Some of the older drivers asked only for the things that were on the low shelves. It was a game for them, to kill the time. Agnes didn’t mind. They gabbed away and watched her glide around the small shop, collecting their orders of sugar and starch. They felt less lonely as she bent over to get the day’s paper, savouring the tightening of her skirt as she crouched to reach the bottom shelf. They appreciated the way her jumper hung low and the black of her bra was visible against her rose-coloured skin. Agnes knew what a horrible thing it was to be lonely.
After a few dark winter months of working in the station, things started coming to Agnes. At first it was small things, like boxes of potatoes or extra jars of pickled onions from the cash and carry. One morning she was given a shipping box of panty liners. Soon a couple of the drivers started bringing bigger presents, like a used fridge, an old portable television, and other electronics that had come off the backs of lorries. Shuggie had come home from school and found the cracked draught door reglazed. He had come home and found the mouldy kitchenette freshly painted.
Towards the dead end of the night shift there were whole stretches of time when no one would stop in at the garage. Agnes would sit and stare out at the Pit Road, counting the hours by watching the back and forth of the lonely night bus. These nights she would sit behind her safety glass and slowly flick through her Freemans catalogue, spending wages before they were earned. The sun would creep up, and she would get ready for the shift to be over, slipping a bar of chocolate into her pocket for the wean’s school and helping herself to a fly packet of cigarettes. She’d open the lock on the door and let the morning shift in. As she walked the road back to Pithead, the morning sun would set the slag hills on fire before the heavy sky had a chance to roll in and cover the scheme in its usual grey blanket.
On the way home Agnes would sing a polite good morning as she passed the tired bones of the women with cleaning jobs in the city. The cleaners would rub the gold crosses that hung around their necks and mutter a quiet aye without looking at her. What a respectable Catholic was doing coming home at that ungodly hour, these thin women could not fathom. They were suspicious of this woman, who wore lipstick in the early morning and unchipped nail polish the colour of sex. The men who were lucky enough to still have jobs would look up and smile as they passed Agnes. They tried to hide the wrapped lunches that their wives had made as they wished her a good morning, gave her a sly wink.
When she got home she would slip the stolen chocolate bar under Shuggie’s pillow, and with a kiss and a cup of milky tea she would wake him for school. At the foot of Leek’s bed she would leave his overalls, clean and washed from the night before. The boys would lie in separate beds, silently facing each other, listening to the sound of her singing along to the morning radio. Neither of them would blink, scared to be the first to break the spell.
Agnes had been working the night shift for only a couple of months when she first met him, the red-headed ox. He was different from the others. The other taxi drivers had taken on that familiar shape of men past their prime, the hours spent sedentary behind the wheel causing the collapse of their bodies, the full Scottish breakfasts and the snack bar suppers settling like cooled porridge around their waists. Eventually the taxi hunched them over till their shoulders rounded into a soft hump and their heads jutted forward on jowled necks. The ones who had been at the night shift a long time had turned ghostly pale, their only colour was the faint rosacea from the years of drink. These were the men who decorated their fingers with gold sovereign rings, taking vain pleasure from watching them sit high and shiny on the steering wheel. This could not help but remind her of Shug.
When the redhead first stepped from his taxi, she tried not to stare. He must have been new to the driving. His shoulders were still straight, and the pink in his face was from daylight and fresh air, not dark pubs and golden pints of stout. He was a tall, broad man, and as he filled the taxi with diesel she watched how he stood straight and proud. He rocked the taxi side to side with one thick arm, his red curls shining under the flickering fluorescent lights. He didn’t flinch when he saw her, as the other men sometimes did, but he didn’t smile either. She was sat behind her glass, her arms folded, as if she was waiting for a lover who had forgotten to come and pick her up. She pushed his change towards him in the little safety drawer, and he mumbled thanks and went back to his taxi.
It was a few weeks before he turned up again. This time she was talking to him before he had even reached the window. “You’ve not been driving long, have you?” she said, with a lipsticked smile, the drawer pushed out towards him invitingly.
