggle to get concrete up. This is where our joiners will be going as soon as they finish the compound.’
‘No they won’t. I’m bringing up a grip squad from Glasgow. They’ll do this in half the time.’
Mac’s heart sank. A self-employed squad would look to Swann’s authority. They would look to it through Trevor. They would see through his position. He remained silent for a long time, looking along the coast, along the line of cliffs to Sutherland, at the three closest oil rigs. Further out to sea he could make out a dozen more.
He was finished. It was a matter of time.
‘I guess you know what you’re doing.’
‘I’ll walk directly down to the compound from here. You go back the way we came. I’ll be gone by the time you get back.’
Mac watched him make the first part of his descent, carefully at first down the higher steeper levels. He took his mobile phone from his pocket and pressed 3. Knowing James Swann was on his way would not repair the mess John Kelly had made but it would at least prepare him for the blast.
He stopped at the Ness Hotel for lunch, ordered steak pie, chips and tea, no alcohol, had to wait half an hour. After 10 minutes, he took out his mobile phone and pressed 1.
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Hi Sweetheart. Where are you?’
‘Just outside the school with Gillian and Mike. You?’
Mike?
‘I’m in the Ness Hotel. What a dump. Ancient stags’ heads with eyes missing, tatty tartan curtains, linoleum worn to the thread. Classic of a sort, I suppose. Hard to believe it can still exist.’
‘Can I buy the new iPod? I’ll be the last person I know to have it.’
This took no thought. ‘You’ve got money so just go ahead. I’ll make it up tonight. Listen, will you cook?’
‘Dad, you have a responsibility to look after me, not the other way around. This is what Mum said.’
‘What else did Mum say?’
‘It’s the age of equality. Women don’t have to cook.’
‘So be equal. I did it last night. Look in the freezer. Choose. Microwave! It’s easy. Just set the table. And buy that music. We can listen together on the hi-fi.’
‘I don’t think so. It’s modern and you’d hate it. But we can watch television. 6:30, remember you said.’
‘Mike who?’
‘Mike MacArthur. You know his Dad. You were at school together.’
That would be Colin MacArthur who had cut a swathe through the girls in their time. Why worry?
‘Does he wear a leather jacket, Mohican haircut, ripped jeans, smoke dope.’
‘Dad! I have to go.’
‘Okay.’
‘Dad, can I have contact lenses?’
‘Ask Mum.’
‘G’bye.’
The phone was heavy in his hand, but she wouldn’t feel the aching hunger for him that he felt for her. It was too much to expect. He had to understand how it was for her.
The face of the mobile told him he had a voice message from Patricia. Well, that could wait until later. He ate his lunch in silence and paid his bill and, as he left, a breeze from the sea lifted some of the guff from the septic tank and poured it around him.
Back at the compound Kelly gave him a wry look but said nothing, continuing his untidy organisation of a construction site in the chaos of its early days. Mac took a box of drawings and documents from the boot of his car, the laptop from the back seat, the calendar, into the Agent’s hut to enter each into its new space. In time he and the space would grow into each other. It would become the universal site hut he had lived half his life in. The pile of earth lumps, he noticed, had softened as the day wore on.
On his laptop he called up the works programme and checked materials required for the coming week against delivery notes, made the necessary call to the buyer to gee up the supplies. He took the folder of plant returns from his brief case and put it in the filing cabinet.
When the initial setting-out was complete he could hand all this over to Trevor. Not yet though; and the pegs had to be in the ground and checked before that side could be left to Paul. He phoned the electricity company, calling forward their connection. Both John Kelly and he were too much engaged in trivia, but that would stop when the major part of the labour force, dispersed from the Black Isle, was reassembled. That would be, he checked the programme again, half next week, the rest two weeks down the line. He made coffee and, as he sat down again, the phone rang.
Patricia.
‘Mac, it’s me. We have to speak.’
‘Not a promising start. Where are you?’
‘At home.’
‘Ah yes. I remember.’
She would be in the kitchen of their house, under the new units he’d put in shortly before leaving, shortly before Ronnie. Her hair was shorter now, but the essentials would be the same. She would be wearing jeans and a pullover to work in. She would be finished for the day, article written and emailed to the paper. This call would be made after she was done, interrupting his work, not hers.
‘How’d you get this number?’ he asked.
‘Sally at the office. Obviously you weren’t going answer your mobile.’
‘Ronnie there? How’s he like my taste in furniture and paintings? Obviously he shares my taste in women?’
‘The furniture and paintings are my taste, same as everything else in here. You don’t remember? You were too busy with your valuations on site to notice the value of what was under your nose. Ronnie’s at work. He has the sort of job where you go in at 9:00 in the morning and come home at half past five.’
‘That’s a real job? Okay, I’ll take your word for it. What do you want?’
‘I want to talk with you about Alison. I’m not happy about some of the attitudes she picks up from you.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right, and there are other things. I think she’s drinking. Have you been giving her drink?’
‘She gets half a glass of wine topped up with lemonade, an introduction. That’s not drinking.’
