night buses grumble by and dark windows on cold houses. When he spoke again he was quieter. “Have you ever tried to walk to the front door with your bastarding family stuck into you like fish hooks, eh? Do you know how long it takes to peel four screaming weans off your leg? To kick them back down the hall and shut the door on their wee fingers?” His eyes were cold in the mirror. “No, you don’t know what it’s like. You just tell muggins here to come get ye. You sally out with suitcases like we were off to Millport for the day.”
She was sobering up. She stared silently out the window, trying not to think of the trail of fatherless children and the childrenless father they were leaving in their wake. In her mind it looked like a trail of viscous, salty tears being dragged along behind the black hack. The excitement had left her by then.
When they had passed under the iron railway bridge at Trongate for the third time, the sun was starting to rise and the fresh fish vans were being unloaded at the market. Agnes stared at the women crowded at the bus stop, the early-shift charwomen getting ready to clean the big city-centre offices. “We could go to my mammy’s new flat,” she had mumbled finally. “Just till we find a place of our own.”
All these years later, Agnes didn’t want to think about that night because it made her feel like a fool. Now she had packed the Catholic’s suitcases again. These brocade cases that were now carrying her away were the same ones that had brought her here to her mother’s. She looked down on the green cases and ripped the old McGowan label in two.
After Agnes had left the Catholic, Brendan McGowan had tried to do the right thing by her. Even after she had stolen away in the night, he had hounded her to her mother’s and made promises of what he would change to have her back. Agnes had stood there, in the shadow of the tower block, with her arms folded, as her husband offered to rearrange himself so completely into whatever she wanted that he would not have been recognized by his own mother. When it was clear she wouldn’t take him back, he had asked the parish father to talk with Wullie and Lizzie and guilt her into returning. Agnes would not be told. She would not go back to a life she knew the edges of.
For the next three years Brendan McGowan had sent his money every Thursday and taken the children every second Saturday. The last thing Catherine remembered about her real father was sitting in Castellani’s café as Brendan wiped vanilla ice cream from Leek’s face. Agnes had dressed them both deliberately in the best clothes they owned, and an older lady, with pearls about her neck and ears, had complimented Brendan on their neatness and good manners. The woman leaned down to Catherine’s height and asked the pretty girl what her name was. Clear as a Cathedral bell, the little girl had replied, “Catherine Bain.”
Brendan McGowan had excused himself from the table then. He had wound between the clusters of happy families towards the bathroom, and then he had turned and gone out into the street. Catherine didn’t know how long they had been sitting there alone, but Leek had eaten his ice cream and then hers and was dipping his finger into the melted dregs at the bottom of the shell-shaped glass.
The good Catholic had done all he could to hold his restless wife. She had run from him, and he had lowered his pride and asked for her back. She had divorced him, and he had lowered his pride again and had taken any time he could with his children as sacred. Then she had given them the Protestant’s name, and like lambs who had wandered from their field, they were sprayed with the indelible keel marks of another. Agnes had found his limit. Now, thirteen years on, Leek and Catherine could not have picked him out if they met him in a crowd.
Agnes had to restrain herself from picking at the brocade handle. She had packed her questions and doubts into the Catholic’s cases again and cheerlessly carried them to the taxi. To look at it now, the black hackney felt like a hearse. Wullie wouldn’t speak to her as he helped carry the children’s clothes down in the rusted lift. Lizzie stood over the big soup pot in the kitchen and wrung her chapped hands on her apron. As Agnes watched her mammy stir, she could see the gas wasn’t on.
Leek and Catherine had sat up in their beds at night talking about the ominous pull of this new life. Agnes could hear the low mumble of their worries through the wall. Lizzie had come to her earlier in the week and said the children had asked to stay on with her. She pleaded with Agnes to let Leek finish school and let Catherine be close to the factoring office. The day of the flit, Agnes had noticed how Leek had been gone the whole morning, slunk off with his pencils and secret books to some hidey-hole or other. Catherine had quieted her trembling lip and dutifully helped her mother pack. All morning Lizzie hugged Shuggie close and whispered prayers for safe return into his pale neck. Agnes watched Leek, when he thought no one was looking, plead to his granny again; she heard him say that he would be good, that he would behave. Agnes was glad when Lizzie rebuffed him gently. “No, Alexander, your home is with your mammy.”
As the rain started to come down, the last things to be loaded were Shug’s two red leather suitcases. Only when they were stowed in place did Agnes admit to herself that it was time to go. Lizzie and Wullie stood in the rain looking as grey and stiff as the tower block behind them. Their goodbyes had been casual and distant. Lizzie wouldn’t have them make a scene in public. A crack in the facade might open a rift, and Agnes had no idea what would flood forth from that. So instead they kept busy, fussing about kettles and clean towels.
Agnes sat on the back bench of the taxi with Shuggie packed between her knees. Leek and Catherine sat tight on either side, wedged amongst the boxes, their thighs pressed close to hers. She had ironed all their outfits, taking time to starch Catherine’s work shirt, picking out Shuggie’s blazer from the catalogue. She had bleached her dentures, and her hair was freshly dyed, a shade darker than black, closer to the saddest navy.
That morning she had tilted her head forward and asked Catherine what she thought of her new mascara. The mascara looked too heavy for her eyelids, like she was on the edge of sudden sleep. Now, as the taxi pulled out into the main road, Agnes made a show of looking back and waving mournfully through the rear window with a long, heavy blink. She thought it was a cinematic touch, like she was the star of her own matinee.
The hackney chugged up the Springburn Road and was past the empty Saint Rollox railworks before she turned back around in her seat. She ran through the hollow reasoning why she was going along with Shug’s plan, but as she tried to fortify herself with this rosary, it seemed like the stupid fancies a love-daft lassie half her age might have. Agnes rubbed the pads of her fingertips as she counted off her foolishness: The chance to decorate and keep her very own home. A garden for the weans. Peace and quiet for the sake of their marriage. She dug deeper. There was a chance that things would be different, she hoped, once she got him farther away from his women.
The windows grew foggy, and Shuggie drew a sad face in the condensation. With a flick of his thumb, Leek altered it to look like a swollen cock and then slumped down in his seat. Agnes drew her ringed hand over the drawing and saw through the clear glass that they were passing the big blue gas containers behind Provanmill, the guards at the northeastern gate of Glasgow.
They drove for a very long time in silence. Eventually the taxi chugged to a stop at some lights, and Shug opened the glass partition to tell them they were nearly there. He closed the glass again, and Agnes wondered whether it was from habit or something truer. She remembered when he had been courting her, how he would keep the glass open and try to charm her with his easy patter. He would lean back and rap his Masonic ring on the divider, a faint line on his left hand where his wedding ring should be. The air would be thick with his tangy pine aftershave and hair pomade. On weekday afternoons the taxi would smell of the sweaty stink of them, the glass misty from their lovemaking. She thought of the happy hours parked under the Anderston overpass, happy hours before they really truly knew one another.
Agnes looked at the grassy front gardens of the low bungalows and tried to feel excited again, but it was like trying to make a fire with wet wood. There had been a line where the houses had imperceptibly passed from council to
