Hemispheres (10 page)

You want them all.

Yeah. I want to grab them and get my fingers burned. Before they die.

Is that what you’re doing now?

It’s what I’ve always done. I was engaged to Kate when I was eighteen, but then I met some squaddies in a bar and off I went.
Dropped back in a few years later and married her – I don’t know who was more surprised. But the chance of a few hands of
poker or an inside tip on a
horse, and I’m off again. To me and Joe it’s like breathing. Joe’s thermos flask, you know, that battered metal thing. Fifteen
years of good luck and bad in there, fifteen years of risking everything on the turn of a card.

So, she says. What happened this time?

Ah, look. I’ve felt it coming for a while. Like a thundercloud, all them possibilities. We were in a firefight. Place called
Mount Longdon.

I stop short, wonder what to say.

Afterwards I started walking. Couldn’t help myself. Had to get some air into me lungs. Started walking and all the time I
could smell it coming. A sharp smell, like windfall apples in autumn.

Sarah yawns. I realize it’s getting late. She’ll be up at dawn checking on the colonies. Photographs, leg rings, records.
But then she transfixes me with her eyes.

What about people Yan? she says. The ones who get left behind when you change horses. Don’t they get hurt?

She holds me with her eyes, and there’s a long pause before I reply.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think about it. Not when the dice are moving.

And afterwards?

Well, that’s different. You see, Kate and Dan are so much a part of me. But even when I’m with them, I’m still alone.

You don’t really do relationships, she says. Do you? Not two-way ones, anyway. When people start getting too close, start
getting right under your skin, you have to push them away.

You make me sound like a right bastard.

Maybe, she says, smiling. But I’m from exactly the same mould.

She holds my eyes.

Do you think you’ll ever go home? she says.

Her face is smooth, slightly mocking. I want to cup it in my hands.

I don’t know. I don’t know how deep the seam runs.

Cheers Yan. Nice to see that your family went out of the window when there was a chance of a legover.

Danny. I was being honest. I’m trying to tell you the truth here.

But you did fuck her, right?

I wouldn’t call it that.

Ah, look. It’s too much information to be honest. There are some things I don’t need to know.

I want you to know. I need to tell you.

Keep your voice down, the nurse is giving us dirty looks.

She’s a battleaxe, that one.

So, we weren’t in your head at all? Me and Kate.

Of course you were. It’s just. The inside of a head, right? It’s a lonely place. A lonely place to be.

Sarah shakes her head.

That lighter, she says. You play with it all the time, specially when you’re being evasive.

I’m not being evasive.

She laughs. I test the weight of the lighter in my palm. Twitch the little lever to raise the cap.

Found it on the Falklands, I say. Upstairs in a derelict farmhouse. A bedroom with the sky poking through.

It’s an odd design. Old-fashioned.

Doesn’t work, but. Needs cleaning, refilling. New wick.

Do you mind if I have a drink? asks Sarah, moving across to the cupboards.

Feel free. Should get back to my own bed. Hopefully they haven’t actually set fire to any wildlife in there.

The other cabin appears quiet, though there’s a light still flickering. Probably Joe. It takes a lot of liquor to swamp him.

Stick around a while if you like, she says. I was enjoying the conversation. She smiles tentatively. You could have more tea,
or a glass of milk.

Milk is fine. The juice of the cow.

She hands me a glass, sits down with a brandy.

Purely medicinal, she smiles. So how come you don’t drink?

Ran with some wild lads when I was young. Drinking and fighting. Never had a drink problem, touch wood, but I’ve been on the
edge a couple of times. Beer only, these days. No spirits.

I smile wryly at her.

So what made you stay out here on this rock, all alone? You could be sat at home watching Terry Wogan.

Reason enough, she says, quaffing the brandy. Well, for as long as I can remember I loathed my parents. Embodied everything
I hated. Suburban dreariness. Betjeman to the power of a thousand. Dad pruning the roses, mum cleaning the house. They were
bright people, they’d been to university, but somewhere down the line the lights went out and they settled for the routine
and the little semi with the patch of lawn, changing the car every three years and gawping night after night at the stupid
bloody telly gabbling away in the corner.

I sip at the milk. Thin longlife stuff.

