Archie and the North Wind (17 page)

There was the queen, and she was listening to each thing that Connal suffered and said. And when she heard this final truth, she sprang and cut each binding that was on Connal and on his comrade and she said, ‘I am the woman that was there.’ And to the king: ‘And thou art the son that was yonder.’

Connal married the king’s daughter, and together they rode the white-faced horse home.

And as he lay there, telling himself that ancient story, Archie was encouraged. ‘Hah!’ he laughed to himself – and a real laugh it was, even though it has to be written down as ‘Hah!’ here, in just exactly the same way as Ted Hah’s very different ‘Hah!’

The giant was Capitalism, Archie knew, and the hole was where the bodies of the poor lay scattered in the Cave of Profit where all the gold lay. They were the ones daily sent down in creels to labour for the giant. They were the ones eaten alive. Roasted on the spits. Even their corpses consumed. And this, of course, was to be his job here: to go down daily in that creel to find the gold, and bring it to the surface. To dig for oil in this virginal landscape. To bring the fat baby up so that his blood could be used as fuel to feed the giant.

If he were Connal, what would he do? Run? Uh-uh. Forsake the contest? No way. Hide beneath the blanket, pretending the giant didn’t exist? What was it all but a story anyway, of little use nowadays? A foolish pastime which belonged to the olden days when folk believed such nonsense? Even though the smell of roasting flesh was in their nostrils, even though they could hear the giant’s rumblings, even though they could clearly see him on their computers? All that cynical blogging out there where no one believed anyone else.

And poetry! Remarkable how poetry caused Connal to be released. Believe that if you will, you fool. Dream on, MacDuff. As if that could happen! Oh aye. Pull the other one, son. You try that on the next time you’re taken captive by al-Qaida. Just stand there and start chanting this to them – ‘
My love is like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June
…’

Archie listened to Brawn breathing steadily in the next room: like the soft breathing of a child. How thin the walls between beings. As long as you could hear someone else, you were alive. He was talking in his sleep. ‘Snow. White. Soft.’

Archie recalled all the corpse-strewn caves he’d ever seen on television. Those earthquake-heaved streets of Port-au-Prince. The oiled beaches of Louisiana, and the long poisoning of the Niger Delta. The jutting elbows and knees and shoulders in Uganda. The black and white skeletons of Auschwitz. The giant’s creel suspended halfway down in the deep-cast mines of New South Wales.

But he had no sword of light.

‘Now, who had the sword of light,’ he asked, ‘in the story, I mean. Who had the sword of light?’ And, of course, he remembered that the giant’s son had the sword of light. Given him by his father. ‘Ah,’ said Archie ‘So it was the giant himself who first had the sword of light!’

‘What is it?’ he asked himself. ‘What is this sword of light?’

‘Iron or steel,’ he heard Gobhlachan say. ‘Remember, son – iron and steel were so hard to come by, so anyone who had them was already halfway to victory. Anyone who had a gleaming sword was already well on the way!’

‘But that was then,’ Archie said. ‘What is it now, though? What’s the material which gives the giant the advantage now? What is it, Gobhlachan?’

But Gobhlachan was silent.

Wasn’t that the entire point? Connal worked it out for himself. No manual. No exposition. No clues beforehand, except the stories he carried within himself. His mental knowledge of the giant. The death of his mother. A grasping foster mother wanting to kill him. Bereavement and fear. The bag of gold and the comfort and security it offered. A penitent banker laughing round every corner.

No clues as to the sword of light. Who made it, and how, and was there another of its kind? Was there a market for it, or was it kept secretly, hidden? Could you just download it? What could the sword do? That was the sword which could upwards and downwards, cutting the nine ties on its way across, and nine ties on its way back. It’s just that the giant had it. And Connal managed to get hold of it.

What was it? Oil? Wealth? Knowledge? Power?

And to grasp it, Connal had to enter the cave. The cave of gold. With all the danger and sorrow it carried. Into the darkness. Where the stench of death lay. Lazarus, come forth.

Connal didn’t just text or email the giant:

Dear Mister Giant – I hope you’re well, and I’m very sorry to bother you, but it would be really lovely if you could – please – release those people you have captive in your cave.

PS
And the gold as well.

