‘Yeah. I was the technical manager. Basically they poached me from Disneyland to come here and run this place.’
‘Shit! Disneyland! Seriously?’
Leona wasn’t surprised to see Jacob’s mouth drop open. Mum and Dad had taken them both to EuroDisney back in 2008. Jacob had been about five then and was fascinated by the animatronics on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. He must have dragged them from the exit back round to the entrance half a dozen times.
‘Yup. Disneyland in Florida. I was chief oompah-loompah for one of their bigger rides.’
Helen’s fair eyebrows locked together. ‘What the hell’s an oompah-loompah? ’
He grinned. ‘That’s what the “cast” called us backroom nerds. Very funny, or at least they thought so. Mind you, we used to get our own back on them . . .’
Raymond talked all the way through dinner. Leona guessed he hadn’t had any company for quite some time and now, feeling more at ease with them than he had been earlier at the retail park, he seemed to enjoy opening up, giving them a glimpse of his past life in the old world. His pasta must have been cold by the time he finally got round to finishing it. But she enjoyed listening to him, hearing references to the past, to places she would have liked to have seen and places she had seen.
Raymond Campbell; an engineering graduate from Edinburgh University, he’d bummed around in India and Goa for a while before getting work in London. Then, later on, he got to work on some prestigious development projects in Dubai and then Disney in Florida before finally getting the job to run this place.
‘I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a tech-geek. I love fiddling with stuff, optimising systems, you know?’
Helen cocked her head and pursed her lips. ‘Do you mean making things run better?’
Raymond smiled at her. ‘That’s exactly it. There isn’t anything you can’t make run a little better, a little faster, a little smoother, if you take the time to analyse it and component-split the processes,’ he replied, his eyes remaining on the young girl - eye contact that lingered between them for a few charged seconds.
Leona stepped into the moment. ‘So, Raymond, what’s your crash-story? ’
He knew what she meant by that, everyone had their story; how they survived the crash, what the first day, the first week, the first month was like for them, how they managed to get through it.
Helen played at being hausfrau, stacking up the bowls in the gathering darkness as he settled back in his chair again. It creaked in the stillness.
‘We were preparing to open the Oasis back then. Our first guests were already booked in for the middle of December. If I remember right, it was some footballer and his fashion-model wife and their extended family. There were a dozen staff here and a couple of builders finishing up work on the chalets when it all started. Those bombs went off in Saudi, kicking off the Middle-Eastern troubles. The bombs in the big refineries and that tanker exploded in the Gulf blocking the shipping routes, and the Prime Minister came on . . . my God, do you remember that?’
They did. Everyone, except Helen.
‘He stood in that press room, ripped up what he was meant to say, and told us we were all as good as screwed.’
Helen was too young to remember that so clearly, nonetheless, she’d heard the story many times over.
‘So anyway, I was co-managing this place with a lady called Tanya - she was a botanist, in charge of the plants and bugs and stuff. Anyway, we dismissed all the others so they could get home to their families. We stayed, though; someone had to keep things running here.
‘We thought it was a scare that would blow over in a few days. Like everyone else. We just thought the Prime Minister had panicked, had a nervous breakdown on camera or something. We assumed the government had a handle on it. We assumed there were oil reserves, food reserves and some sort of contingency plan for this kind of a crisis. But then, of course, it got out of hand so quickly. We watched on the news as the riots spread right across London. When the BBC stopped broadcasting, I guess we realised at that point that this was worse than we thought. Really bad.’
‘We were in London then,’ said Jacob quietly. ‘Me and Leona, during those riots.’
Raymond looked at him. ‘It must have been frightening.’
‘It was,’ replied Leona. ‘Very.’
‘Go on,’ urged Nathan, ‘you was saying, Ray.’
‘So Tanya and me stayed on here. She continued to look after the tropical ecosystem, I kept the generators going and we sat it out, listening to the radio; FM for the first week or two, then medium wave then finally long wave as British stations stopped broadcasting. We heard about the safe zones in London and elsewhere collapsing a few months after the crash. We heard brief reports on the short wars, Russia and Georgia, India and Pakistan, Israel and Syria, Palestine.’
‘Yeah, we heard about those too,’ said Jacob.
‘I heard a Cuban radio station about three years ago talking about the way things are in America. They had it almost as bad as us here; pretty rough first few years. Federal authority disappeared overnight almost. It collapsed down to state authorities. Some fared a lot better than others. East coast: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, those ones, all ended up like Europe did, totally screwed. But further south, the gulf states like Florida and Texas seemed to do better - they had some oil reserves to play with. Apparently they’ve teamed up and there’s some sort of order there. I think they said something about the President being based there.’
‘Do you think they’ll come over here?’ asked Helen. ‘And you know, help us?’
‘I doubt it. Not for a while. They’ve got their own country to fix.’
‘You not heard any more?’ asked Leona.
Raymond shrugged. ‘The station switched from English to Cuban. You can still pick it up, several Cuban stations actually. I think that country coped a lot better than just about anyone else.
