Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  ‘Who’s cut the sea in two?’ he said. His own voice startled him.

  There was something different about the water. It wasn’t just his eyes. He got up quickly, too quickly. He swayed, then gripped hold of the top of the hatch. His heart started to hammer in his throat. A few rows to the north he could see a line stretching from east to west, dividing the entire sea. On the south side of the line the water was the same murky grey it always was, but on the north it looked different. As he watched, the line moved further south, until it swept past his turbine, bringing with it the clearest water he’d ever seen. It was so clear that, even from the top of the turbine, he could see right down to the seabed. He could see the jacket foundations, the underwater cables, and he could also make out shapes floating through the farm.

  They looked like plastic bags – a whole container-load of plastic bags. They were all the same colour and they rose and sank in the same strange way that plastic bags did. But they were different sizes and, now the boy looked harder, he could see that they were shoaling together and none were catching on the turbines as they passed. They made the water look dense, almost like the jelly in the tins. There were so many of them, they were spreading out across the water as far as he could see.

  He raced to the lift, got to the bottom of the tower, ran outside and leaned over the rails of the jacket, staring down into the strange, clear waters. At first he couldn’t see anything except the way the dull light seemed to glint down towards the seabed. A twist of plastic floated past, then an orange net. He waited. Still nothing happened. Another twist of plastic swept past. He turned round, thought he must have miscalculated, that he’d missed them, but then they appeared.

  They were vast, clear globes, like planets, with pale stems, or legs, or something, trailing down from them. He could see their veins in purple rings, circling their bodies and spreading down, as if a line of paint had been spilled. Their inner workings were right there – the strange purple and orange wires of them, their circuits, their entire systems that looked too delicate for the huge, silent creatures that were sweeping in. They came one by one at first, then in their tens, then hundreds, massing in the water like drops of oil, until it seemed like there were more of them than there was water. They swelled and pulsed like heartbeats, as they drifted slowly past on the currents.

  One bumped against the hull of the boat. The boy scrambled down the ladder, picked up a bucket and untied one of the ropes holding the bundle of tarpaulin down. He looped the rope through the handle of the bucket and ran back to the gunwale, but the one next to the boat had gone. It must have sunk down, dipped under the hull and then carried on away with the rest.

  The boy stood watching as they drifted past. It was amazing how easily they moved, using the currents, flexing, tilting, as though being driven on by some underwater breeze.

  Another one drifted closer and he was about to throw the bucket, but then he stopped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the loose tarpaulin flapping on the deck. He lowered his arm and watched as the sheet ballooned up and slumped back down. He turned back to look again at the creatures, their bodies swelling as they moved through the sea. He went over to the tarpaulin, lifted up one corner and felt the tug of the wind.

  Westerlies

  Everything was laid out on the deck – poles, ropes, tools and the tarpaulin. The boy stood by the cabin and studied them. He went over to the tarp and lifted up one edge, stretching it out. The wind caught it and it flapped and buckled, then a sudden gust tore it from his hands and almost sent it flying overboard. He grabbed it, folded it carefully, placing the poles across it to weigh it down, and then went back to standing by the cabin.

  The tarp would need to be secured at the corners, to allow the centre to catch the wind. There were reinforced eyelets running down two of the edges. If he threaded the ropes through them, he could tighten or loosen them to adjust the size of the sheet. Then he would just need some kind of frame to give it structure and hold the tarp in place.

  He picked up one of the poles. They seemed solid enough.

  The frame would need to be attached to the cabin; from there, the tarp could be suspended towards the front of the boat, with the ropes running back, attaching to the gunwales. That way, the boy could be at the wheel and easily get out to adjust the tarp.

  That was the theory. Simple really. If he could make it work.

  He looked up at the blades sweeping above his head and seemed to see, for the first time, the currents of air flowing through them.

  He sat up on the jacket, using the edge of the platform to bend a panel from the engine housing. There was only enough rope to tie a strong knot at the main junction of the frame and then make the lines for adjusting the tarp, so he needed brackets for securing the frame to the cabin. He pushed down on the end of the panel, felt the metal reach the limit of its flex, then give just a few millimetres. He lifted it up and inspected the angle.

  He’d gone down to the engine room earlier that day and dismantled what was left of the engine. He’d shifted the batteries and the heaviest components and secured them in a line running along the keel to rebalance the hull. He’d left the main workings in an old crate and taken only the housing panels and as many fastenings as he could find.

  This was what it had come to – all those years learning how to fix the most technical mechanical problems and now all he needed were sheets of metal, nuts, bolts and screws. The number of times he had cleaned and serviced a drive shaft and now all it was good for was as a makeshift hammer for punching pilot holes in the walls of the cabin.

  All those years his father spent trying to modify the engine, rigging up extra batteries, when it was engines and batteries that had kept him trapped.

  He looked out towards the edge of the farm, then back at the turbines. The water was gurrelly and restless. Waves split off and ran in all directions, their edges dark and creased.

  A wave rose up, slapped and peeled away from the base of the tower. He pushed down hard on the bracket and felt the metal give again.

