Princess of Poor Street

by Emma Blair

Genres: General Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

They called it Black Friday in Parr Street when the factory closed. And whole families in the slums of Glasgow during the Depression felt the cruel sting of despair. Vicky Devine's father, George, was devastated. But young Ken Blacklaws had steel in his veins: 'I'm going to make something of my life,' he would tell her with passion and a dangerous fire in his eyes. Maybe that's why Vicky loved him so much. Beautiful Vicky, her love gained strength and defiance in the midst of bleakness and hardship. As Ken ruthlessly fought his way out of poverty, his ambition knew no bounds. For in his lifetime, he would break the law and Vicky's heart, but never could he break her spirit . . . Praise for Emma Blair: 'An engaging novel and the characters are endearing - a good holiday read' Historical Novels Review 'All the tragedy and passion you could hope for . . . Brilliant' The Bookseller 'Romantic fiction pure and simple and the best sort - direct, warm and hugely readable. Women's fiction at an excellent level' Publishing News 'Emma Blair explores the complex and difficult nature of human emotions in this passionately written novel' Edinburgh Evening News 'Entertaining romantic fiction' Historical Novels Review '[Emma Blair] is well worth recommending' The Bookseller

Release date: October 20, 2016

Publisher: Piatkus

Print pages: 419

Sample

Later, folks were to say that there was a different sound to the knocking-off hooter that evening, a sad, mournful note quite in contrast to its usual stridency. If there was such a difference, Vicky didn’t notice it; the hooter sounded just the same to her as it had always done, since her first recollected awareness of it as a tiny wee lass.

The date was Friday, 7 September 1934, and Vicky Devine was washing her hair at the kitchen sink, preparing for the party that night to celebrate her Ken’s seventeenth birthday.

‘You’d better hurry up, girl. Your dad will be home in a minute and you know he’ll disapprove of you doing that at the sink just before tea’s put on the table.’ Recently turned forty, Vicky’s mother remained as handsome in middle age as she’d been in her salad days. Mary Devine was still a looker, was what the neighbours said.

Vicky gave her hair a final rinse, then wrapped it in a towel. She gazed into her dad’s shaving mirror hanging from a nail at the window. The face staring back was bright, full of life, with the mark of determination upon it and, aye, mischief as well.

‘What’s for tea?’ John demanded from a chair by the fireplace where he was reading the Wizard comic. He was thirteen years old, two years younger than Vicky.

‘Stew, cabbage and boiled tats,’ Mary replied, standing at the cooker and thinking that the tats had been a bad buy.

Mary sighed to herself. George would complain about them, no doubt about it. He was a good man, one of the best. If he had a fault however, he was faddy about his food.

She made a mental note to tell off Mr Emslie the green-grocer for selling her potatoes like these. It just wasn’t on.

‘Are you going to have bevy at this “do” tonight?’ John asked wickedly, knowing he was putting his sis on the spot, for if their dad thought there would be strong drink at the party he would refuse to let her go.

Vicky whirled on her brother. Little bugger! she thought. ‘Mainly soft drinks with a few screwtops of beer for the older boys.’

‘Oh aye!’ John replied, giving her a fly wink.

Vicky narrowed her eyes, her look plainly saying: keep this up and you’ll be sorry, I promise you.

John smirked. He thoroughly enjoyed stirring it for his sis, though it was best, as he had learned from long experience, not to go too far. For Vicky, if roused sufficiently, would inevitably exact some awful revenge. Like when she had dropped his lovingly-made matchstick and glue model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa out the front window so that it smashed to smithereens on the pavement below. Two whole months it had taken him to make that model! At the time she couldn’t have thought of anything that would have hurt him more.

‘I hope there isn’t going to be hard drink at this party?’ Mary said to Vicky.

‘I just said there wasn’t.’

‘Are you certain?’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ Vicky lied.

Mary heard the clatter of feet on the stairs outside. That would be George and the other men up the close now. She took the pan of tats off the cooker and crossed to the sink to drain them.

John watched Vicky rubbing her hair with the towel, and wished he was going to Ken Blacklaws’s party. He’d have given his eye teeth to have been invited, but he was too young to run with that set. He thought the sun shone out Ken’s backside, as did an awful lot of people, Ken being a natural leader with real charisma. Why, even lads much older than Ken deferred to him, hanging on his every word, anxious for acknowledgement and approval.

