Shuggie Bain. Douglas Stuart

edge of the earth. The burnt hills glinted when they were struck with sunlight, and the wind blew black wispy puffs from the tops like they were giant piles of unhoovered stour. Soon the greenish, brownish air filled with a dark tangy smell, metallic and sharp, like licking the end of a spent battery. They curved around another corner, and the broken fence ended at a large car park. At the back of the car park sat a high brick wall with an old iron gate set into it, held tight with a heavy padlock and chain. The guard’s booth at the side was tilting at a funny angle, and a thick layer of weedy grass grew on its roof. The mine was shut. Someone had painted Fuck the Tories on the plywood barrier. It looked like it was closed for good.

      Opposite the gates was a low concrete building. Dozens of men were spilling out of its windowless structure and stood in dark clumps on the Pit Road. At first it looked like they were leaving chapel, but as the diesel engine roared nearer, they turned as if they were one. The miners stopped their talking and squinted to get a good look. They all wore the same black donkey jackets and were holding large amber pints and sucking on stubby douts. The miners had scrubbed faces and pink hands that looked free of work. It seemed wrong, these men being the only clean thing for miles. Reluctantly, the miners parted and let the taxi go by. Leek watched them as they were watching him. His stomach sank. The men all had his mother’s eyes.

      The housing scheme spread out suddenly before them. Ahead, the thin dusty road ended abruptly into the side of a low brown hill. Each of the three or four little streets that made up the scheme branched horizontally off this main road. Low-roofed houses, square and squat, huddled in neat rows. Each house had exactly the same amount of patchy garden, and each garden was dissected by the identical criss-crossing of white washing lines and grey washing poles. The scheme was surrounded by the peaty marshland, and to the east the land had been turned inside out, blackened and slagged in the search for coal.

      “Is that it?” she asked.

      Shug couldn’t answer. From the roundness in his shoulders she could see his own heart had sunk. Agnes’s back teeth were powder. As they drove towards the little hill, they passed a plain-looking Catholic chapel and a huddled group of women still with their housecoats on. Shug searched the street signs and turned the taxi a sharp right. The street was a uniform line of modest four-in-a-block houses. Four families lived in one squat block. They were the plainest, unhappiest-looking homes Agnes had ever seen. The windows were big but thin-looking, letting the heat out and letting the chill in. Up and down the street, black puffs of coal smoke came out of chimneys, the houses were incurably cold even on a mild summer’s day.

      Shug stopped the taxi a few houses down. He leaned over the steering wheel to get a clear look at the building. There were hardly any cars parked on the street, and the ones that were looked like they were not in working condition.

      While Shug was distracted, Agnes rummaged around in her black leather bag. “You three keep your mouths shut,” she hissed. She lowered her head into the cavernous bag and tilted it slightly to her face. The children watched the muscles in her throat pulse as she took several long slugs from the can of warm lager she had hidden there. Agnes drew her head from the bag; the lager had washed the lipstick off her top lip, and she blinked once, very slowly, under the layers of wasted mascara.

      “What a shitehole,” she slurred. “And to think I dressed up nice for this?”

       1982

      PITHEAD