Jimmy Gillies straightened from the gabion basket he was filling with stones on the beach. Out at sea, close to the limit of his vision, one of the rigs was flaring off gas. The sea was iron grey, more or less calm, although small waves threw themselves onto the shingle to hush and draw themselves back into the water. His eye followed the arc of the sea’s edge southwards to the rocky escarpment of the County of Ross and to Cammy who had wandered off, who was picking stones off the beach and throwing them into the sea.
As dictated by the state of the tide over the next two days they would put down another two baskets below where the shingle broke into sand, presently under water, and fill them with carefully but pointlessly graded stones. A single pipe length per day would do, in fact would be all they had time for. When this first gabion was filled, in another half hour, they would tie on the top mat and extend the outfall on top of it by another length of pipe. They would fix the shuttering and place the concrete before the tide turned and came back in. A can-do operation he had told Trevor, with the right labourers, meaning JB and Tammas, but Lammerton had learned their worth and taken them up the coast.
Jimmy’s eye travelled back to where the outfall pipe came out of the long spiky marram grass that waved in the breeze and onto the shore, to the two leather aprons that were draped over it, Willie Quinn’s and his own. When the pipe had been laid the marram had been in dieback but now, with spring at last on the way, it had shot up and the line of the pipe was lost to the eye except for Paul’s centre line peg. The grass was shoulder high and thick and the land between shore and Works now reminded him of the veldt he had travelled in his early years, when he was still single. Here was a salty veldt.
By the end of the week at the latest, the outfall would be complete and they would follow the troops north to the next site, but it was more time away from home and he missed the wife. He also missed his daughter but she was going anyway, as was only right, as was time. She was a woman now, no longer an apprentice, and her boy friends had turned into men friends. He was better away and letting them get on with it. A cool breeze across his cheek returned him to the present.
Almost lost among the marram Paul stood behind his theodolite. The line for the gabion could be less than perfectly accurate because eventually the whole arrangement would be sandblown, pebble covered and more or less invisible. Only the concrete surround to the pipe would be seen and soon it would be coated with moss and stuck with weed and seashell and no one would care about line and level beyond the troops who put it in, but that was the standard Jimmy set, that he would always set. Placement was to be as accurate as Paul’s theodolite could make it provided duration didn’t go into funnytime. So, he looked at Paul who had the telescope turned upwards from the gabion and out to sea and the nearest of the rigs.
Willie shoogled the stones in the mattress with his two hands and also straightened.
‘Look at this shore,’ he said. ‘From the sand to the marram it’s all stones exactly like the ones we’re putting in the basket. Why are we running them a hundred miles from the quarry? Why aren’t we just picking them up and sorting them and shoving them in the basket?’
‘Because the designer never thought of doing it the easy way and the Engineer won’t admit a mistake,’ Paul called down.
‘Hst! Take a look at Cammy.’
Cammy was standing at the waves’ limit, watching them roll to his boots and then stepping back.
‘He’s a dreamer,’ Willie said, ‘but you know that. How long has he been with us?’
‘Two years,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’s getting tired, maybe pining for something. You and I have been working together long enough to read each other’s minds.’
‘He’ll leave us soon.’
‘Think so?’
‘We need to be three. Two won’t do. Would you want him?’ Willie jerked his thumb at Paul.
‘Nope. He’s to stick in at College and make something of himself. He told me he’d do his best and I won’t give him a way out.’
Willie swept off his woolly hat and ran his fingers abruptly through his hair and jammed it back on.
‘Why the funny look?’
‘You deal in facts, Jimmy. All the time I’ve known you you’ve worked in facts, measurements and plywood and concrete and money. Don’t go trading on that hope stuff this late in the day. Ten years from now he’s going to have a saw in his hand, or a shovel.’
‘No. He’ll make it.’
Willie waved his hands in the air. ‘Paul, back from dreamland! Where’s Trots and Jinkie?’
Paul pulled away from the eyepiece and looked back at where the compound used to be.
‘On their way with the last load. The lorry’s going out the gate so that’s that.’
The dumper crested the marram and bounced on to the shingle and skidded to a halt, Trots’ head bouncing on his shoulders, Jinkie in his Celtic jersey jumping down behind, smiling and happy to be free of the bosses for three whole days. Graded stones spilled over the edge of the skip.
