Hemispheres

by Stephen Baker

  Cheers Yan. Nice to see that your family went out of the window when there was a chance of a legover.

  Danny. I was being honest. I’m trying to tell you the truth here.

  But you did fuck her, right?

  I wouldn’t call it that.

  Ah, look. It’s too much information to be honest. There are some things I don’t need to know.

  I want you to know. I need to tell you.

  Keep your voice down, the nurse is giving us dirty looks.

  She’s a battleaxe, that one.

  So, we weren’t in your head at all? Me and Kate.

  Of course you were. It’s just. The inside of a head, right? It’s a lonely place. A lonely place to be.

  Sarah shakes her head.

  That lighter, she says. You play with it all the time, specially when you’re being evasive.

  I’m not being evasive.

  She laughs. I test the weight of the lighter in my palm. Twitch the little lever to raise the cap.

  Found it on the Falklands, I say. Upstairs in a derelict farmhouse. A bedroom with the sky poking through.

  It’s an odd design. Old-fashioned.

  Doesn’t work, but. Needs cleaning, refilling. New wick.

  Do you mind if I have a drink? asks Sarah, moving across to the cupboards.

  Feel free. Should get back to my own bed. Hopefully they haven’t actually set fire to any wildlife in there.

  The other cabin appears quiet, though there’s a light still flickering. Probably Joe. It takes a lot of liquor to swamp him.

  Stick around a while if you like, she says. I was enjoying the conversation. She smiles tentatively. You could have more tea, or a glass of milk.

  Milk is fine. The juice of the cow.

  She hands me a glass, sits down with a brandy.

  Purely medicinal, she smiles. So how come you don’t drink?

  Ran with some wild lads when I was young. Drinking and fighting. Never had a drink problem, touch wood, but I’ve been on the edge a couple of times. Beer only, these days. No spirits.

  I smile wryly at her.

  So what made you stay out here on this rock, all alone? You could be sat at home watching Terry Wogan.

  Reason enough, she says, quaffing the brandy. Well, for as long as I can remember I loathed my parents. Embodied everything I hated. Suburban dreariness. Betjeman to the power of a thousand. Dad pruning the roses, mum cleaning the house. They were bright people, they’d been to university, but somewhere down the line the lights went out and they settled for the routine and the little semi with the patch of lawn, changing the car every three years and gawping night after night at the stupid bloody telly gabbling away in the corner.

  I sip at the milk. Thin longlife stuff.

  I ran away from them, she says. Studied zoology, worked on reserves in New Zealand, the Galapagos. Sent them postcards from the corners of the world. They worried about my job security, about low pay. They worried about my boyfriends who, of course, were all scumbags.

  Her voice is low and comforting, over the putter of the gas heater.

  And then, just about a year ago, my mother died. I got a letter from my dad while I was working here, and I flew back home. He was trying to act normal, making tea and small talk, but you could tell that a light had gone out in him. He loved her. He missed her. An albatross without its mate. Did I tell you that they pair for life? Turned out she’d had cancer for four years and they hadn’t told me. Didn’t want to worry me.

  Parents, eh?

  It’s final, you see. She’s gone and I’ll never have a chance to mend things. Say things. That’s the problem Yan. You push people away, they don’t always hang around until you want them again. They have this habit of dying, leaving the country, finding somebody else. They get on with their lives, and then it’s too late.

  She’s crying soundlessly, shoulders quaking beneath the sweatshirt. I move round the table and sit next to her, put my hands on her shoulders. A potential here, building, and I’m acting before my thoughts can catch up. Reach beneath her face and cup it in the palm of my hand, look into those green eyes that flicker like wind through the tundra grass.

  What about you Yan, she says, very quietly. Do you pair for life?

  By way of reply I kiss her, very softly. She tastes salty. The wind and the sea. Stands up and moves towards the sleeping quarters. Without an order from my brain, my body is straightening itself and standing up, following her into the coal-black glittering darkness.

