Ugly Puggly 6

I fell asleep in the chair. The telly was on mute and a finger of whisky left in the bottle of Glayva. I’d slobbered down the middle of my dark coloured—Guinness is good for you—t-shirt. It took my brain a few dendrites to register it wasn’t my finger and I’d best drink it, before some other greedy bastard did. I heard Molly banging down the stairs, let my head fall to the side, shut my eyes and feigned sleep.

My method acting was so good, I snored, and wakened myself.  

Molly kicking the sandals on my feet. ‘You no hear the door!’ she bawled at my head.

‘Nah.’

 Dave was sitting on the edge of the couch peeking over at me. He looked younger than I remembered, about twelve and about to audition for Spice Boys. He wore a white baseball cap, gold chain and matching Adidas trainers and top.

Ugly Puggly wandered over the french doors. Denim jacket and clean looking, his grey hair had been cut short and he looked almost normal. ‘You got my keys?’ he asked

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Where ur they Molly?’

Anger flared in her eyes. She clapped her hand to her forehead in a theatrical gesture. ‘How the hell should I know?’

I thought it best to change the subject. ‘How was the weather anyway, Dave, when you were, eh?…I’d have offered you a drink, but somebody finished it.’  I glanced at Molly. ‘But we can maybe make you a cuppa tea?’

 ‘No we cannae, unless we get aff our fat arse,’ said Molly.

‘It’s stopped raining,’ said Dave, smiling.

‘Is that your sister?’ Ugly Puggly pointed to a wedding photo on the unit below the mirror.

Sarah was five years older than us. She’d felt sorry for Ugly Puggly, and by her standards had been pretty good to him, which meant she didn’t batter him. Her speciality was the head-butt, but she was good with her fists as any boy, and some men. Unfortunately, she was man crazy. She’d two bairns before she knew whose they were.

‘Is she wearing white?’ I asked.

‘Aye,’ he replied.

‘Well, that’s George she’s marrying then. Her two wains had said they’d help carry her belly for her, rather that the train on her wedding dress. I’m no sure if she was pregnant again in the photo.’ I added, ‘In another picture she’s wearing black, that might have been another wedding, or somebody’s funeral. I cannae remember—but she almost looks happy in that wan.’

‘I don’t think she could have been happy,’ Ugly Puggly stared at the photos, ‘because she liked poetry. And there’s always somebody dying in poetry. And your life being marked out by tea-spoons if you were a rich, pale-faced American wanker. And then, of course, your mum died too.’

‘Oh, thanks for reminding me.’ I used my elbows to get up from the chair. ‘I might have forgotten that.’  I picked up the whisky bottle.

‘Where you goin’ wae that?’ Molly asked.

‘Into the kitchen, tae put it in the bin, how?’

Ugly Puggly picked up her photograph. ‘Aye, she was quite solitary. That was the year we had hands across Scotland.’  

Molly shook her head at me, a clumsy attempt not to get involved.

But I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Solitary? She shagged everything that moved.’

‘Jim!’ Molly said. ‘There’s nae need for that kinda language.’

‘Sorry,’ I puckered my lips.

‘Maybe, we should have a wee cup of tea,’ Molly said, to lighten the mood. ‘What do you take?’

‘That’s no whit I meant,’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘I meant she had to be solitary for the poetry to work. It had to come fae her gut—I take my tea black, nae sugar.’

‘Aye, and there was plenty of that,’ I quipped.  

‘Milk and one sugar,’ said Dave. ‘What was the hands across Scotland?’

‘Dunno,’ I admitted.

Molly shrugged. I handed her the empty bottle as she went through to the kitchen. ‘See if there’s any cans left?’

‘There’s no,’ she said, with a backward glance. ‘And even if there was, you’re no getting them.’

‘Will you sit doon,’ I said to Ugly Puggly. ‘You’re making me nervous. I went over to my chair and picked up the remote. I flicked through the channels.

Ugly Puggly sat down beside Dave. He started to explain about Hands across Scotland, and I was half listening. ‘Well, it was Hugh MacDiarmid that started it. And it was a bit of a joke to begin wae.’

‘Who’s Hugh MacDairmid?’ Dave asked.  

‘Well, that’s a pseudonym. But he was best known for his work A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle.’

‘Whit kind of shite’s that?’ I asked.

‘You drunk?’ Ugly Puggly asked.

‘Suppose,’ I admitted.

‘Whit about then, A Drunk Man Looks at a very young girl pressing her breasts up against the screen?’

I quickly changed the channel from Televison X. ‘I didnae mean that,’ I said.

Dave laughed. ‘That’s whit you all say.’

Molly came through with a few mugs of tea. ‘Whit?’ she asked, handing them to Dave who was smirking and Ugly Puggly.

‘Nothing.  We were just discussing the work of Hugh MacDiarmid.’

‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

‘Oh, it’s wan of our national poets.’

‘Right,’ she sniggered, glancing at me. ‘And you’d know that?’

Ugly Puggly sipped at his black tea. ‘He was a Scottish nationalist and a communist. Sarah was a big fan of his. I think she went to see him.’  

‘Do I no get any tea?’ I asked.

‘It’s through there,’ she said. ‘Are you handless?’

‘Funny, you should say that. Hugh MacDiarmid did that thing, hands across the ocean, or something.’

‘Hands across Scotland,’ Ugly Puggly corrected me.

I rubbed at my chin. ‘That’s whit I meant.’ I came back with my tea and Molly was sitting in my chair. I squeezed onto the three-seater couch beside Dave and Ugly Puggly.

‘So Sarah was involved wae Hugh MacDiarmid? Do you ‘hink he was father of any of her children?’

‘Possible,’ said Ugly Puggly, but he was probably about seventy-eight or seventy-nine by then. Sarah was one of the young organisers.’

I was sobering up and sipped at me sweetened tea, but I yawned. ‘Organising whit?’

‘Well, they said it was mass disobedience, but it was a mark of mass allegiance that’s been largely written out of the history books.’

‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘A mass bakeoff?’     

‘Something like that,’ Ugly Puggly said. ‘They said it couldn’t be done. But all across Scotland from Inverness to Glasgow, to here in Clydebank, where Singers shut down and the shipyards on the Clyde walked out in solidarity, people joined hands in a sign of solidarity with an independent Scotland. Sure there were gaps, but the line stretched hundreds of miles. Some say, thousands of miles. You can still see pictures of the city centre closing down, buses disgorging their passengers. And they too joining the line. It went on and on. People waving the Saltire flag. But there’s nothing about it now. Nothing.’