Chapter 3
Chapter three
Rory
Here is a thing I know about myself. I am excellent at cards.
This is not arrogance, this is simply a fact, the same way it is a fact that I am funny and that the North Sea is gray and that the gray beef thing is an abomination.
I have been excellent at cards since I was fourteen years old, and my uncle Stevie taught me poker at a family barbecue while my mum was distracted by trying to stop my drunk grandpa from setting fire to the whole garden and not just the burgers.
Uncle Stevie is a man who has made some genuinely questionable life choices, and I have him to thank for one of my greatest skills.
So when I walk into the mess hall for the card game, I feel nothing but anticipation. Good, clean, predatory anticipation.
The mess hall is bigger than the rec room and far more suited for a night of cards.
Red Crew are on shift, so it’s all ours.
I was worried it would be a bit of a grim setting, but it looks different at night with the overhead strips turned down low and someone’s playlist coming out of Dazza’s Bluetooth speaker.
Someone has pushed three tables together, and there are beers lined up along the edge, and the whole thing has the warm, slightly chaotic energy of people who have survived something and are celebrating still being alive.
Which is basically what we are. We survived MacLeod’s bollocking and eleven hours of checks, and we are still here and we deserve this.
There are eight of us around the tables.
Me and Tam and Dazza and Grigor and Frasier, plus three other lads from Green Crew, Whelan and Brockie and a guy everyone calls Spanner for reasons that have not yet been explained to me but that I am absolutely going to find out.
The beers are cold. The playlist is excellent.
Frasier has produced a family-sized bag of crisps from somewhere, and nobody is asking questions.
This, I think, looking around at all of them in the low warm light, is exactly what I wanted when I came out here.
Not just the money, though the money is life-changing and I think about it approximately every forty minutes.
But this. This exact thing. A table full of idiots who feel like family after less than a week.
Back home I had mates, of course I did, but it always felt like something I had to maintain, something that would fall away if I stopped being funny or stopped being useful or stopped showing up.
This feels different. This feels like they’d still be here even if I had a bad day.
The thought is so unfamiliar it’s almost uncomfortable, so I take a long drink of beer and pick up my cards.
I win the first two hands with the focused ease of a man who was born to do this. Frasier looks personally offended. This is very funny and I tell him so, which makes it worse.
The third hand I lose on purpose, just a little, just enough to keep things interesting, because cleaning everyone out in the first twenty minutes would be poor form. I am excellent at cards and I am also excellent at reading a room, and the room wants a contest.
By the fourth hand, we are all a bit warmer and a bit louder, and Dazza has his feet up on a spare chair and Tam has abandoned any pretense of a poker face and is basically announcing his hand through the medium of facial expressions.
Someone has started a second bag of crisps.
The playlist has reached a song that Grigor apparently is fond of, and he is now quietly singing along to, which is both unexpected and magnificent.
This is the best evening I have had since I got here. Possibly the best evening I have had in months.
“For fuck’s sake,” says Whelan, who has just lost his third consecutive hand and has the look of a man dismayed with his own terrible decisions. “This is worse than getting bollocked by MacLeod.”
There is a ripple around the table. Not discomfort exactly, more the collective loosening of something that has been held tight all day.
“Are you sure about that?” says Tam, studying his cards.
“He’s been absolutely foul this week. Even by his standards.” Grigor reaches for his beer. “What’s his problem?”
“His problem,” says Frasier, with the authority of a man who has been on this rig longer than anyone, “is that he is MacLeod. That is the problem. That has always been the problem.”
“He wasn’t always this bad,” says Dazza. “I’ve said this before.”
“You have,” says Tam. “Every time someone brings him up.”
“Because it’s true.” Dazza puts his cards face down on the table, which is a crime against card playing etiquette but nobody says anything because it’s Dazza. “Nine years ago, he was alright.”
Tam waves his hand dismissively. “Ancient history.”
“Maybe he’s just miserable,” says Brockie, who is very young and very quiet, and this might be the most I have heard him say all week.
“He’s not miserable,” says Spanner. “He’s frustrated.”
