The Tay Is Wet Read Online Free PDF Page A

to see it several times. Everyone in town was singing operatic arias for months afterwards.
    Timmy Deery was fifteen years old when he first visited Roggart on his own. He had heard about the new “Grand” picture house from Ivor Nale and the first film he saw was a horror piece called “Invasion of the Worms.” His favourite western was “Canadian Pacific” starring Randolph Scott. It was the story of the building of the railway across Canada and Timmy was so smitten that he was hooked on western films from that time onwards. He was given a special seat in the middle back row with his back leaning against the winnowing machine and nobody dared take that seat, or there would be the mother and father of a row. Many young couples who were going out together frequented the “Grand” and, much to Timmy’s annoy ance, they always crowded into the back row and he seemed to be squashed in the middle of them. Also, they did not always pay much attention to the action on the screen, but kissed and cuddled, ate sweets and talked in whispers.
    One evening Timmy was standing outside waiting for the programme to start, and Ivor Nale, who was in his late fifties, and many years older than Timmy, came along with a lady called Rosie, whom Timmy knew as Ivor’s girl friend. They had been going out together for the best part of forty years and the ladies of the village sewing circle had long since given up on seeing them walk down the aisle.
    ‘Poor Rosie,’ they would say, ‘imagine being strung along by that lug of a Nale fellow, sure he’ll never propose to her, wasted the best years of her life waiting on that miserable wretch.’
    Sonny, one day, commented that Rosie herself had recently said to Ivor, ‘I think we should get married,’ and Ivor replied, ‘Sure who in their right mind would have either of us.’ Sonny thought this was a great joke and roared laughing. Timmy did not understand what he was laughing at.
    Anyway, on this occasion, there was a third person accompa nying the older couple. It was Rosie’s niece, a pleasant looking girl of about seventeen and she smiled at Timmy, who blushed and looked upwards at the night sky, pretending he was interested in the stars.
    ‘That’s Jupiter up there,’ he said to Ivor.
    ‘Really,’ said the girl, in a posh English sounding accent, ‘I thought Jupiter was only visible from the southern hemisphere.’
    Timmy glared at Ivor who seemed intent on prolonging the conversation. Putting one arm around the girl’s shoulders and the other around Timmy’s he pushed the two of them so close together that Timmy’s nose touched the girl’s forehead.
    ‘Timmy, this is Wendy, here on holiday from England, Wendy this is Timmy,’ he said cheerily, ‘Now you two go in there together and discuss the stars. This is my treat. Here, Timmy, here’s a bag of sweets.’
    There was no use arguing with Ivor. Rosie murmured for him to leave them alone and that maybe they did not want to discuss the planets. But Wendy was glad to have someone nearer to her own age to talk to. She had been staying with her Aunt Rosie for a week now and was a bit bored.
    She followed Timmy in and sat down beside him. The first film was a Roy Rogers cowboy, which did not really interest her. However, as soon as it began, Timmy became totally immersed in it. He forgot completely about the young English girl sitting beside him. He opened the bag of sweets which Ivor had given him and began eating them and at the same time being transfixed by the action on screen. Wendy waited patiently to be offered one, but in a few minutes Timmy had emptied the whole bag of marshmallows. He burped as the last one went down. One of Timmy’s jobs at the cinema was to switch on the lights for the interval but on this night he forgot to switch them on. As the first film ended Buddy waited for a few seconds and when nothing happened he leaned down from the top of the winnowing machine to see where Timmy was and the reel of