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Close to Home (I)

Big Jack was turning off the lights in the youth club when he heard a noise coming from behind the pool table. Flicking them on again revealed a forlorn, foetal figure sat on the floor.

It was Lanky Pete.

“What's the matter kid?”
   Lifting his tear-stained face out of hands revealed a freshly split lip and accompanying facial bruising.
   “That happen tonight?” Big Jack raised his voice. He didn't like altercations happening behind his back when the individuals involved were in his care of duty.
   “No Jack. It were earlier today.”
   “Come on kid, what happened?”
   “Yer don't know the kid ... someone in class ... Pez ... always in fights ... Shoplifting kid ... weren't even him ... were his brother ... after school ... and he's in the fucking army,” Lanky Pete blurted.
   “Come on son. Never had you down as a wuss. It'll heal. Them lassies'll fancy you again soon enough.”
   Lanky Pete put his head back into his hand and started sobbing again.
   “You gonna be in trouble with your folks?”
   “Already know,” mumbled Lanky Pete.
   “A girl involved?” Jack surmised that there was more to the bleating than just the beating.
   Lanky Pete lifted his head out of his hands again and looked Big Jack directly into the eyes and nodding said, “Jodie Howls, this stupid girl I fancy, she said I deserved it. Said that I deserved it. And it was for nothing. Hit for nothing.”

And that was how Big Jack came to tell Lanky Pete the story of his trip to the Antarctic.

