Lonie11

Lonie dozed and then lay awake. Audrey snuggled into his body and slept soundly beside him. He could feel the rumbling of the traffic outside, hear the increasing noise of buses splashing through the puddles, gearing up for the day, and knew it was time to get up for work. He also needed to pee. Lonie slipped out of bed, his warm feet sticking and making a sucking sound against the cold linoleum. Knackered, and his toes trying to find his shoes underneath the bed, he almost stumbled into the kitchen door, which was standing open. He pulled his coat off the bottom of the bed and flung it on in preparation for his trip upstairs to the toilet. The cold water tap made a squeaking noise, and the pipes banged as if waking up the building, as he filled the kettle from the sink, lit the gas ring and, adjusting the ceramic knob, put the kettle on it.

When Lonie came downstairs from the toilet and into the kitchen the kettle was whistling on the ring. Audrey was sitting up in bed with the face of an angry wasp, her breasts hanging pendulously and the sheets tied across her waist like a cummerbund. Lonie tackled the kettle first, turning off the gas and using his sleeve to knock it along the cooker and away from any residual heat. ‘Morning.’ He turned to meet Audrey’s gaze. Her face slackened and she began to look vaguely human, pretty even.

‘What time is it?’ Audrey asked.

‘Dunno.’ Lonie shrugged. ‘About four?’ He dashed out a smile. ‘You want a cuppa tea?’

‘It’s hardly morning then is it?’ Audrey’s head slumped back onto the pillow behind her. ‘It’s still the middle of the night.’

Lonie picked up Audrey’s tights from the lip of the sink with two fingers and turned and flung them towards his bed. He rinsed two mugs out in the sink, and as the gas geyser whooshed to heat the water, he heard Audrey groan. He glanced round to see her putting the pillow over her head to block out the noise. Lonie coughed and sniffed and spat out some phlegm into the sink.

He heard Audrey tutting. Her voice was muffled from beneath a pillow. ‘Do you mind!’

Lonie didn’t mind at all. After last night every bone in his face would need to be broken and reset to stop him from grinning. ‘Ah need to get a bit of a wash and a shave for work. Won’t be long,’ he promised.

Audrey turned one way in his bed, then the other and rolled onto a damp stain, which made her jump and she wondered whether it came from him or her. It didn’t matter, of course. The bed smelled of the vague perfume of her body and of sex. Their sex. Her vagina was still tingling and raw and her nipples felt red and sore as if she’d been hooked up to a milking machine. She knew there was little chance of getting back to sleep and her thoughts drifted guiltily towards her son and what she’d need to tell her mother. Her immediate problem, one that had caused all the trouble, was that she really needed to pee again. But she no longer felt the need to cover up her nakedness, or to feel modest. She flung her legs out of his bed and padded across to where he was shaving in the sink, his face jawing and grimacing, at his reflection in a small circular cracked shaving mirror.

Lonie heard her before he saw her face in his mirror, peering over the shoulder of his black coat. ‘Jesus,’ he said, as she pressed up against him and her arms circled his waist. ‘You better get away from the windae. Ah’ve only got net curtains. Somebody will see you!’

‘I don’t care.’ Audrey pressed in closer to the prickly cloth and her right hand fumbled their way through the flaps of his coat. He gasped, his bum backing up and against her stomach, as her fingers found the shape of his little mushroom in his pants and began to massage his balls and wank his little side-ways cock into a worthwhile stalk.

Lonie only had a slither of soap to lather his face. He tried to keep the Wilkinson blade gliding across his skin, but kept nicking his neck and chin.

‘I need to go to the toilet.’ Audrey kept wanking at his cock. ‘But I’ll need your coat,’ she whispered at his neck and the back of his hair.

Lonie followed her lead and dipped, in front of the steamed-up window, to let his coat fall from one shoulder. He dipped to let it fall from the other and onto the linoleum. She toyed with his cock, changing hands as she wanked him. The heat of her creamy white tits pushed up against the skin of his back made him want to turn, but he kept up the pretence of shaving, even though there was no bristle on his face left to shave. His nostrils picked up a weak Plasticine smell and he could hear what sounded like the rapid opening and shutting of a wet plastic bag. He knew that meant she was fingering her clit. His Y-fronts were whipped by her hand down to join his coat on the floor. He grunted as she slid down onto the floor, using his coat as an armchair, licked his scrotum and took his balls into her mouth, whilst finger fucking herself. He knew she’d came when she stopped wanking and by her animal like threshing and squeals of delight. He looked down at her bobbling big tits, and putting his razor carefully down on the white ceramic between the two sinks, with a few flicks of his wrist, he’d come too, his seed spraying onto the yellow curtain beneath the sink. He carefully washed his hands in the sink and rubbed at the nick marks on his chin, wiping them away, but knew he’d need to dot them with toilet roll to stop them from bleeding.

Audrey’s legs were still shaking when she stood up. Lonie’s coat was round her shoulders and she buttoned it up. He made room for her at the sink. The water from the geyser was too hot. She looked for a plug, but finding none, dabbed her hands in hot water and soaped them and rinsed them off with the cold water tap. ‘Where’s the toilet?’

