Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  ‘A shame.’ The pilot clasped his hands and rolled his thumbs, one on top of the other. His fingernails caught a narrow band of light. ‘I do find it difficult to express my full meaning when I’m thirsty.’

  The boy breathed out heavily and got up. ‘Wait here.’

  ‘True consideration,’ the pilot called after him. ‘True hospitality.’

  The boy found an unopened bottle of homebrew tucked behind the disused distillery. From the colour of it, it looked like it could have been from the old man’s experimental phase. The boy had once found him prying the letters off one of the rig’s warning signs and scattering them into the vats. He said the brew needed more character.

  Now the pipes and containers were coated in greasy dust. Nothing glugged or bubbled; the containers were cold and empty. He wiped the dust off the bottle with his sleeve, picked up a mug from the galley and went back down to the dock.

  When he returned he found the pilot sitting in a fold-out chair with an upturned crate in front of him. There was no sign that he had even looked at the turbine parts.

  The boy put the bottle and mug on the crate.

  The pilot sat back, looked from the boy to the bottle, to the mug and back again.

  The boy clenched his fist in his pocket, then picked up the bottle and poured the pilot a drink.

  ‘Now, we were discussing need.’ The pilot picked up his mug. ‘One would assume it would be a simple matter. You need something and I give it to you.’ He took a sip, flinched. ‘Very full-bodied,’ he said.

  The boy waited. A drop of homebrew slid slowly down the side of the bottle. He watched it reach the bottom and then pool on the top of the crate. He knew he shouldn’t ask – the pilot wanted him to ask and he shouldn’t do it. He watched another drop slowly start to slide. ‘So will you?’ he said.

  ‘Will I what?’

  ‘Give me what I need?’

  ‘Oh.’ The pilot blinked, looked down into his mug. ‘Well, of course I would but, you see, my predicament.’ He raised his mug to his mouth, then lowered it again. ‘If I were to give everyone everything they needed, where would that leave me?’ He looked up at the boy.

  The boy looked down at him.

  ‘Not here.’ The pilot leaned forward and tapped on the crate. ‘Certainly not here, arranging trades.’ The bottle rocked and he frowned, reached out and steadied it. ‘Because if I gave everyone everything they needed, there’d be no need to trade any more, would there?’

  The boy stepped forward. ‘Look, I just need …’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ The pilot got up, walked to the other side of the hold and looked out of the porthole. ‘This won’t do. Need doesn’t get us anywhere. I can’t trade with people who need things. It’s far too …’ he put his mug down on a crate next to him and wiped his hands lightly on his stomach ‘… it’s far too messy.’

  The boy stayed where he was. The smell of the homebrew rose up into the small room, until he could almost taste it in the back of his throat. It smelled like the winter batch when the old man had de-iced the pipes and then forgotten to clean them out again. ‘So what do you want me to say?’

  ‘Want.’ The pilot turned round and raised a finger. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Want is something I can work with.’ He picked up his mug again, took a sip, studied the liquid for a long while and then nodded. ‘One should always trade for something one wants. Keeps it businesslike. Keeps it so there’s no hard feelings.’

  The boy thought of the old man. He seemed to have stabilized in recent days, but the night before, he had been coughing again for hours. When the boy had left him that morning his breath had been thin and shallow. The boy had had to lean in so close to check on the old man that he’d felt the dryness of it against his face.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ he said slowly and evenly.

  The pilot took a long drink, walked over to the bottle and filled his mug to the brim. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a far more reasonable question.’

  ‘I’ll get you his stuff,’ the boy said. ‘I just need time. When he gets better, he’ll tell me where it is, then …’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘You misunderstand.’ The pilot put down his mug, went to the back of the hold and returned with a crate, which he dropped at the boy’s feet.

  The boy opened the lid. Inside were bones, blades, carved stones, polished wood – the best of all the things the old man had trawled up over the years. They looked so small, barely filling half the crate, so neatly cleaned and polished, packaged carefully in rows.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ the pilot said, picking up his mug again, ‘there’s no market for any of it.’

  The boy looked down at the objects in the crate. There was the piece of twisted wood that looked like a flame, and the clutch of green stones, and the tooth the size of the boy’s clenched fist, which he used to pick up and stare at, unable to believe that it had once belonged to something that had lived.

  And there were other things he’d never seen before. There was a pointed piece of bone that looked like a turbine blade, and a dark stone in the shape of a boat, which the old man had wrapped neatly in paper.

  One of the green stones was chipped. The boy didn’t think it had been chipped before. He reached down and picked it up. There was a small line in one corner of the smooth, green edge. He ran his finger along it, trying to polish it away, but the chip stayed where it was.

  The pilot sat back down in his fold-out chair. The springs grated quietly. ‘I was surprised too. He had it all ready when I arrived last time. Said he wanted to trade for a new battery.’

  The boy stepped back from the crate, leaned against the wall of the hold and closed his eyes. He suddenly felt very tired.

  ‘It was an easier trade than I was expecting. He gave up the whole lot right away.’ The pilot paused. There was the sound of his lips against the tin mug, the gurgle of his throat. ‘But then, you see, he said he needed to get to the outer fields.’

