The Picturegoers

by David Lodge

  Clare frowned. Surely all this was rather unnecessary? It was certainly embarrassing. Not for the first time she felt glad of the protective darkness of the cinema. Surely this woman was not considered beautiful? Her figure was too … well, big. She had always been embarrassed by her own tendency to plumpness, and had welcomed the enveloping folds of the nun’s habit. Even now, when she was free to try and make herself attractive, she counted her full bust and rather prominent seat embarrassments rather than assets. Yet this woman, in whom the same features appeared, grossly exaggerated, seemed deliberately to draw attention to them, and, to judge by the vulgar whistles from one section of the audience, was considered attractive. What did Mark think?

  Amber’s vital statistics were 38–22–38, and Mark thought of the contemporary cult of the bust, and what it might signify. Of course the female breast was ‘vital’ in a more than journalistic sense—it was the fountain of nourishment, of life itself. Blessed are the paps that gave thee suck. But child-bearing was not in favour nowadays. Amber herself had enjoyed three totally contraceptive marriages. Was the attraction sheerly erotic? Yet the dimensions of some of these film-stars might seriously incommode the performance of the sexual act. Mere size was not sufficient. It had to be combined with a small waist measurement, and balanced by a hip measurement, as near as possible, equal to the bust measurement. In the difference between the identical first and third vital statistics and the second, there resided a mystical erotic tension. In classical times the tension was aesthetic. According to the Greek sculptors, ideally the distance between the nipples, between the lower breast and the navel, and between the navel and the division of the legs, should be exactly the same. But today the Venus de Milo wouldn’t make the front page of Reveille if she was dressed up in a bikini. The bust survives the city. Would Amber’s pneumatic charms, protruding from some faded and flickering revival in A.D. 2000, survive Hollywood?

  * * *

  ‘Come on Patrick. This is where we came in.’

  Patricia tugged at her brother’s sleeve. Receiving no response, she pinched his arm.

  ‘Ouch! Brute.’

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mummy.’

  ‘Tell her.’

  ‘Why won’t you come and do as you’re told?’

  ‘I want to see the film.’

  ‘You’ve seen it once.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Mummy said we were to be in by nine.’

  ‘She did not, she said half past nine and it’s only ten to nine now.’

  ‘Well I’m going.’

  ‘All right.’

  Really he was the most exasperating boy. Well, she had a headache, and had to wash her hair—why should she wait until he was sated, which wouldn’t be till the National Anthem was played if she knew Patrick. The discovery that he could see a film as many times as he liked for the same price as one time had rather turned his head, and he sat doggedly through the most boring films until he was forcibly removed from the cinema. Well she wasn’t going to get worked up about it. Let him stay. She would be blamed for it, naturally, but never mind.

  ‘For the last time, Patrick, are you coming?’

  No answer. As soon as she left her seat and turned her back on the screen, she regretted her move. Depression and worry seeped under the exit door, and trickled down the aisle to meet her. Once she had pushed through the swing doors she was swamped. Immediately, the awful flat feeling you always got after the cinema enveloped her. Suddenly you became aware of what a false, worthless film it had been, and that the same old life was at home waiting to be lived.

  * * *

  ‘Kiss me, Len,’ whispered Bridget. Obediently he bent his head and kissed her lightly.

  ‘What’s the matter, Len?’ she asked, dissatisfied. He couldn’t deceive her. A kiss was as precise as any instrument he used on the bench at work. He fended her off mechanically.

  ‘Nothing, dear. Why?’

  Bridget was silent. She let her head fall back on his shoulder, and squeezed his hand tightly. This he recognized as no loving pressure, but a desperate clutch at departing happiness. His own happiness had slipped away when he first glanced at the illuminated clock on the cinema wall, which had the letters THE PALLADIUM arranged in a circle instead of numbers. It had been half past D then; now it was M to I.

