“Fine. Ah saw her this mornin’ as she was comin’ in frae her work.” Jocky exhaled a long plume of smoke. “Does she always drink that much?”
Mungo thought about it a moment. “If ye can keep her happy, distract her, then she drinks a wee bit less. She’s best when she’s got something to look forward to. It doesnae have to be big. Tell her you’ll take her to the pictures on a Friday. Mibbe tell her you’ll take her shopping in the town centre. Jist wee promises to look forward to.”
“You know aw the tricks.”
“Our Jodie knows better than me. Jodie says it’s like minding a sugary wean.”
Jocky laughed. “Ah have one of those baby bouncing chairs around here somewhere.”
“I bet she’d fit in it.”
“She never said ye were funny.” Jocky glanced at his wristwatch, it was a heavy silver thing that called attention to its own value. “Ye should go on up the road and see her. She’ll be awake now. Ah can gie ye the address of the flat.”
“No. It’s awright.” He lowered his chin into the neck of his cagoule. “Can you do us a favour? Please don’t tell her I came here. She asked me not to.”
Jocky leaned forward on his stool and his gut sank between his thighs. “Look, son. Ah didnae know she had weans of her own. Honest. As soon as ah found out, ah papped her.”
“Naw. Don’t do that. We won’t get in the way.”
“Och, it’s no that. Ah’d known yer mother for three weeks. She’d telt me how she loved prawn cocktail and Tom Selleck afore she even telt me she had weans. What did ye want me to dae?”
“Honestly. It’s awright.”
“Ah papped her so she would go up the road and look after youse. What type of wummin doesnae go home to her weans?”
Mungo didn’t know how to respond to that. His mother was like a carnival magician, she was forever working some sleight of hand, sucking in her paunch, or turning different faces to these men. Jodie had said it was like how McCallum’s the baker kept turning their old wedding cakes in their window when the icing had yellowed in the sunlight. By the time some poor punter sliced into the fruit cake, it’d be too late to complain that it was claggy and unappetizing and soaked in rank old booze.
Jocky swirled his cup, he swallowed the dregs of his tea. “Ah think she worries that youse don’t need her anymair and that she’ll be left wi’ nuthin’. She says ye’re all growin’ up too fast. That must be hard for a mammy.”
It wasn’t true; Mungo felt like he would always need her, but he was never allowed to admit that out loud. “My brother said she’s cracking on with her life, and so we should crack on with ours.”
Whenever he thought unkind thoughts about Mo-Maw, he tried to remember the stories that his mother had told him about her own childhood. About how she was the youngest of four girls, and how, after her mother had died, her father, a grain-hodder on the Clyde, had taken the girls and parcelled them out to anyone who would be able to give them a good home. It had been an ordinary Wednesday when the adults came to the house in their Sunday clothes and carried the sisters away.
It had been agreed not to tell the girls in advance. Instead, each of the couples planned a fine day out: outings to the zoo, or shoe shopping, and then in the evening they took the girls back to their new homes and that was the end of it, no discussion. No one had been able to take all four sisters, so Cathy, the eldest girl, had gone to live in Ballachulish where she could help Granny Buchanan around the croft. Alice and Jean had been sent to England to different cousins of their mother’s and had made quiet successes of their lives. Only Maureen, at three and half years old, had remained in the East End of Glasgow. She had been taken in by a childless couple, a scrap merchant and his wife, who lived over the back middens. It was near enough where her father could keep an eye on her, which he did, until he married again and moved through to Falkirk to work on the Union Canal. She hadn’t seen him since she was six.
Mo-Maw said the scrap merchant and his wife were good people, phlegmatic but harmless. Mungo believed her, because Mo-Maw could find the skelf in any caress, and so she would have said if they’d been cruel, or miserly, or otherwise. But as easily as Mo-Maw had come into their lives, she had drifted out of it again when she was fifteen. In the evenings the scrap merchant had liked to sit with large leather headphones on, listening to the wireless, old dancehall songs from before the war, or the endless football commentary. His wife had sat on the settee next to him, flipping through her programmes on the television, together but alone. Mo-Maw said that was how she had found them, and that was how she had left them.
Mungo looked down at his feet, his big toe was bursting through the seam of his trainers. “Do you love her?”
Jocky answered too quickly. “Naw. Naw, ah don’t.”
Mungo looked up at him.
“Listen son, at ma age love is a nuisance of a thing. What ye want is some easy company on a Tuesday night, a bit of help runnin’ the hoose, and if yer lucky a bit of nookie as long as ye can both lie on yer side while ye’re at it.” Mungo didn’t laugh at the joke. Jocky dropped his dout into his mug. “What ye want is an easy life. There’s nothin’ easy about love.”
Mungo finished his tea. He put the mug in the sink. “Will you do me a favour?”
“Another one?”
Mungo nodded. “If she asks you if you love her, just tell her ‘aye.’ She deserves it.”
The man didn’t answer one way or the other. He got up off his stool with a wince. “It does the spine nae guid to be standing at yon counter all day. If ye want ma advice, when ye go out into the workin’ world, try and choose a profession that keeps ye movin’ aboot. And be wary of sittin’ amongst the refuse of other people’s lives.”