Colourless daylight poured through the net curtains. It poked her in the face, and with a snort she thumped back into consciousness. Agnes opened her eyes slowly and found herself staring at the cream Artexed ceiling with its icy stalagmite texture. Her lips wouldn’t close over the sticky film on her top teeth as the dry boak rose inside her. Under her right hand she felt the slippery damask fabric of the armchair. Her fingers traced the familiar fag-burn holes. She was vaguely upright, cradling a dead phone receiver.
She sat still awhile, her head tilted over the back of the chair, like an open pedal bin. She closed her eyes again and listened to her brain thump loudly. Like a tide, the blood flushed in and out, in and out of her skull. Over the ebb she could tell the house was empty. It was early, but the boy had taken himself off to school again. He had already missed too many days. Too many days sat at her feet, just waiting and watching. The school didn’t like that. Father Barry had said that the Social Work would have to be notified if he did not start having a regular attendance.
Some mornings she would wake up with a fright and find Shuggie staring at her. He would be dressed, dwarfed by the bag slung over both shoulders, his face washed and his wet hair parted and brushed in the front only. She would lie there, fully dressed, trying to pull her dry lips over her teeth, while he would say, “Good morning,” and then quietly turn and leave for school. He hadn’t wanted to leave without letting her know he would be right back afterwards. He took her pinkie in his and swore it.
The house was quiet. She tilted her head forward into her hands, and the blood filled the back of her eyes. Shuggie wasn’t standing there as usual. On the table in front of her was a mug of cold tea, the top already congealed with a milky skin. Next to that a slice of white toast poked through with a clumsy knife, littered with lumps of butter too thick to spread. With a hand over her eyes she scanned the low coffee table for something to calm the shakes. She tilted mugs towards her and looked inside for a mouthful of beer. The mugs were empty. Agnes reached for a cigarette and with a sorry whimper pulled the last one out of the packet. She lit it with shaking fingers and took a long drag.
Feeling no better, she got up and shuffled around the couch looking for hidden quarter bottles or half-finished cans. She stoated around the empty house, tipping out all the hiding places that might hold a forgotten drink: the laundry basket, behind the vinyl video case covers that were made to look like encyclopaedias. On her knees, she pulled all the empty grocery bags out from underneath the kitchen sink till she knelt waist-deep in a cumulus of blue and white plastic.
The panic set in. From room to room she wandered, making shrieking, sucking noises of frustration through her front teeth. She had to keep stopping to spit gobbets of rising boak into sinks and old tea mugs. She dug out her big black leather bag and rifled around inside for her purse, sprang the metal clasp at the top, and opened it. Saint Jude rolled around at the bottom in a bed of fluff and grit. It was Thursday, and all the Monday and all the Tuesday benefit money was already done in.
On the Monday prior, she had lain awake through the night waiting for the radio clock to turn to eight. In high heels and uneven eyeshadow she had fairly run up the Pit Road to cash what the miners’ wives called the “Monday Book.” Standing at the back of the benefit queue, her head held high, her hands shaking in her pockets, Agnes had tried to ignore the women in their thin nylon jackets that made dry swishing noises. She stood there separate and aloof, as they rattled with their smoker’s cough, grumbling with sticky phlegm.
Thirty-eight pounds a week was meant to keep and feed them all. It made mothers stand in the little shop and look at pint cartons of milk like they were a luxury.
Agnes cashed the Monday Book with the air of a queen. She walked directly past the milk to the front of the shop, and promptly bought twelve cans of Special Brew. She talked cheerily about the good weather they had been having, but the Indian man said nothing. She was sure the blue elephant thing hanging behind him was giving her the hairy eyeball. She reclasped her purse demurely as he slid the cold metal tins into a plastic bag. The women behind her did sums out loud, their lips moving as they counted, adding bread to oven chips to cigarettes and then, defeated, putting the bread quietly back on the shelf. Agnes slipped back out into the street, and behind the low sandstone shop, she crouched in the broken glass and popped open the first cold can.
