big hug from me.”
Agnes pulled her velvet dress back over her shoulders. She stood still, her palms flat on her skirt. The women buttoned themselves into heavy coats and nodded politely to her as they squeezed uncomfortably past Shug, who still stood in the doorway. They all lowered their eyes, and Agnes watched as Shug smiled from under his moustache at each woman on her way out. He stepped aside only for the bulk of Nan.
Shug was slowly losing his looks, but he was still commanding, magnetic. There was a directness to his gaze that did something funny to Agnes. She had once told her mother that when she met Shug he had a gleam in his eye that would make you take your clothes off if only he asked. Then she had said that he asked this a lot. Confidence was the key, she explained, for he was no oil painting and his vanity would have been sickening in a less charming man. Shug had the talent to sell it to you like it was the thing you wanted the worst. He had the Glasgow patter.
He stood there, in his pressed suit and narrow tie, the leather taxi belt in his hand, and he coldly surveyed the departing women like a drover at a cattle auction. She had always known that Shug appreciated the very high and the very low of it; he saw an adventure in most women. There was something about how he could lower beautiful women, because he was never intimidated by them. He could make them laugh and feel flushed and grateful to be around him. He had a patience and a charm that could make plain women feel confident, like the loveliest thing that ever walked in flat shoes.
He was a selfish animal, she knew that now, in a dirty, sexual way that aroused her against her better nature. It showed in the way he ate, how he crammed food into his mouth and licked gravy from between his knuckles without caring what anyone thought. It showed in how he devoured the women leaving the card party. These days it was showing too often.
She had left her first husband to marry Shug. The first had been a Christmas Catholic, pious enough for the housing scheme but devout only to her. Agnes was better-looking than him in a way that made strange men feel hopeful for themselves and made women squint at his crotch and wonder what they had missed in Brendan McGowan. But there was nothing to miss; he was straightforward, a hard-working man with little imagination who knew how lucky he was to have Agnes and so he worshipped her. When other men went to the pub, he brought home his wages every week, the brown envelope still sealed, and handed it to her without argument. She had never respected that gesture. The contents of the envelope had never felt like enough.
Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the Catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste.
Lizzie had always known. When Agnes had shown up on the doorstep with her two eldest and the Protestant taxi driver, she had had the instant compulsion to shut the door, but Wullie would not let her. Wullie had an optimism when it came to Agnes that Lizzie thought was a blindness. When Shug and Agnes finally got married, neither Wullie nor Lizzie went to the registry office. They said it was wrong, to marry between the faiths, to marry outside the Chapel. Really, it was Shug Bain she disliked. Lizzie had known it all along.
Ann Marie was one of the last to leave, taking too long a time in gathering her cardigan and cigarettes, even though it was all there, exactly as she had dropped it when she arrived. She made to say something to Shug, but he caught her eye, and she held her tongue. Agnes watched their silent conversation.
“Reeny, how you feeling, doll?” asked Shug with a cat’s grin.
Agnes turned her eyes from Ann Marie’s shadow and looked at her old friend, and her ribs broke anew.
“Aye, fine thanks, Shug,” Reeny answered awkwardly, all the while looking at Agnes.
Agnes’s chest caved into her heart as Shug said, “Get your coat, you’ll catch your death. I’ll drive you across the street.”
“No. That’s too much bother.”
“Nonsense.” He smiled again. “Any friend of our Agnes is a friend of mine.”
“Shug, I’ll put your tea on, don’t be long,” Agnes said, sounding more of a shrew than she wanted to.
“I’m no hungry.” He quietly closed the door between them. The curtains became lifeless again.
Reeny Sweeny lived at 9 Pinkston Drive in the tower block that stood shoulder to shoulder with number 16. The black hackney just needed to turn its neat pirouette, and Reeny would be home in less than a minute. Agnes sat down, lit a cigarette, and knew she would wait long hours before Shug showed his face again.
She could feel the burn of Lizzie’s eyes on the side of her face. Her mother said nothing, she just glowered. It was too much to be trapped in your mother’s front room and judged by her, too much to have her be a front-row spectator to every ebb in your marriage. Agnes gathered her cigarettes and went along the short hallway to look in on her weans. The room was dark but for the focused beam of a camping torch. Leek was clutching it under his chin and drawing in a black sketchbook with a look of stillness on his face. He did not look up, and she could not see his grey eyes under the shade of his soft fringe. The room was warm and close with the breath of his sleeping siblings.
Agnes folded some of the clothes that were strewn across the floor. She took the pencil from his hand and folded the book closed. “You’ll hurt your eyes, darling.”
He was almost a man, far too old to kiss goodnight now, but she did so anyway and ignored it when he recoiled at the smell of heavy stout on her breath. Leek shone his torch on the single bed for her. Agnes checked on her youngest, drew the blanket tight under Shuggie’s chin. She wanted to waken him, thought about taking him to her bed, overwhelmed by a sudden need to have someone wrapped tight around her again. Shuggie’s mouth hung open in sleep, his eyelids flickering gently, too far away to be disturbed.
Agnes closed the door quietly and went to her own room. She felt between the layers of the mattress and took out the familiar vodka bottle. Shaking the dregs, she poured herself a pauper’s mug, and then she sucked on the neck of the empty bottle and watched the city lights below.
The first time Shug went missing after his night shift Agnes spent the dawn hours worrying the hospitals and all the drivers she knew from the taxi rank. Working through her black book, she called all of her female friends, asking casually how they were but not admitting that Shug was roaming, unable to admit to herself that he had finally done it.
As the women gabbed about the routine of their lives she only listened to the noises beyond them and strained for any sounds of him in the room behind. Now she wanted to tell the women that she knew all about it. She knew about the sweaty taxi windows, his greedy hands, and how they must have panted at Shug to take them away from it all as he stuck his prick into them. It made her feel old and very alone. She wanted to tell them she understood. She knew all about its thrill, because once upon a time it had been her.
Once upon a time the wind whipping off the sea had turned the front of her thighs blue with the cold, but Agnes couldn’t feel it because she had been happy.
The thousand blinking lights from the promenade rained down on her, and she moved towards them with a slack mouth. She was so struck she hardly drew a breath. The black paillettes on her new dress reflected the bright lights and sent them back twinkling into the Fair Fortnight crowd till she looked as radiant as the illuminations herself.
Shug lifted her and stood her on an empty bench. The lights were afire all along the waterfront for as far as her eye could travel. Every building was in competition with the next, blinking with a thousand gaudy bulbs of its own. Some were western saloon signs with galloping horses and winking cowboys,
