Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

After all his years of practice, Leek was angry that it was Catherine who was disappearing first.

Agnes smiled out at him, the too-toothy grimace that telegraphed a thousand messages. Her eyes seemed dull to him, unfixed, and instantly he knew she was gone. She disappeared again, back to the telephone table, back to the drink.

Red-haired, stocky, and flat-faced, his head joined directly to his body as if a neck were an unnecessary luxury.

The boy had grown so much over the past two years in Pithead. It was hard to describe, he had grown taller but he had also sunk somehow, like bread dough stretched much too thin. She could see he had slid deeper into himself and become more watchful and guarded. He was nearly eight now, and often he could seem so much older.

Each time the hills wiped him away he felt more unnoticed, more like an unseen ghost than usual.

and when the driver let fly his angry horn, they felt seen by the world, they felt alive.

He didn’t realize it, sitting there alone, but while he drew his hunched shoulders fell from around his ears.

Leek never flinched, he’d practised that for Agnes. He locked the door that lay behind his eyes and walked away, leaving the body, the plaster dust, the flask of cold tea, and the angry gaffer behind.

didn’t make him feel so much like a discarded thing, something so easily left behind.

Still, Leek thought this new sadness was better than the anger he had felt at first. Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.

But that was already a September two years ago. He thought back to the time when he had received the letter. He saw Shug leave. He saw Catherine watch the door and his funny little brother, hungry and fearful, while his mother sat with her head in the gas oven.

It was pride, not danger, that made her so angry.

“Don’t let it bother you. They see the one thing that’s a bit more special than them and then they just pile on.”

He almost smiled as he stepped back into the daylight, but it was too quiet. The grass was gone.

If he was to die, he would die in the boots. He thought only of her face when they found him without the wellies, and her Dr Scholl’s sandal and the welt it would leave on his corpse.

He felt something was wrong. Something inside him felt put together incorrectly. It was like they could all see it, but he was the only one who could not say what it was. It was just different, and so it was just wrong.

She sat drinking the dregs of old lager and wondering where exactly her boy was hiding from his childhood.

They both knew the keen edge of need. The women could have been closer then. Separately, they had both gazed hungrily at the pages of the Freemans and lain awake in the quiet of the night, wondering how to make a pittance stretch around.

To Colleen, diddling and shoplifting were one thing, necessary sins. Black tights and high heels were altogether more mortal.

dry. She wanted to kiss him once more, she wanted some last memory of the fine man that he had been, that he still was.

The whole time the Sister soothed her, in a gentle, calming voice, she petted her like a cat, and it made Lizzie want to tell her secret things.

Agnes’s face was very thickly made up, and it looked to Shuggie like the paint had been layered over several other faces she had forgotten to take off first.

“She is not,” said Shuggie, quite proudly. “My mother has never worked a day in her life. She’s far too good-looking for that.”

She was as wide as a small wall.

“My mother says it doesn’t cost anything to take pride in your appearance.”

“It’s OK, though. You don’t have to like her. Sometimes she drinks from underneath the kitchen sink. Nobody really likes her then. Not my daddy, or my big sister, or my big brother. But that’s OK. Leek doesn’t like anyone really. Mammy says he’s a social spastic.”

Sister Nurse. You never answered my question. My mother told me that my grandaddy would be going to heaven soon, and I wanted to know if he had to get a bus or if we could take him in a black hackney?”

They don’t take anything, because it’s not their bodies that go to God. It’s their spirit.”

His granny was smiling at him. It was the smile she had when she was watching Sunday telly and not paying much attention. She didn’t look sad at all, Shuggie thought, she looked peaceful, resigned.

“I’ve never liked those AA places. They attract the lowest kind of people. God gave you a will. You should use it to save yourself.”

can. “I feel like he’s just back from that bastarding war. It’s too soon for him to leave again.”

He waited as the women talked and talked and talked and did not listen to each other.

It grew so late it became early.

“No, I’ve been in your shoes. I suppose I just hoped for better shoes for you.”

“Whatever it takes Agnes, keep going, even if it’s not for you, even if it’s just for them. Keep going. That’s what mammies do.”

She would never have admitted it, but she missed the steamie. She used to love the ritual of it; it was a place free of men, free of weans, a place where the women could share the bits of themselves that they couldn’t talk about at chapel.

As the dirt loosened from the cloth, the women would stand around in a half-circle and work the gossip into a lather. Nothing happened in Germiston that the steamie didn’t know about.

Now, she knew, they were talking about her. Now they waited for her to finish on the wringers; they would say happy goodbyes, and when she was gone they would pluck her good name to bits like a bit of old ham bone.

She remembered how Wullie had felt before the day he told her he couldn’t take it any more.

She had told her mammy Isobel how that gave her hope, but Isobel had travelled a long hard road in life. She held her youngest daughter in her arms and told Lizzie to put aside hope, to give her attention to practical things, her new bairn, her wee job, and feeding the pair of them. “If ye hope,” said Isobel, “Ye also mope.”

They didn’t talk. They lay there not touching, and he felt farther away from her now than he ever had in Egypt.

When he came in the door, there was no pram, there was no blanket, there was no strange little boy. He gathered his girls into his arms, and Lizzie could smell the cold fresh air on him, like faraway open fields.

Agnes knew the constables were running their eyes the drunken length of her, as though this ruin of a woman would drive any mother to the same. Their cold eyes and their warm words did not match.

Here it was then, the number that Catherine never wanted her to have. It was the loneliest feeling.

In her heart she hoped her daughter was happy. She hoped Catherine would call out to her, that Leek would pass the telephone and she could tell her for herself how much she wanted her home.

one with tap water to dry the cracks in her throat, one with milk to line her sour stomach, and the third with a mixture of the flat leftovers of Special Brew and stout that he had gathered from around the house and frothed together with a fork. He knew this was the one she would reach for first, the one that would stop the crying in her bones.

He was always reluctant to leave the protective cocoon of his bed; under the covers his day still had an unspoilt quality to

If the drink made Agnes melancholy and regretful then it made Jinty sharp and needling. She liked to sit and put the world to right, telling people where they went wrong.

Agnes nodded sadly. She would have loved a house full of grandchildren. She would have loved a house to be full again of her own children.

As he was the eldest McAvennie, the trouble between Colleen and Big Jamesy had the deepest repercussions for him; the promotion to “man of the house” was instant, and he found himself caring for his siblings as Colleen numbed herself on Bridie’s blue pills.