This Thing of Darkness (75 page)

59

Evening.

I serve the lunchtime rice, plus the leftover chilli, stirred up with some tins of tomatoes and some frankfurters that I found at the back of the freezer. All that, with cheese on top and plenty of toast.

Most of the guys seem happy with that, but Wee Philly is still on hunger-strike. After I’ve cleaned up, I go to his bunkroom with a mug of tea.

He’s alone in there. Lying out on one of the lower cots, jammed fetally between the cot board and the bulkhead.

I give him the tea and say, ‘You should try to drink,’ not because I care whether he does or not, but because that’s what people like me are meant to say to people like him.

He takes the mug.

I say, ‘It’s a bit blowy, isn’t it?’

He looks at me with eyes of hatred.

I say, ‘What are you all doing here? I know the boys want to get on and fish.’

Wee Philly, with an effort of will, says, ‘Seismic monitoring. Listening out for sub-sea quakes. There’s a whole system.’ He waves his hand in a kind of ring, a network of sensors. ‘It’s a maintenance thing.’

‘Oh, I used to work on a seismic survey vessel. Part of the European Major Disaster Prevention and Analysis Project. Are you with that?’

He nods, but says nothing.

‘So you’ll know Terry Cooper and all those guys? That Italian guy, Matteo Thingummy, with the missing fingers?’

He nods, but watchful. Uncommitted.

It’s a strange conversation. Neither of us are simply speaking, for one thing. We’re shouting over the metallic beating, that’s now omnipresent. Tons of water crashing at the hull. The booming sound as it strikes. The moan and slip of release. A thousand fathoms of ocean beating for admittance. Midnight-green. Lethal.

But it’s the lies too. He’s lying. I’m lying. We both strongly suspect the other knows our lies for what they are.

I listen to the sound of the sea. Try to guess whether my crappy little voice recorder will pick up anything audible through this din.

I’m guessing not.

Ty to guess how long its crappy batteries will last.

I’m guessing not long.

Down in the freezer area, where Buys and Pearson are discontentedly repacking fish, I recount my conversation. Conclude: ‘I just made it up. Terry Cooper and all that crap. These guys aren’t seismologists. I don’t know what the fuck they
are
doing, but it’s not what they’re saying.’

Pearson spits. Not on the fish exactly, but not far away from them either.

‘We were right in the fish. We were right in the fucking fish.’

Buys says nothing, not right away. Just pulls a bit of liver from a badly gutted skate. Throws the fish down in an ice-nestled plastic box. Stares at Pearson. Stares at me.

Then, ‘You need to check the bathroom. Wee Philly’s been redecorating.’

I do my job. Clean up in the bathroom, which is indeed disgusting. Wear my oilskins and rubber boots to do it because, as the ship is moving so violently, I can’t help but be tumbled against the walls as I work.

That done, I go up to the darkening deck. Let the rain and sea spray clean me off. Caff comes in from the bow, harness clinking at his waist. Shouts, ‘This is whit his ahll aboot, is it no? A grand peedie tirl.’

A grand peedie tirl, indeed.

There are lamps at the stern. The ROV’s yellow tanks shine luridly under their glare, but the rest is emptiness. A waste of wind-torn water, nothing else.

As I understand it, the ROV is loaded, readied, connected, tested. Work begins tomorrow, and will go ahead no matter what the seas.

I remember Lowe telling me that one of his ships boasted automatic movement compensation. That it could launch and retrieve ROVs in any sea state. The
Isobel Baker
is a simple trawler and not a particularly new one at that but, I realise, Connor doesn’t care particularly about being able to retrieve the ROV in one piece. If he can, great. If not, he’ll just pay the hire company whatever compensation they need.

I go into the little control room.

There’s no one present. The monitors are powered off. The console that controls the ROV is powered up, but not active. Clamps secure it to the metal table which is itself bolted to the floor. There’s a smaller control gadget for the winch that runs through to the A-frame on the gantry. I inspect it to see if there’s an easy way to cause it damage, but the answer is no, not without pulling it apart.

In the past, I’ve seen one of those military-style laptops kicking around here too. One of those rugged extreme-environment machines. But it’s not here now. There are a couple of computer cables, though. Things running from the console to where the laptop was.

I clean the room. Basic wipe and tidy, nothing special.

