As the pile came down John took it with his left hand, steadying the heavy sheet metal as he made his spiralling down gesture to Conn, guiding its bulbed edge above the receiving pile’s clutch. The two cut faces were shining all the more brightly, he noticed, after the rain – except for just a few black beads around the rim of the clutch. He made his open palm gesture and the descending pile halted in the air.
‘Can you see properly?’ Conn called up. ‘We could do with having the lights on.’
Without thinking Kelly moved his hand around the clutch to pick a few of the beads away. These were more stubborn. ‘Just a minute,’ he called.
‘What’s that, John? Will I get the lights on?’
‘I said just a minute!’
Paul, cold and tired and rapidly becoming more so, looked up from behind his instrument.
‘Can I put this away? Will we need it again?’
Engrossed with the beads of black smelt Kelly stood upright on the ladder to tug at them, moving his arm back and forward, pulling at them and, one last time, tugging.
Conn peered up through the machine’s rain speckled window at Kelly’s arm moving back and forward in the cutting gesture that meant ‘let go’. The movement looked impatient, urgent. He pushed the handle forward to release the lock on the hawser and the pile descended neatly into the receiving clutch where it met nothing that offered a moment’s resistance, nothing that remotely prevented it from running down between the guide beams.
Hhissshhhttt!
The sound drowned John Kelly’s cry that was more of despair than pain as his three severed fingers dropped on the other side, and rolled into the narrow space between the driven piles and the ground they had opened and were lost, the fourth pile quivering and shaking as he reeled from the ladder and fell.
10
The phone like a gun to his ear
Ikey pulled up the site van between the Struie Pumping Chamber excavation and the Resident Engineer’s hut. Less deep than the two A9 chambers Trots and Jinky were shoring up the sides with trench sheets, propping the sheets with metal frames top and bottom. He peered down at the tops of their heads. Holding a metre long spanner between them they cranked the frames into position and tightened the box into shape.
‘Cigarettes, sweets, newspapers wanted, sirs?’
‘Don’t give us that ‘‘sir’’ stuff,’ Trots said. ‘You’re a working man, not just an ugly wee monkey. Show some dignity.’
‘Dignity, sir? Not me, sir. Want anything from Brora? I’m going there after I wash the RE’s floor.’
Jinky unbuttoned the top of his boiler suit and rolled it down. From the back pocket of his jeans he took a small leather purse and from that some change. The change he rolled in a handkerchief and tossed up to Ikey.
‘Fag papers.’
‘That all, sir?’
Silence.
Ikey took a brush and shovel from the back of the van and poked his head round the door of the RE’s hut. Allan was seated at his desk, the phone pressed to his ear like a gun. His eyes were distant with concentration and anxiety.
‘Sir?’
No response. Ikey entered and began to brush.
‘Mac went this morning,’ Allan said to the phone, ‘after Health and Safety left. That’s right, down the road. Kelly broke every safety rule in the book but he’s paid the price. It looks like Mac will be held culpable as well.’
Silence.
‘… and a broken hip from the fall. Yes, expensive errors.’
Silence.
‘No Vernon, it won’t. What’s GR saying; furious?’
Ikey brushed out the four corners of the hut and dropped to his knees to reach under Allan’s desk. He gathered the dust and dried mud to the centre of the floor and scooped it onto the shovel, took it to the door and dropped it to the ground outside.
‘Watch that!’
Trots wasn’t as angry as he sounded. Leaning against the site van he was taking tea from a flask, eating a roll. Jinky was rummaging in his bag, eventually finding his flask.
Ikey took a bucket from the back of the van and filled it from the urn of hot water he had topped up at the compound and dropped in a wet cloth. A second cloth he draped over his shoulder. Again he knocked the door and poked his head round.
Allan was still behind his desk, listening. His head was down and his free hand stroking the top of the desk was trembling.
