Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  ‘Good man,’ said Eamon. ‘You’ve a great heart. Now take it easy. I’ll wheel in the skip when Patsy’s ready.’

  So they worked the shift away and dug their distance and placed their frame. And the few daylight hours passed, and the longer 24 hour day, to the sound of compressed air released and the generator running and the men crying out and sometimes singing their loyalties and their anguish and their pain until night returned but made no end to working. Mike sang his torch songs and Gerry the songs of Old Woman Ireland that lived in the collective memory of his tribe and nowhere else and Deek sang the People’s Anthems of equality and revolution. Day after day they went on digging and eating and hot bedding and returning to the Face that retreated continually before the breaker, the clay spade and the skip. Trevor came down the ladder daily to check on progress and on what might be required. Paul stood by all through the darkness hours and took notes and measurements and checked the line and levels with Eamon.

  Eamon Bowles was happy with progress but always a worrier. That was his nature and it had served him well for many years, through more tunnels than he could remember and only one of his men dead in all that time. Yes, it went well until they were eleven metres in and so under the southbound carriageway.

  Paul found himself alone in the cofferdam with silent, morose Deek. Patsy was working the Face, the compressor roaring every time he struck with the breaker. From the road there was only the occasional thrum of traffic and that from the far carriageway. Paul checked the thermometer that hung from the scaffolding and saw the temperature was six below zero. Topsides would be even colder. He noted the time, 3:00am, and jotted it into his book.

  Inside the tunnel Patsy put the breaker down and called for Deek to push in the bogie and skip. Another half hour and Deek had lifted it out, driving the crane in Conn’s absence, and on to the pile of arisings that had now grown large enough to obstruct other site traffic. Tomorrow a lorry would arrive and Conn would load it using the excavator to be taken to coup and dumped. They were more than half way by length of dig, half way because the Face was now under the central reserve. Now they could place the pipes and concrete surround on this side and transfer across the road. They would tunnel from the north cofferdam to meet the new pipe and inside himself Paul felt such a thrill of achievement in prospect that it might capture him to this form of toil for life.

  Deek loaded the bogie with sleepers and pushed it inside, hauled it out again empty.

  ‘Line,’ Patsy shouted from inside.

  Paul looked in along the eleven frames that were already in place and along the line of bulbs that cast a light that flickered with the irregularities of the ancient generator. Patsy was crouched, doubled over in the void he had dug into the till, three of the sleepers stacked behind him, the fourth laid horizontal in position. He held a nail upright on its top surface, roughly in the middle.

  ‘Hold on,’ Paul shouted in. ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘You should be! Get up there.’

  Paul was already half way up the scaffolding. He stretched the piano wire again between the nicks, tight as he could, not as tight as Eamon with his leather palms but tight enough, and eased the plumbobs down to minimise swing. Downside again he steadied them with his hand and sighted through them to the nail.

  ‘Left a centimetre,’ he called into the tunnel. ‘Left. Smidgeon. Smidge. Spoteroonie!’

  Patsy swore and shifted the whole sleeper to the right.

  ‘Again,’ he shouted.

  This time it all fitted.

  ‘Send Deek in to give me a hand with these three.’

  Deek was still topsides and Paul knew, as Patsy knew but wouldn’t say, that the pain in his back was too great. He would linger up there and hope for the salvation that comes from unspoken human sympathy translated into action with no questions.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Paul shouted back, already on hands and knees and entering the tunnel that way.

  Crawling towards Patsy he took himself up onto his hunkers under the last frame, there accepting one end of the second sleeper. Now he could neither rise for the low roof nor go properly down on his knees for the leverage it would put on his back. The weight of the sleeper transferred from shoulder to hips to knees to ankles and he took the shock, that way, through the muscles of his thighs.

  ‘Prop it upright,’ Patsy told him. ‘Hold the bottom end in place while I push the top over. That’s it. That’s it.’

  Patsy backed further into the unsupported tunnel to let Paul get his shoulders into position and between them they got the sleeper vertical and in against the wall. Paul still couldn’t get a proper purchase.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’ll lie down. That way I can pull the toe in.’

  ‘Do that.’