The room has two doors. One internal, leading to the companionway down. The other external, leading to the main deck itself. The external door is stiff and hard to work. I open the door, and turn the handle till the latch is fully retracted. I push the tip of my knife as far as it’ll go into the gap between the latch and the backplate. Then bend the knife till the tip snaps off. The latch isn’t totally jammed, but nor does it want to go about its ordinary latchy work. I make an attempt to close the door, but it doesn’t really hold. Bangs about a bit in the frame, then springs open when the ship kicks.

I take both cables out of the console. Throw one on the floor under the desk. Have the other one knotted in my hand as I step outside. Either Ryan or Eddie is on deck, fussing around the gantry under the lamps. He waves to me. I wave to him. As I wave, the knotted cable slips from my grasp. It’s picked from my hand and flies out to sea in the darkness. I let my broken knife follow it out.

I don’t like being out here, not even in the shelter of the superstructure. I have one hand on the handrail the whole time. Both hands when I’m walking and especially if the waves are breaking over the deck.

I hurry below. I’m already on the ladder down, before I notice Buys below, wanting to come up. He stands aside for me, and I say, ‘Thanks,’ and continue. He says nothing. Doesn’t even set foot on the ladder, just stares after me till I’m gone and out of sight.

A dangerous man
, I think. Brooding and dangerous.

I don’t serve food at midnight. Make sandwiches for anyone who wants one, but we’re not fishing now and the crazy pressure of the nets and the processing room has lifted for now.

Honnold and his men, not the newcomers, are all down in the galley with a bottle of whisky, supplied by Honnold from his own cabin, I think. They invite me to join them, but I don’t, not really. Just wipe up, get a few bits ready for the morning.

As I’m doing that, Connor pokes his nose in, looking for either Ryan or Eddie.

Pearson says, ‘Hey, mate, you found any earthquakes yet, or are you still looking?’

Connor says nothing. Honnold moves his lips but says nothing.

Connor goes.

I go. As I do so, Caff winks at me. Raises eight fingers and grins.

I don’t know what that means, but smile back.

Bed.

Brush my teeth, but don’t get undressed. There’s a sticky salt dampness that permeates everything. A chill that’s entered the bone and won’t leave till I’m somewhere warm, dry and stable.

Get into my cot, but the ship is bucking now like a crazy thing. Twenty-foot falls between each wave, and the pause between each rise and fall is a juddering, heaving, uncertain gap of time. An unsteady thing that lengthens, shortens or pauses as it chooses. That never lets you find a rhythm.

I don’t sleep, not really. Each plunge is sickening. Each rise frightening. Every now and then we’re struck on the side by some rogue wave, some chance combination of waters that causes a sudden roll or yaw, quite different from the now-regular pitching. Each time that happens, I jolt awake in terror, convinced the boat has foundered and is about to sink.

The night is a roaring nightmare. Walls of water that strike and strike and strike again.

Like that Rhayader barn. Different, but also the same.

At four in the morning, I stagger out to the bathroom for a pee. Find Wee Philly there, clutching the stainless steel bowl of the toilet. He’s exhausted and haggard. Too pale even to be green. His eyes are red, bloodied. I think he’s been crying.

I say nothing. He says nothing.

I pee in the next door cubicle, rinse my hands, go back to my cabin.

Caff’s eight fingers.

He was giving me the windforce, I realise. Force eight, gale force.

Honnold told me he expected a ‘proper storm’ in due course and he, I think now, was being more precise than I’d understood. To a sailor, a force eight or nine wind is a gale all right, but you don’t call it a full storm until you hit force ten.

We haven’t yet encountered the full fury of what’s coming and I don’t know if I can handle what we already have. I don’t know how long it’ll take Connor and Wee Philly to do what needs to be done. Or even if they can do it in these sea conditions.

I climb back into my cot, and endure the heaving ship. A few minutes before five, I get up, put on boots and go down to the galley to prepare breakfast.

A trayful of sausages. A spadeful of egg. And a ship whose howling metal hull is our only world, our only safety.

60

Connor is openly furious.

‘The door’s totally unsecured. The fucking control room has spent the whole fucking night underwater.’

Honnold – sitting next to Coxsey, eating my egg and sausage – stays studiedly calm.

