A VIKING IN MY DUSTBIN. (13) Bogart and Me

On my quest to find safe and interesting places to hang out during my weekly truants from school, I had found the town Museum. What I didn’t realize is that what I had discovered there was to change on my life.

As I looked into the reconstructed room-set and watched and waited for something to happen, willing it over the pain in my legs, I didn’t realize what seeds were being sown in the sub-soil of my eleven year old imagination. Time after time I returned to stare in at the still but yet strangely animated room, expecting that one day the ghosts of the original inhabitants would appear.

Besides the Art Gallery and town Museum the third part of my new extra-curricular life; my trips to the town’s fleapit cinemas on Wednesday afternoons, were also part of a formative process.
There were three cinemas in town. The two I favored were next to each other on a street called Westgate.
The Playhouse was my favorite of the two, though grungy to say the least it was the better of the two. The auditorium smelled of damp old air and even older people, every time I went the same shadowy huddled figures were there. Like me, they were the cheap-rate matinee people, the pensioners and the homeless.
Although it was depressing when the lights came up, such as they ever did, the Playhouse wasn’t quite as ratty as the Essoldo, a little further down the street.
The Essoldo had seen better days. The outside had elaborate stucco flourishes and mouldings. Once grandpa told me, it had been the town’s Music Hall, now it barely stayed in business. It was so run-down the owners should have paid the patrons.

In those days you could stay in the cinema all day if you wanted, starting early in the afternoon with the first show. Best thing though was that the cheap matinee tickets meant truanting kids like me could get in on pocket money, but I seemed to be the only one.
I would choose my films in advance from the adverts in the Wakefield Express the local paper. I saw everything that was going, musicals, war films, comedies, cowboys.
I saw some great films and some absolute stinkers. I saw films that made me laugh like a drain and some that scared me half to death. All of them transported me to another world on a magic carpet of an old cinema seat, sat there alone with eyes as big as the flying saucers that hovered over Washington.

“How’s it going kid?”
“Fine thank you.”
“What’s a kid like you doing in a crummy place like this?”
“I am incognito Mr. Bogart.”
“Hey kid don’t use my real name- I’m in role. Call me Rick like everybody else in this flick.”
“Sorry Mr. Rick.”
“You should know this stuff kid, if you’re incognito. Smoke?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“Good going kid, these things will kill you.”
“Like a shot of bourbon? Sam a shot on the house for the kid.”
“ Erm, Mr. Rick, have you got any fizzy orange instead?”
“Tough guy huh!”

I knew all the stars and they all knew me in my imagination.
Getting in was never a problem. The woman behind the window at the ticket booth never looked up- or down in my case, and if ever someone came round with a flash-light I just slid down in my seat.
“A half please miss.”
I’d say, my glasses and cap showing above the counter along with my shilling. Invariably a ticket torn in half would slide back under the glass, and never a question asked. Maybe the lady in the kiosk mistook me for a midget.
There was usually a double bill with cartoons and the sort of adverts, slides rather than film, adverts for local restaurants and plumbers.
“After the film why not try the Golden Moon Restaurant, New Delhi, just nine thousand miles from the cinema.”
“Bert Smith Plumber- round the bend but reliable.”

The only time you could see who you were sharing the place with was when the lights came up. Then the illusionary world disappeared to be replaced by the reality of the crumbling old theatre and the prospect outside of a cold and rainy winter afternoon.
Then with the lights up, I’d nervously look round at the gaunt faces of single old people, mainly old men, and the few huddled couples and occasionally the gigglers and gropers on the back seats of the balcony above. Those I could only hear and not see.
Occasionally there’d be some people who spoilt it for the other patrons; someone with a terrible cough for instance, or a drunk, or worse a gibbering nut-case who wouldn’t stop talking. Once there was a bunch of teddy boys taking the mickey and singing along to the songs in the Sound of Music.
All the above were usually sorted out by the manager with his flashlight, who told them to shut up or get out. I thought he was really brave.
But one good thing, there weren’t many perverts, least I don’t think so and was I spoken to only once.
She was an old woman in a fur coat who smelled strongly of pee and lavender. She touched me on the shoulder from the seats behind. I froze and sat still as a frightened mouse, moving only my eyes from under the peak of my cap. I didn’t do anything, but as I didn’t respond she leaned closer. Then I smelled the tobacco and mints on her breath.
“Here dear would like a sweetie?”
Never accept sweets from strangers mum had said. She offered me a mint-imperial from a crumpled paper bag.
“You on your own dear?”
I didn’t move, she stuffed the bag close to my face over the seat. I had no option, mum would have been so mad, I took one hard white and slightly warm mint like a little bird egg, at the same time I caught a glimpse of her thick red lipstick and heavy black mascara. She looked like a monster.
“Yes, er no, I’m doing a project for school.”
“Nice. Bet you’re a clever boy. Would you like to come and sit with me?”
I had to think quickly.
“No thanks,” I said, “I’m saving seats for my teacher who will be here very shortly to check on me.”

“That dame bothering you kid.”
“Oh no.” I said to Mr. Mack.
“I could send the boys round.”
“No really I’m fine thanks Mr. Rick.”

I wasn’t. She scared me, but telling her about my teacher must have worked, that was the last mint imperial I got from her.

The main problem with going to the cinema was that it took most of my pocket money to get in, then I’d be tempted to spend more on a choc-ice or one of those frozen triangular blocks of orange.
Those were dangerous because after you’d sucked on one for an hour it dyed your tongue bright orange for a week. Difficult to explain without major fibbing that you’d caught a mysterious disease! And as I already knew with the thermometer in the hot tea act, a mega-fib like that could lead to a month spent in an isolation ward.
So during the intermission, I tried my best not to look at the usherette with her illuminated tray of lollies, choc-ices and cones and stared instead motionless for ten long minutes at the moth eaten curtains, thankful that temptation disappeared when the lights went down.
But oh how I loved the films. Thank you Mr. English.

After a few weeks I started thinking about what I’d seen. The films fascinated me; how was it that from the reality of the auditorium with its’ snuffly inhabitants and peeling paint, you could be completely transported, within seconds to another world? As though the theatre itself had completely dematerialized? It fascinated me, it really did. And thoughts along those lines, somehow connected up with my Museum experience. Trouble was I had no one to talk to about it.
I wondered hard and long about how was it that you could lose yourself in a story, set in the wild west or deep below the Atlantic in a submarine and still be sat on a thread-bare seat with it’s springs coming up your bum in boring Wakefield? What was it in a story that took you away and absorbed the audience so completely?
Then, one glum afternoon mooching around the museum for the umpteenth time, I had a thought that changed my life. I remember it clearly. It wasn’t born of the museum alone but from a mix of my extra-curricular activities; from within the frames of the paintings into which I felt I could step, the dark paneled room in the museum which, though empty seemed so alive and the films which drew me in beyond the seedy theatre into the comprehensive world of their story and their characters.
The thought was, “Why couldn’t museums and their exhibits be more like films, with a story that takes you in and surrounds you”?

• Favorite
• Report Concern
• Share This
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Add your comment

You need to login or signup to add your comment to this work.

Tags:

bogart, carpet, cinema, flea, magic and pit