Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs

by Paul Carter

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, for example, you’re single, you only wear something once, your clothing labels are from other countries, so you travel a lot right?’

  ‘I’m impressed.’ I was, of course.

  ‘You disappear regularly, and your clothes have numbers written on the tags when you get back, so it’s got to be something like the merchant navy or mining. Am I close?’

  I explained that the numbers are room numbers, that I work on the rigs and the laundry guy always writes your room number on your gear. ‘You’re right about everything else too.’

  She smiled. ‘So where was your last job, somewhere interesting?’

  ‘Russia, Japan, and before that Africa.’

  She thought I was lucky, travelling so much, she had just returned from a trip to South Africa. ‘Whereabouts in Africa were you?’

  ‘Nigeria.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Oh, it was definitely interesting.’ I had to ask her out, but she’d seen my undies. What if she was an environmentalist and decided that I was nothing but a meat-eating eco-vandal who raped the Earth for a living?

  ‘Would you like to have a coffee with me?’

  We had coffee the next day. I was happy; it had been a few years since I had felt that way. Clare was wonderfully easy to talk to. It felt different, she was different, strength of character hovered under her features. All my previous relationships had ended because I was away too much. Perhaps this would be different. These emotions are hard to fathom, especially after years of listening to hundreds of men sit in the locker room offshore going on and on about their divorces. Here are a few quick snippets of oilfield marriage advice:

  ‘Don’t do it.’

  ‘Cheating bitches.’

  ‘She took the kids and the fuckin’ dog.’

  ‘Hide your money man.’

  ‘Fucked the whole team while I was off shore.’

  ‘Got home to an empty house.’

  ‘I’m gonna have her knee-capped next month.’

  ‘So I fucked her sister.’

  Etc., etc.

  It’s simply fear, I think. I always had this notion that I could just roam the planet and run pipe, get into adventures, continue fucking about like I had since I was in my early twenties. Meeting Clare made me think about the next ten years—shit. Basically, I’d have to pull my head from my arse and take stock. What had I done over the last fifteen years? All my friends are genuine grown-ups; they have mortgages, kids, and jobs that don’t involve making conversation with ‘Billy-Ray’ during a typhoon about fuckin’ turkey season back home Gawd-damn.

  There was one person I could talk to about this: Ruby. The constant in my life, my oldest friend, we go way back, nothing was real until I told Ruby. She always threw new light on everything. I had been threatening myself for the last few years with the idea that I could do something else with my life; Ruby had been telling me that for a lot longer. She laid down the rules of life, she never minced words or dressed up a situation. Ruby had saved me from bad decisions many times over the years, so with her I would always listen.

  Luckily Ruby liked Clare and told me to go for it. ‘You’re thirty-five, bald, and you’ve been sleeping on my couch for the last ten years . . . what, do you think you’re Brad Pitt or something?’

  With that she had a laugh—her laugh is priceless, like watching someone yawn. You find yourself laughing with her; throw in a few drinks and I’m on the floor, crocodile tears streaming down both cheeks.

  ‘I’m going to get out of the oilfield soon,’ I announced.

  ‘Keep polishing that turd Pauli.’

  I spent more and more time with Clare. Her company was relaxing in a matter-of-fact way, I liked that. With nothing but time on my hands I occupied myself working for Louise in her advertising agency. I loved it, the people were fun and civilised, and the most danger I faced was a wayward paperclip or perhaps an overly hot cup of coffee.

  After one particularly long stint offshore in the Philippines I returned home to a message on the answering machine, from Louise . . . Could I come straight over and have a superb dinner with lots of great wine and Barry stories. As usual it was a blast. The next day she sent me off to a photo shoot, my first. It was a studio shoot in town. I arrived, found the right studio and walked into a large white room filled with semi-naked girls, the photographer, the hair stylist, the make-up guy, who winked at me, and the client, who spent most of the time chain-smoking with his head out the window. Two days earlier I was on the drill floor on a shitty rig in the southern Philippines, and now I was getting paid to stand here and find inspiration.

