Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  Paul climbed off the block and took his tea standing.

  ‘Will you travel when you retire?’ asked Conn.

  Kelly shook his head. ‘I’ll work till I drop. What for would I retire? I’ve seen the world and the best of it’s here. The rest would freeze your bum off, or burn you to death. There’s places you have to carry a gun; other places they cut your finger off if you get the change wrong.’ He drew his thumbnail across the base of his pinky. ‘Listening, Paul? Don’t travel; stay here. Stick in at that college and stay here.’

  Every time Paul turned some older man was telling him to ‘stick in at college’.

  ‘Home then?’ Conn asked. ‘Back to Ireland?’

  ‘D’ye know the size of their minds over there? One time I went back, long ago, and I said something about the bombs that were going off in the North how it looks different from out of Ireland. I said there must be other ways. When I went to pee two of them followed me and told me if that’s what I thought I should maybe go home. Home? One showed me …’

  ‘His prick?’

  ‘He took a gun out of his pocket. Can you imagine that – what it is to be shown a gun in that way?’

  ‘You’ve told me that story before. You could live in Dublin. You don’t have to go all the way back.’

  ‘What’s the point unless it’s all the way to Shannon, and who’s left there now? The men I knew are all dead and the women are as ugly as me. And what am I to the young ones? There’s a few Gods-Owns I’ve been, not many; places I’ve thought I could settle. This is maybe one. I think I could stay along the road there in Ness. It’s quiet. It’s like Ireland without the priests.’

  ‘You won’t go back to any of these places?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Never. D’ye hear me, Paul? Never go back. Mind though, when I’ve left these places there’s always a part of me stayed. This one will be no different,’

  ‘Don’t give us that sentimental ould Irish bejabers.’

  Kelly looked at his watch.

  ‘Time up!’ he said. ‘Back to work.’

  With the two top guide beams on their cross pieces Kelly leaned the ladder and climbed up and tied the top rung.

  Conn shouted up from beside the piles. ‘Shouldn’t we put the scaffolding up?’

  ‘Hsst,’ said Kelly. ‘I’ve done this a thousand times. The ladder will do. Now, Paul, get the first pile spoteroonie and all the rest will follow.’

  ‘Take a look at these.’ Conn was kneeling by the piles, picking red clay out of one of the clutches with a screwdriver. ‘They’ve been used a hundred times. No chance they’ll drive true.’

  Kelly looked down at the piles from the top of the ladder. They were old and rusted and hadn’t been cleaned when they left their last site. Swannie had bought them on the cheap. At least the ends, where driving had flattened them out and bent them, had been cut away. The centimetre wide steel shone silver and hard where the winter sun caught it.

  Conn ran his fingers along the cold edge, from the bulb of the male end to the receiving clutch at the other. From pile to pile, bulb would enter clutch and the wall of piles would stand strong and true, although not if the piles were twisted as these were. The cut edge was dead smooth except for a few black balls of smelt that came off to his fingers.

  ‘No matter,’ Kelly shouted down. ‘We’ll just have to do our best. I’ll speak to Mac. Maybe he can replace them. Now let’s get on.’

  ‘Mac can’t change anything,’ said Paul.

  They all knew the sub-text. Swannie wasn’t just being cheap. He was making life difficult.

  ‘Never mind all that,’ said Kelly. ‘Let’s get going.’

  Paul already had his theodolite up. He took a back sight on the offset peg he had established before and turned the instrument 180 degrees to the cofferdam. He looked past it on to the road and half way uphill to a peg on the wayleave. Everything looked right: the lines of his fences, his centre lines and profiles, his setting-out, all looked good.

  Conn climbed back into his cab and lowered the chains over the piles.

  Kelly passed the clamp bolt through the hole at the top of the first pile and screwed it tight. He lifted a thick wooden block and tucked half a dozen wedges under his arm and carried them to the top of the ladder and placed them on the wooden guide. Taking a nail from his pocket he looked down, his arm draped around the timber beam.

