3
The Witch of Devereux Towers
Vince Moody owned a tiny terraced house in the most run-down part of Langbridge. He liked to think he owned it but in reality he had borrowed the sizable deposit, and more besides, from his parents, who didn’t have much in the way of money and constantly reminded him of the fact, but in truth he knew they had been desperate to get the last of their four children off their hard-worked hands. There was no way Vince would have been able to afford to buy a home otherwise, run-down area or not, so he was grateful, up to a point. Having to be forever beholden to his parents and shouldering the guilt he felt at being a major contributor to their supposed poverty being exactly that point.
He was anxious to pay them back, but the wages at the Empire had never been brilliant, even for the position of Chief Projectionist, and had in reality been standing perfectly still for a number of years whilst inflation had decided to take off like a Saturn Five rocket. So the little spare cash he had he squirreled away to pay back the loan, which meant he led a pretty Spartan life. He rarely bought new clothes, left it ages between haircuts – though the fashion was for long hair, which helped disguise belated trips to the barbers somewhat – he ate frugally, could not afford to smoke or drink even if he had the inclination, which he didn’t, and instead of owning a car he owned and rode a bicycle. He would have loved to have taken driving lessons, shoot around the lanes in an MGB GT like his boss, but that wasn’t going to happen in a hurry.
He was also partially trapped by his lack of ambition; or more to the point his crippling shyness, which in turn hobbled his ambition before it ever got going. It had been one of the driving factors behind his parents’ scraping out the dregs of their savings to pay for a deposit on a house for him; anything to get him out into the real world, to give him that little bit of oomph, as his father used to say. They were almost embarrassed of him. He wasn’t so much the black sheep of the family as the bald one. They liked to brag off about the other siblings, who had all gone on to really good, steady jobs, even married and provided grandchildren. But Vince? Well, Vince was always considered not very bright, not quite with it, even before he went to school. He was the baby that took the longest to walk, the longest to talk, the longest to potty train. It suited his parents to have him out of the house and out of sight, a distant, almost invisible slur on their genes.
Still, the things he could indulge in that didn’t cost anything gave him some pleasure. He loved film, and his job gave him some access to that. In theory he had free passes to the cinema that he could use to come in and sit down and watch one properly, but given that he was the only real projectionist and had to work every day except Sunday, when the cinema wasn’t even open anyhow, he never got to use the passes for himself. And when he was on holiday – a brief two weeks in summer, one week in winter – he wasn’t in the mood for going back to his place of work. So he gave the passes away to his mother and father, who never went out because they had no money, they said, putting the passes into an old wooden biscuit barrel they used to hoard unpaid bills.
Another love was the detective novel. The library was free and they had a good stock of all his favourites, Agatha Christie in particular, though he had read every James Herbert books ever since The Rats scared him half to death, and he couldn’t go into the dark storerooms in the Empire for ages without taking a shovel with him. Both occupations added cheap thrills to an altogether un-thrilling life. But Vince wasn’t complaining. Vince rarely complained. To do that you had to have an opinion and his opinions counted for nothing. You also had to have the guts to voice them and he didn’t have those either.
What he had been able to afford was his bicycle. A brand new Carlton Criterium in polychromatic bronze with lightweight five-speed derailleur. He could be at the Empire in under ten minutes, and in the absence of any other transport – no car and the buses were so infrequent they were a local joke – it meant his small world could at least be extended a little wider, limited only by the strength in his legs and the hours in a day.
It was this shining bicycle that he rode through the streets of Langbridge. Today was Saturday, market day in the town. The June sunshine was beating down on the sweltering shoppers, eager to grab their groceries and cheap tat from the market stalls before magically disappearing around one o’clock, when the town centre would fall almost empty again.
Vince breathed deep the warm summer air, the tang of oranges and lemons and the earthy smell of potatoes still caked in dirt wafting over from the fruit and veg stall. He loved this time of year; people swanning around in T-shirts, girls in light summer dresses, transistor radios playing in the streets. Made him feel like he’d like to stay on his Carlton and keep on riding, just take the road that led out of town and see where he ended up.
He leapt off his bike before the twin gates that led into the Empire’s rear yard. It was his job to unfasten them and pin them back every morning, and to close them again at night after everyone had left. He was fastening his bicycle with a chain underneath a ramshackle corrugated shelter as Mr Caldwell drove into the yard in his MGB GT. He let the engine growl a second or two and then the yard fell silent, the fumes coming over to Vince thick and strong.
Martin Caldwell was a little younger than Vince, if only by a year or so, he thought. But he appeared far more worldly wise. He was tall and lean, almost too tall for his MG; his hair was long but expensively cut, feathered in beautifully and held in place by vast amounts of Falcon hairspray for men; he wore a wide-lapelled chocolate-brown suit, even though he didn’t need to wear a suit, with a matching brown kipper tie; his shirt was cream with tiny daisies on it. Though fashions had changed and it was now OK for men to wear flowers – and even the colour pink – Vince could never see himself being brave enough to don daisies, ever. Caldwell’s platform Chelsea boots click-clicked over to where Vince was just finishing off fastening the padlock on his bike lock.
‘Morning, Vince,’ he said. He smiled briefly, only to be polite. ‘How are you?’
Though Vince replied that he was fine he could tell his manager wasn’t interested whether he was fine or not. He’d already walked off in front to the back door, fumbling with a hefty bunch of keys. Vince could smell Aramis aftershave, lots of it. He went through a number of keys before shrugging and letting Vince open the door for him.
‘Thanks, Vince. Why are there so many damn keys?’ he said, thumping open the door.
‘I don’t know, Mr Caldwell,’ he said.
‘We need to rationalise,’ he said. ‘Get them down to three or four. There must be twenty keys here, all told. Is there really any need for that many different locks?’
