by Ross Raisin
Beans looks up slowly. ‘Offer.’
‘Aye, what ye said, this other place.’
Beans doesn’t say anything. He stares off now to the side, at nothing, at the wall. Maybe he’s bevvied. He doesn’t smell but; no of drink, anyway.
‘Well, I thought I’d let ye know, okay.’
He doesn’t push it after that, and carries on eating his food while Beans sits there, vacant, until after a while he pushes his chair out and walks off, leaving his food where it is.
Mick watches him, over on the far side of the room, sitting down with his back against the wall. A new one, this. He’s never seen him when he hasn’t been bouncing off the ceilings and chewing everybody’s ear off. He continues staying there, alone, while the tea comes out and then the chairs and tables are cleared away, and he’s still there, unmoving, while Mick and the others are getting into their sleeping bags for the night. A Hallelujah goes over to him eventually and he gets up slowly, moving over to his pitch.
The next evening though Beans comes up to him in the car park where Mick is stood waiting for the church doors to open. He does mind the conversation. And no just the first one either, but the no-conversation last night as well.
‘So what I thought was Sunday.’ There is a scaffer sat smoking on the steps who tilts his head up to listen, and Beans pulls Mick off to the side. ‘See the thing is Sunday’s a good day to try cause there’s always chuck-outs the weekend, after people have been on the batter.’
‘I’m no sure, mean it’s –’
‘Nay worries, I’ll sort it, I’ll sort it. I know the place, see, I know how to play it.’ He grins. ‘A bed, man. A fucking bed, eh.’
Hard to know what to think, and hard to think at all anyway, so he doesn’t. He sits near Beans at tea and half observes him rattling on ten the dozen to anybody that goes near him. They eat. Go to sleep. Up the next morning and he’s out again into the cold, away the long stiff journey to the shelter of the coach station. His feet are pretty swollen getting. The walking, or the temperature, or his socks, which cling now like a second skin. One moment to the next. That is all he can do. One moment to the next. Avoid the Hallelujahs and sit quietly as he gets his ear chewed off by this strange creature that is smiling at him now. ‘Come on, then.’ Plates getting cleared away. ‘Ye ready?’
Chapter 26
‘See, what I’m saying is never let them think that ye’ve hit the scrape because if they do then that’s you screwed, man, terrible, fucking terrible. They’ll never leave ye alone. Plus as well they’ll give ye the worst of everything – room, bed, fire alarm, giro, the whole bag all to shite.’
Mick looks down at the pavement. It is dark. Cold. Their breath fluming in front of them as they walk. Actually, no – Beans’s breath fluming in front of them – because he never shuts up. Since they left the church it’s been non-stop: benefits, religion, piles, the population of birds. He needs to rest but he’s too tired to think about doing anything but trail along with this guy through the dark streets, stumbling into busyness where the pavements are hoaching at bus stops and crossings; down deserted side roads, past closed shops, pubs, a girl with her arms tightly folded, smoking in a doorway. The problem with birds, he is saying, is that they’re all dying because the farmers are greedy arabs and they’ve torn down all the hedgerows, the same as they tear down the tenements and now there’s nothing, everything is bare just. Mick is trying no to listen. This place they are going to was supposed to be close by, but they’ve been walking Christ knows how long and he doesn’t recognize any more where they are. To close the eyes just. Close the eyes. Sleep. No have to think. No have to listen.
‘Where d’ye say it is, this place?’
‘Naw, don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s near here. I know where it is.’
‘Ye’ve stayed before, well?’
Beans halts abruptly on the spot, jolts his body upright. ‘Have I stayed before? Course I’ve stayed before. Course I have.’ And he starts walking again, chuckling to himself. Has he been bevvying? It’s hard to tell. He’s a mighty queer ticket, whichever way. There is a period of quiet. They keep on. No a slow pace either – the guy walks with these great loundering strides, the shoulders stooped over and hunching, bunching, as he steps. It had came as a surprise, during the lunatic moment back there, how tall he actually is when he stands straight. A big man, and this large army-type overcoat that he wears, making him look even bigger. Impossible but to tell how old he is. The hair, when he’s took off the woolly hat to sleep, is a full coverage – dark, straggling below his ears and greasy as drag-chains. His face though, lined and scarred; purple. Whatever it is he’s been doing with himself, it looks like he’s been doing it a long while.
