Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  There were turbines that the old man visited that the boy had never even been able to get to. Every time he tried he was forced to turn back, the battery dropping to fifty per cent before he’d even got close. The old man would go to these turbines regularly, spending all day out there before taking a circuitous route back. Sometimes, after the old man returned, the boy would go down to the dock to check the battery and find it still on twenty or thirty per cent.

  He thought about giving up on trying to follow the old man and instead just search the farm systematically, working through it turbine by turbine, row by row. But there were so many turbines, there were so many rows. And what would stop the old man deciding, at any time, to move his stuff to one of the turbines that the boy had already checked? He could end up searching the farm for ever.

  Sometimes, if he came across one of the old man’s nets, he would haul it up and sort through its contents, to see if he could find anything that resembled the objects that used to be in the old man’s room. Sometimes he found things that looked like pins, or beads, or small figures; but when he brought them back to his room and cleaned them, they just melted into grit and sludgy clay.

  There was a turbine up in the north of zone two – the only one working in a broken row.

  The boy had seen the old man go back to it several times. He only ever stayed there for a few minutes. Not long enough to make repairs, or set up a net, or assemble and disassemble his poles. But maybe long enough to go and check on something that he’d hidden.

  The old man had taken the boat out the day before and not got back until late, so the boy would be able to argue the use of it that morning, if it came to it. He went into the control room to check the turbine’s coordinates one last time. But then, as he was about to leave, he noticed the weather report. There was a warning of a storm front pushing in from the north-west. It would hit the farm by the middle of the day. The boy sat down and looked at the map. He centred it on the turbine in zone two. The other screens showed the angles from the nearest cameras. It was too far away. He’d never make it there and back in time.

  ‘You wanting the boat?’ the old man said from the corridor.

  The boy quickly switched the screen back to the weather report. ‘There’s a storm coming in,’ he said.

  ‘So, no, then.’ The old man came into the room.

  The boy turned round to look at him, then froze. The old man was wearing the fur hat. He’d pulled it down low at one side, so that it looked almost jaunty. The dark fur gleamed under the strip lights.

  The old man looked over the boy’s shoulder at the screens. He looked at the weather report, then each of the camera angles. He frowned, glanced at them one more time, then turned and walked away down the corridor.

  The boy stayed where he was. His hand went up and rubbed slowly along his jaw. Where had he left the hat? He couldn’t remember where he’d put it after the pilot had given it to him – in the galley with the resupply? Or had he left it in his room? Either way, the old man had found it and now he knew … now he knew what? There was nothing for him to know. It was a hat. That was it.

  He turned back to the screens and saw the storm warning again. It had gone up another level – the storm would be big and it was spreading fast.

  The boy got up and ran after the old man. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  The old man carried on walking. ‘There’s a storm coming in.’

  ‘So where are you going?’

  The old man picked up a bag that he’d left outside his room. ‘Out.’

  ‘But …’

  The old man turned. ‘Why are you so interested in where I’m going?’

  The boy stopped. ‘I’m not.’

  The old man stared at him. ‘You been making many repairs recently?’

  The boy looked down at the floor. ‘Some.’

  ‘You’ve been out a lot.’

  ‘So have you.’

  The old man adjusted the hat carefully. ‘I was up a turbine the other day and I saw the generator belt was missing.’

  The boy kept his eyes fixed on the floor. ‘It must have broken.’

  ‘Not broken. There were no bits anywhere. Just missing.’

  The boy looked up and held the old man’s gaze. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  The old man stared at the boy for a long time. Then he sighed quietly. ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fat man. At the last resupply. What did he say to you?’

  The boy took a breath. There was some loose stitching on one of the flaps of the hat. It needed fixing or it would make a hole. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s trying to get to you.’

  A light on the air-con dial on the wall flashed slowly. The boy watched it and thought about the prop shaft he’d managed to reconnect on the boat. It turned so smoothly now. He almost wanted to tell the old man about it; and about the intricate way that the batteries connected up; and how, when he was working on the boat, he could almost hear his father just behind him, his footsteps, the sound of him bending down to fit a part; how he could almost see him over his shoulder, smell the dusty smokiness on his breath. The light flashed again. ‘He didn’t say anything.’

  The old man took a step forward, then stopped. ‘Jem,’ he said.

  The boy didn’t move.

  The old man lifted his bag onto his shoulder. He suddenly looked tired. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He turned and walked down the corridor towards the dock, the hat pulled down low over his eyes.

  The boy let out a long breath and was about to go back to the control room, when he remembered. ‘What about the storm?’ he called down the corridor, but he could already hear the clang of the dock gates.

  He watched through the rig’s cameras as the old man piloted the boat out of the dock, then he switched to the satellite map. The weather report showed that the storm was only an hour away. The swell was already picking up, thumping higher against the rig’s supports. The old man was heading north, straight towards the turbine that the boy had just been looking at, straight towards the storm.

