“I don’t like that.” Mungo’s face was ticcing.
Hamish gunned the engine again. Oncoming headlights glinted off his thick lenses. “I won’t stop doing this until ye sit up and stop acting like a fud.”
“But you’ve knocked it.”
The engine squealed again and the car lurched into gear. “So? Anybody that wants tae stop us has to fuckin’ catch us first.”
The lights of the Parade were beautiful at high speed. Bright chip shops and cosy pubs all reflected on to the damp streets. Tenements streaked by, and Mungo watched the lights change in synchronization in every one of the front rooms; happy families, tucked in from the cold, all watching the same channel. Soon, the tenements fell away and the low houses of Royston rose on the hill to the right: the land of Catholics, no place for a Hamilton.
Beyond these sat the broken promises of Sighthill. The high-rise towers were only twenty years old and were already in a state of disrepair. They were the tallest buildings Mungo had ever seen. The tops of them disappeared into the dense clouds, like a stairway to somewhere above the endless rain, or like a strut trying to keep the ceiling of dark cumulus from collapsing and suffocating the entire city.
The Capri knew how to fly. Every time Hamish paused at a red light and took off again, Mungo was pressed back into the seat, as forcefully as the times when Hamish would sit on his chest. Only this pressure felt like freedom. Hamish gunned the engine and snapped the steering wheel, and the car slid around the traffic island. While they paused at the lights Mungo pointed towards the illuminated snack bar. It was quiet and Mo-Maw was hanging out the serving hatch with the fluorescent tube light glinting off her pallid chest. Her boys watched as their mother flirted with one of the bin men. Hamish cranked down his window and pumped the engine again. He screamed over the roar, “Getitupyeyaauldrunk, giesagobble!”
Mungo slid down in his seat. He turned to apologize to Mo-Maw but they were already screeching towards the Trongate. Hamish was roaring with laughter, and despite himself, Mungo realized he was having fun. “Don’t wet yersel, she’ll no know it was us,” said Hamish. “She’d never wear her glasses in front of men.”
The orange beast roared down High Street and, turning right, it passed the newspaper works and went into George Square. Hamish drove like he owned the whole city, one hand high on the wheel, the other waving at scornful lassies out the window. Mungo laid his forehead against the cool glass and watched a thousand stories go by: young, underdressed women going for drinks after work, lines of animated art students talking with their hands, and the lawyers with their arms full of Manila folders, walking with a sense of their own importance. So many lives were happening only two miles away from his and they all seemed brighter than his own.
Hamish pulled the car along the wide artery of Argyle Street. The people seemed a lower sort here, people like them. They were closer to the River Clyde now and the shops were cheaper; the buildings not yet sandblasted back to their glorious golden colour. Glaswegians cut through the smirr without even looking where they were going. They didn’t look up at the grand buildings, heavy with Corinthian columns, that the Tobacco Lords had built for themselves. Mungo felt envious. If he could walk these streets every day, he would never take the beauty of the city for granted.
“You awright?” asked Hamish. “Ye’re no gonnae be sick, are ye?”
“I never get to see this. Don’t drive so fast.”
They cruised on for a while, winding up and down West Nile and Renfrew Street and then back along Hope Street. The car stopped at the lights by Central Station and they watched young women huddle together and make their way to the pubs and clubs. The tops of their soft arms were pink with gooseflesh and mottled with stubborn baby fat. Hamish pulled alongside them and brought the engine to a seductive susurration. The girls laughed at them.
Hamish flicked the fuel gauge. “Seems a shame to waste this beauty. How do ye fancy an adventure afore we get tae work?” He drew out a can of Special Brew from his tracksuit pocket and handed it to Mungo. He took out another and slammed it off his brother’s in salute. Mungo was sad to see gobbets of white foamy lager spill on the upholstery but Hamish didn’t seem to mind. “Here’s to us brave Hamilton men.”
There was a stack of someone else’s cassettes in the cigarette drawer. Hamish played the Pretenders and he mugged at Mungo to “stop his sobbing,” bopping in time to the jangling chorus. Hamish looked happy, driving fast, with one hand gliding through the spitting rain, and the can of lager clamped between his knees. Mungo wanted to watch him in his rare contentment, but the city was already flying by underneath them. They took a bridge over the Clyde. They flew over neighbourhoods Mungo couldn’t name.
* * *
By the time they reached the sea it was hard to see where the land ended and the water began. Hamish parked on the tallest hill and they sat on the bonnet. Below them were constellations of evening lights, lonely farms, and tiny clusters of villages sitting snug against the frigid Irish Sea. Hamish put his arm around Mungo. He almost apologized. “Mibbe next time we’ll do this in the daylight, eh?”
Mungo didn’t mind. It was the quietest place he had ever been. “Can we turn the headlights off? Just for a wee minute.”
His brother did as he asked. Hamish finished his lager, and then he finished Mungo’s for him, as they sat together in the gloaming. After a while, he said, “Ah dinnae mean to be so hard on ye all the time.”
“I know.”
“I just feel a mental amount of pressure sometimes. You know, wi’ the Billies, wi’ baby Adrianna, and looking after you on top of it.”
“I don’t ask you to do that.”
“S’pose you’re the least of ma problems.” Hamish was pulling gently on Mungo’s earlobe. Mungo rarely heard his brother talk like this. At home, you couldn’t admit anything tender. It was foolish to say something sweet that the scheme could use against you later. “We’re in this the gether, Mungo. I’m just hard on you because ah cannae have ye turning out soft or nothing.” He tugged Mungo’s ear, then twisted it.
Mungo was sad that his real brother had crept back so soon. “I think something is wrong with Jodie. She’s no eating properly.”
“Aye?” Hamish sounded bored. “I bet none of the boys at school want to shag her.”
“Wait, I thought we were in this the gether? Three Musketeers?”
“That’s a laugh! It’s mair like the Godfather and his two useless wallopers.” Hamish crumpled his lager can, it sailed through the air. “C’mon. Want to see some braw magic?”
Hamish drove along a series of twisting roads. He drove fast and Mungo was reminded that his brother had been here before without him and the thought made him blue. The car banked around high hedges and farmers’ fences until it came to a stop facing up a small hill. In the last of the violet light Mungo could see about forty feet ahead of them.
“Right,” said Hamish. “What do you think happens if ye take the handbrake off on a hill?”
“That’s stupid,” said Mungo. “You would roll backwards.”