Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  Agnes stood behind the front door and closed the large glass draught door ahead of her. She couldn’t think. In the small pocket between the two doors she finished the can that she’d secreted in the bottom of her bag. She pressed her face against the wall, cold and soothing; the stone was thick and damp, and she could tell it would be slow to heat up.

  She stood in the hiding place for a long while before she walked the length of the hallway, past two small bedrooms. Catherine was standing in the middle of the first, moving neither here nor there. The wild miners’ weans were resting their elbows on the outside ledge and looking in the bedroom window at her like it was a zoo. Dumbfounded, she could only stare back. The wood-framed windows were poorly fitted, and the chipped glazing putty warned of cold nights and wet walls. Agnes could hear the weans talking as clearly as if they were in the room with her.

  Leek had found the other room. He had opened the bag that kept his drawing supplies and was lying on the bare floor drawing a charcoal picture of the black hills. He took the edge of the pastel and drew the figures of the dark-jacketed men who had watched them as they arrived. They lined the mound of the hills like trees with no leaves. She watched her son, jealous of his talent to disappear, to float away and leave them all behind.

  There were no more bedrooms after that. The third that they had been promised was clearly the living room, and as she retraced her steps, two and then three times, she knew all the children would need to be put together in one single room again.

  Shug was standing at the end of the hallway looking blankly at her. His comb-over had been dancing in the wind, and he caught the waving strands and with a lick of spittle tried to smooth it back down over his head. He stepped back inside the open kitchenette and motioned for her to follow. The kitchen had a large clothes pulley hanging from the ceiling that looked like a torture rack. At the far end hung a set of miner’s working clothes, neatly arranged to dry, from socks to white underwear to a blue polyester work shirt, all stiff with age. Would the man who they belonged to ever be back from the mines? Maybe they had the wrong house after all.

  The facing of the chipboard cabinets was peeling in places, and Shug stood working his pinkie finger under one of the laminates. Behind him, in the corner above the cooker, sprawled a vine of black mould. Without looking at her he simply said, “I can’t stay.”

  At first she barely looked up. She had thought he meant only to go out on a shift and make money. He did that often, came home from a shift only to stand up again and announce he was heading back out. He had never been a man given to sitting at home.

  “What time would you like your dinner?” she asked, already worrying about chip pans and bread knives.

  “I don’t want your dinners any more. Don’t you get it?” He was shaking his head. “This is it. I can’t stay any more. I can’t stay with you. All your wanting. All that drinking.”

  It was then she saw that the brocade cases were settled amongst the packing boxes but the red cases were not. She must have had a look of profound confusion on her face, because Shug met her eyes and was nodding slowly, like you did when a child swallowed medicine, goading it on, waiting for the ick of it to reach the gut. Agnes looked away. She didn’t want to understand. She didn’t want his medicine. She stopped looking for the chip pan, started rearranging the beads on her jumper so that the shiny, faceted sides were uniform and facing outward, stalling for time, unsure of what to do now.

  “This is it,” he said again.

  There was a single chair in the room, a broken-backed kitchen chair, covered in paint splashes and used for reaching high cabinets. Agnes closed the kitchen door quietly; out in the hallway the children were already complaining, aware now that there were not enough bedrooms. She put the broken chair in front of the closed door and sat down. “Why am I not enough for you?”

  Shug blinked like he could not believe what he was hearing. He shook his head, and as he spoke he prodded himself in the chest. “No, m’lady. Why was I not enough?”

  “I’ve never so much as looked at another man.”

  “That’s no what I meant.” He rubbed at his eyes like he was tired. “Why did you no love me enough to stay off the drink, eh? I buy you the best of gear, I work all the hours God sent.” He stared at the wall, not at it but through it. “I even thought, maybe if I gave you a wean of my own, but no. Even that wasn’t enough to keep you still.”

  Taking her roughly by the elbow, he tried to lift her from the seat. Agnes shook herself free and sat back down like she was in a peaceful protest.

