Lonie9

‘A’m sorry. Lonie pulled his hand away from hers and he stood up slowly like an arthritic old man. ‘Ah’ve been stupid, blabbering on a lot of nonsense nobody wants to hear.’ He chuckled. ‘Least of all me.’ And looking at her bent over with tiredness, added, ‘least of all you.’ He looked about the room, as if to check everything was in order. ‘Ah’ll just go next door and give you time to get settled.’

‘Thanks,’ Audrey said, yawning and stretching her arms up, but quickly pulling them down because he was looking at her and that action emphasised the size of her breasts. It was a bit warmer, but as she eased her shoes off and her stockinged feet hit the cold linoleum she longed for the comfort of an electric blanket and her own bed at home.

Lonie stepped over to the sink. He’d his back to her and acted as if he’d already left and was preparing for bed alone. He left the cold water tap running. He swilled one of the mugs out and filled it with water, which he flung back in one gulp, smacking his lips in appreciation. He went over to the cupboard and emptied a little salt fall onto the index and ring fingers of his right hand, some also falling onto the work surface and floor. With a grimace he shoved his fingers into his mouth and polished his teeth with salt. He dashed back across to the sink, were the water was still running and hawked up the salvia of salt water into the sink, ran the mug under the tap and spat out, spat out, spat out. With a sniff, a grunt and a scratch of the back of his neck his evening ablutions were finished. He turned and caught Audrey sitting on the edge of the bed, her mix-matched eyes watching him, her shoes were off, sitting like two trained black terriers, guarding her feet and her toenails varnished pink. He found this strangely erotic as she wore no nail varnish on her fingers and somehow it made her seem more naked to him. He patted both hands against his upper thighs, like a gunslinger checking his holster, to make sure he had his fags in his pocket. ‘Ah’ll be goin’ now.’ Lonie marched to the door, pulling it shut; noticing how badly the floor needed to be swept, but then it occurred to him how selfish he’d been. He stuck his head around the door. She’d one leg up and out and was peeling off her tights.

‘Do you mind?’ she said.

Lonie didn’t mind at all. She’d long colt like legs. He could have stood there all night. ‘Sorry,’ he said, holding his hand up and his head dropping down in acknowledgement.

Audrey sighed, smoothing her tights out so they wouldn’t snag. It was a typical man thing to do, but he did seem genuinely embarrassed, besides he’d not seen anything that a swimmer wouldn’t see at any public baths. She’d other things to worry about, but wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.

‘Ah, just wanted to ask you.’ His head was tilted away from her to give her a false privacy, but his eyes drifted towards her as he spoke. He licked his lips. ‘Ah, just wanted to ask, how come if you got your degree, you didn’t end up with some big fancy teaching job, and ended up instead in the typing pool?...not that ah’m sayin’ there’s anythin’ bad about that,’ he quickly added.

Audrey tucked her unwrinkled tights into one shoe, crinkling them all up again. Her blouse was unbuttoned, but she didn’t care. ‘I didn’t finish my degree.’ She knew the question that would come next and the question after that. She’d played it out countless number of times as men, various beaus, since then, had played patty-cake, patty-cake around her knees.

‘How no’?’

Audrey gave her stock answer. She’d taken to embellishing it. Lying about it, but it always came out the same. ‘I got pregnant.’ She held his eyes, her head tilted slightly to the right, until he looked away. From experience she knew it could go two ways. Most men had seen that as some kind of declaration of how easy she was; that her legs were some kind of slip road into an autobahn of willing pussy. One stammering idiot with chronic eczema had dropped his soup spoon and could hardly finish his meal. Walking her home he’d flung her into a privet hedge, tried to rape her, and had almost succeeded, coming prematurely and jerking his seed into her belly button. She’d limped home minus a shoe. He’d phoned her later and stammered down the line, asking if she wanted to go out for dinner again. Other men had simply made some trifling excuses and left.

‘I’m sorry.’ Lonie’s head dropped and he looked down at his feet. ‘You didnae want to talk about it and Ah’ve put my big foot in it again.

‘No. No,’ Audrey stumbled past the end of the bed, towards the door, her left knee giving way as if in response to the memory. ‘It’s ok,’ she said reassuring him and herself. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’

Lonie stepped back from the cracked brown linoleum in the hallway, into the faded yellow linoleum of his own kitchen as a guest. ‘What age were you?’

There was such an intensiveness about his gaze as if a light had come into his blue eyes that Audrey felt like sitting down. ‘Fifteen when I got pregnant, but I was sixteen when I started university.’ She went to the sink, ran the tap and used the mug that he’d used earlier to get herself a drink of water.

Lonie leaned against the work surface and waited until she had finished sipping her mug of water. ‘You were pregnant when you went to university?’

‘I never knew.’ The surprise in her voice startled him.

‘How could you not know?’

The voice was his. The voice was her mother’s. The voice was her sisters and one-hundred-and-one busy bodies that needed to know, but she couldn’t properly explain it. The answer always came out wrong. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘We were young and progressed from kissing for hours, for days at a time, until our lips were sore and blistered, to heavy petting, but we never really…’ She searched for the right words. ‘We never really did it.’ She looked at him to see if he believed her. He gave no outward sign, but somehow she thought he did.

‘But you got pregnant?’ His fingers rubbed at his unshaved chin.

‘I never knew. I just thought I was getting fatter. I wore big wooly jumpers to disguise the fact.’

‘But you got pregnant?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But we never took all our clothes off. And I cannot remember him; you-know?’ Her cheeks flushed.

