was somebody.
“I can’t remember the last time you took me dancing,” she said.
“I can still trip the light fantastic.” He helped her gently back to the pavement and took a lingering squeeze of her soft middle. Shug could see the waterfront through her eyes, the tawdry glamour of the clubs and the adventure of the amusement halls. He wondered if this, too, would lose its shine for her. He took his suit jacket from his back and draped it over her shoulders. “Aye, the lights from Sighthill aren’t going to seem the same after this.”
Agnes shivered. “Let’s not talk about home. Let’s just pretend we’ve run away.”
They walked along the shimmering waterfront trying not to think of all the small, everyday things that pushed them apart, that kept them living in a high-rise flat with her mother and father snoring through the bedroom wall. Agnes watched the lights flash on and off. Shug watched the men swivel their greedy eyes to look at her and felt a sick pride burst in his chest.
In the grey daylight of that morning she had seen the Blackpool seafront for the first time. Her heart had quietly broken in disappointment. Shabby buildings faced a dark, choppy ocean and a cold, sandy beach where blue weans ran around in their underclothes. It was buckets and spades and pensioners in rain bonnets. It was day-tripping families from Liverpool and coachloads from Glasgow. He had meant it as a chance to be alone. She had bitten the inside of her cheek at the commonness of it all.
Now, at night, she saw its draw. The true magic was in the illuminations. There wasn’t a surface that wasn’t glowing. The old trams that ran down the middle of the street were covered in lights, and the shaky wooden piers that jutted out into the brackish sea were now festooned like runways. Even the Kiss Me Quick hats blinked on and off as though demented with lust. Shug took her wrist and led her through the crowd and along the blazing promenade. Children were screaming from the waltzer ride on the pier. There was the roar and flash of the dodgem cars, the clink-clink of the manic slots. Shug kept pulling her through the crowds towards the Blackpool Tower, twisting this way and that in the habit of a taxi driver.
“Darlin’, please slow down,” she pleaded. The lights were all flying past her too quickly to drink in. She wrenched her wrist from his grasp, there was a red ring where he had gripped her.
Shug was blinking and red-faced in the holiday crowd. He flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Strange men shook their heads as if they would have known how to handle this fine woman better. “You’re no starting, are you?”
Agnes rubbed at her arm. She tried to soften the frown on her face. She hooked his pinkie with hers, the gold of his Masonic ring felt cold and dead against her hand. “You were rushing me, that’s all. Just let me enjoy it. I feel like I never get out of the house.” She turned from him, back to the lights, but the magic was gone. They were cheap.
Agnes sighed. “Let’s have a wee drink. It’ll take the chill off, maybe help us get back in the spirit of things.”
Shug narrowed his eyes and ran his fist over his moustache like he was catching all the hard words he wanted to say to her. “Agnes. I’m begging you. Please can you take it slow the night?” But she was already gone, over the tramlines towards the winking cowboy.
“Howdy,” said the barmaid in a thick Lancashire accent. “That’s a right purdy dress.”
Agnes lifted herself up on to the swivelling plastic bar stool and crossed her ankles daintily. “A Brandy Alexander, please.”
Shug turned the bar stool next to her, spun it like a top, till it was taller than hers. With a hop he pulled himself up and twisted until they were eye to eye. “A cold milk, please.” He drew two cigarettes out of a packet, and Agnes motioned for him to light one for her. The barmaid put the drinks down in front of them. The milk was in a child’s tumbler, and Shug pushed it back towards her and demanded a different glass.
He slid the lit cigarette between Agnes’s lips and stroked the nape of her neck where a soft curl was escaping. She reached into her handbag and then, pushing the hair back into her crown, with a skoooosh she blasted it with sweet-smelling hairspray. Agnes took a long mouthful of the sweet drink and smacked her lips. “Elizabeth Taylor has been to Blackpool. I wonder if she likes whelks?”
Shug picked the inside of his nose with the ringed pinkie. He rolled the mucus between his thumb and forefinger. “Who doesnae?”
She spun to face him. “Maybe we should move here. It could be like this all the time.”
He laughed and shook his head at her, like she was a child. “Everyday it is something different with you. I’m exhausted trying to keep up.” He traced a finger along the shiny hem of her skirt as she watched the summer crowds push by outside the bar. Ordinary folk, already in winter coats.
“You know what I want? I want to play some bingo.” The warmth of the drink was in her now. She wrapped her arms around herself in a contented hug. “All these lights. I’m feeling lucky.”
“Aye? I asked them to turn them on just for ye.”
Fresh drinks came. Agnes fished around and pulled out the straw, the stirrer, and the two fat ice cubes. “This time I mean it. I’m going to win big. I’m going to start living. I’m going to give Sighthill a showing up. I can just feel it.” She finished the brandy in one swallow.
Their rented room was at the top of a Victorian house that was set three streets back from the promenade. It was plain even for a Blackpool B & B, and it smelled like the kind of place that rented rooms to temporary lodgers, not families on holiday. Each carpeted landing had a different, settled-in musk. The place smelled of burnt toast and TV static, as if the landlady never liked to open a window.
It was quiet at that hour in the morning. Agnes lay in a pile at the bottom of the carpeted stairs singing tunelessly to herself. “Ahh’m onny hew-man. Ahh’m just a wooh-man.”
There were feet moving behind closed doors and old floorboards creaked overhead. Shug put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Shh. Be quiet, will ye. You’ll wake up every soul in the place.”
Agnes pushed his arm away from her face, threw her arm wide, and sang louder. “Show me the stairwaa-ay ah have to cli-imb.”
Lights came on in one of the rooms. Shug could see it from under the thin door. He put his hands under her arms and tried to pick her up, drag her up the carpeted stairs. The more he pulled the more easily she slid through his hands, like a boneless bag of flesh. Each time he got leverage, she would become formless and slip free. Agnes spilt back on to the stairs with a giggle and went on singing to herself.
An Englishman in one of the rented rooms hissed through his closed door, “Please keep it down. Before I call the poh-lice! People are trying to s-sleep.” To Shug he sounded like a small effeminate man, the way he dribbled out his sibilant esses. Shug would have liked him to open the door. Shug would have liked to leave a sovereign print on his face.
Agnes feigned affront. “Aye, phone the police you spoilsport. I’m on my holid—”
Shug clamped his hand tight over her wet mouth. She only giggled. With mischief in her eyes, she licked the inside of his palm with a fat tongue. It felt like a warm wet slab of flank mutton. It turned his stomach. Tightening his grip, he dug his ringed fingers into her cheeks till he forced her dentures apart. The smile left her eyes. Leaning his face close to hers, he hissed: “I’m only going to tell you this the once. Pick yersel up. Get yersel up they stairs.”
