You didn’t bring the horse, I said, stupidly. She looked at me.
Dad sent me over with towels and stuff, she said, dumping them on the table. At least you can have a shower.
She wrinkled her nose and I flushed. She was shorter than me, slim, with dark hair falling over her eyes. Kept trying to flick it out of the way with her hand.
Thanks, I said. Got some clean clothes in the bag.
Not a flicker of interest.
I’m Polly, she said. Don’t call me Pol cos I fucking hate it. Dad always does.
There was an awkward pause.
Anyways, she said. I sometimes go and sit on the beach in the evening, watch the stars come out. Might nick a bottle of something if Dad ent looking. You can come if you want.
Yeah, maybe, I said, flushing.
Well don’t bite my hand off, she said. About nine o’clock. You have to click the ignition to light the gas.
She swept out of the van without waiting for an answer.
I did what I was told and had a shower. Clean water carrying away the sweat and dirt and clearing my head. And then I lit the gas hob and brewed up and the stovetop kettle spat steam through a broken whistle and a cup of scalding tea nibbled at my stomach.
Later I sat at the base of the dunes above the high-tide line and watched the evening sky darken. It was half past nine. Polly wasn’t coming. She probably never even meant to come. It didn’t matter. The sky at the rim of the world faded to the purest, most luminous blue, and then began to fall gracefully into the sea. And the first pale stars appeared, newly emerged insects flapping nervously at the horizon. Small waves ran against the beach, breath of the sleeping world, and when they broke the runnels of foam were ghost white in the gathering dark. The world wiping itself clean and beginning again.
I jumped when she slipped down beside me.
Thought you weren’t coming, I said.
Like to keep a bloke waiting, she said, brandishing a bottle of Pernod. She’d changed into a denim skirt and a black jumper, a faint rim of eyeliner at her eyes. Her skin clear and pale as the twilit sky. Behind us a nightjar began its churring note in the darkness, the sound of an exotic insect vibrating in the night.
*
Is that a northern accent or something? she laughed. When you say may it sounds like mare – and you say craw instead of crow.
It’s the way people talk, I said. (Tark, she giggled.) Anyway you say loike instead of like. Not exactly the fucking queen.
Shut up and have a drink, she said, thrusting the bottle of Pernod at me. It smelled sickly and overpowering, the liquid oily and golden. She’d already downed a good third of it.
You don’t drink Pernod on its own, I said. Got to let it down with something. People drink it with water. It goes cloudy. Cloudy like when you light a coal fire and the smoke froths out of the damp rocks. Or you can drink it with black – blackcurrant that is. Goes kind of cloudy and pink.
Listen to you, she said. Do you run a pub or summat?
Lived in one almost all my life, I said. You pick up stuff, biting ankles behind the bar.
She looked at me, halfway interested.
Me mam – Kate – she’s been in the trade all her life. Grew up in a pub and never felt at home nowhere else. She did a couple of year on the army camps with me dad like, but then she got homesick and made him buy the Cape. He got it for tuppence I reckon cos it was a fuckin dive with strippers and lads selling billy in the bogs. Yan – that’s me dad – he cleaned it up a bit, but Kate kept it going. Sounds daft but she’s like a queen behind that bar. Half the customers are in love with her. The rest of them – it’s lust. Keeps the trade rolling in, mind. Or it did.
I took the bottle and swigged, taking a jolt of the liquid straight down my oesophagus. Ice crawling through my scalp. My stomach heaved. I knew why Yan steered clear of anything strong.
The full sweep of night was slowly descending, more stars beginning to blink in the eastern sky but the western horizon still pale. The sea coughed gently, small waves flickering towards us. A lighthouse flaring and subsiding somewhere off to the west. Four slow white beats and then quiet. The nightjar buzzing in the dunes.
Portland Bill, she said, as if reading my thoughts.
She was reduced to two circles of eyeliner in the near dark, her face a pale blur.
Four flashes every twenty seconds, she said. Like the heartbeat of the sea.
We watched the cycle again, in silence, light calling out over the empty sea.
