“Okay.” He tried to not pick at his face but he couldn’t help himself.
* * *
After Jodie was gone Mungo stood at the window and worried for Mo-Maw some more. To kill the quiet, he took out his sketchbook. Letting his hand glide over the page made him forget himself. Jodie had been the first to notice it. One day she had grown irritated by his restlessness and had given him one of her old jotters and a half-chewed blue biro. When he couldn’t concentrate or grew itchy, she opened it to a blank page, and he drew great sprawling patterns. He never drew figures, he just started in a corner with the indigo ink and let it wander where it would until he had filled the page with intricately swirling, interlocking jacquards: things that looked like peacock feathers, fish scales, or ivy vines, all looping around each other till no whiteness remained. There were wonderful patterns forming in his mind. They could look as ornate as the Bayeux Tapestry or as simple as Ayrshire lace.
But today the blank page could not hold his attention. His mind would not leave his mother alone.
It had been Mo-Maw’s turn to mop out the close, which meant it became Jodie’s responsibility. For the past two weeks Mungo had watched his sister skitter inside the close mouth and sneak up the stairs before any of the neighbours could open their door and shame her for the stour. It was unfair, Mungo thought: Jodie was run ragged, and all because she had a fanny.
With nothing better to do, he filled the tin bucket and poured globs of Jodie’s conditioning shampoo into the water. He started on the top landing, outside Mr Donnelly’s door, and washed each stone step on his way downstairs. The close soon smelled tropical with happy bursts of coconut and strawberry chewing gum, but the mop grew slick and several times he had to wash a landing again and again to calm all the bubbles.
The Hamilton family lived on the third floor of a four-storey sandstone tenement. The close wasn’t fancy but it was well kept, and everybody went to the bother of leaving a clean doormat outside their door. There were two flats on every landing and each half-landing had a stained-glass window, a simple diamond pattern that let in light from the back green and cast a subdued olive and indigo down the stone stairway.
As he emptied the perfumed water into the gutter he watched gangs of young Proddy boys prowl along the road. They had their jackets zipped open despite the damp cold, and they hung off their thin shoulders in an air of gallus nonchalance. Without exception, they wore their hair parted in the middle and hanging over their eyes in heavy gelled curtains.
“Mungo!” they called at him. They balled up their faces, twisted them like wrung-out tea towels.
Annie Campbell was out on her landing by the time Mungo climbed back up the stairs. She was rubbing at the stone floor with her foot, her husband’s moccasin slipper making a tacky, sucking sound. “Oh! Mungo son, what did ye wash this wi’？”
“Just shampoo, Missus Campbell.” He had always liked Mrs Campbell. When they were younger, she had baked cakes. On dreich days, if she had heard them playing in the close, she would give them each a slice of Selkirk bannock and tell them how she missed her own boys, all grown and headed somewhere south to look for work. Mungo knew Mr Campbell used to work for Yarrow Shipbuilding, although he couldn’t remember Mr Campbell ever leaving the house for work, not since Thatcher had stopped funding for the Clyde. Now Mr Campbell rotted away in an armchair that faced a hot television, and the Hamilton children slunk against the wall if they ever met him on the stairs.
Mrs Campbell swept Mungo’s hair off his face. “Honestly son, ye are all kindness and no common sense.” She dug around in her pinny and handed him a fistful of lemon drops. They were all congealed and stuck together as one.
“Ah havnae seen your mammy in a guid while. Is she keeping awright?”
Mungo picked the lint off the blob of sweeties. He wouldn’t look at her.
Mrs Campbell sucked thoughtfully at her dentures. She took her cracked hands and put them on his narrow ribs. “Would ye do me a wee favour? Ah’m that used to making big dinners. Ah can never get it right since my boys are away. Would you come inside for a minute and have a plate of mince? It wid break ma heart to put it in the bin.” She pulled a face that said it would indeed break her heart if the food was wasted.
Mungo thought about Mr Campbell. It wasn’t that he disliked the man. It was just the size of him scared any wean that found themselves in his shadow. Years ago, any time he hung out of the window and scolded one of his own sons, the other children would stop their playing and hang their heads in a moment of silent mourning for the poor condemned Campbell. Something about Mr Campbell made Mungo nervous because he had never grown up with a man in the house.
Although he was hungry, he shook his head. “No thank you, Missus Campbell.”
The woman tutted. She grabbed hold of his hand and pulled him through her front door. She looked as wispy as sea haar, but she was made of tough Aberdonian granite. “Ah’m done asking you nice. Ah’ll be personally offended if ye refuse ma cooking again.”
Mrs Campbell led the boy through to her front room. It was the exact same shape as his own, only one floor lower. Mrs Campbell liked to smoke and keep the windows closed. He had heard her say: Why would she waste something she had paid good money for?
Mr Campbell didn’t take his eyes off the television as they entered. They were replaying the highlights from a greyhound race out at Ayr. Mungo watched the long dogs slice through the drizzle as they chased the mechanical rabbit.
Mrs Campbell pushed Mungo into her own armchair. She unfolded a small trestle table and pinned him in while she went to heat up a plate. The wall above the fireplace was covered in photos of the Campbell boys. They showed a time-lapse of sorts, every era of them clearly documented. Smiling, good-natured boys, grinning once a year against the marbled blue of the school photographer’s backdrop. They were at least ten years older than Mungo and he didn’t remember them too well, but he could tell from the boys’ mouths that the photos didn’t miss a moment: baby teeth, missing teeth, first big teeth, gappy teeth, and metal teeth. He saw the shy smile of silver braces and then the straight and confident grins of successful young men. Mungo touched his own mouth self-consciously. Mo-Maw wasn’t a big believer in dentists.
“Has your mother gone missing again?” Mr Campbell didn’t look up at the boy.
“Aye.”
“Wummin don’t know what nonsense to be up to these days. Too much choice. No doubt she’ll show up when she dries out.”
“Do you think so?”
“Aye.” He scowled at the racing results. “Has your Hamish found work yet?”
“Naw.”
Mr Campbell considered this for a moment. “Aye, well. Glasgow’s done for. No coal, no steel, no railway works, and no fuckin’ shipbuilding.” The man’s jaw set at a funny angle but he didn’t stop watching the racing. “You tell him Mr Campbell said he should join the navy. He should ask to get stationed at Faslane and then drive one of thon nuclear submarines right up Thatcher’s cunt.”
Mungo tittered with nerves. “Don’t you mean John Major’s hole?”
Mr Campbell grimaced. “There’s submarines enough for the lot of them.”