Ross Raisin - Waterline

‘Serious?’

Dia nods slowly.

‘How do they know? How they know the cleaners aren’t in the rooms?’

‘They spy.’

‘Aw, that’s terrible.’ He pulls the machine down and starts a new cycle. ‘And ye’re joining in yourself, well, if they strike?’

‘Yes. If they can do this to them, they will do this to us.’

The whole of the basement staff are in on it, he finds out soon enough. Too bloody right. Dia’s no wrong, what he says. Give them an inch and all that. The next meeting is called one morning, wee nods and whispers after staff food, and he goes along to it. It’s no exactly organized. The staff room is a fair rabble getting when he arrives, and for quite a long time nobody is looking too sure when it’s supposed to start, until a few of them begin shushing their fingers and one of the women stands up on a chair. It’s the one he saw in the manager’s office. She speaks in Spanish, but he gets the gist. The finger jabbing away. She’s good; she holds the room. A certain kind of magic that starts to happen when a person stands up like that and gives a voice to all these disgruntleds listening in.

After a few minutes, she starts saying it in English, ‘No pay, no work,’ and the KP boys are joined in with the clapping. Obi and Vincent are here as well. He claps with them. It feels good, being part of it. At the same time but, there’s a sense of being cut off, all of them, cut off. They’re clapping in a basement and there’s nobody else here. It’s hard no to think how small they are. When the work-in was starting and Bertie was climbing up on his brazier, everybody heard about it. That’s how it succeeded. Everybody joining together to support them — the miners, the Dutch, the Beatles — there’d been eighty thousand on the march through Glasgow. Eighty thousand! And, as well, they were actually building something then, they weren’t striking, they were actually keeping the work going, how could anybody argue with that? A strange kind of work-in it would be if they tried that here, scrubbing lavvies that haven’t been sat on, plates that no food has touched. No the less, no the less. It is good, what they are doing. It is crucial.

He goes to the next meeting as well, a smaller affair with only a handful of the housekeepers and him and Dia. More of it is in English this time. A couple of the women get up and tell how much pay they’ve had nipped the week, or which rooms hadn’t surfaced until the back of eleven. He keeps quiet, listening. Leaves when Dia leaves. When are they going to get doing something about it, is the question he’s wanting to ask. If there’s going to be a strike, who is behind them?

A day off. The thought of hauling himself up and out of the hotel, buying a mini television, making a phone call. Easier staying in his room, hidden, safe, a few cans left.

Without a window and any shifting of light, it’s hard keeping track of the time. There is the alarm, obviously, but that only points what the hours and minutes are, it doesn’t give a proper sense of the here and now, passing. It is marking time, but it’s not his time that it’s marking. A noise in the corridor. Voices coming past, gradually fading. Do terminal patients feel the time in a hospital, laid out on a ward? When the brain and the body are losing their functions, shutting down, sparked and lulled by drugs. Do they know how long they’ve been there, or do they stop feeling the hours — the long stretches between grapes and colostomy changeover speeding up as the mind slows down?

He gets up and dressed for staff food at five. They sit chewing in quiet. Occasional bits of conversation. He asks Dia and Eric if it’s been busy and they tell him no, it’s Thursday, always quieter on a Thursday. On the other row of tables, where the receptionists sit, he spots the woman he spoke to the day he arrived. It’s the first time he’s seen her — probably she only comes down for the lunatic when she’s on a double, or maybe she brings her own food in usually, who knows? What does it matter? She is sat pattering with her co-workers. Smiling quite a lot as she talks. Probably that’s how she stands out, the smiling, it’s no exactly a common feature down here. Dia picks up his plate to get leaving, clapping Mick on the shoulder as he goes.

He stays and finishes his food, half listening to Obi and Vincent talking about an increase in their agency charge — Vincent hadn’t noticed it, but Obi is saying he’s seen it on his payslip — while across the way, she is the last of her group getting up. He waits for her to move over to the clearing table, and picks up his plate.

‘How’s it going?’ he says, standing in next to her.

‘Food could be better,’ she laughs, scraping her plate.

‘Look, see I was hoping to ask a favour, if it’s okay.’

A wee look of surprise, or unease.

‘Sure, what is it?’

‘It’s no a big one’ — he tries a smile — ‘it’s just I’m wanting some paper. Mean, I want to write a letter.’

A look of relief. ‘Of course, no problem. Tell you what, if you wait here a minute I’ll go fetch some for you now.’

He sits down at a table, watching her go. The heart is clappering, he realizes. Stupit crapbag.

She is back quickly.

‘This enough for you?’

He grins: he’d only wanted a couple of sheets but she’s brought him the whole caboodle — a full pad of hotel writing paper, a pack of envelopes and a biro.

‘Aye, that’ll do it. Thank you.’

She gives him a smile. ‘No problem. Let me know if you need anything else.’

Back in his room he sits down on the bed with the pad beside him. He tries to think. What is there to say but? There’s nothing. There’s everything of course but there’s no way to put it without saying things he doesn’t want to say. Without lying. See if Robbie knew the truth of it he’d be pure beeling. And no just with him either, with the whole family, Craig in particular. And then they’d all be drawn into it. They’d all know.

Dear Robbie,

I hope you and Jenna and Damien are well

is as far as he gets. He puts the pen down and stares about, trying to concentrate. Instead though he starts thinking about the receptionist. He doesn’t know her name. He should’ve asked her. I ought to have written you sooner, I know, or gave you a call, but everything’s went that fast I’ve lost track of how long it’s been. Which is kind of true, but it’s bullshit still. It isn’t what he wants to say. The truth is he just hasn’t called. He could have done, but he hasn’t, simple as that. Nay excuses. The thought of her again. Being friendly with him, no pitying, friendly. Smiling.

An erection. Christ. He looks at it a while. Ye dirty auld bugger, eh. He pushes the pad aside and sits there staring at his dobber. After a moment he gets up and goes to the door to spy a look into the corridor. A voice, or a radio, sounding quietly down the way, but there is nobody about, all of them working, or asleep, or whatever else it is they do.

He sits on the edge of the bed, cleaning himself off. It is uncomfortable. Sore. He bundles up the toilet roll and drops it into the waste bucket. That’s the letter writing by, well. No way he’s doing it now. But as he goes to put the pad on top of the table, leaving it there with the pen, a scunnery feeling is started welling inside him. Dear Robbie, I hope you and Jenna and Damien are well . That’s all he’s got to say. And now this carry-on. He needs suddenly to sit down, close the eyes, screw them tight, fight back the waves of disgust that are convulsing in his stomach.

His chest begins heaving, erratic wet dribbles coming out of his nose, and then when he does start to greet it isn’t in a great relieving burst like the other one he’s just had the now, it is a jerky, tight, drivelling kind of greeting, which doesn’t make anything the better because he knows as he’s doing it that it isn’t for her that he’s bubbling; it’s for himself. Self fucking pity. The desperate fucking emptiness of needing her there. Needing to tell her that he’s sorry, but no for her sake, for his own. Selfishness. He gets off the bed, glancing down, as he goes over to his work clothes, at the stiff little pouch that is sat in the bottom of the waste bucket.