Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  Jinty finished the phone call and told Agnes he had said he would be there in the hour. She started tidying up the empty fag packets and ring pulls. “You know, hen, if ah were you ah might run a wee brush through ma hair. Cover they bruises. Try and make yersel look a bit more appetizing.”

  They waited over an hour on frayed nerves until Lamby arrived. Jinty showed him in. He sat on the edge of the settee and fidgeted with his trendy bomber jacket like a teenager. Agnes could see that everything the scheme had said about him was true. Jinty made the introductions and slipped the heavy plastic bag out of his hand.

  “Nice to meet ye, Agnes,” he said through a row of neat teeth.

  Agnes mustered as much of her charm as she could. “It was nice of you to come visit with us. It’s hard to make your own fun in this desolate place.”

  “Aye, well, it isnae every day a fella like me gets an offer from two beautiful wummin such as yersels,” Lamby said. Jinty squealed with filthy delight.

  Agnes had heard better patter. She sat back in the armchair. “So, you are not related, then?” she asked, “I don’t think I have yet to meet someone from this scheme who was not tied right back to Jinty by blood or marriage or weans.”

  “No, ah think my ex-wife had something to do with the McAvennies. Ah’m an O’Hara; we tend to live over on the burn side of the scheme . . . in the flat-roofed houses.”

  “It’s a wonder some of the weans develop bones at all.”

  Lamby smiled kindly at the insult. “Aye, well. That’s probably why ye’ve been the talk of the town. Fresh blood and all.”

  Jinty took a half-bottle of Smirnoff from the bag and poured a big finger into each of the three mugs. On top of the vodka she poured in some bright, fizzy Irn-Bru. It bubbled and hissed and looked as innocent as ginger ale. “Oh, ah cannae stop long,” she sniffed to herself, taking a big mouthful.

  Lamby smoked rollies, and he sprinkled the paper with tobacco and ran his pink tongue along the sticky edge. “Besides, ah’ve seen ye afore,” he said to Agnes. “Ah always thought ye must have had a man. Lookin’ as well as you do.” He licked the first cigarette closed and passed it to Jinty.

  “It doesn’t cost to take pride—”

  “She’s a happy divorcee,” interrupted Jinty. “She’s the lucky one. Any wummin can do fine without a fat sack of meat snoring next to her every night. Isn’t that right, hen?”

  “Spoken like a true wummin,” said Lamby.

  Agnes thought how he looked too young to know what a true wummin was but said nothing. She took a long mouthful from the mug. The vodka tasted clean, like bleach. Lamby licked the next cigarette very slowly. Agnes saw that his nails were very clean and his ears and neck looked flushed pink, as though he had just taken a hot bath. “Ah mean, come on! There has to be somethin’ men are still good for,” he said lasciviously.

  This tickled Jinty. She swung her little legs and cackled like a girl. “Absolutely bloody nothing,” she squealed. “Agnes, do ye hear the cheek o’ this filthy wee bugger? He thinks we were born yesterday.” The heat of the vodka brought out a split-veined sanguine in her cheeks. “Have ye been seeing anyone lately, Lamby?”

  “Aye, a couple of birds,” he said, looking at Agnes. “Ah’m playin’ the field. Tryin’ to keep it casual-like.” He gave her a wink.

  “Och, men are all the bloody same, eh, Agnes? Even as babes they lie on their backs fascinated by their little thingy.”

  “How about you?” he asked Agnes. “Have you been seein’ anybody?” Jinty rolled her knees in an excited circle and answered for Agnes. “Her!” she squealed. “That one is practically on call for the Greater Glasgow Taxi Livery.”

  Agnes felt the sting of the words push into the bruises on her body. She lifted her mug anyway and nodded a sad acceptance of the award.

  Jinty pulled the plastic bag from between her small feet and added, cruelly, “If you’re not a taxi driver, then this one’s not interested.”

  “Is that right?” said Lamby. He looked at Agnes directly again and with a hurt frown asked, “How’s that working out for ye?”

  Jinty interrupted again. “It’s not a choice she can help. It’s a curse! She hears the thrum of a diesel engine, and it’s knickers off and whoosh the meter’s running.”

