The man was awake again. He sat up. Mr Gillespie was tickling the bottom of her foot. He was missing all the teeth on the upper left side of his mouth and she wished he wouldn’t smile at her over the crook of his shoulder like that.
When Mr Gillespie was first manoeuvring her into position, he took her to the Ayr fairground. With a crisp fifty-pound note he paid for her to go on all the rides: screaming, rickety rollercoasters, the heavy, pendulous pirate ship, and her favourite, the whizzing, spinning waltzers. The lights, the sugary candy floss and sweet peanuty smell of popcorn had made for a dizzying night far from home. Jodie could picture him now, paying for all the rides, and standing nervously in the shadows, like a divorced father, while she had her seventy-five seconds of fun.
There was another time he had brought her to West Kilbride. It was a damp evening in September and marked the first time she had kept her knees together from shame and from spite. Her bad mood had begun in his steamy Sierra. Mr Gillespie hadn’t realized he had been talking too much about his own daughter, who went to Hutchesons’ Grammar and was a shoo-in for Edinburgh University. She was jealous to see him boastful and proud of Gillian. It stung to think that no one felt that way about her.
“Do you think Gillian does something like this with her Modern Studies teacher?” she’d asked as his hand worried the loose thread at the bottom of her school skirt.
The look of disgust on his face had pushed her deeper into the leather seat. Gillian Gillespie would never sink so low. Jodie had bitten her bottom lip, but she laughed anyway. “Haaah-ha.”
“The sooner you grow out of that stupid laughter, the better,” he’d muttered.
The firth had come into view. The low sun reflected on the sea and it shimmered like silver fish scales. Jodie had decided then that she would let him do whatever he wanted and just stop caring. She’d rolled down the window and laid her head on the door frame. The sea air cooled the burning in her cheeks.
* * *
Mungo pressed the grey pigeon flat against the board. He held it firmly like James had shown him, and the pouter bobbed but it did not struggle. James mixed the packet of hair dye that he’d bought from the chemist and smoothed it over the bird. There was a toothy American pin-up on the side of the box, and now the boys were matching her hair colour to the wings of a pigeon.
“Don’t get it in her eye, I cannae fly a blind bird,” said James.
In long, gentle strokes, he brushed the sludge all over the bird. He plastered it over the wings until Mungo could remove his hands because the bird was pasted to the piece of salvaged plywood. It had the look of an animal tarred and feathered. Then they waited for the pigment to leach from it. “It’s science, int it?” James grinned, shaking his own tawny locks. “Everybody prefers a blonde.”
The doocot was sour with the tang of bleach. The acrid stench made Mungo’s eyes sting, but his face was not twitching. He liked it here. James reached out a few times and tried to lick the thin dye brush against Mungo’s temple. He had to keep dancing away, always careful to never let go of the platinum bird.
He had come to the doocot every day for the past week. James had been generous with him, happy to have someone other than his doos to talk to. He let Mungo hold the birds and let him feed them their diet of pellets and water. On the second day they sat on the damp grass and James shared his ham sandwich with Mungo. By the third day, James had made him one of his own, thick with butter, chewy at the crusts. Next to Hamish, James was straightforward and uncomplicated. When he handed him something, Mungo didn’t need to flinch. He was sitting in the cold grass eating a salty ham sandwich when he realized with surprise that he would be sad to go back to school on Monday.
The pigeon didn’t become the sun-kissed Los Angeles blonde that the box promised. It turned a pale soupy colour, like an old lady’s tights, but James seemed pleased anyway. He took care to wash the hen carefully and rinse the last of the strong chemicals from her wings. When he put her back amongst the others they bobbed and eyed her lasciviously.
“I think they fancy her already,” said Mungo, “but I reckon she fancies herself more.”
James was busy putting pairs of cocks and hens together, letting them start a stunted round of courtship before separating them at the weekend and sending them out over the city, a hard-done-to feather ball of lustful confusion. If they were beautiful and horny enough they might attract another man’s bird back to James’s doocot and have the quick fuck he was trying to deprive them of now.
A bluish bird was strutting up and down behind his chicken wire. It was puffed up and bloated looking. It was keen to attract any hen that met its beady gaze. “He looks full of himself, din’t he? The big gallus smasher.”
“What’s his name?” asked Mungo.
“I dunno, I thought I would call him Archie but it doesnae feel quite right.”
Mungo peered through the hexagonal wire. “Go on, call him Mungo.”
James laughed, then he let out a sore rattling cough. Mungo noticed he did that a lot. It was an old man’s cough, wet and phlegmy and deep set in his lungs. James picked up a smaller greige-coloured doo. It was a nervous-looking bird that was small enough to be female. “Naw, if anybody is to be Mungo, this is the bugger.”
“He disnae look like he could attract a stuffed chicken.”
“That’s what ah’m saying.” James lifted the brown pigeon and stroked its ruffled collar. “But watch yer language, Little Mungo can hear ye and he’s a sensitive little prick.”
Mungo peered at the small pigeon, he stroked its collar with his pinkie, and it flinched. He would have to admit the name suited the bird. “I’ve never met another Mungo before. I’m gonnae look after it and make him tougher than Dolph Lundgren over there.”
James had lined the doocot in smashed glass shards to discourage rats from eating his defenceless birds. There was a crunch of broken bottles underfoot as he did an excited dance. “That’s it! His name is Dolph, it’s no Archie.” He turned to his bluish bird. “I hereby christen you: Dolph the Mad Shagger.”