Ross Raisin - Waterline

The trouble is, even if he does make up an address, probably they’d be able to check up on it these days. Even these yards that are just a mess of scrap metal and titty calendars, they’ll still have some way of finding out on a computer if the address matches what you tell them, and then that’s you screwed. He switches on the television. Maybe he’s looking at all this the wrong way round. What he should be doing is fixing out a place to stay first. But no, that isn’t right, he’s thought through all this already: he doesn’t have enough for the deposit; and even if he did, landlords will aye be wanting references as well. And he doesn’t have those, that’s for certain. He has to keep going but. Battle on. What is it they say — if ye get chucked in the Clyde, ye swim to the bank and haul yourself out, a fish in the one pocket for lunch, and one in the other for tea.

He isn’t going back. That is the one thing he is sure about. Getting the coach up there with his tail between his legs and returning to that dark, silent house he can’t even breathe inside, and everyone seeing that he’s failed and pitying him. Everyone? Serious? Who’s everyone? Nobody even knows that he went. And the house is up in the air by now anyway; someone else moved in, and the housing association after him for rent arrears.

He keeps to his room the next few days. The routine is set in. The shop in the morning, and the rest of the day he watches TV, drinking, dozing, the brain shackled. Zoning out like this, he can control it most of the time, keep his thoughts sluggish enough they can’t get any speed up; although the torpor and the drink mean he is sleeping a lot, and that is when he can’t control it. She is in his dreams, but out of reach, never clear. One afternoon he drops off and he has this vivid sense that he is in the house, in his chair, half asleep watching the football scores coming in on the vidiprinter. The house is quiet. There is a faint noise of chopping, coming through from the kitchen. He waits for the Rangers result, and when he’s seen they’ve won, he gets himself up from the chair and goes out of the living room. The chopping noise is louder now, and as well the unmistakable sound of boys fighting upstairs. At the entrance to the kitchen he stops and looks at the back of her, chopping, away with herself humming and no noticing that he’s stood behind her. Carrots. A stew. The pleasing sound of meat frying away on the hob. He is enjoying watching her — the quick hands scooping up carrot chunks and the smooth movement of her shoulders inside the pullover. ‘Ye there?’ she says, without turning round. He smiles, walking up to put his arms around her waist. ‘Smells good, hen.’ He leans forward and now she does turn around but it’s no her, it’s Mary, kissing him, and he stumbles back trying to grip hold of the counter, carrot tops getting knocked onto the floor, bouncing off the lino.

He wakes up hot and confused. Light outside, but he can’t fix out what time of day it is. The racing sensation as his brain tries to make sense of where he is, whether he’s awake or not. He is on the bed. Flakes of pastry on the pillow by his face. He flicks them onto the carpet and closes his eyes, everything spinning around.

Worse than these daytime dreams but is being awake the night. The darkness out the window seeming like it’s going to go on forever and him hot and stiff on the bed, fragments of memories coming at him out the dark from nowhere. The drink helps. It pulls him under and he sleeps deeply for a few hours, but then always there is that point in the night when he wakes up and it is a long while until morning and he knows he’s going to lie there just, a sore feeling behind the eyes, edgy at the slightest sound out the window or through the floorboards.

The daytimes when he is drowsing, he’s in and out, on the border of dreams and memories. Not all about her, either; some of them good, wee things from the past. Another dream he has, that isn’t so much a dream as a pure lifelike recollection of something that happened once at the yard. It comes into his head from nowhere. Charley Gordon. A great bear of a man, with a thick red neck and the half of his teeth missing out the big daftie smile. This when he was a plater’s apprentice at John Brown’s and Charley was his journeyman. A Catholic. One of the few, but Charley could handle himself, he aye enjoyed it even, the argle-bargle and the bigotry. All these stories he’d tell Mick of this or that wee nyaff that’d put the mix in and he’d had to sort him out. When he wasn’t telling him these stories he was sending him off to the stores for whatever parts it was he needed. Mostly it was something simple and he’d go ask direct from the storewoman — flange nuts and mating screws, all these strange names that the things had — as he shuffled about and looked at his feet, too shy to talk to her. Other times there’d be a whole load of things that Charley would be wanting, and she’d let him in the stores to collect them up himself, up and down the sliding ladders to get them into his sack.

This one time Charley had gave him a long list of parts for a bevelling job he had to do, and Mick knew he’d expect him to be half an hour or so to fetch it all, but, cocky wee imp that he was, he reckoned he knew that store better than anybody, and so the idea comes to him that he’ll chance legging it up the road to the pool hall for a quick game, before slaloming around those ladders and getting back in time. Course but when he does get in the store, he can’t find half the parts, and by the time he’s collected everything it is gone an hour and Charley is spitting teeth, they ones he’s still got, anyway. He hardly speaks to him the rest the afternoon and he makes him work like a dog, ordering him everywhere to do all these tasks for him. It takes a few days until Charley’s forgave him, and by then it’s all a great joke: the tapping on the wrist and the big smile whenever Mick’s back rushing in from the stores. So he thinks it’s all forgot about, but then later the week Charley sends him off, and he’s that wary of making any mistakes it doesn’t even occur to him what he’s doing as he goes up to the storewoman and asks her if she’s got a pair of large red nipples. The slap she gave him, he could still feel it an hour later, stood at the countersinking machine with Charley chuckling away next to him.

Sometimes a memory like that, it appears from nowhere and it sets you wondering about things, like what happened to Charley? He still alive? Did he ever get himself that wee sailing boat and fuck off to the islands like he used to say he would? Who knows? Probably. Aye, probably. He didn’t mess about, auld Charley.

No Breakfast is back again. Maunderly as ever. Sometimes it’s him, and sometimes it’s the friendly one, wanting to chin him for a conversation. He has a sense of floating most of the time now. He’s outside of everything, outside of himself, giving the same attention to the world as he would to the TV on in the background — the handing over of his rent; the pamp of a car horn outside on the road; a street cleaner changing a bin, bits of newspaper and a banana skin falling onto the frosted pavement. He watches him absently from the window. A black guy. He’s got himself a job, well. How did he do it? Probably he’s qualified for something else, like Dia and Eric, washing dishes with a degree in the pocket. They get on with it but. They aren’t too proud for any of it because they’ve got a purpose, is how, they’ve got a family to provide for and a house to build, so it doesn’t matter how many times these English bastard employers stick the boot on, they’ll always get back up and get on with it just.

It is night outside. He’s not ate in a while but the truth is he can’t be arsed dragging himself out to the shop. Hard to believe that no long back he was on the march across town looking for jobs, arranging interviews, speaking to people on the telephone. It takes him a long while getting up the energy to go out, and when he does, it is because he makes a deal with himself that he’ll stock up with enough supplies that he can make them last.