Mungo was ashen. He shook his head.
His reluctance confused Jodie. There had been wet summers where they had amused themselves by slamming the door in each other’s faces, waiting till the exact moment their sibling was crossing the threshold and then wham. You got double points if they were carrying a mug of tea.
“All the hours,” she began quietly, “all the afternoons I’ve sat in that airing cupboard and nursed your hurts. And you won’t even do this one thing for me?” Jodie wiped her tears. “I thought you loved me. Haaah-ha.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. You only love what I do for you. You’re as bad as the rest of them.”
He pressed his thumb knuckle to his twitching eyelid. “Just once?”
She nodded. “Aye. Just once.”
“Now, you said. Just. Once.” He needed to reiterate it, to have it notarized.
Jodie pushed his hair from his eyes. She let him know it was okay. “Just once.”
He spent a long time working up to it, never quite touching her, hoping she would change her mind. Jodie yelled at him. Eventually her brother drew his fist back and with a pained scream he struck her in the stomach. He had pulled it short. The blow didn’t even dislodge the air inside her. But now Jodie had the momentum she needed. “Good. Again Mungo. Harder.”
“But you said just the once.”
“Aye, but you need to hit properly.”
He hit her again, harder this time, but he let his wrist roll over the fist.
“Harder.”
He hit her again. The gasping was all his, not hers.
“Harder.”
He hit her again. She barely moved.
She gritted her teeth. “Please, Mungo. For goodness’ sake. For once. Be a man.”
He drew his fist back. All was white and red. He swung it into her, and he followed the curve of his fist with all the power in his narrow shoulder. It connected and the wind blew out of her. He hadn’t expected what he felt; his hard fist against the tender pillowy-ness of Jodie. Her flesh had easily absorbed it and not resisted. As she bent double, he found himself marvelling at her; a woman’s superior design, able to take the blows and reward them with a feeling of warmth and protection. It wasn’t like when you punched a man. On the rare occasion he dared to retaliate against Hamish, Hamish’s very fibre reached back out with bone and gristle and muscle to return the pain up Mungo’s arm. When you hurt a man, he hurt you back.
He had a picture of Mrs Campbell then and he hated himself.
When she regained her breathing Jodie composed herself. She took Mungo in her arms. All the colour had drained from his face; even the tic, starved of blood, lay motionless. It was her with the bruised gut, yet she was comforting him again. As in everything in life, he couldn’t be there for her. They both thought it but neither said it. Useless.
“Thank you, Mungo.” She coddled him. “Shall I heat some of Mrs Campbell’s broth and we can have a wee cuddle? Scooby-Doo will be on in a minute.”
In the end it didn’t work, but Jodie didn’t tell Mungo that. It was better they didn’t talk about it again. She had asked for violence out of a gentle soul and it made her feel like she had trampled a patch of fresh snow.
It didn’t work, her belly continued to swell. Poor-Wee-Chickie – always watchful behind his net curtains – noticed the happy girl no longer smiled as she came along the street. He told Mrs Campbell and Mrs Campbell brought Jodie a steak and kidney pie. The following week she did what girls in her day had done, and she took Jodie to see a Romany woman down in the Calton. The never-was baby was gone, and Mungo thought it was all his fault.
FOURTEEN
Mungo lay flat upon the earth. After the men had used him, he neither slept nor moved. He thought if he played dead, he could invite death to take him away. Several times he tried denying his own breath, not with a puffed-out chest, hoarding oxygen, in the way Jodie had taught him for swimming, but on the edge of his exhale he simply stopped breathing and refused to take more air inside of him. It never worked. His body was a treacherous thing.
The sun rose early. The rain had ceased but it left the air thick and moist to the touch. As the sun came overhead it illuminated the red tent and everything was bathed in a furious cherry glow. Gallowgate had not bothered to close the zipper when he left, but he had wiped Mungo almost tenderly and raised the football shorts back around his waist. Although the tent flaps blew loose, the air was stifling and hard to breathe. It stunk like sweated whisky, like blood and watery shit. Fat horseflies were landing on the nylon siding and fucking each other, inches from his face.
Mungo could tell he had a black eye; the slightest touch from his fingers made him recoil in pain. He hesitated before he searched the length of himself. There was a gash on his chin where the zipper on the sleeping bag had caught him and then the waterproof matting had rubbed it open. His ribs were tender and the hair at the top of his head sang where Gallowgate had gripped it and pinned him down. His legs felt wet and sticky with his own blood, and his own shit, and other things that were not his own. But the worst of the pain was deep inside him. Somewhere above his stomach and below his heart. He tried to search it with his fingers, but he couldn’t get at it, and it grew.
There were no voices outside the red tent. All he could hear was the gentle lapping of the water and the lazy buzz of clegg flies. He needed to go to the lochside, to lower himself into the numbing water and wash it all away. He wanted to sink beneath the surface and never come up again.
Mungo rolled over. There was another sensation, a new feeling; like he needed to sit on a toilet and evacuate himself entirely. Mungo removed his sock. He used it to wipe the worst of the mess from his bare legs. Then he crawled out of the tent.
The men were sitting at the dead campfire in silence. The bars of toddler’s chocolate sat on a rock, like a rabbit trap.
“Oh. What time do you call this?” St Christopher was looking Mungo straight in the eye, a face free from remorse. Mungo didn’t want to, but he dropped his gaze to the ground. He wanted to look at the man in the face, make him drop his eyes, but found he couldn’t. “Ah thought mibbe ye were gonnae sleep the whole day away. What a waste. We’ve got trout to catch.”
Gallowgate had his back to the boy. He didn’t say a word. St Christopher came closer, he squinted at the boy and considered his bruises. “Dear God, that’s a fuckin’ shiner ye’ve got there. Did we get that loaded?” There was an odd tone of pride in his voice. He seemed to be innocently enjoying the thought that they had become rowdy, and Mungo wondered what, if anything, the auld lush remembered. “Fuck me. Ah must’ve tain a bad blackout. When ah’ve got a drink in me, ah could start a fight in an empty coffin.”
Mungo backed away without turning his back on them. He was inching towards the tree line, back to the cool quiet place where he had felt unfettered and free the day before.
“Where are ye going?” asked St Christopher. “Ye’ve no touched yer pot noodle.”
“I just need to—” Mungo gulped painfully – “to use the toilet.” The sound that escaped his lips was hoarse, it lacked power. He touched his swollen throat.
Gallowgate was gutting a small perch. He turned slightly and watched Mungo recede into the canopy of trees. He spoke to the boy over the blade of his shoulder. “Dinnae go far, Mungo. Bad things happen to wee boys in dark forests.”