CHAPTER 31
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘How is she this morning?’ asked Walter.
Dr Gupta sipped on her breakfast chowder. ‘The infections are clearing up. The dressings are coming off dry. I cannot tell you how relieved I am about that.’
Walter nodded. So was he.
‘Basically, she has finished fighting off secondary problems, now she is busy healing.’ Dr Gupta made a face. ‘There will be a lot of scarring, however. She will have it up her neck and across her right cheek. I just wish we’d had a few pressure wraps to minimise the hypertrophic scarring on her face. Stupid really, in all our trips ashore for medical supplies I never really thought there would be a need for me to treat burns.’
He nodded and glanced around the mess. It was mostly empty now, most of the third sitting had finished and left for their morning chores to make way for the fourth sitting and the four long tables were empty save for five small children still eating at the far end, urged to get a move on by an exasperated mother. Walter knew them all by name, but since they’d only joined the community seven months ago, he’d yet to get to know them well. That was something Jenny was much better at - finding time to sit down and talk to people.
Walter knew he wasn’t a popular choice of stand-in leader. Tami would probably have been more welcomed in the role.
She was looking at him as he thought that; reading his face like a book. ‘You know, Walter, no one can really blame you for that explosion,’ she replied. ‘That is not fair.’
‘But they are, aren’t they? I’ve heard what’s being said.’
He sometimes even wondered himself whether he was to blame. Even something as simple as those ￡30 cooking stoves you used to be able to buy at any camping store had a bayonet fitting as well as a screw valve. Safety should have been more on his mind than haste; haste to get something up and running for Jenny. And his allowing Jenny to bring Hannah down into the generator’s back room with those methane digesters, when no children, under any circumstances, should have ever been allowed in there . . .
Stupid. Stupid.
What was Hannah doing down there on her own, though? She knew she shouldn’t play there, she knew that very well. So why? And the feed pipe lying on the floor, the G-clamp lying beside it.
Did Hannah do that? Did she pull it loose by accident?
There’d only been a fleeting few seconds down there in that dark room before the explosion. He’d caught the briefest glimpse of her feet protruding from behind the generator and the rubber hose dangling from the roof softly hissing gas. That’s it. That’s all he saw. But she would have had to have been climbing over the top of the casing to pull that hose free, surely? If she’d had an urge to climb on something, for crying out loud, there were plenty of other places she could have done that. It just didn’t make sense. Hannah was a good girl. She knew she’d have been out of bounds. She knew the generator was dangerous; not a climbing frame. It just didn’t make sense to him.
Dr Gupta interrupted his wool-gathering. ‘So, what are you going to do with Mr Latoc?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is he staying or going?’ She slurped a spoon of chowder. ‘You cannot leave the question unanswered for much longer, you know?’
‘I know, I know.’
Walter would ask Jenny what she wanted to do about him, but she was still out of it, either half asleep, or half-cut on those knock-out-a-horse painkillers she was taking.
Walter wanted the man gone. Valérie Latoc was trouble brewing. He had the people living over on the drilling platform in thrall to him. Every time he caught sight of the man, it was with a row of people sitting patiently, listening to him talking.
What the hell does he gabble on about?
Of course it was women listening, mostly.
What is it with women? Give them a coffee-skinned man and they go weak at the bloody knees.
But he’d also noticed David Cudmore and Kevin in one of Latoc’s little audiences. It always seemed to look like a prayer group; a sermon on the mount kind of thing.
‘He’s some sort of preacher, I think,’ said Walter.
‘I know. Jenny would not be happy with him if she knew.’
Much as he’d like to, he couldn’t just kick the man off the rigs. Jenny had said he could stay on probation and, given that she was slowly getting better and would hopefully be able to take the helm again one day soon, it was her decision. Not his. If she woke and found Latoc gone, she’d think he’d booted him off out of petty jealousy. In fact, everyone would say that, wouldn’t they?
Walter didn’t like the fact that Valérie was more popular. More attractive. Younger. He didn’t like that at all so you know what he did? The bitter old bastard kicked poor Valérie out to fend for himself. God knows if he’s still alive out there . . . I hope he is . . .
Even if he tried to have the man removed, Walter suspected it wouldn’t be allowed to happen. There’d be an uproar amongst his fan club.
‘Oh, speak of the devil,’ said Dr Gupta.
Latoc entered the mess followed by three women. Walter knew them quite well, they were bunked on the main compression platform. He hadn’t spotted them before amongst Latoc’s regular drilling platform crowd. Keisha, Desirae and Kara. The first two were sisters who’d once lived in north London. Kara was originally from Nottingham. Together, the three of them were normally an infectiously cheerful group, filling any room they were in with loud and cheerful bingo-hall banter frequently peppered with high-pitched and raucous belly-laughs.
New recruits. It seemed that Latoc’s brand of charm was spreading like a bloody virus to the other platforms now. They grabbed plastic bowls from the galley’s counter and were served a ladle of steaming broth each and then sat together at one of the other long tables.
Valérie Latoc extended his hands across the table and they reached out for them. His head bowed, as did theirs, and he began to utter, quite loudly, a prayer of thanksgiving. Walter knew Jenny would be on her feet already, on her way over to ask him to do this quietly or take it outside. This space was communal, shared not only by non-believers but by so many others of different faiths, who were equally asked to keep their faith a personal thing.
Jenny was strict on this. No public prayers, not here, not in the mess. Otherwise the door would be opened to all sorts of petitions: people wanting to eat on single-faith tables, people wanting the men to eat separately from the women, people insisting on fasting, people insisting on eating before sun up or after sun down.
Tami tapped Walter’s arm and nodded towards them. He shot a glance over his shoulder at them and then turned back round to face her, reluctant to meet her eyes.
‘You know Jenny would not accept this?’
He nodded.
‘If you let this happen, it will happen again.’
‘I know . . . I . . .
A dozen more people entered the canteen; the start of the fourth sitting, children chatting noisily to each other, hungry and too energetic for the mums shuffling in with them. One or two of them eyed Valérie and the others curiously.
‘You cannot let this happen and not say something, Walter. People see this and there’ll be others who will want their particular faith blessings before each meal.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered. ‘Okay . . . let me just think how I’m going to say—’
But then it was done. Valérie, and the ladies sitting with him, chorused ‘amen’, released each other’s hands and the canteen was almost immediately filled with their high-spirited chatter and good-natured laughter.
Walter bit on his lip and made a face. ‘Maybe if he does it again . . . I’ll, uh . . . I’ll have a quiet word.’
Dr Gupta looked at him and shook her head, tutting. ‘Not good,’ she muttered. ‘Not good.’