Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  Robert Davidson is a writer and editor based in Highland Scotland. He is the author, co-author, and editor of many books as well as a published poet, lyricist and librettist, and is the founder of Sandstone Press. Before altering his life’s course he worked in civil engineering, mainly in or around the water industry. It is this experience which informs Site Works. Books written by Robert Davidson have been short listed for the Saltire Society, Scottish Arts Council, and Boardman Tasker Awards.

  Also by Robert Davidson

  Poetry

  The Bird & The Monkey

  Total Immersion

  After The Watergaw (Editor)

  Columba (Poetry Scotland)

  Butterfly on a Chestnut Leaf

  Song Cycle

  Centring on a Woman’s Voice

  Libretto

  Dunbeath Water – an oratorio

  Non-fiction

  Winning Through

  (with Brian Irvine)

  Shadow Behind the Sun

  (with Remzije Sherifi)

  Cairngorm John

  (with John Allen)

  Fiction

  Hegarty and the Doleful Dancer

  (writing as Leon Murphy)

  SITE WORKS

  The Ness and Struie Drainage Project

  ROBERT DAVIDSON

  First published in Great Britain by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  PO Box 5725

  One High Street

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9WJ

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, Stored or transmitted in any form without the express Written permission of the publisher.

  © Robert Davidson 2011

  The moral right of Robert Davidson to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  Site Works is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are imaginative, composites drawn from memory or both. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses, authorities of any kind, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No inferences should be drawn.

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-905207-70-1

  Cover design by River Design, Edinburgh.

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

  For Moira

  Contents

  1. A working man

  2. Extracts from the Report on Tenders

  3. Commitment is the name of the game

  4. The specification is everything

  5. The strength is in the gravel

  6. There's a grip squad coming

  7. A velvet glove

  8. The cludge and the portaloo

  9. An executioner's wind

  10. The phone like a gun to his ear

  11. What we think about when we can't straighten

  12. It's all about survival

  13. That it should flow the way it does

  14. The first flower of spring

  15. Merciless with the lash

  16. It's the principal tool of my trade although I seldom use it

  17. Extract from the Final Valuation Report

  18. It's the Clearances all over again

  19. All those tiny men working in the distance

  20. What can't be cured

  1

  A working man

  It was getting on for 6:30am and it was Friday. I had only six hours sleep behind me but there was no time for another long morning of coffee and regret. Past the curtains, through the window, the sky was black as pitch. The pane had an edge of rime that would melt when the sun hit it. I woke thinking about the pumping station. There were another two, maybe three days in it. Derek the steelfixer was desperate to get on but before he could put his bars down the joiner had to get the soffit shutter in. To do that the walls had to be up.

  Big Swannie, the new Contracts Manager, had given the Agent a bollocking about the time I was taking. The Agent, Mac, is a survivor from the old company and a gentleman. I tell him about safety considerations and the Clerk of Works breathing down my neck and he understands. I tell him about rain, how it washes the mortar away quick as I can put it down and the weather being too cold to make the stuff anyway and he accepts. When he passes these things on to Swannie he gets bawled out. Swannie sent him across the site to tell me to bring my other squad in. I told him it would make no difference; they couldn’t change the weather. I didn’t say they’re working on a factory extension where they are under cover and the steady money isn’t something I am going to risk. I’m losing enough on this job as it is. When he asked me if he should bring someone else in, Healey’s men for example, I gave him the hard look. I don’t work with other builders. Healey’s just a brickie anyway.

  I got up feeling dried out and sick, picked my clothes off the floor and threw the switch on the electric fire. Through in the kitchen I washed my hands and face and made a long spit into the sink. Light was breaking over MacRae’s shed. This place is too far out of town but it’s cheap. It was good to see the lambs being born and all the work that goes into the harvest, but a farm in winter is a bleak place.

  Some mornings the mucus hangs off the beasts’ noses in thick icicles. They hate the cold. They suffer, same as us workers. My hands go raw in the cold air, handling the bricks. Safety gloves have no heat in them. Real gloves get worn to nothing in half a shift. All around the cofferdam the ground is churned up. Wet clay climbs your legs and drops into your wellies. Turn your socks down over the tops and they get clarted with mud. I have bald rings round my calves where it rubs. My feet are filthy all the time. Wellies with steel toecaps freeze your toes and the steel cuts in when you walk. The teachers and the office workers don’t know.

  I made coffee and toast and gave myself ten minutes. There was a steady, acute thump on the right side of my forehead and my stomach was turning over. The toast went dry in my mouth, the tea acid in my stomach. I managed to finish both and threw a panadol down. Back in the room I put on trainers and a leather bomber jacket; I like to look halfway decent going back and forth.

