Mungo bet Jodie would never say that to Mr Gillespie’s face.
Mr Campbell was still talking. “Just like the fucking English, eh? First they let boatloads of the starving Irish bastards come over and take all the good work. Then they go and shut all the businesses and leave us jobless and drowning in dirty Fenians.” He looked at Mungo now, his eyes were as clear and blue as a June sky. “Aye, very clever of the English that was. That’s how ye keep the Scottish lion on its knees.”
Mrs Campbell returned with a scalding plate heaped with boiled potatoes swimming in brown mince. The gravy was thick with onions, long and curved as a witch’s fingernails. In the middle of the plate were two fluffy doughballs. She smiled as Mungo ate. Mungo chewed as quickly as he could, eager to be away from Mr Campbell. Only when he was finished did she take the trestle table away and free him. The woman dabbed at a gravy stain on his jumper. “That Maureen Hamilton, she was having a bloody laugh when she named you after a saint, eh? The cheek of it. Look at the state of ye.” He kissed Mrs Campbell’s cheek, his lips felt greasy against the parchment of her skin.
The man pointed at the ceiling but did not look at the boy. “When yer mammy shows her gallus face, ah’ll nail her fuckin’ feet to your carpet if ye want? That’ll soon sort her.”
“I’ll let you know,” said Mungo. He nodded quickly as he went out the door.
Afterwards, Mungo lay on his living room carpet running his hands across his happy belly. The day dimmed early and the orange street lights came to life all across the scheme. He lay there in the afternoon dark, humming to himself.
He heard Mrs Campbell climb up and down the close with her sloshing pail. Her knees cracked as she went. The mop head clipped the hard stone as she rinsed each stair clean of his shampoo. He felt bad to have given her extra work, but her voice echoed as she sang Tammy Wynette to herself and he decided that she sounded content enough.
When she reached the Hamilton landing the woman crouched at his door. The rusted spring whined in protest as she opened the letter box. Her voice was carried in on the draught. He could hear her clearly enough, as though she was in the room with him.
“Mungo Hamilton, ye’re a useless wee scunner.”
The letter box closed with a snap. Mungo sat up. There was a brief pause before it rasped open. “But I love ye.” It snapped closed, and then sprung open again. “Ya wee arsehole.”
* * *
Garibaldi’s Café had been on the same corner for over twenty years. For sixty years before that, it had sat further along the road, at the base of a tenement the council had pulled down during the slum clearances, when they had sent the families to live in the new high-rise flats.
Jodie was out of breath by the time she raced through the front door. Enzo Garibaldi raised his head as the little bell tinkled. He scowled at the ornate clock that sat amongst his family photos; six generations of stern Italian men wrapped in jolly striped aprons. Jodie knew the clock ran fast but it was hardly worth arguing about. She tucked her schoolbag under the counter and pinned up her hair.
Jodie worked at Garibaldi’s most nights after school; scooping hard ice cream into oyster shells and marshmallow-filled wafers, before pouring thick syrupy raspberry sauce over the top of it with a glurp. Garibaldi’s ice cream came in only one flavour: sweet full-cream vanilla. Jodie had tasted real vanilla only once, and she knew that Garibaldi’s was not vanilla. It was just white sugar and heavy cream, but it made housewives’ eyes roll back in their heads and children behave at the mere promise of a pokey cone. There was a reason it had stayed in business for nearly a century; it made your teeth scream with delight.
It was a damp, uneventful evening and she passed the hours by breaking apart bulk crates of ginger so Enzo could sell them individually at a higher price. When Jodie finished her shift she locked herself in the bathroom. She stuffed herself into her velvet dress and then concealed the dress underneath her winter coat before she asked Enzo for an advance on next week’s wages.
Enzo liked Jodie; she had the tint of an Italian and reminded him of his own adult daughters, grown and with families of their own. At least once a week he asked if Jodie was still planning on going to university, if her life remained on track. It was an odd euphemism, when what he really wanted to know was if she was letting any man get at her. But Jodie was glad that somebody cared to ask, even if she had to remind Enzo that she didn’t come from university money.
As she folded her apron, Enzo beamed at her proudly and handed her an advance straight from the till. Then he let her heap two golden oysters for herself, dusted in flake crumbs and smothered in raspberry sauce.
As she crossed Duke Street, the faint rain shimmered like midges in the glow of the street lights. She walked up the hill towards the high school and stood on the corner taking care to hold the dripping ice cream away from her velvet dress.
The man had been parked with his headlights off, waiting patiently for her. When he saw her in the rain, he turned over the engine and pulled alongside the kerb. Jodie got into the car and kissed him. He didn’t linger on her lips. He was annoyed that she would bring dribbly ice cream into his new motor. Rolling down his window, he took the oysters from her and dumped them out on to the street. Then he put each of her fingers into his mouth and sucked the cream from her knuckles.