  The room got colder. There was a slow sucking in of air, and Agnes’s face hardened to glass. The drink soaked into her now, and the words escaped her in a low, threatening hiss. “You are one low, backstabbing little cunt, Jinty McClinchy.”

  The little shrew stopped her mindless laughing. “Och, calm yersel. I didnae mean anything by it.” She greedily tipped the mug to her face, but her little eyes were sharp daggers peering over the top of it.

  Lamby stiffened, looking from one woman to the other. The room was silent. “Eh, look, mibbe ah should head, eh?”

  Jinty crossed her ankles demurely over the bag of carry-out and shushed him. “Oh, don’t mind her. She was just a bit unlucky in love last night. Ye have to stay. Ye have to help and cheer her up, eh.”

  Agnes sat quietly for the rest of the afternoon, drinking whatever Jinty put in front of her and smoking whatever Lamby rolled. He tried to talk to her about all sorts of things, but when she got the chance to answer for herself she could only manage a yes or no. By the time they were well into the cans, Jinty had seen enough.

  “Lamby, son, I don’t know what’s gotten into her,” she moaned sourly. “She’s normally the life and the soul.”

  “That’s alright.” His cheeks were flushed the same red as Jinty’s, and he still sat in his nylon bomber jacket. Agnes thought he must have been uncomfortable; she wondered whether he was embarrassed because he had no one at home to iron him a clean shirt.

  “Aye, but ah don’t want ye leaving here thinking ye’ve spent the day at the old folks’ home. Put one of they tapes in, would you. We’ll have a wee party.”

  Lamby reached over and opened Lizzie’s old stereo unit. He lifted one of the tapes from a pile and slipped it in the player. “My wife used to like this,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “Och, what a voice that wummin has. What. A. Voice!” said Jinty between draws. She twirled her small white hands in the air to the melody. “Lamby, for God’s sake, would you get that miserable sod up.”

  He eyed Agnes nervously. “No. Leave her be. She disnae want to dance.” After a quarter bottle and six lagers he was feeling only slightly less timid.

  “Lady Bain!” Jinty scolded like a headmistress. “This is a party! This man has brought us drink! Now give him a dance!”

  Agnes looked at Lamby, as itchy as a young lad at a school disco. She gave him the best half-smile she could manage to let him know it was all right. On uncertain legs Lamby rose to his feet. He took her hands and tried to tug her from the chair the way plumbers pull a stubborn clog out of a drain. Agnes hadn’t stood since she had sat in that chair earlier; the drink and the inertia made her legs go soft, and as she rose he caught her in his arms as if they had been lovers for a long time.

  “There you go, eh,” squealed Jinty, pouring herself a sly top-up behind their backs. “Keep a good haud of her.”

  The two of them did a sort of end-of-the-night dance, a clumsy waltz, old-fashioned and slow. They held each other up purely by the way their sweaty bodies were mashed together. Agnes’s face was inches from his, and for the first time she noticed that he had shaved for their little party. His neck was covered in sore gooseflesh, and there was a smell of pine about him, from the kind of aftershave that smelled like bathroom cleaner, not a trace of sex in it.

  “Ye’re a great wee dancer.” He spoke to her kindly. She tried to be attentive and listen. But only her body was in the room.

  Jinty drank the mug dry. “Gie him a wee kiss!”

  “Ah havnae been up the dancin’ since ma divorce came through,” he said.

  “Don’t be ungrateful! He bought ye all that drink! Kiss him!” shouted Jinty.

  “Maybe ah could take ye one night?”
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  “He’ll no be back!” Jinty warned.

  Agnes was nearly two inches taller than the younger man. With their age difference, it could almost have been her own Leek she was dancing with. She saw now the far side of his face had a knife scar running from ear to chin, a common enough chib mark, but on such a young man it seemed a shame. With a clumsy hand she reached out and touched it.

  “Ah. So ye noticed that, did ye,” he said shyly.

  “You look like my eldest boy.”

  “Gie him a wee kiss, for God’s sake!” squealed Jinty, cracking another can.

