* * *
He was cooried into the far corner of the tent when Gallowgate pulled back the flap. It was almost completely black inside the red tent, but the faint embers of the campfire lit the side of Gallowgate’s face. Mungo could hear St Christopher pissing into the loch. His humped back must have been arched with satisfaction, maybe relief; the high arc of his piss splashed noisily on the surface of the water. The man loosened his guts and farted into the night.
“Are ye awright?” asked Gallowgate softly. “Whut happened? Why is he whistling?”
Mungo shook his head. Several feelings he couldn’t process all fought to push to the front of his mouth. He didn’t know the words to explain what St Christopher had just done to him. Even if he had known, the shame clamped his jaw shut, the pain in his throttled throat choked the sound.
Gallowgate was dabbing at the sleeping bag. He rubbed something between the tips of his fingers, sniffed it, and recoiled. He left Mungo in the darkness as he went back out into the night. Mungo couldn’t tell if he struck the man, or shoved him, but there was a panicked splashing, and a gasping as St Christopher struggled to right himself and make it back to the shore. Gallowgate parted the tent flaps again, he sounded genuinely angry. “You are well out of order! Ya dirty basturt. Ah’m phoning the fuckin’ polis.”
The boy could hear St Christopher chuckle; the slap of his wet blazer as he cast it on to the rocks. Then came the sound of his labouring to bend down and crawl into the other tent. The satisfied sigh as his weary bones hit the sleeping bag.
Gallowgate reached into the darkness and searched for Mungo. “Here, here.” He was trying to be soothing, beckoning Mungo from the corner. “Ah’m dead sorry. Look, ah’ll talk to him in the morning. It’ll be awright.”
Mungo’s voice sounded faraway. His throat was inflamed with the throttling. It hurt to swallow. “It’s no right. He fuckin’ touched us! He shouldn’t have done that.”
Gallowgate had to come closer to hear him. “Ah know.”
“My big brother will fuckin’ kill him. Murder him.”
“Ah know.”
“Please. I just want to go home.”
“Ah know, ah know. We will. In the mornin’。” He pulled the boy towards him and put his arm around his shoulder.
Mungo was soothing himself by telling Gallowgate all the things Ha-Ha would do to St Christopher. He could picture him with the tomahawk tucked into the waistband of his denims, doggedly turning out all the darkened pubs of the Saltmarket, the Trongate, near the Briggait, scouring beneath the railway arches, searching the faces of all the inebriates until he found the cunt he was after – and he always found the cunt he was after – then the keen edge of his tomahawk would sing.
Gallowgate listened patiently, sighed in all the right places, waiting for the boy to calm his breathing. He was running his hand along Mungo’s back, soothing him like a patient father, patting him as though he were a child with trapped wind. They sat together in silence and listened to the noisy anorak rustle under his caress. Mungo picked his twitching face.
“Gallowgate?”
“Aye?”
“If I just wanted to leave now, like right now, which direction should I walk?”
“Shhh, it’ll be light again soon. Everything feels better in the light.” Gallowgate’s arm must have grown tired. The fatherly hand started moving in a circular motion. It moved round and round and lower and lower until it slid under the toggled waistband of his cagoule. As it gently brushed the warm divot above Mungo’s backside – the little valley where fine dander was just starting to sprout – Mungo flinched. Gallowgate’s sovvie rings were chilled as they travelled up the vertebrae of his spine.
Mungo hadn’t realized he had been crying until Gallowgate told him to stop. He had never been a great one for crying as a child. For as long as he could remember Hamish had taken a pleasure in trying to break his temper; trying to find and pierce the water balloon filled with tears that sat inside everyone. Hamish would sit on his chest and thump away with piercing fingers like his breastbone was a typewriter. At the end of every sentence he would twist his ear like it was a crank and with an open palm, clatter the side of Mungo’s face. New sentence.
How am I, Mungo Hamilton, such a wee gullible fanny? Type, twist, clatter. New sentence.
Why do I, Mungo Hamilton, always get myself into bother? Type, twist, clatter.
Even Jodie had used his stoicism when it suited her. She would get Mungo to go into Mo-Maw’s secret stash and steal potato scones for the pair of them. They would sit in the quiet of the airing cupboard and gorge themselves on the stodgy triangles. When Mo-Maw would catch them, Jodie would say it was Mungo’s idea, and he would get the leather sandal across his legs. Jodie would hide behind his bedroom door and wait for him to come into the room smarting in pain, but dry-eyed. She would give him a hug and tell him that’s why he could bear the blame, because he never cried, he never gave anyone the satisfaction of his tears.
Gallowgate hissed at Mungo to stop crying. He had his hand on Mungo’s football shorts and was trying to pull them down. Mungo used all the strength in his body to clamp one hand on his waistband and brace the other against Gallowgate’s chest. All the years of defending himself against Ha-Ha had given him a defensive sort of strength: muscular legs that could support another man’s weight, a taut body that could curl shut, and clench tight as a clam. For a second it seemed like he could lift the weight of Gallowgate off him.
The last of the firelight caught Gallowgate’s eyes. By the set of his jaw, Mungo could sense his determination. The man hammered his fist into Mungo’s face, in a way Ha-Ha never had. He dropped his elbow on to his already bruised windpipe and pushed upwards until Mungo’s head tilted all the way back. Then he turned the boy over.
TWELVE
In the weeks following Mo-Maw’s resurrection, she was neither here nor there. Jocky would call and Mo-Maw would sweep her life into her handbag and run back to him. Every five days or so he would return her like an overdue library book, and she would appear so dog-eared, so sodden with drink, that it looked like she had been dropped in the bath. Jodie said she thought Jocky was a bad drinker too because he would call at any hour of the day or night. They could hear him as he told Mo-Maw, over and over, that she was lovely. Mo-Maw wanted to believe it, even though she knew she was not lovely, she told him she was too tired to be lovely now.
The night shift had made her nocturnal. More than once Mungo woke up for school and found the front door wide open and Mo-Maw sitting at the kitchenette table in her heavy coat.
The guts of her brown handbag would be spilled across the floor, out the front door, and dribbled the length of the close as she had stumbled home and searched for her house keys.
Mrs Campbell chapped the door twice in the one week. With her purpled face and yellowed eye socket, she asked Mungo how school was going. Without a word, or a downward glance, she took his hand and folded Mo-Maw’s white bra into it, and still talking about the foul weather, she curled his fingers silently around it, and left without casting an aspersion on Mo-Maw’s name. The next time she brought him a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie, roasting hot from her own oven. Then, in a plastic bag, she handed him the debris Mo-Maw had dropped the night before: half a dozen panty liners, a bottle of Avon perfume, and a stack of defrosted square sausages.