“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, sandy 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.
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