Lonie6

Lonnie pushed through the swing door of The Press Bar into a fug filled world with enough fag smoke to furnish the fires of hell. It was full of the kind of people you didn’t want to meet on the street - newspapermen. Men were propped up, looking into the glass mirrors of the bar, smoking fag after fag and drinking half after half of whisky and water, whisky and no water, and trying to work out what they were talking about and if anybody was listening. Others bumped and jostled like electrons and protons trying to find enough space around their feet to tell a story that once had sounded funny to someone they’d once knew.

Audrey, with her head held high, followed touch tight behind the damp smelling cloth of Lonie’s dark coat and bobbing black head. He practiced saying ‘hi’ to a few people, and danced around tables and chair legs and people that wanted to talk, his presence swallowed up by familiarity to the jukebox blast of some old Rolling Stones number that made them feel young. But, ‘her with the tits’, as the fatman had called her, cut through the public bar like a shark fin through the shallow end of a public swimming pool. Every man’s eyes seemed to be following her and they seemed to be shaking their heads as if they’d chlorine in their eyes.

As he pushed through the door from the bar into the lounge there was less fag smoke, less noise and Audrey felt she could finally breathe. She immediately spotted the fatman squeezed into the far away corner. His cronies, the other editors from the Glasownian, were peppered like gunshot, around the planks of two tables pushed roughly together, perched on three- legged- cushioned stools.

‘Gerr over here,’ the fatman’s voice boomed out, cutting the distance between them.

Lonie unbuttoned his coat and pulled his fags out. ‘You go over,’ he said to Audrey, ‘I’ll get the drinks in.’ He lit up, the fag stuck to his lower lip, was like a passport to normality. ‘George. George.’ He gently shook awake a man in a business suit that had his head lying on the bar. ‘Time to go home.’

‘Why?’ said George, his hand flailing out, pulling the fag from Lonie’s gob and taking a drag.

The barmaid, Barbara, an elderly nip-faced woman, with dyed young brunette hair, stood with a blue chequered dishcloth in her hand, and gave Lonie an appreciative smile. ‘So’s Barbara doesnae need to clean around your baldy head when she’s moppin’ the bar.’

George's head swivelled towards Barbara. Then it swivelled towards Lonie. Then he was off the bar stool and chasing his legs. He looked about to fall, but caught them in a dip and crashed through the lounge door and was swallowed up by the urgent whispers of a hundred drunk men in the bar.

‘Whit you want to drink?’ he asked Audrey, who stood, unmoving beside him.

‘I’m not here to drink. I’m here for work. Then I’m going home.’ Audrey felt the men’s eyes on her, sitting at the table, weighing her up, as if she was hanging on a hook in a butcher’s window. If she had another button on her coat she would have buttoned it even higher, up to her neck, even if it choked her.

‘Suit yerself.’ He turned to Barbara. ‘A pint of heavy and lemonade for moany face.’

As he got his change, she poked him lightly in the back. He could see her face was white and she bit at her lips. ‘Whit you wantin’? You hungry. You want crisps?’ He turned back to Barbara with a ten- bob coin in his hand. ‘Two packets of plain crisps and two packets of cheese and onion.’

‘We’ve no’ got cheese and onion,’ said Barbara.

‘Whit kind you got then?’

‘Plain,’ said Barbara.

Lonnie shrugged. ‘Plain it is then.’ He supped his pint, and handing the glass of lemonade to Audrey, waited for Barbara to come back from the bar with the crisps and his change.

‘What’s keeping you?’ the fatman shouted across the room.

‘I’m just going to go.’ Audrey sipped at her lemonade and gave Lonie a tight-lipped smile.

‘Whit about your crisps?’ Beer froth clung to his lip as he guzzled another swallow of his pint.

‘You eat them.’ Audrey put her glass of lemonade down firmly on the bar beside an empty pint glass and next to the burnt out wreckage of an overflowing white metallic Tennents’ ashtray.

Lonie grabbed at the sleeve of her coat. ‘Hing on. You did brilliant today with that auld cunt of a Cardinal. But it’s no’ enough to do brilliant.’ The barmaid came back flinging the crisps and his change on the bar. ‘You need to give the fatman a story he can work with, or it's back to the typing pool for you.’

Her heart-shaped mouth dropped open a little as she considered this.

‘Besides,’ said Lonie, ‘Ah cannae eat four packets of crisps.’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’ Audrey picked up her glass of lemonade and followed Lonie over to the corner tables.

Stools were pulled from other tables and placed on the periphery of the table circling the fatman.

The fatman pointed his finger at Audrey. ‘What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘Lemonade.’ She took a sip as if to prove her point.

‘That’s no’ a real drink.’ The fatman nudged a red haired jowly man sitting next to him. ‘Get her a drink.’

‘I don’t drink.’ She took another sip of lemonade.

‘Well get her shandy.’

‘Get it yourself,’ said the jowly man.

MacArthur, the editor who had briefed Lonie and Audrey earlier, spluttered into his pint as he laughed. ‘The fatman doesn’t go to the bar. He’s that lazy he needs to get a taxi to go to the toilet.’

‘I’m driving.’ Audrey held up her glass and smiled, tight faced, through it at the group watching her.

Lonie, sat next to her, tore open a packet of crisps and started munching.

