by Iain Maloney
‘Not a single representative here, no one with any information. Hiding away in their offices behind locked doors and security, probably all on their way to the airport non-stop for LA in private jets while my husband is out there in God knows what kind of misery. He said it would happen. They all said it would happen, didn’t they Maggie? After the fire in eighty-four. All the cutbacks, cutting corners and scrimping on safety. Easy to cut a safety budget when the most dangerous thing you have to face is Great Northern Road on your way to the office and your comfy desk, easy to cut other people’s safety when you don’t have to stand face-to-face with the men you put in danger. He said this would happen, didn’t he Maggie? He said it was a death trap.’
It was 2.30.
No names.
Helicopter ETA 3.30. Estimated Time of Arrival.
We sat.
No names.
The Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dyke, if he ever existed, must have had doubts. There was a point when, finger aching, arm rigid, back stiff, he realised he couldn’t do this forever. The sea would win eventually. What was natural was necessarily more patient than the man made. No amount of fingers would hold back the flood.
Maybe he was already dead.
My dad, the man who taught me to play tennis against the garage wall, who first called me Carrie, who introduced me to the deep history of time, the sculpting processes of the earth, to creatures who swam in the warm oceans, who first made me an ice cream float, took me to see ET, shared a private world of gestures, looks and smiles. My dad who was burning covered in oil, his flesh melting off him like he had opened the Arc of the Covenant, a campfire marshmallow black and bubbling, a witch, a Joan of Arc burnt alive, an offering to Pele. My dad who was floating in the North Sea, face down, sucking in water, a lifejacket that broke his neck as he hit the water at terminal velocity leaping a hundred and eighty feet out of the frying pan, his corpse drifting with the current, oil industry jetsam, a bottled up message circling the planet in a decaying orbit until the weight of continued existence dragged him to the bottom, Davy Jones’ locker, an unmarked grave. My dad who was fighting for survival in a dingy, on a rescue boat, on the Tharos, on a helicopter, burns wrapped in silver, broken bones splinted with salvaged wood, dehydration fought with drips, slipping in and out of consciousness, mumbling words to himself, my name maybe, wondering if he’ll see his wife again who at that moment was kissing Frank Carpenter goodbye as the taxi driver put her suitcase in the boot and yawned, and my finger broke, the ocean burst through the wall and I heard this voice that was distantly connected to me wail out, I felt my face melt too, tears and snot and all my hope dribbling down my face and there was an arm around me, poor lassie here all by herself, and another of the endless supply of tissues and I cried and cried and cried because he was gone, he was alive, he was dead, he would be there soon and if I never ever saw him again what would I do? How would I survive in a world without my dad? I couldn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t say I love you. I couldn’t say sorry. I couldn’t say thank you. I couldn’t say how much I was looking forward to going to Iceland with him. How much I wished it was her. I couldn’t say how much I hated myself for thinking that and how much I hated myself because I knew it was true because if he was gone and she had Frank Carpenter who did I have? I was empty, all cried out, a vacuum, and Pele moved into the space bringing her fire, her heat, and I was all magma and seismic quakes and I wanted to smash something, crush something, I wanted to smash her, crush her because she wasn’t there and if by some miracle he was on a helicopter she wouldn’t be there for that either and all he had was me and all I had was him and for all I knew all I had was nothing, no one, because he was ash, he was fish food, he was vaporised in the hottest part of the flame, the blue zone, his atoms dispersed into the air following the laws of quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, at the mercy of meteorology, precipitation, the nitrogen cycle, photosynthesis, subduction, thermodynamics, and I was alone, outside nature looking in with my microscope and magnifying glass and archaeologist’s brush and chisel and I would live my life wondering if the carbon or nitrogen or hydrogen or oxygen I was testing was once part of my dad, his blue eyes maybe, or a piece of his stubble. A clipped finger nail. The hard skin on his feet. The scar tissue on his chest from the motorbike crash when he was nineteen.
