The record hissed to the end of the first side. Lizzie excused herself and wobbled off to the bathroom. Big Nan, thinking no one was looking, took the opportunity to peer slyly at Lizzie’s cards. Her eye caught a glint of unopened stout tins behind Wullie’s old comfy chair. “Jackpot!” she shouted. “That auld yin has a hidden carry-oot stuck down the back o’ his chair!” She sat down, sweaty and out of breath, and helped herself. Nan was here on business, staying a little soberer than the others. All night she had been closely counting the money on the card table, thinking about the bit of ham she could buy for Sunday’s soup and the money the weans would need for next week’s school. Now the card business was over, Nan was thirsty for the hidden stout.
“Lizzie Campbell. That auld liar. She’s not aff the drink,” said Reeny.
“She’s as aff that drink as I’m aff the pies,” said Nan, buttoning her cardigan tight over her new bra. She shouted for Lizzie’s benefit in the direction of the dark hallway. “I don’t know why I’m pals wi’ you robbing Catholic bastards anyhows!” Nan took the stout and filled the mugs and glasses on the table; the drunker she could get them the better. Suddenly she was all business again. “So. Are we gonnae finish these cards or get the catalogue out? I’m tired o’ watching you auld wummin dance like youse are Pan’s People.” From a black leather handbag at her feet she pulled out a thick, dog-eared catalogue. Across the front cover it read Freemans, and there was a picture of a women in a lace dress and straw hat in a happy golden field somewhere far from here. She looked like her hair smelled of green apples.
Nan opened the catalogue on top of the playing cards and flicked through a couple of pages. The noise of the plasticky paper was like a siren’s song. The women stopped throwing themselves around to the music and gathered around the open book, pressing greasy fingers on pictures of leather sandals and polyester nighties. They opened to a double spread of women riding bikes in pretty jersey dresses and cooed as one. At this Nan reached into her leather bag again and pulled out the handful of Bible-size payment books. There were groans all around. They were her pals, sure, but this was her job, and she had weans to feed.
“Och, Nan, I’ve just no got it this week,” said young Ann Marie, almost recoiling from the catalogue.
Nan smiled and through closed teeth replied as politely as she was capable. “Aye, ye’ve fuckin’ goat it. An’ if ah have to dangle you out of the window by they fat ankles, you’ll be paying me the night.”
Agnes smiled to herself and knew Ann Marie should have quit while she was ahead. But the young woman ploughed on. “It’s just that swimsuit doesnae actually fit.”
“Yer arse! It fit when you goat it.” Nan searched through the grey books. She pulled the one that read “Ann Marie Easton” in curly black biro and dropped it on the table.
“It’s just my boyfriend said he’s no able to take me away on holiday anymair.” Ann Marie looked big-eyed from face to face for a trace of pity. The women couldn’t care less. The last holiday most of them had seen was a stay on the Stobhill maternity ward.
“Too. Fuckin’. Bad. Pick. Better. Men. Pick. Better. Claes,” Nan applied the pressure like she had a thousand times and went about collecting money from all the women and marking it in their books. It would be an eternity to pay off a pair of children’s school trousers or a set of bathroom towels. Five pounds a month would take years to pay off when the interest was added on top. It felt like they were renting their lives. The catalogue opened to a new page, and the women started fighting over who wanted what.
Agnes was the first to lift her head at the change of pressure in the room. Shug was stood in the doorway, his thick money belt heavy in his hand. The damp wind was sucking through the room, telling Agnes that he had left the front door open, that he was not staying. Agnes stood and moved towards her husband, her dress still folded down at the waist. Too late she straightened her skirt, then she clasped her hands and tried to smile her soberest smile. He didn’t return her it. Shug simply looked through her in disgust and abruptly said, “Right, who needs a lift?”
The unwelcome presence of a man was like a school bell. The women started gathering their things. Nan slipped a couple of Lizzie’s hidden stouts into her bag. “Right, ladies! Next Tuesday up ma hoose,” she barked, adding, for Shug’s benefit, “and any man who thinks he can break up ma catalogue night will get battered.”
“Looking lovely as ever, Mrs Flannigan,” said Shug, picking his thumbnail with the hackney key. Of all of the women to fuck, it would never be her. He had standards.
“That’s nice of ye to say,” replied Nan with a thin smile. “Why don’t ye shove yer arms up yer arse and gie yer insides a big hug from me.”
Agnes pulled her velvet dress back over her shoulders. She stood still, her palms flat on her skirt. The women buttoned themselves into heavy coats and nodded politely to her as they squeezed uncomfortably past Shug, who still stood in the doorway. They all lowered their eyes, and Agnes watched as Shug smiled from under his moustache at each woman on her way out. He stepped aside only for the bulk of Nan.
Shug was slowly losing his looks, but he was still commanding, magnetic. There was a directness to his gaze that did something funny to Agnes. She had once told her mother that when she met Shug he had a gleam in his eye that would make you take your clothes off if only he asked. Then she had said that he asked this a lot. Confidence was the key, she explained, for he was no oil painting and his vanity would have been sickening in a less charming man. Shug had the talent to sell it to you like it was the thing you wanted the worst. He had the Glasgow patter.
He stood there, in his pressed suit and narrow tie, the leather taxi belt in his hand, and he coldly surveyed the departing women like a drover at a cattle auction. She had always known that Shug appreciated the very high and the very low of it; he saw an adventure in most women. There was something about how he could lower beautiful women, because he was never intimidated by them. He could make them laugh and feel flushed and grateful to be around him. He had a patience and a charm that could make plain women feel confident, like the loveliest thing that ever walked in flat shoes.
He was a selfish animal, she knew that now, in a dirty, sexual way that aroused her against her better nature. It showed in the way he ate, how he crammed food into his mouth and licked gravy from between his knuckles without caring what anyone thought. It showed in how he devoured the women leaving the card party. These days it was showing too often.
She had left her first husband to marry Shug. The first had been a Christmas Catholic, pious enough for the housing scheme but devout only to her. Agnes was better-looking than him in a way that made strange men feel hopeful for themselves and made women squint at his crotch and wonder what they had missed in Brendan McGowan. But there was nothing to miss; he was straightforward, a hard-working man with little imagination who knew how lucky he was to have Agnes and so he worshipped her. When other men went to the pub, he brought home his wages every week, the brown envelope still sealed, and handed it to her without argument. She had never respected that gesture. The contents of the envelope had never felt like enough.
Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the Catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste.