Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  More hands of cards were dealt, more menage money was lost, and Agnes kept the records on rotation even though no one was paying any mind. Predictably, coins started piling in front of Nan as the piles of the others got smaller. Agnes, with her drink in hand, began to spin alone on the carpeted floor. “Oh, oh, oh. This is my song, ladies. Get up, get up!” Her twirling fingers implored them to their feet.

  The women rose one by one, the unlucky ones happy to step away from Nan’s conspicuous pile of silver. They danced happily in their new bras and old cardigans. The floor bounced under their weight. Nan spun around a shrieking Ann Marie until the two of them knocked into the edge of the low tea table. The women danced with abandon and took big mouthfuls of lager out of old tea mugs. All their movement became concentrated in the shoulders and hips, rhythmic and lusty, like the young girls they saw on television. It was a certainty that the poor skinny husbands they kept at home would be suffocated later that night. The women, smelling of vinegar and stout, would go home and climb on top of them. Giggling and sweating, yet feeling for a moment like fifteen-year-olds again in their new bras. They would strip to holey tights and unclasp their swinging tits. It would be drunk open mouths, hot red tongues, and heavy clumsy flesh. Pure Friday-night happiness.

  Lizzie didn’t dance. She had proclaimed herself off the drink. She and Wullie had tried to set a good example for the family. It had made her a bad Catholic to be tut-tutting at Agnes while enjoying a wee can or two herself. So she had stopped with the sweetheart stout and haufs of whisky, almost. Agnes looked over at her mammy sat with her cold mug of tea, and didn’t believe it for a minute. Sitting with a proud back, Lizzie’s eyes were still rheumy and damp-looking, her pink face clouded with a distant look.

  Agnes knew Wullie and Lizzie had taken to slipping out of the room when they thought no one was watching. They would get up from the dinner table on a Sunday or make one too many trips to the bathroom. In secret they would sit on the edge of their big double bed with their bedroom door closed and pull plastic bags out from underneath. Into an old mug they would pour the bevvy and drink it quickly and quietly in the dark like teenagers. They would come back to the kitchen table and clear their throats, their eyes happier and glassier, and everyone would pretend not to smell the whisky. You only had to watch her father try to eat his Sunday soup to tell if he had a drink in him or not.

  The record hissed to the end of the first side. Lizzie excused herself and wobbled off to the bathroom. Big Nan, thinking no one was looking, took the opportunity to peer slyly at Lizzie’s cards. Her eye caught a glint of unopened stout tins behind Wullie’s old comfy chair. “Jackpot!” she shouted. “That auld yin has a hidden carry-oot stuck down the back o’ his chair!” She sat down, sweaty and out of breath, and helped herself. Nan was here on business, staying a little soberer than the others. All night she had been closely counting the money on the card table, thinking about the bit of ham she could buy for Sunday’s soup and the money the weans would need for next week’s school. Now the card business was over, Nan was thirsty for the hidden stout.

  “Lizzie Campbell. That auld liar. She’s not aff the drink,” said Reeny.

  “She’s as aff that drink as I’m aff the pies,” said Nan, buttoning her cardigan tight over her new bra. She shouted for Lizzie’s benefit in the direction of the dark hallway. “I don’t know why I’m pals wi’ you robbing Catholic bastards anyhows!” Nan took the stout and filled the mugs and glasses on the table; the drunker she could get them the better. Suddenly she was all business again. “So. Are we gonnae finish these cards or get the catalogue out? I’m tired o’ watching you auld wummin dance like youse are Pan’s People.” From a black leather handbag at her feet she pulled out a thick, dog-eared catalogue. Across the front cover it read Freemans, and there was a picture of a women in a lace dress and straw hat in a happy golden field somewhere far from here. She looked like her hair smelled of green apples.

  Nan opened the catalogue on top of the playing cards and flicked through a couple of pages. The noise of the plasticky paper was like a siren’s song. The women stopped throwing themselves around to the music and gathered around the open book, pressing greasy fingers on pictures of leather sandals and polyester nighties. They opened to a double spread of women riding bikes in pretty jersey dresses and cooed as one. At this Nan reached into her leather bag again and pulled out the handful of Bible-size payment books. There were groans all around. They were her pals, sure, but this was her job, and she had weans to feed.

