Thirty-Two

There was no real stour to be wiped away, but Shuggie wasted the morning by wiping Agnes’s porcelain ornaments. In the move into Mrs Bakhsh’s bedsit the tiny fawn had chipped an ear, and the beautiful girl who sold rosy apples had lost a whole arm, still clutching her McIntosh red. For weeks it had made him feel terrible just to look at them. Now he took real care to wipe them all gently and set them back exactly in the right place.

That morning he picked up the long-limbed fawn and turned it carefully in his hand. He had expected the chip on the fawn’s left ear, but as he looked closer he saw how the paint was fading away from her lashed eyes and the white markings were rubbing off her flank. It angered him. He had always been so careful. He had always tried his best.

Shuggie squeezed the ornament until his knuckles blanched white. The fawn kept beaming its same serene smile. He pressed against the dainty front leg, lightly at first, then he pressed harder and harder until the porcelain gave. It made an awful grating, snicking sound as it broke. He stood without breathing for a long while. Under the shiny porcelain veneer the ceramic was rough and chalky. He ran his finger along the sharp broken edge. Then, without thinking, he pulled again and again until he had snapped all the legs off the ornament. When it lay in pieces in his hand, he found he could not bear to look at it again. He dropped the broken fawn into the space between his headboard and the wall. Then he quickly gathered his coat and the bag holding the tinned fish he had bought from Kilfeathers, and locking the bedsit door, he went out into the bracing rain.

Shuggie floated in a daze towards the main road. Despite the rain, Pakistani men were still busy putting boxes of brown vegetables out in front of their shops. Screeching music blared out of the Bollywood video store; its windows were jarring with bright posters of swarthy-looking men holding doe-eyed women in swooning embraces. He stopped for a moment to study them, then he walked on, passing by unnoticed.

He boarded an orange corporation bus, and with a noisy clunk the driver issued a long white ticket, half-price for children. He climbed the stairs and sat on one of the last dry seats on the top deck. The bus crawled through the slow traffic, but Shuggie didn’t mind. He wiped a peephole in the condensation and watched the city fall away. The bus shuddered and turned into an abandoned scheme on the right. The gable ends of half-demolished tenements lay exposed in the rain. Brightly painted front rooms and wallpapered hallways stood bare and embarrassed-looking above piles of rubble. In one backcourt there was still a line of clean washing strung proudly between two makeshift poles. In another, happy weans kicked a bladder where whole blocks had been torn down around them.

The bus rumbled over the Clyde. The river water reflected the grey hulk of the Finnieston Crane as it loomed lonely and idle over the water. Shuggie wiped again at the damp windows and thought of Catherine. His mind always went to her when he saw the rusting cranes. She had not come home for Agnes’s funeral. She had told Leek, who had told Shuggie, she would rather remember her mother in the good times. It would do her no good to see how the drink had whittled her. Now, looking at the cranes, Shuggie realized he couldn’t picture Catherine’s face clearly any more. He wondered exactly what Catherine could still see when she thought of their mammy. Maybe she could see only lovely things.

They had burnt Agnes on a bright cold morning.

Shuggie had sat with her body for the best part of two days. At night he tucked a blanket around her, and the next morning he took it off again. He turned on the fire when she grew cold, but it was no good, her skin could retain no heat. He called Leek at the boarding house down south to tell him their mother was dead. Leek waited a long while for him to stop crying, and then he told Shuggie what to do, step by step, and then very patiently, he repeated it slowly, as Shuggie wrote it all down in Agnes’s phone book. That was good of him, Shuggie thought later, not to lose his temper.

Leek came north on the overnight coach. He travelled all those miles and then stopped ten feet away from Agnes’s body. He never seemed to be able to come any closer. He let Shuggie fuss with their mother, and later he simply watched as his brother bent over on the undertaker’s carpet and smashed and glued cheap stones together till he made her a pair of earrings that almost looked like they could match.

Leek organized the cremation. Shuggie followed Leek the entire week, too tired to cry, too stunned to be of further help. From the procurator fiscal to the undertaker, then on to the chapel, Shuggie followed behind him, pallid, useless, mute. Several times Leek stopped in the middle of whatever he was doing and turned to his brother. He said nothing; he left empty space for Shuggie to confess whatever was heavy on his mind. Shuggie tried, he wanted to tell Leek what had happened, but the words wouldn’t come, he couldn’t admit it. All he would say was that he had been tired, that he wished he had tried harder.

