Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

  “You’re too good to work. You’re too lovely.” He knew what to say; they had talked like this a hundred times before. It came out too flat, but still Agnes seemed assuaged. Then he said something unexpected that froze the smile on her face. “But, like, if you did work, it would be OK. Like, if you get a night shift, you don’t have to be in for me at nights any more. I can watch myself.”

  Agnes sat up and downed the last of the lager. She seemed like she wanted to change the subject. Shuggie watched her as she pulled together two effigies from their unwanted clothes. She arranged a pink angora jumper of hers and a too-small gangster outfit of his into a pair of hollowed-out Guy Fawkes dummies. Shuggie followed her into the kitchen, where she hung them on the clothes pulley. She pulled on the rope, and the pulley ascended to the ceiling again. They twisted there, full of life, two versions of their old selves hanging in wait for the new family.

  “The woman’s named Susan,” said Agnes. “She’s nice. She has four weans and a carpet-fitter for a man. Never claimed the dole in his life. Wait till they get a load of him round here.”

  “Are we tricking her?” asked Shuggie, full of concern for the new tenants.

  Agnes rubbed her cheek like she was trying to soothe herself, like her dentures were pinching at the back. She poured herself a fresh mug of lager. “No. She has a motor and a man. They didn’t seem that bothered to be so far out.”

  She put her finger down the neck of Shuggie’s jumper, pulled it out, and rubbed his skin, like she was checking whether a lazy maid had hoovered under a carpet. There was fine hair starting to bud on the plain of his small chest. She worried it with her nail, but said nothing about it. “You’re awful pale. When was the last time you were outside?”

  He didn’t want to tell her about Francis McAvennie and the kitchen knife. He didn’t want to admit he had been too scared to linger outside since that day he had threatened to stab him. In the end he didn’t have to say anything. Agnes’s mind was a jumping slide projector. She said, “You’ll not remember the city. You were too wee. But there’s dancing, all kinds of dancing, and big shops. You can be outside all the time, because there’s that much to do.” He thought he saw her inflate with false hope, like she was trying to puff herself up with a delicate excitement. It seemed as fragile as thistledown. “You’ll not remember. But you’ll see.”

  “I can’t wait.” It was a lie, but only half of one. He couldn’t admit it to her, but the city scared him slightly, the vast uncontrollable nature of it: all the alcoholics he could lose her to, the dark pubs, the men who might take advantage, all the unknown streets she could slip down and he could lose her on. At least the Pit had been a known element. It had held them stuck like flies on paper, bounding them in on four sides by nothing. She could harm herself here, but he could not lose her.

  Shuggie tried not to dwell. “When we flit, will you really try to stop the drinking?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  There was a faint look of disbelief in his eye; he couldn’t help it. He turned to the sink to wash the last of the dishes, to hide his face.

  It got her goat. “Are you calling me a bloody liar?”

  She had been drinking all day. Her mood was a low-level haar, foggy, dark and heavy, but holding steady without rain. Shuggie did not want to burst this cloudiness and force the bad weather. “No. Sorry.”

  Agnes stubbed her cigarette out on the edge of the sink. She lifted her lager mug and tossed the contents down the drain. It all happened so forcefully, so fast, that Shuggie got sprayed with the dregs and stepped back, soaked and blinking.

  Agnes opened the planking place under the sink and took out her last two Carlsberg. She handed one to him, and tore open the other herself. She held it over the sink, and the lager poured down the drain in a choking, sputtering torrent. When it was empty, and the last of the white yeasty foam had fallen into the sink like damp snow, she threw the can at the bin and missed, the tin rattling on the linoleum floor. All Shuggie could do was step back wide-eyed and hold on to the worktop for balance. Agnes, possessed by something now, ran around the house; he could hear her clawing underneath furniture and scrabbling behind the wardrobe. She came back with a half dozen bottles, all the forgotten dregs of vodka, all the last slugs she had passed out before finishing. She emptied them down the sink with a dramatic flourish.

  Shuggie had never seen her do that before. He had never seen her waste good drink.

