The Picturegoers

by David Lodge

  She followed a path into a wide macadam clearing, in the centre of which stood a bandstand, gaunt, skeletel, deserted, like some abandoned pagan temple. In her early childhood, in the war, the puzzling structure had symbolized for her mythical pre-war delights—like talking-dolls, pineapples, and sea-side rock. The disused bandstand had been a useful playground in wet weather—useful, but limited, because there was very little you could do in a bare, empty bandstand once you had played tag in its confined area, and walked round the parapet. Always you felt it was holding something back, waiting.

  It still retained its mystery. It had been repainted since the war, but, as far as she knew, it had never given forth music. Despite its new coat of paint it was still something of a relic, something of an enigma, resembling, in its apparently purposeless massiveness, some strange arrangement of stones on the site of a vanished civilization.

  Leaving the bandstand, and heading for the gate at the summons of the park-keeper’s doleful bell, she decided that like the rest of Brickley, it exuded the odour of decay, hopelessness, regret Decay had a certain undeniable pathos and character, but it meant death—death to the heart, death to the mind, death to the spirit. The family were kind and well-meaning, but they could not help, they had been-too long in Brickley. The Church—she had had more than enough of Brickley parochial Catholicism. Brickley: its very name choked and stifled. Mark had blown in like a fresh breeze, hinting, with wild scents, of other delightful worlds where the air was free, pure, invigorating. Experience that she had once accepted as belonging only to the dream-world of the cinema screen, really existed, was to be grasped at the cost of a little determination. A Bohemian student life in Paris, the beaches of the Mediterranean, travel, talk, people—Life in a word. She thirsted for it.

  And then there was Mark himself. It was him above all she would be trying to impress by her break with convention—impress in a quite futile way, because it was obvious that he and Clare were permanently attached. But still, it would be satisfying if he ever experienced in future years a tinge of regret that he had not appreciated the potentialities of the young schoolgirl he had coached with such distressing kindness. Distressing, precisely because it was so genuine, so guileless. As soon as she had realized that he was making no attempt to disguise his liking for her, she had known that there was no hope. She was sentenced for life to be Clare’s younger sister in his eyes. If somehow she could have been given a meagre share in their relationship, if one or the other had treated her as a confidante, it might have been more bearable. But Clare was always inscrutable and uninformative, and Mark (it was the only flaw in his sensibility) plainly thought her either blind or indifferent to their relationship. Their love was like a bonfire behind someone else’s high fence. You stood in the dark watching the glow and the flare of fireworks, and it never occurred to the other people to invite you in, and you couldn’t ask.

  As she walked along the High Street, these thoughts had infiltrated her mind like the scouts of an advancing army of depression and self-pity. The hour of acute awareness was running out into the usual hopeless analysis of a hopeless situation, the usual emotional slush. A cinema offered a refuge, and she had clutched at it. She couldn’t afford it, but no matter; she would make do with her appallingly riddled stockings for another month. Besides, it was a good film, a continental film, part of the more abundant life she sought.

  The impulsive and irresponsible gesture had the effect of recovering her sense of identity, and now she sat waiting expectantly for Bicycle Thieves to begin. It was important to concentrate so as to be able to discuss the film intelligently with Mark.

  * * *

  Patrick held his cigarette in one gloved hand. It was uncomfortably warm, but it kept the nicotine off your fingers. He pushed back a long, greasy spike of hair that kept slipping down and pricking his ear. The hair which his mother said was too long, and the grease which his father said was too much. It seemed that they were probably right.

  But at least they restricted themselves to saying now. He would wait a few days before having his hair cut, so that they could not think that they had made him. That was the main thing.

  He could do more or less as he pleased now. Within reason. He could go to the pictures on his own. It so happened that Clare and Mark were here tonight, but that was just chance. They didn’t know he was here. Just as well, as he wasn’t allowed to smoke. Not that they would tell. Patricia would, though, if she saw him. She would like to get her own back for that row she had got into last October.

