Twenty-Three

Christmas came and went, and Agnes started her New Year’s celebrations early. By the time it had gotten dark on Hogmanay, she had done away with the surreptitious pouring of vodka, half-hidden out of view down the far side of her armchair. By the time the television started preparing for the festivities, she was opening cans of Special Brew with a triumphant hiss and crack and pouring them like waterfalls straight into her old tea mug. It was still hours until the Hogmanay bells and she was already listing all the men who had ruined her.

If Agnes had noticed that Leek was slowly disappearing, she didn’t say. Leek had spent his Christmas week hiding inside sleep. At night he hitchhiked to the city and played his apprenticeship wages away in the puggie machines that lined the arcades under Central Station. He disappeared earlier than usual on Hogmanay, like a man who sees rain coming and tries to outrun it.

Shuggie stayed home, turning a drunk Agnes from the front door, keeping her away from the telephone. On Hogmanay, he sat by the window watching the Christmas-tree lights come on in the other front rooms as he pushed handfuls of white net curtains into his mouth. He stuffed them in until his mouth was full and he was less hungry than before. He soiled her good curtains in front of her and longed for her to tell him to stop, but she didn’t.

While the McAvennies played with new bikes and enjoyed a visit from Big Jamesy, Shuggie sat by her feet like a quiet shadow. He watched without talking while she drank from the bottomless tea mug. She told him bad stories of his father again, picking up the tale like it was a book she had only set to the side for a year.

By the time the six o’clock news was finished she was sitting on her bed slurring into the phone to Jinty McClinchy. Shuggie slid quietly along the hallway and sat with his back pressed against her bedroom door. From there he could listen through the chipboard and could follow the bell curve of her worsening mood. He wondered how long it would be till she passed out, till he could have a rest.

There was music coming from her cassette player, and he could tell it was a bad sign. He slipped into the bedroom like a wary ghost. Agnes was smoking, dressed in nothing but her sheer black stockings and her black lace bra. Shuggie often bought new tights for her. Pride wouldn’t let her leave the house in a laddered pair, so the boy learned the exact size and shade she liked. Pretty Polly jet-black, semi-sheer tights were in all of his memories of her, both happy and sad.

On her dark days, like today, the tights looked dirty and bad to him. They stood in contrast to her rose-coloured flesh and drew attention to the fact that she should have been dressed decently, like other mammies were. The tights left pink lines across the soft fat of her belly, where they pinched her skin. It seemed like something other people should not be able to see. He wanted her to cover it.

She had forgotten he was home. When she finally noticed him in the mirror, she smiled that glassy smile she did with her teeth closed. Reaching deep into her black leather bag she produced a single fifty-pence piece. “Look at the state of you, ” she said. “How can we celebrate the bells with you still in your pyjamas? ” She gave him the coin and told him to fill a bath.

He didn’t like to leave her like this. He could see she wasn’t at home in her own body. She circled her arms around his waist, drew him to her and placed a kiss on his lips. He could feel the heat of her breath, her lips slightly parted and lifeless. “Clean yourself good now, ” she warned. “I want to start this year right. ”

When the bathtub was half-full of lukewarm water, Shuggie cautiously slid in. He worked the soap into his scalp and lay in the bath, listening to her shuffle from hiding place to hiding place, looking for the alcohol she had hidden from him and had now forgotten. He took out the little red football book that Eugene had given him and began to memorize all the teams and results of every match of the previous year’s Premier Division. He was penitent with these Hail Marys, going over and over the meaningless scores till he had committed them to memory. It would be a new year, a new chance.

His Hogmanay outfit lay on her bed. It was the monochrome gangster get-up, the black shirt and the white tie. As they got dressed together in silence, they looked like an unhappy married couple who were headed to a very special party. He held his mother for balance and helped her pull on her skirt. “Let’s have a look at you, then. ” She took a painted finger and slid it down his nose. “T’chut, look how handsome you are! ” She shook her head in reverie. “Not a bit like your fat bastard of a father. ”

Agnes peeled off a can of warm Special Brew from its plastic noose. She looked at it lovingly and slid it solemnly into the boy’s hands. “Here, take this to Colleen’s. Wish her a happy New Year from me, and make sure she gets to drink in how smart you look. ” A bitter smile cracked over her lips. “Be sure and tell your Auntie Colleen a ‘Happy New Year’ from me and Eugene, eh? ”

Every house in the street had its Christmas tree lit and proudly glowing in the front window. Dark-haired boys flitted down the street with bits of coal, excited and early to start the first footing. Shuggie took the short walk to Colleen’s house at a slow pace. He travelled along the wooden fences that hemmed the thick white-berried council bushes. He had no intention of passing on the can of drink or his mother’s message.

