Hemispheres (38 page)

Don’t you want to know what happened?

Jonah bent over the potatoes, brow furrowing.

I know what happened. He was always hard to handle, your old man. Burnt a short fuse. Many times I’ve been glad he was around,
though.

I leaned heavily against the edge of the kitchen table, the wood grating uncomfortably into my coccyx.

Why were you glad?

Jonah’s hands raced across potato after potato, dropping each naked vegetable into a bowl of cold water. They shimmered, like
underwater corpses.

Imagine what it was like growing up half-caste around here, in the sixties. If people gave you chew you had to give it back.
With interest. If you didn’t teach them a lesson they wouldn’t leave you alone. You couldn’t opt out of it. That’s why it
was good having Yan around.

The potatoes were finished and he rinsed the sink out with scalding water, steam billowing from the stainless steel. He opened
a drawer and produced a kitchen knife, dull and ominous. He chopped each potato in turn, first into thick slices driving down
hard on the heel of the knife, and then quickly chipping each slice into long wedges, the blade rapping against the chopping
board as he did so.

I can opt out, I said.

The blade clattered through another slice of potato.

How do you mean?

Yan’s the same as Hagan. Stags goring each other with antlers. Tom cats ripping each other to shreds. Wild animals turning
on each other in rage. We’re more than that. We must be.

Jonah smiled, and laid the knife down flat for a moment, the blade dull with starch.

You’re idealistic, he said. I was the same at your age.

I rolled up my sleeve, showed him the purple bruising around my bicep. The livid, metallic brand of a man’s hand, where Yan
had gripped my arm this morning.

Jonah placed the basket of chips into the deep fat fryer, and the golden oil simmered energetically, a deep rolling bubble.

I don’t want to be like that, I said. Jonah looked at me sideways, sweat breaking out at his temples.

None of us want to be like that, he said. Not in the beginning, anyway.

We ate the scalding chips in silence on our laps with salt smeared across them and globules of deep red ketchup on each plate.
Once, I looked up and caught Jonah’s eye. He looked away.

I went back up to bed, though it was only mid-afternoon, pulled the eiderdown over my head. The scene in the pub came back.
Paul stretched out a hand, grey as the dusk, and touched Yan’s shoulder. Yan looked startled. He examined the cue in his hand
like he was surprised to find it there, let it drop to the floor beside Hagan’s body. As
the light began to flicker, the projector slowing towards a halt, the strobe lamp caught his face, gaunt and bony. He turned
towards the younger man and clapped him on the shoulder and the two of them locked eyes.

Breeze lifted the nets at the window and light roved over the shattered security glass in the door. And now Yan and Paul were
struggling with a bundle between them. Black plastic like a rubbish sack, shimmering in folds and trussed with gaffer tape.
Where the tape was stretched tight it revealed the shape of a man’s face. Nostrils, the tip of a nose, the channel at the
centre of the upper lip.

Give us a hand, Dan. He’s fucking deadweight.

I stayed rooted to the stool. Yan caught sight of Michelle, still behind the bar, pale face turned towards him.

Get the fuck out of my pub, he said. You whore.

And then Kate was in the doorway. She stared at them, stared at me. Took in the broken glass and smashed furniture.

Yan, she said, her voice quavering.

Indulge me my sweet, he said. Some unfinished business, and then I am yours until the end of time.

She stood there, paralysed.

Outside in the yard they dumped the package inside the boot, Trajan jumping excitedly as Yan slammed the lid down. They were
laughing, faces vibrant, and they lit cigarettes behind cupped hands, balloons of smoke rising from open mouths. Then the
car started and they were gone. Rain moved in from the North Sea and hid them from view, and the projector finally jammed,
the heat of the bulb melting through the frail acetate and consuming it in a pure flame of luminous white silence.

And I fled from them, out to where a raft of ducks huddled on the sea, wrinkles of grey water lifting and falling beneath
them. The sea flowed into my ears and I could hear the eiders gabbling quietly, the black orbs becoming opaque with sleep.
I moved close to the large, soft bodies, seeking their protection, and they shifted to accommodate
me. Rain craters grew and spread as a sea squall passed over, and the coast swam into view, the mouth of the Tees with the
long sweep of pale sand to the north.

