Mungo picked the lint off the blob of sweeties. He wouldn’t look at her.
Mrs Campbell sucked thoughtfully at her dentures. She took her cracked hands and put them on his narrow ribs. “Would ye do me a wee favour? Ah’m that used to making big dinners. Ah can never get it right since my boys are away. Would you come inside for a minute and have a plate of mince? It wid break ma heart to put it in the bin.” She pulled a face that said it would indeed break her heart if the food was wasted.
Mungo thought about Mr Campbell. It wasn’t that he disliked the man. It was just the size of him scared any wean that found themselves in his shadow. Years ago, any time he hung out of the window and scolded one of his own sons, the other children would stop their playing and hang their heads in a moment of silent mourning for the poor condemned Campbell. Something about Mr Campbell made Mungo nervous because he had never grown up with a man in the house.
Although he was hungry, he shook his head. “No thank you, Missus Campbell.”
The woman tutted. She grabbed hold of his hand and pulled him through her front door. She looked as wispy as sea haar, but she was made of tough Aberdonian granite. “Ah’m done asking you nice. Ah’ll be personally offended if ye refuse ma cooking again.”
Mrs Campbell led the boy through to her front room. It was the exact same shape as his own, only one floor lower. Mrs Campbell liked to smoke and keep the windows closed. He had heard her say: Why would she waste something she had paid good money for?
Mr Campbell didn’t take his eyes off the television as they entered. They were replaying the highlights from a greyhound race out at Ayr. Mungo watched the long dogs slice through the drizzle as they chased the mechanical rabbit.
Mrs Campbell pushed Mungo into her own armchair. She unfolded a small trestle table and pinned him in while she went to heat up a plate. The wall above the fireplace was covered in photos of the Campbell boys. They showed a time-lapse of sorts, every era of them clearly documented. Smiling, good-natured boys, grinning once a year against the marbled blue of the school photographer’s backdrop. They were at least ten years older than Mungo and he didn’t remember them too well, but he could tell from the boys’ mouths that the photos didn’t miss a moment: baby teeth, missing teeth, first big teeth, gappy teeth, and metal teeth. He saw the shy smile of silver braces and then the straight and confident grins of successful young men. Mungo touched his own mouth self-consciously. Mo-Maw wasn’t a big believer in dentists.
“Has your mother gone missing again?” Mr Campbell didn’t look up at the boy.
“Aye.”
“Wummin don’t know what nonsense to be up to these days. Too much choice. No doubt she’ll show up when she dries out.”
“Do you think so?”
“Aye.” He scowled at the racing results. “Has your Hamish found work yet?”
“Naw.”
Mr Campbell considered this for a moment. “Aye, well. Glasgow’s done for. No coal, no steel, no railway works, and no fuckin’ shipbuilding.” The man’s jaw set at a funny angle but he didn’t stop watching the racing. “You tell him Mr Campbell said he should join the navy. He should ask to get stationed at Faslane and then drive one of thon nuclear submarines right up Thatcher’s cunt.”
Mungo tittered with nerves. “Don’t you mean John Major’s hole?”
Mr Campbell grimaced. “There’s submarines enough for the lot of them.”
Margaret Thatcher had not been Prime Minister for a couple of years now, even Mungo knew that. Yet every conversation about unemployment and the future still focused its ire on her. Mr Gillespie had told his Modern Studies class that Margaret Thatcher had been intent on closing all the heavy industry in the city. The English government had been frustrated with the growing power of the trade unions, tired of subsidizing Scotland to compete with cheaper foreign labour. He had said that it was catastrophic to put several generations of the same families out of work: men who had been bred to shape steel would be left to rust, whole communities that grew up around shipbuilding would have no paying jobs. He drew concentric circles like the ripples in a puddle and tried to have the class list the broader effects Thatcher’s policies had on the city. How when the collieries closed, it had been the butchers and the greengrocer and the man who sold used cars who had suffered next. Mr Gillespie had said it was bad enough that the Conservatives had killed the city, but that it had been spearheaded by an English woman was an unspeakable insult. What had made her want to neuter the Glaswegian man? A thousand words due a week on Monday.
When Mungo asked Jodie what neuter meant, she had said Mr Gillespie drank too much. That if a man was in power, he would never have made the tough decisions that Thatcher had been faced with. Then she asked Mungo if he actually wanted to work down a coal mine?
“Naw.”
“Then stop fucking blaming it on women.” Jodie picked the chipped polish from her thumbnail. “Besides, ignore the old bastard. None of that Thatcher stuff is on the curriculum. Mr Gillespie is a flabby-arsed Marxist. Do you know how some men build model railways in their spare room? Well youse are his little green soldiers. He sees it as his wee project to stir up the proletariat in the East End, while he drives his Sierra estate to the Marks and Spencer out at Bishopbriggs and spunks his wages on baguettes and Merlot.”
Mungo must have been squinting at her because Jodie sighed. “I saw him peeling a kiwi fruit in the staffroom the other week. So, up your arse with his voice-of-the-working-class nonsense.”