by Ross Raisin
They are going up a stairwell and his legs give out. He slumps down on the step and Beans is dragging at him until he gets up and labours on. Another door.
‘You.’
‘Me, aye.’
They are being let in and they follow the backs of a man’s legs up a staircase. Who’s he? My pal, that’s who. A small room and a TV going. He is sitting down on a settee and Beans and the man have went into another room. A plate on the floor with the remains of a jacket tattie, just the well-fired parts of the shell left over. Beans and the man appear in the doorway, grim-faced.
Cans coming out; he gets handed one. The man’s eyes are large and swollen, the top lids delicately folded scrotums. The air clung with smoke as he gets through his pack of fags, Beans smoking as well, dog-ends on the floor, a shoe, some bundled sheets. He doesn’t say much, your mate, through the smoke. He’s fine, he’s fine. Darkness, and he wakes, alarmed and shaking. Beans on the settee, one cadaver leg hanging off the edge. He is lying on the floor. The stink of smoke in the carpet. The tattie still there; he crawls over and starts into it, tearing at the boot leather skin.
Always with Beans he’s on the march somewhere, some plan or other he’s got in his head and he isn’t stopping until he gets there. They arrive at a small car park behind a low, flat-roofed building. There is a fence all round with a neat bed of green shoots in front. BUTTERFIELD MEDICAL PRACTICE, on a sign plugged into the soil. Alarm seizes suddenly in his stomach, working up into his throat until he is almost breathless, choking, needing to sit down on the path by the flower bed. Beans slapping him on the back. A pure desperate urge to drink now has hold of him as Beans makes him stand up, and they get walking, away again onto the street.
They come to a park – no a park but more a patch in between a couple of road crossings, with a square of grass and a rubber-matted play area big enough for about three weans a time to go on. A see-saw. A wee elephant slide with a trunk for a chute. There is a bin beside a bench, which Beans has a neb through before going in his pocket and handing Mick a five-pound note. ‘Gonnae go the offie while I find us something to eat?’
The man in the offie is a bastard, but what can you do? Mick thumps the two bottles of superlager onto the counter and the guy doesn’t say a word, he gives this wee look just, but he’s made himself fine well clear enough. I, the seller of refreshments, know that you, the scaffer, are going to get yourself paralytic, and if it so happens that you kill yourself falling into the road, or you kill somebody else falling into the road, then it’s no my fault, and I’ll stand here with my face to vinegar just to show who is the better out of the two of us. Nay problem. Fine. Just hand over the beer, pal.
Chapter 29
A woman, coming toward them.
‘Excuse me.’
Beans straightening up, the eyes alert suddenly.
‘Nay bother, madam. Ye haven’t interrupted anything.’
Her hands on her hips.
‘You can’t drink here. There’s kids playing.’
How old is she? Thirty? Forty? Her weans over on the see-saw, and another woman there too, nervous wee looks up the way. Beans is giggling, saying something, impossible to tell what. The woman stood with her arms folded. ‘Excuse me.’ She is looking at him now. ‘Can you understand me?’ The weans are stopped playing, lined up on the rubber play area watching. He has a dim sense of wanting her to stay there, a sort of longing, but Beans is acting it still, muttering on, and she is gone, angrily gathering up bags and weans and marching out of the park to go fetch the heavy team, or the polis, or the council – wading boots on, lads, the residents arenae happy.
There is only one bench in the park, so they take turns, a night each, to sleep on it. The nights it isn’t their turn they lie out on the grass aside or underneath it. One time but Beans gives a try sleeping on the slide, although it’s obvious no big enough, and Mick finds him in the morning crumpled at the bottom of the chute, looking like something the elephant’s boaked up during the night.
