Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  All that winter and right through the spring thaw, Leek’s teeth hurt him. The National Health Service was slow to replace them, and so he wore the cracked bridge only when he was outdoors, keeping his mouth clenched shut because the dentures slipped free any time he spoke. At home he did without and sloped about the house with the overbite of a cartoon turtle. When he saw Shuggie he sat on him and pinched his skin till it came out in welts. Shuggie felt it was owed and did his best not to cry out.

  When the NHS finally replaced the false teeth, Leek’s bite struck the top set at an odd angle and the ceramic plate pinched at the back and brought his gum out in raw sores. Like an apostle, Shuggie followed him with slices of white bread. He tore off a small hunk, balled it to a pillowy mush, and handed it to Leek to put under the ceramic and sooth the blisters. Shuggie carried bread in his pocket for Leek up until the summer. Many times, when Agnes washed his school trousers, she would find a forgotten slice of pan loaf, stiff and blue with mould.

  It turned to the summer holidays, and the road was hoaching with McAvennie children and their cousins and their cousins’ cousins. They were making the most of the two weeks of good west-coast weather, bouncing footballs off kerbs or riding bikes and screaming as they sent great mouse-coloured clouds of slag dust into the air.

  Shuggie wilted away from them.

  He felt something was wrong. Something inside him felt put together incorrectly. It was like they could all see it, but he was the only one who could not say what it was. It was just different, and so it was just wrong.

  He loped into the shadows of the house and clambered under the chain-link fence, out into the peat marshes that ringed the scheme. He walked away from the council houses a good while. The rare sun beat down on his back, and through his thick jumper, his skin started to feel prickly from the heat. Turning off the flattened path, he crushed a new road through the tall reeds. He stomped around in circles until he trampled a large oval section completely flat. The dead grass made a thick brown carpet. Shuggie slipped off the heavy wellies and began to practice as Leek had shown him.

  He stood at one edge of the circle and walked to the other side. The first crossing was a quick nipped walk, short sharp steps with swinging arms. In frustration, he dug his clean fingernails into the palms of his hands and turned around and started again. He took slower, more deliberate steps, made room for his cock, swung his feet out, and pressed each heel firmly into the soft earth. Shuggie took off the wool jumper and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He scolded himself, turned around, and did it again.

  He did this back and forth all afternoon, each time willing himself to go slower, to stop swinging his arms so expressively, and to be more like Leek, like a real boy. It came so naturally to those boys, without any thought, without any apology.

  Agnes sat upright in the chair by the window and watched the street. Packs of weans roamed at play, but Shuggie was not amongst them. At half past ten her house and her make-up were already done, and although she wasn’t leaving the house she put on her low-cut jumper and a fitted grey skirt. She sat drinking the dregs of old lager and wondering where exactly her boy was hiding from his childhood.

  From boredom, she picked white flecks of sock oose off the arm of the chair; she made a neat pile in a square of toilet paper and then folded it and put in her pocket. It made her sore that she was still paying for this old three-piece suite and her boys wouldn’t respect it. She would bleed five pounds a week for the next eight years to pay for it, and they sat on it upside down and sideways, shoes off and shoes on.

  The broken gate across the street opened, and she sat up. The ragged bunch of McAvennies began wheeling salvaged bikes out into the dust. They were beautiful children, she had to admit. The slovenly ways of their mother made them look like little wild lions. Their long hair was thick and animal-like, and their eyes the beautiful gypsy brown of their father’s.

  She had taken the middle girl once. She hadn’t intended to, but she had been washing the windows in vinegar water and she couldn’t concentrate. The children had been playing in the street, in the dip of the road where the stour collected. She couldn’t enjoy cleaning her windows while watching them sat in the filth there. She beckoned the one they called Dirty Mouse over and lured her around the back of the house by giving her half of an apple. For an hour or so she ran a hard-backed brush through the wild tangles of the girl’s hair and carefully cut the knots and dreadlocks from the nape of her neck. When she was done, Agnes was surprised to see how straight it was, how shiny and silken, the colour of caramel and tabby cats. Together they did it up in a neat ponytail, then in braids, in French knots, and then in big French plaits like the ones Catherine used to wear to school. It was a lovely afternoon.

