Chapter 98

Author’s note:

In order to keep the story flowing, I’ve condensed and adjusted a few things about my working life. Any reader who also remembers the good old days with ICI on Teesside might well not recall the people, places and events in the same way as I’m describing – so, if your memory diverges from mine, please take my version with a pinch of salt! Thanks, RR

The train journey home from Reading to Middlesbrough that night was okay, in fact not bad at all for a Sunday evening; there were no delays or transfers to buses because of engineering works, and I was back in my single bed at the Loftus’s by eleven, wishing like hell that I was not alone in it.

I’d had a great weekend, but sleeping cuddled up to the love of my life the past two nights had made the loneliness of my digs just that much more apparent, and I had to give myself a good talking-to and remind myself that it was all going to be worthwhile in the end.

One month down, less than nine to go, and then Julie and I would be back together for always. I hadn’t quite got to the stage of ticking off the days; I rather suspected that once we got to Easter and less than a hundred days (and nights) to go that I’d be wishing my life away and having a morning ceremony of crossing them off on my calendar...

To my surprise, after that initial bedtime wobble, I actually slept well. I’d read an Arthur Hailey paperback, “Hotel”, on the train; it hadn’t been good enough to read again so I’d left it for someone else. I couldn’t connect with his characters and their various back stories in a hotel in New Orleans; although it was obviously very well researched, there was just too much going on, and much of it was a series of frankly unbelievable coincidences. Yeah, it had whiled away my journey at a cost of only 45p, but I didn’t see myself buying another one of his books very soon. It had meant that I hadn’t dozed off on the train, and that was perhaps why the energetic activities of the two previous nights caught up with me as soon as I switched off my light.

Whatever the reason, I kissed Julie’s photograph goodnight and told it that I loved her, and the next thing I knew was my alarm clock ringing beside the bed to welcome the new working week.

The twins’ offer to host the first Six Musketeers gathering of the new academic year, which had seemed such a great idea, turned to ratshit when the reality of my now being employed (and therefore being at the whim of my employer) struck.

We had provisionally agreed on a fortnight’s time, the weekend of the 17^th October, but when I got back to work on the Monday, I discovered from Anita that the next part of my training involved shadowing the so-called “Duty Officer” who provided the weekend onsite first response from a qualified chemist in case of any queries or problems. And yes, I was also down for shadowing someone for the next three weekends, and doing it for real all by myself on the Halloween weekend. That was a real bummer, but it was part of the job. I’d been told that it was going to happen (locally it was the first step of the management training that all ICI graduates started), but the timing was not the best.

Julie too was understandably distinctly under-chuffed when I phoned her that evening to pass on the bad news, but she did say that she understood that I was in no position to refuse the duty, and that it was just one of those things. I encouraged her to go up to Bristol on her own, and she said that she’d think about it.

I wrote a couple of fairly steamy letters in my bedroom that night, one to Jen and the other to Julie, in which I mentioned how very much Gustav and I had enjoyed our weekend with them, regretting that we were not going to be able to repeat our erotic activities quite as soon as we’d hoped, and making a few (pretty detailed) suggestions about what might occur when we did next meet up.

On Wednesday evening, I wrote a similar long letter to Sheila, apologising that I would not be there myself on the 17^th, but asking her to look after Julie, and describing (again in candid detail) some of the things that Gustav and I had intended vis-à-vis her good self, which would now have to be postponed, but which I hoped would happen in due course.

I had a progress meeting with my supervisor, Dr Ransome, on the Thursday. He had quickly asked me to call him ‘Adam’, and I had found him much more approachable than he had appeared at our first meeting. He was a very busy man; as well as being the immediate line manager for more than a dozen of us, he was running a couple of research projects as well as representing our section on various boards and committees. He was happy with how I had settled in, and asked his secretary Anita to give me a list of upcoming training days that I might benefit from.

Anita had a training file already set up for me! The first part of it was my induction training; I was pleased to see that most of the boxes on the cover sheet were already ticked off. I looked through the training brochure and mentioned that I had already qualified as a first-aider when working at the vegetable factory.

“When was that?”

“Last summer; we all did the St. John’s Ambulance course to be an appointed person when we started at the factory for our summer job.”

“July 1974? Eighteen months ago?”

“Yeah, about that. I thought it was valid for three years; I’m sure I’ve got the certificate somewhere.”

“That sounds about right. So no hurry to update that one. How are you in confined spaces?”

“I’ve been down a coal mine?”

She laughed.

