Hemispheres (6 page)

I’ve seen on the forum there are snow buntings down at North Gare. It’s the right kind of weather for them, a biting northeaster
coming from the sea with snow behind it. But you need to be patient with these birds. The harder you look, the more they withhold
themselves. And
just when you’ve given up and headed for the car, they’re all around you with a splurge of laughter, a jangle of keys, conjured
from the clotted snow clouds bearing down from Siberia.

So I’m in no hurry. I stroll down past the breakwater, the Gare itself, butting out into the river’s mouth towards its twin
on the southern side. They were built from iron and steel slag, thousands of tons of it from the foundries across the river,
back in the old days. South Bank, Grangetown, Lackenby, Dormanstown. You can still pick up chunks of slag on the beach and
see the gas bubbles frozen there.

And then I’m on the beach, strewn out towards Seaton and the dark stump of Hartlepool Headland. A couple of eider and a cormorant
out on the water, common gull and yellowlegs. Ice at the sea’s edge, crunching beneath my feet. You can look back along the
river here, past the concrete hulk of the nuclear power station and Tioxide and the ghost ships at Able’s, across the Seal
Sands refineries to what remains of the Billingham site. And on the southern side there’s Lackenby and Teesside Cast Products,
some of it still running and some of it derelict, and beyond it more petrochemicals at Wilton. Wherever you are on the estuary
there’s a faint hum, the quiet respiration of all this industry. And when the last plant closes down even that will stop.

There’s nobody else here. Colour drained from the river, the sea and the sky. Entropy. The sapping of energy. A universe staggering
to a halt, unable to expand any more. And the cloud banks keep coming over the North Sea. Leaden and purple and swollen with
new snow.

I’ve come way down the beach so I walk up into Seaton Carew and linger for a few minutes outside a sleeping pub. Jonah’s local,
when he was ashore. In summer he’d pad around Seaton with no shoes or socks on, just a tee-shirt and his crumpled tracksuit
bottoms, wandering into the pubs and the amusements, frittering away his time. They never discovered what sank her. She just
disappeared in heavy weather somewhere in the North Pacific. A freak wave probably, one of them giants thrown up by a trick
of wind and water. I peer through the window, half expecting to see him in there, bent over a pint. But only the fruit
machines stir in dreams of coloured light, gentle waves washing across the curtains.

When I come back along the beach there are one or two dogwalkers, faces swollen up with snow, pregnant with weather. And there’s
a figure on the foreshore between sea and land, where the shimmering tide moistens the sand. Sanderling are skittering almost
to his feet, tiny and pale, legs a blur and bills dabbing.

I recognize the way he smokes. There’s a thumb and forefinger raise to the mouth, then a quick sucking of breath, the cheeks
concave. Pursed lips and a furtive look around like a schoolkid smoking in the bogs.

Snow buntings, he says, as I approach. Stands his ground, looks at me steady with them mobile grey eyes in the square face,
skin sallow like parchment and the hair close-cropped and greying. He tugs the big donkey jacket around him, wings of the
collar riding up round his ears.

I was thinking about Jonah, I say.

Oh aye?

An uncomfortable silence. Yan thrusts his hands deep into his pockets.

Did he ever tell you about the caul?

I nod.

What a chopper, believing in that cack. Didn’t do him much good in the end like. I only hope it was quick. That he never went
down inside her.

He smiles tightly.

Talismans don’t work, he says. There’s no magic.

Outside the river’s mouth ships are waiting, lights blinking in a hesitant dawn, the shimmering lights of Teesmouth ahead
like a winter city, on cooling towers and flare stacks, condensers and refineries. Yan turns and begins to walk away, along
the beach. I stumble after him, and suddenly I’m a child again, struggling to keep up with those long legs. After a few steps
he stoops and picks something up, brushes it with his fingertips, then rummages in a pocket and shows me a clutch
of sea-smoothed glass in his palm. Clear, blue, green, the glass eyes of the sea, with cataracts of salt.

You used to collect these, he says. When you were a kid.

That was thirty year ago, I shrug.

But I take them anyway, from his outstretched palm.

