Waterline

by Ross Raisin

  Maybe he’ll take a walk down the water. Keep moving; he needs to keep moving.

  He isn’t too sure the time, or even what time is safest to come these days and what’s best left alone, it’s that long since he’s been down. So he comes slowly up the path, scanning up the way ahead. There is a young couple he comes past, with their two tiny weans. One of them is in a pram, and the other running about, scampering between the headstones and her da trying to coax her back. She’s got the right idea but. Why no run about the place, instead of teetering around the graves? They’re dead, christsake, they’re no bloody sleeping.

  There’s new flowers again. The ones Mick left himself are there next to them, gone dry and brown by now. He picks them off the plot and gets them slung over the palings. Strange Craig’s left them there, although – no, see even that is probably done on purpose, as a reminder, a marker of the da’s last visit. That’s exactly the kind of thing he would do, in fact.

  It’s started drizzling, so he walks over by the palings and stands under a bit of tree. See what makes it the worse is it’s hard no to pity the boy. The same useless fucking pity that everybody’s so keen to stick on him, he’s doing it too, when he imagines him up there in Yoker alone and angry, naybody to talk to. Or maybe he does. Who knows? There had been a girl he was seeing, Tina, was she called, but there’s no way of telling if they’re together still. Maybe not, in fact. It had seemed like something of a loose kind of arrangement, from what Cathy had said. He should ask him. He gives a short laugh at the idea. He’s only once before been up to see him, and that was a few years ago. Into the dingy flat boufing with dirty plates and filled-up ashtrays, but no his place to say anything, so he didn’t; and neither did Cathy even because, as she says, it’s his life to do as he wants and see if he wants to make mistakes then he’ll make mistakes, and he’ll learn from them, same as the rest of us.

  The family are on their way, ahead of him as he leaves along the path. The wee girl holding her father’s hand, and him leaning over and giving the wife a kiss on the side of the head. You don’t think, when you’re that age, about all this that might happen – that is going to happen, actually, a pure certainty it is going to happen. You’re too busy with getting the food on the table and clothes on the weans’ backs and feeding the wife’s bingo habit to start thinking about what like it might be when one of you is gone. And too right. Jesus. Too right. What a thing to think about.

  There is a man outside the house. Mick has turned the corner into the street and is coming up the pavement when he sees him, standing at the front door. Mick turns straight around. Keeps moving. Gets back down the end of the street to the bus stop and spies through the glass. He’s still there, just stood, waiting. From here, he can’t see properly who it is, but he’s sure he doesn’t recognize him. He fights to get the breathing under control. Maybe it isn’t his house, and he’s mistaken, it’s actually next door. It isn’t but. It’s definitely his house. The man is peering in the window now, cupping his hands around his face. He chaps the door. Now what? Wait, just wait. The man turns and starts inspecting the grass at his feet, as if he’s looking for something, and then he’s up to the window again, spying in. For a second, a strange hopeful thought hits him that maybe it’s a robber, but just then the man turns and goes out the gate and he can see his face. It’s nobody he recognizes, a big guy in a shirt and tie, who is getting now into a dark red car parked on the street outside. It’s a while before he leaves but. The car stays there another few minutes before it starts pulling out from the kerb and swings round, moving off in the direction away from the bus stop.

  Mick waits a moment longer, watching carefully. As he gets up and starts toward the house, there is laughter, and he spins around to see two teenage boys knotting themselves looking at him from one corner of the bus stop. He walks away quickly, checking around him, and gets in the gate and then the house, hurrying through it and out into the garden, snibbing the latch of the shed as he comes inside.