  The cold air hit me as I was locking up, so icy it picked out the rim of the nostrils and the quick of the nails. Worse than that was where it dug right into the body’s core and made me know that I am limited. There is only so much in there. Not everything can be borne. Worse than that was the blow to morale. This was what I had to look forward to all day, these conditions, losing myself in work, doing the best I could against boredom. All I want is to get on with it when I’m out there. Instead I spend half the day taking blows and waiting.

  The light in the shed went on and MacRae’s boy, Neil, came out of the house and across the track to feed the beasts. He seems to like what he does. Maybe it’s the prospect of owning the place when the Old Man gives up, or maybe he pretends just enough to get by. The beasts get excited when they hear him, moving around in their stalls. He tells me they show affection. Because he brings them food they think he’s their friend. He gave me a wave. We don’t say much.

  In winter I drive a lot in unlighted areas and on farm tracks. This is what it is to be a builder in the Highlands. For this reason I always buy a white van, it’s more visible in the dark. The present van is four years old and going on for 85,000 miles done. It’s becoming unreliable. Soon it will have to go. This means another bank loan. For the same reason it’s streaked with mud half way up its sides, right up to the Master Builders sign. I keep up with membership. It separates me from the Healeys of the building world when it comes to fine work.

  What I like best is handling good facing br
icks, keeping them dead plumb, dead square, matching in the coloured pointing. Being in the Master Builders keeps me in good with the architects, the ones who do one-off, individual houses. I like to think of these houses standing a hundred years from now. There was a time I wanted to sign my walls like paintings so people would know who built them. I take the same attitude into this other, heavier, work. It doesn’t matter that it’s a chamber that’s going to be buried and filled with sewage. Some day after I’m dead it might be emptied and someone will go in and see. Nobody alive cares but Harry the Clerk of Works and he claims he’s responsible for everything that’s done right and none of the rest. It’s an ego trip for him now where it used to be a religion.

  The engine started third turn but the windscreen and the air-blower were both icy. I had to sit freezing in the stale fug left over from Malky’s cigarettes, gunning the engine until it warmed up. When a soft patch appeared in the middle I went outside with the cloth and made it just big enough to see through. Back inside the van my head felt like it was going to split as I leaned over the wheel and peered into the headlight beams. I turned round the farmhouse and onto the track and headed out.

  Grass in the middle of the track was coated with frost; the van lurched from side to side in the ruts. Now and again the lights picked out sheep eyes in the field. There’s something hellish about a split eyeball staring at you from a sea of darkness. Listening to Malky puts these ideas in my head. He reads horror comics, collects videos like Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man. You could think he believes in that stuff. At the end of the farm track I turned on to the single-track road and, at the bottom of that, the main road into town. I drove through with the wipers going, gradually clearing the screen, past the police station and away.

  My head had to focus through the last night’s drink, quick movements would set it spinning. Concentration is a struggle at the best of times. My head goes everywhere when I’m driving, the job I’m going to, the last job, the next job, the number two squad, measurements. The wife doesn’t invade the way she used to now she gets her money straight from the Bank. I don’t see her any more and, if I don’t see her, she fades. This morning I felt so rough I had to force all of my mind on to the road, deeply aware of my hands on the wheel, of gripping too hard; the tyres on the asphalt, how any sudden movement could have the van weaving.

  Malky was waiting outside the garage in the Muir, just across from the pub where I’d left him. It almost looked like he’d spent the night in there and staggered out in the morning. We were both far gone when I took him home. The difference was he would have stopped then. Sandra would have made sure he was fed and clean before she put him to bed. She’d turn him out to meet me in the morning, knowing I would be up for work no matter what. Against that I went home to more vodka. Whoever invented Thursday pay for the troops should be shot.

  Malky climbed down into the passenger seat. Neither of us said anything. I took off and gave him the look that said, safety belt – on. He pulled it across and pushed the catch home. I got us out of town and put the foot down. Malky reached into his pocket, took out a packet of cigarettes and fumbled one out. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He put the packet away and fumbled in the other pocket for matches. When he’d lit up and was shaking the match out he looked at the ashtray. It was full. He rolled down the window and tossed the match out. Without thinking he took the ashtray out of its holder and emptied it out of the window also. The driver behind us made angry shapes with his mouth. I let him pass and turned off the main road, taking the country roads. It would put ten minutes driving on the journey but the other driver’s mobile phone could mean the police. Then there were tyres, brakes, all these things. But the MOT was up to date.

  Malky took out his comic and settled down. He’s as much gorilla as man. In this respect, as well as reliability and hunger for work, he’s good to have around. There are Agents who dispute the measure, knowing they can sit on their lies and stare you down if you want to work for them again. Him just standing there when I hand it over makes a difference. Nothing needs to be said.

