Lonie 3

‘You thought how you're going to structure your interview with the Cardinal?’ Audrey’s fingers tapped on the desk, talking shop, a way around their sudden awkwardness.

‘I’m not sure.’ Lonie’s brow furrowed.

‘That’s your order!’ A fat woman with candyfloss hair shouted from behind the counter. ‘You want me to bring it over?’

Lonie jumped up out of his chair. ‘I’ll get it Ma’m.’ He grinned at Audrey. ‘By the time she gets over here the burgers will be cold.’

Lonie grabbed a brown plastic Bakelite tray from the stack at the counter, perching each item on it carefully as if they were about to explode. He pulled several white paper napkins from the dispenser and added several more as a precaution in case the first few didn’t work. He walked stiff-backed and stiff-legged to their table. Audrey moved the plate and pancakes and her cold cup of tea onto the empty table next to her. There was a slight wobble as Lonie placed the tray down, but he looked as pleased with himself as a man that just lowered a moon buggy onto the moon.

‘That looks nice.’ Audrey lifted each item from the tray and placed it carefully on the table to the side of the tray. She didn’t want him knocking anything over.

Lonie sat down. ‘Ahmmm just going to nip outside for a fag.’ Then he was gone again.

He came back in about five minutes later. Audrey had finished half her bun and had drunk some of her tea.

‘We better be goin’,’ he said.

‘That’s just what I was thinking.’ Audrey searched through her bag for her car keys and clutched at them as she gathered up her bag and checked she hadn’t lost anything.

They were on the Balloch Road before Audrey spoke. ‘I’ll give you half the money for that.’

‘Nah, don’t bother.’ Lonie had the window slightly down as the greenery outside whooshed past.

‘I insist.’

A long drawn out breath came from passenger seat. ‘Ok then,’ said Lonie.

It was straight dual-carriageway. Audrey kept her eyes on the road as she carefully picked her way around his words. ‘How much do I owe you then?’ Her lips bit into a prim self-satisfied smile.

‘Nothin’.’

Audrey kept her eyes on the road, but her hands tightened on the wheel. ‘How much do I owe you?’ She drew out each word and enunciated it as if she was talking to a five-year-old.

‘Nothin’.’

A long drawn out sigh came from the driver’s seat. Audrey dared a side-way’s glance at Lonie. ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

‘Well half of nothin’ is nothing.’ He was unperturbed.

‘You mean you didn’t pay for it?’ Audrey’s voice went up in stages. She anxiously checked the rear-view mirror for a police car chase, and the driver and passenger mirrors too, just in case they were that close the rear view mirror was redundant. Her hands were shaking. She was expecting sirens and handcuffs at any moment.

‘What do you mean you didn’t pay for it?’ The car swerved slightly onto the left of the hard shoulder.

‘…you want to slow down a bit. Well, you were in that much of a hurry to leave’ His hands tippy-tapped on the armrest of his seat. ‘I didn’t want to slow you down. Don’t worry about it. These places get bumped all the time.’

The Hillman was approaching a roundabout. She flicked on the indicator and it tick, tick, ticked, signalling to go right.

‘We’re straight on.’ Lonie wiggled his bum and sat up straight-backed in his seat.

‘I’m going back to pay what you owe.’

Lonie looked at his watch and tapped at the face of it. ‘We’ve no’ got time.’

Audrey swerved around the island and went straight on. ‘I’m mortified… I’ll never be able to go back there again.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You paid for your pancakes and cuppa. That’s about two-quid. They’re still ahead.’

‘But I used to go there with my family. When we went day trips to Balloch. Mum. Dad and my sisters.’ She flinched as she said it, and turned her head a little to see how he took it.

‘Look.’ Lonie slouched into his seat, with the posture of a kilo of new potatoes. ‘You know where we are now?’

‘No,’ she admitted, sorry to have mentioned anything about family to him.

‘We’re at the- rest- and- be- thankful.’ As he spoke the sun leaked out of cloud cover and shone; water on the loch glimmered like a movie set mirror of mountains and hills and Lonie grinned as if to say I did that.

Audrey drew into a lay-by and parked the car. ‘Go on then.’ She flicked her head to indicate outside. ‘Have a fag. You know you want to.’

Lonie was out of the car and lighting up before she had time to finish speaking. She got out of the car more sedately and stood looking out over the loch.

‘It’s beautiful.’ She looked at the mountains, took in the grey-blue smoke and swirl of clouds and breathed in the clean air. ‘We used to come here, you know, park up and just…’ She got a bit choked up.

Lonie took a drag, looked over where she was looking, but all he could see was water and it looked as if it was going to start pishing down again.

‘My dad died last year…That’s why I got so upset.’

‘It gets easier.’ Lonie moved closer to the car and closer to her, but he turned his head to make sure the fag smoke went the other way. ‘Your memories are of the living. Not the dead. They grow a protective skin in your head and you keep them alive that way.’

‘I didn’t mean,’ she sounded upset.

‘I know.’ He turned away from her. A fish jumped with a splash upon the calm of water about 100 yards out, creating circles that eddied into nothingness. ‘It was different for me. By the time I got here my grandparents on my dad’s side didn’t want me because I was a Papish bastard. And my grandparents on my mother’s side didn’t want me because I was an Orange bastard. It would be over one side's dead body that I went all Fenian and it would be over the other side's dead body that I went all Masonic.’ Lonie took a deep drag. ‘Both were technically correct. Jesus, no wonder my mum and dad fucked off to live with huskies and North American seal pups. Better gettin’ away from all this shite.’ He flicked his fag out among the rounded boulders and stones of the pristine shoreline for a freshwater crab to have a smoke.

