Mouse (3 page)

Apart from one other man who was contracted to maintain the ancient electrical and plumbing systems, and the two women who came in to man the ticket and refreshment booth in the foyer, that was everyone at the Empire. And for a lot of the time it belonged exclusively to Vince Moody.

When he’d first started at the Empire he thought all he’d do was project films. That’s what projectionists did. But, as assistant, whilst the Chief and sugared-almond-Michael swapped stories he was never a part of, Vince had to go around emptying bins, changing light bulbs, cleaning up what the cleaners didn’t clean, then polish the tiled floor with an electric floor polisher, take out and wash air filters, fetch and carry cans of films from the lockup outside in the yard, make tea, get the fish and chips for lunch, answer all calls at the back door and a multitude of other tasks which the Chief had put on a long list of weekly chores that only Vince appeared to be in charge of, and all of which had little to do with projecting films.

Finally he was let loose on the twin projectors. They looked faintly frightening, like two prehistoric beasts in a dull lead colour, relics from the 1940s, he guessed, lit not by bulbs but two arc-light copper rods, one positive the other negative, which when brought almost to touching point erupted into a sun-like flame. He found it difficult to keep the rods in the correct position as they burned down, adjusting knurled knobs on the side of the projector to keep them aligned. He soon brought the beasts under his control. So too he mastered the lacing of the projectors with film, in and out of sprockets, under levers and through gates in a complicated order that, if gotten wrong, tore up the film which raced through the projector at twenty-five frames a second.

He learned how to do the changeover from one projector to another, waiting for the black changeover dots to appear on the film, the change from one reel to another, from one projector to another, never even noticed by the cinema audience. And the orchestrating of the many lights around the auditorium, all done from a bank of around thirty switches that controlled ceiling lights, sidelights, lights in front of the curtain, lights on the floor. And when it was all done in conjunction with the moving of the black masks over the screen, the fading of the auditorium music, the dimming of the lights, each bank at its allotted time, the slow peeling open of the curtains and the final appearance of the film on the screen as the last of the lights faded into dark – now that was masterful! That was when he felt like he was conducting a huge orchestra, all the different parts coming together like sweet music. And no one knew of the skill and artistry it required.

This had become his Empire. His refuge from the world. A place where people came to forget the power cuts, the endless news reports of industrial unrest and strikes and the bombs in
Ireland
. The Empire was a place of dreams. And before the people filed in, and after they had all left in the evening, the Empire returned briefly to him. No one knew it like he did. He was the cinema’s longest-serving employee now. He’d tour the old building whilst it was wreathed in quiet, wandering up and down the many rows of empty seats, onto the stage, behind the screen, up into the lofty dark roof space, down into the basement where dusty old things had been stored and long forgotten, down the many corridors that laced through the building like mould in Stilton.

It suited him, this job. He was on his own most of the time. He was never comfortable in the company of others, often painfully shy and uncommunicative, except when he talked about film. He knew tons about film and didn’t have anyone to share it with. Mr Caldwell only cared about figures, profits and losses, and especially the losses. Vince adored the Empire. It was a sort of second home. In fact he felt more at home here than he did in his real home. The Empire was more of a mother, he thought, than his real mother.

And when the film was running and the rods were set, the light and sound were good, he’d often creep out of the projection booth and stand in the dark behind the last row of seats. He’d simply watch the film for ten minutes or so, listening to the sound, looking over the focus, feel the heat in the auditorium – not too hot, not too cold – but sometimes he’d people-watch. Check out the backs of heads, guess who they were and where they’d come from; the singles, the couples, the groups. Here he was in charge. People looked to him, to the man with the faceless head sometimes glimpsed at the tiny rectangle of glass in the projector room wall, though they did not know this. They didn’t know him, he didn’t know them, but they were united by their love of film and for a few hours they were in his capable hands.

He secretly envied the couples, though he was too embarrassed to stare too long at the courting couples in the back row. But you never miss what you never had, his mother often said and he’d try to convince himself that this was so. He’d never had a girlfriend, never even kissed a girl, and something inside him missed that no matter how he’d try to tell himself otherwise.

He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he wasn’t ugly either. He was so plain as to be invisible, he guessed, and his crippling shyness didn’t help matters either, didn’t endear him to the opposite sex who appeared to like their men straight from a
Marlborough
advert. The only female attention he’d ever got was from the cleaners and he began to believe that this was all he deserved; it was all that fate had in store for him in that particular area.

Nobody knew he was here. No one cared he was here. In some ways that suited him just fine. It was a place to hide from disappointment before disappointment struck. Ten years had passed him by in a blink, and he supposed the next ten, and the ten after that, would come and go just as fast. It never occurred to him that things could change, either carving up the Empire into smaller pieces of itself, or that he might one day fall in love.

But fall in love he did. It had been on one of those trips down to the auditorium during the feature. He happened to glance over the back row and saw her, her face lit up by the light reflected from the screen. A woman sat all by herself. Small, neat hair, maybe a little on the plump side. But he was inexplicably smitten with her.

He wasn’t rightly sure what was happening to him, because the emotions were so alien. Couldn’t understand why he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Why his heart leapt on seeing her, why his stomach went all empty and fluttery. Or why he had to keep coming down to try to look at her, to see if she came back to the cinema. And he was delighted to discover that she did. When that happened it was always the same seat she occupied, though it might be weeks between visits. Yet the effect on Vince Moody was always the same; sheer elation on seeing her.

Once, he lingered just a little too long and then noticed that the picture was growing darker. He ran back up to the booth in a panic, managing to adjust the rods so that the light burnt bright again, before it went out altogether and triggered the alarm bell and accompanying boos and shouts of displeasure from the audience.

