A Majestic Man by Alyson Faye

1985 Halifax, Yorkshire.

The cinema was nearly empty, but then it was midnight and all the punters had gone home, the shutters had been pulled down and Mabel, after applying her usual extra coat of lipstick to her rouge red pout, as armour against the bus ride back, had departed, with the spare confectionery for her nephews and nieces. Only The Majestic’s owner, Rigby Rogers, was left sitting in the front row, with a pair of swollen-bellied tubs of popcorn on either side, staring at the flickering monochrome images on the screen.

He liked to run his favourite films after hours, he’d always been a night owl. He was mouthing the dialogue along with the film’s bleached-out figures, as he watched a fat be-hatted, bow-tied man alongside his sad-faced, scarecrow companion, tramping across a studio desert wearing boots and kepis. Their neck drapes were blowing back into their faces courtesy no doubt of wind machines’. The scene had been captured on nitrate nearly a hundred years before and thousands of miles away, across an ocean, in Hollywood. The duo's familiar antics flowed off the screen, flooding Rigby with nostalgia . . .

• *

Halifax, 1960.

A sick day and a blessed escape from the hell of Rigby’s daily life at the local secondary school. Instead he was lying cosy in bed, hugging a hot water bottle enwrapped in a smelly blue rubber coat, watching, as a rare daytime treat, the tiny black and white portable TV.

‘Let’s watch Laurel and Hardy, son.’ His Mum said.

The sound of her knitting needles blended with Hardy’s high pitched giggles and Laurel’s sobs were a wonderful tonic.

‘I saw them, you know, Rigby, Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy, in person,' his mum added. 'Oh, about seven years ago in t’ middle of town, at the old Odeon.’ The needles clicked. Rigby stared at his mother in amazement, mouth open. She smiled at him. ‘Aye, that Hardy fella, he was double the size, sweating buckets, the poor man. The thin fella, well, he looked like he’d not eaten in months. End of the road for them career wise, touring Britain.'

Rigby fiddled with the patterned Paisley bedcover, hardly daring to believe that right here in his bedroom was this living link to these celluloid ghosts and his alltime comedy heroes.

‘Hung around the back door of the Odeon I did, for hours, but they didn’t come out. Perhaps they were hiding?’ Mum added, looking thoughtful. 'Perhaps they'd simply had enough.'

‘Who from?’ Ten-year-old Rigby was confused.

‘Dunno, Rigby. From Halifax? Or themselves? They couldn’t have wanted to be here – not really? I mean - Hollywood to Halifax- it’s the wrong way round that journey.’

* * *

1985, Halifax.

Dear old Mum, thought Rigby. She’d been dead these past ten years, but he still remembered her knitting needles, and her luridly coloured sweaters whichgrew from them and, best of all, her stories.

Rigby roared with laughter, his face lit up by the screen’s silvery glow. He turned to the pair of figures, one standing at the head of each aisle.

‘See fellas, you’ve not lost your old magic. You’re still making us laugh in Halifax.’

The two silent companions – wooden, life-sized figures, painted in faded colours, one thin and sad-faced, Mr Stan Laurel, and the other rotund and bow-tied, Mr Oliver Hardy, stood upright, rigid and unbending.

They were a real talking point for the cinema’s customers, and Rigby, himself was such a familiar figure too, poised in the foyer, who liked to tell everyone. ‘Them wooden figures were a gift, you know, from Mr Laurel. To The Majestic, when I opened here in ‘62. He was born just over the border in Lancashire. He’d got family there and used to visit. Especially after Mr Hardy died. One of them told him about me opening The Majestic and me showing one of their films, so, he sent these two fellas over. Worth a bomb now, I expect.’

Rigby had told this fable so often he half-believed it and indeed, there were nuggets of truth woven into its warp and weft. Rigby was, as he saw it, in the business of selling dreams. He offered an escape for a couple of hours, from life’s dreary toil, whilst sitting in the red velvet seats maybe holding hands in the dark with your beloveds.

‘Gift of the gab, Mr R. is what you’ve got.’ His box office manageress, Mabel, often told him, fond but disapproving.