As he crossed the street he wondered what people were eating. He imagined them huddled together with full bellies, shut in from the cold. He stood outside Colleen’s house squeezing winter berries between his fingers and thought about the steak and butter sandwiches sober Agnes had made for the bells the year before. He thought about the way they had cuddled on the settee and eaten peppermint chocolate, watching the crowd in George Square bring in the bells with a song.

Shuggie wondered what to do with the can of lager. He hunkered in the darkness by Colleen’s low coal shed and pulled the ring pull. It sliced away from the can with a yeasty hiss, and the familiar smell was heavy in the cold air. With a cautious tongue Shuggie licked the brew from the top of the can. The foam tasted harmless, fluffy, like bitter air, a little sour and metallic, like wrapping his lips around the cold kitchen tap. His belly stabbed with hunger and anticipation, it asked to be filled, for a little taste of anything. Crouching like an animal, he turned his back to the street and drank a small mouthful of the lager. It didn’t burn. It tasted like flat ginger with a side of heavy seeded bread. He took another sip and another, and the grumbling in his belly grew quieter.

He was glad of the warmth of it and the way it made his heart feel dizzy. The hunger started to subside, and he was feeling a little lighter, when he heard a diesel engine draw up. He watched Agnes stumble down the uneven paving of the path, clutching her purple coat closed over her short skirt. She said something flirtatious to the driver and climbed gracelessly into the back of the hackney. The driver wore thick government glasses; it clearly wasn’t Eugene. Shuggie panicked as the taxi pulled out of Pithead.

In the four months and thirteen days since Eugene had helped his mother back on the drink, the red-headed taxi driver had come by two or three times a week. Those mornings Shuggie listened for Leek to leave for his apprenticeship, and a few minutes later, Eugene would slip into the quiet house. Shuggie could set the television meter by it.

Since that night at the golfer’s clubhouse, Eugene had had the good sense to avoid Leek. As Agnes had lain singing to herself on the hall carpet, Leek had howled, and in his boxer shorts he had huckled Eugene out of the hallway and into the street. Although Eugene could have easily resisted, his manners were such that he let himself be manhandled out the door and found himself apologizing all the way to the kerb.

That night Eugene had been sleepless with guilt. Early the next morning, away from his daughter’s scowl, he had pulled the telephone from the hallway and snuck with it into the bathroom, locking the door. He had woken Agnes, and she had met him at the colliery gates. He apologized for pressuring her into the drink, and he promised he would help her set it right again. As they sat in the back of the cold taxi she had kissed him for reassurance. Her loose tongue felt bloated and lifeless, and Eugene hoped the lager on her breath was only the dregs of the night before. As her head lolled in the taxi, he had remembered then, she had not drunk any lager with him at the golf club.

After that night Shuggie had expected Eugene to flee. Instead, the boy sat in his school uniform at the telephone table and listened to them talk on the mornings Eugene came to visit. Shuggie unfolded his homework on his lap and signed her name carefully with the old biro. He remembered a time, in Lizzie’s house, when he had played with one of his mother’s Capodimonte knock-offs. The ornament was a romantic farm boy. He was wielding a blunt scythe and staring with such a strange wistful look that he must have been witness to the most glorious sunset. Repeatedly, Agnes had asked Shuggie to leave the boy alone, but he found he could not, and when she was in her Sunday bath he dropped it and the arm broke from the body and the scythe smashed from his hand. Shuggie had hidden the statue in the dark of Lizzie’s airing cupboard. He sat next to the heat of the immersion boiler and tried to stick the arm back on with everything from Sellotape to congealing rice pudding. He visited the broken boy every day for a week and prayed for some miracle. When he wasn’t in the airing cupboard he obsessed about it, and when he was in the cupboard he cried for what he had done. It was a whole week of torture before he panicked and just left it there, hidden between a set of old bath towels for someone else to find and repair.

