In Lonnie's Shadow

by Chrissie Michaels

  While Pearl cast a crafty look at Ruby, Lonnie started to count five empty bottles standing on a mantle. But where had he seen them? A childhood voice trilled at the back of his head. ‘One, two, three, four, five, once I caught a fish alive.’ Pain was a peculiar thing. It turned solid into liquid and slowed down time; split body and mind; changed the here and now into the imagined.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Try me. Stop loafing like the dense lump of lard you are and help. Mind you lift him gently.’

  Lonnie’s vague attention drifted to the hands he could feel pressing and cradling his armpits, attempting to lift him. He stared blankly at those butterfly hands. He felt a flutter and a tickle. He could have been laughing. His insides hurt. A moan came rattling from his chest.

  ‘Easy does it, Lonnie.’

  If only he could place the voice.

  ‘We’ll take him upstairs. Don’t let Madam see.’

  ‘If she does, I’ll blame you,’ Ruby snapped.

  ‘Just do what you’re told!’ Pearl fumed back. ‘Carry him inside before he bleeds to death all over us.’

  Ruby shot her a terrified look. ‘He won’t, will he? What if he does? What if his insides spill out over my dress and his eyes pop out? What if his heart bursts open?’ Her voice went shrill at the horror. ‘What if he dies?’

  ‘I swear you better shut up before I punch your podgy brain out with my own bare hands.’

  To the sound of Ruby heaving and puffing and ever complaining, and before they had taken three unsteady steps, Lonnie heard the sounds of their argument blur. He spun down into a deep dark well of nothingness.

  VELVET COVERLET

  Item No. 6772

  Purple coverlet. Blood stains.

  Carlo had an uneasy premonition about leaving Lonnie by himself after the race. An awful feeling that crept up on him as if a black cat had crossed his path. Like he’d broken a mirror and was facing seven years’ bad luck.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’ he yelled, when he came upon the two girls struggling to carry his injured mate up the steps into the Big House.

  ‘Shut your trap or Madam’ll hear us,’ gasped Pearl. ‘Take over Ruby’s end. She’s about as useless as a cart without wheels.’

  Pearl sent Ruby ahead to dog out, which the girl happily did, more than willing to trade places with Carlo and be out of harm’s way. Lonnie was too heavy and Pearl’s tongue far too vicious for comfort. When all was clear, she waved them inside. Without so much as a sniff from Madam Buckingham, they managed to support their battered friend into the Big House and up the spiralling staircase.

  Lonnie’s limp hand rested on a dark pad of velvet. He took in the sweet smells of rose petal and lavender. He reasoned with cool detachment that he must be inside a lined coffin. Dead as a doornail. At his own funeral. Mourners were tiptoeing past, unaware he was here with them in spirit as well as body. He was an echo, a whisper of his old self, but here nonetheless. It was a moving farewell which made him want to spill some tears of his own. He found his eyes blinking their way around a tiny dusty room hardly bigger than a closet. He wondered who had forgotten to put the coins on his eyelids. He looked in vain for the marbled columns of the crypt. If only his mind would keep a hold of things.

  A voice too sick with remorse and sounding more like Carlo than a welcoming angel burst out, ‘I’ve been a fool. I shoulda known Crick would settle the score. Not that he’d dirty his hands. More likely sent one of his bully boys.’

  With a puzzled frown, Lonnie slowly came around to Pearl dabbing his face with a wet towel. She waved off Carlo’s accusation. ‘You don’t know who attacked him so pipe down.’ When she realised the patient himself was awake, she smiled down tenderly. ‘So you’re back with us in the land of the living. How’re you feeling?’

  ‘Thought I’d died and gone to heaven,’ Lonnie managed to croak out.

  Pearl plumped up the cushions and velvet coverlets that she’d brought in and bundled together as a mattress, quite frankly relishing her role as Florence Nightingale. Lonnie tried to force himself into a sitting position, unsuccessfully as it were, his shoulder and back stiff from the kicking and the chafes rubbing like nettles on his skin.

  ‘Rest easy. You’re out of harm’s way.’