In the way he sometimes did when they had to wait, or when the work was least intense, Cammy wandered on his own. The shoreline, a narrow strand, was a few metres of shingle that changed to grit and then to sand where the tide went back and forth, the spiky marram grass that hid them from the new Works and made it a world apart. Here all things changed, dry became wet and wet became dry and nature graded rock from coarse to fine more evenly than the quarry could possibly manage. Here Life first crawled from the sea, cast its shell and continued inland.
He could imagine, or try to imagine, how it was when the world was settling, inanimate and senseless and, that done, try to accept that these same elements had somehow assembled without outside aid to take both form and life, developing first consciousness and then self-consciousness, inventiveness and creativity. All this was scarcely more credible than the breath of God, but nonetheless fact.
Bypassing thought as it should his heart sent an arrowshot prayer upwards to the stars. Not repentance this time, for the wavering Christian’s diminishing faith that now questioned everything, nor pleading, nor explaining, nor gratitude, nor seeking, this time only acknowledgement of the way things are and of how they fit. Not even thanks, it was appreciation, but now his mind was back in play and Mind ruined everything.
Like the tiny crabs and the bubble-weed he was in an in-between condition, between fact and faith, and the knowledge afforded him a comfort he could not quite explain. No point speaking to Willie or even Jimmy about such things, they lived in the most practical of worlds. Work was their religion and joinery their nation. Their ideology was written in the space between value and independence. That meant though, there could be no discussion of the spiritual.
He looked to his feet. The pebbles which from the outfall pipe had looked so uniform in size and colour in fact were wildly varied. He took in the multi-forms and multi-colours through his eyes, the salt smell through his nose, the cold breeze through his skin and knew beyond all doubt that he was part of it, not merely among it. How could he explain to Jimmy, whose only watchword was survival, that he would be content to join this inanimate world now? He could turn to stone now but knowing the day would come he was content to wait. He had abandoned the search for purpose.
One pebble called up to be selected and he did so, raising it between thumb and forefinger and tossing it into his palm, hefting its weight there, moving his thumb against its one flat face and feeling its roughness. The light caught its many embedded specks of quartz and made them sparkle and he focussed on it, the whole pebble, all its facets and colours and mass, trying to understand if it had purpose and, if so, was it of less importance than he because he was sentient.
From the corner of his eye he saw Trots and Jinkie arrive with the final dumper of stone for the gabion mattress. Trots had manoeuvred the dumper against the gabion’s edge and tipped the stones in. As Cammy watched he reversed the dumper and drove it back into the marram and stopped and climbed down. Willie and Jinkie fumbled at the stones to make their top surface even and started tying on the top mat. Soon they would be ready for the pipe.
The iron grey surface of the sea lay before him with all its depths. Leaning back on his rear foot he stretched still further behind with his arm, twisting at the waist until he could reach no further. Shifting his weight onto the front foot, uncoiling from the waist, swinging his arm forward as quickly as he could, he spun the stone low and flat across the water, watching until it made contact and skipped across the surface and sank. The nearest oil rig lay beyond and when his eyes refocused he could see tiny men on its work platform, far away in the distance and lost in the carrying of tools and loads and the turning of valves. All of them were wrestling with the inanimate, all of them on the side of change whether they knew it or not. The real art, he reflected, the truly fine art, was in a becoming that still eluded him.
Suddenly Paul was at his side. ‘The batcher’s broken down again.’
‘That means we have to call in concrete from Alness as well as get the pipe in and the shutters up and the stuff poured and vibrated. There’s not time.’
‘Jimmy says you’ve to come back now.’
Cammy turned again to sea and shore knowing that to go now was to never see them in quite the same way again. His hand strayed to his apron and the hammer that hung by his side, along with his saw the only tools he possessed to effect change in this or any other world; those and a bag of nails.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
They joined the others at the gabion to make six. Jimmy Gillies spoke. ‘Better call Trevor,’ he said. ‘He’ll see further than us. Meanwhile the mattress is ready so we can get the next pipe in. Trots!’
‘Yo!’