Shuggie sat at the telephone table and thought about the broken ornament again. He listened to them talk in the quiet voices adults used in the morning, and he could tell Eugene was tired from his night shift. The man had a wallpaper book, and he was asking what pattern Agnes preferred, the happy field flowers or the bold bengal stripes with tiny fleurs-de-lis. From the telephone table Shuggie could tell his mother was hushed with a sore head and concentrating all her energy as she fried liver for Eugene’s breakfast.

“It’s nae bother, ” said Eugene quite happily. “Ah can do the whole kitchen in a day. My faither once taught me a recipe for that mould. Ah can scrub the walls in the morning and paper in the afternoon. It’ll be brand new in no time. ”

“Yes, OK then, ” said Agnes in a tiny voice.

“Are ye alright? ”

“Yes, ” she said. “Just a wee sore head. ”

Shuggie could hear Eugene close the heavy wallpaper book; he could imagine him laying his hands palm upwards and open on the top of it. “You know mibbe don’t take a wee drink the day. How about if ye feel it coming on, ye could go for a wee walk or something? ”

Shuggie listened to his mother struggle to keep her voice even and flat. Like a skelfy piece of wood, she sanded at it, to hone the roughness of sarcasm from it. “A wee walk. Yes. Maybe that would sort it. ”

A few weeks later, by the time the wallpaper was hung, Shuggie noticed Eugene had stopped saying things like this. He acknowledged instead that if Agnes needed to take a drink, would she at least please stop hounding the taxi rank for him. Shuggie sat at the telephone table again and took her dog-eared phone book on to his lap. He took the chewed biro, and finding Eugene’s name, he changed the 6 in his telephone number to an 8. Then he found the listing for his taxi rank and changed all the 1s to 7s as skillfully as he could.

When he looked up, Eugene was standing in the kitchen doorway with a Phillips-head screwdriver in his hand. Shuggie watched him go up and down the hallway and tighten all the door hinges till they shrieked against the wood. “Ah was just thinking, ” he said to her. “The taxi needs to go into the garage next week, so ah’ll have a few evenings free. How about a wee night out, at actual nighttime, this time. Mibbe we could go back to the golf club and have that prawn cocktail ye liked so much. I was thinking this time I wouldnae have a bevvy. Mibbe this time naebody needs to have a drink. ”

Shuggie took his dirty tea mug and slid past Eugene into the kitchen. His mother was sat at the table, her head in her hands, her fingers scouring her skull, with a bucket between her knees. The new wallpaper was lovely, the yellow and blue field of flowers really cheered up the small space. Eugene had been very clever and neat in how he had lined up all the little bluebells. All the mould was gone, but now when Shuggie looked out the window, the brown marsh stood out like an enormous square stain in an otherwise pretty spring field.

Now Shuggie crouched outside the McAvennies and poured the remainder of the Hogmanay lager into the dead grass. He hid the empty can inside his shirt for shame. Half-stunned, he crossed the street and found the front door ajar and all the house lights still burning. He wandered from empty room to empty room in disbelief, still expecting to find her somewhere. He raked through the empty kitchen cupboards and found the last tin of custard. He opened it and dipped his spoon in deep. The sugary cream made the lager in his belly stop rolling around. He sat down on the low coffee table and greedily spooned the custard down as the happy revellers in George Square started to come on the television.

By the time the ceilidh band was in full swing he knew she would not be coming home. The revellers start to hug one another and break into song. He felt like a baby to miss his mother. It wasn’t fair, the way everyone could up and leave as they pleased.

Shuggie searched the house for a note or a sign, a treasure map to where she had gone, but there was nothing. He searched her black bingo bag and found all the markers there. He went to the wee phone table in the hall and thought about whom he could call. The red leather address book by the phone listed all the people Agnes knew. She had been religious about keeping it updated, and some of the names in the book had been crossed out in what looked like anger. Next to her neat cursive she had scrawled in another hand, one that looked like another woman’s entirely, a short comment. Nan Flannigan still owes my mammy five pounds from 1978, and Ann Marie Easton, two-faced hoor, and Davy Doyle wore a navy suit to my daddy’s funeral, and Brendan McGowan only wanted a slave and a housekeeper.

