Ha-Ha would see tonight as a defeat. Those who could still fight would be shamed into returning next week to save face. It should be over, but Mungo knew better. It was more of a beginning than an ending.
Mungo stumbled on and swallowed his hurt just like he had been taught. His tears caught in the back of his throat where they mingled with his own blood. He gulped until he had choked on too much, and then he hauched black spittle into the grass. He was glad that he could not see the redness under the dim lights.
Young men hurried in all directions. All the dauntless warriors were limping home, bragging of their glories, screaming threats of retaliation. But by how they tucked their tailbones Mungo could see that they were shaken. They were gulping, chewing on their hurt until they could be across their front doors. They kept their chests puffed out until they could be safe in their mammies’ arms again; where they could coorie into her side as she watched television and she would ask, “What is all this, eh, what’s with all these cuddles?” and they would say nothing, desperate to just be boys again, wrapped up safe in her softness.
The first of the polis sirens echoed off the tenements. The young men who could still run started running. Mungo came to the cluster of dens. The little settlement was destroyed; the shanty town pushed flat and broken to bits. The gutted porn magazines lay upon the grass, and the open-mouthed women, their faces twisted in agony or pleasure, lay scattered about like dead villagers.
When he reached his street, he felt an anger for the happy glow coming from the different flats. Families would be tucked in together, eating fish suppers and watching the Saturday night variety shows. When he came to his close, he struggled to climb the stairs. Inside the Hamilton flat it was dark and quiet. Jodie was home from the café and already in her bedroom; Mungo pressed on it gently, almost pleadingly, but her door was snibbed tight.
The living room was empty. It hung with a low cloud of stale smoke, flat ale, and sweat. Under the fug was a memory of Mo-Maw’s vanilla perfume – the one they had chipped in for and bought her for Christmas – and he was sad to not find her on the couch, snoring off the drink.
Mungo flicked on the electric fire and struggled out of his wet clothes. It took an age to undress; every ordinary movement caused an extraordinary pain and he had to stop often to catch his breath and summon the courage to continue. It was hardest to take off his cagoule – he found he couldn’t lift his arm over his head – and by the time he was in his boxer shorts, there were tears of rage and hurt streaming down his face. He downed a mouthful of leftover lager from Mo-Maw’s glass. It stung the tear in his cheek, but the drink tasted sad and flat and the smell of it made him long for her, made him want to lie next to his mother.
Out in the hallway he listened at her bedroom door. He could hear Mo-Maw’s rolling snore coming from inside. Mungo knew he was too old for these feelings, he knew that Jodie would disapprove, but as he reached for the handle all he could think about was how much he wanted to climb into bed beside his mother and feel safe in her arms. He cracked the door slowly, the room was dark but for the faint orange glow coming in through the undrawn curtains.
“Maw?” he whispered.
Mungo inched along the wall until he bumped into her bedside table. There was a tinkle of tea mugs and perfume bottles. In the faint street light he could see his mother’s pale face above the sheets. Her head was turned to the side, and she was asleep. Mungo watched her for a moment. Her make-up had smeared on the pillow and there was tension in her face, a puckering in her eyelids, as though she was caught in the purgatory between the drink and its sugars. “Mo-Maw?” His bottom lip began to tremble with self-pity. Mungo peeled the candlewick away from his mother; he turned to slip in beside her but as his one good eye adjusted to the dark, he realized that her tiny frame made too large of a hummock in the bedspread.
Mungo lifted the sheets slowly.
The street light washed across the strange bodies. The old widower from upstairs was nestled beside his mother. He was burrowed below her armpit, his mouth was clamped to her breast, his long arms wrapped around her waist. He was like an undernourished tick suckling at her side and it took a moment for Mungo to make sense of the tangle of limbs, for his mind to arrange the horror into something that made sense.
It was as though they had been in the middle of some dance when they had both fallen asleep, or had simply given up.
Perhaps it was the sudden cold air. Perhaps it was the faint light. Mr Donnelly opened his little black eyes. As he lifted his mouth from Mo-Maw’s skin, there was a long slaver of spittle. He unfurled his body like some rodent in a nest. His thin hair was sweated across his face and as he blinked and looked up at the boy, his eyes were like two puddles in the darkness.
Mr Donnelly had not expected the placid boy to turn on him. When Mungo grabbed the man by the hair and dragged him out into the close all the old chancer could say was “Aye, nae problem chief, ah didnae mean any bother.” It rolled off his tongue in a jovial manner as though he was a first-footer who had stayed too long after the Hogmanay bells.
Mungo hurled the man on to the hard stairs. He paced the landing, flagellating himself, slapping his own face, cracking his fists off his temples. It was this that unsettled the old man the most. His fury sent Mr Donnelly cowering into the corner of the stairwell, where he sank to the floor with his hands covering his head. Mungo was angry at the man, but he was angrier with himself. It was a nightmarish sight to see the man without trousers but with his old blazer and shirt on and his tie still knotted. His bare legs were pallid against the concrete and the tip of his shrivelled cock was hanging below his shirt hem, tacky in the close light. Mr Donnelly had seen his opportunity and taken it, he hadn’t bothered to waste time on swooning or sweet teases. It was a low way to live.
Mungo spat on the man, a great shower of directionless spittle.
“Thank you, son. Aye, thank you.” The old man seemed grateful to have gotten off so lightly.
Leaving Mr Donnelly hunkered in the close, Mungo went inside and locked every lock. He returned to Mo-Maw and pulled the sweated bed sheets across her. She didn’t stir. Her head was tilted backwards, her mouth open and ghastly with her own smeared lipstick. Tattie-bogle. He would pretend she had been Tattie-bogle all along. Without glancing at her pinkest flesh, he lifted the empty shell of her most gently and stuffed the sheets underneath her. It brought her splayed legs back together. Then, as though he was preparing her for burial, he wiped the last of the paint from her lips. She lay there, drunk out of her memory, looking like a baby that would not sleep without being swaddled.
The struggle with the old man had roused Jodie. She was growling to herself like she could not wait to be gone from this madhouse. He heard her fill a mug with tap water. Then she sealed herself back inside her bedroom.
Mungo couldn’t sleep after that. Inside and out he was in agony. He crawled on to his bed and felt rotten for all the mistakes he had made, all the poor-me’s he could conjure: Jodie and the baby, Ha-Ha and the Bhoyston, Mo-Maw and the dirty money, but most of all for James.
He had been so scared of Ha-Ha that he had ruined the best thing he had ever known. Now, in the darkness, he knew that Ha-Ha would not keep his word, not for long – he never did. It was only a matter of time before James would be hurt, and for what? For liking Mungo Hamilton, the ruiner of all good things.