‘You and Jinkie bring it down from the compound. Don’t forget the sealing ring and lubricant.’
Trots jumped back into the driver’s seat and revved out a cough of smoky exhaust that blew across Jimmy’s overalls. He pushed the gear-stick forward and bounced back onto the marram grass. Jinkie followed on foot.
‘He’s a clown,’ Jimmy said. ‘Haste when he’s behind a wheel, slow as a donkey with a shovel in his hand. Every idea in the world about working but bone idle when it comes to doing. Paul!’
‘Yo!’
‘Phone now.’
Paul pressed the memory buttons that put him through to Trevor on the new site at Lochdon.
‘Trev! Paul here. Batcher’s broken down.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Jimmy wants you to bring in a load from Alness.’
‘A load is six cubic metres. You can’t need all that. Wait you, I’ll do the sum.’
Paul could hear Trevor’s fingers tapping on the calculator.
‘Pipe’s 15cm diameter, 15cm concrete around that. Point four five by point four five.’
Jimmy couldn’t hear as Paul could. ‘When will it arrive?’
‘He’s doing a sum.’
‘Times six metres less the area of the pipe also times six. Paul, that’s just over a cube. We’re not paying for six and the journey, which is what we’d have to do to bring it up from Alness. Get Trots and Jinkie to mix it by hand.’
‘He says we’ve to mix it by hand.’
Jimmy took the phone from Paul.
‘Jimmy here. The tide’s going to beat us.’
Words passed back from Trevor. When the call ended Jimmy looked at the phone as if it was responsible for some great stupidity before he returned it to Paul.
‘Willie!’
‘Yo!’
‘Get the shutters oiled. Cammy!’
‘Yo!’
‘Cut the dwangs, 45cm perzackly and twelve of. Paul!’
‘Yo!’
‘You and me’ll get the pipe in while Trots and Jinkie are breaking their backs up there.’
‘Trots? Some hope.’
‘Look at that.’
Breaking out of the marram grass again Trots had a length of ductile iron pipe balanced across the skip of the dumper, the pipe sticking out two metres to either side and Jinkie running alongside steadying it with his hand. On the shingle the dumper bounced away from Jinkie and the pipe rolled off.
‘As well Harry’s not here,’ Jimmy said. ‘Take the pipe over to the mattress. Where’s the gubbins?’
Trots reached into the skip for the jointing ring and tin of lubricant and showed them.
‘Put it all over there by the mattress.’
Trots frowned but did the job, carrying the pipe at opposite ends from Jinkie. ‘We’ll fit it too,’ he said. ‘That’s our job.’
‘Not this time. You two get back up there and mix us a cube of concrete. There’s none coming from Alness this day.’
‘Mix by hand?’
‘Quick time too, we’re fighting the tide.’
‘Who says we’ve to break our backs for nothing? If the bosses want, they can pay.’
‘Trevor says no.’
‘We work for Pat Healey.’
‘So, ho ho. Want a job up the road? Think Healey wants to stay in with Trevor? That’s to say Swannie? There’s no money in this. There’ll be money up the road.’
Angry Trots clenched and unclenched his fists.
‘We can do it, Trots,’ Jinkie said. ‘Couple of hours back and forward.’
‘Or we can stick together against the bosses. We can get the price we’re due for busting our backs.’
‘Stand arguing,’ Jimmy said, ‘and the tide beats us and everything goes back a day. Worse than that, since we’re right on the ebb just now work time gets less every day. Two pipelines down we’re that much further into the water with the tide taking that much less time to turn. We have to do this today.’
‘That’s it,’ Trots said. ‘That is the case. That’s what you put to them. They’re not daft. They’ll give in first time. Trevor’s organising the new compound, working out impossible programmes to kill the workers, ordering materials. He hasn’t got time to argue. C’mon, Jimmy, we’re in this together. Get him on the phone.’
‘I told you, Paul and I will get the pipe in. You start mixing now, I mean right now, and we’ll finish this today.’
Jinkie, that small man, took hold of Trots’ sleeve just above the closing and unclosing fist.
‘He means it, Trots.’
Trots jerked his arm away. His eyes found Jimmy’s eyes and remained deep inside them as he spoke.
