Lonie 32

Lonie tossed and turned all night in his bed, not sleeping, just tying the blankets in different series of Scout knots. He’d kept his socks on, but his feet remained colder than Audrey’s heart. He tried unsnagging his feet and pulling them up short into the more temperate part of the bed, looping them like Hula Hoops under his bum, but that only pushed him into a sitting position. When he sat up he reached for his fags. He pulled on his shirt and trousers, and an old wool jacket that had seen better days and slipped his feet into his shoes. Before padding into the living room, he grabbed a section of The Encyclopaedia Britannica from his wooden bookcase as if picking up a portion of fruit. The fire in the grate wasn’t made up and there wasn’t enough coal to fill a matchbox even if it was. The electricity meter had run down and there were no more last-chance shillings. When he pulled the curtains aside snow outside the window was falling and creating its own swirling glow. His breath was a sculpture meeting the window pane. The backcourts and tenements outside were transformed into a painter’s landscape of beauty with backcourt bins wearing white hats. He pulled over the old hard-backed wooden chair from the corner of the room, from behind the curtained alcove and sat with his back to the window. He let the encyclopaedia on his lap fall open and started reading about a place and the word for a currency unit and his thoughts wrapped around him to keep him warm.

There were still a few hours until Lonie nominally started work. He trekked down the stairs of his tenement block, uncaring, glad to feel fresh air on his face. His feet slipped and sludged through the virgin snow of Apsley Street. He slid the last few yards down the slope onto Dumbarton road. Traffic had come to a standstill, the road and pavement bumping up against each other in a carpet of snow. The light played tricks with his eyes. As he ploughed ahead the roads seemed to stretch on forever, but somehow with the muffled sounds seemed closer. The brown soft-wool scarf wound round his neck and over his mouth as a make-shift muffler made him feel like a child. He felt like stopping off at the Clyde walkway, throwing snowballs at bricked up factory windows and making a snowman in the middle of the road. He expected to hear huskies and the call of the wild. What he didn’t expect was Davy Brown smoking a fag in the stairwell and peering out at him, through the snow, as if expecting him.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Davy Brown was laughing with a gap-toothed smile.

‘Ah was goin’ to ask you the same question. Whit’s the matter with you? You never come outside for fresh air. In fact, the thought of fresh air usually makes you sick.’

‘Well, I’m not the one that’s in work two hours early.’ Davy risked stepping down the stairs and into the snow, making all the usual ‘brrrrr’ noises, as if he’d been plunged into the Clyde, but quickly jumped back up to the safety of the stairwell. ‘You must really love this place.’

‘Nah.’ Lonie standing on the pavement, stamped his feet, and shook the snow off his coat. ‘Ah love you. Have you got any fags?’

They stood smoking for a few minutes, looking out from their shelter at the snowflakes drifting silently down. The noise of the trucks, men shouting from underneath the closed metal shutters and the hum of the printing presses seemed to belong somewhere else and to another time.

‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Lonie admitted, breaking their companionable silence.

Davy’s eyebrows rose dramatically and dropped suddenly. ‘I get that all the time.’

‘But you’re old. You’re trying to sleep during the day. Ah widnae want to try that. Ah’d need to get drunk the night before and stay drunk.’ Lonie started coughing. His body bent over like an ironing board.

Davy Brown shuffled his little feet tight in his brown Brogan boots uneasily. ‘If you did that you’d never be sober.’ He slapped Lonie on the back to aid his recovery. ‘Let’s go inside and get something warm inside you.’

Lonie’s red face spluttered ‘Whisky?’ He held onto his friend’s arm as he pulled himself upright, but let go to grog green sputum, from the back of his throat, out into the fresh white snow.

In the narrow kitchen, Lonie and Davy held onto their mugs like charm bracelets waiting for their luck to change. The grey tea remained tasteless. Lonie had told him about his visit to The Mitchell Library. He nibbled on a soft Digestive and moaned about somebody leaving such a poor specimen in the biscuit tin. Davy’s memories of the Murray case weren’t much help.

‘Whit about the fatman? He seems to have been on the case from start to finish. Ah, was thinkin’ about havin’ a word with him.’

Davy pondered this, while lip smacking boiling hot water into having some kind of tea taste. ‘I’m not sure.’

Whether Davy was talking about the fatman or the tea, Lonie wasn’t sure either. He surreptitiously lifted his bum cheek up from against the back wall where he was sitting to fart.

‘The fatman was on the first case.’ Davy yawned, played with the leg of his specks and rubbed at his balding head. ‘But I don’t think he was on the last. I think he was off on the sick for a very long time. At one point we didn’t think he’d be back. So, I don’t think it would be a very good idea…’

‘Is there somebody Ah could talk to? That would fill me in on the gaps.’ Lonie’s voice rose in exasperation. Davy handed him a fag out of his packet. ‘Wasn’t there some talk about Murray having some kind of disciples that did his bidding?’

