Lonie 28

‘I’ll go and see if Carol’s finished her lunch.’ Lorna drifted towards the door. Jim followed her out of the office, tacking on behind and catching her up in the hallway. Lonie was talking to Father Campbell. Audrey watched them leave, half-listening to the men's conversation.

Lorna was back a couple of minutes later, her face carrying a bucket load of smiles. ‘Carol said that she’ll see you now.’ She addressed Audrey and spoke as if she’d been handed a personal invitation to a royal house party.

Lonie’s elbow ricocheted off the chair rest as he turned to get a better view. Audrey sat fretting, suddenly undecided and looking at Lonie for reassurance. He sniffed, coughed and his hand wandered sideways to pat her on the knee. ‘You’ll be fine.’ There was softness in his voice and she waited for some kind of punch line, but none came.

Audrey’s knee’s wobbled as she got up and her throat felt dry. Lorna’s smile and reassuring presence made her feel more sure footed. Her shoes squeaked on the sleek polished floors as she followed Lorna along the line of the corridor to Carol’s room, carrying her notebook and pen.

High ceilinged, white-washed walls, was Audrey’s first impression of Carol’s room. It seemed bigger, narrower somehow, because of its starkness. There was a women’s changing room smell of perfumes that filled the stilted silence. Light filtered in through a frosted glass window with the shadow of bars behind it. Carol, squeezed into a corner, sitting on an old leather armchair, beckoned Audrey in with aristocratic largesse, her long slim fingers, bare of rings, adornment, or other accoutrements of wealth or social status. Her other hand had a slim grey covered book pressed into her lap.

Jim sagged like an oversized potato sack in a plastic chair with his back to the door facing Carol. ‘I’ll leave you girls to it.’ Before he left, his hand reached up to adjust the leg on his specs. Lorna slipped into the still warm seat. Audrey hesitated; there was nowhere else to sit. The room was filled with bookcases. The far away wall under the window was busy with sketches and drawings of a charcoal coloured Carol growing older and stouter. Delicate china- dog ornaments with white- paper doilies placemats created their own bookmarks on the shelves.

Carol had been carefully watching Audrey. ‘Sit over there.’ She waved her hand towards her bed, as a make-do seat. The embroidered top blanket seemed too fancy for her to make a cushion of - a peacock splashing out an elaborate rainbow whorls of colour. Audrey sat on the edge of the bed, her feet firmly placed on the thick pile of a dove-grey carpeted floor, her pen and pad placed beside her. The room was too hot for her liking, but she said nothing.

‘I can see that I disappoint you.’ Carol had a scratchy voice. She laughed. ‘But in my head I’m still twenty to twenty-five.’

Audrey had been so intent on framing the first question that she hadn’t realised she had been staring. Nor did she realise, as Carol had picked up, she was disappointed. She was shrunken down into real life. She was as recognisable as an ebony- chess queen smudged by time, with the matinée idol nose and cheek bones intact, but her face and body seemed to have grown square and careless and sprawling out more that it should. Her black dress was well cut, but from another time, with a white slip showing at the hems, above dark granny stockings and sensible boots. Her eyes, her dark eyes, however seemed to keep an unblinking hold on Audrey as if trying to find their way back to some wind scattered innocence.

‘No. No. You don’t disappoint me at all.’ Audrey focussed on the tail-wagging china dogs, beside her chair and sounding sincere. ‘How can I be disappointed if I’ve never met you?’

‘You’re being disingenuous.’ Carol's laugh was as hollow as her smile. ‘But I am so very glad that you took the time to come and see me.’

‘I’m a reporter,’ said Audrey simply.

‘I know that.’ She let out a week’s full of sighs. ‘The truth is I welcome the intrusion. I’ve nowhere to go, but my own life.’ Her eyes roamed her cell. ‘And my books,’ she added.

The leather chair was like a seasoned punch bag it retained something of the shape of Carol as she stood up. Lorna sprung up too. Jim appeared as a slumping presence in the doorframe, his Joe-90 specs looking in. Audrey stood up too. They stood facing off like they were at a school disco.

‘It’s ok. It’s ok.’ Carol held her hands up as in surrender. I just want to welcome our guest.'

Lorna slid back into her seat, but Jim remained vigilant in the doorway.

‘Hallo, I’m Carol Peters.’ Her voice was stilted. She held her hand out, very prim and proper for her to shake.

‘I’m Audrey Crowood.’ She felt her voice sounded unsure and uncertain. The other woman’s soft hands were surprisingly firm, but again it was the light in her eyes that held her, looking through and into her.

Carol’s hands dropped away suddenly. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I’ve always preferred imperfection.

Audrey frowned not sure if she was referring to her different coloured irises, her size, or what she thought of her fat body generally.

‘Beauty is boring. All straight lines and endless shades of the same white. Perfection is boring.’ Carol smiled at Audrey. ‘I much prefer imperfections. It’s far more interesting.’ She shuffled back to her seat, which was waiting for her to sink into again. She turned and her eyes hooked Audrey’s again, time and space seemed to fall away. ‘How long have you been pregnant?’ a chary smile played on her lips.

‘I’m not,’ said Audrey.

‘Carol!’ growled Jim in warning.

‘Tell her.’ Carol ribbed Lorna, inviting her to speculate.

