Free Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor Page A

of a matchbox. He examined the flame before raising it to his cigarette.
    “Wine?”
    “Yes.”
    “You were out with those people,” my mother said.
    “Where’re you going now for yourself?” my father demanded, noticing that I had made a move.
    “Up to bed.”
    “Will you listen to that! As cool as water and the whole house after being in a turmoil!”
    “You gave me a promise you wouldn’t go out there.” My mother had suddenly become still. With a fork in her hand, her eyes hotly probed mine.
    “I didn’t promise anything,” I said.
    I could see her deciding to cross the room to hit me, then deciding against it. My father said I’d had a good education, that money he couldn’t spare had been spent on me. That food was taken out of the oven at twenty past eight,” he said. “There isn’t a dog in the town would have thanked you for it.”
    “You promised me that day.” My mother did not take her eyes off me; I thought she hated me because I could feel something like hatred coming across the room from her.
    “I nearly went down to the Guards,” my father said. My grandmothers couldn’t touch their fried eggs, so that was more food wasted. It was the worst evening of my grandmothers’ lives.
    “There was an understanding between us.” She would stand there for ever, I thought, looking at me like that, as still as stone while my father tediously gabbled.
    Keep off the drink, boy,” he commanded, having issued other orders, as well as warnings and advice. “You’re too young for that game.”
    “I’m going to work in the picture house.”
    The vituperation I had anticipated burst simultaneously out of them, scornful and immediate. Their faces reddened. My father pushed himself on to his feet.
    “I don’t like it in the timberyard,” I said.
    “What don’t you like, boy?”
    “I don’t like any of it.”
    “You’re a young pup. Haven’t you caused enough damage for one day? Go up and knock on your grandmothers’ doors and tell them you’re safe and sound. The other stuff you’re talking about is rubbish.”
    I went away, glad to be allowed to do so. Obediently I knocked on my grandmothers’ doors, but there was no response from either of them, as I had known there wouldn’t be. In my own room I sat on the edge of my bed and within a few moments I felt tears on my cheeks. In the diningroom they would be deploring my defiance, saying they could not control me, that I had always been like that, a bad example to my brothers. There had been pain in my father’s eyes, and in the bluster of his voice when he’d called me a young pup, but I didn’t care; I didn’t care in the least how much I hurt them. It was like a nightmare, that she was going to die.

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FIVE

    Slowly, carefully, she passed upstairs to the balcony, holding on to her husband’s arm. And when Rebecca came to an end they left the cinema in the same unhurried manner. There was, I realise now, nothing she might have said to me, and I could tell from her expression that she found it difficult to smile. “Please wait,” Herr Messinger had requested when he’d set out my duties for that evening. He returned some time later, and together we locked up his property. “One day I shall place you in charge of the Alexandra,” he said. He paused, and added: “That is her wish, and my own too.”
    I would have carried the wireless battery out to Cloverhill as I had before, but that was not suggested. At a quarter past ten every night Herr Messinger arrived in his gas-powered motor-car and stood on the marble steps, ready to say goodnight to his customers when the film ended. I be lieve, although I cannot be certain, that she asked him to. When everyone had gone I would give him the cash-box and he would drive away again.
    Three times a week I fetched the films in their metal cases from the railway station and returned those that had been shown, the smaller cases con taining the newsreels and the shorts, another