On a Tuesday morning she went back to the shop already with a drink in her. She glided up the dual carriageway, her knees dipping elegantly with each step. Agnes cashed in her Tuesday Book of eight pounds fifty in child support. Fortified by the Special Brew she told the shopkeeper that his blue elephant gave her the “heebie-jeebies.”
But it was Thursday now. She looked down into the purse, empty but for Saint Jude and the oose gathering in the creases. Sad, selfish tears of the poor me’s welled in her eyes. She raked a finger through the dirty ashtray. She needed to think what to do next.
The alcohol leaving her body made it hard to watch the television, so she ran a hot bath. The water would make her feel less cold, less sore. She rinsed the sweat and flatness out of her hair. She took the flannel cloth and began wiping the taste off her teeth and lay back in the scalding water and thought how she could get some money. Across her soft middle ran a deep red welt where, after she had passed out, her black tights had dug in, bruising the flesh. She stuck her finger in the welt. It ran across her spare tyre like a train track and that made her think of the Glasgow train, Paddy’s Market, which lay underneath its arches, and the pawnshop that sat there.
Without drying herself she ran about the house in a wet housecoat looking for something to pawn. In the daylight everything looked cheap and worthless. She turned every Capodimonte ornament in her hands and even tried picking up the black-and-white television, but she would never be able to hump it by foot into the city. In the bedroom she considered her jewellery, all the odd pieces that were lying loose in an old penny-bank bag: the Claddagh rings her mother had given her, her granny’s locket, Catherine’s christening bangle. It took effort, but she reluctantly put the bag back in the drawer.
She did a sly amble past Leek’s heavy toolbox. She nudged it with her toe. It was empty, he had taken all the tools with him to the YTS job site. He had carried it all, even the things he would surely not need. He had learned his lesson the last time she had been itching for pawn. Agnes scratched at her palm. She kicked the empty toolbox and went to Catherine’s wardrobe. She was surprised to find so little inside, it was like Catherine was a lodger who hadn’t committed to a new place. She turned a pair of high suede boots in her hand, but they had long been ruined with rain and mud.
Losing hope, she opened the little linen cupboard that held the good towels. There, folded away in a bin bag, was the old-fashioned mink coat she had bought on Brendan McGowan’s good tick. She took the plastic bag out of the cupboard and pushed her hand inside to the furry pelt. It felt like pure money.
Within the hour she had her hair set, the long mink coat on, and was walking up the main road the long miles to Paddy’s Market. She walked against the traffic, her head high, with a knowing smile on her face. The Pit grit pushed into her open heels as if it were beach sand. She straightened her back to look like she enjoyed letting the rushing traffic blow through her hair and tried to ignore the fine dust that rasped between her toes. Passing cars slowed at the odd sight. Her face burned with the flying grit and the shame, but she tilted her head back and walked on. She felt like she must have looked mental.
Every time she neared a bus stop she lingered like she was waiting for a bus, making a grand gesture of looking up her sleeve at a watch she did not own. Then she waited until the traffic thinned a little and walked on to the next one, her head thumping, her heart burning. Four miles or so from the scheme, a bus slowed and actually stopped for her. Looking the other way she took one hand from her mink pocket and waved it away, like she was too good, as miners’ wives gawped out the window at her.
By the time she reached the outskirts of the city it had started to spit. It was a light sprinkle at first that hung on the tips of the coat and glistened like hairspray. Agnes was exhausted from walking in the high heels, but as she crossed the narrow streets of her first marriage, the fear that she could meet someone she knew made her walk faster. The spit became a downpour and soon the drenched coat slapped off her bare legs like a wet dog tail. She took refuge in a tenement doorway and watched the buses push dirty waves on to the pavement. For a moment, she missed the good Catholic.
Black mascara ran down her cheeks. She had a crumpled wad of toilet paper, and folding the sour boak stains into the back she wiped the lines beneath her eyes. The coat was sodden and matted in places where the water had pooled and sat. She took an ornament out of each pocket and rubbed the glass faces of the ballerinas till they were dry.
