He is sitting on the bench, laughing, as if it’s a happy memory he’s just recalled.
‘Amazing, eh, you going to Rothesay, no think?’
Without the money for a drink, it leaves a hole in the afternoon, so they decide what they’ll do is go up the river and pay the swan a visit.
The gate has a new padlock on it. ‘Bastards.’ Beans strains over the palings, then is off scootling down the path. The swan is out. Or maybe she’s been evicted too. The nest is still there, but the whole area has been cleaned up: the cans and the rest of the rubbish gone, and new wiring over the tunnel entrance. They sit down on the veranda and throw chuckies at the floaters, Beans starting up about the Fair again. It is all there in what he’s saying — the Winter Gardens, the beach, Italian ice creams — but for some reason there is something queer about how he’s telling it, as if it’s no true somehow. Like he’s heard all this off somebody else but he thinks it’s his own memories. Or he’s making it up. Maybe it’s just himself but, trying to find holes in it. Maybe he doesn’t want to believe it’s true.
Later, they have a walk down the water. Beans tries it on, tapping passers-by for a few coins, but without much luck. They don’t have any change on them; or they don’t speak. Head down. Eyes to the tarmac. No a total disaster though. Eventually they come past a young pair kisscanoodling, who give him a two-pound coin.
The gloaming is come on when they return to the park. They drink the single can that they’ve each got, and take their positions, Mick on the ground with the blanket, Beans up on the bench. Without much superlager inside to numb him up, it is impossible to get to sleep. The cold nipping, and this unsettling feeling going through him in waves that is related he knows to the bringing up of old memories. He must doze off at some point though, because he is dreaming about a paddleboat and a boy fallen off the side when he is suddenly woken up — noise, heat, and a great blaze of fire above him that he realizes, through the flames, is Beans.
He is stumbling, flapping about, his chest and arms ablaze. Mick blunders to his knees, the fire crackling, a smell of petrol. ‘Keith,’ he shouts, uselessly, pushing him onto the ground and only then clocking the group of men stood on the play area. Watching; walking over. The guy from earlier, a can in his hand, laughing. Beans is thumping his hands on the grass and Mick tries to roll him, this kind of growling noise coming out of his throat, and his face damp, pieces of skin peeling off his neck. The hat — if it caught fire — and he scrabbles to pull it off him, Beans’s eyes pleading, crapping it he’s going to die. And Mick is thinking it too but he knows, in that instant, rocking the body on the grass, that his own fear is for himself. The men are stood over them. One of them puts an arm out and lager is pouring down, hissing on the dying flames. He is powerless, he just keeps rocking the great charred mass back and forth, burning his hands, until the fire is almost out, and he tries then to take the jacket off but it is too tight — more laughter — so he tears at it and it comes apart in pieces. One of the men suddenly puts the boot on, kicking Beans in his side. Then another of them catches Mick in the stomach and he is keeling over, bent double on the hot grass, no able to breathe.
They are away, running down the path, jumping the gate. ‘Keith. Ye alright, pal?’ Stupit question. He’s alive but. The lips are quivering in his raw bleeding bawface; wet, red patches on his chin and cheeks. Mick pulls off the shreds of his jacket and his shirt, trying no to look at the body, then he takes off his own coat and rests it on top, lying down beside him, his hands stinging, too done in the now to move or think about getting somewhere safe.
Chapter 30
Beans is sat up on the bench, quiet. He’s got the coat draped over him like a blanket, but underneath it’s possible to see what’s left of his clothes, stuck to him in black tatterings on his chest and belly, patches of red wincing flesh, skin bubbles.
‘Ye’re well fired, then.’
No the right thing to say. He isn’t amused. Just sat there, staring ahead. He’s got his woolly hat back on, turned now a darker shade of red. Below it, one of his bug-ladders is burnt off, a few blackened stems of hair poking out from the blistered skin, and the bottom of his ear is yellow and gluey with pus, like an upturned clam.
‘Want something to eat?’
Beans shrugs his shoulders just. Gives a kind of snort. Clear enough what he’s meaning: who’s going to get it, well? Mick stands up and goes to the bin. It hasn’t been emptied yet from yesterday and it’s overflowing: a magazine and an empty Lucozade bottle sticking out the top. The best he can find though is a bit of brown banana left in its skin and a few crisps in a bag. He takes them over to lay beside Beans on the bench, but he doesn’t even turn his head. All the life is went out of him.
He sits again on the bench, the crisps and banana between them.
‘I’ve seen a guy on fire before,’ he says then, just to be saying something. ‘A welder. Just pure unfortunate, really, cause he was doing this job that he had his mask on for and as well one of these flame-retardant suits, but see that was the problem. He starts jigging about and nobody knows what he’s up to at first, they think he’s dicking around, but actually a spark is got inside the suit and nobody can see that his clothes is on fire cause, like I say, the suit’s flame-retardant.’
Beans isn’t listening. His head is sunk down, looking at the grass. There is a scorched patch in front of where they are sitting.
‘Anyway, so by the time his mate’s clocked what’s going on the poor guy is almost fried, and when he comes back from the hospital he’s got third-degree burns and everyone’s telling him he should go the courts but he says he’s no gonnae because it was his own fault for no doing the neck studs up.’
‘This supposed to be cheery?’
Mick turns round, relieved. ‘Right, sorry.’ He smiles. ‘Sorry. See what I mean is it could’ve been worse.’ Beans is looking now at the banana and crisps, not moving. His lips are swollen and bluish. ‘Worse,’ he says, in a quiet voice.
There is the problem of food and also, now, the problem of where to stay. They don’t discuss it but it’s clear enough they need to move from the park. As well, Beans is in blatant need of some medical attention. When Mick says they should go the hospital, however, he just gives a wee laugh. It’s the only thing he responds to all afternoon. The rest of the time he just sits there in silence, pulling the coat around him and covering his wounds, but Mick can see well enough what like the state he is in: his face and neck hugely swollen by now, and the top of the coat soaked with whatever it is that’s running out of his sores.
Later, Mick gets up and tells him he’s going off to find some food. He starts down the road, looking in the bins. A few people watching him as he gets grubbing inside them but he’s too hungry to care, pulling and digging at all this stuff that the residents have decided isn’t fit for them any longer: magazines, a bunch of flowers, newspapers with this picture of a politician type on the front. There is food too, plenty of it. Sandwich cartons, some with just the crust left, but a couple that there’s actually an entire half-piece in there. Unfuckingbelievable, really. In another bin he finds a Japanese roll left in one box and two more with these pink pickled frillies on the side. He gets it all into a pair of sandwich cartons and leaves back to the park.