The DSS would pay to have her cremated but would not stretch to the cost of burial, because there was no space left in Wullie and Lizzie’s plot. Leek kept her death from the paper; there was no announcement in the Evening Times. Still, a woman in the next close had been intermittently in the AA with Agnes, soon the word spread through the fellowship, and there were strangers at the door. Then word of her death leached out to Pithead, and all the old ghouls came out to Daldowie Crematorium.

Big Shug had not come to Agnes’s cremation. The only black hackney that came to Daldowie was Eugene’s, and although Big Shug must have heard the news through Catherine or Rascal, he never showed face. Shuggie had packed a backpack full of clean clothes, just in case, then felt stupid for having done so. Throughout the service he searched the faces for his father, but Shug never came.

Leek frowned at Shuggie, like he was angry at his hope, disappointed that Shuggie was stupid enough to still believe. Leek said Big Shug was a selfish shitebag. It made Shuggie sad then, not only because it was true but also because Leek had looked so much like their mother when he had said it.

Inside the crematorium the mourners sat along the outside edges and towards the back. Only Shuggie and Leek sat in the front. Eugene sat near the door, flanked by Colleen and Bridie. Jinty, half-cut already, hung off young Lamby. When Shuggie turned around he thought how nobody looked truly sad. After they rolled Agnes into the ritual chamber, he heard a woman’s voice behind him tut, “Cremation? They’ll never get the bloody flame out with that old soak. ”

Until then, Shuggie had not thought properly about her being cremated. When they put her coffin on the guide rollers, his mind was filled with supermarket conveyor belts. Then it dawned on him. He found himself straining, peering wide-eyed and wild, to see where she was going next. As he looked across at his brother, Leek only nodded calmly and said, “Aye, that’s her away. ”

It was what Leek used to say as they watched Agnes get into a hackney. “That’s her away, ” he would say, as he emerged from behind the good net curtains, grinning down at his younger brother, and then set about tormenting him in front of the evening news.

That’s her away. It was what you said when you disposed of something.

Outside the crematorium there were white buds on the bare trees, and the smell of thawing greenery hung across the memorial garden. Some of the mourners crossed the grass to offer their condolences to the boys. The bravest came themselves; others, like Colleen, sent a delegate, in the form of Bridie. Jinty had a difficult time crossing the damp ground. She looked perplexed when Leek said there would be no reception, no drink to celebrate.

“What, no a single drop? ” she asked.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? ” he spat, the front of his false teeth locked tight.

Eugene took Jinty by the arm then, to steer her away. He turned to Agnes’s boys to say something kind. But Leek simply turned away.

Shuggie rested his head against the bus window and tried not to think about the funeral any more. His fingers separated some coins from the others. He thought to call Leek later, from the payphone outside Mrs Bakhsh’s bedsit. He knew now how it should go: Shuggie would ask how the new baby was, but he would not ask about art school. Then when Leek asked him how he was, Shuggie would say he was doing fine, because he had learned that was what his brother wanted to hear. They would both pretend to be fine, and then they would talk awhile about a train ticket and a visit south, something small and distant to look forward to. Then Leek would go quiet. He knew Leek didn’t ever like to talk much. In one way that was good; to call south on the greedy phone box was expensive, and Mrs Bakhsh refused to install a phone of the boarders’ own.

The bus rumbled on. The Clyde shipbuilding yards were dead now. The wide river was quiet and empty, except for a lonely boatman in a small boat. The reflective strips on his raincoat shone bright as diamonds through the steady smirr. Everyone knew of this man; he was always on the front page of the free Glaswegian newspaper. Like his father before him, the man patrolled the Clyde without rest. He rescued those old men who, with a skinful, had fallen in over by Glasgow Green. Other times he pulled out the bodies of the men and women who hadn’t wanted to be rescued, those who slipped silently, deliberately, from the side of stone bridges into the brackish water.

