by Ross Raisin
He is stumbling, flapping about, his chest and arms ablaze. Mick blunders to his knees, the fire crackling, a smell of petrol. ‘Keith,’ he shouts, uselessly, pushing him onto the ground and only then clocking the group of men stood on the play area. Watching; walking over. The guy from earlier, a can in his hand, laughing. Beans is thumping his hands on the grass and Mick tries to roll him, this kind of growling noise coming out of his throat, and his face damp, pieces of skin peeling off his neck. The hat – if it caught fire – and he scrabbles to pull it off him, Beans’s eyes pleading, crapping it he’s going to die. And Mick is thinking it too but he knows, in that instant, rocking the body on the grass, that his own fear is for himself. The men are stood over them. One of them puts an arm out and lager is pouring down, hissing on the dying flames. He is powerless, he just keeps rocking the great charred mass back and forth, burning his hands, until the fire is almost out, and he tries then to take the jacket off but it is too tight – more laughter – so he tears at it and it comes apart in pieces. One of the men suddenly puts the boot on, kicking Beans in his side. Then another of them catches Mick in the stomach and he is keeling over, bent double on the hot grass, no able to breathe.
They are away, running down the path, jumping the gate. ‘Keith. Ye alright, pal?’ Stupit question. He’s alive but. The lips are quivering in his raw bleeding bawface; wet, red patches on his chin and cheeks. Mick pulls off the shreds of his jacket and his shirt, trying no to look at the body, then he takes off his own coat and rests it on top, lying down beside him, his hands stinging, too done in the now to move or think about getting somewhere safe.
Chapter 30
Beans is sat up on the bench, quiet. He’s got the coat draped over him like a blanket, but underneath it’s possible to see what’s left of his clothes, stuck to him in black tatterings on his chest and belly, patches of red wincing flesh, skin bubbles.
‘Ye’re well fired, then.’
No the right thing to say. He isn’t amused. Just sat there, staring ahead. He’s got his woolly hat back on, turned now a darker shade of red. Below it, one of his bug-ladders is burnt off, a few blackened stems of hair poking out from the blistered skin, and the bottom of his ear is yellow and gluey with pus, like an upturned clam.
‘Want something to eat?’
Beans shrugs his shoulders just. Gives a kind of snort. Clear enough what he’s meaning: who’s going to get it, well? Mick stands up and goes to the bin. It hasn’t been emptied yet from yesterday and it’s overflowing: a magazine and an empty Lucozade bottle sticking out the top. The best he can find though is a bit of brown banana left in its skin and a few crisps in a bag. He takes them over to lay beside Beans on the bench, but he doesn’t even turn his head. All the life is went out of him.
He sits again on the bench, the crisps and banana between them.
‘I’ve seen a guy on fire before,’ he says then, just to be saying something. ‘A welder. Just pure unfortunate, really, cause he was doing this job that he had his mask on for and as well one of these flame-retardant suits, but see that was the problem. He starts jigging about and nobody knows what he’s up to at first, they think he’s dicking around, but actually a spark is got inside the suit and nobody can see that his clothes is on fire cause, like I say, the suit’s flame-retardant.’
Beans isn’t listening. His head is sunk down, looking at the grass. There is a scorched patch in front of where they are sitting.
‘Anyway, so by the time his mate’s clocked what’s going on the poor guy is almost fried, and when he comes back from the hospital he’s got third-degree burns and everyone’s telling him he should go the courts but he says he’s no gonnae because it was his own fault for no doing the neck studs up.’
‘This supposed to be cheery?’
Mick turns round, relieved. ‘Right, sorry.’ He smiles. ‘Sorry. See what I mean is it could’ve been worse.’ Beans is looking now at the banana and crisps, not moving. His lips are swollen and bluish. ‘Worse,’ he says, in a quiet voice.
There is the problem of food and also, now, the problem of where to stay. They don’t discuss it but it’s clear enough they need to move from the park. As well, Beans is in blatant need of some medical attention. When Mick says they should go the hospital, however, he just gives a wee laugh. It’s the only thing he responds to all afternoon. The rest of the time he just sits there in silence, pulling the coat around him and covering his wounds, but Mick can see well enough what like the state he is in: his face and neck hugely swollen by now, and the top of the coat soaked with whatever it is that’s running out of his sores.
