James shook his head. “Tomorrow maybe. I need to go see Mac Munroe up in Cranhill. He’ll be desperate to buy the doocot off us. He’s been keen to fly my prize pouters for ages. Between the cages and the birds there has to be about four hunner pound all in. That’ll be a big help to us.”
James went to the doocot and exercised his doos while Mungo slumped on the grass and felt bad about his meagre savings. James retrieved his flask and sandwiches and they ate a shared breakfast together as the pigeons circled overhead. The tea was milky and sweet and it soothed the cut in his mouth. There was no school today, there would be no school tomorrow. The boys made lists of things to pack; useful things like bandages, firelighters, sleeping bags, and then many impractical things: a ghetto blaster, tins of heavy Ambrosia rice, and James’s mourning suit, in case farmers expected a formal job interview. Afterwards they lay on their stomachs in the morning sun, nothing more to say, drunk with relief at what lay ahead. James snaked his hand across the grass and lifted the back of Mungo’s jumper. He ran his fingers through the downy hairs at the base of his spine. Mungo closed his eyes.
“Do you think people will like us?”
“In Ardnamurchan? Ah dunno, we don’t really need people to like us. We just need them to leave us alone. There’s hardly any people there, ah think it’ll be awright.”
No women watching from windows. No gossiping voices at the landing below you. No Ha-Ha wanting him to man up. No Jodie wanting him to grow up. Mungo could not imagine. “Will you tell your da?”
“Aye. Ah’ve already written the letter. Ah wrote it last year after he battered me for the chatline.” James stroked the base of Mungo’s spine, ready to pull his hand away should one of the dog walkers come too close. “Will you tell Mo-Maw?”
Mungo thought about it. “Naw. I’ll tell Jodie. She’ll know how to break it to Hamish and Maureen. ‘Asides, they willnae want to know me after they hear what I am.”
“Maybe Jodie will.” James trusted in the legends of her good-heartedness. It spoke as many lovely things about him as it did about her. “Mibbe one day we can tell her where we went.”
“Aye. Mibbe.”
“Mungo, you do know we can’t ever come back here? Once they know, we’ll be as bad as Chickie Calhoun.”
Someday Mungo would tell him what he knew but for now all he said was “He’s no all bad. He’s awright. We’re awright.”
“Whut? No shuffling to the Paki shop in your cagoule, making soup for Mo-Maw, living for the guid weather when you can watch bin men take their taps aff in the summer sun?”
Mungo was grinning, spit pooling in the side of his open mouth. “You’re a cheeky basturt for a Catholic. You still have to apologize for saying all that cruel shite to me.”
“Ah was just keeping the Protestants in line. Yeese think ye run this town.”
“That was kind of you, wingnut.” Mungo snickered as he twisted James’s ear.
James batted his hand away. He looked up at the sky full of birling birds. There was some other man’s hen in the sky. She was a drab, eggy yellow against the ash-grey clouds, but now and again the sunlight hit her and she shone like gold. One of James’s pigeons started to circle her, a plump little bully that he called Henry-the-Weighth. The pair dipped out of view behind the tenements and in that moment, James knew that his bird was lost forever. It would have devastated him only hours ago, but now he huffed, and felt strangely happy for Henry. He chuckled to himself. “Here, ah realized something the other day. Do you remember that chatline ah telt ye about? Well, ah realized ah started phoning it well before my mammy died.”
“Aye. So?”
“She must have been getting those bills for months. She must have seen what those numbers were for, and just paid them. She never let on. She never said a word.”
It took a moment for Mungo to realize what it was James was telling him. “Oh. She knew about you. That’s guid.”
James whistled at his birds. “Aye. That’s guid.”
Mungo turned his face away from James. The sunlight was making the crown of his head warm, and he wanted to feel it kiss his other cheek. “Just think. This time next week. No more John Donne.”
“Who?”
The soft fingers on his spine had lulled him into a stupor. “It doesnae matter.”
The sun would hold. The boys closed their eyes.
* * *
While the boys had been watching the birds fly over the scheme, Hamish had come upon the doocot from the park side. Like a deerhound he had the instinct to start at the widest point and sweep inwards, coursing his quarry back towards home. He had come through the park and then slipped between the missing railings in the iron fence.
Earlier that morning he had gone to the flat to look for Mungo and found Mo-Maw slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. Last night had been a blur of adrenaline, flashes of emerald green and white and spit and blood. But through it all he could clearly picture his baby brother lying in the dirt, choking on his blood, while the gleeful Fenian stamped down upon him. When Hamish saw Mungo’s bloodied, discarded clothes in the hallway, and found Mo-Maw weeping to herself at the table, he imagined the worst. He shook her. She looked up. She screamed.
For a moment Hamish had forgotten about his own torn-up face. Mo-Maw’s screaming brought Jodie through from her bedroom. His sister stood in the kitchen doorway, her hair curled around a tonging iron, the plug dangling from the end where she had ripped it from the wall. It was unlike Jodie to be at a loss for words. She stared at Hamish, and at the blood that was already seeping through the bandage, and as she stared, the tongs singed through her hair and a long, ringleted clump came away in her hand.
Mo-Maw had been nursing a hangover, she hadn’t been weeping for Mungo, she thought he was still in his bed. Hamish guffawed at his own stupidity.