  She was in the dangerous in-between place. Enough drink to feel combative but not enough to be unreasonable yet. A few mouthfuls more and she would become destructive, mean-mouthed, spiteful. He stared at her as if he were reading the weather coming down from the glen. He took hold of her and tried to shift her again, before the great rainclouds inside her burst.

  She wrenched herself from his grasp, sat down again, and drew herself to her full height. She regarded him coldly for a long while. She could still not believe what was happening. “No. Not good enough. This doesn’t happen to women like me. I mean look at me. Look at you.”

  “You’re embarrassing yourself.” He pulled on the front of her jumper.

  Shug moved her by force then. She did not cry out as he took her by the hair and pulled her to the floor. Agnes pressed herself against the bottom of the kitchen door as though she could keep him inside forever. He slammed the door into the back of her head, like she was only a loose corner of carpet. As he stepped over her, his right brogue caught the underside of her chin, splitting the pearl-white skin clean open.

  “Please, I love you. I do,” she said.

  “Aye, I know that.”

  By the time the hackney had turned on the Pit Road, her children were in the hallway and Agnes, sparkling and fluffy, was lying like a party dress that had been dropped on the floor.

  The red leather cases never made it into the miner’s house. Shug did not come back to see her for several days, and when he did he didn’t have the cases with him. He had taken them to Joanie Micklewhite’s and slid them into the space she had cleared for him under her bed. Agnes did not know that at first. Shug simply reappeared one night, gently kissed the gash on her chin, and laid her down on the fold-out settee in the living room.

  Shug started coming in during his night shifts and using her in this way. He waited until the small hours, when the children would be in bed, then he whistled nonchalantly up the hallway in freshly pressed shirts. As she undressed him she could tell his underwear was clean and boil-washed by another woman. When they were done, he would lie there for a moment until Agnes wrapped her arms around him, and then he would stand up and leave. If she cooked for him, he would maybe stay a little longer. If she started in on him with question or complaint, he would leave, and he would stay away for several nights in punishment.

  After he’d gone, Agnes would lie on the fold-out settee because she could not take to their bed without him. She lay awake the rest of the night staring at the ceiling while the boys slept in their bedroom next door. All that first autumn Catherine would climb on to the mattress with her mother, and they would lie there together under the damp and the growing mould.

  “Why don’t we just go back to Sighthill?” Catherine would whisper. But Agnes couldn’t explain through the hurt. She knew he would never come back if she returned to her mother’s.

  She was to stay where she was dropped.

  She was to take any little kindness he would give.

  Eventually Guy Fawkes Night arrived, and the air was thick with bonfire wood and burning tyres. Leek and Catherine stood at the window and watched home-made pyres burn across the boggy blackness. Weans launched fireworks at each other like they were whistling missiles. It seemed like rare fun.

  The television was still half-unwrapped from its bed sheet and placed on the floor in the corner, not yet a full commitment. Catherine sank into the settee, her wet hair wrapped in a
turban towel. It’d be the late news and then another night of listening to her mother weep in the dark.

  Agnes waited in the back, in the kitchen. With the lights turned off, it was the room with the best view of the Pit Road. Every night she watched for the hackney and got her hopes up with the approaching hum of any diesel engine. She’d been drinking all the day away, but it wasn’t helping any. She walked between the window and her stash below the kitchen sink. From the click of the latch, the children could count the times she opened the cabinet and snuck a drink.

  “Mammy, what’s for eating?” Leek shouted from the settee.

  Agnes stopped picking at the scab on her chin. She looked at the pot on the electric cooker. “I could heat you some of this soup.”

  “The one with the peas in it?” Leek asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, not if it’s got peas in it,” said Leek, a little hurt that his fifteen-year war against green vegetables went unnoticed.

  “Uh, hullo, its pea soup, ya big dafty!” mocked Catherine.