Later, Mick gets up and tells him he’s going off to find some food. He starts down the road, looking in the bins. A few people watching him as he gets grubbing inside them but he’s too hungry to care, pulling and digging at all this stuff that the residents have decided isn’t fit for them any longer: magazines, a bunch of flowers, newspapers with this picture of a politician type on the front. There is food too, plenty of it. Sandwich cartons, some with just the crust left, but a couple that there’s actually an entire half-piece in there. Unfuckingbelievable, really. In another bin he finds a Japanese roll left in one box and two more with these pink pickled frillies on the side. He gets it all into a pair of sandwich cartons and leaves back to the park.
He lays it all out on the bench. Beans nods his head slightly – one eye is half closed, the lid above it pink and inflamed – then he stares off again without touching the food, back into whatever it is he’s thinking.
They wait it out the afternoon until the light starts to change and Mick gets them on the move. Beans doesn’t argue. He doesn’t do anything, just keeps cloyed up, loundering slowly behind as they go down the road. They come again to the doctor’s practice. He leads Beans down a path to the back of the building. All the lights are turned off and the car park is empty, so he lays the blanket down under an archway by the back door. He sits Beans up against the wall and sets off for more food.
Strange but it’s gave him something of a punt up, what’s happened. Fucking terrible, of course, he’s a terrible bastard to think it but it’s true. He feels more of a purpose about him. It’s down to himself the now. Showing Beans that he’s no just some leech that can’t get by on his own. He can be useful. He is being useful. After a long walk he finds a full bin round by a kebab shop. A few looks but so what? Go fuck yourselves. On the way back, it starts to rain. He gets a hurry on, clutching the warm carton of collected chips and doner meat under his jacket.
Beans has moved. The blanket is laid out still, an empty carrier beside it. The rain tearing out from a gutter, hammering onto the concrete.
He eats half the food. Watches the yellow flowers over in the bed, nodding, drooping. Puddles growing in the car park. Which gives him an idea, and he gets up to go on another bin search, eventually finding an empty Coke bottle. Nobody on the street but. When he returns to the pitch he props the bottle with a stone out in the rain.
With the damp, and no overcoat, he sleeps fitfully the night, waking frequently with the same familiar sense of alarm. The blanket bare next to him. By morning, the rain has stopped, and the bottle is filled up quite a bit, stood there in the half-light of the glistening car park. Beans is gone still. He stays there, awake, the sun coming up and the sound of traffic increasing on the road, until eventually there’s no choice but to move on before anyone arrives.
He sits on top of a wall across the road, watching the entrance to the car park. The cleaner arrives. He watches the dim shadow of him through a window, slowing passing the mop. Doctors. Patients. A woman with a screaming snapper in a pram, halting and shouting at it to get shut up.
There is curtain-twitching going on behind him. He can see the movement in the corner of his eye when he turns his head to look down the road. Next thing the meat wagon will be blaring up the way, nay doubt. Well, get to fuck, then, he isn’t doing anything; he’s just sat there. But then what happens, it’s no the polis, it’s the man
of the house opening the door and coming out. ‘Excuse me.’ The wife in the doorway behind, in her dressing gown. He’s got a T-shirt on – DUBLIN MARATHON FINISHER – and he means business: it’s his wall, get the fuck off it. ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’ Mick starts to laugh. The residents don’t know what to make of that though, they’re exchanging glances, wondering what’s their next move. Aw, sod off, and he hops down from the wall, gets walking away down the pavement. That’s him, then. No use waiting there any longer, so he decides to go to the river and check the veranda.
No sign of him. A hundred places he could be.
He spends the night at the doctor’s. Cold, shaking. Panic sticking the boot on at every turn and keeping him from sleep.
