Shug narrowed his eyes and ran his fist over his moustache like he was catching all the hard words he wanted to say to her. “Agnes. I’m begging you. Please can you take it slow the night?” But she was already gone, over the tramlines towards the winking cowboy.
“Howdy,” said the barmaid in a thick Lancashire accent. “That’s a right purdy dress.”
Agnes lifted herself up on to the swivelling plastic bar stool and crossed her ankles daintily. “A Brandy Alexander, please.”
Shug turned the bar stool next to her, spun it like a top, till it was taller than hers. With a hop he pulled himself up and twisted until they were eye to eye. “A cold milk, please.” He drew two cigarettes out of a packet, and Agnes motioned for him to light one for her. The barmaid put the drinks down in front of them. The milk was in a child’s tumbler, and Shug pushed it back towards her and demanded a different glass.
He slid the lit cigarette between Agnes’s lips and stroked the nape of her neck where a soft curl was escaping. She reached into her handbag and then, pushing the hair back into her crown, with a skoooosh she blasted it with sweet-smelling hairspray. Agnes took a long mouthful of the sweet drink and smacked her lips. “Elizabeth Taylor has been to Blackpool. I wonder if she likes whelks?”
Shug picked the inside of his nose with the ringed pinkie. He rolled the mucus between his thumb and forefinger. “Who doesnae?”
She spun to face him. “Maybe we should move here. It could be like this all the time.”
He laughed and shook his head at her, like she was a child. “Everyday it is something different with you. I’m exhausted trying to keep up.” He traced a finger along the shiny hem of her skirt as she watched the summer crowds push by outside the bar. Ordinary folk, already in winter coats.
“You know what I want? I want to play some bingo.” The warmth of the drink was in her now. She wrapped her arms around herself in a contented hug. “All these lights. I’m feeling lucky.”
“Aye? I asked them to turn them on just for ye.”
Fresh drinks came. Agnes fished around and pulled out the straw, the stirrer, and the two fat ice cubes. “This time I mean it. I’m going to win big. I’m going to start living. I’m going to give Sighthill a showing up. I can just feel it.” She finished the brandy in one swallow.
Their rented room was at the top of a Victorian house that was set three streets back from the promenade. It was plain even for a Blackpool B & B, and it smelled like the kind of place that rented rooms to temporary lodgers, not families on holiday. Each carpeted landing had a different, settled-in musk. The place smelled of burnt toast and TV static, as if the landlady never liked to open a window.
It was quiet at that hour in the morning. Agnes lay in a pile at the bottom of the carpeted stairs singing tunelessly to herself. “Ahh’m onny hew-man. Ahh’m just a wooh-man.”
There were feet moving behind closed doors and old floorboards creaked overhead. Shug put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Shh. Be quiet, will ye. You’ll wake up every soul in the place.”
Agnes pushed his arm away from her face, threw her arm wide, and sang louder. “Show me the stairwaa-ay ah have to cli-imb.”
Lights came on in one of the rooms. Shug could see it from under the thin door. He put his hands under her arms and tried to pick her up, drag her up the carpeted stairs. The more he pulled the more easily she slid through his hands, like a boneless bag of flesh. Each time he got leverage, she would become formless and slip free. Agnes spilt back on to the stairs with a giggle and went on singing to herself.
An Englishman in one of the rented rooms hissed through his closed door, “Keep it down. Before I call the poh-lice! People are trying to sleep.” To Shug he sounded like a small effeminate man, the way he dribbled out his sibilant esses. Shug would have liked him to open the door. Shug would have liked to leave a sovereign print on his face.
Agnes feigned affront. “Aye, phone the police you spoilsport. I’m on my holid—”
Shug clamped his hand tight over her wet mouth. She only giggled. With mischief in her eyes, she licked the inside of his palm with a fat tongue. It felt like a warm wet slab of flank mutton. It turned his stomach. Tightening his grip, he dug his ringed fingers into her cheeks till he forced her dentures apart. The smile left her eyes. Leaning his face close to hers, he hissed: “I’m only going to tell you this the once. Pick yersel up. Get yersel up they stairs.”