  This was rather a dull film. He didn’t really care whether the man got his bike back or not. He was rather soft, Patrick thought. Him and his little boy.

  Patrick professed to scoff at ‘soppy love stuff’ in films; but he suspected that he was disappointed by its absence from this film. He hesitated over recognizing or dismissing this thought. It was rather important. After all, it was expected that he would become a priest, like James. But a priest must give up all that. It was a difficult problem—were you spoiling your vocation, or didn’t you have a real vocation anyway? It was rather worrying.

  His attention was captured by the appearance of a young woman on the screen. Not very big. He had slipped into a rather alarming habit lately of looking at every girl or woman he encountered to see how big her bust was. Bust. That was a word he had just discovered. There were several words that meant the same thing. Bust, bosom, breasts. Bust was a funny word. Sometimes they called statues of people’s heads busts. It was probably wrong to look at women’s busts, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention it in confession, not until he had decided about his vocation, one way or the other. It was part of the evidence he was collecting against himself: he looked at Blighty furtively in the barber’s; he tried drawing women, sometimes in the nude, always with big busts, in a drawing-book he kept hidden at home; he desperately wanted to kiss a girl to find out what it was like.

  He inhaled a slight whiff of smouldering wool, and hastily stubbed out his cigarette.

  It was funny he should have remembered the row that week-end, when Patricia had left him in the cinema, and the per … pervert had touched his leg, because that was when all this had really started. All that Sunday he had brooded on the episode in the cinema. He had wanted to tell his father, but for some inexplicable reason, felt shy and slightly ashamed. In the end, coming home from Benediction, he had blurted it out, rather boastfully, since he had felt that a brush with a real pick-pocket had a certain adventurous quality about it. His father had asked a few questions, and looked grave. He had been frightened, wished he had kept quiet. When they got home, he was told to go to bed, and meekly obeyed. Patricia was rowed for leaving him behind in the cinema. As he slowly undressed in his room, he heard her come snivelling up the stairs. Then his father had come in. ‘Son, I want to have a word with you about this man in the pictures, so that you’ll know what to do in future. Get into bed now, or you’ll catch cold. Never mind about your prayers—you can say them in bed. Now listen, son. You don’t know what a pervert is, I suppose. No, not a kleptomaniac. Heavens, what a word! No, this man was no pick-pocket. To explain what he was I’ll have to explain a few other things. Now, you’ve probably heard the lads at school talk of certain things …’

  Yes, he had heard them. And it had been easy to ignore them, not to listen, to walk away, when he believed them to be just dirt. But when they were made respectable, vouched for by his own father, when they were associated with his own parents, and with his own existence … it was quite different.

  Many things had fallen into place as a result of his father’s explanation: drawings on lavatory walls, the shape of girl babies, the strange scufflings in Jimmy Thompson’s rabbit hutch when they put the black buck Jumbo in with Snow White … He had lain awake for hours that night, as a whole new world of discovery and excitement and evil unrolled before him. Never had he learned and understood so many new things at once. Never had his mind worked so fast or so clearly, leaping on from one conclu
sion to the next, some exhilarating, some appalling. It changed everything.

  He had to know, of course. A priest had to know. But perhaps one day he would want more than just to know. That would not be all right for a priest.

  * * *

  Harry brooded, frowning terribly as he toyed with his knife. He was bored, and Harry didn’t like to be bored. It was usually necessary for someone to suffer when Harry was bored. Christ, what a film. The only reason he was here was that he had seen every other programme on locally. He didn’t like foreign films at the best of times: you couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was too much trouble to spell out the sub-titles. But at least you usually saw some hot stuff in foreign films, to make up for it—tarts in bed with blokes and that sort of thing—which you didn’t see anywhere else. But this film was dead tame. Not a good-looking tart in the whole picture. And a putrid story. Bicycle Thieves! You might have thought from the title that it would be a good gangster. He should have guessed. Who would want to knock off bloody bicycles? There was only one good bit in the film—when they showed you the little bastard pissing up a wall. Harry smiled his thin smile as he recollected the scene. But soon he relapsed into his dangerous black mood, fingering the razor-sharp edge of his knife, open in his pocket.