  Colleen had done the nut when she found out. She was screaming at the top of her lungs before she had even left her house. She crossed the road like a coming storm and rapped hard on Agnes’s door, screaming, “Who in the name do ye think ye are? Parading around here like ye are the big I Am. Ye should focus yersel on that poofy wee boy of yers.”

  Then there was wild spitting. But Agnes, numbed with lager, didn’t blink an eye. She turned the hard brush over and patted it reassuringly against her leg. Keep it up, she thought, and you’ll see how well I can use the back of a brush as well.

  Some days, not many, Agnes thought it was shame they could not be civil. There was so much the women held in common, although Agnes would have bitten off her own tongue before she admitted it. Agnes had heard from Jinty that there was a time when Big Jamesy had spent the last of his redundancy on junked cars and BB guns for the boys. It had sent Colleen out to steal their Christmas dinner from the Fine-Fare supermarket. They both knew the keen edge of need. The women could have been closer then. Separately, they had both gazed hungrily at the pages of the Freemans and lain awake in the quiet of the night, wondering how to make a pittance stretch around. If he got this and she got that, then what would they themselves do without? It was a mother’s math.

  Separately, the two women had spent whole afternoons hiding behind settees from the Provident man. It was like an odd synchronized swimming, the way the Pithead women all sank to the carpet and crawled across the floor. The Provvie was a thin man in a big suit. He would peer through windows unabashedly. He had spent years watching curling fingers of cigarette smoke billow inexplicably from behind the settees in empty houses.

  Colleen, indirectly through Bridie, had even taught Agnes how to trick the electric meter, how to open the box with a hairpin without damage to the lock. One Sunday every month she reclaimed her coins and her boys sat eating runny ice cream sandwiches in front of a roaring hot, three-bar electric fire. Silver coins sat in her hand like a pile of jewels, and Agnes would pump some of the coins back through and get double the month’s electric allowance. The meter man’s books never added up. Agnes could picture him down the pub with the man from the Provident, wringing their hands at the industrious mothers of Pithead.

  As Colleen clutched Dirty Mouse to her chest, Agnes wondered why Colleen hated her so much. Agnes coveted what Colleen had. She was thick with family. They were close, and they were close by. Her children were young and strong and still needed her. Most important of all, she had her man, her only ever man, and he was still there. She also had her God, and by her own account He had chosen her to be superior, to bear moral witness on those around her, and she did, like a middle manager carrying out the Big Boss’s bidding. To Colleen, diddling and shoplifting were one thing, necessary sins. Black tights and high heels were altogether more mortal.

  As Agnes finished her lager she watched the wild McAvennies bicycle towards the Pit Road. She watched Colleen come out her gate with her message bag and follow their plumes of dust out of the scheme. It was then she took a notion.

  Colleen’s man, Big Jamesy, was under a rusted Cortina shell. He was dirty already or dirty still, Agnes could not tell. With a sharp clip-clip she crossed the narrow road. He lay flat on his back, a stain o
f dark oil spilt around him like a pool of treacle. Agnes rapped her big ring on the metal car shell.

  “What’s it noo?” His sigh was so gruff that she felt the heat of it on her ankles. Metal tools fell to the concrete, and the man did a crablike shuffle to get out from under the wreck. It seemed to take him forever.

  Her face practiced a series of uneasy, casual-looking smiles. By the time he found his feet, he stood a good two heads taller than her. He was the colour of the black Irish, so honeyed that the dirt and oil almost suited him. The side of his neck was burnt and puckered from the Pit explosion, his hairline at the back oddly asymmetrical. Still, he was handsome. She hated that.

  “Is your Colleen home?” she asked.

  Jamesy eyed her warily. His eyes stopped on her low V-neck jumper. “Don’t try and kid a kidder,” he said flatly. “What is it ye whant?”

  Agnes dropped her eyes. His hands were thick and calloused. “I had a favour to ask you.”

  “Oh, aye.” Now he smiled like all the men she had known. His sharp teeth pointed inwards, in to the back of his throat, like a trap.

