No Smoking (Part One)
by Paul Seaton
The first half of Othello was torture. Every speech seemed to drag, and I noticed after ten minutes that my palms were itching. Maybe I should go to the toilet, I thought. Make my excuses and leave Charlotte to her favourite play while I snuck outside and had a smoke. It wasn't like I'd been puffing away all evening. Not on the tube, the taxi or the pub. Christ, was there anywhere left to smoke anymore? That's how I felt for most of the time I spent in my seat before the interval finally arrived.
As we left the auditorium, Charlotte was in raptures. She talked incessantly as we climbed the carpeted stairs up to the top of the upper circle. It was only a small theatre, but the grandeur of yesteryear had been preserved very well. It was easy to conjure the image of audiences at shows featuring Charlie Chaplin, The Rolling Stones or Macbeth making the same climb. They can’t have moved as fast as I did. As I paced quickly past slow-moving couples, I virtually pulled Charlotte along with me. Her short legs and general floaty quality made the process like taking a small child to the toilet, not my fiancé to the bar for a half-time Hendricks.
‘Do you really need a cigarette that badly, Jonathan?’ She asked me in that voice she reserves for moments of restrained irritability.
I grunted good-naturedly, sure in the knowledge that she knew the tone I used to suggest a happy pretence. We'd been together four years and three months. I knew her body inch-by-inch, but I knew her mind even better. Charlotte had the most amazing mind. She knew my thoughts before I did, and I constantly denied her the satisfaction of knowing it.
‘Not at all,’ I lied. ‘Let's grab a gin and tonic if we can get served.’
Charlotte lightened and we headed to the bar. Despite being light of foot up the velvet stairs, the place was heaving, with four people struggling to cope with the alcoholic demands of a maxed throng that was four-deep across the length of the Heliot Lounge. The Hippodrome Theatre is many things. Reasonably priced, part of a good night out at the casino - Charlotte loved roulette and I used to watch her eyes follow the silver ball with secret delight - and centrally located in Leicester Square. But it was not well staffed that night.
By the time we had been served, the interval had dragged by in an annoying fashion. I stood loyally by Charlottes side and listened to her appraisal of the performance. I took a lot from it, despite myself. Between jealous glances to the exit where I would see happy smokers returning to the theatre, their addiction sated, I distracted myself by revelling in her intelligence and it was luminous. Charlotte, you may have guessed, didn’t smoke.
‘It kills brain cells,’ she would say, in the tone she reserved for facts. You couldn’t argue with facts.
We practically downed our gins when they arrived (it was Gordon's instead of Hendricks) and were walking back to the auditorium when Charlotte saw the look in my eyes.
‘Oh, go on. I can't bear the sad look in your eyes.’ She said, and I smiled at her apologetically.
‘You're wonderful, you know that, don't you?’ I asked her. Of course she did. Charlotte knew everything.
I squeezed her palm, extricated myself from her side - like a fool - and walked back up the couple of stairs towards the exit. I looked back at her and saw her smile twinkle and flash in the dim core light of the Theatre footlights. It was the last time I would ever see that smile.
Once I was outside, I withdrew my cigarettes and lighter with the dexterous skill of a dart player spinning the flight in his fingers before releasing the arrow. I was alone in the cool night air, the sun already down and a belly of clouds hanging over the City ready to empty. I flicked the cigarette up to my waiting lips and caught a flame on the first spark.
The first suck is amazing, isn't it? That first hit of the nicotine and chemicals. What would ironically be the last cigarette I ever smoked tasted like the most perfect poison.
In that moment, I didn't think about Charlotte, my promise to her that I would quit by Christmas - I’d shamelessly promised that for the last three Christmases - or another living soul. I just gloried in the suffocating bliss of my addiction being fed. The cold night was getting more biting with every minute, and I was grateful of the warmth the smoke gave me as it filled my lungs.
‘The second half will be starting, sir.’ Said the doorman to my left. He was on his own out the front and wore a bottle green jacket with gold trim that looked a little faded around the cuffs. It's those quaint antique touches that give The Hippodrome its charm, so I walked over to him.
‘Thanks. I won't be a minute.’
‘We must have a hit, isn't that right?’ He said with a gleam in his eye and a furtive smile.