‘I don’t want her drinking at all and I’m her mother.’
‘Well, I want her to have a responsible attitude to drink and not get ambushed by it when she eventually moves into the adult world and, by the way, I’m her father. Don’t forget that, you and Ronnie.’
There was a long silence from Patricia, a great nothingness that had him taking the phone from his ear and looking at it until her tiny voice, now wounded, sounded across the gap.
‘This is hurting us both,’ she said.
‘I guess so.’
‘How’s the job? Any better?’
‘Same shit as last time we spoke. What I am thinking about is how we are going to lay the pipeline across the A9. One side at a time, I guess. Moving the traffic across to suit.’
‘Think you can stick it?’
‘I can try.’
‘I know that tone. You still love it out there. You love the conflict. That side of your life always came first.’
‘So, what did you really want?’
‘I meant what I said. Did you know Alison is falling behind at school?’
‘Really? She thinks about music all the time, and friends. Isn’t that how it should be at fourteen? She seems okay to me.’
‘I want her back early this time. Thursday.’
‘Why? I see little enough of her. You want to protect her from my influence?’
‘We’re going to Ronnie’s parents this weekend. It would be nice for them to meet.’
Now it was Mac’s turn to make a silence. A9 traffic, men shouting, beep warnings from reversing vehicles, laughter, all went on outside the impregnable bubble of anxiety that had him for its centre.
‘Is this a joke?’
‘They asked to. They like young people. They have grandchildren the same age.’
‘It would be simpler if I wasn’t here, wouldn’t it? Better if I was dead.’
‘Look,’ she went on with effort, control. ‘I can see I’m going to get no sense out of you. Try to think this through rationally for a change. We are already living together, the three of us. That’s not going to change. It makes every kind of sense to ease the relationships. Think about Alison for once.’
‘For a change? For once? Do you mind if we end this call now? Just leave it there. I have Alison until Saturday morning. That’s not changing.’
‘Look Mac, don’t go into your martyr routine. You’ll always be her father but Ronnie has his place too. Times are changing.’
‘Lets leave off there. Right there! I’m not going into any martyr routine and I’m not swallowing any of this guilt and responsibility stuff and I’m not budging on dates. Just leave it there.’
After two years it was no easier to get off the phone. They hung up together.
Well, he knew what Patricia was about all right, reducing his time with Alison on an ‘it’s-good-for-her’ basis, building her into this new family. He was the lesser, no-rights, partner. So, who was he to stand in the way? Another stint in the Middle East would suit Patricia down to the ground. He would be out of the way. There would be more money. By the time he came back, assuming he didn’t end up with his head in a bucket, Alison would be at University and a stranger. Ronnie would be her dad. Some day he would have to meet this Ronnie. According to Alison he wasn’t so bad. Gratifyingly though, he wasn’t so great either.
She still preferred her real Dad.
Outside he heard John Kelly shouting in irritation. The pipe bedding material had arrived a day early and he had nowhere to put it. He decided to let John get on with it and take the longer view, the programme, the gathering labour force.
If Swann was bringing in a grip squad the chances are they would be good. Almost certainly it was the beginning of the end for their full-timers. He would be obliged to back Healey’s labourers, hard enough workers but slapdash and thuggish. Derek the steelfixer and his squad would, in a way, set off against them. In addition, and more to the point, Derek was ace at what he did and strong enough to keep his own men in line. Unlike most steelfixers he would bring problems forward as soon as he saw them. Most steelfixers just let the job run to a halt and turned the meter on. On a ‘reward-what-you-want’ basis Mac accepted Derek’s higher rate. The good builder was already gone. Harry, the clerk of works, rated him but the time he took was unconscionable.
I see further than James Swann, he thought. Maybe I can wait him out. But no, Swann was as much Syme’s man as Healey was Swann’s. There was a programme of change for the company just as surely as there was a programme of works for the job and Mac was no part of it. To give himself a chance he had to keep his head in the job.
Later, as the light began to fade, he picked up the phone and called Paul’s mobile.
‘Light’s going. Come off the hill now.’
‘I’m packing the theodolite away now.’
‘Will John MacKenzie be out tomorrow?’
‘So he says. Two days to finish this.’
‘Good, I’ll bring Conn and his machine over day after tomorrow. He can start the soil strip as you start to come down this side. That should be safe enough. Later you can set out the profiles for Healey’s men. They can start first thing next week. I’ll see them later.’
‘You’re using Healey’s men?’
‘No choice. Let that go, Paul. Adapt.’
‘Okay.’
Good boy Paul, he thought. Good teamwork beginning with Trevor. With Mac as Contracts Manager, Trevor as Agent, Paul moving up to sub-agent after he got that elusive qualification, it could be good. Good, but not what was written in the stars. James Swann was Contracts Manager and Mac was increasingly like the spare prick at a wedding.
He put his head back into his work and lost himself there until, outside, he heard John Kelly bringing the shift to an end, heard the troops piling into the minibus and leaving. John looked in.
