Hemispheres

by Stephen Baker

Youth Training Scheme, isn’t it? I tried to focus on an old works calendar. A woman’s body with a tyre tread rolling down her spine, between her buttocks.

  Your Tough Shit, that’s what it stands for. Twenty-six fucking quid a week, I ask you.

  I made what I hoped was a noise of agreement.

  Look at yourself Danny. Your dad’s gone for good. Yer mam – she wants to move on. She wants a new dick. You got to look after number one. Empty the fucking till and get your own gaff. Forget about school and exams. Exams is just pieces of paper. Here, look.

  He picked up a stray sheet of paperwork from the floor, brandished it at me, then turned his back and peeled down the skin-tight jeans to expose a pair of rosy buttocks. He balled the paper in one hand and ostentatiously wiped his arse with it, dragging it down his crack from front to back, then pinging it against the wall.

  That’s what you do with fucking exams, he grinned as he hauled up his jeans, eyes bulging. Learn how to party son, because you’re only young once. You don’t want to look back and ask yourself where it all went.

  He was silhouetted starkly in the doorway, braced against either side. Behind him a flock of lapwings rose like smoke from the flooded pools of Haverton Hole, the piping call taken up by every bird, echoing over the marsh. They blew over on rain-softened wings. People were full of advice these days, full of certainty. I was too mashed to come up with any answers. In the end Paul lurched off in search of more entertainment. I could hear his boots receding across the cinder yard. I could hear Yan’s boots coming up the stairs of the pub. Rise and shine me hearties. No rest for the wicked. Have you ever seen a paddyfield warbler? The scratch of the fingers rubbing the stubble on his chin.

  The sound of him coming up the stairs, the clatter of his feet filling the stairwell, swelling out into the world.

  *

  I woke up, mouth burning with acid, with rust and chemicals. It was dark, and I was in the tiny box room at the back of the pub. I couldn’t remember finding my way back from the portakabin. Noise bursting from downstairs, loud inflamed voices. I looked at the red, blinking eye of the clock radio. Half past nine. Nausea rumbled through me like a distant train.

  Jonah. Nine-ish, he’d said.

  I stumbled out onto the dark landing. Squalls of noise from the bar downstairs. On the stairs in the dark, hand on a wooden banister smoothed by countless other hands. Kate thought the pub was haunted. Like someone watching me, she said. And when I turn round, there’s nobody. Yan laughed at her. I’ll take any customer, living or dead, as long as they pay for their ale. You can only have a tab if you’ve got a fucking pulse.

  Ghosts, I thought, that day on the stairs. Every pub must have ghosts. All the feet that have traipsed through it, all the lives that have been threaded through it. And Yan, too. Perhaps he’s one of them now.

  They were crowded round the pool tables. Watching, jostling, thumbs in waistbands, smoke billowing up from cigarettes clamped between lips and wedged into ashtrays. Gary Hagan himself was behind the bar, back to me, laughing at some harsh banter. A stark shaft of light roared down onto the green baize, solidified the dribbles of fagsmoke like candlewax poured into cold water. The rest of the bar was dark.

  Fuck off, bellowed Jonah. You’re underage.

  He punched me on the arm and burst into ringing laughter, face creasing like a leather glove. Michelle served us, beer slopping into the pint glasses like whipped cream. Dark rodent eyes kept flipping dumbly up to mine as she waited for them to fill. You shouldn’t be here, they said. She swiped the crumpled greenies from Jonah’s fingers and turned away.

  We found a table and sat down. Jonah raised his pint.

  Here’s to your old man, then.

  He sipped thoughtfully, brow knitting.

  Where’s Kate?

  Upstairs. Go up and have a word, if you like.

  Still on the smiley pills?

  Aye. She’s camped in front of the telly most of the time. Like a kid gawping at the fishtank in the dentist’s waiting room.

  He frowned and lifted his glass, swirled the brown liquid round and round.

  Keep expecting him to walk back through that door, he said. He had plans for this place, once he was out of the army.

  Funny, that. He was always slagging the area off.

  That’s the paradox, said Jonah. When you’re here, you want out. But when you’re on the other side of the world you get this ache. It’s like migration. You don’t understand why but you have to do it.

