Hemispheres

by Stephen Baker

  *

  I wonder why we are not dead yet. Perhaps we’re dead and haven’t noticed, like Matteo said, simply wandered into the next world like beggars. But no, Barriga hasn’t pulled the trigger. He is frozen. I glance at the others and their eyes are fixed not on Barriga, but on a point behind him and just to the left, where the barrel of a Walther pistol is pressed into the back of his skull like the wet snout of a dog. The pistol is held in a hand, which is connected to the body of Fabián Rodriguez. He cocks the pistol, lazily tilts his face with its hooded eyes.

  Put the gun down pajero, he says calmly.

  Barriga appears to be thinking. A cloud passes over his pudgy face. The bankroll still guttering on the bed. Then Barriga engages the safety catch and drops the Mauser to the floor where it nestles into the shagpile.

  Kneel down, says Fabián, levelling the pistol at Barriga’s head. The colonel drops to his knees in front of us. Fabián retrieves the keys from his pockets and tosses them over to us and we wrestle out of the cuffs. Fabián snaps a pair onto Barriga, locking him to the foot of the bed.

  You fucking took your time, I say to Fabián.

  He laughs. I nearly stayed for an extra beer, he says. Then you would have been fucked, chabón.

  That was your plan? snarls Joe, incredulous. Bring him back here and hope Fabián turns up? We were nearly dead men.

  Aye, I say. But I knew something would turn up.

  A torrent of flame belches from the bed as the foam mattress ignites, acrid black smoke bubbling up to the ceiling and hanging there in sheets. Fire seethes up the panelling, pine boards weeping great tears of sap and lacquer.

  Let’s make like a tree, says Joe. We can take this bugger’s van.

  Aye, I say. North to Bolivia. I always fancied seeing the Andes.

  Barriga is kneeling there, chained to the bed with the room burning behind him. He looks at me. Yan, the pylon.

  Well, I say. You didn’t think I was really going to let you go, did you?

  I tell you what, says Horse Boy, his face a mass of scabs, I want one of them cigars.

  Let’s go, says Dave. Before we’re toast.

  Fire howls across the ceiling tiles, molten plastic dripping onto the carpet. But Horse Boy reaches into the colonel’s top pocket and pulls out a slim box of panatellas, a cigar knife and a lighter. He cuts and lights a slender dark cigar and sucks contentedly for a second, right back into his lungs without gagging. Then he grips the back of Barriga’s skull and forces the burning tip into his right eye. He holds it there while Barriga bucks and squeals like a rabbit with a broken back, holds it there until it sizzles through the eyelid and into the eyeball with a hideous stench of burning seaweed, holds it there until it burns through to the vitreous humour and is extinguished with a sound like a hot saucepan going into the sink. Horse Boy releases Barriga and lets him slump unconscious to the carpet, the dead cigar still protruding from his eye socket.

  Enjoy your cigar Colonel, says Horse Boy. Then we walk from the burning room, stiffly, limping, dragging our broken wings. Down the stairs to the lobby and out into the sunshine, measuring our steps in the bright world.

  13. Long-Toed Stint

  (Calidris subminuta)

  It isn’t difficult to find Paul. His old woman still lives at the same house, behind Port Clarence Social Club. I ring the doorbell and a large dog batters itself against the frosted glass. She’s frail when she opens the door, the sweet smell of overflowing bins behind her.

  I don’t want double glazing like, she says. Windows are already done.

  I’m not selling anything Mrs O’Rourke. I don’t know if you remember me. It’s Danny Thomas. I used to live up at the Cape.

  She eyes me up and down before replying. Her face is narrow and pointed, bobbing in the doorway. Tucks a lifeless strand of grey hair away behind an ear.

  They knocked it down, she says. Druggies kept getting in, setting it ablaze.

  Aye, I know.

  The wind is cold, a steely rain lashing in from the west.

  I can’t let you in son. The dog’ll have your bollocks. He doesn’t like men.

  I was looking for your Paul. We used to be mates.