Across the road sat a long grey building. On the left hand was a taxi garage of sorts, where parts of broken black hacks and minibuses lay around like dinosaur bones, and somewhere in the back a radio played. Beyond this sat a small office, and through the dirty window Agnes could see that the walls were lined with new fan belts and hubcaps, tins of grease, and bottles of engine oil. It was a heavy service garage, not for the casual motorist. There were no packaged sandwiches, no maps of things to see.
A little bell rang as Agnes went inside. She was making a puddle on the floor as a man in overalls came through at the bell’s command. Red-haired, stocky, and flat-faced, his head joined directly to his body as if a neck were an unnecessary luxury. He looked up from his dirty hands, surprised to see a beautiful lady in a fur coat standing there.
“I’m really very sorry to bother you,” started Agnes, in her best Milngavie accent. “But I got caught in the rain and I wondered if you had a toilet I may use. You know. To tidy up a little.” She pointed at the wet coat.
“Well …” He rubbed his stubble. “It’s no really for customers.”
Agnes pulled at the coat; it shook big globs of water. “Oh, right,” she said, her eyes falling to the dirty floor.
He studied her for a minute and with a scratch of his thick arm declared, “Well, ye dinnae look like a customer either, so ah suppose that mibbe it wid be alright.”
He led her through the garage. Taxis lay in states of disrepair, leaking motor oil that made the floor difficult to walk on in heels. She watched the coat drip on to the greasy cement and the water bead and run away like little tears.
“Um, wait there just a minute,” said the man. He darted nervously inside a thin red door. She heard the rrshhhh noise of canned air freshener, and he appeared a minute later with rolls of magazines and newspapers under his arm. “It’s a bit basic, but ye’ll find all ye need.” As he held the door, a blonde with big tits peeped out with a saucy wink from under his arm.
Agnes went into the filthy bathroom and closed the door tight. She stood for a long while looking at the melted old hoor in the mirror. In the toilet there was no automatic dryer, so she took a handful of paper towels and started grabbing fistfuls of the wet coat, pressing the towel into it like she had spilt something on a carpet. As much as she could grab and squeeze, the coat kept giving out more and more rainwater.
It took her a long time before she felt composed enough to step back out into the garage. The man was right outside the door, frozen to the spot, with two mismatched mugs. “You looked like ye could use a warm cup of tea.”
“Do I look that bad?”
“Oh, naw.”
She took the mug; it was only slightly oily. “I must look like a drowned rat,” she said, in the hopes he would disagree.
“Drowned mink, really.”
As the man looked around for a clean seat, Agnes studied him closely. He had washed his face since she came in. There was a ring of oil round his neck and sideburns where the cloth had missed, and the front of his fair hair was still wet against his pink face. He was handsome, she thought, in a solid, Shetland pony sort of way. He pulled out a bar stool, and she noticed his left hand had only two fingers and a thumb, the other two gone like he had chewed them down when he was nervous.
He met her eyes and moved the hand behind his back. “It’s a long story.”
Agnes cringed, embarrassed to have been caught staring. “We’ve all got a couple of them.”
“Missing fingers?”
“No,” she laughed. “Long stories.”
“Like how youse are off to pawn that coat?”
She laughed again, too sharply this time, and then she stopped. He wasn’t laughing with her now. She brought that Milngavie voice out again, the one that said, I am a woman with a rich man and a big house. “I am not off to pawn this coat. What on earth gives you that idea?”
Without hesitation the man said, “Oh, ah’ll gie ye one better. Ye’re off to pawn that coat, ye’ve walked here aw the way frae Ballieston or Rutherglen.” He looked off to the side. “No, wait! There’s a pawnshop in Rutherglen.” He went quiet for a minute. “You’ve walked here from …” he snapped the fingers of his good hand. “Pithead!”
Agnes blanched.
“Am ah right?”
“No.”
