Cammy picked his way carefully down the haul road and climbed the fence.
‘Don’t go off the wayleave!’
Who’s to know?’
Cammy went to the boulder and shone the torch on the mark and Paul focussed as best he could.
‘Spoteroonie!’
‘Levels,’ said Jimmy, when Cammy got back. ‘Cammy, shine your torch on Paul’s book for him.’
Paul worked out the correct reading to the top-of-the-wall level, took the actual reading on the shutter head, worked out the difference and called down to Willie, ‘138mm’. Willie measured 138mm down the inside face of the shutter and drove a nail halfway home. He put the staff on the nail for Paul to check.
‘Spoteroonie!’
They repeated this for all four shutters at the halfway points and the ends. All were correct.
‘Just as well,’ said Conn. ‘It’s too dark to lift safely.’
Paul took down the level and put it in its box for Willie to stash in the culvert. The theodolite would come with him down the hill.
‘It might snow in the morning,’ said Willie.
‘They’ll pour anyway,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s Swannie for you. He’s driving this, not Mac. However strong and ugly Mac seems to you, Paul, he’s nothing against Swannie.’
‘Harry will find something wrong if he can,’ said Cammy. ‘He’ll stop the pour if he’s able.’
‘He won’t find anything. It’ll be all right,’ said Jimmy.
He shone his torch on Willie, Cammy and Conn, one after the other. ‘We’ll get here early. John Kelly’s saying they’ll pour at first light, but they won’t. There’ll be something, late concrete, frozen diesel, Harry being awkward, something. We’ll get it all checked again and be ahead of the game. Paul, can you make it up here for 8:00am? I mean up here on the hill.’
‘I’ll be here,’ said Paul, ‘if I’ve still got a job. Mac wanted me back to do plant returns before this. He won’t like me coming out here first thing and not checking with him, but I’ll be here. We’ll get it done.’
‘Come down our side of the hill,’ Willie said. ‘We’ll give you a lift back to the compound. It’ll be safer than going down that slope in the dark.’
‘I’ll get back myself. I’ll be okay.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure.’
‘I don’t want you getting hurt,’ said Jimmy.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Cammy, give Paul your torch. You and Willie can share.’
Paul took Cammy’s torch and found himself staring at the circle of light it cast at his feet. He folded the tripod and lifted the instrument carefully against his chest, holding it with just the one arm.
‘I’ll walk you along the hill,’ said Jimmy.
The two set off with their torches lighting the ground before them while Conn locked the cabs on his machines and the others gathered their tools. Very quickly the job was out of sight behind them and the hill was silent. They got to the edge, to Paul’s setting-out peg and the beginning of the churned ground where the pipeline had been laid.
‘You’ll have to go on yourself now. This is as far as I can take you.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
‘You’re a good boy. I’m sorry I said what I said about your dad. If you were mine I’d be proud. But listen, go easy on the drinking.’
‘Okay.’
‘And stick in at college. You’ve got it in you to be an Agent, maybe even a Contracts Manager.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘That’ll be good enough. Don’t drop out; hang in.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘You can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends. Be careful there. Your employers too – once you get qualified you can move about. Do that until you find somewhere you fit. Stay there. Don’t worry about the money; you’ll get by. Make sure you’re comfortable.’
Jimmy offered his hand and they shook.
‘Thanks.’
‘See you in the morning.’
Paul pointed the torch downwards to bring his light in close. The going was no firmer underfoot than it had been when he came up in the morning. If anything it was riskier. He moved with care, growing fatigued quickly, and when he stopped to rest he looked back to see Jimmy’s circle of light disappear on his own side of the hill.
8
The cludge and the portaloo
In the compound Harry watched as Derek unloaded a second load of reinforcement steel for the settlement tank bases. He turned his collar up, pulled down his safety helmet against the wind and pushed his hands further into his jacket pockets.
At last the high culvert was complete. Conn was removing the stone haul road and reinstating the ground. When he was done he would track his machine back here and Mac would lay off not one but two of the other drivers. No sooner had Jimmy Gillies, Willie Quinn and Cammy been transferred shoreside to the settlement tanks than the staff joiners were trooping one by one in and out of the agent’s hut. The grip squad’s big pay was exerting its inevitable disaffecting influence. Experienced Harry had seen it coming and socialist Harry didn’t like it.
Ikey tugged at his sleeve.
‘Beg pardon, Mr Gilfeather.’
‘What is it?’
‘Mr Crawford asks can you can come to his office as soon as is possible, sir. He says he tried to call but your mobile phone is turned off.’
‘Communication is best a one way thing with the likes of Mr Crawford. From me to him and not t’other way round. What’s it about?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me that, no sir, but I heard something.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘GR called him to say that you’ve to go down to Newtonmore and sort something out.’
‘Sort what out?’
‘Don’t know, sir, but I heard on the radio that someone left a valve open in the new works and the Spey is running with sewage.’
Another joiner went in to see Mac. This was the fourth. Each stern looking tradesman entered with a frown and come out happily jingling the nails in his apron.
‘See this, Ikey?’
‘Sir?’
