Free Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor Page B

episode of Flaming Frontiers or The Torture ( '.ham ber of Doctor R. Every evening, and during the Sunday matinee, I sat in the projection room with the old man who had been the projectionist in some other town, whom Herr Messinger had brought back into employment. When the old man’s stomach gave him trouble and he wasn’t able to come in I took his place, as soon as there was no further custom at the box-office.
    “For the sake of your mother,” my father pleaded, “wouldn’t you have a bit of sense for yourself?”
    He meant wouldn’t I stop doing what I was content to do and return to the drabness of the timberyard. I was becoming a queer type of a fellow, he told me, which wasn’t a good thing for a mother to have to see. “Come into Viney’s one day and we’ll have a bottle of stout over it,” he invited, forgetting his advice to me with regard to drinking in public houses.
    Politely, I thanked him and said I’d look into Viney’s when I had a moment to spare, not intending to and in fact never doing so. On the balcony stairs there were framed photographs of William Powell and Myrna Loy, of Loretta Young and Carole Lombard and Norma Shearer, of Franchot Tone and Lew Ayres. I could see some of them from the box-office and used to watch people stopping to examine them, couples arm in arm, the girls’ voices full of wonder. In the mornings I opened the exit doors at the back, on either side of the screen, in order to let the fresh air in for an hour or two. When the woman who swept the place out didn’t arrive I did it myself; I mopped the foyer and the steps, and went over the carpets with the suction cleaner. Often in the mornings I would press the switch that caused the yellow and green curtains that obscured the screen to open, the butterflies of the pattern disappearing as the curtains moved. When the daylight came in through the exit doors the amber shading of the walls seemed different.
    People loved the Alexandra. They loved the things I loved myself—the scarlet seats, the lights that made the curtains change colour, the usherettes in uniform. People stood smoking in the foyer when they’d bought their tickets, not in a hurry because smoking and talking gave them pleasure also. They loved the luxury of the Alexandra, they loved the place it was. Urney bars tasted better in its rosy gloom; embraces were romantic there. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers shared their sophisticated dreams, Deanna Durbin sang. Heroes fell from horses, the sagas of great families yielded the riches of their secrets. Night after night in the Alexandra I stood at the back, aware of the pleasure I dealt in, feeling it all around me. Shoulders slumped, heads touched, eyes were lost in concentration. My brothers did not snigger in the Alexandra; my father, had he ever gone there, would have at last been silenced. Often I imagined the tetchiness of the Reverend Wauchope softening beneath a weight of wonder, and the sour disposition of his wife lifted from her as she watched All This and Heaven Too. Often I imagined the complicated shame fading from the features of Mr. Conron. “I have told her you are happy,” Herr Messinger said.
    Annie began to come to the cinema with young Phelan from Phelan’s grocery, in whose presence she was less sullen. She showed him off, one eye on me in the box-office, pausing on the balcony stairs and calling out loudly to people she knew. She had begun to wear different shades of lipstick, and had her hair done in a different way. For all my good fortune in being sent away to school, and my escape from the timberyard, she would outdo me in the end. She was outdoing me already, her manner implied, standing close to young Phelan.
    A month before the war ended the death took place at Cloverhill House. Herr Messinger did not mention it but I knew it had occurred because he arrived at the cinema in mourning, and two days later there was the funeral, her body taken to our Protestant graveyard. He made