  Agnes let her hand linger on the young man’s face and thought how she missed her eldest boy. Even when he was there in the room she missed him; he had the way of always leaving her feeling lonely. Lamby, this man, put his hand to her face and his lips on her mouth. Jinty crowed with delight. Agnes felt his lips open, felt him suck, felt his tongue probing there. His hand slipped lower down her back.

  “Now don’t you two do anything ah’ll have to confess for.” Jinty McClinchy was fanning herself giddily, relieved to have earned her carry-out.

  The hands that had been gentlemanly started the sly creep across her arse. With kneading fingers he pressed the bruise she had earned at the top of her tail bone. The boak rose in her. She turned her head, but it was too late. She vomited the sour contents of lager and vodka and Irn-Bru down the front of his trendy jacket.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” screamed the man, dripping in the watery bile.

  “Mammy?” Shuggie stood in the doorway.

  Agnes fell back into the seat and put her face into her hands as the hot drunk tears started to burn out of her. The man looked from the broken lady to the little boy in his school clothes to the woman tucking the last of the plastic bag into her big leather handbag. As he pushed past Shuggie, Jinty shouted down the hallway after him: “Lamby, son! She’s no usually like this! Ah’ll gie ye a wee phone another day, and we can have another little party!”

  The little woman sighed as the front door shut with a slam, and then she looked into all the open fag packets on the table, consolidated them into one packet, and slipped this into her bag. The woman shook each of the open cans on the table and when she heard the swoosh of remains she poured it into her mug until she had emptied them all. Jinty downed the mug in two or three big mouthfuls, and then she drew her floral scarf out of her bag again.

  “Right, ah cannae stop long.”

  Eighteen

  Shuggie stood as far away from the bladder ball as he could. When it rumbled across the playground he made a show of running towards it but was careful to always let the other boys beat him there. He was happier to stand in the shade of the goal corner and watch the girls play a line of skipping elastics, the best of them twisting gracefully down the rainbow-coloured lengths.

  There was a damp bursting sound in his left ear. The bladder caught him unawares on the side of the face. It stung like the flat of a hand. The ball rolled to the feet of the opposite team, who sent it into the goal.

  Francis McAvennie stopped at Shuggie’s side. As he was the eldest McAvennie, the trouble between Colleen and Big Jamesy had the deepest repercussions for him; the promotion to “man of the house” was instant, and he found himself caring for his siblings as Colleen numbed herself on Bridie’s blue pills. He leaned over as close as he could, so close that Shuggie could feel the shower of his warm spittle. “For fuck’s sake. Stop being such a poofy wee bastard.” The other boys gathered round like pit dogs, their eyes greedy.

  “Do you want to be a girl?” Francis grinned, his arms wide for the crowd. Shuggie shook his head; he only wanted to put his hand to the welt on his face. “Would you rather put on a wee skirt?”

  “I don’t,” mumbled Shuggie.

  “Don’t talk back to me, poofter.” Francis, a clear foot taller than Shuggie, pushed him in the chest. “You’re a poofy little fairy. You and Father Barry are going to burn in hell for the things you do.”

  There was a chorus of giggles, then the laughter changed to a chanting chorus of hit him, hit him, hit him. Francis lifted his left hand to slap the red side of Shuggie’s face. The boy flinched to the other side, but Francis stopped short and with his other hand made a fist and crashed it into Shuggie’s temple. He turned to the cheering boys. “My da calls that the Ratcatcher.”

  Shuggie lay on the ground with his head ringing on both sides. A pair of bare legs with slack white socks appeared over him. The girl was spitting like a cat, her long hair making a stream of frothing lemonade. “Stoppet, Francis, ye fuckin’ bully! Go ahead an’ try that shite on me an’ ah’ll get ye battered. Ah’ve got plenty mair cousins than you have.” The girl whirled on her heels to tend to him. Shuggie could see the boys give her the finger behind her back, but they were stepping away regardless.

  There were scabs on her bare knees, and Shuggie couldn’t stop looking at the burst elastic of her socks. As she put a hand under each of his armpits and hoisted him to his feet, he could see the floral gusset of her underpants from underneath her skirt. “You should hit him back,” she said. “Ah bet if ye hit him the once, he’d no pick on ye again.” Shuggie didn’t know which side of his face to rub at first. “Do you want to cry?” asked the girl. Shuggie nodded. “Well, don’t yet, haud it in until we round the corner, and then ye can cry. Ah won’t tell.”