Shuggie got off the bus at the back of Central Station. Even thick with grime and dabbled with pigeon shit, the riveted glass arches of the train station were still proud and magnificent. The mass of the glass station ran above some of Argyle Street and made a dark tunnel of the wide street below. The overhang was filled with fish and chip shops, bright places that sold half-priced denims, and a windowless pub that opened as early as it could in the morning and was already thick with smoke by lunchtime. Shuggie stopped outside a bakery. The ovens of the shop made it glow bright and warm, and the air was sweet with cheap icing sugar and white bread.

Sometimes he would just stand here and pass an empty hour, pretending to wait for a bus but only warming himself in the sugary dream of the air vent. He had found himself squinting at the taxi rank opposite on one such visit. He had been bending down slightly, buckling his knees and searching the faces of the drivers, before he realized what he was hoping for. Ashamed, he straightened up quickly and hurried away.

Shuggie went inside the bakery. There was a long queue of damp office girls dripping over the hot pastry cabinet. Shuggie waited patiently, his eyelids drooping in the sweet heat. A rosy-cheeked shop assistant scratched the back of her hairnet, and he asked her for two strawberry tarts. As she started to slide the tarts into a paper bag the glossy red jam began to spoil and stick to the paper. “Excuse me, Missus. Could I please have them in a box? ”

“It’s fower cakes to a box, son, ” she said, with a hot, bored chew.

Shuggie folded the five-pound note around his fingers. He would not be paid again until next week but said, “OK, then. I’ll take four, please. They are a present. ”

The woman huffed, but she was not unkind. “Ye should have said so, Casanova. Ah didn’t know ah was serving the last of the big spenders. ”

“It’s not like that, ” Shuggie mumbled, his chin to his chest.

With two quick turns of her wrist the woman snapped a cardboard box together. The red tarts looked like four ruby hearts. He paid the woman, pulled up his hood, and went back into the dreich. The money did the thing it always did: now that the fiver was broken, he found himself in a small shop, spending some shrapnel on a large bottle of fizzy ginger. With the tinned fish in his bag and the ruby hearts he walked the length of the long street. He wandered through the old part of Merchant City until he had covered the Trongate and the Saltmarket and found himself back at the wide river. He walked along the empty riverbank until he came to the mouth of Shipbank Lane. Under the overhang of the old Saint Enoch railway, groups of men huddled in T-shirt sleeves and thin suit jackets. They shivered and jangled as they hawked pirated videocassettes off flattened cardboard boxes. Women ignored them as they came down the narrow alley carrying bags filled with second-hand clothes they had bought from the market at the top.

She was there, exactly where she said she would be.

The girl was opposite the market mouth, sat on the low boundary fence as though she were rusted on to the very metal. In the soft rain her long hair was poker straight and the large hoops of her earrings made her seem more childlike than she was. It hurt Shuggie to see her looking so drawn and pinched. When he had first met her, with Keir Weir in the year before Agnes died, there had been a defiant bravery to her. She had been wise, and she had been gallus, and he knew now it had all been a childish front, a mouthy bravado that covered the hurt inside her. Now her pretty, freckled features were set in that closed, self-protecting way she had developed. Her lips were almost always pursed, and her raisin-coloured eyes were constantly scanning the busy crowd for trouble. There was a calcified hardness to her now that she wore like armour and too often forgot to take off.

“You took yer time. I’m soaked to ma skin, ” said Leanne Kelly. There was a small pile of shopping bags tucked defensively between her legs.

“I’m sorry, ” said Shuggie. He climbed the fence next to his friend and sat just as she did. He checked his stance against hers and then altered it, till they were the same. He was as tall as her now, taller even, and he reached out and rubbed her wrist where her anorak never seemed to cover her skin. “So what do you want to do? Walk about a bit? ”

Leanne smirked. “Good thing we’re no winching. ” She flicked her grey chewing gum into the puddle. “Ye’re pure predictable. ”

“Sorry. ”

She ran her hand over the side of his face and then shoved him roughly. “I’m jist kidding. Course we’ll walk around, what else is there? ” She fidgeted with the bags at her feet. “Jist let me do this one thing first, OK? ”

He knew what she meant to do. If Agnes were alive, if he still had the chance, he would want the same thing for his mother. Still, as he watched Leanne pick at her lips in worry, he could not help himself: “Leanne. Come on. If I was at this nonsense you would batter me for it. It’s useless. I’m sorry, but it is. ”

She cut him off. “Don’t start. Ah fuckin’ know. ” Leanne scowled up at the rain like it was a nuisance she could tell to just go away. “’Asides, I’m no even sure ah’ll see her. ”

Even in the soft rain Paddy’s Market was busy. The alley snaked the length of the disused train lines and into each of the abandoned railway arches were stalls full of children’s clothes, bright floral sunloungers, and bedside lamps in gaudy football colours. The market used every available space: clothes hung from the sooty ceilings, and folding tables were covered with odd ornaments and old watches. Vendors spilt out messily into the tight alley, their second-hand furniture already waterlogged and ruined in the spit.

