Lonie7

Lonie swiped the car keys out of Audrey’s hand. ‘No you don’t. You can get a bus home like everybody else.’

A drunken man staggered through the swing doors of The Press Bar and stopped short at the sight before him. A man and a big busty woman were wrestling in the street. The woman was red faced and trying to grab at him. He was grinning, his coat tails flying as he stepped back, retreating step by step, grabbing at her hands and slapping them away. The drunken man winced for the gangly young man. He didn’t expect the kick that connected with his shins.

Lonie was no longer grinning. ‘That’s cheating,’ he said.

‘Just give me my keys. You stole them off me. That’s theft.’ Audrey was flushed, out of breath, her chest bouncing up and down.

‘Well call a cop.’ Lonie had the keys gripped firmly in the fist of his right hand, but he took a few steps backwards in case she counter-attacked.

‘I’ll give you the keys,’ cackled the drunken man. ‘You can come stay with me anytime.’

Audrey turned to look at him. He was a little old man, with a cloth cap perched on his head like pigeon dirt. Then she turned to look at Lonie with a look of disgust. ‘Car keys!’ Her face was set, determined, leaving no suggestion that there was any more room for playing around.

His fist uncurled and he stretched his hand out tentatively. The keys held out as a peace offering between them.

But when she went to grasp them his fist closed once again. He whipped his arm back and shoved the car keys firmly in his greatcoat pocket. ‘You’re drunk as a skunk.’ He turned sideways to her as if ready to start running. ‘Don’t think you’ll catch me. I was one hundred metre champion in Primary Seven, and I was in the school fitba team.’ He patted his thigh. ‘These legs have still got it.’ He feigned to go one way, then the other.

‘Look.’ Audrey took a step forward on the pavement. He sneaked sideways onto the cobbled road that ran behind the pub. She tried to sound reasonable with his impenetrable unreasonableness. ‘I only brought enough money for lunch. I’ve not got much money left and doubt that I could afford a taxi. I live on the other side of the water. The nearest train station is about two miles away and I’d need to walk through all these derelict old buildings on the river to get there and I’m not even sure I know the way on foot. Besides,’ she took a step towards him, ‘I’m not “drunk as a skunk” as you put it. I think I’d two shandies.’ She took another step forward. ‘I admit I may have been a trifle over exuberant.’

‘Over exuberant?’ Lonie fingered the keys in his pocket, but he was no longer smiling. ‘If exuberant means pissed. You were most certainly that.’ He staggered about laughing. ‘I feel a bit exuberant myself.’ A cold rain started blowing down and along the empty spaces of the Broomielaw, getting picked up by the growing wind and magnified by the deep silent band of the River Clyde. ‘Ah could walk you up to the train station, but, you’re not the only one that can’t afford a taxi. It’s payday tomorrow and Ah’ve only got enough money for a few haufs.

‘Just give me the keys.’ She held her hand out impatiently and addressed him like a child.

‘No.’ He faced her, his jaw set. ‘Whit about all those poor children that you were talkin’ about? You only come up with arguments like that when it suits you?’ She looked away. He could see she was shivering. ‘Look,’ he scrambled through his coat pockets and then his trouser pockets, pulling out all the change he had. Cupping it in his hand he held it out to her. ‘There’s probably about a pound there. That should get you a taxi into the toon. Then you can get a train hame.’

Audrey looked at his face. He looked and sounded serious. She tentatively held her hand out and their fingers touched briefly as the change cascaded into her palm. Sixpence escaped her grasp and rolled towards the gutter. He was immediately hunting it down on its wayward path and stamping on it before it was lost to the space between the cast-iron curves of the drain. He held it up like a trophy between thumb and forefinger, the silver alloy twisting and catching the orange neon of the street lighting.

‘For you, M’lady,’ he said, handing it to her with a flourish.

‘Thanks.’ She opened her bag and placed it carefully in the folds and loose change section of her red leather purse with the other coins. But she was distracted. Her neck turning one way and the other looking past him, and listening not to what he was saying, but for the distinctive thumping sound of a diesel engine changing gear that meant a black Hackney was somewhere on the tarmacked road. ‘Is there a phone box close by?’ she asked him, ‘and we could phone a cab?’

