Lonie 2

Lonie knew Audrey in the passing, like a goldfish knows its bowl. He’d said ‘hi’ to her a few times then watched her disappear from memory. She was easy enough to find. She had one of the draughtiest booths in a corner of the office called Siberia underneath the window that didn’t close. As he got closer he could hear her typewriter pinging as it slammed back and forth. Rumour had it that she could do 120 words per minute and that any copy she made went straight to the composing room to be laid out on the stone-set tables for printing. She was given the drudge work of weddings, funerals, fetes and school prizes. Rumour had it that there were no other rumours about her, which was always a disappointment. Lonie had time to look at those famed tits as she whizzed on with her work. They were indeed a couple of outboard motors pushed under the tarpaulin of a white frilly blouse buttoned up to the neck, like a spoil-sport puritan, with no cleavage visible. Her jacket was grey pinstripe rounded at the collar to make it more feminine and her long hands and white fingers poked out at the cuffs like a scarecrows. Her hair snared Lonie’s eye. It was deep auburn, long at the front and caught in a wave that swept up and over her head, but tapered down, and was short as a man’s at the back. It was the silence that caught him. She had stopped typing and was sitting with her hands in her lap looking at him.

‘You want something?’

One of her eyes was brown, the other a light- green. Lonie wondered why nobody had told him about this.

‘The fatman wants to see you.’

‘Mr MacDonald?’ Her neck went shooting up like an inquisitive swan. If there was a school prize for sitting up straight she would have won it. ‘What does he want to see me about?’

‘Dunno.’

Audrey wore a little red lipstick, her top lip chewing briefly on her bottom. ‘Ok,’ and she was up out of her chair standing beside him. Thin, but, even in her snub-nosed heels, tall for a woman. Lonie was six-two, but she was almost the same. He followed behind her grey skirt. She’d a great ass that sashayed and a quick rhythmic walk that radiated authority, but slowed as she neared the fatman’s office, letting him brush past her at the door.

The fatman looked up at Lonie. He didn’t bother looking at Audrey, standing shadowing him. The other editors did that for him. Her face was striking rather that pretty, but it was her tits they were looking at. They were the headline they would be discussing later.

‘I’ve got a job for you. They’re shutting that hospital. The one they spent £180 million upgrading.’

‘Goldenwell,’ said Audrey.

‘Yeh, Goldenwell. Stupid fuckin’ name for a hospital. Cutbacks. Seems it’s uneconomical. Well, that’s the buzzword. I want you to go and interview that Cardinal of yours.

‘Cardinal Robbins?’ said Lonie. ‘But why me?’

‘Well, you’re one of those potato munchers aren’t you? Brought up by some nun order of the funny fanny? I’ve made an appointment for you.’

‘No, I’d a family just like yours, only thinner. Only mine inconveniently died. I’ll look out the press cutting if you want to gloat.’

The fatman held up the palm of his hand in what could be construed as apology. ‘You want this job or not?’

Lonie shrugged. ‘Yeh.’

‘McArthur will brief you.’ The fatman turned to a balding man hovering at the edge of his desk.

‘Mr MacDonald.’ Audrey’s heels clicked as she pushed past Lonie. ‘You said you wanted to see me?’

‘Yeh.’ The fatman pointed at Lonie. ‘You drive him down to the meeting with the Cardinal.’

Audrey waved her hand dismissively at Lonie. ‘I’m a reporter.’

‘I’m not paying for no taxis all the way down to Rhu. No siree. You can report what you see when you’re driving.’

‘I want expenses. And I’ll write up copy of the meeting. I’ll let you decide whose is the better version.’

The fatman shrugged. ‘No expenses. I’ll look at what you’ve got. But I will buy you a drink?’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Your funeral.’ The fatman’s wrists flapped one way and the other as shooed Audrey and Lonie away. ‘I’ll see you in my other office when you get back.’

MacArthur raced out at their back. The nearer to the glass booth he got his desk the nearer he was to power. The strip lighting above his desk clicked on and off as it rationed light and threatened darkness. Lonie and Audrey watched what little eyebrows he had left shooting up to hide in his forehead, his eyes darting back and forth to the light fitting and what was happening in his glass booth as he rooted around the bits of paper on his desk. ‘I can’t find it.’ He sounded in pain.

‘What?’ Audrey looked at the mess of unstacked papers, ashtrays, tide-marked tea cups and boiled sweets on McArthur’s desk, and the way she squinted her eyes at him she was letting him know where the blame lay.

‘The Cardinal’s address.’ McArthur pulled open a desk drawer and looked underneath it, as if someone had taped it there to hide it from him.

Lonie had parked his bum on the side of the desk. ‘It’s ok. I know where it is.’

‘You know where what is?’ MacArthur sounded flabbergasted, but relieved at the same time.

‘Yeh, I know where it is. I know where the Cardinal stays’

‘You sure?’ MacArthur was sure. He’d been let off and his feet were pointed towards the office door and the action he was missing.

‘Yeh. I’ve been there a few times.’

