Ross Raisin - Waterline

‘Ye coming in?’

‘Aye.’ But he stays where he is, looking in past the fat chef.

Beans grins. ‘It’s on me, pal, it’s on me, don’t worry.’

‘No. It’s no the game,’ but Beans is off inside already, and he follows him in.

They go up the counter and Beans immediately orders two breakfasts and two teas, then they get themselves sat at a table by a wall, away from the busy middle of the room. Pathetic. He knows it is. Somehow but he can’t feel it. He’s that hungry, and weak — that’s what it is, a weakness — that he can’t bring himself to say no. The breakfasts come and Beans is beasted right in, mushrooms flying about, ketchup and brown sauce and mustard all mixed together on his plate like a mental sunset. Every bastard in the place probably looking at them. The odd couple in the corner. It’s a good breakfast though. A buttery stack of toast, the warm mush of the sausage. Suddenly the thought that maybe Beans doesn’t have the money to pay for it either, and he’s going to do a run-out. The scunnered faces of the other customers and the cafe owner on the phone to the polis.

He does have the money, it turns out. A ten-pound note comes out the pocket, calm as anything, no chicanery, no hystericals. He walks up the counter just, pays, and they leave.

It is bright out still. They walk for quite a while, Beans talking — they aren’t allowed back into the hostel while evening, he is saying — until they arrive, suddenly, at the river. A stretch he doesn’t recognize. Beans is saying he wants to show him something, and they go through a gate with a broken padlock — Permits required to access this property for the purpose of nature conservation or fishing — into a small wooded, weeded area. Down a sloping thicket and thorns path, long grass and random rubbish — empty cement bags, a broken office chair on its side — to a sprawling bush, which they crawl under, emerging onto a patch of open ground that looks out on the water.

‘The veranda,’ he declares. They sit down, legs dangling over the banking. He likes to sit here and watch the boats and that come past, he says. And to drink too, judging by all the cans lying about. There is a swan who stays under the scrub off to one side where the banking stops, Beans tells him, only she’s no there the now because she’s out and about getting her nest together. It’s hard to believe him — anything he says — but then Mick sees the nest, lower down, sticking out from under the scrub, all these twigs twined into a great bowl on the wet ground amongst plastic bottles and lager cans. Bold as ye like. He gives a smile at the sight of it. These swans that he minds, who made their nests by the fitting-out berths, their feathers clatty with oil, but who’d come and go like they were boating on Loch Lomond.

At one point during the afternoon Beans goes off for a while, and returns with a couple of four-packs. They sit in the sun drinking, and Mick tells him what type are a couple of the boats that come by, Beans listening as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard.

It is only when it gets evening and they are on the approach to the hostel that it starts to loom over him again. The bare room. Bogging of bleach. Surrounded by homeless. They walk past a bar and he almost asks Beans if he fancies going a pint, but obviously it’s impossible because of the money situation. It’s bad enough he’s tapped him already for his breakfast, plus now the cans. So they go in, Beans away into the reception to chin the staff and leaving Mick to go up on his own.

He is on the stairhead about to turn onto the corridor, but there is noise up the way. Voices. He waits round the corner, the heart going mental already. Hard to hear what they are saying, but it sounds like there’s a few of them, and this other noise as well that sounds like somebody thumping rhythmically against the wall. He is that fixed on what’s ahead of him, he doesn’t notice the group coming up the stair behind.

One of them laughs.

‘You alright there, mate?’

He spins round. There are three of them. Young lads. They stand there grinning and leering at him.

‘Fine, aye,’ and he moves on down the corridor, the others up ahead turning to watch him, and these behind following him, one of them making a tootling noise, like a trumpet. He gets into the room, closes the door and pushes one of the cots up against it.

The sun straining a thin light through the curtain. Beans asleep in his clothes. Noises coming and going outside, keeping him awake, on edge.

It is dark. He has been dreaming. Christmas. Christmases, all jumbled together. The first one he is sat in the living room and the boys and the Highlanders are there sat in their positions, a wee plastic Christmas tree behind the television, Lynn sat on the settee next to Alan with her crabbit face on, like it’s the last place in the world she wants to be the now, this craphole, with its stained carpets and cramped corridors, and the wobbling banister as he goes up the stair and into the bedroom. Robbie and Craig sat on the kitchen chairs with plates of Christmas dinner on their laps, looking toward the shape in the bed. Craig cutting up the turkey breast into tiny pieces; quartering the Brussels sprouts.

He is awake. The mind out of its box, spinning, all over the place. A few minutes and he’s managed to calm himself a little, lying awake until he is able to sleep again.

Another Christmas. Australia. He is sat at the table waiting for her to come in from the kitchen. The cracker hat clamming to his forehead and the full works there on the plate in front of him — turkey, roast tatties and parsnips, bread pudding, cranberry sauce — and outside, all of the gardens down the road are empty because the whole of the Tartan Terrace is at the same game: the only weekend of the summer nobody’s got the barbecue out.

Morning, and he’s lying in the bed, the body aching, sticking. Beans suddenly in through the door and frowning. He looks at him a moment. ‘Breakfast?’

They sit at the same table, the same positions. The only difference is that Beans isn’t as rosy this morning: his back is up from something that’s happened in the hostel, and it’s making him mutter and scratch fork points through his swirly sauce sunsets.

‘See the problem is with these people, they’ve no respect for a person’s privacy, know? Mean, it’s no better than the clink, serious, and I’m expecting a bit of privacy myself. That’s the least I’m expecting.’

‘What happened?’

The eyes widen, far enough to expose the white outsider parts that are normally sheltered under the lids. ‘What happened? That bastard the manager, that’s what. He says to me, the magazines are supposed to stay in the reception, they’re no for taking out. Believe that? He’s no even asked me. He’s telt me I’ve got them but he’s no even asked me first, that’s how I’m beeling about it.’

He cloys up then and they don’t talk any more about it. They finish eating and Beans pays.

It is colder, blowier, the day, and after a walkabout they go into a train station, park themselves on some seats by a pasty shop. There is a scaffer hanging about the ticket machines and Beans is watching him, the bristles up, like a dog. The smell of pasties wafting; a rare moment of enjoyment. He thinks for a moment how the shame of leeching like this should be making him the more desperate to get doing something, but it’s not, it’s the opposite — he doesn’t think, doesn’t care; he is into the routine. They are walking again. Fine but. Fine. Keeping on the move. A stop at the offie on the way to the veranda, and it is okay once they are sat down because the wind is mainly kept off by the bush all afternoon. As soon as they get leaving though, the familiar feeling starts to kick in, the nerves already on edge.