  The boat travelled further from the rig. The weather report showed the front pushing closer to the farm. It cycled down from the northern ocean, spreading outwards like something dark that had spilled. The wind speed increased and clouds ballooned up through the atmosphere. Eventually the boat came to a stop at the turbine. The boy waited, watching the report. The storm came closer. The old man was still moored up to the turbine, just a few miles from where it would hit. The boy took out his watch. He switched from the weather report to the satellite map and back again. The boat symbol didn’t move. He searched for any available cameras, but the signal was scrambled by the weather. It was exactly midday when the computer showed the storm sweeping through the north fields of the farm.

  The boy got up and went outside to the gangway, which ran around the upper levels of the rig.

  The swell was washing over the jackets of the towers. Spray swept across in waves, soaking the boy’s face. In the distance, to the north, the turbines were feathering their blades. And further beyond that, a thick murky line grew on the horizon. It was brown but glowing, almost bronze. The boy stood, holding on to the rail, and watched as the swell rose, the wind increased and then … nothing.

  The clouds didn’t come any closer. They edged along the horizon and then vanished from sight. Soon after, the waves dropped and the wind returned to its normal level. All around, the turbines engaged their yaw motors and angled back into the wind. The boy let go of the rail. His fingers were locked stiff and his knuckles were raw. He clenched and unclenched his hands as he made his way slowly back into the rig.

  The weather report had changed to show the storm front veering east well before it reached the farm. The boy switched off the screen and sat down. Then he turn
ed the screen back on and brought up the satellite map. It was still zoomed in on the turbine, but the maintenance boat wasn’t there. He rescaled the map until he found the boat. It was on a course back to the rig, travelling at an angle from a different part of the farm.

  The next day the boy went out and searched the turbine. But all he found was the fur hat, on the floor in the middle of the empty tower.

  The old man’s routes changed. He started visiting the same locations over and over. One day the boy saw him go back to the same three turbines he’d visited just days before. The boy had been out to them and found nothing. Indeed, it didn’t seem that the old man was going to them for any reason at all. He didn’t set his nets or assemble his poles. He just went in, then came back out and stood in the doorway looking out at the sea.

  It was only when the old man finally made his way back to the rig that the boy realized what was happening. The old man was following the exact route that the boy had taken when he came back from checking the turbines, even down to the detour where he’d strayed off-course.

  The boy sat back in his chair and stared at the screen. Now the old man was following him.

  After that, the boy had to be careful. He began moving randomly about the farm, taking long detours and avoiding the cameras. He made sure he took his toolbag up into every tower he visited and then sat in the nacelle until he thought the old man would have got bored watching. While he was there, he always made some kind of repair, even if nothing needed doing – removing all the wheels from the gearbox and then fitting them back on, leaving the case open, so it would be obvious if the old man came to check.

  He only went to his boat when it was dark or foggy, and he always covered his tracks – travelling in sweeping arcs around the farm, making himself visible at other turbines to throw the old man off.

  In the meantime, he watched the old man carefully, making a note of any new or different journey that he took.

  And the old man watched the boy. They shadowed each other’s movements, visiting the same turbines over and over, waiting for the other to crack or slip up as they traced ever more complex and circuitous routes through the farm.

  The boy lay on his bed, watching the air con shift dust particles in loops and spirals around the room. He breathed slowly, curled and uncurled his toes, watched the dust. It was surprising, really, how much of it there was. The air con had filters and the door was always closed, so all the dust in the room must have come from him. This was his body in particle form, breaking apart, cell by cell, to fill the space.

  The old man had just come back and was unloading the boat. It would be some time before the battery was charged enough, so there was nothing to do but wait. The boy rolled onto his side and picked up one of the technical manuals from under his bedside unit.

  He looked down at the columns of text, the graphs and tables of figures. There were solutions here for almost every fault or malfunction that could occur on the farm. But he couldn’t focus on it – there was no point focusing on it. The dust moved slowly around the room. He put the book back on the floor.

  There were steps in the hallway and three short, sharp coughs, then the door swung open. The old man strode into the middle of the room holding a length of rope.

  The boy put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.

  The old man held up the rope. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  The boy kept his eyes on the ceiling. If he didn’t answer then maybe the old man would go away. He waited a full minute. ‘It’s a bit of rope,’ he said finally.

  ‘Not that. This.’

  The boy looked at the old man. He was still holding up the rope. The boy looked at it, then back at the old man.

  ‘I don’t use this knot,’ the old man said.

  The boy closed his eyes.

  ‘I don’t use this knot,’ the old man said again. ‘One of my nets had moved and it was tied up with this and I don’t ever use this knot.’

  The boy opened his eyes and looked at the knot. ‘Why not?’

  The old man’s grip tightened on the rope. ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t you use it?’ It looked like a round turn and two half hitches. It was a good, strong knot.

