There was a pigeon on the windowsill, a plain, unremarkable doo. Poor-Wee-Chickie went to the window to drop torn pieces of white bread through the slit for it. Mungo noticed then the smoothness of his face and the thickness of his fair hair. He wasn’t as old as he pretended, older maybe than Mo-Maw but much, much younger than Mrs Campbell. It was an affectation, this old, shut-in pensioner. The man could still be out at his work, could still be of use. Somebody could love him.
“You awright, son?” He caught Mungo mid-thought.
“Aye. I was just thinking about pigeons.” Then he doubled down on the lie. “I have a pal who has a doocot. He’s interested in doo fleein’。 I’ve been learning all about them.”
“Is that right?” He dropped the last of the bread through the crack. “Ma father used to trap them right off the window ledge. Ma mammy used to make a gorgeous pigeon pie.”
“That’s minging. Don’t tell my pal about that.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie was laughing. “He’ll no want my recipe, then? What’s his name?”
Mungo wondered if it mattered. If the boy in the doocot was even his friend anymore or if he had done something wrong while trying to do something right. “James, James Jamieson.”
“James, James Jamieson.” The man repeated it under his breath and rapped his knuckle on the windowsill. “James. Old-fashioned and not very imaginative, but it’s a good solid name. Jameses are very constant people. He sounds like a person you can trust.”
“Do you think?”
“Aye. I like him already.” Poor-Wee-Chickie pointed up to the top-floor tenement across the back middens. “He lives there, doesn’t he? I used to ride the mornin’ bus to work wi’ his father. He was a miserable big bastard. Didnae have the time of day for anybody. Wouldnae smile at ye if you bought him a new set of teeth.”
“He looked at me like I trekked dirt across his carpet. Did you used to work wi’ him?”
“No. I was a slater for the council. He carried a union bag. Must’ve been some sorta shipbuilder. Mibbe a stager, or a caulker-burner.” Poor-Wee-Chickie tapped his neat fingernails against the glass. The doo blinked. “I’ve seen that boy staring out his windae. He’s there late at night. Sometimes he’s there in the morning.”
“I think he’s looking for pouters.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie nodded, but the jutting of his bottom lip said he thought differently.
“He’s all right. He just keeps himself to himself.” Mungo shook his head like he wanted to change the subject. “I dunno. He can be a laugh to hang out with up at the doocot. He never makes me feel bad.” Poor-Wee-Chickie made a face that looked like he didn’t quite grasp what Mungo meant. “See. You know how when somebody has something they love and they won’t let you near it? Like, Hamish has an old Pink Floyd album he won’t let me hold. It opens out into a great big picture and I only want to look at the drawings but he won’t let me touch it. Or – or how Mrs Campbell doesnae like it when I touch the ornaments on her hall table. Well, James isn’t like that. He loves his doos and spends all his time with them but as soon as I met him, he let me hold one. I think that was guid of him.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie rapped his hand on the wooden sill again. “James-Guid-and-True.” He thought for a moment. “What kind of roof is on that doocot?”
Mungo shrugged. “I dunno. Tarpaper?”
He ran a finger over his moustache. “No, no, no. That won’t do. He’ll be replacing that mair often than he should. What angle is it at?”
Mungo wasn’t great with angles. He held his hands up in a triangular apex and shrugged. Poor-Wee-Chickie took his hands in his own and spent a great deal of time checking the exact pitch of the roof against Mungo’s memory. He manipulated the boy’s hands wider and lower until Mungo agreed about the fifteen-degree mark.
“No, no, no. That’s no guid in the long run. Much too flat. A few hard frosts and the tarpaper will soak up as much as it repels.” He was thoughtful for a moment and still holding the boy’s hands in his own. The side of Mungo’s face started stuttering and Poor-Wee-Chickie remembered himself suddenly. He let the boy go. “Sorry son. Old habits die hard. Roofs! I cannae help myself sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” said Mungo, lowering his hands. “Thanks for the ginger, Mister Calhoun.”
Poor-Wee-Chickie reached out like he wanted the boy to stay but then he thought better of it. “Will ye stop in again? I’ll show ye a trick that Natalie can do for a bit of streaky bacon.”
Mungo knew he would not, but he lied to be polite. “Aye.”
“And tell James-Guid-and-True to nail some slate over that tarpaper. Everything that’s built wrong gets ruined around here.” He led Mungo out to the short hallway. The front door had five security locks and took an age to open.
NINE
Mungo had fallen asleep. When he woke upon the cold earth, the tent was alive with dappled light. Gallowgate was breathing unevenly; his breath was hot and yeasty. His arm was a dead weight pressing into the softness below Mungo’s ribs. Their shirts had ridden up and Mungo could feel the sweat of Gallowgate’s belly pooling in the cup of his lower back. The drink had paralysed the young man, but there were signs of a resurrection. Mungo could feel the swollen lump pressing against his buttocks and every so often it twitched and pulsed as Gallowgate filled with blood and strained against his Italian denim.
Mungo had been clenching his fists. They were bloodless, white, and as he unfurled them they tingled with relief. He counted. One Saturday sleep. One Sunday sleep. Then home.
In the hush of the morning, while the shingles were still slick with mist, Gallowgate led Mungo down to the loch. He taught the boy how to prepare his line, threading the fish gut with weights and a buffer bead. He showed Mungo how to secure the barbed hook with a blunt knot and how to cast out into the darkest pools of water. For bait he produced some fetid lamprey chunks which had been sealed in a freezer bag. Gallowgate kept gulping to swallow the threat of his own bile.
Mungo took off his trainers and waded thigh-deep into the frigid loch. The cold made a castrato out of him; it made him want to sing. Except for the gentle lapping and the occasional swarm of midges, the loch was tranquil. Under the clear sky, the surface was shiny as a looking glass. Mungo wriggled his toes and could see them clearly beneath the water. Before him lay more emptiness than he had ever known.
The far side of the loch was walled in by the carpeted hillsides. Beyond these were jagged Munros, the denuded mountains stretching as far as Mungo could see. The sun illuminated the eastern face of the crags and left the other faces in deep shadow. These shadows held pockets of speckled snow that looked like flaking paint, like old coats of white emulsion that were peeling away from the moss-covered hills, as if it were the handiwork of a careless God. Each mountain appeared as though it had been chipped away from a larger piece of flint. Some of the ridges were so sharp they reminded Mungo of Hamish’s homemade tomahawk.
A sharp wind blew across the loch and snapped the fabric of his cagoule in its hurry. The air was clearer than he had ever tasted, and when Gallowgate wasn’t watching, he tilted his head back and put his tongue out into the breeze. It tasted green like spring grass, but there was a prehistoric brownness to it, as though it had searched an entire age through damp peaty glens and ancient forests, looking for its way to wherever it was going.