Her Master's Voice Read Online Free Page A

food. Raymond made life easy.
    Back on board, Tim started his calculations while the men went through the daily oil and water checks on all the equipment. Then he walked around the mixing tanks with Raymond, chalking on each one the amount of clean water they would need. The supply barge would soon bring them the chemicals and acid. Tim went back to his accommodation for a coffee. He was free to read a book until the supplies got in.
    The hoot of a tug’s siren woke him from a doze. The tall pusher tug was nudging a loaded barge in beside them and Raymond stood on the crane platform to guide it in. The barge carried stacked pallets of concentrated hydrochloric acid and drums of additives. Tim went to the end of his verandah to watch the crew secure the barge.
    Abdullah, the smallest and slowest crewman, stood just below him and waited to moor the cargo barge. He jumped onto it and, pulling a painter over from Sea Sprite IV , he took a turn around a mooring bollard. He slowly took the line in as the barge slid into place. Then he quickly doubled the rope back on itself in an ‘Indopet hitch’, the common local way to secure lines. Tim coughed and Abdullah looked up in surprise. Sheepishly, he undid the hitch and rearranged the rope in figures-of-eight around the double bollard. Turning the locals into anything like bargemen was a slow job. Tim pulled on his boots and went down to help Raymond check the shipment.
    The crew dragged a Wilden air pump across and soon the pump was chugging and spluttering as it emptied fifty-five gallon drums of acid inhibitor, surfactants and demulsifiers and pumped them across into the mixing tanks aboard Sea Sprite IV . The men stacked the empty drums on the far side of the barge, ready for collection. Tim left them to their work and went off to check the spares inventory.
    By the time he had finished, the men had brought the air pump back on board and started emptying the small acid jerry cans using a steam-age peristaltic pump from France. It was slow, irritating work bringing each heavy plastic container down onto the barge deck and holding it tipped as the pump sucked it empty.
    When lunchtime came, Tim grabbed his sandwiches and told Raymond he was going for a walk. He climbed through the railing onto the wellhead platform and then out onto the cable tray. He walked into the swamp and turned right along the pipe racks as they followed the shoreline. The noise of the Sea Sprite IV generator died away and he walked on in peace accompanied only by birdsong and cicadas stridulating.
    Eating his sandwiches as he walked, Tim strode on with a purpose. No stopping to sit on the cable tray today to wait for any passing wildlife. He had a meeting to attend. The air hung heavily around him and directly overhead the mid-day sun was uncomfortably hot. He walked for half an hour before he came to Darti’s rickety jetty and the duck-walk snaking into the swamp. He swung down from the cable tray and started cautiously along the split logs. Down at the swamp level, the path led inland away from the fringe of nipa palms that lined the riverbank. Tall trees with grey trunks and small round leaves towered over him. The sun could not reach the floor of the swamp and this was the shaded world of insects. Tim walked briskly to keep some of the mosquitoes off his face.
    Suddenly he stepped back into the sun again. A clear pool lay at his feet, a contrast to the muddy waters of the Mahakam. The vegetation had been cut back and here the way ran along a beaten earth path worn in the grassy bank of the pool. He passed a vegetable patch rich with corn, tapioca and plantains, and stoutly fenced with split poles against the wild pigs. Just beyond it stood Darti’s house, raised on stilts and roofed with dried leaves. The walls were grey weathered clapboard. Smoke rose from behind it where Darti did her cooking. Tim called out to warn her.
    She came clattering and rushed out onto the verandah. She wore just a faded