‘Fine. Fine. You’ve to be there are 2pm. You’ve got about two hours. Usual stuff. You can make up what you’re going to ask him as you travel.’ MacArthur dashed away and then dashed back. ‘Let us know what happens. We’ll get you in the lounge.’

Audrey was hovering close enough for Lonie to feel the heat radiating from her body. ‘That wasn’t much of a briefing.’

‘What you wantin’ brass bands?’ He didn’t mean it to come out like that, all aggressive.

‘You’re an arsehole.’ One eye brown, one eye green, nailed him to the desk.

‘Yeh,’ he sighed. ‘That’s about right.’ He frisked his pockets before remembering. ‘You got any fags?’ He tried a weak smile.

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘You are old enough. Aren’t you? Maybe you should start?’

Audrey’s hair glimmered like a raven’s wing, from blue to black, as she shook her head. ‘I’ll just go and get my bag. Then we can be going. You want me to drop you off at yours first, so you can get a good clean dip and a wash and shave?’

Lonie waited for her at the bottom of the building, watching the traffic, leaning against the damp stone of the foyer. When he was sure it was all clear his fingers traced the stubble on his chin. He raised his arm up above his head and sniffed in at his oxters. It was a bit damp. He tried the other side. Same thing. A bit oniony, old-man smell, but couldn’t smell anything else. With the clatter of feet sounding on the landing above, his arm jerked down and his hands found the warmth of his coat pockets

Audrey had put on a bit of lippy. Given herself a faint painted on smile. ‘Coming?’ she said, husky voiced, jumping down the last few steps and out into the busy street. She’d put on a no-nonsense green gabardine that reached to ground and covered all her curves. But a watery sun had sneaked out and she sounded grateful to be outside. ‘I’ll just get my car. Where do you want to get me?’

Lonie scratched the back of his neck. Weighed up the volume of traffic and his need for a ciggy. ‘I’ll get you at the shop on the corner?’

That meant her coming up and around and pointing her car in the wrong direction to the way they should be going, but she didn’t seem that fussed.

‘Yeh.’ Her feet went about their business, pecking at the pavement, as she moved away from him, like a featherweight picking out punches.

Lonie waited for her to swing round and by the time she’s circled he’d half-smoked a fag and had two packets secured, one in each coat pocket. She tooted the horn as she drew up to the kerb, as if he was blind and couldn’t see her green Hillman Imp. The road was down to one lane and traffic was piling up behind her, some of the more impatient driver’s tooting their horns before she’d even put on the handbrake. He’d pulled the car door open, bent himself up like a slop-shouldered mannequin and had a half- a- bum cheek on the passenger’s front seat when he heard her squawk: ‘What is that?’

He jumped, his head banging against the car roof, his neck turning this way and that, up and across the Broomilaw, past the shops and empty doorways, and around behind him, for a sudden mugger. ‘That,’ she said. Then he got it. She was talking about his fag.

‘It’s a cigarette,’ he said politely, ‘people smoke them.’

‘Not in my car they don’t.’

The cars behind them were playing a jazz reel of disapproval on their horns. One car swerved out and into the traffic in the other busy lane.

‘Look lady,’ Lonie took another puff, ‘that there on the armrest is an ashtray.’ He patted the ashtray on his side of the seat. ‘One for you and one for me. If you don’t like me mucking them up there’s another one on the dashboard. Or I can fling the dout out the window. I don’t care. Just get moving.’

‘I don’t like the smoke. It makes me sick and stinks up my clothes.’

Lonie took another drag as he thought about it. ‘Ok. Ok. You win. If you’re some kind of health fanatic I’ll blow the smoke out of the window.’ He looked behind him at the traffic. ‘You better get moving.’

‘You better get moving too. You can stick your head out of the window and the rest of you can follow. I’m not moving until you put that out. No smoking in my car means, no smoking in my car. If you get your own car you can smoke to your heart’s content.’

‘Jesus.’ Lonie took a last few quick drags on his fag and flicked it away. ‘Happy now?’

Audrey indicated, ground the gears and her teeth, and the car lurched forward and moved off. ‘So where are we going to?’

‘Just keeping going the way you’re going, get onto Great Western Road past the old tenements and keep going straight until you hit Helensburgh. It’s no’ that hard a place to get to.’

The car hit the first set of traffic lights on Great Western Road and the next set about ten yards later. Lonie wound the window down letting in a light drift of smirry rain. Usually he wouldn’t be that bothered, he liked to drift along, let someone else drive, and he could look out the window and let his mind drift free. But he was so snagged up with getting the next hit of nicotine he felt like jumping out of the car and going home. It was only a ten minute walk to Apsley Street and he could phone in sick from The Smiddy Bar. As soon as they hit Yoker he had to come up with another plan. It was all dual carriageway and they were now moving quite fast so he could no longer afford to fling himself out of the car and claim amnesia.

‘You been there before?’ Audrey’s voice brought him up with a start.

‘Yeh,’ he said, in way that suggested he didn’t want to get into it. ‘Do you think I could have a fag if I stuck my head out of the window? You don’t need to slow down.’

She laughed. ‘You’re mad. I’ll tell you what there’s a wee place just outside Dumbarton that serves the best pancake and syrup in the world. Another ten minutes and we’ll be there. You can have a fag there. We’re a bit early anyway.’