And then we heard it. Thrum. Beat. Rotors. A crush to the window, a dive to the door, we ran, pushing the backs of those in front, little steps in a crowded space. Through A&E and out, spread around the entrance, lining the road like a parade was coming. It was still dark, the helicopter’s lights fearsomely bright, a UFO coming down for us, nose raised, a yellow Sea King whipping up a tempest. Around the helipad ambulances and reporters, their puny flashes batted away by those fierce landing lights. A door burst open, nurses and paramedics darted forward with stretchers and blankets. One man on a stretcher, burn foil glinting in the camera flashes, another man holding his drip, into an ambulance and they drove the short road to us. We parted, a Red Sea of hope, we needed faces, we needed names. The stretcher rushed past, the face covered. The other man walked by, head down, he wouldn’t meet our eyes. He didn’t have anything for us.
There were more emotions here than there were words. We were causing a jam, crushed faces, eyes on the sky, there must be more helicopters, more survivors. Ushered inside, back to the chapel past the whiteboard, 3.30 erased, 3.40 drawn in, more were coming. We fought for window space. No one spoke now. Some cried silently. My hands were clammy, nail marks in the palm, blood drawn on a chewed lip.
The first helicopter left.
The next landed. Seven men, all on stretchers. Another charge, but some of us stayed. In A&E there was a woman with a list of names. They would come and get us. They couldn’t all be in that one helicopter. But I needed news. I needed names. A&E looked like something out of M*A*S*H. The man who walked off the first helicopter holding the drip was on the phone. His wife, I guessed. She’d be at home, not in Bristol with Frank Carpenter.
We waited.
I moved between the chapel and A&E. There was no place for me.
No one from the company came. We had a minister and the Head of Public Relations for the hospital. No one from the company.
More helicopters. Walking wounded. The worst came first. The survivors. They kept using that word. If some were called survivors then some weren’t. The worst came first. The dead last. The longer we waited.
Names on the list. She gave each man an identity bracelet.
A woman shouted that she could see her husband, rushed from the chapel. I followed her to A&E.
It wasn’t him.
She broke down, there on the floor of A&E.
As the men came in they glanced at our faces. Then they looked away.
What had they seen?
We sat.
No names.
No news.
Five helicopters.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Out on the road. The crowd must have been five hundred, relatives, press. The eleventh helicopter landed. I couldn’t see anything. The ambulance sirens parted us. Then he was there. I saw him step from the ambulance, a blanket around him. The plug blew and the lava poured out, I screamed ‘Dad’, elbowed people out of the way, crashed into him and nearly knocked him off his feet. A nurse tried to part us but I found his hand and squeezed with everything I had. He put his arm around me and we went inside. We didn’t speak. He answered the questions, got his bracelet. They tried to separate us again so they could check him but neither of us would let go, so they gave in. He had burns on his hands but that was it. They bandaged him up and let us go.
‘Let’s go home.’ He kissed me on the head and I started crying again. ‘Did you speak to your mother?’
‘Yes, I…’ His face, his eyes. ‘Mister Galloway spoke to her. She’s getting the first train back.’
‘How was the party?’
&nb
sp; ‘What party?’
‘We can talk later. Let’s get out of here.’
‘Excuse me, Mister…’ Someone from the hospital.
‘Fraser, Marcus Fraser.’
‘If you would accompany me, any survivors who haven’t been admitted to hospital are being taken to the Skean Dhu hotel. The police need statements from you all.’
‘Now? I’d really like to go home with my daughter.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘I don’t know, sir. But there are showers and a change of clothes. You and the other survivors will be made very comfortable.’
Dad paused for a moment, looked around him like he’d just woken up. ‘Survivors? How many?’
‘Sir…’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t have exact figures. About sixty, I think.’
‘Sixty? Out of how many?’
‘Two hundred and twenty-seven.’
He sagged, near enough collapsed. The man caught him, sat him down.
‘So many.’
‘Dad,’ I rubbed his arm, ‘you go to the hotel. The sooner you go, the sooner you can come home. I’ll get everything ready. A warm bath, some food, okay?’ He looked at me, and it was like seeing him as a child. ‘Okay, Dad?’