“Okay, so you’re not claustrophobic. How about the safety and rescue in confined spaces course? A lot of the tanks need inspecting after they’ve been emptied and cleaned out, but you have to have the right chits for that. Any interest?”

I was young, eager and foolish in those days, so of course I said yes, and she said she’d get me put on the list. Then I went back to my work.

The afternoon of Friday the 10^th October, carrying my sleeping bag and overnight kit as instructed, I duly reported at the security desk just before four o’clock to meet the incoming Duty Officer. He was already there; we’d met briefly during my introductory tour so I knew the face, but I’d forgotten that his name was Bernard. He was kind enough to re-introduce himself anyway, and then he led the way to the room just down the corridor which was the Duty Officer’s bunk and office – I’d seen the sign on the door, but not really made the connection.

“This is just the site office for Wilton – have you been taken round the Ops Room - the emergency control centre – on the eighth floor of Billingham House yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Make sure that you do that sometime soon, it will help you realise that the weight of the world isn’t entirely on your shoulders out here at Wilton. There’s always two people on duty there, and they have the direct lines to the emergency services. Our main task here is to ensure that we implement the correct procedure so that nothing gets forgotten. See this red phone? It’s a direct line to Billingham House, you don’t even have to dial. Just lift the receiver and it will flash and ring the other end. They’ve got exactly the same documents as we have, it’s just that we notify them and they co-ordinate the other external agencies, because they know what they’re doing. You’ll just need to familiarise yourself with that little lot, so you can find the correct procedure straight away.”

He pointed at the wall and grinned. Lordy, Lordy! There were two long shelves, absolutely crammed full of thick lever arch files of procedures and instructions! On the opposite wall there was a large-scale plan of the site and a similar-sized air photograph, and the wooden desk was covered with a thick sheet of perspex which protected a sea of typewritten lists underneath.

“The first thing we do is start up the log sheet to show that we’ve arrived, and then we make the check phone calls to Billingham to ensure that all three lines are working.”

He showed me how to complete the log sheet, and then we made the three check calls on the lines, both ways. He was running through the information sheets under the perspex when there was a knock on the door; it was one of the ladies from the canteen with a trolley. She greeted us with a smile.

There was a small rectangular side table that I hadn’t noticed; on it she unloaded a couple of plates covered with tin foil, a Thermos flask, and a Tupperware box containing a few items. We thanked her and she left.

“That’s our sandwich supper and some coffee, Security have a kettle and a fridge with milk so we won’t run dry. For breakfast, we just let Billingham know that we’re going over to the canteen and tell Security we’re out so they can listen for the phone, and lunch is sandwiches again.”

That seemed clear enough, and we returned to our study of the lists. Although there was a huge amount to take in, it was all laid out logically and I quickly realised that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Then we stood in front of the plan and air photo while Bernard pointed out the various sections and the reference and rendezvous points marked on the plan.

“Don’t worry about memorising them all at once; they’re on the plan so you can refer to them, and there are more copies in this second drawer if people need them. Now, these lever arch files are organised by type of incident rather than location, so if we had a report of a fire in the cat cracking plant, we’d look for the Fire section, then for the file on the cat cracking plant, and there it is. Pull it down and have a quick squint at it.”

I took the file down from the shelf and skimmed through the pages. It was full of plastic wallets containing typewritten lists and procedures; it was all laid out so no thinking was required – phone the site fire station, tell Billingham, warn the adjacent plants in case they hadn’t noticed, etc. etc. Somebody had clearly put a lot of time and effort into these files; if there ever was an accident, then it was going to be tackled competently from the start. I replaced the file on the shelf.

A telephone bell rang, and I jumped. Bernard smiled at me.

“Not to worry, Jon, firstly that’s the outgoing call line, and secondly it’s just gone six, so it’s my wife checking that we’re all organised for the weekend.”

I grinned shamefacedly – yes, he was quite correct, my immediate thought had been that the plant was about to blow sky-high on my first duty shift.

“Do you want me to wait outside?”

“No, no need for that, I shan’t be long.”

I picked up another file to examine.

From what I could not avoid overhearing, the main reason for the call was so that Bernard’s two young children could say goodnight to their father before they had their supper, bath and bed. He repeated the same things to both of them, blew a noisy kiss down the phone, and then had a short and factual conversation about the arrangements for Sunday lunch with his in-laws.

I looked up as he finished and set down the telephone handset.

“Forgot to mention that – if you ever need to give out a telephone number to friends and family to contact you while you’re Duty Officer, make it this outgoing line, then you won’t be blocking the incoming calls line if somebody needs to get hold of you.”

“Thanks, that’s a useful tip.”