Shuggie watched a blond girl with black hair roots. She crouched over what looked like all of her belongings, which she had laid out thoughtfully on a muddy piece of ground. He thought how Agnes would have both loved and hated it here.

Leanne handed him a polystyrene cup full of tea, and when he took the lid off he saw that it was already cold and filmy. He looked at the milky cataract and felt bad that she had been waiting for him a long time.

“Agnes would have been fifty-two the day, ” he said, then he added quickly, “although she would have denied it blue in the face. ”

Shuggie tilted the fizzy ginger towards Leanne like an arrogant sommelier he had seen on the television. “I thought we could have a wee birthday party. Cheer us up. ” He was grinning as he passed her the sweet strawberry tarts. She opened the box with a soft coo, and he was suddenly disappointed at the mess of blood-red jam squished against the lid. “Bugger! I carried them as carefully as I could. ”

Leanne shoved her shoulder into his. “Don’t worry. They’re gorgeous. ”

The tarts that were so lovely an hour ago now sat between them looking spoilt and damp. Shuggie reached out and snatched one. He wanted them gone. With a hand like a shovel he forced a whole tart into his mouth. The sweet sticky jam and the warm cream filled his throat to choking. He sucked the cake down and felt better for the weight of it in his gut. He reached into the box for a second, and this time Leanne turned her body away from him and squealed, “Get aff! They’re mine, ye greedy beggar. ”

Shuggie laughed; he liked to see her look less worried. He mashed the last of the jam between his lips till it coated his mouth like a messy lipstick and made great gurning faces at her. Leanne shoved him away. She ate two tarts, slowly and delicately, taking care to separate the jam from the cream and then handing the unloved shortbread pastry to Shuggie to finish. She closed the lid on the last.

They sat together in that huddled way, as the rain stopped and started, and stopped and started, just drinking the cold tea and sweet ginger and talking and waiting for something that might not even happen. Leanne spoke first. “So, our Calum’s got a lassie from Springburn pregnant. ”

He took a handful of her fine hair and ran his fingers through it. He squeezed it between his forefinger and thumb, like an old clothes mangle, and it released the dampness with a squeak. “Is he the one just above you? ”

“Naw, he’s two above me, between our Stevie and our Malky. He’s fair enough looking, but he’s no very bright, and that’s how ye’ve got to keep yer eye on him. He’ll try to dip his wick in jist about anything. ”

“Charmer. ”

“Aye. Last Easter he must’ve met this lassie up the dancin’ on a Saturday, and by all accounts she must have been pregnant afore they opened the chapel doors on the Sunday. ” Leanne shook her head at her brother’s stupidity. “Her father just came to our door last night. He’d found us in the phone book. Our Malky leathered Calum when he found out. Not for getting the lassie pregnant but for being stupit enough to tell this wee lassie his real family name. ” Leanne took up a separate strand of her own hair and started checking it for split ends. “Our Calum couldnae even remember this lassie’s first name, never mind what she looked like. Ye should’ve seen his face when he saw her. He would have passed her on the street. Now he’s a daddy. Stupit eejit. ”

Shuggie heard the woman before Leanne saw her. It was a girlish laughter, too young for a woman so old, and it rang hollow and forced, as if she were performing for someone. Shuggie thought about ignoring her; he considered pointing Leanne’s gaze down the river, away from the laughing woman. When he turned to his friend, she was gnawing the skin around her thumb and worrying the contents of her plastic bags. When he pulled her hand away from her mouth, there was hardly any skin left around any of her fingers. He could not bring himself to lie to her then, so he sighed and pointed to the woman. Then Leanne sighed for herself.

