Book Read Free

Shuggie Bain

Page 18

by Douglas Stuart


  Agnes was feeling the first flush of the drink when a strange woman came along the road. The woman was checking an address on a piece of paper, counting the identical houses as she passed. It was easy to tell she wasn’t from the Pit because her hair had been expensively cut and set. She wasn’t a Catholic cousin, because she had a bright red handbag, and it matched perfectly her bright red shoes.

  The flash across Colleen’s face told Agnes she didn’t know this woman either. The woman approached the group, said something to Colleen, and Colleen nodded slowly. Stubbing out her fag, she picked up her cold mug of tea, and looking backwards over her shoulder, she led the stranger inside. The gossiping crows scattered.

  Agnes sat forward. She thought the woman must have been the Social Work, and she wished she had called them herself. They were cracking down in Pithead, catching the dole dodgers who were working part-time and the disability claimants who were up ladders wiring in television aerials. But the woman didn’t stay long enough for that; she left with the beautiful red bag still under her arm. Agnes watched her step through car guts and close the broken gate politely. She took a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses from her bag and used them to push her hair from her face. It tickled Agnes, for she knew it would make Colleen livid. Sunglasses? Who in the name of the Holy Father does that bitch think she is? With her head held high, the neat woman walked up the empty street and out of view.

  Agnes waited, but Colleen never came out again.

  When they were hungry the three McAvennie girls floated up the street like ghostly brides. Their golden hair was matted and blown about their faces like a veil, and their long summer dresses, once a delicate blue, were washed out with age. Agnes had only closed her eyes a moment, but when she looked up the bulk of Big Jamesy’s scrap truck was mounted on the kerb opposite. It was still daylight outside, but the big lights were already burning in the McAvennie house. In the bare bulb light she could see people moving quickly from room to room. Agnes hissed open another can and gulped it down quickly.

  In the bedroom she changed her skirt for something that would let her kick, and donned the angora jumper with the rhinestone beads, the impractically fluffy one that Colleen had been so suspicious of. She took some time going through her box of jewels, picking the largest gemmed rings, which were papal in scale. The glass gems were so poorly set they ripped tights and caught on tea towels. Some mornings after a bad bender, she woke up to find cuts on the side of her face or the inside of her forearms. Agnes looked at her bejewelled hands, a sparkling weaponry, knuckledusters of peeling, plated gold. The last of the lager curdled in her empty stomach, and she knew the time was now.

  Agnes stumbled outside and leaned on the broken fence. She took a deep breath and felt a little light-headed and a little discouraged again. Then the screaming started.

  The McAvennies’ door flew open, and the youngest boy started running at full tilt out into the scheme. With the door open, Colleen’s voice rang clear across the low houses. “James Francis McAvennie! Ye are no better than a Proddy dog carrying on lit that.” Agnes stood stock-still in the middle of the empty road. Up and down the street, children stopped playing and windows quietly opened a narrow crack. She knew women were turning down televisions and twitching behind curtains.

  “Whut? Aye, go on then, hit us. Ye think ye are a big man around here, don’t ye? Ah’m gonnae get my brothers round here, and we’ll see who is the big man now, eh? Ah should have listened to ma mammy. Ye dirty Orange fucker.”

  A man’s voice said something sharp but inaudible, and Colleen shrieked louder. “Ah will not keep ma voice down. Ye’ve broken yer vows and God will never forg—” Agnes imagined Big Jamesy must have taken her by the throat, because the street fell silent for a moment. Then Colleen’s voice wavered back, this time with less anger. “Where do ye think ye are going? James? To her?”

  Big Jamesy McAvennie burst from the house, the neck of his T-shirt ripped, as if Colleen had been hanging from it. He was still dressed in his waders, and he had a black bin bag full of what looked like clothes and bed sheets tight in each hand. There were sore stripes of red sunburn and fresh claw marks across his face and burnt-up neck. He climbed up into his truck and started the engine.

  Agnes was swaying in the middle of the road; he couldn’t have missed seeing her there, drunk but proud, with her clenched, gemmed fists. He rolled down the window of the truck with a furious pump and shouted at her like a frustrated man looking for directions. “Whit the fuck dae ye want, Hoor?” He used it as though it were her name. “Come to pick the fucking bones clean? You are a bit quick, aren’t ye? Ye’re s’posed to let the meat cool first.”

