Was this all there was? Was this what was at the end of the road, as far as their legs could carry them? Mungo could feel all enthusiasm ebb from his friend. He switched places with James, forcing the larger boy to slide back on the narrow seat. “Let me pedal for ten minutes more. If we don’t see anywhere nice then I’ll pedal all the way home. Okay?”
“Aye, okay.”
They rode on, but slower now, heavier of heart. They debated whether to cross a bridge over the roaring motorway. Mungo had a distrust of bridges; it was only an overpass that separated the Protestant Billies from the Catholic Bhoyston. On the far side he could see another housing scheme, but beyond that was a low line of trees, and there were no tower blocks, nor gasworks, to spoil the horizon.
They rode to the line of trees and were delighted when they opened on to some grassy slopes. There was a golf course to one side, where plump middle-aged men looked as cheerful as bonbons in their pastel jumpers. Beyond this lay a large pond almost like a small lochan. The pond itself was choked with algae and filmy as a cataract, but pretty swans glided over the green surface. It was peaceful. It was theirs alone.
“See. Telt ye. Happy birthday.”
James cuffed him in the side, “Jammy bugger,” but he was smiling.
Mungo wove the bike along a path, cycling in great lazy circles, and tried to dip low enough that James would fall off. They spent time laughing and dragging each other to the water’s edge and trying to pitch the other man into the swan scum. When the swans grew tired of them and floated away, the boys climbed a low berm and Mungo pushed the old racer through the long grass till dew glistened on all the spokes. From the top of the hill they could see the dense, grey city to the left of them; to the other side were new houses, half-built and generously spaced, made of bright orange brick, for families with cars and good-paying jobs.
James opened the box. The cake was flattened and the letters had bled into the sponge. It didn’t matter. They shovelled sticky handfuls of it into their mouths, lay back on the grass, and let the warm cream choke them. James had a hidden quarter-bottle of Famous Grouse in his anorak pocket. He took a long slug and passed it to Mungo. “Put some hairs on yer baws. Go on. They cannae arrest us for drunk-pedalling an auld racer.”
He only swallowed a dribble. Drink scared him but he didn’t let James see that. The whisky tickled on the way down, but under the low clouds and on the fresh grass he liked how it tasted like woodsmoke and peat. It was like bonfire night, before they put old bike tyres on the flames, before Ha-Ha buried cans of hairspray and watched them whine and explode.
James took out a packet of crumpled cigarettes. “Watch this.” He turned his head from Mungo, and when he turned back, he had four cigarettes in his mouth, each stuck between a different gap in his teeth. He grinned and rolled his eyes.
“Ye’re a bam,” laughed Mungo. “Honestly. I can’t believe what a moody basturt you are. Laughing like an eejit. Two hours ago I thought you’d jump off the roof of that doocot.”
“Well, ye’ve cheered us up.”
James lit a cigarette and offered it to Mungo, but he shook his head. Anyone who had seen Mo-Maw hacking in the morning, ash-fingered and raking through the douts, would never smoke. He could hear Jodie’s voice in his head. Jodie, the hypocrite, who had already done something much, much worse than smoking.
James frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you now?”
Mungo hadn’t realized his face was knotted. “See at your school, do the Catholic teachers try and shag the students?”
“Naw. Don’t be daft. There was a Father Peter that taught fitba that we called Father Paedo but that was it. He stood in the corner and monitored us when we were in the changing rooms. But I just took it as him being a cunt.” James blew smoke rings into the air. The boys watched them float down to the pond. “How? Are the Proddy teachers trying to touch yer ring?”
“No, not mine,” said Mungo. “But I’d let them if it meant I never had to study Maths again.”
“Oh. Shove it in, sir. Just a wee fraction more!” James laughed. They watched pensioners take slow laps around the pond. “I don’t mind Maths. It’s the languages that I can’t stick. Priests fuckin’ love their Latin.”
“Do you have to go to chapel all the time?”
“No, but we pray most mornings at school.”
Mungo thought about it for a while. They had weekly assembly in the Protestant school, and they were expected to recite the Lord’s Prayer at lunchtime. So, what was it about Catholics that made them so different? What was it he was supposed to hate in them? “How do ye remember all the dance moves?”
“The rituals? Och, they teach ye all the moves when yer a wean. Ye just know after that. Catholics aren’t all that big on freestyle, ye know.” James made the sign of the cross. “At least it’s just school. At home we don’t go to chapel on a Sunday anymore. Not since my mammy died. Ma da doesnae like to get all dressed up to sit in the pew. He says it’s like good china without a working teapot.”
“What a poet. He’s the next Rabbie Burns.” James’s eyes were bright under his flaxen hair. He seemed less like the sullen boy from the doocot. Mungo was sure James was happy again, and that he could take a teasing. Mungo put his hand on his hip, he did a fey half-dip and said, “Besides, you’re the teapot. You big bender.”
Something flickered between them. He had misjudged. He had gone too far. For a second he thought the shutters would come down over James’s eyes again, that the bright eyes would fall back to the ground. He regretted having said it. Then James took a last draw of his cigarette. “Teapot? Aye. Well. Takes one to know one, eh.”
It was what they didn’t say next that made Mungo nervous. James didn’t break his stare and he didn’t say anything. His grin widened slightly and with each millimetre it grew, Mungo’s smile widened to meet it. They sat like that, just grinning until their faces hurt.
“You look like your da,” said Mungo eventually.
“Fuck ye, I don’t.”
“You do. You’re friendlier looking. When you want to be.” He picked at the grass. “You should try not to be so heavy sad all the time.”
James reached up and pushed Mungo’s hair out of his eyes. It was so quick it almost didn’t happen. His hand was furtive and fleeting, like a darting doo.
A fissure Mungo hadn’t known about cracked open in his chest; beneath it was a hollow feeling that had never bothered him before. It was an agony not to raise his own hand and touch the hairs James’s fingers had licked. It burned. He wanted nothing more than to feel the warmth left by his touch. He closed his eyes and said, “I feel sick.”
It was as though a sky full of clouds passed over James’s face, it was rain and it was fear. Mungo saw the change. It made him look up. They had been sitting close together on the berm but sending clumsy semaphores like it was the Clyde Valley that divided them. James leaned across the distance and placed a kiss on his lips. It was dry and his teeth scraped Mungo’s bottom lip. They bumped heads.
Mungo rubbed his forehead. “Did you just headbutt me?”