He wakes. The sour taste of alcohol in his mouth. Against his face is an empty creased bottle that he’d put there as a pillow. The sun is up, and warm already, but he has got the shakes. No just the arms, or the legs, but the whole of him: head, chest, elbows and hips, all the way down to his toes. Shuddering. He caulks the eyes shut but they pinball in the sockets until they are pure throbbing and he can no longer stop this fear that is rising up him, overwhelming him, a genuine terror made all the worse because there is nothing to fix it to, no reason, it is there just. He presses his forehead hard against the slats of the bench, pushing against the ache. Slitting the eyes open. Beans isn’t there. The sudden thought but of getting up to look for him – it’s impossible, even the thought is impossible and makes his stomach start to heave and his throat retch, even sitting up, even opening his eyes fully, impossible, impossible. Easier to lie there just, shivering and sweating. The sun no helping matters either – sapping him and making him the more nauseous. He hasn’t the energy to take off his coat though. The smallest things. Impossible. But through it all he is craving for a drink. An urging of the body; a pure physical need for it, just to stop all this, drive away again the ache and the fear.
It is getting darker and he is cold. Beans has gone for a crap in the bushes beyond the play area. Away on the road, a streetlamp flickering on. Then another. All along the side of the park they are coming on at random intervals, and he realizes that it’s the ones in the darkest spots where the smaller trees are coming to leaf which are turning on first. Interesting. The wee things you notice.
Beans is shaking him on the shoulder.
‘Come on, gonnae wake up?’
‘What?’
‘Breakfast.’ The familiar grin. His breakfast grin. ‘I’ve been researching.’
He gets himself up off the ground. It is drizzling and his back is soaked, some of it sweat probably, although he doesn’t feel too bad this morning. Their money has ran out, so they haven’t drunk the full bucket the last couple of days. They get walking through the rain until a short while later they arrive at a building that looks at first like an office block, but when they go through the glass doors and bare lobby it opens into a large hall, full of scaffers. Bright overhead lights, tables, din. Beans turns to him: ‘Ye okay? Check the food, eh. No bad.’ He can’t see any food. The place is hoaching with scaffers, shuffling about, yapping, staring. ‘Ye coming?’ Beans is gone ahead and he hurries after him, clinging behind like a wean, he’s that dependent. See what if Beans leaves him? Gets so sick of him laggered onto his back like some diseased lump that he gives him the slip? The possibility of it makes him start to panic as he follows on to a trestle table with large pots of food on it. He waits in behind Beans, copies how he gets his meal and moves to the next area for a tea. They sit down at an empty table and eat hungrily. Toast. Scrambled eggs. ‘Pretty good, eh? I should’ve minded this place earlier. It’s one of the best. Only open a couple of hours but, so ye have to be quick.’
A young guy is watching them. He is sat at another table with a couple of others, forking egg into his mouth but clear enough looking over. Beans doesn’t seem to notice, or else he’s ignoring it. Mick keeks away. He wants to be out of here. Beans has other ideas though: ‘Finish this and we’ll go the showers, okay?’
In another room there are washing and drying machines, and cardboard boxes full of clothes. Beans is off through a doorway and he is left stood there unsure what to do. An old woman with a name badge hung around her neck comes up and tells him to help himself to some of the clothes, so he rummles through and pulls out a faded black pair of trackie bottoms and a grey shirt with a dark smudge on the collar.
In the next room, through a door marked MEN, there is a queue for showers, and Beans is further up the way already. They aren’t communal, thank Christ: there’s five or six separate ones, each with a curtain, though a couple of the men at the front are down to their pants already. Fucking terrible, the state of them. Scars and veins and
jaundice.
He waits until he is inside a cubicle before he starts to undress. Even removing his coat feels odd. He’s no took it off since Beans gave it him. Then he peels off the rest, all of it damp and rotten, clabbered to his skin, and he gets in the shower. It’s been that long since he’s seen himself in the scuddy that he doesn’t recognize himself. As if the body isn’t his; it belongs to another time when nakedness was something that had to be dealt with on a daily basis, and now he doesn’t own it – he’s removed himself from his body like he has from everything else. The only clue that it’s there the now: that it hurts. There are bruises on his legs, down his front, his hips, fucking everywhere. His forearm skin is turned loose and chickeny; he pulls on it, the spring gone. The penis down there. Genuine difficult to believe that is his. He puts a hand around it, tries to mind what it means, the having of a penis. Nothing’s doing but. His dobber’s no sure about it either, and the two of them dither there for a while, waiting for something to happen, a connection. There is none. Or maybe it’s just that neither of them are too comfortable about the line of half-naked scaffers queuing outside, which is in fact fair enough, being honest.