PPS
Happy Christmas and a Guid New Year to yin an a’.

But he was so tired, exhausted after such a journey. And Angelina almost dead on his shoulders, where was she? How was she? And Brawn – big, beautiful, courageous Brawn – forever marching on ahead. And the bed now so sweet and soft, the room so warm, the flowers so bright.

Yet all he wanted to do was sleep and none of that sword up and down stuff, and then that hot shower in the morning and the bacon and eggs, and keep his mouth shut and stay quiet and mum, and just go out daily to dig or drill or extract – whatever was asked of him – without raising any awkward questions, without being difficult and bolshie, without making trouble, without putting himself – and, for that matter, Brawn and Angelina and Jewel and Sergio and Ludo and John the Goblin and Olga and Gobhlachan and Yukon Joe and all the rest of them – at risk. At risk of being sacked, thrown on the scrapheap, turned out into the blizzard and snow, to fend for themselves again or die, alone, unwanted, uncounted in these endless Arctic wastes.

And who would give a damn?

The whole circus would just roll on anyway, without their futile, deadly gesture. What was the point? He was no Connal. And he settled lower into the duck-feathered pillow. To sleep, he thought. To sleep. To sleep. Perchance.

‘Grip. Nail. Frost,’ Brawn was saying in his sleep next door and as he drifted off to sleep Archie remembered his own wife and son endlessly sitting in front of the television, also ceaselessly channel-surfing.

‘Maybe, really, I’m the giant,’ Archie thought, as he finally fell asleep. All night he dreamed that someone had taken his wife and son captive and they were being held prisoner in two creels suspended halfway between the earth and the grave, between today and tomorrow.

7

HE WAS WOKEN
in the morning by a quiet knock on the door, and a woman’s voice saying, ‘Good Morning, Mr Grierson.’ A woman entered dressed as a bunny-girl, bearing a big hearty breakfast on a tray – fresh coffee and croissants with a basket of fruits.

‘Sponsorship,’ she said. ‘You know how it is. The world’s gone to rack and ruin if you ask me. You can hardly go to the loo nowadays without sponsorship. Here’s your breakfast, thanks to Playboy Inc. The misogynistic bastards. But then it’s a good wage, isn’t it?’ She put the tray down on his table. ‘Oh – and I’d better say it,’ she said. She smiled beautifully. ‘Have a nice day.’ She left, leaving the sweet fragrance of coffee in her wake. But then she opened the door again and stuck her lovely face back inside. She was covered in freckles. ‘Oh – I’m Barbara. But you can call me Babs.’ She waved her fingers. ‘Cheers.’

That was only the bed-breakfast. After his second, real breakfast – ham and eggs and sausage and black and white puddings and mushrooms and all the rest of the cholesterol killers – he signed the contract as part of the Alaskan Oil Company Drilling Team, who had been given the franchise to explore The Great Northern Field, as it was known.

Big Ted Hah himself did the presentation for all the new workers hired: an all-gizmo, all-singing, all-dancing PowerPoint presentation which beautifully demonstrated, through remarkable figures and graphs and sliding photographic and video shows, how the Alaskan Oil Company Drilling Team, along with their partners,
BP
, Statoil, Ruskoil, Chinoil, ExxonMobil, Amoco, Conoco, Texaco and PetroCanada were involved in what he called the Great Project.

‘A Great Project in a Great Petroleum Field from a Great Company with a Great Workforce!’ he enthused, flicking one button after another, displaying oil wells in full flow, rigs sparkling like gorgeous Christmas trees, an African woman carrying wood on her head to light a fire, and an all-white Rolls-Royce purring down through some mythic sleepy Swiss Village. ‘Fuel,’ said Ted, ‘that’s what binds us all together. Oil and wood and gas, keeping the world turning.

