Doggerland. Ben Smith

Doggerland - Ben  Smith


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weaknesses – small differences that sprawled over time into repeated malfunctions or whole areas of the nacelle half-digested by rust. Some of the newer models were meant to be more resilient – better seals round the circuitry, fewer moving parts – but nothing stayed new or resilient for long.

      The boy went over to the control panel, where a row of lights had gone out. He signalled to the old man, who sighed, opened the zip pocket at the front of his overalls and took out a decrepit tablet – two sides thick with tape and a crack in the corner of the screen, dark lines spreading across it like veins. The old man came over, plugged it into the control panel, tapped at the screen and then said something.

      ‘What?’ the boy shouted.

      The old man cupped a hand over his ear. ‘What?’ he shouted back.

      ‘I said “what”,’ the boy shouted, louder.

      ‘What is it?’ the boy said eventually.

      The old man tapped at the tablet. ‘Huài diào.’

      ‘Huài diào?’

      The old man shrugged.

      ‘Which bit?’

      The old man gestured towards the control panel. ‘All of it.’

      The boy took a step forward. ‘Let me see.’

      The old man unplugged the tablet and put it back in his pocket. ‘No point. Don’t know where the problem is. We’d need the control panel to tell us.’

      The boy took a screwdriver out of his pocket and began to remove the casing of the control panel. ‘I can work it out.’

      The old man folded his arms. ‘Waste of time.’

      The boy removed the casing. Underneath there was a tangle of frayed and rusting circuitry.

      ‘See,’ the old man said.

      The boy eased two wires apart with his screwdriver. Flakes of rust crumbled onto his hand.

      ‘Got plenty to be getting on with,’ the old man said. ‘But if you want to spend all day playing electrician.’ He leaned against the gearbox and closed his eyes.

      He shoved the screwdriver back into his pocket. ‘Fine,’ he said.

      The old man opened one eye. ‘What was that?’

      The boy didn’t reply. He just started unpacking the spare holdalls from the toolbag and they began to strip the nacelle.

      Within half an hour they’d taken apart the generator and gearbox. The old man had removed anything useful from the rotor hub and packed it carefully in one of the bags. Then they unscrewed the panelling from the walls and bedplate, following lengths of copper wire, which they pulled out and wound into coils.

      The boy took the first load down the lift and out to where the maintenance boat was moored to the jacket. The rain had set in, bleaching sharply from the west. He bowed his head to stop it hitting his eyes. This was how he thought of the weather: in terms of how much you had to bow. Sometimes he had to bend double, hauling himself along by railing and rung; sometimes it drove him to his knees.

      The boy had only once questioned this, saying why couldn’t they use some of the parts to make repairs?

      ‘Why do you care?’ the old man had said.

      The boy had thought about it for a long time. About all the different ways the turbines seemed to groan; how a faulty motor would emit a small dry gasp just before it gave out; how plastic creaked like his own joints when he’d been kneeling in a spinner housing too long.

      He hadn’t been able to answer.

      The boat moved slowly through the farm – a dark dot among the pale rows, rising and sinking as it cut through the swell. The boy sat in the open stern, his back braced against the cabin, watching the boat’s wake spooling out behind them until it was pulled apart by the cross-currents, leaving no trace of their passage. Spray hissed against the deck and he looked up, then cursed under his breath. They should have been travelling south, but the boat had turned north, up into zone two. He knew because the corrosion on the towers was always worse on the south-west side – the metal blistered and peeling as if it had been subjected to flame.

      He got up and opened the cabin door. The old man was standing at the wheel, squinting out of the cracked windscreen.

      ‘I’m running her slow,’ the old man said.

      ‘The gauge has been playing up.’

      ‘I’m running her slow.’

      The boy went in and closed the cabin door. ‘How far’s the next job?’

      The old man didn’t answer.

      ‘There’s four more turbines on the list.’

      ‘It’s been a good day’s work.’

      ‘We haven’t fixed anything.’

      The old man squinted out of the windscreen again. ‘We’ve got what we need.’

      The boy’s face was stinging in the cabin’s dry heat. ‘We should at least try and fix one.’

      ‘What if it needs parts?’

      ‘It might not need parts.’

      ‘So we’re not going to do any more work?’

      ‘We can do some after,’ the old man said. ‘If there’s time.’

      The boy shook his head. There wouldn’t be


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