Afterlight (58 page)

Snoop shook his head with irritation as two of them started to spray mouthfuls of whisky onto the fire and yipped with glee at the billowing clouds of flame.

‘HEY!!’ he shouted. The stupid fuckers were going to set themselves on fire. ‘Stop that shit!’

They stopped and contented themselves with waving smouldering slats of wood in the gathering darkness and making smoke trails.

This was the Chief’s plan, wasn’t it? This is the long game. This. Just this. Keep them happy. He wondered if Maxwell had actually bothered to think any further ahead than taking possession of these rigs. Because he had.

How long does this shit last? Because at some point the hidden treasures that can still be foraged out of a stack of freight containers had to run out, right? It all runs out eventually; the bottles of alcopops, the cartons of cigarettes, the cans of corned beef and baked beans.

Just like the oil once ran out.

He wondered if any of the other boys had bothered to think about that. He wondered if Jay-zee sitting beside him, whooping and clapping his hands as he watched the boys getting their ends away, had ever given that a moment’s thought.

He wondered what Maxwell was going to do once they were on those rigs and running things. Was this going to be their home? A going concern? Or some place to simply strip clean and move on from?

Just like locusts.

 

 

 

B
racton looked unchanged to Leona yet seemed subtly different. As they cycled in silence through the old town, through the modern high street with its fading chain-store signs, towards the docks and gas terminal, she found herself appraising it anew. It contrasted with the choked urban space of London. Here there were overgrown front gardens, parks and greens gone wild, any and all of which could be cultivated far more easily than the cracked concrete spaces in the capital.

Oddly, it no longer seemed the forbidding and desolate shell she remembered; a place from which dangerous and desperate armed men might emerge at any moment. It was just an empty town, largely in fair condition, certainly repairable and habitable if they chose to settle ashore here.

Perhaps it was the sunny weather. Perhaps the warm breeze that stirred the birch trees along the high street and down Runcorn Way towards the docks. Perhaps the reassuring continuity of life: the rabbits, foxes and deer that impassively watched them pass instead of scattering at the sound of their bicycle tyres through drifts of dry leaves. It could’ve been any of those things that led her to believe there was a viable future here.

That was the
only
purpose left in her life now, she decided. To convince Mum once and for all that the days of hiding were over; that the time had come to move the community off the rigs and back onto the mainland. Just one single, bloody-minded goal that she was going to hang on to. To start over. But that was okay with her. It kept the heartache in a box. It kept it manageable.

Their bikes rolled across the railway sidings between warehouses and parked forklift trucks onto the skittering gravel and crumbling concrete towards the quay. Finally, a dozen yards short of the water’s edge, with a squeak of brakes, she came to a stop and the others followed suit.

‘So there’s the North Sea, then,’ said Bushey, stating the obvious after a few reflective moments. ‘Any idea how we get to your gas rigs?’

‘Over there.’ She pointed to a tugboat tied up on a canal lock alongside the large brick gable wall of an old brewery. Tied up there as it always was after Walter had returned it from a water run. ‘We’ll use that.’

‘We’ll need to scavenge some marine diesel,’ said Adam. ‘Is there any—’

‘Walter normally leaves it topped up,’ she said looking at the others. ‘Always. He’s very reliable. A creature of habit.’

Adam shielded his eyes from the sun as he stared out across the sea. ‘And how far out is it?’

Leona shrugged. ‘Take us a morning if we were sailing,’ she said in answer. ‘Over an hour in the tug though.’

Adam looked back at them. ‘That would be about fifteen miles out?’

She nodded. ‘About that.’

‘On a clear day you can actually see the top of the rig’s com tower from here,’ she added. They all turned to look, squinting for a minute, but it was too hazy a day to pick out anything discernible on the flat horizon.

‘You think we beat those others to it?’ Harry asked.

Leona’s gaze drifted along the perfectly flat sea line. It looked like Maxwell’s boats had had the perfect weather to make it up here - an atypically glass-smooth North Sea. They could only hope something had gone wrong or delayed them.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I’m sure we’ve beaten them.’