  She led him out of the playground as the boys climbed the railings to spit on them. “You two away to play dollies?” said a ginger-headed boy. The girl was on the fence in a flash. She grabbed the boy’s school tie and pulled his face into the thick metal railings. There was a clang as his bony forehead rang off the rusting iron. “Run!” squealed the girl. They left a cloud in the dust, and there was no stopping until they were halfway up the side of the low hill to Pithead.

  When they caught their breath the lemonade-haired girl started roaring with laughter; there was a pinkie finger’s space in the middle of her front teeth. She had a line of freckles across her nose, and her eyes were as shiny and blue as a cat’s-eye marble.

  “Do you really have enough cousins to fight the McAvennies?” he asked, still trying not to cry.

  She shook her head. “Naw. It’s just me and ma da. He’d fight you for the telly remote, but that’s about it,” she shrugged. “Ah’m Annie. Ah’m the year above ye.”

  “Oh. I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Ah’ve seen ye. Everybody’s seen you.” Annie pointed to the top of the hill, where a makeshift cul-de-sac of mobile homes had been set up. “We live in they caravans. Ah’ll walk ye home. They’ll not dare touch ye when ah’m here.” She puffed out her thin chest. “Where do ye live?”

  Shuggie made to point along the low miners’ houses and then lowered his hand. She would be drunk. She would be on the phone to the taxi rank raging for his father. “I don’t want to go home just yet.”

  “It’s Thursday,” Annie said sagely. “Surely all the drink money is spent by now?”

  Shuggie squinted at the girl. “How do you know that?”

  She hooked her hand over his arm. “Ah’ve met her once. Your maw. She was sat on our settee one day after school. Ah’ve never heard a person talk so nice before.”

  “I really hope she was no bother.”

  “Naw, not at all. She smelt lovely. She showed me how to put a French plait in ma hair.” Her face darkened. “Ah just feel angry for the bad things they say about her. You should fight for her.”

  “I do fight for her!” he said. “Mostly with herself, but it’s still a fight.”

  The girl made a rasping noise of resignation. “Ah just let him get the fuck on with it. If ma daddy wants to drink himself to death that’s his business. He’s lost, ah think. He misses ma maw.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Aye, sort of. She lives in Cambuslang with ma wee brothers and a semi-professional football player.” They walked to the field that held the caravan cluster. “But really, ye two should fight back. Ah’ve heard people say s
he is a right hoor for the drink, that ye need a daddy and it’s her fault ye are the way ye are.” The girl looked wistful then. “But ah’ve never met a more beautiful lady. Ah’d be right proud if she was ma maw.”

  The twelve caravans made a neat semicircle, and someone had lined the uneven mud path with heavy field boulders. Every manner of personal belongings poured out of the tin homes, the path was littered with plastic toys and sodden furniture. The immodesty of it shocked Shuggie. Annie stepped up two breeze blocks to a beige-coloured caravan. A large brown German shepherd lay across the open doorway. Shuggie cautiously followed her inside, stepping carefully around the watchful dog and holding his school bag to his chest. The caravan was narrow and long, the kitchenette in the centre and a horseshoe dinette at the far end. There was a colour television hanging from a bracket in the ceiling; it was blaring the horse-racing results in a fast, shorthand voice. The shallow sink was heaped with dirty plastic dishes. Shuggie watched some ants weave industriously amongst spilt cornflakes.

  “Da. It’s me,” said Annie.

  Shuggie could barely see the man sitting in the darkened dinette. He was hunched over the day’s paper, running a biro pen under the name of horses. “Have ye eaten anything?” she asked. “Ah could make you a bowl of cereal. Ah can even heat the milk if ye want?”

  The man with the rheumy eyes didn’t answer. Shuggie watched him drink from an old tea mug and go back to scoring the horse races. He tried not to picture his mother here.

  At the back of the caravan Annie opened a thin door and pushed the boy through. The bedroom was a pink palace. There were two single beds crammed in the neat space, on each was a Disney princess blanket, and around the walls were thin shelves, each housing a dozen bright rainbow ponies. The room was immaculately clean.