  The winter sun shrinks to the size of an egg and the day to a frozen puddle between two walls of dark. We see bergs out at sea. The nights are long, lit by gaslight and the wild stars. The boys emerge from their alcohol craziness, due mainly to the fact that supplies are running short and need to be rationed. They ration their craziness. I also sense that they feel bad about checking out, about being absent. The hut gets cleaned and swept, blankets are folded, rubbish and detritus are banished. We cook the everlasting diet of dried and reconstituted food together, curries, paellas, sausage and mash, and eat in companionable silence. We fantasize about fresh meat, fresh vegetables. Joe makes specific and bloodcurdling threats to the local wildlife. Butchery, flensing, rendering, à la carte menus. The unholy noise of the colony fades into the background. We no longer notice it. The albatross chicks are fed through the winter, thick down matted with frost, the parents wheeling stiff-winged out to sea and back. I sleep with Sarah, sometimes. Joe wonders too long and too loud about the best recipe for seal vindaloo. Sarah says she will be on the radio to Grytviken or Stanley if he so much as looks at a seal the wrong way. She will call down an air strike right on his bony arse. Joe looks at her with new respect. Seal is off the menu.

  Months go by like this and it’s hard to fill the time. I watch birds through the short hours of daylight. Horse Boy reads his endless paperback. Sarah is busy, monitoring, ringing, taking photographs, typing up reports on the typewriter, the keys purring through the long night. We all perfect the art of sleeping, long and deep. Almost hibernation. I no longer feel the island coming adrift. Solid ground, all the way down.

  Evenings we sit in the cabin, if Sarah is busy. I’m stirring the rehydrating food, bubbles rising through the liquid, little orange jewels of reconstituted carrot and brown nuggets of reconstituted meat rising to the surface, dancing, sinking again. Horse Boy is reading, lips twitching. Fabián Rodriguez watches impassively, heavy lids over his eyes and a cigarette in his hand. Dave sleeps like a bear in winter. I’m worried about Joe. He doesn’t seem to have the capacity to deal with the empty time. He fidgets, stands, walks over to the bunk, swears incoherently, lights a cigarette, mauls it until it’s dead, sits down on the bunk, gets up again, goes to the door, comes back and sits down. A few minutes later it begins again. Like one of them polar bears kept in a pokey cage, going mad with the boredom, endlessly circling, repeating the same meaningless gestures. One morning I grab the opportunity to talk to him alone. The other three are outside, pissing about, throwing rocks at each other.

  I’m fine son, he says, aggressively defensive. Don’t need a counsellor. Go and play with your birdwoman.

  Just asking Joe, I say, apologetically. Didn’t mean to step on your male pride. I head for the door. Maybes I’ll chuck some rocks too.

  No, hang on. I’m not fine, he says. Sorry.

  I turn and wait. There is a long pause.

  Ever hit a blim when you’re smoking? he says. One of those little rocks of seriously pure stuff?

  I nod.

  Happened to me once, he continues, and I started to hallucinate. Nothing crazy, just like a sine wave travelling down my body, my legs billowing out to one side and my head to the other. Bed, I thought. That’ll sort it. But when I got there the room was tumbling, like being inside a rolling dice. So I made myself concentrate on a spot on the wall. There was a nail there and someone had drawn a little circle round it in biro. I just kept looking at this spot, and after a bit my consciousness started to shrink around
it. Everything that I was, concentrated in a spot the size of a sixpence, with darkness outside. Then the spot shrank to a pinhead and I was gone.

  There’s a long pause while I wait for the punchline. I roll a skinny cigarette. There are shrieks from outside, a huge metallic clang as a rock hits the side of the hut.

  Being here, says Joe, everything is shrinking down again. My brain isn’t working enough. Just a small spot, a tiny spot the size of a pinhead. Get up, make the bed, look at the wall, make food, go to sleep.

  His voice is rising aggressively. He stops and his head goes down in his hands. I spark up and suck tobacco smoke. Someone seems to be climbing onto the roof of the hut. Scrabbling, laughter, more scrabbling. I put my hands on Joe’s shoulders.

  We can get away soon Joe. As soon as the weather breaks. We’ll get back to civilization. Chile, or somewhere.

