Lonie4

The Cardinal’s house was set back from the road amid shrubs clipped as neatly as tablecloths and grass snooker- room green. A gleaming Rolls stood in the driveway and behind it, in the double-garage, a little red Mini, which Lonie figured was used for buzzing around the grounds, or nipping out to the shops for more claret.

Monsignor Some-thing-or-other greeted them at the door. He was a stout, bear of a man, in a black suit that was too small for him. A cigarette was taped to his nicotine stained fingers and his face was flushed and red as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. ‘You’re late.’ He’d a soft voice, almost effeminate, despite his appearance. His reprimand was directed at Lonie who’d gotten out of the Hillman first. He glanced at Audrey, but quickly looked away because she was so obviously female.

They stood weighing each other up in a small glass-enclosed cloakroom at the front door that smelled of damp clothes and worn out Wellington books. Monsignor Some-thing-or-other hesitated, his hand on the brass door handle that accessed the main house. He turned and whispered to Lonie. ‘You do know, of course, when you address Cardinal Robbins you say “His Eminence or My Grace”.’ Audrey understood this was for her benefit. ‘And another little piece of protocol,’ he tried a smile, which was weak as kitten’s milk on Audrey. ‘We like our lady visitors to wear a hat or hair covering in His Grace’s presence.’

‘I’m all out of hats.’ Audrey smiled back at him.

‘Ah,’ Monsignor Some-thing-or-other hesitated. ‘We do have quite a selection for just such a purpose.’ He braved a full-frontal smile, blinking frequently, his index finger waving in the general direction of some hats that hung near the outside door. ‘Or if you prefer we have this.’ He pulled out what seemed like a large white magician’s hanky out of his suit pocket. Putting it down on a three legged ornate styled corner table, he unwrapped a black mantilla, thin as a spider’s web, his eyes misting up, and fingered it reverentially as if it was a set of Rosary beads, or he wanted to wear it himself.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Audrey.

Monsignor Something-or-other’ clicked the handle of the main door, pulling it towards him, keeping it firmly shut. He turned towards Lonie. ‘We are very lucky to have a man such as Cardinal Robbins here among us.’ Turning towards Audrey he held out the mantilla, his thin lips twisted into a smile so false it should have broken his face in half. ‘And, young lady, it is a matter of respect.’

Audrey let the mantilla fall into her hand. It was a beautiful and intricate piece of cloth, fragile as a moth’s wing, which felt as if it had been around hundreds of years,. ‘I find that when a man,’ she handed the Monsignor back the mantilla with some regret, meeting the man’s gaze, ‘asks a woman for respect, invariably she ends up on her back with her legs open.’ The mantilla drifted down into his soft hands. He quickly put it back on the table and covered it over the white handkerchief as if the piece of cloth had heard quite enough and probably too much.

Lonie choked down his guffaws. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but didn’t sound sorry at all.

‘I think it would be best all round if we left your secretary here in the cloakroom, or perhaps she would be more comfortable sitting in the car outside?’

‘Would you be more comfortable in the car outside?’ Lonie smirked at Audrey.

‘If I’m sitting in the car I won’t be stopping. I’m sure you can find your way back to Glasgow from here quite easily.’ There was a plain matter-of-factness about the way she spoke that Lonie knew she wasn’t kidding around.

‘The choice is yours.’ Monsignor pushed open the internal door to the big house and the smell of beeswax on hard floors and the silence of grandfather’s clocks ticking out time slipped into the cloakroom.

‘Hing on. Hing on. Let me think.’ Lonie’s hand dived into his coat pocket for his fags and his face took on the red sheen of Monsignor Something-or-other who hovered beside him.

‘There’s nothing to think about. I’m a reporter, the same as Mr Lonnigan, not a secretary.’ She could see that remark had struck home with Monsignor Some-thing-or-other. ‘And I think that after the latest scandal the church would be keen to give its point of view. After all didn’t the Cardinal say that there would now be a new spirit of openness and transparency in the way it went about his business? That we were no longer living in the middle-ages?’

‘Monsignor Some-thing-or-other’s Adam’s apple bobbled up and down and he sniffed. ‘I don’t think,’ he chose his words carefully, ‘those scandals, if they could be termed that, were anything to do with the kind of financial matters you’re here to speak to His Eminence about today.’ He hesitated, licking his lips. ‘I’m sure claims about physical and…’ his nose twitched in disgust, ‘…sexual molestation in those institutions were widely exaggerated.’