There were many first-name-only entries in the book. Shuggie guessed that most of them came from the AA. Some numbers gave additional descriptive information, a way to tell one Elaine from another Elaine. Shuggie thought it was funny how AA members did this. Maybe it was to protect anonymity, family names being private, but more likely it was because people came and went, and descriptions were better than names. He flicked through pages of names he recognized: Monday-Thursday Peter, Big Bald Peter, Mary-Doll, Jeanette Mary-Doll’s pal, Cathy from Cumbernauld, and Wee Ginger Jeanie, which was confusingly under G instead of J. That irritated him.

His mother could be anywhere, and he started to panic that he might not see her till February. He screamed at the thick book, “Where the fuck are you? Tell me! ”

New Year’s in Scotland was a legendary two-day party. New Year’s in Agnes’s Glasgow was endless. When they first came to Pithead the boy had seen a house party that had lasted for days. Agnes had still been drunk by the sixth. By the time Shuggie was getting dressed in his school uniform, ready for the spring term, Leek had decided enough was enough. Leek could bear a lot, but on the sixth of January he rampaged through the house with a black bin liner and pulled two ratty miners out on to the frozen street.

Shuggie wondered about Leek, about his screaming, flashing gambling machines, and his insides hardened. He was getting sick of playing “you touched it last” with his brother. Picking at his bottom lip, he idly lifted the phone receiver and sniffed at the sour smoke and the perfume of her lipstick that still hung on the mouthpiece. For comfort he held the beige handset and listened to the hum of the dial tone. He looked at the keypad, and finally noticing the red redial button, he pressed it.

The phone chirruped for a long time before someone answered. Shuggie could barely hear the woman on the other end for the din of loud old-fashioned music in the background. “Hullo. HULLO! Who is this? ” she shouted, her voice thick with smoke and slow with drink.

“Um. Is my mother there? ” he asked, now sitting erect.

“Who is this? ” she sounded bothered by the interruption. “Who’s your mammy, wee man? ”

“My mother is Agnes Campbell Bain, ” he said. “C-can you tell her it’s Shu—Hugh. ” He caught himself. “Can you please tell her I don’t have any custard left. ”

The woman leaned back into the noise of the party. “Haw, does anybody here know an Agnes? ” she asked of the room behind her.

There were other voices, and then she said, “Haud on a wee minute, pal. Happy New Year, OK. ” Before he could reply she had set the receiver down. He could hear men and women laughing in the background and could tell they were old because the melancholy Scots songs were already playing. Shuggie waited and listened a long time for the woman to come back. He was sure that she had forgotten him when a voice spoke.

“Sh-hullo, ” slurred the familiar voice.

“Mammy? … It’s me. ”

The voice didn’t speak for a while, and when it did it sounded confused. “What do you want? What time is it? ”

“When are you coming home? ”

“What time is it? ”

Shuggie peered around the corner, and in the light from the telly could just about see the face of the little clock. “Half ten, um, no, it’s almost eleven o’clock. ”

The voice went quiet. He heard the flare of a lighter as she sucked on her cigarette. “Well, then, you should be in your bed. ”

“When are you coming home? ”

“Look, don’t upset yourself. Doesn’t Mammy deserve a party? It’s been that long, Hugh. ” Her voice trailed off. “I’ve been promised that many parties in my day. Why are you trying to ruin my party. ” She was repeating herself now.

“Mammy, I’m scared. Where are you? ”

“I’m up at Anna O’Hanna’s. Away to your bed, and I’ll see you when I get home. ” This part was ominously vague.

The line went dead, and it took him a while to replace the receiver. Shuggie thought about calling again, but she wouldn’t come back to the phone. He sat there sniffing the receiver a while longer, and then he went to bed, still fully dressed, with the bedroom lights on and the Hogmanay celebrations still blaring on the television. There were happy voices out in the street; he could hear the McAvennie children run up and down the road shouting “Happy New Year” at the top of their lungs. They had a wooden football clapper that they were twisting into a roaring din.