  With that the truck roared away. By the time he had reached the end of the street and turned, Colleen was at the front door, looking wild. “James! Jamesy!”

  Agnes stumbled back to the kerb, clumsy with drink. Jamesy swerved deliberately and narrowly missed clipping her with the back tyre. The road filled with the usual cloud of soot.

  Agnes was blinking on the opposite kerb, but Colleen hadn’t the peace of mind to see her. In her thin face was a wildness and an emptiness, alive and dead at the same time. She fell with a crack to the tarmac and lay, loose-legged and blank-faced, in the dust.

  Agnes looked up and down the street like a person who wanted to stick the boot in sleekitly, or a person who wanted to run away from a car crash. She was unsure which.

  There was a faint breeze fluttering all the curtains, but no one came to help, no cousins, no other Pit women. Silhouetted at the McAvennie window stood the four remaining children, lined up in descending heights like little Russian dolls. All with the same sad, beautiful face. One day she would give them all a deep hot bath to really stick it to Colleen.

  From the gutter there was the loud rrrip-rip noise of hair being pulled from an old brush, a sticky tugging sound, like old gummy linoleum being torn up. Agnes stepped closer to the flailing woman. The belly full of flat lager, the dust, and the tangle of limbs made it hard for her to understand what she was seeing. At first she thought Colleen was ripping her football top into shreds, but as she stepped closer Agnes could see the clumps of matted hair the woman was ripping free in each claw. Rip. Rip. It came out in wild handfuls.

  Agnes flitted around the fallen woman. Before she knew it, she was kneeling in the dirt, using her ringed fingers to try to tame the younger woman’s furious talons. She wrapped herself tightly around Colleen. “Here, what’s all this, then?” She said it in a voice so kind it shocked even her. She hadn’t come to help.

  Colleen went limp in her arms, and Agnes gently lowered the woman’s claws into her lap. Agnes prised open the fists, which were still clutching the ripped-out hair. She began pulling the thick strands from between the thin fingers as if she were cleaning an old comb. Colleen’s hollow eyes stared into the dirt for a long time before she spoke. “Ah should have left well alone instead of getting on at him while he was down. All ah said was ah didnae want any more mouths to feed.” Colleen’s hands were shaking. “Since that mine shut he was coming at me night and day like a teenager on the boil. He was never any use at all that pulling out nonsense.”

  Agnes was staring at the bald patches on Colleen’s head; there was already dust on the blood-pricked scabs. “Five weans is enough for any woman.”

  Colleen snorted. “He would have had a hundred if he could. But ah jist thought, fuck ye, McAvennie, and to spite him ah shut the shop.” Colleen started to cry again. The tears came out in long thick streams, almost as if she had a leak. They poured down her bony nose, dripping off her chin. Colleen turned her eyes towards Agnes and looked at her then as if for the first time. “That must be when he started fuckin’ around.”

  Agnes was conflicted. She would have told any other woman that it would get better in time, even though she knew it would sit on her chest for the rest of her life. She offered no such salve to Colleen. It occurred to her that they were equals now, and she couldn’t be ashamed at how her insides
lifted at the thin woman’s bad news. She bit her lip to stop from smirking.

  Miners’ women were pacing in the street now. Cousins and the wives of cousins, circling nervously, as if Colleen had turned into an animal they were unsure of how to approach.

  “She walked up to me as nice as ye like. With they sunglasses. Big fancy ones in two shades of brown. She said her name was Elaine. Asked if she could have a word in private. Ah thought she was from the catalogue, thought she was trying to sell me some shite for the weans’ Christmas.”

  Colleen then let out a groan. She uncurled her fingers and took the hem of her skirt. With a single tug she spilt the thin fabric in two from hem to belly. Then she fell listlessly back to the pavement.