  In the three years that I have worked as a freelance copywriter in advertising, albeit in a random staggered way, I have had more drinks, dinners and parties thrown at me than in the fifteen years in the oilfield. But without fail after a few months I would get what my old boss called ‘a rabbit up my arse’ and I would start looking for a rig again. The characters you meet in the oilfield are unbelievable—from full-on rocket scientists with multiple Ivy League degrees and a keen interest in painting to-scale miniature sixteenth-century military figurines on their bunks, to Billy-Bob the brain-dead redneck ex-con whose misspelt jailhouse tatts, fart jokes and new truck back home are all he can talk about. Put a combination of twenty guys like that in a rundown backwater bar in some Godforsaken corner of the world miles from anywhere remotely ‘civilised’, throw in a civil war, a donkey, some festering prostitutes, and anything can happen. And I think that’s why it’s so addictive—not the drilling, not the job, definitely not the food, but the people and the situations you meet them in.

  In the Philippines a few years ago I was in a bar with the boys when a gun-fight started, yes, a gun-fight. Everyone had a gun in that part of Manila. The time passed in super-slow mode, like recalling a car accident. But the part of that night that most sticks with me is when one of the guys went from drunk to sober in a second. We were hiding under the table together when I saw the first flash of panic on his face. Panic is a black leopard that sinks its claws deep into your skull; it makes your body burn and shake. Some people ball up, some freeze, some focus, I tend to poop my pants.

  He focused, grabbed my collar and in a clear white moment said, ‘If I get shot, you have to call my brother and tell him there’s ten grand buried in a coffee can in his front lawn.’

  I was blank . . . the guns were still going off, rounds were breaking windows and slapping into the wall somewhere above us. The fight lasted less than a minute, and spilled out into the street, where the two men exchanging fire were joined by two security men from the bar.

  I took a quick look out the broken window; down in the street I could see one of the bar’s armed bouncers crouched behind a car, his head almost in the wheel arch, one arm laying across the hood blindly firing in the general direction of the other men. I sat down on my unfinished cheeseburger and laughed a nervous relieved laugh. Mike was still under the table, lighting a cigarette. The others were scrambling to get out the back door.

  ‘You buried ten grand in your brother’s front lawn?’

  ‘Fuck no, but he’s a prick and it would have served him right.’

  Towards the end of my fifth month at home I got a call to go back to Russia. I only had three days to get ready, and a bunch of copy to finish for Louise. It was a Sunday, my flight was on Monday morning, I was racing across town on the bike to get to a meeting. Just as I passed a set of traffic lights I sensed a car, way too close, and doing well over the speed limit. It came up behind me fast, hitting my bike’s rear wheel as it was changing lanes.

  The bike bucked, kicking me up on the tank. I held on but was overshooting a right-hand corner. I grabbed a handful of brakes but locked up the rear wheel . . . that was it . . . I laid it down. BANG . . . the impact was remarkably soft. I knew I was okay. I looked over my right shoulder as the bike and I slid down the road, the car that hit me was speeding off through the entrance to the
Eastern Distributor Tunnel—bastard.

  The corner . . . my head snapped back. The bike and I had parted company and I watched my beautiful 650 Twin slam into a metal fence. This can’t be happening! I just had it resprayed.

  Passing my demolished bike I bounced off a curb, somehow made the corner and slid through another set of traffic lights that were conveniently green. People sat behind their steering wheels watching me, mouths open, as I passed by them on my arse. I stopped just as my feet touched the curb of a cross-street. I got to my feet, but my right leg was shaking too much to stand.

  My phone disintegrated in my hand when I opened it. A man came running up.

  ‘Are you okay? Don’t move, don’t take your helmet off . . . your brains could fall out.’

  I looked at the man and pondered that. ‘Can I use your phone please?’

  ‘I saw the whole thing, you’re really fucking lucky mate.’

  I called Ruby; she was on the way. An ambulance came roaring up, the medic sprang out. ‘I’m okay . . . well, he thought the helmet was holding my brain in.’ The medic shot a fuck-off look at the man who nodded in that knowing way.

  ‘You’ll live,’ he said and smiled then gave me some dressing for my right hand and soon they departed.

  ‘Hope I never see you again,’ I said.

  Ruby arrived and took me to hospital, just to be sure. I’d cracked a rib.

