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  The water level in the cofferdam had stabilised near the top of the wall. Last time this happened the wall wasn’t so high and it spilled over and filled the chamber. This time it had only filled between the cofferdam piles and the bricks. Malky tried to turn the starting handle to get the pump going, but the works were frozen. He gathered a few rags together, soaked them with diesel and started a fire under the thing. I drew the hap off the previous day’s work and folded it into a corner, went out over the gangway and dropped on to the top scaffold staging inside the chamber.

  By this time there was enough light to see to the bottom. It was deep shadowed but I couldn’t make out any water. I took out my torch and climbed down to the next level. The wall looked sound. There was no glisten on the pointing where the torchlight hit it, no white efflorescence growing on the face. When I ran my hand across it came back moist, but I put this down to condensation. The next level was the same. My heart was thumping. This was a natural test for the wall and it looked like it was going to be okay.

  Down on the base, where the outside pressure was greatest, it was difficult to tell. I laid my donkey jacket on the slab, got down on my belly and shone the torch all around the bottom course. It was bone dry, as far as could be seen. All around me were bits of scaffolding, dog ends, lumps of mortar, broken bricks. Here the smell of dampness and cement was strongest, that cold talc smell. It came into my head as awareness of place. I was here again, at work, a sort of home. I would always return.

  Looking up at the patch of sky past the scaffold opening I could see it was beginning to cloud over. It would rain before the end of the day; maybe there would be snow. Up above, the pump started, slowly at first then more steadily. The gravelly roar arrived over the top of the wall, followed by the coughing noise it made when it started throwing water out into the ditch.

  I climbed back up and laid out my tools on the top staging. It looked good, the whole thing looked good. The time spent was worth it. If Healey had built it, the way he was building the small chambers, the courses would have been all over the place. Water would be coming through and it would never seal. Harry would have accepted none of it but the wall would be up – built. Eventually the Engineer would have settled for the best he could get, knowing it would never be seen except by some future workman with other things on his mind if he was down there at all.

  I opened my bag at the corner of the staging where I couldn’t trip over it. Between the piles and the walls the water level was steadily falling. Malky was filling the mixer with diesel. We had an alkathene pipe running overground beside the track from the mains connection. Naturally it was frozen. We’d have to wait for the sun to free it if we were going to use it to make mortar according to spec. He turned the tap to the on position and left it. The water would announce its own arrival. Meantime he shovelled sand and cement into the bucket and gave it a few turns.

  I got him to hold one end of the steel tape at the two near chamber corners and checked the diagonals. I knew I’d done this the previous night and that I would do it again last thing as well as several times through the day. The sizes can’t change but I check them anyway. I’m obsessive about checking. When I’ve nothing positive to do I go check something. In the van I find myself wondering if I checked sizes before I finished, if I packed my tools right, if I locked up properly. I wake up thinking about these things. The following morning it always turns out I have. I mean it – always.

  The Contractor’s troops were starting to drift out of the hut and about the site. I had asked the Agent for a crane but it hadn’t appeared. It was tied up with the pipelayers. As usual he was pressing me on time but not providing the plant when it was needed. It would have to track across half the site to get here. If Brendan was involved there was no telling when it would arrive. He would tie it up as long as he could. I climbed out of the Chamber again while Malky took a Stanley knife to the plastic on the first palette of bricks. He passed them to me in pairs and I tossed them on to the staging.

  This was coarse but I couldn’t wait. As usual there was big wastage. I would have to build the broken bricks in as best I could and drop the rest into the chamber. The troops would clear them out before the joiner came in. After a while we got a rhythm going and got the bricks across. I climbed back on to the staging, put the string lines up and tested them with the long bead.

