mast flexed back into shape, hauling the radio antennae taut again. ‘Keep yer hair on, darling.’
Fergus locked the door of the case and pocketed the key. ‘And don’t call me that!’
‘Sorry, darling.’
‘I said stop it!’ Fergus shrieked.
‘Ach, dinnae wet yer knickers, ya big lassie.’
‘You disgusting little -’
‘Oh, come on, you two; act grown-up,’ Kenneth said. ‘Fergus,’ he pointed over to the window, and a slope-topped display case standing under it. ‘What’s all this stuff?’
‘That’s my museum,’ Fergus said, glaring at Lachy and walking to the window.
‘Oo, a museum,’ Lachy said in a pretend posh voice, but came over too.
‘Things I’ve found, locally,’ Fergus explained. He stood over the case, pointing. ‘That’s a Roman coin, I think. And that’s an arrowhead.’
‘Whit’s that green thing?’ Lachy said, pointing to one corner.
‘That,’ Fergus told him, ‘is a fossilized pear.’
Lachy guffawed. ‘It’s a bit aw bone, ya daft bugger. Where’d ye get yon? Back a the butcher’s shop? Find it in the dug’s bowl, aye?’
‘No I did not,’ Fergus said indignantly. ‘It’s a fossilized pear; I found it on the beach.’ He turned to Kenneth. ‘You’ve got some education, Kenneth; you tell him. It’s a fossilized pear, isn’t it?’
Kenneth looked closer. ‘Hmm. Umm, I don’t know, actually.’
‘Fuckin bit a bone,’ Lachy muttered.
‘You filthy-mouthed little wretch!’ Fergus shouted. ‘Get out of my house!’
Lachy ignored this, bent down, face over the cabinet.
‘Go on; get out!’ Fergus screamed, pointing to the door.
Lachy looked sourly at the pitted, vaguely green exhibit labelled ‘Fossilized Pear, Duntrunne Beach, 14th of May 1945.’
‘I’m not kidding! Out!’
‘Fergus -’ began Kenneth. He put a hand on the other boy’s arm. Fergus hit it away, face white with fury.
Lachy wrinkled his nose, which was almost touching the glass of the cabinet. ‘Still, whit dae ye expect frae a laddy that hides in a lavvy?’
‘You pig!’ Fergus screamed, and brought both fists thudding down on the back of Lachy’s head. Lachy’s face crashed through the glass, into the display case.
‘Fergus!’ Kenneth yelled, pulling him away as Fergus kicked at Lachy’s legs. Lachy screamed, jerked back, spilling glass, arms flailing, face covered in blood.
‘Aah, ya basturt!’ he wailed, staggering. ‘Ah canny see!’
‘Lachy!’ Kenneth shouted, hauling his hanky out of his pocket. He went to Lachy, grabbed his shoulders. ‘Lachy; stand still! Stand still!’ He tried to wipe the blood from the other boy’s eyes; it was all over his jumper, dripping onto the carpet.
‘But ah canny see! Ah canny see!’
‘What on earth is going on in he - Oh my God!’ Mrs Urvill said, from the doorway. ‘Fergus! What have you been letting him do? And get him off that carpet; it’s Persian!’
Lachlan lost an eye. The Gallanach Glass Works, Ornaments Division, made him an artificial one. Fergus was soundly beaten by his father, and not allowed out for a fortnight. The Urvills granted the Watt family the sum of one thousand guineas in full and final settlement of the matter, the papers drawn up by the firm of Blawke, Blawke and Blawke.
Lachlan was still growing, and perhaps because of that during his mid-teens the eye kept falling out, so another, slightly larger, was made; Lachlan was allowed to keep the old one. He had a third glass eye, which he’d got from the hospital when the first one had been lost for a week (it was eventually discovered, months later, under a chest of drawers in Lachy and Rab’s bedroom, where presumably it had rolled during the night), but it was of inferior quality; duller and less lifelike, and he kept it as a spare.
He was the boy with four eyes, and he didn’t even need glasses. Or rather a monocle.
‘Keep an eye out for us, Lachy!’ and variations thereof became a popular phrase amongst his school-mates, though not to his face after the first boy to say it within Lachy’s earshot, if not sight, was held down by a half-dozen powerful young Watts and forced to swallow the brown-irised orb, and then to bring it back up.
Mary McHoan sniffed the air. ‘Prentice, you smell of petrol.’
Prentice collapsed into a seat in the living room. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
His mother looked over the top of the Guardian at him. On the television, a game of snooker was proceeding silently. Prentice sat and looked at it. Mary put the paper down, took off her reading glasses.
‘Where’s Ken?’ Prentice asked. He still had his black leather jacket on.
‘In bed, reading,’ Mary told him. She folded the paper, went over to her son, and sniffed the air above him.