It helps, she said. Proves the world’s carrying on. Time is still moving. I need that. Over the other way, you can sometimes see the Needles. That low red light there. On for fourteen, off for two, on for two, off for two. Then it starts over again.
We watched the two lights sleeptalking in the Channel. Sometimes it seemed they were falling into a rhythm, the flashes becoming habitual, approaching synchronization. But then they dropped apart, the rhythm becoming disjointed, trying to communicate in mutually incomprehensible dialects.
Like two people, I said. You try to communicate but you can’t reach. Not really. In the end, you’re on your own.
She didn’t answer.
You were going to tell me about your mum, she said.
Was I?
Yeah mate. You was.
So I told her the whole story. Yan missing on the Falklands, Kate dropping into paralysis and valium and Gary Hagan steaming in there with his loafers and his pecs. I told her about Jonah and Yan’s diary and that dumb fucking cat in the box. I told her what her dad said to me up at the park. She drank long and hard.
Got any snout? she asked. I popped a couple out of the crumpled pack and lit them and two red coals danced in the dark, hissing like dragons when one of us took a drag.
Dad, she said, lives in a fantasy world. I catch him hiding in the bushes sometimes, and he won’t use the phone cos he reckons it’s tapped. He’s got MI5 trying to waste him and the Inland Revenue trying to take him to the cleaners and the banks trying to repossess the house. It’s like he’s on the edge of a volcano man.
She took a long pull on the cigarette and exhaled, smoke milky in the night.
But I’ll tell you the truth, she said. He owns the park and he ent got a mortgage and he pays his tax on time to the penny. Got a nice army pension as well, keeps him topped up. The whole fucking thing is made up.
What’s he so paranoid about?
Dunno. He was just different. You know, when he came back.
She stubbed the cigarette into the sand.
Parents, she said. It’s like looking after fuckin kids, innit? What’s the point, tying ourselves in knots trying to please them or tying ourselves in knots trying to shock them. In the end, I reckon, you just got to escape.
The lighthouses continued their disjointed conversation. Polly’s voice dropped to a whisper, a night insect buzzing close to my ear.
When he come back from the Falklands, she said. Of course I was chuffed to see him. We all was. But he was different. He is different. I somehow felt cheated, like they’d taken my dad and given back someone else. Sometimes he just looks at me and I feel a cold chill go through me.
I took the bottle from her hand and glugged hard. Thought about that feeling of relief when Barlow clammed up on me.
Don’t you want to know why he’s like that?
Nah. There’s some stuff I can live without. He put himself in that situation and now he can deal with it. It’s not my shit.
Yeah.
Maybe Danny, she said. You don’t really want to find him at all.
Her breath tickled my ear and the hairs stood up on end.
I’ll tell you summat else, she whispered, conspiratorially. He’s still got both his fuckin eyes, yeah? Started wearing that patch a couple of years back and he tells people all sorts of bullshit about how he lost it. Car crash, tumour, whatever. But there’s still an eye behind there. Pull it off and take a look if you don’t believe me.
On the way back through the
dunes she leaned on me for support, alcohol going to her legs. I felt the cool length of her body against me and it weighed almost nothing. We steadied ourselves. There was a pale ribbon of sand snaking away from the sea between dark humps of gorse, and flickering along this channel in complete silence came a bird, sharp-winged and slender, a falcon sculpted from shadow. It passed close to my face, a moth paddling in darkness, and skimmed away into the dunes. Moments later I heard the long, churring sound start again, an antique motorcycle mining the night.
It’s a nightjar, I said. People used to think they sucked the tits of nanny goats at night and dried ’em all up.
You’re full of shit, she whispered.
We sat in the van with the curtains drawn and the lampshade cast a pumpkin glow over everything and then her tongue was in my mouth like a small flame fiery with aniseed. I moved my palm up to cup her chin and the edge of her jaw, the fusion of cheek and neck, and it fitted perfectly. She weighed almost nothing. And thirty minutes later I held her hair out of the way while she knelt and hawked her stomach contents into the caravan toilet. I looked at the whorl of her ear, that strange bud of flesh. And afterwards she stumbled to one of the sofa beds and fell asleep with strands of bile at the corners of her mouth. I watched her, chest rising and falling like the incidental murmuring of a lighthouse.