The spark of a match lighting a cigarette in Lonie’s mouth seemed to distract him. ‘No they weren’t. If anything they were understated.’ Lonie’s head tipped back as he blew a cloud of smoke into the air. ‘I was there. Remember? And if you don’t, maybe you should ask His Eminence. He put me there. I’m sure he’ll remember for you.’

‘Yes. Yes. Of course. If you come through to the waiting room.’ Mosignor Some-thing-or-other flung open the door and stepped inside the big house inviting them to follow. Inside the main hallway his heals clicked and Lonie and Audrey’s steps added a melancholy echo, as he took a right, and ushered them into a large room with an old-fashioned radiogram. Lonie sat down in one of the armchairs facing a brick up fireplace that had a standing ersatz marble ashtray beside it. Audrey sat in the other, close to the large dining room table which twinkled in the fluted light of the faraway high windows, the spectre of long digested dinners and talk about gun dogs, clinging to the walls and corniced ceilings like a patina. ‘I’ll get cook to bring you some tea, while I have a word with His Eminence. Let him know you’re here.’ Monsignor Something-or-other, playing the noble host, managed a smile. ‘Is there anything else you need?’ He was all fluttering hands and fawning face now.

‘No,’ said Audrey.

‘Custard creams. I like Custard creams.’ Lonie cocked his head in a way that turned his statement into a question.

‘Yes, I’m quite sure we’ve got Custard creams.’ Monsignor Something-or-other turned to go.

‘And Bourbons,’ Lonie shouted after his departing back. ‘Bourbons.’

‘Thanks.’ Audrey’s fingers traced and trailed down the dining room table as if searching for dust amid the specular gloom. Prints and lithographs studded the walls. They were representations of birds and spaniels and groups of men and women in nineteenth-century serving apparel of black and white hats and costumes looking fiercely at the recording artist.

‘For what?’ Lonie was content to let the smoke stain the ceiling and to sit with his feet stretched out like a Lord of the manor.

‘For sticking up for me.’ Audrey stopped at a framed photo of the Cardinal and Pope John Paul XXXIII.

‘Ah wisnae sticking up for you.’ Lonie chuckled. ‘Ah wis sticking up for myself. Ah didnae fancy walkin’ all the way back to Glasgow. Thank you very much.’

‘He’s quite handsome isn’t he?’ Audrey’s fingers pecked at the glass covering the frame as if to get inside the image.

‘Who?’ Lonie’s head swivelled around to see who she was talking about.

‘Has he got Italian blood?’ Audrey’s hand rested on the dining room table frowning at the photograph, like the women in the other prints.

Lonie stubbed his fag out and sidled up behind Audrey, standing at her back, breathing in the freshness of her amid all the dead reproductions hanging on the wall. He’d seen the photo before. There was a copy of it in Cardinal Robbin’s office. There was another in his private study. He couldn’t remember if there was one hanging in every landing of the three storey building, but thought there might well be. Cardinal Robbins was younger then, of course, and had a full head of black hair. ‘Handsome!’ He dunted Audrey playfully in the back. ‘If you want to look at handsome look at me.’

Audrey laughed, turning to scrutinise him. ‘You’ve got bad skin. Your nose it too big. Your ears are too big and your mouth is certainly too big.’

‘Thanks,’ he sniffed, ‘but I’ve got Italian blood too. It just went to Ireland for a couple of hundred years. Kings of Ireland. That’s what we were, Kings of Ireland. Until your gang of marauding thieves came over to steal all our land off us.’

‘My gang?’ She drifted away from him and over to the window that looked down over a different room, the slope of the lawn, and further down out over the untamed black-blue glimmer that sucked in the light of the water.

They heard cook shuffling along before they saw her, clearing her throat every few steps along the corridors. She bustled in, a heart-shaped faced stretched into a windblown kite, as wide as she was tall, carrying a tray. ‘I’ll just leave this here.’ She put it down on a small table between the two chairs. Clearing her throat and smiling at them she left them to serve themselves.

There was a pot of tea and a pot of coffee. Lonie’s fingers swooped in among the ruffle of doilies and pulled out a gingersnap biting into it right away, crumbs falling onto his open necked shirt. His fingers carousing, considering, but not picking out any semblance of Bourbons retreating to the matching white china cups and saucers. ‘Will ah put your tea out?’

She watched him pouring the tea, swilling the milk about the jug, as if checking for impurities and then dashing it into colour his tea, ringing the silver teaspoon out and banging in four sugars, and then another as an afterthought. The tea cup looked small in his hand and it was shaking as tea spilled onto the saucer. ‘No. I think I’ll get my own,’ she said pleasantly.

