The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

by David Ireland

  What was needed? Dedication to what? Not simply the State and not only personal goals. He bit the inside of his lip in the fury of this sudden concentration of thought. If a man could have his personal aims and a reasonable chance of fulfilling them, and beyond them to be caught up in a larger idea. It eluded him. No matter. He knew the idea was there. Perhaps next time he would grasp it and see it face to face.

  ‘We could work this place, no trouble, if we had people dedicated to Puroil,’ said the Good Shepherd, but even as he spoke he knew they had no time for him. They could understand chronic liars, but not the honest man who suddenly lied.

  The Great White Father butted in. ‘What nong’s going to be dedicated to some bunch of foreign bastards that don’t know us except as workers they’d rather do without? No, man. You’ll never get dedication in a place like this, I hope. Even you’re not dedicated: Christianity made you what you were. And you, Samurai—you’re not dedicated. You work because you’re too proud to be a bludger like me. Don’t bring in dedication: no intelligent man could be dedicated to making gasoline just for putting in the tanks of a few million stupid motorists.’ He relaxed. The mood was too serious. ‘Did I tell you about the last time I was in hospital? For the prostate. There I was with this permanent catheter and a big glass bottle suspended over the side of the bed. Every single visitor bumped the blasted thing; there it was swinging on the end of me and everyone that leaned over the bed to sneak me a can or two or a brandy bottle pinched the damn tube. I was in hell, I tell you. Dedicated?’

  The Sumpsucker heard it all from the lavatory. There he was, busting for a pee, but every time he took it out it was an erection. Desperately he tried to pee by accident, the only way he ever managed, but it was no good. The thing knew. Tricked him every time. As soon as it peered from his trouser into the open air it shot out straight. He was whimpering. All that going on out there and he was the foreman, he should be there to take charge. Tears came into his eyes. He didn’t want to do it in his trousers. Perhaps if he put blinkers on it. He grabbed a handful of rag and surrounded it. Come on, you stupid bastard! And it worked. He’d tricked it. It thought it had clothes on, and relaxed. He peed gratefully into the rags and threw them back in the rag box.

  Taffy was still out.

  THE VERTICAL SPLIT He was out for another ten days. It took quite a bit of sidestepping of the regulations to get some money to his family in time to buy the week’s food. Company interpretations of compensation regulations laid down that no money be paid out until the proper claim forms had been completed by the injured person and a report made to the company’s medical officer. This, too, was designed for the man with the scratched finger. The company advanced some money from Taffy’s sick pay. Even so, there were questions asked up in the Termitary: why couldn’t the man have stood to one side when taking these readings? Why didn’t he report the injury himself? The auditors picked up the fact that payment had been made when the claim forms hadn’t been filled out by the injured person. The men responsible for circumventing the red tape had the ever-present feeling their own jobs were in danger. It was clear to the operations people that Taffy had been in no condition to fulfil the regulations, but there it was—the vertical split. The questioners were in other departments; they had no knowledge of what sort of work Taffy did, what it meant to have some of your flesh cooked off you, what dangers the men faced every day. They had often only the haziest idea where the plant was and what it was supposed to do, although they joined in heartily with shocked displeasure when they heard of yet another breakdown. ‘It’s the poor types we get as operators,’ they said.

  SLEDGEHAMMER FINESSE Man is irrepressible. You can’t keep him down, especially when his livelihood is in the balance. In the latest crash the great compressor had surged and tripped, its shaft bent. A maker’s representative was flown from Hamburg to watch it taken apart. Despite all speculations about whether the plant would go, another start-up was proceeding normally.

  The rest of the refinery was served by a brand-new high-pressure boiler capable of eighty tons of steam an hour; a beautiful piece of work except for its instrumentation, which had nothing in common with the instrumentation on the other boilers. None of the operators understood it. The cracker wasn’t ready for steam, but just to be able to report to Melbourne that something was going, the vertical boiler was blasting away for a fortnight, as soon as the bellows was patched.