‘Bundling it was called in Victorian times. They kept all their clothes on too, but they still had illegitimate babies. Lots of them.’ He shrugged. ‘And did you have the baby?’

‘Yes.’ She grasped at the sink, holding onto it for support. ‘I had it in the toilets, rushing out about half way through a lecture on Bismark and the development of Germany.’

Lonie reached for his fags, but was keen not to make any sudden movements.

‘It was a boy. A little boy.’

Lonnie nodded in half-recognition that she’d used the past tense and sneaked a fag out of his packet. He held it up in front of him, asking her permission to smoke. ‘Who found you? She nodded back in affirmation, and he reached over for the matches beside the cooker.

‘My friend Linda. My best friend Linda.’ Audrey’s nails curled and nipped into her hand. That was what she remembered best. ‘She was in a terrible state.’

‘What about you?’ Lonie chugged out some smoke, waving it away from her.

‘Me?’ Audrey’s shuffled from foot to foot. Her face took on the creased mask of an older woman. She too batted the fag smoke away, but that was more a reflex, a distraction to give her time to think. ‘I was fine. Perfectly fine.’

Lonie chewed on his lip. ‘They took you to hospital?’

‘Yes. Yes. Of course they took me to hospital.’ Audrey sounded appalled that he could even think such a thing, that they wouldn’t. ‘That was fine too. I had to have a blood transfusion.’

‘And the baby?’ Lonie said gently.

‘Five- pounds- two-ounces.’ Audrey looked up and over Lonie’s head to a faraway place. ‘He had Down’s Syndrome.’

‘Ah’m sorry.’ Lonie stood with his hands folded and head downcast in the position of a mourner.

‘What are you sorry about?’ Audrey’s voice was loud and agitated, ‘that I’m not the person you thing I was.’ She slapped herself on the chest. ‘Or that I’d a baby with Down’s Syndrome?’

‘Ah’m sorry that you’re hurtin’. Lonie took a deep breath. ‘Ah’ll no' ask you any more questions and Ah’ll leave you in peace.’ His eyes dropped and he turned to go through to the living room.

‘My little boy's name is Craig.’ Audrey’s voice rung out like a bell.

‘Craig?’ He stopped to consider. ‘That’s a nice name for a little lad.’

Audrey chased after him, out into the damp of the hall. ‘My mother watches him.’ He held up his hand in acknowledgement and let it drop wearily. ‘When I’m at work.’ She felt lighter, somehow, sharing it with someone else. She turned off the light at the kitchen and felt her way around the frame of the bed. After a few seconds her eyes adjusted and she was able to make out the hard wooden frame of chair beside the bookcase. She unbuttoned her blouse and smoothed it out on the back of the chair and wriggled out of her tight skirt. She pushed one hand up and around her oxter to unhook her bra, but remembered she didn’t have a nightdress and she still had to find the toilet quick before she peed herself. Her fingers helped her find the way back around the bed. Audrey stood in the hall, the light from the close outside filtering in the rectangular window at the top of the door, her breath coming out in small steady puffs in front of her face. Her hand trailed the wall, like a blind man’s, as she worked her way down the hall and worked her way past the living room. A light showed underneath the door. She kept going and bumped against a cupboard door. She was so surprised she pulled it open, somehow expecting it to turn into a urinal.

Audrey dashed up the hall flinging open the living room door. There was a small fire burning in the grate. Lonie had pushed two chairs together to make a make-shift bed and was sitting smoking with his long black coat pulled up over his shoulders as his blanket.

‘I’m so sorry to disturb you. I’m a bit embarrassed,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to find the toilet.’

Lonie had once seen a picture of the Venus de Milo and having a woman falling in the door of his living room, but with better tits, wasn’t what he’d call a disturbance, but she was squirming in a way he was sadly familiar with. ‘That’s no’ a surprise. It’s on the landing.’

‘I need to go to the toilet now.’ Audrey sounded desperate.

Lonie watched her advancing into the room, holding her stomach with both hands, firelight dancing on her clean white skin, her tits jutting out at him and a darker shadow playing in his mind as she came and stood close enough for him to smell the earthy smell of her pussy.

‘What am I meant to do?’ She danced hotfoot in front of him.

‘Just don’t pee on my good Axminster carpet!’ he said.

‘What do you do? What do you do? I can’t go outside like this.’ Her nails dug into his shoulder. ‘You’ll need to come with me. Show me where it is.’ She pulled at the coat he was using as a blanket and whipped it away from him to cover herself up for the journey.

Lonie’s hands dived down to cover his groin area. He only had a pair of yellowing Y-fronts on, but he was too late; she’d already seen that his cock had pushed through the cloth and stood, swaying slightly in the shock of the cold air, as if it was sniffing about. He pushed it down into his pants, his hands handcuffing it there.

‘I’m going to pee.’ There was finality about her words.

Lonie jumped up and out of the chairs, pushing her towards the door. ‘Use the sink. Use the kitchen sink. That’s what I use when I’m stuck.’

Audrey let herself be prodded and pushed into the kitchen. In her need she’d lost all inhibitions. She tore down her pants, kicked them underneath the sink, raised her leg like a farmyard animal and sprayed the plates, mugs and saucers in the lower sink. When she was finished she bent down to retrieve her knickers from beneath the curtain were Lonie kept his bin.

Lonie was standing in L-shaped shadow of cooker and unit. ‘Well, at least ah’ll just need to rinse them in the morning. They’ve taken a good soaking tonight. Ah better go next door,’ he said, but his voice was shaky and no longer had the clipped certainty that he usually spoke with.