He paused for a minute and looked at her over the top of his cracked mug. “God, ah’m sorry, Missus. Ah mean, how fuckin’ rude of me. Ah thought ye were off to pawn that coat. Ye know, for drink money like.”
Agnes lowered the mug from her cold lips. Her eyes found his. “Well, you’re wrong.”
“Aye, well now, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s for the best then, int’it?”
“Why?” she asked, despite herself.
“Cos the Gallowgate pawnshop is shut for gasworks, that’s why.” She scowled at him to see his bluff. He only raised an eyebrow. “Look, ah wisnae trying to be rude. Honest Injun. It’s just that it takes one to know one, eh?” He held up his bad hand in testimony and wiggled his two good fingers.
Agnes sat the mug down with a slosh. “Thank you for letting me use your toilet, but really I’d better go. My husband will be worried sick.”
“Aye, ye do that. It’s a long walk home in the rain. Still, mibbe ye’ll find that wedding ring ye’ve lost.”
Agnes had gone right off of him. She lifted her head high and pushed her black curls away from her face. “What do you want with all this?”
He turned his mouth down in disappointment. “Nothing. Well, not what youse think anyway. Look, Missus, ye just came in here in a right sorry state, and from the look o’ ye, there was a thing or two ah could easy tell.” He slowed himself slightly. “Ah could tell because ah’d been through it maself, that’s all. Don’t get your knickers in a knot. Finish your tea, won’t ye? Ah used a new teabag for that cup and everything.”
Agnes took up the tea again, using it to hide her shock, to fill the silence, to stop the bubbling inside her gut.
“So, have ye been to the AA yet?”
Agnes stared at him blankly.
“Alcoholics Anonymous?” He started singing, “Wan day at a time, sweet Jee-sus?” Agnes shook her head.
“Well, are ye at least willing to admit ye have a problem?” He tilted his head like a tired schoolteacher. “Ye came in here wi’ the level-five shakes.”
“I … I was wet … and cold.”
He laughed. “Look, when ye are wet or cold yer knees knock and yer teeth chatter. Ye know, like this.” He made a cartoon impression of a frozen lunatic. “BUT! When ye are scratching around looking for a bottle of lighter fluid to drink, ye shake like this.” The man shook like a reanimated corpse.
The shame rose in her again. “What would you know about it?”
“Ah know that yon mink will only get you about six bottles of vodka and mibbe a hot fish supper.” He picked at his teeth. “Well, at least my mammy’s did when I robbed it off of her. I also know that six bottles of vodka, a fish supper, and three nights spent sleeping in the gutter will gie ye septicaemia.” He waggled his half fingers again.
They were quiet for a while after that. He opened a packet of cigarettes, and after taking one from the pack with his teeth, he offered the pack to Agnes. Agnes lit the cigarette and drew on it like she was famished. Her shoulders fell, and catching her breath she gazed around at the black hack graveyard. “Do you know a taxi driver named Shug Bain, by any chance?”
“Cannae say that ah do,” said the man, studying her face.
“He’s a short, fat, balding pig. Fancies himself as a Casanova.”
“That could be any one of them,” he laughed. “What rank is he wi’?”
“Northside.”
“Naw, they put their motors in at yon garage on the Red Road. Probably never met him.”
“Well, if you ever meet him could you fix his brakes?”
The man smiled. “For you, beautiful, absolutely.”
The man finished his cigarette and went on studying Agnes. “He’s no the reason you’re headed down the plughole, is he?” Agnes didn’t answer. He began to howl meanly: “Ah-ha, ya daft eejit. Doin’ yersel in for a man.”
Her shoulders pulled up proudly again. “What if I am?”
“Do ye know what to do, if ye really want to get yer own back?” He paused.
So like a man, she thought, to have an opinion on everything. “What?”
“It’s quite easy. Ye should just get the fuck on with it.” He slapped his hands and threw them open in a wide tah-dah gesture. “Get on wi’ yer fuckin’ life. Have a great life. Ah promise that nothing would piss the pig-faced baldy bastard off more. Guar-rant-teed.”