Tremble (61 page)

The main files were arranged chronologically and then within each year personnel were filed alphabetically. I found a Taylor who had worked the rig from 1978 through to ’82, a Thomas who was the electrician from 1980–81. There were several other Ts but no Tattle.

I scanned the files again. Time had shaded the tops of the main files with dust and grime. It was then that I noticed the clearly delineated outline of a file that had been removed from between Tass and Topper. Okay, suppose it was Tattle’s file—where would Harris have hidden it? I was sure someone as bloody anal as Harris wouldn’t have thrown it away, especially if there’d been a legal case attached.

I looked around the room. Harris’s desk was bare except for a curious photo of an albino bat torn out from a magazine and stuck on the wall above the computer screen. The man must be some kind of animal nut, I reasoned. I tried the drawers; one was locked. I knelt on the floor and meticulously began to pick the lock.

Inside was a
Playboy
issue July 1982, a framed photograph of a woman I could only assume was Harris’s mother, an electric alarm clock engraved with the immortal words,
To E. M. Harris, for twenty years of loyal service
. Under all of this lay a large package. I pulled it out and dusted it off; it was sealed with thick sticky tape. I switched on the kettle in the corner, waited for it to boil, and steamed it open carefully. Then I tipped the contents out onto Harris’s desk.

First item: a newspaper clipping from the
Aberdeen Evening Express
dated 16 June 1975. It read:

Clipped to this was another article, this time from the
Edinburgh Echo
:

I leaned back in the chair; I could feel the gorge rising in my throat. So Tattle had been a diving engineer like myself and, also like myself, had suffered a recent separation. Under the clippings was a file: the insurance company’s report, addressed to both the oil company and Tattle’s family. The final verdict was that all evidence pointed to death by self-inflicted wounds, therefore defined as suicide. Poor bastards, I thought, they wouldn’t have got a penny from the company then. We all had to sign a disclaimer regarding mental illness as a condition of employment. I found myself feeling some affinity for the anguished phantom I’d seen the night before.

Beneath the file, slipped between two blank sheets of aged yellow paper, was a slim notebook covered in a deep-blue satiny fabric. I opened it and was immediately transfixed by the spidery handwriting that slanted upward at the end of each line. A title was scribbled across the first page:
Here is the journal of Jim Tattle
. I began to read.

I stared out the window at the lightening sky. So Tattle had experienced something similar. I flicked forward through the diary, my hand trembling. His handwriting got wilder and wilder. The last entry was marked 9 June, a week before he was found floating in the raft. It was as if he had scribbled it in a mad hurry—the lines ran diagonally across the page and finished hanging in midair, like a series of mini cliff-edges.

There was nothing else. I suppose he finally wanted to be with his dead brother. The prostitute was right: the sea can throw up memories like seaweed after a storm. It’s that vast glassy surface—a fucking mirror for the soul. Me, in my darkest moments. I related to poor Tattle—the shadowy outline of that eyeless figure drifted back into my mind.

I don’t know what made me take the file, but I did. Somehow, its existence made his suicide and burial feel incomplete. Some South American tribes refuse to be photographed because they believe the camera steals the soul; and Australian Aborigines don’t allow their people to be named after their death. Perhaps it was the sense that as long as the file existed Tattle would remain floating out there on that glassy surface screaming, “I see, I see.”

Out on the lower deck I placed the file in a rubbish bin and torched it. The flames danced up through the wire, vivid against the colorless vista. Gray sea, gray sky. I squatted, warming my hands, staring into the fire, the heat a glorious contrast to my freezing ears. I felt like the last man on earth. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad.

As the last of the paper crinkled up I made a vow to bury my grief and Tattle’s ghost together. Then I heard the whirring blades of the returning helicopter.

The next couple of days passed in a blur, just the eternal routine of checking equipment. One of the workers discovered a broken cable and I had to radio the main office to order a replacement. The men were jovial—empty balls will do that. Their conviviality would last a week and then they’d slip back into sullen acceptance of the monotony of the endless little tasks that go into maintaining the rig. Personally I’ve always liked routine, it takes the edge off time, blunts its teeth. Day became night became morning became afternoon…

Besides, being young, I didn’t yet feel that galloping fear some of the older men experienced who knew the rig was their last chance to make some real money. Yeah, I was naive enough to think I had all the time in the world. And I’d tricked myself into thinking I’d forgotten all about Tattle and his mysterious death.

Until one of the men pushed an envelope into my hand.

“A love letter from your Mary. The old cow insisted I give it to you. I would have forgotten but I found it in me back pocket.”

I stepped into my cabin and reluctantly tore open the cheap pink paper.

Helps what, I thought. Why should I care about Tattle? A man’s problems can hang around a rig like a ghost for years, even after the man himself is long gone. Every offshore worker knows that. The secret is to walk through that haunting as if you haven’t a care in the world. Otherwise the negative energy will stick to you like metal filings to a magnet.

The weather was changing; warmth floated in on the breezes that came from the land. It made the men restless and set the cook humming. It usually made me dream, but for the last week I’d found myself plunging into a deep imageless slumber each time I laid down my head. Perhaps it was the switch over to night shift; whatever it was it disturbed me.

This particular evening I woke up with a pounding at my temples. The air was stuffy with a rich animal smell I couldn’t identify. For a moment I wondered if a mouse had died behind one of the walls. With
my head still pulsing I yawned and reached under my pillow. My hand touched something unfamiliar. A blue-black pearl, left there like some sort of message.

It was large and misshapen, not perfectly spherical like a cultured pearl. There was something alien about the way it shone in the light, as if it had come from an entirely different terrain.

I ran it across my skin; it was sticky, as if it had only just been removed from the oyster. Then I sniffed it. A familiar salty musk. I’m telling you, as a good Catholic I blushed when I remembered where I had smelled the scent before. I lay there struggling with my erection, before my alarm went off indicating my shift had begun. It had to be a prank the lads were playing on me.

I waited until the last meal of the shift then confronted the crew.

“Which one of you jokers thought this would be funny?” I held up the pearl.

They looked at me blankly. Then Nick the navigator, a bit of a showman, held out his hand. I dropped the gem into the center of his palm. He studied it as if he were a jeweler examining the Queen’s crown; the others watching, fascinated. Finally he looked up with a mock-serious expression plastered across his long face.

“What the fuck are you on about, Seamus? This is a fucking pearl. A valuable one at that. What’s this got to do with us?”

“Someone left it under my pillow.”

There was an awkward silence. Then Nick spoke up again.

“Okay, fess up, you mob, which of you lads is in love with this here Irishman?” At that they all cracked up.

“Come on, who left the love note?” Nick yelled over the laughter, which only sent them into louder peals of hysterics. I sat there, face burning, not moving an inch.

“Mate, you’re losing it. You should get over to the knocking shop before your balls ferment the rest of your brain,” Nick added.