Gull (11 page)

Besides, the British were getting a $370 cut on the first ninety thousand cars produced: thirty-three and a bit millions. (Dollars, not pounds, but still, thirty-three and a bit million of them.) And what about the other jobs that DMCL’s presence was attracting? Not a single cent of US investment in the previous seven years and all of a sudden there were thirty companies lined up. LearAvia was already in, north of the city, with – lest anyone forget – fifty million dollars of new,
Conservative
government grants and loans to make components for its Lear Fan executive jet.

Jennings, who needless to say could not let the day pass, or rather, 3 February being a Sunday, let the day after it pass without paying a call was more rueful than raging at finding himself, and the government whose bidding he did, over a barrel.

‘You can rest assured that there will be no such clause in the revised letter that accompanies
this
loan. As for Lear Fan, by the way, there is no comparison. It brought rather more of its own money to the table and it won’t see a penny of ours unless it gets a plane in the air before the end of this year, which’ – not
quite
under his breath – ‘might have been a sensible condition to apply in this instance too.’

Maybe he thought those really were gull’s wings.

He had walked with Randall around the assembly shop (still sparsely enough fitted out that Randall had broken up a full-scale lunch-hour soccer game only two days before), nodding with what at moments and in another person might almost have been taken for approval.
Well, if you did have £65 million of public money to spend this would not be the
worst
way to spend it...

His parting shot, though, was a reversion to type. ‘The problem with making unrealistic promises is that even though people know they are unrealistic they are inclined to hold you to them. Until this point the clock has been ticking down. From here on it is ticking away. You know the principle of the away rule, don’t you? Everything against you counts double.’

Randall had not the first idea about the away rule, but he understood the import of the metaphor.

To replace it with one of his own: the longer the delay the deeper the shit they were likely to find themselves in.

The only thing he could do was to help keep the preparations here on track, be ready.

*

The way it was explained to Liz and her co-workers, they had to be familiar with every stage of the assembly process so that in the event of an emergency – ‘Armageddon’ was the word Mr Bennington had used, and coming from him you could well imagine it – any one of them could stand in for any other,
all
the others, and finish the cars single-handed. (‘Because make no mistake,’ Bennington said, ‘if anything can emerge from Armageddon other than the cockroaches it’ll be our cars.’) Hence the months, and months, of training.

To begin with they were in the old carpet factory, watching videotapes and live demonstrations, being introduced to the DMC-12 part by part and to the tools they would be using to put those parts together,
tools
, as Liz soon learned, being a term that covered everything from a wire brush to the enormous dies – the size and shape almost of landing craft – in which the fibreglass bodies were to be moulded. A handful of completed bodies were already in circulation for them to practise on. ‘Mules’ they referred to them as and approached them to begin with as though they might actually get a bite off them or an almighty and unexpected kick.

As the new buildings took shape and more and more of the equipment was installed the workers were walked through them, group tours, two, three times a week: here – the body-press shop – is where those dies would operate in the fullness of time; there – the chamber with concrete piers and desolate air of a concentration camp that never failed to give her the creeps – would be the ovens for curing the bodies for fettling (a good old-fashioned scrub, the task of the wire brushes) and transport by cranes – for the moment hypothetical – to the assembly shop, which was, or would be, a whole other world again.

They had been shown photographs of the Tellus carriers, which were somewhere between a low platform and a species of lunar vehicle, in length and breadth a foot or two bigger than the car bodies they would move around the assembly shop under instruction from a computer. The track that they would run on (Liz remembered the boys’ Scalextric, its cars more often off than on) had already been laid down one side of the shop starting at the point where what they called the trim line – all the internal wiring – and the chassis line were to meet and the body and chassis ‘mated’, a word that, when it came up in the tours, never failed to raise a laugh and a few choice comments:
how many screws does it take...?