He got up and went back to the phone table. Shuggie looked under A then under O and there she was, Anna O’Hanna. He had heard the name before. Anna wasn’t from the AA, she was a childhood friend, who was or was not also a distant relative. They had once worked together in the STV canteens and gone to the Tollcross dancing together in their youth. She was, by his mother’s own handwriting, an old backstabbing slitty eyed gossip and also the best friend I ever had.

Under her name was her address, marked as Germiston. He had no idea what Germiston was, but everyone Agnes ever knew lived in Glasgow, so he hoped Germiston would be there. Shuggie ripped a blank page from the back of his mother’s phone book and copied the address as neatly as possible. Then he called a number he found in the phone book under Taxi.

“Hullo, Mack’s Hacks, ” said the gruff man.

“Hello. Can you tell me where Germiston is, please? ”

“It’s in the northeast, pal. Do youse want a taxi? ” he replied impatiently.

“Sorry to bother you again, ” said the boy politely, “but how much does a taxi to there cost? ”

“Where youse comin’ frae? ” sighed the man.

Shuggie answered the man very specifically, giving the house number, the street, the town, and even the postal code.

“Ah, about eight pow-n, plus two fifty extra for being the New Year’s. ”

“OK. One taxi, please, ” said Shuggie, hanging up the phone.

With a butter knife he pried open the gas meter the way Jinty had shown them. Carefully he counted out the fifty pences, lining them up neatly on the table in front of the telly. There were only twenty of them, which without counting on his fingers he knew was ten whole pounds. The boy got the long, flat bread knife from the kitchen and began prying the back of the telly meter open the way he had seen Agnes do it a hundred times before.

With practice he knew he had to jostle it, so that the coins would fall out without damage to the meter itself. If the telly man saw the meter was broken you would be in big trouble, but everyone on the street had so many years of practice that no one ever seemed to get into this big trouble. Shuggie had watched Agnes and then Leek raid the telly meter on a regular basis. You had to fill the meter with a fifty-pence piece for three hours’ of telly watching. When the money ran out, the telly automatically switched off, leaving you in darkness. There was no negotiating till the end of a film or till the advert break. If your money was up, the telly went black.

Shuggie slid the butter knife into the slot and two lonely fifty pences rolled out. If the man had told the truth, that should be enough to get him to Germiston. But not enough to get him back.

When he heard the idling sound of the hackney, Shuggie went outside. All the house lights of the street were on, and happy families were spending the bells together. Colleen was alone at her window, watching her children run up and down the road rattling their noisemakers. Shuggie did as Agnes taught him, and so he waved and smiled as he got into the hackney.

The taxi driver was a thin fair-haired man. He was taken aback to see a child dressed as a Chicago gangster. “Are ye it, wee man? ” he asked, puzzled.

“Yes. ” He handed the driver the handwritten address.

The driver lowered his head and peered at Shuggie’s front window for a sign of an adult, a mother or father to appear at the living room window. Shuggie took the plastic bag full of coins out of his pocket and placed it on his knee. All that silver made a sparking noise, and eyeing the small boy and then the money, the driver finally took the handbrake off with a huff.

The taxi pulled out of the small dusty scheme, and soon they were up in the dual lane traffic and moving quickly. Shuggie knew this was the road into the city centre. He made a note of the route, checking off landmarks, preparing for the long walk back. First they passed a secondary school, then some rugby fields, and finally the black void of a silent loch. From there it all flew by unknown.

Instead of taking the low road the driver took a higher road, like he was turning away from the city. It looked like back-country roads, like the city had exhausted the edge of its sprawl. The road was undeveloped; to the left were half-built Barratt houses with their backs facing the traffic and tall dark brown wooden fences keeping in their unplanted lawns. On the right unfolded miles and miles of fallow fields, dark and empty. The driver must have known the route well, because he kept glancing back and smiling at the boy in the white tie.

“Ye look very smart. Are ye going tae a party? ” he asked, smiling in the mirror.

“Well, kind of. I also just think it’s important to always look your best. ”

The man laughed. “So where’s yer maw, is she at this party? ”

“I hope so, ” Shuggie muttered.

