Lonie38

Lonie was so early getting up he didn’t bother going to sleep. Starting back at the Glaswonian gave him a staggering buzz of excitement that he hadn’t felt since sitting on the stairs waiting for Santa as a kid. The sky was an inky black. The plough, great bear, and all the other little bear constellation of stars, twinkled down on him as he walked along Dumbarton Road. The segs in the heels of his Weejuns clicked as his long coat flapped and he lit up the ground walking to the office. He bounded up the stairs. Davy Brown, with a night light on his desk, was sipping coffee, smoking a fag sitting and peering at copy. Lonie felt like flinging his arms around him and giving his pal a bear hug. Instead he reached into his coat pocket for his fags and cleared his throat. Davy’s head was as slow in turning as a square peg in a round hole, but he smiled his little smile. That was enough.

‘You’re early.’ Davy hit his elbow against the lamp, his hand reaching out to steady it.

‘Ah’m fuckin’ six week’s late.’ Lonie slapped Davy on the back of the shoulder. He found his matches and lit a fag. ‘What’s been happening since Ah’ve been away?’

Davy’s mouth buckled as he thought about it. ‘Nothing,’ he finally said. His neck hunched up as he added ‘Tilby’s left. Fiddling expenses. But I guess you knew that.’

Lonie’s hand smoothed through his hair and scratched at the back of his head. His fag hand fell to his side as he considered this. ‘That’s a real shame!’ he guffawed. ‘A real fuckin’ shame.’

They swapped stories, smoked fag and drank tea and soon Davy’s shift was finished. Lonie was no longer on the newsdesk frontline. His office chair and desk had been relocated. It was beside Audrey’s. The window in a diagonal across from them squeaked in protest, but he used a long pole to shut it and keep some heat in. He watched the other reporters drag themselves into work, cigarette smoke cloaking them like a grey nimbus and could instinctively feel, rather than hear, something of their low level grumbling. Lonie’s presence was as taken for granted as the grey metal filing cabinet stacked with folders that sat in the corner of the room. Bresslen was the first one to wander over and officially welcome him back.

‘The fatman wants to see you and Mr Taylor wants to see you.’ Bresslen sighed with the weight of messages he was carrying.

‘Why does Taylor want to see me?’ Lonie had only met the proprietor of the paper once, when he won a short-story competition two years on the trot. It was a photo opportunity in which Lonie had the wide open shirt and pouffed-up curls of a Regency dandy, or that of an Engelbert Humperdinck, and Mr Taylor had the grey pinstripe suit and prim smile of a banker. The headline “Young Catholic orphan wins job opportunity” made it sound like he was stepping into a reporter’s job, but it had taken him seven years of running errands and acting as an unofficial office boy, to reach the dizzy heights of the newsdesk. He hadn’t had the timidity to speak to Mr Taylor then and wondered why he wanted to speak to him now.

The fatman was already sitting smoking in Mr Taylor’s administrative centre at the top of the building when Lonie arrived. Mr Taylor had gotten older. He’d been whittled down to a hawk nose and bent back. He was looking out over the docks and the Clyde. Lonie felt he’d interrupted something between him and the fatman, but said nothing and slipped into a silver tubular L-shaped chair that looked as out of place as him in an office the colour of a coffee stain. The fatman always found the comfortable seat.

‘I was just saying.’ The fatman blew a cloud of smoke in Lonie’s direction. ‘We’re glad to have you back.’

‘Ah’m glad to be back.’ Lonie felt that he should have put an extra shine on his black shoes or wore a tie.

Mr Taylor cleared his throat as if he was going to say something as he turned to inspect Lonie, but he said nothing and turned back to watching the squat- bottomed shape of a grey corvette winding its way up the Clyde.

‘I assured Mr Taylor that we’d get to the bottom of this funding scandal…That you had contacts that we could use…’ The fatman looked toward Mr Taylor, but there was no suggestion that he was listening. ‘That we can push on with our agenda.’ The fatman’s eyes locked onto Lonie’s. He nodded towards the door. ‘Is there anything else we can do for you, or you need to know Mr Taylor?’

Lonie found himself outside Mr Taylor’s office quicker than an adder bite. The fatman quietly closed the door behind them like a coffin lid.

‘He likes to keep his cards close to his chest.’ The fatman seemed more expansive in the hall.

‘Any closer and he’d be comatose.’ Dust motes drifted down from the panels of the ceiling from the vibrations in the building and settled on Lonie’s good-white shirt. He waited for the fatman to walk down the stairs with him. The fatman scratched at his back and pulled away in the other direction.

‘I’ll get the lift,’ the fatman explained.

‘Isn’t that only to be used for transporting supplies?’

