Mungo stepped forward and gave the woman a hug. She spun him into a waltz. “Da-dee-da-dah. Aw, yer a pure sook, Mungo Hamilton. Last o’ the great romantics.” She shooed the children away. “Awa’ wi’ ye. Awa’ afore ye make auld Graham jealous.”
The Hamilton flat was quiet. Mo-Maw was in her bedroom, breathing heavily. They closed the door silently behind them. Jodie put her fingers to her lips but Mungo knew what to do. They had been playing this game for a long time: don’t make a sound, don’t wake Tattie-bogle.
Mungo had only been seven and Jodie had been eight and a half when they first met Tattie-bogle. Jodie could see her brother struggle with this other person, the angry, destructive drunk that came when Mo-Maw was lowest. They had been watching Willo the Wisp, it was only dinner time, but Mo-Maw had been drinking for long before they had come home from school. Hamish had asked for something to eat and she had laughed and told him how the electric cooker worked. In a fit of rage, Hamish had taken the bottle of whisky from her and poured it down the sink like it was cold tea.
When she was finished leathering him, a panic rose inside her: where would she get more drink? She telephoned a man who lived in the close next door. He came over and they spent some time in her bedroom with a bottle of fortified. Hamish had to lie on his stomach, the back of his legs scarlet with handprints. They sat close to the television and ate bowls of salted porridge that Jodie had made. When the man finally left, Mo-Maw was fully drunk and only half-dressed. She had gone past the point where she had been having any fun and now she was angry and lousy with a deep sense of having been swindled.
“Do ye know what ah just had to do?” she accused Hamish. They knew, although they didn’t have the words for it yet. They’d had to sit cross-eyed before the television in order to not hear the man and his grunting. The children had been so close they could smell the static from the screen. “Well, that was all your fault, so it was.” She pointed an accusatory finger at her eldest boy. The children sat clumped together, alert as three startled ferrets. That was the day Jodie invented Tattie-bogle.
When Mo-Maw finally passed out, Jodie rubbed some calamine lotion into the back of Hamish’s red legs, while Mungo flicked through the channels on the soundless television. They were playing a werewolf movie: some comedy about an American teenager trying to cope with his terrifying alter ego. The three children sat open-mouthed, their heads lolling on soft necks, when Jodie quietly said, “Ah. That’s like Mo-Maw. She’s not the same person all the time. See.”
Mungo and Jodie choked down the last of Mrs Campbell’s dry cheese. They stood in their dark hallway and tried to decipher the message in Mo-Maw’s uneven breathing. She was falling asleep. Good. Jodie hugged her brother goodnight. They parted to go to their separate bedrooms. They did not make even the faintest noise, but still somehow Mo-Maw stirred. Her voice was damp and claggy sounding in the darkness. “Mungo? Mungo darlin’， is that you?”
Mungo looked to his sister; she was beseeching him to be quiet, all the colour had drained from her face. Mo-Maw stirred from her bed. There was the thump of a meaty foot hitting the carpet, and Mungo knew what he had to do to keep her safe, to hold her still. “Yes, Mo-Maw. It’s me. What is it?”
It took her much longer to think when she was rolling this deep. The children stood in the dark, waiting for her reply. “C’mon,” said the pitiful voice. “Come in here and sleep with Mo-Maw the night.”
You’re too old for that, mouthed Jodie.
“I know.” But he couldn’t admit to Jodie how much he wanted to do it, how he wanted to be with his mother, and to feel safe again.
“Mungo, you can’t sleep in with her,” Jodie whispered.
“Munn-go, Mungo. C’mon-go, Mungo sleep in here the night,” Mo-Maw whined.
Mo-Maw was slurring heavily. He could wait, he could do nothing, and she would probably fall asleep. But how could he tell Jodie this was for him as much as it was for her? “I should go. I can keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t go wandering in the night.”
Jodie didn’t say anything else. She turned away from him in disgust and slammed her bedroom door. He listened to the tiny snib catch. Hamish had kicked her door in once – right around the time Jodie had started her bleedings – and in revenge, she had taken all his trousers and cut the pocket bags out of them. For a long time after that Hamish had needed to carry everything he owned in his two hands like a beggar of Bethlehem.
Mungo poured Mo-Maw a tall glass of metallic tap water. He slid into the warm bedroom. “Lift your bum,” he commanded, and she did a crablike pose on the bed, shaking, like she might topple at any moment. Mungo dug the tight elastic of her leggings out from her belly flesh and drew them off. Sighing with relief, she lay back on the bed and patted the sheets next to her. Mungo took off his own clothes, naked but for his boxer shorts, and climbed in beside her. Drawing the duvet over them, she pushed herself close to him and he wrapped himself around her small back. She was like a child in his arms, a drunk, sour-breathed, nicotine-coated child. Mungo pressed the warm tops of his thighs against the underside of her cold legs. He held her tiny feet between his and rubbed them gently until they felt less like ice.
“Ah’m no sleepy,” she slurred.
“Do you want a story? I can tell you the one about the woman who wins the football pools and never needs to work another day in her life. You like that one.”
Mo-Maw shook her head like a child. “No. Sing me something good.”
“Like what?”
“You know hunners of good songs. Sing me something you’ve taped off the charts. Something about love.”
Mungo lay behind her. He needed to keep her here with him. In a quiet voice he started to sing his love songs, unsure of the words, but certain of how they made him feel.
SIX
The orange Capri was parked under a broken street light. Some industrious youth had climbed the lamp post and disconnected the light so that he could kiss his girlfriend in privacy. The car sat in the shadows, near the breeze-block wall that separated the drying area from some muddy grass. It was a magnificent machine. Even in the half-dark it was a shade of pumpkin orange so confident that it defied the usual embarrassment of gaudy motors. It was a powerful-looking beast, the kind that Mungo only ever saw in toy boxes imported from America.
Hamish put his hand on the door handle and with a quick slice of a flathead file he released the lock and let himself in. Mungo slunk backwards into the shadows. By the time Hamish had coaxed the roaring engine to life he had pressed his entire back against the breeze block. “Get in, ya shitebag” was all Hamish would say. Mungo didn’t think he could outrun the growling engine.
With its mirrored baubles and furred headrests, the inside of the car felt more like a seedy gentleman’s club than a car interior. Hamish drove slowly through the back streets as Mungo sank down into the plush velour seat and tried not to let anyone see him in the stolen motor. When they reached the traffic lights of the Parade, Hamish slid the car out of gear and pumped the accelerator. It made a ferocious roar that echoed off the tenements and made people jump at the bus shelter. He did it again.