Slowly he took his hand away from her face. There was a pink mark where he had squeezed her jaw. There was fear in her eyes, and she looked almost sober again. As he drew his hand away, the fear melted from her eyes and the demon drink came back into her face. She spat at him through the ceramic teeth. “Who the fuck do you think y—”
Shug was on her before she could finish. Stepping over her, he reached backwards into her hair. The hardened hairspray cracked like chicken bones as he wound his fingers into the strands. With a tug hard enough to rip handfuls out by the roots, he started up the stairs, dragging her behind him. Agnes’s legs splayed awkwardly, she flailed like a clumsy spider as she tried to find her footing. The ripping pain stung her skull, and she wrapped her hands around his arm for purchase. Shug barely felt the sharpness of her nails as she pierced his skin. He pulled her up a stair, then he pulled her up another, and then another. The dirty carpet burnt her back, rubbed the skin from her neck, ripped the paillettes from her shiny dress. Hooking his thick arm under her chin he dragged her across the next carpeted landing. In one motion he dropped her at the door, fished out the key, turned on the bare light, and dragged her inside.
Agnes lay abandoned behind the door like a ragged draught excluder. The beaded dress had worked itself up her white legs. Her hand reached to her head, feeling for where her hair had started to tear. Shug crossed the room and pulled her hand away, suddenly embarrassed at what he had done. “Stop touching at yourself. I’ve no hurt you.”
She could feel the blood of her scalp on her fingers. Her ears were ringing from the bump, thump, bump of each stair. The numbness of the drink was leaving her. “Why did you do that?”
“You were making a show of me.”
Shug took off his black suit jacket and laid it over the single wooden chair. He took off the black tie and wound it neatly upon itself. His face was flushed red, and it made his eyes look somehow smaller and darker. While he’d dragged her upstairs his hair had come undone from the bald patch he tried hard to conceal. The loosened strands hung by his left ear, thin and ratty-looking. There was a cluck in the back of his throat, like a switch firing, and then his hands were on her again. She felt the claw on her neck, felt it on her thigh. He used his fingers and dug into her softness, wanting to be sure he had a firm grip. As flesh separated from bone she cried out from the pain, and he hammered his sovereign ring twice into her cheek.
When she was quiet again, Shug bent over and dug his nails into her shoulder and thigh and threw her on to the rented bed like a burst bin bag. He climbed on top of her. His face was a blazing shade of scarlet, his limp hair swinging free from his swollen head. It was as though he was filling with boiling blood. Using his elbows he pushed all his weight on to her arms, shoved them into the mattress until they felt like they might snap. He took the bulk of himself, all the driving weight he had gained from being so sedentary, and pushed it into her and pinned her there below him.
With his right hand he reached below her dress and found the soft white parts of her. She crossed her legs below him; he felt the ankles lock one over the other. With his free hand he gripped her thighs and tried to pull the dead weight of them apart. There was no giving. The lock was tight. He dug his fingers into the soft tops of her legs, digging the nails in until he felt the skin burst, until he felt her ankles open.
He pushed into her as she wept. There was no drink in her now. There was no fight in her any more. When he was done he put his face against her neck. He told her he would take her dancing in the lights again tomorrow.
Three
> That summer, when it finally came, was close and damp. For a nocturnal man, the days had felt too long. The long daylight was like an inconsiderate guest, the northern gloam reluctant to leave. Big Shug always found the summer days hardest to sleep through. The sun brightened the thick curtains till they were a vibrating violet, and the children were always noisiest when they were happiest, the door going constantly with mouthy teenagers from other flats and women in strappy sandals traipsing the hall carpet, clacking pink feet and pink gums at all hours.
As night finally fell, Big Shug pulled his black hackney round in a small tight circle. It spun like a fat dog chasing its tail and headed out of the Sighthill estate. Seeing the lights of Glasgow, he relaxed back into the seat, and for the first time that day his shoulders fell from around his ears. For the next eight hours the city was his, and he had plans for it.