“When I started doing this, I spent the first half-dozen evenings reading the files, and then it got boring. There are some paperbacks in one of the desk drawers; you can always get Security to tell you some of their war stories as long as you leave the door open so you can hear the phones, and when you start your PhD you’ll be glad of a quiet place to sit and think – I know that I was!”

I grinned. Being Duty Officer clearly wasn’t going to be as bad as I had feared it might be. It wasn’t like I was going to be chained to the desk for 24 hours.

“So how often do you end up doing this?”

“Now that I’m married, about three times a year. The rota is a bit biased; we use it to keep you young bachelors out of the clutches of watered beer, fast women and slow horses!”

I laughed at his joke; I hadn’t heard it described that way before.

“You see, we have only your best interests at heart!”

I forbore to mention that the rota had scuppered my planned passionate reunion with my girlfriend the coming weekend; it wasn’t his fault that it had worked out that way, and I somehow managed to grin back.

“So the weekend duty load will ease off when I get married?”

“Oh yes – by then ICI will have quite an investment in you, and they won’t want you getting all huffy about having to work at weekends. It’s part of the reason they have dedicated watchkeepers at Billingham, to keep the extra duty down. Did Anita not tell you that you’ll get an extra duty payment for this?”

“No, she didn’t! I assumed it was all part of the salary.”

“Normally, it would be, but the unions cut up about it, said that the firm should either pay overtime or employ someone to do the job, hence the payment. It’s not unreasonable either; I know when I was courting I actually volunteered for a few extra duties so that I could afford to take Marion out more!”

That cheered me up. I only had a month’s experience of living on my starting salary, which had seemed fairly generous in theory, but with the Income Tax and National Insurance deductions, as well as my pension contributions, there wasn’t as much left over in my bank account at the end of the month as I had hoped. A little extra would certainly help me save towards our first house.

Bernard reached past the side table and picked up a couple of green canvas rolls with several wiggly bits of metal sticking out.

“Now, have you had dealings with these army surplus camp beds before?”

“Er, no, don’t think so.”

“Once you have the trick of them they’re easy enough, and they’re actually surprisingly comfortable. Here, I’ll show you and then you can have a crack at yours.”

He undid the strap and revealed a long canvas strip with metal poles showing each side and four ‘W’ shaped bits which he explained were the legs.

“Open up the bed, connect the two poles each side, making sure that the holes that you can see through the pockets line up, and then put in on the floor holes facing up. Then take one of the legs, poke one end into a hole, and then the other end into the corresponding hole on the other pole. You’ll need to bend it slightly because it will be in tension when it’s set up.”

He quickly did the other three legs, flipped the bed over, and there it was. Seemed simple enough.

“Okay, now you.”

He leaned his bed up on its end against the shelves and left the floor to me.

I picked up the other roll. It was surprisingly light. I undid the strap, which of course meant that the legs fell on the floor, and shook out the roll. The two poles each side pushed into each other; there was a pocket at each end to make sure that they couldn’t fall out, and it took a little bit of effort to push them far enough apart to be able to join them.

“Watch out for the light!”

In my haste to turn the bed over without poking out one of Bernard’s eyes, I’d lifted it lengthwise and nearly smashed the fluorescent tubes which lit the room. I slowed down my actions, got the rectangle of canvas on the floor, and then started on inserting the legs. Getting one end in the first hole was easy enough; the pressure required to bend the leg to fit in the corresponding hole was slightly more than I had expected. The second leg was even more difficult – I hadn’t quite got all the holes lined up, so I had to rotate the poles on one side before I could slot it in. The other two legs popped in easily enough, and I placed my bed besides Bernard’s.

“Brilliant! I should warn you that they tip over if you try to sit on the sides, but otherwise they are surprisingly comfortable.”

The two of us sat down again; I started looking through the procedure files, while Bernard produced a scientific journal to study. At around eight o’clock, he suggested that we make a start on the sandwiches, and we wondered over to the security desk and scrounged a couple of mugs of tea to wash them down.

At nine, Bernard stood up and stretched.

“There will be check calls at midnight; sometimes I stay awake for them, and sometimes I doss down earlier. Billingham initiates them, so we don’t need to set an alarm or anything. If you don’t mind holding the fort, I’ll go and have a wash, and then you can have your go. If you need me, the washroom is two doors down.”

He picked up his towel and spongebag and went out; I carried on my reading. When he came back I noticed that he had changed into an old pair of trousers, a frayed rugby shirt and a v-necked pullover.

“No point in being uncomfortable! Cup of coffee?”