  He doesn’t respond. Gaslight flickers over his pockmarks like the craters on the moon.

  Look, I’ll play you for it, I say.

  His right hand comes up, clenched into a fist. I see it and bring up my hand, forefinger and middle finger extended.

  Stone blunts scissors, I say, banging my fingers against his fist. You win. We’ll leave as soon as we can.

  I light his cigarette and he sucks pensively.

  You let me win, he says. It doesn’t count.

  I’m considering an answer when there’s a thunderous bang on the roof of the hut, then silence. After a few seconds I hear the voice of Fabián Rodriguez, shouting for help.

  I don’t think I can feel a pulse, says Sarah, standing up, rosy-cheeked from the exertion. I can’t get him back.

  She’s tried resuscitation for twenty minutes now.

  He threw a fucking rock, says Fabián Rodriguez, disbelieving. He was standing on the roof, threw a rock at me and then he slipped. Must be icy up there. Fell off the roof and hit his head.

  The body of Horse Boy lies at our feet, a shocking wound just above the hairline, a slick of oily blood polluting the rabbit-fur of his head, moving slowly onto the shingle.

  He threw a fucking rock, says Fabián again.

  Up to their knees in blood, says Joe Fish.

  We carry the body up to high ground, overlooking the colonies and the small cluster of huts. The sea is immense and troubled, the island shrinking. We lie him on his back on the frozen ground. Sarah tucks a woolly hat over the wound.

  His poor head, she says.

  We begin to pile stones around and over the body.

  A burial cairn like a Bronze Age king, says Joe. Like Agamemnon.

  Wait, I say, and run down to the huts, helter-skelter over the shingle, my boots skidding and sliding on the wet and silent stones. I return with the paperback, and lay it on his chest with what I hope is the appropriate degree of reverence.

  What was his name? asks Sarah. I never heard you call him anything but Horse Boy. It seemed a bit rude.

  Trevor, I say, Trevor Collins. He used to be in the Household Cavalry, something like that. Hence the nickname. He hated Trevor.

  He was always reading that book, says Fabián Rodriguez. Never looked up, for hours and hours.

  He couldn’t read, says Joe.

  We look at him.

  He couldn’t read, he repeats. Never really went to school much. He once asked me what the title of the book was, in case anybody asked. Swore me to secrecy.

  I bend down and close one of the stiffening hands over the yellowed pages. We continue to add stones and rocks to the pile until the body is covered, no trace of the brightly coloured clothing visible from the outside. The wind is blowing, as always, tugging at the flaps on our waterproofs, tugging at the corners of our eyes and mouths. An albatross looms close over us, parachuting down to the familiar nest heap among thousands, snow white against the grey clouds and black rock. The immense bird doesn’t register us at all. If, on its descent, it glances in our direction, it sees perhaps only a group of oddly coloured stones among millions of others.

  7. Pallas’ Warbler

  (Phylloscopus proregulus)

  Today I’m doing a webcam setup for the local archaeology unit – the only decent job I’ve got on at the moment. They want to film parts of a dig in realtime and link it back to their website. It’s an Iron Age settlement, quite a juicy one apparently, and when Matt rang to offer me the contract I bit his fucking hand off.

  For a start, I’m out of the office, away from that non-ringing phone. And it’s good to be out on the gently rising clay lands north of the Tees, looking across the sprawl of Teesside to the Cleveland Hills, the contorted shapes of industry, the Transporter and the Newport Bridge all throwing back the insipid spring sun. They’ve stripped the ground back with an excavator and against that cheesy glacial clay you can see the scrawl of vanished ditches, houses, pits, blooming like black hieroglyphs. Matt bounds over to a trench, webcam in hand. It’s a wireless one – saves them dragging cables in the mud.

  I feel like Tony fucking Robinson, he yells, running about with this thing. Here we have the first Teessiders, looking out across the impenetrable forests of Stockton, dragging their knuckles on the floor.

  Less of the cheek, I tell him.

  I was born here as well, he says. I’m allowed to rip the piss.

  He shows me round the site. The diggers are cleaning up where the machine’s been working, shovelling and trowelling, wrapped up against a raw April day.

