The Picturegoers Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by David Lodge

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Copyright

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Welcome to the Palladium, Brickley. Once the grandest music-hall south of the river, now its peeling foyer is home to stale popcorn, a depressed manager, and a cast of disparate picturegoers who touch and shape each other’s destinies.

  Amongst them is Mark, the cynical intellectual who seeks sensuality and finds spirituality; Clare, his girlfriend, who loses faith and discovers passion; Father Kipling, the scandalized priest; and Harry, the sexually frustrated Teddy boy.

  In his astutely observed first novel, David Lodge ushers in a congregation of characters whose hopes, confusions and foibles play out alongside the celluloid fantasies of the silver screen.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Lodge’s novels include The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), Changing Places (1975), for which he was awarded the Hawthornden Prize, How Far Can You Go? (1980), which was Whitbread Book of the Year, Small World (1984), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Nice Work (1988), which won the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, Thinks … (2001), Author, Author (2004) and, most recently, A Man of Parts (2011). He has also written stage plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism, including The Art of Fiction (1992), Consciousness and the Novel (2002) and Lives in Writing (2014). His works have been translated into more than thirty languages.

  He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham and continues to live in that city. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was awarded a CBE for services to literature and is also a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

  ALSO BY DAVID LODGE

  Fiction

  Ginger, You’re Barmy

  The British Museum is Falling Down

  Out of the Shelter

  Changing Places

  How Far Can You Go?

  Small World

  Nice Work

  Paradise News

  Therapy

  Home Truths

  Thinks …

  Author, Author

  Deaf Sentence

  A Man of Parts

  Criticism

  Language of Fiction

  The Novelist at the Crossroads

  The Modes of Modern Writing

  Working with Structuralism

  After Bakhtin

  Essays

  Write On

  The Art of Fiction

  The Practice of Writing

  Consciousness and the Novel

  The Year of Henry James

  Lives in Writing

  Memoir

  Quite a Good Time to Be Born

  Drama

  The Writing Game

  Home Truths

  Secret Thoughts

  FOR MY PARENTS

  PART ONE

  THE CEILING OF Mr Maurice Berkley’s office next to the projection room was cracked and peeling. Every square inch of the Palladium cinema, Brickley, except the foyer, desperately required redecoration; but Mr Berkley remarked this particular area of decay because he was staring at the ceiling from his couch, where he was wont to relax for half an hour before changing into his dinner-suit. Why he persisted in the empty ritual of changing his clothes at a quarter past six every evening, he found difficult to explain. It certainly didn’t impress the customers, as they sloped furtively across the foyer, out of the anonymity of the pavements, into the anonymity of the auditorium. Nevertheless he swung his feet to the floor and reached out for his dinner-suit. As he slicked down his scanty hair, and tugged his bow-tie deftly into shape, he decided that he changed clothes for his own sake. Like the dress uniform of some historic regiment buried in the khaki uniformity of a modern army, it was a defiant, hopeless gesture to a drab, uninterested world. Hopeless, because nothing could recall the days of glory, when the Palladium had been the Brickley Empire—the grandest music-hall south of the River, and first stop on the suburban circuit for the big names of the West End. All that remained of that era were the faded, curling photographs of once-famous artistes, who grinned vacantly from the walls above their scribbled messages of inadequate goodwill: ‘To Maurice, with love, from an old trouper’ … ‘All the best in life—Maudie Jameson’ … ‘To Maurice, with many happy memories, and best wishes for the future—Joe Blakey’ … Was this, then, the future to which they had consigned him?

  He skirted the desk on which lay the still imbalanced ice-cream accounts, and softly closed the door on the accusing columns of figures.

