by Iain Maloney
‘Off out tramping the countryside tomorrow?’ Harry asked. ‘Where is it this week?’
‘Bennachie.’
‘You’ll have the weather for it.’ There must be some problems with the conference – Harry’s pint was disappearing faster than normal. ‘I might take the mutt for a leg-stretching along the beach.’
‘Just down here?’ Marcus pointed beyond the edge of campus, over the golf course where the North Sea started.
‘Just down here. The mutt prefers Balmedie but have you been up there since they let that arse Trump build his eighteen holes? Ruined it. That’s your SNP for you.’
Harry was hoping for an argument. Marcus waved at Duncan.
‘I’ll get these,’ said Harry, draining his pint.
‘So what’s up?’
‘Oh, nothing. Usual fuck-ups, double bookings, confusion. You’d think Aberdeen was on the moon the way some of these arseholes are behaving. No doubt we’ll get a week of Americans saying “why couldn’t we have it in America?” The English complaining about the cold, the French complaining about the food, the Germans complaining about things not being well organised and the Japanese pissing off every five minutes to play golf.’
‘Any more stereotypes you want to roll out?’
Harry laughed. ‘There are Arabs coming but… well… you know.’
‘Worried about a fatwa?’
‘Did I ever tell you that story?’
Harry had, many times, but Marcus let him go on. Some people liked to talk their stress out, others nursed it to keep it warm like Tam O’Shanter’s wife and her wrath. Marcus had been the latter. Still was, to a certain extent. Harry would have two pints and a bit of a rant, then he’d be purged.
‘Well,’ he said when he was done, draining his pint. ‘Back to the grindstone. You’ll be here later?’
‘Chances are.’
‘Cheers Duncan.’
‘Harry…’
Harry stopped at the door, turned back towards him. Marcus couldn’t speak. He wanted to ask, wanted to say something but he couldn’t, the words were blocked.
‘Marcus?’
‘Nothing. I…’ Harry came back over, put his hand on Marcus’ shoulder. Marcus flinched at the touch. ‘Nothing, Harry. It’s fine. Forget about it.’
‘Malmaison.’
‘Malmaison?’
‘On Queen’s Road. Booked in from tomorrow.’
‘How did you…?’
‘How long have we known each other, Marcus?’ Marcus looked down, to the side, anywhere to avoid making eye contact. He pulled his lighter and fags out, slid off the stool. Harry stepped back. ‘Two things. Go and see her. At the hotel. Don’t see her for the first time in years just before she delivers her paper. Secondly, do it sober. For fuck sake be sober when you see her. Now, give us one of those sticks. I’d better be getting back.’
Harry took a fag, Marcus followed him outside and sparked his own, the smell of hydrocarbons and smoke around him.
Piper Alpha, July 6th 1988
You, Marcus, you’re there in the cinema watching Caddyshack. You’ve seen it before but what else is there? Go for a walk? On an oil rig at night you’re taking your life into your hands, wandering about. Get in someone’s way, slip on something, and before you can say ‘health and safety’ you’re in the North Sea with a broken spine. Back in a cramped room with a good book and a bunkmate snoring? No, there’s fuck all to do offshore when you’re only there for a few days, don’t know anyone and no one wants to know you. A few frames of snooker? Everyone’s suddenly busy. You’re management. You’re an unknown risk. You could try explaining your job has nothing to do with theirs but they won’t believe you. Too much ill-feeling over cutbacks. You’re a geologist, but out here you represent every desk onshore. So you sit in the dark of the cinema listening to the roar of the gas flare and watch Bill Murray fight with a gopher.
You hate golf. A good way to ruin a nice walk. Take that course down at the beach in Aberdeen, out the back of Pittodrie. A long, beautiful stretch of coastline fenced off and turned into a playground for wankers who count their handicaps. Nature divided into fairways, greens and bunkers.