‘Need is the capitalist game but we can play it as well as they can. They don’t think twice about exploiting the workers. They do it all the time.’
‘There’s a job to do and no time to argue.’
‘You know they do!’
Slowly and carefully Jimmy took his hands from the pockets of his overalls.
Willie began to whistle loudly.
Cammy stopped sawing and stretched his back.
‘There’s another job coming up the road,’ Jinkie said. ‘Don’t lose it for us.’
‘Round these parts we remember the Clearances. We remember the dogs as much as the shepherds, the shepherds as much as the masters.’
‘Think I’m a dog, Trots?’
‘Jimmy!’
‘What is it, Willie?’
‘Forgot your name for a minute, I was just making sure.’
Jinkie took hold of Trots’ sleeve. ‘C’mon, Trots.’
The rasping sound of Cammy’s saw carried in the breeze.
‘Okay,’ said Trots, ‘we’ll do it. The Workers know how to wait. We’ve been doing it for a long time.’
He climbed back onto the dumper and gunned the engine, turning it in its narrow circle and bumping back uphill into the marram with Jinkie running along beside.
His instrument set plumb above the centre line Paul swivelled the powerful telescope onto the nearest rig, centring the vertical cross hair on the tower above the platform. Swivelling it down again he found he could pick out lifting gear, windows, hand rails, crates stacked one above the other.
A door opened and a figure came out into the weather, pulling its collar up around its neck before running to a standing valve and taking its wheel in its hands and turning it anxiously, shoulders working, sturdy legs transferring all the forces both static and kinetic down into the platform. At sea level silent waves broke against the rig’s three massive round legs
‘See that, Paul?’
Willie Quinn had finished oiling the shutters and tucked bucket and brush upright among the marram grass.
‘See what?’
‘Three legs are more stable than two. That’s what we should have, three legs. We wouldn’t fall over as much. Not then.’
‘No?’
‘Proof positive there’s no God. He’d have given us three legs so us joiners could stand up better in the wind that way and slaters wouldn’t get blown off roofs. Fishermen could stand up in their boats.’
‘We’d walk different though,’ Paul said. ‘We’d spin along like those waltzer things you get at the Fair.’
Willie considered sagely. ‘We’d need ball bearings in our neck to keep the head steady while the body went round and round. Great things the ball bearings are. What do you think, Cammy?’
Cammy shook his head.
‘We’d do a better job than God. Three legs instead of two.’
Cammy was thoughtful of this blasphemy. ‘God gave us four legs,’ he said at last. ‘It was men that got up on two. That’s when it all went wrong.’
‘Paul, I need a rough line for the pipe,’ said Jimmy at the mattress.
‘You’ll miss the banter,’ Willie told Cammy, ‘if you go.’
‘Three legs,’ said Jimmy, ‘and three arms to go with them; one to steady the wood, another to work it and the third to scratch your arse, which is what you guys do most of the time. Paul, give me that line.’
Paul turned his instrument to sight the mark he had made on the wall of the closest Settlement Tank and locked it into position. On top of the wall the fitters were fixing the scraper rails on the walls. By tonight the job would be done and they would be away. Swivelling the telescope on its axis he focussed down on the mattress and guided Jimmy’s pencil onto the centreline.
‘Spoteroonie!’
Jimmy made a mark. ‘Near enough then.’
‘No. Spoteroonie.’
‘Boy’s getting confident,’ Willie said. ‘He knows his worth.’
‘Shoosh, Willie,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’s worth nothing without that qualification he’s promised me he’s going to get.’
Paul turning a stone with his boot frowned.
‘What’s your qualifications, Jimmy?’
‘Possession of the tools is all.’
‘So what’s your worth?’
‘A hammer and a few nails.’
‘You were the highest paid man on the site until the plant fitters arrived.’
‘A hammer and a few nails is all any joiner’s worth.’
Jimmy took his hammer out of his belt and spun it on his finger like a six-gun and pointed it at Paul. ‘Paper is worth more. Get that and you can do what you like.’
‘You listen to him, Paul,’ said Willie. ‘He knows what he’s talking about. A lifetime on the tools and what’s he got to show for it? Beautiful wife, big house, a nearly new car and a daughter at Uni, is all. Some hammer. Some nails.’