“I was 22 at the time, maybe 4 or 5 year older than you are now. But kid, I understand. Something that happened to me might help. A story from when I was a lad like you.
   “Margaret, now there was a woman. This woman wasn't only my soul mate, she was my soul. We'd been courting since we were 17 or 18. Oh, Maggie, a fine, beautiful woman. Such a kind person. Clever soul.
   “We were about 21 she suddenly decided, bang out of nowhere, that it wasn't working. It was over. I was gutted. Absolutely gutted. But I didn't let it stop me. I was in love with this woman. I was going to win her back and by doing that I became a complete mug.
   “I helped her parents with their house which needed loads of work doing to it, fixing their roof, painting. Hours of work. But worse than that I used to drive her everywhere. Can you believe it, I used to drive her to see her new boyfriends. Because she didn't have a lift and I was desperate to see her. I'd do anything to spend time.”
   “So, you win her back?”
   “No. For about a year nothing I did for her seemed to work. It was driving me crazy. I was seeing the woman I loved nearly every day but she no longer loved me back. In the end I realised that I had leave and get her out of my heart. At the time I was into rambling. The open and bleakness of the fells.”
   “Rambling. Like Hiking.” Lanky Pete laughed. His crying had stopped.
   “Don't laugh. This is a serious story. I mean I loved the outdoors and also I liked photography. That kind of thing. A man must have hobbies. So I heard about this job in the Antarctic, through a friend. It was brilliantly paid and was just what I needed.”
   “The Antarctic?”
   “Yep.”
   “You went to the Antarctic?”
   “Yeah. Two years. At the time I thought it was the best thing for all involved. No people. No pubs to drown my sorrow in. And no Maggie. It was the ideal opportunity to get my head together.”
   'Was it cold?'
   Big Jack laughed, “Freeze the balls of a brass monkey, Lanky Pete, it was flaming brass monkeys. A really strange place. Like nothing on earth. More like the moon. Well, for the first few months everything was great. I got on with the rest of the research team. An odd bunch of guys and there was one woman but a butch, man-looking woman. Probably a woman who likes other women, if you get my drift. As I said, a right motley crew of freaks - like me at the time I guess. I fitted in and we all looked out for one another. The Antarctic is a dangerous place. It's not all snowball fights and sledging. And the first thing you learn is survival and then next is to love your huskies?”
   “Huskies?”
   “Yep, the dogs that pull your sled. They're your life-line and you have to work together as a team. It's not man and animal. They're too smart for that. Clever creatures. The strongest, most robust, intelligent of all dogs. And boy, did I love those dogs like my life depended upon it. You have to learn very quickly how to communicate with your dogs on their level or you're a goner.
   “So one day I'm out with my huskies - I hadn't thought about Maggie for weeks - and you get these weather reports by radio each day, but they're not always right. You get your own feeling for the weather. Of what's going to happen. So that day they'd predicted a white-out.”
   “A white-out?”
   “A white-out is when a blizzard comes down and it's so thick that all you can see is whiteness. You lose all sense of direction. You can't even see up from down or your hand a foot in front of your face.
   “So anyway, this day, it was beautiful, clear blue skies, not a cloud in slight. Perfect for photography. There was no way in the world that the day's report was correct. But my colleague told me not to go too far from base, just in case. I took their advice. And then out of nowhere - Boom! You guessed it, a blizzard. Didn't even have time to get back to the sled. The huskies had bolted just like Maggie. So much for them being my best friends.
   “So you're taught before you go out there all these survival techniques. If you're caught in a blizzard you have to dig yourself in and wait for it pass. Otherwise the cold will kill you within an hour. But in my stupidly I thought that I could make it back to base on foot. I knew that I was no more than half a mile away. I got out my compass to check the direction and headed off.
   “After less than what I thought was about 200 yards I was completely knackered and thought it best to dig in. I couldn't see a thing. The base. Nothing. You always carry heat packs and rations for four days in your back-pack. So I made my new home in the ground, got in, closed my eyes and prayed for the blizzard to be over soon.”
   “Shit, that sounds scary.”
   “No when it comes to survival you go into automatic mode. No time to be scared. So, after six hours I dug a little look-out hole. Still white. A day later - still white. Two days. Three days same whiteness.
   “And then I started to worry. The heat packs had all been used. It was so cold that I had been using them faster than I should have been. And there was only one day's worth of food left.
   “Fifth day, white and no food or heat left. That's when I started to think about Maggie again. When I thought that I was going to die. When you run out of food and heat packs you're taught to eat snow for water and urinate on yourself to keep warm.”
   “Piss on yourself, you mean ... urgh.”
   “You don't think about it when it's a matter of survival. Life and death, kid.”
   “So how many days were you in your hole?' Asked Lanky Pete, now completely engrossed in the story.
   “Well you can normally survive another 10 days on water alone. So after 14 days I really started to worry, fearing for my life, I was week and my head had started to do funny things. Maggie would get a letter saying that I had died of my own stupidity in the Antarctic and they couldn't find my body, because I had already buried myself.
   “15th day, white. And then finally on the 16th day I saw the most glorious site I have ever seen in my life - blue. It was the longest 16 days of my life. I did more thinking about myself and how I feel about my life than I ever have done since. There was nothing else to do.”
   “And?”
   “And the only thing I worked out was this very simple thing - care about what people think only when you care for them and they care for you back. Worrying about anything else is bullshit Pete.
   “You like this Jodie, I'm sure she's a beauty but she doesn't care for you, which she obviously doesn't or she wouldn't have said the things she said, don't worry about what she thinks, kid. You're a good lad. Find someone else who does care like you care for them. And don't worry about anything else.”
   “So what happened with Maggie? What about Maggie?” Lank Pete asked.
   “Mrs. Big Jack? It worked. She'd missed the hell out of me while I was away. We got married about 4 months after I got back.”
   “Did that really happened? You've just made it up.”
   “True story, kid,” Big Jack said with a wry smile
   “Fucking hell.”
   “Couldn't put it any better myself,” Jack said, “but that's not the most amazing thing about what happened. The stories not finished. When I dug myself out of that 16-day freezing hell-hole in the ground, you wouldn't believe it, all that time I had been less than 30 meters away from the base all that time.”
   “No way!”
   “Yep. True. I was so close to home all that time it was unbelievable.”

Big Jack reached out his hand to Lanky Pete and pulled him off the floor where he had been sat, listening intently.
   “Look kid, I've got to lock up.”

As Lanky Pete stepped outside into the post-twilight warmth of an English Summer's evening, his lips and bruising prickled in the heat, which wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation, like any unexpected blue sky so close to home.

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