The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (14 page)

‘There must be some tea there. Or some water. You must have had a drink.' He felt Volga's stomach in the region of the bladder. Volga pulled away.

‘I'm ticklish. Not on the stomach.'

‘I think you're virginal, never mind ticklish.'

‘It's no good. I'm all dried up.'

‘Tell that to the Old Lamplighter.'

‘That's different.'

‘OK Volga. If you can't you can't, but when you can it's right there. No more stumbling over feet and chairs and upsetting beer to get out. Once you sit you stay till you're full. That's our motto.'

‘Sure is progress.'

‘No such thing as progress, Volga, but I know what you mean.' He lifted his own blue and gold can. On its sides was a fur of dew pearls.

 

ASSEMBLY LINE LOVE Ambrose turned up, a youth of twenty. Just old enough for adult pay.

‘Welcome, prisoner!' said the Great White Father as he stumbled in.

‘What prisoner?' asked Ambrose, lost. They passed him a can. His eyes crossed as he watched its rim approach his mouth.

‘Us.'

‘We're not prisoners,' he said stoutly. ‘I go home when the shift ends.'

‘What do you do tomorrow?'

‘Come back here.'

‘Why not go away somewhere?'

‘I'd get the sack.'

‘What then?'

‘I'd have to get another job.'

‘And you're not a prisoner?'

‘I can work some other place.'

‘Why not just stay home?'

‘Cut it out. You've got to have a job.'

‘Then you're an industrial prisoner.'

‘Then everyone is.'

‘What difference does that make?'

‘Everyone has to work for a living.'

‘Do they? Read the social pages.'

‘Working for a living is the right thing to do.'

‘You're crazy.'

‘Work is good for you.'

‘A good crap's better.'

‘I'm free to starve.'

‘Freedom to starve! That's it. The clause they forgot to put in the Atlantic Charter. Declaration of Human Rights. Freedom to starve.'

‘But if everyone—'

‘—Not everyone, son—'

‘—Practically everyone has to work, then it all cancels out.'

‘It doesn't cancel out, it adds up. We're prisoners.' He could see Ambrose was excited and confused. He changed the subject.

‘Reminds me of my wife when she was young. She was beautiful, I had to chain her up. But they still got to her.'

‘What you want out of life anyway?' demanded Volga. And the Great White Father answered for Ambrose.

‘All he wants is meat three times a day and knock-off time.'

He was due for holidays in two weeks and the Humdinger and Big Dick had recommended that he visit the Home Beautiful to prepare him for his trip north to Surfers Paradise with some mates and their girls. He was nervous. The Old Lamplighter would treat him right, but she had to do everything in plenty of light. Once her business had been men in suits, appointments and all; here it was first in best dressed. Shorts, muddy boots. The other girls would never be in her class, they could only go down. She never forgot that once she had been a respectable middle-class prostitute. Ambrose couldn't have managed the Sandpiper with her yen for paddocks and sandflats and bare feet. Or the Sorcerer's Apprentice with her dazzling repertoire and scholarly approach, recording every new sensation in a little blue notebook.

The Old Lamplighter loved to listen to the Great White Father. She loved the bright patches of twinkle in his sea-blue eyes and the rough, chesty voice. When he got around to her in his regular test of the girls she tried to keep him talking so she could see the movement of his firm, dry lips and feel the vibrations of his voice against her chest. She never listened to what he said, she was unshakeably convinced that whether they talked of cars, government, life or death, men never said anything important.

She splashed her bottom with gin to stop bedsores.

‘Come in, son,' she said to Ambrose. ‘You're next.'

The Volga Boatman finished dressing in a hurry and made way for Ambrose. He knew the Old Lamplighter had been thinking about the Great White Father all the time. It didn't bother him.

‘You're a funny boy,' came the lady's voice clearly. ‘Not many men dress on the right.' The answer from Ambrose was inaudible.

‘What's the matter? Lose the string?' The taunt came to the drinkers' ears.

‘String?' They heard him this time.