Everyone looks at Spanner.
Spanner shrugs with the serenity of a man delivering an obvious truth. “He needs to get laid. It’s been coming off him in waves for months. You can practically see it. The man is wound so tight he’s about to snap, and it’s everyone else’s problem.” He picks up his cards. “Just saying.”
There is a pause of approximately two seconds, and then the table absolutely loses its mind.
I am laughing before I have fully processed what has been said, which is the best kind of laughing, the kind that bypasses your brain entirely. Tam is wheezing. Grigor has stopped singing. Frasier looks like a man who has been handed a gift.
“He needs to get laid,” Whelan repeats, delighted. “That’s your analysis?”
“It’s not analysis, it’s observation,” says Spanner serenely. “I’ve been on this rig three years. I know what I’m looking at.”
“So what’s the solution?” says Dazza, wiping his eyes. “We’re in the middle of the North Sea. Options are limited.”
“Someone should go offer,” says Frasier.
More laughter. Louder this time.
“Take one for the team,” says Tam, raising his beer. “A selfless act of community service.”
“Very noble,” I say. “Very brave. Who’s volunteering?”
Everyone looks at everyone else. There is a lot of pointing. There are several suggestions that are anatomically creative and logistically questionable. Grigor says something in what I think might be Russian that makes Spanner choke on his beer.
“Rory should go,” says Whelan.
I roll my eyes at him. “Absolutely not.”
“You’re the youngest.”
“Irrelevant.”
“You’re the prettiest.”
I attempt to give him my most withering look, but unfortunately it lands somewhere between flattered and offended and I cannot help that, it is simply where it lands.
“Still no.”
“He’s got a point though,” says Dazza thoughtfully, as if they are discussing something entirely reasonable. “You’ve got a very symmetrical face.”
“I’m not going to MacLeod’s door to offer myself as some kind of. I don’t even know what. Absolutely not. You’re all insane.”
“We’re not saying you’d actually do anything,” says Tam reasonably. “Just. You know. Present the option.”
“The option,” I repeat. “Is he even?” I stop. Rephrase. “I mean. Does he. You know.”
Everyone looks at me.
“Is MacLeod gay, is what Rory is trying to ask,” says Tam, with the patience of a man translating for a small child.
“I’m just asking. For context.”
Spanner shrugs again. “Out here, does it matter? It’s not like there’s a wealth of other options.”
This is greeted with the philosophical nodding of men who have thought about this more than they might admit in other contexts. I open my mouth and then close it again.
“I’m not.” I pause. “Just to be clear. I’m not. An option. I mean, I’m not gay. So.”
“Sure,” says Dazza comfortably, in the tone of a man filing information away without judgement and without particular interest, which should be reassuring and somehow isn’t.
“Doesn’t really matter either way,” says Tam. “Nobody’s suggesting anything actually happens. Probably. MacLeod would eat whoever knocked on that door alive.”
“Or Rory could broaden Macleod’s horizons,” winks Frasier
“His horizons are fine. His horizons don’t need broadening by me. Can we please play cards.”
We play cards. But the idea is out there now, floating above the table like smoke, and I can feel it.
The way they keep catching each other’s eyes.
The way Frasier is very carefully not grinning.
The way Spanner, who suggested the whole thing with the energy of a man on a mission, is watching the room with the serenity of someone who knows exactly how this is going to go.
“Tell you what,” says Dazza. “Loser of the next hand has to do it.”
I look up from my cards. “Do what?”
“Go knock on MacLeod’s door and offer themselves. Take one for the team.”
I stare at him. “You’re not serious?”
“Absolutely serious. Loser goes and knocks on MacLeod’s door.” He looks around the table. “Agreed?”
There is a chorus of agreement that is slightly too enthusiastic and slightly too immediate, but I am not paying attention to that because I am not going to lose.
I have not lost a significant hand all evening and I am not going to start now.
The whole thing is completely hilarious and I am completely safe and this is exactly the kind of stupid escalating nonsense I love about this crew.
I pick up my cards.
