Ross Raisin - Waterline

‘Bread crates,’ he says. ‘Good mattresses. Plenty of give, see, and they keep ye off the ground.’ He’s right too. They work well, slotted together with the matting laid out on top, and he is much more comfortable the night, no forgetting as well the bottle of superlager they got from the offie on the way back. He is able to sleep, even though he wakes up often. Each time he does, the tunnel boufing with a rank smell. The sour stankwater — but then there is a hiss of air from behind him, tickling the backs of his legs. The salmon.

Rain. They keep to the tunnel but it is filling up with water, so thank Christ for the bread crates. They stay sat or lying on top of them all night and all day as the blashie weather continues; his body aching, disintegrating, but always auld Beans there, trusty as ever with the bottle. The sun appearing. Beautiful spring sunshine. Daffodils. Bloody daffodils, where they come from? We have received a number of complaints. Sat throwing chuckies into the river, aiming at a can caught up in the yellow foam. Beans is a fair aim. A man of surprises, ye are. Aw, fuck off, pal, I used to play cricket for Scotland, ye know. The pair of them falling about pishing themselves. They are just stood there looking. A few residents have made complaints. Residents? Ye kidding? Who’s that, well, the fucking swan? She’s fine, man, she knows the score, she’s no a bastard like yous. But they aren’t finding it so funny, they’re just stood there in their high-vis jackets and their fishermen’s wading boots. If you don’t move, we will have to get the police. Eh, what? Who are yous, then, if you’re no the polis? They are laughing again and started throwing the chuckies at these three but the game’s over. Up in the air. Suddenly the polis, the protectors of the residents, are arrived and they are being pulled about and corkscrewed up the path — bloody hell, says the one of them, as he keeks the drinks cabinet. They let go of their arms a way up the pavement, and it looks a banker they’re about to get slung in the meat wagon, but no — get walking, they are told. The polis following at a short distance behind. Onto the roads and they keep going, miles and miles, turning round one point and the polis are gone, Beans muttering to himself, grumbling, chapping now on a door. After a while an Asian guy opening. No, he says, and he shuts it again.

They are going up a stairwell and his legs give out. He slumps down on the step and Beans is dragging at him until he gets up and labours on. Another door.

‘You.’

‘Me, aye.’

They are being let in and they follow the backs of a man’s legs up a staircase. Who’s he? My pal, that’s who. A small room and a TV going. He is sitting down on a settee and Beans and the man have went into another room. A plate on the floor with the remains of a jacket tattie, just the well-fired parts of the shell left over. Beans and the man appear in the doorway, grim-faced.

Cans coming out; he gets handed one. The man’s eyes are large and swollen, the top lids delicately folded scrotums. The air clung with smoke as he gets through his pack of fags, Beans smoking as well, dog-ends on the floor, a shoe, some bundled sheets. He doesn’t say much, your mate, through the smoke. He’s fine, he’s fine. Darkness, and he wakes, alarmed and shaking. Beans on the settee, one cadaver leg hanging off the edge. He is lying on the floor. The stink of smoke in the carpet. The tattie still there; he crawls over and starts into it, tearing at the boot leather skin.

Always with Beans he’s on the march somewhere, some plan or other he’s got in his head and he isn’t stopping until he gets there. They arrive at a small car park behind a low, flat-roofed building. There is a fence all round with a neat bed of green shoots in front. BUTTERFIELD MEDICAL PRACTICE, on a sign plugged into the soil. Alarm seizes suddenly in his stomach, working up into his throat until he is almost breathless, choking, needing to sit down on the path by the flower bed. Beans slapping him on the back. A pure desperate urge to drink now has hold of him as Beans makes him stand up, and they get walking, away again onto the street.

They come to a park — no a park but more a patch in between a couple of road crossings, with a square of grass and a rubber-matted play area big enough for about three weans a time to go on. A see-saw. A wee elephant slide with a trunk for a chute. There is a bin beside a bench, which Beans has a neb through before going in his pocket and handing Mick a five-pound note. ‘Gonnae go the offie while I find us something to eat?’

The man in the offie is a bastard, but what can you do? Mick thumps the two bottles of superlager onto the counter and the guy doesn’t say a word, he gives this wee look just, but he’s made himself fine well clear enough. I, the seller of refreshments, know that you, the scaffer, are going to get yourself paralytic, and if it so happens that you kill yourself falling into the road, or you kill somebody else falling into the road, then it’s no my fault, and I’ll stand here with my face to vinegar just to show who is the better out of the two of us. Nay problem. Fine. Just hand over the beer, pal.

A woman, coming toward them.

‘Excuse me.’

Beans straightening up, the eyes alert suddenly.

‘Nay bother, madam. Ye haven’t interrupted anything.’

Her hands on her hips.

‘You can’t drink here. There’s kids playing.’

How old is she? Thirty? Forty? Her weans over on the see-saw, and another woman there too, nervous wee looks up the way. Beans is giggling, saying something, impossible to tell what. The woman stood with her arms folded. ‘Excuse me.’ She is looking at him now. ‘Can you understand me?’ The weans are stopped playing, lined up on the rubber play area watching. He has a dim sense of wanting her to stay there, a sort of longing, but Beans is acting it still, muttering on, and she is gone, angrily gathering up bags and weans and marching out of the park to go fetch the heavy team, or the polis, or the council — wading boots on, lads, the residents arenae happy.

There is only one bench in the park, so they take turns, a night each, to sleep on it. The nights it isn’t their turn they lie out on the grass aside or underneath it. One time but Beans gives a try sleeping on the slide, although it’s obvious no big enough, and Mick finds him in the morning crumpled at the bottom of the chute, looking like something the elephant’s boaked up during the night.

He wakes. The sour taste of alcohol in his mouth. Against his face is an empty creased bottle that he’d put there as a pillow. The sun is up, and warm already, but he has got the shakes. No just the arms, or the legs, but the whole of him: head, chest, elbows and hips, all the way down to his toes. Shuddering. He caulks the eyes shut but they pinball in the sockets until they are pure throbbing and he can no longer stop this fear that is rising up him, overwhelming him, a genuine terror made all the worse because there is nothing to fix it to, no reason, it is there just. He presses his forehead hard against the slats of the bench, pushing against the ache. Slitting the eyes open. Beans isn’t there. The sudden thought but of getting up to look for him — it’s impossible, even the thought is impossible and makes his stomach start to heave and his throat retch, even sitting up, even opening his eyes fully, impossible, impossible. Easier to lie there just, shivering and sweating. The sun no helping matters either — sapping him and making him the more nauseous. He hasn’t the energy to take off his coat though. The smallest things. Impossible. But through it all he is craving for a drink. An urging of the body; a pure physical need for it, just to stop all this, drive away again the ache and the fear.