“Very grown up o’ ye to be travelling alone at yer age, ” he said. “Ah’ve goat a wee boy about yer age. You about twelve? He really likes tae ride up front and play wi’ ma CB radio. ”

He was only eleven, but he liked the comfort of the bigger number, so Shuggie didn’t answer. It was funny the way you could see only the driver’s eyes or his mouth in the mirror, never both at the same time.

“Dae ye want tae ride up front wi’ me? ” said the man’s mouth in the mirror. It split into a wide smile.

The taxi slowed to a stop, not at a junction or at a light but in the middle of the wide empty road. Shuggie looked to the half-built houses on the left and the flattened fields on the right. If he was to bring her back safely, then Shuggie supposed he had no choice but to do as he was told.

The man told Shuggie to get out. The front door on the left opened; there was no passenger seat on the left side of the black hackneys, just a carpeted floor. He stood in the carpeted enclosure amidst the evening newspapers, an old coat, and a half-eaten packet of sandwiches. Shuggie tried not to stare at the food. The bread was thick with crust, but he was so hungry he didn’t care, he would have eaten it crust and all.

“There ye go, that’s better, eh? ” The driver cleared his stuff off the floor and made some room for the boy. He held the sandwich in his hand. “Would ye like some? ” he said. “It’s just butter and bit of tinned ham. ”

“No, thank you, ” Shuggie said politely, but his eyes were burning into the half-eaten piece.

“Here, take it, ” said the man, thrusting it towards him. “I can hear yer belly frae here. ” Shuggie took the sandwich. The bread was damp from the butter, and he tried to eat it slowly, but the lager sat sour in his stomach, and he found himself pushing in large hunks of salted ham. It was so thick and rich it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Even kneeling, Shuggie was still not shoulder-height to the seated figure. Glancing over the thick sandwich, he thought how the driver looked not at all like his father. The man’s face was kinder, the edges of his eyes were creased from smiling. There was a crucifix on a silver chain around his neck, and the sight of it calmed Shuggie in an unexpected way.

“That there is the CB, ” said the driver, pointing to a handset that looked like an electric shaver. The driver switched a knob on the dial. “There ye go, ye can gabber all ye like, if ye want. It’ll only be the long-haul drivers and the lonely hearts that follow them who’ll hear ye on this channel. ” The man smiled at him with straight teeth, and Shuggie thought he would like Agnes to meet him, this man who gave him sandwiches.

With a snap of the handbrake the taxi took off again down the dark road. Shuggie fell back against the glass partition. “Whoa, there, wee man, haud on to something! ” With his left arm he encircled the boy’s waist, holding him tight and upright in the luggage space.

They drove on farther down the unlit road. Shuggie tried not to eat the sandwich too quickly. The ham was thick and so deeply salty it tickled his gums. The man said suddenly, “It happens mair than ye might think. Weans being left alone that is. ” He turned to Shuggie and smiled. “I see it aw the time, mammies and daddies that desperate to go down the pub that weans are fending for themselves. Poor wee things. ” Shuggie finished the sandwich. He tried not to lick the butter from his fingers.

“Was that good? ”

Shuggie nodded and answered politely. “Yes. Thank you very much. ” The man’s arm was still around his waist for support.

The man laughed kindly. “Ooh, thank you very much, ” he repeated, like an amused parrot. “You’re a polite wee fella, aren’t ye? ”

Shuggie tried not to look embarrassed. He fixed his eyes on the rear-view mirror and wished Leek was here. The empty country road seemed to go on forever; he was trying to remember the things they passed. He made a list of things he saw, like in a game of Granny Went to Spain, but after ten or fifteen trees and only one traffic light, all the things looked the same, and he gave up reluctantly.

Slowly the driver’s arm went lower down the boy’s side. With a slow hand, he pulled the back of Shuggie’s shirt from his tweed trousers and insidiously pushed his fat warm fingers down the back of Shuggie’s underpants. Without looking, Shuggie could tell the man was still smiling at him.

“Aye, you’re a funny wee fella, aren’t ye? ” the man repeated. With a hard push, his hand reached further down inside the underpants, and he started searching the boy with his fingers. The waistband of the tweed trousers was cutting into Shuggie in the front. The strain felt like he was halving him in two, and he could have cried out for that pain alone. Still, Shuggie said nothing.