‘That’s time, Mac.’
‘Off you go. I’ll wind up here and then head for the Black Isle. I’m bringing Conn over in a couple of days. That should please you.’
‘Sure will. See you tomorrow, Mac.’
‘See you then.’
‘And good luck.’
Luck? Yes, the GF knew he needed some luck.
Mac called the Black Isle site hut and asked Conn to stay until he got there. He tidied up what he was doing and packed away his laptop and drove off in fading light that was soon black as pitch and as he drove both Patricia and James Swann kept invading his head.
The man was a bully. He would be Northern Director over Mac’s twitching corpse. You had to be an animal to get on in this game. The civil engineering contract was the survival of the fittest, nothing more.
He drove the A9 under a low cloud cover, headlights sweeping the forest at bends. This was his land. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to be sickened out of what was his own, his place in the construction industry in the Highlands. He wouldn’t let it happen, by God, he wouldn’t. He struck the wheel with the flat of his hand. He wouldn’t.
It was after 6:30pm when he drove onto the site. Most of the old compound had been cleared and they were down to just a few troops. Derek’s squad, with no reinforcement to tie, were tidying, repairing fences here and there. Healey’s squad were struggling to get the sewer past Harry’s tests. Conn stood by with his machine to lift old scaffolding, formwork, small items of plant, onto the lorry. Patience, a capacity for boredom, was as vital to him as his hands on the controls. A round man, his fair hair thinning on his ball shaped head, he was waiting in the hut for his instructions when Mac arrived.
Mac told him he was bound for Ness at last.
‘There’s no big lifts left here,’ Conn reassured him. ‘The labourers can throw what’s left on the lorry without me.’
‘They’ll be following on as well.’
‘No problems. I mind my own business.’ This meant he didn’t respect Healey’s men either, although he was maybe afraid of them.
‘What’s the surface like out there? It’s too dark to see.’
‘Harry’s happy enough. At least he will be when these last two pipelines pass.’
‘They’d better. If we have to bring you back to dig them up again there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘They shouldn’t have been backfilled before the test, Mac.’
‘I know that. You know that. John knows that. Swannie said otherwise.’
‘He’ll be hoping for a claim against the contract? That’s how we’re working these days?’
‘You can go home now, Conn. I’ll lock up.’
Conn left and, as he locked up his machine and started his car, Mac sat and stared into space. The heating was off and it was cold but he sat unmoving, suddenly exhausted.
This was how it was. By now even the crane driver had the lie of the land, knew the new rule was haste and deception and claim, smash and grab. He could almost taste the sympathy in the man’s voice and hated what he must become if he was to survive.
‘The only answer,’ he said to himself, ‘is to stay and take it, adapt, or catch a flight east.’
So, struggle against it. Risk it all. He would have to work the weekend. Likely he would have to work every weekend. No hardship in itself because, never mind the cost to himself, he loved his work, the smells and sounds, the men, the demands on his foresight, his experience and intelligence, his leadership. Patricia was right about that, if nothing else. He went to the window and looked out, his hand against the thin plasterboard wall of the hut. There was a wind picking up. Conditions could change very quickly. As he watched, the clouds opened over the City and the stars shone through with their eternally cold, inanimate brilliance.
Across the water Inverness burned with electric light, the Kessock Bridge was strung with moving vehicle lights and along the Moray coast was all pinpoints of light, street lights, houses, the airport lights. Real constructs, they were the reality within which Alison would live her life. It had been his privilege to go to the basics of nature, the ground and the water and the energy, and turn them into the basics of civilised living. All along his life had direction and purpose he had never even considered. He had no inclination to leave. He would not leave. He would fight and he would lose, but he would fight. His mobile phone rang. Alison.
‘Dad, you’re late. It’s after 7:00. I’ve made the dinner and it’s getting cold. Are you coming home? I mean now.’
‘Sorry, Ali. I’ll be a while yet.’
‘Where are you?’
‘On the Black Isle, in my old hut that looks across the water at the city. As a matter if fact I’m looking that way now. You know I’ve played my part in building all this. That’s really important.’
‘I know, Dad. It’s your job. I know it pays for the way we live and I know I’m lucky, but aren’t you coming home?’
‘Don’t think it’s just a job.’
‘Dad?’
‘Let me tell you what I’m looking at. Above the town the clouds have just opened and the stars have come out and it’s as if the city is answering with its lights. I have this huge wonderful feeling of ‘‘home’’ that surged through me when I heard your voice and saw what I saw. It’s an amazing thing, the City, because it’s always growing although, just the same, it’s always complete. Like you, Sweetheart.’
‘Dad?’
‘I’ve played my part in its making and as I sit here on my own I think I understand what I never did before. It was all for you, in some ways directly for you, in others not so direct, but all for you and Gillian and Mike and the rest and if there’s a price to pay it’s worth it.’
She said nothing but he could hear her breathing.
‘And it goes on.’
‘Does it?’
‘And you will go on.’
‘Oh, Dad.’
‘I guess that’s enough. It has to be enough.’