But that would have been a small price to pay. He loved her, this unknown woman, even though he didn’t know what love was. He’d seen enough of it on the big screen, however, to convince himself that’s what it must be. So she wasn’t pretty in a Marylyn Monroe or Jane Russell way, but neither was he Steve McQueen or Robert Redford, and that fact alone told him they were made for each other.

But when the picture finished and the lights went up, when the people all went home, the dream was over. His life, though, had changed subtly. No longer was the Empire the refuge of before. Without her it was cold, dark and lifeless. Without her he felt cold, dark and lifeless. He felt dead. A corpse. She became his life. A reason to live.

*  *  *  *

Vince Moody owned a tiny terraced house in the most run-down part of Lang
b
ridge. He liked to think he owned it but in reality he had borrowed the sizable deposit
,
and more besides
,
from his parents, who didn’t have much in the way of money and constantly reminded him of the fact, but
in truth he knew they
had been desperate to get the last of their
four
children off their hard-worked hands.
There was no way Vince would have been able to afford to buy a home otherwise, run-down area or not, so he was grateful, up to a point. Having to be forever beholden to his parents and shouldering the guilt he felt at being a major contributor to their supposed poverty being exactly that point.

He was anxious to pay them back, but the wages at the Empire had never been brilliant, even for the position of Chief Projectionist, and had in reality been standing perfectly still for a number of years whilst inflation had decided to take off like a Saturn Five rocket. So the little spare cash he had he squirreled away to pay back the loan, which meant he led a pretty Spartan life. He rarely bought new clothes, left it ages between haircuts – though the fashion was for long hair, which helped disguise belated trips to the barbers somewhat – he ate frugally, could not afford to smoke or drink even if he had the inclination, which he didn’t, and instead of owning a car he owned and rode a bicycle. He would have loved to have taken driving lessons, shoot around the lanes in an MGB GT like his boss, but that wasn’t going to happen in a hurry.

He was also partially trapped by his lack of ambition; or more to the point his crippling shyness, which in turn hobbled his ambition before it ever got going. It had been one of the driving factors behind his parents’ scraping out the dregs of their savings to pay for a deposit on a house for him; anything to get him out into the real world, to give him that little bit of
oomph
, as his father used to say. They were almost embarrassed of him. He wasn’t so much the black sheep of the family as the bald one. They liked to brag off about the other siblings, who had all gone on to really good, steady jobs, even married and provided grandchildren. But Vince? Well, Vince was always considered not very bright, not quite with it, even before he went to school. He was the baby that took the longest to walk, the longest to talk, the longest to potty train. It suited his parents to have him out of the house and out of sight, a distant, almost invisible slur on their genes.

Still, the things he could indulge in that didn’t cost anything gave him some pleasure. He loved film, and his job gave him some access to that. In theory he had free passes to the cinema that he could use to come in and sit down and watch one properly, but given that he was the only real projectionist and had to work every day except Sunday, when the cinema wasn’t even open anyhow, he never got to use the passes for himself. And when he was on holiday – a brief two weeks in summer, one week in winter – he wasn’t in the mood for going back to his place of work. So he gave the passes away to his mother and father, who never went out because they had no money, they said, putting the passes into an old wooden biscuit barrel they used to hoard unpaid bills.

Another love was the detective novel. The library was free and they had a good stock of all his favourites, Agatha Christie in particular, though he had read every James Herbert books ever since
The Rats
scared him half to death, and he couldn’t go into the dark storerooms in the Empire for ages without taking a shovel with him. Both occupations added cheap thrills to an altogether un-thrilling life. But Vince wasn’t complaining. Vince rarely complained. To do that you had to have an opinion and his opinions counted for nothing. You also had to have the guts to voice them and he didn’t have those either.

What he had been able to afford was his bicycle. A brand new Carlton Criterium in polychromatic bronze with lightweight five-speed derailleur. He could be at the Empire in under ten minutes, and in the absence of any other transport – no car and the buses were so infrequent they were a local joke – it meant his small world could at least be extended a little wider, limited only by the strength in his legs and the hours in a day.

It was this shining bicycle that he rode through the streets of Langbridge. Today was Saturday, market day in the town. The June sunshine was beating down on the sweltering shoppers, eager to grab their groceries and cheap tat from the market stalls before magically disappearing around
one o’clock
, when the town centre would fall almost empty again.

Vince breathed deep the warm summer air, the tang of oranges and lemons and the earthy smell of potatoes still caked in dirt wafting over from the fruit and veg stall. He loved this time of year; people swanning around in T-shirts, girls in light summer dresses, transistor radios playing in the streets. Made him feel like he’d like to stay on his
Carlton
and keep on riding, just take the road that led out of town and see where he ended up.

He leapt off his bike before the twin gates that led into the Empire’s rear yard. It was his job to unfasten them and pin them back every morning, and to close them again at night after everyone had left. He was fastening his bicycle with a chain underneath a ramshackle corrugated shelter as Mr Caldwell drove into the yard in his MGB GT. He let the engine growl a second or two and then the yard fell silent, the fumes coming over to Vince thick and strong.

Martin Caldwell was a little younger than Vince, if only by a year or so, he thought. But he appeared far more worldly wise. He was tall and lean, almost too tall for his MG; his hair was long but expensively cut, feathered in beautifully and held in place by vast amounts of Falcon hairspray for men; he wore a wide-lapelled chocolate-brown suit, even though he didn’t need to wear a suit, with a matching brown kipper tie; his shirt was cream with tiny daisies on it. Though fashions had changed and it was now OK for men to wear flowers – and even the colour pink – Vince could never see himself being brave enough to don daisies, ever.
Caldwell
’s platform
Chelsea
boots click-clicked over to where Vince was just finishing off fastening the padlock on his bike lock.