  Having no choice but to be left to Pearl’s fussing, Lonnie settled back down into his coffin. She took him through the full story about how she had discovered him left almost for dead. It was lucky she’d found him in time – Pearl deciding there was no need to give any glory to Ruby, the undeserving little tabby cat – because the rider had been intent on murder. He’d hightailed it when he’d heard the hullabaloo. ‘If I hadn’t come out when I did that madman would’ve kicked you into the next kingdom.’

  ‘There’s only one madman capable of it. And you want to know why I reckon it’s all down to Crick?’ said Carlo. ‘Because Lonnie beat him in the horse race.’

  Pearl raised an eyebrow. ‘I could name a few other madmen around here. Hang on,’ she said, giving him a look of astonishment as the penny dropped.

  ‘Are you telling me he beat Crick? We won?’

  Carlo was still going off half-cocked over Lonnie’s beating. ‘Go on, tell her I’m right. And when I find him I’ll kick his bloody head in.’

  ‘Stop pumping him for answers, yer chump. Can’t you see he’s groggy?’ Pearl patted Lonnie’s hand sympathetically. ‘Don’t go worrying over who done it.’

  Lonnie was being coaxed back into a clammy fog of sleep, away from his pain. Pearl was speaking but her declaration was hushed. ‘I wish us two could’ve been together, yer chump. But I can never be what you want me to be. Even with your bunged-up face, you’re still far better looking than any lad has a right to be.’ Murmurings half-heard, half-imagined. An out of kilter phonograph, fuzzily playing. For his ears only.

  HEAVY LEATHER BELT

  Item No. 4273

  Found in cesspit. Heavy duty, working man’s belt.

  A short time later, Lonnie stirred, more alert to his surroundings and the events that had brought him to the Big House. From the room below he heard a great crash. Thumps came in heavy succession. Bang. Bang. Bang. There was a roar of laughter and shrill squeals. Lonnie wondered if Mrs B had employed a vaudeville troupe from the Princess. After a raucous rendition of tar-rar-rar-bump-te- day, a voice like a parrot shouted, ‘Parlee-a-mint is cawled, old chums! Moved tem-po-rare-re-lee down the road to this upper-tee establishment! Sit down, yer fat cow, before I deck you.’ More laughter and applause followed.

  All that popping of fine French wine and gin, the sporting and the entertainment, made Lonnie more miserable, especially when all he was fit for was to lie here and chalk up his injuries. He rubbed the grazes on his nose and chin. They stood out like volcanic lava. His lips were swollen. He opened his mouth, expecting teeth to tumble out and was mightily re- lieved when they didn’t. His shoulder and leg ached. Red snake welts lay in wait on his stomach like an- cient cave paintings. A vague image of an oak coffin appeared in the back of his mind, which he hastily tossed out. Why am I feeling sorry for myself? he thought. I could have come out of this a lot worse. I could have not come out at all.

  The door creaked open. A dark-bearded gent tottered into the room, carrying along with him the unmistakeable and pleasant aroma of Havana cigars. He pulled in a curly-haired woman and lifted her dress to her thighs. Lonnie rolled his eyes at the sight of her bloomers.

  ‘Not in here,’ the woman objected, tugging down her dress and nudging the gent playfully with her knee.

  ‘Poppycock,’ he slurred. His breath was beery and he was having great difficulty unbuttoning the front of his trousers.

  She protested again. ‘This room’s too dingy.’ Lonnie gave a deliberate cough, which startled the

  man and gave the girl a chance to run off giggling. Turning towards him, the man tried gallantly not to sway. ‘Sorry, old chum, no idea someone was in here already.’ With great formality he secured his front, apo
logised once more, and hastily vacated the room.

  Lonnie shook his head. These toffs were a breed of their own. With the door closed and the room blackened again, he struggled into a more comfortable position. The night was going to be a long one. He listened to the merrymaking. It soon outlasted his efforts to stay awake.

  When he opened his eyes again the house had fallen silent. By his side was a generous helping of currant cake and a jug of ginger ale. Some fattening up from Pearl, he guessed rightly. He managed to get some of the food past his lips and swilled it down with the warm, sharp-tasting drink.