  From the head of the circle staircase he looked down at the bare, cheerless expanse of the foyer. In the old days it would have been a bright, babbling crush of people, and he himself would have been threading the crowd, greeting an old friend, politely refusing a request for complimentary tickets, directing the Press to their seats … Sighing, Mr Berkley began to descend the stairs. Saddened, he had watched music-hall die of TV, entertainment tax and the contempt of the young; shamefaced, he had witnessed the failure of sleazy nude shows, with titles of laboured suggestiveness, to win back the customers; stunned, he had stood by while his theatre was knocked down to a cinema-owner. He had been faced with two depressing alternatives: the undignified status of cinema-manager; or unemployment. Being a realistic man, Mr Berkley had chosen the former. But the salt had gone out of his life.

  Now he stood uneasily beside the box-office, trying to catch the eyes of his customers, if only to smile at them. But they avoided his glance, as if he were some kind of policeman. Morosely they queued for their tickets, joylessly they took them to the ticket-girl, and swiftly they were swallowed up by the booming darkness beyond the swing-doors. Against their cheap frocks and sports coats, his dinner-suit conveyed an impression of unnecessary and eccentric self-display. He exchanged a few words with the girl in the box-office (but what did she know of boxes?).

  ‘How’s business Miss Gray?’

  ‘Oh, just about as usual Mr Berkley.’

  Which meant just about as bad as usual. Not only had Mr Berkley endured the indignity of managing a picture-palace instead of a theatre: there was the further humiliation that the Palladium had never been a success as a cinema. The conversion had been effected at the very moment when cinema receipts had begun to slump after the post-war boom. The new owner had made a bad speculation, and tended to channel his irritation on to Mr Berkley. If the owner decided to cut his losses and sell out, where would Mr Berkley be? The news that the Rialto in Bayditch was to be converted into a warehouse, lay heavy, an undigested lump of worry, in Mr Berkley’s memory. Well, let it lie there. He positively would not be a warehouse manager.

  He eyed with distaste the interior of the foyer, where ill-advised attempts had been made to impose a veneer of ‘contemporary’ on the rich, old, Edwardian décor which, even at its shabbiest, imparted a feeling of comfort and opulence, a sense of insulation from the everyday world, which Mr Berkley always insisted was an essential part of the experience of going to a theatre. But then he was no longer manager of a theatre.

  Restlessly he paced over to Bill, the aged commissionaire, like himself a veteran of an earlier and better era.

  ‘Not like the old days, is it Mr Berkley sir?’ said Bill, greeting his employer’s obsession fondly, as if it were a cat. The man’s sycophancy nettled Mr Berkley unreasonably, and he turned away with a muttered ‘No’. He retraced his steps to his office, steeling himself to grapple with the ice-cream accounts. As he mounted the stairs he intoned to himself a cinema-manager’s catechism:
/>   Q. What does the margin of profit or loss depend on?

  A. Ice-cream.

  Q. What therefore, does my livelihood depend on?

  A. Ice-cream.

  Q. What therefore, is the source of all happiness?

  A. Ice-cream …

  When the Palladium was made into a warehouse, he prophesied bitterly, it would probably be used to store ice-cream.

  * * *

  Mr Mallory always liked to drop from the bus while it was still moving. He did so now, with practised aplomb, and sauntered after it as it braked to a halt. On the running-board his wife lurched as the movement was snatched from under her feet, and catapulted crossly on to the pavement.

  ‘Oh no, don’t help anyone,’ she remarked, as he hurried forward, too late. He swallowed the apology that had risen to his lips.

  ‘Come on, the programme will have started,’ he merely said.

  Not that he was anxious to get to the cinema. He hated hurrying his leisure. The week’s work was behind him; idleness lay ahead—if he didn’t lift his eyes too high. Tomorrow was Sunday. There was one precept of Christianity he would always conscientiously observe: keeping the Sabbath holy by abstaining from servile work. In that particular respect at least he had always been, unconsciously, a Christian; so he had realized when Father Kipling had explained to him the doctrine of Baptism of Desire. Perversely, this was the one commandment his wife, who had been largely responsible for his conversion, insisted on breaking regularly.

