Ross Raisin - Waterline

‘Where d’ye say it is, this place?’

‘Naw, don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s near here. I know where it is.’

‘Ye’ve stayed before, well?’

Beans halts abruptly on the spot, jolts his body upright. ‘Have I stayed before? Course I’ve stayed before. Course I have.’ And he starts walking again, chuckling to himself. Has he been bevvying? It’s hard to tell. He’s a mighty queer ticket, whichever way. There is a period of quiet. They keep on. No a slow pace either — the guy walks with these great loundering strides, the shoulders stooped over and hunching, bunching, as he steps. It had came as a surprise, during the lunatic moment back there, how tall he actually is when he stands straight. A big man, and this large army-type overcoat that he wears, making him look even bigger. Impossible but to tell how old he is. The hair, when he’s took off the woolly hat to sleep, is a full coverage — dark, straggling below his ears and greasy as drag-chains. His face though, lined and scarred; purple. Whatever it is he’s been doing with himself, it looks like he’s been doing it a long while.

He is trying now to hoick his tattered Ikea bag higher onto his shoulder. Mick is conscious of his own faded holdall, smart in comparison, and as well his clothes, which if maybe they aren’t the cleanest, they are normal clothes, they are his clothes. He isn’t going around in an army greatcoat and a pair of silver running trainers with the soles flapping off them. Beans is hammering away again: the weather, how it’s freezing but it isnae wet and that’s the important thing because it’s blashie weather that’s the worst. Jesus, he could do with a drink.

‘See, look, this is what I’m telling ye. Here.’

They are outside a grey concrete building at one end of a street. A woman’s voice on an intercom by a heavy, unmarked door and they are getting buzzed in. A corridor; straight ahead a staircase and two doors off either side. Bare walls and grey carpet tiles. The strong smell of bleach. Beans doesn’t seem too sure where to go and he hesitates a moment, a quick neb in the one door, then back out, and he tries the other one; goes inside. Mick follows him in.

It looks like a doctor’s waiting room: plastic chairs backed against the walls and a single battered settee, a small television that is turned off, and a low table sprawled with mangled, thick magazines. An Asian woman is sat at a computer on the other side of a small security hatch. Beans goes straight up and puts his hands onto the counter. They look massive in the stark lighting, veined like cabbages.

‘We’ve booked a place the night. I was in earlier.’

Mick sits down on the settee. Comfort flooding his legs. He could go to sleep right here, close the eyes, go to sleep.

‘No, see, I came in Sunday but there was no rooms so I was told come back the day and they told me earlier there was places for us, that’s what I’m saying.’

The woman’s voice is hushed, barely audible past his huge back. He is arguing with her; the protective shutter above the hatch about to roll down any moment. Beans turns then and comes toward the settee. He dumps down and Mick near slides onto his lap.

‘Says we’ve got to wait for the hostel manager. She’s no too sure we’re booked in but that’s pure crap — I was here the morning and I spoke to the guy, I telt him we were coming. Fucking indirect access, ye ask me.’ He keeps speaking, but Mick sits in a kind of a daze, wanting to let the brainbox go to rest. Hostel. He is in a hostel. He tries no to think about what is happening; trying no to think about any of it, least of all this blowhard sat here next to him, staring now at the underwear models in a worn-out clothing catalogue. An agitated old black man noses in at one point, his trouser bottoms rolled up unevenly to show dirty yellow walking socks. He glances toward the television a moment, then backs out.

Mick is falling asleep, Beans quietly looking at the magazines, and another man coming in, younger, smarter, a trimmed beard. Beans is stood up, talking to him. The man goes away, through a locked door into the room with the woman; returning with sheets of paper. He gives some to Beans, then he’s looking down at Mick, handing him the papers and saying something — he can’t hear it properly, it’s quiet like a radio with the batteries going — benefits, it is something about benefits. He tries to sit up. The man is talking to Beans again. No visitors. No alcohol. No drugs. He repeats it. Beans nodding his head. Grinning. He looks demented.

The room is small. A cubicle. Three beds with high plastic sides, lined up like cots. He puts his bag down at the foot of one of them and looks out the small window at a brightly lit car park. Lies down on the bed. He can hear Beans outside, laying it off to the man because the room isn’t big enough. He stares up at the ceiling. The same smell of bleach; sanitizer. Strange but he is glad of Beans being there. The ceiling is starting to swim. He shuts the eyes. So tired it feels his breathing is about to give out.

A shout wakes him. He sits up. His clothes are on and it is dark apart from some lights outside a window. A hollow racing sensation as he gets his bearings. There is another shout; it is in the corridor — Go on! it sounds like. Then feet pounding and a tremor in the floor as they come past his room. Go on! More than one person. Three or four. Men’s voices. A moment later it is quiet again, but the tight panicked feeling does not leave him and he lies there rigid, exhausted but no able to get back to sleep.

When he wakes up again it is getting light outside. The room is empty. Tummelled sheets on one of the beds. He is hungry, but he doesn’t know if there is a breakfast in this place. He doesn’t know what or where the place is either, for another thing. After a while he gets up and listens through the door, and goes out.

The kitchen along the corridor is empty. Plates and pans are heaped in the sink and there are blackened scratchings of food littered on top of an electric hob cooker. Something in the room which is boufing. Doesn’t smell much like food but, and he realizes as he gets closer that it is the bin. He moves away from it and toward the fridge. Inside, a bundled-up Tesco carrier and a snipped-open packet of pasta sauce inside the door. That’s the lot. A stank of yellowish liquid pooled at the bottom. Second inspections but, and he undoes the carrier to find a plastic tub of cocktail sausages. No like they’re going to miss a couple, and no like he’s fussy either, so he puts one in his mouth; but there is something wrong about the taste of it, and he gets standing up, shuts the fridge door, awful, fucking awful. Posters on a noticeboard. Needle exchange. Substance-use worker. His stomach lurches and he bends over the sink, about to boak, but he doesn’t — he stays there, poised, with the stomach spasming but nothing coming up, just this thin dribble hanging off his lip. He sticks the tap on and swills his mouth. The rush of water splashing against the plates and pans and wetting his front. Where is he? He wants suddenly to laugh. Where in fuck is he? He turns off the tap and goes out, back to the empty room, and into the bed.

Beans is stood at the foot of the bed, looking at him.

‘Fancy getting some breakfast eh?’

Mick gets up automatically, without thinking. Starts putting his shoes on. Beans is over by the window, his hands clasped behind his back, calmly gazing out as if it’s a loch view.

Once outside, they are straight away on the march. No the worst day. Warm on those parts of the pavement that the sun is shining, although pretty snappy still in the shaded areas, past offices and residential blocks, under a bridge, past a line of parked buses. They go by a small scrub of a square and a mob of scaffers around the benches on one side. Seven or eight of them, women in the mix, sitting and standing about, drinking. Beans slows down, watching them. For a moment Mick is feart he is wanting to go over, but they carry on past, although Beans still has his attention turned to the group. They continue up the way. Truth is, he’s glad to be out of the hostel. Away from that room. Probably most of that group back there are staying in the place too. The thought of it, of being in there with them, himself in a room alongside, it doesn’t make sense. He can’t reckon with it. Better outside in the open, away from it, even if that means being with your man here. They are stopped outside a cafe. A large scratched sticker on the window — a fat chef holding up a steaming forked sausage. Beans is going in, but Mick hesitates outside.