He is trying now to hoick his tattered Ikea bag higher onto his shoulder. Mick is conscious of his own faded holdall, smart in comparison, and as well his clothes, which if maybe they aren’t the cleanest, they are normal clothes, they are his clothes. He isn’t going around in an army greatcoat and a pair of silver running trainers with the soles flapping off them. Beans is hammering away again: the weather, how it’s freezing but it isnae wet and that’s the important thing because it’s blashie weather that’s the worst. Jesus, he could do with a drink.
‘See, look, this is what I’m telling ye. Here.’
They are outside a grey concrete building at one end of a street. A woman’s voice on an intercom by a heavy, unmarked door and they are getting buzzed in. A corridor; straight ahead a staircase and two doors off either side. Bare walls and grey carpet tiles. The strong smell of bleach. Beans doesn’t seem too sure where to go and he hesitates a moment, a quick neb in the one door, then back out, and he tries the other one; goes inside. Mick follows him in.
It looks like a doctor’s waiting room: plastic chairs backed against the walls and a single battered settee, a small television that is turned off, and a low table sprawled with mangled, thick magazines. An Asian woman is sat at a computer on the other side of a small security hatch. Beans goes straight up and puts his hands onto the counter. They look massive in the stark lighting, veined like cabbages.
‘We’ve booked a place the night. I was in earlier.’
Mick sits down on the settee. Comfort flooding his legs. He could go to sleep right here, close the eyes, go to sleep.
‘No, see, I came in Sunday but there was no rooms so I was told come back the day and they told me earlier there was places for us, that’s what I’m saying.’
The woman’s voice is hushed, barely audible past his huge back. He is arguing with her; the protective shutter above the hatch about to roll down any moment. Beans turns then and comes toward the settee. He dumps down and Mick near slides onto his lap.
‘Says we’ve got to wait for the hostel manager. She’s no too sure we’re booked in but that’s pure crap – I was here the morning and I spoke to the guy, I telt him we were coming. Fucking indirect access, ye ask me.’ He keeps speaking, but Mick sits in a kind of a daze, wanting to let the brainbox go to rest. Hostel. He is in a hostel. He tries no to think about what is happening; trying no to think about any of it, least of all this blowhard sat here next to him, staring now at the underwear models in a worn-out clothing catalogue. An agitated old black man noses in at one point, his trouser bottoms rolled up unevenly to show dirty yellow walking socks. He glances toward the television a moment, then backs out.
Mick is falling asleep, Beans quietly looking at the magazines, and another man coming in, younger, smarter, a trimmed beard. Beans is stood up, talking to him. The man goes away, through a locked door into the room with the woman; returning with sheets of paper. He gives some to Beans, then he’s looking down at Mick, handing him the papers and saying something – he can’t hear it properly, it’s quiet like a radio with the batteries going – benefits, it is something about benefits. He tries to sit up. The man is talking to Beans again. No visitors. No alcohol. No drugs. He repeats it. Beans nodding his head. Grinning. He looks demented.
The room is small. A cubicle. Three beds with high plastic sides, lined up like cots. He puts his bag down at the foot of one of them and looks out the small window at a brightly lit car park. Lies down on the bed. He can hear Beans outside, laying it off to the man because the room isn’t big enough. He stares up at the ceiling. The same smell of bleach; sanitizer. Strange but he is glad of Beans being there. The ceiling is starting to swim. He shuts the eyes. So tired it feels his breathing is about to give out.
A shout wakes him. He sits up. His clothes are on and it is dark apart from some lights outside a window. A hollow racing sensation as he gets his bearings. There is another shout; it is in the corridor – Go on! it sounds like. Then feet pounding and a tremor in the floor as they come past his room. Go on! More than one person. Three or four. Men’s voices. A moment later it is quiet again, but the tight panicked feeling does not leave him and he lies there rigid, exhausted but no able to get back to sleep.
