‘What are you doing?’ Laura said crisply from behind him.
He started at the sound of her voice, looking round to see her black, shadowy form looming over him, the details of her face lost in the dark. ‘Sorry, Laura,’ he stammered, ‘I was looking for the dratted bathroom. I felt sure you said it was down this way.’
‘That’s not the bathroom door,’ she said coldly. ‘The bathroom is that way.’
He passed her sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘The old memory is playing up.’ He was conscious she was watching him all the way up the stairs to the bathroom door. ‘I thought you must be asleep,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘I hardly sleep,’ she said, her voice as monochrome as the gloom. ‘I don’t much like the night time.’
* * * *
The weekly visit to
Caldwell
’s office to collect his wages had become something of a nightmare for Vince. It had been fine until Monica had pushed old Mrs Kimble out of the nest. He paused outside his manager’s office door, sucked in a deep, calming breath, and knocked. There was no reply, even though he knew someone was inside. He knocked again, louder.
‘Come,’ ordered Monica’s distinctive voice.
He entered. She was sat as bold as brass behind
Caldwell
’s desk. She glanced tiredly at him and pointed at a space in front of the desk which she expected him to occupy. He hesitated. ‘Well, do you want your money or not?’ she said smartly.
Vince went up to the desk. She didn’t raise her head, rummaged around in a drawer and removed a small, square wage packet, which she tossed unceremoniously onto the desk. She slid a piece of paper over to him, slapping a pen on top of it. ‘Sign,’ she said.
He signed for his wages. ‘Does Mr Caldwell know you’re sat at his desk?’ he said, clutching the brown paper packet. He didn’t dare look up at her as he said it.
‘What’s it to you?’ she snapped. She watched him as he put the wages into his pocket.
Vince noticed
Caldwell
’s Oscar statuette standing lopsided on the desk. It had a massive dent in the base. He knew how it had happened, of course, but couldn’t resist saying something.
‘What’s happened to the Oscar? That was a present from Mr Caldwell’s wife. She won’t be pleased about it being damaged.’
Monica peered contemplatively at it from under her heavy lids. ‘His wife, yes…’ she said. She put out a casual hand, lifted the statue by its head, swung it over the side of the desk and dropped it with a clatter into the waste bin.
‘You can’t do that!’ said Vince. ‘That belongs to Mr Caldwell.’
‘You don’t know who you are dealing with, do you, squirt? Let me tell you this for nothing, your days at the Empire are numbered,’ she said, a cruel twist to her brightly coloured lips.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like I just said. You’re not indispensable, you know.’ She rested her chin on a bridge made by her hands. ‘I’ve suggested to Martin – Mr Caldwell – that we need someone better suited to the job of projectionist if this place is ever going to improve. People like you are dragging it down.’
‘That’s not true!’ he said, horrified. ‘What does Mr Caldwell say? He’s never told me I’ve been bad at my job.’
‘So what if he hasn’t? I can do as I please, Vince,’ she said. She crooked her little finger. ‘I have him just where I want him. You see, that’s the trouble with men; they’re controlled more by what’s in their underpants than what’s in their heads. He’ll do whatever it is I want him to do.’ She waved her hand, looking away again. ‘Shoo, fly, don’t bother me.’
Vince stifled his annoyance, felt a fire raging in his insides that he could not quench. ‘That’s not fair,’ was all he could manage to utter as he turned about to face the office door.
‘Life’s not fair,’ she said. ‘By the way, Mr Caldwell is looking for you. You’d better go find him fast if you don’t want to upset him.’
‘What does he want me for?’
She grinned. ‘You’ll have to go and see won’t you? He’s down in the basement somewhere.’
He found Martin Caldwell down in the boiler room. He was rummaging through a bunch of keys, standing before a door in a corner of the room.
‘You wanted to see me, Mr Caldwell?’ Vince asked uncertainly.
Caldwell
spun round, looking faintly agitated. ‘Yes I do, thanks, Vince.’
‘Have I done something wrong?’
‘What? Course not. Here,’ he said, handing him the keys, ‘which is the right one for this blasted door?’
‘That leads to an empty cupboard, Mr Caldwell; are you sure you need to go in there?’
‘A cupboard? I thought it led down to the old part of the Empire.’
‘The basement?’
‘That’s right. I have to look over a few things to do with the refurbishment, and all that,’ he said vaguely. ‘There’s an old well in there, right?’
Vince nodded. ‘Yes there is. It’s basically a hole in the ground that’s been covered over with an iron grating. It’s medieval, they say. The Empire was built on the foundations of a much older building. Some say it was the site of a medieval tannery. The door you’re looking for is this way.’
Vince led him out of the boiler room, down another flight of stairs to another door. Beside it an old fire-axe hung on rusted hooks, above a positively ancient-looking fire extinguisher. He found the correct key. They felt the intense cold from the darkened room creep up the steep stone steps to greet them.
Caldwell
paused at the top of the steps, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. ‘Is there a light?’ he asked.
‘No, Mr Caldwell. Electricity doesn’t come this far down.’
‘So nobody ever comes down here?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s no need. I’ve been in recently to store some old films I found in the loft, but before that the last time was when someone came in about seven years ago to bolt a metal grating over the well because it was deemed dangerous.’
Caldwell
took out a box of matches and stuck one. ‘Let me see,’ he said, treading carefully as he descended the uneven stone steps.
The walls were constructed of large pieces of stone, mossy-green in places with the damp. ‘Are those the films?’ asked
Caldwell
nodding towards a pile of rusting old cans in the corner.