‘They may not even have left yet,’ said Bushey.

Leona nodded thoughtfully. They could hope that. Who knows?

‘You know which way to head, right?’ asked Walfield.

‘Of course,’ she smiled. ‘Straight out, north-eastish. On flat water like that we’ll see something soon enough. I’ve done the trip enough times.’

Walfield laughed. ‘Looks like you have.’

Adam looked at the tugboat. ‘Do you know how to pilot one of those things? Because I sure as hell don’t. Lads?’

Bushey and Harry shook their heads.

‘Never been on one,’ added Harry. ‘I hate boats.’

‘Can’t be any harder to drive than a supply truck,’ said Walfield. ‘I’ll have a go.’

Leona looked at the men. ‘So, what are we waiting for?’

They made their way across the dockside towards the vessel, crossed over a small footbridge to the far side of the small lock in which the tugboat bobbed gently, and along the narrow walkway at the bottom of the brewery’s red brick wall, finally hopping aboard the vessel.

Walfield let himself into the boat’s cockpit and examined the small bank of toggle switches beside the helm.

Adam tapped Leona’s arm as she looked on. ‘You sure your mother is going to welcome us aboard? I mean . . . otherwise, we really are sort of left out on a limb.’

She studied him for a moment in silence as Walfield clacked switches and the others clambered aboard. Behind his dark beard, behind skin drawn economically tight against bone and muscle, she saw something of an intelligent young man. She saw eyes that didn’t dart hungrily where they weren’t invited, but instead met hers on the level. She thought she detected someone whose thoughts weren’t on what could be
taken,
but what could be
made.

She imagined Mum would see those things in him, too.

‘You helped me. You’ve got me home safely.’ Leona’s bittersweet smile ached as, for a moment, she’d give anything to be able to have Jacob standing here beside her. How she wished Mum was getting
both
her children back.

‘She’ll be grateful to you, Adam. Trust me. It’ll all be hugs and kisses.’

He laughed. ‘She sounds nice.’

She grimaced. ‘Ugh, don’t ever call her that. She hates that word.
Nice
is what you call ice cream, or a paper doily, or fluffy bunny rabbit print pattern. Mum’s . . . well, she’s a pretty tough case.’

For a moment, for the first time in ages, she spared a thought for how Mum was. She remembered, through the cloud of grief she’d been floating in, that Tami had assured her Mum would recover. She was healthy, fit. A tough case all right.

But how long ago had that been? She realised she’d completely lost track of the date, of what month they were in in fact. The trees were turning, the leaves falling. Autumn was just a spit away. Three months? Four, since they’d left?

Would she have recovered?

She’ll pull through. Tough as nails.
That’s what Tami had said.

Tough as nails now. But not always so. Leona still remembered a different mum; more rounded with fewer angles. Comforting curves rather than sinews and muscle. A decade ago the hardest thing she’d had to do was argue the toss with the taxman once a year over the details of Dad’s accounts. Or nag Jacob to get a wriggle on and do his bloody holiday homework. Since then, since the crash, she’d earned every single day of their lives; fighting for herself and her children. The first five years she was mother to her and Jacob. The last five years she’d been a mum to several hundred people. If that didn’t make a person harder . . .

‘She’s . . . well,’ Leona cocked her head, ‘she’s pretty
forthright.
But you’ll see that soon enough.’

He laughed softly. ‘If she’s like you she sounds like someone I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of.’

The tug’s starter motor whined unhappily before the diesel engine caught, coughed and nearly choked before it settled into a rhythmic chug. Walfield grinned, pleased with himself as he held the helm tightly in both hands. ‘Piece of piss.’

‘So then, let’s go home,’ said Leona.

