Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  All those years out with his nets and this was all the old man had to show for it – fragments of things that could never be fixed, never be put back together again.

  That was all that would be left of the farm one day too. The towers and blades would degrade; the rig would crumble into the sea. When the whole farm finally got eaten away, the only things left would be its plastic parts – the latches and hooks, clips and cable-ties – all the small disposable components that were never designed to last, but would stay, like the teeth of some enormous sea creature, shed and forgotten throughout its life, becoming, in the end, the only record of its existence.

  It’d happen even sooner if the old man kept wasting all of his time trawling up junk from the seabed.

  The boy looked down at the bone again. He scratched his thumbnail against the rough surface, blew lightly across the hole, drawing out a quavering note, like a whistle.

  Whistling. He heard it again. Working its way through the rig. Up from the loading bay. He looked around, but there were no clocks in the old man’s room. He put the bone back carefully where it had been, turned and moved quickly to the door, catching the stack of tins with his heel and scattering them across the floor. He dropped down onto his knees and felt around. There was the faint scrape of a crate being unloaded from the boat. He found three of the tins, but the last one had rolled in between the piles of netting. He searched as fast as he could, trying not to disturb anything. A tangled mass of rusted metal shifted and began to topple. He grabbed it and moved it back so it was balancing again. He found a tin, but this one was half-full of coagulated protein mince, which slipped in a thick disc onto his hand.

  A cough. Loud and sharp. Then another. The boy stopped moving and held his breath. Silence. Then the scrape of the crate again, near the bottom of the stairs. The boy wiped his hand on his leg and fumbled through the piles of netting until he found the last tin, tangled. He tried to get to the edge of the net, but gave up and wrenched a hole in the brittle mesh.

  He stacked the tins shakily, numbers facing the door, which he slid round and pulled almost shut. Once on the other side, he kneeled down and manoeuvred the tins slowly into position. At the last moment, he remembered to turn the third number to face into the room. Which he had to do blind, eyes closed, head down.

  He pulled his arm free, realized he hadn’t even looked for the pliers, closed the door and walked quickly along the corridor to his room. And winced as the stack of tins he’d built behind his own door crashed over and scattered across the floor.

  c.8,200 Before Present

  It ends with a wave. A single wave spreading across the horizon. A neat crease in the surface of things. As it spreads, it grows in height – ten feet, twenty feet, sixty feet. It hits a low island. There is barely a pause. Just, perhaps, a slight adjustment in direction and flow as the wave bends, folds, then passes on, leaving behind nothing but open sea.

  So, water completes its work – of levelling, of pressing in at edges, of constantly seeking a return to an even surface, a steady state. And now it is only the way the sea peaks and rises into sudden, steep waves that hints at the landscape underneath – a ridge that was once an island; an island that was once a coastline; a coastline that was once a range of hills at the heart of a continent; a continent that was once frozen and covered over by ice.

  For a hundred thousand years the water waited, locked up as crystal, sheet and shelf. All was immobile, but for the slow formation of arc and icicle, which was the water remembering the waves it used to be and the waves it would become again. The only sound was the crackle of frozen mud and ice rind, which was the water, down to its very molecules, repeating its mantra: solidity is nothing but an interruption to continuous flow, an obstacle to be overcome, an imbalance to be rectified.

  One hundred thousand years – barely worth mentioning in the lifetime of water.

  All it needed was the slightest change in temperature. A few degrees and crystal unpicked itself from crystal, icebergs sheared – breccia to brash, floe to growler, old ice to slush. Each slippage building on the next, as the water reorganized itself and began to retrace its steps, probing at borders, undermining, working out the path of least resistance.

  Until, somewhere to the north, a grain of thawing mud loosened from another grain of thawing mud, dislodging a coastal shelf, which caused a landslip, which caused the wave.

  It is a simple history – of water turned to ice, returning to water. And, barely noticeable, somewhere in the middle of this cycle, plants and animals and people made this place their home.

  A Fur Hat

  The supply boat turned a slow arc and backed in. It was bigger than the service boat – deep-hulled and high-prowed for open water. The fenders thumped against the dock. There was no movement for a long time. Then, finally, the cabin door opened and the pilot appeared at the stern. He threw the ropes down and watched carefully as the knots were tied. His eyes were dim and sunken in the pale mass of his face, his head was shaved to a greenish grey and folds of freckled skin bunched at his collar and wrists, as if his bulk could not be contained by his neatly buttoned overalls. He clasped his small hands over his stomach as he waited. The boy passed him the charging cable. The pilot nodded, plugged the cable into a socket, then moved across the deck and lowered a gangplank down to where the old man was standing. He walked in short, careful steps, with his toes turned inwards, making it seem like he was constantly pitching forwards.

  ‘I hope I’m not late,’ he said. His voice was soft and clipped. ‘Difficulties with the supply chain. Paperwork’s been terrible.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ the old man said. He turned to the boy. ‘Had you noticed?’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ the boy said.

  The pilot’s face stayed smooth and impassive. Then he sighed quietly, took a remote control out of his pocket and opened a hatch in the middle of the deck. ‘If you’d care to examine the goods.’