‘If you're not particularly well hung you should tie on a piece of string. Helps you find it. Good in cold weather, too.'

‘Take it easy in there!' called the Great White Father. ‘Don't forget this next one's his first!'

Ambrose had gone in expecting to come out triumphant, brandishing his experience. Volga took the paper bag and crossed the river back to the refinery.

 

YOU HAVE TO BE A BASTARD Anyone else would have had a bad moment meeting the Good Shepherd—guilt and suchlike—but not Volga.

‘Hullo Volga.' The Good Shepherd knew every sheep by name.

‘Great day for it.' Volga knew, as everyone knew, that the Good Shepherd was being gradually outed. His superiors reasoned with him and threatened him to make him change his attitude to the men, but how did you reason with a man whose actions were controlled not only by what Puroil asked, but modified by outside, abstract things called principles?

‘You have to be a bastard,' they told him piously. Church members with a lifetime of worship of the gentle Jesus behind them in their cold stone churches, all thought like this. For the sake of the Company you must be a bastard to the humans in it. It was taught as gospel in Basics of Supervision.

‘I get more out of the men my way,' he answered.

‘We don't care what you get out of them. When Puroil says Jump all you have to do is say How High.'

‘My way leaves them a little human dignity.'

They shook their heads. He was not an Oxford or Cambridge man, not even a proper university man. He had gone through—the phrase appropriate to a degree factory—on a part-time course. Working his way through, taking jobs as a waiter by night to pay his fees. They despised this. All the regular engineers were equipped with parents who could at least afford a university. Puroil preferred men with a solid background and when top appointments were made they went to men from the best universities.

‘I won't ask what's in your little brown paper bag,' the Good Shepherd said archly.

‘A pair of false teeth, a truss and an arch support,' said Volga matter-of-factly. He couldn't help noticing the frayed cuffs. The Good Shepherd gave a tenth of his salary to his church.

The Good Shepherd folded his arms and laughed immoderately. It was a good joke, there wasn't much room for laughter in Admin. Volga walked on, the Good Shepherd got into his car and drove out of the blue gates, but not before he opened the boot of his car. Somehow, vertebrates like the Python could take home scrap paper and foreign orders, and slimes like the Slug could drive humbly out with jacks, oil cans, aluminium sheet, greaseguns, spanners, instrument fittings, ladders, cement bricks, cups, urns and supplies of tea, but men like the Good Shepherd were always stopped by the guards.

The Volga Boatman pressed on to the Elder Statesman's summer residence, giving his tremendous calf muscles a thorough workout by striding through and rising on his toes at each step. His boots had cut-down heels to give him more movement of the ankle and to make his calves settle to a natural angle when he stood still.

‘Volga!' called the Elder Statesman. ‘What do you think of this? This is a new pressure vessel from the States'—he indicated a twenty-foot erection on which clambered several visored and helmeted men—‘It's got a quarter-inch hole in it, but not a soul in this country can fix a quarter-inch hole in cast aluminium—they have to fly out Yanks to do it from the firm that made it!'

Sure enough, the men on the vessel made the monotone drawling noises that denoted use of the American tongue. There was a confidence about them, the manner the English used to have. And these were only welders. Now and then they looked down at the watching natives. They were proud to be Americans and didn't hesitate to show their pride, even if it meant not speaking to second-class citizens. After all, they were members of the club, they could only be easy with other Americans. The rest of the world were foreigners.

Volga got away long enough to go in to the amenities room and hide Blue Hills' teeth, truss and arch supports in the Elder Statesman's large gladstone bag, then made a sly phone call to the guards at the gate.

The Elder Statesman had dobbed him in to the screws—to Captain Bligh—for being off his plant when something went bang. It was true, but the Elder Statesman was in no danger of getting blamed so why put him in? Luckily, Volga had seen Captain Bligh tipping sample bottles full of gasoline into his car—parked near the plant—so the foreman didn't want to know about Volga.

Volga had no trouble being a bastard and he'd never even had the benefit of Basics of Supervision.

