The welcoming lights of an old inn. The sign creaks in the howling wind. A flash of lightning illuminates the sign. On it is a piggy in dark glasses with a walking stick.
They stagger in out of the howling, terrifying storm. Everyone in the bar stops talking and stares at them. The pianist gets his coat and leaves. A clock ticks loudly. A stuffed stag’s head falls off the wall.
One of the travellers, the one with the nobbly knees (me) says, “Oh – hello, we’ve come to Yorkshire by mistake.”
And the landlord with two pies in his hands says, “You’re not from around here, are thee?”
The other traveller, the one with fluffy hair and a sticky-up nose (Vaisey) says, “No, no – we are looking for Dother Hall, we are artists.”
Everyone laughs.
The landlord says, “But are you mime artists?”
I nod, twice.
Vaisey says, “And I do a bit of tap. We mean no harm, we just want to don our tights and tap dance our way to the top.”
I say, “Yes, yes, we want to live forever, we want to learn how to fly!!”
Everyone stares at us.
I say desperately, “Look! We can prove it! We are wearing our new all-in-one dance bodies and leggings underneath our kagouls.”
The burly landlord says, “Put them in the room with the others.”
We are led to a door and when it opens we see…the room is full of performance art students. Some in all-in-one body and leggings dancewear.
A few just in leggings. Some of them are very old.
Walking to college with Vaisey, I said, “It will be a relief to get back to the Dother ship.” I was wrong.
Jo was waiting for us by the gates because she’s had a note from Phil, asking her to meet him outside M & S on Wednesday to see a film called Night of the Vampire Bats.
Jo showed us his note: This film makes Twilight seem like afternoon.
Jo said, “Look, and this is where you two come in.”
Bring two others, for my mate, Phil.
Jo looked at me and Vaisey.
I said, “No.”
Jo went on and on all day. It was driving me mad.
Everywhere I looked she was doing her saddy face.
When I went to the loo she was there outside the loo door, looking at me like a sad puppy. Not even saying anything.
The trouble was that Vaisey had said she would go, ‘just for a laugh’, but I think she is hoping that Jack would be going. So it was alright for her. Flossie and Honey are off the hook because they have extra singing that night.
I finally gave in when Jo gave me an apple with a little crying face carved in it.
Phil’s note had mysteriously appeared in Jo’s pigeon-hole by the front desk. It must have been hand-delivered.
Jo said, “How will I get a letter back to him?”
I said, “You won’t, unless you want to jog over to Woolfe Academy disguised as a sea cadet.”
She said, “Well that settles it then, you have to come, otherwise his mates will turn up and feel like lemons.”
And she stomped off like it was a done deal.
I said to Vaisey, “The fly in her argument is that when she says, ‘they’ will feel like lemons, we don’t know who ‘they’ are. And ‘they’ might BE lemons.”
Surely Phil might have mentioned if one of his mateshad a trunk…
I don’t know why I am so bothered about this ‘date’.
I’m not even officially on the date.
We had to go and try and get permission from Sidone to go to the cinema at night time. She was in her inner chamber, um, I mean office. She was lying down on a chaise longue with a cup of tea.
“Darlings, I am ex-hausted, I had a call from a friend directing Cats and he has bled me dry. I have practically redesigned the whole thing lying on this chaise longue. Sit, sit.”
We sat, sat.
“It beggars belief that he would only realise he didn’t have enough cat costumes the day before he opens. They can be an ugly, demanding crowd in Cleckheaton. I know, I gave my Ophelia there and someone called the social services. Sometimes this profession is a tyranny. Still, darlings, you came to see me for something?”
I said, “We’d like to go to the cinema in Skipley on Wednesday night, because we were thinking that for the lunchtime performance we could, um, use some of the ideas and themes from the film.”
She was very, very interested. Unfortunately. And swept her hair back. “What are you thinking? What is this germ, this shoot you are nurturing? Is it an interior idea? What is the film?”
And Jo said, “Well…it’s called…Night of the Vampire Bats.”
She said, “Yes, and what is it about?”
Jo said helpfully, “It’s set at night.”
Sidone was looking into the distance and twirling her earrings. “Ah, the night. The mysterious, shadowy underworld that covers so many, many broken dreams.”
I thought she was going to start crying she was so moved by her broken dreams.
Jo stumbled on, “But, but, really I think it’s about…um…an interior darkness.”
I was just about to say, “That bats must feel because they can’t see much.” But luckily Sidone stood up.
“Marvellous! I utterly see where you are going with this…it’s the long dark night of the soul, isn’t it?”
I was inwardly thinking, you can say that again, but outwardly saying, “Um.”
Anyway, we are allowed to go. Amazingly.
As we came out of her office, she shouted after us, “Strive, strive for authenticity, my dears. Even when you feel the cold tremors of fear and bleakness tearing and biting at your heels.”
As we closed the door to her inner sanctum, I said, “I think I can feel my feet beginning to bleed quite a lot.”
I was exhausted from lying. I’m so useless at it.
Vaisey said to Jo, “You said that Night of the Vampire Bats was about interior darkness.”
I said, “Well it will be. It’s really dark in the cinema.”
Jo was pleased because we had got away with it. She shook her little head and said, “Yes, OK, it is about bats…but mostly…it’s…about my very first date!!!!”
I said bitterly, “It’s alright for you, but me and Vaisey don’t know if