  Leek dug his foot into her side and pulled the towel off her head, ripping some of her hair along with it. He threw it in the far corner for spite. Get it up ye, he mouthed silently. They had agreed, without ever discussing it outright, to tread as lightly as they could around their mother.

  Catherine stood up to fetch the towel from the other side of the room. She had held on to her virginity as Lizzie had warned her to, so now it wouldn’t be long till she was married to Donald Jnr, and then she wouldn’t have to share a bedroom with either her brother or her mother in this cold damp. The thought alone stopped her from leaving; she was on her way out anyway.

  Catherine rewrapped her hair and flicked her brother the finger. She went through to check on her mother. Agnes was distractedly circling the kitchen like a toy train; every so often she stopped and opened the cabinet under the sink, filled a mug from a container within a plastic bag, and took a long drink. Catherine nudged the cabinet door open with her toe; with relief she saw it was not bleach Agnes had been pouring into the mug.

  Catherine wrinkled her nose at the congealed soup pot. “Mammy, how about phoning in a wee Chinese?”

  “Guid idea!” Leek chimed in from the other room.

  Catherine had said only Chinese, but Agnes had heard Shug. She had the strange power to tie anything back to him these days. Her eyes came into sharp focus. “I could phone the rank and see if Shug’s coming round the night?” she offered brightly. “Mibbe he’ll bring a Chinese over?”

  Catherine groaned. Agnes had been warned not to phone the rank any more. Shug had added it to the long list of things she had to stop if she ever wanted him home. It was his emotional ransom. Perhaps though, if he knew the children were hungry, he’d come over and things would be OK for a few hours. She could fix herself up nice, and maybe he would spend the whole night with her on the fold-out settee. Agnes took a mouthful from her mug and thought through her script: sound normal, sober, non-committal; keep it easy and smile down the phone. It hadn’t worked any night before, she didn’t know why, but she wanted badly to try again.

  Agnes sat at the little pleather phone table and lit a cigarette for her nerves. When she finished dialling she turned her engagement ring back around, as though the person on the other end could see. The gold of her wedding band had turned a dirty-looking yellow.

  A woman’s voice on the phone answered with an annoyed crackle. “Northside Taxis!” It was Joanie Micklewhite. Agnes knew her only casually.

  “Hello, Joanie, is that you? It’s Mrs Bain.”

  “Oh, hullo, hen. Whit can I do ye for?” Joanie sounded flat, like when you turn the corner and run into someone you’d rather never see again.

  “Can you get a message out to Shug, to please phone home,” Agnes said. She wondered then whether Joanie knew he had left her. She wondered who at the rank knew he wasn’t sleeping in her bed.

  “Let me try. Can you haud on, hen?” The phone went quiet as Joanie put the line on hold and tried to contact Shug’s taxi over the big CB radio. It took an eternity before Joanie came back on the line. “Ye still there?”

  She caught Agnes mid-puff. Agnes exhaled the smoke above her head. “Still holding! Did you get through to him?”

  Joanie paused slightly, and Agnes stiffened for rejection. “Aye. He said he’d give you a phone in a while.”

  Agnes brightened up, something like hope caught in her chest, and she looked forward to seeing him, her own husband. She thought about the velvet dress she would wear for him; she wondered if she had time to shave her legs.

  Then Joanie added, “Agnes. I know he hasn’t told you everything, hen.” She stuttered on: “I . . . I just wanted you to know that when you do find out, I’d never meant for anything like this to happen. I have seven weans of my own. And, well, I’m sorry.”

  The last of the bonfires were dying by the time Shug arrived. The children were in bed, sullen and hungry. Agnes couldn’t touch any of the Chinese. She watched his hair fall from his bald head as he shovelled great mouthfuls into his gullet. Through all this he hadn’t lost his appetite, and that killed her. Agnes rubbed at her temples and sat amongst all the unpacked unpacking. There were still no red cases. “Does she keep a nice house?”

