Site Works

by Robert Davidson

  Below them the site was a hive. The Roads lorry stood beside the nearside tunnel chamber, now up to ground level with concrete rings, not bricks. The decision had been made while Harry was away.

  The pipeline from Ness was almost complete. Another day would do it. Trots and Jinky had already started on the Collection Chamber. In Harry’s absence Allan had agreed that concrete rings could be substituted for bricks. Trots and Jinky were building them ring on ring. A further week would do them, not only to construct but also to seal the chamber, surround it with concrete and cut away the tops of the piles.

  Further towards the shore the Settlement Tank bases were complete and the joiners were working on the walls. JB and Tammas were labouring to them. Conn’s crane stood unmanned beside the excavation. He would shift locations come the concrete pour. Paul stood by with his level, ready to give his marks and check levels when required.

  ‘He’s quieter since the tunnel closed,’ said Allan. ‘It’s changed him. He even looks bigger. More filled out across the chest.’

  ‘Paul also loves this game,’ said Harry, ‘although he maybe doesn’t know it yet. He still thinks about things he might be doing elsewhere but he loves it. In time he’ll travel with it. Take a nail’s end to his skin and his blood will run thick with cement. I bet there’s building in the genes, not that I’d ask, and the tunnel matured him. Now the game has him in its gut it won’t let him flaming well go until it’s done with him and farts him away.’

  On the wall shutter Willie Quinn straightened and shouted across to Paul. From the hill they could not make out what was said but there was laughter in it.

  ‘Look at that,’ Allan said. ‘It never stops. The weather is vile and the boredom is like a wall. We’ve already had a serious accident but these guys just get their heads down and get on. They were laughing about who could eat the most pies the other day, with the rain whipping round them. I just don’t get it.’

  Harry understood that Allan just did not get it.

  The mist that had blown in from the west, from the Atlantic, settled on the hill behind them and reached out towards the North Sea and the oil rigs. He drew his donkey jacket tighter about his neck.

  ‘The days are drawing out,’ he said. ‘Don’t think it will get any easier for that. The shifts will get longer and it’s still freezing, still wet. I hear there’s a new GF starting Monday.’

  ‘Someone from the parent company in Leicester.’

  ‘Flaming typical!’

  Swannie’s beamer turned off the road and into the compound. He got out and went into the Agent’s hut without looking round.

  ‘There’s the man that wields the whip,’ said Harry.’

  ‘Wields the whip or is the whip?’ Allan asked.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘The Lochdon contract is just about ready to go to tender. Look down, Harry. It isn’t Strath Construction any more, not even a half way house. Mac and John Kelly are gone. Half of the staff joiners are already away; the rest can be laid off when James Swann chooses, or retained if they cut the mustard. We are looking at Syme Atwood now, pure and unadulterated. Swannie has reduced his overheads, increased output, and has the advantage of having this whole shebang in place. No one is better placed to win the next job.’

  ‘It was always going to be that way.’

  ‘Trevor tells me that Swannie is preparing a claim on the tunnel and will go to arbitration if he has to. Apparently he never loses.’

  ‘Take it from me, GR never budges.’

  ‘So, one of them must fail?’

  ‘That’s the nature of the game, Allan. Merciless with the lash, it’s always on someone’s back.’

  13

  That it should flow the way it does

  Healey’s men tumbled out of the van onto mud frozen overnight into ridges and curlicues that turned their ankles and cracked the stiffness of their joints. Cold air invaded their lungs and drew out moans and grumbles of unfocussed grievance. When they piled in to the hut, all eight, it was filled with steam from the urn. JB took off his glasses and wiped them on his pullover.

  ‘Did I see Ikey dotting between the GF’s hut and the Agent’s? Hard to say when it’s so dark. It might have been some animal. Shouldn’t we be his first priority? The place is like a Turkish bath. What’s he thinking about?’ He turned the gas below the urn to a peep.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Tammas.

  ‘Higher things most likely. I’ve told him reading will lead him astray but he doesn’t listen. All he’ll get is a lot of stupid ideas and disappointments.’

