Ross Raisin - Waterline

One here, a soft fog of flowers painted on the front.

There’s plenty more like that, plus as well the wild flower kinds. Meadows. Bustling hedgerows. A woodland clearing mobbed with bluebells. Hard to imagine there’s this many types of card in the supermarket. A churchyard, quiet and peaceful with brown leaves blowing about. A teddy bear. And another here that’s for some reason a cat gazing out the window at a sea view.

It’s Robbie that wanted to put the cards up. He wasn’t much wanting to do it himself, but Robbie had dug the heels in. What else are you going to do with them? Stick them in a drawer? Leave them lying on the counter with the funeral programmes and the electric bills? So now the pair of them are in the corridor, fixing them up to the red ribbon that Robbie’s fished out from the Christmas cardboard box. The light dimming in the front door. Dull laughter from the living room, where the rest of them are sat watching the television.

‘You know all these people, Da?’

‘No really, being honest. There were some the day even, I don’t know who they were. A few would’ve been from the department store. And then the family, course.’ He nods at the living room wall. ‘I preferred no to ask.’

Robbie is reading inside a card. ‘They could’ve introduced themselves,’ he says, closing the card and pegging it with a red plastic Christmas tree. It’s normally the wife does this, getting up the greetings cards. This same red ribbon drooping off the pictures about the living room; pinned-up spruce as launch bunting around a ship, dutifully awaiting the chop from whichever of the wee begrudging women of the royalty have been sent up.

There’s going to be too many cards will fit in the lobby and corridor. Robbie asks will they get up the rest in the living room when Alan and Lynn are away to their bed. No, he tells him. He isn’t having these cards all about the room when Robbie and Craig are sleeping in there. No that it makes a great deal of sense but. When everything else in the room is some kind of reminder. Fact is, if you start taking down all the things in the place that are fingered with memories, then that’s the whole house emptied.

Dear Mick,

Words don’t say enough. If there’s anything we can do, please let us know. All our thoughts are with you the now.

Love from Derek and Jean and all the family

One thing you can be sure, it’s the women that have written them. Nay chance any of this coming from the husbands. All our thoughts are with you the now. No that it should be but, no that it should be. It was the same story earlier: the women all hats and hands and kind words while the husbands stood in beside them, cloyed up. He would’ve been the same but. No denying it. Silent, listening politely while Cathy said everything that was needed. These were men like him, guys he’d worked with, easier with steel sparks showering on top their head and their mate pattering bullshit in their ear. You can’t blame them. As natural to them, a funeral, as redundancy. And the response aye the same: straight to the bar, boys.

‘I was talking to Claire,’ Robbie says. ‘You know, was with Maw at the store?’

‘I mind her, aye.’

‘She was saying how bad they all took it when they heard. Says the place hasn’t been the same the last year.’ He looks round at the living room door and says in a quieter voice, ‘She couldn’t understand Lynn’s stupid finger food either. Serious, what was all that about?’

‘I missed out on it.’ He takes a peg from the box and looks up at Robbie. ‘They’re trying to help, Rob, that’s all.’

‘Come off it, Da. Mozzarella fucking parcels? In the Empress? Fuck off. There was a whole black bag left afterwards at their end of the table.’

True enough. He’d actually watched Desmond clearing it out afterwards, when everyone had went. A quick sniff and a nibble of Lynn’s various parcels, weighing up the resale possibilities, before dumping them in the bag.

Mick had kept himself in with the main group, huckled together at one end of the spread by the sausage rolls and the cheese sandwiches, Robbie and his wife either side of him like a pair of minders. Craig keeping to himself, away in a corner. Truth be told, he wouldn’t’ve objected trying one of Lynn’s mozzarella parcels, but it would have meant going over the other side of the table, where Alan and Lynn were holding court with the rest of Cathy’s family. Most of they lot he hadn’t even seen since the wedding; so you’re talking thirty-five years ago. And that’s the ones that came. Some of these he’d probably never clapped eyes on in his life. He’d gave a bye to the idea of going over. Leave that lot to themselves, he thought.

It was only the weans, scootling about the place, who moved between the two groups. And the brother-in-law, of course. Man of the people Alan there, he didn’t miss his opportunity to introduce himself. Heartfelt greetings to the ones he knew — quite a few of them from back in the day in the yards — never mind it was him who’d bloody laid them off. Christsake. Smiling away there. No hard feelings, eh? We didn’t want to do it but see that was the times, there was no choice.

Mick had made sure to keep his distance. Took himself away for a pee when it looked one moment Alan was coming over to speak to him. When he’d closed the lavvy door behind, he saw that Desmond had gave a proper clean in there. There were toilet rolls stacked in the windowsill, and he’d moved the rotten rolled carpet that used to be outside the window. The blockages cleared from the urinals. A few extra pineapple-soap chunks. Strange how it goes but that was probably the only moment all day when he was close to greeting, when he saw that. He stood there a moment after he’d finished peeing and for a few seconds just, something got hold of him and it was an effort to stop the tears coming on. This pure strong feeling that you could only describe as utter gratefulness toward the guy because he’d cleaned out his toilets.

When he came back out, the brother-in-law had moved away, his big broad shape over on the other side of the room, doing the rounds. He was like a politician. Getting into the group at the bar, shaking hands, making sure everybody knew it was him had paid for it all.

Robbie is looking at him. ‘It wasn’t on either’ — he jerks his head at the wall — ‘that speech of his.’

Mick doesn’t respond. He pegs up another card, overlapping them as they get near the end of the corridor.

‘He barely mentioned you. Craig and me, sure, but anybody could’ve listened to that and thought you and Maw had never met — that she’d lived her whole life up in the Highlands with the sons of fucking lairds chasing after her. She’d have skelped him, if she’d heard it.’

He goes in the box for one of the last tree pegs. He isn’t getting into this the now. No with the guy sat there in the next room. He keeps quiet, and the two of them get on with the job in silence a while.

‘Sorry, Da, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just, mean, he’s a bloody blowhard.’

‘Robbie.’

‘I know, sorry.’

They have done along both sides of the corridor. There is a small stretch just, by the living room door, left to fill.

‘I’ll put these up in the kitchen somewhere,’ Robbie says, holding up his last handful. He walks off, and Mick stands a few seconds looking down the two lines of cards. The sound of the television gets louder, fades away again. There are two cards next to each other, he notices, identical. Foggy flowers in a vase. Intrigued a moment, he steps forward to get a look who they’re from.