  He was worried about seeing her home, about not being able to see her home. Every time they went out he worried about not being able to see her home, and every time it spoiled his evening almost before he had begun to enjoy it. He would have cheerfully walked home for Bridget’s sake, but if he was late in, Ma was bound to have an attack, just out of spite. Still, the fact remained that he could see her home, and hang the consequences. Perhaps that was what nagged at him. If it had been utterly out of the question, he would feel easier in mind. As it was, he had to make the same difficult decision again and again. Bridget hated it as much as he did—more, probably, as she had to walk home through the dark streets, and she got frightened easily—but somehow she seemed to be able not to think about it, until the actual moment of separation arrived, and then she was nearly in tears. That made him feel terrible. It wasn’t fair really—he felt that she should be like him, and let the misery of parting into her mind by degrees, so that it wasn’t so crushing when the moment came. As it was, she wanted to be happy when he was miserable, and then she broke down just when he had steeled himself to withstand the separation.

  But there was one appalling separation yawning up before them, which even he could not bring himself to consider calmly: National Service. Instead of getting better, things were going to get worse. When, O when, were they going to get married? He couldn’t save, let alone support a wife on his apprentice’s wages. Army pay was even less. They were both determined to start off properly—no furnished bed-sitting room for them, and turned out as soon as a baby arrived. Bridget wanted a family, and so did he. Neither, money apart, did he want to get married while he was in the army. It didn’t need much imagination to realize what it must be like to live from one leave to the next. If it was agony saying good night to Bridget now, when he could see her the next day, what would it be like to say good-bye and not see each other for a week, a month, a year? There was Bill Baker, who used to work at the next bench: went into the army, got married on his embarkation leave. Now he wrote to the boys in the workshop about the brothels in Hong Kong (‘It’s one bloody great brothel’, he had said in his last letter), while his wife was, by all accounts, the easiest pick-up any night of the week at the Bayditch Palais.

  Bridget would never become an easy pick-up. But you could understand a bloke who went to a brothel when he was 10,000 miles away from his wife. He couldn’t swear that he wouldn’t himself, though he had never had a girl in his life. And if you didn’t blame the bloke, could you blame the girl? It wasn’t their fault. It was those who sent him away. What right had they? What right?

  Len fretted under an impotent sense of injustice. The mood passed rapidly, leaving him tired and miserable. He knew he didn’t really care about anyone else. He didn’t care if Bill Baker caught the pox and his wife ended up under the Bayditch railway bridge with the lowest women in the neighbourhood. They could all go to hell if only he could stay with Bridget.

  Sometimes he wished they hadn’t met so young. If somehow he were offered a miracle by which his memory of Bridget could be wiped out, and he would meet her and fall in love with her again in five years’ time, he would have accepted it.

  * * *

  The tide was on the turn now. Slowly the customers were beginning to ebb away. For Doreen the evening’s work was almost over. Her feet throbbed, and the backs of her knees ached, but, mindful of the magazine article ‘Graceful You’, which she had read that morning, she stood erect, a foot from the back wall of the cinema, her weight evenly distributed between her feet. By the central exit, the other girls slumped and sagged against the wall, whispering. Occasionally a
coarse laugh rose above the whispers, a laugh she was intended to hear. Because of that day off she had had last week. Now they sneered every time Mr Berkley spoke to her. Well let them, the cats. Just jealous they were, mostly married they were, and knew they didn’t stand a chance. Not that Mr Berkley had done anything or said … But he was nice. A bit old. But very nice.

  People were going now, the rows were thinning out, and the laughter was patchy. Every now and then there was a muffled clatter of seats tipping up, half a row would heave to their feet, clasping coats to their laps, and allow a few people to stumble into the aisle. Leaning against the slope these would toil slowly towards the exit, pausing at intervals to look over their shoulders, in case they were missing anything; and when they got to the back of the cinema, they would linger over putting on their coats, stealing glances at the screen. Silly fools. Why didn’t they stay in their seats?

