Hemispheres

by Stephen Baker

Yeah, I know. I’m cutting down on the happy pills. Still feel drunk all the time, mind. Hazy.

  She sat back down and looked at the form.

  It’s his life insurance, she said. I’m making a claim.

  Right.

  Draw a line under it. Then we can sell this place. I can’t carry on here.

  It’s not so bad.

  It’s haunted Dan.

  The man at the end of your bed, I said.

  Somebody got into bed with Michelle, she said.

  I laughed.

  That’s most of Teesside mam.

  Kate pursed her lips.

  She was on her own. She heard the springs creak and the mattress give, and then someone pulled her by the ankles, down under the covers.

  I’m knackered, I said. I could do with a shower.

  Yeah, she said. You could.

  I was halfway to the door when she spoke again.

  You went to look for him, didn’t you?

  Aye. Sort of.

  Did you find him?

  No.

  She smiled. Nicotine stains on her teeth, lines gathering at the corners of mouth and eyes.

  He was a waster, I said.

  She shrugged.

  I was in the box room, showered for the first time since the caravan park. Pulled on a clean black shirt and jeans. Darkness pressed its nose to the window and I shivered. A tap at the door and I opened it and there was Hagan, larger than I remembered him, the muscles more pumped and the skin darker.

  You’ll get cancer on them sunbeds, I said.

  He smiled. Even white teeth in the pudgy face, gold earring glinting against the tan.

  Danny, he said. I like the bonehead. It suits you, kind of. Can I have a word?

  Have as many as you like.

  Listen, he said. We haven’t got off on the right foot, like. Can we start again? Fresh start and all that.

  He held out a hand, gold bracelets at the wrist beneath the designer shirt. I thought for a moment and then I shook it. Looked into the face, at the expressionless blue eyes. He was smiling, but they were cold.

  Nice one, he said. Listen, why don’t you nip down the bar for a pint later? There’s something I want to ask you.

  He looked at me appraisingly, well-trimmed eyebrows raised beneath the gelled blond mane.

  Aye, I said. Later.

  He turned and trotted down the stairs and the air was shimmering around him.

  Hagan held a pint glass aslant under the beer tap and let the foamy lager rise, the head overflowing time and again until it was displaced by clear liquid.

  On the house, he said, holding the glass out to me. I took it and sipped, putting the dripping glass down on a beer towel.

  It’s about territory, he said.

  The glasses on the shelves were glinting, reflections multiplied in the rank of mirrors behind the bar.

  Got to piss in the corners of your life, he continued. Mark it, like. With your scent.

  Like a dog.

  Aye. Like a hound dog swinging his dick. Like a boss wolf on his patch.

  A knot of them around the pool table. Franco, Magoo and a few younger lads not much older than me. Hagan started slopping lagers and stouts into pint glasses, lining them up on the bar.

  Anyone sniffs your piss and keeps on coming, he said. That’s when you need to show your fucking teeth.

  Pulled a tenner out of his pocket and shoved it at me. I shifted uncertainly on the bar stool.

  Have a look, he said. Whose mug shot is it?

  I looked.

  Darwin, I said.

  Aye. Charlie fucking Darwin. Why’s he on the money?

  I shrugged.

  Because he knew the score, said Hagan. Survival of the fittest, eh? The strongest. Not just strong in the arm. Anyone can be a meat axe these days. Strong up here as well.

  He tapped the side of his temple with a broad forefinger.

  Got to be in tune with the times, he said. Maggie Thatcher. Aye, she’s a woman, but she’s going to fuck the lot of them. Dole wallahs, bedwetters, coal miners and puffs. Shove ’em in the gutter and tread on their fucking faces.

  His enormous upper arms swelled and glistened.

  Natural selection, he said. The strong get selected and the weak get lost.

  He took a sip from a bottle of lager, frosted with condensation. I gulped at the gassy pint he’d given me. Magoo was threading coins into the jukebox. They clattered down and the machinery whirred.

  Do you like the new George Michael? asked Hagan. He’s a pussy magnet that charver.

  I shrugged.

  You sniffed my piss and kept on coming, he said. Didn’t expect that.

  He sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip, put both elbows on the bar and looked at me.

  You got big cojones Danny, eh?