They are not good cards.
This is fine. I have won on worse.
I play the hand with the focused precision of someone who is not even slightly worried.
I read the table. I read the faces. Tam’s face is doing the thing, but I factor that in, I always factor that in.
Frasier is trying very hard to give nothing away.
Dazza has his feet back on the chair and is whistling very softly, which usually means he’s got nothing.
Usually.
A few minutes later, and I’ve been proven right. It’s down to me and Frasier now.
I put my cards down.
Frasier puts his cards down.
I look at Frasier’s cards. I look at my cards. I look at Frasier’s cards again.
The table erupts.
I sit very still in the middle of the noise and do a rapid internal assessment of the situation.
I have lost. I have, against all probability and reasonable expectation, lost. To Frasier, whose poker face I thought I had completely mapped.
Who apparently had been holding something back this entire evening.
Who is now wearing the expression of a man who has just won something considerably more valuable than the pot.
Something prickles at the back of my mind. A thought I don’t fully form yet.
I don’t back out of bets. This is a thing about me that is as fundamental and non-negotiable as my name or my blood type.
I don’t back out of bets and I don’t back out of dares.
I never have, not once, not even the time at seventeen when a dare resulted in me spending forty minutes stuck in a supermarket trolley in a canal.
This is just who I am. Rory Gallacher does not back out.
So.
“Right,” I say, with tremendous calm. “Fine.”
This produces more noise. Tam is clapping. Grigor is beaming. Even Brockie, who barely speaks, is grinning like I’ve made his entire week.
“Now,” says Dazza. “You have to go now.”
“It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”
“He’ll still be up. Man never sleeps, does he.” Dazza looks around the table for confirmation and gets it from several directions.
“We’ll be watching,” says Frasier, with immense satisfaction.
I look at him. “Watching?”
“CCTV.” He nods at Whelan, who is already opening his laptop with the eager energy of a man who has been waiting for this moment.
“Covers all the corridors, including outside MacLeod’s cabin.
We can see everything from right here.” He pauses.
“Not inside, obviously. Just the corridor. We want to see his face when he opens the door, not.” He waves a hand. “Anything else.”
“Right,” I say. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” agrees the table, with slightly too much sincerity.
I look around at all of them. Eight faces in the low, warm light, bright with barely contained delight, waiting.
The prickle at the back of my mind gets a little stronger.
Frasier, who in two hours of cards had been resolutely average, suddenly producing exactly what he needed at exactly the right moment.
Dazza’s feet coming off the chair just before the cards went down, like a man bracing for something.
The way the forfeit got suggested and agreed to so quickly, so cleanly, with such unanimous enthusiasm.
No. They wouldn’t.
Would they?
I look at Tam. Tam is the worst liar I have met in my life, and he is looking very intently at his beer.
Interesting.
I sit back in my chair and look at the ceiling for a moment.
Engineered or not, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same.
Rory Gallacher lost a bet, and Rory Gallacher does not back out and eight people plus whatever poor soul is unfortunate enough to be monitoring the CCTV tonight, are all about to witness what happens next.
I look back down at the table. At all of them, waiting, gleeful, magnificent idiots, every single one.
I am going to knock on MacLeod’s door at eleven o’clock at night and offer myself as a solution to his tension.
Offer myself to my supervisor. Who has never once looked at me with anything other than professional disappointment.
Who communicates primarily in silences and single devastating sentences.
Who is tall and built like a geographic feature and has a jaw that could cut glass.
I am going to do this because I lost a card game that may or may not have been rigged, and because I do not back out and because somewhere in the last six days, these absolute idiots have become my people and I’m not going to let them down.
“He’s going to kill me,” I say.
Everyone nods. “Been nice knowing you, lad,” someone calls out.
Fuck my life.
“Right,” I say, and stand up. “I’m going.”
The cheer that goes up is genuinely the nicest thing that has ever happened to me and the worst thing that has ever happened to me at the exact same time.
I flip them all off with both hands on my way out the door.
The cheering gets louder.
At least I’m dying in a blaze of glory.