Ross Raisin - Waterline

Fortunately but Beans doesn’t go in the reception, he’s wiped his hands with them, he says, and there is nobody about as they go up the stair and into the corridor. Open the door and go inside the room.

‘Aw, Christ.’

It has been turned over. All the bedding is thrown on the floor and the drawers under the one small table are wrenched open. Their two bags have been taken. He sits down heavily on the bed, his breath constricting. Beans is away out the door. ‘Fucksake, man. Fucking hell.’ He puts his head down on the mattress. Stares out the window. A wean is kicking a ball against the car park wall. He lies listening to it beat repeatedly on the brick.

‘She says there’s nothing they can do, we should’ve locked the door. Bastards. Probably them that did it. Serious. It probably was. Ye okay, pal?’ A hand is on his shoulder. ‘Look, nay worries. No like we had much anyway eh? First thing we’ll do the morning, we’ll get out of this place. Okay?’ He is hauling one of the cots up against the door. ‘The better on our own, serious, nay cunts nebbing about.’

The group have been there all morning. At any one time there are between four and eight of them: sometimes a pair will wander off toward the street, or a new arrival will come into the square and for a few minutes the silence is broken as the others get on their feet, talking, shouting. One of the women keeps herself slightly removed, on the end bench. If one of the men approaches where she is, starts saying something to her, she ignores him, and eventually he returns to the others. The air of the group is edgy, quiet, getting worse as the morning goes on. Nothing to drink. She feels cold and nervous, sober, aware of the staring line of people at the bus stop.

Shortly before midday, three men arrive, two of them each holding a heavy plastic bottle of cider. The mood changes straight away. There is laughter and movement, the first of the bottles getting opened and passed around. She stays where she is on the bench, and before long another woman comes and sits next to her, passing her the second bottle. This other woman is grinning, looking at her coat. ‘Jesus, Anna, alright for some.’

From the first swallow she is elsewhere. Her fear leaving; warmth spreading from deep inside her; the people at the bus stop disappearing. There is a burst of laughter from the group, one of the men saying something that she cannot hear, and the other woman resting her head now against the arm of her coat, closing her eyes. The woman’s hair is thin, and she can see there is a rash on part of her scalp, and on the very top of her head, a large dark blue scab.

A fight has broken out. It came out of nowhere — she didn’t see what started it — but two of the men are stalking stiffly around each other, and suddenly one of them crumples to the ground as he is struck by something from behind. In an instant the square is filled with shouting, the others in the group rushing in to join the scuffle. She lifts the woman’s head from her arm, lowers it gently to the bench slats and hurries away.

She breathes thinly as she moves down the street, past a line of parked buses and under a bridge, before slowing, her legs aching and frozen. At least her top half is warm. The coat is expensive and new, with a soft lining, and she pulls it tightly around her, making sure that the top is buttoned up to the neck. She needs to pee, but it is quite a way still to where she’s headed, so she takes a detour to a public toilet by the river. When she gets there though, she finds it has been boarded up. Fuckers. She is reminded of the stupid drunk dickheads fighting up at the square and she vows not to return there later in the day, whatever happens.

There is a pub on her way and she goes into it. On entering through the heavy swing doors she is immediately watched by the bar girl, and by the time she has gone down the narrow spiral staircase into a dingy basement corridor, there is a large man in chef trousers standing in front of the toilet entrance. He is slowly shaking his head. She turns, avoiding looking at his face, and goes back up the spiral staircase. She walks through the bar; the girl looking at her from behind the counter. Her limbs are heavy and she thinks for a moment that the swing door is not going to open. She desperately needs to pee. With a painful heave the door pushes open, and she turns her head back as she steps through it.

‘Fucking bitch.’

There is at least ten minutes left of the journey and she feels like she is about to piss herself. She comes to a side street leading toward a train station and goes down it, crouching behind one of the cars parked next to a high metal fence. Before she has finished, a man, and then a woman with a young teenage girl, come out of the train station exit and start walking along the pavement on the other side of the street. The woman and the girl are talking and do not see her, but the man crosses the street a short way ahead and must see the urine dribbling into the road, because he looks now through the car window at her and for an instant his mouth opens and he mutters something before hurrying away.

When she arrives at the house her mouth feels dry and her arms and legs are faintly shaking as she reaches for the buzzer. She waits in the doorway, until a moment later a man’s voice answers, and there is a click as the door unlocks and she lets herself in.

On the veranda, looking out. A yacht coming past, sails blustering in the wind. A woman’s face in a porthole. Away to the Med, says Beans. Champagne and Charlie. Only watch out for the Bay of Biscay or ye’ll be boaking it all up into the sea. Anyone’s guess how he thinks he knows these things. Maybe he does. The money is finished, he says then, but it’s nay worry. He’s got a plan. He is kneeling up and lifting the bush to get out. Okay? Okay?

There is a noise up on the pavement. A woman’s voice, and, quieter, a man’s. He tries to listen, no able to pick out the words, but they are getting closer. A gust of wind or something and suddenly he can hear them coming toward him and he scrapes deep into the bush, lying flat underneath it. He cannot let them see him; he pulls his jacket over his head. But they keep coming — they are onto the path now, and he can see the crabbit face, irritated at all these roots and thorns snarling about her ankles. They spot him then, laid out under the bush. She’s pure scunnered at the sight of it, but he has a wee smile on him, unsurprised, keeking down now at the cans by his feet.

It is colder when Beans returns, the river turned black and treacly. He has a dark blue ski-jacket-type overcoat under his arm, and a carrier that he starts pulling things out from: a loaf of bread, an open tin of beans, a stack of beers. He sits down next to him. ‘Here,’ he says, and lobs the coat over. ‘Put this over your jacket. Keep ye warmer.’

They make cold beans pieces out of the first few bread slices, and start on the cans. He has been drinking already, it seems. He isn’t out the game, but he’s talking loudly, laughing, and he makes them clink cans every couple of minutes — plus, each time, an extra one for the swan. ‘Thanks,’ Mick says, after one of these toasts, ‘the coat and that.’

‘Aw, you’re welcome.’ Beans puts on a panloaf English accent. ‘You’re very welcome.’ He takes a long gulp. ‘This fella I know, I called in a favour. He’s alright, no a bad guy. He’s a cunt, ye know, but he’s alright.’ They are laughing. A warm enclosed feeling from the beer.

‘It because I’m from Glasgow, how ye’re helping me out?’

‘What!’ He sits bolt upright and gets standing stumbling to his feet. ‘Ye’re from Glasgow? Serious? I’d have gave ye the swerve if I’d known,’ and he collapses to the ground again, cackling to himself.