Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  Down in the marsh there’s a shelter of reeds, built on a raft of reeds. The boat noses in. The raft creaks and presses lower in the water.

  There is no wood any more, barely enough dry brush to start a fire. Salt has worked its way into the soil, choking the roots of everything but samphire and cord grass. There is a constant, brackish damp. When the wind drops, the air is thick with flies.

  The hut fills with smoke. Inside, in blackened baskets, are the bones of animals, carved into the forms of animals that haven’t been seen in living memory.

  Hunters burned the last of the thickets to drive them out into the open. Now the hunters are driven out. It’s a slow and quiet way to disappear. It is painless, relatively. The only people left are those who can endure the damp and the cold and the flies; those who have a taste for raw shellfish and the reeking flesh of seabirds.

  The boat rises on the incoming tide. It strains at its moorings. The tide comes in and doesn’t drop out. Next year there will be less land, more flies. Next year, the shelter will be gone.

  Easterlies

  He thought he knew the wind before – the way it worked, the way it moved, its quirks and temperaments – but without the mediation of gearbox or blade control, it was sprawling and volatile. Looking up at the turbines, it seemed like the wind was blowing cleanly, but down on the surface, gusts cut in every direction, causing the tarp to flap and buckle, and the boat to be dragged suddenly off-course, veering between the rows.

  Sometimes the wind would squall for days – the tiller would drag, the tarp would never be at the right tension. The boy would rush from wheel to ropes to wheel. He would have to climb on top of the cabin and free a tangled corner. Sometimes he would be making good progress, then one of the brackets on the frame would loosen and he would have to furl the tarp and make a hasty repair. By the time he’d finished and was ready to go, the wind would have dropped.

  He’d been prepared for the difficulties of using the tarp, the difficulties of navigation, but he hadn’t been prepared for the physical toll. All those weeks shut up in the nacelle had sapped his strength; he had no stamina, his limbs were sluggish, his joints weak. Some days it would be so exhausting simply getting the tarp to the right tension – constantly running back and forth to adjust the ropes – that the wind would change and he wouldn’t have the energy to do anything about it. The boat would drift back the entire distance it had already travelled before he could get up the strength to haul in the tarp and think about mooring up.

  He would travel each day for as long as the wind held or he could stay on his feet, then he would pick a turbine where he would spend the night. He became adept at piloting the boat in, casting the tow-line and lowering the tarp at exactly the right moment to bring the boat to a steady stop. Apart from once or twice, when he miscalculated and had to fend off the fast-approaching jacket with a pole. Apart from once or twice, when a horrible crunch emanated from the bow.

  The first thing he would always do after he moored up was take the lift to the top of the turbine. But he never found another one with a table and chairs in the room at the back. He never found another coffee machine. So he would go out and spend the night on the boat. He would sit in the chair, wrapped in a sheet, eat a little food, drink a little water and lower his fishing line from the stern. All he ever caught was junk – bits of rubber tubing, fragments of old gleaming packets – but still he would sit out until the last light, watching his line, trying not to think about what he would find back at the rig, if he ever got back to the rig; thinking instead about that huge shoal, wondering where they were.

  Gradually his body became more used to the work – his back ached less and his hands grew thick calluses against the chafing of the ropes. Each day he was able to keep going a little longer. Sometimes, if the wind was right, he would sail through the night. With no engine noise, he could listen for the sound of the water breaking against the towers and guide the boat that way. Sometimes, there would be a glimmer of light in the sky. Sometimes, the clouds would open up, revealing a hole dusted with bright flecks.

  If the weather turned, he would have to moor up and wait it out. There were times when sudden gales blew in and it took twenty or thirty passes before he could hook onto a jacket. There were times when the sea rose up and it was too dangerous to get close to the towers, so he would manoeuvre the boat to the open water between the fields, lower the tarp and ride it out. There were times when there was nothing he could do to stop himself being blown back miles the way he’d come.

  But he learned how to sail across the wind, and he worked out that if he travelled in a zigzag route, he could actually make headway running against it. To begin with, he would navigate by the corrosion on the towers, but gradually he learned the different ways the currents moved throughout the farm. Those from the south were weaker, easy enough to travel against; those from the north brought big swells that broke across the bow. It was better to just let them take the boat, then cut back when they slackened.

  Sometimes the boat would seem to skim along the surface of the water; other times progress would be laboured and sluggish. Most days he tried not to think about whether he’d ever get back. He tried not to think of the size of the farm, the vast identical rows. What he thought of was the tension of the ropes, the angle of the wheel, how long a steady breeze would last.

  One day he passed a turbine with a scorch mark halfway up its tower. He turned and watched it as he went past. He’d already passed that turbine a few days before. He remembered the dark, peeling paint – the way it curled off into the wind like flags. A few days later he passed it again. He began to see it every few days – he almost started looking out for it just before it came into view. However hard he tried to change his route, however much he tacked further north, further west, he always circled back to the turbine with the scorched paint.

  One time he was sure he smelled the burnt veneer on the wind before he got there. Another time he got so close he could see the blisters rupturing the grey skin.