  To his mind, even a mere bus-ride to a cinema, on a Saturday evening, should be free from the hustle and bustle of everyday travel. On Monday morning, of course, he would be gripped again by the same frenzy as possessed everyone on the Southern railway in the rush-hour. He would claw and push and run with the herd. But a journey to a pleasant, idle destination should be undertaken without this vulgar fuss and hurry, with leisured ease, oblivious to the crude demands of time, the ultimate entertainment being postponed and savoured in anticipation. It was bound to be a disappointment anyway.

  If he were alone, for two pins he would not go to the cinema at all, but just stand at this busy junction, observing the passing show, sharing the relief of a city relaxing its strained, tired nerves at the end of a working week. One of the chief occupations of his youth had been to stand at a street-corner with some pals, just looking and talking … he brushed aside the recollection, which honesty forced upon him, that as a young man he had lacked the means to do anything else. Now he could do something else, now he had money in his pocket, the democratic entertainment of street-corner lounging seemed like an unattainable luxury. There was something at once soothing and invigorating in the atmosphere of Saturday night, which he wanted time to absorb. The traffic was moving more quietly now, with more grace and control than during the day; gear changes were sweeter, acceleration less fierce. And the people seemed to take the evening like a reviving drink; one could sense a week-end cheerfulness in the air. From a radio shop late to close, a negro’s voice carried to the street:

  Everybody loves Saturday niiight,

  Everybody loves Saturday niiight,

  Everybody,

  Everybody,

  Everybody,

  Everybody,

  Everybody loves Saturday night.

  There was always a certain amount of truth in these popular songs.

  He paused to buy an evening paper from the nimble-fingered newsvendor, who drew it with a flourish, like a sword, from the sheaf under his arm. Mr Mallory scanned the football results which occupied most of the front page, and noted philosophically that he had failed to win a pools dividend. A waste of time and money, Bett called it, but she didn’t understand that he cheerfully paid out 3s. 6d. a week, not with any real expectation of receiving £75,000 in return, but simply to add a little interest and excitement to life.

  He raised his eyes from the paper and took in the scene with a benevolent regard. He felt no contempt for the flashily dressed youths who sauntered by, nudging and butting each other; and only gratitude for the pretty, gaily-dressed young girls, eddying past in giggling, self-conscious groups. He could pick out in the throng a few late shop-girls prinking home in high heels, their neat little bottoms tightly sheathed in narrow skirts, expensive hair-do’s bobbing; once home—homes so much more soiled than their clothes—the sheath would be exchanged for something wide and rustling; a comb through the glossy perm, a flower at the throat, a squirt of deodorant, a fresh layer of powder, a quick renovation of faded lipstick—and they would be ready, smiling, and indefatigable for the palais or whatever else. Who could blame them if they didn’t get up and go to church next morning? Only people who had enough time on their hands to compose letters to the Catholic papers about ‘pagan’ England.

  ‘Well then, come on, if you’re going to,’ said his wife.

  Really Tom was getting so strange these days, this irritating, absent-minded sort of smile on his face, as if he could only concentrate on the thing before his eyes and was rather pleased with it—a habit which somehow seemed to put all the responsibility and worry on her shoulders. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for staring after young girls, there was no harm in it she knew, and she should be past the age of jealousy. She had put on so much weight in the last few years it was too late to do anything about it now. ‘What do you expect after eight children?’ she had blurted out one day when Tom was teasing her, and then wished she hadn’t. She disliked showing Tom her real feelings. It placed her at a disadvantage. But she didn’t give herself away so obviously as he did, staring after those bold girls, with more money than sense, tight skirts that were almost indecent, well the way they walked anyhow. She recalled, but without affection, the days of her own youth, of her wretched financial dependence on her parents, and the Irish village where to walk through the streets on a summer’s day with bare forearms was the act of an abandoned hussy.

