Lonie40

Lonie tracked along the corridors. The door further on, to his right was open. He could hear the mumbling of prayer, recognised the sing-song structure of the Rosary being said, with a voice climbing up the prayer. At its peak another voice took over, Jim’s voice overlapping Lorna’s and breaking the Hail Mary into two, stringing the prayer on to the next trough and peak of its relation. Further along the hall he could hear the same antiphon and response of prayer being played out by Brother Jerome and Connelly. He stood in the doorway, of what he took to be Carol Peter’s cell. She was sat in the soft seat in the corner of her room, her hands balled into the knuckles of a fist, neck and head flung back, as if someone was standing behind her chair and forcibly tugging at her hair. Her eyeballs were the most salient feature of the tableau. They rolled back beneath her flickering eyelids so that only the pink blood vessels of the sclera were showing. Lorna stood nearest to Carol, her black boots almost wedged under her chair. Her hands were out, fingers pointed like claws, in a childish portrait of someone ready to pounce, but her eyes were closed and she rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the prayer. Lonie felt that Jim knew he was there. His stocky figure stood behind and to the side of Lorna. He too had his hands out, thick fingers curved towards Carol, but it was more as a self-conscious gesture. Jim’s responses stuttered, his hand fell to the side of his flared denims, Lonie’s presence putting a dampener on the engine of prayer and his responses ground to a halt. Lorna travelled on alone, swaying to the beat of her own inner rhythm, but her eyes opened and her voice dropped an octave and grew silent. The force tugging at Carol’s hair seemed to leave. Her neck began to bend forward to a more comfortable sitting position and the dark pupils of her eyes resumed their normal gaze. She wiped at the slabbers on her mouth with the back of hand.

‘Mr Lonnigan.’ Carol smiled like a captive sand lizard. ‘I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.’ She got up from her chair. Lorna moved aside. Jim was more reluctant, his feet stalling in the space between the bed and door, but he too moved out of the way. Carol presented Lonie with her hand, for him to shake.

‘Glad to meet you.’ Lonie looked her in the eye. But his eyes, after a few seconds, flickered towards Jim and Lorna.

‘I’m sure you are.’ Carol kept hold of Lonie’s hand for longer than was necessary, the long fingers of her right hand tapping out some undecipherable message on his wrist. She turned to Lorna and Jim, her shoulders a curve of apology for her rudeness in detaining their guest. ‘I believe it’s you he wants to see.’ She took a deep breath, looking up at the light of the small window. ‘I think there may be something wrong with your Father Campbell.’ She darted a glance at Lonie, chortled as if catching him out, before flouncing over and flinging herself in her chair and picking a book up that had been left face down on the bedspread.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ There was a note of alarm in Lorna’s voice.

‘He’s dying dear,’ cackled Carol, stroking the cover of her book, like a cat.

‘Ah don’t know.’ Lonie fidgeted, his hands looking for his fags, but he’d left them back in the office. ‘Ah think he’s got a sore side, but he looks awful white.’

‘Fuck-sake.’ Jim sounded tired, rather than angry.

Lonie looked at him with a new found respect. Carol raced past him and Jim followed. The bee-hive hum of prayer was still coming from a few doors down, but it too stopped.

Lonie legged it and caught up with Jim. ‘Shouldn’t you lock her in, or something?’

‘Where’s she going to go?’ Jim seemed unperturbed.

Lorna was first to get to the office, but she was no longer in than back out darting towards the kitchen and recreation areas. The weakest of coppery smells hung in the air. Audrey was holding Father Campbell’s hand. His breathing was ragged and blood ran down his skull and what little hair he had left and dripped onto his shoulders. The side of his robe was also soaking as if he’d been stabbed, and his hands and feet were oozing pustules.

‘Help him.’ Audrey’s eyes pleaded with Lonie.

‘We’ll need to call an ambulance.’ Lonie strode forward and reached for the phone on Father Campbell’s desk, and picked up the receiver and began dialling 999.