  There was a roar from the pool table and one of the young lads was picking up a bundle of wedge from the rail.

  Pleasure doing business with you Mr Frankland, he crowed, cigarette dangling from his gob and gold chains at his wrists. There was this smudged blue tattoo on the side of his neck next to a livid purple lovebite.

  Winner stays on, said Hagan. I’m next up.

  He rounded the bar and moved over to the table. I stayed perched on a bar stool.

  I’m next pal, said one of Lovebite’s mates, a skinny feral kid with cropped ginger hair. That’s my cash on the side there.

  Hagan stood in front of him, muscles bunching like thunderclouds beneath the tight tee-shirt.

  Did you hear something Franco? he asked.

  Franco shook his head with mock seriousness.

  Thought I heard something squeaking, said Hagan. Like a little high-pitched mouse.

  He fixed the gaggle of younger lads with a hard stare, one after the other. None of them said owt.

  Must have been imagining things, said Hagan. I was wondering where I’d put me cash down, and there it is.

  He picked up the coins from the rail and slotted them in, releasing the balls with a low rumble. Looked over at me and winked.

  See what I mean Danny? Natural selection. Fuck off son, you’re barred, he said to the skinny ginger kid. Go and sniff glue in the park.

  The kid looked at his mates.

  The rest of you can stay, said Hagan. It’s just that ginger cunt.

  The kid thought for a moment, turned and walked slowly out of the bar. None of his mates glanced after him.

  I watched Hagan win Franco’s money back from Lovebite. He raped the table, hard and fast and powerful. Buried the black and held his hand out for the cash. Lovebite and his mates sidled out of the front door, left the bar almost empty. On their way past one of them gobbed a great slick of curdled phlegm at the front window and then we heard them sprinting away. The gob hung there like a raw egg before sliding down the glass, and the walls bowed under the pressure of night.

  This is our territory Dan, said Hagan, back behind the bar, polishing a pint glass with a towel. Our patch. The lads wanted to take you apart for robbing the till, but yer mam doesn’t want you hurt and they’ll do what I say. They’re my dogs.

  He put the glass down on the bar.

  She said she’d give me an answer. Once she’s got your dad’s insurance money.

  An answer?

  Aye. You know what I mean. We’re all grown-ups, right? I need you to make sure she’s filled out that form and sent it mate. I need to know she’s not just playing me.

  I saw her filling it in tonight. Upstairs in the kitchen.

  Good lad. You let me know when she’s posted it.

  Razia ran into my arms and hugged me fiercely. Then she dropped away, embarrassed.

  Dan Thomas, she said. Back in town and twice as ugly. Did you find what you were looking for?

  We walked through to the living room, where the TV chirruped innocently in a corner.

  No, I said. Not really.

  You’re back, anyways.

  She flounced down onto the threadbare sofa. I perched on the ar
m.

  He’s a waster, I said. Not worth the effort. I don’t know why I bothered.

  Yeah, you do. He read you bedtime stories, wiped your little arse for you. He took you out birding on Saturdays.

  Yeah, he did all that. Until he got bored and went somewhere else.

  Whatever he did or didn’t do, he’s still your old man. Blood’s thicker than water, I reckon.

  Not me Raz, I said. I’ve got thin blood, me.

  And in the night I wake up and can’t get back to sleep because of that buzzing in my ears and I pad through to the kitchen and there she is sat at the table with her back to me and a bottle of Napoleon at her elbow. Barefoot in her towelling robe and she’s shredding that insurance form into the pedal bin and the sobs she’s making sound like an animal and blue night pissing from the pipes like gas.

  I want to reach out and touch her but I can’t.

  And Hagan sat at the same kitchen table in the morning in his boxers and a tight tee-shirt drinking a protein shake and sunlight hissing from his blond highlights. Turns to me and winks and says, she’s posted it, hasn’t she Dan? Tell me she’s posted the form. And I look at him.

  Aye, I say. Took it to the postbox meself.

  And a summer went by, dribbled by like a gas leak only nobody made a spark. After exams I helped around the pub, bottling up, shifting barrels down in the cellar, with Hagan to the cash’n’carry. A hot summer, curdling in the bowl of Teesside, trapped between the North York Moors and the Durham coalfield. Haze over the estuary, a lush topiary of steam hanging heavy over chemical plants. My hair grew and I shaved it off again. Exam results dropped through the front door, good but unspectacular. Time slowed.