The familiar places: the river, the park – he even starts toward the day centre one morning, but then as he’s on the approach he turns about. An ache is growing inside him, taking over the whole of his body. Hunger, for one thing. Something else but. Too big. It’s too big. A sense that is inseparable as well from needing a drink – a pure desperate fucking need for one. So he starts going up the coach station again. It takes him a long while to walk there, using the wee bus stop maps and getting lost all the time but so what? Kills the time. Can ye spare any change, madam? Spare any change, sir? They can’t. Or some of them can, but most of them give him turned shoulders and the silent treatment. He doesn’t care. He needs a drink, simple as that, and everything else – it’s all a great blank space above the clouds, himself lying there on top with the hands behind the head and the blanket underneath him, slipping and floating across like he’s on a magic carpet. Any change, sir? Ye don’t? Nay danger, don’t worry, don’t worry. An auld hen, her hands tucked together, that way auld ladies do, fingering in her bag. God bless ye, madam. A man gives him his apple and he goes over to Newcastle to eat it, hid inamongst the legs and dragged suitcases as the driver appears with his cup of coffee, climbing onto the coach and getting the doors open. A few moments of noise and bustle. Singsong voices. A wee man walking past, joking with his mate. Somebody he minds him of. Who? Sure there’s somebody, and then he does mind – Ken – and he smiles at the memory. A great guy. About four foot two in his work boots, and a smile like a shopping trolley pulled out the river. One of the platers at Swan Hunter. This great singing voice he had on him, always belting out something or other – ‘You ain’t seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn’ – that was one he was always giving it, because Newcastle had this striker at the time that was banging in thirty goals a season.
The bay is thinning out now, a line of people forming outside on the coach park.
The other thing about Ken, most people never guessed until it was too late, he was a serious hardman. He’d bring in his own pieces every day, which the wife had made for him in these neat paper bags. Ham and pease pudding. Every day. He was aye particular about it. What sandwiches you brought today, Ken? And it was funny because he never knew you were kidding, he was that proud of the wife’s pieces. So one day this plater’s helper called Tommy Lambton thinks it’ll be a great joke to take the pieces from under his work bench and hide them while he isn’t looking. Come lunch break and Ken’s raging. Which of you’s took em, then? And suddenly he’s got the whole plating squad lined up, blank-faced, because in fact nobody does know where they are, until eventually young Tommy can’t hold it in any more and he starts knotting himself – they’re here, Ken, and he hands the sandwiches back, fair squashed and grubby by now. That’s the end of it, as far as anybody thinks. But later the lunch break Tommy is in the canteen sat down eating, yapping about the great trick he’s pulled, when in steps Ken, who comes toward the table and, calm as a waiter, picks up Tommy’s plate and walks off with it. Then they’re all following him through the yard like he’s the Pied Piper, Tommy included, quiet as a mouse now and with this black-affronted look on him, as Ken goes up to the launching berth and tips the food into the water. Then he hands the empty plate back to Tommy and leaves, all the rest of them watching this pie case slowly floating down the Tyne. One guy joking that it just goes to show how much filling they put in those bloody pies.
He laughs at the memory of it. A woman reading her magazine in the next bay, frowning at him. Chichester, she’s going to. Course she fucking is. He gets up and leaves her to it; resumes with his collecting.
There is enough for a couple of cans and a sausage roll. He goes up the river, the old spot, looking out over the power station and the tollie tug. He doesn’t stay long though. Even with the drink, he can’t get relaxed. Not on his own. The panicky feeling is there, the heart going, some part of him always on the alert now it’s only him to keep lookout, and as well nothing to distract him, nobody in his ear giving it the problem with bird-murdering farmers and all the rest.
The park is empty. No weans, or mothers, nothing. It’s a pretty dreich day but. The patch of charred grass is still there, less black than it was, but just as dead. He moves on. Down the road he nicks into a pub to go for a pish, but it’s dead inside and the landlord cops onto him before he can get in the toilets. Another pub opposite but, and he slips in unnoticed. He washes his face, and nabs a toilet roll from one of the cubicles.
Further on there is a subway station, and he sits down by the cash machines without too much of a thought but that he needs to sit down, so he may as well do it here and tap some money into the bargain. Pure murder on the arse after a while though, even with the blanket and his carrier of clothes underneath him. Thickets of legs, coming in waves, up the stair from the subway. He doesn’t look at them. No up at their faces. He keeps his eyes on their ankles and their shoes instead. Without the body and the face on top, the feet take on a life of their own, like it’s the feet themselves that are wanting to get a hurry on, them that are annoyed at having to swerve around him. That’s fine but. Fine. Feet, he can deal with.