  Paul checked his line and sighted his instrument upwards, guiding the nail into position, indicating left and right with his hands.

  ‘Near enough!’ said John Kelly, making a scrape mark across the wood. He turned on the ladder to look at Conn.

  The driver fired up his engine and lifted the first pile off the ground, lifted it and moved it slowly through the air until it hung over the frame. As Kelly made his downward, turning gesture Conn eased the brake off the hawser and pushed his stick forward, braking again as the pile descended closer to Kelly, quickly responsive to the older man’s gestures, the opening and closing fist, the spiral down, the quickly opened palm that meant stop now. When the pile stood on the ground between the four beams Kelly indicated that Conn should lock the jib and come over.

  ‘Put your rule against the side of the pile for Paul to read,’ he said.

  Paul read Kelly’s rule at the top and Conn’s at the bottom.

  ‘It’s about right at the top, 15cm out at the bottom.’

  Kelly nailed a piece of timber across the top beams and had Conn lift the pile again. He climbed down and pushed the bottom end of the pile across until it was about right and made his spiral down gesture for the driver. When they checked the pile head again it was out, but not as much as the bottom end had been before. Five repeats of the process had the first pile sitting dead plumb in the correct position. Kelly pushed the block of wood into the belly of the pile and chocked it tight at the top.

  By the time he had it secure at the bottom as well, Conn had attached the pile driver and lifted it across. John Kelly climbed upwards and stepped off the ladder and on to the first beam, standing upright and unprotected as he reached to guide the huge mass on to the head of the pile, again turning his hand as Conn lowered it into place, now pushing with his shoulder to get it locked on to the pile edge.

  A gust of wind pushed against his back. He straightened and looked out to sea, counted four oil rigs, two of them flaring off gas. Beyond them clouds were gathering and rain was sweeping across the North Sea towards them. Below the compound, in the settlement tanks excavation, the troops had just finished pouring the first segment of the first tank base. The grip squad were gathering their tools and Healey’s men were working the top surface, levelling it with the backs of their shovels before taking the wooden and steel floats to it. An hour should see them through.

  He untied the ladder and climbed down to turn on the compressor. The hammer drove against the anvil, the anvil against the pile head – once – twice – and a deafening thang-thang-thang echoed from the hill opposite as the pile went in the first, the easiest metre. As Conn placed the piledriver back on the ground the first of the rain reached the site. Kelly looked at his watch.

  ‘Dinnertime,’ he said.

  They made it into the hut as the heavens opened.

  Paul cleared his drawings off the table and switched on the kettle. The electric fire had been left on as usual. Rain lashed against the window.

  ‘Know what they call that east wind,’ Kelly asked Paul, taking his seat.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The executioner’s wind, because it cuts right through you.’ He looked around. ‘This place is a midden but at least it’s warm.’

  ‘Ikey does his best.’ Paul made tea in the pot and poured for all three, not mentioning that John Kelly did nothing to keep the place liveable. ‘I’ll make more for the flasks,’ he said. ‘How’s progress, John? Frames up, first pile in. Good enough? Will Swannie be happy when he gets back?’

  ‘Good enough, but Swannie won’t be happy,’ said Kelly. He nodded at the window an
d the rain. ‘And that won’t help.’

  ‘Especially if it freezes on the ladder – or on the beams,’ said Conn. ‘Mr Swann wouldn’t want John to fall off, Paul. It could mean a serious delay.’

  No matter,’ said Kelly. ‘When did you last check the hawser? It’s frayed where it’s attached to the clamp.’

  ‘All the checks are done. Harry looks at the papers every week. He’s not good for much, but he does that.’

  ‘We don’t want the pile driver to fall, or one of the piles. It could cut young Paul here clean in two.’

  ‘C’mon,’ said Paul.

  ‘Except it wouldn’t be clean.’

  ‘Aw!’

  ‘Don’t think accidents can’t happen, son,’ said Kelly. ‘There’s things I’ve seen would curl your hair.’

  ‘Don’t call me son.’

