Ross Raisin - Waterline

He wolfs the sandwich and crisps, although the soup is too hot to swallow down quickly. Why is he stood there anyway but? He could go. No like he’s bloody beholden or anything, but still he stays put, staring into the side of the minibus, trying to get the soup finished and already it’s too late, a woman coming round the side, approaching him. He watches her over the top of his cup, his shoulders tensing.

‘Hello.’ She stands there just, no saying anything, smiling. Obvious it’s some kind of a ploy to make him talk. He stays quiet though, the cup held up to his mouth.

‘Good soup?’

He nods his head.

‘We always try to have a soup on. Especially nights like this.’

The roof of his mouth is scalding. Some noise on the other side of the minibus.

‘Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?’

‘No,’ he says, mainly because he can’t be bothered acting it.

She starts going in her coat pockets. ‘Here.’ Handing him a piece of paper. ‘This has the address of one of our winter shelters which is open tonight. It’s just off this main road, actually. Not far.’ She smiles, and he takes a big gulp of soup, watching as she slips the hand into her pocket again.

‘Do you have a faith?’

‘No.’

She is unperturbed. ‘Well, take one of these anyway. Something to read through, if nothing else.’ And she holds out leaflets of what look like Bible scriptures. He doesn’t take them, but she has turned round anyway, distracted by whatever’s going on past the minibus. Some kind of scuffle is broke out. She starts toward it, and he moves forward as well, by instinct, looking what’s going on. Some kind of argle-bargle between the two groups; facing off to each other, lots of shouting and birling about. One of the figures steps forward and there is a surge of excitement in the group behind him — ‘Do the soup, do it, do the soup. . go on, fuck off back to Warsaw’ — and a soup cup is thrown, the liquid arching through the air. A melee starting, the Christians softfooting up to it, and he takes his opportunity to go; he puts his plate and cup on the ground and is away.

The cardboard was took out during the day and possibly he is going to die here, sat up against the iceberg generator. Both legs are shaking now, and his face is that frozen the teeth have gave up chattering. Instead, a random spasm of his jaw each few minutes, the two sets of teeth crashing together, so that by this point he’s got toothache as well; no part of him wanting to miss out. He is past caring though. Nothing is real any more, even the pain. All that exists is the cold.

The street is dark and empty and he turns back a moment to check the name of it. It’s the right one. Why shouldn’t it be? What’s he expecting: drunken, toothless scaffers spilling about over the road? A giant arrow — down and outs, this way? Further on there is a smaller street off the side, and down it, a church. He goes toward it in a kind of daze, without considering what he is doing; all he knows is that he’s definitely way too fucking sober to be doing it. It is the cold that pushes him on, chibbing like a gun between the shoulder blades.

The great wooden door of the church is closed, no sign of anybody about, so he carries on round the side to a single-storey, modern kind of a building. A light through the ribbed glass above the door. He presses on the button, but nobody comes out, so he tries the handle and goes in. A small, dark foyer. Old books on a shelf; a poster on a noticeboard — Sunday service crèche club. Fucksake. What is he doing? Nay turning back now but, because a door is opening; the Hallelujahs are coming.

A tall man with close-shaved hair and glasses is looking at him from round the door.

‘Hello. Can we help you?’

‘I was told there’s a bed.’

‘Come in.’

He follows him through into a large hall, the lights turned out, but he can see well enough the humped shapes in bags across the floor. They go into some kind of office, and the man sits down at a table, motioning him to a chair opposite.

‘Now, we require very little here by way of paperwork. We provide a place to sleep for the night, a hot evening meal and breakfast. All we ask is that you treat the church and the other guests with respect. That, really’ — he smiles, holding up both hands in mock surrender — ‘is as complicated as it gets.’

Guests. He serious?

‘What is your name?’

He tries to think up something, but he isn’t quick enough. ‘Mick.’

‘Hello, Mick. My name is Yann.’ He is smiling again and Mick wonders if maybe this is the hallelujah bit coming. ‘Whatever has brought you to us tonight, Mick, nobody here is going to judge you, and anything you tell us will be treated in confidence, as is the case with every one of our guests.’

‘I’m no a homeless, just I’m in-between things, is all.’

Yann smiles. He isn’t buying that one. ‘That’s alright.’ He starts to get up. ‘Let me get you a cup of tea. I’m afraid it’s too late now for the evening meal. We don’t generally allow admissions after eight, but we do have a space and I know how cold it is tonight.’

‘I’ve already ate, thanks.’

‘Good.’ He goes to the door. ‘Now, I need just to tell you, we don’t allow any drugs, alcohol or weapons in here.’ He smiles. ‘We’re pretty relaxed, otherwise.’ He goes out the room. Drugs? Weapons? What does he look like to this guy?

A few moments later the Hallelujah comes back in. A small cup tinkling with a spoon and sugar lump on a saucer. He gives it to him and leans down to pick something up outside the doorway. A sleeping bag, and a rolled-up mat. He puts them on the table. ‘Finish your tea, then I’ll show you through.’

There is a couple dozen bodies. The room honks with feet and drink and urine. Cabbages. He is being shown to a space against the wall in between two humps, and all he can think is — no, he cannot do this. Leave, well. Remove yourself from the place and slam the door firmly shut behind — thank you, oh dear Lord, for no judging me and for the tea but that’s me offski the night, goodbloodybye.

‘Breakfast is at six thirty,’ the voice is whispering, the mat getting laid out for him, ‘and all guests are asked to vacate by seven.’ Mick sits and takes off his shoes, a pure blessed relief, and even if the brain doesn’t want him to be doing it, there’s no chance the body is going to listen now as he slides into the warm bag. He will be up and out immediately as he’s swallowed down some breakfast. Guests are asked to vacate by seven. What a fucking place. Hotel Hallelujah.

He is facing toward the wall. The bag pulled right over his head. Still but he can’t shut out the sounds. Farts and wheezings all around him. Cabbages. He sleeps in fits. His chest cramping each time he wakes and then strains the bag tight about him, but the smell, that smell, it’s inside the bag, inside him, right into the windpipe and the lungs, until he is pure desperate for some other smell that he knows, something familiar. But he can’t mind any. Impossible to imagine that any other smell exists. It’s just this.

A noise wakes him. A shout, somewhere in the room, followed by a long wail. For a moment there is silence but then it comes again, a loud scurling sound. Like a fox; no something human. He closes his eyes, wanting to shut it out, but he can’t, even in the quiet in-betweens, because he is braced, the heart tromboning, waiting for it to come again. He inches the bag down from his face and props up onto his elbow to try and see over the hill of whatever he’s next to. There is no movement anywhere. Only the dim shapes of all these others, who don’t seem to notice this desperate wailing noise, merging it instead into their own nightmares.