It was the end of a long, muggy dusk by the time he reached Glasgow. It took eight hours of faithfully getting into cars and aboard buses he didn’t quite know the destination of, but he wasn’t afraid any longer.
On two occasions the bus driver wouldn’t let him aboard; he had almost no money, plus he was filthy. But there were three occasions when they did, when the driver took pity on him, punched a ticket that didn’t exist and waved him on for free.
Mungo was in a daze as he walked slowly home from Buchanan Street station. The city air was hot and close. It stayed light until late this time of year, and carousing louts still had their shirts off, scalded pink from the long weekend, drunk on the last of their holiday wages and not yet willing to go home. He walked past the new Strathclyde University campus, the old Rottenrow hospital, and climbed up and out towards the East End.
All roads to home took him in front of the oppressive Royal Infirmary and the dirt island with the rusted snack bar. Mo-Maw was already at her serving hatch. She was chatting with some ambulance drivers. Even from this distance, he could tell by the artificial width of her smile that she had taken a good drink. He considered passing on by without even saying hello, when he noticed Jodie and Hamish were there, sitting at the skelfy picnic table. They had a poached look about them, as though they had been waiting a long time.
They drew their eyes the length of him as he crossed the dirt. Their reaction was typical of each of them. Mo-Maw fell to melodrama; her cries flew out to him, but her voice was calling, look at me, look at me. Hamish set his jaw in a lock; Mungo could see him narrow his eyes behind his thick lenses, determined to let the women show their hands before he played his. He peered past Mungo and seemed disappointed the two alcoholic men were not with his brother.
Only Jodie seemed truly pleased to see him. She wiped her face on her jumper sleeve and folded her arms around his middle. Mungo could feel the heat from her crown where she had sat in the sun the whole bank holiday Monday, just waiting to see her brother again. His arms hung limp at his sides. He found he could not hug her back.
Mungo wanted nothing more than to share his pain with them. To make them feel the slow terrifying hours he had felt. But Gallowgate was right, he could never share the hurt, because it would cloud their eyes and some part of them would wonder what he had done to deserve it. There were tears in his eyes, but he held them there and steadied his lip. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of pity. He wasn’t their baby anymore.
“What happened?” screeched Mo-Maw as she pulled Jodie off of him. “Ah haven’t had a minute’s peace since ye phoned us.”
“Nothing.” He shrugged like she had asked him what he’d had for school lunch.
He had worried her on the telephone, or perhaps she sobered up and realized she didn’t know where her youngest son was, or who he was with, but now Mo-Maw was concerned in a way she rarely was for others. Mo-Maw’s eyes were wild about his face. She turned his hands in hers and ran a finger along the pale boundary where his hair had protected his skin from the sun. She found the saint’s finger marks on his neck and licked her thumb, tried to scrub them away with her spit. They would not lift. “Your face. What the fuck happened to it?”
Mungo nodded at his brother. “He happened to it. It was like this when I left.”
“Was it? It looks worse.”
“You’re imagining it.” He picked at his scabby chin. “I fell a couple of times. It was slippy on the hillside. Maybe I banged it again.”
Mo-Maw peered along the road. “Well, where are they, then?”
“Who?”
“Ye know, whatshisface and the lanky one.”
“Away.” Then he added casually, “They said they would see you at the AA meeting on Thursday.”
“Are you really all right, Mungo?” Jodie handed him a cup of flat Coke and he drank it in messy gulps.
“Aye, I’m brand new. How are you?”
Mo-Maw was clutching his face too tightly. She seemed annoyed at him now, for intruding on her peaceful weekend. “Why the fuck did ye phone and worry us like that then?”
Mungo shook his face free from her greasy fingers. “What do you care?”
Mo-Maw rested her weight on one leg and put both her hands on the same hip. The Nike trainers had been through the washing machine, their stitching was separating and the fancy logo had rubbed off; they were fake. “Don’t think ye can go on one fishing trip and come over all cheeky bastard on me now.” She was raving to herself, turning on the dirt island, talking to any strange driver who would nod sympathy at her plight. “One weekend away doesnae make you a man. Ye’re not too big to go over my knee.”
Mungo stared right through her. First, he had not been man enough; now he was too much.
He turned to his sister and handed Jodie a pile of skimming stones from the lochside.
She pressed her forehead against his and whispered. “You’ll tell me how it was. Won’t you? In the airing cupboard?”
“I saw a roe buck and a dead sheep. It rained. That’s about it.”
Jodie reached her hand out to push his hair away and he stepped away from her. He could look at Jodie, but he wouldn’t let her touch him again. If Jodie, of all people, could not love him, all of him, perhaps he could not be loved.