“How long have you been working here then?” Mungo thought that seemed like a safe place to start.
“Two weeks, give or take.” Mo-Maw sat close to Mungo and lit a damp cigarette that looked like it wouldn’t take. “Jocky knows a fat Scouser called Ella. Big Ella owns a whole fleet of these vans and needed somebody to work the night shift here.”
“Who’s Jocky?” asked Mungo.
Mo-Maw pushed at the hair that hung down the back of her neck; her old perm was looking tired and slack. Mungo thought that hair could grow a lot in a few weeks. “Jocky’s ma new fella,” she sniffed. “He runs the pawnshop down the Trongate. Oh! Wait till you meet him. He’s a smasher, puts you in mind of a chubby wee Nicolas Cage. Fair loves his grub.” She pushed Mungo’s hair from his eyes. She liked to look on him, he was the bonny and, as of yet, unspoiled bit of her and Big Ha-Ha. He didn’t have the sharpness of Hamish or the weariness of Jodie. “Do you want a Commodore 64? Jocky can get me one if ye want?”
Mungo shook his head. He didn’t want a computer.
Mo-Maw rested her hands on the table. She noticed Jodie looking at her fingernails. Her nails appeared nude under the street lights, but as she waggled them Mungo saw their pearlescent shimmer. “Do youse like it?” she asked Jodie. “Ah felt yon Raspberry Beret was making me look a bit done-in. Aw the young lassies are wearing these nude shades the day. Took me a minute to get used to it, but I think it looks cleaner, younger. Din’t it?”
Jodie stared at her mother with such intensity that Mo-Maw turned to Mungo and asked if she had something on her face.
“Are you living with him? This Jocky?” Jodie asked. “I mean, I suppose you are living with him, but why?”
“How no? Jesus Christ. Ah’m only thirty-four, Jo-Jo.” Mungo knew his sister hated this pet name, she said it made her sound like a dancing monkey. “You’ll be seventeen in a couple of months. Ah was potty-training Hamish when ah was your age. What’s the harm in it, eh? Jocky treats me right, he takes me for a Chinese – starters and mains.”
“Prawn crackers, too?” asked Mungo.
“Aye. And a banana fritter if I like.” Mo-Maw turned her gaze back to Jodie. “Ah’ve got to try and squeeze a wee bit of happiness out of life while ah still can.”
Jodie nodded across the table at Mungo. Her face was wet from the rain, it gave it a waxy pallor and her expression was alarmingly calm. “He’s only fifteen. You’re no done raising your weans yet, ya selfish besom.” It was happening again. This pitched battle between Jodie and Mo-Maw over Mungo. He felt forever in the middle. At any moment they might both get on their knees and try to lure him towards one of them with a bit of salted ham hock, like a dog.
“Oh, gies peace. We both know ye love playing at the wee housewife.” Her cheeks were hollow sucking on the cigarette. Mungo searched for Jodie’s feet under the table, he wrapped his legs around her ankles, ensnaring his sister.
Mo-Maw said, “Look, ah’ve goat some money now. No much, but some.” They listened to the squeak of the new trainers. “Ah’ll come round the house and pay all the bills. We can go down Duke Street and run the messages the gether. You can have all the chocolate biscuits ye want.” She took Jodie’s hand in her own. Mungo thought Jodie might stab her. “You need to stay on yer own a wee bit longer. Jist till I know where me and wee Jocky are headed.”
It was becoming so late it was early. There was a fresh line of black hackneys pulling up on the kerb. They bumped up out of the flow of traffic and Mungo watched them heave with relief as pot-bellied taxi drivers stepped down into the rain. “Can we come visit? Can we see where you live now?” He could feel the side of his face start in a mutiny.
Mo-Maw put her chin on his shoulder. She strained to kiss his twitching cheekbone. “Naw son. No the now.”
“How?” It was not a good enough answer for Jodie.
Mo-Maw leaned forward and clasped Jodie’s hands in a way that startled his sister. “Wummin to wummin, ye might not know how men are yet, but ah need to make this easy on him. It’s too early for me to be messy, to be a bother.”
“A bother?”
“Ye’ll understand one day. Ah need to keep it breezy a wee while longer, that’s aw.” As she rose to serve the men, she unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse again. “Ah need to find the right time to tell Jocky ah’ve got weans.”
FIVE
Mungo had been summoned. He was hunchbacked in front of the television, drawing a tight spiral that he didn’t know how to end. Jodie looked at him havering over whether to go. She turned off the television and reminded him of how much worse it would be if he didn’t do exactly as Hamish asked.
Most of the time Hamish stayed in one of the damp council flats that were built in the 1960s. Mrs McConnachie lived on the top floor and since Hamish had impregnated her youngest lassie, Sammy-Jo, she felt obliged to let him hang around. Mungo could see his brother tried to be on his best behaviour when he was there. He acted in a constricted way, tight-faced, grudgingly patient. It served only to squeeze all the cruel bits of him into the part of his day when he was not trapped under the McConnachie roof. But Hamish knew better than to chance his luck further: Sammy-Jo was only fifteen, and Mrs McConnachie could have him jailed for molesting a minor. As it was, her doctor called the Social and the Social called the police. Sammy-Jo lied to them all; she said she didn’t know who the father was, and on the birth certificate a civil servant had written Unknown in his finest calligraphy. Hamish had copied the script and tattooed the word behind his right ear.
Mungo stood on the threshold to Mrs McConnachie’s living room. He hadn’t been invited inside yet. The settee had six of the boys from the builder’s yard crammed on to it. They were packed thigh to thigh and spilled over the arms of the small sofa. In their nylon tracksuits they looked like so many plastic bags all stuffed together; a flammable, noisy jumble of colour-blocking and sponsorship logos. There was the manic throb of techno coming from the stereo; someone had a bootlegged copy of a Carl Cox set from Rezerection. It sounded like the DJ was pressing an early warning siren over a stuttering breakbeat. It was so aggressive sounding – it moved so fast – that it made Mungo feel tense.
The ginger boy was the only one to look up at Mungo. He half-nodded and then swivelled his clear blue eyes back to the daytime television. That was it, that was all the thanks Mungo would get for saving him. His arm looked mangled; navy-blue fingers blossomed from the end of a sickly pink stookie. The plaster was already covered in hand-drawn cocks, each throbbing vein painstakingly rendered in fat bingo marker, and signed with pride. The boy’s eyes were a faraway blue, and there was a rash around his thin mouth from huffing a fresh bag of glue. His arm must have hurt awful bad.
One of the MacPherson brothers was sat on the settee. It was rumoured that there were four brothers in total, but at any given time there were only ever two MacPhersons on the streets of the scheme at once. They alternated in and out of Polmont Young Offenders so frequently it seemed like Mrs MacPherson was checking them in and out of a pawnshop based on how much she could handle at any given moment. Mal MacPherson sat on the broken arm of the settee, tapping his white drumsticks soundlessly on his legs: the left holding a rigid beat, the right adding the swirling thrill. He stopped and held the drumsticks aloft with a sense of ceremony. The sticks made a rigid line, the tips connected under his septum. He held it for a beat – Mungo could almost hear the pause in the marching tune – and then he proceeded to drum soundlessly again. The boy was dedicated. He was always practising for the Orange band competitions that took place in the Auld Resolute working men’s club; a barricaded, windowless hall that sat defiantly in the Catholic end of the Calton.