‘And a sore back,’ Jimmy said, still pointing, ‘arthritis coming on from endless soakings, the state pension and nothing with my name on it bar the label on my overalls.’
He put the hammer back in his belt.
‘Now Paul, help me fit this pipe. Willie, help Cammy finish off the dwangs.’
Between them, Jimmy and Paul, they lifted the pipe onto two blocks of wood on the mattress, its socket end looking up at the spigot of the pipe that had been laid from the settlement tanks. Jimmy took a clean rag from the bucket and lifted the pipe ends and wiped them carefully.
‘The tiniest piece of grit can spoil the joint.’
‘No matter,’ Paul said. ‘This open end won’t be tested.’
Jimmy looked at him out of the corner of his eye and it was a complete answer.
The pipe ends absolutely clean he took the rubber sealant ring from the bucket and coated it with lubricant and pushed it carefully into the socket. ‘That’s a fit,’ he said and replaced the pipe on the mattress. ‘Now, give me a piece of that timber for a cushion, and the pinch bar.’
Cammy passed him a piece of sawn wood and he and Willie stationed themselves at what would be the pipe joint. Jimmy went to the low end and placed the wood between the spigot and the pinch bar that he jammed into the mattress and placed his boot behind.
‘Ready?’
‘Yo!’
Jimmy pressed the pinch bar forward onto the wood, the wood onto the spigot and so eased the pipe forward into its mate. ‘Now Paul. Line again.’
Paul returned to his position behind the theodolite and guided Jimmy left and right until the new pipe end was in line with no margin for error either side.
‘Spoteroonie!’
‘Do you mean it this time?’
‘I mean it again.’
‘That’s good. Now just stay there. Willie and Cammy, bring the shutters over. This won’t take long.’
The six shutters were two metres long and a half metre deep, marine ply lubricated with linseed oil and fixed to a wooden frame simply with nails. Willie and Cammie placed them in pairs to either side of the pipe, spaced them at the bottom with the two-by-two dwangs Cammy had cut to size and at the top nailed them to the correct 45cm width. They took their line off the pipe and when they were done Paul again checked it. Jimmy nailed on the stop end and the box was ready for concrete.
‘These days they say the first men were blacks,’ said Willie. ‘Roaming up to the north out of Kenya.’ He shook his head. ‘Not true. They were white like us. It’s been proved.’
Jimmy looked at him for a long moment. ‘Where do these things come from? No, don’t tell me. Paul! How’s the concrete doing because we’re ready and the tide’s on the turn.’
Paul’s mobile phone rang. Trevor had a question.
‘The shutter’s ready,’ Paul told him. ‘If we get the concrete now we’ll finish, yes.’
‘Ask him,’ Jimmy asked, ‘if the fitter is coming out to fix the batcher. We won’t manage with hand batching tomorrow with less time. We’ll need the machine.’
Paul repeated this and waited again.
‘Trots and Jinkie are working away at the mix now,’ he said.
He listened again and switched off.
‘The fitter’s on his way. Trevor says to call him when we’re about finished.’
‘Do that,’ said Jimmy. ‘Listen, that’s the dumper on the way back.’
The dumper broke out of the marram grass and bounced onto the shingle spilling concrete. Jinkie ran out behind.
‘Here’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto,’ Willie said. ‘Remember that on the telly, Cammy?’
‘Before my time, Willie.’
‘You won’t remember who played Tonto then.’
‘Nope.’
‘Jay Silversleeves. He got the name when he was a joiner on the Hydro dams. With his colouring he couldn’t take the cold. His nose ran like a waterfall and he used to wipe it on his sleeve, over and over on his sleeve. He changed the name a bit when he got to Hollywood. Good joiner he was, started the same day as me on that big pyramid job in Egypt. He was on the wrong side at Little Big Horn though. We never spoke again.’
Trots manoeuvred the dumper so he could tip the concrete into the shutter. ‘Ready, Willie?’
‘Not without vibrators. You haven’t brought them down yet.’
‘Nothing works here,’ Jimmy said. ‘Look, pour half the concrete in.’
Trots pushed the tipping lever forward and the skip rose on its hinges. Jinkie pushed the back of his shovel into the flow, directing it into the shutter, allowing very little spillage.