‘There’s one back in the pub.’ Lonie’s lips slapped together and he made a smacking sound as he spoke.

Audrey shook her head in a ‘no’ answer. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She started walking away from him, her eyes peeled to the road. She walked back towards the entrance to the pub. A black Hack, as if sensing its prey, passed Lonie on the outside and swooped in, its tyres crunching on the grit and dirt, parking close to the pavement.

Lonie pulled his collar up to protect him against the rain, took a deep breath and rubbed some warmth into his white hands as he set off towards Partick. He heard the taxi’s engine idling, but he quickly turned when he heard the familiar clip-clop of her shoes as she followed him along the pavement.

‘Whit?’ Rain water ran down his face as he turned to face her. ‘You’re still no’ gettin’ your car keys.’

‘It’s ok.’ She was in a hurry to say what she had to say. The taxi door was open. The light on the back seat was on. The driver was looking impatiently back in the direction that she’d went. He tooted the taxi’s horn. ‘I was just wondering if I could drop you off?’ The taxi tooted its horn again and she turned around and gave the driver a hard stare.

‘Nah, you’ve no’ got enough money. Anyway, I can walk. I don’t really live that far away.’

‘But you gave me all your money.’ The taxi tooted. ‘Will you be alright?’ She turned to see the man with the flat cap getting into the cab. They watched as the light in the back of the cab went off and it pulled out onto the road, made a U-turn and splashed through a puddle and passed them on the other side of the road, its drunken passenger getting knocked about in the back of the cab like a paper bag.

‘Hi-you,’ shouted Audrey, but the taxi driver didn’t even glance across.

‘I’ll get another,’ she said, convincing neither of them. The wind shrieked driving the rain and she shivered, clutching and slapping warmth into her arms.

‘I’ll walk you.’ He nudged her. ‘That way we can get a bit of heat.’ He put his arm through hers and they started walking back towards the pub. They walked for a few minutes their feet slapping off the road, stacks of warehouses glooming down at them, until she suddenly stopped and pulled her arm out of his.

‘That’s stupid, you’ll need to walk all the way back up there and all the way back.’ The shoulders on her coat were a sponge colour and the bounce in her hair was plastered down. ‘I could just come and stay at yours.’ Her teeth were chattering.

The pub was emptying of customers as they passed it again, going the other way. Lonie like a gentleman was on the inside, protecting her from predatory stares from people like himself. He picked up the pace, walking faster than he normally would as she clung to his arm.

‘And no hanky-panky!’ She stopped, mid-stride, making him laugh.

‘Hanky-panky!’ Lonie kept walking pulling her along. ‘The last time ah had hanky-panky ah think it was my birthday. Women came from all over to give me hanky-panky, but ah had to leave some unopened. A man can never get enough hanky-panky. But since it’s no’ my birthday ah’ll let you off.’

‘I mean it,’ she said, pulling away from the crook of his arm. They had left the black weather stained warehouses and waterfront behind them and were on the Sauchiehall end of Dumbarton Road filled with brownstone tenement buildings, Art Galleries and fancy pubs that sold more than one flavour of crisps, with rock star decibles and light streaming out of the windows and trendily dressed customers, with big hair and big heels, and denim jacketed students, all Wrangler and Levi that rushed in and out, as if the place was on fire and they had to go back in because they thought they’d forgotten something. The road wasn’t busy, a trickle of cars and buses, but in comparison to the area they’d just left it seemed like rush hour. ‘I need to find a phone.’ She looked along the straight road, searching for the red marker of a phone box.

‘C’mon,’ he said, pulling at her arm and across the road into University Avenue. ‘There’s a phone box up here, but you’ll not need it, there’s a taxi rank just up the road.’ He stood on the edge of the pavement with his hand out as a taxi roared past, down Byres road, ignoring him.

‘How far away do you live? Do we need to get a taxi?’ Audrey stepped in front and to the side of him. Pedestrians passed them on the inside of the broad pavement.

‘Ah thought you wanted to go hame?’

‘I thought I was staying at your house.’

‘You ur, but whit do you want a taxi for?’

‘I don’t. I want a telephone.’

Lonie held his hand up. Another taxi careened down the street and he tried flagging it down. Unsuccessful he let his arm drop. ‘Whit you want a telephone fur then?’

