The main doors to the theatre were closed and barred, with brown paper pasted on the insides to discourage people from looking in. There were several glass display panels next to the steps, but I saw no announcements of performances, and there were no show cards visible. However, the building did not look at all derelict and was in good repair. The paint had been recently applied.
I pressed my face to one of the door windows trying to see into the foyer beyond. I rattled the handle lightly, not trying to force the door but to make enough noise to alert anyone who might be inside.
After a few moments a man appeared from within. He stooped to peer at me past one of the brown paper covers, then seemed to realize who I might be and unlocked the door.
‘I’m Hike Tommas,’ I said. ‘I’m starting a job here.’
‘Hike? I was expecting you last week,’ the man said, but not in an unfriendly way. He extended his hand, and we shook. ‘My name’s Jayr. I’m the acting manager here. For the moment there’s no one else on the staff, so we’ve a lot of work ahead of us.’
‘What’s to be done?’
He ushered me in, closed the door against the cold wind and led me through the lobby, where dust-covers had been laid over the carpets and counters, and down two narrow passages and a short staircase up. The theatre building was unheated and lit only by dim bulbs set high in the ceilings.
Jayr gave me a hot drink from the coffee machine he had set up in the tiny office behind the pay-booth. We sat casually in the cramped space, leaning against the edges of furniture.
‘Do you have any experience in a theatre?’ Jayr said.
‘We had to do practicals in my course.’
I described some of them, naturally embellishing the facts to make them sound more impressive. In fact I had already set out my c.v. when applying, and I assumed Jayr would have seen it. Most of my real experience had been in watching other people working behind the scenes, but my interest in stagecraft was genuine and I had spent a lot of time reading the books and talking with other students.
I gained the impression Jayr was glad to have someone to work with him, and his questions soon sounded desultory to me. I decided he was probably unimpressed with his new assistant, but it did not seem to matter much. It was not he who had hired me, it turned out. We were both temporary staff, although I was more temporary than Jayr. He lived in Omhuuv all year round.
I slowly pieced together some idea of what the story was. The previous owners had sold the theatre to a new company, or there was a transfer of a trust document, or another kind of legal dispute. No one was officially the owner for the time being, so they needed staff to stand in temporarily and prepare for the season ahead. Although Jayr lived in the town he had not been born on Goorn, but on one of the other Hetta islands, at the far western end, a small industrial island called Onna. He had worked here the previous summer, more or less in the same position I was now in. He said he had been given a big chance, a fabulous opportunity to prove what he could do as manager. He told me the technical facilities in the theatre were as good as you would find anywhere. The official tech crew had not yet arrived and were not expected for a few more days.
He took me out to show me around the backstage area, giving me a guide to the main technical facilities. I took all this in without a problem: my course had given me a thoroughgoing background in stage management and theatrical craft.
The theatre was about to re-open after the winter break. Bookings had already started coming in. The Sjøkaptein was a popular feature of the town. The problem, Jayr’s problem, was that the programmes were so unimaginative. He told me the previous year the season had included several plays, but now he was here he had discovered that this summer the main bookings were for variety shows, comedians who were famous from television, pop tribute bands, magic acts. There were problems with the need to hire musicians, finding out what special or extra lighting effects were needed, obtaining releases from TV companies, dealing with agents, all in addition to the normal concerns of staffing, safety measures, office paperwork, and so on.
The programmes at the end of the season were more to his taste. During two weeks towards the end of the summer a couple of plays were scheduled, and he was looking forward to those. In the meantime he was making the best of the rest. There was a renowned clairvoyant coming for a short season — Jayr was looking forward to her too. Clairvoyants always filled the seats, he said. And a mime artiste. Jayr liked mime. But he found the rest uninspiring. He told me there was plenty of scope for me to become involved.
Later, when Jayr had to make some phone calls, I wandered away on my own and walked down to the semi-dark auditorium. The seats were protected by vast over-thrown translucent plastic sheets. I sat quietly in the luxuriantly cushioned rows of seats, somewhere in the middle of the stalls. I leaned back, staring up at the ornately decorated plaster ceiling, the cluster of small chandeliers, the velvet plush on the walls. The building had clearly been renovated recently, but it still felt like a traditional theatre.
A sense of contentment spread through me. The only other theatre I had been in was the civic playhouse in Evllen, but that was financed and managed by the local authority, part of the leisure complex, with squash courts, a gym, a swimming pool and a lending library. The Sjøkaptein had the grace of tradition and years on it, but it was magnificent and alive, and dedicated to the calm illusionism of drama, entertainment, amusement.
The next day it began snowing again in earnest. The snow fell day and night, high, thin flakes blowing up the fjord from the direction of the open sea, drifting in the streets and against the houses, the wind gusting relentlessly from the frigid north-easterly quarter. Snow was an accustomed part of life for the people of the Tallek region. Snow changed the mood of everyone — snow had to be dealt with as a practical matter. Every morning and evening, and sometimes during the nights also, the Seigniory snow-ploughs and blowers were out, keeping the streets and wharves open, allowing the shops to trade, the fish to be landed, the trucks to enter and leave. I kept the stove in my room alight all day and night, as did everyone else in the town, fusing the billows of snow with thin grey woodsmoke. For me, Omhuuv took on a more rustic, medieval quality, feeling closer to the elements, deeper in a wild history.
I settled into daily routines. Jayr set me to work testing and checking all the mechanical equipment in the theatre: the ropes, the trapdoor, the rigging, the lights, the sound system. The scenery bay was cluttered with flats from last season’s plays, and because we had no use for most of them I set about breaking them up, keeping intact the pieces that I could, or which Jayr said were standard pieces of scenery. I discovered I knew less about this kind of thing than I had thought, but because I was working alone I soon picked up what I needed to know. I carefully kept all the pieces of reusable timber, storing them in the scenery bay.
Jayr was concerned about the slow intake of his bookings: the theatre was due to open in the first weeks of spring, when the snow was supposed to be no longer falling, if not completely melted from the mountains. This was the regular schedule, but according to the records the bookings this year were unusually low. Jayr fretted and complained about the lack of audience support for some of the artistes, especially about the acts he favoured. There was one in particular: a man who worked under the stage name ‘Commis’, a renowned mime artiste. Jayr swore Commis would probably be the most popular act in the year, as he had been in the past, but at the moment his performances were being no better supported by the public than any others.