  “Och, Nan, I’ve just no got it this week,” said young Ann Marie, almost recoiling from the catalogue.

  Nan smiled and through closed teeth replied as politely as she was capable. “Aye, ye’ve fuckin’ goat it. An’ if ah have to dangle you out of the window by they fat ankles, you’ll be paying me the night.”

  Agnes smiled to herself and knew Ann Marie should have quit while she was ahead. But the young woman ploughed on. “It’s just that swimsuit doesnae actually fit.”

  “Yer arse! It fit when you goat it.” Nan searched through the grey books. She pulled the one that read “Ann Marie Easton” in curly black biro and dropped it on the table.

  “It’s just my boyfriend said he’s no able to take me away on holiday anymair.” Ann Marie looked big-eyed from face to face for a trace of pity. The women couldn’t care less. The last holiday most of them had seen was a stay on the Stobhill maternity ward.

  “Too. Fuckin’. Bad. Pick. Better. Men. Pick. Better. Claes,” Nan applied the pressure like she had a thousand times and went about collecting money from all the women and marking it in their books. It would be an eternity to pay off a pair of children’s school trousers or a set of bathroom towels. Five pounds a month would take years to pay off when the interest was added on top. It felt like they were renting their lives. The catalogue opened to a new page, and the women started fighting over who wanted what.

  Agnes was the first to lift her head at the change of pressure in the room. Shug was stood in the doorway, his thick money belt heavy in his hand. The damp wind was sucking through the room, telling Agnes that he had left the front door open, that he was not staying. Agnes stood and moved towards her husband, her dress still folded down at the waist. Too late she straightened her skirt, then she clasped her hands and tried to smile her soberest smile. He didn’t return her it. Shug simply looked through her in disgust and abruptly said, “Right, who needs a lift?”

  The unwelcome presence of a man was like a school bell. The women started gathering their things. Nan slipped a couple of Lizzie’s hidden stouts into her bag. “Right, ladies! Next Tuesday up ma hoose,” she barked, adding, for Shug’s benefit, “and any man who thinks he can break up ma catalogue night will get battered.”

  “Looking lovely as ever, Mrs Flannigan,” said Shug, picking his thumbnail with the hackney key. Of all of the women to fuck, it would never be her. He had standards.

  “That’s nice of ye to say,” replied Nan with a thin smile. “Why don’t ye shove yer arms up yer arse and gie yer insides a big hug from me.”

  Agnes pulled her velvet dress back over her shoulders. She stood still, her palms flat on her skirt. The women buttoned themselves into heavy coats and nodded politely to her as they squeezed uncomfortably past Shug, who still stood in the doorway. They all lowered their eyes, and Agnes watched as Shug smiled from under his moustache at each woman on her way out. He stepped aside only for the bulk of Nan.

  Shug was slowly losing his looks, but he was still commanding, magnetic. There was a directness to his gaze that did something funny to Agnes. She had once told her mother that when she met Shug he had a gleam in his eye that would make you take your clothes off if only he asked. Then she had said that he asked this a lot. Confidence was the key, she explained, for he was no oil painting and his vanity would have been sickening in a less charming man. Shug had the talent to sell it to you like it was the thing you wanted the worst. He had the Glasgow patter.

  He stoo
d there, in his pressed suit and narrow tie, the leather taxi belt in his hand, and he coldly surveyed the departing women like a drover at a cattle auction. She had always known that Shug appreciated the very high and the very low of it; he saw an adventure in most women. There was something about how he could lower beautiful women, because he was never intimidated by them. He could make them laugh and feel flushed and grateful to be around him. He had a patience and a charm that could make plain women feel confident, like the loveliest thing that ever walked in flat shoes.

