Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  Bridie looked at the glossy gold packet, at the gold-plated lighter. “Jeezo. It’s like the Queen of England has moved in.”

  “It makes a right difference when you don’t have to pick the baccy off your teeth,” Jinty agreed.

  The women took one each and lit the cigarettes. They all took long greedy draws and savoured the taste in silence. They held the cigarettes between the thumb and forefinger, as if gripping a pea-shooter. They studied Agnes, her painted nails dancing in front of her face like so many red ladybugs. Between delicate fingers, she took light shallow puffs as they sucked their cheeks thin. Then she lifted her other hand and took deep greedy mouthfuls from the mug.

  “Where ye frae then?” asked Jinty, reaching out to touch her emerald earrings.

  “Originally? Germiston. But I suppose you could say all over the East End. I’ve moved a fair bit.”

  “All ower the East End, eh?” echoed Bridie, nodding sagely. “A Good Catholic wummin then. What brings ye out here to our wee scheme?”

  Agnes faltered. “My man heard it was a nice place to live, safe for my weans.” She paused. “Good Neighbours.”

  “Aye,” said Bridie, with a laugh. “It’s no Butlin’s, but that sounds like the good auld days. That mine has been dying for years. There’s hardly nae work there for naebody anymair. Every year we’ve got mair men sat at home, wanking in the daylight.”

  “There’s a couple who’ve still got jobs. Mainly filling in the holes to make sure no kiddies fall in,” added Noreen. “Don’t want any mair accidents, see.”

  “Accidents?” asked Agnes.

  “Aye, it’s always been a gassy seam. They used to have to pump the methane out just to work it. Mind, the men knew this; they knew what they were working against and respected it best they could, but one day it just fell in on the poor souls. Pure collapsed. There was an explosion that burnt them all up. Left some weans wi’ no daddies.” Jinty was still staring at Agnes’s earrings. “It made a lot of lonely women.”

  They turned and looked at the house that belonged to the woman with the skull face. Bridie sighed. “Don’t worry about Colleen McAvennie. Her bark’s worse than her bite.”

  “Is she your cousin as well?”

  “Oh, aye, but no blood, ye see. She’s just protective of her Jamesy. Used to be he was a good-looking fella. He was a big burly banksman; used to ferry them up and down in a cage lift in that shaft. Got burnt in that mine, took the skin all off his shoulder and the side of his neck. Red as a July sunburn.” The women bowed their heads, almost as a sign of respect. “A fine-looking man nonetheless.”

  “Anyways, where did yer man go off tae wi’ them fancy red cases?” asked Jinty suddenly.

  “He’s a taxi driver; sometimes he needs to take his stuff with him,” she lied. It was thin. “He works the night shift.”

  Jinty sucked at her teeth. She laid a sympathetic hand on Agnes’s. “We wurnae born yesterday, hen. He looked to me like he was leaving for longer than that.”

  Bridie waved her cigarette at Jinty. “Och, never mind her. Don’t sink to her level. All we are saying is, we’ve aw got men and we’ve aw got men trouble.”

  The women puffed on their fags in empathy. Noreen looked worried. “How you gonnae feed yersel if he disnae come back?”

  Money was always on her mind, her heart was gnawed with the worry. “I don’t know.”

  The women looked from one to another. Bridie spoke first. “We’ll have to get ye on benefits. Ye can go up the office on Monday morning. Ye’ll have to tell them ye’re needing disability allowance, otherwise they’ll have ye up the dole every Thursday.”

  “Will they sign me on to disability?”

  “Ah widnae worry, hen. They’ll take one look at yer address and give it to you easy. Look at this place.” Bridie waved her hand into the empty street. “It’s no like there are any new jobs coming here. Disability is the only club we’ve got, and Monday is club day.”

  Agnes lifted the vodka mug again and stared down into the faint clouds. The tea must have been very milky.

  Bridie topped it up to the brim with a smile. “Aye, ah took ye for a drinker.” She drew on her fag. “Aye, the minute ah saw ye, ah spotted it. They thought you were the big I Am, all done up in sequins, like some big dolly bird from the city. But ah could see through it. Ah could see the sadness, and ah knew ye had to be a big drinker.”

  The women nodded and cawed, “Aye,” like a murder of crows. Agnes froze with the mug on her lips.