  He pulled on the rope and the tarp rose and fell. He shook the frame. It all seemed secure. It had taken days to get it right – attaching and reattaching the poles in different configurations to give it as much strength as possible, to make sure that the ropes would reach and the tarp had room to expand – but it was finally ready.

  The boat was loaded with all of the supplies. He’d repaired the rain-collector and guttering system, removed the water filter from the coffee machine and rigged it up in the hold. He’d brought his roll-mat back down the tower and made up a bed in the cabin.

  He tested the ropes one more time. The wind was blowing strong and clean from the west. If he cast off now, it would take him straight out of the farm. He went to the stern and looked out beyond the last rows. He had enough supplies. He could just uncouple the boat and be gone over the horizon. He would never see the farm again. He tried to imagine it – no turbines, no churning fields, just open water all around. No more failing systems, no more delayed supplies. No more tending to machines until they crumbled and broke for ever.

  He had no idea what was out there. Even his father’s map showed nothing beyond the mainland and the North Sea. But there were winds and there were currents and they all had to go somewhere.

  He looked out again at the open sea. His hand gripped the rope. He felt each fibre against his skin.

  The wind streamed out in front of him. He should go now. The currents were pushing in the right direction, there were hours of daylight left. He should probably have gone already.

  The wind was so clean that he could feel each one of his hairs lifting slowly. He moved his hand slowly on the rope.

  But he didn’t cast off. Instead he looked back towards the cabin, at the gap where the battery gauge would have been, and tried to remember that night in the storm. He had forced himself not to think about it for so long that it had shrunk to som
ething hard and dark in the back of his mind, like a knot in a piece of driftwood.

  His chest tightened as he remembered again the waves, the sound of the wind, the old man’s face as he’d gripped the strap. What if …? The boy shook his head. What were the chances, really, that the maintenance boat had survived intact, that its battery had held enough charge, that the old man had somehow been able to pilot it back to the rig? Almost none. He breathed out slowly. Almost none.

  The old man would tell him to go. He would say that, now, the boy had no other option. He would say that there was nothing for him to go back for. He would say that if the boy went now, he would be piloting with the wind behind him, and that, if he got some stupid bloody notion in his head about going the other way, then he would be heading straight into the wind, which would be almost impossible. It could be weeks before it changed. And all that time he’d just have to wait, eating through his supplies, risking the return of another storm. Every day he waited he would be stacking the odds against himself. The old man would say that the boy would never have this chance again.

  The boy tested the rope one more time. It was strong and flexible. The wind pushed against his back, making the surface of the water stream out towards the horizon.

  He thought again about that late resupply and the bets the old man had made to let him win the tins. He thought about the cable the old man had cut, and how he would always find the boy the most intricate of jobs to occupy his time. How he would joke or bully or cajole whenever the boy was at his lowest. How he would force him to take a bet or play a game of pool or come out on some long detour through the fields to check his nets. How he had set off those flares that long winter, when the boy couldn’t stand the gloom over the farm any more. How, for those first years, he’d made sure that the boy was so exhausted that he couldn’t lie awake at night, couldn’t dwell, couldn’t think – always leaving him to decipher the maintenance report, setting him the most difficult repairs, making so much mess that the rig needed constant cleaning, making sure the boy was focused on the job, keeping him going.

  How, when the boy had fallen in the dock, the old man had just told him to get up – get up now, he’d said – the urgency in his voice like sparks off a flint. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t reached down to help. Because if the boy hadn’t got up then by himself, he probably never would.

  On the deck there was a short length of rope that had been left over. The boy went across to it, picked it up and began to unwind its threads. It would make a serviceable fishing line, and he might as well do something while he waited for the wind to change.

  The sky was dark but it had to be nearly morning. Out in the distance, a faint strip of light was becoming visible, as if a layer of paint was being slowly scratched away. The boy was sitting in one of the leather chairs, which he had brought down and bolted to the deck, just behind the wheel. He had even cut out a section of carpet to go under his roll-mat in the corner of the cabin.

  He spent most of his time on the boat now, sleeping there overnight, sitting up all day in the lee of the tower. The weather could turn suddenly and he had to be ready.

  The cabin was scattered with posters, the backs of which were covered in drawings and diagrams that the boy had made, showing the boat, the tarpaulin, the action of the wind. He’d raised and lowered the sheet, folded it away and unravelled it hundreds of times. He was sure he knew how it all worked, although he had never taken the boat out from the tower to test it. This close to the edge, he could too easily get swept out to the open sea.

  There were times, though, when he thought he might have to go. When he woke to the same westerlies set in for another day, when he watched his supplies slowly diminishing. But he pushed the thoughts from his mind, settled back in his chair, cut some new hooks for his line.

  He waited, and found ways to fill the days. He cleaned the boat, he checked the ropes, he tested the tarp, he sat up late into the night, drawing more diagrams on the backs of the posters. He ate only half a tin of food a day.