He wiped the window and got a good look in the wing mirror. Smiling to himself, he thought how smashing he looked: white shirt, black suit, black tie. It was a bit much for work, Agnes had said, but then she said altogether too much these days. As the smile travelled through his body he wondered whether taxi driving was in his blood. Between him and his brother Rascal it was practically a family business. His father would have enjoyed it too, had the shipbuilding not killed him.
Shug pulled up at the lights under the shadow of the Royal Infirmary and watched a gaggle of nurses smoke a crafty fag. He watched them rub their pink arms in the cold night air and shelf their tits over tight-folded arms. They smoked without using their hands, afeart of losing any body heat. He smiled slowly and watched himself react in the mirror. Night shift definitely suited him best.
He liked to roam alone in the darkness, getting a good look at the underbelly. Out came the characters shellacked by the grey city, years of drink and rain and hope holding them in place. His living was made by moving people, but his favourite pastime was watching them.
The thin driver’s window made a sharp slicing sound as he slid it down and lit a cigarette. The wind came rushing in, and his long strands of thin hair danced like beach grass in the breeze. He hated going bald, hated getting old; it made everything hard work. He adjusted the mirror lower so that he couldn’t see the reflection of his bare head. He found his long, thick moustache and sat absent-mindedly stroking it, like a favourite pet. Under it his spare chin wobbled. He tilted the mirror back up.
The Glasgow streets were shiny with rain and street lights. The infirmary nurses didn’t linger, flicking half-smoked fags into the puddles and tottering back inside. Shug sighed and turned the taxi past Town-head and pointed down towards the city centre. He liked the drive from Sighthill, it was like a descent into the heart of the Victorian darkness. The closer you got to the river, the lowest part of the city, the more the real Glasgow opened up to you. There were hidden nightclubs tucked under shadowy railway arches, and blacked-out windowless pubs where old men and women sat on sunny days in a sweaty, pungent purgatory. It was down near the river that the skinny, nervous-faced women sold themselves to men in polished estate cars, and sometimes it was here that the polis would later find chopped up bits of them in black bin bags. The north bank of the Clyde housed the city mortuary, and it seemed fitting that all the lost souls were floating in that direction, so as to be no trouble when their time blessedly came.
Pulling past the station, Shug was glad the rank there was full of taxis and empty of punters. Tourists were dull, talkative, and fucking cheap. They’d be an eternity lugging massive cases into the back and then would sit there steaming up the taxi in squeaky Pac-a-Macs. Those ugly tight-arsed bastards could shove their ten-pence tips. He gave a snide toot to the boys and drove on lower towards the river.
Rain was the natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial. Its effect on the taxi business was negligible. It was a problem because it was mostly inescapable and the constant dampness was pervasive, so fares might as well sit damp on a bus as damp in the back of an expensive taxi. On the other hand, rain meant that the young lassies from the dancing all wanted to take a taxi home so as not to ruin their stiff hair or their sharp shoes. For that Shug was in favour of the endless rain.
He pulled up Hope Street and sat at the rank. It shouldn’t be long. Only two or three of the old boys were sat there, waiting for a hire. From here it was a short stoat from the dancing on Sauchiehall Street or a frozen trot for the working girls pitched out on Blythswood Square. Either way, it was a good spot for an interesting night.
Shug sat smoking in the dreich and listened to the crackle of the CB radio. The lady dispatcher announced fares up in Possil and runs to be had down in the Trongate. Joanie Micklewhite was the only voice on the radio, and every night he listened to her hold this repetitive circular monologue asking for help, waiting for answers, giving orders, and bluffing any backchat. Always only half a conversation, like she was talking to herself or talking, it seemed, only to him. He liked the peaceful sound of her voice. He took a comfort from it.
He finished his cigarette and watched young couples huddle together as they left the late picture. The drivers in front slowly started to pull fares and rattle off into the night. Alone at the head of the rank, he watched a group of young lassies dribble chips on to the street as they had a fight over how they should get home. It looked like they’d get in the taxi, but no, the fat practical one wanted to wait for the night bus. Leave her, he thought, let her get wet. The prettiest, most guttered one was still stumbling towards him. Shug practiced his smile in the half-light.
He was dragged from his dirty thoughts as a set of bony knuckles rapped on the window. “Ye fur hire, pal?” said a man’s voice.
