Hemispheres (12 page)

At the time it didn’t feel like there was an option, he says. Leave school, get a job. Everybody was doing it. Billingham
site and the shipyards. I just drifted into it. Worked out later that I wanted something else. You fucking get a sniff of
the world and you want more. You want
it all. Sat on St Helena watching the sun rise out of the Atlantic. Sweating your balls off in an armoured car in West Belfast
with cunts busting petrol bombs against your hide. Down on the Falklands with the wind straight off the Antarctic and the
tundra grass rippling like catfur. Tagteaming some sweaty tart in Famagusta.

Don’t.

It’s the truth. The army gave me all that, but in the end even that wasn’t enough. I needed more.

We reach the end of the breakwater, watch the visible patch of sea heaving restlessly in the mist.

I always wondered Dan, why you came back here after university. You had a degree in computers. The world was your lobster
in the nineties. You could have gone anywhere. Silicon Valley, Europe, the Far East.

He sounds almost starry-eyed as he rattles off the list of places.

But you came back here to this dump, and set up your own business. You’re scratching a living and you could have been raking
it in.

Don’t know, I say. Was it me who made them decisions? It doesn’t feel like me. More like I’ve just inherited them. I don’t
share an atom in common with him, whoever he was.

There’s a cormorant fishing on the misty sea. Every now and then it resolves into view, low and black on the surface of the
water, diving and resurfacing, fading out like white noise on the television.

Perhaps I’m not like you, I say. This is the place I know, where I grew up. I know people. It feels comfortable. I’ve travelled
around and seen stuff, but I don’t need to keep pushing at the boundaries.

I don’t know, he says. Where did you and me drift apart? We’re made of the same piss and wind boy. The same blood. Only a
whisker between us but sometimes it’s like we don’t even speak the same fucking language.

Matt said that today. You can never really touch another person, just kind of overlap for a bit.

Ha. Wise fella.

He stops, and the mist closes down around us. Globes of moisture in his stubble, in the tufts of his hair.

Dan, he says. I don’t know where to start.

Start with Mount Longdon, and carry on from there.

Christ. Why would you want to know about all that?

Because you never told me, like all the times you went walkabout. Just left us joining the dots for ourselves. Like there’s
this whole side of you I never saw. Not Danny’s dad and Kate’s fella. Someone else.

The dark side of the moon, he says.

Don’t.

Okay. You want to know everything, I’ll tell you everything. But it’s a long time ago now.

I know.

Where did you get Longdon from anyway? It wasn’t from me.

When I was sixteen I robbed the till and went to see some of your old mates. George Barlow and Charlie Fraser. They opened
my eyes a bit.

He looks surprised.

Never knew you had it in you Dan, he says. But Christ knows what they told you. You need it from the horse’s mouth, I reckon.

I’ll tell you all about it, I say. It’s only fair. A story for a story, eh? Maybe, he says.

Maybe you’re more like me than you care to admit. Am I fuck.

You’re in denial, he says. It’s understandable.

Then he spins away, laughing, fighting back a cough, laughing again. Thumps me on the back so I almost choke. And we continue
walking back towards dry land. The mist thickens, the visible world shrinks to nothing, and the two people on the breakwater
disappear from view.

It was Barlow I went to see first. He had a caravan park down on the Isle of Purbeck somewhere round Wareham. I remembered
him faintly, a florid barrel of a man who stayed at the Cape once when I was small. He tied up the arms of my cardigan so
I couldn’t get my hands out and then he laughed and I cried.

It was a long night, chainsmoking on trains until my throat was sore, lying sleepless on the platform at Temple Meads like
a corpse on a slab and watching dawn precipitate slowly through the glass roof. I checked Barlow’s address in a street atlas
in the station bookshop and the girl on the till had a face on her like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.

And then more trains through a hot early summer day, stuffy and rattling and painfully slow, stopping in sidings and fagsmoke
swarming in sunlight. Body and brain at fever pitch, bitter with adrenaline.

I walked out of Wareham station into the late afternoon, the sky fresh and blue as a clean sheet and the unwashed smell rising
as the sun dried out the sweat from my shirt. Holiday traffic on the roads and the fishtank looks of other kids behind the
safety glass. Beyond the town the road was quiet and when I crested a hill there was heathland stretching away. Heather, gorse
and furze scrabbling down towards the sea, the heather buds just showing a pale lilac which shimmered in the distance like
a field of stars. And on this moonscape gorse and broom spattered their yellow blossom like a chipfat fire roaring in the
late sun and the scratching songs of warblers dribbled from thorn scrub. The sea in the distance, a blue strip beginning to
smoke and merge with the sky.