The woman had not seen them yet. Her pale hand snaked through the arm of one of the short-sleeved men from the alley, his young mouth a closed knuckle of toothlessness. Clear across the busy market, from the other side of the lane, Shuggie could hear her cajoling the young jakey for a little company. With wet lips he told her naw, flatly, and Shuggie watched as the man used sharp pinching fingers to free himself from her grasp. The jakey jangled off and left her standing alone.

The pair watched the woman for a while; she looked trapped in the centre of the alley, not sure where to go next. She was more of a ruin than the last time Shuggie had seen her. Her mouse-brown curls were becoming a peppery mat of tangled locks, and her skin was overrun red and royal blue with broken veins. There was a little cornflower eyeshadow on her face and around her lips a trace of a happy pink lipstick. It comforted Shuggie to see her still wearing tan tights, even though there was a ladder in one leg, and she stood demurely with her knees and her ankles somewhat together.

Leanne rolled her eyes. He could see that it took all her strength to force herself forward. She slid from the fence and picked up the shopping bags at her feet. One of the plastic bags was heavy with folded laundry and clean underthings that were long past white. The other held sweet soft foods, like toddler’s yogurt and jars of mashed apple sauce. Shuggie remembered his own contribution then and pulled from his pocket the bag with the dented tins of fish. “You said these were her favourite. ”

Leanne opened his bag and peered inside at the tins.

“Ta very much, Shuggie. ” She turned the salmon in her hand. “But she’s out on the street. Where’s she gonnae get a tin opener for that? ” Leanne shook her head at her own question. “Sorry. That was dead ungrateful. ” She exhaled slowly, and she swung the small bag in a wide arc like a clubbing weapon. “Listen, auld Moira will find a way. She always fuckin’ does. ”

Leanne crossed the mouth of the market towards her mother. Shuggie saw the woman clock the approaching girl and roll her brown eyes. He couldn’t help but smile at the family resemblance.

They greeted each other without affection. The smirr had stopped for a moment, and Mrs Kelly followed Leanne out of Paddy’s Market and over to the Clyde side. Shuggie flattened an old cardboard box and laid it over the wet railing. He let the two of them sit close together, and they watched the boatman thanklessly skim the water.

“Ah knew some of the poor lassies he fished out o’ there, ” said Moira Kelly. “He didnae even knock a single thing. Every damp cigarette was still in their pocket, every Claddagh ring. He took not a penny. Now isn’t that a thing? ”

Leanne opened the box of tarts and offered the last one to her mother. Shuggie tried not to look as the woman fingered a gobbet of the sticky red jam and popped it in her puckered mouth. There were deep, drawn cavities around her eyes, as if she hadn’t been eating again. The strawberry sugar glistened in the corners of her mouth like gloss, and it looked obscene.

“Are we just gonnae sit here aw day? ” she asked, not uttering a word of thanks.

“Why don’t we just sit a little while? ” Leanne slid the cake box on to her mother’s lap, trying to pin her under the sugar, as you might draw a dog closer with a tin of meat. The woman was bobbing with the drink, but she lifted the last cake and stuck her tongue deep into the exposed cream. He could see there were new teeth missing on the side, teeth that had been there in the autumn. There was cream on her knuckles, and she licked the length of her finger in a suggestive way. Leanne looked pleased to see her try to eat, but it was too vulgar for Shuggie. As he looked at Mrs Kelly’s ripped tights, with the gooseflesh of her legs poking through, suddenly all he wanted was to see his mother again.

They sat together for a while, and Shuggie watched the Clyde as Leanne told her mother about the soap opera her five brothers created on the daily. Several times Mrs Kelly just laughed at the Kelly boys’ nonsense and said, “Thank feck ah’m no there to clean that shite up. ”

When she said things like that, Shuggie found he had to keep his face turned to the river. Leanne then told her mother she was to be a grandmother. Shuggie felt the fence wobble as the woman shrugged.

When Leanne had run out of things to tell her, she asked her mother to stand up. She made Shuggie hold Mrs Kelly’s old overcoat out wide; and as the woman hopped from one leg to the other, Leanne drew off her tights and then her dirty underpants from underneath her skirt. The woman didn’t enjoy being fussed with. She grumbled to herself but turned her eyes to Shuggie. Shuggie kept his own eyes firmly on the wet pavement.