  “Do ye drink anything and everything?” asked Bridie.

  “Pardon?” said Agnes, lowering the mug.

  “Is it a very bad problem ye’ve goat?” clarified Bridie.

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  “Look, hen. Ye’re standing out here drinking vodka in the middle of the street. Ye’ll have no problem signing on the disability looking like that.”

  “You have a mug of vodka as well.” Agnes was affronted.

  Their mouths turned downwards unkindly as they tilted their mugs towards her in the orange street light. The filmy whiteness of milky tea showed in each one. “No, hen, we’re drinking piss-cold tea,” scolded Bridie. “It’s only ye who’s neckin’ vodka like it was tap water.”

  Agnes’s face smarted red. The women smiled pityingly through tight lips. The pupils of their eyes, hooded by their lids, looked black in the orange street light. Agnes looked into the mug and threw the rest of the vodka down the back of her throat.

  Bridie held up her hand. “Listen. One day at a time and aw that shite. Ah’ve had a wee problem maself. Six weans and a husband out of work? You better believe ah drank.” She squashed the finished cigarette doubt into the dust with a sandalled toe. “It was the blackouts that did me in though. Ah couldn’t take that first five minutes of every day waking up and wondering who said what to who and what bastard ah’d had a fight wi’. Ye’d go into the kitchen scratching for a cup of tea, and they all look at ye side-a-ways. Then ye’d look around and one of them would have a black eye. Then ye’d go to the mirror and ye’d have one an’ all.” The women all nodded in empathy. Nobody laughed.

  Jinty added, “I’ve stood up at Dolan’s shop talking about Dallas with women ah’d dragged along the street by the hair the night afore.” She curled her hands into fists, her thin body animated by the scandal. Then she pointed at skull face’s house across the road. “Do ye a’member the time Colleen felt Isa was making eyes at Big Jamesy?”

  Bridie tutted. “That was a nonsense. They’re blood. Everybody always forgets that.”

  “Well, there was no telling Colleen about that.” Jinty turned to Agnes. “Now oor Colleen disnae take a drink. She’s right close to the Baby Jesus, takes him everywhere in her heart. But this one Monday morning, she took a drink, a right good hammering. She’s gone up the post office and done in her Monday Book, spent every fuckin’ penny and swilled it down her neck. Her weans were greetin’ and starvin’, and she drank every drop. She gets a plastic bag and goes up and down that road scoopin’ up dog shite. White ones, black ones, runny and hard, near fills the bag to the top. She took this bag of dog shite and staggers up the road there.” Jinty pointed towards the slag hills. “She puts on a yellow marigold glove and she starts throwin’. Ah mean absolutely covers the front of Isa’s house. She was throwin’ that shite and screamin’ for Big Jamesy to come out there and face her like a man.”

  “What happened?” Agnes asked.

  “Aye, ah’m getting to it.” Jinty slung a sly look over her shoulder to Colleen’s gate. “She showers the place in dog shite, you could smell it for miles. It goes on the windows, sticks to the pebble-dash. Drenched. Lord knows ah’m no a big fan of Isa—her man took early redundancy from the Pit, and she spent it at the bingo and won a pretty penny—bu-ut I do not condone throwing shite in the street like a savage.”

  Bridie took up the tale. “Anyway, turns out Big Jamesy wisnae diddling Isa. He was working. Working! Of all the things to be doing. He got himse
lf a part-time job hauling scrap and couldnae tell anyone for fear they’d shop him to the disability.”

  Jinty kissed her Saint Christopher. “Here Colleen thought he was at it, and the man was out trying to make a bit of extra money.”

  “Thank God for blackouts.” Bridie crossed herself solemnly. “Look. Ah know why ye drink, hen. It’s hard to cope sometimes. Ah steer clear of the drink, but ah still need a couple of these every day.” She took a baby’s aspirin bottle out of her pocket. “Bridie’s little pals.”

  “Aspirin?” asked Agnes.

  “Naw!” Bridie licked her top lip, she leaned in closer. “Valium. If you want just try a couple. A wee taste that’s all. If you want more, I’ll look after ye. Special price.” Bridie pushed down and unscrewed the lid of the small plastic bottle with a smile. She tipped two into Agnes’s palm like they were sweeties. “Here, just try it, and welcome to Pithead.”