‘Easiepeasie,’ he said. ‘Lemon squeezie.’
‘Now move over here and drop the other half.’
Trots reversed and moved the dumper sideways and tipped in the rest.
‘Now drive up and bring the vibrator unit down. It’s the wee electric one.’
Trots and Jinkie roared up towards the compound.
The concrete was mounded above the top of the shutter. ‘Will we shovel out the extra while we’re waiting?’ Willie asked. ‘It’s their job. They might not like it.’
‘No. Wait until it’s vibrated down, there might not be enough. They might have to mix some more. Look at the tide, though. We’re getting beat.’
The tide was lapping the base of the shutter.
‘Paul! See what they’re up to.’
Paul climbed up off the shore and stood by his theodolite, looking uphill towards the compound.
‘They’re on their way. No dumper though. They’re carrying the vibrator between them.’
Jimmy took his hammer out of his belt and spun it. ‘They’ve left the dumper behind. The vibrator weighs about as much as a mini car and they’ve left the dumper behind.’
Willie stroked his chin. ‘We’re going to have to get them put down,’ he said. ‘Cammy, do they deserve to live? As a moral philosopher you know about these things.’
‘What’s ‘‘deserve’’? What’s that?’ Cammy asked.
‘There’s more in that question than in any possible answer.’
Trots and Jinkie reached the edge of the marram and rested the vibrator on the shingle.
‘The dumper’s broke now,’ Jinkie shouted. ‘The fitter’s on the batcher and he’ll fix the dumper when he’s finished that.’
Willie looked at sweating Trots. ‘Working hard?’
Trots and Jinkie again picked up the machine by its two handles and carried it to the shutter where Trots grasped the starter cord and pulled. It whined into action first time and the half-inch poker jiggled on the stones of the beach, rattling like a beggar’s cup. He picked it up and tossed it into the mound of concrete and the mound slumped down in the shutter.
Paul shouted over the noise. ‘Willie, what were you saying about the first men? They were black. Everyone knows that. From Kenya.’
Willie pushed at the concrete with a shovel, forcing it in mounds against the vibrator, watching the tiny air bubbles come out and the cream form on top.
‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘lovely stuff. Trots, you can mix concrete all right. This would even make Harry happy and he is a famously grouchy person. The first men, black? Not so. All the new thinking says white, like us.’
‘That’s racist,’ said Trots, scowling. ‘You’re a racist.’
‘Just a thought. Can a thought be racist?’
‘Yes, it can.’
Trots lifted the poker out and put it in again, moving along the shuttering’s six metre length and as he went Willie looked at Cammy. ‘We are apes,’ he said. Right?’
‘So some say.’
‘No tails.’
‘True.’
‘But unlike all other apes we are hairless. Also unlike all other apes we have noses that stick out from our faces.
Jimmy ran his fingers along his own. ‘Some more so than others.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Willie. ‘In more advanced specimens, such as James here, it signifies a great astuteness and the correct understanding of the bounds of truthfulness, very useful qualities when dealing with the likes of Swannie. How’s the measure doing anyway?’
‘There’s nothing in this beach work. The sooner we’re up the road the better.’
‘So listen, it’s several millennia ago and the Ice Age is blowing down from the north and here is a tribe of our still not quite human ancestors, Homo Hairiarsus, covered in brown fur with their noses flat as toad in the hole.’
‘I’ve got the picture,’ said Paul.
The vibrating poker shrieked and dulled as Trots pulled it in and out of the concrete. ‘This is all racist nonsense,’ he said.
‘I’ll be a Fascist then, Trots?’ asked Willie.
‘Sure sounds like it.’
‘Well, never mind that. So they come across this hot spring and one of them jumps in and, hey, this is good, I mean really warm and comfortable. There aren’t too many of these apes so they all get in and just sit around in the warmth for years while the temperature drops all around and the other ape tribes get hairier in order to cope, as do the mammoths and sabre toothed tigers and all the rest that manage to survive at all. The temperature continues to drop and their shoulders and heads get very cold indeed so they lie a little bit lower in the water and then a bit lower still until eventually only their noses are poking up and only the apes with long noses survive. They pass this characteristic on to their successors and, eventually, here we are.’