  ‘You can’t go offshore now . . . shame, just gonna have to stay and be an ad man.’

  Bollocks, I’ve never missed a job. The next day I was on the flight trying to work out how I was going to get into a survival suit, life jacket and four-point harness for the flight to the rig, let alone work.

  I WAS BACK IN Singapore again, begging for used thermal coveralls, but this time it was a different rig. BP had decided to drill that wildcat well offshore in Sakhalin. Erwin Herczeg was in charge of this job—the godfather. What a relief. No matter what blew up, broke down, fell over or just stopped on the rig, he could fix it, get the job done, do it in record time and have all the boys back on the beach in one piece and wearing the obligatory give away client baseball caps. It had been a few years since we had worked on a job together; I was looking forward to it.

  After ten days in the workshop standing-by we finally got the call. This time we would go from Yuzhno by charter flight to a small jetty on the northernmost tip of the peninsula near the small town of Okha. From there we would take a supply vessel to a supply barge which was moored a few kilometres offshore in international waters. And finally a chopper to the rig.

  By the time we arrived in Yuzhno the weather had turned. It was the middle of their summer but to us still cold enough to warrant thick jackets and beanies. The small charter aircraft was waiting on the tarmac, its strobes flashing and the door ajar. One prop was spinning, sending waves of invisible rollers over the grass behind us. We simply transferred from the jet to the charter. All the passengers were involved in the rig operation: one big Dutch guy who was with the company supplying the drill bits for the job was not happy with the look of the aircraft.

  It did look as ancient as everything else on Sakhalin, like a flying version of the Nogliki train. The Dutch man walked around it kicking the tyres and swearing over the noise as the flight crew looked on. Eventually we all got on board, the bags were stowed by throwing them in the back; it was loud, cramped and very uncomfortable. The weather had worsened by the time we arrived on the tiny Okha airstrip so the supply vessel was going to have to wait until the next day. Our accommodation for the night was a forty-minute truck ride inland, into the woods. It was very weird, we drove down a small dirt track ever deeper into an ominously black pine forest.

  ‘Where the fuck are we going, there’s nothing out here.’ The only place I knew of for hundreds of miles was Okha, and we were heading away from there.

  One of the BP guys leaned over. ‘There are beds at this place, don’t worry, it’s not flash but it’s all we could get at short notice.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh it’s an old asylum.’

  I looked at Erwin.‘Isn’t that like a nuthouse?’

  ‘Well it is now buddy,’ he replied, laughing.

  Darkness fell quickly, adding a sense of urgency that silently crept up everyone’s spines. Then, towering above the woods, black against the sky, stood our lodgings. The building was another award-winning design from the Russian ‘Fear Works’ school of architecture. The only thing missing was a few well-placed gargoyles. It was a nuthouse. I pictured a Soviet version of The Shining with some crazed Boris hobbling about in the snow with a big fuck-off axe.

  Random lights shone weakly in the upstairs windows, but when the truck circled and backed up to the main door, only its red tail lights illuminated the entrance. It started raining hard as we unloaded the bags, a dark figure opened the heavy iron door and right on cue a bolt of lightning cracked down over our heads. I wondered what this place must have been like during the Cold War, I thought about the possibility of salty-looking KGB film noir spies torturing people in the basement.

  The woman in charge was perfectly suited to the spooky scene; Hollywood could not have cast this any better. She had a pronounced limp and actually said ‘Walk this way’ when she led us to our rooms on the second floor. I sniggered all the way up the stairs, along the barren corridors which were like huge dark tunnels.

  I was sharing a room with Erwin; it smelled of disinfectant and looked like a cross between Hannibal Lecter’s cell and your average public toilet. It was fairly empty, furnished only with two iron beds, each with one inch of antique foam, and a small table. I wished I had a crayon so I could write ‘Redrum’ on the door. Every time lightning flashed through the curtainless window glass, thunder shaking the building, one of the guys down the hall would scream,‘IT’S ALIVE’.

  Erwin sat on his bed, smiling. ‘All work and no play makes Pauli a dull boy.’

  ‘Very funny . . . I hope they feed us.’