  Ten

  His mother was nowhere to be found. He cupped the bone-white tooth in his hand; the little incisor floated in a pool of spittle and blood, and he was sure he might die. Was this what happened now that he was seven? He was afraid to probe his teeth with his tongue should they all come loose. He needed to find her to ask. But his mother was gone.

  Shuggie stood with his face against the rusty metal gate and watched a pack of pit dogs roam by. Five male dogs harassed a small black female dog. They made a high yipping noise as they prowled past, and Shuggie pushed his lips between the fence slats and sang along with them, yip yip yip. He listened to the dog’s song, and it was as if they were calling him outside. He wasn’t allowed out the front gate without telling her, but then she wasn’t here.

  Keeping his plimsolls planted firmly inside, he stuck his head out and looked left and then looked right. He played a game of holding his breath and then darting out and darting back, all the while stealing glances up and down the short road to try to see her.

  She wasn’t there.

  The pack of dogs called him out of the gate. Shuggie picked up his dirty blond dolly and tossed her out on to the pavement. Daphne landed with a raspy crack and made a snow angel in the dust. He leapt out and grabbed her, darting back inside like a little bony fish, closing the gate with a loud metal clang. He looked over his shoulder, no one came to the window and no one came to Bridie Donnelly’s window. There was no one watching. She wasn’t there.

  Shuggie opened the gate again and followed the dogs. There was a clutch of women standing in men’s slippers on the corner. They had been talking animatedly about something, but he saw how they lowered their voices as he approached. One of them turned and curtsied towards him. Trying to look casual, like he didn’t care, he made a show of dancing along the dusty road past the chapel on the hill. He made a great game of kicking plumes of dust into the sky and danced farther and farther from home. He came to the Catholic school and watched children play at their morning break. He stood in the shade of a horse chestnut tree and wondered why he wasn’t in school himself. There hadn’t been cartoons on that morning, so it hadn’t been Saturday, he knew that much, but she hadn’t laid his clothes out like she sometimes did, so he hadn’t gone, and she hadn’t said anything.

  The boys were mercilessly kicking a bladder into the corner of the playground, and they saw him before he noticed them watching. “What’s that ye’ve got?” shouted the smaller of the brown brothers, the sons of the skull-faced woman, Colleen McAvennie. Shuggie instinctively hid the Daphne doll behind his back.

  “Hello,” said Shuggie with a polite wave. He mimicked the swishing curtsy of the miner’s wife and gracefully extended his left leg out behind himself.

  Open-mouthed, they peered through the peeling railings and drew their eyes up and down the length of him. “How come ye’re no in school?” asked Gerbil, the younger one, picking flakes of green paint from the iron.

  “I don’t know,” Shuggie admitted with a shrug. The boys were only a few years older than him but were already thick-built and brown from summers spent outside, exploring marshes and throwing cats into the Pit’s quarries. He had seen them easily move heavy loads of their father’s scrap from the back of his lorry.

  Francis McAvennie narrowed his dark eyes and said, “It’s a’cos your mammy is an auld alky.” He watched Shuggie’s face to see the sting of the words.

  Gerbil McAvennie put a flake of iron paint between his lips. “How come ye don’t have a daddy?” His voice was already deep like a man’s.

  “I d-do,” Shuggie stuttered.

  Gerbil smiled. “Where is he then?”

  This Shuggie didn’t know. He had heard he was a whoremaster and that he was raising another woman’s weans while he fucked every bastarding thing that sat in the back of his taxi. But it didn’t seem right to admit this. “He’s on night shift. Making money for our holidays.”

  The break bell went, and Father Barry came out to line up the playing children. Gerbil reached his hand through the fence, his long fingers snatching at Shuggie’s doll. Francis gurgled like a happy baby and joined in the game till they were both grabbing wildly. Shuggie stepped back into the shade of the horse chestnut tree. “I’m telling Father Barry on ye! Ye should be in school,” they screamed.

  Clutching Daphne to his chest, Shuggie turned on his heels and ran away as quickly as he could. He was out of breath by the time he came across the Miners Club, but he could still hear the McAvennie boys calling out for Father Barry.

