He was gone only a short while, but long enough for Mungo to wipe his face on the tea towel and feel stupid. When he returned there was a burgundy book in his hand, a diary with “1957” stamped in gold deboss. Flicking through the pages, he saw that each cream surface was warped with tiny, obsessive script. Chickie’s feelings were crowding the page, and when the page was full, they twisted and continued up along the margin.
Tucked in between the pages were two black-and-white photos. The first photo was square with a white frame. It showed a young man with thick hair, standing outdoors and leaning against the open window of a tenement. He had a broad Sunday paper folded in one hand and a short cigarette in the other. His face was tilted upwards towards a rare sun and he wore a heavy wool jumper and some high-waisted trousers. He was carefree and laughing at whoever was taking the photo.
The man in the photo was handsome and had the confidence of youth. Everything lay ahead of him. It was all unspoiled. “Ye were bonny, Mister Calhoun.”
“Were? Cheeky bugger. I have a jawline that could etch glass.”
In the next photo six teenage boys were in the back green of a tenement, this same tenement, sitting cross-legged on trampled grass and beaming at the photographer. Two of the boys sat slightly to the side on an old Mackintosh coat laid out like a picnic blanket. It was the smallest thing. The six were smoking after a football match, but those two seemed special, ever so slightly separated, an island of their very own.
Poor-Wee-Chickie pointed at the man sitting next to him on the coat. A towheaded boy with a dimpled chin and a crooked smile. “That fella’s name was Georgie. A kind boy, really, truly kind and considerate. We trained through in Ayr for the Merchant Navy the gether. On the first day he felt bad for me when he saw I didnae have socks thick enough for the boots so he gave me a pair of his. My mother had given me money for a sandwich and a bottle of ginger at the train station back to the city, I saw he didn’t have any so I made sure he got half of mine. That’s all it really was, wee things. Over the next three months, it was just wee kindnesses here and there. I loved him, though. He gave me my first kiss. My best kiss.”
Mungo was struck dumb.
“He asked me to emigrate to Australia with him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Och, I had a hunner good reasons back then, none of them make much sense now. Usual shite: ma mammy wisnae well, ma daddy never came back from the war, ma sister would be left to cope by herself, I didnae look guid in short trousers. Utter nonsense. All stories I telt myself to cover my fear. Australia! My wee arsehole was twitching like a rabbit’s nose.” Poor-Wee Chickie sighed as he filled the kettle. “Still, you know, ah suppose ah did what any guid son should do. At least my mammy was happy all her days.”
“That was decent of you.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie shook his head. “No, you’re missing the point. It was cowardly. I wanted that badly to go with Georgie. I’ve spent the last thirty-odd years imagining it. I just didnae have the guts.”
“Was there nobody else?”
“What. Around here?” Poor-Wee-Chickie pulled at a loose thread on his cardigan. “People became scared to death of me. They think what I have is catching. What man would get close to me?”
Mungo looked at the photographs again. The laughing boys, the happy teenager smoking and reading the paper. Poor-Wee-Chickie had been surrounded by love. Where had it all turned for him? “Where’s Georgie now?”
“Och! Georgie is married now, so mibbe it was for the best. He writes to me sometimes. He always asks me if I go back to Ayr and I tell him I do, but I never have. I couldnae face it.”
“What should I do, Mister Calhoun?”
Poor-Wee-Chickie ducked his head slightly and looked deeply into Mungo’s eyes. “That’s easy son. Put yourself first for once.”
Mungo drew his school bag over his tender shoulder. He nodded at the liver. “I’m sorry, I can’t eat that.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie laughed. “Och, that’s awright. Natalie loves liver. She’ll be in pure heaven.” He checked the sliver of sky peeking above his net curtains, and as he sighed, he caught Mungo staring at him. “Och, don’t worry about me, son. Ah’ll take a wee dauner up the shops, get something nice for ma dinner. Mibbe there’s a guid film on later.”
* * *
It was still early. Mungo waited for a break in the CID patrol before he emerged from the close mouth and lurched along the road. His leg throbbed as he stood on the corner and vacillated between heading to James’s tenement and the doocot. If he went to the tenement, James might not let him in, and the neighbours would hear him plead into the intercom. He could not stomach the shame of that.
So he went to the doocot and hunkered out of view on the far side of the shack. The sun came over Glasgow as he waited for James to do his morning feed and exercise. As he waited he rehearsed everything he wanted to say, but it all sounded clumsy, the small things too small, all the big feelings, overwrought and showy as an American film. He didn’t have to wait long. He heard James’s cough before he saw him.
When Mungo emerged from the far side of the doocot, James wouldn’t look at him. He opened the heavy locks and stepped into the darkness as though Mungo was not even there. “Whrooup, whroooup, whrooup.” The birds sang it back to him.
“I’m ready. I will go anywhere you want to go.” For all the rehearsing, Mungo couldn’t control himself now. Ashley and Ha-Ha had already wedged too much between them. He needed James to know the depth of everything he felt. It would tumble out of him, even if James shamed him with it later.
James didn’t turn around. He was holding a jug of cold water up to each cage, letting the birds drink through the bars like prisoners. It was reinforcing in their small brains that he was a benevolent jailer. That he alone loved them, and he alone would take care of them, if only they promised to return whenever he released them. He wouldn’t look at Mungo. “Anywhere? That’s brave of ye.” It didn’t sound as if he meant it. “How is yer self-loathing gaun?”