The dinner ended with each man quitting the table, leaving Silas sitting facing an unfinished meal. For two hours he sat stiffly calm. The others stretched on sleeping bags above mattresses laid on the floor. There was no conversation. After a time, Roland made teabag tea, heating water in an old electric kettle. He placed a cup in front of Silas, who glanced up and blinked in gratitude. After a time, one by one, each took his turn at ablutions and crawled into a sleeping bag, Silas being the last to do so.
None of the planting squad in the hall slept well. Noel padded through blinding sunlight in Afghanistan, his shouts filtered through sleep in a mutter of horrors that subsided into grey dawn. Sinister sounds carried over humped figures that drifted restlessly in and out of slumber.
They arose, poorly rested and irritable, to begin a new day. No apparent reaction to Silas’ confession of fire raising was evident as they walked towards the Argyll for breakfast, a low sun stretching their shadows on uneven brick paviors. The smell of wood smoke hung faintly in the air.
These men were not typical of any labouring squad found elsewhere in the broad reaches of commerce. The smugly conventional regarded them as men racing to the bottom of the pile. They saw themselves as having spurned the conventional rat race to reinvigorate their lives in clean air.
Before Silas’ outburst, each one of them had begun to doubt the integrity of concept in Commission planting, had become uncomfortably aware of the pulp industry they were fuelling. When Silas confronted them with its hypocrisy, they empathised. Not for them the bitter sense of betrayal that gripped their hard working ganger and the greatly respected Mackinnon. Silas had created schism between the group and the authority figures that directed them.
When Robbie drove up to the Argyll with young Iain already ensconced in the vehicle he noticed nothing unusual in the demeanour of his squad. He watched them climb into the rear of the landrover and slide along the bench seating into accustomed places.
“Today, boys, we will begin to clear away the road. We’ll have a lorry to remove the debris,” Robbie said over one shoulder. “It’s a lovely day for it. Tomorrow, we will start helping the firefighters that have come all the way up here to put out the fire for us.”
“The poor souls,” said Blue. “Our gratitude will know no bounds. I hope they brought water with them.”
The ganger smiled as he drove, pleased with an obvious good spirit in the squad. He looked forward to an undemanding day and glanced upward to the mirror. Among the men seated behind him, Silas hunched, eyes fixed upon the ribbed flooring of the vehicle. It appeared that, as usual, no-one was paying him any mind.