The Waves Burn Bright

by Iain Maloney

  ‘You startled me. I got up for the bathroom and I heard a helicopter coming in so I looked out of the window and saw someone sitting on your lawn. Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. I heard the helicopter as well. It landed and took off again really quickly.’

  ‘Unusual at this time of night. That’s why I switched the telly on. Have you seen the news?’

  ‘No? Why?’

  ‘There’s been some kind of accident offshore. Caroline, which platform is your father on?’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  ‘The news isn’t clear. A fire on Piper Alpha. That’s one of ours.’

  Piper Alpha.

  Piper Alpha.

  Mr Galloway was speaking from somewhere on the moon, a woozy bass that I could feel more than hear, like when the batteries went in my Walkman and the audiobook fell into a black hole, stretched and deepened.

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘I… I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you have a number for your mother?’

  ‘Inside.’

  ‘Go inside. Elaine and I will be over in a minute.’

  I looked at him. Saw him. Did he just speak?

  Kim and Lesley were still up, under a double duvet at either end of the couch watching The Breakfast Club. It was the final scene, detention over, the cast walked out into Saturday sunshine, their lives ahead of them. Simple Minds kicked in, Don’t You (Forget About Me). The rest of the house was empty, throbbing with it. The party long over, Mark’s echo stalking the stairs. I flicked through all four channels. Nothing. Nothing. No fire. No accident offshore. Mr Galloway was a dream and nothing more, the helicopter nothing to do with me.

  Doorbell.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Kim was almost asleep, wriggled upright.

  ‘Did you get cold? Kim wanted to wake you but Graeme said to let you sleep it off. Was that right?’

  What was she talking about? I flicked channels again. Nothing. The doorbell.

  Mr and Mrs Galloway came in. No one locked the door. Or they had a key. I couldn’t remember. He was properly dressed now. She’d got trousers on and a coat but I could see her nightie underneath. It was blue with yellow flowers. Kim and Lesley glanced around the room for anything incriminating.

  ‘Hi girls,’ said Mrs Galloway. ‘Is there anyone else in the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s nothing on TV,’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There are bulletins through the night. It’s nearly half twelve. You should sit down.’

  ‘I’ll get the kettle on.’ Mrs Galloway went into the kitchen. I didn’t think to check on the way through if there was any drink left. I ran, beat her to it, pushing by her. But it was okay, there were no cans, no bottles. A smell of cigarettes from the bin, that was it. I stood in the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do. None of this made sense. I must still be dreaming, out on the lawn.

  ‘Caroline, it’s on.’

  ‘Go on through, I’ll make a pot of tea.’

  Grampian TV said Mr Galloway was telling the truth. A fire offshore. A rescue operation underway. The helicopter we’d heard was taking doctors to the Tharos, a semi-submersible platform nearby. As we listened another helicopter buzzed overhead. Mr Galloway pulled the curtains back and looked.

  ‘Coming in.’

  ‘Survivors will be taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary by helicopter,’ said the TV. They had no film, just old photos of Piper Alpha. It looked fine. A bright, clear day out at sea. Maybe he was on that helicopter, maybe he was already at the hospital and no one there to meet him. Maybe he was coming on the next one and I still had time, it only took five or ten minutes to walk to A&E from here. Maybe he wasn’t on the helicopter. Maybe he wouldn’t be on any.

  ‘We need to call your mother.’ Mr Galloway switched the TV off. ‘Where’s the number?’

  It was by the phone. I unfroze, adrenaline peaking. I needed to call her. I needed to do it. These people were neighbours, this was my house. They didn’t belong there. I did. I was in charge. I needed to do something, something to regain control. This was something I could do.

  ‘Carrie, is that where your dad is?’ I’d forgotten Kim and Lesley were even there. I couldn’t look at them. Their faces, scared, small and frightened, like children. There couldn’t be fear. I couldn’t be small. In control. In control.

  I dialled.

  It rang.

  It rang.

  A voice, male and full of sleep, ‘Yes, Frank Carpenter, what is it?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I must have dialled the wrong number. I was looking for Doctor Hannah Fraser.’

