‘There,’ said Eamon, pointing at where his first two lines crossed. ‘About an inch.’
The welder pulled his mask down over his eyes and turned on his two gas bottles, lighting the mix into a puff of loose flame at the point of the burner. Turning the tap he altered the mix and the pressure and the flame hardened into a straight line first red and then blue and roaring. This he put to the chalk mark and held it as the steel reddened and turned to liquid, dripping and running and hardening again down the face of the pile. A spout of water jetted from the newly cut hole and fell on the blinding concrete to run into the channel and be sucked away by the rose-like intake of the thirsty pump. Within a minute the stream lessened like a small boy’s stream of urine and came to an end.
‘Local then, not the water table,’ said Eamon.
‘Couldn’t be,’ said Paul and Eamon looked at him silently, informing him in that way about the difference in what should be and what proved to be and the need to test when it is your own life under consideration. Also silently informing him that now in his life was the time to learn.
‘Now welder, cut the piles along the lines given.’
The welder held the hard flame steady against the chalk line until the steel pile started weeping molten metal and then cut slowly along the four 1200mm lines. When the metal square fell away they hooked it to Conn’s cable and stood within the scaffolding until he had lifted it clear above them and placed it by the generator to be taken away eventually, whenever. Now the earth lay open before them in the corrugated shape of the outside face of the piles, four metres below ground level at this point and with the road rising two metres above that, a dry glacial till studded with boulders that had been rounded by the very sea that stood behind them and that answered to the same tidal pull those many thousands of years ago as it did now. The face of it was wet with water running down the outside of the piles and that spilled onto the concrete floor from the younger, softer material sitting on the till and that held the rain.
What they called that visible section of ancient ground from this time on was the Face. Even as it receded before their efforts and travelled under the road, the Face.
The welder left them and Conn lifted his burning gear away, replacing it with the small skip they would remove all the arisings from the tunnel. With the skip and in it was the pneumatic breaker. Conn threw down the air hose for Mike to connect and, when that was done and the broad bit secured in its place, turned on the compressor. Paul watched Mike’s ease with the weight and bulk of the breaker knowing that he, Paul, could only lift it with a great effort.
Mike hefted it and gunned it and, at Eamon’s nod, put it to the Face with his hip pressed behind it and all his weight. When he pulled the trigger the cofferdam filled with sound and his body shook, his whole body from his boots up. The bit sank in to half its length and he levered the breaker up and down until the first chunk of till fell away.
‘Hard digging,’ Eamon said to himself. ‘Nor will it get any easier.’
He signalled upwards to wave Tony down and soon the younger man was shovelling the broken lumps into the skip with Eamon at his shoulder.
‘Are Gerry and Brian here yet?’ Eamon pronounced the second name ‘Bree-on’.
‘Just arrived. They’re setting up the second caravan now. Should be ready for the shift change at 6:00pm. Patsy and Deek won’t be here until about midnight.’
‘Pf.’
‘Don’t look that way, Eamon.’
‘You know Deek. Drink?’
‘He’s with Patsy. They’ll be okay.’
‘They’d better,’ Eamon told him. ‘Paul! Upsides.’
At ground level the compressor was roaring alongside the echo of the breaker as it reverberated up the metal piles and up again still further into the cold air.
‘Come further away,’ said Eamon.
They stood at the toe of the road slope where they could hear each other speak.
‘You know what’s happening?’
‘24 hour working in three eight-hour shifts. We put all the traffic onto the northbound carriageway and fourteen metres takes us to the middle of the central verge. Then we lay the pipes back the way and concrete them in and close the tunnel this side. We change the traffic over and go in from the other side and meet in the middle.’
‘That’s how important your work is. Think if we don’t meet in the middle, or if we come in six inches low.’
‘We won’t.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay. Tell Swannie to get the traffic across on the other side now, today, this minute. We’ll be here,’ he pointed at their feet, ‘in two days.’
Depth of winter, 4:30pm, and the floodlights were filling the cofferdam with light far brighter than day. The rest of the site was pitch dark but for these lights and those in Conn’s cab and in the Agent’s hut where Trevor was working on the next valuation. Paul had spoken to him about the traffic diversion and Trevor had activated the plan with the Roads Department right away. The adverts had been placed weeks before and all permissions arranged to allow them this suddenness. Only then had he called Swannie and that way shown both Paul and himself that he would have more freedom in his actions than Mac. The clock rolled round to 6:00pm with no change other than the clouds that alternately hid and revealed the stars and blackened the sea.
Paul and Eamon looked down into the cofferdam at Mike and Tony working the Face. They were half a metre in and Tony was still able to stand to work the breaker but his face was against the piles now, and his whole body juddered with the vibration of the heavy machine.
‘Make sure they know,’ Eamon told Paul. ‘I made my deal with the other fellow and I don’t like this change. We will work three eight-hour shifts changing at 2:00am, 10am and 6:00pm. That way we’ll avoid the rest of the starts and finishes. There’ll be no more than two days notice for shifting the traffic onto the southbound lane. He has to make that okay with the Roads Department and the police and all the rest else we’ll be held up and that’s more cost. Understand?’
‘I do.’
