Shug was blinking and red-faced in the holiday crowd. He flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Strange men shook their heads as if they would have known how to handle this fine woman better. “You’re no starting, are you?”
Agnes rubbed at her arm. She tried to soften the frown on her face. She hooked his pinkie with hers, the gold of his Masonic ring felt cold and dead against her hand. “You were rushing me, that’s all. Just let me enjoy it. I feel like I never get out of the house.” She turned from him, back to the lights, but the magic was gone. They were cheap.
Agnes sighed. “Let’s have a wee drink. It’ll take the chill off, maybe help us get back in the spirit of things.”
Shug narrowed his eyes and ran his fist over his moustache like he was catching all the hard words he wanted to say to her. “Agnes. I’m begging you. Please can you take it slow the night?” But she was already gone, over the tramlines towards the winking cowboy.
“Howdy,” said the barmaid in a thick Lancashire accent. “That’s a right purdy dress.”
Agnes lifted herself up on to the swivelling plastic bar stool and crossed her ankles daintily. “A Brandy Alexander, please.”
Shug turned the bar stool next to her, spun it like a top, till it was taller than hers. With a hop he pulled himself up and twisted until they were eye to eye. “A cold milk, please.” He drew two cigarettes out of a packet, and Agnes motioned for him to light one for her. The barmaid put the drinks down in front of them. The milk was in a child’s tumbler, and Shug pushed it back towards her and demanded a different glass.
He slid the lit cigarette between Agnes’s lips and stroked the nape of her neck where a soft curl was escaping. She reached into her handbag and then, pushing the hair back into her crown, with a skoooosh she blasted it with sweet-smelling hairspray. Agnes took a long mouthful of the sweet drink and smacked her lips. “Elizabeth Taylor has been to Blackpool. I wonder if she likes whelks?”
Shug picked the inside of his nose with the ringed pinkie. He rolled the mucus between his thumb and forefinger. “Who doesnae?”
She spun to face him. “Maybe we should move here. It could be like this all the time.”
He laughed and shook his head at her, like she was a child. “Everyday it is something different with you. I’m exhausted trying to keep up.” He traced a finger along the shiny hem of her skirt as she watched the summer crowds push by outside the bar. Ordinary folk, already in winter coats.
“You know what I want? I want to play some bingo.” The warmth of the drink was in her now. She wrapped her arms around herself in a contented hug. “All these lights. I’m feeling lucky.”
“Aye? I asked them to turn them on just for ye.”
Fresh drinks came. Agnes fished around and pulled out the straw, the stirrer, and the two fat ice cubes. “This time I mean it. I’m going to win big. I’m going to start living. I’m going to give Sighthill a showing up. I can just feel it.” She finished the brandy in one swallow.
Their rented room was at the top of a Victorian house that was set three streets back from the promenade. It was plain even for a Blackpool B & B, and it smelled like the kind of place that rented rooms to temporary lodgers, not families on holiday. Each carpeted landing had a different, settled-in musk. The place smelled of burnt toast and TV static, as if the landlady never liked to open a window.
It was quiet at that hour in the morning. Agnes lay in a pile at the bottom of the carpeted stairs singing tunelessly to herself. “Ahh’m onny hew-man. Ahh’m just a wooh-man.”
There were feet moving behind closed doors and old floorboards creaked overhead. Shug put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Shh. Be quiet, will ye. You’ll wake up every soul in the place.”
Agnes pushed his arm away from her face, threw her arm wide, and sang louder. “Show me the stairwaa-ay ah have to cli-imb.”
Lights came on in one of the rooms. Shug could see it from under the thin door. He put his hands under her arms and tried to pick her up, drag her up the carpeted stairs. The more he pulled the more easily she slid through his hands, like a boneless bag of flesh. Each time he got leverage, she would become formless and slip free. Agnes spilt back on to the stairs with a giggle and went on singing to herself.
An Englishman in one of the rented rooms hissed through his closed door, “Keep it down. Before I call the poh-lice! People are trying to sleep.” To Shug he sounded like a small effeminate man, the way he dribbled out his sibilant esses. Shug would have liked him to open the door. Shug would have liked to leave a sovereign print on his face.
Agnes feigned affront. “Aye, phone the police you spoilsport. I’m on my holid—”
Shug clamped his hand tight over her wet mouth. She only giggled. With mischief in her eyes, she licked the inside of his palm with a fat tongue. It felt like a warm wet slab of flank mutton. It turned his stomach. Tightening his grip, he dug his ringed fingers into her cheeks till he forced her dentures apart. The smile left her eyes. Leaning his face close to hers, he hissed: “I’m only going to tell you this the once. Pick yersel up. Get yersel up they stairs.”
Slowly he took his hand away from her face. There was a pink mark where he had squeezed her jaw. There was fear in her eyes, and she looked almost sober again. As he drew his hand away, the fear melted from her eyes and the demon drink came back into her face. She spat at him through the ceramic teeth. “Who the fuck do you think y—”
Shug was on her before she could finish. Stepping over her, he reached backwards into her hair. The hardened hairspray cracked like chicken bones as he wound his fingers into the strands. With a tug hard enough to rip handfuls out by the roots, he started up the stairs, dragging her behind him. Agnes’s legs splayed awkwardly, she flailed like a clumsy spider as she tried to find her footing. The ripping pain stung her skull, and she wrapped her hands around his arm for purchase. Shug barely felt the sharpness of her nails as she pierced his skin. He pulled her up a stair, then he pulled her up another, and then another. The dirty carpet burnt her back, rubbed the skin from her neck, ripped the paillettes from her shiny dress. Hooking his thick arm under her chin he dragged her across the next carpeted landing. In one motion he dropped her at the door, fished out the key, turned on the bare light, and dragged her inside.
Agnes lay abandoned behind the door like a ragged draught excluder. The beaded dress had worked itself up her white legs. Her hand reached to her head, feeling for where her hair had started to tear. Shug crossed the room and pulled her hand away, suddenly embarrassed at what he had done. “Stop touching at yourself. I’ve no hurt you.”
She could feel the blood of her scalp on her fingers. Her ears were ringing from the bump, thump, bump of each stair. The numbness of the drink was leaving her. “Why did you do that?”
“You were making a show of me.”
Shug took off his black suit jacket and laid it over the single wooden chair. He took off the black tie and wound it neatly upon itself. His face was flushed red, and it made his eyes look somehow smaller and darker. While he’d dragged her upstairs his hair had come undone from the bald patch he tried hard to conceal. The loosened strands hung by his left ear, thin and ratty-looking. There was a cluck in the back of his throat, like a switch firing, and then his hands were on her again. She felt the claw on her neck, felt it on her thigh. He used his fingers and dug into her softness, wanting to be sure he had a firm grip. As flesh separated from bone she cried out from the pain, and he hammered his sovereign ring twice into her cheek.