Читать книгу Exile - Warwick Deeping - Страница 22

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The Tindaro picture house was a primitive affair. You took tickets for the most expensive seats, because these seats cost you only five lire, and if you sat in the less expensive seats you were likely to be presented with a flea. The building was badly ventilated, and when Billy pushed the curtain aside she met the warm, stale darkness and odours of garlic and of unwashed southern humanity.

She said, “What a fug!”

They had to wait in the darkness at the end of the hall until the lights were switched on at the conclusion of one of those very crude, knockabout products. The place was half empty. No one troubled to take tickets or to assign seats. Billy and Winnie Haycroft sat down in the last row but one, being nearer the door here and the fresh air of heaven. The public was principally native waiters from the hotels, shop men and girls, Tindarese dandies. The lights went down. A piano and a violin began to give out appropriate music.

Billy found the picture boring. It staged the old silly theme of the aristocratic blackguard and the noble laborious fellow and the girl. It played to the mob in the gallery. And Billy had had a hard day, and much exercise in the fresh air, and the hall was abominably stuffy. Her attention fluttered. She glanced at Winnie Haycroft’s face, and saw it floating beside her in the dimness as a pale, absorbed profile, like a faded white flower on a fragile stalk. Winnie was absorbed. She had been translated into a world of absurd romance, and like a child she gazed and gazed. Her hands were tense in her lap. Her lower lip drooped.

Billy sat and wondered. What could Winnie Haycroft see in all those very unreal and melodramatic happenings? Such stuff was not life, those hysterical faces with glycerine tear blobs, and noble frenzies, and starched villainies. And there was “the child.” Or was Winnie lost in the thing just because nothing ever happened in Tindaro so far as Winnie was concerned? Emotion. Yes, just emotion, craved for and unattainable save in this stuffy, tawdry place.

Yes, perhaps it was that. Or did the happenings on the screen symbolize escape, escape from Tindaro, and exile, and lace and the rather dreary atmosphere of Miss Haycroft’s serious shop? Winnie’s aunt had a desiccated look, like some pale shred of flesh hung up to dry in a dusty corner.

The noble fellow and the girl were embracing. A little shudder of ecstasy made itself felt in the figure at Billy’s side. Winnie’s elbow pressed against her friend’s. Then the lights went up, and Billy saw that Winnie Haycroft’s face had a look of hazy exultation. Her eyes shone. Almost she had the air of a woman who had a lover, and who had been kissed.

“Lovely. Don’t you think so?”

Billy was kind. She did not blurt out her opinion, and say that she had found the piece awful tosh.

“Quite up to the average. The hero was rather funny.”

“Funny!”

“Well—such a noble fellow. I rather preferred the blackguard.”

“O, my dear.”

They edged into the gangway and joined the crowd that jostled good humouredly out into the southern night. Billy drew three deep breaths. She saw stars twinkling.

“Phew—that’s better.”

She felt Winnie’s hand tucking itself under her arm.

“I wish they would have more English pieces.”

“But they don’t exist, or hardly. We don’t let go enough to have good film faces. We keep things shut up inside.”

Tindaro was black and silent, and the ribbon of the sky between the high houses was spangled with stars. The Corso with its grey stones lay darkly at peace, like still water flowing between the shuttered houses. A few footfalls echoed.

By the church of San Domenico three or four dark figures stood as though attached to the old and greasy wall, and Billy felt the sudden pressure of Winnie Haycroft’s body. Her hand clutched. They swerved out into the middle of the Corso.

“What’s the matter?”

“One has to be careful. One gets spoken to. Horrid.”

Billy’s chin went up.

“Well, it needn’t kill one.”

“Oh, and other things when it’s dark.”

“Yes,” said Billy, “just because it’s dark.”