  On the rare occasions she promised to get sober, she would still drink it all first, every single drop, before she started with the fierce withdrawals and the boaking and the shaking. There were other times she fell sober because she had no choice. On the weeks when all the benefit money was gone, and no man would bring her a carry-out, then a type of grudging sobriety would start. If that happened on a Thursday, then her sobriety had a four-day running start. Shuggie always rooted for it. But the drink rarely lost. It was like a bully who gave Agnes that running start in the grinning confidence he would catch her easily, and she’d be battered again when the benefit book was cashed again the following Monday. Still, Shuggie always fell for it.

  He opened the last bronze can. He watched her out of the side of his eye as he poured it down the sink, in a gentle, tentative trickle, ready to stop at any moment.

  Agnes watched him do it, her held tilted back like she was a fine lady. “Do you believe me now?”

  Shuggie pushed his thumb knuckle into his eye socket to steady himself, to stop the hopeful tears. “Thank you.”

  Agnes stiffened, but she smiled, a faint tremulous thing. “No more drinking for me. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but that’s the best thing about the city. No one will know us from Adam.” She picked some oose from their hanging effigies. They spun in the quiet kitchen. “And you. You can be like the other boys. We can be brand new.”

  1989

  The East End

  Twenty-Eight

  After the isolation of the slag hills, the tenements felt like a thriving hub of life. The main road was lined with thick sandstone buildings, and set into the base of them were hundreds of little shops, a post office every mile, a chip shop nearly every block, and all sorts of dress and shoe shops where Agnes could shop on tick. Shiny cars waited at lights and then inched along in patient lines; there were double-decker buses, two at a time, stopping every block or so. There was a cinema, a dance hall, a big green park, and as many chapels and churches as he had ever seen. The pavements were full of people going about their messages, and nobody paid any mind to the others. They moved independently, in oblivious, anonymous, take-it-for-granted freedom. The people didn’t even nod hello to each other, and Shuggie could bet there was not a single cousin amongst them.

  The moving lorry made some sharp turns on to tighter side streets. The sky felt far away now, and the only break in the wall of tenements was at the corners, where streets of even more tenements branched outwards. Shuggie looked up, it felt like they were dug into the very earth, deep inside a sandstone valley. They came to a stop, blocking the street completely, and with a loud rattle the men from the AA dropped the tailgate. Agnes looked at the piece of paper and stood looking up at the tenement. It was a greyish-blond building sat in the middle of a long wall of the same. The door had buzzers for eight flats, and Agnes found the ones for the third floor.

  “This is us now,” she said, pointing to one for the boy to see.

  He was too old for it, but he let her hold his hand, if only to keep her moving forward and not send her itching for drink. Shuggie hooked her hand in his, it felt small to him all of a sudden. She was wearing every ring she still owned, but despite the chilled metal he could feel the nerves and the clammy want in her palm.

  “Let’s promise to be brand new. Let’s just promise to be normal,” he prayed, as they held hands like newlyweds.

  The close mouth was clean and cold. The walls, the floor, and the stairs had the look of being carved from a single piece of beautiful stone, and it all smel
led like it had been recently wiped out with bleach. They climbed the stone stairs slowly, stepping to the side to let the men get up and down with the boxes. On each landing two heavy doors faced each other, each floor neatly and evenly divided. As they passed each landing, floorboards squeaked behind some of the doors. Agnes held her head high and carried on up the stairs.

  The door of the flat was on the right-hand side of the third stone landing. As they stepped inside, Agnes made a quick inventory of the dirt that remained, the carpets that needed to go, pointing at finger marks here and there like she was a tour guide. “Aye, she wasn’t very clean,” she said coldly. “She’ll likely do fine out in the Pits.”

  The new flat was small. It had a stubby L-shaped hallway, and he found himself wondering where she would put her telephone table. At the front of the tenement, looking out on to the street, was a big baywindowed living room, and next door to that was a very small master bedroom. At the back of the tenement was the narrow kitchenette and a tiny box bedroom. Shuggie paced the small bedroom, measuring it heel to toe in both directions, hoping it would fit two beds, but it never could. It suddenly felt final, and it made him miss Leek.