‘The troops want off the books and onto the grip. They’ll find themselves working longer hours under worse conditions but, because they aren’t real grip men, they won’t make more money. In fact they’ll make less, but greed and pride beat common sense every time. So they’ll get unsettled again and ask to get back on the books. Swannie won’t have this. He’ll move them to other sites and eventually they’ll get out themselves. Until then, he’ll get more out of them for less. He’ll have this kind of deception down to a fine art. I told them he wants rid of them and to stick together whatever. Deaf ears.’
‘How long will you be away, sir?’
‘If I know GR – and I do, Ikey, I do – until the natives are purring.’
Harry climbed into his van and drove off to speak with Allan Crawford and receive his instructions. Ikey limped into Stores to pick up a brush. With Harry in Newtonmore for a few days, or weeks, the site would become that bit slacker. Just the same he would get on.
In the compound he worked with a perpetual smile, sweeping out the men’s hut and tidying the ground between. The troops did nothing for themselves in this way but it wasn’t that they were uncaring, only accustomed to it. Filth accumulated on the floors and litter around the huts because they didn’t have time except when they were rained off, and then everything was too wet to brush or lift or even shovel, the mud they trailed inside, the oilskins they peeled off, their hair and hands.
There were two toilets in the compound, a wooden shack for the troops, and for Mac, Trevor, John Kelly and Paul a portaloo. The difference between the two was marked. The three cludge bowls had no toilet seats. Strips of wet newspaper took the place of toilet paper. The u-bends were always blocked and the bowls always full. The portaloo was spotless and clean but never used. Whenever Mac or Trevor felt the call they would dri
ve to the Ness Hotel, but still the men never ventured into the portaloo. As a status barrier it was recognised and its purpose shifted to being a focus of discontent.
Ikey brought a space heater into the cludge and lit the gas. He raised a tin of barrier cream, a bucket and disinfectant from Stores. He went down on hands and knees among the pools of urine and the stink and set to deep cleaning the floors. One of the toilet bowls was brimming and floating with turds. He rolled up his sleeve and coated his arm with barrier cream to the shoulder. In to the elbow he felt around the u-bend and scooped at the soft faecal matter with his hand, in and back to make a suction until the blockage cleared and the water level dropped to his wrist. He cleaned inside the bowls and resolved to bring in toilet paper if only John Kelly would provide the money. He brushed out every corner and changed the only light bulb. When he was done the cludge was usable, no more than that.
Kelly on his way to the tanks excavation stopped to stare at him when he reappeared.
‘In there again?’
‘Cleaning it up as ordered, sir, as part of the compound.’
‘Look at the state of you. Get some of that swarfega and get yourself properly cleaned.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘3:30pm and the light’s near gone. There’s no working day this time of year.’
‘No sir.’
‘Let me take a look in there.’
Kelly stepped inside the cludge and came out again frowning.
‘All well, sir?’
‘Enjoy your work, Ikey?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘Well listen, don’t do this again. Not only is it too clean in there, it’s getting on to being warm and dry. It’s too comfortable.’
‘Sir?’
‘I don’t want the troops hanging about in there. Just keep the u-bend clear so it’s more or less usable.’
‘Can I use it now, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, Mr Kelly.’
Ikey returned inside the cludge and into one of the wooden cubicles. He hung his jacket behind the door and sat without dropping his trousers. From his jacket pocket he took his book and joined Raskolnikov in prison. Some people’s troubles, he reckoned, were worse than his own. At the start he thought he could identify with the man but now he thought otherwise, although he understood about keeping his own essential character within himself and secret.
With a place of his own on site, made comfortable and private and perfect for his own use, he would finish this chapter by going-home time. After he had given mother her dinner and done the washing up, he would join the Dostoyevsky Appreciation Group on the internet and discuss today’s reading. His fellow dreamers, some were educated people and some not, and some could see the shape of things to come while others never looked forward at all.
9
An executioner’s wind
Almost forty years away from Ireland John Kelly had not thought of home for at least thirty, not until now. Hands on hips by the A9 he was oblivious of traffic noise, his eyes ranging south and north along the Ross and Sutherland coastline – a rocky escarpment distinct with the quality of edge. It reminded him of Kerry. It had about it a familiar, isolating feel, a floating island that drifted into his life from time to time bearing different names, Alaska, Libya, Colonsay where he had worked on the new pier. It had been an itinerant, restless sort of life that had given him a tidy enough nest egg but little else, no family and few friends.
He reached down to the wooden peg by his foot and gave it a shake, working it round and round until he could pluck it from the ground and toss it to one side. Paul had placed it to mark the centre of the new collection chamber. From that and the two lines of pipe to set out the four sides of the cofferdam. Now its job was done and, that being so, it could go. Two massive concrete and steel frames stood beside the stack of steel sheet piles. A ladder with a rope tied to the top rung leaned against the compressor. Beside them again were the pile driver and four square timber beams he would use as guide rails. Beams, frames and compressor were all massive. On the other side of the dual carriageway another stack of steel piles lay waiting where the second chamber would go.