‘What’s the harm, luv? It’s just another story. We’ve got a million of them here, trapped in the walls of this palace.’

The L&H companions with Rigby standing proud between them had had their photograph in the local press, ‘The Courier’. Then, to everyone’s surprise, a national had picked up the story and run with it. The phone started ringing at all hours, and Laurel and Hardy fans started turning up, knocking at the closed doors, hanging around the back alley, pestering for a chance to pose with the wooden companions. Mr Laurel’s gift. A piece of cinema history.

‘It’s getting out of hand now, Mr R.,’ Mabel said, one bleak Monday afternoon, as she patted her perm into place prior to pulling up the shutters on the box office. ‘They’re camping outside overnight now. Look! And we’re running out of Rowntrees fruit gums. They’re eating them by the bucket load.’ She pointed at the scattering of tents and umbrellas outside the glass doors cluttering up the pavement and the handkerchief-sized patch of grass.

‘But it’s good for business, Mabel. You can’t deny the coffers have been filling up nicely. Usually it’s very quiet at this time of year. Can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, can we?’

Mabel lowered her voice, so the two lasses, training as usherettes, couldn’t overhear. ‘But what if they find out it’s all a --- fib.’ She blushed. She didn’t want to criticise her boss. He was a lovely chap. He just had an over-active imagination. ‘You’re charging them money to pose with Mr L. and Mr H.’

‘And, just to remind you, Mabel, I’m giving you a cut.’ Rigby frowned at her.

Mabel blushed even deeper. With her Wilfred not working the extra shillings were coming in handy. They could have fish and chips and steak pie every week plus there were the perms, colour tints and little treats from Harveys department store. Luxury it was.

‘Go on, girls,’ Rigby told the usherettes, ‘open up those doors, and let them in.’

* * *

At midnight Rigby sat smoking in his cupboard of an office counting the evening’s takings. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey perched beside him. He was a happy man, though, if he had to be honest, a tinge of guilt was taking the edge off his mellow mood. He hated having a conscience.

He stood up, flicking off the lights, and took his usual midnight promenade around the premises - up to the reels room where the cameras lurked, then back down to the cloakrooms, box office, foyer, and finally right into the heart of The Majestic - the screening room.

The companions stood in their usual spots, silent, waiting.

‘Nice work, lads. You’ve done me proud. What a gift you’ve turned out to be.’ He patted their wooden shoulders fondly.

Behind him the screen flowered into life, black and white images forming of two familiar faces, both staring out at him. Rigby froze, then slowly turned around. Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy were both up there, but men's faces were sad, and frowning. Now they were shaking their heads, saying, ‘No more, enough is enough. Respect our legacy, Rigby Rogers.’ In a dazzle of silver the images vanished.

Rigby staggered backwards, collapsing into one of the front row seats, heart pounding. In the dim light he thought the companion figures were juddering towards him, one on either side. He heard the creak of wood, saw their arms lift up only to shake forbidding fingers … creak, crack, one step nearer and nearer . . .

Rigby woke up a few hours late lying face down on the sticky carpet, blurry with booze and nursing a banging headache. He was however alone.

The screen was thankfully empty and dark, and the silent companions were both back in their usual spots, and motionless.

* * *

Mabel arrived breathless, her hair still in bright pink plastic rollers. She’d come straight over from ‘Cut and Curl’. ‘What’s the trouble, Mr R.? Why did you phone me at the hairdresser’s? Is there an emergency?’

Rigby sat behind his desk, feet up, now fully sober, and shaved. He beckoned her in. ‘Film festival. That’s the ticket. We’re going to start a Laurel and Hardy film festival. Right here in Halifax, with photographs of when the boys toured here. Advertise in the paper for people’s memories of them. Like those of me dear old late mum. Get folk interviewed and put up a little exhibition. Get those fans in, give them a meal, too. Pie and peas. Open the rooms upstairs and run their comedies over forty-eight hours. A weekender. I’ve realised that the greatest gift, Mabel, of Mr L and Mr H –is their legacy – of laughter.’