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?’