“Who’s that?” asked Ha-Ha as he passed the woman around. “Yer maw?”
Mungo wanted to stay in the shanty town. It reminded him of the goodness of the doocot. These boys had been getting along, cooperating constructively in the process of building the little village, making something good out of nothing, just like James had.
Ha-Ha snatched the dirty picture and tucked it safely inside his anorak. “Who’s comin’ up the bridge wi’ me? Let’s fuckin’ do this!” Like an Orange piper, Ha-Ha marched the boys on through the weeds and into the night. They whistled their fight song in fair tonal unison. Mungo hung back. He could see that some of the boys were still as young as nine or ten, a few were in T-shirts or light knit tops and most were occupied in licking the dribbling cold off the ends of their noses. There were a handful amongst them, Ha-Ha’s closest lieutenants, who were more than grown men. They carried heavy ceremonial swords, taken from Masonic fathers, and lengths of lead pipe stolen from pulled-down tenements. The ginger-headed boy still had his arm strapped across his chest, but in his other hand flashed the silver teeth of his mammy’s serrated bread knife.
There were no street lights over the waste ground but Mungo could see the man-made glow of the bridge ahead. The narrow footbridge spanned the motorway, connecting the Protestant scheme with the Catholic scheme that lay on the far side. This was a bridge that no young Protestant fighter would ever cross alone.
The motorway was pulsing with Saturday day trippers returning from a jaunt to Edinburgh Castle; contented weans who had rubbed the snout of Greyfriars Bobby.
Mungo could see hooded figures loitering at the mouth of the bridge. There must have been another ten or fifteen Protestant boys, all older than himself, all standing tight-faced in the cold rain. They parted to let Ha-Ha through. It was a great turnout. Ha-Ha looked swollen with pride.
Someone crouched in the dirt and picked up a rock in one hand and a ginger bottle in the other. Like potato farmers, the smaller boys began digging for other missiles. Mungo looked down and saw a half-brick, red and heavy, a relic from some other battle. He dug it out, its edges sharp and violent, and straight away he wanted to put it down, to turn and head back to James.
One of the hooded Billies turned his way, taking a long draw on his fag. “Ah see we finally got young Hamilton out here. Bout time, shitebag.” The man’s mouth was a collection of broken teeth. He had a grin like a graveyard full of wrecked headstones. “Ah thought ye were gonnae let the family name doon. Turn out to be a fuckin’ bender.”
Mungo did his best to pull himself up to his full height. He knew that it didn’t matter what he said next, it only mattered how he said it. “Haw, fuckface. If ye like they wooden pegs ye call teeth ah’d shut yer fuckin’ mouth.” The hooded boy had come too close to the truth. Mungo rolled the brick in his hand as his fear turned to adrenaline. He sensed Ha-Ha nod approval somewhere over the sea of warriors and one by one, the boys turned away from him.
The mass of fighters now numbered forty or so. As the traffic rushed by beneath them, they huddled under the single pool of street light with hands and ears tucked deep into anoraks and sang Rangers songs. As they sang, their warm breath escaped over the top of their chimney-stack necklines. They told dirty stories and lied boastfully of fucking each other’s mothers. It was decided that a blond boy – square-jawed for eleven – had the most fuckable mammy. Several of the older Billies stepped forward and claimed to be this boy’s father. “You look lit me,” one crowed, “Naw. Sure. Ye look mair lit me.” They amused themselves for a time by extending their fists and having the boy crawl back and forth in the mud to kiss their gold-plated rings, which he did, grateful to have been noticed by his elders.
Someone passed around a bottle of Buckfast and the men drank it down in gulps. A couple of the younger ones reached for it, eager to earn respect, and then pulled faces as the sour wine hit the back of their throats. Mungo shifted nervously, feeling his wet socks squish between his toes, and folding and unfolding the ten-pound note in his pocket. He thought about how James had turned away from him in disgust. Then, without wanting to, he thought about Ashley and how her eyes flickered backwards when James kissed her neck in the park. She would soon know James like he never had.
A high ululation sailed over the heads; someone was on the bridge. In an instant, bricks were raised up, and silver blades pulled from pockets. Two of the boys drew long rusting swords from the legs of their trackie bottoms, and Mungo noticed one of the smallest boys had a log splitter that he needed both hands to hold up. As quickly as the weapons were drawn the crowd began to part. Boys pulled back into two rows, creating a narrow gauntlet. Through it came a tight-faced girl. She was pushing a wobbly pram with a sticky-looking child in it. She wore the same baggy tracksuit as the boys, distinguishing herself as female through her large hoop earrings and her light-pink trainers. The girl pushed the plastic pram over the shortcut of waste ground. The squeaky wheels slipped on the weeds and shoogled the baby about. “Aw, grow up. Ye should be bloody ashamed of yersels.” The girl carried herself like a warrior queen, her hair scraped back and caught into a bejewelled headband. Several of the plastic gems were missing, their bezel casings looked empty as gouged eyes. When she had safely passed the Billies, she sneered and shouted back, “I hope they Catholics kick the shite oot o’ ye.”
The boys looked from one to another, searching for a leader, someone who would tell them how they should feel about this insult. A loose bottle flew through the air and smashed at her feet. The boys let out a single unified whoop.
The sticky wean started to cry. Having been raised in the fighting way of all Glasgow women, the girl took the bait. She let go of the pram and shot back across the dirt, wet ponytail whipping behind her, her chewed claws out, ready to tear them to ribbons. She caught the hair of the gobbiest lad and brought her fist down on his neck and head. The boy tried to run, but she had him by the hood and kept hitting him. The other boys stopped their laughing. The bottle thrower shrank into the crowd. The battered boy wriggled out of his hoodie and stood there shirtless and shivering in the rain, dodging out of claw range. It was the most degrading thing that could happen to a fighting man: to be so publicly skinned by a girl.
Mungo slid to the edge of the rabble. He dared himself to run while the crowd was distracted. The men started to circle the shirtless boy, trapping him and pushing him towards the spitting girl like a hen at a dog fight. Her nails tore long pink streaks of skin off of his arms and the scalping of his fair hair was audible even over the excited squeaks of the boys. Each time he freed himself, the Billies moved to block his escape, pushing him back towards the young mother. She kicked into his pure white body, blackened him with her muddy feet.
From out of nowhere another bottle spun through the night air; it shattered across the temple of one of the smallest boys and when it did, it sparkled like the lights at the school disco. As he fell, the small boy’s blood sprayed a wide arc across the shirtless boy.
They had all been distracted by the furious girl; they hadn’t noticed the group of Fenians standing on the apex of the narrow motorway footbridge. The Catholics stood grinning in the dim light, each dressed in a uniform of green and white hoops.