John continued to watch Vicky, amazed to think that the great Ken Blacklaws was winching his sis, and had been for six months now. Ken Blacklaws, who could’ve had the pick of any bird in Townhead! Och well, he told himself, she was his sister after all, he probably wasn’t seeing her the way other boys did. But still, her and Ken Blacklaws, he couldn’t help considering it a marvel, right enough.

Vicky was the first to see her dad’s face when he came in, and the sight of it made her stop what she was doing. It was a dirty-grey colour, and there were deep lines etched under his eyes that had not been there that morning. But it was his expression that was the most startling; it was grim with a capital G.

‘Dad?’ she queried.

Vicky’s tone made Mary turn round from the sink, where she was still draining the tats. George’s eyes, hard with despair, locked onto hers.

‘It’s bad news, Mary,’ he said quietly.

Mary went cold inside and her lips thinned. Filled with a sense of impending doom, she waited for George to explain.

‘I’ve been laid off.’

She reeled mentally on hearing what every wife she knew lived in dread of being told. ‘Short-time lay-off?’ she asked hopefully.

‘The factory’s gone broke. Everyone has been laid off permanently as from tonight.’

As if in a dream, Mary laid the steaming pan of tats on the side of the sink, wiped her hands on her pinny, then went over to the chair facing John’s and sat.

‘What happened?’

Vicky was equally stunned by this completely unexpected bombshell. Ken worked at Agnew’s, so he too had been laid off.

‘We were all called to a meeting this afternoon and addressed by Mr Robertson, the high heid one himself. He said he was sorry but the factory had been in deep financial trouble for some while. According to him, the banks have called in various loans. I didn’t understand all of it, but the upshot was the factory had to close down, and right away.’

‘Just like that!’ Mary whispered.

‘Just like that,’ George echoed.

George thought of the paint factory which had employed him all his working life. He’d gone there as a lad when old man Agnew still owned the place, and had soon learned what the word graft meant. But it had been a better job than many – better than going down the pits, for example, or than the extra-heavy physical toil that his pal Danny Blues had to contend with in the chain-making factory over in Cambuslang.

He pulled out a packet of Capstan and frowned on discovering it was empty. There was a spare packet on the mantelpiece behind one of the wally dugs: Vicky picked it up and handed it to him.

Vicky noted that her dad’s hands were trembling as he lit a cigarette. She had never seen her dad’s hands tremble before. She asked the question Mary couldn’t bring herself to utter.

‘What now, Dad?’

George sucked smoke into his lungs and felt nothing. His entire body might have been shot full of anaesthetic.

‘I don’t know, I just don’t know,’ he replied hollowly.

Mary wanted to scream at the top of her voice and smash every breakable thing in the house. ‘We’d better have the tea before it spoils,’ she said instead.

Vicky picked at her meal. Never a big eater at the best of times, she had completely lost what little appetite she might have had. A glance round the table confirmed that she was not the only one in this state. Her dad was gazing into space, while her mum stared fixedly at a boiled tat as though it were a crystal ball. John was the only person doing justice to what had been set before him.

George turned his attention to Mary. ‘Do you know there are only three men living in Parr Street who didn’t work for Agnew’s?’ he said softly.

Mary nodded. ‘Aye, I know. It had already crossed my mind.’

Parr was a fairly short street, with Black Street running parallel to it on the one side, Glebe Street on the other – the same Glebe Street where Scotland’s most famous fictional family were supposed to stay: the Broons, who were featured weekly in the Sunday Post, and were known, and followed, by Scots from Tallahassee to Timbuctoo. Black Street also had a minor claim to fame in that it was where the area VD clinic was sited – or perhaps, in Black Street’s case, the word should be infamy.

George pushed his plate away with a muttered apology for the waste and, rising, went to sit by the fireplace. It wouldn’t be long before winter came on, he thought, and the amount of money the Labour gave out wouldn’t run to coal, not by a long chalk. Mary would be doing well if she could provide a half-decent meal a day on it, let alone anything else. Then he remembered the rent: a half-decent meal every two days, he corrected himself. By half-decent he meant porage and dry bread, that sort of thing.

‘I won’t go to the party tonight if you don’t want me to, Dad,’ Vicky offered.

‘No, lass, you go and enjoy yourself while you can. After today parties are going to be in short supply around here for some time to come, I’m thinking,’ he replied, giving her a soft smile that tore at her heart, for she loved her dad.

‘We mustn’t be over-gloomy, something might come up. You might land yourself another job no trouble at all,’ Mary said, trying to inject a cheery note into her voice.