“Ah don’t understand ye, son. You should be oot fingerin’ lassies and getting drunk. No houndin’ auld Moira for some company. ”

“I’m not here for you, Mrs Kelly, ” he mumbled. He lifted the coat higher, trying in a way to turn her damp gaze from him.

The woman was unperturbed. “Well, ah should be oot there havin’ a guid laugh. No dancin’ the fanny fandango for a funny wee fella lit you. ”

Leanne was still on her knees. She buckled her mother’s shoes again. “Shuggie brought you salmon. Don’t be so bloody cheeky. ”

“Well, hurry up then. It’s giro day. The men will have it spent afore ah can even get a drink oot o’ them, ” Mrs Kelly hissed and bounced like an impatient child.

Shuggie had nothing to say to Mrs Kelly, but for Leanne’s sake he wanted to hold the woman there with them, just a little longer. “So? How have you been keeping since I last saw you? ”

Mrs Kelly mocked him: “Oh, it has been a sihm-ply marvel-louse spring. Hasn’t it just? ” Then she pursed her mouth, impatient with the bother of it all. “Nosy wee bugger, ‘int ye? ” For a moment, that seemed to be all she was going to say. Then her mouth pulled downwards in a sour sneer. She did have something to tell, and she was suddenly glad of the audience to tell it to. “Here! Ah got back the gether wi’ wee Tommy for a minute. ” She rubbed instinctively at her jaw, where the teeth were missing, in remembrance of this unknown man. “He wisnae aw bad. He had a good grift gaun up the back of the Caley railworks. Used tae spoil me rotten. Used tae stoat frae pub tae pub and pretend he was blind. He was that blind he had tae feel along the bar for his drink. ” Mrs Kelly was bubbling with laughter now. “He necked his fair share of other folks’ whisky afore they found oot his eyes worked just fuckin’ fine. ”

She was roaring to herself. Shuggie could see it made Leanne happy to see her laugh. It was clear in the way she looked up at her mother and in how the tightness around her mouth softened a little. But too soon it passed. Leanne seemed to remember herself and tried to recover her defences. It was like she had been scolding a badly behaved child, but the child had won her over with its charm, and she had caved against her better judgement.

Mrs Kelly had noticed. “See, ah’m good company. Ye like seeing auld Moira, din’t ye? ” Mrs Kelly was rubbing her daughter’s shoulder. “Aye, ah could always cheer ye up. ”

Leanne said nothing to encourage her. Shuggie lowered the coat and went back to watching the boatman. Mrs Kelly prodded at her sore jaw again and finally asked, “So, any chance ye’ve got money for a wee bottle of fortified? ”

“No. ” Shuggie shook his head.

She sucked at her missing teeth. “Aye, well. Ye don’t ask, ye don’t get. Eh? ”

He held the last of the fizzy ginger out to her. She glared at the sweet drink like it offended her, then she took it from him anyway. They had been enjoying it slowly, but now Mrs Kelly swallowed it like she was parched. Shuggie looked at the gummy line her lipstick left on the neck of the bottle. He tried to bite his lip, but he could not help himself. “Why do you have to get in such a state? ”

Leanne stopped pushing the dirty clothes into plastic bags and sat back on her haunches. She looked up at her mother again, as if this were something she would very much not like to miss.

“Who says ah don’t like tae take a drink? ” Mrs Kelly pouted and ripped the coat from Shuggie’s arms. “Yer aw just jealous. Ah have a rare time! Helps the day tae dance along a wee bit. Cuts oot the flat parts. ” She took a tube of lipstick out of her pocket. It was worn down to the canister, and as she pushed too hard the colour missed the line of her lips. Shuggie tried to ignore the particular shade of pink.

“She loves you, ” he said.

“Shuggie! ” Leanne pleaded.

“Oh, tweet-tweet, kiss-kiss, ” Mrs Kelly snorted, and she thumped her chest to release some sugary gas. “Well, ye know what ah think? Ah think the more ye love someone the more they take the piss out of that. They will do less and less of what ye want and more and more of just as they fuckin’ please. ” She thumped her chest again and belched this time.

Leanne roughly gathered the dirty laundry and stood up again with a tired huff. She put herself between the boy and her mother. Shuggie could see her cheeks were scalding red and her eyes were liquid as she started chewing her lips again. He turned away and went back to watching the boatman.