‘It’s
your
control room. You should have secured the door.’

‘I
did
secure the fucking door.’

Honnold raises his eyebrows, quietly drawing attention to Connor’s inconsistency. All he says is, ‘Is your equipment OK?’

‘
Our
equipment is polar grade expedition quality. The equipment is completely fucking fine. But there was stuff in that room – cables and stuff – that’s gone outside for a midnight fucking swim. And the winch controls are totally fucking fucked.’

Honnold nods gravely, as though considering the health benefits of a salt sea swim. ‘So ye’re not able to launch?’

‘We have to fucking launch.’

Honnold shrugs. ‘Then launch.’

Connor approaches. Inspects the breakfast options. Pokes the egg. Says, ‘Christ!’ Takes a couple of sausages, which he starts eating standing up.

Then, his mouth still full, says, ‘Let’s do it.’

Easier said than accomplished.

The first thing is turning the ship.

At the moment, as I understand it, we’re facing away from the wind, running with the waves, not against them. That’s more comfortable, because the gaps between the waves are greater and because we can surf down the wave fronts rather than butting into them.

But if we’re to operate an ROV, we have to remain – however approximately – above the damn vehicle. And that in turn means we have to head into the wind, letting the waves pass beneath us as we remain roughly stationary over the seafloor.

That sounds straightforward enough but Caff, who explains all this, is clearly anxious about the manoeuvre. ‘Thoo dohnt wahnt tae be skelp while turning,’ he says, as his hands show a big wave hitting the ship side-on as it turns. ‘If tha’ happens, we’ll hae oor bahookie in th’ sky in twa shakes o’ a hoor’s fud.’

Honnold’s on the bridge. Buys assisting.

They make the turn.

We’re not skelped. And our bahookie, whatever that is, remains wherever it’s supposed to be.

As Caff predicted, our motion instantly feels worse.

The waves come faster, steeper, harder. The ship doesn’t even maintain a constant direction. As Caff says, ‘If a wave’s cresting, ye dohn’t wantae be under th’ crest.’ So we slalom through the inferno. Picking our route through the flying water. Two men on the bridge at all times. One steering. One wave-spotting.

Even the men, experienced and strong as they are, don’t keep their footing very well in these conditions. The men on the bridge wear body harnesses to keep them in their seats. As for me, I’m not even close to managing. I’m simply flung around. A cat in a tin box. I hold on to anything that’s fixed down. If I have work to do, I do it one-handed or – swiftly – in the few seconds of peace between one breathtaking descent and the next terrifying rise.

But the next part, the hardest part, I want to watch and I do.

Buys and Honnold, on the bridge, keep the ship’s bows pointed into the storm. The waves are massive now. Thirty-foot cliff faces, lined and pitted with flying foam, hurtling towards us. Smashing into and over the ship. The sickening fall of release, followed by the next blow, and the next, and the next.

It might or might not be raining. I can’t tell. There’s so much airborne spray, the air is already thick. There’s nothing dry or quiet in the whole ship. Fear howls in the wires. It moans in the wind. I’m scared to stand on deck. Scared to lurk in the ship’s iron bowels, hearing nothing but the tug of water against steel, the grind of engines.

And yet, for all that, the vehicle is launched.

Connor is in the sodden control room. As I understand it, the winch can still raise and lower the ROV. What they can’t do, any longer, is sway the A-frame out from the gantry to give the vehicle a clear drop over open sea. I’d hoped my little act of sabotage would have been enough to wreck their plans, but apparently not.

Tant pis
.

The monitors are on and working. The data connection is on and working. The game seems very much on, alas. I think the loss of the computer cables has caused some kind of problem, but just what that might be, I don’t yet know.

Ryan and Eddie, assisted by Pearson and Coxsey, stand at the stern.

The gantry lights are still blazing, even though it is notionally full day.

Oilskins, lifejackets, harnesses, safety lines.

Ryan and Eddie have long grappling poles laced into the frame of the ROV. Pearson and Coxsey, I think, are wrestling with the bolts that have kept the machine fixed to the deck.

The ship herself keeps the stern relatively sheltered from the storm, but ‘relative’ is not much of a protection out here. There are times when the entire stern disappears beneath the swell. Moments when we lose sight of all four men, only for them to re-emerge, struggling figures in yellow and orange, tugging on their safety lines, seeking to re-establish their grip on our little steel world.