Another job no trouble at all! George knew that this was highly unlikely. Unemployment was rife in the city, with thousands and thousands laid off, in the same boat he now found himself in. For any vacancy that did occur there was always a long line of applicants, willing to take any pay, work any hours.

‘Maybe so,’ he replied, trying to appear positive for Mary’s sake.

Vicky glanced from her mother’s face to her father’s, and saw that they were both pretending, making a bold show of it.

‘I suppose this means I have to stop my comics,’ John said. He was used to getting the Wizard and Adventure every week.

‘There’s a lot more besides your comics will have to be stopped,’ Mary told him.

John coloured. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out,’ he mumbled.

Mary leaned across the table and patted his left wrist. He was a good boy, if a wee bit unthinking at times. But then that was his age. ‘We know that, son.’

‘I have six bob saved, from pocket money and that. You’d better have it, Mum,’ John replied.

Mary’s eyes shone.

‘And I have two pounds seven and a kick. I did have more, but I spent it on Ken’s present,’ Vicky added.

Mary wished that she could have told them to keep their savings, but the lad was dead right: now was a time for everyone to muck in; from here on, every farthing would count.

George took his pay packet from his hip pocket and tossed it onto the table, where it landed in front of Mary’s plate. ‘I’ll sign on first thing Monday morning, and as soon as I’ve done that I’ll start making the rounds looking for work.’

Mary reached out gently to touch the buff-coloured pay packet. She did not have to open it to know how much it contained: three pounds exactly.

‘What’s the dole nowadays?’ she asked lightly.

It was a subject Mary had always shied clear of. Her subconscious hope had been that, by not knowing about it, the evil would never befall her.

‘Fifteen and threepence per week for a man,’ George replied.

Mary blanched. Dear God!

‘Plus eight bob for an adult dependant and two bob for each child,’ George went on.

Mary did a rapid mental sum. Twenty-seven and threepence a week, less than half of what George had been bringing home, and it had been a struggle to make ends meet on that! ‘We’ll get by somehow. We’ll just have to,’ she whispered.

George lit another cigarette. ‘I stop when this lot are finished,’ he said. He had been a smoker all his adult life, but stop he would. There was nothing else for it.

Mary fought to control her tears. She would cry later when she was in bed, and George asleep. To let him see her cry would only make it the worse for him.

After helping Mary wash and dry the tea dishes, Vicky dolled herself up for the party, putting on her best dress, silk stockings and the make-up she was allowed. Normally this was something she derived great pleasure from, but not that night.

That night, it gave her no pleasure at all.

 

The party was due to begin at about half past seven but Vicky went early, wanting to talk to Ken before any of the others arrived.

Ken lived further down on the other side of Parr Street. When he let her in, in answer to her chap, he said that his parents had already gone out visiting, which meant they were alone.

Mr and Mrs Blacklaws had promised Ken that they would visit his Aunt Bell over in Carntyne so that he could have his party without them being present. Despite the day’s happenings – Mr Blacklaws had also been employed at Agnew’s – they’d kept their word, though visiting, and being away from their own home, was the last thing they wanted in the circumstances.

Once she was inside the hallway, and with the door shut, Ken encompassed Vicky in his arms and kissed her.

‘Oh, Ken, what dreadful news,’ she whispered when the kiss was over.

He cupped her left breast and gently squeezed. ‘Aye, you can say that again,’ he replied.

‘And there was never any hint of what was to come?’

‘None whatever.’

He kissed her again, thinking how gorgeous she was. He drank in the smell of her scent: heavy, and musk, and mouth-watering.

‘I could eat you,’ she whispered.

He gave a throaty laugh and adjusted his glasses. He was very short-sighted. Without glasses, his clear vision was limited to half a dozen feet. Beyond that everything became hazy and jumbled.

Ken had long since got used to wearing glasses, having had them since a child, but he had never stopped hating them. His bad eyesight was the one defect in an otherwise excellent and muscular body.

‘My parents are worried sick about what’s happened. The atmosphere at home’s awful. It’s as if there’s been a death in the family,’ Vicky said.

‘Let’s have a half together before the mob get here,’ Ken proposed and, taking her by the hand, led her through to what Mrs Blacklaws somewhat grandly referred to as the front parlour, and which most other people in the street just called the big room. Most of the furniture usually in there had been moved to other parts of the house and the carpet rolled back. To one side stood an opened-out gateleg table with a clean cloth over it. On the cloth were various soft drinks and a number of screwtops.

‘I’ve got a bottle of whisky, but I’m keeping that planked,’ Ken explained, producing the bottle from a built-in press.