‘That, and other things, if you know how to work it.’ The fatman waved him away. ‘That’s it. You’ve got the green light now. Go out and nail those bastards. I want to see Larry Murray and Carol Peters in the dock.’

‘What if they’re genuinely mad?’ Lonie listened to the squeal of the metal pulley ropes as it ascended.

‘Fuck them.’ The fatman hurried along the corridor from him, as fast as his legs would allow. ‘I just want them genuinely hung. I’m not the only one.’ He put his hand on the lift cage, as if that would stop it shuddering. He concertinaed the metal shutters open and stepped into the base used for lifting. ‘Press that down button, will you?’ he shouted through the bars to Lonie.

Audrey was sitting straight-backed typing at her desk when Lonie got back to the newsroom. She smiled when he appeared, which he thought was a good sign. He twisted his neck and looked behind him to make sure.

‘Have you got your press credentials?’ He smiled back at her.

‘I always carry them in my bag.’ She frowned and reached down to search through her bag lying beside the desk.

Lonie stuck his hand out to stop her. ‘It’s ok. Ah was just wonderin’.’ He yawned. ‘Are you ready to go then?’

‘Shouldn’t we…’ Audrey stopped speaking. He’d begun to yawn again. ‘The fatman wants to have a meeting with us.’

Lonie shook his head to shake himself awake. ‘Ah’ve already had a meeting with him and Mr Taylor.’ His hand became buried in his mouth to stifle a yawn. ‘Let’s go out and get some fresh air. This place is killing me.’ He searched in his pockets for his fags and reached for his coat. ‘The fatman’s leaving us to it. It’s just you and me against the world.’

The other reporters watched them leave. Lonie followed Audrey down the stairs. Apart from her tits she seemed thinner and her heels seemed higher. With her condition he was worried she might stumble and hurt herself. He was ready to make a dive for her arm. When they got to the Hillman Imp he insisted on opening the car door for her, even though she had the key. He lit a fag and just as quickly put it out.

‘Seatbelt!’ Lonie shouted as Audrey tried to race the car quickly forward. There was no traffic about. The car stalled. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Her long neck turned as she scanned the road, not trusting the efficacy of the three mirrors on the car. Part of her had forgotten she’d told him about the pregnancy and the other part wished she hadn’t. ‘I’m not an invalid.’

‘Ah’ve thought about what you said. Ah’m no’ sure you’re right, but Ah’ve got the money together for, you know.’

Audrey’s foot jumped off the peddle as she turned to look at him and nearly drove into the back of a Ford Escort van with its hazards on. ‘What do you mean you’ve got the money?’ She swerved around the van and accelerated away, her heart racing as she spoke. They were coming up to a tricky junction at Polloon Avenue. She pulled into the side sure she was going to be sick. ‘Sorry.’ She wound down the window and took deep breaths. ‘What do you mean you’ve got the money?’

Lonie looked squint-eyed at the terraced houses and the neat private- green privet hedges. ‘Ah’ve got the money, for you know.’ His fingers clutched at the fags in his pocket. He wound down the window on his, the pavement side of the road, thought better of it, and got out of the car and lit a Woodbine.

Audrey got out of the car slowly, her body weighed down with a private loathing. She spoke to him over the roof of the car. ‘For the abortion?’ She knew he couldn’t say the word. ‘How did you…’

‘Ways and means. Ways and means.’ He cut her off with fag smoke and waffle.

‘Do you know anybody?’ She scanned the streets around her as if someone was bound to be listening, but there was nobody, just a lollipop man in neon white at the side of the road, about one hundred yards ahead of them.

Lonie sniffed. ‘Ah might do.’

‘How?’ Where did you get the money?’ A shrill nervousness crept into her voice.

‘Lots of the guys Ah grew up wi’. In the homes. They graduated to a different side of the business.’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘Lockin’ them up was hardly a deterrent. Prisons are where they came from. Prisons are where their mates are. Their brothers and sisters.’ He flicked the fag away. ‘Ah’m sure Ah can get something sorted. As you said, if you’ve got money you can do anything you want.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But Ah don’t know if that’s what Ah do want. One thing Ah dae know Ah don’t want to be owing anybody any favours. Cash on the nail. In and out. Job done.’ Lonie pulled open the car door and sat inside the car, waiting for her.

Audrey got in and started the engine. The lollipop man held his hand out to stop them, his lollipop sign planted firmly into the middle of the road. A boy and a girl, about five-years old held hands as they passed, with their mother behind them pushing a high-topped pram.

‘I don’t know either anymore.’ Audrey sighed, her eyes filling up, but she drove straight on, tears running silently down her cheeks.