Jim shuffled past him and pressed down the black disconnect levers. ‘We’re already in a hospital.’ He spoke calmly. ‘If you can just help me get him up we can take him to his room to lie down for a bit.’

Lorna came in with a steaming basin of water, a white cotton towel and two facecloths, which she splashed down ontop of some papers on Father Campbell’s desk. Audrey’s feet knocked against the bin as she backtracked and slid out of the way, her back against the wall to let Lorna past her, to attend to Father Campbell. Lorna 'oohed' and 'aahed' as she cleaned his face, using a damp cloth and a dry cloth. He shut his eyes to help her. The phone rung. Father Campbell’s hand reached out for the receiver, but Lorna was quicker. She cleaned the fingers and that hand first and then the other, wringing the cloth out and turning the contents of the basin vermilion. She mopped up the blood still seeping through with the towel making no allowance for the vagaries of skin and bone.

Jim squeezed round one side of his desk with the agility of an elephant trying to put up a Christmas card on the wall. ‘Geez a hand.’ He nodded at Lonie to get to the other side of Father Campbell’s chair. For a second Lonie thought they were going to move him like a cupboard, putting their hands under his chair and lifting him straight up into the air, over the desk and down the corridor. But Jim put one arm under Father Campbell’s oxters to help pull him up. Lonie wriggled in and his hand wiggled beneath his back, under his arm, and joined in a transom with Jim’s. Father Campbell struggled to his feet, with both men supporting his weight. Lorna pulled at the desk so that it scraped sideway offering a passage out of the office. Audrey leaned across and patted Father Campbell on the shoulder. He looked across at her and they exchanged smiles as weak as sunshine in December.

Lorna led the way along the hallway, looking back anxiously, as if carrying a light and in fear they’d get lost. All strength in Father Campbell’s legs was gone. He was secured and swinging from the crupper of his helper’s arms and hung lopsidedly to Lonie’s side. Audrey brought up the rear of their party.

‘Jesus. It’s like carrying a corpse,’ complained Lonie. ‘Can he no’ put his feet down?’ He talked to Jim as if Father Campbell was unconscious or couldn’t understand him.

‘Don’t take the Lord thy God’s name in vain.’ Jim lifted and pulled Father Campbell more over to his side, lifting him off the ground. He was carrying almost all his weight. Lonie adjusted his feet and hands to help, but he too was getting pulled along by Jim's momentum.

They passed Carol Peter’s room. She stood in the doorway, with a book in her hand. ‘In his conceit he carries the sins of others and his legs have buckled under the load.’ She giggled quietly.

‘Away with you!’ Jim shouted back at her, as if she’d reared up at him.

Brother Connelly and Jerome’s frames stood guard at the door to Larry Murray’s room. He stood behind them and hissed with his head down as they passed, walking back and forward behind them, waiting for an opening to break through.

Lorna fiddled with a key she had in her pocket, before springing open the door to Father Campbell’s room. It was a bare whitewashed tomb of cell, with a bed underneath the open window, a crucifix on the wall and a bible lying on a wooden chair. Jim shuffled across to the bed. Lonie did likewise. They sat down together on the edge of the bed, with Father Campbell sandwiched in the middle of them.

‘Thank you.’ Father Campbell gasped. He let his legs be lifted by Jim onto the bed and his body laid out like a corpse. He folded his hands himself into a praying position.

‘Do you want anything?’ Lorna wiped at the blood on his face and clucked as she looked at the clean white sheets. ‘We’ll need to change them in the morning.

‘No.’ Father Campbell wiggled his bum and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes as if sleep was the cure for whatever ailed him.

Audrey darted across from the doorway and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled and opened his eyes. ‘Could I have a word with you Lonie? he asked, dismissing the others.

‘Sure.’ Lonie shrugged. His neck turned and he’d a lip smacking decision to make about whether there was time for him to make the dash back to the office to get his fags. The other filed out.