‘Better get going,’ said Audrey, ‘but just for the record. Were you Catholic or Protestant?’

‘For the record,’ Lonie glared at her, ‘I was a wee boy.’

Audrey pulled open the car door on her side. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant how come you ended up in an orphanage run by the nuns?’

‘Simple.’ Lonie pulled open the door on his side and flung himself into the passenger seat next to her. ‘Cardinal Robbins wanted me. Nobody else did.’

‘Well, at least that’s something.’ She spoke without any conviction, signalling and pulling back out onto the road.

‘Aye, well,’ said Lonie. ‘He wanted me for the publicity. I was the equivalent of a stag’s head on his wall. Boo-hoo-hoo. This poor wee boy from the other side of the world that no good Protestant home would take. You should know what kind of photo opportunity that makes.’

‘What’s he like?’ Audrey kept her eyes evenly on the road.

‘Well, I’ve not seen him for about twenty years, he was only a bishop or something then, but I’m sure he suits the purple garb and women’s dressy things that those men wear. God must like him a lot.’

‘Don’t you take anything serious?’ The long curve of the road bent around her words.

‘I take everything serious. The only things I don’t take seriously are the things that don’t deserve to be treated seriously. What about you? What about your family?’

‘My family?’ Audrey didn’t know what to say. ‘I’ve got two sisters.’ She glanced over to see how he was taking it, but it was difficult to tell because he’d his eyes shut, as if he was dozing. ‘One of them is married to a cardio-thoracic surgeon.’ She slowed down as they passed a few cottage- type houses on the other side of the road. One of them had a sign in its window saying ‘Ice-cream’. There was nothing from him. Not even a snore. ‘The other is married to an accountant.’ She shoulder-shrugged, the movement working its way into her arms, causing a slight wobble in the wheels on the straight stretch of road. ‘No grandkids-as yet.’ Her voice sounded small.

‘You must be a disappointment then.’ Lonie kept his eyes shut, but a grin cut across his face.

‘What makes you say that?’ Outrage shook her voice, radiated out of her like the blast of a car horn.

‘Well, let’s look at the facts.’ Lonie opened his eyes. ‘You work for a secretarial wage in a shitehole of a place and you’re no’ likely to marry a doctor or, god help us, an accountant.’

The words were like a fishbone in her throat she had to spit out. ‘How do you know that?’

Lonie sat up and banged the dashboard. ‘Hing on. Hing on. Stop.’ He turned to look at the two-storey houses cut into the hillside behind them; miniature castles with blue-grey slate roofs and with an acre of land running downhill and crashing against drystone dyke walls, and footpaths of grassy knolls to repel the common invader.

There wasn’t much traffic. Audrey made the turn and they were soon limping along in second gear to give Lonie time to pick out the right house.

‘Ah think it’s that one there.’

‘You sure?’ But Audrey had already made the turn and the Hillman was spraying up red chips in the curve of the driveway. ‘I didn’t see a sign.’

‘Well it’s a private residence. What do you want him to dae put up a sign saying “This is my house and I’m a fuckin' Cardinal”?’

Audrey parked on the drive at the front of the house beside the bay windows. She took her time, letting Lonie get out of the car. Structurally, the house looked solid, but somehow it also had a neglected look, as if nobody lived in it. The stone chips crunched under Lonie’s feet as he made his way to the front door. Audrey tagged along behind him. They could see into the gloom of one of the front rooms, but nobody was sitting or standing in the slant of the mildew light. There was a white concave button set into the wall of the double-doors. Lonie pressed it a few times. They couldn’t hear it ringing. When that had no effect he banged on the door. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I thought they were expectin’ us.’

As they turned to go back to the car one of the doors creaked open. A woman with hair that had been borrowed from a crow’s nest, wearing a pink frilly overall over her dress, carrying a worn out pair of gardening gloves and secateurs slipped through the gap. ‘Can I help you?’ Her accent was money. Serious money.

Lonie stumbled as he turned.

Before he could say anything the woman addressed him again. ‘If you’re selling something, I don’t want it. And if you’re a tradesman please use the tradesman’s entrance, but since I don’t need anything fixed I’m at a loss to see why you’re here creating all this ruckus.’

‘I’v e…We’ve got an appointment.’ Lonie’s hand swept round to include Audrey.

The older woman’s eyebrows knitted up a storm. ‘An appointment?’

‘To see the Cardinal,’ the younger woman said helpfully.

Audrey’s accent pacified the older woman to a certain extent, but she still looked at Lonie suspiciously and kept her secateurs pointed towards him and at the ready.

‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ offered Lonie. ‘You’re not the Cardinal’s house.’

‘Are you wilfully stupid, or just plum ignorant?’ The older woman’s mouth twitched, as if she’d swallowed a small mouse.

Lonie sounded tired. ‘Bit of both I’m afraid, but it’s not contagious.’

‘Bravo.’ The older women threatened to smile, but she caught herself in time. ‘Cardinal Robbins stays about two miles along this road. You can’t miss it. It’s well sign-posted.’

Audrey made no comment as they drove and Lonie made no comment about her not commenting. He watched the scenery and tried to work out how many hospitals and schools could be built with £180 million and what he’d like to do with the change.