  She sighs, shifts her feet in the slippers. I try not to stare at the swollen ankles, varicose veins bulging under the tights.

  That waster, she says. He’s nigh on fucked hisself with drink and drugs. You want to stay away. Well away.

  Inside the house the dog pounds at a closed door.

  Do you know where he lives?

  Aye, he’s sponging off the social. It’s some kind of hostel for junkies and loonies. When they can’t look after themselves no more. Hang on and I’ll write it down for you.

  I pull the van up outside and sit for a moment, idling the engine, watching cold clear raindrops collect on the windscreen, crawl across the glass, coalesce. And then I sweep them away with the wipers. Across the road there’s a young girl, back arched precociously against the car park railings, short skirt and high boots, her long hair strong and sodden. She’s wondering whether I have the look of a punter.

  Paul lives in a halfway house in St Hilda’s. The original town of Middlesbrough was here, but now it’s cut off from the modern town centre by the railway line and the flyover. Over the border, they call it. Bleak blocks of new houses with tiny windows and razor wire, in among the old buildings falling apart and the open stretches of brownfield nobody wants to build on.

  I decide to leave it. It’s years since I’ve seen him – he may not even remember me. But I don’t drive away, just sit for a minute or two and tap my foot at the accelerator pedal. Think about that station platform in the Fens and the moon going down. And then I swing myself out of the car and into the rain and that girl watches me impassively from across the street.

  Have you got any chews on you Danny? says Paul, wheedling. Them green ones are the best.

  I don’t think you can get those any more mate, I say. Not for years.

  The warden has let me in and I’m sitting with Paul in a communal kitchen. Cooking facilities, two rough wooden tables with benches, and white light spilling in through windows high up. He slurps at his cup of tea.

  Aye, I’m not bad Danny marra, not bad at all.

  He grins idiotically at me, a little old man in a baseball cap, a jumper and jeans many sizes too big. He hobbles slowly and painfully across to the kettle. A knotted quality to his limbs, sinews in his neck grinding against each other like cables. He breathes out, heavily, to recuperate. Then he lifts the jug kettle unsteadily towards the tap and fills it. Replaces it carefully on its base and flicks the switch with a trembling finger. I notice how his fingernails are clubbed, turning over the tips of his fingers. He turns and leans against the edge of the sink.

  Do you remember the time we went up Pally Park to monkey with that lass? Dirty bitch, she was. Had to hospitalize her in the end. What was her name?

  That wasn’t me Paul. I’m Danny, remember, from the pub?

  Yan’s lad. Yan Thomas, he shouts, fucking murderer that gadge. He laughs. Complete fucking psycho.

  What do you mean?

  He looks confused. Erm, I don’t know. His face crumples. Don’t take any notice of me. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about. Booze, drugs, Holme House, it takes it out of you.

  He pours water into the mugs, the full kettle shaking alarmingly.

  Have you got any of them green chews? he asks, brightening suddenly.

  Paul, do you remember that time I bumped into you down south? We went up to that junkyard near Peterborough.

  He looks blank, mouth sagging open.

  We were sat on the platform in the middle of the night, I persist. You told me about your grandad nicking mercury and pouring it into the bath.

  He beams.

  Aye, mercury. I used to scoop it up with me hands, watch it running about like a flock of chickens. It was beautiful stuff, that. Beautiful. You know, I had a job once. It was on the bins.

  It wa
s the landfill Paul. Cowpen Bewley.

  Aye, the landfill. I had a run in with the foreman. Little radge bastard, always on my back.

  He dumps the teabags in the bin and slops milk into the mugs.

  There you go, he says, handing me one. I can look after myself, you see. Well, one day I told him to fuck off, and I walked off the job.

  Thought you stuck the nut on him.

  Probably, he says.

  Then he looks thoughtful.

  If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here with these loonies. It’s the small stuff that can mash up your life. Should’ve carried on smiling, carried on doing the job. Thought fuck off to him inside me head.

  You can’t think like that, I say. You’ll send yourself mental.