  Paul lay down and pulled on the base of the vertical sleeper, his head resting on his arm. Behind him the lines of the planks receded, the line of bulbs likewise with their dim light casting shadows from the sleepers and the rails and beyond the tunnel opening the skip on the bogie lit from above by the fierce white light of the floods. Then it happened and the dread unexpected became, without warning, real.

  They saw the movement in what was a sort of slow motion to them, so quickened by the run of adrenaline were they, the wild uprising of blood with no time for fear, he and Patsy both. The top wedges distorted, the wedges between the frames and the roof planks crushed and splintered and the broken pieces forced out, dragging their six inch nails with them, spat onto the floor by a sudden massive increase in pressure while the planks between the frames buckled downwards but held.

  Patsy moved in silence. At once his whole body was over Paul’s, his hands and feet scrabbling for purchase and finding it first on Paul’s body, then his arm. Paul cried out in pain and struggled to turn in the narrow low space of the tunnel. Without thinking he tried to stand but was stopped and buckled by the roof that might come in on him before his next breath. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled like an athletic baby for the light of the tunnel opening and there Patsy took his arm, grasped his donkey jacket and hauled him bodily into the light of the floods and the cold air of winter.

  ‘What kept you? I thought you were dead!’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘I thought you were dead!’

  Paul looked back along the tunnel and saw nothing that had changed but for the splintered remains of half a dozen wedges.

  ‘Did it really happen?’

  Deek called from above. ‘Y’all right down there!’

  ‘We’re okay’ Paul called back. ‘What happened? What hit us?’

  ‘Some kind of huge truck; a monster. Come up.’

  Paul followed Patsy topsides, his legs scarcely able to carry his own weight for shaking, and the three of them stood in an uneasy triangle in front of Conn’s machine, illuminated eerily by the cab light.

  ‘What was that?’

  Eamon came running from the compound, fastening his trousers as he ran, his bootlaces flapping.

  ‘What was it? You okay, Paul?’

  ‘I got up the slope in time to see two red lights disappearing,’ Deek said. ‘He can’t have seen the signs, must have ploughed through the cones.’

  ‘Come on,’ Eamon said. ‘We’ll look.’

  There was no traffic to either side when they reached the tarmac, no lights but the wintry stars and the moon. They walked to the north and found their traffic controls had been smashed through. Two of the signs were crushed and bent and thrown onto the verge by the force of collision.

  ‘What was he thinking of?’ Eamon asked. ‘Do you have your phone, Paul?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Call the police. Let them know. Patsy, Deek, we’ll put this lot back together as best we can. Then it’s back down the cofferdam.’

  The troops were quicker with the traffic controls than Paul was, calling the police. He rejoined them at the mouth of the tunnel as they looked in.

  ‘Wait here,’ Eamon told them, and went insid
e on hands and knees to feel around the frames and look at the roof planks.

  ‘Deek!’

  ‘Yo ho.’

  ‘You’re the most expendable. Bring me half a dozen wedges.’

  Deek did this without comment, steeling himself before entry. The two men first re-wedged the spaces where the old wedges had been destroyed utterly, then replaced the others one at a time. That done they crawled to the end of the tunnel and completed the frame that Patsy and Paul had begun and placed the planks. When they came out Patsy had mugs of tea waiting for them.

  ‘The planks were bending down,’ Paul said. ‘That’s suicide in there.’

  ‘No,’ said Eamon. ‘It just looked that way.’

  He bent and looked into the tunnel again.

  ‘That’s this side dug. We’ll make sure Swannie knows about what happened and the whole thing is recorded. Driver must have been asleep.’ He looked at Paul. ‘We’ll begin piping in the morning. You’ll come off night shift, Paul. I think they’ll agree to that. At least until we cross over. Everybody okay?’

  ‘Okay, Eamon,’ said Patsy.

  ‘Okay,’ said Deek.

  ‘Okay,’ agreed Paul at last, with them but still not of them.

  ‘Now, finish,’ Eamon said. ‘The beds are full so get yourselves a room at the Hotel, it’s a dump but it’s warm and dry. Paul?’

  ‘Yo ho?’

  ‘See you at 9:00am.’

