Lizzie had always known. When Agnes had shown up on the doorstep with her two eldest and the Protestant taxi driver, she had had the instant compulsion to shut the door, but Wullie would not let her. Wullie had an optimism when it came to Agnes that Lizzie thought was a blindness. When Shug and Agnes finally got married, neither Wullie nor Lizzie went to the registry office. They said it was wrong, to marry between the faiths, to marry outside the Chapel. Really, it was Shug Bain she disliked. Lizzie had known it all along.
Ann Marie was one of the last to leave, taking too long a time in gathering her cardigan and cigarettes, even though it was all there, exactly as she had dropped it when she arrived. She made to say something to Shug, but he caught her eye, and she held her tongue. Agnes watched their silent conversation.
“Reeny, how you feeling, doll?” asked Shug with a cat’s grin.
Agnes turned her eyes from Ann Marie’s shadow and looked at her old friend, and her ribs broke anew.
“Aye, fine thanks, Shug,” Reeny answered awkwardly, all the while looking at Agnes.
Agnes’s chest caved into her heart as Shug said, “Get your coat, you’ll catch your death. I’ll drive you across the street.”
“No. That’s too much bother.”
“Nonsense.” He smiled again. “Any friend of our Agnes is a friend of mine.”
“Shug, I’ll put your tea on, don’t be long,” Agnes said, sounding more of a shrew than she wanted to.
“I’m no hungry.” He quietly closed the door between them. The curtains became lifeless again.
Reeny Sweeny lived at 9 Pinkston Drive in the tower block that stood shoulder to shoulder with number 16. The black hackney just needed to turn its neat pirouette, and Reeny would be home in less than a minute. Agnes sat down, lit a cigarette, and knew she would wait long hours before Shug showed his face again.
She could feel the burn of Lizzie’s eyes on the side of her face. Her mother said nothing, she just glowered. It was too much to be trapped in your mother’s front room and judged by her, too much to have her be a front-row spectator to every ebb in your marriage. Agnes gathered her cigarettes and went along the short hallway to look in on her weans. The room was dark but for the focused beam of a camping torch. Leek was clutching it under his chin and drawing in a black sketchbook with a look of stillness on his face. He did not look up, and she could not see his grey eyes under the shade of his soft fringe. The room was warm and close with the breath of his sleeping siblings.
Agnes folded some of the clothes that were strewn across the floor. She took the pencil from his hand and folded the book closed. “You’ll hurt your eyes, darling.”
He was almost a man, far too old to kiss goodnight now, but she did so anyway and ignored it when he recoiled at the smell of heavy stout on her breath. Leek shone his torch on the single bed for her. Agnes checked on her youngest, drew the blanket tight under Shuggie’s chin. She wanted to waken him, thought about taking him to her bed, overwhelmed by a sudden need to have someone wrapped tight around her again. Shuggie’s mouth hung open in sleep, his eyelids flickering gently, too far away to be disturbed.
Agnes closed the door quietly and went to her own room. She felt between the layers of the mattress and took out the familiar vodka bottle. Shaking the dregs, she poured herself a pauper’s mug, and then she sucked on the neck of the empty bottle and watched the city lights below.
The first time Shug went missing after his night shift Agnes spent the dawn hours worrying the hospitals and all the drivers she knew from the taxi rank. Working through her black book, she called all of her female friends, asking casually how they were but not admitting that Shug was roaming, unable to admit to herself that he had finally done it.
As the women gabbed about the routine of their lives she only listened to the noises beyond them and strained for any sounds of him in the room behind. Now she wanted to tell the women that she knew all about it. She knew about the sweaty taxi windows, his greedy hands, and how they must have panted at Shug to take them away from it all as he stuck his prick into them. It made her feel old and very alone. She wanted to tell them she understood. She knew all about its thrill, because once upon a time it had been her.
Once upon a time the wind whipping off the sea had turned the front of her thighs blue with the cold, but Agnes couldn’t feel it because she had been happy.
The thousand blinking lights from the promenade rained down on her, and she moved towards them with a slack mouth. She was so struck she hardly drew a breath. The black paillettes on her new dress reflected the bright lights and sent them back twinkling into the Fair Fortnight crowd till she looked as radiant as the illuminations herself.
Shug lifted her and stood her on an empty bench. The lights were afire all along the waterfront for as far as her eye could travel. Every building was in competition with the next, blinking with a thousand gaudy bulbs of its own. Some were western saloon signs with galloping horses and winking cowboys, others were like the dancing girls of Las Vegas. She looked down on Shug, beaming up at her. He looked smart in his good, narrow black suit. He looked like he was somebody.
“I can’t remember the last time you took me dancing,” she said.
“I can still trip the light fantastic.” He helped her gently back to the pavement and took a lingering squeeze of her soft middle. Shug could see the waterfront through her eyes, the tawdry glamour of the clubs and the adventure of the amusement halls. He wondered if this, too, would lose its shine for her. He took his suit jacket from his back and draped it over her shoulders. “Aye, the lights from Sighthill aren’t going to seem the same after this.”
Agnes shivered. “Let’s not talk about home. Let’s just pretend we’ve run away.”
They walked along the shimmering waterfront trying not to think of all the small, everyday things that pushed them apart, that kept them living in a high-rise flat with her mother and father snoring through the bedroom wall. Agnes watched the lights flash on and off. Shug watched the men swivel their greedy eyes to look at her and felt a sick pride burst in his chest.
In the grey daylight of that morning she had seen the Blackpool seafront for the first time. Her heart had quietly broken in disappointment. Shabby buildings faced a dark, choppy ocean and a cold, stony beach where blue weans ran around in their underclothes. It was buckets and spades and pensioners in rain bonnets. It was day-tripping families from Liverpool and coachloads from Glasgow. He had meant it as a chance to be alone. She had bitten the inside of her cheek at the commonness of it all.
Now, at night, she saw its draw. The true magic was in the illuminations. There wasn’t a surface that wasn’t glowing. The old trams that ran down the middle of the street were covered in lights, and the shaky wooden piers that jutted out into the brackish sea were now festooned like runways. Even the Kiss Me Quick hats blinked on and off as though demented with lust. Shug took her wrist and led her through the crowd and along the blazing promenade. Children were screaming from the waltzer ride on the pier. There was the roar and flash of the dodgem cars, the clink-clink of the manic slots. Shug kept pulling her through the crowds towards the Blackpool Tower, twisting this way and that in the habit of a taxi driver.
“Darlin’, please slow down,” she pleaded. The lights were all flying past her too quickly to drink in. She wrenched her wrist from his grasp, there was a red ring where he had gripped her.