  He was a selfish animal, she knew that now, in a dirty, sexual way that aroused her against her better nature. It showed in the way he ate, how he crammed food into his mouth and licked gravy from between his knuckles without caring what anyone thought. It showed in how he devoured the women leaving the card party. These days it was showing too often.

  She had left her first husband to marry Shug. The first had been a Christmas Catholic, pious enough for the housing scheme but devout only to her. Agnes was better-looking than him in a way that made strange men feel hopeful for themselves and made women squint at his crotch and wonder what they had missed in Brendan McGowan. But there was nothing to miss; he was straightforward, a hard-working man with little imagination who knew how lucky he was to have Agnes and so he worshipped her. When other men went to the pub, he brought home his wages every week, the brown envelope still sealed, and handed it to her without argument. She had never respected that gesture. The contents of the envelope had never felt like enough.

  Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the Catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste.

  Lizzie had always known. When Agnes had shown up on the doorstep with her two eldest and the Protestant taxi driver, she had had the instant compulsion to shut the door, but Wullie would not let her. Wullie had an optimism when it came to Agnes that Lizzie thought was a blindness. When Shug and Agnes finally got married, neither Wullie nor Lizzie went to the registry office. They said it was wrong, to marry between the faiths, to marry outside the Chapel. Really, it was Shug Bain she disliked. Lizzie had known it all along.

  Ann Marie was one of the last to leave, taking too long a time in gathering her cardigan and cigarettes, even though it was all there, exactly as she had dropped it when she arrived. She made to say something to Shug, but he caught her eye, and she held her tongue. Agnes watched their silent conversation.

  “Reeny, how you feeling, doll?” asked Shug with a cat’s grin.

  Agnes turned her eyes from Ann Marie’s shadow and looked at her old friend, and her ribs broke anew.

  “Aye, fine thanks, Shug,” Reeny answered awkwardly, all the while looking at Agnes.

  Agnes’s chest caved into her heart as Shug said, “Get your coat, you’ll catch your death. I’ll drive you across the street.”

  “No. That’s too much bother.”

  “Nonsense.” He smiled again. “Any friend of our Agnes is a friend of mine.”

  “Shug, I’ll put your tea on, don’t be long,” Agnes said, sounding more of a shrew than she wanted to.

  “I’m no hungry.” He quietly closed the door between them. The curtains became lifeless again.

  Reeny Sweeny lived at 9 Pinkston Drive in the tower block that stood shoulder to shoulder with number 16. The black hackney just needed to turn its neat pirouette, and Reeny would be home in less than a minute. Agnes sat down, lit a cigarette, and knew she would wait long hours before Shug showed his face again.

  She could feel the burn of Lizzie’s eyes on the side of her face. Her mother said nothing, she just glowered. It was too much to be trapped in your mother’s front room and judged by her, too much to have her be a front-row spectator to every ebb in your marriage. Agnes gathered her cigarettes and went along the short hallway to look in on her weans. The room was dark but for the focused beam of a camping torch. Leek was clutching it under his chin and drawing in a black sketchbook with a look of stillness on his face. He did not look up, and she could not see his grey eyes under the shade of his soft fringe. The room was warm and close with the breath of his sleeping siblings.

  Agnes folded some of the clothes that were strewn across the floor. She took the pencil from his hand and folded the book closed. “You’ll hurt your eyes, darling.”

  He was almost a man, far too old to kiss goodnight now, but she did so anyway and ignored it when he recoiled at the smell of heavy stout on her breath. Leek shone his torch on the single bed for her. Agnes checked on her youngest, drew the blanket tight under Shuggie’s chin. She wanted to waken him, thought about taking him to her bed, overwhelmed by a sudden need to have someone wrapped tight around her again. Shuggie’s mouth hung open in sleep, his eyelids flickering gently, too far away to be disturbed.

  Agnes closed the door quietly and went to her own room. She felt between the layers of the mattress and took out the familiar vodka bottle. Shaking the dregs, she poured herself a pauper’s mug, and then she sucked on the neck of the empty bottle and watched the city lights below.