Ikey squirted washing-up liquid into the bucket and again went down on hands and knees. He took the cloth at the bottom of the bucket in both hands and leaned back and forward, persuading the mix to foam. Starting from the two corners behind Allan he dipped and scrubbed with the cloth, pulled the remaining grit towards himself and made sure it was all lifted in the cloth and then floated off and left in the bucket. He worked in circles, making them larger as he leaned back and forth, moving along, joining them to cover the whole floor within his reach.
‘James sent Mac to the Black Isle job, what’s left of it. That’s right, a non-job, a temporary arrangement. Mac himself reckons he’ll be sacked. Meanwhile James has stationed himself here in the Agent’s hut. Yes, Trevor is acting Site Agent and they are going to manage the site themselves until something gets sorted out. New people on the way.’
Silence.
‘Yes, James still has to be away a lot.’
By the time Ikey reached the centre of the floor the water in his bucket had turned a flat murky grey. He went outside and poured it onto the river bank, rinsed his cloth and refilled from the urn. Jinky was straddling the trench sheets and reaching with his foot for the top rung of the downside ladder.
Back in the hut and once again on his knees Ikey listened to the RE with one ear, only half wanting to know. He began at the remaining two corners, leaning on the cloth and drawing it back and forth. From the corner of one eye he watched Allan flicking through the Contract Document as he spoke.
Silence.
‘The two cofferdams are ready now,’ Allan said to the phone. ‘The tunnellers arrive the day after tomorrow. Yes, traffic plans have gone past Roads and Police.’
Silence.
‘No full time General Foreman for the present. Any sign of Harry coming back from Newtonmore?’
However Vernon Street replied Allan paled at it. ‘The cables?’ he asked. ‘They’re going to support them. That’s all they’ve said. They’re leaving it to the tunnellers. There’s no more detail.’
Silence.
‘To a fine art, Vernon. Yes, as we say.’
Silence.
‘Okay, I’ll find out.’
Ikey finished washing the floor as Allan hung up. He took the bucket of dirty water to the door and looked at the RE. Allan looked past him blankly, stunned.
‘Couldn’t speak while you were on the phone, sir. Mr Williamson says he has the line pegs re-est … re-estab …’
‘Re-established.’
‘On the line of the pipe, sir. On the hill, sir. Can you check it, sir.’
‘Check it?’
‘At least take a look, sir.’
Allan looked through the eyes of a frightened child and nodded slowly.
‘Anything from Brora, sir? I’m going there now.’
The Resident Engineer did not reply. Lost within himself, he looked like one who would rather be anywhere but here, who wished that the time was any time but now. Slowly his head descended into his hands.
Trots was still topside when Ikey came out. He took the bucket from him and cast its contents down the river bank.
‘Get them to give to give you a mop,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be on your knees for any man.’
‘Wasn’t, Mr Trots, except to scrub the floor.’
On the drive south he reflected on how things could be worse. He could move around in his head better than most, if not so well in his body. Like Raskolnikov in Saint Petersburg, like Mr Crawford in his contract and John Kelly in hospital, or for that matter like Trots in his beliefs, he could be a slave to the decisions
of others and his own nature and trapped.
11
What we think about when we can’t straighten
Beside the busy A9 Paul stood with the head of the Tunnel Gang, Eamon Bowles. The nearside lane had been coned off for the width of the drainage channel, and signs laid out for scores of metres to the north. Still the southbound traffic thundered past with undiminished speed, cars and vans and huge articulated lorries carrying livestock out of Caithness bound for the slaughterhouses of the south, cod and haddock from the remnant fishing industry and dry goods from whatever ships had berthed at Scrabster. Eamon, a man no higher than Paul himself and not much broader, had a powerful, mostly silent presence. Of this Conn had warned.