Lorna’s voice had lost its girlishness ‘Enough of your childish games. The visit ends now. Sit down and behave.’

‘Or what?’ The chair received Carol like an old friend. ‘But you do have a child?’ Her voice was inquisitive, teasing Audrey.

‘A little boy,’ she admitted, falteringly.

‘Ah, the boy has some defect. He’s sick. He’s crippled. He’s handicapped.’ She carefully studded Audrey’s face. ‘Ah, he’s all three of these and more. He’s a Mongo.’

‘Carol!’ roared Jim from the door stepping into the room, but she just laughed.

‘The Mongolian people conquered the world. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that. The reference to Mongolism was in reference to the flat face of the babies with such a condition. It was a common name for what was an uncommon condition.’ She looked over at Audrey. ‘But I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Audrey. ‘You haven’t offended me at all.’ She sat back down on the bed. Jim returned to the hallway.

‘My mind drifts and because I don’t see anybody I say too much. I talk like an incontinent schoolgirl.’ Carol picked up her book from the arm of the chair and placed it back in her lap. ‘Some times that is the problem. The characters in books are more real to me than those in real life.’

‘What are you reading?’ Audrey's short hair was a black crown; her head tilted as she tried to read the title.

‘Oh this!’ Carol seemed pleased to be asked. ‘Northanger Abbey. It’s one of my favourites.’ She settled into her seat, thumbing the pages. ‘It’s a bit of a cheat. Only the second part is set in Northanger Abbey. But there’s a certain grim irony as I follow young Catherine through the pomp and pomposity of Bath to the supposed Gothic horrors of an Abbey that is not an Abbey, whilst sitting reading in a madhouse for crimes that I have been acquitted of.

‘Are you saying you're innocent?’ Audrey’s voice pushed up a register in anticipation. She turned a fresh page on her notebook, pen at the ready.

‘The sins of the father shall be visited on the sons. As you shall find out.’

‘Carol!’ Lorna’s voice peeled out a warning.

But she smiled her little smile and stroked the cover of her book. ‘Have you read it?’ she asked Audrey.

‘No,’ admitted Audrey, ‘but I did read Jane Eyre at school.’

‘Ah. Jane Eyre had that huge stubborn streak which I admire. Jane Eyre refused to be anybody but Jane Eyre.’ And there it was again. That little smile. ‘Charlotte Bronte was a genius. The sisters were all geniuses. And there was Branwell, with his interest in phrenology, whom big things were expected of and was such a disappointment. Perhaps it’s because his mother died so young, like mine.’

‘Your mother is still very much alive.’ Jim cut sharply in, his feet wedged in the door, carefully listening, weighing every word.

‘Is she?’ Carol whispered; her head turning towards the light of the shut window. ‘I find more life in poor Catherine Morland, with her girlish ways and her adult responsibilities.' Carol clutched at the unopened book in her hand. There was an ache in her voice that seemed to crack her open and a younger self peeked through.
Who can forget the cry of “Eleanor, and only Eleanor, stood there?” A deep breath and she was back to her old scratchy- voiced self. ‘Eleanor was her putative sister in law,’ she explained, ‘but I sometime wonder if Catherine was more in love with her than her dolt of a brother. You really must read it.’

‘I’d like that very much.’ Audrey put her pen and pad aside and stood up. She glimpsed Jim taking another step into the room and exchanging a look with Lorna.

‘I’m sorry Miss.’ Jim stepped in front of Audrey. ‘We’re not allowed to accept presents.’

Audrey hadn’t really thought of him being so big before. If she’d thought of him at all she’d thought of him as joke figure. Now she knew there was substance to him. ‘It’s only a book,’ she pleaded. ‘No more than I can borrow from any public library.’

‘Well Miss, you can get one there then, can’t you?’ He spoke calmly and reasonably.

Audrey darted around the side of him. ‘This is ridiculous.’ Carol held the book out for her to take, that little smile on her face.

Lorna was as quick as Audrey. She too blocked her path. ‘No Audrey, you don’t understand. I think it’s about time you were leaving.’

Lorna’s hand found its way into Jim’s. They stood there as a couple, which was disconcerting. Audrey had never thought of them as a couple. They were so far apart in terms of –well, everything, that it was laughable and that was what she felt like doing, laughing in their faces.

‘C’mon now Audrey it’s time to leave.’ Lorna patted her on the arm. She picked up her pen and pad from the bed and was ushered out with little clucking noises as is if she were a child, with Jim following at her back.

Audrey turned at the doorway and looking around Jim’s broad shoulders. ‘It’s been very nice meeting you.’ She waved towards Carol.

A hand was raised back in acknowledgement. Carol started singing the old Vera Lynn song; her singing voice was remarkably good. ‘I’m sure we’ll meet again, don’t know where don’t know when...’

‘Would you like some tea?’ Lorna said as they neared the office.

‘Yeh, I could kill for a cup,’ put in Jim.

‘What about you?’ Lorna gripped Audrey by the arm.

‘Yes,’ said Audrey. Then shook her head. ‘No, sorry, I mean no.’ She shook her head again. ‘I mean I don’t know.’

‘It’s ok. I’ll get you one.’ Lorna pushed her towards the office door. Jim squeezed in behind her. Father Campbell was leaning back in his chair, as if he hadn't moved since they left, talking to Lonie.