  His eyes stung with wind and salt. He couldn’t remember what the open sea had looked like.

  Days passed, then weeks, maybe months. Finally, the turbines got smaller and the fields seemed more familiar. Then one evening he moored up to a tower and, when he went up into the nacelle, he found a repair. He studied it for a long time, trying to work out if it was one of his.

  Mainly he kept heading west, but sometimes he would see a row that he thought he recognized, or a particular transformer, and he would turn off to the north or south and follow some half-remembered route until night came, or he realized that he actually didn’t remember it at all.

  Then, one day, he looked down a row and saw, at the end of it, the squat outline of the rig.

  The dock gates were open and inside was dark. The boy took a deep breath and brought the boat round as slowly as he could, peering forward into the gloom. When he was nearing the gates, he locked the wheel, went out on deck and lowered the tarp. The boat slowed. Then he picked up a pole, stood in the bow and guided the boat in.

  Inside, the dock was quiet. His eyes refocused just in time to fend off the walkway and bring the boat in to a steady stop. He stood in the bow and looked around. The storm had wrecked the dock. The walkway was buckled and several panels were missing. The crates that had been stacked to the side had been bowled into the water. There was a layer of rubbish floating in one corner. Two of the strip lights were hanging from their wires and the other two had been torn completely loose.

  There was no sign of the maintenance boat.

  The boy stood there for a long time. He watched a piece of netting drift and then sink into the murk. The storm waves crashed in his head, the cabin door swung open and shut and open again. Then he stepped down over the gunwale, attached the mooring cables and made his way up into the rig. The lights in the stairwell flickered. There was a tide-line of scum and plastic fragments on the stairs, where the water must h
ave reached during the storm’s peak.

  The corridors were dank and cold. There was no sound coming from the air vents. The computers in the control room had powered down. Only their blinking standby lights showed that they were still working.

  In the rec room, the buckled legs of the pool table had finally given way and it was slumped on its side, balls scattered across the floor. The window had a large crack running from top to bottom.

  An awful smell hung in the galley, emanating from a tin of something left open and rotting on the side. The boy picked it up and put it in the rubbish chute, then got a mug and poured himself a drink of water. The other mug was standing next to the sink, stuck to the counter by a hardened ring of homebrew.

  The boy went down to the sleeping quarters and opened the door to his room. There was the bed, the built-in furniture and the small stack of technical manuals on the floor. Had it always been this empty? He had spent so many weeks on the cramped boat that his room suddenly felt bare and anonymous. He went back out and shut the door.

  Further up the corridor a ventilation pipe was dripping. He stood and listened and the drip grew louder, until it was pounding in his skull, causing his ears to ring. He walked over, grabbed hold of the pipe and pushed it upwards. The pipe creaked and its ceiling mounts buckled. The veins stood out on the boy’s arms. The pipe bent and split along the top. The boy gripped it harder until his hands went white. He pushed until it wouldn’t move any more, then he let his arms drop to his sides and stood, shaking. The dripping stopped.

  The boy closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then another. Finally, he made himself go over to the old man’s room. He stood outside it for a long time. If he didn’t go in there, if he didn’t open the door, he could imagine the old man was inside. He could almost hear him, checking through his nets, talking to himself, humming. He opened the door.

  The room was the same as he’d last seen it – the maps of the farm, the piles of netting, the containers of mud and sand on every surface, the same smell of homebrew, which was fainter now, barely more than a trace, lingering in the corners like dust.

  The boy stood in the doorway, running his eyes over everything. Then he crossed the room, moved the maps out of the way and sat down on the bed.

  The whole room seemed to pitch and roll. He told himself it was just his body playing tricks – still compensating for the movement of the boat. His left leg tensed, and then his right. He concentrated and tried to make them stop. The walls rose and fell. It was just muscle memory; he could make them stop. He sat very still on the bed. The room shifted around him.

  He closed his eyes. Salt stung the backs of his eyelids. He had to think. He had to make a plan. Supplies – that’s what he needed. Supplies and spare water filters. His tools. He needed to fix up the boat and then go.

  One by one, he began to go through all of the repairs he needed to do to the boat. He went through the processes, the exact tools he would use. The bed seemed to slide beneath him. He reached out a hand to brace himself and touched against something metal. He opened his eyes, saw the striped deckchair, the tattered blanket thrown across it. The floor lurched. His stomach lurched and he thought he was about to be sick.

  There was a loud crash.

  The boy jumped up, stumbled, steadied himself and listened. There was silence, then a series of quieter noises coming from further down in the rig. He left the room and walked down the stairs. As he got closer, he heard movement in the dock. When he looked through the hatchway everything was dark. The gates were still open, but beyond it was night. The light from the hatchway cast a bright rectangle and, further up along the gangway, a torch flickered, picking out the hull of the boy’s boat and the shape of another vessel moored up next to it.

  Suddenly, the beam stopped and swung round to the hatchway. ‘Who’s there,’ said the boy and another voice at exactly the same time.

