Ross Raisin - Waterline

Beans has got a lot of paint onto his paper. There’s parts of it where he’s went over a dried bit from earlier and the paint has formed into a kind of ledge. It isn’t clear what he’s painting exactly. The sea, maybe. A sunset.

‘It’s me on fire,’ he says when Mick asks him.

‘Aw, right. It’s good, aye.’

There is nothing himself he can think of to paint, so he sits there a while, drinking his tea and observing the others. The two women stick close together, talking, occasionally a wee joke with the suit and tie man. One of them is quite a bit older than the other, and it’s clear enough the young one looks up to her, leans on her. A mother and daughter? No, how could that work? Maybe but. How does any of it work? Fucked if he knows. The teacher is coming over again. He asks if he’s struggling for ideas, and then he says why doesn’t he try and think of something that he knows really well. Then he moves on to Beans, and Beans is looking at him intently as the guy examines his painting. It’s good, he tells him. Maybe be a bit lighter with the brush though. And away he goes to the other side of the table to speak to the women.

He starts painting the QE2 . It’s quite a good likeness, actually, except for he’s done the mooring line too thick and it looks a bit like there’s a tail behind it. It’s relaxing but, painting. Quietly getting on with it, the mumble of the radio and the suit and tie man in the background.

The next session he keeps going on the ship. Paul is there, sat with him and Beans, they two yapping away while Mick paints and listens. Both of them are agreed when he’s finished it that it’s a decent painting. So too are the others, at the end of the session when the big fella asks them all to show the group what they’ve done. Detailed, the two women say about it. The young one has done a sunflower, and the other woman has done a picture of her daughter, who from the looks of it is black, so that rules out the young one unless she’s had a mix-up with the paint.

They are allowed to keep what they’ve done, so he takes his painting to his room and puts it up on the wall. He has spruced things up a little with his giro payments and the room now contains: a collection of mugs, a mini television that he saved up quite a time for, a mat, a kettle, and as well two more Barbaras and a potted plant on the windowsill.

Something he thinks about quite a lot these days: what would she think if she knew? He is staying in a homeless hostel and the family is disintegrated. Of all the guilts putting the boot on, it’s this which is aye the worst. This feeling that goes with it, crawing at him, that it’s too late. That things are too far gone the now ever to be put back.

Each while, Beans goes into one of his maunderly phases. He’ll cloy up and keep to his room or stay outside all day, until the point comes when he’ll disappear, for days, sometimes for weeks. His key worker tearing the hair out wanting to find out from Mick where he’s went to, but he genuine has nay clue either. Usually a fair bet the skinny neighbour and his squad have something to do with it though. One night, Beans is asleep in his room and a mob of them are outside in the corridor, digging him up, banging on his door every few minutes. The next night it’s the same story, and the next, until eventually Beans snaps and he charges out the room with a wine bottle. A mighty scrap in the corridor, one guy’s face getting ripped, then the polis arriving and the whole pile of them away in the meat wagon to the station.

Soon afterwards, Beans does the disappearing act. No sight or sound of him for two whole weeks until one evening he’s suddenly there in the canteen, cheerily queuing up for shepherd’s pie. No word about where he’s been. The usual performance. Everything back to normal. After they’ve eaten they go up the day room for a game of pool, and Beans is once again full of the usual patter.

At one point, he is bent down about to take his shot, when suddenly he straightens up and starts into a life history of Chris the art teacher.

‘Know he used to be a serious artist? Ten, twenty years ago. He was selling paintings and he was a proper somebody, mean, he was known in the art world. See but he liked a wee refreshment. A bevvy-merchant. So what happens, he’s been to this party, an artist party, and he’s driving himself home totally out the game, and he knocks into another car, a young couple on their way back from holiday. Dead. Instantaneous. Your man gets put away for a good long stretch, and when he comes out the clink he’s totally hit the scrape. Too drunk to paint, and even if he could, the art world has gave him the swerve because of what’s happened. So he’s going about staying on people’s couches, bedsits and that. Ten years, a total wipeout. Now he doesn’t paint any more, but he does this class because he used to stay here one time. And he does them in the prisons as well. A decent guy, serious. Just the bottle, man, know what I mean, it ruins ye.’

He leans down, finally, and takes his shot.

Mick stands looking at him.

‘How ye find out these things?’

Beans shrugs the shoulders just. ‘Don’t know. I keep my ears about the place.’

Both of them keep going to the art class. Most weeks it’s painting — oils, watercolours — but sometimes they do other things as well, like pottery, T-shirt printing. Renuka is pleased that he’s stuck with it. It helps with his move-on. Activities, jobseeking, reduced bevvying, it all counts toward it. They last two maybe haven’t been quite so successful as the activities, but such is the way of things. Renuka seems happy anyway. He’s been a couple of times to this room in the hostel where they’ve got some kind of link with the jobcentre and they try fixing you up on these volunteer schemes, training programmes and the like. Although to be honest, fuck that. Trainee. Him employed twenty years in the shipyards and now to get working for nothing. Even these jobs that he keeps applying for, the main reason he’s doing it is there’s no choice: they want to see work-related activity, as they call it, if he’s to get his giro.

Strange to feel that way about it, when normally work has always been the answer. And he knows as well that he does need to get doing something, to get out of the building, get out of his room; but he’s just no got the will for it. Back in the day, at least he knew it was going somewhere, the money. He needed it. There was a family to support and he went into work and could aye see what he was working toward because it was bloody right there in front of him: eighty thousand tons of it, sat on the water. But why apply for all these crappity jobs that you can’t get anyway because apparently you’re no good enough? And then even if you did get them you’ve still nay chance earning your rent, so you’re never going to see any of the income because all you’re doing is trying to tread water with the benefit money.

It goes up and down, how busy the art class is. Some weeks it’s just him, Beans and the two women, but other times there might be nine or ten turn up. Some who are pretty decent at the artmaking; others who come just to sneak a mug of sugar under the coat and leave. One or two who spend the whole time in your ear giving it the life story, or — like Beans — everybody’s life story but their own; and as well the ones who sit and barely speak a word. Probably there’s a lot more of the quiet types staying in the hostel, just they keep themselves hidden. The yaps are about all the time, in the canteen and the day room, or hanging about the reception biting the receptionist’s ear off, but the silent ones stay in their rooms. Mostly they’re only likely to come out if there’s a fire alarm — which actually is about three times a day — everybody gathering outside in the car park in their bedclothes and their baries; keeping to themselves, or pattering with the firemen that stand in groups waiting for the all clear.