Hemispheres (3 page)

That Gary Hagan, said Paul. One of these days he’ll get his napper tapped off.

Our feet tramping in the wet, the huge metal sheds of Swan Hunter looming ahead.

Has he nailed yer mam yet?

Kate? He wants to. I don’t reckon she’s having it, mind.

She keeps him hanging round, though, eh?

She likes having a man behind the bar.

I’ve seen her looking, he said. She wants me.

Fuck off.

A bus shimmied past us, headlights rippling like moonlight on the wet road. We swerved to avoid the spray.

I might fit her in me busy schedule, leered Paul. One of these days.

Go on then, I said. You’re going to tell me anyway.

Paul’s Munchausen sexual adventures. I assumed they were fiction, I half feared they were true.

Well, he said. There’s this one. Hazel, from Pally Park. Went through seventeen squaddies in one go, what I heard. Me and
Dog were up there the other night, panelling fuck out of it, one end each. Get yourself down with us sometime, you could squirt
your beans in there as well.

There was a pause while I considered this tempting invitation. We were nearly at the bus stop.

I’m on the bus, I said. I hoped he wouldn’t come along.

On the bus. There’s cigarette smoke lazing through a shaft of sunlight and you lean your head on the window and the rattle
of the diesel makes your thoughts dance away on a tide of vibration. Reclaimed fields on the estuary, unearthly green where
the spring grass is beginning to stir, and below them the black earth and ballast and the alluvium of the old estuary in volume
on volume like the pages of a damp book. A pair of teal rise on stiff wings and the air thrums in their tailfeathers and they
fly for the shelter of a pair of cooling towers where steam blossoms high above the rim.

I called Jonah my uncle but he was just a mate of Yan’s, back to when Noah was a lad. We went birding together, now and then,
but
his heart wasn’t in it. He did it because it kept us in touch, and because of Yan. Like there was a thread he had to keep
spinning.

Yan and me did the circuit two or three times a week, when he wasn’t on base or on a tour. Haverton Hole, Saltholme and Back
Saltholme and the Triangle, Dorman’s and Reclamation, Greatham Creek and Calor Gas and Seal Sands and the Long Drag. Plus
we turned out when a real crippler came in.

It’s got to be some of the best birding in the country – one of the few consolations for living in this shitheap, said Yan.
Maybe that’s why he did what he did. But I always liked it here, where the river runs out of energy and the pylons are stalking
their prey across country and the refineries and petrochemical plants come to fruition in giant rock formations, in hard cliffs
and crags above the reclaimed land. I like the Cleveland Hills making a bunched fist on the horizon, shafts of cold sunlight
sweeping across their flanks, across the distant estates of Middlesbrough.

I like hanging on by the fingernails. The honesty of it.

It wasn’t the battery of telescopes you get for a real rarity, but a few of them at the edge of the dock with nowt better
to do on a Saturday morning. I recognized a couple of the blokes and we nodded without speaking. I pulled my bins out and
focused on the diver down there beyond the staithes, long and low and the water gulping right over its back. Right on the
membrane between two elements. Sea and sky. Water and air.

You always find them at the front of the bird book because they’re supposed to be the most primitive family, the furthest
back towards reptiles. A seamless curve of bill and head and neck, sharp and snaky as a new pencil. Sea grey above and ghost
white below and the eye like a bead of blood.

The bird blinked upside-down, silver membrane wiping the eyeball from below. Humped its back and dived. We glanced around
and someone lit a cigarette. I thought of mine, still sat on the bar in the Cape. Rain
stippled the surface of the water, soft and insistent, and the bird bobbed back to the surface with a shrug. It didn’t notice
the rain. The eye, like a berry.

Blink.

Water.

Blink.

Air.

They winter at sea, red-throated divers. Range all over the Arctic and the north Atlantic and only bad weather brings them
to harbour looking for shelter. They’re out there now, weighing about the same as a bag of sugar.

Blink.

Water.

Blink.

Air.

A hand clapped on my shoulder and I whirled round to see Jonah.

Danny, he said, with a grin. A brown face creased like a well-worn slipper, the mouth baggy but the eyes sharp. Rain-beaded
grey hair on his skull like coal ash.

