Lonie76

There’s somethin’ no’ right with you. And Ah want to know what it is?’ Lonie caught Audrey at her desk the day after the funeral. ‘Look,’ his voice dropped, ‘The Fatman’s asked me to write a eulogy for Father Campbell. You mainlined Births, Deaths and Funerals for long enough to be able to do it in your sleep. Fuck him. Let’s work on this together.’ He looked at her face. She had a pink ribbon tying her hair into a tight pony-tail at the back. It made her look about fifteen. ‘C’mon. Don’t be so grumpy.’ He slapped the back of her chair.

The muscles in Audrey’s stomach clenched as she held her breath. ‘Ok.’ She smiled up at him, a low-watt smile, but it was enough to make him act less fidgety. She took a deep breath. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about things.’ His glance slid over her face and body. ‘I’m leaving. I’m not really cut out for this lark.’ The words came out in a rush.

Lonie’s deep set eyes grew cavernous and his jaw set. ‘When did all this happen?’ He took a step backwards, his bum bumping against the desk behind him.

Audrey’s eyes opened and closed very quickly. ‘Last night. Just now. I’m not sure.’ She shook her head held her hand out in an appeal for him to understand.

‘Whit you goin’ to dae?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe finish my degree. Do teacher training, become a teacher like my mum.’ She tried laughing, but it fell hollow between them.

‘Whit you goin’ to dae for money?’

‘I can work part-time, secretarial.’ She did laugh now, seeing herself in this different life, this better life. ‘I’m good at it. Don’t you know?’ His face showed no sign that he recognised levity. She lowered her head and spoke more nonchalantly. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive.’

‘Whit about the bairn?’

Audrey felt that Lonie was like a boxer, circling her, jab, jabbing, jabbing, and trying to pick holes in her reasoning. She arched her neck and massaged under her chin. ‘I’m sure mother will take care of him. She’ll be delighted I’m becoming a teacher. I’m sure she’ll be up in the attic getting all her old lesson plans out for me…’

‘Ah’m no’ talkin’ about that one.’

Lonie’s eyes seemed to her like dark holes, from which no light escaped.

Her left hand strayed towards the desk and typewriter. She scratched at an ink blot on the desk with her ring finger and then looked up at him. ‘I thought you arranged that.’ Her eyes were as bold as his now, not flinching from what was ahead.

‘Ah have. This weekend.’ His lip curled up. ‘You need to stay with me. Dae Ah get to fuck you one last time?’ There was bitterness in his voice. ‘For old time’s sake?’

Audrey half rose from her chair. ‘No you fucking well don’t.’ She rarely swore, but this was the exception to that rule. ‘You’ll never fucking touch me again.’ She slumped in her seat. ‘I’m trying to be nice about this, but you’re just being an arsehole.’

‘You’re right. Ah’m tryin’ to be nice about bein’ an arsehole. I’ll arrange things for this Friday. Make sure you don’t let me down.’ The phone on Lonie’s desk was ringing. He didn’t look back at her as he went to answer it.
***

Mother was up first. It was still dark, with the wind blowing through the blinds, creaking the windows. Audrey could hear her in the bathroom, running the taps, using up all the hot water, making things difficult. She crept out of bed and into Craig’s room and slipped into his bed beside him. He was all hair now, a regular mop-top, her little boy. She cuddled in beside his dumpy little body and fell asleep. Dreams of grey wolves loping behind her, their panting breath haloing out, the crunch of deep snow as they gained on her, made her eyelids flicker. ‘No. No.’ she whimpered.

‘Mummy. Mummy.’ Craig jerked at her arm. His face was bloated with sleep, but he sat up.

There would be no more sleep for either of them. Audrey’s nose twitched. He’d done a number two in his nappy. Anger flashed through her body. There’d be little hot water. He’d have to be cleaned and sit in a tepid pool of shit as she cleaned him. There wouldn’t be enough for her to have a bath. She felt like shaking him. But already he was up, running over to the window, looking out to the garden.

‘Bird. Bird.’ He pointed, chubby white arm extended out, blunted finger touching the rain splattered pane of glass and chuckling, dancing up and down, turning his triumph into hers by turning to face her and sharing the excitement that he should know such a thing and so should she.

