Lonie36

Lonie usually finished work early on a Friday about 3.30 pm. Jimmy and Cass ran a line and propped a wall up and did enough in the morning to keep the charge-hand off their backs, but even the cement mixer rumbled on a slower beat. Every man had to be hunted out of the bothy at tea-breaks, but there were no grumbles. A brown envelope of a pay packet worked like spoon fed lithium in the tea urn and everyone stumbled around in the afternoon with a half-assed smile on their faces until it was time to pick it up.

After work Lonie got off the green and gold Corpie bus at the city centre. He trudged slowly along the Clyde to the offices of the Glaswonian because he didn’t want to be too early. Audrey would still be working. Then he speeded up, skimming along the pavements like a peever in flight, because he didn’t have a watch on, was sure he’d be late, and she’d have driven home.

‘Have you got the time pal?’ Lonie asked a moonfaced man, who was holding his hat on his head like a button so it wouldn’t blow off in the high winds. They were at the corner of Shakespeare Avenue, where he’d positioned himself near The Captain’s Rest dwarfed by the gallows of blackened warehouses. Audrey’s Hillman Imp was still parked a foot from the pavement so he knew she hadn’t left.

‘No.’ The moonfaced man barked at him and scurried past.

Lonie took a meditative drag on his Woodbine. The moonfaced man was scared he was one of those yobbos he’d written about on the news desk. The kind he didn’t have to use much imagination to place at the scene. The kind that asked people for the time and then slashed them, or mugged them, or knocked them down and gave them a kicking, for no other reason than they could. People who lived up to the no mean city idea and let every other image die with each punch and kick. He chuckled. He was perfectly respectable, wearing an old donkey jacket he’d picked up from the site, had on a pair of acrylic drainpipe trousers the colour of cement and a pair of worn-in wellies.

At clocking off time Audrey left her office. She was regular as a clockwork toy and walked with her head down, elbows up, tits pushing against the wind on the pavement opposite Lonie. She didn’t see him until he stepped out in front of her parked car. She said nothing, but everything she needed to say with her lower petted lip sticking out. She opened the driver’s door, flung her bag into the passenger seat and flooded the engine starting the car. Her eyes stared straight through Lonie, who had his hand on the bonnet. He jumped back when she gunned the accelerator and the car jumped forward.

‘Whoa. Whoa.’ Lonie jumped towards the safety of the pavement and banged on the hood. ‘Ah’m sorry, he shouted. He watched the car shoot past him and out into the street. It slowed down about thirty yards away. He started running towards it, expecting it to pull away at any moment. A red Vauxhall slowed as it came up behind the car, and tooting its horn, pulled out overtaking it. The Hillman Imp nosed into the side of the road, like some injured beast and parked in a slant with the engine running. Lonie slowed as he got nearer, not sure what he was going to say. As he got closer and closer he kept expecting the car to pull away. He reached for the car handle, but it was locked. Audrey sat in the driver’s seat looking at the road, as if waiting for a gap in the traffic. He rattled the door handle again. She turned, her eyes were red- rimmed in a faraway place deeper than a body should go. He waited until she came back to herself. She took an age to lean across and wind down the window.

Lonie poked his nose through the gap in the top of the window. ‘Ah’m sorry.’ He meant it but didn’t know how to make up the hurt.

Audrey delved into her bag and pulled out a man-sized hankie. She blew and honked through her nose. She shook her head at him to go away, but he just stood staring with that stupid fixed grin. She relented and leaned across her bag and clicked up the lock on the door, chiding herself even as she did it. He probably thought empathy was something that crows ate.

Audrey sat for the longest time in the driver's seat, like a librarian inches from Lonie, looking at the road waiting for him to say he’d the wrong ticket. She turned the engine off; the car stopped juddering and died, leaving only the space of silence between them. ‘How have you been?’ She struggled with the simplest words. Repugnance in her face, slacking into the cut tendon of need.

‘Ah’ve been fine.’ He allowed his hand to drift and curl up next to hers, until he was touching her cold fingers and spoke with stunted formalism. ‘How’ve you been?’ He waited for her hand to jerk away.

Audrey’s sobs caught him unaware. She began to keen, her intercostal muscles lifting and falling in rhythm as if crying was a race, her head falling against the steering wheel. ‘I’m fine,’ she eventually babbled, allowing herself to slump against Lonie and for him to hold her weight. She shook free, blowing her nose, her face bleary with weeping. Her voice bottomed out and she sat up straight in the driver’s seat. ‘I’m fine.’

