“We have to go. Now.”
“Do we? Funny that. You being ready to leave just when things get a bit better for me.” He took a small sepia hen from the cage and stroked her neck. She was not drinking the morning water. “Ah thought you would be happy for me. Ah didnae expect you to be jealous.”
“I’m no jealous.”
The stiffness in James’s shoulders softened slightly. Then he coughed, his damp, raking rattle. “Ah don’t think ah want to go anywhere with you. Ye’re as bad as your brother.”
“I didn’t do it.” He was circling now, trying to push himself into James’s line of sight, but the other boy always found something to tilt away towards. James denied him the comfort of his gaze. “I want you to know I didnae hurt anyone last night. I went. I did as Hamish asked but I didnae fight.” He lifted the side of his cagoule to show the navy bruise, but even at the nylon rustling, James did not turn. “I let them hit us and stamp on us and I didnae even fight back.”
“That doesn’t make you any less of a fuckin’ bigot.”
Idiot. Weakling. Liar. Poofter. Coward. Pimp. Bigot.
Mungo wanted to say he had done it for James. He had done it so Ha-Ha would not hurt him, so he would leave the one thing Mungo loved in peace. But what was the point now? Either way James seemed lost to him. Mungo tried one last time, but the word escaped him quiet as a sigh. “Please.”
James wouldn’t look at him.
Mungo picked up his school bag and turned to leave. Where would he go if he was not following James? He knew then that he would go nowhere. He would go straight to Ha-Ha and stand in his line of sight so that he never felt the need to hunt for this Catholic, never felt the need to set fire to him.
“I wish I wasn’t like this, James. I wish I was all right but I’m not. You don’t have to be like Chickie. Ashley is gorgeous and it’s a lovely thing that your da loves you. Those are good things. I lied. I am jealous.”
There were mongrels sniffing in the doocot grass. Old men, their eyes obscured by flat caps, stood nearby and whistled gruff commands. Everything would go on as it always had.
“No. Ye’re wrong. He doesnae love me.” James turned and squinted into the light. “He doesnae even know me.”
The heavy cake of Jodie’s foundation looked like a crusted scab in the morning sun. The skin around his temple was already purpling with blood. There were heavy bags of worry under Mungo’s eyes and the side of his face was swollen both on the inside and out.
“Fuck sake!” James crossed the rat glass and put his hands on the sides of Mungo’s head. He tilted him like he was an ashy doo. His eyes searched the wounds, and his fingers pulled on his bottom lip to check his teeth.
“Ssssttt,” Mungo winced.
“Where does it hurt?”
He didn’t know where to start. “Nowheres. I’m fine.”
James was pulling at his cagoule, raising his jacket to his chest. Seeing the outline of heel prints under the ointment, still blooming and darkening across his pale trunk, he laid his fingers gently on it. “Sweet suffering fuck.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t do that.”
James was turning the pale boy around, his eyes scanning every inch of his torso, his fingers running the outlines of his pain. Mungo tried to laugh the hurt away. “Catholics, man. Everybody thinks they’re the good guys.”
James jammed his knuckles into his eye sockets. He was repeating okay, over and over, like it was a chant. The blood had drained from his face. He stood that way, thinking, chanting, for a long while. “Fuck it. Awright, we’ll leave.”
Mungo shook his head despite himself. “Naw, I was being selfish. You’ll be awright. You can go away to the rigs. You can have weans with Ashley.”
James clamped his hands on either side of Mungo’s head. “It’s too late.”
Mungo winced. Then he smiled, a tremulous, fleeting thing. “Are you sure?”
“Aye.” His thumbs were caressing Mungo’s bottom lip. “Ah think ah have more than enough saved. We can go north and rent a caravan for the whole summer. Ah can find work. We’ll be awright.”
The men who were walking their dogs in the early sunshine glanced their way. The boys separated. They stood a respectable arm’s length apart and laughed and smiled at each other like they were demented. James sank to his knees, his eyes were swivelling back and forth as he thought about all that would need to be planned.
Mungo sat on the grass beside him. His teeth were rattling now. The pain caught up to him and the last of his body heat was leaching through the welts on his side. James drew off his own jumper, the barley and gorse Fair Isle, and then he helped remove Mungo’s cagoule and redressed him in the knitwear. Up close there were a thousand different colours all running through the knit, not only the porridgey cream and golds, but also bluebell blues, mossy browns, and an acidic, punkish pink. Mungo wanted time to sit and study it closely, all these little things he had never noticed before. It was alive with the warmth of James, he felt him all around him. Mungo chewed the right cuff, the wool squeaked between his teeth. It calmed him down.
“Better?” James helped pull the cagoule back over Mungo’s head and zipped the neck closed all the way to the top, taking care to avoid pinching his chin.
Mungo folded himself over the soft schoolbag, suddenly very relieved, and more tired than he could say. He let the weak sun wash over him. “Today?”
James shook his head. “Tomorrow maybe. I need to go see Mac Munroe up in Cranhill. He’ll be desperate to buy the doocot off us. He’s been keen to fly my prize pouters for ages. Between the cages and the birds there has to be about four hunner pound all in. That’ll be a big help to us.”
James went to the doocot and exercised his doos while Mungo slumped on the grass and felt bad about his meagre savings. James retrieved his flask and sandwiches and they ate a shared breakfast together as the pigeons circled overhead. The tea was milky and sweet and it soothed the cut in his mouth. There was no school today, there would be no school tomorrow. The boys made lists of things to pack; useful things like bandages, firelighters, sleeping bags, and then many impractical things: a ghetto blaster, tins of heavy Ambrosia rice, and James’s mourning suit, in case farmers expected a formal job interview. Afterwards they lay on their stomachs in the morning sun, nothing more to say, drunk with relief at what lay ahead. James snaked his hand across the grass and lifted the back of Mungo’s jumper. He ran his fingers through the downy hairs at the base of his spine. Mungo closed his eyes.
“Do you think people will like us?”
“In Ardnamurchan? Ah dunno, we don’t really need people to like us. We just need them to leave us alone. There’s hardly any people there, ah think it’ll be awright.”
No women watching from windows. No gossiping voices at the landing below you. No Ha-Ha wanting him to man up. No Jodie wanting him to grow up. Mungo could not imagine. “Will you tell your da?”
“Aye. Ah’ve already written the letter. Ah wrote it last year after he battered me for the chatline.” James stroked the base of Mungo’s spine, ready to pull his hand away should one of the dog walkers come too close. “Will you tell Mo-Maw?”