Offshore (7 page)

Shut up dickhead. She’s going to think you’re flirting with
her.

“
Thanks for bringing my stuff,” she said, a slight pink
tinge to her cheeks. “It’s been a great help when you have enough
to do. Fancy a drink?”

“
Bravo is dry, you know that?”

“
Don’t get your knickers in a knot. I didn’t mean booze.”
She opened the mini fridge used for storing temperature sensitive
medicines and took out two brown bottles. “It’s not quite as cold
as I like it, but it will have to do. Do you like ginger
ale?”

Eddie
grinned. “Love it.” He twisted the cap off the bottle and a crown
of bubbles erupted, releasing the sharp tang of ginger. “Cheers,”
he said, and put the bottle to his lips to take a deep, cooling
quaff. The gas in the carbonated liquid made him belch
loudly.

“
Begging your pardon,” he said, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand.

“
Excused.”

They
sipped at their drinks in silence.

“
Are you happy with your digs?” he asked.

“
As I can be under the circumstances, thanks.”

“
And are you warm enough now?”

“
Yes, thank you. My nipples have gone all nice and soft,
like little raspberries.”

Eddie
choked on the bottle, spluttering liquid down the front of his
overalls and coughing fit to hack up a lung.

A
laughing Lydia patted him on the back until his spluttering fit
settled down. His face gradually recovered its normal hue, his eyes
stopped bulging, and he sooked slowly and carefully on the
remainder of his drink. “Have you got all the gear you need?” he
said, in an attempt to reclaim some of his lost dignity.

“
Provided I don’t need to carry out major heart surgery, I
should be okay.”

More
silence.

She
rocked back in her chair. “The men don’t want me here, do they?”
she said.

Eddie
screwed up his face, both agreeing with and dismissing her
concerns. “You’ve been around oilmen long enough to know we’re like
sailors; a superstitious lot. Women on board ship are considered
the worst form of bad luck - like killing an albatross. A platform
is nothing more than a ship on legs, with its own set of rituals
and traditions. Don’t take it personally. I’ll look out for you and
try and make sure they don’t give you too much grief.”

“
Thanks. I appreciate the sentiment, but you don’t have to.
I might be small, but I’m no wilting wallflower.”

“
I never for one minute suggested you were–”

“
I can give as good as I get.”

“
I know. I heard what you said to Reynolds!” He chuckled
quietly into his drink. “Needledick the Bugfucker. Good
one.”

“
They might think they’re winding me up, but it’s really
like water off a duck’s back,” she said. “I can handle
them.”

He
tipped his bottle towards her in a mock toast. “Then I wish you all
the luck. Can I give you a piece of advice though … in
confidence?”

“
Sure.”

“
From what I’ve seen and read in the
personnel files, Reynolds
is
the one most likely to give you
trouble–”

“
I sussed that already, but he’s all mouth. I said I can
handle him–”

“
And if you find you can’t, what then? You need someone you
can turn to. Someone you can trust to back you up. Protect you if
need be.”

“
And I suppose that someone would be you, would
it?”

“
Me?!” Eddie snorted down his nose. “I’m probably the least
reliable person here. The one I want you to look to is the prof,
Brewer.”

“
Why him?”

“
Because although he might look a bit
eccentric
with his tweed suit and bow tie, he’s been in the business
a long time. He’ll have dealt with people like Reynolds and his ilk
before, knows how they tick, how to talk to them, how to put them
back in their grubby little boxes. He’ll see you right.”

“
Now who’s playing the psychologist?”

“
I mean it, Lydia.”

She
could see he did, and nodded her agreement. “If you’re sure you
don’t want the job, I thank you for the advice, and duly appoint
Lawrence Brewer as my white knight, although I hope I won’t have
cause to call on his services.”

“
I hope you won’t either.” Eddie stood to leave. “Time I got
back to the herd and see how they’re getting on.” One last gulp
emptied his bottle. “Thanks for the drink.”

“
You’re welcome.”

“
If you come back up the galley in about an hour there
should be some food ready, if the guys haven’t come to blows
already.”

“
I’ll be there.”

With a
brief nod he left her to the peace and quiet of her medical bay, in
his nose the remnant of her perfume, and in his groin the telltale
tingle of interest in an unavailable feminine form.

Chapter 8

The
harsh bellowing of the foghorn sounded at least once every two
days, and had become such a regular occurrence that, for the most
part, it went ignored and no longer disturbed the workshop dweller
huddled in the dark.

It took
no notice of it this time either. It had other things on its
mind.

Being
wakened from its state of semi hibernation by the arrival of the
people upstairs had cranked up its metabolic rate from a condition
of almost complete shutdown, through bare survival, all the way up
to a semi alert standby, and all its bodily functions were now
reactivating in preparation of something happening.

It
needed to take a dump; a piss too. Mostly, it thought as it rasped
its leathery lips with a tongue as rough as sandpaper, it needed a
drink.

Dragging
itself from its greasy bed, it crawled over to the washroom to lap
stale water from the almost empty lavatory bowl.

The
water had been enough to prevent death by total dehydration, but
only just, and saving it for drinking meant it couldn’t use the
toilet for its intended purpose, forcing it to use the far corner
of the room as its latrine. An unsavoury situation, but essential,
and it had long since become accustomed to the all pervading stink
of the waste; so much so that it no longer registered.

In the
corner it squatted and defecated, passing little dry pellets like
rabbit droppings, while letting loose a thin yellow trickle of
urine.

