“But how is this about your da?”
James shook his head. “I’m getting to it. But you have to understand that I hardly ever said a word.” He wiped the dirt from his palms on to his denims. “Ah didn’t know it would cost a fortune, did ah? Honest to God. My da came off the rig and opened all the bills. He called the phone company when I was at school and they told him what the number was for. ‘A sex line for men who like men,’ they said.” James shook his head. “It wasn’t only that. Honest.”
Mungo sat up. He felt Jodie turning on the hot tap over him, and he was up to his neck in shame.
“Ma da knows. He knows what I am.” James took a punishing gulp of the whisky. “He hasn’t looked at me right since.”
James was bigger than him, a whole head taller, a whole year older. There was a dark road and James was on it. Mungo knew he should not follow, if he didn’t step on to the road, he could still turn away. James looked at him, and as though he could read his mind, he laid his finger on Mungo’s twitching cheek and said, “Don’t be lit me Mungo. It’s not too late for you.”
But it was already too late. It had always been too late. When they were younger, Mungo and Hamish had been playing in the bathroom. They had filled the scalloped sink and they were slamming Action Men together in an underwater battle. Hamish was resting his weight on the lip of the sink, and Mungo couldn’t see, so he jumped up and did the same. There had been the tiniest fracture in the porcelain – Mo-Maw had dropped a glass ashtray into it one time – and now the weight of their play breached it and the water poured everywhere. Just before the sink split, Mungo put his hand over the crack and tried to hold back the water – it worked, and then it failed, and he was soaked and bloody from the chipped porcelain. He tried all afternoon, but there was no way to put the crack back together.
Mungo raised himself on his elbows and kissed James. Even more than the others, it felt like his first proper kiss, clumsy and with too much pressure on his lips. He buried the tip of his nose in James’s cheek and gasped when he felt the secret warmth of James’s tongue. It thrilled him. The tongue tasted sweet like cream and powdered vanilla, and his mouth was hot like burning peat and golden tobacco.
It was James who put his hand on Mungo’s chest and pushed him gently away. It was not safe on the hill so near to the prison.
The Rattray lay on its side and James began spinning the front wheel, seeing how fast he could make it turn. “Did she deserve it?” he asked after a long while. “The wee wummin whose husband nearly kilt her?”
Mungo didn’t want to think about Mrs Campbell and her purple eye, not now. “No. You cannae deserve a belting lit that.”
James put his foot against the tyre, it stopped instantly. “How no? Ask ma da.”
“Is he handy with his fists?”
“Naw. He is fast with the back of his hand though. Ye should know he will kill me if he finds out what we just did.” James spun the wheel again and laughed. “He’ll kill you first though.”
There it was again, the road, the path, the turning, the warning. “Naw man. I’m a Hamilton,” he said bravely. “I’ll shank the Fenian bastard.”
James pushed him over. “Yer a dirty Fenian kisser now, ya daft walloper.”
The tap, the hot water, more shame.
“He can never find out, Mungo. He’s bad. I mean it.” James pumped the wheel. “Like, it was my job to do the dishes when I was wee. Sometimes I’d forget to shut a cabinet or close the drawer all the way. It’d be almost closed, but like, not one hunner per cent. His favourite game was to wait until ye had just fallen asleep, you know that lovely feelin’ where ye stretch out your toes and properly sink into the mattress and float away. He’d time it jist perfect. He’d wait and then barge in, the big light blaring, and wake you up and make you get up and close the cabinet door. He’d slap the back of your head all the way to the kitchen and slap you all the way back to bed again.”
“Just for an open cabinet door?”
“Aye. He’d pass it all day and just leave it ajar. He could have shut it himself wi’ one finger.”
“Even Ha-Ha isn’t as twisted as all that.”
“One time our Geraldine sat on the coffee table and her fat arse broke the glass. She blamed me and he leathered me and then every weekend for a year I was apprenticed to a glazer’s in Parkhead just so I learnt the value of glass. I was only twelve.”
“How much is it worth, then?”
“How the fuck should ah know? My job was to sit in the empty van when it was double-parked.” He stopped the tyre again. “I spent a whole year of weekends in that white van. Afterwards my father had the cheek to ask me how I don’t make any friends.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. But I meant what I said the other night.” James picked through the ruins of the cake. He rolled the decorative bear in his palm. It was a cheap plastic thing. It had been poorly printed and the misalignment made it appear as if it was half melted. It was too childish a thing to be wearing a sash that said “Sixteen.” James was emancipated now. He could do what he liked. He was a man. “I’ll stay for as long as I can. But when I have to go, I will go.”
James made to throw the bear away but Mungo stopped him. He took the bear from James’s hand. He licked the sugar from it, and when James wasn’t looking, he dropped it into his pocket.
* * *