  Dinner was boiled mystery meat and boiled something else, yummy. We sat up late, swapping stories, catching up on the last few years while the wind beat a distinct rhythm through the rain on the cracked windows. We woke early to cold showers, clear skies and no breakfast. Then it was back on the truck to the jetty and the waiting supply ship.

  Our voyage was brief, three hours and we were alongside the supply barge, our home until the rig was ready for us. The POB (Personnel On Board) situation on many rigs is a constant problem—no bed space. Sometimes I have had to ‘hot bed’ it, jumping straight into the night-shift guy’s smelly sheets too tired to care. To avoid this we would stand-by on the supply barge until the last moment, then make the trip to the rig.

  Inevitably there were problems with the drilling and we ended up standing-by for a week. I was glad as it gave my rib a chance to heal. The vessel was comfortable, the people on board were really nice. Most of the crew were Indonesian, the rest Australian. But on the third day a massive typhoon started looming closer to our location. Tracking up the coast from Japan, it hit hard early in the morning. I knew this because I woke up on the floor with all my gear on top of me.

  Remember those old Star Trek moments when the ship was being attacked and everyone would grab a handrail then collectively let go and do a high-speed dressage manoeuvre over to the opposite handrail while the director shook the camera? Well a typhoon is nothing like that. If it’s bad enough, it will pick you up and hurl you into the nearest wall. I could hear one of the boys throwing up with all his heart in the toilet.

  ‘Don’t open that fuckin’ door.’ I’m usually okay as long as I don’t smell it.

  Erwin was starting to turn green. ‘I need to go on deck . . . see the horizon,’ he moaned.

  We pulled on raincoats and carefully made our way outside. The main deck was big, fifty square metres, and covered in equipment. Drums of drilling chemicals were scattered about and rolling all over the place. Containers had broken loose and skidded across the deck; the fork
lift lay on its roof. Every alternate wave broke over the side of the barge; crashing down hard on the cold steel floor. The hull vibrated as tonnes of sea water slammed like the wall of a liquid building into the bulkhead.

  I tried to elevate Erwin’s mind from that horrible inner focusing you do with seasickness. Waiting . . . swallowing . . . sweating on your elementary canal to go into spasm. With one eye closed and my right leg tucked behind my coat, I hopped up to him. Horizontal rain stung my face, I had to yell as loud as I could over the wind. ‘Arrrr me laddy, there we were, hard aground on the mahogany reef.’ . . . Nothing . . . ‘We was pickin’ the weavels out the biscuits-n-drinkin’ our urine all day I tells ya.’

  In the middle of my performance, a huge wave deposited a fully grown seal bang in the middle of the main deck. Equally surprised to see each other, all three of us exchanged looks and shared a ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ moment. The seal remained firmly planted on the spot . . . ten feet from us, unexpectedly caught in the spotlight of the human world, his eyes wide as saucers darting left to right. I’d never seen a seal go from sheer terror to relaxed indifference . . . he almost smiled.

  As if realising the most he had to fear was putting a flipper in some wayward vomit, he opened his pink mouth and belched. Erwin and I watched him casually make his way over to the only shelter available, in the welding shop. Within an hour the boys were throwing him toasted sandwiches. I was waiting for him to come out and ask where we keep the good brandy.

  The typhoon moved on, leaving days of cleaning up to be done. We made repairs and double-checked our equipment. No choppers were flying when our turn on the drill floor arrived, so we boarded the supply boat again. The rig, when we got there, loomed out of the fog, a decaying hulk, its structure forming an alien-fabricated atoll that reminds you of your fragility.

  The crew stood on the deck of the supply boat, waiting in silence for the crane to lower the ‘Billy Pugh’. ‘Billy Pugh’ is a manufacturer’s name, commonly used for a personnel basket. It looks like a giant upside-down ice cream cone, with a flat ring about two metres wide and a cone of rope netting attached to the ring and fixed at the top to the crane’s hook. Each man was running over the what ifs in his mind. The first thing most of us usually do is take a good look at the derrick: Are there any stands racked back? Are they tripping in or out of the hole? What’s my bunk going to be like? You just throw your bag inside the rope netting, step on to the ring with the other guys, grab the rope and hold on. The crane lifts you the 200-odd feet straight up and onto the heli-deck.