  I thought about Yan. I had it in my head that I was going to let him go, like one of them birds you trap in a mist net and let off with a ring round its leg. Had it in my head too that he wouldn’t be as obedient or go as quiet as a ringed bird. Not yet, anyway. I was waiting for September, for the cool and blustery winds you get from the sea, for the wide blue sky swept clean with a yardbrush. When autumn was here and passage migrants were finding a desperate landfall along the coast, then it would be time.

  *

  Going to check out the new supplier in Hartlepool, yelled Hagan up the stairs. Are you coming?

  The van sped along the Seaton Carew road, heat squatting on us like a truculent frog, flat expanses of reclaimed land scorched from green to yellow. Petrochemical plants no longer bristled but drooped like a Dalí wristwatch. Outside the fire station there were two figures waiting and Hagan slowed and pulled up. Kurt and Magoo. They loped to the back of the van and jumped into the cargo bay. One of them thumped the plywood partition and Hagan moved off again. I looked at him with raised eyebrows. He was totally relaxed, designer sunglasses pushed up onto his forehead and a matchstick twirling between his lips. Drummed a rhythm against the wheel with his thumbs. He saw me studying him.

  They’re going to help us load some gear, he said.

  But at the roundabout we turned right, and pulled up at the security gate of the nuclear power station. The guard came out, sweltering in a military style navy jumper. Flashed a thumbs-up sign at Hagan, and I recognized Franco. He raised the barrier and then jumped into the back of the van with the others. Hagan sped off down the approach road.

  Quick detour, he said, but his mouth was becoming tense, teeth squeaking on the matchstick. The great concrete stump of the power station brooded over us. No vegetation around it, just a vast spread of recycled slag where the odd dusty thistle had gained a footprint. Beyond this were tall mesh fences topped with razor wire. We skirted the power station and continued behind, the ground becoming scrubby with mounds of overgrown rubble. Butterflies beating lazily from plant to plant, revelling in the heat. A red admiral flopped onto a thistlehead, angling velvet wings to the sun.

  We came to a halt at the end of the road. Beyond us was the estuary, dark grey and unconscious where the river limped into the sea. A bare bank of shingle leading down to the water, and across the river the vast sheds and elevators of British Steel shimmering in heat haze.

  Help us unload, said Hagan breezily, slipping out of the driver’s door. I wondered what was going on. Fly tipping, maybe. Jumped out and slammed the passenger door. Crickets were lazily creaking in the spoil heaps. Round to the back of the van. Hagan flung the doors open and the three of them jumped out. Magoo, blubbery and sweating. Franco, lean and knotted. Kurt, tall and athletic. Each holding a hollow steel pole six foot long, the sort they use in metal fence panels. Spines of mesh still attached, where they’d been twisted away. They formed a triangle around me.

  What’s going on lads?

  A sharp sick feeling in my stomach. I tried to push out of the encirclement but Franco rapped me hard on the kneecap with his pole. A hard hot flare of pain and I knelt down clutching the knee. Hagan spoke from outside the circle.

  Stand up.

  His voice was calm, empty. I stood, my knee throbbing.

  On the beach lads, he said.

  They began to walk forward, herding me in the middle with the steel poles. We walked down onto the shingle bank, towards the water’s edge. The beach had a steep rake and soon we were hidden from the approach road. Eventually, they stopped. My heart was racing.

  Just do it, I said. Whatever you’re going to do. Just do it.

  Hagan smiled. He stepped inside the circle.

  I’m in control, he said. Not you.

  Grabbed my face in a huge hand, squashing my cheeks and lips together.

  Smelt the piss, he said. But you kept on coming. Look at me.

  I looked.

  The tanned, handsome, pudgy face, sparkling blue eyes and white teeth, the single gold earring and streaked blond hair. He had thick black eyebrows. I wondered what his natural hair colour was.

  *

  Raz was right about the bedtime stories, you see. He told me this one once about the seven whistlers, six curlews searching for their lost companion. They searched through the ages of the world but they haven’t found him yet. And if they ever do, then the world will end. I thought that was a bit odd, when I was a kid. I could imagine the world ending in fire or flood or a fuckoff big earthquake, but I couldn’t imagine the world ending in curlews.