The first afternoon, he makes 87p. The next day, the weather is better and he gets there earlier. Somebody drops him a baseball cap, which he puts on to shield his face from the sun. Another gives him a cup of tea, and when he’s finished it he leaves the empty cup on the ground next to him. His earnings almost double. Chink. In it goes. Like pressing a button. He spends his nights in the usual spot behind the doctor’s, awake already and away early the morning. Sandwich, superlager; easy enough, the routine, and it gathers around him like a fog, guiding him and protecting him. Inside it but, thoughts and memories appear suddenly like figures out of the mist – he tries to lose them, give them the body swerve; always the same race between the reminders and the drink.
He’s slept right through and they are come to move him, the light up and a crowd of blue jackets moving through the car park, one of them picking up an empty bottle of superlager, Beans not there, these rub-ye-ups grabbing at his legs – come on, come on – a man craning down toward him, his face tight with disgust.
The buses. A much better idea. Good and bad points but, obviously. Good and bad. There is a stretch of road with four or five bars knuckled together, and he learns after a couple of tries elsewhere that this is the best place to get on, wait while they’re closing and the stops are birling with drunkens trying to cram and heave through the doors. Once on, up the stair and to the front is the best spot, a bit of extra space for the legs and the pilot’s view out the window. The smell of chips and vinegar. Kebabs. Listening to the songmakers away at the back. It’s only when the front’s been took and he has to sit further down that people start putting the mix in. A lassie on her mobile phone sat next to him with her face turned to the window, speaking in a quiet voice and no realizing or caring that he can hear what she’s saying. Another time, he falls asleep right in the thick of all these posh, clammering English boys, and wakes up to them laughing, the aisle full of legs and the one sat next to him wearing his baseball cap. The rest of them in knots about it. He sees Mick awake and turns toward him, grinning, takes the cap off slowly and puts it back on Mick’s head. He closes his eyes. Too tired to do anything. ‘Fuck off.’ But t
hat just sets them going again.
When the bus gets further out of the city and it starts to empty, is when he can sleep. Sometimes he’ll have a carrier with some cans and he’ll drink them up against the seat in front until he’s knocked himself out and he sits slumped against the window, eventually the lights shuddering and turning off. Then shuddering on again. The bus starting to move, back toward the city; tired-looking African and East Europe types getting on, staring silently ahead, keeping to themselves.
No uncommon that a fight will break out. He tries to keep out the way, but one night there is one that kicks off across the aisle from him, a proper frontpager. Two pale lads laughing and shouting, going at the staring matches with anybody that looks over. One of them lights up a fag, the smell of it drifting through the bus. Right in front of them, this great belly man in a rock music T-shirt and a kind of perm haircut tumbling over the back of his seat, and the two lads start pishing about, kidding on they’re going to set the perm alight. Then the smoker starts blowing smoke past his ear, leaning in so close it looks like he’s about to kiss him on the neck. The big guy is getting irritated, tapping the foot and muttering away in a language that’s no English. The whole thing kicks off the instant one of them touches the back of his head, and he jumps up and turns around, suddenly clambering onto the seat and standing on it. The two lads totally blindsided, sat staring up at him.
‘You wanna see my poothy?’
Giggling from somewhere up the front of the bus.
‘You wanna see my poothy, hey?’
The lads don’t know what to do; they’re sat watching, rigid and seething, and then suddenly the big guy starts into a lap dance, practically in the one boy’s face. ‘You wanna see my poothy?’ And it’s more than the boy can take, leaping up and getting the hands around his neck, pushing him back over the next seat and exposing the giant belly from under the T-shirt. Men jumping in now, a young guy in front of Mick standing up but his girlfriend pulling at his arm trying to stop him. There’s four or five of them holding the lad back, his mate one of them, but the boy’s beeling still, desperate to get at the lapdancer, who is walking away down the aisle by now. The veins standing out on his forehead and the whole face looking like it’s going to explode from the skin – eyeballs, teeth, the lot. And then it does. A couple of girls in front screaming as his nose busts, wee red missiles flying everywhere.