  Sometimes, he thought he saw a band of different-coloured cloud drift across the horizon. Sometimes, he thought he saw the turbines far to the south shift their blades. There were days of heavy swell when the boat strained at its moorings, and days when the wind dropped and the blades barely completed a single circuit in an hour. Once, he had been up the tower and heard the yaw motors, then felt the nacelle begin to turn. He had rushed down the lift and out to the boat, but the turbine had just shifted a few degrees then gone back to its original position.

  Gradually, the light increased, picking out the tips of the blades, then the rotor hubs, then the towers, until it seemed as though the turbines were floating. Down below, the sea was still dark. The boy got up and went to the stern to check his line. He had tied it to a spare pole so that it hung from a height and he could see it if it moved. He had even baited the hooks with some of the food from the tins, but there had been no sign of the fish since they’d drifted past. The water had stayed clear for one day and then settled back to its usual murk. The fish must have moved on. Either that or they couldn’t stand the tinned food either.

  The boy went back into the cabin, sat down in the chair, watched his line and waited.

  It was moving. The line was moving, being drawn over to the right. The boy stood up, rubbed his eyes and stepped out of the cabin. He must have fallen asleep. Outside the deck was wet. When had it rained? He remembered a dream about a leak. He’d been having the same one again and again. He was pressing on a crack and water was pouring out, flooding the hull, and he was trying to block it with some rope and a rolled-up length of tarpaulin. Then someone had appeared, watching, but the boy always woke up at that exact moment, cold with sweat.

  His line was moving. He took a few steps closer, then he realized the line wasn’t moving – the line was staying still. It was the boat that was moving, being pushed by the changing current.

  The mooring cables tightened, then the sliders began to shift and the boat slowly swung one hundred and eighty degrees to the opposite side of the tower. The boy stood on the deck and waited. The wind was still pushing from the west, lifting the swell into small peaks. The boat rocked and swung from side to side. The boy held on to the gunwale and looked up at the blades, sweeping the air far above him.

  He watched and waited. The blades stayed facing west. Then, just as he felt his neck beginning to cramp, he heard a deep grating and the nacelle began to turn. The blades turned to face north, then north-east, then they finally settled facing out to the open sea.

  The boy ran to the stern, pulled in his line, then went to the bow and took hold of the mooring cables. He had gone over and over exactly what he would do. He had drawn diagrams, worked out the angles, thought through every process. He looked back at the tarp, the bent framework of poles, the makeshift brackets and ancient ropes holding everything in place. What was he thinking? What the hell had he been thinking?

  He felt instinctively in his pocket for his watch, then remembered it wasn’t there. He looked up instead at the blades, which were all still facing east, beating steadily.

  He took a deep breath, unhooked the mooring cables, pushed the boat out, ran to the ropes, unfurled the tarp, secured the lines, ran into the cabin, took hold of the wheel and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  The boat dipped in the swell, rolled from side to side and turned slowly. The boy held the wheel and waited. Nothing happened. He let go of the wheel and went out on deck. The tarp was just hanging, flapping in the wind. The boat rolled and turned. The boy pulled on the ropes, tightening and loosening the sheet. He took hold of the frame and shook it. The boat turned. Then suddenly the ropes pulled tight, the tarp snapped and bulged, the boat lurched forward and the deck tilted violently to port. The boy stumbled, heard the frame creak loudly. The deck continued to tilt. The boat picked up speed. The boy staggered into the cabin, took hold of the wheel and tried to turn it to
starboard.

  He stood in the tilting cabin, wrestling with the wheel. Eventually he got the boat almost level and looked up just in time to see a turbine looming straight ahead. He let go of the wheel and the boat swung away. The deck lurched. The starboard window rose, giving a view of the full height of the tower as the boat veered past.

  The boy gripped the wheel and pulled at it again, inching the rudder against the pressure of the water. Slowly, the boat righted, then seemed to twist, suddenly, the other way. The stern swung round so the bow was facing into the wind and, as quickly as it had filled, the tarp went slack.

  The boy stood, gripping the wheel, breathing heavily. There was no sign of the turbine he’d come from. There was no sign of the edge of the farm. He had almost capsized and crashed, and it turned out he had no idea how his boat worked. But it had worked.

  He held the wheel and waited. Slowly, the boat began to turn again.

  c.9,500 Before Present

  A boat floats above a valley, above grassland and heathland, above the stumps of long-dead trees.

  The valley blooms with mussels, clams and whelks. The water is clear and still. Birds dive down to pluck weed from among the branches and lever up spongy crusts of wood. The old rivers are now trenches on the seabed – filling with silt until they’re barely visible, like old pathways where no one walks any more.

  The boat moves on, making for a wide estuary, following a route where, during the last spring tide, a new channel was formed.

  The trees were the first to go, oak and lime drowning in the rising water table, even when the coastline was still out of sight. It was a slow and quiet way to disappear. It was painless, relatively. The ground became sodden. Bogs appeared, and marshes. Water pooled in hollows and became lakes. Rivers widened and linked hands. Almost overnight, grassland sprouted to reed. At the next full moon, the reeds were swallowed by the tide.