SIXTY-TWO
TRISTAN WAS UNPACKING THE U.C.M.’s. These bottles contained a rich red fluid which constituted our last line of defence in the battle with animal disease. Its full name, Universal Cattle Medicine, was proclaimed on the label in big black type and underneath it pointed out that it was highly efficacious for coughs, chills, scours, garget, milk fever, pneumonia, felon and bloat. It finished off on a confident note with the assurance: “Never Fails to Give Relief” and we had read the label so often that we half believed it.
It was a pity it didn’t do any good because there was something compelling about its ruby depths when you held it up to the light and about the solid camphor-ammonia jolt when you sniffed at it and which made the farmers blink and shake their heads and say “By gaw, that’s powerful stuff,” with deep respect. But our specific remedies were so few and the possibilities of error so plentiful that it was comforting in cases of doubt to be able to hand over a bottle of the old standby. Whenever an entry of Siegfried’s or mine appeared in the day book stating “Visit attend cow, advice, 1 U.C.M.” it was a pretty fair bet we didn’t know what was wrong with the animal.
The bottles were tall and shapely and they came in elegant white cartons, so much more impressive than the unobtrusive containers of the antibiotics and steroids which we use today. Tristan was lifting them out of the tea chest and stacking them on the shelves in deep rows. When he saw me he ceased his labours, sat on the chest and pulled out a packet of Woodbines. He lit one, pulled the smoke a long way down then fixed me with a noncommittal stare.
“You’re taking her to the pictures then?”
Feeling vaguely uneasy under his eye, I tipped a pocketful of assorted empties into the waste basket. “Yes, that’s right. In about an hour.”
“Mm.” He narrowed his eyes against the slowly escaping smoke. “Mm I see.”
“Well what are you looking like that for?” I said defensively. “Anything wrong with going to the pictures?”
“No-no. No-no-no. Nothing at all, Jim. Nothing, nothing. A very wholesome pursuit.”
“But you don’t think I should be taking Helen there.”
“I never said that. No, I’m sure you’ll have a nice time. It’s just that …” He scratched his head. “I thought you might have gone in for something a bit more … well … enterprising.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “Look, I tried enterprise at the Reniston. Oh, I’m not blaming you, Triss, you meant well, but as you know it was a complete shambles. I just don’t want anything to go wrong tonight I’m playing safe.”
“Well, I won’t argue with you there,” Tristan said. “You couldn’t get much safer than the Darrowby Plaza.”
And later, shivering in the tub in the vast, draughty bathroom, I couldn’t keep out the thought that Tristan was right. Taking Helen to the local cinema was a form of cowardice, a shrinking away from reality into what I hoped would be a safe, dark intimacy. But as I towelled myself, hopping about to keep warm, and looked out through the fringe of wistaria at the darkening garden there was comfort in the thought that it was another beginning, even though a small one.
And as I closed the door of Skeldale House and looked along the street to where the first lights of the shops beckoned in the dusk I felt a lifting of the heart. It was as though a breath from the near-by hills had touched me. A fleeting fragrance which said winter had gone. It was still cold—it was always cold in Darrowby until well into May—but the promise was there, of sunshine and warm grass and softer days.
You had to look closely or you could easily miss the Plaza, tucked in as it was between Pickersgills the ironmongers and Howarths the chemists. There had never been much attempt at grandeur in its architecture and the entrance was hardly wider than the average shop front. But what puzzled me as I approached was that the place was in darkness. I was in good time but the show was due to start in ten minutes or so and there was no sign of life.
I hadn’t dared tell Tristan that my precautions had extended as far as arranging to meet Helen here. With a car like mine there was always an element of doubt about arriving anywhere in time or indeed at all and I had drought it prudent to eliminate all transport hazards.
“Meet you outside the cinema.” My God, it wasn’t very bright was it? It took me back to my childhood, to the very first time I had taken a girl out. I was just fourteen and on my way to meet her I tendered my only half-crown to a bloody-minded Glasgow tram conductor and asked for a penny fare. He vented his spleen on me by ransacking his bag and giving me my change entirely in halfpennies. So when the cinema queue reached the pay box I had to stand there with my little partner and everybody else watching while I paid for our shilling tickets with great handfuls of copper. The shame of it left a scar—it was another four years before I took out a girl again.
But the black thoughts were dispelled when I saw Helen picking her way across the market-place cobbles. She smiled and waved cheerfully as if being taken to the Darrowby Plaza was the biggest treat a girl could wish for, and when she came right up to me there was a soft blush on her cheeks and her eyes were bright.
Everything was suddenly absolutely right. I felt a surging conviction that this was going to be a good night—nothing was going to spoil it. After we had said hello she told me that Dan was running about like a puppy with no trace of a limp and the news was another wave on the high tide of my euphoria.