 

 

 

H
alf an hour out from shore they picked out the platforms on the horizon; like a row of five fat ladies with thick shapeless legs, skirts held up and wading through ankle-deep water for cockles. Walfield opened the throttle and the engine rose a note. They carved across the flat sea, leaving a tail of tumbling suds behind them and Leona’s spirits rose as she began to pick out more and more detail on their approach. Best news of all, she couldn’t see any barges anchored nearby or tethered beneath any of the platforms.

‘Jesus. Much larger than I imagined,’ called out Adam.

Twenty-five minutes later the men were getting a much better idea of how large the platforms were, towering above them as Walfield eased back on the throttle and aimed the tugboat towards the base of the tallest platform amongst the cluster.

‘It’s like a bleedin’
jungle
up there,’ said Walfield gazing up at the dangling terraces of foliage.

Leona detected movement along the decks; the ever-shifting green of endless leaves, lining every deck and walkway; the multicoloured fluttering of clothes strung out on laundry lines, and the movement of curious people emerging to gather along the safety rails.

She waved up at them, trying to see if she could recognise individual faces yet.

Walfield threw the tug into reverse to take the last of the momentum off the vessel, and the deck beneath their feet shuddered. Leona shaded her eyes, looking up at the closest faces on the spider deck.

‘It’s us!!’ she called out. ‘It’s me! Leona! Where’s Mum?’

Several voices called back, over each other, lost against the idling chug of the engine.

‘Mum?! You up there!!?’

A male voice called down. ‘Who is that?’

Leona didn’t recognise it at first. Then she remembered the newcomer, the foreign man. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d been teasing Mum about fancying him.

‘It’s Leona!’ she replied. ‘I also have some friends with me!’

She heard a chorus of voices stirring above her.

‘Somebody go get her, will you!’ she called out. No one was going to lower anything to them until Mum said it was okay to do so.

‘How many friends?’ It was that foreign guy again. She remembered his name now. Valérie.

She shrugged an answer. ‘Four of them. Can you go get my mum, please?’

She saw him now, leaning over the cellar deck railing. ‘Four men?’

She wondered what was taking Mum so long. She wondered why Walter wasn’t already manning the davits, being a nosy bugger and calling out twenty questions to them as he lowered the crane hooks.

‘Where’s Mum? Where’s Walter?’

Adam emerged from the cockpit and stood beside her on the foredeck.

‘Everything okay here?’

Valérie Latoc’s voice came down to them. ‘Your mother is not in charge now! Things have changed!’

She looked along the crowd on the spider deck. She saw familiar faces. Deborah Hardy, her two toddlers, Ronnie, Moira and Audrey - white-haired old sisters - Saleena Chudasama, her children, Alice Harton, Denise Bingham. A deck up she recognised Tami Gupta, Howard, the Yun sisters, Keisha, Desirae and Kara and some of the other Bible-bashers. She saw Edward waving and grinning, David beside him. She saw Hamarra, Rebecca, the Barker sisters . . .

Familiar faces, but all somehow a little different. She’d expected smiles; teeth everywhere and waving hands. But instead the lined-up faces watched events impassively.

‘What’s going on? Why the hell isn’t Mum in charge?’

Latoc’s hesitation told her something. ‘I have replaced her! The people here wanted this! It is for the best!’

‘What?!’

‘You should go!’ called out Alice. ‘It’s not your mum’s place any more!’

‘Where’s my mum? I want to speak to her!’

‘Your crazy mum went and threw a bloody hissy-fit!’ snapped Alice. ‘She shot Valérie!’

Leona steadied herself on the foredeck as the tugboat bobbed gently. ‘What? She wouldn’t do that! Where is she?’

‘She is in our prison!’ replied Latoc. ‘We have decided she cannot stay here any more! She is going to be evicted! She can leave with you!’

This is crazy.
When she’d left Mum was in the infirmary dosed up to the gills on painkillers and antibiotics. Walter was ostensibly running things, maybe not a popular choice, but as her right-hand man, the obvious choice.

Leona turned to look at Adam. ‘Something’s gone wrong.’