  An ice-cream girl sauntered slowly up the aisle with a loaded tray, up to her tits in choc-ices and orange drinks. Sullenly Harry stood up to allow someone to push past into the aisle. Bloody people were always eating. The youth stumbled and trod heavily on Harry’s black suède shoes. A flame of pain and anger enveloped him. A blade glinted, and as if by magic a crescent appeared on the man’s cheek, with little heads of blood seeping out like juice from an orange.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ said the youth.

  Harry sat back in his seat without answering. Dwelling on the sentence, memorized from a paper-covered novel he kept at home, he felt revenged. He wanted the youth to go away, for in his mind he saw him fall back with a suppressed scream of terror and pain, holding a handkerchief to his face. He wiped the blade of his knife on the plush cinema seat, as if to clean it.

  Loosening his shoulders inside his jacket, and smiling his thin triumphant smile, Harry turned to appraise the bloke’s tart, who was now separated from him only by an empty seat. She blushed under his scrutiny, and anxiously looked towards the aisle. Her face seemed familiar, but it was some time before he realized that she was the curly-haired bint who had given him the slip some months back. Lived in Barn Street. Quite a doll—good shape, good teeth, nice skin, and most likely a virgin, to judge from the wet bloke she knocked around with. And here was the bastard back again with his bloody ice-creams. Harry felt physically sick as he pushed past again, the short, flat hair, red, boil-pitted neck, corny blue sports jacket—inches from his face.

  ‘Sorry about treading on your feet.’

  The repeated apology only added to Harry’s rage and humiliation. He closed his eyes and went through in detail what he would like to do to the curly-haired tart. And then he began to think, why not do it, why not? It was time.

  It was tricky, eating ice-cream with your arms linked, and she didn’t want to get a stain on her new frock. That was the worst of the cinema, it was so dark you didn’t notice till you got outside. But she had linked arms with Len because she was so glad that he was next to her, between her and that boy who had looked at her as if, well as if she was indecently dressed or something. Some men were like that, as if they had X-ray eyes. There was Raymond at the cafeteria. Like Gladys said, you felt your clothes falling off every time he looked at you. Not that there was any harm in him, it was his nature Gladys said. She had been to Italy on a coach tour, and the Italian men couldn’t control themselves she said. She said if you went out alone in a tight skirt you were black and blue before you’d gone a hundred yards. But that boy was different; there was something nasty about the way he looked at you. He wanted to do more than pinch …

  She was so glad that Len was back by her side, and yet she dared not tell him why, because he would only be angry and perhaps start a fight and worry afterwards anyway. Like that time she had been followed, last October. After she had told him, they hadn’t gone to the pictures for a month, so that he could see her home. And as Old Mother Potts wouldn’t allow men visitors, and Len didn’t like dancing, it had been pretty dreary just walking about the wintry streets together.

  Still, now the lighter evenings were coming on they wouldn’t depend on the pictures so much; there would be walks in the park, kissing on the benches in the shadows, lying on the warm, grassy banks … Her train of thought halted with a sickening jolt as she remembered that this summer there wouldn’t be many evenings like that. Len was going into the Army next Thursday. She put her ice-cream, half-eaten, on the floor under her seat.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  ‘Mmm. Lovely.’

  Len scraped his cup, licked the spoon, and deposited both on the floor. As he straightened up he seemed to have left his heart on the floor with the empty ice-cream carton. Already he could feel depression and worry creeping over him like a periodic fever. Already he was beginning to steal glances at the clock, comparing it needlessly with his own watch, missing bits of the film while he made rapid calculations as to whether he might conceivably be able to see Bridget home, and, when this had become out of the question, as to how long they would have to say good night at the hated corner.