The only thing that troubled me was the blank, uninhabited appearance of the cinema entrance.
“Strange there’s nobody here,” I said. “It’s nearly starting time. I suppose the place is open?”
“Must be,” Helen said. “It’s open every night but Sunday. Anyway, I’m sure these people are waiting too.”
I looked around. There was no queue as such but little groups were standing here and there; a few couples, mostly middle-aged, a bunch of small boys rolling and fighting on the pavement. Nobody seemed worried.
And indeed there was no cause. Exactly two minutes before the picture was due to start a figure in a mackintosh coat pedalled furiously round the corner of the street, head down, legs pistoning, the bicycle lying over at a perilous angle with the ground. He came to a screeching halt outside the entrance, inserted a key in the lock and threw wide the doors. Reaching inside, he flicked a switch and a single neon strip flickered fitfully above our heads and went out. It did this a few times and seemed bent on mischief till he stood on tiptoe and beat it into submission with a masterful blow of his fist. Then he whipped off the mackintosh revealing faultless evening-dress. The manager had arrived.
While this was going on a very fat lady appeared from nowhere and wedged herself into the pay box. The show was ready to roll.
We all began to shuffle inside. The little boys put down their ninepences and punched each other as they passed through a curtain into the stalls, while the rest of us proceeded decorously upstairs to the one-and-sixpenny seats in the balcony. The manager, his white shirt front and silk lapels gleaming, smiled and bowed with great courtesy as we passed.
We paused at a row of pegs at the top of the stairs while some people hung up their coats. I was surprised to see Maggie Robinson the blacksmith’s daughter there, taking the tickets, and she appeared to be intrigued by the sight of us. She simpered and giggled, darted glances at Helen and did everything but dig me in the ribs. Finally she parted the curtains and we went inside.
It struck me immediately that the management were determined that their patrons wouldn’t feel cold because if it hadn’t been for the all-pervading smell of old sofas we might have been plunging into a tropical jungle. Maggie steered us through the stifling heat to our places and as I sat down I noticed that there was no arm between the two seats.
“Them’s the courting seats,” she blurted out and fled with her hand to her mouth.
The lights were still on and I looked round the tiny balcony. There were only about a dozen people dotted here and there sitting in patient silence under the plain distempered walls. By the side of the screen the hands of a clock stood resolutely at twenty-past four.
But it was all right sitting there with Helen. I felt fine except for a tendency to gasp like a goldfish in the airless atmosphere. I was settling down cosily when a little man seated in front of us with his wife turned slowly round. The mouth in the haggard face was pursed grimly and he fixed his eyes on mine in a long, challenging stare. We faced each other for several silent moments before he finally spoke.
“She’s dead,” he said.
A thrill of horror shot through me. “Dead?”
“Aye, she is. She’s dead.” He dragged the word out slowly with a kind of mournful satisfaction while his eyes still stared into mine.
I swallowed a couple of times. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Truly sorry.”
He nodded grimly and continued to regard me with a peculiar intensity as though he expected me to say more. Then with apparent reluctance he turned away and settled in his seat.
I looked helplessly at the rigid back, at the square, narrow shoulders muffled in a heavy overcoat. Who in God’s name was this? And what was he talking about? I knew the face from somewhere—must be a client. And what was dead? Cow? Ewe? Sow? My mind began to race over the cases I had seen during the past week but that face didn’t seem to fit in anywhere.
Helen was looking at me questioningly and I managed a wan smile. But the spell was shattered. I started to say something to her when the little man began to turn again with menacing deliberation.
He fixed me once more with a hostile glare. “Ah don’t think there was ever owt wrong with her stomach,” he declared.
“You don’t, eh?”
“No, young man, ah don’t.” He dragged his eyes unwillingly from my face and turned towards the screen again.
The effect of this second attack was heightened because the lights went off suddenly and an incredible explosion of noise blasted my ear drums. It was the Gaumont News. The sound machine, like the heating system, had apparently been designed for something like the Albert Hall and for a moment I cowered back under the assault. As a voice bellowed details of fortnight-old events I closed my eyes and tried again to place the man in front of me.
I often had trouble identifying people outside their usual environment and had once discussed the problem with Siegfried.
He had been airy. “There’s an easy way, James. Just ask them how they spell their names. You’ll have no trouble at all.”
I had tried this on one occasion and the farmer had looked at me strangely, replied “S-M-I-T-H” and hurried away. So there seemed nothing to do now but sit sweating with my eyes on the disapproving back and search through my memory. When the news finished with a raucous burst of music I had got back about three weeks without result.
There was a blessed respite of a few seconds before the uproar broke out again. This was the main feature—the film about Scotland was on later—and was described outside as a tender love story. I can’t remember the title but there was a lot of embracing which would have been all right except that every kiss was accompanied by a chorus of long-drawn sucking noises from the little boys downstairs. The less romantic blew raspberries.
