Lonie 51

Audrey tried not to think of the things she had seen. It was a straight road from Old Kilpatrick to the Clyde tunnel. There weren’t many cars or buses on the road, and the traffic lights were kind, so that the Hillman swept, like royalty, through a continuous green patch. Her nervousness showed in small ways, a sudden speeding up and slowing down. She almost ran into the back of a truck coming out of the Clyde tunnel, by switching lanes at the last second. A dull look appeared in her eyes when she checked the rear view mirrors and wondered if she’d taken a wrong turning onto Paisley Road West, even though she’d taken the same road day in and day out. Then she was home and put on a brave smile as her son rocketed out of the door and into her arms.

It was cold outside, with rain falling like a spider’s web, but she prolonged the moment, feeling his little fingers curling round her neck, touching the soft white petal skin of his cheek with a kiss, clinging onto his warm toy dumper truck of a body. He made ecstatic bubbling noises which would have been checked by her mother, but Audrey felt were in their own way delightful. There were far uglier things in the world. Thoughts of them came and went in waves over which she had no control. ‘C’mon Craig. Let’s get you inside.’ She spoke with a forced jocularity. Her son lessened his grip as she let him down, but she took his chubby little hand into her own as they went inside mother’s house.

In the evening, after Craig had been put to bed, mother installed across from her at one end of the sofa, watching the nine o’clock news had a touch of unreality. It was all three-day weeks and miners threatening to go on strike again. Grace’s conversation was full of tips about how best to run the country. As a former headmistress she wanted a revolution in which miner’s leaders learned how to speak properly, miners doffed their caps to the gentry and begged to be allowed to burrow into damp holes in the ground. She still behaved as if she were the only adult in the household.

‘You know being on your own, isn’t such a bad thing.’ Grace’s remark was for her elucidation, but it was unclear to Audrey to whom it applied. Certainly mother believed they would both be killed in their bed some crazed paramilitary grouping, but there was still cocoa to be made and P.G. Wodehouse to be read and standards that would not be allowed to slip in the interregnum. Audrey retreated into looking at the television with an expression of glazed boredom. How wonderful she thought to be married, really married. She snorted. Grace was more likely to have a heart attack by the appearance of Lonie than any paramilitary grouping.

‘I’ll just go up dear.’ Grace looked at her sharply.

Canned laughter was coming from the entertainers on the box in the corner of the room. Audrey gave it her full attention and bent her face into a canned smile. ‘Do you believe in God?’ Audrey turned to catch her mother, unawares, studying her.

‘Of course I do.’ Grace chided her. ‘I was brought up to believe in God.’ After the shock of such a question the muscles on mother’s face regrouped into a mask of neutrality. Some things were best not talked about.

‘Do you believe in the devil?’ Audrey’s voice shook. She wanted to say much more, but her mother cut her off.

‘Don’t be ridiculous dear.’ Mother rose and proffered her cheek to be kissed. ‘Don’t forget to check all the doors are locked and put the lights out.’ She left Audrey sitting watching one of her favourite shows. From the foot of the stairs she called out: ‘Don’t worry I’ll get the lights upstairs.’

Audrey waited until she heard the lights clicking off one after the other before she turned the television off. She sat in a puddle of darkness with only her thoughts for company. When the house had settled she stole into the kitchen and brought down a wine glass from the top shelf. There was a decanter of brandy in the drinks cabinet. She was careful not to let glass clink against glass as she poured the first drink. Later, when the darkness began to creep into the room and crowd her she was less careful. She sloshed some onto the cabinet and onto her slipper. She was as meticulous in the cleaning up operation as a burglar on a dawn raid. Not a fingerprint was left as she climbed the stairs.

She slipped into her boy’s bedroom and falling out of her clothes, slipped into bed beside him. ‘Everything’s going to be alright. Everything’s going to be alright.’ She had no other weapon but love to protect him with. Audrey smoothed the boy’s hair and his soft weight was the ballast her mind needed to drift into sleep.

Audrey’s dreams were waiting for her and gave her no respite. Her body jerked and tried to run from the hanging tree, but her feet were tied by sleep. The thirteen stones whispered to her in some ancient tongue which by the logic of sleep she knew, but refused to hear. A man jerked, his tongue lolling out as he hanged. He too called to her, but whether it was to come or to run, was also not clear. But such was her terror it could only be the latter. Her mouth opened to scream, but her tongue was met by a diabolic kiss, so that she too chocked and couldn’t breathe. Craig’s wailing beside called her up from the ocean bottom and exoricsed sleep. She felt for his little hands and kissed them. He kicked out at her.

‘For goodness sake. Can you not do something about that infernal racket?’ Grace shouted from the next room.

Audrey felt the wet patch on the bottom sheet between Craig and her. ‘It’s ok,’ she shouted back through to her mother. ‘He’s been having a bad dream. I’m just going to change him now and put him back down.’

Mother’s exasperated tut from a few doors down was a mile long.

But when Audrey’s fingers felt around the base of Craig’s night-time nappy she knew it would be dry. He hadn’t peed. In her night terrors, she had.