‘The strongest men you’ll ever come across. There’s lots think it’s the big boys, the muscle men that can tear telephone books in two. Most see past all that and say it’s the whippet types with pound for pound leverage that leaves the big boys far behind although it can’t touch their sheer physical power. Both wrong. These men are neither big nor small but when you look close you’ll see there’s no excess flesh or excessive leanness. It’s not even hardness, or toughness, not as you would think of them. It’s a tightness they have, especially across the shoulders and the front of the chest and in the thighs. It seems to hold them together. And they come as a type; don’t speak much. It’s the noise. Tunnelling doesn’t lend itself to conversation so they hold their thoughts in.’
Paul looked down the road embankment at Conn in the cabin of his machine beside the completed cofferdam. The square had closed neatly along the top and below, where the ancient piles Swannie had supplied had come apart, there was water peeing in although the clutches were welded as far down as possible. The flow of water that couldn’t be shut off was at least ‘controlled’. The base was blinded with a massive 10cm thickness of concrete with a sump hole cast in and channels running to it. From the sump the water was lifted and cast into the burn by a 4’ diaphragm pump. A relic, Willie Quinn said, of that ‘big pyramid job in Egypt’. The cofferdam on the other side of the road, at the foot of the hill, was also complete but dry. Conn raised a hand in salute and went back to his Daily Record and his roll up.
At their feet, Paul’s and Eamon’s, two of the tunnel gang were busy with shovels, up to their hips in a track of their own digging. They had exposed the four concrete surrounded ducts that ran along the verge, two for communications, one for power and the other spare, for a metre on either side of the centre mark Paul had given them by chalking the kerb. The track was 3.2 metres in length to allow for the 60cm concrete pipe and its 30cm drymix bedding all round, the width of the tunnel with an additional metre to either side. They looked down now at it together. It seemed more organic than manufactured, Paul thought, part of the great beast they served. The RE appeared beside them.
‘Yo ho, Allan,’ said Paul.
Eamon looked to neither left nor right but kept his eyes and his counsel for the men in the ground.
Allan’s eyes went continually to the traffic, back and forward from the trench, as if he might be tempted by some inner demon to step into its flow.
‘I have your sketch,’ he said, taking from his pocket an A4 sheet with the tunnel drawn in cross section, the ducts above it with their wooden support system, and the kerb. Eamon hunkered down to speak quietly to the men in the ground, so they could hear him against the traffic noise.
‘Take out another 25cm either side. Just that depth,’ he said, holding his thumb and forefinger apart. ‘We’ll put a longer length on the underside of the cable and that will be more support.’
‘Excuse me, the drawing doesn’t show that,’ said Allan.
Eamon stepped down the slope of the verge and lifted the first two wooden slats that would be placed top and bottom under the ducts, and the metal bander that would be used to tie them together. He handed both down for the troops to tie into place with string.
‘Excuse me,’ said Allan, ‘that’s additional to the drawing.’
‘Now this longer piece,’ said Eamon. ‘Up here on the surface. We’ll peg it down later.’
He handed down the bander for the men to secure, first, the top and bottom protection, then all three to the top piece that spanned the trench and a metre to either side to support it.
‘Give it a shake,’ he said. ‘That’s not going anywhere.’ He straightened. ‘Right Paul, show me the notches you’ve made on the piles. Gerry and Mike, come down the slope behind us. Take a breather there.’
At the cofferdam Allan stood in a silence that matched the tunnellers’ own and watched while Paul took Eamon to the upstream side of the cofferdam.
‘Here,’ said Paul, pointing to a nick he had made in the pile top, the pile standing a metre above the ground and making a sort of barrier to the excavation.
Eamon ran his finger across the top of the pile, lingering on the nick as if to be sure it was really there, as if feeling was the only reliable sense.
‘And here.’
This was on the downstream side near where the acetylene and oxygen bottles and the rest of the burning gear had been left. On the other side of the cofferdam stood the generator and lights. Beside them was the compressor and beside the compressor the breakers and coiled air bags, the bogie and rails, and a pile of stacked railway sleepers already cut to length. Below both nicks the welder had blown a small circular hole in the piles.
