Lonie35

It had been a week since Lonie had picked up his last pay from the Glasownian. There were other papers, The Herald, The Scotsman, The Record, but the newspaper world was a fickle business. Pissing the fatman off wasn’t going to look good on his CV, not that he had such a curious beast.

He’d found work carrying a hod filled with bricks or with mortar. It was simple and uncomplicated, one foot in front of the other going up and down a ladder and along scaffolding batons, building a new secondary school in Easterhouse. The first week had been hard on him. The back of his neck and shoulder ran a diagonal of pain, but his muscles remembered manual labour and he began to fit in, feeding the two brickies lines of patter with every load he delivered. Jimmy, the older brickie, was about sixty, delicate looking with his wool hat and raincoat to his knees, but he could climb like a monkey. A trowel in his hand splashed down mortar like the holy sacraments and he could half a brick for the end-cut by just looking at it and banging gently with his hammer. Cass, the other brickie, in their squad was about the same age. The lines he ran along the wall to keep it straight were just as taut, but he was more hash-dash, and his work needed more pointing. They made no secret of their contempt for all things Papish, loved Rangers more than they loved their mothers, but would fall to bickering with each other in the bothy about whether John Greig was a better player than Colin Stein, as Lonie ate his sandwich and worked his way through Pale Fire during tea-breaks.

Lonie had made a routine for himself. He walked to the Whiteinch Public baths, on a Friday after work, with a change of clothes in a bag. When he got home he was careful not to get his clean clothes dirty on the grate as he kneeled down to light his fire, holding a newspaper over the lum until the frames sprang into life and it took. Peeling the potatoes and afterwards flinging the skins onto the flames and listening to them sizzle, so that the smell seemed to sit in his nostrils, was a preparation for his main meal. After dinner he’d feel full and a bit dozy. He’d pull the chair opposite closer and put his feet up. In the cozy warmth he’d pick up a book, fall into reading and taste the frozen hours of silence which would postpone, a little, and a little more, that cruel relapse into the forward motion of his own life.

Lonie once more heard the scratching on his door. His head surfaced from Monsaratt’s novel like a periscope. Mrs Johnstone after fixing her pipes had the notion that he was some kind of handyman. She had him rearranging her house, paying him in bowls of homemade soup and clinical observations about his shortcomings in comparison to her late husband and in general. His first thought was to duck down back into the pages of the book and live another life, but Mrs Johnstone tended to be more persistent than a wolf pack of U-boats. Besides, he figured her house was no bigger than his and, unless she was planning an extension, there must be a limit to what could be fixed or added on. He slipped on his shoes and left the warmth of the hearth to answer the door.

His knees crooked and he fell forward, his hand clutching the door frame. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Memory required a note of forgetting as well as remembering. She wore a red headscarf over her hair and there was a twitch about her left eye.

‘Yes, me.’ Audrey licked her lips, her fingers tight around her handbag.

‘Come in. Come in.’ Manners trumped memory. His body opened up with a flourish to let her past and welcome her into his house.

‘I’m not staying long.’ Audrey peeled off her headscarf.

Lonie let her pass him in the hall. She knew her way into the living room. Her hair was longer, but she smelled much the same. He let her settle into the seat near the window, before offering her tea and bringing her biscuits to eat with it.

When they’d settled like the two wally-dogs on the mantelpiece in chairs across from each other Audrey remarked, ‘you look well.’

It was the turn of her mouth and lips as she drunk her tea that touched Lonie, as if she cared. ‘Do I?’ He lifted another Jammy-Dodger from the plate that she’d left untouched between them. ‘Whit did you expect Frankenstein with a bolt lose?’

‘No. No. I don’t mean that.’ Audrey sat with her legs tight together, across from him. She squirmed in her seat as she spoke. ‘Why do you always pick a fight with me and make things so hard?’

Lonie gulped down his tea and smacked his lips. ‘Why do you always pick a fight with me?’

‘I didn’t come here for this.’ Audrey fanned at her face with her hand and leaned forward, one shoulder pointing at him, then the other, to slip off her Brunswick- green cashmere cardigan.

‘Whit did you come here for?’ His voice was as low as prowl of threes in blindman’s poker. He picked up another Jammy-Dodger and dipped it into his tea.

‘You’re disgusting.’

‘Ah’m no’ askin’ you to eat it. Whit did you come here for?’

‘I was worried about you.’ Her lips tried on a smile.

‘Ah was worried about me to. At least we’ve got something in common.’ Lonie’s eyes narrowed. ‘And…?’ He paused with the biscuit half way to his mouth, the weight of its soggy centre bending and dropping to the floor. He picked it up and flung it into the banked up fire, where it sizzled between them.

‘The fatman’s asked me to work with Tilby on the Goldenwell case.’ Audrey squeezed her hands. A light- salmon- pink tinge glowed in her cheeks. ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Ah think you’re goin’ to do whit you’re goin’ to do.’ Lonie settled back into his armchair, his feet warmed by the fire.