‘I need to phone my mum.’

An, ‘oh,’ escaped from his lips. He searched for his fags and his gaze shifted from her to the phone boxes 100 yards up the road.

‘To let her know that I won’t be home tonight.’ She could see he hadn’t thought of that. ‘She’ll already be worried. Probably got the police already out looking for me.’

‘Well, at least that will make good copy. I can see the headline: “reporters mum starts manhunt because daughter misses her dinner.’ Lonie patted down his pockets. ‘Shit. Ah think Ah’ve left my matches in the pub. Ah’ll need to cadge a light off somebody.’ He stuck a fag in his gob. ‘The phones are over there.’ He motioned with his head.

‘You got a light? You got a light,’ she heard him say, whilst strangers ebbed and flowed around him, contriving not to meet his searching gaze.

Lonie was standing in almost the same position on the pavement when she got back, his face turned towards the lights of The University Café, but he was smoking and had the look of a philosopher who had captured the meaning of life, but wasn’t letting on, just yet. She had a more practical problem. ‘You know where there’s a phone that works?’

He shrugged. Whits the matter? Vandalised?’

‘There’s coins stuck in both the 10p and 2p slots. You can dial and I got through. I heard my mum say “Hallo” but I couldn’t put the money in. She’ll be even more worried now. She probably thinks that was a kidnapper wanting ransom money.’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘They really should empty those phones.’

Lonie grabbed at the lapels of her coat and ducked down to get a good look at her face. ‘How much are you worth?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘not sure, about ten pence, but I’m sure I’m worth the price of a phone call. Let’s round it up to two pence.’

‘Done.’ He grabbed at her coat and pulled her up and across the pavement, like a kite. A young boy with a black wispy beard pushed open the heavy door of the phone box and eyes downcast slumped by them. ‘You better no’ have been peeing in there,’ Lonie shouted after him.

Lonie stepped inside the phone box, his nostrils sniffing the air, but there was nothing apart from a bit of hash smoke. Audrey pushed in beside him, her breath on his face. He patted her on the head and tried not to think about how close she was; how nice she smelled and how determined he was not to get an erection even though he already had one.

‘Wait a minute and I’ll get the change out of my bag.’

Audrey shimmied and shook as she bent down to open her bag. He tried not to look. He really did. He picked up the phone receiver and dialled 100 to make his mind concentrate on other things; physical things, that were not physical; physical things that were not female.

‘Hallo, is that the operator…’

‘My money got stuck in the phone…’

‘A two pence…when that didn’t work ah put in a ten…that got stuck too…’

‘It’s the phone box on the junction of Byres Road…Hing on.’ Lonie put his hand over the receiver. ‘Whit’s your maw’s number?’ he asked Audrey, parroting it back to the operator on the other side of the line.

‘Thanks,’ he handed the receiver to Audrey. ‘The phone’s ringing. You better speak to your maw.’

‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘it’s me…’

Lonie brushed past her and stood outside the phone box, glad to get some cold air about his face and body.

Audrey was smiling when she came out a few minutes later. ‘It’s alright. Air- sea rescue have been stood down. I’m staying with a girlfriend.’

Lonie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A girlfriend?’

She laughed, pushing her arm through his. ‘That was brilliant. How did you do that?’

Lonie walked arm-in-arm with Audrey down to the junction. They stopped at the traffic lights. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘The important thing to remember when you’re talkin’ to an operator is they’re no’ real people. They’re actually robots. And you’ve got to speak to them in robot speak or their levers don’t work.’

The lights changed to red. Audrey pulled at his arm, so that they could cross the road. ‘And what if they’re not actually robots?’ she asked half way across the road.

‘Ah, difficult one.’ He slowed and stopped as the lights changed to yellow and then green.

‘Hurry up you’ll get us killed.’ She pulled him onto the pavement.

‘It’s quite simple. He stood untroubled as people passed either side of him. ‘ Ah’ve got a theory about that. If you’ve got a metal coat hanger you can use it on the phone, or your money back. Get it right up them. That’s the only thing robots understand.’

‘I’d say you’re mentally unbalanced.’ Audrey let him take her arm as they turned past the corner and made their way along Dumbarton Road.