  Chapter 11

  The cold. It is setting in. Keep the whisky flowing, my man, keep it flowing. He unscrews the cap and takes another bolt – a bottle he’d minded was in the kitchen, unopened, laid out on top of the cupboards. A present from Alan last Christmas. The usual gift from him, but no complaints, he’s bloody grateful, serious. The bottle carefully chosen, you can tell: decent enough it’s obvious he’s spent some money, but never a single malt, never something that the average man, in the brother-in-law’s opinion, should be drinking. But fine. Fuck it. Fine. Cheers then to the brother-in-law and to his charming wife, who haven’t as it happens been down once to visit the grave since they left. Which tells you everything, really, everything. Still but you can’t have it all ways, eh, and the better that he doesn’t have to see them; plus as well of course, how does he know for sure that they haven’t been? Maybe they have, see, maybe they have. No way. They haven’t. There would be some display of flowers or something. They have not been. See if they come at all, they’ll come when it suits them. When there’s a film they want to see, or they need a new computer.

  A stifty wind in under the door. He pulls the blankets close. Jesus, he’s hungry. He drags the emptied tool box from under the table and feels about inside it for the end of a packet of biscuits, then gets eating a couple. It’s nearly finished, the food store. A battle plan needed. Another problem for another day.

  He has had a pure stroke of luck. He’d been one afternoon rummling about in the back of the shed for anything useful there might be, and he found the wee battery radio they used to put outside sometimes when they were sat or she was at the gardening. It’s still working. A miracle. And it’s good too, having it on, no bother that the reception is pretty fuzzy, it’s better than nothing, especially these nights he’s laid there just, with the brainbox going, no able to sleep.

  He listens to the quiet voice of the nightwatchradioman. He’s talking about this TV programme that he watched the day about assisted suicides and people going away for them, the legalities and all that. Mick’s no hearing it all, but it’s relaxing, the sound of the guy’s voice. There is a call-in after, but they don’t stick to the topic. People can ring in saying whatever’s on their minds. What do ye think will be the score Saturday? Barry in Pollokshields predicts a thumping away victory for the Gers, and a hat-trick for the new boy. Here’s hoping, Barry, here’s hoping.

  The food store is gone. It’s fine but, it’s okay; no like it has come out the blue. He’s been intending the last few days to go the messages for one or two items. Bread. Biscuits. Cheap things that don’t need going in the fridge and he can keep out here. Another bottle of whisky would be much appreciated too, but he’s got to be careful watching the pennies, got to start thinking where’s the money going to come from. He closes his eyes. Got to do this, got to mind to do that. It’s too much to think about. Easier to shut the eyes just and go to sleep, no have to deal with anything just now.

  Chapter 12

  Des is standing on the pavement out front of the Empress when he spots the distant figure of Mick approaching down the street. He drops his cigarette to the ground, picks up the broom that is propped against the wall, and gets sweeping the lunchtime dog-ends into the road. No that there’s a great many. There’d only been a few in: the small group of staff from the recruitment agency round the corner, a couple of shopping-centre workers, and Pat, who is the only person left in the bar now, quietly drinking his Guinness over the racing odds.

  He finishes clearing the pavement, and waits to say a hello to Mick if he isn’t stopping in for a drink. Halfway down the street though, Mick crosses over and goes into the closemouth of a tenement on the other side, a blue carrier bag in his hand, and disappears. Des goes inside. He pours a refill for Pat, a Grouse for himself, then goes into the back for a sit down.

  Maybe it had been someone else. Looked like Mick but. He sits back and lights a fag, keeping an eye through the bar to the lobby entrance. The family must have all gone by now: it’s
well over a month since Craig was coming by those nights, so he’s obviously back up in Yoker. They might be on with a claim by now, from what Craig had been saying then. Awful fucking sad, what had happened. She was a great woman, Cathy, a cracker. Always had been. Back in the day, he used to have something of a crush on her. When he was a young guy first working the bar for his father, he’d look forward to her coming in with the other women during the work-in. There will be no bevvying, the shop stewards had told their men, so they were doing it for them, they’d joked. Just awful bloody sad. It could’ve been any of those women – still could be. The whole area is a timebomb. It could well be him next, or Pat, or any of the men that he’d stood and listened to from behind the bar, right from when there first started to be the rumblings, talking about it like it was something far off and no to do with them, even though they were sat there with the dust caked in their ears and their arseholes. A customer is coming into the lobby entrance. Des gets up, reluctantly wedges his fag in the ashtray, and goes through to the bar.