  ‘One time I was working in London,’ said Conn. ‘You know these tower cranes? Seen one yet?’

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘Like a big letter ‘T,’ tall as hell. The cross on the ‘T’ has a long arm, that’s the jib, and a short arm, that the counterweights slide back and forward on – big concrete blocks, big as this room.’

  ‘The most dangerous plant on the site,’ said John Kelly.

  ‘Especially when they’re being dismantled. The counterweights have to be moved back and forward to suit the length of the jib. What happens is the jib comes away in pieces so you have to be careful with the blocks. You have to watch how they’re moving against the downward pull of the load over at the other end. It’s a constant balancing act.’

  Both hands round his mug of tea for the warmth Paul stood and listened.

  ‘This day I was in the cabin with the fitter out on the jib undoing the bolts when, all of a sudden, the end of the thing fell clean away. The fitter went with it – killed. I was thrown back in my seat. Looking at the sky I thought I was for a quick cheerio as well. The weights ran along the lever arm and shot off into space and, next thing, the cab flipped over and I was looking at the ground, near sick with the fright. They had to talk me down.’

  Conn had the floor. He drank slowly and opened the paper.

  ‘Tell him the rest,’ said Kelly.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Paul said.

  ‘What people down below saw was two concrete blocks like two cabins, and it looked like they were hovering in the air.’ Conn looked up at the roof of the hut. ‘Yes, it looked like they were just hung there like two balloons. Then all of a sudden they got bigger and down they came on the site. Whoom!’

  ‘Anybody hurt?’

  ‘I don’t like to say.’

  ‘C’mon.’

  ‘There was this steelfixer working below. Somebody called out and he stood up saying ‘what?’ and suddenly there was this huge concrete block where he used to be – drove him into the ground like a nail. The paramedics had to take a week off.’

  ‘Tell him the rest,’ said Kelly. ‘He has to know these things.’

  ‘He has to sleep at night, John.’

  ‘Don’t leave me hanging,’ Paul said.

  Conn continued reluctantly.

  ‘One of the setting-out engineers came across his fingers.’

  ‘His fingers?’

  ‘Four of them.’ Conn held out the four fingers of his right hand, thumb tucked behind the palm. ‘The edge of the block must have come down across the knuckles. The shock threw them half way across the site.’

  Paul was conscious his mouth was open.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what he did. He put his foot on them and turned them into the ground and as far as I know they’re under that building now.’

  ‘C’mon!’

  ‘What should he have done?’ asked Kelly. ‘Put them in a fag packet and taken them to the widow? ‘‘Here missus, have one of these.’’ Listen, I’ll tell you another.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘There’s more all right. I was concrete ganger on this bridge in Glasgow, years ago. We were pouring the columns that were to hold it up. I can see the Clerk of Works now; finicky type, looked like a dead body heated in an oven. I remember he had a smile like a dog’s. What was his name? We used always give him something to find, steel not tied, a wrong bar near the top where we could get at it. He’d go away happy and we’d get on with the pour.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘This time we dropped a fag packet between the steel and the formwork. When he spotted it we sent the nipper down and he went away and we got on.’

  ‘A nipper? Like Ikey?’

  ‘Just like Ikey, but no one thought to check he’d come out again before we poured. Next day we stripped the shutter and, by God, there were the backs of his nails and knuckles, flush with the concrete down at the bottom – three of them. He must have crouched down and got them through the steel to get at the fag packet and got stuck. His ring will have caught in the tying wire. He must have been shouting up to us when we were pouring. Pulling away at his trapped fingers and shouting.’

  ‘What a terrible, terrible end,’ said Conn.

  ‘What did you do?’ Paul asked.

  ‘You haven’t heard the worst yet,’ said Conn. ‘You’d better tell him, John.’

  ‘I don’t know if I should.’

  ‘You said yourself, he has to learn.’

  ‘We were staring at the fingers,’ John Kelly continued, ‘when they started to move. Not much at first, but then they started to wiggle and straighten out from the concrete, slow as you like. It was as if he was still alive in there and begging us to get him out. I tell you my blood ran cold. One of the labourers started to cry.’