You could do with a shot, a beer, a bottle of something. Life is dry offshore. Rodney Dangerfield downswings and this scream like a Stuka raining down on Guernica drills through the platform, underneath it a death rattle. You’re shaken to your feet, the platform jerking like a rodeo bull, lights flickering, and the screen crumples to the floor like a poleaxed drunk. You look around, panic on the horizon like a fiery dawn, you know the safety procedure, remember it from your younger days when offshore was part of your routine, and you remember it from the refresher when you arrived. You don’t know this platform that well but the men do. Muster in the galley or your lifeboat station and await instructions.
A space filled with darkness and smoke, flickering lights, shouts, tears, even jokes, black humour in the blackest of times. You run through smoke, the heels of the men in front of you, your jumper pulled up over your mouth and nose.
In the galley now, walls heating, floors heating, the platform is ablaze, explosions tilting the world. You’re waiting for someone to come and tell you what to do but no one comes. Some leave, alone and in groups, to find their own way out. One lad is crying in the corner. You dip towels in the fish tank, the cold water soothing for a second or two, then you’re dry and parched again. The fish swim in ever decreasing circles. Throw them over the side, let them escape. Would they survive the fall? Tomatoes smashed onto the face, the juice dripping. You wonder about the sprinklers, why there’s nothing coming out of them. You wonder if this is cutbacks. People are trying doors but everywhere there’s smoke and flame. Black pouring in through the galley, through the roof space. You look around like it’s freeze-framed, like everything is frozen in time, and it’s then that you realise you’re going to die.
You’re going to die.
You look at the men on the floor, the men sitting in groups, looking lost, waiting. And you say, ‘we’ve got to get out of here.’
‘They’ll send choppers in.’
‘They can’t land, the helideck’s burning.’
‘We’ve done our muster. We wait here for instructions.’
‘There are no instructions coming. We have to get out. Get off.’
And you join the men opening and closing doors, smoke everywhere. You dip your towel in the fish tank again, wrap it round your head.
‘I’m getting out. Who’s with me?’
‘We’re to wait here for instructions.’
But you can’t wait. You leave.
In the corridor there are bodies.
You crawl over them, find the stairs, crawl down.
Bodies. Five. Ten.
You can’t see if anyone followed you. There’s too much smoke.
Each breath hurts.
Each breath hurts.
You’re going to die.
Carrie’s at home.
Alone.
Each breath hurts.
You’re going to die.
But you can’t.
You crawl over the bodies.
Explosions.
You get to the drill floor. You can stand up now. The floor is melting. The handrails molten.
You keep going down.
You pass men going in different directions. Some have lifejackets. Some don’t. You don’t.
At the edge you look down. Sixty-eight feet. Too high.
You look along and there’s a hose. Someone’s tied a hose and men are going down it. About thirty feet above the water it hangs, they hang, then drop. There’s a zodiac zipping around the legs. The sea is on fire. The platform is on fire from the bottom to the top. You get in line. Your boots are melting into the deck. It’s your turn. Your hands are burnt but you grip the hose. You slip. Slip down faster and faster until there’s no more hose and you’re falling. You try to remember your training, legs straight, toes pointed, arse clenched, hand over nose and mouth t
hen you batter through the surface.
Kick up. Kick away. The current will pull you under but arms under yours and you’re pulled into the zodiac.
‘Are you hurt?’
You shake your head. Cough. No. You don’t know. You’re alive.
A bigger rescue boat. You climb up the side netting, are pulled onto the deck. Blankets. Cigarettes. Someone takes your name, adds it to a list. A short list. You’re alive.
And there is Piper Alpha, from sea level to helideck an inferno, a vent into hell opened in the North Sea, all that rage flaming out, gas from the risers still burning, burning, more and more explosions. There are men still on there, men still in the water. Men jumping from the helideck a hundred and eighty feet up. Hundreds of men fighting for life. You’re alive.
The boat circles. More men are pulled on. The deck is strewn with survivors. The worst injured are taken inside. Tharos sprays water over the platform but it’s like hoping to stop a train with a breath. It’s as bright as day. You’re alive.
It falls apart. Melted metal buckling, dropping into the sea. It would hiss if you could hear over the roar of a thousand jet engines. You watch the accommodation block. The galley. All those men you left in there. You watch from the boat as it tilts, it slides into the sea and is gone.