He gives himself a good wash, using the soap from the dispenser to rub over his head and his body, and special attention to the feet, which are started looking like a couple of raw beef kidneys. It feels good. The force of the water. Cleaning. Paying attention to all these parts that he’s forgot about. The belly button. Armpits. Nipples, christsake.
When he comes out, he goes in the toilets and takes a very satisfying crap. The first time in a long while he’s no had to sneak into a pub for one, or go in the park with a stolen toilet roll.
He puts his dirty clothes in a washer. Pretty pleased as well with these new ones. The shirt is a decent fit, and the trousers comfy enough around the waist, even if they are a wee bit on the short side. No the less, see even if his socks are on show, he definitely doesn’t look half as daft as Beans does. He clocks him out in the hall and goes toward him, chuckling.
‘Jesus. Check you.’
He is wearing a pair of black jeans and a white denim jacket, the both of them a fair few sizes too small for him. Beans grins. ‘Gallus, eh?’ Then he holds a finger in the air and spins around slowly, showing the back: ATLANTA HAWKS.
‘If you say so, pal. If you say so.’
Beans goes back to the clothing room, saying that he forgot to look for another pair of socks, and Mick moves over to the juice table. There are plenty of name-badge people milling about, topping up cups, handing out leaflets, chatting. They don’t seem like Hallelujahs. Any case, there isn’t anything religious on the walls, only posters everywhere – chiropodist, walk-in clinic, housing advice – things he should be finding out about, probably, but the awareness of it only makes him feel the more sluggish. Through in the clothes room he can see Beans talking to somebody. He is pointing a thumb at his jacket, showing it off, but suddenly a hand shoots out from behind the door frame and grabs him by the collar, pulling him forwards. Beans stumbling, out of sight. There is too much noise in the hall to hear what is going on. He moves quickly toward the room, a few looking in now.
It is the young guy that had been staring. He is stood right up to Beans, putting the face on him.
‘Fucking give it me.’
Another guy as well, behind him, eyeballing Beans, who is rocking on his feet, confused. ‘Look, see I got it out the box, that’s what I –’ but he is getting shoved again, the veins on the guy’s neck standing out and Beans falling to the floor, straight onto his arse. Mick rushes forward, standing in front of him before the guy can stick the boot on. ‘Leave it, come on. What ye doing? Leave it.’ The young guy is looking at him, this odd smile, like he knows him.
‘The jacket’s mine.’
Name-badge men are coming in the door. Beans behind him, getting up. The situation as it is, he looks even more ridiculous right now in the tight denims. The guy’s pal is pulling on his shoulder – ‘Come on, let’s go’ – but he’s a fair solid build and he’s no budging, and it’s pretty obvious that the jacket cannot be his because it’s way too small for him. In an instant the two men are barging out the room, pushing past the name badges, and it is over, just like that. Beans looks shook up. He is fairly shook up himself; but, through it, a small feeling of elation.
Nobody is moving, and it’s Beans who is the first to speak, looking out the door through the bodies. ‘Psychies,’ he says, going over to the box and starting to root about, still after his socks.
On the way back to the park, carrying a new blanket and their cleaned clothes in carriers, Beans doesn’t talk about what has just went on. He patters on as normal, like nothing’s happened, telling him instead about the holidays he went on as a wean. Mick has the incident on his mind but. Wondering if Beans noticed his part in it even. ‘Fair Fortnight, ye mind it? We’d go to Rothesay. Always there, nay discussions. One time my maw says let’s go someplace different this year, maybe go see her cousins and that in Irvine, but the da he tells her we’re going to Rothesay and that’s that.’
