“That’s all right, Tonalt. Maybe some other time.” Fraser buffed the offer away, there were ears on here from all over, it would be indiscreet. “My dad and I sailed to Tober Mhoire at the weekend. There was a lost pigeon in the harbour, a gormless, grey thing, and I thought of you.”
“He might be mine,” laughed James. “I’m no getting the hang of pouting. I’ve lost more birds than I catch.”
Fraser tutted. “Too bad. Just stick in there …”
“I’ll stick it in ye, son,” said a gruff voice. It made James flinch. For a moment he had forgotten they were not alone.
“I’ll stick it right up ye.”
* * *
All afternoon they lay in the long grass and watched the clouds roll down from the Campsie Fells. Mungo was glad they were lying down, for if he had been standing he would not have known what to do with his limbs. Waves of loveliness ebbed over him followed by waves of shame. They came like Jodie alternating the hot and cold taps and trying to balance a bath with him already in it. This time, though, he couldn’t pull his legs to his chest and escape it, he would be burned or he would be chilled as it happened. There was no pulling away.
The boys lay a discreet distance apart. James’s pinkie found his and they knotted them together like they had that first night in James’s bedroom. “Do you mind?” It was tentative, all politeness and consideration. Constant searching for the next stair in the dark.
“Naw, I don’t mind,” said Mungo. “James?”
“Aye.”
“Does your da not like me?” It had been weighing on him. “What did I ever do to him?”
“Nothing. ‘Asides, it’s me he hates. No you.”
“How can yer own da no like you?”
James rolled on to his elbow. He kept opening his mouth to talk, but each time he swallowed his words and said nothing.
“You can tell us. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
Eventually, James told him about the chatline, about the number from the newspaper he had carried with him, ever since he had been unable to stop thinking about Paddy Creek. “… The chatline was nothing dirty. Just voices, boys talking to one another about music, about where they liked to buy clothes and stupit things like that. Sometimes you’d get an older man and he would ask you dirty things but mostly it was just young lads talking and having a good time and telling jokes.”
James sat up and pulled his knees to his chest. “There was one boy, wee Fraser, he had the funniest accent you ever heard, he’d tell you something dead-dead-sad and you’d have to be careful not to laugh cos it sounded like a mad chirpy bird. I liked him best. His dad had a sheep farm, he used to complain that there was nobody around him but blackface lambs, that he spent whole days just wandering and being by himself. To him it was pure murder, but to me it seemed like he could be himself, all day, and not pretend. I wanted to know what that felt like.”
“But how is this about your da?”
James shook his head. “I’m getting to it. But you have to understand that I hardly ever said a word.” He wiped the dirt from his palms on to his denims. “Ah didn’t know it would cost a fortune, did ah? Honest to God. My da came off the rig and opened all the bills. He called the phone company when I was at school and they told him what the number was for. ‘A sex line for men who like men,’ they said.” James shook his head. “It wasn’t only that. Honest.”
Mungo sat up. He felt Jodie turning on the hot tap over him, and he was up to his neck in shame.
“Ma da knows. He knows what I am.” James took a punishing gulp of the whisky. “He hasn’t looked at me right since.”
James was bigger than him, a whole head taller, a whole year older. There was a dark road and James was on it. Mungo knew he should not follow, if he didn’t step on to the road, he could still turn away. James looked at him, and as though he could read his mind, he laid his finger on Mungo’s twitching cheek and said, “Don’t be lit me Mungo. It’s not too late for you.”
But it was already too late. It had always been too late. When they were younger, Mungo and Hamish had been playing in the bathroom. They had filled the scalloped sink and they were slamming Action Men together in an underwater battle. Hamish was resting his weight on the lip of the sink, and Mungo couldn’t see, so he jumped up and did the same. There had been the tiniest fracture in the porcelain – Mo-Maw had dropped a glass ashtray into it one time – and now the weight of their play breached it and the water poured everywhere. Just before the sink split, Mungo put his hand over the crack and tried to hold back the water – it worked, and then it failed, and he was soaked and bloody from the chipped porcelain. He tried all afternoon, but there was no way to put the crack back together.
Mungo raised himself on his elbows and kissed James. Even more than the others, it felt like his first proper kiss, clumsy and with too much pressure on his lips. He buried the tip of his nose in James’s cheek and gasped when he felt the secret warmth of James’s tongue. It thrilled him. The tongue tasted sweet like cream and powdered vanilla, and his mouth was hot like burning peat and golden tobacco.
It was James who put his hand on Mungo’s chest and pushed him gently away. It was not safe on the hill so near to the prison.
The Rattray lay on its side and James began spinning the front wheel, seeing how fast he could make it turn. “Did she deserve it?” he asked after a long while. “The wee wummin whose husband nearly kilt her?”
Mungo didn’t want to think about Mrs Campbell and her purple eye, not now. “No. You cannae deserve a belting lit that.”
James put his foot against the tyre, it stopped instantly. “How no? Ask ma da.”
“Is he handy with his fists?”
“Naw. He is fast with the back of his hand though. Ye should know he will kill me if he finds out what we just did.” James spun the wheel again and laughed. “He’ll kill you first though.”
There it was again, the road, the path, the turning, the warning. “Naw man. I’m a Hamilton,” he said bravely. “I’ll shank the Fenian bastard.”
James pushed him over. “Yer a dirty Fenian kisser now, ya daft walloper.”
The tap, the hot water, more shame.
“He can never find out, Mungo. He’s bad. I mean it.” James pumped the wheel. “Like, it was my job to do the dishes when I was wee. Sometimes I’d forget to shut a cabinet or close the drawer all the way. It’d be almost closed, but like, not one hunner per cent. His favourite game was to wait until ye had just fallen asleep, you know that lovely feelin’ where ye stretch out your toes and properly sink into the mattress and float away. He’d time it jist perfect. He’d wait and then barge in, the big light blaring, and wake you up and make you get up and close the cabinet door. He’d slap the back of your head all the way to the kitchen and slap you all the way back to bed again.”
“Just for an open cabinet door?”
“Aye. He’d pass it all day and just leave it ajar. He could have shut it himself wi’ one finger.”
“Even Ha-Ha isn’t as twisted as all that.”