  The club was run-down and empty-looking. Shuggie pulled himself up and hung from the bars on the windows. Then he idled around the forecourt, where spent lager kegs bled out puddles of flat ale. The dirty lager mixed with petrol and made lochans of shining rainbows. Shuggie knelt down and pushed Daphne’s blond hair into the iridescent puddle. When he took her out, the shiny yellow hair had turned the colour of night, and he tutted. Where were the beautiful rainbow colours? He pushed her down again and held her under the surface longer this time. Her eyes automatically closed, like she was sleeping, but she was smiling so he knew she was OK. When he lifted the doll out of the puddle, the black liquid rolled off her face and down on to her white woollen dress. Her cheap yellow hair had turned matte black. He stared at it and realized that for a minute he had forgotten about his mother. Daphne smelled funny.

  For a while he weaved in and out of the lager puddles. He peered out on to the road, and when he was absolutely sure Father Barry was not looking for him he darted across the road and into the mouth of a wooded lane he had not seen before. The lane backed a row of older-looking miners’ cottages that were joined at the back with a communal garden. At the near edge of the garden sat a large brick bin shed. It was flat and rectangular, with no windows and a dark opening, where a painted green door now hung open and broken. At the side of the bin shed lay a washing machine, the kind used in hospitals or government buildings, solid and big as a wardrobe. It was too heavy for the bin men to take away, so it lay rusting next to the shed, and fat lazy flies dipped in and out of its shadow.

  Inside the machine sat a boy, with his legs above his head, curled around the drum like a broken-backed cat. “Want a spin in my carnival ride?”

  Shuggie was startled to find him in there.

  The boy swung inside the drum and rocked in semicircles, in one second his feet were above his head, the next his head were above his feet. “Look, it’s dead fun!” he coaxed.

  Shuggie held Daphne out to him and offered her up for first go. The boy uncurled from inside the drum, pushing out his long brown legs, like a spider through a keyhole. He arched his body out backwards; straightening, he was almost as tall as the metal machine. He was a good year older than Shuggie, at least eight or nine, starting the long stretch already.

  “Hiya. Ma name’s Johnny. Ma maw calls us Bonny Johnny.” he said with a tight smile. “It’s supposed to be like a wrestler’s name, but I think it’s pure shite.” He slapped his own forearm like the wrestlers on television did before a fight. He chopped at the empty air. “Whit’s your n
ame, wee man?”

  “Hugh Bain,” he said in a shy voice. “Shuggie.”

  The boy was watching him, peering through half-lidded eyes the same way Shuggie had seen the miners’ children squint when he raised his hand in class. It was a blend of disbelief and disdain. He had often seen his granny look at his father this way. Shuggie turned his left kneecap inwards.

  Then Johnny smiled. His face changed so quickly it made Shuggie take a step back. It was like a flick of a light switch, and his face brightened like a bare bulb in an empty room.

  “Is that a dolly ye’ve got, Shuggie?” The boy was using his name like he had known him a long while. Without waiting for an answer he added, “Are ye a wee girl?” He stepped into the long grass, flattening it as he came.

  Shuggie shook his head again.

  “If ye’re no’ a wee girl then ye must be a wee poof.” He tightened his smile. His voice was low and sweet, like he was talking to a puppy. “Ye’re no’ a wee poof, are ye?”

  Shuggie didn’t know what a poof was, but he knew it was bad. Catherine called Leek it when she wanted to hurt his feelings.

  “Do ye no’ know what a poofter is, wee man? A poof is a boy who does dirty things with other boys.” Johnny was up against Shuggie now, nearly double his height. “A poof is a boy who wants to be a wee girl.”

  Bonny Johnny was a dirty white colour, like he had been steeped in tea. He had sepia skin and honey-coloured hair and eyes like amber lager. When Johnny smiled he had all his big boy teeth already. Shuggie worried the gap in his own smile with his tongue. Johnny snatched the doll from him and tossed her into the drum. “See! She wants a ride.”

  Johnny pressed himself into Shuggie’s back, put his arms around his waist and lifted him up into the mouth of the machine. Shuggie climbed up into the drum, and he felt a helping hand give him a final push as he tumbled in. Clutching Daphne, he looked back out into the daylight, his bare legs chilled by the cold metal.