  It may only have been his mind, but the bite to eat made him feel a little stronger. He decided the cuts and grazes were only surface wounds, looking worse than they felt; although the same couldn’t be said for his shoulder and leg, they hurt worse than they looked. That applied to his embarrassment as well. Since making a chump of himself with his misguided declarations to Pearl he figured he’d have to smooth things over face-to-face when next they met. No point in hanging around here then. Better to be home in his own bed.

  He stood up slowly, straightening his legs. After testing them for broken bones, he opened the door a smidgeon and peeped out. There was a wide carpeted corridor with doors coming off to the left and right. At the far end an oak staircase curled its way downwards. One foot was out when he overheard the voice of Mrs B coming clear as day from the neighbouring room.

  He ducked back into his hidey-hole. Mrs B was midway through an argument and he could make out every word.

  ‘I’m sick of you asking. She knows nothing and she never will.’

  ‘I’m not risking the law sniffing around.’ The second voice was Burke’s. ‘It’s my neck they’ll be after.’

  ‘That I won’t forget. It was a hot-headed thing you did, getting into a fight and throwing him down the stairs. We both know I’m in as deeply as you. Look, I asked her the other day and I believe her. She’s a godly girl. She doesn’t remember a thing.’

  ‘From now on, I’ll be keeping an eye on that Daisy

  Cameron myself, see if I don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you touch her unless I say. I mean it, Burke. If you interfere I’ll send you packing. You know as well as I do the girl was only a snivelling child at the time. She’s erased the night from her memory. I’m telling you once and for all, Daisy Cameron does not recall how her father died. Now get out of here and leave me to my business.’

  Lonnie tried to sort out the story he’d just heard. So Daisy’s missing pa had been killed in a fight with Burke. And Mrs B was involved, too. It was a shock to him. More so that Daisy had seen them do it. Only she didn’t remember. It dawned on him what

  Postlethwaite had said that day in the phrenological shop about fear and he fingered the back of his neck. At last it was all starting to make sense. Daisy couldn’t remember by day because her memory of the murder was locked away at the base of her skull, only somehow it was forcing its way out at night in the form of a nightmare.

  After Burke left, Madam Buckingham paused for a while by the window, looking out onto the lamp-lit street. She recalled the events of that night, when upon hearing a torrent of filthy abuse and heart- wrenching cries that even she found disturbing – and it took a lot to make her cringe – she and Burke had stormed up a flight of steep grey steps into the cesspit that Samuel Cameron called home.

  ‘Stop yer thrashing, you cowardly sot.’ Madam Buckingham remembered how the reeking, gut- wrenching, drunken excuse of a man had wobbled to his feet at the sound of her commanding voice and the sight of Burke’s huge bulk beside her. From across his knee the bundle of rags that was his little girl fell to the ground. The thick leather belt was raised above his head, the momentum of the swing almost causing him to fall over backwards.

  As the girl struggled to cover her bruised buttocks with her hands and pulled at her threadbare pinafore, her father’s foot kicked out viciously and she rolled across the floor like a skittle ball. It was a sight enough to melt even Madam’s own hardened heart.

  The man wrapped the heavily buckled belt more tightly around his right fist. It was the same one he had been using on poor Daisy when the two interrupted him and he intended giving them some of the same. He staggered towards the two intruders, so drunk he could barely walk, let alone be of any real threat to the giant of a man facing him.

  Sharp as ever, Madam Buckingham sized up all the danger signs and took a step to the side. At the same time Burke moved forward, grabbed the drunk by the shoulders and lifted him from his feet in a single movement, tossing him head first. Daisy’s pa tumbled head over heels down the stone treads until he came to rest at the bottom of the stairwell with his skull well and truly caved in.

  On Madam’s orders Burke bundled the girl into his rough arms. They stepped over the rapidly spreading stain that was encircling her father’s head, its colour the only relief to the drabness of the house. He carried the senseless child to the safety of the Leitrim, as gently as it was possible for a lumbering thug to do.

