Ross Raisin - Waterline

He sees then the flowers, white ones with egg-yolk centres in a wee pot plant placed where the headstone will be. They are new. The old ones actually have been cleared away, so somebody’s obviously come and spruced it up a bit. Craig. It must be. He’s been in before work then, or his lunch break — no, he’s too far away to get here and back that quick, so it must be after work that he’s come, that he’s coming. Keeping up his vigil and swerving on the idea of a visit to his da, who’s no been the grave himself even once since Craig left last week, as Craig is no doubt aware.

He leaves down the path and out the cemetery, away down the street until he reaches the park. It is quiet here too, nobody about as he goes in through the entrance gate. It’s always quiet in here, that’s the best thing about it, and how they used to come in from time to time. No the worst park in the world. No the worst. No the best either but, don’t kid yourself. All you find in here is the occasional old guy on a bench, or a group of schoolweans having a smoke, or sometimes a scaffer or two smashed up on the superlager, pishing up a tree.

There are plenty of decent-looking flowers in here. They are planted around some of the paths and the trees, and they’re no that dry and wilted either, even with the weather like it’s been. There is a bed of these nice red ones on the outside of a path that rings a chipped dribbling fountain. Just the job. He follows the path until he gets to the flowers, and he’s about to bend down to pick a few when, a short way ahead through the trees, he keeks the parkie, pushing his wheelbarrow of weeds and dirt. Mick carries on along the path. When he comes back round to the same point, the parkie is turned the other way picking something up off the ground, but it’s still too much a risk, so he keeps going round. The bastard’s probably trying to trick him. Pretending he’s fiddling at a plant when in actual fact what he’s up to is putting the surveillance on your man here, who to be honest must look like some kind of nutcase, now on his third lap of the fountain. Probably he looks the part too. He’s not shaved since the funeral, and also it’s fair to say he could maybe do with a wash and a fresh change of clothes but such is life, eh.

The guy is still poking about up the way, so he moves right out of the parkie’s line of sight, hiding himself behind a good thick tree. He stays there, waiting, each now and then sticking the head out to check the lay of the land. The parkie’s got army shorts on, and a yellow high-vis bib, so it isn’t a problem keeping track of him. He waits. Before long the parkie gets moving on, going toward a wee brick outhouse type thing, and Mick takes his chance, stepping out from the tree and quickly across to the fountain.

He kneels down, and starts nipping off the stems of the flowers. The blood is going, he can feel it throbbing in his ears. A grin coming on. Pretty daft, really, the way this has turned out.

‘Hey! No, hey, you can’t do that!’

He’s been clocked. Sounds like an East Europe. He stands up and runs for it.

The guy is still shouting behind him, but Mick doesn’t turn round, he makes for the entrance, the stomach cramping and his breath all over the place. Stupit, stupit, pure fucking ridiculous, but all the same there’s something of a thrill about having done it and as he gets to the road he holds the flowers aloft, punching them in the air like a baton. He starts laughing. Ye great bloody bampot, serious. He slows to a jog along the pavement and looks round over the palings, where the parkie is standing some distance off, watching him, probably confused at why some headbanger has just nicked his flowers.

He lays the flowers down on the grave, a little way off from the others, and leaves.

When he reaches the turn into his street, he is still breathing quite heavily. In fact that is probably the first exercise he’s had in years. Plus as well no having eaten. Nay wonder he’s a mess. He is turned into the street and it is quiet, but as he walks on he sees, further up the pavement, one of the drivers from Muir’s. Steve. Impossible to know if he’s spotted him yet, but there’s no turning around the now, it’ll be too obvious if he does. Panic starts immediately to tighten through him. He lowers the head and speeds up, staring down at the street, his feet scuffing the tarmac, dog-ends floating beneath the grates of each stank he comes past. The heart is off again, beating wildly — look at the feet, look at the feet — but course that’s just going to make him look the more pitiful, isn’t it, but so what, so what, if it stops him getting noticed just, stops the possibility of a conversation, of being forced into the world of other people. He should have passed by now. Mick looks up, slowly, angling his head gradually to take in more of the pavement ahead. They’ve missed each other. He’s not been spotted. Relief pours through him, and he glances round to see Steve, a fair way past and crossed onto the other side the road, away with his carriers.

The house. The front door. It opens with a wee stiff shove and there the lobby and the corridor, dark and cool after coming in from the sunshine. The silence of it. Where to put yourself. He comes in and goes through to the kitchen. Gets the kettle going. Mugs clinking out of the cupboard. What a bloody morning. Christsake.

He has made two mugs. No point dwelling on it though. He tips one down the sink and takes hold of the other in both hands, letting it warm through the fingers. Something of a queer smell — probably the milk isn’t the freshest. It’s fine but, fine, he’ll drink it. And then the question again, where to put yourself? What to do now?

What is it that retired folk do with theyselves? All that time they have. Feeding the sparrows, the tellybox on, the park, wee familiar walks down the water, stopping and sitting to chat about this and that. All the patter you can have about characters from the past and how things were before the yards were closed, and what do ye think the now of these high and mighty new flats going up across the way there? The Iron Ladies, as ye used to call them.

There it all is still in the living room. The jumble sale on the settee and the photos still scattered over the floor. It seems even more ridiculous the now than it did before, but he leaves everything where it is and goes to sit in the armchair and finish his tea. He scans out over the photographs, and notices that a couple of them are gone partly under the settee. He gets up and pulls them out. Black and whites, good ones, he’d no paid them much attention earlier. One of them doesn’t have Cathy in, he’s put it out by mistake: it’s himself just, he looks about nine or ten, so it can’t be long after his da died, and he’s stood in the back court outside him and his maw’s tenement, grinning for the camera.

The other one is even better. He can mind it exactly. Twentieth of September, 1967. Launch day of the QE2 . You don’t forget a day like that. He picks up the photo and takes it over to the armchair. Even though it’s faded you can still see what a sunny day it was, the yard mobbed with a great crowd, more than 30,000 there. Cathy had fussed on that much when he’d gone to pick her up, getting her clothes right and her flask and her oatcakes ready, that by the time they arrived the yard was that busy it took over half an hour for them to find Pete and Mary. In the photo, the four of them are stood in a line with their arms around each other’s shoulders. He can mind even who it was had took it for them: this wee doddery man in a suit with his hair greased down, parted in a side-shed, who’d gave them his walking stick to look after while he fiddled on trying to get understanding the camera buttons. Cathy and Mary, in their bonniest dresses, holding hands. Himself and Pete blootered. Pete is holding the old boy’s stick, leaning down on it, and the rest of them laughing at him.