In another room there are washing and drying machines, and cardboard boxes full of clothes. Beans is off through a doorway and he is left stood there unsure what to do. An old woman with a name badge hung around her neck comes up and tells him to help himself to some of the clothes, so he rummles through and pulls out a faded black pair of trackie bottoms and a grey shirt with a dark smudge on the collar.
In the next room, through a door marked MEN, there is a queue for showers, and Beans is further up the way already. They aren’t communal, thank Christ: there’s five or six separate ones, each with a curtain, though a couple of the men at the front are down to their pants already. Fucking terrible, the state of them. Scars and veins and jaundice.
He waits until he is inside a cubicle before he starts to undress. Even removing his coat feels odd. He’s no took it off since Beans gave it him. Then he peels off the rest, all of it damp and rotten, clabbered to his skin, and he gets in the shower. It’s been that long since he’s seen himself in the scuddy that he doesn’t recognize himself. As if the body isn’t his; it belongs to another time when nakedness was something that had to be dealt with on a daily basis, and now he doesn’t own it — he’s removed himself from his body like he has from everything else. The only clue that it’s there the now: that it hurts. There are bruises on his legs, down his front, his hips, fucking everywhere. His forearm skin is turned loose and chickeny; he pulls on it, the spring gone. The penis down there. Genuine difficult to believe that is his. He puts a hand around it, tries to mind what it means, the having of a penis. Nothing’s doing but. His dobber’s no sure about it either, and the two of them dither there for a while, waiting for something to happen, a connection. There is none. Or maybe it’s just that neither of them are too comfortable about the line of half-naked scaffers queuing outside, which is in fact fair enough, being honest.
He gives himself a good wash, using the soap from the dispenser to rub over his head and his body, and special attention to the feet, which are started looking like a couple of raw beef kidneys. It feels good. The force of the water. Cleaning. Paying attention to all these parts that he’s forgot about. The belly button. Armpits. Nipples, christsake.
When he comes out, he goes in the toilets and takes a very satisfying crap. The first time in a long while he’s no had to sneak into a pub for one, or go in the park with a stolen toilet roll.
He puts his dirty clothes in a washer. Pretty pleased as well with these new ones. The shirt is a decent fit, and the trousers comfy enough around the waist, even if they are a wee bit on the short side. No the less, see even if his socks are on show, he definitely doesn’t look half as daft as Beans does. He clocks him out in the hall and goes toward him, chuckling.
‘Jesus. Check you.’
He is wearing a pair of black jeans and a white denim jacket, the both of them a fair few sizes too small for him. Beans grins. ‘Gallus, eh?’ Then he holds a finger in the air and spins around slowly, showing the back: ATLANTA HAWKS.
‘If you say so, pal. If you say so.’
Beans goes back to the clothing room, saying that he forgot to look for another pair of socks, and Mick moves over to the juice table. There are plenty of name-badge people milling about, topping up cups, handing out leaflets, chatting. They don’t seem like Hallelujahs. Any case, there isn’t anything religious on the walls, only posters everywhere — chiropodist, walk-in clinic, housing advice — things he should be finding out about, probably, but the awareness of it only makes him feel the more sluggish. Through in the clothes room he can see Beans talking to somebody. He is pointing a thumb at his jacket, showing it off, but suddenly a hand shoots out from behind the door frame and grabs him by the collar, pulling him forwards. Beans stumbling, out of sight. There is too much noise in the hall to hear what is going on. He moves quickly toward the room, a few looking in now.
It is the young guy that had been staring. He is stood right up to Beans, putting the face on him.
‘Fucking give it me.’
Another guy as well, behind him, eyeballing Beans, who is rocking on his feet, confused. ‘Look, see I got it out the box, that’s what I —’ but he is getting shoved again, the veins on the guy’s neck standing out and Beans falling to the floor, straight onto his arse. Mick rushes forward, standing in front of him before the guy can stick the boot on. ‘Leave it, come on. What ye doing? Leave it.’ The young guy is looking at him, this odd smile, like he knows him.
‘The jacket’s mine.’
Name-badge men are coming in the door. Beans behind him, getting up. The situation as it is, he looks even more ridiculous right now in the tight denims. The guy’s pal is pulling on his shoulder — ‘Come on, let’s go’ — but he’s a fair solid build and he’s no budging, and it’s pretty obvious that the jacket cannot be his because it’s way too small for him. In an instant the two men are barging out the room, pushing past the name badges, and it is over, just like that. Beans looks shook up. He is fairly shook up himself; but, through it, a small feeling of elation.
Nobody is moving, and it’s Beans who is the first to speak, looking out the door through the bodies. ‘Psychies,’ he says, going over to the box and starting to root about, still after his socks.
On the way back to the park, carrying a new blanket and their cleaned clothes in carriers, Beans doesn’t talk about what has just went on. He patters on as normal, like nothing’s happened, telling him instead about the holidays he went on as a wean. Mick has the incident on his mind but. Wondering if Beans noticed his part in it even. ‘Fair Fortnight, ye mind it? We’d go to Rothesay. Always there, nay discussions. One time my maw says let’s go someplace different this year, maybe go see her cousins and that in Irvine, but the da he tells her we’re going to Rothesay and that’s that.’
Mick smiles. ‘That’s where we went, ye know, Rothesay.’
Beans stops in his tracks and a man on his mobile phone almost walks into him.
‘Fuck off, serious?’
‘We did, aye. Every Fair, mostly.’
Beans is still rooted to the pavement, amazed. Residents diverting past them. ‘Mind that station the Friday morning? The platform mobbed with all these Fair Invaders packing in and the conductors playing hell with ye if ye got too close the edge — but what could ye do, eh? There was nowhere else to go!’ He starts chuckling. ‘Who ye go with, the parents, brothersisters?’
‘No. Mean, my da died when I was wee, so it was me and my maw just. These other guys she was with sometimes, but mostly it was just us.’
They walk on in quiet for a while. If the two of them are in fact ages, then it’s actually possible they would have been there at the same time. He is tempted asking him what years he used to go, but he stops himself. Something about Beans, this sense that he doesn’t want pinning down and it’s the better no to push him on things. Who’s he to talk but? He who bloody cloys up at the barest mention of anything that might make him have to remember.
Beans is still on at it as they get back into the park. Ye mind the fiddle player on the Wemyss Bay ferry? Ye go the Punch and Judies? The pleasure boats? The tackle shop and dangle your line through the cracks in the pier? Mick is listening, but he’s trying as well to figure out how they are going to make up the price of a bottle and get through the rest of the day.
‘Once or twice we stayed in a caravan but most times my maw would be thumbing it through the small ads for one of they rooms that families rented out for the holidays. And see my da, he was a bevvy-merchant, right, and he was always away to the whisky booths or else he was there drinking in the room. But this landlady I mind we had, she knew what like the score was, and I don’t know if it was cause it was her weans’ room normally or what it was, but she starts into him this time — “Ye can’t bring your drink in here, this is my house, a terrible man ye are” — and all this, and me and my maw and my wee sister are sitting there like three pounds of mince, thinking he’s gonnae belt her, a pure certainty that he will. But he doesnae. He gets up just and he lets himself out the door, away to the whisky booth, and the three of us and the landlady staring at each other with nay clue what to do next.’