 

BIG BROTHERS The Samurai was watching the aluminium welding. Some of the men who passed thumped him gently on the arm in rough affection. Everyone liked the Samurai, he was like the bigger boy in class, who shouldered the responsibility for other kids' adventures and, if need be, stood up and swapped punches with the teacher. The men who thumped him playfully took care to move into his field of vision, though, before they showed their affection.

Even the Good Shepherd came by to watch the American welders. They worked fast, Americans had a name for having the finger out. The prisoners were grudgingly impressed. Only the Good Shepherd and the Samurai realized they worked fast because their system of payment was different from the Australians': they were paid for the whole job. The sooner they got home, the sooner they earned more dollars. Australian welders were paid for their time; they saw to it their jobs took time. The Good Shepherd would have been more impressed if the vessel had been cast without the quarter-inch hole.

He was depressed. He knew the company should not do provocative and cruel things to the detainees under its control—the ban on books was absurd: it penalized the brighter prisoners—and yet he knew there must be a hierarchy of control in the camp and felt deeply that the equality that was supposed to exist between high and low was a dark, shadowy thing with no substance. His mind swam away from the clutches of these irritating thoughts as a tiny fish glides past the gently waving fronds of the anemone. Not into safety, but away from immediate danger.

 

A DEDICATED MAN The Great White Father called in at the wharf at six one morning, just the time the nit-keeper should have wakened those who were down. All were asleep. There was only one barge in and it was discharging steadily with three hours to go before it was empty. They had transgressed the unwritten law that you didn't let yourself go to sleep while you were keeping nit for your mates, and they'd had a clancy. The Corpse had been about to have a shower before waking the others: he liked to clean up early and walk to the gate without waiting for the bus, to be out of the place at the earliest possible moment. It was a mile to the front gate. He had dozed off with the water running, there was water slopping everywhere.

This was not an important clancy except for the sleepers, who had water lapping round their rag beds on the concrete. The Gypsy Fiddler was doing a shift at the wharf—they spared him from the cracker start-up because someone had to make up the number at the wharf, they didn't want men back on overtime. He'd never worked at the wharf before and he missed learning how to start his own unit, but it saved money. He woke thrashing sleepily about with his arms, splashing the water. Blue Hills was down there, too, exiled from the hateful cracking plant for the same reason. He'd never worked on the wharf before, so he had to be guided every step of the way. He received some of the cold splashes from the Fiddler's waving arms. Blue Hills rarely spoke up for himself, so he was often sent away to other plants.

They looked up, wet, at the same moment.

‘I just work here for tucker money,' said Blue Hills, stupidly. He'd been dreaming of a five day a week job.

‘We're afloat!' yelled the Fiddler, waking everyone. The Corpse was the last to come round. He had gone to sleep sitting in a chair: only his boots were under water.

‘She's sinking!' he roared, leaping for the door. They held him down so he wouldn't go over the side of the wharf. Men did funny things if they were suddenly awakened.

The Great White Father looked around and told them how to get the water away so the next shift wouldn't dob them in for the spill. He was organizing his system of look-outs for the Home Beautiful for the following week, but wisely decided to have no part of this lot.

The distant noise of the starting-up cracking plant beckoned him. He left the wharf and walked up the road towards the gas screaming in the forty-eight-inch lines, the shattering roar of banks of compressors and blasts of steam.

The Sumpsucker was on deck, pacing the concrete floor of the control room, hands clasped on his forehead, pushing down into his chest cage his small bald head on its retractile neck. He always had two T-shirts under his shirt; he let the bottom one rot off from inside, then put a fresh one on. That way, one was always warm. Decomposing, if you like, but warm.

The Father knew the Sumpsucker's ambitions for a dustcoat. The company had recently cut out overtime payments for foremen; an operator with overtime got more cash. The white shirt made up the difference. The Father decided to use Sump as a lookout; the more he had on him now, the better.

‘It's your turn on lookout.'

‘I was there last day shift.'

‘You're there again this day shift.'