  The hold was stacked with crates. Inside there were the usual tins and packages, identical vacuum-packed blocks. There was a small parcel of something like chewing gum, something less like chocolate, a bitter powdered green tea. One crate was filled entirely with spare water filters, another with coolant for the generators and one with a range of cleaning products in near-identical bottles – for use, as they saw fit, on the rig and on themselves.

  The old man looked slowly through each crate, checking off the contents against some mental list of what he thought should be there. Inevitably, he would find something awry. He would say that he’d asked for new LEDs. The pilot would say he had not. The old man would say that he thought LEDs would be considered essential, integral to the good maintenance of the farm, and to be included on any shipment. The pilot would say he did not. The old man would ask whether the pilot would be able to do his work without enough LEDs. The pilot would say he could not, but that he always checked and made sure to ask for new LEDs when he was running low on spares. The old man would say that’s why he had asked for them. The boy would sit on a crate in the corner and wait. They wouldn’t even need LEDs.

  After a while he got up and picked up a cardboard box he’d seen in one of the crates. He opened it and brought out a handful of red fabric.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ the old man said.

  The pilot rubbed the corner of his eye with his little finger. ‘Warm clothes. Like you’ve been asking for.’

  ‘Like we’ve been asking for? You mean like we were asking for all winter and we’ve stopped asking for now that it’s not winter?’

  The pilot blinked. ‘It gets too hot out here, does it?’

  The boy reached further into the box and picked up a dark hat with earflaps. He rubbed the material between his finger and thumb. From a distance it looked black, but closer up it was deep brown, with strands the colour of rust. ‘Is this real?’ he said.

  The pilot turned, took the hat from the boy and put it c
arefully back in the box. ‘It’s a real hat,’ he said. He folded the box flaps closed, smoothing them down with the palms of his hands. When he let go, they sprung slowly back open.

  ‘Have you got the stuff I actually asked for?’ the old man said.

  The boy reached in and touched the hat again. The material was dense and soft, but almost coarse, like there was grease in it deep down. He turned to the pilot. ‘Where’d you get it?’

  The pilot moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  The old man was standing with his arms folded, staring at the pilot. The pilot sighed again, went to the back of the hold and brought out another crate. The old man opened it and took out a pole, then another pole, then a series of further poles and attachments, which he proceeded to examine, one by one. Then he packed it all away again, nodded and picked up the crate.

  ‘You asked for poles,’ said the boy.

  ‘Instruments,’ said the old man.

  ‘Let’s call it apparatus,’ said the pilot.

  The boy closed the cardboard box and watched them leave the hold. ‘Expensive poles,’ he said.

  They sat in the high-backed chairs around the table in the conference room. Between them was a pile of generator components, seeping grease and oil over the glass surface like the remains of some mechanical feast. The crate with the poles was next to the old man’s chair. The pilot studied the components in front of him. ‘And this is all yùnzhuăn?’ he said eventually.

  The old man nodded.

  ‘Because if my clients find there’s a piece missing …’

  ‘“My clients”. Jesus.’

  ‘If they find …’

  ‘It’s all there.’

  The old man had already given the pilot a full gearbox, two coils of copper wire and all of the individual parts they’d salvaged over the past months. Now he was handing over a generator.

  ‘He can’t take all that,’ the boy thought; then realized he’d said it out loud.

  The old man and the pilot both turned to look at him. The pilot picked up a section of the housing. ‘It’s all branded.’ He spoke to the old man, but continued to look at the boy.

  The old man shrugged as he turned back to the pilot. ‘That’s never bothered you before.’

  ‘It bothers me now, though.’ The pilot put down the component and folded his hands. They were very smooth and his nails were filed and clean. He was still looking at the boy. ‘The parts are getting older. The profit margins are thinning.’

  The boy looked down at the table. He could see the old man’s reflection distorted in the sheen of grease. There were a hundred ways he could have used that generator. He could have split up the parts and fixed an entire row.

  The old man picked up a length of copper wire and began twisting it round his hand. ‘What do you want me to do about that?’

  ‘Nothing, of course,’ the pilot said. ‘There’s nothing that can be done.’ He watched the old man winding and unwinding the wire.

  The boy could smell the tarnished, bloody smell of the metal.

  The old man sat back and smiled. ‘Very philosophical.’

  The pilot’s eyes shifted back to the boy. ‘Well, I suppose one must find some way of dealing with the pressures of offshore life.’

  The old man was still smiling, but his jaw was tense. ‘Can’t say we’ve noticed.’

  The pilot’s eyes moved around the room, taking in the empty wall fittings, the buckled air vent and the turbine components piled in the corner. ‘How’s your hooch coming along, by the way?’

  The old man stopped smiling. ‘Do we have a deal?’

  The pilot shifted position and let out a long breath through his nose. ‘I’ll be taking a risk,’ he said. ‘The margins, the pressures …’

  ‘What do you know about pressures?’ the boy said, too loudly. He suddenly felt too hot and the room seemed too small. The old man knew he wanted that generator. The boy had spent hours cleaning each component until they shone.