A mile or two further on I turned onto an unsurfaced track sign-posted to the caravan park, straggling pine trees on either
side. A horse was coming slowly towards me, ridden by a girl about my age. She looked down at me disdainfully and when we’d
passed I glanced back a couple of times but she never turned round. Inside the park I wandered between the vans, statics and
a few tourers set in an ocean of clipped grass stretching downhill towards the sea. And there he was, loading gobs of water
with a hosepipe into troughs of gaudy summer annuals. He moved patiently, stealthily even, from trough to trough.

Watched you coming up the road, he said. That was my girl you went past. Polly. Fucking bitch.

He went back to splashing water, moved on to some hanging baskets around the steps of a static van. The eyepatch was the first
thing I’d noticed. I tried not to stare. He was a stocky man, built like a barrel, a beige flannel shirt buttoned tightly
over the paunch. A florid face topped with crisp greying hair and the black patch stretched tight across it on elastic.

What do you want? he said. Ent got no casual work this time of year. Me and the wife do that, and Pol. When I can get the
cow to lift a finger. Who told you we was hiring? Were it that slut at MSC again?

No pal, I wasn’t after work. You’re Georgie Barlow, aren’t you?

And he came right at me and knocked me off my feet and down to the floor on my stomach. Face pressed against the grass, right
arm dragged up behind my back ready to pop out of the socket.

Who are you, you little turd, eh? a voice hissed in my ear.

He jammed the side of my head down harder, grass stems pressing an imprint into my cheek.

What you’re thinking is, that was pretty nifty for a fat one-eyed fucker. Aren’t you? See, the training never leaves you.
I’d fucking crush your windpipe soon as look at you. Who sent you?

I struggled but he held me firm. I was starting to black out.

Yan, I croaked. He slackened the grip on my throat. Yan Thomas. I’m Danny, his son.

Let’s look at you, he said. Rolled me over on my back like a prize trout.

I met you, he said. Up at the pub. It’s no joke, that place – so far fucking north I nearly got a nosebleed. You were a humourless
little bugger.

He stood up.

Yan Thomas, he said, shaking his head. That lunatic. You know where the word lunatic comes from, don’t you?

Nah.

The moon son. Lunar. They used to reckon she’d send you mad if you spent too much time under her belly. Your old man was a
moonstruck bastard if ever I met one.

He put his hands on his hips.

Sorry I kicked off back there, he said. But I can’t be too careful, you know. There’s all sorts after me. Inland Revenue,
loan sharks, the bank.

He lowered his voice, tapped the side of his nose.

And they’re just the civilized ones, he said. There’s others I can’t even tell you about.

I got to my feet gingerly, brushed the grass off.

So what can I do you for son? Don’t tell me they’ve finally found the body.

No, I faltered. I just wanted to talk to you. About what happened when he went missing. I need to understand it.

I don’t tell them stories any more, he said. Like a little kid shutting up shop. He retrieved the hose from the hanging basket
which was now dripping like a sponge, and dropped it onto the ground. Silver snakes of water looping through the grass.

It was a mess, he said. It was all a mess. Best forgotten. Best left alone.

He stomped over to the standpipe tap, looked at it, tapped at his eyepatch. The girl on the horse was coming slowly back up
the drive,
sitting absolutely erect. Black hair coursing down her back.

Look, he said. I’ll give you a van for the night. On the house, like.

The hose was still on the ground, water pissing away into the grass. The horse passed behind the pine trees and disappeared.
Barlow shifted on his feet, pulled some keys from his pocket and tossed them at me.

Number twelve. She’s a leaky bitch but if it rains you can stick a sauce pan under it. Tomorrow I’ll run you down to the station.

He turned and stalked away towards the house at the top of the site. I watched his rolling gait and broad back retreating
up the site. The hosepipe at my feet, still hissing, the silver slick of water swelling and spreading, punctured by the sharp
stems of grass, starting to gather momentum and flow downhill. I walked to the standpipe and turned off the tap. The hissing
stopped and Barlow turned to look at me and his face was startled.

In the caravan I sat down at the table, breathed that indefinable caravan smell of furniture polish, spent matches, propane
fumes. Always tricky to work out exactly what you’re feeling, what you’re supposed to be feeling. You’ve come all this way
for a sniff of a story, so why do you feel half relieved when he won’t spill? Can’t fathom yourself Danny, never could.

If in doubt, there are two solutions. Brew up or skin up. I was trying to light the gas hob when there was a knock on the
door of the van. She came in before I could answer.

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.