  She slipped a hand under her coat, and felt the small lump under her left breast. Impatiently she pulled it out again. It was becoming a nervous habit. Yet she couldn’t suppress the absurd hope that one day she would put her hand there and the lump would have disappeared. She wouldn’t go to a doctor. She had never been to a doctor in her life, except for the babies, and then she had hated the things they did to you. Besides, she knew enough—too much—about lumps from other women …

  * * *

  ‘Take us in, Mister?’

  Four grimy, wizened urchins, with an appallingly young infant in tow, involved themselves strategically with Mr Mallory’s legs, and peered searchingly up at him. Before he could reply, his wife had taken command of the situation:

  ‘Be off with you, you little spalpeens, and take that child home. He’s no age to be on the streets with the likes of you.’

  The Irish always came welling up in Bett at times like this. Himself she customarily addressed in the flat, laconic accents of South London.

  They passed into the foyer of the Palladium.

  ‘How the mothers can let them, I just don’t know,’ she continued. Mr Mallory contented himself with a vague murmur of agreement, and joined the brief queue for tickets.

  He noted gloomily that prices had gone up again, and resigned himself to paying extra. Bett got a headache if they sat too near the screen. As they made their way to the swing doors with Stalls glimmering over the top, Mr Mallory said: ‘I thought Patrick and Patricia were going to this programme.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you at tea, only of course you don’t listen. They went together, earlier. I don’t want them to be up late.’

  ‘Hmm. I didn’t think Patricia would be seen dead with her brother.’

  ‘She wanted to see the film, and I wouldn’t let her go on her own,’ stated his wife simply. Mr Mallory felt a twinge of sympathy for his daughter.

  ‘And Clare and Mark?’

  ‘I don’t know where she’s going tonight.’

  The girl tore their tickets in half, and they passed through the swing doors and curtains into the hot d
arkness of the cinema. Once again Mr Mallory thought how easy it would be to buy the cheapest tickets, and show the usherette inside the torn portions of dearer ones which you had saved from a previous occasion. Or did they change the colours every now and then? He would never have the courage to try the experiment anyway. He hung back as he heard his wife wrangling with the usherette.

  ‘Are you sure there are none in the middle? What about those two? Tom!’ She wheeled round.

  ‘Anywhere will do, dear,’ he said mildly. Someone hissed ‘Sssh!’ and Mr Mallory manœuvred his protesting wife into the nearest vacant seats.

  * * *

  The Palladium. That was it. Mrs Skinner who polished the candlesticks had been quite definite that it was the Palladium.

  Father Martin Kipling, parish priest of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Brickley, tried to ignore the little flutter of excitement inside him as he paced evenly towards the temple of Mammon towering above the busy pavements. Somehow one couldn’t help calling a picture-palace a temple of Mammon even if one was entering it to see an edifying film like Song of Bernadette—it tried so hard to look like one. Its ugly, florid architecture was even now bathed in a neon flush of hell-fire. It was not one of those modernistic slabs of ferro-concrete, but apparently a converted theatre, probably Edwardian, and had an air of ill-disguised dilapidation which intensified its baleful aspect. Over the entrance an enormous, crudely coloured representation of what might have tempted St Anthony in his less discriminating moments leered from a couch. Father Kipling lowered his eyes swiftly. Why was she there? She had nothing to do with Bernadette.

  It was not surprising that he felt a twinge of guilt as he approached the shrine of materialistic paganism, a fear that his dog-collar might cause scandal to an onlooker unaware of the purity of his purpose. He felt an absurd urge to button-hole the nearest man and explain earnestly: ‘You know, I haven’t been inside a picture-palace since before I was ordained. Of course I’m allowed to go. Being secular you know. They leave it to my discretion. But I don’t think it quite becoming for a … But this time, you see, it’s a film I particularly want to see, Bernadette you know. All the Catholic newspapers particularly recommended it, I remember. Everyone seems to have seen it, even Canon Birley. So I thought I would take the opportunity. But I wouldn’t like anyone to think I made a practice …