At intervals along the carriers’ route other lines would come in at right angles, bringing the engines, the stainless steel panels, those outrageous doors, and finally the seats and the wheels, at which point the car would be transferred on to another contraption – a rolling road (it went nowhere but round on itself) – to test its brakes before the big roller door in the bottom left corner of the shop was raised and out into the world it would go.

Eight minutes’ worth of fuel was all that it was to have in its tank, that being to the precise second what was required to take it through the Emissions and Vehicle Preparation shed, whatever that was, once round the test track and up the ramp of the transporter that would carry it to the docks.

Liz learned it like a catechism, recited every night with the prayer that Robert was wrong, that tomorrow or the next day or the next week at the latest they would start and build a bloody car.

*

Randall was crossing the open ground between the two shops one afternoon when he saw coming in the opposite direction the woman who had said the thing in her interview about the doors making her want to smile. She wore the grey version of the company coveralls, the collar – deliberately he supposed – flipped up. Her hair was held back from her face by a large clip at the crown.

He slowed as she drew closer. ‘Liz, isn’t it? I’m...’

‘Mr Randall, I remember.’

‘I don’t usually bother with the “mister”.’

She nodded.

‘So,’ he said, because he had stopped now, he had to say something, ‘you’ve been finding your way round all right?’

‘Are you kidding? All those walks? I could give other people tours.’

‘I’ve realised the mistake I made when I moved here.’

‘You didn’t get out walking enough?’

‘I didn’t have someone to show me around properly.’

She had been looking over her shoulder – they all did it, embarrassed to be seen talking to the bosses – but turned her head again now, sharply.

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t suggesting...’ Which of course made it sound even more as though he had been.

She nodded again, acknowledgement of his clarification or confirmation of her first suspicion, who knew? ‘I should probably be getting on here.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you should. I mean, we should. I mean, I should too.’

She was gone before he got the last word out.

*

He did not sleep properly that night or the next, now telling himself that the fault was entirely hers, that it had been a perfectly innocent remark, making small talk, now wondering who he thought he was fooling: something within him had quickened seeing her walking towards him. Maybe he
had
meant to leave the invitation hanging.

Gossip was what he feared rather than an official complaint. (He was not so paranoid as to think he had stepped that far over the mark.) He was grateful for the inventory that had started to arrive, the clipboard that as often as not he was obliged to carry with him when he ventured forth, checking, reconciling, pushing everything – everyone – else to the periphery. A busy man at a busy time, head down, focused.

A week this went on. No complaint – he had been right about that – but no sense either out the corner of his eye of workers nudging one another as he passed:
did you hear what your man there’s supposed to have said...?

He was standing late one morning genuinely absorbed in the clipboard at the newly connected Tellus control station when he heard a voice.

‘Anyone would think you were trying to avoid having to talk to people.’

‘Pardon me?’

She was closer to his shoulder than he had anticipated. He had to take a step back in turning to avoid treading on her foot. She held up her hands close to her face in imitation of him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I was...’ What?
Really
looking at it this time? ‘Miles away.’

‘Well, you’re back now.’ She had folded her arms. Defensive. ‘I just wanted to let you know... the Botanic Gardens are lovely this time of the year. If you wanted to get out and about more, I mean.’

‘The Botanic Gardens.’

‘Right. Especially on a Sunday morning.’

‘Sunday.’

‘Right.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

*

She had no idea what possessed her. She had been on the point of passing him by – he had his nose stuck in paperwork – and then she thought, no, I’m going to say something here and then her mouth was open and instead of giving out to him she was telling him about Sunday mornings in Botanic Gardens.

Absolutely no idea at all.

There had been a shift in the tenor of their training of late, less now about getting to know the ins and outs of every stage of the assembly, more about getting to know one particular task. Hers – whatever it was the people in charge of the training had observed in her in the previous weeks and months – was seats.

Right down at the end of the assembly line. That was where she had been going when she saw your man Randall at the Tellus control station and suffered the rush of blood to her head.

A pair of seats was sitting there waiting for her, positioned as they would be when eventually the computer brought the carrier to a halt, a fully fitted car mounted on top, doors raised.

