“So you could have everything you ever wanted.”
Lizzie seemed so far away then. Agnes had the urge to wrap her mother in her arms, beg for her forgiveness, even though she felt not a shred of remorse. “Can’t we be pals again?”
“No. It’s not as simple as that any more.” The corners of Lizzie’s mouth turned down in a mocking way. “Let’s just kiss and make up? No, I think not.” She uncurled another clump of hair. “How many women will it take, Agnes?”
Agnes bristled. “I need a cigarette.”
“You need a lot of things.” Then she added, “You should have stayed married to that Catholic.”
Agnes rooted around in her mother’s curler bag. She took out the Embassy packet and put two cigarettes in her mouth. She took a long draw and held the smoke inside for a long while. “Jesus can’t pay my catalogue.”
Lizzie gave a fake laugh. “No. But hell will mend you.”
Agnes got up then and sat on the blanket by her mother’s side. The lit cigarette was a measly peace offering, but Lizzie took it and said, “Help me take out these curls. I must look half-mental.” Agnes took her mother’s head in her hands and ran her fingers through the thinning hair. Lizzie softened slightly. “You know, your faither always used to come in on a Friday night, half past six. Every other working fella on the street would go missing. There wouldn’t be a man’s voice till Sunday afternoon, not in all of Germiston. I remember that you could hang out that window and watch them all stoat home on a Sunday teatime. All of them addled wi’ the drink.”
The potato peelers were nodding in unison again. Lizzie said, “I’m no judging the men. That was just what they did in those days. If you wanted your housekeeping money you had to go dig your man out of the pub on a Friday teatime. But your faither would come singing Friday night, his wage packed in his hand and a fresh parcel under his arm. Silly fool would have been down that market on his way back from Meadowside and picked up a wee dress or a new coat for you. I never knew a man know the size of his weans, let alone go shopping for them. I used to tell him to stop it, he was spoiling you. But he would say, ‘What’s the harm?’”
“Mammy, I can’t talk about this again.”
“Honestly, I was that happy for you when you married that Brendan McGowan. He seemed like he could give you what your faither had given me. But look at you, you had to want better.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Better?” Lizzie used her clenched teeth to itch the tip of her tongue. “Look where better has gotten you. Selfish article.”
Agnes brushed out the last of her mother’s curls. She had to restrain herself not to give them a sly tug. “Well, seeing as you think I’m selfish then, I need to ask you for a favour.”
Lizzie sniffed. “It’s a bit early in our friendship to be calling in favours.”
She rubbed the lobe of Lizzie’s ear gently, manipulatively. “I need you to tell him for me. Tell him that we’re moving. Will you do that?”
“It’ll kill your faither.”
“It won’t.” She shook her head. “But if I stay here I know I am going to lose him.”
Lizzie turned and studied her daughter closely. She stared coldly at the flicker of hope in Agnes’s eyes. “You will believe anything, won’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“We just need a fresh start. Shug says it might make everything better. It’s only a wee place, but it’s got its own garden and its own front door and everything.”
Lizzie waved her cigarette airily. “Oh, la-di-dah! Your very own front door. Tell me: How many locks do you suppose this front door is going to need to keep that wandering bastard at home?”
Agnes scratched the skin around her wedding band. “I’ve never had my own front door.”
The women were silent a long while after that. Lizzie spoke first. “So, where is it then? This front door of your own.”
“I’m not sure. It’s way out on the Eastern Road. It used to be rented by an Italian chippy or somebody Shug knows. He said it was very green. He said it was quiet. Good for my nerves.”
“Will you have your own washing line?”
“I would think so.” Agnes rolled on to her knees. She knew how to beg for what she wanted. “Listen, we’re pals again, right? I need you to tell my daddy for me.”
“Your timing is beautiful. After this morning’s nonsense?” Lizzie pulled her chin into her chest and made a long, low clown mouth. “If you leave he’ll blame himself to his dying day.”
“He won’t.”
Lizzie began rebuttoning her summer dress. The buttons were lining up wrong, and it was testing her patience. “Mark my words. Shug Bain is only interested in Shug Bain. He’s going to take you out there to the middle of nowhere and finish you for good.”
“He won’t.”
Wullie and Shuggie came lumbering across the forecourt then. Lizzie saw them first. “Look at the state of that. A walking advert for soap powder.”
By the time Agnes looked up, the last of the Eiffel Tower was being licked from between the boy’s chubby fingers. She couldn’t help but smile at her father, the giant with his shirt tails untucked, like a schoolboy shirking his uniform. They walked slowly, swinging between them the Daphne dolly that Shuggie treasured so much.
“If you cannae make Shug do right by you, at least make him do right by the boy.” Lizzie narrowed her eyes at her grandson, at his blond dolly. “You’ll be needing that nipped in the bud. It’s no right.”
Seven
Agnes followed Shug’s red leather cases as they migrated around the flat. They had shown up out of nowhere, earlier in the week, with no price tags and the faint look of having been gently used. Shug had neatly folded all of his clothes, setting socks within shoes and rolling underwear into tidy jam rolls, before packing everything thoughtfully inside. Often, during the week, he would open one of the red cases and study the contents closely, as though memorizing the inventory, then close and lock it securely again. Agnes could see the cases were half-empty, that there was still valuable space inside. Several times she left small piles of the children’s clothes near them and then watched with bubbling jealousy as the cases up and moved to the other side of the room, still with nothing belonging to her or the children placed inside.
On the day of the flit he had set the red cases by the bedroom door. Agnes worried the suitcase lock with her nail. She wondered why she hadn’t seen the new house herself. Shug had come home with the idea after one of his night shifts spent talking to a Masonic pal who owned a chippy in the city centre. A council flat in a two-up two-down that he said had its own front door. Shug signed for it there and then with all the casualness of buying a raffle ticket.
Agnes wrapped the last of her glass ornaments in newsprint and lined up her old green brocade cases next to Shug’s. She intermixed them, rearranged them, but no matter what she did there was a sense that they didn’t belong together any more. In the luggage