‘Funny though,’ he continued, shaking his head, ‘I never thought that just stopping the oil would fuck the world up quite so much. I understand now, of course. I understand why so many died, in this country at least. Perhaps if we’d all been given six months’ warning, maybe even just a week’s warning - enough time to learn how to grow some kind of a basic survival crop, buy the seeds and stick ’em in the ground . . . you know? But by the time the Prime Minister—what was his name?’ Raymond looked around at the teenagers at the picnic table.
None of them could actually remember.
‘Well, by the time that idiot blew his whistle it was already too late to do anything.’
He fell silent and the evening was filled with the creaking and chirruping of foreign-sounding insects, and the soft rustle of running water.
‘Was Tanya your girlfriend?’ asked Helen.
Raymond stirred. ‘God, no. We were just colleagues, workmates, that’s all.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Jacob.
‘She vanished.’
‘Vanished?’
‘A while back. One day we drove the truck into Thetford to forage for essentials. We thought it was safe to split up, we hadn’t seen any drifters for a while.’ He looked down at his hands, twisting the corner of his yellow T-shirt. ‘She never came back to the truck. I called for her, for hours. Looked for her around the town. I returned to the Oasis, then went back the next day and tried again. I never found her. She just vanished.’
‘Oh, God, that’s awful,’ offered Helen.
‘Yeah . . . yes, it was. I figure she was taken by someone. Or perhaps an accident, fallen somewhere, injured or killed.’ He shook his head silently. ‘It nearly pushed me over the edge really. I didn’t realise how close we’d got over the years.’
Leona stirred. ‘How long ago was this?’
He shook his head. ‘Happened, I guess, four years ago?’
Leona looked at him with pity. ‘My God, you’ve been all alone since?’
‘Uh-huh. Minding the trees and the bugs, keeping this place going, keep
ing myself busy.’
‘Do you miss her?’ asked Helen. Leona detected something in her young voice and the way that Raymond addressed her questions so attentively; there was a little chemistry going on there in the dark. The thought made her grimace ever so slightly. Helen was only fifteen and although Raymond seemed quite boyish, he had to be in his mid-thirties; old enough to be her father.
‘It was just the two of us for six years,’ replied Raymond, ‘just the two of us. So, yeah, of course I miss her.’
Helen began gently quizzing Raymond about Tanya, about his past life. He talked about that, about Disneyland, and the other three listened intently. Helen cooed dotingly, giggled too readily at his anecdotes.
Leona sighed at Helen’s obviousness. She wondered whether her instinctive distaste at the thought of Raymond and Helen as an item was a hangover from the past, from the world before. She remembered curling her lip in disgust at a story in the newspapers: an aging rock star in his sixties bedding a sixteen-year-old Russian bar girl. An old tabloid story from a different world where such a relationship was a horrendous notion. She wondered though, how much those sorts of moral values had changed in this new world.
A different story now, perhaps, she figured. In this new world, a man a decade or more older would have a wider experience and knowledge base, better honed survival skills, better able to care for a younger partner than some sleek young strip of a lad.
All very tribal, very Darwinian. But it made sense.
She looked at the dark outlines of the others around the table; at Jacob, laughing, fidgeting in his bamboo chair, so full of hope that things were on the cusp of getting better, that London was waiting for him. Nathan too. And Helen flirting shamelessly with Raymond, distancing herself from the boys, pretending to be so much more grown up, clearly rather keen to make an impression on Raymond.
We’ve all got our little goals, and none of them involve returning to the North Sea.
She smiled, knowing no one would see her face in the fading light of dusk and ask her what she was thinking. Leona hoped they’d all find what they’d come along for. Most of all, she hoped her little brother would find what he wanted in London. His street lights.
Chapter 31
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
‘How is she this morning?’ asked Walter.
Dr Gupta sipped on her breakfast chowder. ‘The infections are clearing up. The dressings are coming off dry. I cannot tell you how relieved I am about that.’
Walter nodded. So was he.
‘Basically, she has finished fighting off secondary problems, now she is busy healing.’ Dr Gupta made a face. ‘There will be a lot of scarring, however. She will have it up her neck and across her right cheek. I just wish we’d had a few pressure wraps to minimise the hypertrophic scarring on her face. Stupid really, in all our trips ashore for medical supplies I never really thought there would be a need for me to treat burns.’
He nodded and glanced around the mess. It was mostly empty now, most of the third sitting had finished and left for their morning chores to make way for the fourth sitting and the four long tables were empty save for five small children still eating at the far end, urged to get a move on by an exasperated mother. Walter knew them all by name, but since they’d only joined the community seven months ago, he’d yet to get to know them well. That was something Jenny was much better at - finding time to sit down and talk to people.
Walter knew he wasn’t a popular choice of stand-in leader. Tami would probably have been more welcomed in the role.
She was looking at him as he thought that; reading his face like a book. ‘You know, Walter, no one can really blame you for that explosion,’ she replied. ‘That is not fair.’
‘But they are, aren’t they? I’ve heard what’s being said.’
He sometimes even wondered himself whether he was to blame. Even something as simple as those £30 cooking stoves you used to be able to buy at any camping store had a bayonet fitting as well as a screw valve. Safety should have been more on his mind than haste; haste to get something up and running for Jenny. And his allowing Jenny to bring Hannah down into the generator’s back room with those methane digesters, when no children, under any circumstances, should have ever been allowed in there . . .