  The boy still had his eyes shut, but he could tell the pilot was watching him closely.

  ‘He didn’t tell me what had happened right away. First of all he said you were just out making repairs. But I knew. The way he was acting. It was just like last time.’

  The boy opened his eyes. The pilot was looking right at him.

  ‘You know, he was out here on his own for over a year before he let me report your father. Kept telling me he was just out working. That he always just happened to be out working whenever I turned up. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole rigmarole again. The statements, the reports, all that paperwork.’ His nose and mouth pinched together again. ‘So it really is fortunate to see you alive and well.’

  The pilot leaned over to the crate of the old man’s stuff, took out a polished, lumpy pebble and held it to the light. ‘What do you suppose this was for?’

  The boy stepped forward, his heart hammering in his throat. His fists were clenched again but this time he didn’t try to hide them in his pockets. ‘What do you want?’

  The pilot turned the pebble in the light, stopped, frowned, dropped it back in the crate and wiped his hand on his overalls. ‘Thank God for civilization.’

  The boy stepped forward again and closed the crate with a bang. ‘What do you—’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘No.’

  The pilot put down his mug and folded his arms. ‘Well then, I can’t help.’ He breathed out slowly through his nose. ‘You want medicine. Well, assuming that we can come to an agreement on the price, I will have to make sure that I procure the correct drugs. And for that I will have to see him.’

  The boy stood still for a long time, then he turned towards the hatch.

  The boat rocked gently as
they made their way across the deck.

  ‘So he just found you?’ the pilot said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The old man, he just found you?’

  The boy reached up and rubbed his jaw. ‘He just found me.’

  ‘In the outer fields?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Washed up on a turbine?’ The pilot stopped and looked over at the maintenance boat suspended in the charging bay. ‘All that in a boat without a decent battery.’

  The boy watched the side of the pilot’s face as it turned, scanning the dock. The lines around the pilot’s eyes were small and fine and neatly spaced.

  ‘Amazing,’ the pilot said eventually.

  There was a noise from down below the gunwale. ‘It is, isn’t it. But then sometimes I surprise even myself.’

  They looked down and saw the old man standing at the bottom of the gangplank. He had slicked his hair back and was wearing clean overalls. It looked like he had his hand resting on the railing next to him, but the boy could tell he was gripping it tight. His arm shook slightly but he stood still and straight as he looked up at the pilot.

  ‘Greil,’ the pilot said, moving to the near gunwale. ‘Feeling a little under the weather?’

  ‘You know. Pressures of the job.’ The old man coughed once and grimaced. ‘You’re still eating well, I see.’

  The pilot blinked and smoothed his hands down his flanks. His scalp flushed slightly. ‘Pressures of the job,’ he said.

  The boat rocked. The boy watched the old man’s hand on the railing. He could hear how heavily the old man was breathing. He hoped the pilot couldn’t hear it.

  ‘Thought I’d better come and check the shipment,’ the old man said. He looked down at the water, started to say something else, but his eyes were following a small wave that had come through the open gates and he seemed to lose his train of thought.

  ‘It’s all fine,’ the boy said.

  The old man frowned and looked up. ‘Did you bring the spare LEDs this time?’

  The corner of the pilot’s mouth twitched. ‘You know, I believe I did.’

  ‘It’s all fine,’ the boy said again.

  The pilot was watching the old man carefully. ‘I’ve got your items here,’ he said. ‘Your sticks and stones.’

  The old man glanced at the boy, then tipped forward slightly before righting himself.

  The pilot bent his head to one side, following the movement. ‘No market for it, I’m afraid. But it seems that things turned out for the best, after all, wouldn’t you say?’

  The old man stared at the pilot. His eyes looked so pale they almost seemed to burn in the dock’s dim light. Then his hand loosened on the railing and he slipped sideways. The boy started for the gangway, but the old man managed to grip on and hold himself upright.

  The pilot looked on, expressionless.

  ‘Well.’ The old man straightened up. ‘As ever, this has been a scintillating conversation, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do.’ He took a deep breath, turned and made his way slowly, but deliberately, back to the stairwell.

  The boy and the pilot watched him go. Each footstep echoed back down and around the dock.

  ‘He really does need medicine, doesn’t he?’ the pilot said.

  The boy said nothing.

  ‘Which doesn’t put you in a very good trading position, does it? Makes it very hard to be businesslike.’

  Still the boy said nothing. He could feel every movement the pilot made through the floor; the adjustments he made to his footing every time a small wave came in.

  The pilot looked down at his hands and sighed. ‘I want the boat,’ he said.

  The dock lights buzzed quietly in the gloom.

  ‘What boat?’

  The pilot turned to the boy. For a moment, he looked almost sad. ‘The boat you came back here on.’

  The boy suddenly felt very cold. ‘What boat?’ he said again.

  The pilot let out a long breath through his nose. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that he actually managed to find you. On a turbine? In the outer fields? He doesn’t even know how to use the satnav.’

  The boy’s mouth felt dry. He turned away and gripped the gunwale. ‘You can have anything else.’

  ‘I don’t want anything else.’