  The first time Shug went missing after his night shift Agnes spent the dawn hours worrying the hospitals and all the drivers she knew from the taxi rank. Working through her black book, she called all of her female friends, asking casually how they were but not admitting that Shug was roaming, unable to admit to herself that he had finally done it.

  As the women gabbed about the routine of their lives she only listened to the noises beyond them and strained for any sounds of him in the room behind. Now she wanted to tell the women that she knew all about it. She knew about the sweaty taxi windows, his greedy hands, and how they must have panted at Shug to take them away from it all as he stuck his prick into them. It made her feel old and very alone. She wanted to tell them she understood. She knew all about its thrill, because once upon a time it had been her.

  Once upon a time the wind whipping off the sea had turned the front of her thighs blue with the cold, but Agnes couldn’t feel it because she had been happy.

  The thousand blinking lights from the promenade rained down on her, and she moved towards them with a slack mouth. She was so struck she hardly drew a breath. The black paillettes on her new dress reflected the bright lights and sent them back twinkling into the Fair Fortnight crowd till she looked as radiant as the illuminations herself.

  Shug lifted her and stood her on an empty bench. The lights were afire all along the waterfront for as far as her eye could travel. Every building was in competition with the next, blinking with a thousand gaudy bulbs of its own. Some were western saloon signs with galloping horses and winking cowboys, others were like the dancing girls of Las Vegas. She looked down on Shug, beaming up at her. He looked smart in his good, narrow black suit. He looked like he was somebody.

  “I can’t remember the last time you took me dancing,” she said.

  “I can still trip the light fantastic.” He helped her gently back to the pavement and took a lingering squeeze of her soft middle. Shug could see the waterfront through her eyes, the tawdry glamour of the clubs and the adventure of the amusement halls. He wondered if this, too, would lose its shine for her. He took his suit jacket from his back and draped it over her shoulders. “Aye, the lights from Sighthill aren’t going to seem the same after this.”

  Agnes shivered. “Let’s not talk about home. Let’s just pretend we’ve run away.”

  They walked along the shimmering waterfront trying not to think of all the small, everyday things that pushed them apart, that kept them living in a high-rise flat with her mother and father snoring through the bedroom wall. Agnes watched the lights flash on and off. Shug watched the men swivel their greedy eyes to look at her and felt a sick pride burst in his chest.

  In the grey daylight of that morning she had seen the Blackpool sea-front for the first time. Her heart had quietly broken in disappointment. Shabby buildings faced a dark, choppy ocean and a cold, stony beach where
blue weans ran around in their underclothes. It was buckets and spades and pensioners in rain bonnets. It was day-tripping families from Liverpool and coachloads from Glasgow. He had meant it as a chance to be alone. She had bitten the inside of her cheek at the commonness of it all.

  Now, at night, she saw its draw. The true magic was in the illuminations. There wasn’t a surface that wasn’t glowing. The old trams that ran down the middle of the street were covered in lights, and the shaky wooden piers that jutted out into the brackish sea were now festooned like runways. Even the Kiss Me Quick hats blinked on and off as though demented with lust. Shug took her wrist and led her through the crowd and along the blazing promenade. Children were screaming from the waltzer ride on the pier. There was the roar and flash of the dodgem cars, the clink-clink of the manic slots. Shug kept pulling her through the crowds towards the Blackpool Tower, twisting this way and that in the habit of a taxi driver.

  “Darlin’, please slow down,” she pleaded. The lights were all flying past her too quickly to drink in. She wrenched her wrist from his grasp, there was a red ring where he had gripped her.

  Shug was blinking and red-faced in the holiday crowd. He flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Strange men shook their heads as if they would have known how to handle this fine woman better. “You’re no starting, are you?”

  Agnes rubbed at her arm. She tried to soften the frown on her face. She hooked his pinkie with hers, the gold of his Masonic ring felt cold and dead against her hand. “You were rushing me, that’s all. Just let me enjoy it. I feel like I never get out of the house.” She turned from him, back to the lights, but the magic was gone. They were cheap.

  Agnes sighed. “Let’s have a wee drink. It’ll take the chill off, maybe help us get back in the spirit of things.”