We wander through the dunes, between the beach and golf course, snowclouds beetling above us. A couple of rock pipits, tails
beating for lornly. I sit down on the flank of a dune where a fence of wire and staves is almost submerged beneath drifts
of pale sand and marram grass bristles under the arctic hand of the wind.

What do you want Yan?

He looks taken aback. Squats down next to me, and spins a cigarette, while I inhale the warm aromas of stale tobacco and sweat
drifting from his jacket. He sparks it up, wind buffeting the flame of his lighter.

I’ve been meaning to talk to you, he says.

Phone, e-mail, carrier pigeon, I drone ironically, raising my palms in supplication.

Chance is better, he says, eyes flashing mischievously. Anyways, I’ve been in Pattaya.

You’ve been in Pattaya most of the last twenty years.

And the rest. Kathmandu, Lombok, Sydney, Benares. But Pattaya’s got it all. The beach, the beers, the boom boom. A bar takes
a lot of running Dan. And the women are incredible, apart from the ones with dicks.

I hear there’s no way of telling, some of them.

I can tell, he says, with a wink. And the opium is something else. Jesus Christ. Like raw cane sugar dripping over your brain.
Have you ever?

He catches my glance.

No, he says. You wouldn’t have.

He pulls hard on the little roll-up. Dust-devils of smoke scurry away on the wind.

What are you doing back here, then?

I’ve still got the house in Hartlepool. Tenants need a kick up the backside, every now and then.

He hesitates, licks his lips. Runs a hand over the stubble on his head.

Look. He pauses. I wanted to see more of you. You’ve not made it easy for me Dan. You’ve kept me away, acted like you didn’t
need the old fella. Can’t keep it up for ever man. You must be knocking on forty.

Thirty-eight. And you haven’t been here most of the time. Pattaya and the rest.

Chicken and egg, he says. Squashes his dog end into the sand. What else was there to do, after Kate sacked me off?

I’m suddenly angry. I stand up.

You’d have gone anyway, I say. And I don’t know what you’ve come back for.

I start to walk away, and he doesn’t follow. When I look back he’s still squatting there gazing out to sea, wind tugging at
the loose skin of his face. And then snow buntings are whirling up from the ground, over the round dunes choked with gorse,
along the runnels and hollow ways of the foreshore. I follow them, watch them feed among the thin stands of marram, Arctic
sparrows in buff and white. And when I draw near the closest birds flick up and over the heads of the rest, and the whole
flock flurries away like a rolling snow squall, tumbling over the next dune, coming to rest. Small contact calls, keeping
the flock together. And then they’re gone, lost among the tufts and scribbles of snow streaming across the sand and brawling
through the dunes.

The house is enclosed, turned in upon itself like a seed case. Curtains drawn, blinds at the windows, no lights. Perhaps she’s
still asleep. I creep in, feeling like a burglar in my own house, wincing as the latch clicks. In the kitchen I stand at the
fridge and pour a glass of cold milk. Neck it, feeling the cool liquid rise against my stubble. And then I take a step back
and knock against one of the stools at the breakfast bar. It tumbles over, clatters across the tiled floor, comes to a stop.
And everything is still. Kelly standing in the doorway, the cat rubbing at her calves.

I called you, she says, last night.

She’s barefoot, long dirty blonde hair rumpled from sleep, curves hidden under the towelling dressing gown.

I know. Saw the missed calls. It’s noisy in the pub, I don’t hear it go off.

You know what alcohol does to sperm quality.

Yeah, and coffee, and sweeteners. And air.

She smiles, blue eyes bleary, that little curl, almost a sneer, tugging at her upper lip.

Anyways, I say. I wasn’t on the beer.

She’s rubbing at the side of her face insistently, letting me know I’ve still got milk smears in my stubble. I choose to ignore
her for a moment.

She bends and rights the stool, perches on it.

You need to get yourselves some friends Dan. Some interests that aren’t just for creeps and loners.

But I am a creep and a loner.

I close the fridge door crisply, and lean back against it. She puckers her mouth, sighs. I shrug, grab my work jacket down
from the coat hook, start to thread myself into it.

Where are you going?

Got an installation booked.

It’s Saturday.

Can’t afford to turn work down.

I head for the door.

I’m ovulating.

Stop in my tracks, turn round and look at her.

The mucus, she says. It’s just right. Wipe your mouth.

