Ross Raisin - Waterline

Mick smiles. ‘That’s where we went, ye know, Rothesay.’

Beans stops in his tracks and a man on his mobile phone almost walks into him.

‘Fuck off, serious?’

‘We did, aye. Every Fair, mostly.’

Beans is still rooted to the pavement, amazed. Residents diverting past them. ‘Mind that station the Friday morning? The platform mobbed with all these Fair Invaders packing in and the conductors playing hell with ye if ye got too close the edge — but what could ye do, eh? There was nowhere else to go!’ He starts chuckling. ‘Who ye go with, the parents, brothersisters?’

‘No. Mean, my da died when I was wee, so it was me and my maw just. These other guys she was with sometimes, but mostly it was just us.’

They walk on in quiet for a while. If the two of them are in fact ages, then it’s actually possible they would have been there at the same time. He is tempted asking him what years he used to go, but he stops himself. Something about Beans, this sense that he doesn’t want pinning down and it’s the better no to push him on things. Who’s he to talk but? He who bloody cloys up at the barest mention of anything that might make him have to remember.

Beans is still on at it as they get back into the park. Ye mind the fiddle player on the Wemyss Bay ferry? Ye go the Punch and Judies? The pleasure boats? The tackle shop and dangle your line through the cracks in the pier? Mick is listening, but he’s trying as well to figure out how they are going to make up the price of a bottle and get through the rest of the day.

‘Once or twice we stayed in a caravan but most times my maw would be thumbing it through the small ads for one of they rooms that families rented out for the holidays. And see my da, he was a bevvy-merchant, right, and he was always away to the whisky booths or else he was there drinking in the room. But this landlady I mind we had, she knew what like the score was, and I don’t know if it was cause it was her weans’ room normally or what it was, but she starts into him this time — “Ye can’t bring your drink in here, this is my house, a terrible man ye are” — and all this, and me and my maw and my wee sister are sitting there like three pounds of mince, thinking he’s gonnae belt her, a pure certainty that he will. But he doesnae. He gets up just and he lets himself out the door, away to the whisky booth, and the three of us and the landlady staring at each other with nay clue what to do next.’

He is sitting on the bench, laughing, as if it’s a happy memory he’s just recalled.

‘Amazing, eh, you going to Rothesay, no think?’

Without the money for a drink, it leaves a hole in the afternoon, so they decide what they’ll do is go up the river and pay the swan a visit.

The gate has a new padlock on it. ‘Bastards.’ Beans strains over the palings, then is off scootling down the path. The swan is out. Or maybe she’s been evicted too. The nest is still there, but the whole area has been cleaned up: the cans and the rest of the rubbish gone, and new wiring over the tunnel entrance. They sit down on the veranda and throw chuckies at the floaters, Beans starting up about the Fair again. It is all there in what he’s saying — the Winter Gardens, the beach, Italian ice creams — but for some reason there is something queer about how he’s telling it, as if it’s no true somehow. Like he’s heard all this off somebody else but he thinks it’s his own memories. Or he’s making it up. Maybe it’s just himself but, trying to find holes in it. Maybe he doesn’t want to believe it’s true.

Later, they have a walk down the water. Beans tries it on, tapping passers-by for a few coins, but without much luck. They don’t have any change on them; or they don’t speak. Head down. Eyes to the tarmac. No a total disaster though. Eventually they come past a young pair kisscanoodling, who give him a two-pound coin.

The gloaming is come on when they return to the park. They drink the single can that they’ve each got, and take their positions, Mick on the ground with the blanket, Beans up on the bench. Without much superlager inside to numb him up, it is impossible to get to sleep. The cold nipping, and this unsettling feeling going through him in waves that is related he knows to the bringing up of old memories. He must doze off at some point though, because he is dreaming about a paddleboat and a boy fallen off the side when he is suddenly woken up — noise, heat, and a great blaze of fire above him that he realizes, through the flames, is Beans.

He is stumbling, flapping about, his chest and arms ablaze. Mick blunders to his knees, the fire crackling, a smell of petrol. ‘Keith,’ he shouts, uselessly, pushing him onto the ground and only then clocking the group of men stood on the play area. Watching; walking over. The guy from earlier, a can in his hand, laughing. Beans is thumping his hands on the grass and Mick tries to roll him, this kind of growling noise coming out of his throat, and his face damp, pieces of skin peeling off his neck. The hat — if it caught fire — and he scrabbles to pull it off him, Beans’s eyes pleading, crapping it he’s going to die. And Mick is thinking it too but he knows, in that instant, rocking the body on the grass, that his own fear is for himself. The men are stood over them. One of them puts an arm out and lager is pouring down, hissing on the dying flames. He is powerless, he just keeps rocking the great charred mass back and forth, burning his hands, until the fire is almost out, and he tries then to take the jacket off but it is too tight — more laughter — so he tears at it and it comes apart in pieces. One of the men suddenly puts the boot on, kicking Beans in his side. Then another of them catches Mick in the stomach and he is keeling over, bent double on the hot grass, no able to breathe.

They are away, running down the path, jumping the gate. ‘Keith. Ye alright, pal?’ Stupit question. He’s alive but. The lips are quivering in his raw bleeding bawface; wet, red patches on his chin and cheeks. Mick pulls off the shreds of his jacket and his shirt, trying no to look at the body, then he takes off his own coat and rests it on top, lying down beside him, his hands stinging, too done in the now to move or think about getting somewhere safe.

Beans is sat up on the bench, quiet. He’s got the coat draped over him like a blanket, but underneath it’s possible to see what’s left of his clothes, stuck to him in black tatterings on his chest and belly, patches of red wincing flesh, skin bubbles.

‘Ye’re well fired, then.’

No the right thing to say. He isn’t amused. Just sat there, staring ahead. He’s got his woolly hat back on, turned now a darker shade of red. Below it, one of his bug-ladders is burnt off, a few blackened stems of hair poking out from the blistered skin, and the bottom of his ear is yellow and gluey with pus, like an upturned clam.

‘Want something to eat?’

Beans shrugs his shoulders just. Gives a kind of snort. Clear enough what he’s meaning: who’s going to get it, well? Mick stands up and goes to the bin. It hasn’t been emptied yet from yesterday and it’s overflowing: a magazine and an empty Lucozade bottle sticking out the top. The best he can find though is a bit of brown banana left in its skin and a few crisps in a bag. He takes them over to lay beside Beans on the bench, but he doesn’t even turn his head. All the life is went out of him.

He sits again on the bench, the crisps and banana between them.

‘I’ve seen a guy on fire before,’ he says then, just to be saying something. ‘A welder. Just pure unfortunate, really, cause he was doing this job that he had his mask on for and as well one of these flame-retardant suits, but see that was the problem. He starts jigging about and nobody knows what he’s up to at first, they think he’s dicking around, but actually a spark is got inside the suit and nobody can see that his clothes is on fire cause, like I say, the suit’s flame-retardant.’