  ‘He’d be dead,’ said Paul. ‘It would be nerves.’

  ‘My God boy, I hope you’re right.’

  ‘How did you get him out?’

  ‘Taking that column down would have held us up for a week. No, I got the cement finisher to lop off the fingers with the edge of his trowel, one – two – three, and fake the wall up with grout. He’d no family, poor man. No one ever asked.’

  Paul stared at the lumps of dried mud scattered across the floor of the hut.

  ‘Looks like the rain’s easing,’ said Conn.

  Cold rain had filled the ruts in the compound with puddles, some shallow, some deeper than the leg of a Wellington boot, gleaming drops distended from the fence. The wind had gone but somehow the air seemed even colder. Kelly beat on the men’s door with his fist.

  ‘Out!’ he shouted. ‘Back at it!’

  JB was first into the light, Trots last, trowels in hand.

  ‘Joiners, get some kind of tarpaulin rigged over the base so Healey’s men can finish it off. Boys, what you’ve done will be all speckled with rain. Go over it all again.’

  One by one, and with different levels of reluctance, the men picked their way through the mud back to their jobs.

  John Kelly stood close to the top of the ladder again, one arm draped around the top beam, as he guided the bulb edge of the second pile over the clutch of the first. He held out his free hand, shaking it to the left and right to direct Conn and his jib. Rain had made the beam slippery. For balance he held the first pile that much tighter, leaning his shoulder against it. The executioner’s wind cut into him.

  When the second pile was in position he took the edge in his left hand to make the final, slight, adjustment. Whatever condition the rest of the pile was in the end cuts had been done to perfection. The steel across the centimetre thickness shone as if new, except where the little black balls of smelt had formed at the edges. Not that it mattered, but he ran his hand across the smoothness to pick a few of them away before giving his downward spiral to Conn. The pile lowered slowly until it was engaged, then still slower until it was past the first beam. Kelly made a quick horizontal cutting gesture with his arm and Conn let the pile drop, running metal against metal – hissshhhhttt! – to the ground.

  Paul checked the line and Kelly and Conn, between them, shif
ted and chocked and wedged the pile into position.

  John Kelly moved the ladder, again tying the top rung to the beam, and waited for the third pile to steady above his head. Again he reached up and took its edge in his hand and directed it into position and again – hissshhhttt! – the bulb slid down the receiving clutch to the ground.

  Kelly unbolted the clamp and, without descending, indicated Conn should attach the pile driver. He waited for it to swing over the piles and climbed back up on to the beam. Grasping the machine he looked down between his legs at the lower beams. His eyes refocused on the ground still further below and he felt his head spin. He gripped the frame to steady himself and looked round at the churned wayleave on the hill across the road. It was soaked and ripped beyond redemption and now subjected to more torrential rain.

  The two piles were hammered down their first metre and Paul looked from John shifting his ladder, to Conn in his machine, to the men working below them on the settlement tanks and, for the first time, felt part of something greater than himself. The Contract had its difficulties, externals like weather, like traffic controls, and internals like Swannie’s workings against both the Engineer and his own staff, and the tensions between the men, but he felt part of it. It was something like a family, something like a team or an army, but not quite any of these things. He wanted it to work. When the job was complete he wanted it to be good. Today it had become more than just a job.

  Now the day was wearing on and the light beginning to go. With the worst of the rain blown past the temperature dropped. The wind continued, ice formed in the ground ruts and the sky began to darken. Conn lowered the piling hammer and released it to fit the clamp to the next pile. Unlike Kelly he could not see any sign of wear in the hawser. He climbed back into the heated cab and away from the cutting wind.

  ‘Watch yourself when you’re up there,’ he shouted.

  ‘I’ve been doing this since you were driving a pedal car.’

  Conn lifted the pile and swung it slowly across and above where John Kelly clung shivering to his ladder, one arm draped across the beam.