Ross Raisin - Waterline

‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

‘Ye don’t have to say anything, son.’

The two businessmen are away, one of them laughing and putting the arm around the other’s shoulders a moment, then withdrawing it, clapping the hands together. Off blottoed back to the office for an afternoon’s work. He looks at Robbie, who is watching them leave.

‘I’m sorry, Rob.’

There is silence as they take a moment to consider each from their own side of the table how pathetic it sounds.

Robbie turns back toward him.

‘What, were you homeless, Da?’

‘If that’s the word.’

‘What else is the word?’

‘No, well, it’s that one, aye.’

‘Mean, you were on the street?’

‘Some of the time.’

‘Jesus.’ He is staring now at the table. ‘Didn’t you think I would’ve helped you?’

‘I know ye would, son. I know.’

Robbie is screwing his eyes, scowling. ‘We didn’t know if you were alive. Most of them thought you were dead.’

He hasn’t drunk any of his pint.

‘I sent a letter.’

‘Oh, yeh, your letter. Suddenly I get this letter and me and Alan are come to stay in fucking Heathrow for a month but nobody there knows where you are either, only that you were calling yourself Mick Provan and you got the sack.’

The barmaid is coming toward them. She is carrying a large black drinks tray which she sets down on the edge of their table, and picks up Mick’s empty glass to put on it. She hovers by them for an instant, looking like she’s about to say something, until she seems to clock that the atmosphere’s no the best and she walks away.

‘Alan was with you, then?’

Robbie shakes his head slowly. ‘Fuck off, Da. He’s been bloody great. Do you know it’s him that was paying the rent arrears after you abandoned the house?’

He closes his eyes, or the elastic has went. His insides are turned to liquid, the bones alone holding himself on the chair, somehow. How is that? How are they holding him on the chair still? He was fixing things out. He was out the hostel and into a flat and he was fixing things out. He opens his eyes; sits upright in the seat. The thought comes to him suddenly that he is glad he hasn’t shat himself.

He tries to say something but no words come.

‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Craig’s there telling him to —’

‘Robbie,’ he interrupts him, ‘look, I’m sorry but, mean I don’t think I can hear all this the now. I’m sorry.’

‘What? What is it not a good time or something?’ Robbie stands up. ‘You’re right.’ His voice is shaking. ‘You’re right.’

He steps out from the table and tucks his chair back under. Then he turns, and starts to walk away.

He stays there, sitting. The bar is empty. After a few minutes the music is turned up loud, no paying customers left for the bar staff to worry about, only one old guy on his own sat staring at the sports news.

The rest of the afternoon is a wipeout. The door locked; television on. Renuka and Beans no calling round, or if they do he doesn’t notice.

He is in and out of sleep the night, the television on in the background, an educational programme he tries to get listening to, occupy the mind — how does the criminal justice system work? — it’s boring enough but it doesn’t knock him out, and he lies there gazing at the spasm of blue light on the ceiling.

The next morning he is stood in the kitchen waiting for the toaster to finish when the entry buzzer goes. It is Renuka.

She comes in and sits with him at the table.

‘I spoke to Robbie yesterday evening. I gather things were difficult.’

‘They were.’

‘It isn’t going to be easy, obviously, as we said before.’

He nods.

‘He’s quite keen though, your son, to keep trying.’

‘Ye think?’

‘Well, yes — he’s sat in a cafe down the road waiting for me to call him. He wanted to come straight here, but I told him I needed to speak to you first.’

She is smiling but he turns his face away from her. Out the window, it is started snowing.

‘What did he say?’

‘He just said that you both need to keep trying.’

He looks round at the tiny room: the unmade bed and the childlike paintings on the wall above it.

‘I don’t know I’m ready, Renuka.’

She is nodding. ‘I know. The thing is though, if you leave it like this, things will only be more difficult the next time.’

She is right. They will. Plus as well the boy lives on the other side the world, so nay doubt he’ll need to be going back anytime soon; and he is reminded again with a crawing of the stomach that he has come away from his family for this, for ten minutes in a chain bar and the da to tell him he’s no wanting to see him still.

‘The stupit thing is, I was that bloody terrified going there, I just needed to see him the more.’

She is nodding again. Patient as ever. Plotting where all this puts him on his Cycle of Change; or thinking he’s a bastard just, who knows?

He comes in the flat with Renuka and stands in the doorway looking at him.

‘Robbie. Come in. Want a cup of tea? Renuka?’

Robbie and Renuka wipe the slush off their feet and go in the main room while he takes the kettle over to the sink to fill it up. He can hear him treading through in the other room, inspecting, judging. Renuka telling him that it’s his father that’s fixed the place up, with the blinds, the paint job, and Robbie keeping quiet; whatever he’s doing in there he’s no saying anything about it.

He moves the television onto the floor and they sit down all three of them around the table. Get drinking their teas.

‘So,’ says Renuka, ‘I can be here, or not be here — just tell me which you’d prefer.’

‘No,’ Robbie says, ‘stay. It’s fine. Yes?’

He nods.

‘Look, Da, yesterday — I didn’t mean to be difficult. Just there’s things I don’t understand.’

‘Aye, course.’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘No, me neither.’

Robbie is looking at the art work on the wall above the bed.

‘You an alcoholic, Da?’

‘No.’

Renuka is keeping quiet. It would look better, he realizes, if there weren’t the empty cans of superlager on the floor by the bin.

‘Just I don’t understand how it’s happened. If I’d known how things were, I would’ve stayed. Course I fucking would. Why didn’t you say anything? I’ve felt that fucking guilty.’

‘Christ, it’s no your fault, Robbie, I didnae know any of this would happen. I should’ve answered your calls, you’re right. Things got on top of me just.’

‘Know you’ve lost the tenancy now? Alan couldn’t keep paying it forever.’

He is glaring at him. Challenging him. Mick keeks down at his tea. The mug is chipped already. Pound-shop tollie, what do ye expect?

‘I’m no going back, son, if that’s what ye mean.’

A long period of silence. Much tea drinking. Renuka glancing from one to the other of them, weighing up when is the right time to step in.

‘That’s another thing I don’t understand,’ Robbie says finally.

He waits for him to go on, but he is gone quiet, looking at the table.

‘What’s that? What ye no understand?’

‘That’s where she is.’

He looks up, but the face isn’t angry, he just looks horrendously fucking sad, which of course sticks the boot on a hundred times worse; and, together with it, he is seized with a feeling of desperate closeness to the boy, of wanting to be close to him.

‘That’s how I couldnae be there, Robbie.’

There is another stretch of quiet, broken again by Robbie. ‘See, even if I can get understanding it, I can tell you for sure, Craig won’t.’