The cab was rolling slower. The driver made a funny sound like he was eating hot soup through his front teeth. Headlights tore in the opposite direction. Shuggie winced at the man now; his fat fingers were pressing down into him in a strange way. The custard made a skin on top of the sour lager, and the bread swelled and expanded in his gut so that he thought he might be sick. The fingers pressed and pressed. The driver’s mouth was pulled tight in a grimace. Shuggie wished for the light of some houses.

“You know, my father is a taxi driver. ”

The driver stopped his grimace.

Shuggie kept on, trying to keep his voice casual and ignore the fingers that were searching his dirty place. “… And my Mammy’s boyfriend, he’s called Eugene. ” He took a shallow breath. “He might know you? ” The question shot up at the end.

Slowly the driver slipped his hand out from the back of the tweed trousers. Shuggie slid his back down the partition and sat his dirty place safely on the floor of the cab. He put his fingers against his waist and in the dark he could feel the pink marks on his belly where the stitching cut into him. It felt like taking off school socks that were too tight, but worse.

Voices crackled over the CB. Some man in a Teuchter accent was talking about floods on the Perth Road. The driver wiped his hand discreetly on his work trousers. “So, did ye have a nice Christmas? ” he asked casually, after a moment.

“Yes. Thank you, ” Shuggie lied.

“Was Santa guid to you? ”

Christmas came from the Freemans catalogue and was slowly paid off. “Yes. ”

The black hackney finally reached the lights of a grey, worn-down housing scheme, and the driver asked, “Son. What did you say your daddy’s name was again? ”

Shuggie thought about lying, “Hugh Bain. ”

Something like relief swept over the driver, and he relaxed back into his chair. When he dropped Shuggie in Germiston it had already gone the bells. The boy offered the driver the bag of stolen fifty pences. The man looked at it closely, perhaps with pity or guilt, and said the ride was free because Shuggie had been such a good boy. The boy wished he had taken the coins; he didn’t want the man to think he had liked the way his fingers had hurt him.

Shuggie could feel the man watch his back as he climbed all the stone stairs to the front door on Stronsay Street. Only when he turned around and smiled a brave smile did the driver pull away. When the taxi turned the corner, Shuggie tucked the black shirt back into the tweed trousers. He rubbed at the sourness in his gut. Each of the buildings were identical; the tenements crowded in on the narrow road and made a canyon of bricks and glass. Looking up, he noticed music and bright lights coming from a flat on the third floor, so he pressed the metal buzzer for 3R. Without anyone asking who was there, the door buzzed automatically open.

The tenement close was poorly lit. Somewhere above Shuggie loud music and happy voices bounced off the walls. Shuggie stepped inside. Any Glasgow wean could easily tell this was one of the poorer tenements. The six feet or so of decorative tiles that lined the entryway were cracked and missing. There was thickly applied council brown paint with a dirty cream stripe about adult eye level that pointed the way into the belly of the close. Every flat surface was covered in graffitied declarations of love and gang pride. From the sworn allegiance to the IRA, Shuggie could see that Germiston was certainly Catholic.

As he climbed up from the mouth of the close he could hear the party on the third floor. It sounded happy, like the night still hadn’t turned sour. The boy took the steep stairs slowly, one at a time. They were hard granite that had been worn into a dip in the middle, and there was no curving banister; instead the stairway was built around a solid wall of poured concrete. As he climbed he couldn’t see what lay around the corner.

He inched quietly upwards. As he turned the second bend, he came upon a woman and man sitting on the cold steps. They lay there rumpled like two piles of dirty laundry. They were doing things to each other that the boy had seen before. The old woman seemed barely conscious, and the man had his hand up her skirt, touching her in her dirty place.

Shuggie folded his arms over his chest and politely stepped back, away from what lay at eye level. He quietly stepped down some stairs and was almost back around the corner when the woman opened a rolling eye and noticed him. The man continued to rub at her like he was polishing a shoe.

“Whit ye looking at? ” she asked, gummy-lipped.

“Are you OK? ” he asked quietly. “Is he hurting you? ”

Somewhere above them a door opened, and the noise of a grand party filled the close. People were leaving.