‘That was mostly tommy-rot. But I’d talk to that priest of yours. He was at the trial. Murray spent more time in conference with him than he did with his own lawyers.’ Davy’s mouth firmed up into a smile. He had a drag on his fag, pointing into the air with it. ‘That’s who I’d talk to.’

‘You mean Father Campbell?’ That made sense to Lonie.

‘Aye.’ Davy's index finger waved his answer at Lonie. ‘Definitely. That’s what I’d do. If it was up to me. That’s what I’d do.’

Lonie wasn’t much of a clock watcher, but when Audrey wasn’t in by 8.20 am he picked up the receiver and quickly put it down again. He didn’t want to phone her at home, in case it embarrassed her and didn’t want to go through the switchboard for her home number in case it embarrassed him instead. The snow was falling thicker and faster and school after school were lining up to say they wouldn’t be opening that day. There was sure to be a front page headline with the worst snowstorm since… The next part would be optional and taken from archives. Pictures of cars slewed all over the road and old people with snow encrusted hats and gloves, looking as glum as old folk usually do when talking about the weather, was always a good filler. There’d also be a shot of kids in red balaclavas sledging. Unless it was off a cliff that wouldn’t reach page one. The phone on his desk rang. When he picked it up he knew it wouldn’t be good news. In a way he was right. Audrey couldn’t make it. Her Hillman Imp had cut out. She’s phoned Bresslen and now was phoning to let him know.

Lonie did a quick calculation. Davy had already left. He’d be unable to tap anyone else for his bus fare. He had to walk to Goldenwell hospital a journey of about four miles. He laughed and shook off his lethargy. He’d walked more than that every morning when he was a child. When he was outside the building, in the open air, he felt better. After a mile his shoes let in, but his shoes had always let in. When growing up they said that was to give his feet room to grow. His stomach felt fine. He did not feel the rising claustrophobia, he usually did, when travelling by bus or car. Snow had taken all the rough edges off the Goldenwell buildings and the green hills that undulated up to it were untouched and as sweet looking as icing sugar. He felt a sense of achievement bypassing the mazy winding road as he cut a straight line across the hill and climbed up the knoll. He kicked at the metal gate, the snow breaking and falling off the top and sliding, as if in slow motion, to the ground on the other side of the fence. No one seemed to stir. A peek-capped guard, raincoat buttoned up to his thick neck eventually emerged out of the hut of the right to the gate. The snow began to melt on Lonie’s hair and run onto his face. He became aware that his coat and clothing were frosted with snow and under his scarf his features would be something of a snowman’s blur.

The guard cautiously approached the fence, stopping about a foot away from it. ‘Can I help you sir?’

Lonie looked behind him, as he knew the guard must be doing, for a car or some other vehicle that had brought him here. He unwound the scarf from his mouth, but offered no explanation. ‘My name is Peter Lonnigan. I work as a reporter for the Glasownian. I’m here to see Father Campbell.’ He tried smiling, but knew that rarely worked for him and usually made things worse.

‘Have you any identification sir? The guard banged his feet on the ground to keep the snow from landing on the toes of his black boots and to keep them warm.

Lonie’s fingers crept into his coat pocket. The Silk Cut fag he’d stashed for later became bent and wet, a box of Bluebell matches jiggled as they were pushed aside. A snotty handkerchief in the other coat pocket offered no relief. His hand dived inside the smooth satin of his inside pocket of his coat, but found nothing. ‘Ah can’t seem to find…’ In desperation he tried the back pocket of his trousers that had a hole in it. He looked into the guard’s eyes. His voice was a hole with words falling into it. ‘Ah’ve no’ got any identification.’

‘This is a secure unit sir.’ The guard’s voice was as even and measured as the metal bars he was looking through.

‘If you can just phone Father Campbell?’ Lonie started coughing, holding onto the gate. ‘Ah’ve left my press pass back on my desk at work.’

‘Bad cough you’ve got there sir.’ The guard turned to go back to his warm hut. ‘If you just go through the usual channels.’

Lonnie felt like kicking the gate again, but his feet were too cold. He fumbled for the fag in his pocket. The tip had broken off. He pushed in against the corner of the wall. It took him four matches before his hands stopped shivering and he could get the fag in his mouth lit. It was begining to get overcast and dark. A green E-type Jaguar passed him on the road down from the secure unit, with its lights on, sliding across the road and almost hitting him. It accelerated away tooting its horn. It was too late to go back to work. Too cold to go home. Lonie kept walking. All he could see was fucking snow. There was nothing worth pawning. He’d need to take a crowbar to the metre to get a few shillings out. Fucking snow killed everybody. He wasn’t going to let it get him. He hoped there would be enough in the metre for a few halfs of whisky to warm him up. That thought kept him going, putting his foot into one pisshole in the snow after another.