Hemispheres by Stephen Baker

hut,
     chilly and damp from disuse. The others made themselves comfortable, lugged a gas canister and lit the heaters, and then,
     with the aid of a crate of whisky from the boat, wallowed in the pigpen of extreme drunkenness. But I couldn’t sleep, even
     when the snorts and grunts and squeals of the others had subsided into slumber. Every time I perched on the edge of it and
     the circle of my thoughts threatened to fall into dream, I felt the rocks beneath us move, the island come adrift and begin
     to sink beneath the relentless ocean. I felt the water, breathtakingly cold, in my mouth and my nostrils, and I jerked awake,
     sitting upright and rubbing my eyes.
    How do you deal with the loneliness, I ask. Here on your own?
    She grimaces.
    People never understand, but I’m not lonely. I find myself alonein a dark house, late in the evening, and everything is deathly quiet – then I’m lonely. But here there’s always sound. The
     birds and the sea, even in the middle of the night. The birds talk in their sleep. Dreams, nightmares. You know.
    Wonder what an albatross has nightmares about.
    People, probably. Long-line trawlers, being hooked and dragged under. Killer whales. Or perhaps the sea drying up, flying
     forever over desert. Who knows.
    So there were three of you here, monitoring the birds. What happened to the other two?
    The other two went back when the island was liberated. We never saw the Argentines, you know. Just a few ships moving out
     at sea. That was the Falklands conflict for us.
    Don’t suppose seabirds give a toss about human wars. They just get on with it. Sensible approach, if you ask me.
    What about you Yan, she says, looking at me from behind a wing of hair flapping on the wind. Do you just get on with it? Is
     that what’s brought you here?
    I think, I say. That sometimes I just act on instinct.
    Like an albatross, she says.
    The wandering albatross is huge. The strange black triangular eyes of the tubenose and a great bludgeon of a beak. Clumsy
     as a goose on the ground, but in the air it soars beautiful and strange. An angel, or a ghost. We stand close to a nest mound,
     blinking back the stench. One of the adults is there with the giant brown chick, not fully fledged. And out of the chaos of
     take-offs and landings comes a single bird, wingspan held at just the angle to bring it through the rookery and down to this
     nest, this one among thousands. It stands facing its mate, webbed feet pawing the ground, and they greet each other with gurgling
     sounds and clacking of bills. Then the newcomer yawns and regurgitates a cropful of partly digested fish with an eyewatering
     wave of stink, the chick gobbling the slime excitedly as it emerges from the throat of itsparent. All seem contented and companionable, a nuclear family within the metropolis of the colony.
    They mate for life, says Sarah. Don’t breed for a few years, but when they pair up, it’s for good. They can live for forty,
     fifty years.
    Raise the chick through the winter, don’t they? I say. Must get chilly down here.
    She’s a good-looking woman, a few years younger than me, late twenties or early thirties. Golden hair cropped at the jawline,
     threshing around in the blustery wind. Through the all-weather clothing it’s hard to distinguish her figure, but she has fascinating
     eyes, green like the tundra grass and always moving on the wind. A hint of sadness perhaps. Why did she stay here on her own?
    No flies on you, she says. Chick stays on the nest all through the austral winter. The adults take turns to go fishing, even
     though there can be heavy snow, violent storms. We’ve monitored the distances they travel, with radio transmitters. If the
     weather’s bad in the South Atlantic they head north, as far away as the waters off Brazil. Six hundred miles or more and back
     to this rock in the far south. They’re incredible creatures.
    The pair on the nest launch into another frenzy of head tossing and bill