  Agnes stood by the big bay window and looked out over the street. Shuggie encircled her with his arms, and these brand-new people allowed themselves a minute of quiet, peaceful daydreaming. Agnes scratched the back of her calf with the other foot. Shuggie knew it was in her nature to be contrary.

  The moving men had finished before long, and as they took the last of the cardboard with them, Agnes gathered her mohair coat and promised Shuggie hot tea and apple pastries for their lunch. Shuggie closed the door behind her and ignored where her shoe buckle had snagged the back of her tights. He stood alone a long time at the kitchenette window and stared into the enclosed back green. Completely walled in by the tenements, the space was divided by five-foot walls, so that every building had an equal square of scabrous grass, dominated by a concrete bin shed.

  Every square of green was teeming with weans, like petri dishes hoaching with life. The air was filled with echoing screams and laughter, amplified by the sandstone enclosure. Every so often a wean would shriek up at the back of a building, and shortly thereafter a window would swing open and a bag of crisps or a set of keys would be tossed down four storeys to the ground.

  Shuggie sat and watched the scene—a coliseum of sorts—for most of the afternoon, wondering what it must feel like to play, to be so carefree. He watched the weans climb the walls and invade other back greens. He saw heads get cracked and toddlers get shoved off of bin-shed roofs. A window would open, and an officious finger would single out the offending gladiator, and then that child, wailing in fear and contrition, would not be seen for the rest of the day.

  Shuggie eventually grew bored with the brutality.

  As he waited for her to return with the tea things, he fell on the little red football book and for the hundredth time started at page one. He was reading the results for Arbroath when he heard the key in the new lock. From the seat at the window in the kitchenette he could already tell.

  “Hello, son.” She stood in the open doorway, her eyes loose in her head, and there was a wide, too-toothy smile on her face.

  “Ha-have you been drinking?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No-ooo.”

  “Come here. Let me smell you.” Shuggie crossed the empty kitchenette.

  “Smell me?” she said. “Who do you think you are?”

  He was getting taller every day. He took hold of her sleeve and pulled her towards him with all the command of a grown man. She wobbled on her feet and tried to wrench her sleeve free. He sniffed at her. “You have! You have been drinking.”

  “Look at you. You love to spoil my fun.” Agnes tried again to pry him from her sleeve. “I just had a wee hauf with my new pal Marie.”

  “Marie? You promised we would be brand new.”

  “We are! We are!” She was becoming irritated by her gaoler.

  “You lied. You didn’t even try. We are not new. We are just the fucking same.” Shuggie pulled her sleeve so hard the jumper stretched and the neck slid off her shoulder. There, on the soft white skin, was a single black bra strap. He reached out to grab it.

  “Get off of me!” Agnes looked frightened now. She tugged on her jumper and twisted away so abruptly that the boy took to the air. He landed with a crack against the wall and slid to the floor in the corner of the hallway.

  Agnes was mumbling to herself. “Who do you think you are to speak to me like that?” A thought crossed her mind and she turned on him again. “Your father? Do you think you are your bastarding father?” Her head sat back on her neck in ugly defiance, and she spat down on him. “That’ll be the fucking day, sunshine.”

  He watched her put the stretched jumper back on her shoulder and go back out the front door without shutting it behind her. In the echoing close he heard her go from door to door. She chapped each door, and when someone answered she introduced herself with a slurring politeness.

  “Hello. I am SO sorry to bother you. My name is Agnes. I am your NEW neighbour.”

  Shuggie heard the good people of the tenement pause and then return awkward greetings. He could almost hear their eyes running up and down the length of her, taking her in, making up their minds. This woman, with her bottle-dyed, jet-black hair, in the shiny black tights and the black high heels, was already drunk by lunchtime.

