by Iain Maloney
‘What, leave Hawaii for the bottom of King Street? She’d have to be mad,’ said Gavin, filling my wine glass.
‘They wouldn’t have me,’ I said. ‘I’m so out of touch on petroleum geology and as you pointed out earlier, there’s not much use for my specialty in Aberdeen.’
‘You never did explain why you chose volcanoes,’ said Gavin.
‘Two reasons,’ I said, the crisp yellow flavour of the wine on my tongue. ‘Firstly if you don’t want to work for the oil industry, if you want to pursue geology academically you need something with a lot of unanswered questions, something that needs research. Secondly, volcanoes are amazing. They’re just so cool. When I was a kid, Dad and I would go on trips, Vesuvius, Etna, Sakurajima in Japan. It was on Sakurajima I got this scar,’ I said, pulling back my hair to show them. ‘They’re probably the most dangerous places on the planet but also the most fertile, people live on them, farm on their slopes despite knowing that any minute it could erupt and kill them all. We know more about space than we do about what goes on under the ground beneath our feet.’ I was rambling, talking fast. ‘Volcanoes got under my skin, literally,’ I rubbed the scar. ‘Mum and Dad had been arguing all through the trip up Sakurajima so I ran up the mountain, tripped and hit my head. Later I passed out and had a kind of vision.’ Dad was looking at me, something in his face. He hadn’t heard my version of the story. I’d never told anyone about it. ‘I’d been reading a book Mum gave me on goddesses and it had a chapter on Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess. While I was unconscious I had a vision, a dream really, vision makes it sound grander, madder, but anyway I had this dream where I saw Pele sitting inside the volcano quietly powerful, controlling the magma. If she lost her temper the volcano would erupt but as long as she was happy, calm, pacified, everything would be okay.’
Everyone had stopped eating, they were watching me. It was a weird story, I knew, but I was caught up in the memory.
‘In the hospital later, with Mum and Dad still arguing, I could still remember it, that warmth, the fire, the hidden strength, the violence waiting below the surface ready to explode. That’s when volcanoes got into me. It’s funny, I suppose, if Mum and Dad hadn’t been fighting all the time I’d never have got this scar or had that vision. I’d maybe have gone into petroleum geology and never left Aberdeen.’
I stopped. They were staring at me. I took a sip of wine, my throat dry.
Well done, Carrie. A story about your parents at your father’s wedding. Ten out of ten for appropriateness. I bent my head to my soup, started spooning sour broth into my mouth.
The venison was chewy, hard to swallow. We moved onto red wine with the main course, the Pinot Noir mixing with the juice of my rare deer steak, the potatoes islands in a river of oily blood. Gavin had started talking about the difference between the western islands and the northern ones. As a Shetlander he held their culture to be separate from the rest of Scotland – Norse rather than Celtic, more part of Scandinavia than a pre-Roman Britain. ‘When I was in the Merchant Navy I had a map of the world on my wall next to my bunk. One of my roommates was a Mexican. He told me to turn my map upside down. At first it looked wrong. But you know what? It totally changed my perception of the world. The map finally looked how I’d always thought the world to be. In Shetland we never looked south for our culture and influence. Greece, Rome, Paris, London. We look north. Turning the map on its head made that clear.’
‘The first time I saw a map in New Zealand,’ I said, ‘I thought it was so badly drawn.’ I drank a mouthful of wine. ‘We’re used to the map with us in the centre. You don’t see how the Pacific dominates the planet. Obviously in that part of the world the Pacific is at the centre of the map. Hawaii at the centre. It took me a while, like you were saying Gavin, to realise the problem was with me. My thinking was Eurocentric and Anthrocentric.’
‘But maps are there for our use,’ said Isobel, looking at Dad instead of me. ‘It makes sense for them to reflect the information we need.’
‘But maps are supposed to reflect reality,’ I said. ‘Otherwise what use are they? If I want to climb a mountain or drive from Glasgow to Skye I need to know the truth of the landscape, where the roads go, where they don’t.’