‘Jesus. We’re all driving.’ The fatman’s hand swept round, almost knocking over two or three pint glasses and into an ashtray, as he motioned towards the other editors. ‘I drive better when I’ve had a few.’

‘Just your luck,’ said Tilby a black haired man with an educated accent, blowing fag smoke into the air.

‘I prefer not to,’ said Audrey firmly.

‘Ok then,’ said the fatman deflated. He nudged the red faced man next to him. ‘Get her half-a-shandy that’s not really drinking.’

‘No,’ Audrey put her glass of lemonade on the table, tilting its contents back and forth. She looked at the fatman. ‘What if there are kids on the street and you're drunk.’

‘Whoa,’ said the red faced man. ‘Who said anything about being drunk?’

‘Anyway,’ said Tilby, downing a quick half of whisky, ‘kids should be in there bed at this time of night, not gallivanting about at all hours of the day and night. That’s the problem with this country.’

Lonie stood up, brushing crisp crumbs from his mouth. He turned to face the company ‘Whit you wantin’ to drink?’ He pointed to each and every one, parroted what they had just said and nodded in recognition of something he already knew.

When he was up at the bar the fatman leaned across and asked Audrey in a conspiratorial tone that fooled no one, ‘how’d your meeting go?’

‘It went very well.’ Audrey sipped at her lemonade.

The fatman leaned forward his belly pushing against the table, as he grunted and sat in a kind of side-saddle to her. His brown eyes were unflinching and he kept them firmly on her. As she talked and talked and talked she felt Lonie’s presence at her back, putting drinks down, listening, then wandering back to the bar. The circle of men tightened around her and she reached for the first glass of shandy. It didn’t taste as bad as she thought and found herself reaching for another, as the fatman asked her what she thought and took her gently back to a point that she’d made earlier and asked for clarification. Lonie slumped into the seat beside her. She heard him lighting up and, as she tasted cigarette smoke, turned to find him grinning at her.

‘What?’ She sipped at her shandy and peered at him again suspiciously.

‘How much more of this is there?’ The fatman looked over at Lonie.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Lonie picked up his glass and gulped down some beer. ‘I’d say about another three pints worth.’

‘My round. My round.’ Tilby jumped up almost knocking over the table.

Audrey found another half pint of shandy, or whatever, on the table beside her. She almost knocked it over picking it up. Someone’s hand snaked onto her knee and she batted it away without even seeing where it came from. She was having the most interesting and fascinating conversation about the Glasownian with Mr MacDonald, the fatman, or Sam as he liked to be called. At one point she may even have spilled a drink, some of it spilling on her dress. Tilby sneaked under the table and threatened to lick it off which everyone found so funny, made more so when she tried to kick him, missed, and knocked over a table of drinks.

She felt a hand pawing at her shoulder. She swatted it and then grabbed at it; sure she could catch the culprit this time. But it was only Lonie. Little Lonie. Little Lonie lost at sea. She let her head tilt and her soft cheek lie against his hand. She felt very, very tired. Her eyes kept blinking open and shutting, but if his hand stayed there she was sure she could sleep for five minutes and would feel much much better.

‘C’mon sunshine. Time you were up the road.’ Lonie grabbed at the shoulder of Audrey’s coat and, like a puppet master, pulled her up into a standing position facing him.

‘She’s alright,’ Tilby shouted.

‘Time for another one,’ his pal beside him sniggered.

‘Toilet!’ She covered her mouth and let Lonie, pick up her bag and drag her across the lounge. He pushed open a door, near the bar, and shoved her inside.

Audrey fiddled with the lock on the door, making sure it was locked. It was a cold bare cubicle, none too clean, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Her knickers were around her ankles and she was peeing when she knew she was going to be sick. She half-crouched and spewed in a small sink attached to the tiled wall, blocking it up. Worst of all, when she finished peeing, she turned and toilet- roll dispenser had only a bit of damp cardboard where the roll should have been. She looked over at the sink for a sliver of soap, but there was none. It was pointless searching for handtowels. Then she remembered that she had some clean handkerchiefs in a packet in her bag. But her bag was outside with Lonie. She crab-walked towards the bolt on the door; her knickers dragging against her heels. She kicked them out from under her feet and off. Picking them up she wiped herself down and looked around for somewhere to hide them. She left them hanging on the hot water tap and pulled at the bolt on the door, hoping that no one else would want in before she could get away. Someone banged on the door and her heart stopped.

‘You ok?’

She recognised Lonie’s voice, turning to flush the toilet she hurried out, battling her way past his dour expression and any questions he might have. Battling her way through the lounge doors, out past the drunks with their weaving makeshift shuffles, and accusatory looks in the bar. Battling her way out and gulping in the fresh air of the pavement outside.

Lonie banged through the door directly behind her and tapped a fag out of his packet. ‘You ok?’

‘Yes.’ Audrey smiled at him.

‘It’s just.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just I didn’t think you’d make the woman’s toilet. Nobody uses it, but it’s in the bar. But you seemed rather…’ He let the words drift as he lit a fag.

‘Pissed?’ she suggested.

He laughed. ‘A bit. Pissed enough to use the staff toilets, but I’m sure they won’t mind.’

‘How you gettin’ home?’

Audrey searched in her bag for her car key and, pulling them out, jangled them at him.