  The old man frowned slightly and shook his head at the boy, but the boy didn’t meet his eyes.

  The pilot looked from the boy to the old man and back to the boy. He positioned a generator component carefully on the table in front of him. ‘Nothing, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Compared to you.’ He smiled slowly, then frowned, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the grease off his fingers. ‘Although I could tell you some stories …’

  The old man leaned forward. ‘Do we have a deal or not?’

  The pilot leaned back and folded his handkerchief, lining up the edges exactly. ‘How is your hooch coming along?’

  The pilot swayed and leaned back, balancing his bulk on the narrow stool. The shaft of which, bolted to the galley floor, creaked as he shifted his weight. He leaned further, until he reached a precarious angle. Then he crossed his ankles, reached for his mug, took another sip and coughed delicately.

  ‘So, the brave and handsome pilot,’ he said again. ‘The hero of our story. He packed up his boat. Packed it up with everything.’

  The boy was sitting at the other side of the table, staring down into his own, empty mug. The pilot had already told the story of the container girls and the one about the blind foreman and the whisky fog. Now he was on to a new one. He could slip from one story to the next without taking a breath, but once into it he would leave long pauses, waiting for his audience to respond.

  ‘Everything?’ the boy said eventually. His tongue felt hot and numb when he spoke. He’d already drunk three mugs of the old man’s homebrew. Usually when the bottle was empty the pilot would leave, but the two-litre container was still over half-full. The edges of the boy’s vision were starting to go cloudy and his palms were tingling. The effects of any two batches were never the same. One had caused his feet to swell up; another had made his chest itch for a week. He was sure he could hear ringing in his ears. But someone had to stay with the pilot, and the old man had taken his crate of poles and disappeared into his room about two hours ago. At least the boy didn’t think he’d heard this story before.

  The pilot nodded slowly and raised a finger. ‘An excellent point. What do we mean by “everything”? To you, of course, it is …’ he opened his hand and made a sweeping gesture towards the crates that were now stacked in the corner of the room ‘… such essential goods as I provide. Food, water-distillation systems …’

  ‘Fur hats.’

  The pilot looked at the boy. ‘Exactly. He made sure he packed his fur hat.’ He paused again and took a sip of his drink.

  The boy breathed out heavily and rested his head on his hand.

  ‘He packed everything neatly, took a complete inventory. Then he set off for the open sea …’

  The old man came into the galley and began looking through the crates, unstacking each one and dragging them loudly across the floor. ‘The open sea?’ he said. ‘What do you know about the open sea?’

  The pilot blinked twice. His eyes were starting to go red around the rims. ‘I’ve spent time offshore,’ he said.

  The old man carried on searching the crates. ‘You mean your day trips?’ He found whatever he was looking for, glanced at the boy, then left the room.

  The pilot pursed his lips and watched him go. He pushed up one sleeve of his overalls and scratched his elbow, revealing a row of small, warped tattoos on his puckered skin. ‘Well, we can’t all be great adventurers, can we. With our maps and our nets.’ He smoothed his sleeve back into place.

  The boy waited, but the pilot kept on watching the empty doorway. ‘His maps and his nets,’ he said slowly.

  ‘You were talking about the sea,’ the boy said. The sooner the pilot finished his story, the sooner he might leave.

  ‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I? Well, he’d gone out a long way – out beyond the sight of land – when he noticed the boat was listing. He went down to the engine room and
found a leak.’

  There was definitely a ringing in the boy’s ears. It was tinny and dull, like a bell buoy far out at sea.

  ‘The boat was taking on water, the hold was fully stocked. Our brave pilot had to make a choice – try to make it back to land, knowing the boat would sink, or stay where he was and bail, knowing that all he could do was keep the water at bay until his strength gave out.’ The pilot sat back and rested his mug on his stomach.

  The boy stretched his jaw to try to stop the ringing, but the noise increased.

  ‘I just thought you might find this an interesting conundrum,’ the pilot said. He lifted his mug and took a sip. ‘At what point does one decide to give up?’

  The boy raised his head and the galley blurred. ‘What did you say?’

  The pilot swirled his drink. ‘Just that it’s easy to see how a person could let all this get to them.’ He kept swirling, and the liquid rose up and grazed the rim of his mug.

  The boy closed his eyes, trying to still the movement.

  ‘The same struggle, day after day, year after year. The endlessness. I can only imagine how hard it must be, trying to keep this place going, knowing there’s nothing you can really do.’ The pilot leaned forward. His voice dropped. ‘If you ever need anything. If you ever want to talk …’

  ‘Talk?’ The old man came back into the galley, picked up a mug from the side and sat down at the head of the table. ‘We wouldn’t want to put you out of a job.’

  The pilot took a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Sorry.’ The old man reached across the table and dragged t he bottle towards him. ‘Have I interrupted one of your stories?’

  The pilot folded a neat crease in his handkerchief and put it away in his pocket. ‘Not quite. We were just discussing the importance of temperament.’