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found floating in a life raft fifty miles north of Aberdeen. Tattle, a
diving engineer, had been suffering from a mental disorder for some
time. No foul play is suspected.
Clipped to this was another article, this time from the Edinburgh Echo:
The horrible sight of an eyeless corpse floating in a life raft shocked
fishermen working off the east coast of Scotland early this morning.
The victim, identified as Jim Tattle, an oil-rig diver, was found stark
naked and sprawled across the inflatable life raft. Mr. Tattle, who
had just undergone a marital breakup and a nervous breakdown,
had gouged out his own eyes. The oil company had no comment.
I leaned back in the chair; I could feel the gorge rising in my throat. So Tattle had been a diving engineer like myself and, also like myself, had suffered a recent separation. Under the clippings was a file: the insurance company’s report, addressed to both the oil company and Tattle’s family. The final verdict was that all evidence pointed to death by self-inflicted wounds, therefore defined as suicide. Poor bastards, I thought, they wouldn’t have got a penny from the company then. We all had to sign a disclaimer regarding mental illness as a condition of employment. I found myself feeling some affinity for the anguished phantom I’d seen the night before.
Beneath the file, slipped between two blank sheets of aged yellow paper, was a slim notebook covered in a deep-blue satiny fabric. I opened it and was immediately transfixed by the spidery handwriting that slanted upward at the end of each line. A title was scribbled across the first page: Here is the journal of Jim Tattle. I began to read.
16 May 1975
Another gray day, sometimes I wonder why I bother to write in this journal at all. I think it’s because the discipline is stopping me from going crazy. It’s been six months now and I’ve started to forget what Vauxhall looks like. Isn’t that pathetic? I checked all the drill’s fuses twice over tonight. Anything to avoid talking with my so-called coworkers. Bunch of total morons. If I hear another knock-knock joke I’ll puke. They don’t seem to care about anything except making
money and the see-through blouse Cilla Black wore on Top of the Pops last night. I could scream. There’s one man I get on with—Harris. He’s older, reminds me of my dad. He’s got the same old-fashioned gruffness. Maybe I’m just more comfortable with rude people.
He sat next to me at dinner, which was brave considering how the rest of the crew ridicule me. We had a smoke in his office later. He told me he saw an albino bat once on some war ship he served on. That would be fantastic, to see something as weird as that.
Later I smoked some pot and listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon—again! What a truly amazing album. It felt like the music was playing every secret emotion I had. At about one a.m. I had one of those revelations you get with really good grass. For a moment I thought I was in telepathic communication with Eddy. He was telling me that it was okay I didn’t go to his funeral.
17 May 1975
I just woke up and there was that odor again, all over my cabin and bed. A weird musky smell. This is the fifth morning in a row. Maybe I should tell whoever’s on cleaning duty about it. Then as I was dressing I noticed a couple of puncture marks in my arm. Just like someone had bitten me. This is beginning to really spook me.
I stared out the window at the lightening sky. So Tattle had experienced something similar. I flicked forward through the diary, my hand trembling. His handwriting got wilder and wilder. The last entry was marked 9 June, a week before he was found floating in the raft. It was as if he had scribbled it in a mad hurry—the lines ran diagonally across the page and finished hanging in midair, like a series of mini cliff-edges.
9 June 1975
It’s here, screaming, like hooks in my skin, like the rush from a razor-sharp climax. Surrender. Don’t fight it, not anymore. Eddy, I’m going to be with you. Like we were, playing soccer on the field outside the house. Boys, we were boys, possibility screeching in every train whistle, in the London fog, in the dreams of our grandfather. We were going to be millionaires, artists, rock stars, chasing life itself. Taste, taste summer, the chilly smoke, frost on the grass, and hot tarmac. Sirens. The song of the siren. She’s coming for me. Guess this is good-bye. Sucking sleep from the sky and shutting out the moon. Eddy, my brother, my shadow half…
There was nothing else. I suppose he finally wanted to be with his dead brother. The prostitute was right: the sea can throw up memories like seaweed after a storm. It’s that vast glassy surface—a fucking mirror for the soul. Me, in my darkest moments. I related to poor Tattle—the shadowy outline of that eyeless figure drifted back into my mind.
I don’t know what made me take the file, but I did. Somehow, its existence made his suicide and burial feel incomplete. Some South American tribes refuse to be photographed because they believe the camera steals the soul; and Australian Aborigines don’t allow their people to be named after their death. Perhaps it was the sense that as long as the file existed Tattle would remain floating out there on that glassy surface screaming, “I see, I see.”
Out on the lower deck I placed the file in a rubbish bin and torched it. The flames danced up through the wire, vivid against the colorless vista. Gray sea, gray sky. I squatted, warming my hands, staring into the fire, the heat a glorious contrast to my freezing ears. I felt like the last man on earth. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad.
As the last of the paper crinkled up I made a vow to bury my grief and Tattle’s ghost together. Then I heard the whirring blades of the returning helicopter.
The next couple of days passed in a blur, just the eternal routine of checking equipment. One of the workers discovered a broken cable and I had to radio the main office to order a replacement. The men were jovial—empty balls will do that. Their conviviality would last a week and then they’d slip back into sullen acceptance of the monotony of the endless little tasks that go into maintaining the rig. Personally I’ve always liked routine, it takes the edge off time, blunts its teeth. Day became night became morning became afternoon…
Besides, being young, I didn’t yet feel that galloping fear some of the older men experienced who knew the rig was their last chance to make some real money. Yeah, I was naive enough to think I had all the time in the world. And I’d tricked myself into thinking I’d forgotten all about Tattle and his mysterious death.
Until one of the men pushed an envelope into my hand.
“A love letter from your Mary. The old cow insisted I give it to you. I would have forgotten but I found it in me back pocket.”
