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Moon Puddles
by
Stan Howes
That evening I must have taken hours to dress. I wore a black shirt and cords and a light-coloured jacket. My tie I carefully knotted an inch below my shirt collar to create an impression of intellectual casualness, the kind you see in French movies. I posed and postured in front of the bedroom mirror until I had achieved the right stance.
‘She must be a nice girl,’ said my mother, fishing as mothers do. I was tempted to explain, but in the end clammed up and gave her a dutiful-son smile.
What bothered me most was passing the yobs who hung out, like a permanent encampment, at the local bus stop. Would I suffer their withering abuse, become the butt of their mirthless repartee? After a final posturing in the mirror and the licking down of some recalcitrant hair I slammed the front door behind me and ran into the rain-tossed night. As I turned the last corner before the bus stop I braced myself for the ritual name-calling. For once the yobs were no where to be seen.
The bus rumbled through ghostly, ill-lit streets where unknown figures formed and faded in the curious dream of night. There was a sprinkling of people on board the bus seemingly absorbed in their window images until a drunk broke in on their thoughts. He came lurching down the aisle causing consternation among the women passengers. Just as I thought he would pass me by he performed a kind of clumsy pirouette and landed with a thud on the seat beside me.
‘Sorry son,’ he spluttered while his head went on an eye-rolling swivel. Predictably his head rolled back to slump on my shoulder. Thus I travelled with my sleeping companion into the city.
Walking through the streets first-time nerves were starting to get to me resulting in a dash to some underground toilets. With relief I climbed to street level again, breathed in a lungful of leaf-wild air and took in Belfast at night. People hurried to-and-fro over the glassy-wet pavements intent on gaining warm interiors. From one of the darker alleys muffled snatches of disco wafted desolately while in the City Hall grounds drink-hoarse voices like lost souls called to one another.
In The Crown Bar I sipped a vodka and coke crowded on all sides by boozy bonhomie. Everyone seemed engaged in passionate talk, loud laughter or shouting for more drinks and keeping the bar staff scurrying about. This was a popular watering hole for visitors from the obscure to the celebrated, the place it was smart to be seen in. Just as I was squeezing through the double doors, a man with a kind of period, sculpted beard had brushed by me on his way out. For a fraction of a second our eyes collided and I recognised him. Being one of the obscure he didn’t recognise me. I took another drink and now with mind focused and nerves steady I exited with a gaggle of revellers onto the glum street and there before me it stood.
Clusters of wind-flapped people like moths around a flame gathered at the lighted entrance of an old, grandiose building across the road. When I joined the filtering queue I felt like a devotee of a new religion: awed, excited, unsure what to expect. This was it, my first night at the theatre, the Grand Opera House no less!
I had imagined people dressed up to the nines and talking in posh accents. While there may have been some like that, most appeared quite ordinary, unpretentious folk, sporting in some cases anoraks and T-shirts. I was starting to feel positively overdressed!
I have to be honest when I took my seat in the auditorium I was having a struggle with the drink so that in the end I let the first act of the play wash over me. It was probably the best thing to do for before long I was enjoying the performance. My position in the front row of the stalls was literally a few feet from the actors allowing me to feel like a passive player in the story. Maybe my slightly tight state too had made me a bit more aware and open to new things. The by turns joyous and tormented characters were people I knew and could relate to. The fact that they lived in the dusty heart of Russia a century ago and had funny-sounding names was unimportant. With a little stretch of the imagination they could be the same people who walked the rain-trailed streets of my own city. And wasn’t that the actor I had seen coming out of The Crown Bar?
In the helter-skelter at the interval I waded to the bar. Drink in hand I stood amid the rowdy theatre throng sensing I was present at some crucial and thrilling event. The animated and laughing faces bobbed and swam around me. I admired the women, catching sometimes a surprised or blasé expression.
I amused myself by listening to the chatter about the play and incongruously about holidays and home improvements. Had some of these people no soul I thought getting on my high horse. How could they not be swept up in the drama and emotion of the play?
I was bursting to tell someone about my new-found discovery when a young, pretty, well-dressed woman, who was apparently waiting for her partner to return, smiled at me and I blurted out the first thought that came into my head:
‘It’s a great play!’
‘It is rather good,’ said the young woman cradling her wine glass like an apple.
‘Quite funny too,’ I said. ‘A bit like a farce.’
For a moment I feared I had blundered and had put my foot in it.
‘People don’t realise,’ she went on, ‘how comic Chekhov really is. They think he is all tedium and people shooting themselves. His plays are very like life, don’t you think? You never know what to expect.’
‘How true,’ I ventured.
‘This is your first time at a theatre?’
‘Yes, but how did you know?’
‘I read it in your eyes,’ she said. ‘They’re glowing.’
‘You’re certain it’s not this?’ I responded pointing at my glass.
She gave a tinkly laugh.
‘I think I can distinguish between alcohol and ardour. For you life will never be the same again. I know the signs. You’re hooked!’
At that moment a man, who looked as if he might be her father, unpaternally put his arm around her waist.
‘Maybe we’ll meet again?’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
With that she was whisked away.
I clambered back to my seat in the stalls through a chaos of vivid faces and babbling voices and drunk the moment to the full: the play, the actors, the audience, the young woman, the evening…… Everything swirled in the rose-coloured glass of new experience.
The second half of the play proved as enjoyable as the first and when the curtain fell the theatre erupted in applause. Such was my enthusiasm my hands were stinging when it finally crackled out. Struggling to the exit I happened to glance up at the circle and caught sight of the young woman and she of me. She gave a little wave and what seemed like a knowing smile. I raised a hand above the crowd.
As I left the theatre I felt a strange elation. I began to run. The rain had ceased and a bright moon shone in the puddles. I didn’t stop running until I reached the bus stop.
Getting off the bus I stumbled into the unruly arms of the yobs, but even they were powerless to upset me and as I walked away their jeering, yelping calls were drowned in an ecstatic, rolling applause that shook the stacked roof tops and hammered down the great hall of the night.
When I got home my mother was eager to hear a full account of my evening. While she moved about the kitchen making supper in her methodical way she asked me if I would be seeing my new girlfriend again. Reclining in a plastic chair I gazed round at the assembled and hushed detergent bottles and wet dishes and after a dramatically long pause said:
‘I think I shall.’
My mother gave me an odd look and filled the toaster.
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Stan Howes
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