‘Hoho,’ said Trots.
‘I tell you true.’ Willie raised a hand and swore on his joiner’s apron.
‘The males had to get out of the water every so often and go find food for the females and the young. That’s why men today are hairier than women. When the ice eventually receded and they came out of the water for good and walked off through the long grass their skin was white. Like ours.’
‘Racist,’ Trots muttered, but Jinkie was staring into space with his mouth open.
‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘It explains why white men are superior to blacks. The blacks lost their fur later, and their noses are flat.’
No one contradicted Jinkie who would need to believe he was superior to someone somewhere. Willie slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Ever meet a black man, Jinkie?’
‘No.’
‘That’s enough vibrating,’ Jimmy said. ‘The concrete’s right down and, look, it’s about two centimetres low and we can’t make any more without the batcher or get it here without the dumper and the tide is at our feet already.’
‘We’re beat,’ Paul said. ‘Swannie isn’t going to like this.’ His mobile phone rang and once again it was Trevor.
‘Finished yet.’
‘No way,’ said Paul. ‘We’re two centimetres short of the top and the dumper’s broken down.’
‘Plumbs,’ said Trevor. ‘Tell Jimmy.’
‘Plumbs,’ Paul repeated.
‘Nope!’ insisted Jimmy.
‘This is our job,’ said Trots. ‘You tell him, Paul. We’re doing this’.
Jimmy hung his thumbs from the belt of his apron. ‘Looks like we’re finished for the day.’
Paul still had his mobile phone at his ear. Trevor spoke.
‘Did I hear Trots say he’d do it? Tell him to make sure the plumbs don’t touch either the shutters or the pipe.’
Trots stood close enough to hear. ‘Jinkie,’ he said. ‘Scoop up some of that concrete. I’ll get the plumbs.’
Where the shingle met the marram grass the beach stones were biggest. Trots gathered a dozen and carried them in pairs and placed them by the shutter while Jinkie dug. When he had them all he took his finishing trowel and widened Jinkie’s first hole and placed the first stone in and covered it with concrete. When they had two plumbs at each of the shutter joints, one either side of the pipe, they set about spreading the displaced volume and so raising the top level of the concrete.
‘C’mon, Jimmy,’ Trots said. ‘The tide’s winning.’
‘I give in,’ said Jimmy. ‘C’mon, boys, grab a trowel each or a shovel or anything and let’s get this job done before the tide wipes it out.’
The three joiners and the two labourers worked away at the top surface of the concrete, putting in more plumbs as required, spreading the concrete and smoothing it, Trots finishing the surface with the metal trowel and all of them knee deep or over in cold salty water by the time the job was done.
‘The tarpaulin now,’ said Jimmy. ‘Quick, cover it before the tide gets over the top.’
Again from the grass they took a sheet of hessian, wide enough to cover the shutter’s top and sides and spread out to either side on the shore, long enough to cover its length. Together they unrolled it bottom end to top and dropped stones through the water to hold its ends down on the shore.
‘Job done,’ Willie shouted. ‘Okay, I know we cheated but, way down here, it’ll be okay. All this concrete has to do is stop the pipe floating away.’
‘And take any knocks,’ said Jimmy.
Willie was puzzled
‘What knocks? No boats here. No vandals.’
‘That’s right,’ said Trots. ‘What was the point beyond getting it done and saving the bosses money? Why did we get so into it?’
‘Getting it right,’ Jimmy told him. ‘Except we didn’t, we cheated.’
Up at his instrument Paul once again turned the telescope down on the outfall, now looking onto the billowing hap they had used to protect the concrete surface from taking on wave patterns that no one would ever see.
The job was done. All he had to do now was ring Trevor and tell him.
‘Job’s done. The troops are tidying up.’
‘Okay,’ Trevor told him. ‘The fitter just called to say the batcher’s fixed. Tomorrow you’ll be further into the water and the tide will turn that bit quicker. We can’t afford another breakdown.’
‘That’s what Jimmy says.’
‘Well, he’s right. Two pipe lengths to go and with the tides the way they are the last one is going to be desperate for time. We’ll have the fitter standing by the batcher just in case. He’s the best insurance we can have.’