  There are other builders the agents know will do the job quicker than me if they can get the Clerk of Works to accept the rubbish they put down. These guys would intimidate me off the job if they could get away with it. Not while Malky’s around. Even Healey’s Brendan respects him and Brendan’s a pig when he’s battling. He’s loyal to me; I think he loves me in a way. Sandra knows she can trust me. She knows he’ll get his full money every week, and that I’ll drop him close to home. I don’t usually bring him back exhausted and caked in mud or pished. It’s only when times are thin I take on the heavy stuff, the pipelines, the roadworks. Most of the time he comes home from a nice house-building job, reasonably clean. More and more though, it’s the heavy stuff I get.

  The site is on a hill above the Beauly Firth. It’s a sewer main, nearly three miles long, with staged pumping stations to get the stuff back up through the town and over the top. This means pipelaying going at the same time as building. Ductile iron pipes six metres long, gravel bedding, trench supports, all have to be trafficked along the temporary road. At the same time there are tracked excavators moving back and forth, cranes and piledrivers at the chambers, bricks and cement mixers. The Contractor’s wayleave across the fields, the work space, is too narrow. With the pipe track open, pipe bedding on one side, arisings on the other, there’s no room for the excavator to travel along and back. Conn has had the fence down three times, and he’s a magic driver.

  This is just one way the job is going wrong but it was the Client who arranged the access. Big Swannie is claiming delay and disruption. At present he doesn’t know if he’ll get his money back. This means a lot of tension between Swannie, his Agent, and the Engineer’s staff. It means he’s tight with his payments to the subbies and the suppliers. On top of this there are other bad things happening. Fact is, the job has gone to hell. My contract is to build walls to the main chamber, a big deep one, below the village. Everything about the job is vile. All I want is to build the thing once and correct, I mean to my own standards, get out and never go back.

  There is a rough car park outside the compound. We stopped there and got changed at the back of the van. The sun was up but the air was still cold. Clear sky, it was a high-pressure day, a good day for work if I could only get going. Three long huts sit inside the compound beside the fence; one for the agent and setting-out engineer, another for Harry. The third is for the troops. The troops’ had an outside cludge with the pan full to the top with pish and floating turds. There are people you tell these things and they don’t believe these conditions exist. Some poor mug was going to have to dig down outside, break open the pipe and take the contents up his arm. It wouldn’t be Malky. They couldn’t give me enough money to make him do it. Inside the hut is where the men hang their jackets and change. This is where they sit when they’re rained off. The Agent had let the filth rise in the place for fear of spending Swannie’s money. Malky and I were having none of this. We changed into oversocks still wet with yesterday’s sweat, wellies, donkey jackets, and walked the mile or so to the cofferdam. I carried my tools on my back. Malky carried the flask and sandwiches Sandra had made for us.

  It was still a quarter before eight. Only Derek the steelfixer was on site. Derek is the hardest man I’ve ever met. He picks a frozen bar up first thing, when it’s coated white with frost, and just holds it tight in his hands. I tried to do this once. It felt like burning, like gripping a hot poker. I couldn’t straighten my hand for half an hour. He says he only has to go through this first thing and after that there’s no more pain. He was sorting out 30mm bars with his boy. This looked like roof steel for the Pumping Station, which meant he would be delivering the bars sometime through the morning. One of them at each end, they carted them across to the gate where the crane could pick them up from outside. I like Derek, but I’m afraid of him too. I once saw him go to town on a concrete ganger who was pushing him on for bonus. The ga
nger spent the night in hospital. Pride wouldn’t let him say anything. The police were never brought in. Derek doesn’t drink any more, doesn’t swear or gamble. I keep in as best I can. Healey does the same.

  The access road was all churned up by trucks, but still hard after the overnight freeze. In the wheel ruts there were knee-deep frozen ponds. Below us was the chamber compound and the cofferdam, the fence, the tops of the cofferdam piles. The ground was shiny with tiny ice pools where our boot prints had filled and frozen over. We couldn’t hear the pump going. When we got down we found it had been turned off overnight. This happened every so often. When the locals had been without sleep for long enough one of them would come down and shut it off.

  The access width isn’t the only thing wrong with the contract. On Day One the pipelayers had come across a thick gravel band about a metre below the surface. When the trench was opened it spilled ground water and kept spilling. Big Swannie turned purple. The Engineer said he should have expected this; Swannie said there was no way he should have expected it. Instead of dragging a trench box along to hold up a dry excavation he had to close pile and try to control the flow with pumps. When that didn’t work he had to well-point. This is costing a fortune. The pipelayers are champing for bonus. Brendan, building the shallow chambers, is held up. This is why he has his eye on my job. The Pumping Station is four metres deep so has to be close-piled anyway. Swannie, being Swannie, bought in piles that had been used a dozen times before. Here and there the clutches have opened and water pishes in but this isn’t so bad as in the trenches. I got Malky to dig a sump in the corner and drop the pump rose in. We covered it with gravel and, okay, the pump now handles the flow when it’s working. But some bastard turned it off.