‘How many times did you check the line?’
Eamon asked this question with his eyes looking beyond the nick, over the piles and down at the narrow, two-stage scaffolding and ladders that descended to the cofferdam base four metres below.
‘Twice from this side, then again from high up on the hill with the laser.’
‘I checked it from the hill side,’ said Allan.
‘Both cofferdams?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the four nicks are a perfect line? This is important.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘Yes,’ said Allan.
‘The level nails down below? You’ve checked them as well?’
‘Same number of times,’ said Paul.
‘You didn’t cheat and do it together?’
Allan folded the sketch he still held in his hand, put it in his pocket and walked away.
‘No,’ said Paul. ‘We didn’t cheat.’
‘Okay. You can leave now. Come back in about an hour with the welder. He can start burning then.’
When Paul was gone Eamon lifted his satchel from where it lay on top of the sleepers and took out a roll of piano wire. He passed one end through the hole that had been burned beneath the nearest notch and tied it over the top of the pile. Making sure it passed through the notch he walked around the cofferdam and performed the same operation on the upstream side, pulling the wire tight with hands toughened by more than thirty years of labour and hard weather. Although he couldn’t work the Face any more, his back long done for, he could do all the rest. Tight he pulled it, tight, through the notches until it sang in the breeze. Then he took two more lengths from the bag, and two plumbobs to be hung front and back.
‘Gerry,’ he said. ‘Down we go. Mike, go back to the compound and help Tony and Pat set up the caravans.’
From the bottom of the excavation he looked at the water as it peed through a single open clutch half way down the piles. The flow was less now than it had been when he first saw it early in the morning, but still running along the channel to the sump where the pump rose sucked and spluttered on a mix of water and air. He held out his hand to take some in his cupped palm as it fell, tasted it and nodded.
‘Clean,’ he said. ‘Probably rain. We can use it for the tea. But what are we going to find when we go through the piles? Here, Paul, gimme a hand.’
Paul had cast into the blinding concrete wooden stobs and calculated from the design gradient of the pipeline the level of the pipe’s middle produced at those positions. He had placed his nails exactly half a metre above to allow Eamon to eye th
rough provided he took the piano wire around the tops of the nails and not the bottoms or, worse, one above and one below. Eamon stretched the next line of piano wire between the nails closest to where the opening would be and made it tight as he could but down here there was no breeze to make it sing. When he had done the same with the other he took his spirit level from the long pocket at his thigh and held it at the middle of each span in turn. The bubble was dead level on both wires.
‘Good man Paul,’ Eamon said to himself. ‘If you can do nothing else in life you can do this and you will have your bread.’
From his pocket he took a piece of chalk and handed it to Mike, signalling that he should go to the cofferdam wall where they would make their opening. He stood behind the furthest vertical line and closed one eye, finding with his monovision the other vertical and moving his head until the two wires made just the one line. He lifted his hand and Mike put the chalk against the piles and moved it back and forth until he put a mark on the piles that was in line with the two wires. Joining the two marks they had the vertical centre of their pipeline.
With this vital line on the piles Eamon put his eye behind the two horizontal wires and they put two more marks a metre to either side which was the pipeline’s horizontal centre. In this way they sketched a cross in chalk on the piles and from that they drew the square shape of the bedding that would surround the pipe and was the size of the tunnel opening. 1200mm square, a space to crouch in and break your back with the work but better that than lying on your gut in the mud. No kind of a space to be trapped in, it was the bare size they had to remove, to take out more for the sake of comfort was to increase the duration of their task greatly and that was to reduce their rate of pay since they were paid by the metre dug and secured.
On the lowest stage of the scaffolding they located their gas rings and kettle. Mike filled the kettle with ground water and they had tea in the last ten minutes before Paul came back with the welder.
Conn lowered the burning gear into the hole.
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