husband for a promise of a life that was worth living. Her fingers traced the forgotten name: Agnes McGowan, Bellfield Street, Glasgow.
When Leek was still in nappies, Agnes had run away.
On the night she finally left she had packed the green cases full of new clothes, showy, impractical things she had bought on the last of Brendan McGowan’s tick and had kept hidden for the past long year. Before she ran away she had scrubbed their tenement flat one last time. She knew the news would bring in the neighbours. With beady eyes they would pour in to offer condolences to her man, hoping to gnash their gums at her uppity ways. She wouldn’t dare give them the pleasure of thinking her slatternly too.
On the plush hall carpet she had tamped a loose corner with her toe, pushing it back in place, and she was sad to hear the crunch of carpet tacks grip the wood once again. Earlier in the day she had tried to lift it. She had broken two good wedding spoons and bloodied her fingers before sitting back in frustrated tears. As the mascara ran down her face she had wondered if maybe she should stay on, just a little longer, just till she had gotten good use out of that new Axminster. She hadn’t tried to take everything, but that carpet was new, and she had enjoyed how the old wife across the close blanched every time she saw it. It was the kind of hall carpet that you left your front door open for, the beautiful thick kind that you wanted all the neighbours to see. She had nagged and nagged until she got it installed, wall-to-wall, Templeton’s Double Axminster, but the tingly feeling hadn’t lasted this time, not even half as long as she had expected it to.
Living with the Catholic, in the ground-floor flat, all she could see was a wall of grey soot-covered tenements across the street. The night she ran away, Agnes had watched the lights go out, one by one, good, hard-working folk getting an early night for an early start. Outside in the rain was the purring hum of the hackney engine. She could not help but feel some excitement, and inside her, underneath the doubt, was a rising thrill.
Over the back of the sofa lay two miniature effigies; studies in neat melton and soft velvet and uncomfortable shoes of patent leather with gaudy silver buckles. She woke her sleeping toddlers. Catherine looked like a drunken old man, her sleepy eyelids opening and closing in big distressed gulps. As Agnes kissed them awake, there was a low scratch on the tenement door. She crept out to the hallway. The door opened with a low whine, and a man’s round, tanned face twitched anxiously in the bright tenement light. Shug moved impatiently from one foot to the other, ready it seemed to run at any moment.
“You’re late!” Agnes spat.
The smell of sour stout on her breath made him swallow his half-smile. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
“What do you expect? My nerves are shot waiting for you.” Agnes pulled the door open and passed the heavy cases to Shug. They bulged at the zippers and tinkled happily, as if they were full of Christmas ornaments.
“Is that it?”
Agnes stared at the deep, swirling carpet and sighed. “Aye. That’s it.”
With the cases in hand the man shuffled into the street. Agnes had turned then and looked back into the flat. She went to the mirror in the hall and ran her fingers through her hair; the black curls bounced and folded back on themselves tightly. She ran a line of fresh red lipstick across her mouth. Not bad for twenty-six, she thought. Twenty-six years of sleep.
In the children’s bedroom she finished making the beds and put the dirty pyjamas into the pocket of her mink coat. Without negotiation she gave them each a single toy to bring and led them out into the hallway. Stopping in front of the big bedroom door, she turned to them. She looked at the lovely carpet and in a low voice urged, “Right, no matter what, no crying, all right?” The shiny heads nodded. “When we go in there, do you think you can give me a big, big happy smile?”
She found the bedroom switch through habit. It flicked on with a click, and the dark burst with bright, unflattering light. The room was small and tight, dominated by a rococo-style bed that was much too large. The boy happily called out, “Daddy!” and the messy hump in the royal bed stirred. Brendan McGowan sat up in shock, blinking at the Victorian carollers stood at the foot of his bed. His mouth went slack.
Agnes pulled the collar up on her mink coat in a grand gesture. It was a coat he had bought for her on tick, an unneccesary extravagance that he had hoped would make her happy and hold her at peace from want, if just for a while. “Right. Thanks for everything, then.” It was coming out wrong. “I’m away,” she said, in a clumsy understatement, like a maid who had finished her chores and was leaving for the day.
The sleeping man could only blink as his waving family filed out of the room. He heard the front door close gently and the heavy hum of a diesel engine. Then they were gone.
As they roared away that night, the black hackney taxi sounded solid and heavy as a tank. Agnes sat on the long leather banquette flanked by her warm babies. The four drove in silence through the wet and shiny Glasgow streets. Shug’s eyes kept glancing in the mirror, flitting over the faces of the sleeping children and tightening slightly. “Where are we going, then?” he asked after a while.
There was a long pause. “Why were you late?” asked Agnes from behind the collar of her coat.
Shug didn’t answer.
“Did you have second thoughts?”
He stopped looking in the mirror. “Of course I did.”
Agnes brought her leather-gloved hands up to her face. “Jesus Christ.”
“Well, didn’t you?”
“Did it look as if I did?” she replied, her voice higher than she would have liked.
The streets of the East End were empty. The last pubs were closed, and decent families were tucked in together from the cold. The hackney pulled along the Gallowgate and drove on through the market. Agnes had never seen it empty before; it was usually full of people buying their messages or new curtains, nice bits of meat or fish for a Friday. Now it was a graveyard of empty tables and fruit boxes. “Where are we going to go?”
“I left mine at home, you know.” He was glowering at her in the mirror. “We agreed. We said a fresh start.”
Agnes felt the hot heads of her children burrowing into her side. “Yes, well, it’s not that easy.”
“Aye, but you said.”
“Yes, well.” Agnes fixed her eyes out the window. She could feel him still staring in the mirror. She wished he would watch the road. “I couldn’t do it.”
The man looked at the children in their Sunday finest, old-fashioned clothes worn for the first time, expensive clothes bought for a midnight escape. He thought about all their clothes neatly folded in the cases. “Aye, but you didnae even try, did ye?”
She fixed her eyes on the back of his head. “We can’t all be as heartless as you, Shug.”
He had tapped the brakes as his body spasmed in anger. All four of them lurched forward, and the children started to gripe. “An’ you fuckin’ ask me why I wis late?” Bits of spit landed, gleaming, on the rear-view mirror. “Why I wis fuckin’ late wis because I had to say goodbye to fo-wer greetin’ fuckin’ weans.” He drew the back of his hand across his wet lips. “Never mind a wife that threatened to gas the lot of them. Telt me if I left her that she would put the oven on and not light the ignition.”
The
