He couldn’t tell how many men were on the line, but there were many voices in the dark. Some were like his, the heavy Glaswegian glottal, but others came from faraway parts of Scotland, with sing-song or refined voices, well-educated or shamed into sounding their vowels properly. They were talking and they were laughing. He listened to them talk about music, and the bars they liked and pubs they sometimes went to, where they could meet, places where landlords were more tolerant and would let them enjoy a pint in peace. Some older men came on and were fishing harder than the others. They would ask bluntly for what they wanted, words James didn’t know the meaning of but liked the sound of. Sometimes the men would find the thing they were hunting for and the two of them would agree to meet and click through to a private, more expensive line.
Usually James didn’t say much. It was comforting just to listen. Tonight, he could tell that some of the men were already touching themselves. The first time he had called, it was enough to shock him, to clamp his hand over the receiver and giggle nervously. But he got used to that rhythmic paddling sound; the way the receiver was cupped between their chin and chest, how they breathed hard and shallow through flared nostrils as they used their hands for other, dirtier things. It would start easily – or it would have already started by the time he rang on – a man (it was always an older-sounding man) would ask someone to describe himself and that someone would. The younger man would tell them all about the map of his body, the colour of his skin, the way his hair created a peach fuzz across his stomach and under the hard muscles of his arse.
“A swimmer’s body, not very muscular like, but lean, you know?” the Dundonian was saying.
“I like that,” panted the Perthshire farmer. “How many fingers can you fit inside?”
They would be gathered together, a semicircle of strangers, and as they listened to the young man, they would hope that the beautiful things he said about himself were true.
The farmer spent his mess. Some lines went dead, some new sounds added to the crackle. There was another voice in the background, a melodic, light voice, the voice James had come to listen for in the crowd. “Hah-llo,” it said. “Is there anybody out theeere?”
“Fraser, is that you?” asked James.
“Oh, guid.” The cheerful sound of a Gaelic speaker, turning himself to English. “I was hoping you were on here, Tonalt.”
James had lied when they had asked him his name. Donald, he had said, or in reality it sounded like D-awnaul-Dh, heavy with a flat Glaswegian D. He much preferred the way Fraser sang it. Tonalt. “I finally listened to that song, Tonalt,” Fraser said. “I stayed up half the night until it came on the radio.”
“And did you like it?”
“I did,” said the boy with real pleasure. His voice sounded gauzy and light, like he was hidden in a wardrobe with the phone cupped close to his lips. “I even taped it, but the cassette is chewy. I think next time we’re in Inbhir Nis I’ll need to get it on vinyl. But the ol’ lade is sick to the teeth of it already. She said I should be saving for headphones first.”
James liked how he dropped Gaelic words into his sentences; they stuck out, like half-hammered nails. The boys had once spent an hour laughing over the Gaelic translation of gay slurs; the party line went silent while Fraser presented and then repeated the words: Càm, càm. One by one, the disembodied men parroted the word, like an evening class full of study-abroad students. Fliuch, Boireanta, or James’s favourite, the unimaginative conjunction of boy and bum: Gille-tòiin.
“I could send a vinyl to you,” said James. “If I knew where you lived.”
“That’s all right, Tonalt. Maybe some other time.” Fraser buffed the offer away, there were ears on here from all over, it would be indiscreet. “My dad and I sailed to Tober Mhoire at the weekend. There was a lost pigeon in the harbour, a gormless, grey thing, and I thought of you.”
“He might be mine,” laughed James. “I’m no getting the hang of pouting. I’ve lost more birds than I catch.”
Fraser tutted. “Too bad. Just stick in there …”
“I’ll stick it in ye, son,” said a gruff voice. It made James flinch. For a moment he had forgotten they were not alone.
“I’ll stick it right up ye.”
* * *
All afternoon they lay in the long grass and watched the clouds roll down from the Campsie Fells. Mungo was glad they were lying down, for if he had been standing he would not have known what to do with his limbs. Waves of loveliness ebbed over him followed by waves of shame. They came like Jodie alternating the hot and cold taps and trying to balance a bath with him already in it. This time, though, he couldn’t pull his legs to his chest and escape it, he would be burned or he would be chilled as it happened. There was no pulling away.
The boys lay a discreet distance apart. James’s pinkie found his and they knotted them together like they had that first night in James’s bedroom. “Do you mind?” It was tentative, all politeness and consideration. Constant searching for the next stair in the dark.
“Naw, I don’t mind,” said Mungo. “James?”
“Aye.”
“Does your da not like me?” It had been weighing on him. “What did I ever do to him?”
“Nothing. ‘Asides, it’s me he hates. No you.”
“How can yer own da no like you?”
James rolled on to his elbow. He kept opening his mouth to talk, but each time he swallowed his words and said nothing.
“You can tell us. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Eventually, James told him about the chatline, about the number from the newspaper he had carried with him, ever since he had been unable to stop thinking about Paddy Creek. “… The chatline was nothing dirty. Just voices, boys talking to one another about music, about where they liked to buy clothes and stupit things like that. Sometimes you’d get an older man and he would ask you dirty things but mostly it was just young lads talking and having a good time and telling jokes.”
James sat up and pulled his knees to his chest. “There was one boy, wee Fraser, he had the funniest accent you ever heard, he’d tell you something dead-dead-sad and you’d have to be careful not to laugh cos it sounded like a mad chirpy bird. I liked him best. His dad had a sheep farm, he used to complain that there was nobody around him but blackface lambs, that he spent whole days just wandering and being by himself. To him it was pure murder, but to me it seemed like he could be himself, all day, and not pretend. I wanted to know what that felt like.”