For now, though, it was mules and anatomy lessons. She had to learn how to take the seat apart and put it back together again. Thirty named parts, some, like the Nyloc nut, its washer and cap screw, in multiples of four per seat. The seat covers were black and made from the hide of she preferred not to think what, so soft was the leather. (She wouldn’t have said no to a pair of gloves made out of it, all the same.) Hand-stitched, she was pretty sure. This wasn’t work, she sometimes thought, it was a window on another way of living.

Along with the clearly defined role came clearly defined workmates. Taking the seats apart and putting them back together with her were a fella by the name of Anto Hughes and a wee lad, not much older-looking than her own boys, Tommy Cahill, who went by TC.

Liz had never noticed either of them on the way in in the mornings or on the way out again at the end of the day so figured they must be coming and going by the other gate, the Twinbrook one.

‘No kidding?’ Robert sarked. ‘Tommy
Cahill
and
Anto
Hughes and you
think
they might be from West Belfast? Go to the top of the class!’

‘God help us,’ she said, ‘if our names should ever be all that define us.’

She would have put Anto a year or two either side of her – mid to late thirties. Always had a book sticking out of his overalls’ pocket, which he would read, sitting quietly off to one side, any time he had a spare moment.

‘Jack London,’ she said into one such lull, glimpsing the name on the spine. ‘I remember getting him out of the library when I was a kid –
The Call of the Wild
.’

He looked at her, she thought a little embarrassed. ‘I haven’t read that one.’

‘There’s another one, isn’t there, with a dog in it? What’s this you call it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He frowned and folded back the cover on the book he was reading, which she saw in that movement was called
The Iron Heel
. A huge black boot for an illustration. She wondered if she had got the right Jack London. She wondered if some of Anto’s discomfort was for her, not him.

TC, the morning after the three of them were first teamed together, was late getting in. ‘Sorry if I kept you. I had a pass out for an hour there to go up to the Tech for my exam results.’

‘Exam results?’ Anto said.

‘Level Two City and Guilds, Welding and Sheetmetal Fabrication.’

‘And?’ said Liz.

‘I got a merit. I’ve already put in for my Level Three.’

‘Well done.’

Anto made a face. ‘Aye, well done, but in case you hadn’t noticed they’ve been turning us into jacks-of-all-trades since we got here. What are you planning on doing with a Level Three City and Guilds in a place like this, or even a Level Two?’

TC drew himself to his full height, six inches shorter than Anto, a couple shorter than Liz, even allowing for the arches of hair rising up either side of his centre parting. ‘I’ll tell you what I plan on doing – training to be your supervisor, that’s what.’

Anto nodded:
sure thing
. ‘You in a union, TC?’

‘Of course.’

‘Which one?’

‘Which one, he says,’ said TC to the world at large; to Anto, ‘Which one do you think? The big one.’

‘Well then, man-who-would-be-my-supervisor...’ Anto punctuated each word with a light tap on TC’s breastbone, ‘I’m your union rep.’

Light or not, TC looked like he was about to return the taps with interest until Liz intervened.

‘Hold on, you two chiefs, are you telling me I’m the only Indian here as well as the only woman?’

They turned to face her, but before either of them could speak the safety goggles went up on to the forehead of the worker who had been bent over examining a pressurised cylinder a few feet away.

‘If it’s any comfort, love, I’m an Indian too,’ she said.

In fact, as Liz well knew, there was no shortage of women about the place, and not only where you would have expected to find them in other factories: typing letters, answering phones, though mind you even in DeLorean she never saw a man do either of those things. More astonishing still, there were enough cubicles in the toilet blocks (of which there was one about every hundred yards throughout the factory) that she didn’t have to stand in a line reaching halfway down the corridor, watching as any amount of men came and went from the toilets next door. They had been prepared for this, in other words, the management. Her and all the other women, they were not here by chance but by right, on equal footing.