Mick smiles. ‘That’s where we went, ye know, Rothesay.’
Beans stops in his tracks and a man on his mobile phone almost walks into him.
‘Fuck off, serious?’
‘We did, aye. Every Fair, mostly.’
Beans is still rooted to the pavement, amazed. Residents diverting past them. ‘Mind that station the Friday morning? The platform mobbed with all these Fair Invaders packing in and the conductors playing hell with ye if ye got too close the edge – but what could ye do, eh? There was nowhere else to go!’ He starts chuckling. ‘Who ye go with, the parents, brothersisters?’
‘No. Mean, my da died when I was wee, so it was me and my maw just. These other guys she was with sometimes, but mostly it was just us.’
They walk on in quiet for a while. If the two of them are in fact ages, then it’s actually possible they would have been there at the same time. He is tempted asking him what years he used to go, but he stops himself. Something about Beans, this sense that he doesn’t want pinning down and it’s the better no to push him on things. Who’s he to talk but? He who bloody cloys up at the barest mention of anything that might make him have to remember.
Beans is still on at it as they get back into the park. Ye mind the fiddle player on the Wemyss Bay ferry? Ye go the Punch and Judies? The pleasure boats? The tackle shop and dangle your line through the cracks in the pier? Mick is listening, but he’s trying as well to figure out how they are going to make up the price of a bottle and get through the rest of the day.
‘Once or twice we stayed in a caravan but most times my maw would be thumbing it through the small ads for one of they rooms that families rented out for the holidays. And see my da, he was a bevvy-merchant, right, and he was always away to the whisky booths or else he was there drinking in the room. But this landlady I mind we had, she knew what like the score was, and I don’t know if it was cause it was her weans’ room normally or what it was, but she starts into him this time – “Ye can’t bring your drink in here, this is my house, a terrible man ye are” – and all this, and me and my maw and my wee sister are sitting there like three pounds of mince, thinking he’s gonnae belt her, a pure certainty that he will. But he doesnae. He gets up just and he lets himself out the door, away to the whisky booth, and the three of us and the landlady staring at each other with nay clue what to do next.’
He is sitting on the bench, laughing, as if it’s a happy memory he’s just recalled.
‘Amazing, eh, you going to Rothesay, no think?’
Without the money for a drink, it leaves a hole in the afternoon, so they decide what they’ll do is go up the river and pay the swan a visit.
The gate has a new padlock on it. ‘Bastards.’ Beans strains over the palings, then is off scootling down the path. The swan is out. Or maybe she’s been evicted too. The nest is still there, but the whole area has been cleaned up: the cans and the rest of the rubbish
gone, and new wiring over the tunnel entrance. They sit down on the veranda and throw chuckies at the floaters, Beans starting up about the Fair again. It is all there in what he’s saying – the Winter Gardens, the beach, Italian ice creams – but for some reason there is something queer about how he’s telling it, as if it’s no true somehow. Like he’s heard all this off somebody else but he thinks it’s his own memories. Or he’s making it up. Maybe it’s just himself but, trying to find holes in it. Maybe he doesn’t want to believe it’s true.
Later, they have a walk down the water. Beans tries it on, tapping passers-by for a few coins, but without much luck. They don’t have any change on them; or they don’t speak. Head down. Eyes to the tarmac. No a total disaster though. Eventually they come past a young pair kisscanoodling, who give him a two-pound coin.
The gloaming is come on when they return to the park. They drink the single can that they’ve each got, and take their positions, Mick on the ground with the blanket, Beans up on the bench. Without much superlager inside to numb him up, it is impossible to get to sleep. The cold nipping, and this unsettling feeling going through him in waves that is related he knows to the bringing up of old memories. He must doze off at some point though, because he is dreaming about a paddleboat and a boy fallen off the side when he is suddenly woken up – noise, heat, and a great blaze of fire above him that he realizes, through the flames, is Beans.