  Weeks passed. The deadline was brought forward. Working at night while the expert was asleep in his hotel, fitters aligned the German compressor-turbine on its bed by bashing it with a fourteen-pound sledgehammer. The foreman fitter was told that if the machine wasn’t ready by next morning he wouldn’t have a job. Tolerances of eight times the maker’s specifications were winked at, the machine housing hurriedly replaced in the dark.

  High-pressure steam at fifty kilos was let down to the eighteen-kilo main; what was not used exhausted into the 3.5 kilo main; what was not used there exhausted to atmosphere. After the Good Shepherd had got as much equipment running as he could to use the steam, there was still twenty tons an hour at two dollars a ton wasting. This six-thousand-odd-dollars-a-week waste was one and a half times the wages of the four shifts at the cracker, but no one seemed to worry. At last steam was used in driving the great compressor. If it went well, the whole complex could get under way. The funny thing was, the rate of steam wastage remained the same.

  The German engineer sent out to set the machine to rights was baffled.

  ‘It must come down,’ he said in sorrow as he watched it bounce and shake. The expatriate Puroil engineer whose main interest was in finishing the maintenance work, standing back and letting Operations division fall on its face again, said no. The Wandering Jew backed the German. They took it down, looked, and put it together. Did nothing to it. There wasn’t time.

  After another run of half a day the German looked at the vibration readings and said no, it must come right down: no half measures. He had never seen things done this way before, but there was no one to tell this to, he wasn’t at home now. The only consolation he had was in being invited to advise two other refineries on their compressor problems. He collected two fat fees. But at Puroil, maintenance said no, don’t pull it down, and this time the Wandering Jew backed them up. Probably tossed a coin. Faith, hope and confidence were used as substitutes for intelligent actions. They went ahead. Seventeen hundred tons of Borneo feed and a cable overseas to report the happy event. Nothing must go wrong.

  Nothing wrong? Power dips, failing equipment, dirty pumps, machinery run to destruction, set your teeth on edge, made you think of decaying teeth in an uncared-for mouth.

  HIGHER AUTHORITY On the next shift thirty-kilo spray water was put into a kilo-and-a-half power balanced operation. The Python, unavoidably present, had been cornered by Captain Bligh, who handed him the problem gratefully. ‘Can’t get the bottom temperature down. Gas valves go wide open.’

  ‘Spray water,’ suggested the Python.

  ‘Right.’ The Captain relayed the suggestion as an order. The Woodpecker belted the spray water valves wide open. One of them had no spray nozzle—it had burned off—its water discharged into the header in a solid jet. The fault had been notified three months before.

  ‘She’s shaking loose a bit,’ smiled Captain Bligh, when the booms and bangs started.

  ‘Are there any overspeed trips on the turbo-expander machines?’ asked the Python steadily, watching the speed indicators rise.

  ‘No. Only low flow trips. But you can trip them from here. Those red levers—’ He was dying for an excuse to crash it.

  ‘Cut out the spray water, and get an instrument mechanic.’

  ‘There’s none on shift.’ They had been taken off as an economy measure.

  ‘Call one in.’ He left the plant hurriedly.

  ‘He didn’t even know there were no overspeed trips,’ marvelled the men. But Captain Bligh knew he didn’t know.

  CEMENT HEAD An hour later C
ement Head came in. His strides were long and he covered the concrete floor with deceptive speed.

  ‘There’s smoke coming out of the compressor. A noise of metal on metal it sounds like to me.’ His words were directed to his immediate superior, Captain Bligh. Captain Bligh was turning this way and that, his duty to his own superiors was running about in his head, knocking against this new piece of information. Or was it information? That was what he had to decide. He turned away to cope with his boiling night-shift brain. Three in the morning. The control room packed with anxious white shirts.

  Cement Head wavered about. He didn’t often stay in the control room, his job was elsewhere, but this was serious. If that compressor blew up, there would be metal fragments for miles.

  ‘They take no notice of a man,’ he wailed. ‘A man’s been around this place three and a half years now, he ought to know when the equipment’s crook. But they take no notice. They think a man’s a frigging idiot!’ His face was always tanned, but now it had a grey underlay.

