“Lit what?” He wanted to put his fingers in his ears.
“I don’t know.” The pages of her geography homework were creased in her fist. She was pacing and there was a panic in her eyes. “If Hamish was here, he would know.”
Rangers had lost the Old Firm game. It had started as a fine spring day. All along the road the tenement windows were open and televisions and wirelesses were blaring the game out into the street. Big Ogilvy and his twins stood at their bay window in their regimental blues, thoom thoom thoom. They filled the street with Orange pride. But Celtic scored early and the street fell into a tense hush, even Ogilvy’s twins stopped their peeping. Collins’s goal in the first half was followed by another from Payton, putting Celtic firmly in the lead. Rangers brought on their golden boy, McCoist, but they struggled to get back into the game. When Hateley eventually pulled a goal back at the eighty-four-minute mark, the street erupted in desperate cheering. In the end it was not the fact that Celtic won – for they had no chance of winning the league – it was the fact that they ended a historic run of forty-five games unbeaten for the champs. All the Catholics would be celebrating in Baird’s Bar. Mr Campbell had taken it heavy bad.
“We have to do something,” repeated Jodie.
“What?”
“I don’t know. God’s sake. Can you just be a bloody man, for once?”
But Jodie Hamilton was her own man. She was out the door and down the close stairs as Mr Campbell was dragging his wife across the hallway carpet. Jodie hammered on their door like a Provvie debt collector. Mungo appeared, not quite at her side, but slightly behind her. He rocked on his heels, and it took effort for him to step in front of his sister. As the door opened Jodie realized Mungo had their mop and pail in his hand.
It was rare to see Mr Campbell standing these days. But when he opened the door he filled the frame from to doorstep to lintel. “Whit in bloody hell do youse two want?”
Jodie had the peculiar courage of a girl who never expected to be hit by a man – which was strange, because all three siblings had seen their mother suffer at the hands of her boyfriends. There was no man that Jodie would not answer back, and although Mungo admired that about his sister, he thought she put too much faith in the decency of men. This belief, this bravery, gave her a gallus tongue. When they were little, Jodie opened her smart mouth amongst gangs of neds and wrote cheques that Hamish would have to cash later. More than once, Mungo had been chinned by some boy he had never met, and then told to pass it along to his mouthy sister.
Mungo spoke before Jodie could say anything. “Hallo, Mister Campbell,” he said, as cheerfully as he could manage. “It’s my turn to wash the close and I havnae any soap flakes. Do you think I could ask Missus Campbell for a lend of some?”
There was a deep lilac flush to the man’s face. He had been sweating and moving more than he had in years and his fat-clogged arteries were struggling to let the blood around his mass. The thin hair of his comb-over hung loose. “Annie is unable to come to the door the now. She’s no well. She’s in her bed.”
Mungo tried to look crestfallen, but adrenaline coursed through his veins. “Is she awright?”
“Whit’s it to you?”
“If she can’t come to the door can I come in? I know guid and well where she keeps her soapflakes. I’ll be quiet.”
The man didn’t know what to make of the boy with the mop. But the way his face curdled in disgust told Mungo he had heard enough. “Naw, ye cannae. Gie that pail to your sister and fuck off.”
Something was moving lower in the close. On the half-landing below them, a small face was peeking around the banister and watching the children at the Campbells’ door. Nobody paid it any mind. Mr Campbell put his arm against the door, making to close it on them.
“Excuse me, but is everything all right?” Jodie had seen the chance slipping away and she would be more direct than Mungo. “I heard a terrible banging earlier. All ma mammy’s Jubilee plates shoogled in the cabinet.”
“Annie’s had a wee fall,” said Mr Campbell. “Ah’ve telt her no to dust standing on a kitchen chair.” Then he smiled. “But she’ll learn.” He pushed against the door before Jodie could say anything more. It was almost snibbed when a voice rang out from the stairwell.
“Graham!” The voice had a clarity to it that gave it an authority. “What’s all this racket?”
Poor-Wee-Chickie was slowly climbing the stairs to the Campbells’ landing. He was half the height and half the width of Graham Campbell. He ran his finger around the belt of his trousers, tucking his thick jumper into the waistband. “Ye’ve had yer bevvy. Ye’ve had yer fun. It’s yer bed yer needing now.”
“Who the fu—”
“Don’t come the wide-o wi’ me.” The bachelor cut him short. “Ye don’t frighten me, Graham. I was raised by a wife beater.”
“S’at so?”
“Aye. I have pent-up aggression. Dr Doak telt me so. Ye want to help me feel better?”
Graham Campbell had spent his life bending steel; the bones of Charles Calhoun would shatter like cold slate. Mr Campbell was swelling with rage, the lilac burned violet now and his fists knotted into ham hocks. He took a step towards the small man. “Ya cheeky wee poofter.” There would be hometown glory in destroying this deviant. There would be halves of whisky and pints of warm lager at every bar north of Duke Street.