Read Stratton's War for Free Online

very influential people who don’t like the way things are going. Our job is to make sure they don’t do any damage.’

    Now, she’d established contact. The meeting seemed to have gone pretty well, although she needed to hear Lally’s verdict in order to be certain. Surely Forbes-James would be pleased? That was the most important thing . . . The taxi pulled up outside Dolphin Square. Diana stepped out, paid the driver, and, just managing to restrain herself from breaking into a run, passed through the gateway and across the gardens towards Forbes-James’s flat in Nelson House.

SIX

    The air was hot and oppressive. Joe Vincent sat on the top step of the Tivoli Cinema’s fire escape behind the Strand, lit a cigarette and glanced sideways through the iron railings at the alleyway below. A man in a long apron was prodding a broom at the debris on the cobblestones, and Italian waiters from the Villiers Street restaurants lounged, shirt-sleeved and smoking, at kitchen doors. A youth among them looked up and waved, then ducked as an older man - his father, perhaps, or an uncle - aimed a blow at his head. Joe couldn’t hear the words that justified this action, but he could guess what they were.

    He’d spent the morning as he spent every Monday morning, making up the week’s programme, joining together reels of film with acetone cement that reeked of pear drops and made his head ache. When he’d started in the cinema as a re-wind boy Joe had been amazed that it took over 8,000 feet of film to show a 90-minute picture, and that was without the second feature, newsreel, adverts or trailers: now, nine years later and a chief projectionist, he could have completed the job in his sleep - which he might as well have done this morning. He felt numbed by grief. Without Mabel, his flat seemed miserably empty, more so as the hours of Sunday had stretched endlessly, and he’d drifted about her room, touching her possessions, not knowing what to do with himself. He didn’t want to see anyone, to talk, to eat, even to get drunk, and the memories - everywhere he looked - were unbearable. In the end, he’d given himself up to misery, lain on Mabel’s bed and sobbed until he fell asleep.

    He saw the boy who’d waved being hustled inside by the other waiters, and half-heartedly flapped a hand at their retreating backs. What did it matter if they stormed up the fire escape and punched him in the face? Before, he would have re-created the incident for Mabel, embellishing the youth’s handsomeness, and perhaps adding a kiss, blown from the palm of his hand. They would have savoured it together, given the boy a name and a history, and amused themselves devising a romance, but now . . . The memory wasn’t worth saving, because Mabel wasn’t there to share it.

    ‘Mr Vincent?’

    Joe twisted his head and saw the laced-up shoes of Jim Wilson, who was standing by the metal-clad fire door. Wilson, chubby, round-faced and twenty-two, had replaced Joe’s previous assistant, who’d been called up in April. Projectionists were reserved until the age of twenty-five: Wilson had a dicky heart, which made him ineligible for the forces, but Joe, who had registered a month previously, was expecting his call-up any day now.

    ‘It’s getting on,’ said Wilson.

    ‘OK.’ Joe got to his feet and flicked his fag end over the side of the steps. ‘Start the non-sync. I’ll be there in a minute.’

    ‘Righty-o. There’s a cup of tea waiting inside.’

     
    Joe lingered for a couple of minutes on the fire escape, thinking of Mabel, before following Wilson into the stifling projection box. A faint whirring noise from the non-synchronised sound machine’s motor preceded an orchestral swell that flowed from speakers to the auditorium below. As a second-run cinema, showing films at least a month after the Odeons and Gaumonts had done with them, the Tivoli didn’t have an organ and had to make do with records instead.

    Joe checked the