  It was nearly 9:00am and nothing was done. I had come in wanting to lay bricks from 8:00am right through until the light stopped us. Now we were ready to start but the water pipe was still blocked. I got Malky to lower a bucket down between the cofferdam and the wall. The ground water was pure as anything that comes out of the tap. So long as Harry wasn’t around we could use it. I made a start scraping out between yesterday’s courses, making ready for pointing, while Malky finished the mix. When it was ready he tipped it into the barrow and pushed it across the gangway. I took the mortar board from its lean against the wall and put it down on the staging and Malky dropped the first mix on the board. Now I was cooking.

  I filled the trowel with mortar and dropped it on the wall head and spread it. Malky makes good mortar. You can tell by looking at the colour and feeling the way it slides off the blade. It would pass any test Harry could dig out of his books. Malky’s been working with me for three years and the time we spent mixing on the early jobs, just doing it over and over until it was right, was well spent. He gets it right first time, every time. Never mind the state of his head, that it’s full of drink or Sandra’s been nipping it.

  I positioned the first of the new bricks, the most important of the day, in a stretcher across two headers. The trowel edge showed it flush with them, both ends. The string showed a dead level. This was the one to take care with. The rest would be easier. I moved out of thought and into rhythm – spread the mortar – pick up the next brick – mortar its leading edge – lay the brick – check the string. Now again, faster this time. Scrape the wall clean where the mortar runs down. Don’t let the drips and snotters take a set. Keep going. Merciless with the lash, as Harry says.

  This was the best of it, working steadily – no thought required. It all happened between the hand and eye like they spoke to each other. Malky lit a cigarette and sat on the palette with his comic. I wouldn’t have to tell him when to start the next batch.

  The pump revved up as it started sucking air. This meant the water level in the cofferdam was down to sump level. There was still water pishing through the clutches on to the concrete base but the pump had beaten the flow. Malky hung his donkey jacket over the fence gate, folded his comic into a pocket. He picked up a shovel and climbed down the ladder we had tied to the cofferdam walings. This was at the corner we had part backfilled with a gravel and sand mix. With just about his body’s width to turn in I could hear him digging his small hole, leaning the shovel against the steel piles and fumbling at his belt. Sound travels between the hard surfaces like it was a tunnel. I picked up another brick, mortared one edge, and laid it. When he got back he went straight to shovelling sand and cement into the mixer. Without warning the hose started throwing out water. Just in time, as it happened.

  Malky picked up our two safety helmets from the corner of the compound and smacked them together to catch my attention. When I looked up he tossed mine down for me to catch. I looked along the track to see Harry’s white helmet bobbing up and down, then his duffel coat. When he arrived Malky was feeding water into the mixer from the hose and I was dipping from the knees, head up to keep the helmet steady, as I lifted the bricks. He made his cursory hello with Malky and crossed the gangway. I was ready to move the string line again. This time I hung the plumbs as well. Harry nodded approval and put his ruler between the strings and the bricks, nodding again and again. Keep going, he said. Merciless with the lash.

  I respect Harry, and because I respect him I enjoy his approval. We have long conversations about building. He’s worked on buildings all over Britain, big architectural projects, London docklands, big new houses, speciali
st work on ancient buildings. When he goes on about the time he was in West Africa I kid him about ‘that big pyramids job in Egypt’. He knows all there is to know about building, all the mortar mixes, how to colour them. We talk and talk about these things. He knows all the bonds. No point arguing about what English bond really is, or garden bond, or the rest. He quotes chapter and verse. Better than that though, he’s done it all. He also knows all the ways to cheat, so if you try he generally finds you out. Harry and Healey’s men are in a permanent state of war. Harry would hunt them off the job if he could but, of course, Big Swannie likes speed. I know if Harry wasn’t so precious about the quality of brickwork in this chamber I’d be off the job. That’s not why I keep in with him though; we have an affinity. By God, he likes to talk. Some time in the pub we’ll really get down to it.