“Scuse me?” he said, shaken from his thoughts. “I cannae hear ye frae ahind that glass.”
Agnes took in the broad Scots, the soft song of Strathclyde in his voice. She went on in the Queen’s best. “I was just asking if you are new to driving taxis.”
“Whit makes ye ask a man tha’?” he asked pointedly, his breath warm on the cold glass.
Agnes’s smile cracked. “It’s just, I get a lot of taxi drivers pass through here. You seem more . . . cheerful than the rest.” He looked at her much as he might a talking dog. She fumbled on. “You know, you just seem less jaded by it. All that driving. All those difficult passengers.”
“Do ye think ye are a good judge o’ character then?”
The question took Agnes by surprise. It was her that was silent now. The redhead dropped some coins in the drawer with a loud tinny clang. “Gies a pint of milk and a white loaf. Pan bread, not plain. Make sure it’s fresh, and don’t squash it flat in yer contraption.” He pointed at her security drawer.
It took her a moment to recover and get up out of her chair. She was halfway across the little shop before she looked back to see whether he was watching, but the redhead was staring at his feet as though there were a story written on his shoes. He breathed in through his horse-like nose, and she watched his shoulders rise and spread and then fall again. He looked tired, sick and tired. Returning to the window she placed the small milk bottle in the drawer and slid it through to him. He took it up in his big paw. She dropped the loaf in the drawer, and it was only then that he spoke again. “Ye’ll squash ma loaf.” Agnes looked up at him, dumbstruck. The loaf would fit with a push, but he protested again, his cheeks turning pink, “I’m tellin’ ye, don’t shove that through there.”
“It’ll be all right. The bread’s springy.” She pushed her fingers against the moist loaf, and as if it were an advert for freshness, the loaf sprang back.
The man was silent.
Agnes smiled coyly. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t open the security door.” She placed her hand on her chest and opened her eyes wide. “You see, I’m here all by myself.”
The redhead moved from one foot to the other, his cheeks flushed red. He blinked and looked at his feet and took a hard lungful through his big nostrils.
“Look, do you want this loaf or not?” asked Agnes, leaning close to the glass. The front of her jumper shifted, and she knew the black strap of her bra would be on her shoulder. She smiled through half-lidded eyes.
He slammed his thick fist on the glass. It made her leap back as if she had been slapped. “Mother of God. Can an honest man no get a flat fucking bit o’ toast.”
This brought out the demon in Agnes. It did her morale no good to feel so invisible. To be ignored like this made her want a taste of the drink. With a painted fingernail she slipped open the glued end of the loaf and drew out the doorstep slice. She dropped it into the drawer pan like a dead fish. She pushed the single slice towards the big man.
He looked down into the drawer at the loaf slice like she had shat in a box. “Well, take it then,” she warned, the smile and the bra strap were gone. The redhead drew up the slice and held it tenderly. With a metal zip the drawer drew back inside, Agnes deposited another slice and pushed it through to him. The man drew it up. They went on in silence, Agnes dropping slices of pan loaf into the drawer and the man ga
thering them up delicately, like china dishes. She was sure he hadn’t breathed since the first slice had slid towards him. Somewhere inside him the air hissed out like a burst tyre, and he looked down at the half loaf in his arms. Agnes kept working the drawer.
“I used to work down the Pit till they shut it,” he said quietly. “How could ye tell I wisnae a driver?”
“I could just tell,” said Agnes. “I’ve had experience.”
“Aye?”
“I could write a book.” She slipped another slice into the tray.
“I don’t know how they do it,” said the red-headed man. “And the people you meet? Every manner of scoundrel.”
“It takes a certain kind of person to be out here at night. Have you been on the night shift long?”
“About a month.”
“It’s awful lonely, isn’t it?” said Agnes.
The man looked at her for what seemed like the first time. “Aye, it’s very lonely,” he said, his eyes were tired.
She slid the last doorstep slice towards him. “Well, come by tomorrow night. I’ll feed a box of cornflakes through this drawer to you.”
The man smiled for the first time. His teeth were big and straight and white. “OK.”