  The old man narrowed his eyes. ‘Because I use a rolling hitch.’

  ‘That’s better than a rolling hitch.’

  ‘That’s not better than a bloody rolling hitch.’ He threw the rope onto the bed and began pacing the room.

  The boy sat up and picked up the rope. ‘How’d you get it off?’

  The old man stopped pacing. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s still got the loop in it. How’d you get it off?’

  ‘I untied it, didn’t I.’

  ‘So who tied this one?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I thought you said you couldn’t tie it.’

  ‘Couldn’t tie it?’ The old man took a step towards the boy.

  ‘I thought you said …’

  ‘I can tie more bloody knots than you!’

  The boy looked at the old man. ‘So you do use it.’

  ‘I never use it.’

  ‘But you just did.’

  ‘Only to show you that I don’t.’

  The boy looked down at the rope, turned it over slowly. ‘So you’re saying, whoever tied this knot moved your net?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The boy threw the rope back to the old man. ‘You tied this knot.’

  The old man stood still. His jaw twitched. He gripped the rope in his fist, held it up in front of him, then turned and left the room, letting the heavy door thud shut behind him.

  The boy stayed on the bed for a moment. Then he got up, took a cloth from the bucket under the sink and wiped away the damp, brown footprints the old man had left.

  He lay back down. Now, the dust in the room was the old man’s too – all tangled up with his own. If he thought about it, he could imagine them both swirling around, caught by the air con’s mechanical breeze, dragged through its vents and grilles, through all the rig’s pipework and out into the air. He could almost feel the real wind carrying them up over the fields, over the cushion of turbulence and out to the open water, the featureless sea, where all noise and trace of the farm diminished.

  But he tried not to think about it too much. All the dust got caught in the filters.

  Circuits

  With each concussion, the balls jolted and shook. They had to count the wave periods and time their shots, the weather dictating their pace of play, until the rhythms became so practised that it seemed as if each strike of the cue, each glance off the cushion, were predicting the pattern of the storm.

  The pool table was missing four balls, including the white, and had two buckled legs that needed propping up to even the surface. The remaining balls were chipped and riddled with hairline cracks; some were dented, so that they swung when struck or else skidded along the ripped baize. As such, balls and pockets were assigned different values, and points were scored for potting certain balls in certain pockets or keeping balls out of areas marked by scratches, tears and abrasions. If balls were potted in either of the pockets that had lost their runners, they fell to the floor and had to be given to the opposing player. One of the cues was snapped to half the length of the other, so whoever used it received a handicap, which varied each time they played, as did their memory and implementation of the rules.

  They circled the table, keeping to opposite sides. This was the first rule of play. The second was that no one was allowed to talk. They had been playing frame after frame, day after day, night after night. They couldn’t leave the rig. They had exhausted all other jobs and possible pastimes. They had tried to keep to themselves, but had reached the limit of what boredom they could endure. So they had gravitated to the rec room, picked up their cues and started the game, just as they always did when they
were stuck in the worst and longest of storms.

  They circled the table and the boy tried not to look out of the window at the waves that rose up into the sky, as if they were being acted upon by some enormous, sweeping magnet. He tried not to listen as they boomed through the rig’s supports. He tried not to think of his boat out there, moored to its turbine, miles away in the fields.

  He circled the table, crouched down and lined up his next shot.

  There had been no warning of the storm, no sign of any kind. The weather report had predicted nothing but clear skies, maybe a slight increase in wind speed. Then the boy had looked up and seen a shadowy patch on one of the screens. He’d leaned forward, tried to wipe it off, then noticed that it had appeared on the other screens as well. He had switched to the cameras in the northern fields just in time to see the sky turn completely dark and, one by one, the turbines feather their blades.

  He’d watched as the storm swept through the farm. He’d watched the cameras blur then white out, the output drop. He’d watched the sky turn yellow, then green, then murky red. He’d listened to the pitch of the wind, felt the growing weight of the waves slam into the rig’s supports. Then he’d gone to the window and watched the whole world turn to water.

  Waves rose up like buildings, breaking against the towers and shooting spray up to meet the rain, which twisted and swept at angles and drove back down to the sea. The water swelled above the jackets of the turbines, up to the tips of the blades, which hung still while everything lurched around them. All except for a row of seven turbines, out in the distance, which still beat frantically, their wind sensors or their blade motors malfunctioning.

  The boy had stood at the window for a long time, unable to look away. Only then, suddenly, had he thought of his boat.

  He’d run down to the dock, heard the cacophony of the ringing walls, seen the usually still water inside start to prickle with waves, and known then that there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t go out. He couldn’t go anywhere. He’d turned back to the stairs, then noticed the deck of the maintenance boat piled up with the old man’s nets. He must have gone out early that morning and gathered them in before the boy was even awake.