In the compound Conn had lowered his crane’s jib to the ground and was speaking to Paul while the fitters tightened up the extension. The piles were seven metres long, two metres to be driven below the bottom of the four metre deep excavation, a metre to stand proud of the surface and act as a barrier. The piles would have to be lifted their full length above the guide rails. This meant the top of the lift would go to about twelve metres. The pile driver was almost two metres long, hence the extension. Conn gunned the engine and, in a moment, the jib was up and the machine tracking slowly uphill.
Kelly nodded his head. They were about ready to start driving the cofferdam piles.
‘I hear Swannie’s thinking about tunnelling under the road,’ Conn said from his cab.
‘So Mac says,’ Paul agreed.
‘It’s going to be tunnelled all right,’ said John Kelly. ‘That’s for certain.’
‘Hear that, Paul? Swannie never moves without asking John.’
‘Otherwise this cofferdam’s twice the size it has to be. Four metres square with the walings in, not just the bare size of the chamber like on the Black Isle; that’s two, three men working down there with room for air hoses and scaffolding and whatnot. It’s decided.’
Conn waved his roll-up in the direction of the A9. ‘Why not shut one carriageway at a time and go in from the top? Do it in two halves as per usual. Move the traffic from one carriageway to the other.’
‘It’s to do with reinstating the road surfaces, according to Mac,’ said Paul. ‘Also the Roads people want least-disruption so there’s a time penalty built into the Contract. Swannie says they were trying to be clever and they’ve tripped up.’
‘He’ll have to shut a carriageway anyway,’ said Conn as an articulated lorry ground past, tyres flattening on the bitmac. ‘You can’t have beasts like that running over a working tunnel. They’ll stove the roof in. Tunnelling costs a fortune; makes no sense.’
‘Never mind,’ Kelly interrupted. ‘C’mon, let’s get these frames up.’
Conn moved his machine into position and turned the tracks from side to side beneath him, forming a flat area almost as a dog would lying down in a field. From here he would position the frames and lift the piles into place and drive them into the ground. An excavator would take the bulk of the earth from inside the cofferdam and the arisings shovelled into a skip.
Conn would work both machines, digging with the tracked excavator and lifting the skip in and out with the crane. If Swannie decided to tunnel he would skip for that too, and lift in the pipes. He would lift in the blinding concrete for the troops to work from and the bricks for the Chamber. Only then would the machine be free again. He wasn’t likely to stray for weeks. Occasionally he would get out and use a shovel. It was important to appear willing with Swannie and Mac around, but most of his time would be spent sitting and waiting.
He rolled another cigarette and looked down at Kelly. Never a big man, of late he had developed a stoop that made him seem quite small. The years of alternate soakings and burnings had eaten away at him. He had become forgetful too, but when he straightened his back you could see the strength that had been in him in youth.
‘You’re getting on in years, John,’ he shouted down.
‘Never mind that, you ignorant Paddy. Just swing your jib over here till we get these frames in place.’
Concrete blocks a metre wide and almost as deep gave the piling frames stability against the weight of knock they were likely to take. Two steel I-beams stood upright from each block with between them, top and bottom, two cross pieces. With the frames in place and the timber beams spanning the width to kept the piles in place John Kelly would be required to drive his four lines of piles to closure round the square of the cofferdam, moving the set-up for each side. That meant working within a tolerance of 8mm. He
would work from right to left.
Conn lowered the chains from his jib so Kelly could wrap them around the top crosspiece of the first piling frame. ‘How come you’re doing this, John, and not one of Healey’s men?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be walking round the site making a nuisance of yourself?’
‘Swannie’s cutting corners,’ said Paul.
‘Never mind all that!’ said Kelly, lifting his hand in the air, slowly opening and closing his fist. ‘Stand back, Paul.’
Conn eased the lift handle back and the chains drew slowly upwards and tight against the heavy frame.
‘That’s it,’ said Kelly, still making his hand signal.
Gradually the frame was lifted upright and off the ground. It made a swing of about half a metre, no more.
‘Good man, Conn’. Kelly showed an open palm, halting the lift. ‘Now take her across easy like.’
Conn turned his cab on the machine’s tracks and lifted the jib to bring the frame in closer, slowly swinging it across to the marks Paul had made on the ground. Kelly made a turning, downwards gesture with his hand and the frame settled in position, looking like a crude guillotine. He put the ladder against the frame and climbed up to loosen the chains. In minutes the second frame was in place, looking at its companion across the width of the cofferdam.
Between them they wrapped the chains round the end of the first timber beam and Conn lifted it across to the frame. Carefully he placed one end on the lower crosspiece and they shifted the chain and dragged it through to the second frame. Kelly shifted the chain round the upright and had Conn drag the beam through to the other side. By the time they repeated the process with the second beam half the morning was gone.
‘Tea!’ said John Kelly. ‘Fifteen minutes.’
Conn took their bags from his cab, leaned against the tracks of the machine and looked at Paul sitting beside Kelly on the block.
‘I wouldn’t sit on that cold concrete’ he said. ‘You’ll end up like him – piles down to the backs of your knees.’
‘They’re cured,’ said Kelly. ‘Willie Quinn whipped them off with a Stanley knife. The great thing was to do it quick.’
Site Works Page 10