“Wid you stop that a minute, John. ” She pushed the hands away. The woman pulled her top closed and tried to bring more dignity to the scene. She lowered her eyes to the stone stairs. The drunken man continued chewing her neck regardless.

Shuggie took out one of the fifty pences and put it on the woman’s bare knee. Then he darted past them, climbing up towards the noise at the top of the stairs. Men and women were pouring down in their winter coats. It took quick feet and effort not to be swept back down by their clumsy legs and long jackets. He reached the third floor, and finding the door still wide open, he went in. No one stopped him as he pushed through the legs into the small hallway. No one paid any heed as he went into the main room.

The room was a smaller version of the living room at home. It was covered in burgundy brocade wallpaper, and against one wall was a small electric fire with fake plastic coals throwing an orange glow into the sweaty room. In the middle of the room was a three-piece suite still covered in plastic. Around the corners were some borrowed kitchen chairs, and on these were sat men and women in their forties and fifties, faces Shuggie had never seen before. The men sat in heavy grey suits and wide ties, and the women were done up in pretty blouses. They looked stiff, as though they had come from chapel, but wet-eyed, like they had taken too much Communion wine.

The record player in the corner was spinning an especially melancholy version of “Danny Boy. ” A few older jakeys sat by it with their cans of warm beer and murdered the words in a howl, while an old woman sat teary-eyed nearby. The whole room was already sliding down the peak of the evening. He circled the room, searching from face to face for a sign of his mother. Agnes wasn’t there.

In the corner near the window, sitting at a small folding table, was a young boy much the same age as Shuggie. He had been watching Shuggie the entire time as he did his searching circle of the room. He was dressed in his good clothes, and his hair was still neat from when his own mother must have parted it earlier. As they looked at one another, Shuggie wondered whether he was lost or searching too. The boy raised his hand in a small wave, and Shuggie made to cross the room and speak to the stranger. Halfway there he saw that on his little table sat a heaped plate of shortbread and some fizzy juice that still rolled with bubbles. Somebody here loved this other little boy. Shuggie turned away and went back to looking for Agnes.

Back out in the hallway he passed the tangle of legs once again. In the small narrow kitchenette was a woman with jet-black hair. His heart leapt and fell as he realized it was not his mother. Shuggie thought to ask her where Agnes was, but he was so embarrassed by the little shortbread boy that he said nothing. Pride clamped his mouth shut, and the black-haired woman sailed past him like he was invisible. There were three bedrooms in the tenement flat. Each was empty except for the odd lost partygoer having a quiet smoke or a quiet cry. He searched them all, but none of the drunks were his. The last room was the biggest bedroom, the one for mammies and daddies. The door was closed tight, and he had to pull down on the metal handle and push hard to get the sticky door open. There were no lights on in the room, but as the glow followed him in from the hallway he could see the large double bed was heaped high in winter coats.

Shuggie stood there and put his hand on the bag of coins in his pocket. It would be just enough to get him home. Perhaps he would find her there, frantic, sobered with worry, and waiting with hot tea and toast.

In the smoke and the dark, tears began to sting his eyes, and he sat on the coat-covered bed for just a minute. He was being a baby and he knew it. He had been a big baby all night, wanting his mammy, and he wished he was more like Leek, who never seemed to need anyone. Shuggie dug the nails of his left hand into the soft part of his right arm, and he willed the poor me’s to stop.

Something stirred under the coats. Shuggie stood up in fright. Out from some old jackets came a small white hand. It hovered for a moment before it pulled a coat away from its face, and there, with a wet face and spoilt mascara, was his mother.

Agnes’s hair was flat and matted on the right side. In the dim light the boy could see by the smallness in her eyes that she was no longer drunk. As she looked at him her lip trembled as if she would cry. This scared him into stopping his own sobbing, and he tried to stand up straight like a big boy. One by one he pulled the winter coats to the floor and uncovered her. Slowly she emerged, half-naked and crumpled, from the heap. In the half dark she held his eyes and she didn’t say a word. Slowly he kept pulling the layers from the bed. From beneath the heavy coats emerged her white legs and small feet. Shuggie stopped and looked at her there, and in the tangle and the hallway light he saw that her black Pretty Pollys had been ripped from toe to waist.

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