Chapter 12 Cragmere's Conditions

Tuesday came with a wind off the sea and a sky the colour of dishwater. Tamar had the array up by six thirty, the recorder running into an SD card the size of her thumb, the two hydrophones strung out on fifty metres of cable and weighted by a concrete block off the eastern tip of the wall. She had checked the cable twice. She had checked the seals twice. She had done everything a professional would do, because she had decided at six in the morning that she would do everything a professional would do and no more, until she knew what she was going to sign. At ten forty-seven a car came up the drive from Saltwyke Road and pulled in at the top of the village, the number plate reading EBBMOUTH COUNCIL, and Cragmere got out and came up the road without hurrying. He was wearing a jacket he had had for twenty years. He had read the ledger, and he had read her survey, and he had read the mitigation plan she had sent him on the third of the month, and he had read the note at the end of the mitigation plan where she had written that the file at minus one point nine metes was provisional pending further survey. He stopped at the top of the wall, where the wall was one and a half metres lower than the road, and looked out at the array. "The thing in the water," he said. "That's the thing in the water." "Is it working?" "It's been working since six thirty." "And what is it listening for?" "Low-frequency ambient. Between twenty and four hundred hertz. The whole band." Cragmere looked at her for a moment. "Good," he said. "That's the range we need." "It's the range I set. You can set it to anything you like." "That's not what I meant." "No," Tamar said. "That's exactly what you meant." He took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. It was a form, with a header in blue capitals, EBBMOUTH COUNCIL, MARINE AND COASTAL WORKS, FORM MW-14, NOTICE TO STOP WORK. It was signed at the bottom of the form, in Cragmere's hand, on the third of June. He held it out to her. "This is a stop-work order," he said. "It was dated the third of June, before you signed it, and it is served now, and it applies to everything you have done since the third of June on this site." "I have been on this site since the third of June." "You have been on this site since the third of June." "I have not filed any datum." "You have filed a provisional datum." "That's not a filed datum." "That's not a filed datum," Cragmere said. "You have to file the datum at minus one point nine. That's the number I've put on the consent application. If you file a different number, the consent is invalid. If the consent is invalid, the money is invalid. If the money is invalid, there's nothing. So I'm giving you the number to file, and I'm giving you the date, and I'm giving you the form, and I'm giving you this, and you can file it, or you can sign this, or you can refuse, and if you refuse, I have to write my report differently." "Write it differently how?" "Differently in a place you're not going to like." "Would you tell me?" "He doesn't do things he's going to like," Deveril said from the yard. They both looked. Deveril was standing under the gate with a tin of biscuits, wearing the same coat as yesterday, and looking at both of them the way he looked at things he had already decided not to interfere with. "This is the datum," Cragmere said. "It is." "This is the wall." "It is." "This is the survey." "It is." "Sign the survey." "Sign it." Tamar looked at the survey. The survey was her survey. It had her name at the bottom. It had her measurements in the first column, and her reading in the second column, and her signature in the third. She did not sign it. She folded it up and put it in her jacket pocket. "Cragmere," she said. "The steps." "There are no steps." "I measured the steps." "I know you did. I don't know what you did." "You can write my report differently." "Yes." "You're going to write my report differently." "Yes." "Without a reason?" "With a reason. With a good reason. The reason is that this is the way things get done on this coast, and the reason the way things get done on this coast is that it has been this way for longer than any of us have been alive, and the reason there is no record of any of it in writing is that there never was any record of it in writing, and the reason there isn't any now is that we don't write it down, and the reason we don't write it down is that it would be different if we wrote it down." "That's not a reason," Tamar said. "That's an excuse." "That's the reason," Cragmere said. "And the excuse, and they're the same thing." He took the form out of his hand and put it on the wall between them. "You have to file the datum at minus one point nine. I'm giving you the number. That's the number on the consent application, and it's the number the Treasury will pay against, and it's the number the Crown Estate will accept, and it's the number the committee will accept, and if you file a different number, none of that works." "I know what I have to file." "Then file it." "No." Cragmere looked at her. "Say that again." "No." "I'm going to walk away now," he said. "I'm going to walk to the end of the wall and I'm going to look at the water and I'm going to walk back, and when I'm back I'm going to ask you one more time, and I'm going to expect you to say yes." "Okay." He walked. He walked to the end of the wall, which was seventy-two metres from where he had come in. He stood there for a while. He did not say anything. He walked back. "Say it again," he said. "No." "Say it one more time." "No." "Say it one more time, and then I'll go." "No," Tamar said. "That's the last one." He took the form off the wall. He folded it and put it back in his jacket pocket. He took the survey off the wall and folded it and put it in his jacket pocket too. He took out a pen and wrote something at the bottom of the survey in red ink, and put the pen in his pocket, and took the survey out of his pocket again, and put it on the wall again. "You can have it," he said. "That's the decision. It goes in my report, and it goes under your name, and it's what you said." "What did you write at the bottom of it?" "I wrote that you had been served the stop-work order, and that you had declined to file the datum at minus one point nine, and that you had declined to sign the survey, and that you had declined to attend the consent hearing, and that you had declined the mitigation package in full." "That's what I said." "Yes," Cragmere said. "It is." He walked away. He did not look back. He got in the car at the top of the village and drove to Saltwyke, and Tamar watched him go, and then she went back to the wall, and she got the array out of the water, and she went into the kitchen and made toast, and Ruan sat at the table and ate it with his thumb and forefinger the way he did everything. "Deveril was here," Tamar said. "He was here." "Cragmere was here." "He was here." "Cragmere served a stop-work order." "He served a stop-work order." "Deveril was here when he did." "He was." "Did you talk to Deveril?" "He talked to me. I didn't answer." "What did he say?" "He said I had a choice." "What kind of choice?" "He didn't say. He just said I had one. And then he said the wall says what it says. And then he left." Ruan finished the toast. He put the plate in the sink. He did not look at the bay. "I'll go to Saltwyke," he said. "Why?" "Cragmere has a cousin in Saltwyke. I can find out when the committee meets." "When's the committee?" "Friday." "That's in two days." "It is." "What happens if I don't turn up?" "Then Deveril turns up, or his sister turns up, or Collow turns up, or nobody turns up, and the consent goes through without an objection, and that's what Cragmere wanted." "If nobody turns up." "Yes." "Will they turn up?" "Somebody will. Maybe not me." "Maybe not you," Tamar said. "Yeah." Ruan took the mugs and washed them at the kitchen tap, and stood there a moment with the dishcloth in his hand, and looked out at the bay. "I'll leave," he said. "When?" "When you need me to." "I'll know." "You will." Ruan left at four. He walked down the road to Saltwyke, eleven miles, and he took the long way, over the hill at Ashenholt Rigg, because he did not like the short way, and because the short way was where the car had been at the top of the village yesterday with the light on in the front window, and he did not like to think about what that light had been for. Tamar stood in the kitchen with the dishcloth in her hand and looked at the wall through the window, and thought about what Cragmere had written at the bottom of the survey, and what it meant that he had written it under her name, and what it meant that she had let him. Outside, in the yard, the wind was still going. The rig was in the water, and it was recording. It had three more days of battery in it. Nobody was going to take it out until Friday. Nobody was going to sign anything until Friday. ---