“The sooner you grow out of that stupid laughter, the better,” he’d muttered.
The firth had come into view. The low sun reflected on the sea and it shimmered like silver fish scales. Jodie had decided then that she would let him do whatever he wanted and just stop caring. She’d rolled down the window and laid her head on the door frame. The sea air cooled the burning in her cheeks.
* * *
Mungo pressed the grey pigeon flat against the board. He held it firmly like James had shown him, and the pouter bobbed but it did not struggle. James mixed the packet of hair dye that he’d bought from the chemist and smoothed it over the bird. There was a toothy American pin-up on the side of the box, and now the boys were matching her hair colour to the wings of a pigeon.
“Don’t get it in her eye, I cannae fly a blind bird,” said James.
In long, gentle strokes, he brushed the sludge all over the bird. He plastered it over the wings until Mungo could remove his hands because the bird was pasted to the piece of salvaged plywood. It had the look of an animal tarred and feathered. Then they waited for the pigment to leach from it. “It’s science, int it?” James grinned, shaking his own tawny locks. “Everybody prefers a blonde.”
The doocot was sour with the tang of bleach. The acrid stench made Mungo’s eyes sting, but his face was not twitching. He liked it here. James reached out a few times and tried to lick the thin dye brush against Mungo’s temple. He had to keep dancing away, always careful to never let go of the platinum bird.
He had come to the doocot every day for the past week. James had been generous with him, happy to have someone other than his doos to talk to. He let Mungo hold the birds and let him feed them their diet of pellets and water. On the second day they sat on the damp grass and James shared his ham sandwich with Mungo. By the third day, James had made him one of his own, thick with butter, chewy at the crusts. Next to Hamish, James was straightforward and uncomplicated. When he handed him something, Mungo didn’t need to flinch. He was sitting in the cold grass eating a salty ham sandwich when he realized with surprise that he would be sad to go back to school on Monday.
The pigeon didn’t become the sun-kissed Los Angeles blonde that the box promised. It turned a pale soupy colour, like an old lady’s tights, but James seemed pleased anyway. He took care to wash the hen carefully and rinse the last of the strong chemicals from her wings. When he put her back amongst the others they bobbed and eyed her lasciviously.
“I think they fancy her already,” said Mungo, “but I reckon she fancies herself more.”
James was busy putting pairs of cocks and hens together, letting them start a stunted round of courtship before separating them at the weekend and sending them out over the city, a hard-done-to feather ball of lustful confusion. If they were beautiful and horny enough they might attract another man’s bird back to James’s doocot and have the quick fuck he was trying to deprive them of now.
A bluish bird was strutting up and down behind his chicken wire. It was puffed up and bloated looking. It was keen to attract any hen that met its beady gaze. “He looks full of himself, din’t he? The big gallus smasher.”
“What’s his name?” asked Mungo.
“I dunno, I thought I would call him Archie but it doesnae feel quite right.”
Mungo peered through the hexagonal wire. “Go on, call him Mungo.”
James laughed, then he let out a sore rattling cough. Mungo noticed he did that a lot. It was an old man’s cough, wet and phlegmy and deep set in his lungs. James picked up a smaller greige-coloured doo. It was a nervous-looking bird that was small enough to be female. “Naw, if anybody is to be Mungo, this is the bugger.”
“He disnae look like he could attract a stuffed chicken.”
“That’s what ah’m saying.” James lifted the brown pigeon and stroked its ruffled collar. “But watch yer language, Little Mungo can hear ye and he’s a sensitive little prick.”
Mungo peered at the small pigeon, he stroked its collar with his pinkie, and it flinched. He would have to admit the name suited the bird. “I’ve never met another Mungo before. I’m gonnae look after it and make him tougher than Dolph Lundgren over there.”
James had lined the doocot in smashed glass shards to discourage rats from eating his defenceless birds. There was a crunch of broken bottles underfoot as he did an excited dance. “That’s it! His name is Dolph, it’s no Archie.” He turned to his bluish bird. “I hereby christen you: Dolph the Mad Shagger.”
“Dolph Pidgegren.”
“Naw, I’ll get hammered up the meeting with a name like that. It has to be mair poetic like. Something that strikes fear into the heart of other doomen, Champion of the Sorrowful Skies, some pish like that.”
“How about Conan the Sectarian?”
“No way!” But Mungo could tell that James liked it.
They stepped outside and gave the new couples some privacy. They lay on their bellies in the raggedy grass and listened to the faint roar of evening traffic. The last of the daylight had sunk below the fleecy clouds, for a few brief moments everything was bathed in a soft peach glow. Mungo closed his eyes and tried to feel its warmth. “How did you start the pouting anyhows?”
He imagined James shrugging beside him. “It was just something my da introduced me to.”
Mungo felt everyone knew everything there was to know about the Hamilton family, but James hadn’t told him anything about his family. “Is he a dooman as well?”
“Not really.” James coughed again. “He was looking for something for us to do the gether. I think he felt guilty.”
Mungo wondered what it would be like to have a father. “Do you look like him?”
“Aye.”
“Do you act like him?”
“Aye. That’s what my maw used to say anyhows.”
“Does she no think so anymore?”
James looked at him, it was a fleeting glance like he was trying to find something in Mungo’s eyes, some cruelty perhaps, or the narrowing that mean-hearted women get when they sniff a good story. “Sorry, I thought ye knew.” He was ripping grass out by the roots. “There were hunners of big black cars, I thought everybody on the scheme knew.” He slipped a blade of grass between his lips. “That’s why he feels guilty, see. After my maw died he needed to go back to work. He works away a lot. He’s a pipe-fitter on an oil rig. It’s good money.”
“In Scotland?”
“Aye, but right at the very top, it’s nearly in Norway. He works two weeks on and gets two weeks off. But it often feels shorter. He says the paraffin budgie can’t take off in the fog.”
“The paraffin whut?”
“The helicopter. He’s hunners of miles offshore, and they can’t fly in bad weather. The sun lifts a fog off of the sea. He says some days you cannae even see Aberdeen for the haar. You’d think it’d be the winter, but it’s not. It’s the summer that’s the worst.” He met Mungo’s eyes now. “Did ye really not see all the black mourning cars?”
“No,” said Mungo, and he meant it. He had not known Mrs Jamieson was dead. “I’m sorry about your mammy. It must be quiet in your house.”