Were they still alive when it hit the water?
What killed them?
Smoke.
Fire.
Water.
You.
You’re alive.
You’re alive.
You left them.
The sun rises.
You’re alive.
Piper Alpha is a stump.
You left them.
You’re alive.
A helicopter winches you up.
You’re alive.
You’re alive.
Aberdeen, June 2013
‘A bit Third World, isn’t it?’
‘Less Developed World. What is?’ said Ash.
‘The infrastructure. No rail link between the city and the airport. Swap the miserable taxi drivers for shouting tuk tuk drivers, crank the temperature up another twenty degrees, sprinkle liberally with dust and we could be in Southeast Asia.’
‘Glad to be home? Do you know what Third World actually means?’
‘Does it come after Middle Earth?’
‘It’s a Cold War term. The First World was the US and all those countries aligned with it. The Second World was the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, China, all the Communist countries.’
‘And the Third World was everyone else?’
The front of Aberdeen Airport was boarded up. A refit underway, a sprucing up, but it made the place feel closed for business. We joined the taxi queue and before too long our turn came. Ash climbed into the back and I made a half-hearted attempt to help the driver with the bags.
‘You’re fine,’ he said. ‘Get in oot fae the cauld.’
I was drained, dirty. We’d had a four hour wait in Schiphol for the first morning flight. I watched the sun rise across the runway while dropping in and out of sleep. Ash, full of energy after sleeping through most of Eurasia, toured the shops, coming back to me with a bag of cheese, a wooden tulip and a bundle of newspapers. I drank coffee after coffee hoping the caffeine would wake me up and dislodge the blockage in my guts. Whether airline food or stress was the cause, I felt bloated and nauseous. I just wanted to get to the hotel.
‘Far aboots?’
Ash looked at me, baffled.
‘Into town. Malmaison Hotel. Queen’s Road.’
‘First time in Aiberdeen?’
‘Born and bred.’
‘Aye? Ye dinnae sound it.’
‘Been away a while.’
I never did sound it, not like he did. I knew he was putting it on a bit. The airport drivers loved confusing tourists, particularly Americans and the English, by speaking the broadest Doric they could manage, but I’d never sounded particularly local. With Dad being from Perthshire and Hannah from Bath it wasn’t like much Doric was spoken at home. Still, I was as Aberdonian as he was and he wasn’t going to have fun at my expense.
All the way through Bucksburn along Great Northern Road, sitting for ages at the Haudagain Roundabout, heart of Aberdeen’s mismanaged road network, and up North Anderson Drive, the driver moaned about the traffic, about people parking at the side of the dual carriageway, about the wrong vehicles using the bus lanes and idiots who didn’t know how roundabouts worked. I stared out of the window at the familiar and the changed. This was the main route out to the Highlands and I’d come this way so often with Dad, stopped at that bakery for camping treats, the Danestone Tesco for supplies. His Saab had once had a blowout just after the Haudagain Roundabout and he’d jacked it up and changed it in front of what was now some MSP’s constituency office.
‘Is it how you remember it?’ Ash asked.
‘Yes and no. It’s like visiting a film set. In a way it’s hard to believe it’s not plywood and paint.’
‘Have you ever been on a movie set?’
‘No. But you know what I mean.’
‘Strange to be home.’
There was something in her voice, a little catch. When I looked over she was looking out the window. Ash was from North Carolina, hadn’t been home since she was seventeen. I’d never see where she came from, never meet her family. She’d left – or they’d thrown her out – when she came out. Lived her final year of high school with an aunt then moved to New York. Few coming-outs are easy – mine wasn’t – but Ash’s was worse than most. I laid my hand on hers and squeezed, rejoiced in the pressure I received back. Ten years together and she could still give me that rush I never got from anyone else.
I kept an eye on the road in case the driver tried to pull a fast one, taking the long way round. As we turned left off Anderson Drive I made the connections, twigged the route he was taking. The traffic on the Drive was clogging up so he was going to cut through by the hospital, over Midstocket and King’s Gate. He was going to take me right through my own neighbourhood, maybe even right by my old house.