Manager and Chief Projectionist didn’t share another word, Vince leaving Caldwell to nip into his office and close the door, whilst he went up to the projection booth. The twin projectors stood like two massive hounds waiting silently and obediently for their master’s return. Furniture was sparse. The long wooden table that took up most of the centre of the room had on it a device for rewinding film and a splicer, and little else except for a bottle of black blooping ink for putting changeover dots onto the film, and a small reel of tape beside the splicer. There was a hard wooden chair and a coat stand. That was it.
The room was always cold and dark, even in summer. There were no windows except for two small viewing panes, one beside each projector, and the glass panels through which the projector beams entered the auditorium. There used to be a selection of old film posters on the walls to help lighten things up, make it feel less like a mausoleum, but Caldwell had ordered him to take them down. All that was pinned on there now were a sign banning smoking and a yellow health and safety poster filled with a veritable desert of dry text that no one ever read.
Vince went through the morning ritual of working through the jobs on his list, wandering through the building, keeping the old girl ticking over as he liked to call it. Then he prepared for the Saturday matinee. A couple of shorts and a feature for the kids. Today it was an episode of Buck Rogers and another called Rocket Man – ancient black and white things – followed by an old black and white cowboy film. The kids loved it, though. Martin Caldwell didn’t. He had to go out on stage before the films started and pretend to be the kids’ uncle, make jokes, which he positively loathed.
‘F*cking kids!’ he’d say. ‘I’m not a f*cking clown so why do they make me behave like a f*cking clown?’ And he’d stomp away to his office as soon as he could.
Vince liked it though. The kids called him Uncle Vince and waved up to his window and he’d wave back. Then he’d have to go down to the auditorium afterwards with a plastic bag to clear up any crap left over because the cleaners didn’t have to work on a Saturday.
But Vince was particularly excited today because there was a new evening feature being screened and he was hoping that the woman would come in to watch it. It was her type – a bit of romance, a bit of adventure. So he couldn’t wait until the afternoon and the time of the first screening. He was disconsolate when he scampered down from his booth to the auditorium only to find her seat on the back row empty.
‘Hello, I’ve not seen you before,’ said a shrill voice behind him.
He turned to see a young slip of a girl with a square tray of ice cream and lollies strapped around her neck, ready for the interval. She was a pale-faced thing, her skin peppered lightly with acne.
‘Are you new?’ said Vince, avoiding eye contact. ‘Not seen you either.’
‘I finished school this summer. This is my first job,’ she said in a whisper. Acne aside, the dark made her look quite pretty, thought Vince. ‘It’s so exciting, isn’t it? Are you Vince, the projectionist? My name’s Edith,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’m Vince,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be projecting?’
She unnerved him so he said that yes, he was, and dashed away to his booth. He peered down and saw the young woman. She looked up and waved energetically at him and he stepped back, out of view.
Vince’s luck changed at the third and final screening of the day. She was there, sitting in the back row. He stood some distance away, lost in the dark near the exit, studying her, finding her more attractive every time he saw her, he thought. In his mind he was going over a variety of ways he might approach her, but they were all pretty frightening and each filled with disappointment and disaster. At least he could stand here in the dark safe in the knowledge he hadn’t been disappointed, the bubble of his dreams remaining intact and un-pricked. Better to be here with hope than talk to her and have that hope dashed. He couldn’t bear to live with the thought of rejection.
Just before interval little Edith came up to him. ‘Hi again. It’s so exciting, isn’t it?’ Vince couldn’t quite make out what she found so exciting but she was definitely a live wire flushed through with it. ‘It’s a good film, isn’t it?’ she whispered.
‘It’s OK,’ he said, annoyed that his attention had been diverted. These opportunities wouldn’t crop up that often and she was ruining it for him. He had to be back in his box soon.
‘Oh, look!’ she said, pointing a finger at the back row. ‘She’s here!’
‘Who’s here?’ Vince said.
‘Her – can’t you see? The woman over there, sat all by herself on the back row. You know, fuddy-duddy hairstyle.’
He realised she was pointing at the object of his desires. ‘You know her?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, don’t you? She’s the Witch of Devereux Towers.’
‘The witch?’ he repeated, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, not exactly a witch, I suppose,’ she said with a giggle. ‘That’s what all the kids at school used to call her. She lives all alone in Devereux Towers, you know, that creepy old place in the middle of that field a few miles away.’
‘I know the place,’ he said. ‘I thought it was empty.’
‘It used to be. She’s been living there a couple of years now. Lives all alone, like I said. My mum says she’s a very strange one. Keeps herself to herself, doesn’t get involved with things, doesn’t like to talk to people. A regular little mouse, my mum says, hiding quietly away in the dark. The kids call her a witch because that’s what kids do. I’m not saying she’s got a cauldron or anything. Do you suppose she could be a witch?’
He scowled. ‘Don’t be silly!’ he said. ‘Do you know her name?’
‘Laura Leach. All her family is dead. Some say she killed them and has them buried in the grounds of Devereux Towers, or walled them up or something. Cooked their hearts and ate them for breakfast. That’s what the kids say.’
‘Well that’s just stuff and nonsense,’ Vince defended. ‘She looks a very nice lady.’
‘Just saying, that’s all.’ She fell silent and then nudged him with her sharp point of an elbow. ‘Do you fancy her?’ she asked, a bright mischievous light in her eyes. ‘You do, don’t you? You fancy her like crazy!’
‘No I do not!’ he returned, a little too loudly because someone turned around and hissed at him to be quiet. ‘Stick to selling your ice creams, you silly girl!’ He stormed away up to the projection booth, his cheeks afire.
He could hardly concentrate the rest of the evening.
* * * *