  ‘Shit. Hang on.’

  Mumblings. Rumblings. Scratching on the phone. What kind of hotel was this?

  ‘Caroline, what the hell are you doing? Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘Mum, there’s…’ I couldn’t say it. There were no words, nothing there.

  ‘Caroline?’

  I was sitting on the floor looking at the phone. Where were the words? I was in control so why wasn’t my body doing what I told it?

  Mr Galloway took the phone from me. ‘Hannah? It’s Doug Galloway… No, everything here is fine but… No, it’s not about Caroline or anything with the party. I’m sorry, Hannah, will you please listen to me? There’s been an accident offshore. Marcus is on Piper Alpha, isn’t he?… No, we don’t know. The TV says a rescue operation is under way. I thought you should know right away… yes, we’ll take care of her until you can get back… yes, if we hear anything before then. It’s no problem, see you soon.’ He hung up. ‘She’ll get the first train back in the morning.’

  ‘Come on Caroline,’ Mrs Galloway had the tea things on a tray. ‘You can’t sit there.’

  She wasn’t at a hotel. She was in bed with whoever Frank Carpenter was.

  When two tectonic plates meet, one of them is forced under the other. It’s called subduction. One rises and becomes mountains. The other sinks into the earth. This causes earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity. One plate must win out over the other.

  I grabbed my jacket.

  ‘I’m going to find my dad.’

  Outside in the fresh night air, alone on the street with wind and muffled starlight, summer scent from the gardens, from Westburn Park. Deep breath. I was back in control. Minds are just machines, organic machines, thoughts controlled by electricity and proteins and pathways and can therefore be rerouted, diverted, pushed into sidings. Control. Deep breath. There were two halves of my brain. The half that was emotional and terrified and crying Daddy Daddy Daddy. The half that was rational and scientific and controlling my heart rate and my left right left right walking and organising those thoughts. Would I be a gibbering wreck or a rational being? All those nights lying listening to them argue, trying to block it out, trying not to think of words like ‘divorce’, ‘separation’, ‘estranged’, ‘dysfunctional’. You could use physical distractors like audiobooks which cut out sound and engaged the intellect. I didn’t have my Walkman with me. So how else could you escape the present? With memories and dreams, Christmases past and future, holidays and university. It was kind of like what Buddhists do, we learned in RE, with meditation. You let the mind drift, find its own equilibrium. Except without surrendering control. Buddhists floated on water letting the currents take them. My technique was more like cycling downhill; the momentum of the bike and the laws of physics dictated the speed and direction but I still had my hands on the handlebars, fingering the brakes in case I needed to swerve. Or stop. To retain rational control of an animalistic brain, you distracted the panicky pup with warm and cuddly memories and shiny, shiny hopes. Deep breath.

  I turned onto Westburn Road, the solid, reliable granite and fragile-looking modern metal and plastic hybrid of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Foresterhill, where I was born, where I went with a broken arm, another time with broken fingers and most recently with a broken rib. The
arm and the fingers I was vaguely proud of, the former done while skiing, the latter while abseiling. The rib was thoroughly embarrassing. Kim, Lesley and I were walking down Union Street one weekend on our way shopping. We were messing about, dancing around, pushing each other into passing boys. I tried a Singing in the Rain style jump onto the steps of the Music Hall and missed, cracked my rib on the top step. I thought it was just bruised and we went to the cinema but all the way through I couldn’t laugh or eat popcorn or, by the end, stand up without help, because of this excruciating pierce in my chest. Dad picked us up and Mum said I was exaggerating.

  ARI, where Mum worked. Having a mother who was a doctor was a blessing and a curse. Those times in A&E, she was a huge help, explaining things to me and scaring the crap out of the nurses so I got seen quickly. No waiting time when a surgeon’s daughter is in the house. But that was only when she accepted I had broken bones. With my rib, she refused point blank to believe I’d broken it. Same with the arm. Take a couple of aspirin and it’ll be better in the morning. Except the pain was so bad I couldn’t sleep. All kids of medics go through this; everyone has similar stories. Our parents see so much worse every day that our aches and pains get minimalised. It’s not deliberate, it’s not cruel, it’s kind of understandable. A matter of scale. Heart surgeons crack ribs all day long, it’s how you get into the heart. You can’t touch someone’s heart without breaking bones.