And all the time it got hotter. I opened my jacket wide and unbuttoned my shirt collar but I was beginning to feel decidedly light-headed. The little man in front, still huddled in his heavy coat, seemed unperturbed. Twice the projector broke down and we stared for several minutes at a blank screen while a storm of whistling and stamping came up from the stalls.
Maggie Robinson, standing in the dim light by the curtain, still appeared to be fascinated by the sight of Helen and me. Whenever I looked up I found her eyes fixed upon us with a knowing leer. About half-way through the film, however, her concentration was disturbed by a commotion on the other side of the curtain and she was suddenly brushed aside as a large form burst through.
With a feeling of disbelief I recognised Gobber Newhouse. I had had previous experience of his disregard of the licensing laws and it was clear he had been at it again. He spent most afternoons in the back rooms of the local pubs and here he was, come to relax after a rough session.
He reeled up the aisle, turned, to my dismay, into our row, rested briefly on Helen’s lap, trod on my toe and finally spread his enormous carcass over the seat on my left. Fortunately it was another courting seat with no central arm to get in his way but for all that he had great difficulty in finding a comfortable position. He heaved and squirmed about and the wheezing and snuffling and grunting in the darkness might have come from a pen of bacon pigs. But at last he found a spot and with a final cavernous belch composed himself for slumber.
The tender love story never did have much of a chance but Gobber sounded its death knell. With his snores reverberating in my ear and a dense pall of stale beer drifting over me I was unable to appreciate any of the delicate nuances.
It was a relief when the last close-up came to an end and the lights went up. I was a bit worried about Helen. I had noticed as the evening wore on that her lips had a tendency to twitch occasionally and now and then she drew her brows down in a deep frown. I wondered if she was upset. But Maggie appeared providentially with a tray round her neck and stood over us, still leering while I purchased two chocolate ices.
I had taken only one bite when I noticed a stirring under the overcoat in front of me. The little man was returning to the attack. The eyes staring from the grim mask were as chilling as ever.
“Ah knew,” he said. “Right from start, that you were on the wrong track.”
“Is that so?”
“Aye, I’ve been among beasts for fifty years and they never go on like that when it’s the stomach.”
“Don’t they? You’re probably right.”
The little man twisted higher in his seat and for a moment I thought he was going to climb over at me. He raised a forefinger. “For one thing a beast wi’ a bad stomach is allus hard in its muck.”
“I see.”
“And if you think back, this un’s muck was soft, real soft.”
“Yes, yes, quite,” I said hastily, glancing across at Helen. This was great—just what I needed to complete the romantic atmosphere.
He sniffed and turned away and once again, as if the whole thing had been stage-managed, we were plunged into blackness and the noise blasted out again. I was lying back quivering when it came through to me that something was wrong. What was this strident Western music? Then the title flashed on the screen. Arizona Guns.
I turned to Helen in alarm. “What’s going on? This is supposed to be the Scottish film, isn’t it? The one we came to see?”
“It’s supposed to be.” Helen paused and looked at me with a half-smile. “But I’m afraid it isn’t going to be. The thing is they often change the supporting film without warning. Nobody seems to mind.”
I slumped wearily in my seat. Well I’d done it again. No dance at the Reniston, wrong picture tonight. I was a genius in my own way.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind too much.”
She shook her head. “Not a bit. Anyway, let’s give this one a chance. It may be all right.”
But as the ancient horse opera crackled out its cliché-ridden message I gave up hope. This was going to be another of those evenings. I watched apathetically as the posse galloped for the fourth time past the same piece of rock and I was totally unprepared for the deafening fusillade of shots which rang out. It made me jump and it even roused Gobber from his sleep.
“ ’Ellow! ’ellow! ’ellow!” he bawled jerking upright and thrashing around him with his arms. A backhander on the side of the head drove me violently against Helen’s shoulder and I was beginning to apologise when I saw that her twitching and frowning had come on again. But this time it spread and her whole face seemed to break up. She began to laugh, silently and helplessly.
I had never seen a girl laugh like this. It was as though it was something she had wanted to do for a long time. She abandoned herself utterly to it, lying back with her head on the back of the seat, legs stretched out in front of her, arms dangling by her side. She took her time and waited until she had got it all out of her system before she turned to me.
She put her hand on my arm. “Look,” she said faintly. “Next time, why don’t we just go for a walk?”
I settled down. Gobber was asleep again and his snores, louder than ever, competed with the bangs and howls from the screen. I still hadn’t the slightest idea who that little man in front could be and I had the feeling he wasn’t finished with me yet. The clock still stood at twenty-past four. Maggie was still staring at us and a steady trickle of sweat ran down my back.
The environment wasn’t all I could have desired, but never mind. There was going to be a next time.