She’s got another bloke, says Matt. In case you were wondering.

He’s sat opposite me in the portakabin with a crinkly smile on his face and a roll-up wedged between his lips.

Clare, he continues. She don’t hang around long, and apparently you didn’t get in touch.

Seeing my confusion, he creases into a grin.

No secrets in our profession, you see. It’s the long hours in the pub, steaming yourself dry. All comes out in the end.

Glad to have provided some amusement.

I manage a wry smile.

Well, he continues, conspiratorially, I’m not sure you even did that. Apparently you were a very poor shag.

He wiggles a little finger at me, eyes sparkling. A moment of silence while my cheeks begin to burn, and then Matt explodes
with laughter, teeth glittering in his beard.

Just joking, he says. She didn’t provide that much detail. But you should have seen your face.

I laugh along with him, relieved.

The webcam, he says. All packed up and ready to go. We’ll just load it into the back of your van. I’ll miss the old thing,
you know. Got used to having my ugly coupon beamed around the world every day.

Your loss is the world’s gain, I quip.

Matt chuckles.

Got something to show you, he says, before you go. Always happens on the last day.

He gets up from the table and I follow him outside into a gunmetal grey afternoon. We step gingerly across the site, mud squelching
over shoes, rubbing up the insides of trouserlegs.

Remember having a rant at you, your first time on site, Matt says. About the past. Being a fucked-up place we’ll never get
our heads round. Something like that. Well, what Julie found this morning is the proof of the pudding.

Iron Age pit, says Julie, when we reach her. Bloody big one, too.

Her estuary accent twangs in the northern twilight, pale face like a moon beneath the hard hat.

Used ’em for storing grain, supposedly, Matt says. But when they’d finished, they filled them up with weird stuff. Broken
pots, bits of animals, even bits of people. Not just rubbish. Kind of arranged in there, deliberately. Like it meant something.

A bit of insurance, Julie butts in. That’s my theory. Putting something back, like planting little seeds, to make sure it
all grew back again. Regenerated. People and crops and animals and pots.

Never seen anything like this but, says Matt.

We crane out over the deep pit, excavated into dark grey glacial clay, and look down. In the gloom, it appears that a huge
bird has been crucified. It lies on its back on a plinth of black soil, wings outstretched to each side. The late-afternoon
light ripples over the pure white bones, turning each one a pale arctic blue.

Dunno what species it is, Matt says. Bird of prey? Whatever, it’s been laid out down there, freshly dead. Bones are still
articulated. Then they covered it over with earth, and there it stayed for three thousand years.

It’s a raven, I say.
Corvus corax
. Like a bloody big crow. Look at the size of the thing. Birds of prey have a hooked bill, for tearing at meat, but look at
that one. It’s just a bludgeon. An axe. Pure power.

Twitcher, beams Matt. Wouldn’t ravens have evolved in the meantime, though?

No. Been the same for millions of years, millions of generations down the line. Ancients, they are. Not like us. We’re the
greenhorns on this planet. And they never forget. Got everything they need wired in, instinctive.

We’re the buggers with collective amnesia, laughs Matt.

Even so, I say. The past doesn’t trouble them. A single bright moment. That’s all a bird worries about.

Better get on with it, says Julie. The light’s going. Photos tomorrow?

Matt nods and Julie vaults back into the pit and hunches over the skeleton, brushing crumbs of soil from the eye sockets,
the massive bill and broad sternum. The two of us stand in silence for a moment, looking out over the heavy fields and the
gurgling lights of a newborn conurbation towards the muscular hills straining at the leash. Not very long ago, in the same
place, somebody not so different from ourselves arranged a dead raven, still warm, in a half-filled pit. They took a shovelful
of earth, then a second and a third, and emptied them over the coal black feathers, the crumbly loam mounting until the glossy
body was hidden from view.

Just come. As soon as you can, he says, the voice urgent.

I sigh and look at Kelly, who’s strenuously avoiding my glance.

I’m in the middle of something. I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished here.

