Mungo thought about it. “Naw. I’ll tell Jodie. She’ll know how to break it to Hamish and Maureen. ‘Asides, they willnae want to know me after they hear what I am.”
“Maybe Jodie will.” James trusted in the legends of her good-heartedness. It spoke as many lovely things about him as it did about her. “Mibbe one day we can tell her where we went.”
“Aye. Mibbe.”
“Mungo, you do know we can’t ever come back here? Once they know, we’ll be as bad as Chickie Calhoun.”
Someday Mungo would tell him what he knew but for now all he said was “He’s no all bad. He’s awright. We’re awright.”
“Whut? No shuffling to the Paki shop in your cagoule, making soup for Mo-Maw, living for the guid weather when you can watch bin men take their taps aff in the summer sun?”
Mungo was grinning, spit pooling in the side of his open mouth. “You’re a cheeky basturt for a Catholic. You still have to apologize for saying all that cruel shite to me.”
“Ah was just keeping the Protestants in line. Yeese think ye run this town.”
“That was kind of you, wingnut.” Mungo snickered as he twisted James’s ear.
James batted his hand away. He looked up at the sky full of birling birds. There was some other man’s hen in the sky. She was a drab, eggy yellow against the ash-grey clouds, but now and again the sunlight hit her and she shone like gold. One of James’s pigeons started to circle her, a plump little bully that he called Henry-the-Weighth. The pair dipped out of view behind the tenements and in that moment, James knew that his bird was lost forever. It would have devastated him only hours ago, but now he huffed, and felt strangely happy for Henry. He chuckled to himself. “Here, ah realized something the other day. Do you remember that chatline ah telt ye about? Well, ah realized ah started phoning it well before my mammy died.”
“Aye. So?”
“She must have been getting those bills for months. She must have seen what those numbers were for, and just paid them. She never let on. She never said a word.”
It took a moment for Mungo to realize what it was James was telling him. “Oh. She knew about you. That’s guid.”
James whistled at his birds. “Aye. That’s guid.”
Mungo turned his face away from James. The sunlight was making the crown of his head warm, and he wanted to feel it kiss his other cheek. “Just think. This time next week. No more John Donne.”
“Who?”
The soft fingers on his spine had lulled him into a stupor. “It doesnae matter.”
The sun would hold. The boys closed their eyes.
* * *
While the boys had been watching the birds fly over the scheme, Hamish had come upon the doocot from the park side. Like a deerhound he had the instinct to start at the widest point and sweep inwards, coursing his quarry back towards home. He had come through the park and then slipped between the missing railings in the iron fence.
Earlier that morning he had gone to the flat to look for Mungo and found Mo-Maw slumped at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. Last night had been a blur of adrenaline, flashes of emerald green and white and spit and blood. But through it all he could clearly picture his baby brother lying in the dirt, choking on his blood, while the gleeful Fenian stamped down upon him. When Hamish saw Mungo’s bloodied, discarded clothes in the hallway, and found Mo-Maw weeping to herself at the table, he imagined the worst. He shook her. She looked up. She screamed.
For a moment Hamish had forgotten about his own torn-up face. Mo-Maw’s screaming brought Jodie through from her bedroom. His sister stood in the kitchen doorway, her hair curled around a tonging iron, the plug dangling from the end where she had ripped it from the wall. It was unlike Jodie to be at a loss for words. She stared at Hamish, and at the blood that was already seeping through the bandage, and as she stared, the tongs singed through her hair and a long, ringleted clump came away in her hand.
Mo-Maw had been nursing a hangover, she hadn’t been weeping for Mungo, she thought he was still in his bed. Hamish guffawed at his own stupidity.
Hamish cast no shadows. Mungo didn’t know what instinct made him look up from the long grass, what shift in the air made him glance over his shoulder. But when he rolled on to his side, Hamish was standing over them, blood dripping down his neck.
Mungo had thought it would be too early for his brother to be up, too soon for the father of a young baby to be dressed and prowling. Still, here he was – a ginger bottle full of siphoned petrol in his hand.
There was a sour grimace on Hamish’s face and his teeth were grinding from the speed. Bleeding and raw, the left side of his face was covered with a large white bandage, but the ointment and coagulating blood seeped through the thin muslin adhesive. The outline of it looked like a half-grin, like one of those carnival drawings you turned upside down to make it either grimace or smile. Hamish had been slashed from his earlobe to the left corner of his mouth, a rusty carpet blade having sliced through most layers of his skin. He must have been in the Royal Infirmary, being stitched together, most of the night. He had taken a bump of speed and had not yet been home to sleep. The stitches were not holding.
“I thought ye were fuckin’ dead.” His eyes were wild.
“Hamish, it’s no what you think.” Mungo could only fear how much he had seen, how much he had heard.
There were real tears streaming behind the thick lenses. It was this detail that scared Mungo the most. Hamish was shaking his head like he didn’t want to believe it. The two boys lying side by side in the grass. The Fenian’s hand tickling the base of his brother’s spine. Hamish let out a single choked sob. “Naw, Mungo. Ye cannae be one of them. Ye cannae. Ye just fuckin’ cannae.”
James’s hand – the same gentle fingers that had caressed Mungo’s skin – was lying in the grass, supporting his weight. Hamish stepped forward and brought his boot down upon it. He stamped down twice, all the force concentrated in his heel, and the thick sole of his Doc Martens made a terrible crunching sound. James rolled on to his side, terror blanching his face. He curled into a defensive ball and cradled his broken fingers in his other hand. Mungo went to him.
James’s mouth was open wide, but he made no sound. He started crawling backwards, away from Hamish, trying to make it to the doocot. Hamish lifted his glasses and wiped at his wet eyes. He turned his gaze to the Fenian, then he swivelled it back to Mungo. A dark look of relief swept over him. He had the answer he needed, even if it was not the truth.
“Ah. I understand now. Ye’re being diddled by this fucker, eh? This dirty Tim bastard that likes to have his way with wee boys. Typical. I blame the fucking priests.”
Hamish crossed the grass towards James. It was what he wanted to believe. It was a far easier thing to understand than the other truth, that Mungo had lain with this boy and enjoyed it, that Mungo had dreamt of the cereal sugar on James’s breath, that he had taken him in his mouth, or nuzzled his nose into the soft blond down at the crack of his arse, or rubbed himself against James in a cold bath till they made soft bubbles in the flat water. Hamish could not be the brother of a deviant. He would not be the brother of a poofter.