  Scattered along the bench by the wall were copies of yesterday’s Daily Record and Scottish Sun. There were no girlie pictures on the walls, religious Ikey made a point of removing them. JB hung his jacket in a corner and took the four stained mugs of the concrete gang and made tea. All took sugar spooned from the open bag, none milk. The first he gave to Tammas at the door opening.

  ‘Mug for a mug,’ he said. ‘Must be a mug to be here.’

  ‘You’re telling me?’

  Two cars drew up outside and one after the other dimmed their lights.

  ‘Paul and the new GF,’ said Tammas. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Lammerton,’ JB informed him, ‘who hails Bolton. Bloont nawthnah, an old hand from the new firm. Notice the pattern? Our esteemed Mr Swann is replacing the former regime in instalments. Even we, we, shall I say Highlanders, are employed by his favourite Healey from darkest Glasgow. How easy we make his life. He can pick us up and put us down as he pleases, and does. Mac out in favour of young Sharp, de-fingered John Kelly gone and this eeh-bah-goom now in his place. Staff joiners sickened off and dispersed. The more paranoid nationalists will see Scots out, Angles in, but as Trots here will remind us it’s really about social class. Isn’t that right, Trots?’

  ‘Shut up, JB.’

  ‘Trots, this is an afterlife and you’re part of my punishment.’

  ‘I’ll get our stuff from the drying hut,’ Tammas said, meaning his own and JB’s working clothes. Trots and Jinkie could get their own.

  Only Tammas could stand JB’s prosing. The other two worked in an atmosphere of silent reluctance they preferred left undisturbed. Tammas had his one talent to draw on: he could turn his concentration off when he chose. Not that it went on very powerfully, as he himself knew. From the drying hut he brought their two pairs of jeans, their socks and boots, their donkey jackets.

  ‘How it rained yesterday,’ JB reminded them, ‘and how quickly we forget its awfulness. A miracle of the human condition; survival characteristic, I expect. Hunter-gatherers hunting and gathering across the veldt all those eons ago couldn’t have continued otherwise. They would have sat down and died for preference, if they’d known today was destined to be much like yesterday and tomorrow would bring more of the same. But they were preparing the way for us, weren’t they. They were conditioning the species to boredom and toil. What’s this, Tammas? Flat pack togs for the workers?’

  Tammas threw their jackets across the bench and held JB’s jeans out for him, caked with dried mud and stiff, icily stiff. He put boots and socks down by the bench and held the jeans in one hand. They were wooden and rigid, without sag.

  ‘Flat as a witch’s tit,’ he said.

  ‘You have a way with words. Sometimes you take even me by surprise.’ JB at the door broke the hardness and scrunched them between his hands, watching as slabs of mud fell to the ground. He took off his trousers to reveal thin white legs, not strong, and stepped inside the jeans making an ostentatious ‘ich’ sound. The others did the same but in silence.

  JB sat on the bench beside Tammas to pull on socks and boots.

  ‘Look outside,’ he said.

  Slowly the sun rose over the horizon to spread a pale wash of light across the surface of the North Sea, casting long fingers of shadow from the oil rigs and beginning its softening of the site’s frozen mud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Today will be less bad,’ JB said, mostly to himself.
‘We will come through. And who is this as if we didn’t know, yo ho, but Swannie’s pets?’

  The grip squad, the only remaining joiners, drew up in Willie Quinn’s car. From the boot they took boots that were cleaned and polished, and their tools. They put on leather aprons and made their way down to the settlement tanks.

  Tammas was thoughtful.

  ‘I think I know how they do it,’ he said at last. ‘They’ve got two pairs of boots each. They’re not even company boots. They can afford their own. That’s how much they make. Two pairs of their own.’

  JB and Trots looked at him. This had gone in at last?

  ‘Yes,’ said JB. ‘The joiners are better off than the labourers.

  ‘Their wives must clean them for them. Through the day I mean. The boots left at home that day I mean.’

  ‘No way,’ said Trots. ‘Know what date it is?’

  ‘Maybe though,’ said JB wistfully, ‘the anno domini and the fashionable ideas of the day can be overleapt by simple caring. Maybe that’s what it means not to be alone. Yes, I think I remember.’