  The boy stepped forward, and the torch moved closer along the gangway, focusing in on the boy’s face. He blinked, raised his hand.

  ‘Move your hand.’ The voice was loud, but its sharp edges seemed to get smothered in the dark.

  The boy lowered his hand and squinted into the light.

  The light stayed focused on his face for a long time, then the torch clicked off and the old man appeared from the gloom. His hair had grown long and straggly. It was still black, but his face was blurred with a ragged grey beard. He had red rims around his eyes and he kept twitching his jaw. He was still pointing the torch at the boy with one hand. The other gripped a pry bar.

  The boy didn’t move. Then he reached up, rubbed the side of his jaw, and realized that he too had a beard and matted hair down over his ears.

  ‘That your boat?’ the old man said.

  The boy nodded.

  ‘You can’t leave it there.’

  The boy nodded again and stepped back to let the old man past.

  Halfway up the stairs the old man stopped. ‘So you’re back then,’ he said.

  ‘I’m back.’

  The old man nodded, turned off to the sleeping quarters, went into his room and closed the door.

  The boy showered, shaved and cut his hair. The clippers jammed and stopped working, so he had to settle for hacking away lumps of salt-stiff hair with a pair of blunt scissors, tidying it up as best he could. In the galley he found that the crates stacked in the corner were all full of tins. There must have been a resupply in the time he was away. He wondered, for a moment, whether the pilot would have noticed his absence, what the old man would have said. He supposed the old man must have said nothing, otherwise they’d have sent someone else out to take his place.

  He went to the cupboard and found a tin of protein mince, then took four sachets of flavouring from the other tins.

  Once he’d eaten, he sat for some time, savouring the feeling of hot food in his stomach. Then he went to his room and lay on the bed. The mattress rocked and steadied. The bed was still. The walls were still. The wind and the waves felt a long way off. He closed his eyes, then opened them, got up and went down to spend the night on the boat.

  He had almost forgotten the sounds of the rig – the hum of the electrics, the cooling system, how the metal creaked, how the water thumped and thrummed through the supports.

  The boy sat up. The dock was dark, but he could hear footsteps and rattling breath. Then a torch switched on, lighting up the old man’s hands and feet where he was crouching at the other end of the gangway. He had a bundle of netting, which he lowered down and then dragged through the water.

  The boy looked out of the cabin window and watched. The old man stayed crouching on the edge of the gangway, dragging his net back and forth. After a while he pulled his net in and then began to shake it into a bucket. The boy didn’t see anything fall out of the net, but eventually the old man stopped, picked up the bucket and made his way back up into the rig. The boy waited for a moment, then left the cabin and followed.

  The door to the old man’s room was open and the light was on inside. The boy stayed in the corridor and listened, but heard nothing so he walked over and stepped into the room.

  The old man was sitting in his deckchair with the bucket on his lap. He reached in with a tiny sieve and began scooping out what looked like grains of sand, spreading them out on top of the chest of drawers. He leaned down, his face only a few inches from the surface, and began sorting the grains into different piles with the tip of a knife.

  The boy took another step. As the piles grew, he could see that they were all different colours. He looked into the containers nearest to him. One’s contents were blue; another’s were bright green. Blue and green sand? He looked closer. They weren’t sand. All of the containers in the room were full of tiny fragments of plastic, sorted and stored according to colour and size.

  Now he looked again, the nets piled up around the room were not the same thick nets that had been the
re before. They were fine meshes and gauzes, what looked like filters taken from the water system and the air vents, all choked with minute pieces of plastic.

  ‘Where did you find it all?’ the boy said.

  The old man didn’t look up. ‘Find it?’ he said eventually. ‘I didn’t find it. It’s just there. In the water.’ He stifled a cough. ‘I saw it when I was looking. I looked and looked.’ He went back to sorting through the grains. ‘I didn’t find anything.’

  The boy was about to speak, then he noticed that all of the maps scattered across the bed were of the eastern fields. The old man had marked in the open area of water where they had been caught by the storm. Along the sides of the maps he had scribbled numbers and calculations – wind-speed measurements, the direction of the currents. Each individual turbine all around the place where the boy had been swept away was marked with a cross. The old man had crossed off all of the turbines in the eastern half of zone three and those for almost twenty miles into the outer fields.

  On the bedside unit, among more tins and scraps of paper, was the boy’s fishing line. The boy picked it up.

  ‘You hadn’t caught anything,’ the old man said, without looking up.

  ‘I’ll get us out of here,’ the boy said.

  The old man pushed a tiny piece of plastic over to the far side of the surface.

  ‘We can leave in a few days. As soon as I’ve fixed up the boat. We don’t need to wait for anything. That boat – it can go anywhere. It doesn’t need batteries. It …’

  One of the pieces caught on the tip of the knife and flicked onto the floor. The old man got down off his chair and began feeling around in the piles of netting. He picked up a net and shook it out, scattering more plastic across the room. He pressed his hand against the floor and, when he lifted it up, it was covered in multicoloured fragments. He stayed kneeling on the floor, staring at his hand.