‘Suit yourself.’ Lonie fell into the chair nearest to him, slurping down his tea. ‘He pulled the plates with biscuit in closer and his hand moved up and down like an automaton as he chewed.

Audrey settled into the chair across from him, the cup close to her chin to feel the steam rising, sipping her tea with a certain amount of circumspection, with her face turned towards Lonie and making a study of his eating habits.

Monsignor Something-or-other made his returning presence felt with a polite cough. ‘His Eminence would be glad to see you now.’ His two hands were clasped together as he stood waiting.

Lonie slurped at his tea, draining the sugar at the bottom of the cup, and darting a glance at it again just to make sure it was gone. When he looked up Audrey was standing beside Monsignor Something-or-other, both of them were standing together, a conspiracy of silence, he had not been consulted about, wrapped around them.

Lonie carried his hands in his pockets, shambling along, Audrey’s firm step slightly in front and Monsignor Something-or-other leading the way. They stopped outside the Cardinal’s office. Monsignor Something-or-other knocked politely on the hardwood panelling, and said ‘if you’ll just wait here,’ before quickly entering and leaving Audrey and Lonie standing outside. He was soon back flinging open the door and blinking nervously as he smiled at them. ‘His Eminence will be glad to see you now.’

Lonie noticed the Cardinal’s dark hair was now an exhausted grey. Colour had drained from his face leaving it sallow. He stared at them both over the top of horn-rimmed glasses and he wheezed as he got up from behind his desk. But it was the chairs that Lonie remembered best. Two straight-backed chairs were positioned before his desk, ornately carved with the wooden figures of and vines and grapes, and what he thought then as of little duck people, climbing up and down, hidden in the curves and lath and lacquer of the wood. His Eminence’s own chair was the image of its neighbours, but was bigger, with the high back of a throne.

He thrust out his ringed finger for Lonie to kiss. Then he did the same for Audrey. She remained upright, on unbent knee. One eye brown and one eye blue looked down at the bent-backed Cardinal and gave a perfunctory shake to his extended putty-like hand. A slight flinch worked its way across his face, a tiny movement, an expression of someone that had effectively masked their surprise.

‘Take a seat.’ The Cardinal bent over by coughing found it difficult to say much more. Monsignor Something-or-other rushed across the deep pile of the carpet and stood at his elbow. ‘Leave us,’ Cardinal seemed to unbend from his disabilities and his voice sounded stronger. With a servile nod of the head Monsignor Something-or-other did his bidding and left, leaving Lonie and Audrey sitting in their respective seats in front of the desk.

‘You’re from the Glasownian? That’s a newspaper I’ve got a lot of respect for.’ He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, legs apart and seemed a younger man.

‘Your Eminence, you don’t mind if I smoke?’ Lonie leaned forward, meeting his gaze.

‘No. No. Go right ahead.’ Cardinal Robbins reached down into his bottom drawer and pulled out an ashtray, pushing it across the desk towards Lonie ‘In fact, if you’ve got an extra one I wouldn’t mind joining you and the pretty young lady.’

‘I don’t smoke,’ said Audrey.

Lonie handed His Eminence a Woodbine and skated his box of Bluebell matches across the desk. Cardinal Robbins eyes crinkled up as he lit up, filled his lungs and sunk back into the chair. ‘Neither do I. Well, we’ve all got our crosses to bear.’ He leaned forward, maintaining eye contact with Audrey in a way that was quite hypnotic. ‘Well what can I do for you good young people?’

‘We’re here to discuss the closure of Goldenwell hospital.’ Audrey sitting straight-backed on the ornate chair fanned the cigarette smoke away from herself.

‘Potential closure.’ Lonie relaxed into his seat, elbow on the armrest, corrected her, taking a drag and blowing smoke in her direction.

‘Potential closure,’ parroted Audrey, her eyes smarting.

‘Where did you get that information?’ His Eminence hand with the fag in it pointed towards Lonie.

‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said Lonie.

‘But is it true?’ asked Audrey.

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’ His Eminence took another drag and chuckled. He turned towards her and added. ‘It’s not black and white. What I will say is we’re talking to this Conservative Government about it. We are in debt. The welfare system is unravelling and those at the very bottom, the poorest members are being asked to pay the price.’

‘Is Goldenwell Hospital closing or not?’ asked Audrey.