The park is empty. No weans, or mothers, nothing. It’s a pretty dreich day but. The patch of charred grass is still there, less black than it was, but just as dead. He moves on. Down the road he nicks into a pub to go for a pish, but it’s dead inside and the landlord cops onto him before he can get in the toilets. Another pub opposite but, and he slips in unnoticed. He washes his face, and nabs a toilet roll from one of the cubicles.
Further on there is a subway station, and he sits down by the cash machines without too much of a thought but that he needs to sit down, so he may as well do it here and tap some money into the bargain. Pure murder on the arse after a while though, even with the blanket and his carrier of clothes underneath him. Thickets of legs, coming in waves, up the stair from the subway. He doesn’t look at them. No up at their faces. He keeps his eyes on their ankles and their shoes instead. Without the body and the face on top, the feet take on a life of their own, like it’s the feet themselves that are wanting to get a hurry on, them that are annoyed at having to swerve around him. That’s fine but. Fine. Feet, he can deal with.
The first afternoon, he makes 87p. The next day, the weather is better and he gets there earlier. Somebody drops him a baseball cap, which he puts on to shield his face from the sun. Another gives him a cup of tea, and when he’s finished it he leaves the empty cup on the ground next to him. His earnings almost double. Chink. In it goes. Like pressing a button. He spends his nights in the usual spot behind the doctor’s, awake already and away early the morning. Sandwich, superlager; easy enough, the routine, and it gathers around him like a fog, guiding him and protecting him. Inside it but, thoughts and memories appear suddenly like figures out of the mist — he tries to lose them, give them the body swerve; always the same race between the reminders and the drink.
He’s slept right through and they are come to move him, the light up and a crowd of blue jackets moving through the car park, one of them picking up an empty bottle of superlager, Beans not there, these rub-ye-ups grabbing at his legs — come on, come on — a man craning down toward him, his face tight with disgust.
The buses. A much better idea. Good and bad points but, obviously. Good and bad. There is a stretch of road with four or five bars knuckled together, and he learns after a couple of tries elsewhere that this is the best place to get on, wait while they’re closing and the stops are birling with drunkens trying to cram and heave through the doors. Once on, up the stair and to the front is the best spot, a bit of extra space for the legs and the pilot’s view out the window. The smell of chips and vinegar. Kebabs. Listening to the songmakers away at the back. It’s only when the front’s been took and he has to sit further down that people start putting the mix in. A lassie on her mobile phone sat next to him with her face turned to the window, speaking in a quiet voice and no realizing or caring that he can hear what she’s saying. Another time, he falls asleep right in the thick of all these posh, clammering English boys, and wakes up to them laughing, the aisle full of legs and the one sat next to him wearing his baseball cap. The rest of them in knots about it. He sees Mick awake and turns toward him, grinning, takes the cap off slowly and puts it back on Mick’s head. He closes his eyes. Too tired to do anything. ‘Fuck off.’ But that just sets them going again.
When the bus gets further out of the city and it starts to empty, is when he can sleep. Sometimes he’ll have a carrier with some cans and he’ll drink them up against the seat in front until he’s knocked himself out and he sits slumped against the window, eventually the lights shuddering and turning off. Then shuddering on again. The bus starting to move, back toward the city; tired-looking African and East Europe types getting on, staring silently ahead, keeping to themselves.
No uncommon that a fight will break out. He tries to keep out the way, but one night there is one that kicks off across the aisle from him, a proper frontpager. Two pale lads laughing and shouting, going at the staring matches with anybody that looks over. One of them lights up a fag, the smell of it drifting through the bus. Right in front of them, this great belly man in a rock music T-shirt and a kind of perm haircut tumbling over the back of his seat, and the two lads start pishing about, kidding on they’re going to set the perm alight. Then the smoker starts blowing smoke past his ear, leaning in so close it looks like he’s about to kiss him on the neck. The big guy is getting irritated, tapping the foot and muttering away in a language that’s no English. The whole thing kicks off the instant one of them touches the back of his head, and he jumps up and turns around, suddenly clambering onto the seat and standing on it. The two lads totally blindsided, sat staring up at him.
‘You wanna see my poothy?’
Giggling from somewhere up the front of the bus.
‘You wanna see my poothy, hey?’
The lads don’t know what to do; they’re sat watching, rigid and seething, and then suddenly the big guy starts into a lap dance, practically in the one boy’s face. ‘You wanna see my poothy?’ And it’s more than the boy can take, leaping up and getting the hands around his neck, pushing him back over the next seat and exposing the giant belly from under the T-shirt. Men jumping in now, a young guy in front of Mick standing up but his girlfriend pulling at his arm trying to stop him. There’s four or five of them holding the lad back, his mate one of them, but the boy’s beeling still, desperate to get at the lapdancer, who is walking away down the aisle by now. The veins standing out on his forehead and the whole face looking like it’s going to explode from the skin — eyeballs, teeth, the lot. And then it does. A couple of girls in front screaming as his nose busts, wee red missiles flying everywhere.
Chapter 31
‘Tell you what, I’ll give you a call after I speak to Kenny. . He’s coming on straight from college, I think. . He won’t have, but I’ll ask him. Okay, got to go.’
The boy puts his phone into his jeans pocket and waits. The woman in front of him is literally taking forever. He glares at her back. When finally she does take her card out he steps forward, but she’s not moving, she is staying by the machine, and now she is actually putting the card back in. Unbelievable.
When the woman at last shuffles off and it is his turn, he hesitates a second by the machine, unsure how much money to get — whether or not the plan is to get some food before they go in. He takes out thirty, turning away from the tramp on the pavement, and slips it into his wallet before he moves into the crowd of people streaming toward the tube station.
It is easier in the daytime. Mostly he can sit there for hours and hours without thinking about anything, watching the feet just and then sometimes, chink, and he’ll look up at them walking away, a back of the legs and a backside, disappearing down into the subway. He never drinks in front of them. Common sense, that’s all. He saves the bevvying for the end of the day when he leaves, and he always spends up whatever he’s got, meaning the good days usually are followed by bad ones. Sat there the morning, turning green on the pavement. The sweats. The shudders. Shivering against the wall trying no to move his eyes, and the heart torn and flapping from the paranoia that is rising up inside him that any moment one of these pairs of feet coming out the subway are going to belong to somebody he knows. A total conviction building that Robbie is on the approach. He tries to fight against it but it’s hopeless, hopeless, he hasn’t the strength, he just wants to sleep, to sleep, to forget and let the brain go numb but he’s too fucking sober and his breath is dying each time Robbie’s haircut emerges up the stairs. He closes his eyes but it’s impossible to stop the sense of him coming toward where he’s sat; and then he has to look up — but he’s gone, lost into the crowd.