  “For the love of God.” Agnes grabbed at the shredded fabric for modesty. Colleen had no underwear on; the frizzy hair of her cunt was shocking against the sallow smoothness of her belly. “We’ve got to get you in the house. Up. UP!” Agnes tried to lift her, but she was too uncoordinated with the drink. They toppled over together into the stour, and Agnes tore the skin off one of her knees. She tried to drag Colleen inside, but the wasted woman, nothing but a pile of bones, slackened all her muscles and slid back into the dirt like an unruly child. Agnes stood over her, sweating and spitting. “You can’t lie here like that.”

  With her eyes closed Colleen moved her hand across the dirty pavement like she was caressing fine sheets. The words came out slower and thicker now. “Ah don’t fuckin’ care. Let Jamesy McAvennie hear. That his. Wife died on the. Road. With her old cunt out.”

  There was nervous laughter from some of the weans on bikes. Agnes gave Colleen a hard shake; she found she enjoyed it, so she did it again. “Madam, have you no pride?”

  Colleen’s eyes opened wide and then closed. Her breath grew lighter. Agnes pinched her. “Here! What’s gotten into you? What have you taken?”

  But the soft pile of bones did not answer.

  The fences were hung full of women squawking like big nosy crows. The news had spread fast. Colleen’s cousins were screaming blue murder, and Jamesy’s sisters were throwing their fists in defence of his good name. Jamesy’s mother, eighty if she was a day, was spitting and swinging a balding mop like it was a scythe.

  Not knowing what else to do, Agnes drew off her tights and then her own knickers from beneath her skirt. She did it with a brass neck, stumbling half-cut, right there in the street. She struggled to put them on Colleen. It was like dressing a life-size dolly whose limbs, instead of being stiff and rigid, were limp and heavy with slow blood.

  By the time the ambulance came, Colleen wasn’t talking any more. Agnes sank to the dust beside her. She regarded her expensive white underwear, luminous with good bleach. They hung on the thinner woman like a lacy nappy, and they were, Agnes thought, more kindness than she deserved.

  Fifteen

  He reminded her of the colour of sausage casing, except it was less of a colour, more of a watery tint that has been spread too thin. He looked worn through. Lizzie had to use both of her hands to cradle one of his, and as she laid her cheek on it, she could feel the raised cobalt veins that traced the top of it. These were hands that had loaded grain trucks for twenty years, hands that had laid pungent tarmacadam, hands that had killed Italians in North Africa.

  Now Wullie was having trouble even breathing. The air in his lungs sounded as if it was being run over a grater, it would catch on the prongs and stop, only to rattle and rasp back out of him. Lizzie wiped at his face with the hanky she kept up her sleeve. His mouth was always open now, the corners caked and dry. She wanted to kiss him once more, she wanted some last memory of the fine man that he had been, that he still was.

  The old men in the other beds were dozing. She had watched the nurses give them all a drop of liquid morphine, and now they looked like they slept an uneasy sleep. Lizzie unbuttoned her coat and drew the scarf off from around her hair. She lifted Wullie’s hand and drew down the bed sheets. At first she thought to climb in beside him, lie against the stone wall of his body and cry. Instead, as she mounted the hospital bed, she had a change in her heart. She clambered on to the bed and then, still in her good coat, she straddled him.

  Anyone else might have missed it, but Lizzie was sure she saw the lids of his eyes flutter, the corners of his mouth pull tight in a cheeky smile. She rocked back and forth gently. It wasn’t meant to be as dirty as it looked. She only wanted to feel him pressed against her, warm and alive through the cotton of his pyjamas, through the clammy poly blend of her underwear. She only wanted to give him a little comfort against the pain. Didn’t she owe him that?

  Lizzie lit a fresh cigarette as she rocked and rubbed on top of Wullie. She took a deep lungful and then leaned over and blew it into his face. She could only imagine how much he would be missing his Regals.

  “Are ye alright, Mrs Campbell?” asked a voice from behind her. There were hands gently but firmly holding her elbows. “It’s alright now, darlin’,” the voice said, as it guided her off the bed. “It’s alright, ma wee china.”

  Wullie didn’t stir as the Sister helped Lizzie down. His pyjamas were wrinkled where Lizzie had creased them, otherwise nothing had changed. Without any judgement, the nurse snuffed the doubt in Lizzie’s fingertips and pulled her skirt back below her knees. Lizzie felt herself guided back to her seat, and she felt the cold glass of water at her lips. The whole time the Sister soothed her, in a gentle, calming voice, she petted her like a cat, and it made Lizzie want to tell her secret things. Lizzie took the Sister’s hands in her own and said, “Please, God, don’t take him away. Please. No’ again.”