  What a gorgeous apartment it was in the picture. Just Amber’s luck to stumble on a job like that. Think of having that bathroom all to yourself, hot water galore and a thing for showers if you wanted one. Everything warm and clean and white.

  * * *

  Patrick was bored with the film. He waited impatiently for the really funny bits to come round again. There weren’t nearly enough. The grown-ups seemed to find it funny, but he couldn’t see the point of the jokes.

  The person next to him stood up and pushed out. A man moved up from a few seats away, and sat down next to him. Pity Patricia had gone off in a huff so early; he could probably have been persuaded to leave now. Couldn’t go yet, of course, after that row.

  Suddenly he felt a hand on his leg, and the unexpected contact sent fear pulsing through his body. It was as if frightened messengers were running helplessly between his leg and his brain—‘It’s someone touching me!’—‘Someone touching me?’—‘Yes, it’s someone touching me.’ It was the man who had moved up and sat next to him. His heart pounded. He must be a pickpocket. What should he do? Shout for help? Either he would be murdered immediately, or the man would protest that he had done nothing. He hadn’t done anything—perhaps he didn’t know that his hand was there. He tried to imagine how silly it would be if the man didn’t know his hand was there. But he knew the man did know. He didn’t dare turn his head to look. It became terribly important that he should disguise his own knowledge. He laughed emptily at a joke in the picture. The man beside him laughed too, and that frightened him more than anything. He didn’t move—just kept his hand there. O God, please help. This was to punish him for being naughty to Patricia. Please, God, and I’ll do anything You like.

  With a tremendous effort Patrick stood up and fled from the cinema.

  * * *

  ‘You look tired, Miss Higgins.’

  ‘Saturday night’s always a bit of a rush, Mr Berkley,’ replied Doreen, trying to ignore the ill-concealed interest of the exit-cluster.

  ‘Well, you can have a good lie-in tomorrow morning,’ he answered. ‘You might as well go now.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but it’s my turn to see the customers out tonight.’ There was no point in aggravating the other girls.

  ‘Never you mind; I’ll see to that, Miss Higgins. You run along home.’

  Doreen left. There was no point in aggravating Mr Berkley, either.

  Mr Berkley glowed with the appreciation of his own magnanimity. Miss Higgins deserved a little kindness. She took her job with exemplary seriousness. Trim little figure too …

  Mr Berkley moved on to the group of usherettes by the main exit. They became sullenly silent at his approach.

  ‘Mrs Bertram, I have asked you before not to wear that jersey under your tunic.’

  ‘I can’t ’elp it, it’s me chest.’

  ‘I don’t see how it can be necessary in a warm place like this. I must insist that you wear a blouse like the other ladies. Now will you all please draw back the curtains in front of the exits.’

  He passed on. Muffled insults thudded into his back. He leaned over the back row of the stalls, and gloomily watched the closing scenes of the film. Beneath him interlocked couples writhed in their awkward embraces. Why on earth did they bother to come to the cinema? The seats were ill-adapted to love-making. Perhaps they had nowhere else to go. The cinema was a kind of low-voltage brothel for half its customers, and an ice-cream parlour with entertainment for the other half.

  The film faded out on a scene of universal and improbable felicity. As soon as it became evident that this was the end, there was the usual frenzied stampede to avoid the Queen. Three minutes after the lights came on, there were only a few stragglers by the doors, and the inevitable woman, who had lost her scarf, poking about under her seat.

  * * *

  Mark and Clare shuffled out with the yawning, patient crowd, urged on like cattle by attendants anxious to get home. Suddenly Mark found himself suffocated by an enormous depression, which closed over him like tons of cotton wool. Grimly he resisted the urge to fight his way out, to scream and thresh and tear his way into the open air. It wasn’t just claustrophobia, though no doubt that had something to do with it. It was difficult to describe or diagnose these fits, to which he was periodically subject. Holding out Clare’s coat for her to slip on, nudged and bumped by the struggling crowd, he wanted to put up his face and howl. He felt he was a prisoner inside his own body, which was compelled to act exactly like the rest of the crowd, to go through the same motions as these dumb, patient beasts, holding out a coat, queuing for a bus, boarding it, twisting in his seat to capture the change from his trouser pocket, asking for two fares to Ringwood Road. The fact that he would have to say ‘Two to Ringwood Road, please’, or, rather, the foreknowledge that he would have to say it, seemed suddenly intolerable.