  Lammerton, the new GF, thumped on the wall of the hut with the side of his meaty fist.

  ‘A-aht,’ he called. ‘Pouring cawrncrete today.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Tammas asked.

  ‘I think he’s telling us it’s time to start,’ JB said.

  They put on safety helmets and protective gloves, and made their way down to the settlement tanks. Derek the steelfixer and his boy, also just arrived, were ahead of them. The other four labourers walked off to the pipe trench between the Ness septic tank and the cofferdam.

  The two circular tanks were arranged side by side within a single excavation. The first, complete to base and walls, was ready for the plant contractor to fit scum boards and scrapers. The second base was complete, its wall arcing round only quarter of the tank circumference. That first wall pour was now a week past and the concrete surface had long since lost its green. The second pour had been twice delayed, once because the ancient batching plant had broken down, the second time because the fastidious Clerk of Works, newly returned to site, had something to prove. Derek had enough work to keep him going with the remaining wall steel but would not brook delay without extra payment and delay there would be if the second pour did not happen this day. Swannie, they knew, was trampling Trevor Sharp underfoot in his mania for progress.

  The steel shutter was expensive but quick to assemble and not subject to damage from the concrete skip or the vibrating pokers. The investment, Paul had told them, Swannie had placed against the following contracts he intended to win along this coast. All the joiners had to do the day after a pour, was crack it free and run it along the rails. The rest was centring and levelling and procedural and so no problem to the grip squad and Paul with the teamwork they had developed. Now it was clamped against the first pour and shuttered at the leading end.

  Cunning Swannie would win those other Contracts all right and the grip boys would be on them, JB thought to himself. He and Tammas could be easily replaced and, yes, likely would.

  The labourers stood on the lip of the excavation looking down on the joiners blowing their hands and jogging on the spot. The scaffolding was already in place around the shutter for them to work from, erected yesterday when the pour should have happened and would have but for the geriatric batcher. Scaffolding poles for handrails; it was crude.

  Lammerton appeared beside them.

  ‘Raht, you lot. Dahn ole wiv pinch bars. Git them straps aht!’

  The four of them ran down the slope and picked the heavy bars up from where they had lain against the wall. The base had four expansion joints built in, straps of wood cast to make space for bituminous sealant. That soft, black stuff Tammas called it and it was a full description.

  They had to pinch out the straps and set to doing so while the joiners checked the shutter position again and Paul once again checked his levels. At 9:15 they heard the Clerk of Works’ van pull up in the compound. If Harry found no fault, they would pour.

  ‘It’s all spoteroonie,’ Paul called out.

  The crane was already rigged with chains and concrete skip, ready to work. Conn looked down from his cabin in resigned silence, looked up to the compound and out across the North Sea.

  ‘And it’s spoteroonie off the centre nail,’ said Jimmy Gillies.

  ‘And the bolts are all tight and the props rock solid,’ said Willie Quinn.

  Derek turned from the wall steel he was tying ahead of the pour.

  ‘Perfectos? Harry won’t like that either. He’ll want to find something so you’ll know who the boss is.’

  He took a twenty pack from his breast pocket and lit the last one. From the base he picked up a loose piece of aggregate and popped it in the packet to give it weight and tossed it up to Cammy on the wall head.

  ‘Drop it inside. Give him something to find.’

  Cammy dropped it inside and they waited.

  ‘Aye, right,’ Harry scowled from the top of the slope. ‘Everything in place?’

  ‘It is,’ Lammerton told him.

  ‘Everything still clean?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Okay, I saw it all yesterday. Just get on.’

  He turned on his heel and left.

  Cammy eased the stop end shutter loose and took out Derek’s fag packet and dropped it outside the base. ‘The thought was good,’ he said.

  The troops worked away at the straps in silence, knowing the next command was imminent.

  ‘Raht, you lot,’ Lammerton shouted. ‘Let’s get ahn. JB! Mix boocket graht and pour it dahn on kicker. I’ll get on batcher.’