“No!” shouted Shug, pointing in the direction of the wrecked girls.
“Right, then,” said the old man, not paying any heed. He opened the door before Shug could hit the automatic lock and pulled his small frame and voluminous coats inside. “Dae ye ken the Rangers bar on Duke Street?”
Shug sighed, “Aye, pal,” as the pretty girl slid along the queue to the taxi behind his. He gave her a half-smile, but she paid him no mind.
Ignoring the black leather seat that ran the width of the taxi, the old man pulled down a folding seat and sat directly behind Shug. This was the sign of a talker. Here we fuckin’ go, thought Shug.
It was wet outside but humid inside the cab. The hackney filled with the smell of old milk. The old man sat in a yellowed shirt and a crumpled grey suit, over which he had piled a thin wool coat and on top of this had added an oversize topcoat. It gave him the look of a refugee, his tiny frame drowning in yards of Shetland wool and gabardine. On his head he wore a Harris bunnet, from the shadows of which only his red round nose protruded. The patter started almost immediately. “Did ye see the game the day, son?” asked the milky passenger.
“No,” answered Shug, already knowing where this was headed.
“Aw, ye missed a great game, a bloody great game.” The man was tutting to himself. “Who do ye support then?”
“Celtic,” he lied. He was no Catholic, but it was the shortcut to ending the conversation.
The auld man’s face crumpled like a dropped towel. “Oh, fur fuck’s sake, might’ve known ah’d get in a Pape’s taxi.” Shug watched him in the mirror and snorted under his moustache. He didn’t support Celtic; he didn’t support the Rangers either, but he was proud to be a Protestant. He would have turned his Masonic ring around, but the old man was paying no heed and moving like he was underwater.
Bemused, Shug watched as the man worked himself up into a state of distracted despair, swinging from lachrymose to belligerent. He held his hands in front of him like he was pleading with God. Then he laid his arm across the back of the partition and brought his face inches from the glass separating him from Shug’s ear. Wet-lipped with the drink, he was spitting out random streams of patter, making faces like a toddler learning to talk. Big globs of wet spit misted the partition. Shug deliberately tapped the brakes, and the
man’s forehead made a thunk sound as it skelped off the glass. Bunnetless but undeterred, he kept on with his rambling. Shug frowned. He’d have to give that a good wipe later.
The auld Glasgow jakey was a dying breed—a traditionally benign soul that was devolving into something younger and far more sinister with the spread of drugs across the city. Shug looked in the mirror and watched the man continue his drunken solo, the conversation so low and incoherent that he could pick out only certain words like Thatcher and union and bastard. With no feelings of sympathy, he watched as the man laughed and then sobbed at intervals.
The Louden Tavern sat dark and windowless, the door well recessed into the brick face of the low building. It was by design rock-proof, bottle-proof, and bomb-proof. The facade, painted with the red, white, and blue of the Glasgow Rangers, was gloriously defiant in the shadow of Parkhead, the home of Glasgow Celtic, the sporting Mecca of all Catholics.
Shug told the man the fare was a pound seventy and watched him ferret in one pocket after another. All the Glasgow jakeys did this. Their Friday wages were splintered by every bar they passed till they rolled around in pockets as five and ten pence in change, the cumulative weight of the heavy small coins giving them a waddling walk and a hump. They would live on the coins for the rest of the week, taking their chances with their random findings. Even in sleep they were never to be separated from their trousers and large coats for fear their wives or children would tip them out first and buy bread and milk with the shrapnel.
The man was an age looking in every pocket. Shug listened to the soft voice on the CB and tried to stay calm. By the time the jakey had paid and sailed into the dark mouth of the pub Shug was thundering back along Duke Street, trying not to miss the dancing letting out. Outside the Scala an auld dear stuck her hand out, waving it like a small bird. Shug had to stop short or run her over.
He watched her climb into the back of the taxi and felt relieved when she sat square in the centre of the wide black seat. “The Parade, please.” She sniffed, wrinkled her nose, and looked scornfully at Shug. It must have smelled like someone pissed in a pot of old porridge back there.
Shuggie Bain Page 4