  He sipped his beer.

  Your dad certainly did the rounds, he said. Germany, Belize, Norn Iron.

  There was an old gadge at the bar, waiting to get served. Decko – the one who lived with his pigeons. Michelle kept cutting him a glance and then serving someone else. Magoo hauled himself over from the pool table, shiny-faced with the beergut thrust in front of him.

  Do you know who this fucking is? he yelled at Michelle across the bar. He clapped a meaty paw on the old feller’s shoulder, gold rings clustered on the swollen fingers. Light flickered though his sparse blonde hair as he turned to address the bar.

  This ladies and gentlemen, he roared, face an ugly mask under the hard overhead light. This is the hardest man on Teesside. This is the bareknuckle champion of County Durham, Mr Declan Leary.

  Decko glanced round, embarrassed. Thick white hair Brylcreemed back and stained yellow, dandruff on the shoulders of the shabby suit. You hardly ever heard him talk, except to his birds.

  Took on allcomers, this gadge, announced Magoo. Nineteen forties, nineteen fifties. Me old man told me the stories.

  He set his jaw forward like a bulldog and let an explosive belch go. Kurt sidled over to the bar, big blue eyes, cheekbones and a psycho-billy quiff. Him and Magoo bookending the old man, towering over him.

  Now mate, he said to Decko. Never knew you were a fucking brawler.

  Not just a fucking brawler, roared Magoo. He was the fucking best. In the upstairs rooms and the backlots. Put any cunt on his back for half a crown, eh? Every gold-toothed pikey bastard, every plastic hardman in Boro.

  Kurt grinned, turned and scanned the bar, one of his unearthly blue eyes squinting off to one side.

  D’y’ever kill a man Decko?

  Decko shook his head.

  Aye he did, yelled Magoo. Some gadge who swallowed his own tongue. Me dad said he was on his back with foam coming out of his gob, eh? But his feet kept tapdancing for a full twenty minutes. Twenty fucking minutes.

  Decko shook his head again.

  Ow Michelle, said Kurt. Get the man a pint in, eh? On the house, like.

  She turned and looked at Decko.

  Mild, he said.

  Jonah swirled his glass round.

  You were born with a caul Danny, he said. You know what that is?

  Aye.

  It’s the sac you’re inside. In the womb. Keeps you from drowning in there. Most times it breaks up during the birth, but you were born with it right over your head. They had to strip it off so you could start breathing.

  Aye, I know.

  Jonah dropped his voice.

  I kept it, he said. Asked Kate if I could. I’ve still got it.

  Why?

  Michelle plonked the pint down in front of Decko but Kurt lifted it up from the bartowel and had a good gulp.

  Away then champ, he said, tapping his chin. Let’s fucking go. Let’s fucking ’ave you.

  He started to bob and weave and throw imaginary punches. Magoo roared with laughter.

  It’s a powerful talisman, that’s why, said Jonah. Against drowning.

  I snorted.

  Been a merchant navy cook twenty year, Jonah went on. Hard as nails, been called all the names under the sun for the state of my food. But what fucking terrifies me Dan, is going down with a ship.

  I watched the creases dance around his eyes, the way his nose bobbed up and down when he was animated. He reached across the table and gripped my forearm. I looked into his eyes, steady and brown.


  It keeps the terror down, he said. Just having it tucked away, stowed in my kitbag. I know it’s just a barmy old superstition.

  But.

  Aye. But.

  He laughed.

  Franco leaned back against the bar with his cue. He had these deep hungry eyes like wormholes, sunken cheeks you could measure between thumb and forefinger.

  Makes you think, he said. The old hardmen, they’re all coffin dodgers now.

  Magoo leaned back next to him, tee-shirt riding up his kite.

  Back then like, said Franco. It was all white, eh? None of your monkey men over here. Coons.

  He was looking at Jonah.

  *

  Did you ever try to find out what really happened to your dad?

  His voice was low and urgent.

  I shrugged. The army just told us the bare bones, I said, flatly. He was in action at Mount Longdon, not long before the surrender. It was a mess, close quarters and that. Afterwards, well, he’d just gone. Never seen again. No body, no nothing.