  Paul was home by 3:00am for four hours sleep. In the morning his mother made sure he was fed, made sure he was clean going out however he might come back. At their front door she took him by the shoulders and looked him over before letting him go. When he rolled onto the site and parked by the huts her eyes were still burning holes in his head. How they showed concern, puzzlement at this commitment to long hours and night working without additional reward, commitment that didn’t run to working, really working, for a qualification.

  He knew, because she told him, that in some ways he was like his father. What were these attachments to the wrong things? Where was the future in his thinking and where were the girlfriends? Not that his father ever had any difficulty finding those. Did she not know this hurt her? Did he know she wanted grandchildren? Not now but eventually. Say in five years time. What was he all about anyway? Her questions punched him in the heart each one.

  Come home safe, she said over and over in his head. Keep on coming home.

  Stepping out of the car his skin felt tight on his face and his eyes heavy in his head. The sky was overcast and it was cold and rain was on the way. Patsy was already shovelling sand and aggregate and cement into the mixer in the compound. Deek sat on the dump truck ready to carry the mix across to the cofferdam. Gerry was attaching the concrete skip to Conn’s chains.

  Eamon caught his eye and waved him on. He dashed into the hut and changed quickly, dashed out again and across.

  ‘Where you been?’

  ‘I’m on time.’

  ‘Pf.’

  Beside the cofferdam fourteen one metre long 60cm diameter concrete pipes without chip or crack on any part of them sat on wooden boards that kept them from the ground and unmuddied. Brian and Gerry were clearing the area of stones.

  Eamon ran his hand across the nearest of the pipes.

  ‘Went through the stack,’ he said, ‘with a fine tooth comb. They have to be perfect. Did you hear the clerk of works has reappeared?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Think so? Think we need our quality controlled? It’s in his interest to find fault. Anyway, these are perfect. He can come down the cofferdam whenever he likes but you can bet he won’t enter the tunnel.’

  ‘Mike and Tony?’

  Eamon nodded down into the cofferdam where Mike was stooped, looking into the tunnel. ‘Tony’s inside loosening the far end rails. When they come out we’re ready to go.’

  At that Mike reached into the tunnel and hauled out the first of the rails, placed it in the corner, then the second. Gerry ran a scaffolding tube through the centre of the first pipe and signalled Conn to swing his jib across the cofferdam and lower the chains. When they were down he wrapped rags around the tube where it would meet the concrete and signalled for Conn to lift. Downside Mike and Tony landed this first pipe beside the tunnel opening and signalled Conn to lift the chains clear and back across to where Brian was waiting by the concrete skip.

  ‘Okay, Paul,’ said Eamon. ‘Everyone and everything is in place. Patsy’s on the mixer. Gerry’s driving the dumper because of his back. Brian at the skip. Mike and Tony placing the pipes and the concrete and taking it in turn. You and me, Paul, on line and level and whatever else comes up. Listen, there’s no stopping once we start.’

  ‘I know. We don’t want any cold joints. Mister Gilfeather wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Neither would you, Paul, because it would be a weakness in the pipeline. And neither would I. It’s to be right.’

  ‘Nothing to do with rules, specifications, contracts but just for its own sake. I know it.’

  ‘Now, downside.’

  Eamon strung the piano wires across the cofferdam and tightened them while Mike and Tony handled the first pipe onto the bogie. Mike disappeared into the tunnel and Tony pushed the bogie to the end of the rails and both, together, used all their strength to manhandle the pipe off the bogie and into rough position in the confined space. With the bogie out again Paul crouched on his hunkers and looked along the line of light bulbs at Tony lying on the muddy floor of the tunnel at the pipe’s near end, Tony at the far end and the two of them red in the face with pushing short lengths of sleeper under the pipe and pushing wedges in between.

  ‘Now,’ Mike called urgently.

  ‘Take a breath, man!’ Eamon called back. ‘Put the traveller on.’

  Mike took a short wooden tee-shape from where it leaned against the wall planks and stood it on top of the pipe.

  ‘Now.’ Eamon positioned himself behind the piano wires and sighted through them and saw the pipe was 2cm high. ‘Down two,’ he shouted up the tunnel.

  Mike knocked the wedge delicately with a hammer, taking the pipe down at that end. ‘Again.’