Stupid. Stupid.
What was Hannah doing down there on her own, though? She knew she shouldn’t play there, she knew that very well. So why? And the feed pipe lying on the floor, the G-clamp lying beside it.
Did Hannah do that? Did she pull it loose by accident?
There’d only been a fleeting few seconds down there in that dark room before the explosion. He’d caught the briefest glimpse of her feet protruding from behind the generator and the rubber hose dangling from the roof softly hissing gas. That’s it. That’s all he saw. But she would have had to have been climbing over the top of the casing to pull that hose free, surely? If she’d had an urge to climb on something, for crying out loud, there were plenty of other places she could have done that. It just didn’t make sense. Hannah was a good girl. She knew she’d have been out of bounds. She knew the generator was dangerous; not a climbing frame. It just didn’t make sense to him.
Dr Gupta interrupted his wool-gathering. ‘So, what are you going to do with Mr Latoc?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is he staying or going?’ She slurped a spoon of chowder. ‘You cannot leave the question unanswered for much longer, you know?’
‘I know, I know.’
Walter would ask Jenny what she wanted to do about him, but she was still out of it, either half asleep, or half-cut on those knock-out-a-horse painkillers she was taking.
Walter wanted the man gone. Valérie Latoc was trouble brewing. He had the people living over on the drilling platform in thrall to him. Every time he caught sight of the man, it was with a row of people sitting patiently, listening to him talking.
What the hell does he gabble on about?
Of course it was women listening, mostly.
What is it with women? Give them a coffee-skinned man and they go weak at the bloody knees.
But he’d also noticed David Cudmore and Kevin in one of Latoc’s little audiences. It always seemed to look like a prayer group; a sermon on the mount kind of thing.
‘He’s some sort of preacher, I think,’ said Walter.
‘I know. Jenny would not be happy with him if she knew.’
Much as he’d like to, he couldn’t just kick the man off the rigs. Jenny had said he could stay on probation and, given that she was slowly getting better and would hopefully be able to take the helm again one day soon, it was her decision. Not his. If she woke and found Latoc gone, she’d think he’d booted him off out of petty jealousy. In fact, everyone would say that, wouldn’t they?
Walter didn’t like the fact that Valérie was more popular. More attractive. Younger. He didn’t like that at all so you know what he did? The bitter old bastard kicked poor Valérie out to fend for himself. God knows if he’s still alive out there . . . I hope he is . . .
Even if he tried to have the man removed, Walter suspected it wouldn’t be allowed to happen. There’d be an uproar amongst his fan club.
‘Oh, speak of the devil,’ said Dr Gupta.
Latoc entered the mess followed by three women. Walter knew them quite well, they were bunked on the main compression platform. He hadn’t spotted them before amongst Latoc’s regular drilling platform crowd. Keisha, Desirae and Kara. The first two were sisters who’d once lived in north London. Kara was originally from Nottingham. Together, the three of them were normally an infectiously cheerful group, filling any room they were in with loud and cheerful bingo-hall banter frequently peppered with high-pitched and raucous belly-laughs.
New recruits. It seemed that Latoc’s brand of charm was spreading like a bloody virus to the other platforms now. They grabbed plastic bowls from the galley’s counter and were served a ladle of steaming broth each and then sat toget
her at one of the other long tables.
Valérie Latoc extended his hands across the table and they reached out for them. His head bowed, as did theirs, and he began to utter, quite loudly, a prayer of thanksgiving. Walter knew Jenny would be on her feet already, on her way over to ask him to do this quietly or take it outside. This space was communal, shared not only by non-believers but by so many others of different faiths, who were equally asked to keep their faith a personal thing.
Jenny was strict on this. No public prayers, not here, not in the mess. Otherwise the door would be opened to all sorts of petitions: people wanting to eat on single-faith tables, people wanting the men to eat separately from the women, people insisting on fasting, people insisting on eating before sun up or after sun down.
Tami tapped Walter’s arm and nodded towards them. He shot a glance over his shoulder at them and then turned back round to face her, reluctant to meet her eyes.
‘You know Jenny would not accept this?’
He nodded.
‘If you let this happen, it will happen again.’
‘I know . . . I . . .
A dozen more people entered the canteen; the start of the fourth sitting, children chatting noisily to each other, hungry and too energetic for the mums shuffling in with them. One or two of them eyed Valérie and the others curiously.
‘You cannot let this happen and not say something, Walter. People see this and there’ll be others who will want their particular faith blessings before each meal.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered. ‘Okay . . . let me just think how I’m going to say—’
But then it was done. Valérie, and the ladies sitting with him, chorused ‘amen’, released each other’s hands and the canteen was almost immediately filled with their high-spirited chatter and good-natured laughter.
Walter bit on his lip and made a face. ‘Maybe if he does it again . . . I’ll, uh . . . I’ll have a quiet word.’
Dr Gupta looked at him and shook her head, tutting. ‘Not good,’ she muttered. ‘Not good.’