‘But weren’t you and Gavin just saying that reality is how you perceive it?’ She finally looked at me. There was something in her eyes, hard and soft. Maybe it was the drink. She’d had a lot, we all had. ‘You turn the map upside down, put the Pacific in the middle, look at it from someone else’s perspective and suddenly you realise reality is what you make it.’
‘Spoken like a true lawyer,’ laughed Dad. ‘But you’re right. It’s relativity. Reality changes depending on where you are observing from.’
‘No, no, no. Nonsense. That’s okay in physics,’ I said, ‘where it only has to work on a blackboard. If they get it wrong it doesn’t stop them from getting home at the end of the day, if they postulate a multiverse and there isn’t really one, nobody dies, nobody’s village gets washed away. You’re all missing the point. There is a solid reality that exists independently of us and our observations and it comes along with hideous regularity and smashes anyone who gets in its way. The laws of nature weren’t drafted by Newton and Copernicus and Darwin and the rest, they were there while we were shrews hiding from predators and they’ll be true once we’ve reduced this planet to a lifeless rock. You can talk about perception and Einstein all you want but when the ground underneath you blows up, when the world around you is nothing but falling debris and fire, you have to deal with reality head on. You can’t run from reality.’
‘You did.’ Isobel slammed down her knife and fork, startling me out of my speech. ‘You and your mother.’
I looked at her, a little woozy. I’d been lost in pictures I’d seen of eruptions, the stumps of houses, the smoke and ash.
‘In front of your father talking about falling debris and fire, like the wisest voice in the universe.’
Hollowed, everything emptied out of me. Gavin was looking at his plate. I looked at Dad.
He held his hands up. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we’ve all had a drink. Let’s call a ceasefire and calm down.’
I wanted to explain, tell them I was speaking about myself, not them, not him, not what they thought I was talking about. Not Piper Alpha. But the words weren’t there. I couldn’t reach out to them, couldn’t reach them. We were too far apart. Too many oceans. I should never have come.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, slowly, quietly. ‘I didn’t mean any of that the way you took it but it’s too late. I’ve ruined your day. I’m quite drunk and I never normally drink. Not an excuse but there you go. I’ll leave you to it. Sorry.’ I got to the door and looked back at Dad. ‘I shouldn’t have come back. I’m sorry.’
On my bed I cried. I cried all the wine out, all the gin, all the champagne, red tears, white tears, bubbly tears, quinine tears. I cried until I fell asleep. When I woke it was dark out and I had a splitting headache. I took three painkillers and drank water straight from the tap.
I packed my bags. Changed into proper clothes. Real clothes. Back into myself.
The hotel was quiet. I reached over the desk and left my key.
The book still behind the chest of drawers.
The scrunch of gravel under my wheels, the sweep of my headlights across the trees.
Loch Morlich, June 2013
Marcus sat on the beach at Loch Morlich, the thick scent of pine from the arc of trees behind him, the glutinous seeping resin heavy in the air. To his left the river that ran into the loch where Carrie had once seen a pike and been scared by the picture in the Usborne Spotter’s Guide, all those prehistoric teeth. To his right the watersports centre where they’d rented kayaks, dinghies, windsurfers. Ancient and worn, the peak of Cairngorm, the Ptarmigan restaurant on top, the spikes of the chairlift, the swoop of the ski runs. They’d changed it, added a funicular railway, guided walks. Tamed it and corporatised it. He took a swig from the wine bottle, screwed it
back into the sand.
This area was haunted by his past. Ghosts of himself, of others.
Isobel had warned him but he’d gone ahead, booked the room like Ash suggested.