‘You here full time?’
‘Yes, if a nail gets knocked out or whatever I can put it back. And I’ve to take notes, changes in ground conditions, accidents, whatever happens.’
‘Ground conditions? You know that’s the name of the game? Swannie will want to know all about changes in ground conditions all right so he can hit the Engineer with one of these contractual claims he is so expert in. That’s how he’ll make this job pay.’
They held their heads close together against the sound of the compressor.
‘And tell Trevor he’s to keep an eye on that pile of cut sleepers. There’s no telling but we might have to use extra and if we run out we’re stopped and that’s more delay as well. He’s to make sure there’s always plenty.’
‘The RE wants you to take the sleepers out before you concrete round the pipe,’ said Paul. ‘He says if you don’t they’ll rot and create a void.’
‘Then he’s more stupid than he looks. You tell him that. Look though, temperature’s dropping. There’s ice forming on the puddles.’
Ice on the puddles, and steam rose out of the cofferdams from the men’s sweat and from their breath. Like horses, Paul thought, but wouldn’t say. They’re beasts of burden, he thought where do their minds go while they work: Mike’s as his body was battered by its hard push against the breaker, Tony’s as he shovelled and brushed the concrete base clean, the two of them silent and purposeful.
Below them Tony hooked Conn’s chains to the full skip and clenched and unclenched his fist until Conn had taken up the slack. When the chains were tight he signalled for the lift and climbed the scaffolding until he was on the surface to tip the skip onto the pile of arisings growing by the cofferdam, the grey earth and the round boulders.
Downside again Tony helped land the skip and unhook the chains and waved in more or less dismissive fashion that Conn should lift the chain
s away. Mike had stopped work, leaning against the piles while he wiped the sweat from his eyes, his face tense and worried.
‘You’ve not to think about it,’ Tony told him. ‘I know it’s not easy but you’ll hurt yourself. Besides, it might not be what you think. She might …’
‘Of course she …’ Mike said. ‘Work is best. I’ll get on; nothing else for it. Look you, it’s time to get bent down and inside the tunnel. I can’t get a bite on the Face any more, not from this angle.’
‘Will I take over with the breaker? You’ve done your hour.’
‘No.’
They shifted the bit and the air hose across to the small breaker and Mike got down on his knees. Feeling his jeans tight across his thighs, his shirt tight across aching shoulders he edged in under the piles to look at the shape of the unsupported void he had made in the till. It was clean enough and hard, safe ground.
What was it Eamon said about ‘safe ground’? Men got killed in it. No one was ever killed in unsafe ground. Meaning you only got into it if you thought it was safe, or if you didn’t think at all.
He put the bit against the Face and his shoulder against the rear end of the breaker and pulled the trigger. His head shook on its stalk until he tensed his sinews like a body builder and leaned even harder.
Safe ground is what I thought I was on with her, he thought, remembering her voice as it was the first time he heard it. Just off the boat, a horse of a man and proud of it, what he didn’t understand was how ignorant he was of the ways of the world and of women. Was it possible for him to believe, he wondered now, that when she did what she did that night he wasn’t the first? So ignorant was he then, he didn’t even have the frame of reference within which to consider such things. He did now though, and a wider reference beyond that. The boy though, how would he relate? Where would he be in his son’s life? He would have no say. He’d gone along without a word of dissent. He should have married her. No, he shouldn’t. It would have been a disaster, but he would have had rights.
They were getting beyond the first metre, hollowing it out. It was beginning to look like a cave. What had Eamon said? He was to look out for something. No matter. He leaned all the harder until the bit jumped across the face of a boulder and into the hard compressed silt that time and pressure had turned near to stone. Like her heart, he thought, the family running back into generations of uncaring people and the weight of time exerting this intolerable pressure to be like them. The mass of it, the gravity, she would be helpless against it and as unknowing of any wider reference as he was that day they met. Why, she wasn’t responsible at all! Not she. It was history that did it. Deek would say it was the system behind it all. It would come down to the bosses and the class system.
He slung the breaker behind him and away and felt the relief not so much in his shoulders and arms as in the small of his back. Another thing Eamon said; five years to learn, six years to harden, seven years to make your money before your back goes. Make sure you don’t squander it, Eamon said. Not on drink, not on horses, not on women. There’s men can make it grow for you, and there’s women can run it into the sand especially if first they’ve staked your heart to the ground with a child.
That’s what he had to look out for, sand.
Worse would be sand and water mixed.
He reached for the clay spade where it leaned against the piles.
Why call him ‘William’? He had conceded that without thinking. Now he remembered the way she and her parents had looked at each other when he suggested ‘Dermot,’ his father’s name, and ‘Michael,’ his own.
Tony took hold of his shirt, pulling it. ‘I’ll do that. Let me do that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll finish.’
The clay spade was of Eamon’s making. He had taken the shaft from the blade and cut it to half its length and asked the welder to burn the edges of the blade away to only half the width. So now it could be used when you were on your knees with the walls holding you in and the roof so low it had you doubled over even then. With this spade he scraped the base of the first metre clear of lumps and stones and tossed them behind him for Tony to shovel into the skip and now in his head there arose the memory of her coming home in the morning looking like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. How could he not have known she did it for money? That however much he made it would not be enough? Drink and that other stuff she took were more to her than him and the kid together.