  ‘How ’bout walking?’ he said to Clare, as they pushed mercifully out on to the cold pavement.

  ‘It’s rather a long way, isn’t it, Mark?’

  ‘Look at queue,’ he articulated with difficulty, nodding in the direction of the bus stop. The words were like felt in his mouth.

  ‘All right then. If you want to.’

  He set off with a long fast pace, hands clenched in the pockets of his duffle-coat. Clare hurried along beside, and a little behind him. Sometimes he would pause and wait impatiently for her to catch up. They walked in silence, threading the dull, chill streets. Wisps of fog clutched at her throat and made her cough. She was cold in her short jacket and thin blouse. She was puzzled and unhappy and a little frightened.

  As they left the main road and began to climb up High Hill, Mark’s steps became slower and more plodding. At the top of the hill, he sank down on a wooden seat of neglected appearance, inscribed ‘Traveller’s Rest’.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  Clare hesitated, looking at the wet, dirty surface of the seat with disfavour, conscious of the oddity of sitting in the damp, cold darkness at the side of a London street. Mark stared bleakly before him. Then he looked up at her, and something like human recognition flickered in his eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, smiling wearily. ‘Here, sit down.’

  He spread his handkerchief on the bench, and she sat down.

  ‘Sorry to be like this,’ he apologized, taking out a cigarette. She didn’t like it if he smoked when they were alone. Somehow it meant that he didn’t want to be touched, or to touch her. It kept her at bay. She sat uncomfortably erect on the seat, holding her back away from the wet grimy wood.

  The seat was placed at a cross-roads that scored High Hill like a hot cross bun. From it you looked directly down the hill to the London plain. It was one of the highest of the first hills that ringed London, and on a fine day you could see the whole city, right to Highgate in the north, spread out before you in a smoking, shimmering expanse of buildings, punctuated here and there by the splayed fingers of river-side cranes, and great buildings like St Paul’s and their own cathedral. She knew the landmarks well: when the younger children were babies she had often pushed the pram up to the top of the hill
and—the memory came back to her suddenly—she had often sat looking out from this same seat. At night it was a glittering mass of lights, as if some great hand had flung down a fistful of stars. Tonight, however, the panorama was veiled by fog, hanging densely over the river, and slowly creeping through the low-lying streets. But Clare did not miss the view. The mournful lowing of the fog-horns, and the muffled, lonely rattle of a suburban train, which were the only sounds that carried to her ears, seemed sufficiently appropriate to her mood.

  ‘Then why …’ She stopped.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why be like this, Mark?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just get these moods. I feel so fed up at the moment.’

  ‘Have you had another story sent back.’

  ‘You’ve guessed it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mark. It’s a shame. I think your stories are awfully good. I know …’

  ‘For God’s sake don’t.’

  There was a silence, and then he must have heard her catch her breath.

  ‘Oh Christ. I’m sorry, Clare. Look, I didn’t mean to be rough. Here, borrow my handkerchief. Oh blast, you’re sitting on it.’ He put an arm round her and she smiled feebly.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m silly.’

  ‘No you’re not. But look, it’s like this: I think my stories are good, and you think my stories are good. And all my friends think my stories are good. Now that’s fine, but it’s all completely beside the point. Because someone in an office miles away, who doesn’t know me from Adam, whose only interest in my stories is to decide whether people will read them, he doesn’t think my stories are good. Now he may be soulless and mercenary and semi-illiterate, but I’ve got to admit that he is the least biased of all of us; and that’s what stings. I suppose I can’t face facts. I’ve got all the ambition, but no talent.’