He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets, found the box of matches and his cigarettes, lit one and watched the exhaled smoke whip away in the wind. They used to have bonfires on the beach. Marcus took great pride in fires, manly pride, all natural materials apart from the match – one match, any more was cheating – to go from scattered wood and leaves to a roaring fire. Your own resources, your own wit, you against nature, you with nature. That Christmas he’d spent up near Ullapool, the fire he’d lit had burned all day and all night, he’d kept it going the whole time he was there, sheltered from the wind, he tended it, prodded it, coaxed it, controlled it and let it loose. He’d seen himself in it, in that fire, as he stared into the flames, saw himself surrounded by other flames, running, diving, swimming. As long as he kept that fire going, he was alive. If it had gone out, he’d have given up.
Suicidal. He held a vigil for himself.
He’d left that out of the book. Written it all down, everything, but he cut that out. Cut other stuff too. But left a lot. Maybe too much. Had it been a mistake to give Carrie the book? To give it to her then and there? He’d been carried away, hyped up and happy, his wedding, his daughter there. Gavin had gone to wake her up and found the staff cleaning her room. The car gone. Not a word for ten years. Only the steady tick of published papers, conference appearances to let him know she was alive.
That was another mistake. He shouldn’t have gone to the conference.
Marcus waited for her to start before sneaking into the MacRobert lecture theatre. It was a huge, soulless hall with bleacher-type seating that was pushed back at exam time. From his own lectures here he knew there was no way in or out without being seen by the speaker. He could come in at the top, behind the back row, or he could come round the side and walk right by her on his way to a seat. Neither would keep his presence secret so he stayed on the side, hidden from view. He’d promised Harry Boyle that he’d stay away but curiosity got the better of him.
On the surface Geothermal Energy Extraction and Collateral Seismic Events seemed pretty straightforward. Using the internal heat of the earth to create electricity wasn’t a new idea but the side effects were often disastrous, causing earthquakes and sinkholes. Like fracking, it was risky and not something most people wanted in their backyard. Unlike fracking, it was clean and renewable. Finding a way to reduce the risk would constitute a massive step towards a carbon-free energy source. There were only two reasons someone would travel to the oil capital of Europe and deliver a paper on the subject. Either way, Carrie’s paper was attracting attention.
In the ten years since the wedding, Marcus had kept a loose check on her career. Since Harry had given him the job at the University it had become much easier to access her published papers. Initially an expert in mapping volcanoes, she had expanded her interest into general subterranean mapping and at some point had become involved in climate science. It was clear from the direction her research had taken that Carrie was trying to make geothermal energy extraction work. She’d come to Aberdeen to deliver bad news to the oil industry in person. That, Marcus had to see. Judging by the crowd in the hall, he wasn’t the only one.
From his shadowy corner he couldn’t see her, but he could see the projector screen. As she took them through her research, the relevant images flashed up, raw data on one side, a three-dimensional computer map on the other. Her voice was calm, steady, strong, carried well by the radio mic. Marcus found himself trying to pick apart the strands of her accent, the Scottish Rs, the Kiwi EE, the I changed to U, an American twang over the A. She carried a souvenir of every place she’d lived. Perhaps more surprising was the depth of the voice, the years behind it. She was forty-one, he realised. How could his daughter, his little Carrie, be forty-one?
He was in danger of getting emotional, of doing something daft like stepping out into the light. He leaned his back against the wall, sheltered in the shadows.
How much things had changed. When he’d first got into the oil industry a lifetime ago, the only two questions asked about potential oil fields were ‘how much oil?’ and ‘how cheap to extract?’ Safety was never mentioned, except by the unions and they weren’t in the room when important decisions were made. The Cullen Inquiry into Piper Alpha had made a hundred and six recommendations for changes to safety procedures, all of which were adopted. Yet accidents still happened. Only three years before the Deepwater Horizon fiasco had taken place in the Gulf of Mexico. A year later the triple disaster in Japan had turned the world more strongly against nuclear power than before. Now fracking was the enemy. Like it or not, the industry had two new questions to answer – ‘is it safe?’ and ‘is it clean?’
He tried to focus on what Carrie was saying. It sounded like she was approaching her conclusions.
‘What the data show is that scientific and technological solutions are here. For widescale geothermal energy extraction, it’s no longer a matter of if, but when.’