I ran away from them, she says. Studied zoology, worked on reserves in New Zealand, the Galapagos. Sent them postcards from
the corners of the world. They worried about my job security, about low pay. They worried about my boyfriends who, of course,
were all scumbags.

Her voice is low and comforting, over the putter of the gas heater.

And then, just about a year ago, my mother died. I got a letter from my dad while I was working here, and I flew back home.
He was trying to act normal, making tea and small talk, but you could tell that a light had gone out in him. He loved her.
He missed her. An albatross without its mate. Did I tell you that they pair for life? Turned out she’d had cancer for four
years and they hadn’t told me. Didn’t want to worry me.

Parents, eh?

It’s final, you see. She’s gone and I’ll never have a chance to mend things. Say things. That’s the problem Yan. You push
people away, they don’t always hang around until you want them again. They have this habit of dying, leaving the country,
finding somebody else. They get on with their lives, and then it’s too late.

She’s crying soundlessly, shoulders quaking beneath the sweatshirt. I move round the table and sit next to her, put my hands
on her shoulders. A potential here, building, and I’m acting before my thoughts can catch up. Reach beneath her face and cup
it in the palm of my hand, look into those green eyes that flicker like wind through the tundra grass.

What about you Yan, she says, very quietly. Do you pair for life?

By way of reply I kiss her, very softly. She tastes salty. The wind and the sea. Stands up and moves towards the sleeping
quarters. Without an order from my brain, my body is straightening itself and standing up, following her into the coal-black
glittering darkness.

The winter sun shrinks to the size of an egg and the day to a frozen puddle between two walls of dark. We see bergs out at
sea. The nights are long, lit by gaslight and the wild stars. The boys emerge from their alcohol craziness, due mainly to
the fact that supplies are running short and need to be rationed. They ration their craziness. I also sense that they feel
bad about checking out, about being absent. The hut gets cleaned and swept, blankets are folded, rubbish and detritus are
banished. We cook the everlasting diet of dried and reconstituted food together, curries, paellas, sausage and mash, and eat
in companionable silence. We fantasize about fresh meat, fresh vegetables. Joe makes specific and bloodcurdling threats to
the local wildlife. Butchery, flensing, rendering, à la carte menus. The unholy noise of the colony fades into the background.
We no longer notice it. The albatross chicks are fed through the winter, thick down matted with frost, the parents wheeling
stiff-winged out to sea and back. I sleep with Sarah, sometimes. Joe wonders too long and too loud about the best recipe for
seal vindaloo. Sarah says she will be on the radio to Grytviken or Stanley if he so much as looks at a seal the wrong way.
She will call down an air strike right on his bony arse. Joe looks at her with new respect. Seal is off the menu.

Months go by like this and it’s hard to fill the time. I watch birds
through the short hours of daylight. Horse Boy reads his endless paperback. Sarah is busy, monitoring, ringing, taking photographs,
typing up reports on the typewriter, the keys purring through the long night. We all perfect the art of sleeping, long and
deep. Almost hibernation. I no longer feel the island coming adrift. Solid ground, all the way down.

Evenings we sit in the cabin, if Sarah is busy. I’m stirring the rehydrating food, bubbles rising through the liquid, little
orange jewels of reconstituted carrot and brown nuggets of reconstituted meat rising to the surface, dancing, sinking again.
Horse Boy is reading, lips twitching. Fabián Rodriguez watches impassively, heavy lids over his eyes and a cigarette in his
hand. Dave sleeps like a bear in winter. I’m worried about Joe. He doesn’t seem to have the capacity to deal with the empty
time. He fidgets, stands, walks over to the bunk, swears incoherently, lights a cigarette, mauls it until it’s dead, sits
down on the bunk, gets up again, goes to the door, comes back and sits down. A few minutes later it begins again. Like one
of them polar bears kept in a pokey cage, going mad with the boredom, endlessly circling, repeating the same meaningless gestures.
One morning I grab the opportunity to talk to him alone. The other three are outside, pissing about, throwing rocks at each
other.

I’m fine son, he says, aggressively defensive. Don’t need a counsellor. Go and play with your birdwoman.

Just asking Joe, I say, apologetically. Didn’t mean to step on your male pride. I head for the door. Maybes I’ll chuck some
rocks too.