  * * *

  When the film ended with an unexpected FINE, Clare stood up and shook the folds of her coat. Then, noticing that Mark was still seated, gazing abstractedly at the screen, she sat down again. Almost at once the National Anthem summoned them both to their feet, but Mark responded sluggishly.

  ‘Brilliant, wasn’t it,’ he remarked, as he clumsily helped her on with her coat.

  ‘Yes, it was good,’ she replied, rather vexed in case she had betrayed a lack of appreciation by standing up too quickly. ‘Strange sort of ending though.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s just the point, that’s just the brilliance of it. No American or English director would have dared to end it there.’

  They were wedged in with the patient herd of people who were shuffling slowly and quietly up the stairs to the foyer, but Mark talked in a clear, excited voice, as if oblivious of their presence.

  ‘The point of the film, you see, is in the plural in the title: Bicycle Thieves. The man himself becomes a thief out of sheer desperation, and a sense of injustice, and, ironically, accepts the pardon which he is not willing to accord to the person who stole his bike. On another level of course, the whole film is an indictment of the society …’

  Clare found it difficult to concentrate on what he was saying. They were in the foyer now, and the procession fanned out towards the doors, only to jam there once more, hesitating to plunge into the rain, adjusting macs and umbrellas.

  ‘Oh drat!’ said Clare. ‘I left my umbrella under the seat.’

  ‘O.K. I’ll fetch it,’ said Mark. ‘Wait here.’

  Tired of being buffeted by the eddying crowd, she moved over to the wall, where a sofa seemed to dare her to sit on it. She sat down defiantly, and rummaged in her handbag. Opening her compact, she checked her appearance, and dabbed at her hair. Did Mark like the new style? It was difficult to tell. He seemed uninterested rather than disapproving. The crowd had almost disappeared, and the attendants were giving her ‘looks’. At last Mark appeared with the umbrella.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ she said, as she took it from him.

  ‘Couldn’t find the seat for some time,’ he explained. ‘You know, I think you may be partly right about that ending.’

  She paused at the brink of the wet, shiny pavement.

  ‘Which way?’ she asked, hoisting her umbrella.

  He peered into the rain.

  ‘Well, there’s a hell of a queue at the bus stop. We might as well walk. We’ll get just as wet standing there. D’you mind?’

  ‘No, of course not. I know how you love to walk about i
n the rain.’

  ‘Yes, I always get a kick out of it. Especially when there’s some wind. I feel I’m battling against the elements. Defying them anyway.’

  ‘I know.’

  She listened with a kind of exultation to the rain battering the taut umbrella, trying to get in, trying to squeeze between their tightly welded bodies, as they forced their way on.

  ‘About that ending,’ Mark continued. ‘It’s something I’ve always had doubts about. I mean, whether the cruelly realistic medium of the cinema is entitled to tragic endings like that.’

  ‘Well, things happen like that. I remember when I lost a fountain-pen Mummy and Daddy gave me for Christmas: I prayed and prayed, and I never found it.’

  ‘Yes, but because a thing could happen in life, that doesn’t make it good art. You see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied.

  ‘What I mean is, that whereas poetry—Shakespeare, for example—can have tragic themes without merely upsetting the audience—because it is poetry, a higher plane of existence than normal life … And it follows the action to its logical conclusion, death, so that you don’t worry about the characters any more. But one does feel sometimes—is a film entitled to sweep you so compellingly into someone else’s life so completely that for an hour and a half you are them—is it then entitled to drop you just when this character is in a perfectly hopeless situation?’

  ‘I know,’ she replied, ‘I shall be thinking of that poor man and his little boy all night.’ Liar!

  ‘Yes, there you are. I feel the same way. I keep reminding myself that this was a film, a work of art, a dramatic illusion, but it’s not easy to detach yourself from a film, as you can from a play.’

  For a time they trudged on in a silence punctuated by occasional reminiscences of the film.

  ‘I liked the way he composed his pictures, like those continual shots of long, depressing concrete vistas.’