  Good thing you brought wellies Dan, says Matt. The developer turned up in shiny shoes. Brogues, or something. Buffed to within an inch of their lives. Wanted a look round and fell right on his jacksy in the mud. I now have a degree in laughter suppression.

  So what happens when you finish? I ask him.

  Whole thing gets knackered. It’s going to be new houses, an executive development, they call it. They’ll probably name one of the roads Boudicca Crescent. You can’t stand in the way of progress. Or should I say profit?

  Crowds of jackdaws and rooks are massing in pylons, along the towers and even on the wires, almost ready to return en masse to their roosts. Turning over and over in a lengthy and garrulous public conversation. We adjourn to the site hut and I walk him through the basic functions on the webcam.

  So does the site get written up somewhere? I ask him.

  Yeah, we churn out a report for the developer. I don’t suppose they ever read it. Just gets their planning permission sorted. Thing is, it’s hard to say the things you want to say. Vanished people, vanished lives, what made them tick?

  He sips on a cup of coffee, spilling steam into the air.

  See, he says. Someone once told me that human skin is actually made from holes. It looks like a continuous surface but when you look through a microscope it’s holes all the way.

  I scan the inside of the portakabin. Strewn tabloids, polystyrene coffee cups heaped with ash and dog ends.

  The past, he says, is like that as well. It’s a landscape of holes. Think about your own memory. Your brain can’t possibly store every single experience, every single sensation. It has to pick and choose. It just takes snapshots of the big stuff and sort of blurs it into what you think is a continuous surface. Your memory’s like skin – it looks solid but when you get up close there’s just holes. Think about yourself ten years ago, twenty years ago. What have you got in common with that person? Over that time every single cell in your body has died and been renewed. The only connection you have is this electricity in your head, these flashes of light and sound we call memory. It’s a frightening thought.

  He pauses, scratches at his stubble.

  When you go beyond living memory, it’s even worse. We don’t even know our ancestors two or three generations back, what their names were, how they lived. History tells us about the rich and powerful but the average Joe has vanished from the record.

  So why do you bother?

  He thinks for a moment, blowing more steam from his coffee.

  Well, it pays the rent, just about, he grins. But it’s more than
that. These scatters of pottery, the voids left behind where wooden posts have rotted – they prove that there were people here once, real people with beating hearts and brains full up with experience.

  Touching vanished lives, I say.

  Yeah, sort of. Or rather, not quite touching. Overlapping. You can’t ever quite touch.

  Outside, a huge cloud of black birds begins to stream from the power lines, heading back towards Teesside in the evening gloom, whirling and chattering. We step outside the hut to watch them.

  It’s like that Hitchcock film, says Matt. At least I’ve got me hard hat if they come a-pecking.

  The diggers stop to watch the stream of birds.

  Back to work, scum, yells Matt, cracking an imaginary whip.

  She’s lying on the sofa when I come in, knees tucked up towards her chest, one hand neatly under her cheek. At first I think she’s asleep. She doesn’t stir when the latch clicks shut behind me. But when I come into the living room I see that her eyes are open.

  Tried to call you, she says, her voice passive, drained of colour. The eyes don’t look at me. She’s gazing into space, not really focusing on anything in particular. I go over to her, try to brush aside a tendril of blonde hair which has flopped over her face, but she flinches away.

  No reception out there, I tell her, retreating back to the armchair and perching on the edge.

  It hasn’t worked, she says, baldly. I did the test today. It’s negative.

  I try to think of the appropriate platitude.

  I’m as gutted as you are, I tell her. It’s not the end of the world, though. We could have another cycle. Or we could think about adoption.

  We’d have to go private to get another cycle. And we don’t have the money.

  Her voice betrays no emotion. Like she’s rehearsed this conversation a dozen times, lying here waiting for me.

  I go over to the sofa and squash onto the opposite end, lift her feet up and place them on my lap, bare and cold with blunt toes and rough skin at the heels. I start to rub them with my hands, massaging with my thumbs up into the instep the way she likes it. And some of the tension melts out of her.

  It is the end of the world, she says, quietly.