  After he checked the strings and the diagonals he walked all the way round the cofferdam, looking down on the wall head. Any one can lay English bond when the wall only goes to a one-brick width. Its when you step out another brick or, worse, half a brick, it gets difficult. This is when the likes of Healey’s men get lost, building on that extra width as just another skin, not building it in. All the extra strength it has then comes from the brick’s weight, not the build. It’s just two walls leaning against each other. What I had built was the true English bond. Harry knew this. He went round and round the cofferdam admiring. When he had done all this we talked for a while about the site, what was going on, all that was going wrong.

  Harry hates Healey more than I do. He has no time for Kelly, the General Foreman, either. To his face he tells him he leaves lousy work behind. The true bottom-acid of his bile though, is kept for Swannie. Harry despises the profit motive that is all James Swann lives for. On a slightly lesser ranking of hatred is his own boss, the Resident Engineer, who forever compromises on standards and pays out for bad workmanship over Harry’s head. Meantime Malky made a roll-up and took out his comic. He knew Harry valued him as much as the turds he’d just buried on the base of the cofferdam. This meant they paid each other no attention. To Malky the Clerk of Works was just another delay. To Harry, Malky was a talking shovel and the less it talked the better.

  After a while Harry moved off along the track to the pipelaying operation and we got back to work. As Malky tipped the next batch onto the board the general foreman appeared. Kelly looked nervous. He knew I didn’t like to be interrupted and that I wasn’t under his control like the other troops. The Agent wanted to see me in his office. I used up the batch, making no haste to do what I was told, making sure that every brick was laid just so, before rinsing my hands under the hose and walking up the track. Malky set to making himself useful while I was gone, hosing down the mixer and brushing the cement slurry into the cofferdam. If I was away long enough he would know to take his tea so we could start again when I got back.

  The office and stores compound was buzzing. Troops were going in and out to pick up bags of cement, bits of pipe and fittings, all the rest of it. Derek was nowhere to be seen but the chamber steel lay stacked beside the fence, waiting to be lifted. I guessed the mobile crane that was bouncing down the hill was coming to do the job. One of the flat lorries wouldn’t be far away. The Agent’s Ford and Swannie’s Beamer were parked outside the hut. The Agent would be in fear and trembling. What I felt I wouldn’t show. I made a loud knock on the door and waited for the shout.

  Swannie was at the filing cabinet when I went in. The Agent was standing beside his desk instead of sitting, looking like something spare. Swannie told him to make coffee and pushed the cabinet drawer shut with a bang. Everything he did was like this. Every gesture was an assertion of position. Every look was half assessment, half threat. The Agent put a mug of coffee on the desk for Swannie and gave me one too. He didn’t make one for himself. He would know Swannie’s way the way I knew the ways of all Swannie’s kind. If he gave himself coffee he would receive the hard look. Then there would be something menial he would have to do in front of me. If he tried to find something to do for himself he would be told to do something else. If he so much as wanted to go for a shite he would be told to wait.

  I stood quiet while Swannie sat and read from a file, sipped at his coffee, lit a cigarette. Humiliation was his favoured currency. I got the name right in my head, Mr Swann, and tried to look casual. Finally he got round to it.

  He wanted the chamber roof cast on Tuesday; it would be an all-day pour. This meant the steelfixers in on Monday, the joiners before them on Sunday. Obviously he was going to defy the no-Sunday-work rule that was usual in this area. For the joiners to work on Sunday I had to be finished by Saturday night. I don’t like to work Saturdays. I like football. As does Derek, but he wouldn’t be required until Monday so long as his steel was beside the Chamber tonight.

  There was no chance of me finishing in daylight, or even by the end of Saturday unless I worked on. This meant lights. He was having Brendan bring them to the chamber as we spoke. I put down my mug to go but Swannie wasn’t having this. Before I could leave he had to harangue me about my inadequacies. I stood and took it. This is what you do if you want to work. Of course Pat Healey is his boy and his men are favoured. If it wasn’t for Harry’s perfectionism on this brick chamber in particular I’d be off the site. None of this needed said.