Audrey had a cup of coffee for breakfast. Craig had jam-smeared toast and a jam-smeared chin and a clown’s mouth. Mother had no appetite and a sour look. There wasn’t many breakfast dishes, which should have pleased her. Audrey ran them under the hot water tap—which ran cold -- and scrubbed at them with a blue-checked dishcloth, which would be another fight, because that was the wrong way to do things, but she didn’t care. Stacking two cups, a plate and a bread knife on the drying board to rot and leaving them sundried and not put properly away showed what she thought. Glad to be leaving for work. Glad she wouldn’t be back for the weekend.

Audrey had put in her notice that she was leaving the Glasownian. Parking her car in the usual place on the Broomielaw and being slapped by the cold wind and rain, would soon be a thing of the past. She hurried to get into work, more to get a heat than anything else, carrying with her a small canvas travelling bag for her weekend away. The Fatman had made all the usual noises expected of him about her leaving the newspaper. Bresslen had wished her well. Although he seemed to be drinking more, and certainly smelled that way, Lonie had taken up a stance of acting very civil and proper when he addressed her now.

‘You want to go for a drink, before we go for that thing.’ Lonie was standing, swaying a bit, waiting for her to get into the car after work.

Audrey had brought back her travelling bag from work and locked it in the boot of her Hillman. Initially, her plan was to leave the car at work and travel by taxi to Lonie’s house so that it would be sitting waiting for her on Monday morning. They’d discussed it and thought it better to go straight to the woman’s house that was doing the procedure and leave her car parked nearby. She’d pick it up on Sunday night, after resting all day Saturday and most of Sunday. Then she’d be fresh. It also meant spending only Friday and Saturday night at Lonie’s and if she wasn’t too sore she could go home. She started the car engine. She wasn’t sure where Dalmuir was, but Lonie, sitting in the passenger seat next to her, had assured her they’d past it on the way to the Cardinal’s house.

Dalmuir, with stops and starts for traffic lights, was about a fifteen minute drive from work. Lonie directed Audrey when they turned off Dumbarton Road. They went past the open gates of the public park. The sound of the rushing waters of the waterfall followed them as they took a right. Soon they were passing the white and rectangular-roofed buildings of the Holy City.

‘Are you sure we’re not lost?’ Audrey looked into the gloom at the football pavilion and the grass parks. The Hillman had reached a dead end. There was nowhere else to go.

‘Nah. Straight on.’ Lonie looked straight ahead. ‘She said she’d meet us at some lock-ups.’

The Hillman juddered as she nudged it forward and up and over a kerb and onto blue-grey uneven paving stones behind the pavilion. Audrey was no expert. She listened for the sounds of her exhaust scrapping. The wind whipped the bushes and trees on a path that wound its way up to what looked like other football parks. The car slowed and she braked. A brick wall blocked the path. She looked out the back windscreen, unsure about reversing and there wasn’t much room for turning the car either.

Lonie sniffed. ‘Wait here.’ He pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders as he rocked himself forward, opened the door and jumped out of the car. Audrey watched him walking diagonally across the headlights of the car and then like a black cat blending into the shadows and the darkness. The houses rose up above in tiers, blinking out light like ocean liners. Hot air blew out of the heater, keeping her snug.

About five minutes later, Lonie banged on the roof of the car startling her. He came from the wrong direction. ‘That’s you.’ He pulled open her door and stood, with a red dot of a fag in his hand , waiting for her to turn the engine off and get out of the car.

Audrey shivered and pulled her coat up around her neck. On the footpath close by wind whipped through the trees and bushes making them tremble and groan. A clanking echoed from the railway tracks and a train horn squealed out a warning. Lonie loped off in front of her. He didn’t go far, stopping at the last lockup, a concrete box for parking cars, jerked the handle and there was a scraping sound as he pulled the shuttered-metal door up. Half way up, the door balanced on its internal pulley and in the darkness a torch splashed out a beam of light washing his face.