‘What do you want me to do and Ah’ll do it.’ Lone spoke matter-of-factly still savouring her touch. He pushed his hand into the space between the driver’s seat and the small of her back, hoping to hold her again, but she pushed his hand roughly away.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Jesus.’ Lonie pulled back from her, his back up against the passenger door. ‘You don’t look fine. You don’t look as if you’ve been eatin’ right. And Ah should know about that. And if you keep sayin’ “Ah’m fine. Ah’m fine”,’ he attempted to mimic the way she spoke, ‘Ah’m goin’ to start shoving matches in my ear and Ah’ll light one for every time you say it.’

Audrey wiped at her nose and dabbed at the corner of her eye with her hankie. She glanced at him sideways. ‘You want the truth?’ The germ of a smile grew in her mouth.

‘The truth. Ah want the truth.’ Lonie played it up. Her face was still haunted, but becoming less so. ‘Ah’d do anything for the truth.’

‘I’m not fine.’ All of the fight went out of Audrey. She slumped down in her seat as if she’d been horse whipped. ‘I’ve not been sleeping. All I do is worry. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? runs around the inside of my head, night and day like a savage with a spear. I’m pregnant. I’ve not got enough money for an abortion. Sometimes I think it would be best if I died in one of those grotty backstreet ghettos where you need to go to, but then I think, who will take care of Josh? My mother hates me, but she hates him even more. If I had another baby…’ She just shook her head in capitulation, all her mourning gathered together in the tombstone of her set jaw.

Lonie took her hand. It was a white lifeless thing. He kneaded her fingers trying to get through to her. ‘Your mum doesn’t hate you?’

Audrey grunted, in what could be taken to be a laugh.

‘And who said anything about abortion?’

Audrey’s head swivelled towards him. ‘I did.’ She jerked her hand out of his. ‘It’s illegal. They’ve got their different schools, their different hospitals and they won’t work together if it can be avoided, but that’s one thing the good men of the Kirk and Catholic Church can agree on. Church law and the legal code meet and are unequivocal with the no abortion under any circumstances’ rule.’

‘But they’ve got those places you can go to.’ His own voice sickened him. ‘Mother and baby units.’

‘Listen to yourself. You’re worse than my mother. You’ve been in those places. At least you should know.’

‘A baby isn’t such a bad thing. Is it? A’h’ve been in those places and Ah’d work night and day to make sure that no baby of mine ended up in one.’

‘You’re not listening!’ Audrey’s voice had regained much of its vigour. ‘I’m not against babies. I’m just against having this one. The irony is with the scarring in my womb the surgeon’s thought my chance of giving birth again was infinitesimally small. But if there’s a chance to crash and burn I always seem to take the wrong turning.’

‘If you had the wee baby Ah’d help bring it up.’ Lonie spoke gruffly. ‘And if it’s a matter of money for…’ His head hung down.

‘It’s always a matter of money.’ Audrey was back in librarian mode telling him to sit up and not slouch. ‘I’m constantly thinking of all the old wives’ tales of boiling hot baths and too much gin, or even knitting needles. If I had enough money we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d fly down to London for abortion at Harley Street, or I’d nip over to Paris and do a bit of shopping, after the procedure. What world do you live in?’ She felt like shaking him. ‘And what about Josh? Presumably you’d want to make an honest woman out of me. Would he be able to come and stay with us, in a one bedroom house with no toilet?’

‘He could do worse. Families of ten and more have stayed in one- room tenements.’

‘This is the 1970s, not the 1870s and you’re forgetting a very important fact. Josh has Down’s syndrome.’

‘Ah think we’re all cursed and broken in our own way. Ah think trouble always finds its own time. The good thing about being poor is you can only live in the present. Let tomorrow take care of itself. I would be glad to take care of your boy.’

‘I’m not asking for you to take care of me or my boy. I’m asking for you to help find someone that will perform an abortion and to make sure I’ve got the money for it. Can you do that?’ There was a challenge in Audrey’s voice, but even as she spoke there could be no winners, only losers and he slumped in his seat.

‘Ah don’t know. Ah’ll need to think about it. Ah cannae kill a wee baby.’

‘You’re not killing “a wee baby”. You’re removing a collection of cells you left in my body. Pride comes before a fall. Isn’t that what Father Campbell said?’

Lonie shook his head from side to side, trying to grasp what she was asking. He looked at her. ‘How did you know what me and Father Campbell spoke about? You weren’t there?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I must have read it somewhere, or the fatman told me. I don’t know. It doesn’t change anything. Does it? You should speak to the fatman. He’s desperate to get you back. If you’d just phone him…That way you could make more money and we could…’

‘Hing on. You’re awful close to the fatman all of a sudden. And I don’t like it.’ Lonie reached for the car door. ‘Ah need time to think about this.’ He leaned over and pecked at Audrey’s cheek and squeezed her hand. ‘Ah’ll do whatever needs to be done. But you can tell your pal the fatman he’s welcome to come up and see me at any time.’

‘He’s not my pal,’ shouted Audrey, but he’d slammed the car door and disappeared around the corner into the darkness of the side street.