Mungo held him tight. James walked his fingers across Mungo’s belly. He allowed himself a daydream as he traced his imaginary walker across the pale stomach, into the gullies of his hips and across the rise in his breastbone. Mungo’s skin was a snowy plain, a landscape of unblemished emptiness. James teased the line of fine hair that ran down the centre of his stomach. He blew on it and said it reminded him of the grass verges between two fields.
“Imagine living somewhere quiet like this. What it would be like to see as far as you could, nothing but fields and not a soul for miles and miles.”
His talk of leaving had begun to irritate Mungo. He wanted James to be here, in the now, not staring into the far distance, worried about his father’s return. Mungo ran his hand over his body, he pushed his luck. “Why would you leave? You already own all this.”
“Is it mine?”
Mungo nodded.
James used the edge of his hand. He ran it across Mungo’s sticky belly like he was slicing him up. “In that case, how much do you think I would get for it if I subdivided it and parcelled it off for a Barratt estate?”
“Nothing. Nobody else wants it.”
James tweaked at the faint line of pubic hair that ran from Mungo’s cock to his navel. “I dunno. How many head of cattle do you think I could feed on this?” He lowered his muzzle to Mungo’s belly and grazed lightly.
Mungo relaxed under the light kisses. “If you left, where would you go anyhows? Edinburgh?”
James collapsed across him. “Nah. I went wi’ the school once. Four poun’ for a cheese sandwich. Too fuckin’ stuck-up. Can ye imagine what they would say about how we talk?”
“London?”
“No way. Really expensive. ‘Asides, ye get mad riots down there, don’t ye? In Brixton and that. It looks rougher than the Calton.” He started singing “Guns of Brixton” to himself, a fair distance from the actual melody. “Yeese kin crush us, yeese kin bruise us, but yeese’ll huv tae answer to, ohahwoaoh, the Orange drums of Cahhl-ton.”
The Clash reminded Mungo of Hamish; he had once stomped a boy to unconsciousness while singing “Police and Thieves.” Mungo slid his hand over James’s mouth to silence him. Then he pushed two fingers between his lips just to see what it felt like. He probed the soft fat of his cheek, the scarred ridges of his back molars. He was quiet a long while, recording all these private textures.
James spat out the fingers. “Ardnamurchan.”
“Ard-na-how?”
“Murchan. It’s Gaelic for jutting out into the sea or something. We went there when my mammy was sick. It was the last holiday we took as a family. It’s just this quiet, lonely wee bit of Scotland that sticks all the way out into the sea. There were definitely way more sheep than people and the road was so narrow they only let one car go at a time. There was one day, when it was too dreich for my mammy to be outside, that I went walking by maself. I found a quiet bay, you had to scramble down the cliffside to reach it. It was terrifyin’， but I could see there was something down at the water’s edge. When I got down there, there was a cluster of old stone bothies just abandoned by the people that used to live there. A whole village. Poof, up and gone.”
“Poof?” Mungo chuckled.
James rolled over and continued his lazy grazing. “It’s the most secret place I’ve ever seen. There’s another less hidden beach on the far side of the peninsula that wraps around into a horseshoe and has perfect white sand beaches and crystal-clear water all year round. White sand, pure white, like sugar. They dared me to go for a swim, and I did, all the way out to a big skerrie and back.”
“The sea air would be good for your cough.”
“Well then, mibbe that’s the place. Ma da said it’s hard for the farmers to get good help, on account of it being heavy remote. He stopped at one farm and tried to sell Geraldine cos she was moaning of carsickness.”
Mungo ran his fingers through the flaxen hair. He wanted to shake him, to scream. Instead he tried his hardest to look unbothered and said, “If you wait till I’m sixteen then we could split the cost. It’d be cheaper.”
James stopped his grazing. It would be seven more months before Mungo turned sixteen, before he could finish school and not have the Social come after him. It seemed a lifetime. “What if I can’t hide till your birthday?”
“Fourteen, only fourteen more shore leaves with your da. It’s not that much when you think about it lit that.” He held up his fingers. “Look, it almost fits on two hands.”
“He will kill me, Mungo. I know he will. What if I can’t make it to then?”
James lay his head on Mungo’s stomach again, he rubbed his face on his belly like his nose was itchy. Mungo liked to look at the untouched pinkness behind his ears, how the wheat-coloured hair curled slightly, and was a thousand different shades as it crept towards the nape of his neck. Of all the intimate parts of James he was discovering this was his most favourite. He liked to think he was the only person to care about it.
There was a blackhead forming on his neck; Mungo dug at it with his nails. “You can make it. You have made it so far already. I’ll go anywhere with you. But if I leave afore I’m sixteen there’ll be bother. I need to be sure Mo-Maw is awright. And I can’t lump her on our Jodie. Cos I need to be certain Jodie makes it to college. She’s worked too hard for it.”
“Mo-Maw seemed fine to me.”
“You’ve no seen her with a good soak in her. When Jocky ends it, somebody has to be there for her.”
James rolled over to face him, he squinted in disbelief. “Chickie Calhoun.”
“Whut?”
“Ye’ll be Chickie Calhoun. I get it now.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I can see exactly what you want and it’s not guid. If yer no careful, you’ll be stuck here with her, with Mo-Maw, for all your days. A wee bachelor living on the third floor with his poor mammy and shuffling about in a cagoule to buy his messages. Suffering Jesus. The best part of your day will be standing outside the butcher’s and talking to the other old wummin about the weather. Then you’ll carry your fish supper home in a string bag and lock every snib behind yourself. And for whut?”
“For her.”
“Then ye’re as daft as ye look.”
“Yeah, you wouldnae understand.” He inhaled sharply as if he could suck the cruel words back out of the air. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He felt James go stiff as a board.
“Aye, I’m sorry my mammy is dead an all.”
“I didnae mean it.”
James scowled up at him. “I suppose I could wait. I suppose I could try harder with the fountain girls. See if you ever grow the fuck up.”
“Aye. Do that. If you must.” Suddenly he wanted James off of him, but Mungo didn’t have to ask because James sat up and wiped the spume from the corner of his mouth. “How can you be like this?”
“Lit what?”
James leaned forward and turned off the electric fire. The flames on the ceiling flickered and died. “Christ’s sake, Mungo. You must be steamin’。 Have you forgotten what it’s like out there? If they knew, they would stab us! Rip us from balls to chin just for something to talk about down the pub.”