ARE YOU LONESOME
TONIGHT?
Short story by Beth Lincoln
Illustration by Vanessa LovegroveThe road Angela saw in her dreams was fresh enough to sink your heels in, slick
liquorice tarmac licking the horizon like a long black tongue, forked at the end. There
were no workmen in her dreams, no dull machinery; instead the road swept down
the main street in a viscous tide, pushing Mrs Gardner and the vicar into the dull
shop windows, lapping tar against the sides of the Post Offi ce. In reality she was sure
she’d heard from someone that they were thinking of putting it a mile to the east,
opposite the church, so the ancient Red Centurion pub could get the extra traffi c.
When she ran her hand over the road it was cool and smooth like the back of a
snake. It bucked up into her touch.
“We shan’t stand for it,” said Mrs Gardner fi rmly. In town meetings she glared
daggers at her fellow councillors until they murmured assent. She had lost a husband
and three sons to the Germans, so in the currency of town opinion she was rich.
To Mrs Gardner the road was a river of fi lth that would expose their quiet town to
the gadabouts and free-wheeling motorists, the day-trippers and degenerates who
tossed cigarette butts, sandwich papers and god-knows-what-else freely through
their windows, laughed carelessly and blared rock-and-roll at all hours of the night.
“We’re decent people,” she implored them, when she had a good portion of the
village nodding along. “We have values, here. Some of us cherish the peace after
everything we’ve been through...” and her hand went up to touch the fat gold locket
at her chest, wherein pictures of her dead sons and husband were folded nose-to-
nose. A sigh of sympathy went round the crowd, and another letter of protest was
drafted to the County Council.
Angela would look at her shoes, and leave politely before she was asked to add her
signature. If people noticed her at all, they gave her the same dim look of surprise
they gave her when she showed up to school. People forgot about her family. Angela’s
father had died of pneumonia just weeks after the war broke out, missing his chance
to make Angela’s mother a war widow. On Tuesday evenings her mother went to
curry favour with the WI, leaving Angela alone with the record player.
For two golden hours she listened to Bill Haley & His Comets, The Everly Brothers,
Jerry Lee Lewis — but mostly, oh, mostly, she listened to Elvis, her second sun in
the sky. Once, she had taken three buses to see King Creole at the Empire in town.
She wept for almost the whole fi lm, tears soaking the collar of her dress and her
hands clenching helplessly on the arms of her seat. Every scrap of money from then
on went to Elvis, so she could bring him home and meld her cracked and breathless