And bit by bit, they do it. Unloose the ROV. Proffer a thumbs up to Connor, who sways the machine up from the gantry, so it hovers like a giant insect above their heads. This will be the tricky bit now. To bring the vehicle down cleanly into the water. Without simply ripping an arm or head or torso from one of the men there. Without crashing it too violently against the hull. Without wrecking the equipment, fierce yet delicate, that’s mounted within the ROV’s spidery frame.

Ryan and Eddie stand with their poles, swaying with the ship’s motion. Pearson co-ordinates. Coxsey positions himself so he can see both the control room and the stern ramp, no matter what the sea is doing.

The men wait as the ship heaves and surges. The ROV sways above them. A weight that would kill them if it fell.

One particularly violent wave throws me off my feet. Water sweeping over the main deck. Surging round the superstructure, the bridge, so that it alone remains castled above the foam.

I’m wearing a harness myself: Caff, knowing I wanted to see the launch, set me up with the harness and a safety line that gives me no more than a foot or two of free movement.

And when I find my feet again, figure out which way up is vertical and how to get there – the ROV is gone. Vanished beneath the waves.

Ryan is clutching his arm. Eddie seems to be leaning in to Pearson. Kissing him, it looks like. The men start back along the deck. Holding themselves steady when the deck forms an abrupt upward slope. Making ground, as the tilt reverses and they can half walk, half slide downhill.

Ryan’s arm seems bad, and there’s something wrong with Pearson.

I can’t tell what and am not left to watch alone in peace.

Honnold – immune to the ship’s movement – approaches. Yells at me to get down to the galley. ‘Hot water, clean towels, OK?’

I nod. OK. But can’t unclip from my safety line and have to wait as Honnold does it for me. He handles me the way he’d handle a crate of fish, a pallet of stores.

His grip doesn’t even relent when my line is unclipped. With one hand on my harness, he half walks, half carries me to the ladder down. Doesn’t release me entirely until I have hands and feet on the metal treads.

I clamber down to the galley. Put water on to heat. Fetch clean towels from the storeroom. Last night’s whisky bottle, still a third full, stands next to the tea and ketchup, secured by an elastic strap that keeps everything more or less in place.

From the bathroom, I fetch a stack of paper towels.

Ryan comes in, escorted by Eddie. Pearson too, escorted by Coxsey.

Pearson’s head is badly gashed. Now that’s he’s out of the spray and wind, the blood, no longer diluted, seems startlingly red. Abundant. He seems baffled at finding himself here, his vision crimsoned.

I start snipping hair from his scalp with a pair of kitchen scissors, but I’m not the most adept in this pitching surgery. Tell Coxsey to get the scalp cleared. When Honnold materialises, I shout at him to get a razor. I can’t read his face but, once he’s understood my request, he nods.

Shouts, ‘D’ye know anything about first aid?’

I shout back, ‘Yes.’ Which is true. It’s part of every copper’s basic training. I’d guess that someone on board has a notional responsibility for first aid, but Honnold seems relieved that I’m willing to put myself forward. He gives me a thumbs up. Shoves a white first aid box into my hands.

As Coxsey works on Pearson, I turn to Ryan. He’s got his oilskin off, but is struggling to get undressed further. Pushing Eddie away, I run a kitchen knife down Ryan’s sleeve, till his clothes, including his thermal innerwear, falls open from the elbow. The arm is visibly broken, but the skin’s only bruised, not punctured, and the break might be a clean one. I give Ryan’s good hand the whisky bottle, tell him to drink. Tell Eddie to hold the guy steady – a near-impossible request – but Eddie grips Ryan’s torso and upper arm in a wrestler’s grip.

I manipulate the broken forearm, till I can feel the break. Sense the way the bones ought to lie. Straighten the arm till it looks right. Ryan swears, but in the kind of repetitive bloodyfuckingshittingsodding incantatory way that’s as much pain-relief as actual swearing. Eddie’s burly arm keeps his buddy more or less fixed in place. His spare arm holds me too, keeps me in place.

I bind the arm, tightly. Two splints from the first aid box. Tie off the bandage the way I was taught on the first aid course at Hendon, the knot flat against the skin.