  You got big cojones Danny, eh? said Hagan.

  There was some sniggering from the others.

  The lad’s got exams, shouted Hagan. He’s supposed to be brainy. He thinks he’s better than the rest of us.

  He delved in his pocket and pulled out a fistful of paper and threw it up so that little snowflakes of it drifted down on me like tickertape.

  I found it in the dustbin, he said. Tell me what it is.

  I didn’t need to look.

  You know what it is, I said.

  Aye, I do. It’s a fucking claim form for the insurance, that some panda-eyed bitch kept me hanging around for and never had any intention of sending. And Santa’s little helper here told me he’d put it in the post himself.

  He smashed a meaty fist, studded with rings, into my face with the full force of his pumped-up body. There was an explosion in the front of my head, and I found myself splattered across the shingle, my nose pulped and blood pouring from it.

  Get up, he said.

  I stayed down.

  Stay down and you’re dead.

  He kicked the side of my head like a football and it bounced on the ground. There was a flash and my hearing had gone. I groped around in silence and clawed my way back to my feet and they looked at me, laughing. Hagan was saying something but I only heard a high-pitched whine. He walked away down to the water’s edge and picked up a handful of flat round pebbles. Tested one in his hand and skimmed it out across the river and I watched it bounce up six or seven times before nuzzling finally down. The sun, hammering at my bare skull.

  I asked Yan about the end of the world and he said bollocks to it son, it’s only a tall story. If you ask me the world will just run out of juice and go dark and cold until
there’s nowt left. Curlews are just doing their own thing – I daresay they’re either hungry or horny or both. Birds are in a world of their own, Dan, unconnected to us. That’s what I like about them.

  So I watched Kurt and Magoo and Franco close on me, and Magoo swung his pole up above his head and thrashed it down across my left shoulder and dislocated it. The pain jumped like a salmon screaming in the unbearable air with its tail beating. Kurt took a run-up and got me full in the ribs and I was down on the ground struggling for breath and my skin was shredded where spines of mesh had ripped it.

  They stepped back and waited and I saw Franco mouth the words get up.

  I got up.

  Franco smiled.

  Then he lashed me across the mouth and I tasted the raw metal as I spat teeth and blood and my lips and tongue were beginning to swell. Hagan span another pebble out into the Tees. It undulated across the calm water, five bounces, and was gone. Magoo smashed his pole into the small of my back and I flipped over and slammed back into the ground.

  They stepped back and waited.

  I struggled to my feet.

  Another pebble jumping out across the water, skimming in silence.

  It wasn’t so much the stories, though they were good. It was his voice, dark and smooth and strong as coffee. He always said the same thing when he came in, in this mock stern voice.

  You should be asleep.

  The bedside lamp had a yellow glow like a small planet and there was darkness beyond the curtains all the way across the sea to Denmark.

  I wanted to sleep, that blinding day on the estuary. Lie down and sleep. A few minutes of backbreaking pain and then nothingness ebbing out to the sea. But instead I did what I was told. Got to my feet, got knocked back down. I was drenched in my own blood, dark splashes of it dripping silently onto the pebbles. It poured from my nose and gums and ran thick and salty down my throat The stones drank it up and there were container ships and a power station and steelworks and chemical plants all humming away oblivious in the roaring summer heat. Hagan kept flicking his wrist, sending a new pebble bouncing across the surface of the river.

  And then I was kneeling on the shingle with a heavy steel pole bouncing off the top of my skull, watching a pebble crawl from Gary Hagan’s hand and saunter in an elegant loop towards the surface of the river, when a curlew alighted a little further along the beach, right by the water’s edge. They’ll be coming off the moors this time of year, off the breeding grounds and back to the coast. Brown plumage, speckled like an egg, and the long bill drooping moist and black like an anteater’s tongue. Another blow across my shoulders forced tears from my eyes and the pebble rotated on its axis and bounced on the water. I watched the breeze stir the freckled neck feathers as I began to leak away into the shingle. Vertebrae bouncing on the water, running out of energy, almost skimming the surface, and beach pebbles alighting at the water’s edge, fresh from the moors and freckled with salt and chiming sweetly together and curlews hammering at my spine.