‘Upstairs.’ Lonie’s hip bumped playfully against her. ‘Follow your nose.’

Audrey groaned. ‘It’s not that bad is it?’

Lonie laughed. ‘Nah, only kiddin’.’ He bent and nipping her at the elbow grabbed her arm and lent down kissing her on the mouth.

‘Enough.’ Audrey pulled away from him. ‘You’ll get me shot.’

‘Scoot then.’ Lonie’s slapped her bum through the coat. ‘Ah’ll get a fire started next door and we can have a cup of tea in comfort.’

‘Have you got a towel and some soap?’ Audrey asked.

‘Whit you wantin’ a towel for?’ Lonie asked.

Audrey looked as his face to see what he meant. ‘To get washed and dry myself,’ she said.

Lonnie shook his head. He knew what she was getting at, but he had to spell it out to her. ‘Ah’d take some bog roll.’ He pushed the curtain under the sink aside, peered in, and pulled out a cardboard roll with toilet paper stiff and shiny as clear glass. ‘Mind, don’t leave it in the toilet.’ He handed it to her. ‘You can use my towel when you come back.’ He nodded towards a blue stained rag that he had hanging on a nail beside the sink. ‘And A've no’ got much soap left, but there’s enough for your needs, as long as you don’t overdo it.’

‘Gee-whiz-thanks.’ She pulled his coat tight around her waist, and went in search of her shoes and the toilet where shiny toilet roll was the tenement’s currency.

Lonie made up the fire in the grate. It was something he’d grown adapt at over the years. The balled up newspapers, the thin sticks of kindling and the scoop of coal soon took. He expertly flicked on more coal with the battered old coal shovel, and when the flames were the right reddish-yellow-purple colour sat warming his hands in his chair near the fire, before pulling over the metal bars of the grate.

When Audrey got back from the toilet she sat in an identical chair opposite Lonie. ‘My feet are like blocks of ice.’ She stuck her legs out and warmed her feet with the flames.

‘There’s yer tea.’ Lonie motioned towards a mug sitting on the raised tiles beside the fire. ‘You want toast? Ah think a’ve got some bread next door.’ Lonie put his hands on the rest of the armchair to get up, but sunk back into his seat when she shook her head.

Audrey blew on her mug of tea, before sipping on it. It was rotten as she’d expected. She tried not to make a face as she placed it down carefully on the spot where he’d left it for her to pick up. ‘What are those ornaments?’ she asked, as a distraction.

Lonie peered over at the mantelpiece, his eyes trying to pick out what she was talking about. Then it hit him. ‘That’s not ornaments. They two wally-dogs have more life in them than many people ah know.’

Audrey smiled. ‘They’re cute.’

‘They’re not cute.’ Lonie bent and pushed forward in his chair to berate her, but the firelight played in her hair and the sandy light from the window behind her caught the shape of her face and his voice dropped. ‘You’re cute.’ He settled back into his chair and companionable silence, before adding, ‘they were my ma’s. That was the only thing ah saved from the fire.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Audrey said.

‘No. No. Don’t worry about it.’ The fire in the living room began to splutter, letting Lonie look away. He reached for the iron of the poker from the stand and prodded the coal, splitting its burnt seam and the bringing about the right kind of flames and the cohabitation of light and warmth.

Audrey looked at the clock placed at the centre of the mantelpiece. ‘You’re late.’

‘Aye.’ Lonie didn’t bother looking at the time. ‘But ah do mair hours than Methuselah and ah’ll catch up.’ He looked across at her and now she seemed so distant, so self-possessed, and, even with his black coat on, so incredibly young. ‘Ah don’t know how to put it,’ his head became bowed, his hand’s clasped, and he looked down at his feet, ‘but it’s been great.’

Audrey laughed, bending over and patting his knee. ‘I might be wrong, but,’ she looked around the room with a mock theatrical air, ‘we’re both adults and I don’t think anybody has died.’ His eyes still had that dejected look. ‘I think it’s been great too.’ She stood up slowly and let her coat fall open and sat on his knee and let herself slide onto his lap as they kissed.

Lonie groaned as he pushed her away. ‘Ah cannae.’ He was laughing when he said it and kept pushing her until she was off his lap and standing in front of the fireplace wearing nothing but a smile. She looked at him quizzically. ‘My cock’s sore,’ he explained. ‘And ah’ve got work to go to.’ He stood up. ‘Besides ah’m all out of fags and if you werenae here ah’d be rooting about the bins to make a roll up.’

Audrey reached for his coat, pulled it back around her, and slumped back down on the seat opposite Lonie, pulling her feet up and tucking them in underneath her. ‘It’s a bit early for me to go into work. What do you want me to do?’

‘Nothin’, well maybe tap me two bob for fags. Ah’ll give you it back later. Just lock the door when you’re ready to leave and ah’ll get the key off you later.’

‘Just take it out of my bag next door.’ Audrey stretched her neck up to let him peck her on the lips. She shouted after him, when he was out in the hall, ‘you will put a good word about me with the fatman?