“Pubs will be filling soon, ” said Mrs Kelly, closing her coat. “Ye’ve had your money’s worth. ”

“Oh, bloody charming! ” Leanne stood back from her mother and checked her work. She talked to Mrs Kelly as though the woman were only a child who was anxious to go back out and play before the scheme lights came on. She knew she could hold her no longer. “Right, Moira, away ye go then. Try to look after yersel, alright. I’ll look for ye again. ”

“If ye must. ”

Shuggie found he had balled his fists. He stepped forward then and forced his hands inside Mrs Kelly’s coat. He wrapped his arms around her waist and searched her softness till he found the familiar slippery wetness of the rayon warp knit. He roughly pulled at the underskirt till it sat properly and correctly back inside her clothes.

Mrs Kelly’s mouth hung open in shock, but she let herself be handled, as if she didn’t mind the warmth of his arms around her middle. Then she licked her bottom lip with a fat tongue and flashed a wicked grin to Leanne. “Oh, ye want to watch yersel wi’ this one, hen. ”

The boy let go of her waist. He put his hands on her upper arms and gave her a sharp shake. Mrs Kelly blinked like a tossed doll. Her eyes took some time to focus on his face again. “Here you! ” She pulled herself from his grip and walked around him without breaking her scowl. “Whit a funny wee bastard ye are. ”

With that Mrs Kelly turned towards the market, towards the dark pubs that lay under the railway line. They watched her go, stumbling along the alley, with her arms full of shopping bags. She stopped at the corner and, with a low swing, launched the bag of tinned salmon at the girl with the blond hair and black roots. Mrs Kelly raised her arms as though she had scored a goal, and then she stumbled onwards and was gone.

“Jist don’t start! ” Leanne warned. She closed the zipper on her anorak till it covered the lower part of her face.

“I won’t. ” He kept his eyes on the damp pavement and tried to calm himself. “Do you feel any better? ”

Leanne scoffed and then she shrugged. She pulled her wet hair away from her face, and caught it in the elastic band she kept around her wrist. He was sad to see her pretty face grow so taut and hard again.

Shuggie wiped the mud from his shoe on to the back of his trouser leg. He reached out and pulled a loose thread from Leanne’s sleeve, her wrist was cold to his touch. “My mammy had a good year once. It was lovely. ”

Leanne said nothing. She put her chewed thumbnail back in her mouth and sat alone with her thoughts. Shuggie let her be. It had stopped raining, and he watched the boatman tether his dinghy to the riverbank and straighten his bent back.

They still had the rest of the day together, and even in the damp the thought warmed him. “So! ” Shuggie tried his hardest to sound brighter. “What do you want to do now? ”

Leanne wiped her eyes. She turned out the empty pockets on her denims and held them out like flapping flags. “Hows about we jist walk around for a wee while, eh? ”

“Jeezo. Who’s predictable now? ”

“Me? ” She laughed for what felt like the first time in a long while. “No way. We both know ye just want to go gawp at the big handsomes up the Virginia arcade! ”

He felt the flare of shame. He shook his head as if to deny it, but something in her eyes stopped him then. He drew a sharp breath between his front teeth.

Leanne reached out and jabbed him sharply in the ribs. “Pack it in. ‘Asides, I think the one ginger lad with the pierced ears might have been making eyes at youse. ”

“Really? ”

She grinned. “Mibbe. Mind you, he does have that one gammy eye, so who the fuck knows. ”

Leanne swung the bag with her mother’s dirty underclothes and pretended to launch it deep into the Clyde. Then she slipped her free arm into his and tried to shake him loose of his worry. He nudged into her shoulder like a tugboat, until they both were turned away from the river.

Shuggie dropped their rubbish into a council bin. “You know, hearing about your Calum did make me wish we could go up the dancin’ one time? ”

Leanne was still swinging the dirty bag, and now she howled with laughter. It was so loud, so vibrant, it made the videocassette jakeys jump with fright. “Ha! You? Get to fuck wi’ those poncey school shoes, ” she squealed. “There is no way Shuggie Bain can dance! ”

Shuggie tutted. He wrenched himself from her side and ran a few paces ahead. He nodded, all gallus, and spun, just the once, on his polished heels.

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