At last van Dam left, the whiff of his cigar lingering as Villiers reached for another roll. 'How do you ever keep your ship stocked?' he asked. 'Three nights at sea, no exercise, and I'm so damned hungry… You know, the time I've spent on this rig, it's given me an idea. City rents have reached a point where it would pay to build an office block on pontoons and moor it off the coast. No rents, no rates, and with the sort of radio equipment we've got on North Star there's not ISO much business you can't transact. What do you think of that?'
'Personnel,' I said. 'Drilling, I imagine, is like trawling, it's a way of life.'
He nodded, his mouth full. 'A week on, a week off. Can't do that with office staff. But what about Sparks? His stint is three weeks. It's what you get used to, isn't it?' He was silent a moment, chewing over the idea. 'Sea City… The idea's not new, of course. And there are problems, as you say. But this rig is obsolete now. An easy conversion — and if the experiment came off we'd do a lot better than the scrap value.' He glanced at me. 'Where's your wife now? You're not divorced.'
'I've no idea. She was brought up a Catholic.'
'Irish, I believe.'
'Yes.'
'Communist?'
I didn't answer.
'So you hide yourself away at sea. Well, it would make a nice job for a man like you — the first ever sea office block skipper.'
'Is that your proposition?' I asked him.
He threw back his head and laughed, a gold tooth showing.
'No, not really. But it's an idea.' He pulled out his diary and made a note. 'You go and talk to Sparks. If you've got a girl-friend, ring her up — tell him I said you could. I know a lot about planes, nothing about ships or rigs. But I got through to Frankfurt and Sydney yesterday just as quickly as I could from my office in London, and with the fax machine scrambling teleprint messages can be made safe.' He buttered the other half of his roll. 'That reminds me. I said I'd call Rotterdam…" He glanced at the clock over the door and I knew his mind was switching to whatever business deal it was that required his presence in Holland.
'You said something about an offer,' I reminded him.
He looked at me, the eyes shrewd and calculating. It was a mistake, I had been too eager. He smiled. 'Are you prepared to stay on station until we finish drilling?'
'How long will that be?'
'You tell me how many holes we have to drill before we strike oil and I'll tell you how long. We could strike it first go, but if we don't, then we'll go on drilling till we do. There's no other rig available. Not for this year, anyway. And no other trawler, none as suitable anyway. Did you know that when you told Fuller your plans for salvage and took him down to see her?' He smiled, shaking his head: 'No, of course you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't have been such a fool as to sign that charter.' He leaned back, wiping his mouth and screwing up his paper napkin. 'Nor, did Fuller. We only discovered that after Garrard had been to see me.'
'You looked for a replacement then?'
'Of course we did. But it would have meant delay, and it would have cost more. On a gamble like this I don't believe in spending a penny more than I have to. But if it comes off…' He looked at me, a slight lift IS2 to his dark brows. 'If it comes off, I'll see you get a fat bonus, over and above the charter. That good enough for you?' He wouldn't say how much. 'Depends on the strike, but large enough to give you a future.' It also depended on our remaining on station throughout the period of drilling.
I didn't say anything. To him money was the answer to everything. He'd worked it all out, striking a proper balance in that clear, calculating mind of his. But he didn't have to lie out there in the seas that we should have to face if North Star continued drilling beyond the end of the summer. 'Well, that's settled then.' He took my consent for granted. He was that sort of man, so sure of himself. 'I must go now or Sparks will be paging me on the Tannoy.' He got to his feet. 'I wouldn't want anybody out there in charge of the guard boat who bears me a grudge.' He was smiling, making a joke of it, but then he added, 'Just don't try anything, Randall. You look after my interests and I'll look after you. Paternalism, I think you people call it. But loyalty to one man can be a lot better than owing allegiance to a faceless bureaucracy. Nobody who has worked for me has ever had cause to regret it. Okay?' He nodded, turning quickly and walking to the door.
I watched him as he went out to his appointment over the ether with some executive in Rotterdam. God! How I envied him that self-assurance! I got myself another cup of coffee, lit my pipe and sat there wondering where it would all end. Would they strike oil?
And if they did, would I still be here? I was remembering what he had said about offshore drilling and the country's future, his incredible optimism. By 1980, he had said — a saving of perhaps £5,000 million in foreign exchange… the envy of the world, our industry booming, our currency the strongest in Europe. Tell that to the men in the shipyards or the docks! But he had believed it, that bloody overbearing self-confidence of his. And I had been swept along by his optimism into making statements just as wild. Did I really believe that the political climate was governed by the state of the country's economy? You change the economic climate, I had said, and the political climate must change, too. If I were a capitalist, knowing what I did of grass-roots politics, would I back that statement with my own and other people's money?
A sudden scurry of feet in the passageway outside and a voice shouted, 'Coming in now, Rod.' I got up and went out, past a door marked Sick Bay and up two flights into the open where men were already gathering with their suitcases. The sun was shining and there was an air of expectancy. Van Dam appeared at my side looking diminished and somehow ordinary in a dark blue suit and.a velour hat. 'Iz come yet?' he asked, and at that moment I heard it. A shadow passed across the pipe deck, the roar of engines growing, then a rush of wind and dust blowing.
Three men in safety helmets dashed out from the shelter of the toolpusher's office. The engines died, the whip of the rotor blades subsiding to a whisper. The passengers began to appear, a motley crowd that would only achieve the coherence of a team when they had changed into the rig gear of overalls, rubber boots, gloves and safety helmets. I watched their faces as they passed me, piling down the stairway to their quarters. Somebody dropped a bundle of newspapers at my feet and I saw the headline — North Sea Rig Strikebound. But as I bent down to see what it said, a voice hailed me, a short, tubby man with sandy hair and a bright yellow sweater. 'Remember me? Glasgow, wasn't it?'
I nodded. He was one of the Clydeside men who had been with me when we had clashed with the police outside the Marston yard. 'What are you doing here?' I asked him.
'I'm a motorman now. And you?"
I told him, and he said, 'Aye, I heard ye'd gone into trawlers. Weel, I'll be off now and get settled in.' He gave me a quick grin and I remembered his name as he hurried on down the stairway after his mates. It was Rory — Rory Sullivan. He had been a member of the Boilermakers' Union when I had last seen him. I turned to look again at the packet of newspapers, but it was gone now. The helicopter's engines were roaring and in a moment it lifted clear of the rig, slanting skyward. I watched it disappear behind the derrick, dwindling to a speck as it headed south-east on the sixty-mile flight back to Sumburgh Head. Then I went down to the radio room, thinking about Sullivan and unconscious of the bustle around me.
The radio room was on the lower deck of the crew's quarters and had telecommunications on the door. Villiers was no longer there, only the radio US operator seated at the double-sideband, earphones clamped on his head, his thumb on the key rattling out a message. He wore a white nylon shirt, open-necked and with sleeves rolled up. His arms and face were pale, a cigarette burning in a tobacco tin beside the telex.