He nodded. The man took him out to a minibus and away.
The whiteboard said ‘Next helicopter ETA’. There was no time written. In the chapel the minister was speaking.
‘There will be no more helicopters.’
Aberdeen, June 2013
Marcus looked out at the two-thirds empty lecture hall. It was his third year of part-time teaching at the University of Aberdeen and even he’d grown bored with the sound of his own voice. The clock at the back of the hall showed 11.33. Twenty-seven minutes to go and he was done for the day, done for the week. Paperwork – check. Calls returned to Total and Shell – check. Inbox clear of anything important – check. Confirmation of attendance at next week’s Geological & Earth Sciences Conference…
Silence in the room. He’d lost his place, stopped speaking for long enough that everyone was staring at him. These were summer school students, keen to learn, paying attention.
‘Any questions so far?’ He turned to the next page and started from the top. It was turgid. Marcus usually ran two classes. The class on Health, Safety and Risk Ethics was one: with the discussions, the arguments, the implications. Profit versus risk, health and safety regulation versus on-the-job common sense. Responsibility. In the event of an accident, in the event of a disaster, who was responsible?
Then there was this class, which he was delivering verbatim even though it was advertised as a one-off to attract this international crowd, all future high-flyers. Oil Field Redevelopment. What do you do when all the oil and gas is gone? Do you pack up and fuck off or are there options? These questions would become real in their working lifetimes, though with a bit of luck he’d be dead by then. He’d lived through enough oil slumps, had seen the damage a drop in price could inflict on Aberdeen. God only knew what a full-scale withdrawal by the industry would do to the city. But North Sea oil was running out, they said. Although that was probably just scare tactics ahead of the referendum.
11:47. Thirteen minutes. He had everything with him, didn’t even need to swing back to the office, just straight to the Machar for a pint of Guinness and maybe some scran. He could already taste the creaminess, the richness sliding down his throat, the alcohol flicking his switches, bringing him to life. But he had thirteen more minutes to work first. That was the deal that got him this job in the first place. The deal with Isobel that meant they could be together. The deal with Dr Shaw. Weekends only. Nothing during the week. Not anymore. At 12:00 it was officially the weekend. He’d kept his side of the deal for another week. His liver was his own until Monday morning.
Monday morning. 10:00. MacRobert lecture hall, Geothermal Energy Extraction and Collateral Seismic Events by Professor Caroline Fraser. Professor at her age. They’d have to start inventing positions just so they could promote her. Surely she’d win the Vetlesen Prize at some point, the Nobel for geologists.
‘Any questions?’
No. Out the door before the students realised he was done, into the car park between the Meston and Fraser Noble buildings, the new library all glitter and glass in the autumn sunshine, turned right across Elphinstone Road and down the alley to the smell of fresh pies, left onto the High Street and its treacherous picturesque cobbles, a spring in his step, marching through such a beautiful campus on such a beautiful day to such a beautiful goal, the little cottages, the idiosyncratic ancient walls and modern geometrical granite buildings, just a few steps beyond the bank and in through the black door.
He still missed the smell of smoke that used to envelop old bars like this. You could fit the Machar into a railway carriage. Seats and tables along the left wall, bar along the right, toilets and dartboard at the back. His corner was free, back to the wall, cash on the counter, ‘the usual Marcus?’ from Duncan the barman, big of heart and big of gut, University Rugby Club shirt and a mug of tea in his special mug, the white one with the black handle and U N T in black, the handle making the C. Pint handed over, correctly settled, head an exact three quarters of an inch, no fucking stupid harp etched onto the top. Quality craftsmanship. Almost seemed a shame to ruin the effect. Almost. The chill of the glass, the familiar curves spooned by the scars on his palms.
He drank.