I snap the phone shut. Kelly sighs.

Was that really him on the phone? she says. Sometimes I think he’s just inside your head.

He’s dying, Kelly.

It’s too convenient, she says. It’s like you’re having a conversation with yourself.

She’s gathered in the corner of the sofa, thighs encased in tight denim, firmly crossed like a giant nutcracker. Looks at
me incisively, blue eyes calm. That slight hint of a sneer about her upper lip.

Anyway, get your dinner, she says. There’s some beer in the fridge as well. Then we need to talk.

Not hungry, I say. You can tell me now, whatever it is.

She sighs again, and sets her face.

I’ve made you some salad. You need to start eating properly.

I’m not sitting around noshing with
we need to talk
hanging over me. You’ve started it, so tell me what’s going on.

At least have a beer, she says, in a small, tight voice, devoid of emotion. Unfolds herself and pads to the fridge, baggy
shirt swirling around her curves. Hands me an ice-cold cylinder and I pop the ringpull before swigging the metallic liquid.

Real German lager, I say. Brewed in Luton.

She doesn’t smile.

I’m moving out, she says.

It’s like a blow in the stomach. I feel nauseous and light-headed, the beer rusty inside me.

There’s a flat, she goes on, over Miriam’s shop. She says I can have it in the short term, until I find somewhere permanent.

Hang on, I say. We can talk things through. It’s like you haven’t given me a chance.

She thinks for a moment before replying, twisted towards me on the sofa.

We don’t want the same things any more Dan. I think it’s had all the chance it’s going to get.

‘I can’t help feeling you need a little more excitement in your life.’

You read my letter.

Yeah, so I read your letter. Add that to the list of grievances. Nice to know you discuss me with your friends.

I put the beer can down half drunk, no longer have the stomach for it.

I thought once we were through the IVF. Once we were through –

My voice rising desperately. She interrupts.

You’d have found something else. After your dad’s dead, there’ll be something else. A crisis at work, whatever. As long as
it keeps you paralysed, stops you from acting.

It’s not too late.

It’s just not right. Not any more. We could go upstairs now and have sex, but it wouldn’t be right. Something’s broken.

I sit for a moment, rub my thumbnails together.

You haven’t asked me whether there’s someone else, she says.

I wondered. All the nights you’ve been away.

Well, there wasn’t. Just stayed with a mate. Better than lying in that cold bed with you, back-to-back like bookends. Whereas
you, she says, pointedly.

What?

Who is she Dan? Miranda saw her getting out of your car at the station. Nice little peck on the cheek, by all accounts. Someone
classy, or just a whore from over the border?

Jesus, it’s like the fucking Stasi, I groan. It happened once. All them nights you weren’t here, the house cold and empty.
I was lonely, I got drunk, and I slept with somebody. It was the first and last time.

She looks straight ahead, eyes boring into the wall.

Look, I say, I’ll spare you the platitudes. I crossed the line. I stepped outside our marriage, and it scared me. Not a day
goes by when it doesn’t sicken me. And I know things haven’t been right. But we haven’t tried yet. Let’s work through it,
eh? Marriage guidance, counselling, whatever it takes. I thought we were in this for the long haul.

She’s looking straight ahead, her face furrowed in concentration. She takes a deep breath.

We could spend a lot of time and effort working on it, she says, picking her words. And it might make things better. But it’s
not what I want any more.

She delivers this verdict like a stone dropped through a grille, into an abandoned mineshaft. I listen as it descends silently
through acres of bitter darkness, and hear the dull and empty echo as it strikes bottom.

I’ve had enough, says the skeleton in the bed, abruptly.

He swallows and I can see the sinews and tendons in his jaw scrape together under the skin and hear the sand and gravel in
the voice. He
sucks deep at the oxygen mask, chest wheezing and rattling.

Pull the curtains, he says, eyes burning larger than ever in the emaciated face.

I scan for a nurse in the darkened ward, but all seems quiet. Draw the pastel pink curtains around the bed. Diffuse pink light
softens Yan’s expression.

It’s time, he says. I want to go. To the hospice. Get a wheelchair.