He uses the money smartly. £1.29 buys him a decent-size bottle of Polish lager and he saves the rest to call ahead to the church. It runs out after about five seconds, but the guy rings him back.
The journey is much more pleasurable with a drink inside him. No bevvied, but warmer, more relaxed. In such a state it is easier to ignore all the rub-ye-ups bustling past and eyeballing him along the pavement. Away home to their evenings of curry dinner and telly watching, argle-bargling with the wife. Plenty of scaffers about too: alone in doorways; stood in wee groups; blocking the thoroughfares selling their magazines. He is coming into a more posh area. There are wine drinkers inside a giant café window, flower stalls, well-to-do clothes shops. This one that he passes. A naked mannequin in the window, bald and bare, with the one hand on her hip. The sudden temptation to run in and steal her. Run off down the street with the baldy woman tucked under the arm. How far would he get? How many yards down the pavement before the heavy mob catch up, huckling him down some back alley to put the boot on? No that there are many back alleys this part of town. Nay chance. It’s all boulevards and butchers round here, they Italian ones with cured meats hanging in the display above the olive oils and the giant cheese wheels.
It is a Catholic church this night, and the space is a side room off the church building itself, the walls above the sleeping mats covered with ornate lanterns and candles, lifelike statues of nuns holding crosses and looking out with serious faces at the scaffers. There are less staying than the previous two nights, but still one or two of the regulars, they ones that know they’re onto a good thing and have got themselves in with the bricks. He ignores them, managing to keep to himself. Eats his food. Drinks his tea. There is a prayer session after dinner, but the Hallelujahs don’t force it. Quite a few take part though, going through with the Bead Rattler, who has been walking about the place in his robes and his rings, for a wee patter with the Big Man. Hard to know how they’re asking him for anything.
He rolls out his mat and his bag and gets lying down. How quick you get used to things. Settle into a rhythm.
In the morning after breakfast, one of the Hallelujahs, a woman, approaches him.
‘Sleep okay?’
‘Fine, thanks.’
She stands by the tea table while Mick is fixing up his tea and his orange juice. How is it people are always wanting to put the nose in and can’t leave him be?
‘It’s Mick, isn’t it? I haven’t met you before. My name’s Jenny.’
‘Pleased to meet ye, Jenny,’ and he starts to turn and get leaving back to his place at the table.
‘I was wondering — have you had a chance to use the daytime centre at all?’
‘I have, aye, thanks.’
‘Oh, right. Good. And you know we have caseworkers too, who can help you with accessing services.’ The beans guy is arrived at the table making a tea, listening, a wee smile on him.
‘Thanks, Jenny, I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Right, okay.’ She smiles and starts to move off. ‘Have a nice day, Mick.’
Oh, aye, it’s going to be a belter: away down the boulevard for a new suit, then off to a restaurant with the baldy woman for Guinness and oysters.
‘How’s it going?’ Beans is looking at him, still the wee grin. The red woolly hat pulled right down to his eyes.
‘Good.’
‘Ye from Glasgow, well?’
No use kidding on now he’s been rumbled.
‘I am.’
‘Whereabout?’
‘Clydebank.’
‘That where ye were born?’
‘Aye, Clydebank.’
He gives a wide smile. One side of his top lip is chappit and bleeding. ‘I’m from Paisley.’ He holds out a giant purple hand. ‘Keith. Ye’re no a religious case, eh?’
‘No.’
Beans turns his eyes for an instant up to the roofbeams. There is a large dark gouge in the stubble under his chin. ‘Thank Christ for that, then. Enough of them about, no think?’
‘The Hallelujahs.’
He lets out a loud lunatic laugh, which makes Jenny and the woman she’s with look round a moment. ‘Aye, the Hallelujahs, you said it, pal, fucking right.’
He is still chuckling with himself as Mick gets leaving.
Where do they go to? There’s aye the ones that are sat in the doorways and selling the magazines, but what about the rest of them, where do they go? The women? You never see the women. The nights at the churches, there’s been quite a few of them put up. They get a separate room, or if it’s one of the smaller places they get a plastic barricade wheeled up in between to keep the men off them. The tollie tugboat is on the approach, docking up with its cargo of shite. He watches it turn around on the water, coiling slowly into the wharf. No great mystery but. It’s pretty obvious where most of them go, the men anyway, the male scaffers. They ones that aren’t sat next to a carry-out cup, tapping pedestrians for the price of a bottle, are down the broo office signing on. See but how is he any different? Sponging off the Christians for food and orange juice. Fucksake he eats more than anybody there!
He doesn’t stop going. He’s there each night for his free meal and his free entertainment, listening to the night terrors erupting through the hall. He has a shapeless awareness that he needs to be doing something, but it’s getting more difficult to hold the thought and do anything with it. The brain is unable to deal with it. The Hallelujahs aren’t but. They keep going on at him about it. Especially the guy Yann. Does he know there’s a laundry and showers at the daytime centre? Has he had any thoughts what he’s going to do when the shelters close at the end of February? He’s going up to Glasgow, he tells him. Going back to see the family. Yann is delighted. That’s good, Mick. That’s very good.
What will happen to all this lot then? Where will they go? They’re that settled into the routine, some of them. Maybe they are actually in fact secret bloody millionaires and when this all packs up they’re away in their jets to their lochside mansions, and that’s how they’re all so unbothered about it, who knows? Because that’s what they are. Unbothered. It’s true. Rare there is an incident. Sometimes but. Nothing much. The odd squabble a couple of times, arguments over who’s took whose sleeping space, but that’s usually it. It is a while before he sees anything like a proper fight, and when he does, it’s two women. The one of them starts screaming at the other that she’s stole her gloves, and when she denies it and starts walking away, the accuser jumps her from behind and gets clawing at her face. The Hallelujahs are straight in there, breaking them up, wheeling out an extra divider the night.
Beans reckons he knows the whole back story. He is sat down at the same dinner table laying it off to him.
‘She’s had they gloves for years, see. She was gave them as a present by somebody, so ye can see how she’s angry. I’d be angry, somebody lifted my hat. I’d be fucking beeling.’ Mick sits drinking his tea. ‘Know what I think?’ Beans continues. ‘I think it’s no about the gloves. Probably there never was a pair of gloves even. Sometimes it’s like that, know what I mean? Christmas is aye the worst. This place is eggshells then. Depends what like is the family situation, course, but most of these lot are biting the carpets.’
Christmas. He’s not even noticed that it has came and went. He must have been at the hotel. He tries to mind when it would have been, if there’d been any sign of it, but he can’t think; the whole thing is a fog. Plus as well this great bampot right in his face.
‘See me, I’m no staying around much longer.’ He is looking intently across the table at Mick.
‘How’s that?’