  Spoken to anyone who was actually there?

  Jonah’s eyes were focused on me, large and dark like an owl’s.

  Nah. I never tried. Look, if he was alive, he’d have been in touch, wouldn’t he?

  Jonah studied me. I used to have a map of the Falklands up on my bedroom wall, when the war was on. All them little islands round the coast, Keppel and Pebble and Carcass and Sedge. North Fur and South Fur. Elephant Jason, Flat Jason, Grand Jason, Steeple Jason. I looked at that map every day, those long weeks while they were crawling south, wondering where Yan would be, which of those names would become real places. And then some of them did. And then I took the map down and folded it up and put it in the bin.

  It was a premature ejaculation, that war, Jonah smiled. Too much foreplay and not enough action. The sabre-rattling from Maggie after the Argies invaded, the Task Force crawling down the Atlantic. Weeks and weeks of it. But when they landed it was over in a flash. Wham bam thank you ma’am and we’re lying back on the pillows lighting a bifter.

  Any bananas back there Michelle? Kurt’s voice sailed over from the bar. We got a monkey sat over here.

  The problem with wogs, said Franco, conversationally, is when they start interbreeding with white women.

  Ignore him, said Jonah. I’ve had worse from toddlers. The thing is Dan, you need to know. One way or another. You remind me of Schrödinger’s cat.

  Who?

  Ah. It’s a scientific parable man. Supposed to describe how particles behave. How different possibilities can exist at the same time.

  I looked blank.

  There’s a professor, right? And he locks his cat in a box.

  Poor pussy.

  Jonah grinned, but pressed on. Now this is the clever bit. In the box there’s a vial of some radioactive shit. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that an atom of this stuff decays over the next twenty-four hours. If that happens, it sets off a chemical reaction, produces a poisonous gas, and the cat snuffs it. But if that atom doesn’t decay, the cat lives. Confused, hungry, and mighty pissed off, but alive.

  There were monkey noises at the bar, but I tuned them out, focusing in on Jonah. His quiet, insistent voice.

  Nobody can predict the outcome, he was saying. Nobody knows what’s happened until they open the box twenty-four hours later, and when they open the box there’s got to be an outcome. The cat is a hundred per cent alive or a hundred per cent dead. But before they open the box, before they know the outcome, the cat is flickering in between. Like a strobe light. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive.

  I don’t get it.

  You got to open the box to make it stick. Until then all the possibilities are floating about, shifting, like ghosts. Ghosts of probability.

  He looked pleased with himself.

  See, he said. You and Yan are the ghosts. Half alive and half dead, and the box is still shut. You know what you got to do Danny.

  Let me tell you a joke, said Franco, pushing back a chair and sitting down at the table. They were standing around us now. Kurt picked up Jonah’s pint glass, cleared his throat, spat in it, put it back down on the table. Phlegm wobbled like eggwhite on the surface of the beer. Jonah leaned back, put his hands behind his head.

  What, said Franco, is white, and floats face down in the river?

  He put his forearms on the table, sinews bunching and knotting under the bluestained skin. Jonah shrugged.

  A nigger, said Franco. With all the shit kicked out of it.

  Jonah smiled, thin-lipped, and the lads around the table erupted in laughter. Hagan just kept watching from behind the bar. He was a steroid case, pumped solid from the weights. Had these pudgy features that were goodlooking in a bulky way, a floppy blond wedge cut and a single gold hoop in his ear. He stood there, surrounded by glass. Glass mirrors on the wall, pint glasses nesting on the shelves like seabirds, glinting.

  Didn’t know you were a rent boy Danny, he said. You should have told me times were hard. I could have lent you some of your dad’s money out of the till. Or maybes you just like taking it up the wrong’un.

  He looked at Jonah. You should know better, grandad. He’s underage for a start.

  Jonah blinked.

  I better be going Dan, he said, standing up and pushing his chair under the table. He turned to Hagan and raised his glass, studied the thick swirl of phlegm.

  Not a bad pint pal. I’ve had worse. A lot worse.