‘Are you okay?’ Ash squeezed again.
‘Yeah.’
‘Memories?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We’ll check in, run a hot bath and order room service. You’ve nothing on your schedule the rest of the day?’
‘I’ll email Harry Boyle, let him know I’ve arrived.’
‘Try and think of it as just another conference. You’ve done hundreds of them.’
‘It’s not though, is it?’
Slowly down the hill, the taxi stopped at the crossing by the hospital entrance. Visitors coming, visitors going. Patients checking out, walking out. The lucky ones. Arms around shoulders, hunched in jackets, tentative steps. My father had walked out, into the minibus and away to the Skean Dhu where he and the others had been debriefed, cleaned up, given fresh clothes, transport money and a few stiff drinks. I remembered like it was a film, like I was watching myself walk down this road in the early morning light with all my thoughts numb, my emotions spent, an automaton making its way across the lights and down Westburn Road, back home where Mr and Mrs Galloway waited. Kim and Lesley’s parents had picked them up. Mrs Galloway ran a bath for me and then we all waited, watching the news, footage coming in of that burnt, twisted stump protruding above the North Sea like the top of Hell’s tallest tower, gas and oil pumping out, burning, flaming, inferno. We waited, watching. Couldn’t look away until Hannah came home.
National tragedy.
Domestic disaster.
Hannah flustered and blustered, tried to take control. Like she was in charge.
Like she had any right to be.
It was mid-afternoon before Dad came home, ringing the doorbell because his keys were at the bottom of the sea.
He hugged his wife.
She hugged him back.
He drew me into the embrace.
I hugged him, elbowed Hannah out of the way.
The Galloways w
ent home, left us to our misery, our relief.
Straight across at the lights, left past the Atholl, right onto Forest Road, right onto Queen’s Road. I saw none of it. Ash paid the taxi. Bags on the side. I stood washed in the silvery light of the granite, the pink blush. Huge bay windows, rows of chimneys like apothecary jars, black spiked railings and the trees preparing for autumn. I was home.
Ash gave me a tissue and led me inside.
I leaned back in the bath and sipped my green tea. The bath, a deep free-standing tub strangely in the main room and not the bathroom, a set-up that meant we had to wait for room service to leave before getting in. Ash sat on the edge of the bed with her G&T. She’d tried to get me to have a drink, as she did, playfully, every so often, but I refused. I’d drawn the curtains, the triangular peaks of the buildings across the road flashing like neon signs saying HOME HOME HOME. It was too much. Drink would make it worse.
‘Pass me my phone.’
I tapped out a quick email to Harry Boyle and hit send, tossed the phone back to Ash.
‘Does your family have a tartan?’ she asked. The carpet and most of the decor were variations on the theme.
‘Fraser of Lovat. It’s green, red and purple. We’ll get you fitted up before we leave.’
‘I thought kilts were for men.’
‘There are female ones. No one wears them though. At least not to weddings or anything. For Scottish country dancing. But we can add to your collection of national dress.’
‘I have a couple of kimonos, that’s all.’
‘And that Chinese dress. And the Mets shirt you wear in bed.’
‘That’s not national dress.’
‘We should fly home via Germany, get you some Lederhosen.’
‘You’d like that, would you? Leather shorts?’
‘Are you getting in here?’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’
With Ash’s flight from Hawaii to Japan, and then the long haul via Seoul and Amsterdam, we’d both been inside for what felt like weeks. Even so, I wasn’t too keen to get outside and go ‘on safari’ as Ash liked to call it. Whenever we went anywhere new, the first day we’d spend wandering, poking our fingers and noses into street snacks and shops and whatever nooks and niches presented themselves. Ash loved people watching and inventing stories about their lives. She claimed it was her creativity bursting out while I maintained, about ninety percent tongue-in-cheek, that it was her lawyer’s instincts, making up convincing narratives to explain the most circumstantial evidence.
