“Dolph Pidgegren.”
“Naw, I’ll get hammered up the meeting with a name like that. It has to be mair poetic like. Something that strikes fear into the heart of other doomen, Champion of the Sorrowful Skies, some pish like that.”
“How about Conan the Sectarian?”
“No way!” But Mungo could tell that James liked it.
They stepped outside and gave the new couples some privacy. They lay on their bellies in the raggedy grass and listened to the faint roar of evening traffic. The last of the daylight had sunk below the fleecy clouds, for a few brief moments everything was bathed in a soft peach glow. Mungo closed his eyes and tried to feel its warmth. “How did you start the pouting anyhows?”
He imagined James shrugging beside him. “It was just something my da introduced me to.”
Mungo felt everyone knew everything there was to know about the Hamilton family, but James hadn’t told him anything about his family. “Is he a dooman as well?”
“Not really.” James coughed again. “He was looking for something for us to do the gether. I think he felt guilty.”
Mungo wondered what it would be like to have a father. “Do you look like him?”
“Aye.”
“Do you act like him?”
“Aye. That’s what my maw used to say anyhows.”
“Does she no think so anymore?”
James looked at him, it was a fleeting glance like he was trying to find something in Mungo’s eyes, some cruelty perhaps, or the narrowing that mean-hearted women get when they sniff a good story. “Sorry, I thought ye knew.” He was ripping grass out by the roots. “There were hunners of big black cars, I thought everybody on the scheme knew.” He slipped a blade of grass between his lips. “That’s why he feels guilty, see. After my maw died he needed to go back to work. He works away a lot. He’s a pipe-fitter on an oil rig. It’s good money.”
“In Scotland?”
“Aye, but right at the very top, it’s nearly in Norway. He works two weeks on and gets two weeks off. But it often feels shorter. He says the paraffin budgie can’t take off in the fog.”
“The paraffin whut?”
“The helicopter. He’s hunners of miles offshore, and they can’t fly in bad weather. The sun lifts a fog off of the sea. He says some days you cannae even see Aberdeen for the haar. You’d think it’d be the winter, but it’s not. It’s the summer that’s the worst.” He met Mungo’s eyes now. “Did ye really not see all the black mourning cars?”
“No,” said Mungo, and he meant it. He had not known Mrs Jamieson was dead. “I’m sorry about your mammy. It must be quiet in your house.”
“Sometimes.”
“It’s quiet in my house too.” Mungo slipped a blade of grass between his fingers and tried to blow on it and make it whistle. The blade of grass made a thrumming sound and then let out a shrill song. “You know, you can come round anytime you like.”
“Cheers. But it doesn’t matter, I’m no gonnae be here much longer. Soon as I’m sixteen then I’m gonnae leave school and get out of this shitehole.”
“Aye, but where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Mibbe somewhere up north. Somewhere I could get a job working outside. I like being outside and anywhere is better than here. Here I just feel like I’m playing at happy housewives for an auld man that’s never home.”
Mungo could barely imagine life away from Hamish and the constant fear of something bad happening to Mo-Maw. He tried to laugh. “Tell you what, if you hold on, ah’ll come with you when I turn sixteen. I mean, I’ve never even been out of the East End. You could take me to Shettleston and tell me I was in Spain.”
James didn’t say anything to this. It made Mungo feel odd. He felt the seconds stretch awkwardly. He should have kept his mouth shut, but the words inside him wanted to fill the void. “You know, I thought my maw was dead too. But she wasn’t. She was cooking black pudding outside the hospital.” It was a stupid thing to say to a boy who had lost his mother. He lowered his face into the grass.
As the lights came on in the scheme Mungo helped James sweep out the last of the cages and lock up for the night. As they walked back to the tenements James handed him a long brown feather, one of Little Mungo’s moultings. “Ye should have this.”
Mungo turned the feather in his hand, it was soft and fluffy along the outer edge. Little Mungo was still a squab, he had yet to mature. He was going to mention this to James, but James spoke first. “I’m gonnae see some lassies up by the old fountain. Do ye want to come?”
“Nah. I’d better not.” He didn’t like Jodie to come home to an empty house. He wanted to have the lights on before she returned from the café.
James started hacking again. He took a blue inhaler from his tracksuit pocket and drank in two large lungfuls. His woollen hat was sitting above his ears as it always did and the cold had chapped the tips of his ears. “Maybe you should go home, and just warm up a bit? Watch telly?”
“Naw. I’m no ready to go back to an empty hoose. Are ye sure ye willnae come wi’ me? I know a lassie that will let ye finger her if ye buy her a Walnut Whip.”
Mungo felt along the soft ridge of Little Mungo’s feather again. He wondered if he would ever reach an age where that sounded like a nice thing to do. “Naw. No thanks.”
“C’mon, man up,” said James with a half-smile. But he’d already turned and was lurching towards the park.
* * *
By the time Mungo reached home all the lights were already blazing and she was sitting at the drop-leaf table in the kitchenette. She had kept her thick anorak on and was drinking whisky from a long-stemmed wine glass and using another as a lazy-man’s ashtray. The line of her violet mascara was ruined and it gave an odd blue tint to her face. He knew she had been crying. She must have seen him gawping at her.