  He looks confused. A long pause while I slurp my tea. Somewhere in the building a fire door flaps open and shut.

  What happened in that book? he asks suddenly.

  I look blank.

  The axe murderer, he says. Did he get away with it?

  That was twenty years ago, I say, gently.

  He looks at me expectantly.

  Well, I say, no he didn’t. It wasn’t that he really left any clues, it was more the weight of the murders pressing on his mind. In the end, he incriminated himself. He admitted to it.

  What a twat, he says. Should have fucking kept shtum, eh? What happens in the end? Does he die?

  No. It’s odd really. He’s in prison for years. He becomes a human being again. And in the end he just walks out of the book and disappears from view. As if a door opens into another world and he simply steps through it.

  I pause.

  Paul, I say. Do you remember Gary Hagan? Used to work behind the bar at the pub. Weights and steroids. Big gold hoop in his ear.

  Oh aye, I remember him. He was slipping it to your old woman.

  I want to know what happened to him, after Yan came back. He disappeared from the scene.

  He wasn’t a mate of mine. How should I know?

  Because you helped him. You were there, and I wasn’t. People used to reckon you’d staved his head in, the two of you. Put the body in the landfill.

  He looks as if he’s concentrating hard, screwing up his eyes and staring into space. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He closes it again. Then he sighs.

  I’m sorry Dan.

  Tears brimming at the corners of his eyes.

  There are these big black holes, he says. When I can’t remember nothing. Like someone’s torn a page out of the book. I was drinking too much, too many year.

  He slumps back in his seat. The fire door opens and the warden comes in. He’s bearded and well-built, with wiry black hair.

  Everything all right Paul? he asks breezily, looking pointedly at me.

  I’m dandy thanks Dunk, he says. I’m thinking about going out soon, find a sweet shop.

  Yan is sitting up in bed, leaning against a pile of ghastly pink pillows.

  The colour scheme in this hospital is shambolic, he says, I’m going to phone that nancy boy, get him to do a makeover.

  He’s looking grey, his face pale and a little shrunken, the skin sagging more than usual. He coughs, reaches for an oxygen mask from over his shoulder, sucks deeply.

  Oxygen, he says, fucking lovely. Every home should have one. What have you got for me then boy? Flowers, bunch of grapes?

  I brought you a chocolate bar, I say, slipping it from my pocket and under the covers next to him. I’m not sure if it’s legal. It’s one of them chunky ones, the ones you like.

  Better eat it quick before the Gestapo get here, he says, tearing the wrapper and squashing a chunk into his mouth. You want some?

  He tosses the next chunk over to me, and I cram the greasy chocolate into my mouth.

  I’ve got fluid on the lungs, he mumbles through a mouthful of chocolate. Jim’s a dribbly bastard. And they’ve told me to pack in the smokes.

  They’ve actually told you that?

  Erm, well. They gave me a leaflet about quitting.

  I laugh out loud.

  Are you going to quit?

  He thinks for a minute, chewing.

  I’ll give it some thought. Might be worth it if I can get a few more months on the shanks. Few more ticks on the list, you know.

  He starts coughing, reaches for the oxygen, and sucks it in. A sinister wheezing noise as he inhales.

  Remember Frank Dowson from the bird club? Well, he was in this afternoon. Said there’s a long-toed stint up at Greatham Creek. That’s a new tick for me.

  Not for me, I say. I saw the one in eighty-three. On my own.

  I missed out on a lot, he says, indistinctly. Not just birds.

  He falls silent. I walk over to the window and look out, high above Stockton. In the gathering darkness the land is becoming indistinct, its shimmering contours picked out by pinpricks of restless light. Orange streetlights, white headlights and red taillights, rectangles of colour spilling through curtains, the raw blaze of security lighting. And the monotonous grey estates unfolding like a Mandelbrot set in concentric circles and grids and triangles, wave upon wave rippling away into the distance like phosphorescent plankton, over the river, across Middlesbrough. Beyond, there is a deep, still blackness, where the hills are. Whalesong in the sky.