He poured them both good-size halves, then went into the kitchen to get water for Vicky, for she insisted her glass be topped up with that.

‘Happy birthday, Ken,’ she toasted and, having taken a sip of her drink, handed him his present.

‘Och, you shouldn’t have,’ he said, smiling in delight as he accepted the gift. He opened the small brown-paper parcel to find a box, inside of which, cradled in satiny material, was a Ronson lighter.

‘It was the best in the shop,’ she said proudly.

‘It’s really smashing, Vicky. I’ll treasure it always,’ he told her, giving her a peck on the cheek.

The lighter was silver-coloured, with a firm igniting action. His initials had been engraved on one side in fancy script.

‘The only trouble is, you won’t have a use for it now you’ll be giving up smoking,’ she said.

Ken frowned, not understanding. ‘Why should I do that?’

‘Being on the dole, you won’t be able to afford to smoke. My dad’s stopping after he’s finished those he’s got at home.’

Deliberately, in a gesture of defiance, Ken, using his brand-new lighter, lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring at the ceiling.

‘I won’t be signing on for long, damn right and I won’t. They’re not going to chuck Ken Blacklaws on the scrapheap,’ he declared vehemently.

His tone, and intense belief in himself, caused the fine hairs on the back of Vicky’s neck to rise and a shudder to ripple through her.

‘I’ve got my whole future ahead of me. That future isn’t going to be the Broo and the semi-starvation that goes with the Labour handout. I’ve always had plans, ambitions, to be somebody. I view this as a minor setback, no more. In fact, maybe it’s even a blessing in disguise, for I was getting far too settled at Agnew’s. It was high time I made a move to something with real prospects.’

He was unbelievable, she thought. Here he was, in the teeth of adversity, not only insisting he would soon land himself another job, but one with prospects, a proper career even! Who else but her Ken would have reacted like that?

His eyes became partially hooded and brooding. ‘The world’s full of nobodies, those content to be picked up and dropped at the whim of the big boys, those at the top, with power. Well, I tell you, Vicky, someday, I swear, I’ll be one of the stringpullers. Completely my own master, and the master of many.’

Vicky opened her mouth and her breath came slowly streaming out. If Ken said it would happen, then it would. If he’d said he was going to fly to the moon, she’d have believed that too. With Ken, anything was possible.

As Ken threw the remainder of his whisky down his throat, there was a knock on the outside door. With that, the spell his words had cast over the room was broken. He started to leave the room, halted, came back to Vicky and kissed her once more. ‘Just to keep me going.’ He smiled, and lightly ran a hand over the swell of her buttocks.

‘I might have known it would be you,’ Ken said when he opened the door to discover Neil Seton there. Neil lived in the next close, and the pair of them had been good pals since the infants’ class at school, where they had shared a desk. Prior to that they had already known each other from playing out on the street.

Neil had a name for being brainy and had stayed on at school when Ken left to go to Agnew’s. It was Neil’s intention to take his Highers, and if they were good enough – which they would undoubtedly be – and he could win a grant or bursary, go to university after that.

Neil had brought a bag of screwtops with him which he took through to the front parlour and placed beside the ones already there. He tapped his inside jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got a wee half-bottle here, but that’s not for general consumption,’ he said.

‘Talk about great minds thinking alike!’ Vicky exclaimed.

‘She means I’ve got one planked too. Only in my case it’s a full bottle,’ Ken explained.

Neil gave a thin smile. No matter what he did, Ken always seemed to go one better. It had been that way as long as he could remember.

‘How’s your dad taking the layoff?’ Ken asked, pouring himself and Neil a dram, Vicky having shaken her head when he had raised an eyebrow in her direction.

‘He could be a shell-shocked soldier straight out of the last war. He’s walking about the house in a complete daze, hearing nothing and seeing nothing,’ Neil replied.

Ken shook his head in sympathy.

‘As he’s well over fifty, he hasn’t a snowball in hell’s chance of finding something else, and he knows it. It’s the end of the line for him,’ Neil went on.

‘Does that mean you’ll have to leave school?’ Vicky asked.

‘What would be the point of that? I’d just be adding to the unemployed. No, I’ll be staying on.’

It suddenly struck Vicky that there was a selfish streak in Neil, something she’d never noticed before. From his stubborn expression she guessed he would have refused to leave school even if a job had been handed him on a plate.

‘Black Friday, that’s what today will become known as in Parr Street,’ Ken mused.

