The pigeon landed on the doocot roof and still they waited. Another bird, slightly larger and more ordinary looking, circled the blonde doo. It landed on the tarpaper roof and began eyeing James’s pigeon. They locked their hard beaks together in a wrestling type of kiss.
“Ahh, they’re nebbing. Yes!” Mungo could feel James thrum next to him. James’s bird flattened herself slightly and the interloper mounted her. The boy shifted and gave the rope a sharp tug. The wire basket snapped shut over the lovers. The pigeons fluttered wildly and then they settled. “Ya bloody beauty!”
James was racing towards the doocot. He had captured someone else’s pigeon using the lure of his beautiful bird. Mungo followed behind him. Inside the doocot, a wooden ladder drew you up to a rickety platform that formed the upper storey, and then a second stepladder led upwards to the skylight. Set into the wall were dozens of cages framed out of scrap wood and covered with chicken mesh. Each cage was filled with a restless-looking pigeon. The stench was overpowering.
James Jamieson returned the blonde seductress to her cage. He was carefully backing down the ladder with the new pigeon in his hand. “I’ve been trying to catch this bugger for about two years. Look. He’s a Horseman Thief.” He was turning the grey bird, inspecting its beak and its arsehole. The bird was just blinking. “It’s Wee-Man Flannigan’s prize pouter. He’s gonnae be pure devastated. I wish I could see his face for maself.”
“Are you not going to give it back?”
James stuck his tongue all the way out. “Am ah fuck! That’s the whole point, that’s what I’ve been trying to do all these years, have the best doocot in the East End.”
He let Mungo stroke the soft downy feathers. The bird looked incredibly ordinary to Mungo, but it was chirruping happily and didn’t look even slightly bothered to be in the stranger’s grasp. “I’ve got to take my time and spoil him now. Ye know, bind him to me properly. Make sure that he disnae chase some other bit of fanny into somebody else’s doocot.”
“Don’t you worry that you’ll lose a bird?”
“Ach, I lose birds all the time. That’s the game. When you let them go out on their own, they go as far as they want to go, you take a chance. If they want to come back, then they come back. If they don’t, then you lose them.”
“Sounds like a country and western song.”
James shrugged. “I think it’s honest in a way.”
“What? To be led away for a mad shag?”
James looked at Mungo in a way that made Mungo feel childish. “If one of my birds leaves me, how can I be angry? It’s my fault for not making a good enough doocot for them. They must not have been happy enough to stay.” Two pigeons were pecking at each other through the wire of their cages. James drew a hand between them and moved them apart. “You’d fuck off if you were unhappy, right?” he asked Mungo.
“Mungo! Mungo!” Outside the doocot, someone was calling his name. That was the thing with being called Mungo, when someone called that name, they were definitely looking for him. Jodie sounded like she was excited and annoyed at the same time. Mungo stuck his head out of the shelter. She was surprised to see him emerge from the doocot. “What are you doing in there?”
Mungo just shrugged and picked up his bag. “Why aren’t you at the café?”
“Enzo let me away early.”
James and Jodie barely acknowledged each other. James was still clutching his prize pigeon and looking like nothing could ruin his day.
“I’ve got news. Missus Campbell telt me something. You need to come with me.”
Mungo slipped a strap over each shoulder. As he stepped away from the doocot James grabbed the spare fabric of his cagoule. “Haud on. Will you come back the morra?”
“Mibbe,” bluffed Mungo.
James held the blinking bird out to him again. “Ach, go on. You must be guid luck or something.”
* * *
They waited until the street lights came on, until good families had drawn their curtains and settled in front of their televisions. Then Jodie and Mungo left their tenement and headed along the main road. They walked westward against the brightly lit night buses that were bringing couples back from a night up at the dancing. Half-cut faces looked down on them as they walked alongside the busy road. It was late. Mungo took his sister’s hand in his and walked against the kerb, keeping the worst of the bus grit and puddle spit for himself.
It was raining lightly, and the air was still sharp with the frosts of winter. By the time they reached the massive bulk of the Royal Infirmary, the night-shift nurses were already clustered outside, smoking cigarettes under the A & E awning. When Jodie was younger, the Royal Infirmary terrified her. To her it was a Victorian headmistress in the form of a building: strict and cruel and a warning to be on your best behaviour. It was built like a fortress and hung over the city in an imposing way. Thick turreted towers and balustrades running along the length of its roof gave the building a sense of confinement, like it was not a hospital but a prison. It was older than either of them could imagine and the western facade had collected decades of rain and car fumes until it bled pure blackness. It was not a place you ever wanted to end up. The pitted surface of the sandstone held shadows and gave a darkness to the city that filled Jodie’s nightmares. It took her a long time to believe such a foreboding place could be somewhere people would come to get better.
Mungo put his arm around Jodie’s shoulder. She hadn’t been eating properly, neither of them had, but Jodie always let him eat most of their deep-fried pizza and Mungo couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her eat a whole plate of her own food.