No, hang on. I’m not fine, he says. Sorry.

I turn and wait. There is a long pause.

Ever hit a blim when you’re smoking? he says. One of those little rocks of seriously pure stuff?

I nod.

Happened to me once, he continues, and I started to hallucinate. Nothing crazy, just like a sine wave travelling down my body,
my legs billowing out to one side and my head to the other. Bed, I thought. That’ll sort it. But when I got there the room
was tumbling, like being inside a rolling dice. So I made myself concentrate on a spot on the
wall. There was a nail there and someone had drawn a little circle round it in biro. I just kept looking at this spot, and
after a bit my consciousness started to shrink around it. Everything that I was, concentrated in a spot the size of a sixpence,
with darkness outside. Then the spot shrank to a pinhead and I was gone.

There’s a long pause while I wait for the punchline. I roll a skinny cigarette. There are shrieks from outside, a huge metallic
clang as a rock hits the side of the hut.

Being here, says Joe, everything is shrinking down again. My brain isn’t working enough. Just a small spot, a tiny spot the
size of a pinhead. Get up, make the bed, look at the wall, make food, go to sleep.

His voice is rising aggressively. He stops and his head goes down in his hands. I spark up and suck tobacco smoke. Someone
seems to be climbing onto the roof of the hut. Scrabbling, laughter, more scrabbling. I put my hands on Joe’s shoulders.

We can get away soon Joe. As soon as the weather breaks. We’ll get back to civilization. Chile, or somewhere.

He doesn’t respond. Gaslight flickers over his pockmarks like the craters on the moon.

Look, I’ll play you for it, I say.

His right hand comes up, clenched into a fist. I see it and bring up my hand, forefinger and middle finger extended.

Stone blunts scissors, I say, banging my fingers against his fist. You win. We’ll leave as soon as we can.

I light his cigarette and he sucks pensively.

You let me win, he says. It doesn’t count.

I’m considering an answer when there’s a thunderous bang on the roof of the hut, then silence. After a few seconds I hear
the voice of Fabián Rodriguez, shouting for help.

I don’t think I can feel a pulse, says Sarah, standing up, rosy-cheeked from the exertion. I can’t get him back.

She’s tried resuscitation for twenty minutes now.

He threw a fucking rock, says Fabián Rodriguez, disbelieving. He was standing on the roof, threw a rock at me and then he
slipped. Must be icy up there. Fell off the roof and hit his head.

The body of Horse Boy lies at our feet, a shocking wound just above the hairline, a slick of oily blood polluting the rabbit-fur
of his head, moving slowly onto the shingle.

He threw a fucking rock, says Fabián again.

Up to their knees in blood, says Joe Fish.

We carry the body up to high ground, overlooking the colonies and the small cluster of huts. The sea is immense and troubled,
the island shrinking. We lie him on his back on the frozen ground. Sarah tucks a woolly hat over the wound.

His poor head, she says.

We begin to pile stones around and over the body.

A burial cairn like a Bronze Age king, says Joe. Like Agamemnon.

Wait, I say, and run down to the huts, helter-skelter over the shingle, my boots skidding and sliding on the wet and silent
stones. I return with the paperback, and lay it on his chest with what I hope is the appropriate degree of reverence.

What was his name? asks Sarah. I never heard you call him anything but Horse Boy. It seemed a bit rude.

Trevor, I say, Trevor Collins. He used to be in the Household Cavalry, something like that. Hence the nickname. He hated Trevor.

He was always reading that book, says Fabián Rodriguez. Never looked up, for hours and hours.

He couldn’t read, says Joe.

We look at him.

He couldn’t read, he repeats. Never really went to school much. He once asked me what the title of the book was, in case anybody
asked. Swore me to secrecy.

I bend down and close one of the stiffening hands over the yellowed pages. We continue to add stones and rocks to the pile
until the body
is covered, no trace of the brightly coloured clothing visible from the outside. The wind is blowing, as always, tugging at
the flaps on our waterproofs, tugging at the corners of our eyes and mouths. An albatross looms close over us, parachuting
down to the familiar nest heap among thousands, snow white against the grey clouds and black rock. The immense bird doesn’t
register us at all. If, on its descent, it glances in our direction, it sees perhaps only a group of oddly coloured stones
among millions of others.