Tomorrow they’d go out to Bennachie, him and Isobel. Part of the deal. She’d do the driving if he got some exercise. A decent walk, a pub lunch in Kemnay, back into town for whatever fun the evening held. They did that every weekend, a different walk but the same routine. Loch of Skene, Findhorn, Scolty sometimes, out to Braemar, Ballatar. Some proper hills, not that he could climb them, not with his hip, but the view was enough. Lochnagar. Loch Muick. He liked Loch Muick best. There was a bench there dedicated to a good friend from his oil days, a helicopter pilot. He liked to sit on the bench and have a tot from the flask. Remember Mike, toast him.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot.
She might be in the city already, getting a taxi from the airport to some hotel. A hotel in her hometown. He didn’t know. Didn’t know she was coming until he’d seen the conference schedule, seen her name.
He nodded at Duncan. He’d reached the level where the glass narrowed. If Duncan began pouring now it would be settled and ready just as the last mouthful trickled down his gullet, tickling his tonsils according to the laws of fluid dynamics. He wanted a fag but it would mean going outside and he couldn’t take his pint with him. Three pints. Piss then fag. Repeat. Repeat again with variation, usually a whisky chaser or a G&T to freshen the palate.
How he missed the peaks. Nobody to blame but himself and it could be a hell of a lot worse. He looked his age, he knew, if not more. Taka had come out from Japan last year, the first time they’d met up in ages. Bloody Japanese genes, Taka looked about fifty. Lost all the weight, gym twice a week, tennis, golf. Still liked a drink though. Still couldn’t handle it. He’d joined them on one of their weekend walks, they’d stopped at the Huntly Arms Hotel in Aboyne for lunch and Marcus had ended up getting thrown out. The barman took one look at Taka and switched the TV from some game show to the History Channel, a programme about the Bataan Death March. Marcus asked him to change it. He wouldn’t. Marcus told him to change it. He said no. Marcus grabbed for the remote, missed. Marcus was warned. Marcus tried to rip the TV off its bracket. Marcus was thrown out. He felt justified. Racist bastards. He’d never drink there again.
One o’clock. He was the only adult in the bar, the rest were students, postgrads by the look. Did Carrie drink here when she was an undergrad? She’d had her heart set on Durham, he knew that, knew she hadn’t applied. The scars on his palms twitched. She’d stayed to look after him.
He finished his third, went for a piss, out for a fag in the street. She did well here, Carrie.
First Class Honours, won prizes, had her pick of postgrad courses. Did she spend much time in Blackwell’s, browsing the shelves? Lunch in the refectory or a sandwich from the bakery? Sitting alone with a textbook or in a group on the grass, heads on legs, all talk and jokes and plans for later that night, that term, that year?
His pride was muddied with guilt. How little he knew of his daughter’s life, even when she lived at home. A shared house only in fact. Those years when she should have been out having fun, making mistakes, drinking, sleeping around, cramming for exams, those years he had stolen from her, Hannah had stolen from her. Then she left. Standing in the doorway watching her load her bags into the taxi. Eleven in the morning and he wasn’t safe to drive, not by a long way.
A toot from the cab. Time to go.
‘All right, Marcus?’
He jumped, a hand on his shoulder. Done it again, lost in memories, living in the past. He stubbed the fag out, turning from Harry to wipe his eyes. Harry wouldn’t say anything. Harry understood.
‘You coming in? It’s nippy out of the sun.’
Marcus’ next pint was waiting for him, Duncan pumped the IPA when he saw Harry, placed it down. Marcus beat Harry with the tenner. ‘So you got away?’
‘Yes, done all I can for the moment. You know what it’s like, send out queries, ask people to do things and then you can’t do anything until they get back, until they do their job. So I thought I’d come and seek you here in this den of iniquity.’
Harry Boyle was from Donegal originally, by way of Trinity College, Dublin and Oxford. As a lecturer he’d favoured cords and woolly jumpers, a flat cap when outside, big hiking boots whether he was in the classroom or out in the field. Once he moved into management, started making his way up the ladder to Head of Department and found himself with little time for teaching or research, he edged into shirts and ties.