Her parents were no better.
The floor of the tunnel and the walls and roof were smooth and hard and unyielding except at the Face, but he’d had enough. He put the spade against the wall and crawled in and turned and sat with his back to the Face with his own face in his hands.
As though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, that’s how she looked when she came home after staying out all night.
He worked all day and looked after William while she went out and fucked for money, and he, poor clown, believed she needed to get out after being in all day and that he it was had the easier time. Poor clown? He had asked for it and, by Christ, she made sure he got it. Now he had to pay. Now he had to pay near every penny and no recourse to anything because he didn’t marry.
There was always death. No, don’t think that way.
Ho! There’s a laugh, even death was a no go because of William and William was the knife she stabbed him in the heart with. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick but then there was a hand gripping his trouser leg and shaking it. He looked up and this time it was Eamon down on his hunkers looking at him, his whole body bathed in the white light of the floods. He was like an icon framed in the 1200mm square opening, a statue on a church windowsill, and his eyes were blue as Christ’s and old beyond belief for a man not yet fifty.
‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Get out of that hole. You’re taking too much on. This is your life, boy. If you want to survive you have to share it. When Tony says it’s time for him to go inside you’ve to let him. You’ve to come out while it’s his turn. Look at you burning yourself out. There’s a hole appearing right through your middle I can see through. Hear me? Out!’
Mike crawled silently out of his cave and stood up, his weightless head whirling under the lights.
‘Bring the sleepers over,’ Eamon told him. ‘It’s midnight almost. We’ll frame up and be ready for Gerry and Brian at 2:00am.’
The sleepers had already been cut to length and sections of marine ply nailed into place and the centre marked with a pencil by Paul. Mike put the first of them down on the floor of the tunnel outside the cofferdam, hard against the piles, while Eamon went upsides to slowly lower the plumbs. When they had ceased their swing he sighted through them and centred this first sleeper.
‘Now the verticals.’
Mike sat inside with the first vertical sleeper, toeing it behind the horizontal, leaning it against the wall, repeating this on the other side with the third. The fourth sleeper went on top, all of them spaced by lengths of marine ply that had already been tacked in place. Finally Eamon had him stitch the corners together with single six-inch nails. ‘Just to hold them.’
With a tape measure and a nail Eamon marked the next location one metre into the hole and they went through the exercise again, the two frames sitting one behind the other in progressive symmetry. ‘Now the six by twos.’
Tony brought them over from the scaffolding in pairs and backed into the hole on his seat to take them one at a time from Mike and feed them between the frames. Neither the sides nor the roof were visible now, only the floor. It was ceasing to be a cave, becoming a tunnel, a sort of home for them.
‘Now the wedges.’
Tony took the wooden wedges one by one from Mike and pushed them between the frame and each of the planks, pushing the planks hard against the wounded till. He nailed them into place.
‘Ten minutes to spare,’ said Eamon, checking his watch. ‘Now tea.’ He took the boiling kettle from its ring and dropped in two tea bags and gave
it a minute and poured.
‘You’re done in,’ he said to Tony. ‘You were swaying when you came out.’
‘I know it.’
‘Mind where your head goes when you’re in there, the bad things can easy take over.’
‘I know it.’
‘Don’t just fall into your sleeping bag when you get into the big caravan. See you eat. Tony, will you cook? For you both I mean.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘I don’t need any help,’ said Mike.
‘Ah, let Tony cook. He won’t poison you.’
‘Yo ho,’ Gerry shouted from the top of the scaffolding. ‘You’se can beat it now. The real workers are here.’
‘And remember,’ Eamon said, ‘it’s freezing up there. Don’t mess about, get straight inside and fed and into bed. You’re on again at 2:00pm and the time will pass,’ he snapped his fingers, ‘like that.’
As though to make a liar of him Gerry arrived at the base of the cofferdam wearing only a thin Celtic replica top and no donkey jacket.
‘Far we on?’ he asked, looking into the tunnel. ‘Well, that’s a start.’
Mike and Tony climbed topsides and Brian came down. He and Gerry were a pair, Brian broad and sturdy and the older of the two at about thirty. Gerry was 22 and lean under his Celtic top, his red hair cropped close in to the wood, a tiny frown locked permanently between his eyebrows. He pulled the top off over his head and threw it onto the scaffolding to reveal an upper body that was lean and hard and had the muscle definition of an athlete. He ducked down and into the tunnel, his crucifix dangling and his tattoos catching the light, the Sacred Heart, the shamrock and the huge Celtic cross across his shoulder blades.
‘Put the plugs in your ears,’ Eamon shouted. ‘D’ye want deafened.’
The roar of the breaker began and Gerry’s doubled over body vibrated in the tunnel like a tuning fork. After half an hour he was shovelling out the broken till.
‘Not worthwhile,’ said Eamon, looking at working space, depth of penetration, ‘putting the rails down until the next frame goes up. That will be well into tomorrow. I’ll stay an hour or so then you can get me in the caravan.’
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