  Five minutes later, when several trivial and irrelevant instructions from one of the oblivious technologists had been carried out, Captain Bligh had time to go the hundred yards to the beautiful, sleek compressor. It was rocking. He tripped it immediately.

  The high-pressure steam had nowhere to go. In the control room, hands reached for the tiny knobs and knurled wheels that controlled the giant edifice outside, which shook and roared; safety valves blew, screamed from the sudden excess of pressure. Thousands of people in bed for miles around were jerked upright by the sound. As if it reached into their bedrooms and took them bodily into terror.

  LOVE A little after eleven, the Samurai was on his way to Blue Hills, who had begged him to visit the house. In ten minutes he was embroiled with the Hills family. Mrs Blue Hills started to abuse her husband and looked as if she might be thinking of hitting him with something heavy enough to keep him down permanently. And all the time she was busy making little signs to the Samurai.

  Blue Hills himself began to fidget and mumble. From some of the things he said it was evident he knew the Samurai was the one who was getting his share of his wife’s body. He started to assume the role of a procurer. He worked himself up so much that he came yelling and grinning and leering close to the Samurai and stooped down quickly and flipped open the Samurai’s fly. Disgusted, the Samurai got to his feet and shouted, ‘He loves you! You can have him!’ He bolted, but not quick enough, for she threw herself at him and caught him round the legs. He didn’t want to kick her off, and stopped. This gave her time to climb up his limbs and grab him round the upper parts of his body. He fought her off as well as he could, but at last, with her screaming obscene love at him, he threw her away, knocking Blue Hills over. She hit the divan and bounced off on to the floor where she pretended to swoon. Blue Hills, getting up, trod on her face, recovered his balance and trod directly on her left breast. She roared.

  The Samurai was gone. Her husband began to pack his dilly-bag and dress for work. He had lost respect for her so far as to bring into the house his old working clothes, instead of dressing in the laundry outside. The smell of stale gas nauseated her despite her distress.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘It’s not time to go to work, you fool.’

  ‘Home Beautiful.’

  She thought he was being sarcastic about their own establishment and hit him with his dilly-bag. He weathered the blows with dignity and left the house. The dilly-bag followed him and landed in a diosma bush, forcing its thin branches outwards, making a picture rather like a sea anemone trying to swallow something much too big and dying in the attempt. Was life itself the lump on which Blue Hills was choking? Or did it mean nothing at all?

  With a last defiance he turned and jeered: ‘You missed!’ But the door was shut. And in that moment the house broke from its moorings—the path snapped—and floated out into the river behind the house, a river he had never noticed before. On its broad surface floated millions of little boxes stretching far into the distance. He was glad he trod dry land in the street. When he was gone a little way and looked back, the house was drifting past in a current that would take her away from him for ever.

  MEMENTO He drank solidly at the Home Beautiful, and reported for work at seven. At three he was back across the river, this time with the Sandpiper. Strangely, he didn’t feel tired. They were close enough together to satisfy the men spying from the edge of the mangroves; their molecules were mingling nicely.

  ‘I think I must tell you,’ said Blue Hills modestly, ‘I have this cold coming on, I’m a bit wet and snuffly.’ He wasn’t even bothered about being in the open and no roof on the world.

  ‘Come on,’ commanded the Sandpiper, ‘give me that cold.’ She made him press his mouth to hers and moved about and jiggled his denture with her tongue, snuffled and bobbed till the poor man had to haul off to get his breath. ‘I’m not your daughter! It’s all right to do it! What’s all the fuss?’ she urged.

  Poor Blue Hills. Lately he never seemed to eat. He was stale, his breath pushed away everyone who came near him, like a big fist. She wasn’t finicky; men were men. You had to put up with a lot you didn’t like and pretend you liked it. After a while you got pretty hard, you could stand anything as long as you got paid.

  She watched him recover his breath. ‘Better?’

  ‘Yes. I feel great.’