Hours later when she woke up I saw her back across the park towards the house and my legs were numb and then jumping with pins and needles. Well-worn stars hung in the summer sky, weathered by solar storms till they were smooth as river cobbles. I picked out the summer triangle. Arcturus. Deneb. Vega.
Penny for them, she said, croakily.
I was just thinking. Plenty of lads would have nailed you when you were passed out back there.
Missed your chance Danny, she said, sleepily. Too much of a gent.
I left her at the fence and she hurried towards the darkened house. I looked towards the sea, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Portland light, but it was hidden behind the row of pines.
Cold fusion, said Barlow, his eyepatch a glossy black comma in the red expanse of his face. That’s the answer to all our problems.
We were sat in a curry house near the station in Wareham, filling the hour until my train. Barlow scooped up lime pickle with a scrap of poppadom and crammed it into his mouth.
Imagine it, he went on, spitting a small spray of food. You’ve got un limited clean power and it’ll never run out. It will set us free son. No need to worry about buttering up the ragheads just because we want their oil.
He picked up his pint of lager in a heavy fist.
Look, he said. It’s simple, really. You meld together the nuclei of two atoms and bang! Unimaginable amounts of energy. It goes on in the sun all the time. But the scientist who reproduces that in the lab is going to be as powerful as God himself.
He snapped another piece of poppadom.
Only problem is, as soon as someone cracks it, they’ll be after him. They’ll be after him because they need to control it. They can’t afford to let it get out.
What about Calvin Howard? I asked, changing the subject. He’s in Yan’s book. Wasn’t he in the platoon?
You can’t be too careful son, he said. They keep an eye on me because they can’t afford to let me go too far. His voice dropped to a hiss. They think I won’t let on but maybe one day I’ll get carried away and tell somebody, and they’ll have me snuffed out, just like that. He snapped his fingers. It’ll look like an accident, a car smash, even a fatal illness. They know how to do that.
I studied the flock wallpaper over his head.
Calvin’s dead, he said. Not much use to you.
The waiter arrived to clear the pickle tray and Barlow waited until he’d gone. His forehead gleamed with sweat.
Listen son, he said. I felt bad last night, that I didn’t give you more help. See, I owe Yan. He’s into me for a couple of grand. Fucking cards. Thing is, it’s impossible to say no to him. Do you want a few hands Georgie? Just for monopoly money like.
He ordered a couple more lagers. My head was beginning to swim.
What happened to Calvin?
Mount Longdon happened, he said. It was one of their last positions on the approach to Stanley and they told us we had to take it.
Was my dad there?
Yeah. Your dad and those sidekicks of his. An ugly old bastard called Joe – I forget his surname. He only had a couple more years to serve. Stuck to Yan like glue and no-one else could get a word out of him. And this young lad they called Horse Boy on account of his time in the Blues and Royals. He was all right, was Horse Boy, but once in a while he’d lose it and hurt someone. They were misfits, really, the two of them. But Yan liked misfits. It was like he adopted them.
I know, I said, thinking of Michelle and Paul.
Yan and Joe used to play this game. Paper scissors stone, you know the one. Whatever decision had to be made, big or small. As if to say we don’t give a toss.
The waiter arrived with the main courses, manoeuvring the trolley broadside to the table and loading the steaming dishes in front of us. I scraped rice onto my plate, added a couple of spoonfuls of Madras. The sauce was red, volcanic-looking. Barlow took two naan breads, tore them up and began using them to shovel curry sauce towards his mouth.