  The troops climbed topside again and Trots and Jinkie dragged the concrete pokers across the platform looping their air hoses over the edge. Tammas fired up the compressor and Jinkie stepped into the stream of air that blew from the engine’s cooling fan.

  ‘Feel that, boys? Hot air.’

  ‘We’ve got JB for that,’ said Trots.

  ‘Ho ho,’ said JB, banging a shovel across the side of the skip, knocking loose concrete lumps off both. ‘Start now, finish the pour by 11:00. Tea while the grip squad and Paul do their checks. Then we,’ he looked at Tammas, ‘finish off the wall head. Easy day if the weather keeps up. Grout, Lammerton asked for. Gra-aht, as Lammerton has it, meaning a thin mortar to facilitate bond between the hard concrete and the soft, wet stuff. That right, Paul?’

  ‘Plastic. While it flows it’s said to be plastic.’

  ‘Meaning it doesn’t snap back into shape. Paul knows these things. That’s education for you. I’ll get it.’

  At the compound he put a shovel of cement and two of sand into a bucket and mixed in enough water to make a thin gruel to pour inside the shutter on to the receiving horizontal face. He swirled it in the bucket and listened.

  The batcher broke down as soon as Lammerton fired it. Up went the revs and then it coughed and died. JB pursed his lips and back at the tank Trots and Jinkie cursed the day. Derek went on tying steel, mentally working out when he would be properly delayed and could start his claim time.

  ‘Defer the grout,’ JB said to himself, ‘back to the straps.’

  ‘What now?’ Cammy asked at the shutter.

  ‘Tea for us,’ said Jimmy Gillies. ‘If it’s fixed for 2:00pm we might start and finish while it’s still light. Three delays in a row because Swannie won’t hire in decent plant. I’ll put in a time claim.’

  The concrete gang descended once again to the tank base and went back to prying out straps. The grip squad went back to their car. Derek and his boy kept on tying.

  ‘We’re idling,’ JB said to Tammas. ‘As with a finely tuned machine just turning over it can only go on so long.’

  ‘That right, JB?’

  JB pushed a lump of concrete against the pinch bar with his foot, used it for a lever. The strap splintered. He dug the bar in again and again it splintered.

  ‘More crap. This simple job,’ he said, ‘is going t
o take forever.’

  ‘Ahv’n trooble?’

  Lammerton appeared from nowhere. He was taller than JB and wider in the shoulder. Across the tank base Trots smirked momentarily. He knew the score. The new GF would have to prove himself. Tammas was too easy a target and JB had to be a black sheep because of the way he spoke, because there was some part of him that was undiminished in spite of everything and it sounded like pride heading for a fall.

  ‘No trouble Mister Lammerton. I’m just pinching away, pinching away.’

  JB pushed the concrete lump against the bar again and again the strap splintered.

  ‘Ah expect yih’ll ahv advice to offer Mister Swann abaht materials.’

  ‘Mister Swann rarely consults me. When he does I give such guidance as I can as honestly as I can.’

  ‘Yir talk funny, don’t yir.’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘Yir doan’t lahk me, do yir? I know your tahp. Yir doan’t lahk me cause ahm English.’

  JB looked down on the pinch bar where it met the strap.

  ‘Now let me see,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind you being English any more than I would mind you being French or German or for that matter black as a lump of coal, and that’s something you couldn’t say. Right?’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘I’ll try again. I don’t mind you being English but I’m not keen on the way you put on the accent when you’re talking to us. You’re making a point Mister Lammerton. You’re telling us you’re different and keeping yourself apart and in a funny kind of way you’re making yourself superior. I bet you don’t speak that way at home. I bet you don’t speak that way to people who don’t have to defer to you.’

  ‘Yir wot?’ Lammerton’s hands came out of his pockets, fists clenched. ‘You saying Ah’m putting it on? You can talk abaht putting it on? The way yir speak? Think Ah doan’t know why yir ere.’

  ‘Making a living.’ JB weighed the heavy bar in his hands. ‘That’s why I’m here. I’m getting by, and there are worse jobs. It’s less boring than most. I like the people, usually. Fascinating discussion on all kinds of interesting topics, you should hear Trots on the late Princess Diana.’