  Agnes’s face was very thickly made up, and it looked to Shuggie like the paint had been layered over several other faces she had forgotten to take off first. The boy followed her at a discreet distance, stopping now and then to gather up things that fell from the pocket of her matted mink coat.

  As Agnes stoated through the infirmary’s automatic doors, a concerned nurse ran over, thinking she was in need of attention. Shuggie watched the girl try to corral his mother and slip her gently into a tatty wheelchair. Agnes pushed past the nurse and went in the direction of the oncology wards. Shuggie heard the nurse say to a male attendant that she thought for sure Agnes was a working girl.

  “She is not,” said Shuggie, quite proudly. “My mother has never worked a day in her life. She’s far too good-looking for that.”

  The matted mink coat gave her an air of superiority, and her black strappy heels clacked out a slurred beat on the long marble hallway. The rubber tip had worn away from around the right heel, and although she had coloured the shoe in with an old black bingo marker, the sharp metal nail scraped the floor with the screech of hard times.

  Gaunt faces looked out from white beds as she scratched her way past. A large, friendly-looking Sister came out of a booth and stepped directly into her path, a green clipboard clutched to her chest like a shield. She was as wide as a small wall. “Scuse me. Can ah help yeese?” said the nurse with a tired smile. “Ah’m Sister Meechan.” She pulled at the official-looking badge on her blue uniform.

  To Agnes, she seemed kinder than the nurses Lizzie had worked with years before, great hulking Glasgow women able to hold grown men down on a Saturday night and pull broken bottles from between their ribs. They had granite faces, cold and hard, from watching the endless soap opera of mindless violence. Sister Meechan was clearly trying her best. Agnes looked down at the stocky nurse and looked at her small badge. The letters were moving. She took a deep breath and tried to sound sober. “No, thanks. I know where. I’m going.”

  Sister Meechan didn’t break her well-trained smile. “Do ye, aye? It’s the back of nine. Visitin’s done for the day.”

  With a heavy blink Agnes drew her eyes over the officious woman. The end of her nose was pitted like a small strawberry. Agnes let her eyes linger and tutted in sympathy for it, letting the Sister know she had clocked it. Then she put her ringed fingers on the nurse’s thick arm in
an entitled way, each finger falling on to her flesh as if she were playing scales at the piano. “I’m here to see my father.”

  Agnes’s breath was yeasty and sour on the nurse’s face. “And what is your faither’s name?” said the Sister without flinching. Glasgow routinely presented her with all sorts.

  “Wulli . . . William Campbell.”

  The nurse made to check the name on her green clipboard but stopped. “Och, ah see.” Her practiced face cracked, and underneath, several real emotions played across it. She hugged the clipboard to her broad chest and took her free hand and placed it gently on Agnes’s arm. Agnes found herself staring at it.

  “Oh, hen,” she said tenderly, breaking all the formality of her training. “Ah’m dead sorry for the state of your daddy. He’s one of our favourites, such a big handsome basturt, and he’s no been a single bit of bother.” Then Sister Meechan stepped closer to Agnes and added conspiratorially: “Ah am worrit about your wee mammy, though. She disnae seem to be coping aw that well. The night ah was making sure aw the supper things had been tidied away, but when ah reached your faither’s bed ah noticed the privacy curtain was still half-drawn. Ye ken it was far too late for that. So ah pult back the privacy curtain to find the poor soul atop of him gieing it pure laldy.”

  Shuggie would have said that the nurse was a kind lady. Agnes would have to disagree. If she had been sober she might not have laughed. If the kind nurse didn’t have her hand on her arm and that pitiful look on her face she might not have laughed. However, she wasn’t sober and she wasn’t in the mood to be condescended to. So she laughed. It came at first as a guilty giggle but then it caught her with a shake, and she threw her head back in gaudy, haughty peals of laughter. Then she said, cruelly, “Were you jealous?”

 

‹ Prev