‘Contentment,’ continued Big Ted Hah softly, as he pressed the PowerPoint slides: happy Chinese children eating from full rice-bowls; Putin playing ice-hockey in Siberia; Italian women pouring waterfalls of spaghetti on to plates; old Highland men in kilts driving through whitewashed villages in their Fordson Majors. ‘The whole world on the move,’ declared Ted. ‘This is not Capitalism with a Capital C, but capitalism with a small c and Co-operation with a Capital C! This has nothing to do with Oil Companies and Profit,’ he purred, warming to the Great Theme, ‘but Everything to do with Developing the Global Economy, Protecting the Environment, Ensuring the Wellbeing of All World Citizens, Caring for the Poor, Shielding the Weak, Restraining the Strong. As the Great Old Testament Prophet Isaiah put it, in far more mellifluous words than I could ever put it: “The Lord Himself has anointed me to preach Good News to the Poor. He has sent Me to bind up the Brokenhearted, to proclaim Freedom for the Captives, and Release for the Prisoners, to Proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favour and the day of Vengeance of our God, to Comfort All who Mourn, and to Provide for those who Grieve in Zion – to Bestow on Them a Crown of Beauty Instead of Ashes, the Oil of Gladness, instead of Mourning, and Garment of Praise instead of a Spirit of Despair. You will be called Oaks of Righteousness, a Planting of the Lord, for the Display of His Splendour!”

‘That is why,’ he added with a tearful flourish, ‘we will be calling the oil that comes from this Pioneer Field “The Oil of Gladness”. Now, all I say, to All of you, as we enter Together on this Great Venture, is what the Great Roman said when the legions set out to conquer the world: “Each man is the smith of his own fortune; but together, we are the forge of the world!”’

Good God, Archie thought, how Gobhlachan would puke at the notion of it all.

But to arms they went, nevertheless, despite the comedy vomit from Hah. Every man and woman to their chosen or assigned tasks.

‘Well, it’s not Auschwitz,’ they muttered to each other, as they stood in the queue waiting for the jobs to be portioned out.

‘My family need the money,’ said Big Akiba the Ethiopian.

‘My daughter has cerebral palsy,’ said Janek the Pole.

‘Better than working up that dingy pub in Oban,’ said Hamish the Glaswegian.

‘The lights must stay on,’ said Sadie the Londoner.

‘Never again – never ever that poverty again,’ someone said, standing behind in the queue.

‘I’ll get a packet, then retire,’ muttered Archie.

‘If these fucking environmentalists had seen the eight of us fucking freezing in our cots when we were small they would not be so fucking smart at condemning the oil industry,’ someone said from the middle of the queue.

‘I don’t see them refusing a lift in the car,’ added another voice.

‘Or refusing to go on trains or boats or planes.’

‘Or refusing to have central heating.’

‘Or fridges.’

‘Or tellies.’

‘Or computers.’

‘Don’t they know where electricity comes from?’

The job, therefore, was necessary. Like running a hospital ward, someone needed to do it. Some overworked nurse needed to be there to bandage up the drunk when he came in at midnight on the Friday night all swearing and bleeding. Some hugely qualified doctor with a brain bigger than Mars needed to be there to make that exact incision, to bleed that precise drop of blood, when the aneurism flooded the cortex. Just as photographers needed to be there to record the precise moment when Churchill or Gorbachev or Nixon raised earth to heaven, or sank it right into hell. Just as Napoleon needed a poet (as well as a mistress) to soothe his fevered brow. Just as a videophone needed to be there when Saddam went slamming through the earth.

Oil itself, then, was a poem. Or a priest, or a prostitute, depending on your point of view. Utterly necessary. At the very least, useful and pleasurable. Oil. Incense oil. Fragrant oil. Oil of Extreme Unction. Oiling the wheels of industry. My head thou dost with oil anoint, and my cup overflows. I don’t have any bread – only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land.’ Money is none of the wheels of trade: it is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy. The poetry of oil, and oil as poetry.

Ted Hah himself was at the desk dishing out the jobs. Almost like jabbing a pin into the wall, Archie selected one marked ‘Elevator Operator’. He had no notion what it meant. He just liked the sound of the words. And besides, it was in the sector clearly marked ‘Unskilled’.

‘Excellent choice!’ Ted Hah said to him, smiling. ‘One of the best jobs going. If I didn’t have to be here, there and everywhere myself, it’s exactly the job I would have chosen! All you do is press a button and the elevator goes up! And when you hear a
Ping!
– hey presto, you press the other button and
Hallelujah!
– the elevator comes down! Good luck,’ he shouted as Archie was led off to his chosen task in the Great Venture.