From the first swallow she is elsewhere. Her fear leaving; warmth spreading from deep inside her; the people at the bus stop disappearing. There is a burst of laughter from the group, one of the men saying something that she cannot hear, and the other woman resting her head now against the arm of her coat, closing her eyes. The woman’s hair is thin, and she can see there is a rash on part of her scalp, and on the very top of her head, a large dark blue scab.
A fight has broken out. It came out of nowhere — she didn’t see what started it — but two of the men are stalking stiffly around each other, and suddenly one of them crumples to the ground as he is struck by something from behind. In an instant the square is filled with shouting, the others in the group rushing in to join the scuffle. She lifts the woman’s head from her arm, lowers it gently to the bench slats and hurries away.
She breathes thinly as she moves down the street, past a line of parked buses and under a bridge, before slowing, her legs aching and frozen. At least her top half is warm. The coat is expensive and new, with a soft lining, and she pulls it tightly around her, making sure that the top is buttoned up to the neck. She needs to pee, but it is quite a way still to where she’s headed, so she takes a detour to a public toilet by the river. When she gets there though, she finds it has been boarded up. Fuckers. She is reminded of the stupid drunk dickheads fighting up at the square and she vows not to return there later in the day, whatever happens.
There is a pub on her way and she goes into it. On entering through the heavy swing doors she is immediately watched by the bar girl, and by the time she has gone down the narrow spiral staircase into a dingy basement corridor, there is a large man in chef trousers standing in front of the toilet entrance. He is slowly shaking his head. She turns, avoiding looking at his face, and goes back up the spiral staircase. She walks through the bar; the girl looking at her from behind the counter. Her limbs are heavy and she thinks for a moment that the swing door is not going to open. She desperately needs to pee. With a painful heave the door pushes open, and she turns her head back as she steps through it.
‘Fucking bitch.’
There is at least ten minutes left of the journey and she feels like she is about to piss herself. She comes to a side street leading toward a train station and goes down it, crouching behind one of the cars parked next to a high metal fence. Before she has finished, a man, and then a woman with a young teenage girl, come out of the train station exit and start walking along the pavement on the other side of the street. The woman and the girl are talking and do not see her, but the man crosses the street a short way ahead and must see the urine dribbling into the road, because he looks now through the car window at her and for an instant his mouth opens and he mutters something before hurrying away.
When she arrives at the house her mouth feels dry and her arms and legs are faintly shaking as she reaches for the buzzer. She waits in the doorway, until a moment later a man’s voice answers, and there is a click as the door unlocks and she lets herself in.
On the veranda, looking out. A yacht coming past, sails blustering in the wind. A woman’s face in a porthole. Away to the Med, says Beans. Champagne and Charlie. Only watch out for the Bay of Biscay or ye’ll be boaking it all up into the sea. Anyone’s guess how he thinks he knows these things. Maybe he does. The money is finished, he says then, but it’s nay worry. He’s got a plan. He is kneeling up and lifting the bush to get out. Okay? Okay?
There is a noise up on the pavement. A woman’s voice, and, quieter, a man’s. He tries to listen, no able to pick out the words, but they are getting closer. A gust of wind or something and suddenly he can hear them coming toward him and he scrapes deep into the bush, lying flat underneath it. He cannot let them see him; he pulls his jacket over his head. But they keep coming — they are onto the path now, and he can see the crabbit face, irritated at all these roots and thorns snarling about her ankles. They spot him then, laid out under the bush. She’s pure scunnered at the sight of it, but he has a wee smile on him, unsurprised, keeking down now at the cans by his feet.
It is colder when Beans returns, the river turned black and treacly. He has a dark blue ski-jacket-type overcoat under his arm, and a carrier that he starts pulling things out from: a loaf of bread, an open tin of beans, a stack of beers. He sits down next to him. ‘Here,’ he says, and lobs the coat over. ‘Put this over your jacket. Keep ye warmer.’
They make cold beans pieces out of the first few bread slices, and start on the cans. He has been drinking already, it seems. He isn’t out the game, but he’s talking loudly, laughing, and he makes them clink cans every couple of minutes — plus, each time, an extra one for the swan. ‘Thanks,’ Mick says, after one of these toasts, ‘the coat and that.’
‘Aw, you’re welcome.’ Beans puts on a panloaf English accent. ‘You’re very welcome.’ He takes a long gulp. ‘This fella I know, I called in a favour. He’s alright, no a bad guy. He’s a cunt, ye know, but he’s alright.’ They are laughing. A warm enclosed feeling from the beer.
‘It because I’m from Glasgow, how ye’re helping me out?’
‘What!’ He sits bolt upright and gets standing stumbling to his feet. ‘Ye’re from Glasgow? Serious? I’d have gave ye the swerve if I’d known,’ and he collapses to the ground again, cackling to himself.
In a moment, Beans kneels up. He gets scrabbling feet first under the bush, thorns pulling at his coat and revealing his back, pale and mealy as a white pudding. His head appears over the top of the bush. ‘Come on, I’ll show ye.’
They go at an angle from the path, through the weeds and the undergrowth, until Beans stops beside some wire netting. An orange sign on it he can’t read in the dark. Some kind of a tunnel underneath the road. Beans peels the wiring back and squeezes himself in behind, the wire springing back to its original position. ‘Come on.’ He steps forward. An old trainer shoe by his feet.
He gets in behind the wiring and it is dark. A smell of stagnant water. Beans is dragging a piece of matting along the ground. ‘Here, lie down.’ Bits of rock poking at him, their two backs pressed together, shuffling; warm but, where they are touching. The echoing sound of traffic above their heads and the matting no big enough for both their bodies, part of his leg and his arm sticking out and pressing into stones, rubble. The drink but, it is keeping him outside of it, no fully aware, helping him fall to sleep.
Light. The head pounding. His throat dry, chappit, and his legs and his body senseless, except for a jabbing in the small of his back where Beans’s elbow is sticking into him. He tries to go back to sleep, but it is too cold and he can’t, so he sits up and looks about him. On one side, through the wire, weeds and trees; a glimpse of the dark straining river. There are bits of wood and breezeblocks in the gloom of the tunnel. Dark water pooled into a stank, a Sprite bottle floating on top. On the other side, more wiring, and past it, a construction site — a great hole in the ground, scaffolding, a mini JCB. Beans is sat up now too. Silent. They stay the both of them like that, sitting, for quite a while, and he wonders if maybe Beans is hungover, that’s how he’s no talking. But he keeps quiet and to himself into the morning, as they go and sit out on the veranda, cold, shivering, until eventually Beans gets up just, no a word, and leaves.