  The secondary school was bigger than any he had seen. He had waited and cautiously followed a boy that lived on the landing downstairs. The boy was tanned the colour of summer holidays. At the street corners he turned around and with big brown eyes he looked suspiciously at the pale boy who was following him like a stray.

  Shuggie had set up the ironing board and ironed his own clothes for the first day. His trousers were a grey school wool and were topped with a smart red jumper that Agnes had bought for him with cigarette coupons. He ironed them till they were perfectly flat and two-dimensional. Then he ironed the underwear and the socks.

  Following behind the boy, Shuggie rounded a corner, and there it was. It sprawled forever and looked like a city of its own: big concrete cubes and rectangles that intersected at different angles and were surrounded by lower buildings that looked like Portakabins but more permanent. There were no windows to the outside, just this giant concrete mess of shapes in the middle of a flat expanse of asphalt and stone and brown mud.

  He followed the boy in through a main gate. The schoolyard was big, and it was full. Inside it was a moving mass of Protestant blue, and white and some red. Nearly every boy had a Glasgow Rangers shirt on, a training jacket, or at least a sports bag. Everywhere he looked, McEwan’s Lager was spelt out in big white letters. Shuggie put his hand in his pocket and felt better feeling the dog-eared red book there.

  The bell rang, and he followed the boy in through some glass doors. For want of a better idea he followed the boy to his class. The children took familiar seats and set about talking at the top of their voices. Shuggie put his bag on a desk at the back and tried to hide behind it. A short middle-aged man with a white beard came into the classroom. He looked like an angry terrier, and he spoke with a very loud Glaswegian accent. “Right, shut yer faces, youse lot. Let’s go fur the record and then youse kin all get back to talking aboot earrings and perms an’ that.” He paused. “An’ that’s jist the boys.”

  The room made a bored huff. The man took the register and when he got to the end the room fell about shouting again. The teacher folded his arms and closed his eyes and leaned back against the edge of the desk, trying to steal five minutes more sleep.

  Shuggie put his hand in the air and then took it down and then raised it again. “Sir,” he said, too quietly. “Sir!”

  The teacher opened his eyes and looked at the new boy. “Aye?” he asked, still not familiar with the new year’s faces.

  “I’m new,” said Shuggie, too quiet to cut through the rabble.

  “Everybod
y is new, son,” said the man.

  “I know. But I think I am a late enrolment.” He used the term Agnes had told him to use.

  The room fell quiet. Thirty heads turned as one to look at him, boys with top lips dirty with hair and girls already with women’s bodies and faces broken out in little white spots. “Ye’re whit?” asked the terrier-faced teacher.

  “I’m. I’m a late enrolment, sir. From another school.” The room was now silent.

  “Oh,” said the teacher. “Whit’s yer name?”

  Before he could answer, it started. It sounded like a murmur, and then someone said it out loud, and the whisper became outright laughter. “Is eht Gaylord?” said a rat-faced boy at the front. The room erupted.

  “Big Bobby Bender?” said another.

  Shuggie tried to talk over them. His face burned red. “It’s Shuggie, sir. Hugh Bain. I’m transferred here from Saint Luke’s.”

  “Listen tae that voice!” said another boy, with tight curly hair. He opened his eyes wide like he had hit the bullying jackpot. “Ere, posh boy. Whaur did ye get that fuckin’ accent? Are ye a wee ballet dancer, or whit?”

  This went down the best of all. It was a divine inspiration to the others. “Gies a wee dance!” they squealed with laughter. “Twirl for us, ye wee bender!”

  Shuggie sat there listening to them amuse themselves. He took the red football book and dropped it into the dark drawer of this strange school desk. He was glad, at least, to be done with that. It was clear now: nobody would get to be made brand new.

  Twenty-Nine

  The brown-eyed boy who lived downstairs in the tenement knocked on the door as though they were old friends. In the months since they had moved in, he had done his best to ignore Shuggie. Now, when Shuggie answered the door, the brown-eyed boy tilted his head in greeting, told him to get his coat and follow him.

  “What for?” asked Shuggie, rather ungratefully.