  “I’m at my wits’ end,” she said. “I’m having a bit of bother with my boy, the wee one.”

  His face was stone again. His eyes were on her body. “Aye, he’s no right. Yer gonnae have to watch that one. Always has too much to say for himself. I saw him skipping a rope the other day. Ye’ll be whanting tae nip that in the bud.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Agnes folded her arms, but he kept his eyes on her chest.

  “Do ye whant me to get my boys to gie him a slap?”

  “No!”

  “Just a wee tap. Toughen him up.”

  “No! It’s not his fault. It’s hard growing up without a man around.”

  “Whit about yer Leek?” The filthy man considered his own question for a moment; the way his lip curled sourly said he thought little of her eldest boy. “So. Whit the fuck do ye whant frae me then?”

  The wind blew out of her. “I just see you doing all these lovely things with your boys.”

  There was no pity in the man. His hardness, even with his own, was legendary on the scheme. “Aye, and whit do ye whant me to dae about it?”

  “I thought if I gave you a couple of pounds maybe you could take him with you the next time you went fishing, or maybe teach him how to kick a ball?”

  The tight movements of his face told her he was considering it. “Agnes, I’m no whanting yer money.”

  Agnes felt like a fool. She wanted to get back to her drink, to douse her anger and embarrasment with it. “Right. Of course. I’m sorry I bothered you. I just thought. Never mind.” She stiffened her spine, ready to walk her shame back across the road.

  “Haud on. I’m no saying there’s nothing ye can do for me.” Big Jamesy smiled then, and his teeth looked sharp as knives. He pushed an oily hand up his manky vest. He ran it across the meat of his belly.

  The smell of grease and motor oil stayed with her for a long time after. His cock had been considerably darker than his body, like it was grimy or, she hoped, like it had grown tough and discoloured from overuse. It was dark like the thigh meat of a chicken, and it struck her as odd that it was not as honeyed as the rest of him.

  Jamesy was still turgid as he re-zipped his fly and pulled Agnes back to her feet. It was over so fast, and he ushered her out of Colleen’s house all sleekit and shameful. He acted like a sore loser, like a customer who regretted a purchase but couldn’t return it to the shop. He grumbled that he would pick her boy up that Sunday, that he would take Shuggie fishing at a canal that was clogged with garbage and fresh pike.

  At first Shuggie had recoiled and looked like he had never heard a worse idea. She had cried in the bath later that night, trying to dig the oil out from her skin and feeling like a fool. Shuggie had heard her there, sat in the cold water, crying to herself. She had been mostly sober, and to him it was different from the drunken poor me’s. He resolved to show an interest in the fishing, anything to make her happy again.

  He fixated on the planning of the day, the organizing, the list making and the list checking. He planned the lunch and the clothes, the things he would put in his school bag and the little things he would put in each pocket: tomato sandwiches, a toy robot for sharing, a little plasticky pair of sunglasses, and a Christmas cracker whistle. When he had laid out all the preparations and put everything neatly in its place, he sat on the edge of his bed like a patient little dog.

  After Sunday breakfast the house across the street started to come to life. The long-limbed McAvennie boys burst out the door and started loading bags and rods into the back of their father’s scrap lorry. Francis carried an old plaster bucket full of maggots and heaved it over the side. Agnes heard the noise and came around the corner into his bedroom. She made an excited face to the sweating, plastic-wrapped boy.

  “See, I told you!” She sounded more relieved than he was.

  Shuggie kept his eyes on the truck across the street. He touched each of the cagoule pockets in turn, like the Father during mass. “I’m going to catch you the biggest fish ever.”

  “I know you will,” said Agnes, smacking her lips.

  “Sh-should I go across the street now?” he asked.

  Agnes thought about it for a moment. Then the pride in her answered. “No, you wait here. Mr McAvennie will come to you.”

  Big Jamesy stepped out into the road. “Shall I go out now?” asked Shuggie again.

  Leek had been trying to sleep the morning away. A week of manual labour made him look forward to a long lie. He had been listening to them dither and let out a muffled scream from under his bed sheets. “Yes, for God’s sakes, GO!”

