They jumped the fire for a time, until Gallowgate started bumping into Mungo, and they were colliding in mid-air, moshing each other the way headbangers liked to do. Mungo stopped his jumping, pretending to have a stitch. Gallowgate sprawled out upon the shingle. He opened a can of Tennent’s and nudged it towards the boy. “I’ll boil ye some water in the mornin’ but drink this for the now. It’ll help ye sleep.”
Mungo realized he hadn’t drunk anything all day, no loch water, no milky tea. He sniffed the can with its familiar yeasty smell. He could feel the men watching him nurse it, but he was wary of the drink. He had seen the awful sadness it contained, just beneath the happy foam. Slowly, he raised the can to his lips, the first sip soothed his parched throat, but the thick oaty taste made the boak in him rise. The men nodded in approval. Mungo found if he took a mouthful of the beer and held it in his mouth before letting it trickle down his throat, then it was less sickening, tasted less like mildew. If he sucked and sloshed it back and forth between the little gaps in his teeth, it lost its bloated heavy feeling and became like stale, sour dishwater.
The men passed the whisky back and forth, as Mungo stripped young branches for the flames. After a time, he turned his cold kidneys to the fire; there was nothing beyond this pool of dim firelight. His eyes were growing heavy when St Christopher spoke again. “So huv ye goat any pubes yet?”
The lager emboldened him. “Is that all you two talk about? Fannies and fitba and pubes?”
“It’s just banter between the boys.” Gallowgate snickered. “How auld are ye again?”
“I told you. Nearly sixteen.”
“So ye’ve got plenty pubes?”
“Mibbe,” Mungo sneered. “None of your business, is it?”
“No shame in becoming a man, ya big hairy beast. Happens to all of us.” Gallowgate held out his hand in the American way for the boy to slap it. “Here, put it there big man.”
Tired now, Mungo reached out for the high five. In a swift move Gallowgate grabbed the boy’s wrist and with a wrench he spun the boy on to his lap and choked his forearm around Mungo’s throat. The violence was sudden, his can of lager went rolling into the darkness. Mungo forgot about the stars and the firelight. Gallowgate took his thick fingers and stuck them in between Mungo’s ribs. He found the old hurt. “If ah ask ye a question don’t be so bloody cheeky.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
The man released him as quickly as he had grabbed him. Mungo scrambled to his feet. He stood apart from the men for a long time, his eyes bloodshot from the smoke. He dared not rub them.
“Don’t spaz out, wee man,” Gallowgate gurned. He mocked Mungo’s mutinous face. “Ah was only having a laugh.”
St Christopher sat slurping his can and grinning like a halfwit.
Mungo didn’t want to look like a baby, so he tried a casual laugh and pretended to be in on the joke. “Good one, Gallowgate.” He felt the impression of Gallowgate’s fingers still there, still on his skin, pressing into his tender side. Mungo slid into the darkness, pretended to go piss into the loch. As his eyes adjusted, the water gleamed the same colour as the sky, but it glistened slightly in the moonlight, the sky matte above it. The wind coming off the loch smelled like rain. Mungo waited at the water’s edge a long time. He watched the illuminated men like they were part of a diorama: they drank, they smoked, they peered out at nothing. He was forming sentences in his mind, how to fold himself back into the group, when Gallowgate shouted at the dark, announced it was time for bed. St Christopher nodded in agreement.
Mungo emerged from the darkness and made for the red tent by the water with the single sleeping bag inside. Gallowgate tutted and said something about the wild deer and pointed him to the two-man tent inside the bothy. The boy was too tired to sulk. The sour lager gurgled in his belly and he lingered as Gallowgate stamped on their little fire with the heel of his trainer. Gallowgate pointed again towards the tent in the bothy. He watched with all the authority of a father as the boy crawled inside.
Mungo lay there in his football shorts and his blue anorak, scratching the midge bites on his legs. The ground beneath him was cold as kitchen tile and his heart sank as he thought again how he had no warmer clothes to change into, tonight or tomorrow. Rubbing his cold knees, he slithered into a sleeping bag, balling his fists and jamming his hands between his legs for warmth. It was no use. The earth below him was greedy; as fast as his body could burn, the stones leached the heat away from him.
At first, he mourned for the other, smaller tent with only one sleeping bag in it, but now in the pitch-black he was glad not to be alone. There was something terrifying about what might lurk in the loch beyond the fire, and the night was surprisingly cold. Mungo balled up for warmth. His eyes grew heavy as he waited for one of the men to come to bed. He listened to them walk to the loch edge and talk quietly while they pissed loudly into the water. The roar of the whisky didn’t seem to give them any insulation. From the sharp way they were inhaling, he could tell they were as freezing as he was.
Gallowgate parted the tent flaps. It seemed a great effort to fold his drunken frame into the small space. He closed the zipper, and they were sealed inside together. Gallowgate collapsed on top of his dank sleeping bag, the wind pushed out of him with a wheeze. The tight space filled with the smell of him, whisky, cigarettes, dirty socks, and warm armpits. It grew damp as a closed mouth. “You awright, pal?” he asked quietly. His fingers searched the air for Mungo, pressing into the dark like a cautious typist. He searched for the boy, until his fingers found the side of Mungo’s face, where the soft hair grew along his jawline. For some reason, the fingers kept moving. Gallowgate’s ring finger brushed Mungo’s bottom lip. His sovereign rings were cold against Mungo’s cheek.
Mungo pulled away. “I’m fine. Tired.”
“Ah, there you are.”
Mungo could hear Gallowgate rub his palms together. He was blowing on his hands. “Fuckin’ Baltic, int it?” In the dark he reached a thick arm out and pinned Mungo under it, pulling him against his chest for warmth. “It’ll be warmer if we huddle the gether. I never was a Scout, but I’ve seen enough films to know we better stick the gether or we’ll be deid by the mornin’。 Summer in Scotland, eh?”
The man pulled him tight and held him against his chest. Mungo turned away from him, but Gallowgate fitted himself against Mungo’s back. Gallowgate was not a big man but every part of him was sinew and muscle. Even through the two layers of nylon, Mungo could feel his stomach expand to fill the small of his back, till there was nothing between them. “Won’t St Christopher freeze?” said Mungo. “Don’t you want to share it with your friend?”
“Naw. Dinnae grudge him his peace and quiet. This is a rare treat for that auld basturt.”
“How?”
“Auld Chrissy has had a bad run of it of late. He spends most nights in the Great Eastern. Do you know that hostel? It’s no for the faint of heart.”
Mungo had seen the homeless shelter at the Wellpark end of Duke Street. It was an old cotton mill with an imposing Victorian facade that made it look like a prison, and now housed up to three hundred men a night in tiny sleeping cubicles. In the mornings they tried to discourage the men from loitering on the stone steps, but they lingered like wraiths. It was one of the few buildings even Hamish crossed the street to avoid.