can quite understand how you feel. If I were a girl and had suffered the same sort of insult I think I’d be every bit as sore. Just the same, I’d be much happier if you didn’t go out with Terry again.”
“You needn’t worry. I won’t—under any circumstances!”
Silence again. They had reached the road where the girl’s home stood before Sid spoke again.
“Listen, Vera, you know how I feel about you,” he said seriously. “Why can’t we take a risk and get tied up? I mean—I’ll try and get another job somewhere with better pay. As a chief. I’m experienced enough.”
Vera reflected. “I don’t like taking a risk of that sort, Sid. Not as far as marriage is concerned. There’s no guarantee that you’d ever get a better job, and if you didn’t what sort of pinching and scraping would we have to endure? Start trying to find something, by all means—then let’s talk again. Safest, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” Sid sighed. “I feel now, more than ever, that we ought to get married, if only to protect you. Things would be different with me as your husband.... And it’s me you should have, you know, he added urgently. “I’m about the only one who really understands you.”
* * * * * * *
Terry was fairly cheerful during the matinee, and by the time the night performance began he was apparently his old, carefree self. Neither Sid nor Billy had any more complaints to register against him. They even found they could joke with him without him taking offence. What neither of them knew was that his cheerfulness was occasioned by the fact that his plan was complete. He knew how be was going to get the £200 from the safe. So simple, too....
Terry had just finished lacing up his machine with film. As a matter of habit he gazed through the porthole on to the Circle. It was filling rapidly.
“Pretty as a picture, isn’t she?” Sid asked in admiration.
“Pretty?” Terry repeated, frowning. “Who?”
“Vera, of course. Or shouldn’t I bring up the subject?”
Terry did not answer. He could see Vera clearly enough. The auditorium was brightly lighted now with six three-hundred watt lamps, three on each side of the ceiling. Each lamp was inside a massive heavy opal globe fitting. Terry did not like those globes. They had tremendous weight. More than once he had had the uneasy fear that one of them might come down one day.
Down in the Circle, Vera was in charge of tickets, and she was not exerting herself either. She rarely did. Now she had become the head usherette—mainly because the preceding usherette had departed to get married—she seemed to think she could be as lazy as she wished. She merely indicated the seats to the patrons and left it at that. In the quiet spells she sat on the spring tip-up seat fixed to the panelling at the side of the staircase. From this position she could see people approaching up the second half of the stairs. The tip-up seat was there by law, conforming to the regulation that no usherette must stand above a certain length of time. But for the handrail, which came just about the middle of her back, Vera would no doubt have lolled comfortably. As it was she had to sit erect, whether she liked it or not.
“You can have her,” Terry said at length, shrugging.
Sid gave him a look and then walked into the tiny adjoining steel-lined room where lay the turntables and slide lantern. In a moment or two a Sousa march was rattling noisily from the monitor-speaker in the projection room ceiling. The reverberation of the bass notes in the cinema itself struck against the glass of the portholes and made it quiver slightly. Sound vibrations were always strongest at this point in the building, coming in a straight line from the huge speakers at the back of the screen.
Terry glanced at the electric clock in the cinema. It was 7:10. He lounged across to the sound equipment and examined it perfunctorily. Everything was in order for the show. The triple button marked ‘Non-sync—Projector—Output’ was in the correct first position. The second position was for film sound, and the third for microphone announcements made from the box over the public address system. It was not often used. The last time had been when Johnny Brown had got lost and Turner had been asked to locate him in the cinema.
“Two hundred pounds....” Terry’s thoughts reverted to it as he mused. He smiled to himself.
For ten minutes longer he waited, then he walked down the projection room to an open doorway and went out on to the exterior grating platform where the fire escape began its final descent. It was a habit of his to check that the escape was always in order.
“Twenty-five past,” Sid sang out, changing a record.
Terry climbed back to the projection room again and concentrated his mind on the job. He pressed the switches that flooded the proscenium curtains with multicolour. The Circle was more or less full now.
As usual Vera Holdsworth was on the tip-up seat, her back against the handrail, her head lolling slightly forward and her face turned towards the curtains. In the lap of her uniform lay the gleaming length of her torch.
The fingers of the electric clock had moved on to 7:30. Terry pressed the button that opened the curtains, turned the dimmer control, which brought the glow of the houselights down to extinction, and then started up his machine. The news began. At this moment he felt, as always, that he had just started a journey. The responsibility for perfection of presentation lay with him.
This evening his interest in his work kept wandering. He wanted the show over and done with, so that he could hurry on with his plan. Mechanically, he ran his machine and, without a hitch, the show finished at its scheduled time of 9:50.
Terry did not waste a moment. He had Helen to meet, and then a job to do. He only stayed in the projection room long enough to make sure the fireproof shutters were down, then he hurried into the winding room. Whistling piercingly, Billy had flung the last film can into its transit case and Sid was scrambling into his dirty old mackintosh.
“Okay?” Terry asked, putting on his suit jacket.
“Except for the apeman,” Billy replied.
Sid glared ferociously and then straddled a heavy transit case. He heaved it up on to his broad shoulder. All three went down the stone stairs one after the other and emerged into the wet, steamy humidity of the cinema proper.
“See you tomorrow, Terry,” Sid called back, from lower down the staircase.
“Fair enough, Sid. Good night.”
Terry deliberately lagged behind. He saw Sid plant the transit case near the front door, take the news-can from Billy, and then check up the transport logbook and put it down on the larger case. This done, Billy departed, just missing a well-aimed kick at his rear. Sid hung about until Vera came hurrying down the staircase from the staff room.
“What about tonight’s cash, Terry?” Madge Tansley called. “Shall I put it in the safe?”
“Er—” Terry demurred, anxious to be on his way. “How much is there?”
“About eighty-two pounds with advance bookings.”
“Lock it in your cash desk for tonight. I’m in a hurry.”
Madge nodded, did as ordered, and then departed.
“So ends our day,”
