Mungo came out of the close and joined a pack of Proddy boys heading to the waste ground. He fell into formation amongst the baby-faced warriors. He swung his meatless legs in imitation of their gallus way of walking; his shoulders about his ears and a sour scowl on his face. This swagger was a uniform as ubiquitous as any football top. It had a gangly forward motion like a big-balled, bandy-legged weasel, head swung low, eyes always fixed on the prey ahead, ready to lunge with either a fist or a silver blade. Mungo tried his best to wear the uniform but he felt like an imposter. It was a poor imitation.
The smirr wetted them to the skin. The fine mist found its way into the cracks of clothing and pushed through their shoes, making their white socks damp and grimy. It ate them from the feet up, inching inside their denims and soaking them through to their underwear. The spitting rain was only visible when they stepped into the pools made by the orange street lamps. These orange lights gave a feeling of warmth that had been missing in the grey daylight hours. Now and again the boys stopped and huddled underneath them. They passed half-bricks and homemade shanks between themselves as if they were swapping toys.
Mungo was shivering by the time they reached Ha-Ha and the older boys. It was clear that Ha-Ha had bumped some speed; it showed in the way he was grinding his jaw and dancing like a shadow-boxer. He clapped his brother on the back. “Ye made the right decision, fuckwit. Shame really, ah like bonfires. They’re pure lovely to look at.”
Now, as one disorganized rabble, the boys turned the corner into the darkness. Sprayed across the waste ground were wooden boards and old pallets; debris that the younger boys had turned into ramshackle forts and dens. Sat in the mud and weeds it looked like a medieval settlement. Some of the dens had low doorways and were built atop patterned scraps of linoleum. Some had fancy feminine touches and sticks of once-fine furniture. Ha-Ha kicked the side of the smallest hovel. Five or six small boys spilled out of it and soon the whole settlement swarmed like a tiny village. One of the bigger boys flashed a torn pornographic page at Ha-Ha, a woman on her back with her legs splayed.
“Who’s that?” asked Ha-Ha as he passed the woman around. “Yer maw?”
Mungo wanted to stay in the shanty town. It reminded him of the goodness of the doocot. These boys had been getting along, cooperating constructively in the process of building the little village, making something good out of nothing, just like James had.
Ha-Ha snatched the dirty picture and tucked it safely inside his anorak. “Who’s comin’ up the bridge wi’ me? Let’s fuckin’ do this!” Like an Orange piper, Ha-Ha marched the boys on through the weeds and into the night. They whistled their fight song in fair tonal unison. Mungo hung back. He could see that some of the boys were still as young as nine or ten, a few were in T-shirts or light knit tops and most were occupied in licking the dribbling cold off the ends of their noses. There were a handful amongst them, Ha-Ha’s closest lieutenants, who were more than grown men. They carried heavy ceremonial swords, taken from Masonic fathers, and lengths of lead pipe stolen from pulled-down tenements. The ginger-headed boy still had his arm strapped across his chest, but in his other hand flashed the silver teeth of his mammy’s serrated bread knife.
There were no street lights over the waste ground but Mungo could see the man-made glow of the bridge ahead. The narrow footbridge spanned the motorway, connecting the Protestant scheme with the Catholic scheme that lay on the far side. This was a bridge that no young Protestant fighter would ever cross alone.
The motorway was pulsing with Saturday day trippers returning from a jaunt to Edinburgh Castle; contented weans who had rubbed the snout of Greyfriars Bobby.
Mungo could see hooded figures loitering at the mouth of the bridge. There must have been another ten or fifteen Protestant boys, all older than himself, all standing tight-faced in the cold rain. They parted to let Ha-Ha through. It was a great turnout. Ha-Ha looked swollen with pride.
Someone crouched in the dirt and picked up a rock in one hand and a ginger bottle in the other. Like potato farmers, the smaller boys began digging for other missiles. Mungo looked down and saw a half-brick, red and heavy, a relic from some other battle. He dug it out, its edges sharp and violent, and straight away he wanted to put it down, to turn and head back to James.
One of the hooded Billies turned his way, taking a long draw on his fag. “Ah see we finally got young Hamilton out here. Bout time, shitebag.” The man’s mouth was a collection of broken teeth. He had a grin like a graveyard full of wrecked headstones. “Ah thought ye were gonnae let the family name doon. Turn out to be a fuckin’ bender.”
Mungo did his best to pull himself up to his full height. He knew that it didn’t matter what he said next, it only mattered how he said it. “Haw, fuckface. If ye like they wooden pegs ye call teeth ah’d shut yer fuckin’ mouth.” The hooded boy had come too close to the truth. Mungo rolled the brick in his hand as his fear turned to adrenaline. He sensed Ha-Ha nod approval somewhere over the sea of warriors and one by one, the boys turned away from him.