  From that time until the other day, Daisy Cameron had asked no questions, simply accepted her home address as the Leitrim and her placement as seam- stress, without so much as a murmur. Hadn’t they, after all, done a good deed by ridding her once and for all of that wretched, gut-of-the-devil father of hers? Madam Buckingham remained convinced that the God-fearing sprat remembered nothing more about the events of that night. But if she did hear any different, she couldn’t guarantee Burke would be as gentle with Missy Cameron the next time round.

  JAR LID

  Item No. 955

  Ceramic jar lid from a popular cure-all for the skin, scalp and blood. Advertised as curing torturing, disfiguring, itching, scaly and pimply break-outs of the skin. For use from infancy to old age.

  With the place to himself, Lonnie set up for a day of rest and recreation in his mam’s armchair. Things were looking up. His grazes were already starting to scab over, thanks to the soothing lotion, and the swelling was subsiding.

  It didn’t take long for the first of his visitors to come knocking. Not that Carlo bothered to signal his arrival. He sauntered in without saying a word. He was hardly through the door before he pulled out the race purse he had been keeping safe, sprawled out on the rug and flung a fistful of the notes into the air, letting them fall like feathers on his head and face.

  ‘How’d you pull up this morning?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Never felt better, mate,’ Lonnie wisecracked.

  ‘So fill me in. You’re lassoed, dragged through the streets, kicked in the ribs, cut to smithereens. Anything else I missed?’ Carlo gave him a sideways glance. ‘You know, I felt sick on race night when I touched the scar and realised it was Trident you were riding. And there I was thinking you’d swapped them back.’

  The blunt edge of the remark wasn’t lost on Lonnie, who took a deep breath, knowing full well some explanations were overdue. ‘See Carlo, it wasn’t as much that I did or didn’t swap the horses, only I didn’t need to. Remember Crick asking me if I’d ever galloped a horse at breakneck speed, but I never got the chance to finish telling you the story?’

  ‘You mean when he made you ride Trident as a pacemaker?’

  Lonnie nodded. ‘Crick didn’t know I’d galloped him a few times before. It was always in the dark or when no one was around. One day we were going like the wind and I got a bit excited. I hit him with the whip, not hard mind you, just to keep his mind on the job, but he pulled up short and lost all interest. Hard as I tried I couldn’t get him back into full stride again. This all ties into when I dropped my whip at the very start of the race.’

  Carlo said, ‘Yeah, when it slipped out of your hand, I tell you my heart sank a fathom or two.’

  ‘It was no accident. I dropped the whip on purpose. Don’t touch Trident and he’ll ride like a champion, but you whip him and he’ll stop trying. If Crick had half a brain he would’ve cottoned on. The only reason I never went past in track work was because I was holding hi
m back. Crick would never’ve let me ride him again. The point is, Carlo, I could’ve won on whichever horse they gave me. I was always going to be on the winner. It’s a good feeling to have outsmarted Thomas Crick.’ He sat back. Sweet revenge, he called it. A crowd of onlookers to witness Crick’s defeat, not to mention taking his money, too. Well worth waiting for.

  ‘So what’s going to stop Crick whipping Trident from now on?’

  ‘Nothing if they still own him.’ Lonnie hoped with all his heart the Glen had gone through with the sale.

  Carlo wasn’t as impressed as Lonnie had hoped he would be when he told him. ‘You still shoulda told me which horse you were on.’ With a sweep of his hand, he peevishly swiped up the money that lay scattered on the floor, straightened the ears of the notes, stacked up the coins and surveyed the amount in front of them. ‘So how did you manage to win all this?’

  ‘I put all I had on myself.’

  Carlo’s face registered surprise. ‘And a bit more besides! Come on, you’re not worth that much. Where did you find the extra dosh to wager?’

  ‘Besides all the bets you put on me earlier, you mean? The truth is I put on a heap more later.’ That was another detail he’d kept quiet about which he now explained. ‘A few friends at the stable who knew I was mates with Bookie asked me to place some bets

  on Crick for them. And that night at the Eastern Market, Rose Payne gave me something to bet on us both. That sort of thing.’

  ‘But Crick lost,’ pestered Carlo. ‘So how does that win us all this money?’

  A brief flicker of guilt washed over Lonnie’s face.