was fascinated by the plastic slider on his mother’s bra strap.
“Is our Alexander in for the night?” Agnes asked.
“Uh-huh. I think so.”
“What do you mean, you think so? Is Alexander in the bedroom or not?” The bedroom was too small to misplace a lanky fifteen-year-old. It barely held the bunk beds for Catherine and Leek and the single bed for Shuggie. Still, Leek was a quiet soul, given to watching from the edges, capable of disappearing even when someone was talking to him.
“Mammy, you know what Leek’s like. He might be.” That’s all she would say. Catherine spun on her heels, a whirling fan of chestnut hair, and as she carried Shuggie out of the room, she sank her fingernails into the soft of his thigh.
More hands of cards were dealt, more menage money was lost, and Agnes kept the records on rotation even though no one was paying any mind. Predictably, coins started piling in front of Nan as the piles of the others got smaller. Agnes, with her drink in hand, began to spin alone on the carpeted floor. “Oh, oh, oh. This is my song, ladies. Get up, get up!” Her twirling fingers implored them to their feet.
The women rose one by one, the unlucky ones happy to step away from Nan’s conspicuous pile of silver. They danced happily in their new bras and old cardigans. The floor bounced under their weight. Nan spun around a shrieking Ann Marie until the two of them knocked into the edge of the low tea table. The women danced with abandon and took big mouthfuls of lager out of old tea mugs. All their movement became concentrated in the shoulders and hips, rhythmic and lusty, like the young girls they saw on television. It was a certainty that the poor skinny husbands they kept at home would be suffocated later that night. The women, smelling of vinegar and stout, would go home and climb on top of them. Giggling and sweating, yet feeling for a moment like fifteen-year-olds again in their new bras. They would strip to holey tights and unclasp their swinging tits. It would be drunk open mouths, hot red tongues, and heavy clumsy flesh. Pure Friday-night happiness.
Lizzie didn’t dance. She had proclaimed herself off the drink. She and Wullie had tried to set a good example for the family. It had made her a bad Catholic to be tut-tutting at Agnes while enjoying a wee can or two herself. So she had stopped with the sweetheart stout and haufs of whisky, almost. Agnes looked over at her mammy sat with her cold mug of tea, and didn’t believe it for a minute. Sitting with a proud back, Lizzie’s eyes were still rheumy and damp-looking, her pink face clouded with a distant look.
Agnes knew Wullie and Lizzie had taken to slipping out of the room when they thought no one was watching. They would get up from the dinner table on a Sunday or make one too many trips to the bathroom. In secret they would sit on the edge of their big double bed with their bedroom door closed and pull plastic bags out from underneath. Into an old mug they would pour the bevvy and drink it quickly and quietly in the dark like teenagers. They would come back to the kitchen table and clear their throats, their eyes happier and glassier, and everyone would pretend not to smell the whisky. You only had to watch her father try to eat his Sunday soup to tell if he had a drink in him or not.
The record hissed to the end of the first side. Lizzie excused herself and wobbled off to the bathroom. Big Nan, thinking no one was looking, took the opportunity to peer slyly at Lizzie’s cards. Her eye caught a glint of unopened stout tins behind Wullie’s old comfy chair. “Jackpot!” she shouted. “That auld yin has a hidden carry-oot stuck down the back o’ his chair!” She sat down, sweaty and out of breath, and helped herself. Nan was here on business, staying a little soberer than the others. All night she had been closely counting the money on the card table, thinking about the bit of ham she could buy for Sunday’s soup and the money the weans would need for next week’s school. Now the card business was over, Nan was thirsty for the hidden stout.
“Lizzie Campbell. That auld liar. She’s not aff the drink,” said Reeny.
“She’s as aff that drink as I’m aff the pies,” said Nan, buttoning her cardigan tight over her new bra. She shouted for Lizzie’s benefit in the direction of the dark hallway. “I don’t know why I’m pals wi’ you robbing Catholic bastards anyhows!” Nan took the stout and filled the mugs and glasses on the table; the drunker she could get them the better. Suddenly she was all business again. “So. Are we gonnae finish these cards or get the catalogue out? I’m tired o’ watching you auld wummin dance like youse are Pan’s People.” From a black leather handbag at her feet she pulled out a thick, dog-eared catalogue. Across the front cover it read Freemans, and there was a picture of a women in a lace dress and straw hat in a happy golden field somewhere far from here. She looked like her hair smelled of green apples.
Nan opened the catalogue on top of the playing cards and flicked through a couple of pages. The noise of the plasticky paper was like a siren’s song. The women stopped throwing themselves around to the music and gathered around the open book, pressing greasy fingers on pictures of leather sandals and polyester nighties. They opened to a double spread of women riding bikes in pretty jersey dresses and cooed as one. At this Nan reached into her leather bag again and pulled out the handful of Bible-size payment books. There were groans all around. They were her pals, sure, but this was her job, and she had weans to feed.
“Och, Nan, I’ve just no got it this week,” said young Ann Marie, almost recoiling from the catalogue.
Nan smiled and through closed teeth replied as politely as she was capable. “Aye, ye’ve fuckin’ goat it. An’ if ah have to dangle you out of the window by they fat ankles, you’ll be paying me the night.”
Agnes smiled to herself and knew Ann Marie should have quit while she was ahead. But the young woman ploughed on. “It’s just that swimsuit doesnae actually fit.”
“Yer arse! It fit when you goat it.’’ Nan searched through the grey books. She pulled the one that read “Ann Marie Easton” in curly black biro and dropped it on the table.
“It’s just my boyfriend said he’s no able to take me away on holiday anymair.” Ann Marie looked big-eyed from face to face for a trace of pity. The women couldn’t care less. The last holiday most of them had seen was a stay on the Stobhill maternity ward.
“Too. Fuckin’. Bad. Pick. Better. Men. Pick. Better. Claes,” Nan applied the pressure like she had a thousand times and went about collecting money from all the women and marking it in their books. It would be an eternity to pay off a pair of children’s school trousers or a set of bathroom towels. Five pounds a month would take years to pay off when the interest was added on top. It felt like they were renting their lives. The catalogue opened to a new page, and the women started fighting over who wanted what.
Agnes was the first to lift her head at the change of pressure in the room. Shug was stood in the doorway, his thick money belt heavy in his hand. The damp wind was sucking through the room, telling Agnes that he had left the front door open, that he was not staying. Agnes stood and moved towards her husband, her dress still folded down at the waist. Too late she straightened her skirt, then she clasped her hands and tried to smile her soberest smile. He didn’t return her it. Shug simply looked through her in disgust and abruptly said, “Right, who needs a lift?”
The unwelcome presence of a man was like a school bell. The women started gathering their things. Nan slipped a couple of Lizzie’s hidden stouts into her bag. “Right, ladies! Next Tuesday up ma hoose,” she barked, adding, for Shug’s benefit, “and any man who thinks he can break up ma catalogue night will get battered.”
“Looking lovely as ever, Mrs Flannigan,” said Shug, picking his thumbnail with the hackney key. Of all of the women to fuck, it would never be her. He had standards.
“That’s nice of ye to say,” replied Nan with a thin