  I went to see Paul today, I say. Paul O’Rourke.

  I turn round, my back against the window ledge.

  You remember, I was telling you about when we were down in the Fens together, looking for Charlie Fraser.

  He looks surprised and a bit discomfited.

  Right, he says. Why did you do that?

  I don’t know. Felt like Paul and me might have been friends, if things had worked out different.

  You felt guilty, he says. That you’d lost touch. That you hadn’t been to see him before.

  Aye, I say. That as well. He’s in a bad way. Looks about seventy-five. He’s only my age, you know. We were in the same year at school.

  Well he’s got the virus, hasn’t he? What did you expect?

  How did you know that?

  Dunno Dan.

  He reaches for the oxygen and inhales deeply. His face narrows alarmingly when he sucks in his cheeks. It’s like seeing someone without their false teeth, when the face becomes a collapsed bag of skin.

  You must have told me, he says. He was your mate, after all.

  There’s something guarded about his answer. Something unconvincing.

  I didn’t. He never told me anything about it.

  I look at him hard and he seems to shrink.

  So, I push him. How do you know?

  Must have just heard it through the grapevine, then. Still keep in touch with a few from down that way. You remember Cleo, the old witch who used to clean at the pub?

  I nod.

  She’s in a home now, in Hartlepool. I went out to see her the other week and we had a good natter. Maybe she told me about Paul.

  He’s quiet for a moment.

  Were you really tortured? I ask him. In Chile, I mean. I’m never sure whether to take you as gospel.

  He points at the side of his neck, where there’s a small puckered scar like a silver coin.

  Pinch of salt, he says. They tortured me, I tortured myself.

  Call it quits, I say.

  He grins.

  I think I’m starting to understand, I tell him.

  You’d better tell me quick, then. Sixty-three years and I still haven’t got a scooby.

  About you, I mean.

  He flops back against the pillows, spreads his arms in resignation.

  See, I always thought you chose not to come back. Chose to leave Kate and me. Because of who you were. Who you are.

  I can’t sidestep it, he says. I was clear-minded enough.

  No, I say. But you weren’t. This is what I’m starting to see. Something happened, didn’t it? Something sent you off the rails up on Mount Longdon. When you tried to walk out of there, you’d have walked into the Atlantic if yo
u hadn’t bumped into Fabián and Dave camped out in that farmhouse. You hear about it on the telly. This post-traumatic stress disorder thing.

  It’s psychobabble Dan, he says.

  But you weren’t in control.

  I’ve always been in control.

  Maybe that was an illusion.

  You sound like Joe Fish. There’s no such thing as chance, he used to say. Everything is predetermined. But doesn’t a man have free will? If I can’t knit my own fate then I might as well just lie down and wait for death.

  Have some more chocolate, I say, breaking him off a chunk.

  Nah, you finish it off.

  There’s a long silence while Yan sucks at the oxygen mask. I cram two chunks into my mouth together, half sucking, half chewing until the glutinous mass slides down my throat.

  What did you talk about with Paul? he says.

  The eyes look weary, that’s the difference. They used to be big pools, wide and full of movement, leaping with the wind or rippling in the rain. Now they look tight and brackish, no light brimming from the surface.

  Just chewing the fat over the old days. His memory’s shot, mind.

  Oh aye?

  Booze and the rest.

  Right.

  He sighs deeply, as if a balloon has sprung a leak. I look at his left hand, laid out on the pink bedcover. The broad fingers and blunt nails. I used to think Yan had the hands of a sailor, an adventurer. Hands for doing, not for lying still.

  The past, he says. I haven’t got time for that no more.

  No?

  No.

  He starts to cough and his body shudders. He reaches for the oxygen mask again. I hover helplessly at the end of the bed while he composes himself.

  A woman breezes round the corner into the bay, slender like a tall candle, a sheen of black hair bristling with grey and a long coat falling to her ankles. She bends over the bed and kisses Yan plumb on the lips. Long and slow and lingering.