As it
had drunk very little and hadn’t eaten anything at all apart from a
half starved rat for the past four days, its food supply long since
exhausted, that there should be any waste at all was
remarkable.

Done,
he, for indeed it was a male, scratched at its flaccid penis as if
checking he still had one, before crawling back to his makeshift
bed and settling down again to wait.

They
would come down here soon enough, the people upstairs. Human beings
were curious creatures. They needed to explore. Someone would come
and let him out.

He
pulled one of the dirty packing blankets over his shoulders,
dropped his weary head onto stick thin arms and closed his
eyes.

They had
to come soon.

Much
longer and there would be no hope.

Chapter 9

The
crew’s first day on Bravo passed without incident.

After a
hearty breakfast courtesy of Messrs McDougal and McAllister, who
had drawn the shortest pieces of broken spaghetti to see who would
get the cooking roster rolling, the crew assembled in the control
room for Eddie’s first mandatory safety briefing and to be
allocated their jobs for the day.

He and
Shaw had been busy already, dividing the white board on the wall
into columns, each headed with a crew member’s name in a different
colour, and rows labelled with the time. In meticulous detail they
constructed a timetable for every day of the next week, so that
everyone knew where they would be at any hour of the
day.

Every
minute of every shift was accounted for, 8 to 12 hours of hard
graft – scrubbing, painting, checking, testing, fixing, sorting, as
well as cooking, cleaning and laundry duties.

Even
medic Lydia was expected to come out of sickbay a couple of hours a
day to wield a mop or a paintbrush.

“
Fuck me,” declared Reynolds. “I’m allowed ten minutes to
take a crap on Thursday morning. Alert the media!”

Before
dispersing the team to their allotted tasks, Eddie issued each one
of them with a rechargeable radio.

“
These are for local use only. Signal doesn’t carry any
further than about half a mile. They are simply for keeping in
touch. Anyone not know how to use one?”

No
reply.

A quick
signal test and they were connected, to each other and to the
control room. They clipped the sets to their breast or sleeve
pockets, then stood around awaiting further instruction.

“
Off you go then, time’s a-wastin’,” said Eddie, and shooed
them on their way.

After
lunch Eddie submitted his check-in radio report to Longdrift
Headquarters, basically telling them what they wanted to hear -
equipment and stores had been checked and stowed, nothing out of
the ordinary seen on their first tour, everyone was fit and well
and would be getting to work in earnest without delay.

“
Because of your pettifogging, prevaricating tightfistedness
putting us on an impossible schedule with insufficient manpower,
we’re going to be working ourselves into an early grave as it is,
so to save us all a lot of wasted time and effort and allow us to
get the job done and go home, I won’t mess about blethering with
you wankers on the phone every day. Unless a problem arises that
warrants communication, consider no news to be good news and leave
us alone. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Not
exactly what he said, but rephrased with polite succinctness, the
point was still made.

Before
he left the control room to make his second walkthrough of the day,
he noticed an addition to the whiteboard. Someone, Shaw maybe, had
drawn a box in the corner, scribbled in ‘Days to Salvation’ and
added in red the figure 98. Less than a full day on board and they
were all already counting down to leaving again.

On the
afternoon of the second day the weather took a turn for the worse
when the wind picked up, driving the rain almost horizontally
across the deck. It was forecast and prepared for, and so those
working outside were switched to alternative duties indoors
according to the chart.

In the
evening, with light gone and with work and dinner over, those
designated kitchen duty took care of their chores while the others
slouched in postprandial contentment in the lounge.

Eddie
Capstan retreated to his cabin to make notes for his new novel, and
so while the cat was otherwise occupied the mice took a chance to
play.

Lonny
Dick, not interested in lolling on a sofa watching a boxing match
on television, took himself off to find something else to entertain
him. He rode the service elevator down to the workshop two floors
below the main deck.

•

Twenty-four hours the people had been on board, and he was
still stuck here. And now they were torturing him.

The
extractor fans in the kitchen sucked in the scent of frying bacon
and eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, burned toast and hot coffee,
distributing the aerosol far and wide, and when the atomised
particles reached the nose of the resting workshop resident, they
set up a fresh gnawing agony in his stomach, one so strong it made
him nauseous. If he’d had the liquid to spare he would have shed
tears of pain.

He
rubbed his hands over skin like wrinkled parchment, rendered so
paper thin as to be almost transparent, below which the blue veins
traced a macabre roadmap, clearly visible now that practically
every gram of stored body fat had been utilised. To keep his
metabolism barely ticking over, his body had already begun to break
down and consume its own muscle mass, although these wasted slabs
of flesh could sustain him for no more than a few days
longer.

Soon his
liver, kidneys and heart, would fail. He suspected his brain to
already be in the first stage of collapse, having felt the first
stirrings of mental dis-ease in disjointed, disturbing thoughts,
and dreams, his once perfect recall corrupted. Gaps appeared in his
memory like moth holes in an expensive cashmere sweater.

Synapse
function reduced, reactions slowed. Soon the threads would unravel
completely.

An
unthinkable waste, and all for the want of a single good meal, a
helping of the abundance of food and drink the others were enjoying
just feet away above him.

He
prayed silently, despairingly, to a being higher than he, if such a
being existed, for just one of them to come down here, to open the
door, to admit some much needed light and air, to let him out and
end this injustice, but most importantly, to feed him.