Saw these nesting up in Shetland once, he said. On Fetlar. Handsome things in breeding plumage, like. They call it the rain
goose up there. Used to believe it could predict the coming of storms. Some still do, I dare say. When you see the rain goose
there’s a storm on the way. Close up the shutters, get the livestock inside.

The bird dived again, rain becoming harder.

Is there a storm on the way? I asked him.

There’s always a storm somewhere, said Jonah. He pulled the tatty denim jacket closer round himself and shivered.

We stood in silence for a while and watched the diver working its way back towards open water. Jonah shook his head.

Birders, he said, with a grin. Are we a bunch of fruitloops or are we the sanest bastards on the planet? Or is it just a good
excuse to get away from the ball and chain?

All of the above, I said. And none of the above.

Jonah pulled out a pouch and began to roll a cigarette one-handed. It was like watching a card sharp, fingers blurring, flying.
He tore a cardboard roach and notched it into the end, lit a match behind his hand. The smoke billowed from his mouth.

I taught your dad how to skin one-handed, he said. We would have been about fifteen. Mind you, he always rolled too thin.
Like a fucking convict, he was, sucking at them little straws.

What was Yan, then? Sane, mental, or itchy feet?

Loony, said Jonah. Always a storm brewing, always a high wind racing behind them eyes.

I laughed.

Nah, he was a strange one. It was almost like he was a rare bird himself. One of these vagrants and passage migrants, blown
around the place.

You know these birds, the journeys they make, I drawled, in imitation of Yan’s voice. Makes Marco Polo look like a travelling
salesman. Makes Neil Armstrong look like an average high-jumper. If you want a mythical hero, he’s wearing feathers.

Jonah smirked. That’s exactly what he used to say.

I know.

See, he said, we both had this restlessness thing – the itchy feet business. It was straightforward for me. Easy come, easy
go, a woman in every port. The old cliché. Simple enough in the merchant navy. But your dad, he wanted it every which way.

Rain streaming down now, droplets worming down the back of my collar, twisting at the corners of my mouth.

I mean, he wanted the adventure, Jonah continued. But he wanted the home life as well, the family. Later on, when he had Kate
and you, I couldn’t help thinking that he’d got it right. All I had was an empty council house to rattle around in every few
months, and a few extra notches on the bedpost. A few ships, a few tinnies and a few fucks. Not much to base a life on.

He grinned sheepishly, dragged hard at the cigarette which was struggling in the rain.

Anyways, he said, glancing at his watch. I’ve got a young lady to entertain. But I thought I might nip into the Cape tonight,
for a quick one. We can have a pint on the old bastard if nothing else. Nine-ish?

Aye. See you then.

He buffeted me on the shoulder again and stumped away, disappearing quickly in the monsoon. Out in the harbour the bird dived,
the black surface of the water untroubled. I didn’t wait for it to surface.

I was drenched when I reached the pub. Paul was leaning against the wall equally sodden, snakes of water twining over his
oxblood Docs. Pushed himself off as I approached, with a shake and a sneeze like a wet dog.

Hang on out here.

I cracked the door and swung into the bar. Still blousy, uncleaned, bilious. Franco had vanished from the bench. I stood a
moment and listened. Thumping from upstairs, somebody blundering about, bath taps thundering. That was probably Kate. Ten
thirty and the bar still a swamp. The pack of Embassy lying on the bar unclaimed. I swept it up and made for the door, then
turned on second thoughts and dived behind the bar. Crisps, chocolate, cans from the chiller.

Nice one, said Paul, as I emerged. Special Brew. You know how to treat a lady.

We took shelter in one of the abandoned lots along Cowpen Bewley Road, found a portakabin, gutted and derelict but still almost
watertight. Used to be the office for a car dealership, moved out two years ago. Old filing cabinets spilled their guts, paperwork
strewn over the floor, the carpet sprouting mould.

Listen to your Uncle Paul, he boomed, several cans later, already leaden-faced with the alcohol. You want to get out, start
living. I’m looking after your best interests here son.

I tossed over a can, the last one. I was pole-axed, sprawled on the floor, holding on to shreds of consciousness.

I’ve got a job now, chuntered Paul. On the landfill up the road here. Cash in hand. Better than the YTS – know what that stands
for?

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.