‘Done,’ I say.

‘Jesus, thanks, love,’ Ryan says, giving me a kiss, that’s as wet and scratchy and oceany as if a giant spiny sponge from the Atlantic floor had chosen to rear up and kiss me through the spines.

I turn to Pearson, whose head is now reasonably shaved, but still spilling an alarming amount of blood. Pearson wants the whisky off Ryan and Coxsey wants to give it to him, but I tell them he can’t touch it. Alcohol thins the blood and that’s the last thing we need.

I clean the wound. It’s not that dirty, in truth, and the ocean environment is a clean one, but you don’t know what’s been living in Pearson’s hair and, anyway, you clean the wound first. That’s just the rule.

Warm water. No soap. Towels that redden as I use them.

The first aid box has some packets of QuikClot, a dressing that forms a gel in contact with blood. Those things have slashed battlefield mortality rates. Deaths from road accidents too: our ambulance teams use them all the time.

I get Pearson’s scalp dressed and bandaged.

Blood still trickles down the crevices of his face, but not fast now. His fingers keep creeping to the wound, but they move gingerly and withdraw quickly.

He manages a faint grin.

‘Thanks, pet. Fucking brilliant.’

It seems that the ROV was launched cleanly enough, but Ryan’s grappling pole was snared and as the ship bucked and the ROV descended, the pole screamed through the air, managing to break Ryan’s arm and half kill Pearson on the way.

Eddie says, ‘We don’t have a spare. If the weather stays bad, the ROV stays down there.’

He doesn’t seem to mind much, but these boys are deep-sea specialists. If they can’t retrieve the ROV now, they’ll just come back for it later. Connor is in the room now as well. He’s equally unperturbed by the machine’s loss.

I say, ‘It
is
staying down there. This man needs a hospital.’

This man, meaning Pearson.

I’m speaking to the room, but really my words are for Honnold, who’s leaning up against the wall, watching everything.

He doesn’t say anything, but his look tells me to go on.

I say, ‘The first issue was blood loss, which is now solved. Unless those dressings fail, the wound itself will be fine. But we don’t know if there’s a skull fracture. I can’t risk looking for a fracture by palpation, because that risks brain damage or death. And even if the skull is OK, a blow like that is exactly the sort of thing to bring on a subdural haematoma. Blood between the skull and the brain. That kind of thing is virtually symptom-free, until you keel over from it. And it can be – often is – lethal.’

Connor hears my little speech with impatience. Before I’ve even finished, he interrupts.

‘The guy looks fine. Doug, you’re a strong man. You’re fine, aren’t you?’

Pearson – Doug – moves his head in the light. His gaze is visibly blurry, confused.

‘I’ll be OK,’ he says. ‘Just need to lie down.’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ I snap. ‘He’s got no idea if he’s fine or not. He needs a hospital and a brain scan. I’m not a doctor, but I used to live with a paramedic, and that man needs a hospital. Oh, and Ryan’s arm needs setting by someone who knows what they’re doing. He needs an X-ray, a doctor, a cast, and a proper damn hospital.’

Honnold has seen enough.

Turns to leave. ‘I’ll radio Cork,’ he says. ‘We’ll turn aboot.’

Connor says to Pearson. ‘You’re fine, aren’t you? You look fine.’

Says that, his words at odds with the fury in his face. Then leaves.

Coxsey says, ‘Fucker.’

Stares at Ryan and Eddie with something like hostility.

Eddie spreads his hands. ‘He’s not with us, mate. We’re just here on a job.’

Ryan agrees, saying, ‘Doug, mate, if you need a hospital, then you do.’

The nascent alliance cements itself with all four men telling me I did an incredible job. Competing with each other to praise me, as a way to affirm their common membership of the Pearson-to-hospital camp.

I’m not sure I’m a good fit for the angel of mercy role, but I know how to make tea, so I make tea.

Coxsey says, ‘Wee Philly says you guys are seismologists. Some kind of monitoring thing.’

Eddie shrugs. ‘No idea. Ryan and me, we’re with Gullich Glowacz. Sub-sea construction, basically. We go all over. Do whatever people pay us to do. All I know is that we’ve rigged the vehicle for cable work. Cable lifting. Cable cutting. Cable repair. Could be seismology. Could be anything.’