  Mick comes back into the shed with a wee feeling of triumph and puts the items into the food store: bread and biscuits, a packet of cheese, tinned apricots and luncheon meat; even a paper for something to read and while away the hours. See all that stupit carry-on and then in the end it was fine. He’s probably only been gone twenty minutes. He gave the Co a swerve, so all he did was get to the cash machine on the high street, draw out a note and ignore the fact the account is gone overdrawn, then dot in the minimarket on his way back for all these bits and pieces. Easy-oasy.

  Now that it’s done he steps out of the shed again and sets his sights on the house. He may as well get everything done in one go, collect more plates, a knife and a fork, and fill up the watering can with fresh water. Then he’ll be set.

  He stands outside the shed and looks down the line of back gardens, all empty; wet leaves and rubbish strewn about. Five minutes and he’ll be done. Put the blinkers on, get in and get out. He starts toward the house. Grey pebble-dash; green back door. Strange but he doesn’t recognize it, it’s that unfamiliar somehow. If he’d been in the shed and he’d tried thinking what colour is the back door, what colour is the front door even, he wouldn’t have been able to say, serious, he wouldn’t. All they details: doors, carpets, furniture, they all merge into a general feeling you have, a habit, of being in the house. A place you return to at the end of the day after your toils, and relax. The familiar routines – putting your keys on the counter, sticking the kettle on, getting sat in your chair – it’s natural just, you don’t even think about it. All of it so far past the now. Gone. None of it fits.

  The bulb is out in the kitchen. He goes to the cupboard for plates, working by the dim light coming in through the rain-smeared window. Grey shadows on the counter from the kettle and the toaster. He gets a cup, a knife, fork, then he rinses out the watering can; gets filling it with clean water. What would be a good idea as well is pulling the covers off Robbie’s bed: the nights are too cold getting, even with the extra blankets he’s brought out. He goes out of the kitchen and it’s the speed of things, the combination of them all happening together, that undoes him. The light no turning on. The tide of envelopes by the door. A noise upstairs – a bump. It all happens in a second, before he can get registering any of it, and his heart banjos right up his fucking throat and he has to shove against the banister, pressing his back to it and craning to look up the stair. His breathing is heavy and snatched, he can’t control it. It is gone silent up there. But then there’s another bump somewhere above his head; he makes a dart for the living room door beside him. Quiet as he can, he crouches down behind the settee and gets lying in the narrow gap between it and the wall.

  His leg is murdering underneath him, but he doesn’t budge. Still nothing from up the stair. The blood in his ears is making it hard to listen, but he strains to hear, ready for any sound in the ceiling above him. Stupit. He is trapped, and whoever it is that’s up there is just waiting, because they know it, or they’ve went, or they weren’t even bloody there in the first place, Christ knows. So he stays put, the leg aching and his knees pressed into the back of the settee. From where he’s lying, he can see part of the video player under the television, but the display clock is blank so he can’t tell how long he’s been there, maybe only a few minutes, or maybe hours, who knows?

  Quietly, stiffly, he gets himself out from the settee. His ears are pure bursting, he’s listening that hard as he edges out from the room and into the corridor, quickening his pace, coming into the kitchen and grabbing the things before getting out the back door. He clicks it softly shut behind him. A quick look at the upstairs window before he reaches the shed, but there’s nothing.