  “No’ really,” he said, without looking up.

  Agnes drank as much lager as she could in one go, before she needed to lower the can to take another breath. When she was done she asked, “So, is she good-looking?”

  “I told you on the phone. I don’t want to fuckin’ talk about her.” He ripped a slice of white bread in two. “Let me eat my dinner in peace. I didnae drive out here to fight.”

  Agnes was quiet for a long time, thinking carefully about what to say next. Her left hand worried her knife. She was caught between wanting to start a fight and stab him and wanting him to stay a little longer. When she spoke again she tried to keep her voice even and calm. She found it helped not to look at him. “It’s not going to happen is it? Our new start?”

  Shug stopped chewing. He shrugged. “This is a new start Agnes. I couldn’t cope anymair.”

  She cupped her hands over her face. The polish on her nails was bright, as if still wet. “Why the fuck did you bring me here?”

  Shug pushed his plate away. His moustache was heavy with a congealing pink sauce. “I had to see.”

  “Had to see what?” she asked, her voice cracking in anger. “I thought this is what you wanted.”

  “I had to see if you would actually come.”

  Agnes took hold of the neck of his jumper then. Shug picked up his money belt and kissed her with a forceful tongue. He had to squeeze all the small bones in her hands to get her to release him. She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.

  Nine

  Agnes had to sink three whole lager cans before she could go out the front door. A group of women stood in a cluster by the fence, their arms folded like car bumpers. It was like they had been waiting there since she had moved in four months prior. The cold didn’t seem to bother them. The ground was littered with cigarette doubts, and there were dirty tea mugs stacked on the fence posts. They stopped talking and turned as one when she came out the front door. Holding her head high, Agnes made sure the clicks of her black heels were sharp and clear on the pavement. She smiled haughtily at the women in their leggings and slippers. She passed them by, heading up the road to the Miners Club, to forgetfulness.

  The women looked on silently. She was almost out of earshot before one of them spoke. “We’ve no had a falling out already, have we?” said Bridie. Her streaked hair was still unbrushed, her thick trunk wrapped in men’s jogging pants and a housecoat.

  Agnes didn’t turn around. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Ye’ve no invited us to yer party. Are we no pals?”

  “What
party?” Agnes half-turned.

  “Well, where else are ye gaun dressed aw nice like that?”

  “The Miners Club. I wanted to see what you lot did for fun.”

  The women all looked one to another. They twisted at their Saint Christopher’s medallions nervously. “Don’t be botherin’ about that,” Bridie said. “The men don’t like it when we show our faces up there. Stay here with us, and we’ll hae a wee welcome drink to oorsels.” Bridie drew a large, clear bottle from behind one of the fence posts. She tossed the contents of her tea mug into the street and shook the vodka bottle. “Why don’t ye come over here and tell us all about yersel?”

  Agnes stepped closer and watched the bitter liquid eat the ring of tea scum. She held her hand up in moderation as the pure vodka neared the top and gave a prim giggle. Bridie glanced at her sideways and filled the mug to the very top. “Gies peace. Ah cannae have ye thinking we’re cheap.”

  Agnes took the mug with a polite thanks. The women ran their eyes up and down their new neighbour: the strappy heels, the hard-set hair, the beautiful fur coat. Agnes glanced up and down the empty road and let them drink it all in. The nights were gathering in again. The street lights were on, and a gang of collarless dogs wandered from stank to stank, sniffing the rotten drains. One pissed, and the others took their turns and marked the same spot. She turned back to the women, and they were smiling hungrily at her. “Well, cheers then.” She chinked the tea mug against theirs.

  Someone took a pouch of rolling tobacco out and passed it around. Jinty licked some fag papers and tenderly poured a thin line of golden tobacco in. “Put that away!” said Agnes, seeing a chance to repay them for the vodka. She reached into the deep pockets and pulled a pack of Kensitas out of the mink coat.