“Seven,” Dag says, and Tom does a quick calculation in his head. Two days per rod. He frowns. Another fortnight just to secure the foundations is longer than he’d like.
Dag clocks the frown. “M-m-maybe if I get some more men to work with me we can cut that time right down,” he says quickly. “Dad spoke with a new t-team yesterday. They just finished up a p-project in Stavanger. It’s likely they won’t have . . . won’t have heard about . . .” He trails off, lowers his eyes. Tom feels as though he’s been punched in the gut. “I mean . . .” Dag begins again, trying to sweep the inference out of the air. He meant the ghost, Tom thinks, his guts churning and his blood boiling. His disgust at his own team of construction workers downing tools and abandoning their jobs because of a rumor—a rumor about a haunted site, no less—has hardened to fury. What is this, he thinks, the sixteenth bloody century? Norway isn’t some rednecked, backwoods country. It’s a place of intelligent, progressive thinkers and pioneers, not superstitious morons.
But of course, that’s not why they’ve abandoned their jobs, he realizes. Clive hasn’t paid them. That’s the real reason.
“Possibly,” Tom says in reply to Dag’s stammered suggestion of a new crew, a team who won’t be subject to the wiles of spooky tales about ghosts haunting the site of their death. Or maybe it’s more than that, he thinks, looking out over the fjord. He’s standing directly over the spot where Aurelia fell to her death. Where she jumped. As he looks down he spots a trickle of water snaking through the leaves and spilling over the edge of the cliff. The resurrected river, returning to its destination.
“Ahoy there,” a voice calls, and both Tom and Dag lean back from the platform strapped to the side of the cliff and look up where, a hundred feet away, an arm waves down. It’s Erik.
“Hey, D-Dad,” Dag calls up. “Are you c-coming down?”
“Send up the platform,” Erik calls.
Tom and Dag tug the pulley to hoist the wooden platform upward, and in a few minutes Erik is there, trying not to show how out of breath he is. He’s carrying a lunchbox and a flask and hands them both to Dag, who flushes with embarrassment—he doesn’t like Tom seeing that he’s a kid whose dad brings him lunch.
“How’re you getting on?” Erik says, grinning as he scans the scene. He slaps the rock with a large hand, pleased with the progress, pleased with his son. “Excellent work,” he tells Dag, then Tom. “He’s done well, yes?”
“Very well,” Tom says. He’s pleased not only with Dag’s dedication and the progress of the project, but with the fact that these two men have remained loyal to him. They could have bowed to the pressure posed by their colleagues, made their apologies, which he would have accepted. But, when all the others left, Dag and Erik were two of only eight men who remained tied to the project, and he senses their investment in the project stretches beyond Dag’s ambitions. Even so, he’s glad he heeded Aurelia when she urged him to take Dag under his wing. Had he gone with his own feelings on the matter, it is certain both men would not be here, and the project would have stalled.
Later, once sheeting rain has made further progress impossible and he has insisted that Dag and Erik join him for a drink in the kitchen—how he wishes sometimes a pub was nearby; note to self: always make sure a project site has a local pub—he recalls the moment when he met Dag, and he almost didn’t agree to allow him on the site. After all, getting consent for the build was hard enough. It took months, and a lot more money than he’d expected. The insurance costs for each additional man on-site were a burden.
“It was my wife who said I ought to get my head out of my ass and start being more of a people person,” he says. “And I’m grateful for that.” He raises his glass. “Here’s to gratitude. And wise counsel.”
Erik nods, chinks his glass. Dag follows suit, though isn’t quite sure of the tone of the conversation. Is Tom saying he had planned not to mentor him?
When Dag gets up to use the facilities, Erik leans in close.