Marcus peeked over the side of the seating, looking over someone’s foot and through a table support. She was talking almost without reference to her notes, looking directly at the room. She knew what she was doing. Her body language was confident and confrontational. Her shoulders squared, arms by her side, her head raised searching for any challenge. He risked a step forward so he could see the audience.
‘Projects are being rolled out around the world. Places like Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia are already pursuing geothermal energy production and even the World Bank is starting to take notice. When it comes online, it will be cheap, it will be clean and it will be safe.’
He smiled at that, in the shadows. Her echoing his checklist. She’d done her homework, knew where to hit them. She was off the science now, off the hard facts and into interpretation.
‘This is a challenge to everyone in this room. To the academics and the industry representatives. The oil industry is in its endgame. Fracking? Drilling in the arctic wildlife refuge? These are stopgaps, quick fixes. They are dangerous, unpopular and expensive.’
Behind her, on the projector screen, oil spills, sealife coated in crude, protestors against fracking, against BP, Deepwater Horizon, Seacrest, Ocean Ranger, Exxon Valdez.
‘What my work shows, what the work of my colleagues shows, is that the age of petroleum is over. Geothermal energy extraction is no longer a dream. It’s a reality. And that reality means the death of the oil industry.
‘I’ve been asked why I came all this way to deliver this paper. It’s because of where we are, where this conference is. Because of who is in this room. The oil industry isn’t just an abstract entity, drilling over the horizon. It’s the livelihoods of the people of this city and others like it around the world. Aberdeen is my hometown. When the oil goes, or when the market moves on, without an alternative industry, this city will wither. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Together we can build a new industry, with the science I’ve outlined today and your expertise, your global networks and infrastructure, your knowledge and your money. We could make this city the centre of the world for sustainable energy, if only we can find the will and the courage to lead. Occasionally science gives you a glimpse of the future. It’s up to you to be part of it.’
She closed her folder, pulled off her radio mic and dropped it on the lectern, walked out. She wasn’t staying for questions, wasn’t staying for the inevitable showdown. She’d done what she came to do.
Too late he realised she was coming right at him.
She saw him. Stopped. They looked at each other. He reached out a hand.
‘Carrie, that was…’
She pushed by him and out of the hall. The door hissed closed.
‘… brilliant.’
Isobel was around somewhere, back at the tent reading. He wished she were there, just for a moment, next to him on the sand, so he could
touch her, feel some tactile presence, a real human presence in amongst all these ghosts and memories. He let them come, he had to let them come, knew better than to fight, but it didn’t make it any easier. Another slug of wine.
They’d moved out of the hotel after one night, after the fight, ran to the safety of Loch Morlich, the comfort of recognition.
Dr Shaw had encouraged him to face his past, to admit to his mistakes, to accept them for what they were.
You couldn’t make others do the same.
Coylumbridge Hotel, June 2013
‘You had no right. No right.’
‘No, but I was right to do it.’
‘You ignored my wishes.’
‘I did.’
‘You’re not sorry?’
‘I’m sorry about the way it turned out. I’m not sorry I did it.’
Hotel rooms were not the place for fights. You knew everyone could hear everything. You couldn’t take a step without hitting a wall, a bed, the other person. It was all too easy to block the only route of escape. Ash had put herself between me and the door and the only thing I could do was physically shift her. She was all but daring me to. I wanted past her. I wanted out. There was so much anger in me, so much fire that needed to burn. I was afraid of what would happen if I erupted in here. She knew that. She was pushing me.
‘We’re going to talk about this.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about. You knew my wishes. What happened was entirely your fault.’
‘I don’t deny any of that.’
‘Good.’
‘So now we can talk about what happened.’
‘Fucking lawyers!’ I took a step towards her but we both knew I wasn’t really going to push her aside. I flung myself down into the armchair, exasperated, suddenly very tired. ‘Fine. Explain.’
‘You’re an idiot.’
I waited for more. Nothing came. ‘That’s your argument?’