  Eamon sighted again and nodded. ‘Now Paul, check that,’ he said.

  ‘Spoteroonie!’

  ‘Y’hear that, Mike? Spoteroonie. Now you, Tony.’

  Tony took the traveller from Mike and held it at his end of the pipe.

  ‘Up one,’ Eamon called again.

  Tony took the hammer from Mike and shifted the wedge.

  ‘Spoteroonie,’ Paul said.

  ‘Now, Mike again.’

  It took three rounds of sights and shifts to get the pipe in position just so and by that time Deek had delivered the drymix concrete from Patsy and Brian had directed it into the concrete skip. Out of the tunnel again Mike and Tony dropped it into the bogie and pushed it inside and shovelled it under the pipe until they could remove the supports without the pipe moving. Then they filled all round the pipe from the Face end forward.

  ‘Here now,’ Eamon called in. ‘Don’t come too far this way without using these.’

  He handed in a fence post to Mike who passed it along to Tony who took it with two hands because it was so awkward and heavy and used it to push and stab at the drymix until it was as hard compressed against the walls and roof as powerful shoulders could make it. Now all the end of the tunnel was filled with pipe and concrete around the pipe. It was 10:30am. An hour and a half had passed since Paul arrived on site.

  ‘As usual,’ said Eamon. ‘The first is the most important. From here on we only have to sight one end in.’

  There was no time for reply. Conn was already lowering the second pipe and Gerry, up at the pipe stack had begun to sing.

  Now Mary this Scotland’s a wonderful place

  We come here to work by night and by day

  We don’t dig for barley. We don’t dig for wheat.

  We’re digging for gold far under the street.

  ‘D’ye hear that man?�
�� Eamon said. ‘He’s daft. If it’s not the Celtic it’s Ould Erin, and if he’s not loving he’s fighting. He’s a fool. You can’t tell them by sight. You have to know their thoughts.’

  Mike from inside the tunnel heard and he too raised his voice, not in harmony but as an assertion of difference, a spurious sort of independence.

  She may have a face you can’t forget

  A moment’s pleasure brings regret

  No matter what you do or say

  A lifetime’s toil’s the price you pay.

  Then from above came Deek’s voice joining in but not joining, being his own unique man by refusing independence.

  The worker’s flag is red with blood

  Blood the People spilled for love.

  Let the Bosses fear the day

  The Revolution’s on its way.

  With the first pipe in place the work went more quickly and Mike and Tony took it in turns at the receding Face. In nine hours, better than a pipe length an hour, they were at the cofferdam opening.

  ‘Deek,’ Eamon called up.

  ‘Yo ho!’

  Deek was leaning over the piles.

  ‘Clean out the dumper and the mixer. We’ll finish here and see you topsides.’

  ‘Yo ho!’

  ‘Look at that, now,’ he said to Paul. ‘These boys know how to work.’

  Tony and Mike had come out of the tunnel, back into the cofferdam, shovelling the last of the dry mix around the last pipe, Mike pushing it home with the blunt end of the stob, Tony smoothing it with the flat of the shovel. Eventually they were done and, after the course of a single shift, the tunnel was no more. The four of them climbed topsides and walked to the compound, the troops to their caravan and Paul to the hut he had to himself now John Kelly was gone.

  ‘Don’t leave right away,’ Eamon told him at the gate. ‘Go in and see Trevor. You might get a lie in tomorrow while they move the signs and the traffic cones and get the traffic onto the other carriageway. You never know what might happen.’

  The hut was like an oven after the freezing outside temperatures. Paul shook his muddy trousers out of the door and hung them over a chair. He took off his pullover and washed his hands and face in cold water and put on his jerkin. He changed his socks and put on his jeans and his shoes and leaned back in his seat very tired. Relaxed at last it occurred to him that he was happy. His energy was almost spent and there was nothing of anticipation in the feeling, more that he was for the first time in his life in some way fulfilled. This first part of the feat they had set out to do was achieved. It had taken part of him away but although that was true yet there was more. That seemingly lost part would recover. His head spun from lack of sleep and from physical exhaustion and there could be no accurate tracing to the source of this passive joy.