‘It’s alright. It’s me.’ Lonie pushed the door so the internal weight sprung the door open.
‘Come in.’ The beam of the torch shook as the arm and hand holding it tried to hold it and her nerves steady and shifted to Audrey standing behind him.

It sounded like a young woman’s voice. In Audrey’s head she’d pictured a mature woman wearing the white of a nurse’s uniform, examining her in a well-lit clinical setting. Instead she instinctively ducked her head down as she followed Lonie inside and stepped into what seemed like a damp dark cave that smelled of petrol.

‘Start the jenny up and I’ll examine her.’

The torch shone down and picked out a rectangular metal frame that had a petrol cap sticking out of it. In the deflected glare Audrey picked out the orange frame of a Flymo hanging on a nail on the wall, like the skeleton of some long dead animal caught in the crossfire of big game hunters. Lonie put his foot against the generator wrapped his fingers around the starter- cord and jerked the machine along the ground as he tried to start it. The torch came closer.

‘I’m used to it. Let me do it.’ The young woman handed Lonie the torch to hold.

The other woman’s fuchsia pink lips puckered tight as she crouched down and took the starter cord in her hand. Her hard face looked startled, her blond hair-- black at the roots—whipped round and settled on her thin shoulders as she frog jumped backwards and the machine stuttered and started, kicking out petrol fumes. Four jerry-rigged lights attached by bulldog clips to spikes in the wall, and an orange plastic cable running from the generator, one to each corner of the room lit up the garage like a flare gun. The other woman looked younger than Audrey hoped, younger than she expected, younger than she was. But she was all full or purpose and orders. She dragged the generator outside so only the cables were showing.

‘You keep lookout!’ She pushed Lone’s shoulder and waited until he was outside before slamming the door shut from the inside, sealing in Audrey and her. The phut-phut from the engine outside working its way through the thin metal membrane of the garage door and into the room with them.

‘Let’s get you undressed so that I can examine you.’ She gestured towards two fusty carriage seats, British Railway tartan, pushed together and sitting on breezeblocks in the corner of the room. Two poles sat about a foot apart set in concrete blocks, the equivalent of a child’s netball net. Audrey realized that the poles slid up and down and this was used for stirrups.

Audrey wasn’t sure what she should have worn. She sat on the couch and fiddled with the buttons on her blouse and pulled down her acrylic trousers, but not quick enough. The other woman was all over her like an adolescent boyfriend, fingers prodding and palpating round the mound of her stomach. The other woman stood up just as quickly.

‘You’re second trimester!’ Her voice carried an accusation and a threat.

‘Look I’m backed into a corner here. I’m not a bad person. It was a mistake. Nobody’s fault, but mine.’ Audrey wasn’t sure whether she should button up her trousers or take them off, and, to push things along, take her pants off too, and try and wangle her legs into the stirrups. The other woman looked at her and said nothing. She started to explain again. ‘Look I’m in a no-win situation... I’d need to do everything all on my own, nobody to help me.’ She choked up. ‘I just can't do it. Otherwise I swear I’d never be doing this…And I’ll never have another abortion again. Ever.’

‘No you don’t understand.’ The other woman’s voice had a hard edge to it. ‘I got caught doing this it’s five years. I’ve got kids. Think about that.’ The other woman waited a second, giving her time to digest it. ‘Besides, you’re second trimester. I was never told that.’

‘You mean you can’t do it?’ Audrey’s voice rose in agitation. She was filled with a need to get it over with and back on with her life.

‘It’s a bigger risk.’ The other woman’s lips smacked together in warning.

‘I’ll take it.’

‘It means more…’ The other woman’s thumb rubbed over the index finger of her cupped and curled hand, a miserish signal for more geld.

‘You’ll need to speak to my partner.’ Audrey pulled her trousers up and buttoned her blouse. She looked up at the other woman. ‘But whatever he’s short. I’ll personally make up the deficit. I promise. I promise.’

The other woman had a mannish walk. She kicked her way through the dust on the floor. The door scraped open and the darkness outside sat like a wall that Audrey wouldn’t be able to climb over. She closed her eyes and prayed that Lonie would have enough money to make it right.