  Who was Frank Carpenter?

  That song was going round and round my head, I knew all the words from start to finish, the amount of times we’d watched The Breakfast Club. Detention was never like that film. Apart from the start where everyone was bored, maybe. You just sat there doing your homework until even the teacher had had enough and let you go. Pretty much what you’d do after school anyway, just still in uniform. I got detention before the end of term for telling Mr Mitchell that he was wrong. We were reviewing photosynthesis and he wrote the basic formula on the board 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2 only he missed the 1 in H12 making it H2 which was obviously wrong. Only Mr Mitchell didn’t like being told he was wrong.

  I crossed the road and stepped over the low wall that separated the hospital from the pavement. The grass was dry and soft, freshly cut. Grass was like home to me. All the trips we went on, Colorado, Sicily, Sakurajima, Spain, Greece, they were all dusty landscapes, scrub bushes, grass that cut your feet, or sand and rock from horizon to horizon. When I came home, when we came in over the coast to land in Aberdeen, the full frequency range of greens on display was like a welcome mat laid out for me. In the window seat peering down I could already feel the spongy give, smell the tangy crispness. I paused to breathe deep the lawn, the memories.

  There were people, reporters I assumed, around the helipad. Maybe some relatives. It was the middle of the night, how many were awake, watching the news? How many were sleeping soundly, wrapped in comforting ignorance of whatever was going on a hundred odd miles from here?

  I’d no idea how many people were even on a platform at any one time. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

  Velcro grass, my feet fixed. Walking in the dark it was easy to lose myself in memories and futures. I was about to step inside the hospital where reality was splashed on the floor, echoed around the corridors, carried through the ventilation. Hospitals were where the truth of our weakness was laid bare. Meatbags rotting, fragile machines falling apart. Hospitals were the front line in the fight against entropy, where the laws of the universe were challenged. Where we lost the battle.

  I bypassed the reporters and followed the road from the helipad to A&E, a shortcut through Foresterhill I took whenever I went to Lesley’s house. There were people outside A&E, relatives it looked like, smoking. Clusters of sleep hair and thrown together clothes, hands on shoulders, heads bowed under weight, heads raised to the purple summer night, ears pricked for rotors. Eyes ran over me, assessed me for news, passed on. Through the ominous yellow entrance and it was chaos, proper Gleick chaos, ordered disorder, like it was on Casualty, people everywhere, doctors, nurses, patients, more relatives. It didn’t seem real. Maybe they were all actors. At school we learned that in 1938 Orson Welles broadcast The War of the Worlds on radio and the listeners thought it was the news. They panicked, ran from their homes, blocked the highways.

  I went up to the counter.

  ‘Yes?’ The nurse barely looked up, that voice of exasperation – couldn’t I see she was run off her feet? She was overweight and the tiredness made her look older than she really was. She looked like she hadn’t had a holiday in years, skin pale with teabag blotches. I reached in for my mother’s voice, the voice of authority. To be in control you had to convince others that you were in control. Teachers, doctors, politicians, they have that voice. A flash of Mark’s smug face: the Iron Lady. So be it.

  ‘My name is Caroline Fraser. My mother is Doctor Hannah Fraser, she works here. My father is on Piper Alpha. I want to know what’s happening.’

  The exasperation still there but it softened. ‘Doesn’t your mother know?’

  ‘She’s at a conference.’ Yes, this is Frank Carpenter. What is it?

  ‘Are you here alone? How old are you?’

  ‘Sixteen. Will you tell me what’s happening?’

  ‘The relatives are all in a waiting room. You should go there. When we have news you’ll be told in there.’

  ‘You don’t know anything?’

  ‘Cathy, would you show this girl where the relatives are?’