‘We’ll be quicker by then. Jimmy will have it down to a fine art. This was just the first.’
‘We’re sending JB and Tammas down for the next two days. That should help. Now you can wrap up, early start tomorrow.’
‘Four labourers? They’ll fall over each other.’
‘Never mind that.’
Trevor hung up.
Paul put the phone back into his pocket and looked at Jimmy.
‘JB and Tammas will be here tomorrow as well.’
Jimmy and Willie and Trots looked at each other and something unspoken passed between them.
‘We’ll tidy up now,’ said Jimmy. ‘We have to carry all this gear back up to the compound.’
Paul went back to his instrument and out of their way, turning its telescope on to the nearest rig and focusing on the platform. A group of men were working at something, he couldn’t tell what, but they were intent on their business and all their attention was on this unreadable activity. Two were speaking animatedly together and pointing. Others were laying out what looked like a rope but might have been a chain or a hose. They were thinking and talking and working together on their man-made world and he took the impression somehow that they were working against the possibility of some future catastrophe.
He turned the wheel at the side of the instrument to bring them as close as he could and refocused.
Yes, they seemed to know what they were doing and what they couldn’t be sure of they worked out as they went. Now other men appeared, walking past them in pairs, in threes, ignoring them it seemed, all in the service and protection of the great machine that stood on its three sturdy legs in waiting for the power of the sea to turn against it.
‘Can I see?’
Cammy put his tools down among the marram grass and stepped into Paul’s footprints behind the instrument. He turned the focusing wheel to suit his own eyes and, that done, his hands went down to rest on his thighs and take his body’s weight against the crouch, against back pain, and as he watched with visible admiration all those tiny men working in the distance his forehead creased and a thoughtful smile formed on his pressed together lips.
Paul’s mobile phone rang again. This time it was Pat Healey calling from Glasgow.
‘Trevor said it was okay to call. I need to speak to Trots.’
Paul held out the phone to Trots on the shore. Trots took it and put it to his ear and listened and turned it off and handed it back. Jinkie stared at him with his mouth open, waiting for the inevitable.
‘We’re paid off. This lot don’t want us any more. Healey says he’ll call when something new comes up.’
Jinkie walked into the long grass with his hands to his head and Trots swayed where he stood before sitting down on the beach pebbles.
Paul couldn’t look at them. Instead he looked at the Grip Squad, Jimmy, Willie and Cammy, one by one. None of them could look at the labourers either. They couldn’t even look at each other. Jimmy and Willie kept on gathering together their tools and Cammy kept peering through the telescope until Trots and Jinkie had recovered. In this way Paul learned that, although tomorrow their cares would be about income and provision, today the searing truth they had to contend with was expendability and insult. Jimmy spoke.
‘You guys heading back to the compound? We’ll take you to Inverness. You won’t need the company bus then.’
Trots nodded slowly.
‘That’s good of you.’
‘Next time it might be us.’
It wouldn’t though. Paul knew it.
Deep down all of them knew it
Trots folded the vibrator’s air hose and gripped the generator handle and hefted it but no, the beast was too heavy. It would take them both to carry it.
‘She won’t like this,’ he said. ‘She won’t like it.’
‘There’ll be another day, Trots. We’re never out the game for long.’
Each took his handle and together they put their backs into it, leaning outwards and away from each other, as their ancestors had done when between them they took the weight of an animal they had killed, to carry it back to the compound.
Paul unscrewed the theodolite from its legs and clamped it in its case. The tripod stand he also broke down, unscrewing the butterfly bolts and pushing the extensions inside and tightening them again. With the gathered legs on his shoulder and the heavy case in his hand he nodded to the joiners standing with their hammers hanging from their belts like long knives and their saws and pinch bars over their shoulders like spears, providers and protectors for their women and their children no matter the colour of their skin.
Now the labourers entered the long grass and Jimmy Gillies and Willie Quinn and Cameron Stobo also entered it and all moved through it and eventually were lost in it and none of them left anything to mark their existence in this place at all, at this time, but the scrapings they made on the ground in the course of their passing. Burdened by the weight of his tools, the tripod legs and instrument, by his book and the pencil he wrote with, he followed.