Neil swallowed some of his drink. He was not all that keen on alcohol, but pretended that he was so as to be the same as the other lads who couldn’t get enough of it.

‘You’re all alone then, Neil, no lassie with you?’ Vicky teased, and watched Neil mentally squirm.

‘Neil’s never been a great one for the girls, have you, Neil?’ Ken grinned.

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Neil replied softly.

‘Well, you’re hardly a Don Juan.’

‘Like some we know have been in the past,’ Vicky jibed at Ken.

‘It’s hardly my fault if they’ve thrown themselves at me,’ Ken retorted and, half in fun, half serious, inflated his chest.

There was a lot of truth in that, Neil thought jealously. Maybe lassies didn’t exactly throw themselves at Ken, but they did contrive to make themselves awfully available.

‘Well, they’d better not throw themselves when I’m around, or they might get more than they bargained for,’ Vicky said, eyes glittering.

‘What would you do to them, hen, eh?’ Ken prompted, lapping this up.

‘I’d mollicate them,’ Vicky replied, and making a hissing sound clawed the air as if she were a cat.

Neil stared at her in admiration. Gosh, but wasn’t she something! Then he altered his expression before either Vicky or Ken noticed it.

Vicky turned again to Neil. ‘Honestly, though, you’d better be careful. I’ve heard it said that men who don’t have girlfriends turn funny after a while.’

Neil was appalled. ‘That’ll never happen to me, I assure you,’ he replied quickly.

‘I’d be careful just the same,’ Vicky persisted.

‘Och, leave the poor lad alone, Vicky. You’re embarrassing him,’ Ken said.

Filled with devilment, Vicky slunk over to Neil and sensuously rubbed herself against one of his arms. ‘Is that right, Neil? Am I making you embarrassed?’

Neil cursed inwardly when his face flamed scarlet; that made him feel even more foolish.

‘You’ve given him a reddie now,’ Ken admonished Vicky.

‘Are you shy, Neil? Is that it?’ Vicky purred.

He wished that the floor would open and swallow him up. He wished he was anywhere else but there. He wished . . . Oh God, how he wished!

She thought of teasing Neil about the scattering of plooks he had on his cheeks and forehead, and decided against it. That would be going too far. In fact, she’d gone too far already. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Neil; she did: he had many admirable qualities, and Ken thought the world of him. It was just that, in some ways, he was such a natural victim. If you were going to pick on someone, and he was present, there would be no question: he’d be the one.

There was another knock on the front door, which let Neil off the hook. ‘I’ll get it for you,’ he said to Ken, and fled the room.

‘You’re cruel, so you are.’ Ken smiled at Vicky.

‘Do you think he’s still a virgin?’ Vicky whispered back.

Ken smothered his laugh so that Neil didn’t hear, for Neil was indeed a virgin, as Vicky well knew, Ken having told her.

Despite Ken’s and Vicky’s attempts to liven it up, the evening was a muted affair, more like a wake than a party. But, as Ken said afterwards, that was hardly surprising as there hadn’t been a single person present not directly affected by the closure of Agnew’s.

 

On Monday morning Mary called Vicky and John at the usual time to get ready for school. Vicky found it strange to see her father still at home, as in the past he’d always already left for work by the time she and John put in their appearance. It was then that it truly sank in that her dad was unemployed.

‘It’s a change for us all to have breakfast together during the week. Rather nice really,’ Mary said, placing a plate of margarined bread beside the teapot.

Vicky stared at the empty plate in front of her father. She knew it was his habit to have a boiled egg before going to the factory, and bacon and egg at the weekend. There was no egg that day; eggs had gone by the board, as had weekend bacon.

Mary poured out cups of tea for them all. Vicky could tell from its colour that the tea wasn’t as strong as usual. There was a bowl of sugar out, but no milk. No one asked for the milk they normally had in their tea, not even John.

George ate and drank in silence. He felt guilty, as though it was his fault he was idle. It was silly, he told himself, but he continued to feel guilty all the same. Mary kept up a steady stream of chatter, which Vicky found disconcerting. In the normal course of events it was rare for her mother to waste words at this time of the morning.

‘And you’ll start looking directly you’ve signed on?’ Mary said eventually to George, who nodded.

‘Will the Broo give you some leads?’ John asked.

George glanced over at his son. He seemed about to make a caustic reply, but didn’t. ‘If they have any. But I’d be most surprised if they did,’ he answered.

