We walked along Coney Street, along Pavement, and we came to the start of Fossgate. The Blue Bell was to our right. Its smoke room was the Chief’s home-from-home, and I thought a drink-up in there might be the real treat. But not after all that claret, surely? That would be going it a bit even for the Chief. But instead, we crossed the road . . . and there stood the wife, looking at her watch.
She’d been doing her marketing, and carried her basket. She stood right in front of the Electric Theatre.
‘Chief Inspector Weatherill told me a cinema show was to be held in your honour,’ she said. ‘He let on about it when I bumped into him last week, but I was to say nothing to you. He didn’t really want me to come.’
‘Now that’s not quite right‚ Mrs Stringer,’ said the Chief.
‘. . . But I forced the details out of him, and here I am,’ said the wife.
A cinema show in my honour . . .
With its highly decorated front, the Electric Theatre might have looked quite at home in Baghdad. It was the very place the wife and I and the children had seen Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and I thought I might be in for another showing. I looked at the placards in front of the cinema. Under the familiar words ‘To-Night To-Night’ was advertised ‘The Gentleman Rider’ and ‘In the Hands of the London Crooks’.
‘We’re all in the hands of the London crooks,’ said the wife, and Manners came up to me, speaking confidentially. ‘I’ve been told your good lady wife works for the Co-Operative movement, but I had no idea she was actually a communist.’
He grinned and wheeled away to greet two fellows who’d just stepped out of the door by the pay box. The first was a fat chap called P. T. Buckley, and he was the owner of the Electric Theatre, and was forever being featured in the Yorkshire Evening Press as ‘the man who brought cinema to York’. Of late though, he’d been up in arms about the Council having given the go-ahead for a new cinema: the Picture House in Coney Street. The second fellow was Wilson, assistant to Wallace King. He wore a bright blue blazer and a straw boater, and I realised how wrong he’d looked in that baggy, badge-less uniform in Baghdad.
I shook his hand, and he said, ‘You look a good deal brighter than when I last saw you.’
Behind him, I glimpsed a third placard: ‘Closed this afternoon for showing of a special item.’
‘Where’s Wallace King?’ I asked Wilson.
‘Oh, Mr King’s never available at short notice . . . But I am,’ he added, offering me a cigarette. I took the cigarette; everyone smoked outside the Electric, since you couldn’t smoke inside. ‘He’s in meetings all this month with some of the production companies is Mr King,’ said Wilson.
‘The Battle of Trafalgar?’ I said, dazed.
Wilson shook his head. ‘He’s going all out with a new treatment he’s worked up: The Great Fire of London.’
‘And what’s this special item?’ I said, indicating the third placard.
‘You’ll see,’ said Wilson. ‘You’re the star.’
The wife was talking to Buckley.
‘So you’ve been to the Picture House?’ he was saying, looking worried.
‘It’s really gorgeous,’ said the wife, ‘tip-up seats, two programmes a week continuous daily, all the latest American pictures, ice-cream parlour, balcony, gallery, fancy plasterwork – a lovely scheme of decoration, it is – and an orchestra!’ And then she remembered herself, so she indicated the Electric and said, ‘But this is my favourite.’
Inside, the Electric was fairly plain. It was painted brown. As we crossed the entrance hall, the Chief was looking all around.
‘Ever been here before?’ Buckley was anxiously enquiring.
The Chief shook his head, saying, ‘You don’t have an alcoholic licence, do you?’
And there in a nutshell was the reason.
We entered the auditorium and I heard the Chief asking Buckley, ‘Where’s the lantern operated from?’ He then shot me a look that told me he was taking the rise out of Buckley.
The projection box was at the rear. It was dark. I sat next to the wife on the front row. We all sat on the front row. The wife said, ‘Your Chief wanted me to sign the Official Secrets Act before I came here.’
‘And did you?’
‘I told him not to be so daft. But I think Buckley may’ve had to sign it. And the fellow in there,’ she added, gesturing towards the projection box.
Buckley was turning about, signalling that way. The room then became darker still, and the whirring started. On the picture screen appeared the words ‘WALLACE KING BRINGS THE WORLD TO YOU’, and then there was the desert of Mesopotamia, and something was happening beyond the furthest extent of it.