I called up Rattler on the R/T and asked them to come alongside again before they cleared for Aberdeen. Then I handed over to Johan and shut myself in my cabin to compose a letter. But to explain Fiona to somebody like Gertrude was impossible. If I could have talked to her… But even then it would have been difficult. I didn't understand Fiona myself. We had lived together almost four years, in a miserable little tenement house looking up the Clyde to the old John Brown shipyard. There had been times when we were happy together, fleeting moments in each other's arms, or when she was high. But mostly I remembered the arguments, the over-intense voice, the relentless pressure of her restless mind.
I never knew what she took, only that it had the effect of soothing her nerves. She was very emotional then, often lovable, with something of the kitten about her. Even now the ache was still there. But none of this could I explain to Gertrude. Twice I started that letter and tore it up. Then, as I tried again, Lars called to me that I was wanted on the R/T. It was the rig's radio operator with orders for me to report to the barge engineer on board.
'He can talk to me on the radio.'
'He wants to see you personally.'
'Why?'
'He didn't tell me why.' The metallic voice sounded remote and uninterested. 'If you can get yourself on to the supply ship he says they'll lift you on board by crane. Okay?'
'Roger,' I said.
Johan took the ship in for me and I made the leap from the high point of our bows, Rattler's crew watching with their fenders out. They put me in the net, clipped it to the big hook on the end of the crane hoist and I was whisked up to be dumped like a sack on the oil-slimed pipe deck beside a pile of stores and new drill bits. It was van Dam's week on duty and I found him waiting for me in the same little office where I had talked to Villiers. 'Ah zo, they get you up all right an' no bones broken, eh?' He had a telex in his hand. 'Virst you read this,' he said and held it out to me. 'Then you tell me vat it eez all about.'
It was from the Star-Trion office in Aberdeen and read: inform captain randall, standby boat duchess OF NORFOLK, WE HAVE RECEIVED NOTIFICATION FROM THE CLERK OF THE CROWN COURT IN HULL THAT HE HAS BEEN CALLED AS WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION IN A CASE OF ARSON DUE TO BE HEARD ON JUNE 5. SOLICITORS FOR THE CROWN INSIST THAT THE WITNESS BE IN HULL AT LEAST 24 HOURS BEFORE THE CASE OPENS AND HOLDS HIMSELF AT THE DISPOSAL OF THE PROSECUTION. YOU ARE TO NOTIFY ETA SUMBURGH AND WE WILL BOOK ONWARD FLIGHT. CONFIRM PLEASE.
'Veil?' the barge engineer enquired as I stood gazing down at the flimsy, my mind leaping to the courtroom and the Crown's QC questioning me. Cross-examination would follow. And the court listening, faces in the public seats. You'll never know a moment's peace… 'It eez an order of the court. I do not know the law in your country, but I think you 'ave to go, eh?'
I nodded. Two weeks. In just over two weeks I would be in that court, a witness, and the shadowy figures I had seen running would be standing in the dock facing me. Scunton would be there, others too, watching me, waiting to hear what I said.
'Vat I tell them?'
And I would be under oath. How Fiona would laugh! She had never believed in God. She was an atheist, and the oath an Establishment trick, an anachronism harking back to an age of superstition when there was a Heaven and a Hell and fire and brimstone.
'I think you 'ave to go, is it?'
I nodded. 'Yes, I'll have to go.' For all the marching and the talk, the strikes and demos, the System was still the same. 'Tell your office to book the onward flight so that I get to Hull on 3rd June. Accommodation, too.'
'Okay. I tell them. Iz not very nice I think appearing for a prosecution.' He was smiling sympathetically.
'That is vy I do not tell you over the radio. Then everybody know.'
'Kind of you,' I murmured. And conscious of the need to say something that would satisfy his curiosity, I added, 'Two youths set fire to a house and I am supposed to identify them.'
'Vandals, ja. Ve haf that in Holland alzo. Too much.'
I went back to my ship, morose and silent, cursing myself for not having gone to Hull directly the Fisher Maid docked in Aberdeen. It would have been over and done with then, my statement given to the police instead of in open court, and no threats, nothing they could have done about it. Now, whatever I said, one side or the other would hold it against me.
May ended as it had begun in a blaze of fine weather, the days passing in the slow monotony of patrolling back and forth. The crew were relieved one at a time and the Norwegians stayed. Fuller had succeeded in fixing their work permits. There had been an outcry about it and there was a picture in the local paper of some fishermen demonstrating in front of the Star-Trion office in Scalloway. Gertrude did not bother to send us the national papers, knowing the rig was supplied by helicopter — anyway we got the world news over the radio. But she did send us the Shetland Times and in the issue of 16th May there had been a short paragraph stating that Mr Ian Sandford of the Root Stacks Hotel, Burra Firth, had acquired the Hamnavoe fishing vessel, Island Girl, built in 1947. He now intended to use her for supplying oil rigs operating off Shetland. Gertrude had marked the news item and in a note to me she said, / think this is possibly why we have had no more trouble from him.
On the evening of 2nd June, the day before I was due to leave for Hull, the draw-works suddenly went silent. They had started pulling pipe shortly after noon, and Rattler's skipper, Jock Eraser, told me over the radio the rumour was it was a dry well. This was confirmed when Bowstring came on the air to say she had cleared Aberdeen and her ETA would be around 15.00 hours next day.
I went on board the rig shortly after 07.00. The draw-works were running again and Sparks told me they would be lifting anchors and moving to a new location just as soon as they had cleared the seabed. The helicopter that would take me to Sumburgh was not due until 08.30. I left my case under the sick-bay attendant's desk and went in search of Ed Wiseberg.
I found him down on the spider deck with Ken Stewart and several others. They were standing just inside the pump room in front of a big steel cabinet equipped with a TV screen. The picture was vague, a flickering image of some white object that wavered uncertainly. 'Guess we'll have to trim again, Ken. The angle's still wrong." The barge engineer went over to the pumps and stood considering, the mud tanks rising in bulky curves behind him. He stepped forward, pressing levers, holding them as the pumps hissed. Ed Wiseberg was at the console of the TV cabinet, the picture shifting, the object becoming clearer as he adjusted the position and focus of the camera on the seabed. The atmosphere was tense, electric with frustration and concentration. Through the open door I could see the spider with its girders slotted in to the deck structure and the guidewires leading down into the depths.
It was the retrieving tool that showed up white on the TV screen and they were trying to stab it over the top of the casing which protruded through the main guide base. This was on the seabed and the casing had already been cut about twelve feet below the MGB.
I chose what I thought was a suitable moment to tell Ed Wiseberg I would be gone for a few days, but he ignored me, his face like granite, his eyes on the screen. 'Jeez, we nearly got the bugger then. A little more, Ken.'
'For'ard again?'
'Yeah, for'ard. A little starboard, too.'
I watched as they juggled with the positioning of the rig, the casing suddenly quite clear on the screen, the retrieving tool seeming to float above it. Occasionally a fish swam in front of the camera. It was just after 08.00 that tool and casing merged, the white engulfing the black. The toolpusher was on the phone, ordering the hydraulic rams to be closed, and in a moment the whole rig was shaking as the draw-works laboured to break the casing out. A sudden jolt, the big diesel up on the derrick floor changing into high gear, running fast now and everybody smiling. Ed Wiseberg put the phone down with obvious relief. 'Looks like we'll make the first flight after all.' He was smiling, looking pleased. 'Goddam your bloody regulations,' he said to me. 'At that depth, what in hell's it matter if we leave a bit of pipe?' He put his hand on my shoulder. 'Where you making for when we get ashore?'