  I made my second skin and let it all blow past me. I would work on under lights into Friday night. Next day, Saturday, I would come in and work to a finish. No matter what I did or didn’t like. There would be nothing extra on the rate. This is how it would be. My increment of hate for Swannie was just one of many on a hoard he had been growing over the weeks. He didn’t care. Right now though, what was uppermost in my mind was the chamber compound where Healey’s men were erecting the lights. I was thinking about Malky. I was thinking about trouble.

  Outside in the compound Derek had reappeared and was organising the steel lift on to a flat lorry. I stopped to tell him what was happening with the chamber. Of course he already knew. So would the joiner. I was last. I was weak enough to unload on him about Swannie, about the hate that was building up in me. Derek was impassive, as tough of mind as of body. He takes it all and gets on. He knows he works for money and hardening his mind against humiliation is as necessary as hardening his hands. A straight face dealing with Swannie, and for that matter Healey, is as necessary as a straight back for lifting steel bars. These are the necessaries – tough hands to do the work, and thick skin to endure the insult.

  When I got back Malky was facing off three of Healey’s men with the mixer’s starting handle. Saying nothing he stood inside the gate with his legs flexed. They had the jeep and trailer. Bits of lighting equipment stuck out from the sides like a spider’s legs. Brendan was laughing at him, sneering at him and calling him out. If they were to get in to the compound before the mortar had set on the last course they could do damage. They might do damage anyway. Healey would like us to be slowed down. The walls were up so far even Brendan could finish them. Swannie would like this too. Healey was his boy.

  I never forgot this – Healey was his boy.

  Malky’s expression didn’t change, never showed the doubt I knew he would feel, the anxiety when I wasn’t there. He’s a soldier. When they got out of the jeep and started unloading the equipment he moved nervously from side to side on the balls of his feet. Anything could happen. I hurried down. Walking from the other side I could see Harry. Finished at the small chambers he was heading back to the huts.

  We got to the stand-off together, Harry’s presence changing everything. Of course he had it all sussed. He took out his date-and-time camera and snapped the walls as they stood, gave me a few words of appreciation. He said he’d be back in the afternoon and moved on. Malky threw the starting handle beside the mixer and let Healey’s men in. They weren’t likely to try anything now.

  I looked at my watch. It was coming on for 12:00pm. Better we were out of the way. I gave Malky the nod and packed my tools on to my back. It was worth an hour
to keep out of these guys’ way. At the van we ate the pieces Sandra had made and got out of our wellies. Instead of drinking the tea I drove us to the pub. If we were working late the tea would be good to have at about 4:00pm.

  The corner before The Islander has an electricity sub-station I did work on years ago. There’s every reason I might park the van there if anyone was wondering. We walked the rest of the way. Annie behind the bar knew us by this time, knew to pour a pint of lager for Malky as we came in, a big Whitbread for me. I got us a bridie each, to sit on top of Sandra’s pieces, and we hid in a corner out of the way. The more I thought about James Swann the more I churned inside.

  It wasn’t that he wanted the work moved along, or that we were going to lose the best part of the weekend for nothing extra on the rate. All that’s part of the game. It was the lack of respect for craftsmanship. It was for not recognising it in the price. It was for the victory it handed to the likes of Pat Healey, the triumph of crap over quality. The no-respect was handed on to me and through me to Malky; through Malky to Sandra and the boys. Come to that, through me to the ex, and the girl. No-respect was the message sent to the whole worthwhile world of doing and making and being.

  Malky soon had his nose in his comic but his lips weren’t moving. I’ve long since stopped asking what he gets out of these things, how he can go over the same pictures over and over again. As I looked at him, wondering how to start a conversation without spilling out all this bile or going over some old well-rutted ground yet again, he fumbled his cigarettes out of his pocket, lit up and dropped the spent match into the ashtray without looking. Malky knows the score. He takes just the one pint, usually doesn’t even finish it. He was smoking away, drinking very slow, keeping his eye on the page and never looking at me all the while. Yes, Malky knows the score. I got another big Whitbread from the bar and watched the hands on the clock go round.