Ross Raisin - Waterline

3.54. The alarm clock, that’s her as well. She’d got it years ago with his saved-up petrol coupons from the cab. He knocked it on the floor a couple of days ago when he was tidying up the things on her table, and the plug came out. Setting the time and date again proved a complete impossibility — he’s never all these years figured out how the thing works — and so for the past two nights the alarm has come on at some point in the early hours. Both times, it took him bloody ages working out which button shuts it up, and then he spent what was left of last night finally fixing it out: time, date, bastard thing. No that he was that put out, in truth. He was awake anyway.

He moves himself over the other side of the bed. He may as well have stayed put in the kitchen. Given a call in to the show. Iron Age. Iron Lady . A look of pure relief on the girl that she’s no the only sane person up the night. Down there in the kitchen, the living room too, the things are things just, she isn’t present in them. Hard to say how that is when it’s her that bought most of it but that’s how it feels, unlike up here in this room. He’s surrounded by her here, but he isn’t a part of it himself. It is strange, the other side of the bed. Unknown lumps and bumps of wiring poking up at the mattress. He’s got a queer awareness of what it would have felt like for her, on her side. He lies a while longer, staring at the alarm clock, until, at the back of five, he gets out of bed and lays down on the floor next to it, pulling the covers down over him.

There is a toilet roll under the bed. A pair of broken sunglasses. He should give a clean under there, he gets thinking as finally he starts to drift off. Add that to the list.

A cemetery worker is busy sweeping along a flagstone path, collecting up the dirt into a wheelbarrow. He has seen the man there by his wife’s grave each of the last few days: he comes in the morning and stands there a long time, staring down at the ground. Obvious that he’s having a hard time of it, and so he makes sure to keep his distance now as he gets about clearing the path and tidying the area around a plot he’s to measure and mark later the morning.

He has seen the rest of the family here as well. They come all at different times; even before the service, he knows from his manager that there’d been some difficulties with the arrangements. A guy that it seems is the brother of the deceased comes with his wife, and they stay a short time rearranging the flowers; the son with the queer accent, he gets here after lunch and stays holding his partner’s hand; and then the older son comes after the others have gone. He’s always the one that stays the longest. Yesterday, he was sat on the grass next to the grave almost the whole afternoon, getting a book out at one point and just staying there reading.

He pushes the wheelbarrow off down the lawn to the store room, where he puts it away with the broom and the shovel. He fills a bucket with water and takes a stiff brush, a pair of black rubber gloves and a container of solvent from a shelf, then he goes out of the store and down toward the road. The cemetery wall has been defaced again — K.A.H., it reads, sprayed in large black lettering over the concrete — and he kneels down on the pavement to get scrubbing at it with the thick creamy solvent. From where he is, he can just about see the grey head of the man, grieving beside his wife’s grave. Poor guy. There had been kind of an awkward atmosphere after the service, and it’s a fair guess the family relationship’s no the best. Always politics somewhere. He was in the yards, this one, according to his manager. That whole length of path is lined with the names of yardmen, copped their whack before their time. A whole shop floor under that lawn, he’d heard the registrar say a while back, and it would be true enough, except that so many of them are the wives and weans.He keeps on scouring the wall a few more minutes — it doesn’t get rid of it, but it’s the best he can do, the solvent and then the sun beating down on it between now and when it gets painted over at the end of the summer. When he’s done, he picks up the bucket and container and walks back through the cemetery, passing the man, who is stood now by the black iron palings on the other side of the grave, gazing down.

Mick is reading the tags on the flower bouquets. There’s a new big bunch from the Highlanders that they must have got in the Marks and Spencer. A smaller one from Pete and Mary. He puts the tags back as they were, and gets ready to leave. The first few times he’s come here, he’s stayed almost an hour, looking down at the mound of not yet sunken earth. He tries to imagine her. It’s no easy but. Each time, he ends up standing there just, trying to feel that she’s there, trying to see her face, but it’s no happening, is the truth — he may as well be stood staring at a car engine for all the closeness he’s getting.

Maybe when the headstone is up, it will feel different. Although even that hadn’t been without its difficulties. It was him that gave the inscription for it; Alan had paid. The only thing they’d went halves on was the coffin. When they were in the funeral director’s, Mick had called for a modest and simple box, saying that it was what she would have wanted, although of course he knew fine well that if she had any say in it she would have gone for the most expensive one in the shop. He turns to leave, looking down at the space next to her as he moves off, lush and well tended, the stalks of the flower bunches resting down over it, like she’s saving a seat for him on the bus.

The Highlanders are in the kitchen when he gets back, one of them carefully monitoring the grill and the other holding a saucepan.

‘Craig about?’ he asks, his head through the doorway. Sausage and beans, it looks like.

‘In the bathroom, I think,’ says Lynn. ‘You ready for some breakfast?’

‘Aye, thanks,’ he says, eyeing the sausages as she gets turning them over. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’

He goes up and waits just inside the bedroom, hoping to catch Craig as he comes past. But when the bathroom door clicks and he makes his move, it is Robbie that is stepping out. They stop there a moment on the stairhead.

‘Been the grave?’

‘Aye, I’m just back.’

‘You okay?’

‘I’m fine, Rob, thanks.’

In the kitchen, he and Robbie get themselves a plate of breakfast from the dishes on the table and go through to the living room, where the others are already eating.

Robbie and Jenna have booked their flights, they say. Monday morning. There’s a stop-off in Hong Kong, and they could’ve arranged to stay a night, but they’re wanting to get back to the baby. At the mention of this, Lynn gets telling the story of their own trip to India a couple of years ago: how the flight was a nightmare and the locals pack into the trains like pilchards, and there’s cows in the road but if you hire a driver he won’t even pamp the horn at them. Mick’s not much interested in another of Lynn’s stories; he’s thinking instead how he’s going to manage taking Craig aside. His best bet, he knows, is when the house is quieter, that’s obvious enough, while the Highlanders are off on one of their visits to the Botanic Gardens or the Tenement House. He’ll have to wait just, bide his time. Chin him before he goes visiting the grave.

But the Highlanders have for some reason decided against an excursion. They stay in the house fussing on all morning, and it means the right moment doesn’t come; and so by early afternoon, when Robbie and Jenna return from the grave, Craig is out the door. Like the other days, he’s away a long while, not getting in until the back of six, when the house is busy and the Highlanders are preparing food again. It isn’t until after tea and the evening of television watching, when Craig is about to get up and leave, that he has an opportunity.