Lonie sat on the chair beside the bed. ‘Whit’s the matter with you? You're no' well?’

‘That’s what I like about you. You’re not one of those people that treat me as some kind of saint.’

‘Well Ah’ve got a wee neighbour that would be wanting your autograph or the saintly equivalent. Maybe a lock of hair, or a wee dab of that blood that’s pissing out of you. Ah could maybe sell it to her. We could get a right good wee business goin’. “Holy Relics” give them a go, or your money back.’ Lonie scratched his unshaven chin and thought for a minute. ‘Maybe you need some kind of poultice to sweat it out of you.’

Father Campbell laughed through his nose as if it hurt him smiling, his face contorting in pleasure and pain. ‘What would my cut be?’

‘Forty- percent.’ Lonie leaned forward as if to negotiate. ‘Ah’d have to do aw the marketing. Aw you’d have to do was bleed.’

A belly-laugh escape Father Campbell, but he rocked with a coughing fit to follow. ‘I’d want more than that.’ He held his hand up to say he’d be a few seconds. ‘After all it’s my blood.’ He waved his finger at Lonie in admonition. ‘But what if I stopped bleeding? What would happen to our business then?’

‘Well Ah could always open a wee cut. It widnae dae you any harm.’ Father Campbell began coughing. ‘Well maybe it would.’ Lonie looked at his emaciated body. ‘Well maybe it would. But we could always sell your hair.’ Lonie shook his head in disgust at Father Campbell’s balding pate. ‘Or maybe your finger and toenails. People love that kind of thing. We could get a wee picture of you, attach a bit of toenail and charge top dollar.’

‘Might work.’ Father Campbell looked at the ceiling. He turned towards Lonie. ‘But I’d be a bit worried you’d start shaving and sawing bits off me.’

‘Everything below the waist. You don’t use any of that stuff anyway.’

Father Campbell guffawed and rolled on his bed. ‘That’s what I like about you Lonie, you’re not the kind of Holy Willies I’m usually lumbered with.’

‘Well, I’ll take that as a compliment. If Ah was a Holy Willie I’d like to think I’m of the Rabbie Burn’s variety and Ah’m the exception to ever rule. But Ah’m still not sure whit you’re up to. Ah don’t want you bleedin’ to death on me to find out.’ He waggled his finger at Father Chalmers. ‘Don’t die on me until Ah get the story.’ He shifted in his seat and sniffed. ‘Whit’s the matter with you anyway?’

‘You won’t believe me if I told you.’

‘Try me.’

‘My bleeding is a symptom of sin. I cannot help it, but I can ask for it to be taken away.’

‘Look Father. And I don’t like calling you that. Ah went through all this stuff when I was younger.’ Lonie’s voice grew agitated. He leaned over Father Campbell. ‘Ah like you fine the way you are, but Ah’m no’ really that sure what sin is.’

‘That’s easy.’ Father Campbell whispered in a calm voice. ‘It’s a separation from God the creator of all things. Think of it not as something out there, but something in our hearts.’ His hand slapped his chest. ‘In our words.’ He nodded in recognition of speech. ‘And in our deeds. Sin is just another word for selfishness. Being selfish is an offence against God. Being selfless draws us nearer to him. To bad mouth others is selfishness that massages our own poor ego. To talk well of others is to give them room to take root and grow in your heart. But words are not deeds. Actions are a double-bladed sword. Those that are selfish shame the man and God turns aside from such men. But actions that are selfless cuts aside this world and joins us to the next.’

Lonie shook his head and bit at his lips. ‘Look Father, let’s just say we agree to disagree. Ah like you, but the only people Ah know that get on are the selfish bastards. Ah dae my best no’ to be one, but it’s kinda hard, because Ah live in the real world and Ah'm tryin’ to make a decent living.’

‘You do a good job.’ Father Campbell patted him on the hand. ‘But you and Audrey are in danger of your souls and your lives.’