  He is sat in the straight-backed hospital chair with the plastic peeling off it and the foam poking out, while she stares out of the window. The white curtain is pulled shut in a horseshoe around them, and there’s the peaceful hum of a dozen sleeping, snoring, dying women in the room outside. Through in the corridor, the faint hurrying patter of nurses’ feet. And beyond the window, where she’s staring, a gardener, whistling himself a tune as his pink head tots in and out of sight behind a hedge. After a while he comes round the near side of it, and he’s got his shirt-sleeves rolled up, it’s that sunny a day. The windows are open, and it’s awful welcome, the freshness of the air outside coming in with his wee tune, pouring into the stale room. All of a sudden there is a fart somewhere outside the curtain – a loud, long, trumpety job – which causes him to chuckle and look at her, but she hasn’t noticed it, she’s still fixed on the gardener. She has been asleep all morning and she’s lying restfully the now as he sits quietly watching her.

  A nurse pops her head through the curtain at one point, gives him a smile and disappears again. She didn’t signal she was coming in, it occurs to him when she’s gone. But then what would be the point? She is the one that’s changing her clothes, helping her go to the toilet. There’s no need being discreet any more; it’s past that. Maybe if he’d been sat there himself in the bare scuddy, his balls sticking to the seat, then maybe she’d start giving the signal. He grins. Aye, probably.

  There is the gentle hushed sound of a relative talking. Outside, the gardener is lopping the heads off a line of finished flowers at the bottom of the hedge. Still the bright, tireless whistle. He looks at her. Is she listening? Can she hear it? He realizes then that he doesn’t know if she can or not – if she’s listening, if she can see him, or if she’s just staring out at nothing. And that is when he understands. It’s the precise moment, in fact. Maybe she can hear it, maybe she can’t, but either way it doesn’t make any difference because it’s only time now, only time that is in the way. He stands up from the chair to move toward her, and her eyes shift to take him in. He smiles, and brushes the headscarf back to give her a wee kiss on the forehead; then he leaves out of the cubicle to go and get a coffee from the machine down the corridor.

  Chapter 13

  The biscuits are gone stale. There is the dull snap of wet fibreboard about them now, and the cheese has broke out in green spots and a white frilly moss. He opens the door a nook, pushing against the sludge of wet leaves gathered against it, and slings out what’s left for the birds. No use it going to waste.

  The shed isn’t best equipped for this rainy period that’s come on. It gets in under the walls and the door, and drips down off the window. The blankets are pretty damp getting by now. Probably he’ll come down with some horrendous illness and go the way of the cheese. The sparrows the first to find him, to notice he’s copped his whack when they start pecking inside on the lookout for food.

  Enough of that. Talk about maunderly. Jesus.

  He is running out of shit pits. There’s nay chance he’s going back in the house, with its strange atmosphere and its lack of lights and its mysterious bumping noises up the stairs, so that just leaves the bucket at the back of the shed. He did consider using it before, when he stopped using the house toilet, until he came to his s
enses and realized that would be mental. Instead, he’d took a corner of the garden, the border on one side where Cathy used to plant her flowers, and used a trowel to dig a line of small pits, each with the mound of soil next to it to cover over after he’s took a crap. But now the line is almost filled. And as well, he needs to get some toilet roll. All he’s got left to use is torn out half-pages of the Southside News. A delicate operation, serious, though it doesn’t make much difference how gently he does it – the backside is getting sorer, and blacker, pasted each day with new articles about tenement regenerations and Roma beatings.

  There is a noise coming from outside. A faint, distant, rolling sound. He thinks at first it might be the wind, which is piping cold pea-shooters at his feet from under the door, but he understands after a while that it’s Ibrox. There is a match on. He tunes in the radio, but the commentary isn’t the clearest so he gives that up and listens outside just, waiting for the wind to blow him a favour. It does, and a few times he hears a muffled roar going up. Maybe the new boy is on form. Taken the league by storm this past couple of weeks and making mincemeat of opposition defences. Whatever the score is, it seems like they’re winning, and the result is confirmed for him later, because there’s car horns pamping in the night, together with what sounds like a brawl away on the high street.