Silver Linings Read Free

wore the biggest cape you have ever seen, was the mother of ten differently fathered children that she took everywhere with her. Nonetheless when she arrived at the pay desk she only purchased two tickets. One was for herself and one for a child that she was holding firmly by the hand. However, when she walked away from the cash desk, to mount the dangerously steep concrete stairs of the theatre, she appeared to move like a centipede. People gasped and sniggered when Mrs Greenhill banged her chest three times and then as many as up to sixteen feet could be detected marching in unison under her cape. When they arrived at the first floor a deep cough emanating from Mrs Greenhill then signalled that six of the feet should break free from under the cape and scramble up the remaining two flights of stairs to the gods. Once they reached there they took off their coats and spread them down on the benches, thus indicating to other customers that these choice front seats were reserved for the rest of the family, when they finally arrived.
    Looking down over that twelve-inch brass rail, which prevented you from falling over into the Grand Circle’s upholstered seats, Mrs Greenhill would collapse down on the wooden bench and then loudly declare it to be a scandal that she was sent up here after her paying full first-rate prices for her children and herself to watch second-rate shows. ‘Does the management in here no ken that I suffer from vertigo?’ she would holler and swoon. When it became evident that no one was going to bother about her fainting she would quickly recover and grab the handrail before going on, ‘And that three of my bairns are noo addicted to Brasso because, when the acts are boring, they take to sooking this bleeding banister?’
    Kate now willingly recalled that she had been a blonde, willowy eleven-year-old when the Gaiety began to have competition in the form of moving pictures. She vividly recollected how excited everyone was when the Leith Picture House opened in Lawrie Street, down off Constitution Street, in 1911. Dear, attentive, thirteen-year-old Hugh, who was an artisan apprentice in the shipyards, saved enough from his meagre weekly pocket money so he could treat her to a visit to the picture house.
    By the time she was thirteen, and the First World War was looming, every Saturday night she would be burying her head into Hugh’s shoulders as The Perils of Pauline serial saw the heroine Pauline become a poor damsel in distress, faced with dangerous actions that were threatening her very life. One serial lasted a whole twelve weeks, so poor Hugh had no other option but to treat Kate to a visit to the Leith Picture House every one of those weeks so she could make sure Pauline survived the daft weekly cliffhangers. Kate shook her head, because now, at forty, she accepted the storylines of the Pauline films were always flimsy and that they relied on sensationalism. She also acknowledged that Hugh was not impressed by silly movies like The Perils of Pauline but he would shake with laughter at Brewster’s Millions . As time went by Kate’s taste in films took on a developing air of sophistication and she became enthralled by films like The Old Curiosity Shop and Cecil B. DeMille’s first shot at directing, in a film called The Squaw Man .
    The last film Kate and Hugh sat through, before he marched off to war, starred a newcomer, Charlie Chaplin, in the thankfully hilariously funny film, Making a Living .
    Tears now streaming down her face, Kate stood up and lifted a pillow from the bed, which she then placed under Kitty’s head. ‘So, Kitty, my dear, you believe I never knew sorrow.’ She huffed and grunted and then whispered, ‘Never knew sorrow? My dearest Hugh was a big man in every way. At seventeen, when he marched off to war, he was six feet tall, a gentleman, and I loved him. I wish,’ she continued, ‘I could forget just how much we loved each other – lay to rest the memories of the plans