The Hidden History
During the intermission, an usherette appeared, walking up the aisle with her tray.
Long brown hair clipped beneath a peakless cap, red jacket and brass buttons. The face like an open book, the slight smile.
It was her.
The Ghost remembered this well. He remembered Alice raising her hand and beckoning Maggie over.
He remembered the nineteen-year-old Maggie noticing him and saying hello with her eyes. They had spoken once or twice since that afternoon in the park but, just like now, there had never been the right context to chat deeper.
‘Maggie,’ he said. Just that. Just her name. As if it was an elemental thing. Like water in a desert.
‘Hello, Wilbur. Good to see you.’ Professional. Only a quick double blink to reveal that she was feeling anything at all at the sight of him with a date.
‘Aye. You too.’
Alice, perhaps noting that Wilbur’s attention was wandering in that moment, got some ice cream. Lyons Maid vanilla choc ice. And after Maggie had gone, Alice called her back to complain it was too warm and that the chocolate was messy.
‘Look at the state of it. Look how warm it is.’
The Ghost remembered the discomfort he had felt in that moment. He watched himself staring intensely down at the dark carpet of the cinema and praying for it to divide and open up and swallow him whole.
Staggeringly, Alice wasn’t finished. And nor was Wilbur’s discomfort. ‘Where do you keep them? Down your bra?’
Wilbur looked up from the carpet, the embarrassment now replaced by a wish to protect Maggie. ‘Alice, come on, she’s just doing her job,’ Wilbur said, not seeing anything particularly wrong with the choc ice.
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Maggie.
‘That’s all right,’ said Wilbur. ‘It’s not a big deal.’
Alice flashed Wilbur a look. ‘Oh, I know that. But I’d like my shilling back. It’s the principle.’
There was a strange contradiction to Alice. The way she could casually look down at people while also questioning why they would want to raise themselves up.
Maggie said nothing. Just calmly handed her a shilling from the jar of money on her tray.
The Ghost watched himself. He saw his own eyes linger on Maggie’s face. It was so strange, how life became so clear with hindsight. Like a puzzle that can only be solved in reverse.
He also wondered how much of history was this – not words and deeds but gazes and unsaid longings and subtle transgressions.
How much of it was just one near thing after another.