‘Sure.’ Lonie searched through his pockets to make sure he still had fags in them and worked his fingers into the open packet and pulled one out, so he’d be ready, as soon as the car stopped. He glanced at her sideways in case she thought he was having a fly wank. ‘Can you speed up a bit?’

Audrey hit the accelerator, upping the speed by about three- miles- an- hour. ‘When did you visit Cardinal Robbins?’ She kept her eyes on the road, but he knew she wanted to look at him to see how he was taking the question.

‘A long time ago.’ He was careful not to let any emotion slip into his voice. His right foot, however, was pressing down on an imaginary accelerator pedal on the treadmill of the rubber matting on the passenger’s side.

‘What happened?’

He expected the question, but couldn’t help flinching. He’d a one hundred ways of telling the same story depended how drunk he was. Sober he gave the short version. ‘Mum, dad and my wee sister were burnt to death in our house in Canada. I wasn’t. We’d only been there a year. The authorities didn’t know what to do with me. They asked me what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to go home, to Glasgow.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, taking her eyes off the road and slowing down.

Next he figured she’d shed a few tears. She was good. He had to admit it. Tears always worked, got everybody huggy-feely and the stories just poured out like spilt liquor.

‘What happened next?’ she asked.

No tears. He figured she’d be keeping them for the finale.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

She slowed the car, even more if that was possible, and indicated to turn into The Little Chef.

‘They sent me back by boat. It took a month.’ He flung open the car door and jumped out of the car, grabbing the lighter out of the dashboard and lighting up.

She stood with her hands flat and her elbows resting on the roof of the car. ‘My lighter?’

He feigned tip-toeing back to the car, opened the Imp’s door, pulled open the ashtray and plugged the car lighter back in.

‘I’m dying for the toilet,’ she said, ‘but I’m not moving until you tell me what happened?’

‘Nothing. I’ve got fags.’ He waved his lit cigarette about. ‘And I can drink my own urine. So don’t think you can wait me out.’

A purple Ford Capri swerved into the car park, cutting in front of them and cutting their conversation in two. Audrey gave up first, as he knew she would. She had left her coat in the car. Lonie watched her ass as she made a run for the toilets. The two young guys, all denim, sideburns and intentness of being seriously young, followed his gaze and managed half- cracked smiles at each other as they passed him.

Lonie had another smoke in the toilet while he was peeing and kept the lit fag in his mouth as he washed his hands. He was annoyed because he was jumping ahead thinking that would be the kind of question she’d ask him: ‘did you wash your hands?’ and not about the kind of questions he should be asking Cardinal Robbins. He was unprepared, getting lackadaisical and careless and he didn’t like that feeling.

Audrey had secured a table in the corner with a yellow light from a cheap golden desk light glammed up to look something it was not. The two plastic roses in a darkened vase were more authentic and were set off nicely by a pink chequered tablecloth. ‘I didn’t order for you.’ She was pouring golden syrup onto two large thin pancakes and her face looked full of the kind of guilty delight of a kid opening his presents and sneaking a look the day before Christmas.

Lonie slumped into a red plastic looking seat beside her. He lit one fag from the other he was smoking and stabbed the smaller of the two out in the ashtray on the table. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You can go and sit at the tables at the door. The draught should keep my fag smoke away.’

Her chair scrapped the floor as she picked up her cup of tea, balancing her knife and fork on the plate with pancakes. She checked that her bag was sitting on the chair beside her where she could see it when she moved.

‘Hing on. Hing on.’ Lonie stabbed his lit fag out and left it smouldering with the corpse of his first fag in the ashtray. ‘Satisfied?’

She sat down again. ‘No. I’m not satisfied. You’ve spoiled my meal.’ She looked at him evenly. ‘I can’t eat this now.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Lonie pulled the plate over to his side of the table. ‘I can eat anything.’ He used her knife to cut a corner of the pancake and stuck it in his mouth. ‘Nice. Look I’ll get you some more pancakes. Whatever you want?’

‘I don’t want more pancakes. I wanted those pancakes.’

Lonie’s left hand instinctively fell below the table and reached for the fag packet in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry, what more can I say?’

Audrey warmed her fingers on the cup of tea. ‘It’s a start.’

‘You want a burgher or something? I always come into these places, drink coffee and I never drink coffee, and turn into an American.’

A smile played on Audrey’s lips. ‘Ok then. I’ll have a burger and a coffee…but only if you’re having burger and coffee?’

‘Yes Ma’am.’ Lonie sprung up and bowed towards her. ‘Would Ma’am like anything else? Ketchup is a little extra. They dole it out in those damn plastic sachets that are impossible to open. So you just give up and leave them with teeth marks on them to sell to some other mug.’

‘You getting ketchup?’

‘Sure am. No expense spared.’ Lonie made his way towards the counter and was soon back with another hot cup of tea and a coffee.

‘Said they won’t be long.’ He looked suddenly shy and tongue-tied.

‘We’ve still got time, about an hour.’ The awkwardness was infectious.