Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 by Douglas Stuart
Author:Douglas Stuart [Stuart, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2020-02-20T00:00:00+00:00
Nineteen
Agnes stepped out of her own ashes in time for Shuggieâs tenth birthday. She was off the drink for three months before she took up the night shift at the colliery petrol station. She had spread Christmas over four different catalogues, piling the tree with presents and filling the table with four kinds of game and meat with no way of paying for any of it. As Leek and Shuggie lay fat and full in the glow of the television, she did not realize she need not have bothered. They were happy with her alone, with her sobriety and the peace it brought.
The catalogue bills started to come in, but more than the money there was something else about the job that she needed then. The job helped with the loneliness. It kept her busy, gave her something to do on the long, empty nights. Without it she would have sat at home, wondering what she would do until sleep finally came. Most of those nights she would sit there thinking about Shug, thinking about the friends who never called any more, about Lizzie and Wullie and about Catherine in South Africa. The night shift helped keep her from the drink.
The petrol station doubled as a small shop, the only place for a mile that sold cigarettes, sugary ice lollies, and bags of oven chips. It was the centre of nothing. She pulled a drawer towards herself and lifted out the dirty coins that rattled there, dropped in the change, and pushed packets of fags and pints of milk back through the safety-glass partition. It was a social life of sorts, and she was glad for it.
Four nights a week Agnes sat behind the safety glass staring out into the empty darkness. At long intervals taxi drivers would pull in and fill their black hacks with diesel. Some would ask for the key to the dank little toilet, and some would ask her for a paper and a cold can of Irn-Bru. On either side of the safety glass they would have their banter, about the strikes out at Ravenscraig, about the death of the Clyde, about the shared things in their lives. Taxi drivers were used to being behind glass; their own nights were partitions and windscreens. Agnes grew glad of their company.
Over time a couple of the men became regular, and a few started to have their breaks there with her, eating sandwiches on either side of the glass. The late-night business at the petrol station improved after she started. Some hackney drivers went out of their way to call by, to spend five minutes with the beautiful woman who laughed at their stories, this doll who seemed always pleased to see them. They moved on only when the next driver pulled up.
Sometimes, if she was occupied in conversation, a few of the taxis circled the station until she was free. They watched her like shy weans gawping at a plate of biscuits. She could see them criss-crossing
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