“Mind and bring a plastic bag ’cause I’m giving it flake by flake.”
Since Shug there had been other men, but there had been no nights out. All day she had waited for the taxi horn. She had taken her bath by lunchtime and still had to wait until eight o’clock, when he said he would call for her. The clock radio blinked its neon numbers like a countdown. Agnes swung all day from feverish to despondent, and now, waiting in front of the vanity mirror, she felt increasingly stupid. In her mind she made a list of all the things she mustn’t tell this new man. The bad things better left untold made her throat feel choked. It called out for a drink.
Shuggie sat in thoughtful silence next to her, his hands patiently on his lap, his ankles crossed neatly, with the same look of pained nerves on his face. Agnes tried to tidy her life into a narrative and felt increasingly dull and flat. The things she shouldn’t speak about left her with yawning gaps. They shaped her into a woman who had been asleep since 1967, the year she had met Shug.
The red-headed ox was called Eugene. It was a good name, both old-fashioned and plain. It was a name mothers chose for firstborn sons, the ones that were to be solid and true, mother’s pride but not her joy. It had always seemed to Agnes that it was the name Catholic mothers gave to the sons who were for the priesthood, the children marked like a tithe offering.
Eugene pumped the horn of the black hack, and Agnes jumped with nerves. Small perfume bottles tinkled lightly on the night table. She looked down at the boy, who had crossed his fingers for good luck. He held them up and shook them at her with a hopeful smile. Leek leaned in the doorway, his arms folded across himself. She asked him for a kiss for luck, and Shuggie watched as she put her arms around his neck. At first Leek didn’t move, and then very slowly he unfurled and held her in his arms. He showered her cheeks with kisses until, giggling like a schoolgirl, she had to push him away and check he hadn’t ruined her blush.
Outside, in the soft evening light, she saw again how handsome the man was. In a wide-lapelled suit and with his thick hair combed wet through, he made the old hackney seem like a Rolls-Royce. Eugene opened the driver’s door and stepped out. Agnes saw his thin bolo tie, his tiepin gleaming proudly. This was, she realized, the first time they hadn’t been separated by safety glass. He opened the back passenger door for her, and without looking up she knew the Pit women were all stewing at their front windows. She felt the breeze of a thousand net curtains twitching. With a ringed hand she pushed her hair from her face and threw her head high. She could almost hear the angry slapping of gums.
“Did you find it OK, then?” she asked, as he closed the door behind her.
“Aye, no problem at all,” he said, starting the engine. “Did I keep you waiting?”
“No, no. I was in a real rush to get ready, the day just flew by.” She tried to sprinkle her words with a light casual laugh.
“Well, you look the part.” He eyed her approvingly in his mirror.
“Oh, that’s a relief,” she said, lifting her arms and letting the leather tassels on the sleeves shake. “I had no idea what to wear.”
Agnes had never been to the Grand Ole Opry before. It sat on the South Side of Glasgow, on the Govan Road, an old converted picture hall in a decaying part of town. Couples went for the country-music nights, with line dancing and gunslinging matches. It might have been the good craic of the country music or it might have been the guns, but somehow the Opry appealed deeply to Glaswegians. Any night of the week it was ram-packed. For a few hours Edna McCluskey from Clarkston could become Kentucky Belle, while her man, wee Stan, would slip into a leather waistcoat and a big, tasselled Stetson and become Stagecoach Stan the Bounty Man.
Eugene parked and helped Agnes down from her carriage. The Opry’s Old Western sign lit up the street and shone off the wet tarmac. People jostled at the door to get in, and Agnes had the impression of being at a fancy premiere. Eugene cut to the front of the queue, gave a flash of his shiny silver sheriff’s badge, and they walked right in.
Inside, it barely resembled the picture house it had once been. It was laid out over two levels, with a big stage at the front. On the stage was a band, the singer in tan-coloured leather chaps, his hair swept up into a rockabilly quiff over his pockmarked face. He held the mic stand against his legs as if it were the girl he was in love with. He sang with a thick Johnny Cash twang.