  He lifted it to his gob and necked it down in one, phlegm and all. Banged the empty glass down on the table and turned for the door.

  Lads, said Hagan.

  Magoo went for Jonah, face twisted like a hound dog reaching the end of its chain. Jonah stepped back and sent a stool flying and we watched it bounce across the tiled floor and stop.

  And everything stopped, because Kate was stood in the doorway and Trajan was braced against her calves with a snarl stuck in his gullet. She was still beautiful, black hair flowing down her back like a Persian princess. But there was something taut about her these days, skin stretched too tight over the bones.

  What’s going on, Gaz?

  She looked at Jonah.

  What are you doing here?

  Jonah grinned and raised his palms. Hagan’s face flowered into an idiot smile.

  There’s glass on the floor, she said.

  Hagan dived beneath the bar for dustpan and brush. Jonah had gone, left the door gently vibrating behind him. I pushed out into the street where the rain had stopped and there he was, leaning against the pole of the traffic lights, hands thrust into his pockets. I let a taxi glide past and jogged across to him.

  Have we got any more business? he said. Red light flushed across his face from above, gave him the bulbous glow of a Halloween apple. I kicked the kerb, hard.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Yeah you do.

  How do I start?

  Find out who was there with him. There must be some of them who came back. His mates.

  But how can I trace them?

  Did he have a diary or owt? Somewhere he wrote down names and numbers and that?

  Aye. Come to think of it he did have this old address book.

  Do you reckon it’s still lying around somewhere? Back of a drawer, up in the attic?

  Dunno. It might be.

  There you go then.

  Jonah beamed. Above him the lights changed and green light flooded across his face. Molten sunlight dripping through new leaves, transforming him into a mischievous satyr.

  Upstairs in the box room and you don’t need to switch on the light because the orange gloaming of Teesside and the gas flares on Billingham are beaming back off the cloudbase and the hangover kicking in behind your eyeballs. Yan clumping up the stairs in them steelcapped boots and the little click at each step from the tendon in his ankle. Yan dead on the Falklands, white shinbones in the peat. Ghosts of probability. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive.

  Put your hand down on the bedspread with the bitten-down nai
ls and tell yourself it’s real and solid.

  3. Wilson’s Storm Petrel

  (Oceanites oceanicus)

  I put my hand down on the wheel and look at the white flesh and bitten-down nails just to convince myself I’m real and solid. The wheelhouse door is swinging on its hinges, yawning open at the top of a crest and slamming shut in the guts of the following trough. And the weather gets worse, wind, spray and rain streaming across the open deck and bursting against the glass.

  Can’t make headway, yells Fabián Rodriguez. The weather full in our face. He moves the dials of the radio and the static howls and pops. Horse Boy curled on the floor in the foetal position with that coverless paperback up close to his coupon. Lips moving soundlessly.

  South Georgia, says Joe Fish, hunkered down over the charts, his pocked face glowering from wet oilskins. We can sit it out there, in the lee of the island. Head back west when the weather clears.

  Fuck me, a sentence without profanity, I mock. Aren’t there Marines down there?

  The imminence of death smartens up the tongue, he counters. They’re at Grytviken only, I think. And it’s a big island – a hundred miles long.

  South Georgia, I say, shaking my head. What do you reckon Joe? Reckon there’s another reality where I lost that hand, and right now the redcaps are getting started on me?

  Pure shite, he says.

  But chance is the breath of the universe marra. It’s what keeps us sharp, eh?

  No such thing as chance, he says. If you wound the world right back to the beginning and set it all off again, them cards would still come out the same. Every time.

  I give him a slap round the chops, nice and gentle like.

  That slap was predestined, I tell him. Nowt I could do about it.

  Dave smells of sick, slumped on the bench seat with his mouth gaping. Wishing he never came along, I daresay.

  Hang on, so who’s Dave? He was a civvy, right?

  Aye, he certainly wasn’t a fucking para with that kite on him. Nah, he was hiding out at Berkeley when the rest of us pitched up.

  Fabián as well?

  Yep. The deserter from the other crew. Like a mirror image of me. Got on like a house on fire. Dave was in some sort of bother, I reckon, cos he was a right snidey customer.