  Cathy was small and quite young. Mousy, her glasses had a turquoise tint. She smiled sympathetically and held out a hand like she was directing traffic. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Caroline. Carrie.’

  ‘Nice to meet you. Are you here by yourself?’

  ‘My mum’s in Bristol at… she’s in Bristol. My dad’s…’

  ‘Your grandparents?’

  ‘My mum’s parents retired to France. Dad’s are dead.’

  She showed me into a full waiting room. When the door opened every face turned to us. The expressions, the exhaustion, the tears, that was a room waiting for horror. I turned back to Cathy but she was quietly easing the door closed.

  Silence. Then noise hit me like an eruption. There were about forty people in the room, including some young children. Questions overwhelmed, smothering me like ash.

  ‘What did they tell you?’

  ‘What news is there?’

  ‘Did they give you any names?’

  I shook my head. They turned back into their groups and held each other. There were no empty seats so I slid down the wall and sat on the floor. This room reflected me, uncovered what I was trying to hide. I looked at the space between my feet.

  A man came in holding up his hands. His kindly smile showed a man barely above water. ‘I’m sorry, I have no more news. This room is a little cramped, isn’t it? Why don’t we all move to the chapel? There’s more space there and we’ve set up some tea and biscuits for you. So, if you’d all like to follow me…’

  There were no more memories, no more hopes, just one, just the one.

  Come back to me.

  I let myself be led.

  We traipsed after him.

  We sat down.

  Some of the kids got a biscuit.

  There was a window overlooking the helipad.

  We sat.

  Others came in.

  No news.

  A minister came.

  No news.

  Just a comforting word and a hand on the shoulder.

  We sat.

  There must have been near two hundred people.

  Mothers.

  Wives.

  Children.

  Brothers.

  Fathers.

  No news.

  ‘Are you here by yourself, love?’ The woman next to me had a baby asleep in her arms. Soft fuzzy head, rolls of puppy fat like sleeves on a puffer jacket. ‘It’s your dad on the Piper?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Same as this one. He’s due
back tomorrow. Needs to finish the painting. You should see the house, the state of it. Masking tape everywhere, everything under sheets. We moved in six months ago. A fixer-upper, lovely wee cottage out towards Ellon. He’s from Ellon, see? But with him being offshore that much and me with this one to look after, there’s never enough time to get it finished, never enough in the day. I told him we could get someone in, a professional like, and just get it over and done with but you know what they’re like up here, why pay for something you can do yourself? He’s a painter himself after all which is part of the problem. If you spend your days painting an oil rig the last thing you want to do on your time off is more painting. He’d much rather spend it on his arse in front of the golf or in the pub. He’s due home tomorrow.’

  Someone brought in a TV.

  We sat.

  I took a look out the window. Next to me, an elderly man, about the age of Mr Galloway, leaned against the frame absentmindedly picking a whorl in the wood, his eyes fixed on the helipad.

  ‘This city’s seen some tragedies over the years, lassie. Now it’s oil but before that it was the fishing. There’s a decent living to be made out of the North Sea, God saw sure it was well stocked with things we’d find useful, but by Christ He made the cost too high. A fair few I grew up with never came back. Most folks my age’ll tell you the same. But youth can’t be told. My son thinks the ocean is a playground for him to muck about in, as if it’s not dangerous enough without strapping your air to your back and going hundreds of feet under it. Tried to get me out there once, a birthday present he called it but I’ve no death wish. You’ll never catch me scuba diving. I’m a fishmonger, my brother was a fisherman. He’d catch them, I’d sell them. Made a decent living at it but the industry’s on its back now. Never did recover from the Cod Wars and those thieving Icelandic bastards. And to think I was thankful he never went into the fishing.’

  We sat.

  No names.

  People were talking. The sound of your voice drowned the sound of your thoughts. The prosaic. The everyday. No one asked questions. We were radios, broadcasting only. We were not set to receive, not that night. Only me. I needed their voices to drown out mine. Who is Frank Carpenter? They were my talking books, my stories. I didn’t need to prompt.