Ross Raisin - Waterline

He hooks the carriers on the window latch where they can hang outside in the cold. The food he wraps up in another carrier inside the bag, to keep it dry if it rains.

Apart from the rent visits down the stair, and the toilet, he doesn’t leave his room for a couple of days at a stretch, each time moving only when he has to nick out for new supplies. The bathroom is on the floor below, and he waits listening through his door until he’s sure the coast is clear before he comes out. One morning but, he gets caught out. He’s about to go into the bathroom when a door opens to his side and a woman near walks into him.

‘You going in there, mate?’ She is young, wearing a baggy green sweater and tights.

‘Aye, but you go — go on.’

‘No, it’s alright, I’ll wait.’

He sees a sliver into the room as he walks past: clothes on the floor and a man having a hingie out of a window, smoking. Plants, a big poster on the wall. As if they are living there. He takes a pee and feels suddenly conscious that the woman will be coming in there after him. When he’s finished, he takes a couple of pieces of toilet roll and wipes away the dark yellow spots that he’s dripped on the rim.

The money envelope is getting thinner. As well, the last stores he bought in were badly got by the rain: the sandwiches are eatable, just, but they’re too damp to last more than one meal. The cans are nice and cold but. See one thing that’s for sure is that as soon as any employers start checking him up in their computers, they’ll know straight away from the Employers’ Federation or whatever that he’s got something of a radical about him — with the work-in and the unions and that. Plus the episode with the hotel now as well, don’t think they won’t have that logged too, because they will.

There is a programme on. He watches it for a while. It’s a good one. Interesting. It’s about bears, grizzlies and polars, how global warming is forcing them to live closer together. The Arctic ice cap is melting that much each summer that the polar bears aren’t always able to swim north to it like they used to, because it’s too far away getting, so instead they’re turning south toward the Canadian mainland. Which is where the grizzlies live. The inevitable sectarian battles resulting. But as well what’s different is they’ve started mating with each other. The programme shows this photo of the first cross-breed bear, dead, killed by a hunter. Being honest, it looks to Mick pretty much like a polar bear, but apparently it’s got a lot of the grizzly’s features. In the photo, the guy that shot it is grinning away like a nutcase. He’s got a massive army camouflage coat on, and is knelt down beside the bear with his hands splayed across its back. Stupit bastard. You have to wonder how that meeting went, when the hunter met the biologists: look, I’ve found you the world’s rarest bear, a true wonder of nature, and I blasted it through the neck. The programme doesn’t go into that but. Instead it shows all these polar bears loundering the streets of these freezing remote towns, bold as fuck, petrifying the locals outside the minimarket.

He drinks too much that night, finishing all his lager store. It’s no a wise move, because instead of taking the edge off things it just makes him the more maunderly, and he lies on the bed unable to stop himself greeting. He is surprised — as if from outside of himself, observing somebody else — how long and loud he cries. The need to be with her coming on him so strongly that he can’t stop it, and his whole body becoming tight and strained, searching for the feeling of being with her but no finding it, just a vacuum instead, falling and falling.

He is cold. It looks out the window like no the worst day — sunny, in fact, one of they bright, biting wintry mornings — but No Breakfast is scrimping on the heating and the room feels pure Baltic. He stays inside the bed. Some of the time sleeping, some of it with the eyes open, staring at the ceiling, the brain a blank except for occasional daft wee thoughts, like listening for the announcers between TV shows and counting how many programmes they do before somebody else comes on shift. Wondering what it is they do while the programme is on — do they have to sit there in their booth or whatever preparing for the start of the next show, or can they get up and wander about, get a cup of tea, go the newsagent’s for a scratchcard? Daft wee thoughts. Daft wee thoughts that keep at arm’s length the more important one of what the fuck is he going to do now that the money is almost run out.

When the time does come, he makes a decision. The twenty that he’s got left, he will keep back for food and emergencies. It isn’t enough to pay for another night anyway, and the most important thing is that he’s got enough to feed himself; plus the emergencies, whatever they might be. Drink, probably, if the way he’s craving for one the now is anything to go by. He packs up his things and goes for a wash of his face. Strange, but he has some energy about him now that there is no choice and he is on the move. He switches off the television and leaves the room.

He’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to bump into anybody on the way out, but the reception door is open and the younger one sees him coming down. He must think he’s paying another night, because he comes to the doorway, only then noticing the bag.

‘You are going back to Scotland?’

‘No.’

He nods his head. He’s an alright type, even if he does stick the nose in too much.

‘I’m done with the room but. Thanks.’

One thing is for sure: they don’t like you sitting down in this city. He’s been more than twenty minutes looking for somewhere to park down and eat his sandwich, but he hasn’t passed a single bench yet. They don’t want you staying put; they want you rushing about, horn-pamping, snatching the free newspaper. There are no people stood outside the pubs smoking. There aren’t even any pubs that he’s passed, christsake. He keeps on. He doesn’t know where he is, and wanders at random, but it must be he does some kind of a loop or something, because after a while he is arrived back at the coach station.

It is hoaching inside, people milling about, queuing, sat waiting in the bays. That’s fine but. The more people, the less obvious he feels, and as he walks through he wonders how many others in here are hiding, kidding on they’re going somewhere but in fact just keeping out of the cold. He needs to pee. Another problem. A short search and he discovers that it’s 30p for the pleasure of using the toilets. The money situation as it is, he’d rather not. See if he was needing a tollie then maybe that would be a proper use of the emergencies fund, but no a pish, nay chance.

There are a couple of carry-out coffee places near the station, but it’s a while before he finds a pub. When he does, it is fortunate a busy one, and he has no problem sneaking in the toilet to take a fine long and satisfying widdle. The only problem, once he’s done, is that now he’s here he could genuine go a pint. No. First he needs to — well, fuck knows what he needs to do first, but definitely it isn’t that, so he gets making his way back to the station instead. Finds himself a seat, lodged between a Muslim woman and a Chelsea supporter. There is a voice over the tannoy but he isn’t hearing it. He is in the Birmingham bay, is the last thing he notices before he nods off.

When he wakes it is showing 17.44 on the information board. The bay is emptied and he is sat with empty seats all around him. He gets up and goes over to the newsagent’s, looks at the price of sandwiches and gives them a bye, deciding on a chocolate bar instead. Then over to the nearest busy bay.