They used their own hands on their own bodies now. Apart but together. They stole pleasure for themselves, shared it through the mixing of their breath, faster, shallower, until James’s bottom lip snagged on the tip of Mungo’s nose, and his breath grew faster still, his lips sticky over dry teeth. They kept pace with each other. Then just as quickly as it had started, James arched his back, and it was over.
Mungo was dazed, happy, until James left him splayed on the carpet for the second time that afternoon. Mungo reached out for him but James had already rolled on to his knees and was wiping the mess from his own stomach. Kneeling below the bay window, he turned his back to Mungo and there was a pattern of creases from the carpet across his kidneys and flank. He reached for the dregs of a family-sized bottle of ginger and the plastic creased and collapsed as he swallowed it in thick gulps.
The passion had blown across them too quickly. Now James sat there knotted. The rivets of his spine and the struts of his ribs looked like a Govan carcass. When he finally turned, he pushed his back tight against the wall and sat there staring at the floor. They were only a paisley rug apart, but they were not looking at each other, separated as though by a teacher that could no longer tolerate their disruptiveness.
“What did I do?” asked Mungo. What did I do? It was what he had been trained to say. Never what’s wrong with you? or are you okay? Only what did I do?
James coughed his hacking rattle. He rubbed at the centre of his chest. Sometimes his ears and his gappy teeth gave his face a friendly, cartoonish feel, but not now. Now, in the dying light, when he tilted his head and stared at Mungo under the bone in his brow, the muscles in his jaw tightened and his gaze crossed the room, as cold as a draught. His speckled green eyes were like the slate tiles, more grey than green now, sharp and flinted. “Do you think I’m funny?”
“Funny-ha-ha, or funny-peculiar?”
“Peculiar. Do you … Do you think I’m like Poor-Wee-Chickie?” James sucked on his inhaler.
Mungo didn’t know what to answer. He tried hard to see what James was saying but he couldn’t imagine James hiding in a ground-floor flat, with no fresh air in his hair, and no wide grin on his face. “We don’t have to do that ever again.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Fear replaced the shame in James’s eyes.
“No. How? Will you?” He knew he wouldn’t, but the bond required that he state it out loud.
“Never.” He made the sign of the cross and this seemed to relax him slightly. He wiped the snot from his nose. “Look at this fucking mess. Auld Jamieson is back in three days. He’ll skin me if I don’t find a lassie.”
“He’s gonnae skin ye anyhow,” said Mungo. “He sounds like my Hamish.”
James’s eyes were ringed and sore looking. He had travelled so far since he had lain with Mungo; such a distance to cross in seven minutes. “I don’t know how you cope.”
Mungo was picking the lint out from beneath his toes. “It’s got easier since I met you.” He tried to coax a smile.
“Ha. Do you want to be my girlfriend this weekend when ma da’s home?”
“What? Get a wig? Pretend to be wee Mairead from up the Parade?”
“I knew it. I knew you were the woman.” James laughed his half-choked laugh.
Mungo would have done anything to have kept him there, with that grin back on his face. “What are you looking at, ya big-eared basturt?”
“Nothing,” said James. “I just like looking at you. It’s a shame in a way. We’ve lived across the back middens from each other for our whole lives.”
“S’okay. We have three more days before your da gets back.”
“Three more days,” James agreed. “Then no more Chickie Jamieson.”
Mungo lunged at him then and cracked his fist off his chest. He dared him to strike back. Violence always preceded affection; Mungo didn’t know any other way. Mo-Maw would crack her Scholl sandal off his back, purpling bruises curdling his cream skin, then she would realize she had gone too far and pull him into the softness of her breast. Jodie would scold and demean his poorly wired brain and then, feeling guilty, make a heaped bowl of warm Weetabix and white sugar. Hamish would wind him with a fist and sit on his chest. When Mungo started calling for help, Hamish would clamp his hand over his face, that hot hand whose fingers covered his eye sockets and whose meat crammed into his open mouth. They would sit there for a long time, Hamish crushing the wind out of him, until Mungo acquiesced, easy as flattened grass, soft as an Easter lamb.
First came the hurt, then came the kiss. Wrapping his long arms around him, James raised Mungo off the floor in a bear hug. He squeezed with all his might until Mungo couldn’t breathe. He hoped it would never end. Then James farted, a long, growling thunder. It stunk heavy and rancid, pure dairy and white sugar. Mungo braced himself against James, but he could not get free. And he was glad.
* * *
The Jamiesons’ bathroom was a creamy mint colour. Of the four shelves above the toilet, only one still held any toiletries. Mungo picked through the canisters of deodorants, fungal foot spray, and a rusted tube of haemorrhoid cream. At the back was an old-fashioned shaving kit, with a badger brush and a straight razor; he had never seen anything like it. Mungo took Mr Jamieson’s shaving brush down from the shelf. He sniffed it. The traces of lather smelled like men from another time. It had the bright tang of menthol and pine, and the faint medicinal whiff of aniseed, almost like carbolic soap. He ran the soft badger bristles across his bottom lip, enjoying their tickle.
As he waited for the bath to fill, he traced the brush across his collarbone and then down his neck, across his bare chest and around his left nipple. As he did so he tilted his head back and looked up at the patterned ceiling. Mrs Jamieson must have lowered it herself. She had nailed pins around the perimeter and then strung twine back and forth in a decorative pattern that looked something like macramé. There was a bowl of potpourri on the cistern, but when Mungo sniffed it, it no longer held any scent. Other than this, there was nothing that suggested a woman had ever lived here.
Their bathwater was lukewarm by the time they both climbed in. Mungo got in first and claimed the end without taps. He felt clammy, like he had just passed the worst of a fever, but happy and peaceful in every corner of his skin. James got in and poured his long legs around him. He rested a heaped plate of sausage rolls on the toilet seat and Mungo nodded at the party treats. “Who’s the missus now, then?”
James didn’t rise to it, instead he ripped into one of the pastries. A dozen buttery flakes stuck to his chest and dissolved on his damp skin. The rest floated on the water like leaves in a puddle. Mungo popped one into his mouth. The gristly meat was scalding hot. He ladled tepid bathwater into his open mouth.
James was wearing his fisherman’s cap again, chewing and laughing with an open mouth. Mungo reached out and pulled the cap from his head. “I’m no gonnae sit in a bath with you if you’re wearing a bunnet. It’s too weird.”
James covered his ears with his hands. “I wish someone had pinned them back. You don’t know what it’s like. You try going to school wi’ these. Never even think to sit at the front of a class.”