‘But Tilby gives me the creeps.’ Audrey shivered, her eyes meeting his.

‘Ah’m flattered.’ A lopsided smile crept across Lonie’s mouth. ‘At least Ah don’t give you the creeps.’ He leaned forward in his chair and in mock seriousness added, ‘do I?’

‘Not exactly.’ She smiled at him, ‘but then again you’re not Tilby. What should I do?’ She looked into the embers of the fire for answers.

‘Well, you’re a big girl now.’

‘Woman.’ Audrey corrected him with a hard stare.

Lonie knew it was the wrong thing to say and tried not to look at her tits. ‘Ah think it’s a good chance for you to get on. But you already know that.’ His expression hardened and his voice grew low and menacing. ‘Whit you want me to beat up Tilby to warn him off?’ He shook his head from side to side in denial. ‘That’s no’ my game.’

‘No. No.’ Audrey struggled up out of the warmth of the seat, shortening the distance between them, her hand reaching out to pat him on the knee, but falling just short. ‘Father Campbell refuses to speak to any other reporter.’

Laughter rolled around Lonie’s mouth. He cried out as if Father Campbell had scored a goal for his side. ‘Good on him.’

‘Tilby has been refused access to the secure unit.’ Audrey smiled at Lonie indulgently.

‘That’s a real shame.’ Lonie grinned. ‘Cause they’d have probably found out he’s no’ really human and kept him in. Tilby would be quite a straight forward case. They’d open him up like an Easter egg and find he’s got nothing inside him but false smiles.’

‘And the fatman wants to know…’ Audrey didn’t get to finish what she was saying.

Lonie held his hand up. His feet scrambling to push him up, sitting on the edge of his chair, eyes like agate. ‘Hing on. The fatman sent you?’

‘No.’ Audrey’s expression tensed, matching his. ‘I just wondered how you were?’ The coal crackled in the grate, breaking with a blue flame and settling into a base of ashes. She was glad to look away from him and cleared her throat several times before she spoke. ‘The fatman was wondering if you could phone him.’

‘Was he?’ Lonie withdrew into himself and the plump roundness of the chair. He looked out for his fags, which were lying on the stone grate. He opened the packet and offered her one. ‘Oh, no, you don’t smoke do you?’ He slapped his forehead in mock confusion. ‘You wouldn’t do anything so base. Would you? At least Mary’s honest. She’ll get on her knees and give you a blowjob for a fiver. What kind of deal did the fatman promise you?’ His hand was shaking as he lit his fag.

Audrey sprung out of her chair. ‘How dare you!’ She swiped at him to slap him, but he parried her hand. ‘Look at you. You’re such a success aren’t you?’ Her blows lost force as her face crumpled and she began to cry.

Lonie picked the fag out of the side of the chair where he’d dropped it and it begun to burn the lining. ‘There’s no straight line to success. Just a straight line to failure. And Ah know all about that. But Ah wouldnae sell myself short for either. You tell that fat fuck if he wants to come and see me he can climb up the stairs and chap the door the same as you did. Ah don’t know what game he’s playing at, and Ah don’t care, but Ah’m no’ disappointed in him. Ah’m disappointed in you.’

‘I didn’t come here for him,’ Audrey wailed through her hands.

‘Whit did you come for then?’ Lonie sucked on his fag, blowing smoke in her direction.

‘I’m pregnant.’

‘Whit’s that got to dae with me?’

Lonie wasn’t quick enough to stop her charging out the door. He’d one shoe on and one shoe off and hopped down the hallway. She’d a head start. By the time he got to the foot of the close all he could see was the back of her head as the Hillman drove away and indicating to go right. He plodded up the three flights of stairs like a geriatric, his limbs in flight, his head spinning. The seat before the fire was no longer as comfortable. He picked up the book he had been reading and flung it onto the fire, watching the pages fall open and burn individually and then collectively, words spinning with a tongue of flame out of control, turning to blackness and then the grey ash loom holding the fire and the book.

He used the poker to break the book up as it burned. A scratching at the door and he scrambled up with the poker still in his hand. Mrs Johnstone did not flinch.

‘Ah was wonderin’ if you could fix a wee wall-bracket in one of my cupboards that seems to have worked itself lose.’ She waited until he seemed more himself. ‘It won’t take you five minutes.’

‘Have you got a screwdriver?’ Lonie put the poker down behind the framework of the door.

‘Ah might well have.’ She looked at him suspiciously as if he might make off with her tools.

Lonie shut his house door behind him. ‘Who’s the patron Saint of lost causes?’

‘That’d be Saint Jude. Desperate cases and lost causes.’ Mrs Johnstone was put at ease talking about things that concerned her. ‘Have you lost something? He’s very good you know.’

Lonnie nodded and whispered. ‘Ah might well have. Ah might well have.’