“Yeah, but you didn’t even try.” It was too quick. Mungo braced himself.
Hamish flicked the dout and the cigarette cartwheeled into the night. He folded in on himself like a half-shut blade and set off on the long walk home.
Mungo trotted behind him, a kicked dog at his master’s heels.
Hamish scoffed. “Learn a trade, that’s what the school telt me. I telt them I wanted to go tae university, learn all about the engineerin’， and they said, ‘You know, that’s not for boys like you.’” Hamish feigned his best West End accent and Mungo knew by the way he sung it upwards that he was mimicking Mrs Newman, the overworked headmistress at the high school. “The sad thing wis, I knew what that sour cunt meant, but I goes, ‘How no?’ And she sucked in her massive wobbling chins and goes, ‘You’re not cut from university cloth.’”
Mungo had heard Hamish say the exact same thing to Jodie; now he knew where the hurt began. “And you believed her?”
“No at first. Newman telt us if I liked buildin’ things that much, to go down Govan, and apply for a shipbuilding apprenticeship. She sent me down the watter one afternoon, paid my bus fare and everything. I came swannin’ down the dockside in my best school uniform while a tide of men were pushing the other way. They had just been telt they were getting the sack. Their lunch pails were still full.” Hamish stopped his long strides and looked out over the low city. “Grown men wi’ greetin’ faces, and here’s muggins, in a school tie, asking for an apprenticeship. Three hunner and fifty men on the broo and I’m asking for a bus-fare allowance. It was a pure embarrassment.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hamish turned on his heels and rammed his finger into his brother’s chest. They had crossed some kind of Glasgow boundary and it was like the angry man he had left behind had been waiting there for him to return. “I don’t need you feelin’ sorry for us.”
The side of Mungo’s face started twitching again. It had been calm all night, even as he broke the nose of the night watchman.
Hamish studied its familiar twisting and sighed. “Do you hate us, Mungo?”
“No!” It came out in a rushing torrent and it was true. Mungo bit the inside of his lip and added, “But I don’t want to be like you.”
He expected Hamish to clout him. But Hamish only turned away from him and laughed. Mungo took a half-step backwards to avoid any surprise right hook. “It’s funny. Ah thought the same thing about Mo-Maw and look at me. I was an old man at fifteen and a dad at eighteen.”
“Is that why you hate her?”
“I don’t hate her.” Hamish laughed, but it was sour. “Aye, mibbe I do. But don’t we all blame her for somethin’？”
“I don’t blame her. I just try to love her.”
“You’re still young, baw-jaws. Gie it time.”
At that, Hamish turned back around and started to run as fast as he could. Mungo knew to keep up with him. Royston was not a place for a Hamilton to walk leisurely, Hamish had ruined even that. On the side of the low council houses someone had spray-painted a large green shamrock. The brothers didn’t stop to consider it. They flew along the glistening streets, interlopers in the land of the Catholics.
SEVEN
Mo-Maw spent the morning trying to get into Jodie’s good books again. She alternated between ironing the same four tea towels and staring mournfully at the telephone, but whenever Jodie came near, she rearranged her smile and covered the shame she felt at having been spurned. As if to prove her reformation, she then spent the afternoon slipping cubed steak and sausage meat into a pot of stovies. The kitchenette was damp with steam. The air was salted with beef stock and sweating onions.
Mungo lay down on the hallway carpet and propped his legs on the wall. He relished the happy clip of their one good knife, and the splooking sound made by the stirring ladle. Every now and again Jodie would step over him on the way to the toilet. Her rolling eyes implored him to grow up. “Traitor!” she crowed. “Have some self-respect.” Eventually she gave up on scowling at him and started cuffing his flank with her toes – “Sorry. So sorry.” – pretending it was an accident every time she passed. But Mungo was a loyal dog. He would not be moved.
He got up eventually and followed her around the house. Jodie had been drying her long hair and he floated into her bedroom silently, inching ever closer, till he was sat near her, then beside her, and until finally his left hand was upturned and she was dropping her hair clips into it. He quietly implored her to come to dinner, and it was clear that he would give her no peace until she agreed.
His sister joined them at the drop-leaf table. She sat side-saddle to the chair, like she might up and leave at any moment. It made Mungo itchy. Mo-Maw ladled out bowls of potatoes that were as big and white as snowballs and floated in gristly sausage meat: both the long kind and the chewy square kind. Then she drowned everything within a lochan of fragrant gravy.
His mother had washed her face since her last shift but Mungo could still see pockets of the ultraviolet mascara when she smiled. As they dragged their bread through the gravy, she made small talk, telling them about the characters that frequented the snack bar; the nocturnal feeders who spent their lives roaming around in the dark. They fluttered to her like moths, she said, and with no shame they told her all kinds of personal things they should never utter in the daylight.
“So, that’s when Big Ella telt me that the last lassie she employed was selling mair than sausages and fried egg. The dirty besom had written out a secret price list and everything, and if ye bought ten, you got the eleventh wank for free.” Mo-Maw was cackling at the story and for a moment she seemed happy enough for a heartbroken woman. “For the first three weeks ah had all these long-distance lorry drivers asking us what the special was. Ah kept telling them it was curry sauce and chips, and they kept looking at me like ah was stupit. ‘Naw,’ they’d say, ‘the special-special.’”
Jodie folded her arms across her chest. “Mibbe you should give it a go.”
“What? Ah’m no touching any man’s boaby for a couple of bob.”
Jodie’s eyes darted to Mungo. They both knew the truth of it, that Mo-Maw had done worse and for less. His feet were searching for hers under the table, trying to kick her before she soured the meal. The edges of her lips were already curled in snideness. “Mibbe if you sold yourself by the ounce, you’d get a better price.”
Mo-Maw dropped her fork. She pressed self-consciously on her small rolls of fat.
The women were both glaring, but not at each other. Mungo fretted to fill the empty space. Jodie had only eaten a few mouthfuls of the stovies and then stopped. “Are you not hungry?” he asked, mopping his own plate.
She looked a little green. “I don’t seem to have an appetite.”
He turned her plate slightly, as though this might help. “Just eat a few bites.”
Mo-Maw lifted her fork again and ate without savouring the food. “Don’t fuss, Mungo, if she doesnae want it, then she doesnae want it.” She turned to Jodie. “Anyhow, now that you’re a wummin, it’ll no do ye any harm to skip a meal or two. You cannae eat like ye were a twelve-year-old boy. You know what they say about genetics?”