When he wakes up again it is getting light outside. The room is empty. Tummelled sheets on one of the beds. He is hungry, but he doesn’t know if there is a breakfast in this place. He doesn’t know what or where the place is either, for another thing. After a while he gets up and listens through the door, and goes out.
The kitchen along the corridor is empty. Plates and pans are heaped in the sink and there are blackened scratchings of food littered on top of an electric hob cooker. Something in the room which is boufing. Doesn’t smell much like food but, and he realizes as he gets closer that it is the bin. He moves away from it and toward the fridge. Inside, a bundled-up Tesco carrier and a snipped-open packet of pasta sauce inside the door. That’s the lot. A stank of yellowish liquid pooled at the bottom. Second inspections but, and he undoes the carrier to find a plastic tub of cocktail sausages. No like they’re going to miss a couple, and no like he’s fussy either, so he puts one in his mouth; but there is something wrong about the taste of it, and he gets standing up, shuts the fridge door, awful, fucking awful. Posters on a noticeboard. Needle exchange. Substance-use worker. His stomach lurches and he bends over the sink, about to boak, but he doesn’t – he stays there, poised, with the stomach spasming but nothing coming up, just this thin dribble hanging off his lip. He sticks the tap on and swills his mouth. The rush of water splashing against the plates and pans and wetting his front. Where is he? He wants suddenly to laugh. Where in fuck is he? He turns off the tap and goes out, back to the empty room, and into the bed.
Beans is stood at the foot of the bed, looking at him.
‘Fancy getting some breakfast eh?’
Mick gets up automatically, without thinking. Starts putting his shoes on. Beans is over by the window, his hands clasped behind his back, calmly gazing out as if it’s a loch view.
Once outside, they are straight away on the march. No the worst day. Warm on those parts of the pavement that the sun is shining, although pretty snappy still in the shaded areas, past offices and residential blocks, under a bridge, past a line of parked buses. They go by a small scrub of a square and a mob of scaffers around the benches on one side. Seven or eight of them, women in the mix, sitting and standing about, drinking. Beans slows down, watching them. For a moment Mick is feart he is wanting to go over, but they carry on past, although Beans still has his attention turned to the group. They continue up the way. Truth is, he’s glad to be out of the hostel. Away from that room. Probably most of that group back there are staying in the place too. The thought of it, of being in there with them, himself in a room alongside, it doesn’t make sense. He can’t reckon with it. Better outside in the open, away from it, even if that means being with your man here. They are stopped outside a cafe. A large scratched sticker on the window – a fat chef holding up a steaming forked sausage. Beans is going in, but Mick hesitates outside.
‘Ye coming in?’
‘Aye.’ But he stays where he is, looking in past the fat chef.
Beans grins. ‘It’s on me, pal, it’s on me, don’t worry.’
‘No. It’s no the game,’ but Beans is off inside already, and he follows him in.
They go up the counter and Beans immediately orders two breakfasts and two teas, then they get themselves sat at a table by a wall, away from the busy middle of the room. Pathetic. He knows it is. Somehow but he can’t feel it. He’s that hungry, and weak – that’s what it is, a weakness – that he can’t bring himself to say no. The breakfasts come and Beans is beasted right in, mushrooms flying about, ketchup and brown sauce and mustard all mixed together on his plate like a mental sunset. Every bastard in the place probably looking at them. The odd couple in the corner. It’s a good breakfast though. A buttery stack of toast, the warm mush of the sausage. Suddenly the thought that maybe Beans doesn’t have the money to pay for it either, and he’s going to do a run-out. The scunnered faces of the other customers and the cafe owner on the phone to the polis.
He does have the money, it turns out. A ten-pound note comes out the pocket, calm as anything, no chicanery, no hystericals. He walks up the counter just, pays, and they leave.