  Then the pains started. Like a hand reaching into his chest and grabbing the first vital organ it came to, like a very strong and ruthless hand, pain twisted inside his chest and throttled. He got away from her body and seemed to contract into a ball of agony. Knees drawn up and hands across his chest. He fell back and lay panting when a little breath returned to him. He didn’t feel the ridged clay or random edges of shale.

  ‘Lie here beside me, Sandpiper. I think I can die easy then.’ She laughed and looked at her wrist for the time. Twenty minutes left. Plenty. They were out in the open, the way people were meant to be. Not that she hadn’t seen a heart attack before, but Blue Hills was faking. He wanted extra attention for his five dollars. Pity he hadn’t picked on the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: she was handier with the extras.

  Laboriously he fished in his shirt pocket.

  ‘Keep this.’ He held out an old black and white snapshot to her. ‘It’s a photo of happier days. I’m there, with an old mate of mine. I never let my wife see this photo. You keep it. It’s no weight to carry. That bloke you see there was my best mate years ago.’ He rambled on. ‘That’s the house I used to have and there’s all the trees I planted. My favourite trees, before I went and got married. And there’s my old orchid house. Happiest time of my life. A bit of a job to give me tucker money—go where I liked, when I liked—’

  ‘OK, baby,’ she answered, stuffing the photo in amongst the light clothing she had shed, a neat little pile beside them.

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She started to dress.

  He looked away to the low hills across the river. The house. Why not stop this fooling about and go to that house and find who belonged to the waving arm? It might be a surprise. If he lost his nerve he could always say he made a mistake. No. He’d go right to it, never taking his eyes off. It was someone waving, no mistake. Waving to him, a welcome, a real friend. The friend you get only once in a lifetime. It wasn’t waving now, perhaps that meant something.

  ‘I’ve had,’ said Blue Hills, ‘some wonderful dreams. In my life.’ His breath came heavily.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ pulling her dress on over her head. The fabric was patterned with startling flowers. He put out a hand to touch them.

  ‘But I had to sleep to have them.’ This statement seemed to give him some satisfaction.

  ‘Sure you did.’ What could she do to comfort him? She knew only one thing.

  ‘You have to sleep to dream.’ Dresses were mysterious. All that warm dark space up inside and the thighs smooth.r />
  ‘You better get dressed.’

  ‘All right. Did I give you the…’ he paused delicately.

  ‘Yes. I got it.’ Money first you couldn’t work any other way.

  He began to dress. On the pink clay a red meat-ant struggled with a huge burden of food in the direction of its home. Courage, tenacity, strength. Blue Hills stabbed at it with his shoe but only succeeded in injuring it; its legs came off on the left side. However, the good half of the ant continued to tug the huge burden in the direction of its distant, unidentifiable home.

  THE INTERNAL OPPONENT He rested for a while; then, seeing him better, she suggested they move on back to the Home Beautiful.

  Mustering his strength, he tried to struggle to his feet, but that was the end of him. He fell back, making sounds. His breathing seemed to be obstructed, his face screwed up helplessly, a nasty sweat appeared on his forehead. His efforts to breathe, she thought, sounded like the noise of a baby feeding, a greedy baby sucking in food and air in gulps.

  ‘What’ll I do?’ she said aloud. But she was a hero, and knew the men were looking from the trees, so she had a bash at the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation she had seen advertised in the women’s rest-rooms along with the snake-bite and electrocution hints and the venereal-disease warnings. His dreadful, terrifying breath held her off for a moment, but she shut her eyes and went ahead puffing and stopping, puffing and recovering, turning her head away to breathe in. The kiss of life. Puff… She shuddered. I might be a wow as a cut-price prostitute but I’d make a hell of a nurse, she thought, and smiled inside, congratulating herself that she took nothing seriously.

  Blue Hills seemed to revive. He tried to sit up and did succeed in raising himself on one elbow. Was this why the distant waving was not there today? The Sandpiper wiped her mouth with half the length of her forearm right through to the back of her hand.