I wipe it.

Is there any point? I say. Thought we were going down the IVF route now. Perhaps I should be saving myself for that plastic
cup.

She smiles, just for an instant. Just a tug at the corners of her mouth. Stops herself.

*

Stay there, she says, afterwards. Until you’re flaccid.

I look down at her face and she smiles that little smile again and stops herself again. And I stay put. Like two dogs joined
together, I think, despite myself.

Saw Yan today, I tell her. On the North Gare.

She looks up at me, that slight cast in her left eye. Struggles to focus.

Back in the country, is he? she says. What did he want?

Not sure. Wants to play happy families.

Bit late for that.

Mind, I had the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me.

Maybe he’s lost his bar, got money troubles. Probably wants to tap you for a loan but couldn’t spit it out.

That’s not his style.

Hmmm, she says, unconvinced.

A bitter cold February morning, birdsong gusting like a shower of ice crystals from the mature trees in the High Street. Blackbird,
chaffinch, wren, wind and sleet against the pane. I’m sitting in the office, a shabby underlit room on the first floor above
the bookies and fast food joints. Lilac walls, a bad hangover from the eighties. Boot up the computer, the hard drive whining,
lights blinking complicitly. But there’s no mail, so I watch a blackbird in the horse chestnut outside the window, the song
moving through his body like passing rain, pouring from his open throat.

It’s wired in. He hasn’t learned it.

I rest my head against the desk and the cold morning drifts through my bloodstream like a virus, those strings of gulls yelping
over on their way inland, in search of turned fields dark and teeming with invertebrates.

Coffee. The jug has been steeping for a few minutes now. I pour a cup and let the black lava settle through my bones with
a glow of fugitive pleasure. In a small business there’s a slim margin between ticking over and stone dead. Before Christmas
I was ticking over and now I’m dying
on my arse. Had the usual January calls. Problems with machines bought in the sales, a few broadband set-ups. Then nothing.
I look at the phone, small, squat and plastic, mocking me with its silence. And then it jolts unexpectedly into life with
a sick metallic sound.

I snatch up the receiver. Always answer within four rings.

Heron Networks.

Is that what you’re called now?

A faintly amused voice. It’s a couple of weeks since I ran into him on the Gare.

That’s what I’ve always been called. No reason why you should know. Imagine the heron of truth spearing the slimy fish of
spyware and computer pandemonium. Anyway, what do you want? I’ve got a business to run.

Thought we could meet up, have a chat. Any cripplers about?

Dunno. There was a pectoral on Tidal Creek last week. Scopes were out in force for that. Think it’s gone now but.

I’m going to cast an eye over Saltholme and Dormans. There’s a burger van along the road there, does the best bacon buttie
on Teesside. I could meet you there in an hour.

He sounds strangely insistent. I pause for a moment, then decide. I’ll go along, just this once, and tell him he’s wasting
his time. He may as well go back to Pattaya. The beach, the beer, and the boom boom, as he so eloquently put it.

Okay, but I can’t stay long. Snowed under with work here.

He’s right about the bacon buttie. It’s perfect. The bacon salty, fat perfectly crisped, and butter oozing into the ketchup.
I bite in hungri ly, realizing that it’s the first time I’ve eaten this morning. Yan is blowing on his coffee, the steam hiding
his face.

It’s lung cancer, he says. Always knew the ciggies would catch up with me, so I’m not complaining. They kept me off the booze.
When I started thinking about whisky I’d skin up a fag. One evil to chase out another.

I’m gaping at him, brain turning somersaults.

How’s Kelly anyway? he says, matter-of-fact. Weren’t you two trying for a bairn?

Yeah, well. Nothing happened there.

Wouldn’t want a son of mine firing blanks.

There’s a long pause.

It was a joke, he says. You know about jokes, right?

The cancer?

No. The firing blanks bit.

You don’t look ill, I say, and it’s almost true because he’s still imposing, lean but well-muscled, firm grey eyes not wavering
beneath the close-cropped hair. But the skin betrays him, looking a little tight and yellowed. Nicotine-stained, almost. We’re
standing against the roadside fence, saltmarshes crawling away on both sides, green and grey and wet. Flakes of snow still
pirouette from the sky.