  Agnes swatted at the lump of Leek. “No! I said Mr McAvennie will come to us.” She watched the dark man take wide steps down the path; with a thick foot he kicked loose car parts back under the Cortina, which was mounted on bricks. She rubbed the side of her thumb raw as he moved some of the bags in the back of the truck, securing them under cords, and then he passed behind the truck and stepped out into the road.

  Shuggie was wringing his hands in anticipation. She fixed the neck on his cagoule. “Listen, you mind and be a good boy for Mr McAvennie. Do as he tells you. Try not to be a burden, all right?” She kissed him on his small hot mouth, there was a bead of sweat on his top lip.

  The hillock of Leek’s bed sheets spoke again. “Don’t drown fuckwit. I’d never get over it.”

  There was a sound of the old lorry engine starting, it took them both by surprise. They saw the beast rise and lurch as the handbrake was released. With a look in the wing mirror, Big Jamesy pulled it out into the road. Panic cracked across the boy’s face. The truck had been facing the wrong way, towards the end of the road instead of its mouth. The end of the road was a dead end; stumped in by the reedy marshland, it widened like the head of a spoon, and cars often had no choice but to continue up to the very end of the spoon to turn and come back out.

  Agnes bit her lip. “I think he’s just turning the truck around.” She tried to believe it. “But maybe let’s go wait at the door.”

  The boy nodded, his face red hot. They stood behind the front door and adjusted themselves as though they were making a grand entrance on the stage. Holding hands, they stepped out and went and stood by the edge of the road. In the distance the green lorry had turned and was rumbling back.

  They stood on the kerb, erect and proud, as other people might stand on a grand train platform. She held his hand, and with his free hand, he held out the soggy tomato sandwiches. Agnes fluttered her ringed fingers. “Right, dry your face and mind what I said.”

  The truck didn’t slow. Big Jamesy didn’t even look down on them. The soot dust whipped into the air as the truck chugged past. They stood for a long time watching it recede.

  When the dust settled, there was a rapping sound, a high chink, chink, from the window opposite. Colleen McAvennie lifted the stubborn sash and leaned out into the street, a look of suspicion on
her face. “Wit are the pair of ye stauning there all glaikit fur?”

  Agnes could only smile, as if the bus she had run for and missed was not the bus she had wanted. Her dentures were gleaming white in her red mouth, stour already sticking to the fresh paint on her lips.

  Her boy sat in the coal bunker at the back of the house flicking the warm tomato out of his sandwiches. He hadn’t cried like she had expected him to. Agnes had burst the electric meter and emptied it of all its shiny coins. With that she had gone up to Dolan’s shop and bought a handful of chocolate bars and a small fish fillet. When she handed him the little fish fillet, he hadn’t gurgled with laughter like she had hoped he would. He just wiped the soot dust from his hot face and shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t want to go anyway.” There were tears of frustration on her cheeks as she said she was sorry. He looked up at her and asked, “Why?”

  “I’m sorry you have a prick for a father.”

  Leek, under duress, kicked a ball in the back garden with Shuggie. Agnes watched them from the window, and it was clear neither of them wanted to be there. She found some cans of Special Brew hidden under the sink. She rolled the cold bronze in her hand and thought about calling forth the demons inside her. If she drank to get drunk, then she would be fighting in the street before the end of the day. She sat on the edge of the clean settee with a can of courage and hissed it open.

  Colleen brought her rubbish bin in from the roadside, stopping to gossip with the housewife who lived on the left of her. She was twisting her crucifix in a girlish way. Agnes could tell she was feeling pleased with herself. All morning women flitted around Jamesy’s disembowelled Cortina. Agnes could tell they were feeling social, because they all waddled quickly, in that clenched-arsed way they got when they were anticipating good gossip. Bridie Donnelly picked the leggings out of her crotch. It made Agnes feel better to look at their dirty skirts and tea-coloured tights, at their baggy leggings and housecoats.

  Agnes was strategic in drinking the lager. She wanted to time it for Big Jamesy to be home before she swung through that rusted gate. She wanted him to watch as she told Colleen what he had done to her with his oily fingers. If her blood rose in drink too early she would peak, her mind would slow, and she would slur as she spat the truth.