Ross Raisin - Waterline

He stares at the picture. He knows the face as well as if he was seventeen still. But it’s just a picture. It doesn’t tell you who she is. It’s just a picture of a young girl on the edge of a photograph, giggling next to her best pal. Mary. He recognizes that face keen enough too. Cathy standing just off to the side, like she always would, no that Mary was any the prettier, nay chance, it was a question of confidence just, that’s all it ever was, and Cathy a wee touch the rounder maybe but so what? At the very beginning it was Mary that him and Pete both had their eyes on. And it had dug his insides up at the time when it was Pete lumbered her first at the dancing, and even then that was only because Pete was further on with the refreshments that night.

Cathy knew all this. She’d told the story that many times herself. Still but. Mary had been first choice; see you could joke about it all you like but that was how it had happened. There’s no changing it. Easy to forget with all the time that’s passed. For him, anyway, easy for him to forget. But then you start to wonder: does something like that ever genuine go away? Even after the yard folded and the four of them drifted apart — Cathy and him away to Australia, Pete and Mary to one of the New Towns on the outskirts of the city — did she ever think about it?

He and Cathy would only have been seeing each other a couple of months when this photo was took. Probably he was still beeling at Pete. No that you can tell here, the two of them staggering about holding on to each other, fresh from another visit to the friendly old hen in the pinafore apron handing out the specially blended QE2 whisky. Yous two again, well? Go on, then, give me your cups, ye pair of troublemakers. Near to her, there’d been the bookie taking bets what the name would be: Churchill at three to one, and him and Pete had the John F. Kennedy at five to one, and he can’t mind what odds QE2 had been but certain nobody had guessed it would be that. Except for auld Aberconway, that is, John Brown’s chairman, stood up on deck, Princess Margaret in her white wool coat stood in next to him. And then the Queen herself, of course, she knew; even a wee smile from her as she cuts the ribbon and presses the release button, the crowd starting up with the chants when the ship doesn’t budge off her blocks. ‘We shall not be moved,’ they’d sung. Pete shouting out, ‘Give her a shove!’ and the girls trying to get him to shut his mouth. Then a moment later she starts to shift and there’s a great cheer goes up as she slides down into the water and seven hundred tons of drag chain scutter down the slipway after her.

In an instant he is up and grabbing an armful of all this stuff from the settee, bundling it against his chest and away out the room, up the stair.

A shove of the bedroom door and he goes quickly inside, no hanging about as he drops the things onto the bed, the sheets bare and wrinkled, a slant of light hitting where the pillows would be.

He doesn’t bother with putting the photos in their proper places, he piles them all together and gets them taken up to the bedroom with the rest, a sweat coming on as he hurries up and down the stair. He can picture Mary well enough. He can see what she looks like — the exact image of her face less than a fortnight ago at the funeral talking to him and giving him her consolations. He can see Mary; but he can’t see the wife. In fact he can see just about anybody he puts his mind to apart from her, he can picture Phillip fucking Schofield the better than he can Cathy — the squeezy-arsed grin and the silver hair and the all-of-a-sudden serious hands clasped together leaning forward — there he is, fucking Phillip Schofield.

He collects the cookbooks, magazines, the Barbaras, the lot, all of it dumped into the bedroom, a dribble of sweat running down his temple now as he comes back in the living room for more. All this stuff, he needs shut of it. It’s not helping him remember her — no in the right way, it isn’t, no the right way at all — it’s just reminding him she’s dead. And that applies to all of it, the whole fucking lot: tapes, tape player, plant pots, salt cellar, vacuum cleaner, all of it, it can all fucking go.

He stands there, looking around him. Dark outside the window. The room is almost bare: just the settee, the armchair and the television, rooted, in defiance, to their usual positions. He sits down and puts the TV on. The carpet could do with a clean: collections of dust and dirt lined in squares and circles over the floor. The vacuum is away though, buried in the bedroom under a ton of other stuff; and anyway he doesn’t care that it’s dirty, what does it matter, there’s no point being in there even, and he gets up suddenly to go to the kitchen. His mouth is parched. He gets himself a glass of water, drinks it down next to the sink and is about to sit down at the table, only he can’t shake this feeling that he needs to keep moving — keep doing something — and if he doesn’t he will sit down and never be able to get back up again. Probably sensible, actually. See if he sits and does nothing then that just means he’s going to think about it all, and if there’s anything he has learnt the day, it’s that thinking is an unwise idea; thinking only tires you out, makes you act like a lunatic.

‘See me over the remote, will ye, hen.’

‘Here. Mind there’s my programme on soon but.’

‘I know.’

He flicks the channel over and hands her back the remote, careful he doesn’t overbalance his tray, and carries on eating. It’s a good tea. A chilli. She’s put something in it, he’s no too sure what it is, but it’s got a wee bit different of a flavour about it, which he’s liking.

‘The appointment go okay the day?’ he says.

‘Fine, aye. The doctor gave her a new prescription. Says it might help her sleep better.’

‘Seems to be working, eh?’ He smiles, glancing up to the ceiling, and keeps on with his tea. It’s quite loud, the TV, he realizes, and he stretches over for the remote to turn it down.

‘I saw Mick Little the day, ye know, one of the drivers at Muir’s.’

She nods.

‘I no tell you his wife died?’

‘No, Christ, that’s awful.’

‘Cancer, I think, mesothelioma.’

‘That’s awful. Poor man.’

‘I know. He looked bad as well, broken, ye know?’

‘What do ye expect? His wife died. How ye think he’s gonnae look?’

‘I know. I know.’

He scrapes up the last forkful of chilli and puts the plate by. She’s checking her watch, he notices, no wanting to miss her programme. It’s not on for a few minutes yet though, so they keep watching what’s on, something with a guy on a boat talking into the camera.

‘Ye speak to him?’

‘Mick? No. It wasnae the right situation. I was coming back with the messages, I passed him on the street.’

‘How ye no speak to him, well?’

‘Naw it wasnae the right timing. What am I gonnae say, serious? It’s best no intruding. She only died a few weeks ago, I think.’

She finishes eating and puts her tray on the floor.

‘He coming back to work?’

‘Maybe, I’m no sure. Possibly not actually, what with how quiet things are the now. Might be he’s near retirement anyway, I don’t know.’

‘Ye could give him a knock, maybe, in a few weeks, see if he wants to go for a drink.’

‘Maybe, aye.’

‘You and Bertie and all them. Give him a while and then call in on him. He’d probably like that, if he’s no going back to work.’

‘Come on but, what am I going to do, call in at his house? It’s no like I know the guy that well. I don’t want to go nebbing in on him.’

‘Ye’ve been drinking with him before.’