They were dug in on Longdon, he said, and it was high country. Peat bogs and fearsome rock runs. Grass that looks dead even when it’s growing. We were on the extreme left of the attack, using a gully to work up to the high ground. But there was a group of dagoes dug in at the top with a fifty cal machine gun. It was a good position. Kept us pinned down all night, streams of red tracer fire sweeping down the mountain. And then it was early in the morning, fresh and cold, and the ground was damp with dew. A beautiful day, the sky swept clean by rain in the night. You’d think the world was starting afresh. But all we could think about was wriggling on our bellies, soaked through, winning a few yards here, a few yards there.
He paused to take a deep slurp of lager. The Madras was too hot for me. Sweat prickled my forehead and my lips felt swollen.
We was working up the base of the gully and Yan was taking his lads along the left side, above. There was no cover. When they opened up with the gun we lay down on our bellies like worms. Lads who got hit ended up just lying in the open, moaning and calling out, and noone could get forward to them. That was when Calvin got one, right in the stomach. It bleeds a lot, when you ship one in the guts. We had to listen to him dying for four hours and you don’t want to know what that sounds like. Only when he’s quiet, you feel glad.
He piled another dollop of blood red curry onto his naan and crammed it into his mouth.
He was a dad, Calvin. Two kids, I think, maybe three. The youngest only just born. He liked his job, though. Maybe he liked it too much.
How do you mean?
When it goes hand to hand it’s all about who wants to live most and sometimes you can’t be choosy about weapons. In the action at Goose Green I seen Calvin batter a spic’s head in with a trenching spade and when he grinned at me afterwards I never seen him more alive.
Jesus.
Jesus weren’t there boy. Not down in the South Atlantic. We all done stuff like Calvin.
He belched. I’d given up on the Madras by now and was gulping at a glass of chilled water from the jug.
Right, he said. In the end we got round behind them. Nice and quiet, nice and slow. Just crawling on the ground like cockroaches. And then we started to get them pinned down. And some time before midday one of them stands up, hands above his head and we shout for them to stand up and show themselves and four more of the buggers get up. So me and a couple of others go up there, and Yan’s wandering up from behind with his lads. Thank God, I’m thinking, we are being sensible. We can all enjoy a few more hours under the sun. And when we get to the dugout we see they’re just skinny kids, not much older than you. Pale faces with grey circles under the eyes from lack of sleep, wearing those rain capes they all had, da
rk and slicked with water. We was eyeing up their boots.
Why?
They always had decent issue boots, the spics. Ours were fucking shoddy – there were lads ended up with trench foot. Yan started to offer them cigarettes. He always liked a smoke. Cupped his hands round as he tried to get them lit, sharing a joke with these young lads. And he’s trying to barter for a pair of boots with this one kid. Keeps pointing at his feet and going how much. A packet of ciggies, he says. I’ll give you a packet for your boots. The kid shakes his head, backs off, laughing nervously. Yan sort of pursues him, half laughing, half serious. Because you don’t say no to Yan, do you? Ow dago, he says. Give us your boots. Two packets, eh? And he catches hold of this lad by the rain cape and he won’t let go and the others start laughing.
Barlow stopped for a moment, breathing heavily, sweat starting out on his face and neck. He tapped with a finger at his eyepatch.
And I see this lad put his hand inside the rain cape. Kind of remember it in slow motion. The hand goes in. Three packs, Yan says. That’s me final offer. The kid looks scared shitless. And then the hand starts to come out again, only there’s something in it. You stupid bastard, I thought. You stupid little cunt. See, he’s got this Beretta pistol in his hand, and all the time my rifle’s been rising up to my cheek and now it’s in position. And it’s a beautiful blue morning like cold milk. And I squeeze the trigger and the boy turns his head towards me. Stays upright for a sec and I clock the early morning stubble on his chin and this fine gold chain round his neck and I think about the girlfriend or sister who put it there. And his hair’s thick and black and glossy and his mouth is slacking open in surprise. One of his brown eyes is looking straight at me but the other one’s been replaced by a bloody screaming hole the size of the fucking universe.
He reached across the table and seized my forearm. I looked down at his swollen fingers on my sleeve, then up at his face where the other hand was tapping at the eyepatch.
You don’t want to know this stuff, he said. You don’t need to. What happened to him?
Hemispheres Page 10
