Mr Donnelly had not expected the placid boy to turn on him. When Mungo grabbed the man by the hair and dragged him out into the close all the old chancer could say was “Aye, nae problem chief, ah didnae mean any bother.” It rolled off his tongue in a jovial manner as though he was a first-footer who had stayed too long after the Hogmanay bells.
Mungo hurled the man on to the hard stairs. He paced the landing, flagellating himself, slapping his own face, cracking his fists off his temples. It was this that unsettled the old man the most. His fury sent Mr Donnelly cowering into the corner of the stairwell, where he sank to the floor with his hands covering his head. Mungo was angry at the man, but he was angrier with himself. It was a nightmarish sight to see the man without trousers but with his old blazer and shirt on and his tie still knotted. His bare legs were pallid against the concrete and the tip of his shrivelled cock was hanging below his shirt hem, tacky in the close light. Mr Donnelly had seen his opportunity and taken it, he hadn’t bothered to waste time on swooning or sweet teases. It was a low way to live.
Mungo spat on the man, a great shower of directionless spittle.
“Thank you, son. Aye, thank you.” The old man seemed grateful to have gotten off so lightly.
Leaving Mr Donnelly hunkered in the close, Mungo went inside and locked every lock. He returned to Mo-Maw and pulled the sweated bed sheets across her. She didn’t stir. Her head was tilted backwards, her mouth open and ghastly with her own smeared lipstick. Tattie-bogle. He would pretend she had been Tattie-bogle all along. Without glancing at her pinkest flesh, he lifted the empty shell of her most gently and stuffed the sheets underneath her. It brought her splayed legs back together. Then, as though he was preparing her for burial, he wiped the last of the paint from her lips. She lay there, drunk out of her memory, looking like a baby that would not sleep without being swaddled.
The struggle with the old man had roused Jodie. She was growling to herself like she could not wait to be gone from this madhouse. He heard her fill a mug with tap water. Then she sealed herself back inside her bedroom.
Mungo couldn’t sleep after that. Inside and out he was in agony. He crawled on to his bed and felt rotten for all the mistakes he had made, all the poor-me’s he could conjure: Jodie and the baby, Ha-Ha and the Bhoyston, Mo-Maw and the dirty money, but most of all for James.
He had been so scared of Ha-Ha that he had ruined the best thing he had ever known. Now, in the darkness, he knew that Ha-Ha would not keep his word, not for long – he never did. It was only a matter of time before James would be hurt, and for what? For liking Mungo Hamilton, the ruiner of all good things.
TWENTY-FOUR
As the sun broke over the tenements Mungo went to the bathroom and cleaned the blood and mud with a damp cloth. He crunched two of Jodie’s painkillers and smeared Mo-Maw’s tubes of ointment over his ribs till they were thick with pungent grease. He wrapped his kidneys in strips torn from of an old cotton duster and tested the bruises that were spreading up his flank. His outsides looked as dead as his insides felt. It seemed only right.
There was a congealed split under his hairline where the hockey stick had cracked his skull. He cleaned the swollen area and then covered it with a bunion plaster, the only thing he could find that was adhesive. Mungo tried to hold the edges of skin together while it set, and he combed his hair, still matted in places with his own blood, over the flesh-toned rubber. When he swept it back from his face there was a bruise around his temple so he took some of Jodie’s foundation and spread the too-orange cream from the outside of his eye up to his hairline.
It hurt to pull clean clothes over his body and the bandages and the pain meant he could not bend properly as he packed his schoolbag. He burst his piggy bank and wrapped the pittance inside Mr Donnelly’s tainted note. Unpinning an old school photo of Jodie from his wall he placed it safely into the pocket of his cagoule. It didn’t take long to pack the things he loved, and when he was finished his bag was still light enough to lift, despite his tender sides.
He forced himself to wait and try to eat the end-slice of the bread. Wincing, he ate it slowly, while the cut inside his cheek screamed. As he chewed he stared across the back greens at James’s darkened windows. He hadn’t hurt any Catholics, surely that was worth something. They had both done what they needed to hide their true selves. He would show James his bruises and James would understand that. James would put Ashley aside and then they would leave together on a fast bus, going in any direction Mungo pointed.
Mungo closed the door behind him. He stumbled down the sleeping close as weak sun spilled through the stained-glass windows. When he reached the ground floor he was surprised to find Chickie Calhoun stepping back into the close mouth. Natalie was tugging on her leash, her beady eyes bulging out of her skull. Mungo nodded politely and squeezed past them. He had his hand on the heavy door before Poor-Wee-Chickie spoke.
“Is the circus in town?”
“Pardon me?” Even in his low state he remembered his manners.
The little man stood in the shadows at the deep end of the close, the dog leash wrapped around his hand. “Well, you’re creepin’ about with a face full of make-up and a packed bag. So I figured maybe ye were running away to join the Ringlings.”
Mungo smiled although he didn’t feel like it. He reached for the heavy door again.
“Listen, if I were you, I’d wait a wee minute afore going out there. The polis have been up and down that street so often the council will need to lay some new carpet.” Mungo peered through the frosted glass. It was the start of a fine Sunday morning outside. The sun had pushed wide cracks in the thick clouds and it promised a blue sky when it could manage. Still, sure enough, two unmarked CID cars crept along the street; they were conspicuous on a street where few could afford motors of their own. They rolled slowly to catch unawares any boys still trapped out from the fighting. Poor-Wee-Chickie nodded towards his own front door. “Son, have you eaten anything hot yet?”
“No.”