‘Not directly round here, that’s for sure. Everyone laid off from Agnew’s will be doing that. I’ll try further afield, though where I haven’t decided yet. I’ll go where my feet lead me,’ George said.

Mary rose from the table and went to the cooker, where she boiled more water. This she poured into the teapot to make a second brew from the already used leaves. When the tea was masked, she poured it into a vacuum flask, which she handed to George along with a paper poke containing two slices of margarined bread.

‘Your dinnertime piece, as you’re going to be away all day,’ she explained.

George got his jacket from the hallway and put it on. ‘We’ll walk down the stairs together,’ he said to Vicky and John, who were now ready to leave for school.

‘I’ll see you when you get back then,’ Mary said to George, her voice artificially bright.

Going down the stairs, Vicky did something she had not done in years; she slipped her hand into her dad’s, just as though she was a wee girl again and he was taking her out. He shot her a quick sideways look, but did not comment. On reaching the closemouth, she detached her hand again.

There was a group of men standing on the corner, all of whom lived in Parr Street, and who had worked at Agnew’s. Nothing had been arranged but, as if it had, they were all waiting on one another. They would go to the Labour en masse. The men of Parr Street.

Vicky spotted Ken and waved. He waved in return and gave her the thumbs-up sign. He was the only one in the entire group who appeared cheerful. Although she passed directly by the men, she did not stop to talk to Ken. It would have embarrassed her to do so in front of the others, particularly as she was wearing school uniform and carrying her school-bag.

However, Ken had no such inhibitions. ‘Do you think they’ll accept an X where I’m supposed to put my John Hancock?’ he cried after her, making out as if he couldn’t write.

Vicky laughed. Idiot! she thought. She gave him another wave, but without turning round.

 

Ken would brook no argument. Friday night had come round again and he was insisting on taking Vicky to the flicks. He had a few quids’ worth of savings put by, and was damned if he was going to eke it out in halfpennies and farthings. Besides, it would not be long before he was back in work, earning once more.

They went to the Trocadero, or the Troc as it was known, the local fleapit. He was not particularly keen on the picture that was showing, a silent called City Lights starring Charlie Chaplin and Virginia Merrill. The fact that it was silent, and therefore seemed dated although it was only three years old, did not deter Vicky, who adored Chaplin. As she told Ken, the wee clown never failed to make her laugh.

On arriving at the Troc, Vicky and Ken were surprised to discover the manager standing beside the ticket kiosk. He pumped her hand while Ken paid for the tickets. Then he pumped Ken’s, all the while blethering on about how good it was to see them, and how he hoped they’d enjoy the picture and that they’d come back again soon.

‘What was all that in aid of?’ Vicky whispered to Ken after they had made their escape.

Ken’s mouth twisted cynically downwards. ‘A lot of the folk who come here worked for Agnew’s, and now the factory’s shut I imagine that man sees nothing but trouble for his cinema. I would say he was panicking myself, for a personal welcome won’t make any difference. The only thing that’ll do that is for those now unemployed to find jobs again.’

Vicky giggled. ‘His smile looked as though it had been set in starch.’

Ken nodded in agreement.

Going through swing doors, they plunged into the darkness of the auditorium. They stood for several seconds, waiting for their eyesight to adjust.

‘I’ve never known it so empty on a Friday night,’ Vicky whispered. At a rough count there couldn’t have been more than a couple of dozen folk present, whereas usually the place was packed.

Vicky glanced round, looking for the girl with the torch to show them to their seats. There was no girl. At that moment it came home to Vicky that Agnew’s closing-down was going to affect many more people than just those who had worked there.

‘It seems we find our own way down,’ she whispered.

When the interval arrived, a lassie appeared with a tray of ices. Another cutback, Vicky thought. There had always been two lassies before. Ken wanted to buy her an ice, but she put her foot down at that extravagance. She told him firmly that if he bought it she wouldn’t eat it, so there. As the lights were up, Vicky took the opportunity to have a good gander about her. She saw a boy she knew from school, and asked Ken if he could see anyone else from Agnew’s. There was no one.

‘It’s spooky it being so quiet on a Friday,’ Vicky said. Finally the lights dimmed and, as the plush red velvet curtains swished open, she brought her attention back to the silver screen.

On leaving the pictures, Vicky hooked an arm in Ken’s. ‘That was smashing, thanks.’ She smiled.

‘I’d have enjoyed it more if it had been a talkie,’ he replied.

Vicky said talkies might be the thing, but good old Chaplin hadn’t failed her. She’d had a right laugh.

They were passing an alleyway running behind a line of shops wh