In front of the stage was a small dance floor, where some older couples were doing a hurdy-gurdy version of a hoedown. Old men in tight denims swung thick-armed housewives around, and they looked like they were having a rare time as they locked arms and two-stepped in time to the band. The Opry women wore either cowgirl outfits with Stetson hats or big flouncy harlot’s dresses with lace trim and feathers in their hair. Agnes looked down at her tight black skirt and leather coat. It had cost a fortune from the catalogue. She had sent it back twice to get the fit just right. Now she looked around the room at the denims and the ruffled dresses, and she hated the outfit.
Eugene led her through the crowd. He had leather boots on, and under his tan suit jacket he had a gun belt with a decorative tooled holster holding a shiny pistol in each side. Heads nodded familiarly at him, and he nodded stiffly back. Around the dance floor were small round-top tables where the younger couples sat, not yet drunk enough to take up dancing unabashedly. Eugene pulled out a chair and sat Agnes down in the dead centre of the room, not tucked away in some corner. He took her coat, and she let him linger, his thick hands on her shoulders, just long enough to breathe in the perfume of her hair.
The place was alive with the infectious rattle of the band and the stepping, bouncing dance. The air was thick with the warm smells of golden whisky and leather. It was early still, but the crowd was already carried away. Agnes thought it was funny how a bit of cheap dress-up could be so liberating.
“What do ye make of it then?” asked Eugene, his face wearing a wide, proud grin.
“It’s marvellous, isn’t it?”
“It really is. Glasgow was the original Wild West, ye know. Ye can still get scalped out on Maryhill Road on a weeknight.” Eugene was relaxing into his element. “I’m glad we could finally get to dae this.”
“Me too.”
“I realized tonight wis the first time I’d could be sure ye had actual legs,” he laughed. “That ye wurny just some petrol-station stool from the waist down.”
“I hope you are not disappointed.”
“Naw, naw.” Eugene laughed and held out his paw as way of a formal introduction. “Nice to meet you. Tell me a wee bit about yersel?”
“Not much to tell.” Agnes lifted a wet beer coaster and started to spin it nervously. She unfolded the narrative she had practiced in her head. “Glasgow papist born and bred. It’s been a quiet life.”
“Aye, me too.”
“I’m a divorcee,” Agnes added quickly, liking the way it sounded better than, My man left me for a plain-faced dowdy hoor.
Eugene paused; it felt to her like a second too long. “Could ye not make it work?” asked the Catholic.
Was he disappointed? Agnes couldn’t tell. She shook her head and was relieved when, with a jangling of spurs, a waitress appeared at the side of their table. She was a pretty enough woman, dressed in tight light-coloured jeans and a big rattlesnake belt, the snake’s head still attached, its rattle rammed in its own mouth as a closure. “Why, hello thure, Sheriff, how’s life been-a-treatin’ you?” She spoke in a broad Texan twang by way of the sharp end of the Gorbals.
“Hiya, Belle, cannae complain.” Eugene held his hand out towards Agnes. “This is my friend Agnes; this is her first time.”
Without smiling, Belle nodded her big hat in Agnes’s direction. It was a cold greeting. “So, Sheriff, you riding that new stagecoach of yours around this wild city?”
“Aye. Unfortunately.”
“Well, a-one of these days I’m a gonna persuade you to come and rustle me up,” she went on, in pure Hollywood Texan, leaning close, her shirt splitting open at the chest. “Maybe we could take a little run out to Burntisland. My niece has a caravan by the watter.”
Agnes wondered whether they had seaside caravans in Texas. She giggled. She couldn’t help it. The waitress looked down at her like she was a pest.
“Maybe another time, eh.” Eugene shifted in his seat.
Belle sighed and stuck a thumb in her belt loop. “Well, what’ll it be, pal?” Her accent was now flat South Side.
“I’ll have a pint and a hauf.” He looked over to Agnes.
“Um . . . I’ll just have a Coca-Cola,” said Agnes. She was dry-mouthed over the moment she had dreaded all day.
“Is that eht?”
“And some lemon?” added Agnes, as breezily as she could.
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