‘You're not wrong. God, it's needed. Long day.’
The doorman looked normal. Moderately tall and blandly brown-haired, he could have been described as plain, except that his expression came from something else. There was a curve to his lip when he smiled that sat outside how a human being should look. It was cruel, that smile. It came away from his face like the Cheshire Cat’s smile in Alice in Wonderland. It was other-worldly and if I'd been paying attention on anything than my cigarette, I might have been scared to death.
‘Worth missing Othello for, is it?’ He asked, the crooked smile seeming to float in the air.
‘Not really, I suppose,’ I answered, ‘I'll just finish off.’
He stood right next to me, but the odd thing was how far away he felt. Do you ever have a dream where you are at once tiny and enormous? Your fingers dwarf anything you might touch, yet at the same time, you feel like a speck of dust in a deserted ballroom? That sense was like a snake constricting my body as I spoke to him. I felt oddly drawn to him yet reviled and it was nothing to do with what he said. To any passing tourist he might look normal, but the street seemed just as far away as everything else did.
‘My old mum used to say the same thing.’ the Doorman said, his cheeks sucked in, pockmarks definable in his yellowing jawline.
I took a couple of long draws on the cigarette and felt satisfied that no cravings would assail me until the end of the play. I looked around for somewhere to drop the cigarette, but there was no receptacle at hand. My green-blazered friend smiled at me again. He had the eyes of a snake that never seemed to close.
‘Let me take that for you, sir.’ He motioned, and I couldn't help but let him. He looked me in the eyes and took it by the cherry, the glowering red tip of my last cigarette. There was only a little of it left except the filter, but he pinched it out in one movement, never taking his eyes off my face. I felt drawn to his gaze in a trance. As I saw him pocket the cigarette, he smiled once more. I felt an icy chill in my chest, and it didn't fade until he put his arm around my shoulder, guiding me back inside in silence. I felt the immediate need to get away from him as soon as possible overruled by the insistence of my bladder.
‘Could you tell me where the gents is?’ I asked, as much to hear the sound of my own voice than anything.
‘Of course, sir. It's this way.’ He replied. He wasn't smiling any more and despite myself I missed it.
The inside of The Hippodrome really is a maze. We climbed a flight of stairs to the left of the bar, but a series of corridors which in the 1930s stars of the day might have used dressing rooms along took us around the interior of the old building into a section I didn't know existed. I glanced out of the window and saw the familiar sight of Mister Wu's Chinese Parlour where I'd often eaten the £5 all-you-can-eat buffet. Wu was apparently doing a roaring trade, the wet pavement outside the restaurant crowded with couples looking to fill up before late shows.
‘It's just here, sir.’ Invited the doorman. His outstretched arm guided me to the toilet, and I entered, turning to thank him. But he shot me one last smile and I felt the colour pall from my face. It curdled my blood, that smile, and it seemed more horribly gleeful than I ever saw it. I shivered as I entered the rest room.
Inside, it was busy. I saw two men washing their hands, three more at the six urinals and all the cubicles were full, so I couldn't do what I normally would have done, which was to idly relieve myself while scrolling through my mobile phone. I used the urinal closest to the wall and went to wash my hands. The two men were still using the taps on either side of me and I looked at them as I continued my ablutions.
‘Here for the play?’ I asked absently. There was a stifling silence in the room. Neither of them answered at first, but my perseverance eventually got a response when I told them that I was here to see Othello.
‘Tom Jones.’ Said one of them. I remember thinking it strange, because he wasn't advertised. I mean, he was still a big deal. Big enough for a poster, at least.
‘Spandau Ballet.’ Said the other man. The words sounded rusty as they left his mouth, as if it had been a very long time since he'd cleared his throat.
‘I didn’t know they were on.’ I replied. Both of the men went back to washing their hands while I went to the hand-dryer. He must have been joking. He was all of sixty. He didn't exactly strike me as a new romantic.
My hands dry, I went to leave the toilet. The other men in there were still at the urinals or the sink and it creeped me out. The men at the urinals looked normal enough. So too the pair of older chaps at the sinks. But I felt a sinking feeling even before I tried the door.
It didn't open.
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