It is bright out still. They walk for quite a while, Beans talking – they aren’t allowed back into the hostel while evening, he is saying – until they arrive, suddenly, at the river. A stretch he doesn’t recognize. Beans is saying he wants to show him something, and they go through a gate with a broken padlock – Permits required to access this property for the purpose of nature conservation or fishing – into a small wooded, weeded area. Down a sloping thicket and thorns path, long grass and random rubbish – empty cement bags, a broken office chair on its side – to a sprawling bush, which they crawl under, emerging onto a patch of open ground that looks out on the water.
‘The veranda,’ he declares. They sit down, legs dangling over the banking. He likes to sit here and watch the boats and that come past, he says. And to drink too, judging by all the cans lying about. There is a swan who stays under the scrub off to one side where the banking stops, Beans tells him, only she’s no there the now because she’s out and about getting her nest together. It’s hard to believe him – anything he says – but then Mick sees the nest, lower down, sticking out from under the scrub, all these twigs twined into a great bowl on the wet ground amongst plastic bottles and lager cans. Bold as ye like. He gives a smile at the sight of it. These swans that he minds, who made their nests by the fitting-out berths, their feathers clatty with oil, but who’d come and go like they were boating on Loch Lomond.
At one point during the afternoon Beans goes off for a while, and returns with a couple of four-packs. They sit in the sun drinking, and Mick tells him what type are a couple of the boats that come by, Beans listening as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard.
It is only when it gets evening and they are on the approach to the hostel that it starts to loom over him again. The bare room. Bogging of bleach. Surrounded by homeless. They walk past a bar and he almost asks Beans if he fancies going a pint, but obviously it’s impossible because of the money situation. It’s bad enough he’s tapped him already for his breakfast, plus now the cans. So they go in, Beans away into the reception to chin the staff and leaving Mick to go up on his own.
He is on the stairhead about to turn onto the corridor, but there is noise up the way. Voices. He waits round the corner, the heart going mental already. Hard to hear what they are saying, but it sounds like there’s a few of them, and this other noise as well that sounds like somebody thumping rhythmically against the wall. He is that fixed on what’s ahead of him, he doesn’t notice the group coming up the stair behind.
One of them laughs.
‘You alright there, mate?’
He spins round. There are three of them. Young lads. They stand there grinning and leering at him.
‘Fine, aye,’ and he moves on down the corridor, the others up ahead turning to watch him, and these behind following him, one of them making a tootling noise, like a trumpet. He gets into the room, closes the door and pushes one of the cots up agai
nst it.
The sun straining a thin light through the curtain. Beans asleep in his clothes. Noises coming and going outside, keeping him awake, on edge.
It is dark. He has been dreaming. Christmas. Christmases, all jumbled together. The first one he is sat in the living room and the boys and the Highlanders are there sat in their positions, a wee plastic Christmas tree behind the television, Lynn sat on the settee next to Alan with her crabbit face on, like it’s the last place in the world she wants to be the now, this craphole, with its stained carpets and cramped corridors, and the wobbling banister as he goes up the stair and into the bedroom. Robbie and Craig sat on the kitchen chairs with plates of Christmas dinner on their laps, looking toward the shape in the bed. Craig cutting up the turkey breast into tiny pieces; quartering the Brussels sprouts.
He is awake. The mind out of its box, spinning, all over the place. A few minutes and he’s managed to calm himself a little, lying awake until he is able to sleep again.
Another Christmas. Australia. He is sat at the table waiting for her to come in from the kitchen. The cracker hat clamming to his forehead and the full works there on the plate in front of him – turkey, roast tatties and parsnips, bread pudding, cranberry sauce – and outside, all of the gardens down the road are empty because the whole of the Tartan Terrace is at the same game: the only weekend of the summer nobody’s got the barbecue out.
Morning, and he’s lying in the bed, the body aching, sticking. Beans suddenly in through the door and frowning. He looks at him a moment. ‘Breakfast?’
They sit at the same table, the same positions. The only difference is that Beans isn’t as rosy this morning: his back is up from something that’s happened in the hostel, and it’s making him mutter and scratch fork points through his swirly sauce sunsets.
‘See the problem is with these people, they’ve no respect for a person’s privacy, know? Mean, it’s no better than the clink, serious, and I’m expecting a bit of privacy myself. That’s the least I’m expecting.’
