VOLUNTARY POSITION Anders Ross
E
ven your vocation is the work of a miserabilist, a volunteer historian (think ‘custodian’, whatever that means) at the Roxy. It’s the last theatre of its kind. Perhaps with good reason, you think often, looking upon the dust-mantled walls and faded paintwork of the once glorious art-deco picture palace. Someone, years ago, chipped away the heads of the seraphim of the friezes—ratbag kids from the local comprehensive probably. They were never replaced. You were swift to ask for a complete restoration, going so far as to pledge your own money, drawn from your late wife’s estate.
You were naïve then, calling the production office at Pinewood. Films today (all gratuitous sex and violence) do not attract nor demand any sort of secondary attraction at the theatre. So long as there is some triumphal American theme, comic book ambiance, and the chance to buy an outsized, overpriced soft drink, then you’d say the movie is a winner. The kids don’t want to see The Egyptian with Edmund Purdom anymore. No. They want something that gives them a wisecracking star. Yet there was one day, in weather and form quite ordinary, that changed your mind about all of this. The misery had even dissipated. Yet, you know that what happened and what continues to happen surely means the men in white coats are not far away. The morning was beautiful, although in your waking melancholia as some bone-idle Frenchman would shrug, you did not see it. The sheer ocean-blue sky could be seen through your bedroom window, the burning golden sun with angelic corona behind it. The blackbirds heralding a new day, one perching upon the empty planter box sitting on your windowsill. You did not notice anything.
However, what happened on this bright and beautiful day gave you the chance to forget your misery. At least until the hallucinations (yes, that’s what they must assuredly be) wore off—the choir of voices you hear more and more each day, starting in the morning, and the friendly faces that greet you later on. For starters, at breakfast when you made your bowl of porridge—cold and lumpen as you like it, it’s a vanity to eat it warm after all—you found a bag of raisins in the pantry that you swore was not there before. ‘Sun-blessed sweetness,’ you found yourself hushing as you might have done to your adoptive son in his infancy, the dried fruit ringing off the sides of the bowl.
Then there was the walk to the Roxy. Your feet did not hurt for once, which was wonderful. For some unknown reason, you could not help but step into a little stroll—the hum of music in your ears, your eyes gazing upwards to the heavens. What a sight! Long fingers of clouds, white like driven snow before a pool of turquoise sky and golden sun. It was almost enough to set you on a path straight for the outdoor baths at the leisure centre, but you remembered you had a job to go to.
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