‘’Yes, Mr
Caldwell
.’ Vince went over to them. There were about twenty in number. ‘I found them stashed away in the loft, like I said. When I looked there were a load of shorts by Laurel and Hardy, the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, and a few Charlie Chaplin films dated around 1915 –
In the Park
and
Work
, that kind of thing.’
He struck another match. ‘I don’t care what they’re about, what are they doing here?’
‘They’re film history, Mr Caldwell, classics. There won’t be many copies left of some of them. And they’re on nitrate film.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s not as stable as modern film. It’s flammable, can self-combust if it gets hot. That’s why I put them down here, to keep them cool.’
‘What the fuck are you doing keeping piles of worthless old junk that nobody wants and might even catch fire? Get rid of it.’
‘But Mr Caldwell, you can’t throw things like this away.’
‘Do as I say, Vince,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Don’t argue. So, this is the well, huh?’
At the far end of the square room was a rusting iron grid about three-feet-square and flat to the floor. It had been bolted down with four bolts, one at each corner.
Caldwell
went over to it, tossed away his spent match and lit another. He bent to his haunches, holding the flickering flame over the grating. He peered down into the black hole it covered.
‘How deep does this go, Vince?’
‘Dunno, but it goes down a long way, I guess.’ Vince picked up a small stone and dropped it down through the iron grating. They listened in silence for what seemed quite a while before hearing a faint splash echoing up the circular well. The match fizzed out, plunging them into almost total darkness except for the light spilling in from the open door at the top of the stairs.
‘What are you looking for?’ Vince asked.
Caldwell
rose to his feet and made for the stairs. ‘Hazardous thing to have,’ he said. ‘Before any work could begin down here they’d have to check the water table and fill the well in.’
He seemed satisfied with his discovery. At the top of the stairs, as Vince re-locked the door,
Caldwell
asked for the key to be taken off the ring. He pocketed it.
‘Is that all, Mr Caldwell?’ Vince said. ‘You’ve nothing else you have to tell me?’
‘No, that’s fine, thank you, Vince.’ He frowned at the young man. ‘Everything OK?’
Vince said everything was just fine, but he felt disconcerted with what Monica had told him. There were precious few jobs in Langbridge, and even fewer that he wanted to do. He loved being a projectionist. He’d be lost without the Empire. It must have shown on his face because he was stopped by young Edith. She was carrying a mop and bucket and he hadn’t expected her to be there at that time in a morning.
‘I’ve just got a morning job as one of the cleaners,’ she said, rather too brightly as far as Vince was concerned. He didn’t know how she could get excited by the job of cleaner, but Edith seemed blessed with being able to see the best in everything. ‘I’m on my way to mop out the lavatories,’ she added.
‘That’s nice,’ said Vince without an ounce of passion.
Edith nudged him with the top of her mop pole. ‘What’s the matter with you, you glumbum you? Things aren’t that bad, are they?’
‘Monica is after getting me the sack, if you must know,’ he said with a desultory sigh. ‘And why are you always so bloody happy?’ he said.
She recoiled slightly, as if the comment had physically struck her. ‘Well there’s no sense in being miserable, is there? Don’t worry about Monica. Things are never as bad as they seem.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ he said, exasperated. ‘You’re weird.’
‘You’re not still mad at me, are you? Is that why you’re being so horrible to me? I said I was sorry, and you can’t blame me for Monica’s nastiness.’
‘I’m not mad at you,’ he said.
‘I see. Then you’re still pining after that Laura Leach woman, that’s what it is.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Oh yes you are. It’s written all over that sour little face of yours.’
‘So what’s it got to do with you if I am or if I’m not?’ He brushed past her, determined to put an end to the conversation; he didn’t like where it was headed.
Edith, on the other hand, was determined to keep it burning a little while longer and followed hot on his heels. ‘It’s probably best you forget her anyway, knowing what I know about her.’
He stopped. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Not only is she at least five years older than you, which is just
ancient
, she’s quite mad,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way.
‘That’s an awful thing to say about someone, Edith,’ he said, failing to hide his displeasure.
‘But it’s true. She’s a bit crazy, they say.’
‘They say? Who says?’
Edith came up close to him, keeping her voice low. ‘My aunt knows all about her, because she saw her in
Bartholomew Place
.’
‘
Bartholomew Place
? Never heard of it. What is that?’
‘It’s an asylum, you know, for people with problems up here,’ she tapped her temple with an index finger. ‘She was in there years and years apparently.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘God’s honest truth, Vince. I heard she’d been in there since she was a young girl and she’s not been out long. Those kinds of places give me the creeps. I mean, they can do something to your head even if you had nothing wrong with it in the first place, they’re that bad. Now you don’t really want to go pining for someone like that, do you? Perhaps it’s a good thing she found someone else. You had a lucky escape.’
‘You are a horrible, horrible young woman, Edith,’ he said, walking away.
‘I was only trying to help, Vince!’ she called, her lip beginning to tremble. ‘I’m not really horrible. Honest I’m not. You’re not annoyed with me, are you, Vince? I was only trying to help.’
Vince Moody made a determined effort to stamp hard on the steps up to the projection booth just so anyone within earshot would know how fuming he was. He slammed the door shut and slumped down at the long table.
Why must people be so continually awful, he thought? And why was life so unfair?
* * * *
She looked good and she knew it. Someone once said she had the figure of Bridget Bardot and the face of Sophia Loren, compliments she lapped up like a cat at a bowl of cream. But she couldn’t argue with them, even if she’d wanted to, because the mirror didn’t lie. She was beautiful and if anyone knew how to spend the currency that is beauty then it was Katherine. Kat for short.