Free Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans Page B

Stuart tried to edge in discreetly, but they all seemed very pleased to see him.
    “Hello, young man. Here with Granny, are you?”
    “Nice to see a young face. Eight, are you? Or seven, maybe?”
    He looked around for Leonora, but all he could see was a wall of sensible coats. It occurred to him that he might as well try to do some research while he was waiting, so he smiled back at one of the women and asked if she remembered the Gala when it was a movie theater.
    “Ooh, yes,” she said. “Doing a school project, are you?”
    “Mmm,” said Stuart.
    “Oh, it was lovely then,” she continued. “A maitre d’ at the door, all dressed in red and gold—he’d salute you when you went in—and a great big fish tank in the middle of the foyer.” She turned to her friend. “Lorna, this young fellow wants to know if we remember this place when it was a movie theater.”
    “Remember it?” said Lorna, who was all dressed in blue, including her shoes and glasses. “We practically used to live here, didn’t we, Vi?”
    “Lived here,” confirmed Vi. “Saw every film they ever showed. We used to sit in the balcony, and I always had a strawberry cone and you always had a bag of toffees.”
    “Oh, those toffees,” said Lorna, “I’d forgotten about those. There was a machine just by the ticket office, wasn’t there? You put in threepence and you got a little bag full. Always exactly the same number of toffees.”
    “Baker’s dozen,” said Vi.
    “Unluckily for my teeth!” added Lorna. Both women laughed.
    “Is it still here somewhere—the toffee machine?” asked Stuart.
    “Ooh no, love, everything went when it was turned into a bingo hall. I remember them tearing it all out—this place was just an empty shell.”
    A bell started to ring, and in the sudden shift of bodies Stuart spotted a guide dog and squeezed through to where Leonora stood waiting.
    “It’s me,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. “Stuart.”
    She smiled, and the dog sniffed Stuart’s knees suspiciously. On the other side of the foyer, a man in a smart suit flung open the doors into the main hall.
    “Have you ever played bingo?” asked Leonora as the sensible coats surged into the hall.
    “No,” said Stuart.
    The next thirty minutes was a hideous embarrassment. Surrounded by people about seventy years older than himself and sitting next to someone who was actually blind, Stuart thought he might have a chance of winning. He was wrong. The caller announced the numbers at the speed of light, everyone else had a row of at least six bingo cards while Stuart only had one, and he still couldn’t keep up. At one point he was so flustered that he dropped his pen on the floor, and one of the old ladies actually patted him on the head as he scrambled around for it.
    When Leonora, who had special Braille cards, won a voucher for a shampoo and perm at a local hairdresser, the caller shouted out, “Let the little lad collect it! Let’s have a big hand for the little feller!” And everyone applauded as he clumped to the front, beet red.
    “That was very, very kind of you,” said Leonora when he got back to his seat. “Now, let’s go to the café upstairs here and have a chat.”
    She bought him a slice of banana cream pie and they sat at a table by the window. The dog rested its chin on Stuart’s knee while he ate.
    “Is the pie nice?” asked Leonora.
    “Fantastic!” said Stuart.
    Leonora laughed. “You sound just like your great-uncle. That was his favorite word when he was a boy.”
    “When he was a boy ? You mean you knew him when he was my age?”
    “I grew up in the house that I live in now. At the bottom of our yard, on the other side of the wall, was the Horten factory. When they weren’t at school, Tony and his brother Ray—your grandfather— were there all the time, playing in the yard, learning the trade. Well, Ray was learning the trade. Tony was practicing magic most of the time. I wonder whether you look like