Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
The Contours I Do Not Survey
Casting her level book at the end of the levelling weeks, the chainman finds the afternoon pages filled out with contour readings for stations she never booked, reduced level and all, in figures she knows to be her own.
- dated: "the levelling weeks"
- narrator: "Ines Callard, survey chainman"
Tuesday.
We are three on the levels this year: Mr R Ousley at the instrument, Mr F Cotterill holding the staff, and myself with the book and the chain. The line runs for the Works lane improvement, from the bench mark on the bridge parapet down the lane to a tie at the boundary hedge, and that is the whole of the contract line, eight hundred foot and no more. My work is to book the sights as they are called, keep the back sights and intermediate sights and fore sights in their columns, and cast the reduction clean every evening so that the rise and fall checks stand when the engineer signs the book at the week's end. I set store by a clean book. My figures are narrow, and my sevens carry a stroke, and I was taught never to overwrite a number but rule it out and set it fresh.
Thursday.
Tonight, casting the week, I found the trouble. The afternoon pages of Tuesday, filled to the tie, signed, and blotted in the proper way at the hedge, carry further booking underneath my signature, level spots I never called for and never walked to: the head of the sand pit lane, the gate of the orchard, the tank at the top of Church Hill, each with a staff reading in the right column and a reduced level worked at the right. I know the figures. They are mine, the narrow strokes of them, the crossed sevens, the fours I open at the top. Mr Cotterill swears the staff never left the lane of an afternoon, and Mr Ousley's day book shows no change points but the lane's own. The new pages are not forgery, which is the strangest part I can put to it: the columns are ruled to my book, the arithmetic runs, every rise and fall ties, and the week carries its check.
Saturday.
I made checks against the rules all day. The ink figures are pencil like mine, pressed hard past blotting that took none of it. The extra spots sit at even contour heights, two hundred and ten, two hundred and fifteen, two hundred and twenty, when the ground I chained breaks into odd inches everywhere along it. And the chainages of the spots are not scattered: they carry on past the tie in one straight run, eight hundred foot and upward, on the very line of levels, as if the booking were taken by walking on down the lane and out of the contract altogether, over the ground no drawing of this work shows. The book is mine to keep and the pages are mine, and yet the afternoon on those pages was not mine, or was not yet, which is the wording I like no better.
Monday.
I took the book to Miss C Brabbs the engineer this morning. She read the extra pages twice, said the section takes the line to the tie and no further, gave the walking of it back to me as it stands, and signed the week. The book is now signed to the eight hundred foot and the extra figures stand in under the signature, correct and checkable and unowned. Mr Ousley says a good book user keeps the reduction clean and lets the figures come as they fall. The question I cannot close at the foot of the page is where the staff will be standing on the afternoon these pages belong to, and whether, if I walk the line out past the tie some evening to look, I will find the bench marks already cut and bolted, and cut by a hand that sets its fours as I set mine.