  ‘You can’t have the boat.’

  The pilot frowned and shook his head. ‘Most unbusinesslike,’ he said. ‘Most unbusinesslike.’

  The pilot steered slowly and carefully through the farm, checking his position on the satnav, confirming each of the boy’s directions, glancing out of both side windows to make sure he was travelling in the exact centre of the rows.

  ‘So the brave and handsome pilot. The hero of our story …’

  The boy stared straight ahead through the windscreen. The blades churned the air into long streaks of cloud.

  ‘… He packed up his boat. Packed it up with …’

  ‘You’ve told that one before,’ the boy said. ‘He goes out and his boat gets a leak.’

  ‘A leak?’

  The boy stayed staring out of the windscreen. The clouds twisted away and were churned again, threading into a thick blanket that spread towards the middle of the farm. If it carried on thickening, then maybe the pilot would get turned around, and not be able to find a way through. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. The clouds would lift any minute, gathering together up higher, closing over them like a hatch.

  ‘That’s what you said. You said he had a leak and he was taking on water. You said he had a choice between trying to get back and risking sinking, or staying there, bailing, until he was too tired to carry on.’

  The pilot frowned. He looked down at the satnav and then back out of the windscreen. ‘That doesn’t sound right,’ he said. ‘Our pilot wouldn’t be stupid enough to get himself in that situation.’

  The waves became darker and choppier. The boy looked out at the turbines they passed. He watched each one, trying to hold it in view for as long as possible, as if that would change things, slow them down; as if it would stop the pilot turning onto a new row and the boy’s boat appearing up ahead.

  The smell of wax and polish in the cabin was almost overwhelming. The boy kept watching. But it didn’t stop anything. There was his boat in the distance, moored to one of the turbines, and the pilot had already seen it and was slowing down.

  The boy went out on deck and waited in the bow as the pilot made five attempts to get in close without scratching his paintwork. Eventually, the boy was able to hook onto the gunwale and climb aboard. He stood on his boat for a moment, his feet remembering the particular way it rocked. He watched the bow rise and fall, rise and fall, until there was nothing else he could do except secure the two boats together.

  While the pilot checked the knots, the boy crossed to the stern of his boat and looked back at the cabin, at the poles rising up from the deck and the sail, folded neatly, the lines of the rigging and the pulleys angling the ropes to the wheel. There was a dent in the control panel from where his chair had come loose in a gale and been thrown across the cabin. That had been a long and difficult day, but the boat had made it through.

  The wind gusted and the poles rattled in their housings. He’d been meaning to fix that.

  ‘Most charming,’ the pilot said. He was looking up at the sail, his hands folded on his stomach.

  The boy looked up at the sail again. The clouds streamed above it. He rested his hand on the gunwale for a moment, then climbed back onto the supply boat.

  ‘I really am very impressed,’ the pilot said, as he followed the satnav back to the rig. ‘A mast and sails out of poles and an old tarp. And rigging too. Who would have thought it.’

  The boy looked out of the windscreen, keeping his eyes fixed ahead, making sure he couldn’t catch sight of his boat in the mirror
.

  ‘Your father, I’m sure, would have been very impressed.’

  The boy looked round and stared at the pilot, then turned back to the window.

  The pilot blinked, checked his coordinates, then cleared his throat. ‘So, as I say, the brave and handsome pilot, the hero of our story …’ His voice trailed off.

  A wave thumped against the supply boat’s hull, and a moment later thumped against the hull of the boat being towed behind.

  The boy could hear the sound of each wave, the way the white water broke and hissed over the hull. His father had shaped it so that the corners were more rounded than the original – more streamlined. It must have taken weeks, months even, bending over the hull and grinding away layer after layer of metal, then reinforcing it from the inside, polishing it down, making sure the angle was exactly right. Did he ever really think he would get back? The boy would never know. But he’d tried, he’d done what he thought was best, what the boy would probably have done himself. He’d been so young – that’s what the boy thought of now. In that small room with the orange chairs, his father had been so young, maybe even younger than the boy was now. He’d shaped the hull so well that the water barely seemed to touch it. The boy pictured each fleck of metal falling away and settling across his boots.

  The pilot steered into a new row. A turbine loomed down at them with its crooked blades. The pilot turned back to watch it as they went past. He kept looking at all the warped and broken turbines and his hands twitched on the wheel. He checked the satnav again. They were still a long way out. He pushed on the accelerator. ‘What do you think happened?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To the pilot, bailing out his boat. What do you think happened?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘It’s your bloody story.’

  The pilot nodded and breathed deeply. ‘Yes, it is. Good point.’ His hands flexed on the wheel. ‘I think he plugged the leak and he made it home, to a hero’s welcome.’

  The boy turned and looked at him. ‘Do you?’

  The pilot blinked. ‘I think so.’

  The boy watched the pilot closely. There was a tiny bead of sweat above his top lip. Another turbine loomed out in front of them – this one had a hole right through the heart of its tower, which was jagged and blackened, with twists of metal lifting in the wind. Through it, the fields stretched outwards and away, stitching together like a net. The pilot couldn’t seem to take his eyes off it.