August 1930. A new decade. High summer in Bristol and a storm in the offing after three days of searing heat wave. Daytime access to the theatre was through the battered stage door, the one the actors used.
Billy had spent the morning polishing the brasswork in the dress circle. Now, he gazed at the rickety ladder that led into the roof space above the wings. He could hear the murmur of voices on the main stage, two actors in rehearsal, one of them Irene, the woman who would change his life forever.
He got to the top of the ladder and stepped into the darkness. It felt mysterious, enveloping, impenetrable. The borrowed torch was all but useless. He gave it a shake, then another, and in the dirty yellow light he was finally able to look round.
Huge wooden trusses above his head, heavily cobwebbed. A tiny splinter of sky where a slate had shifted. And off to the left his first glimpse of what he’d come to find: the long wooden gully, gently inclined, supported on trestles and tarred inside for reasons he could only guess at. At fourteen years old, Billy Angell was in love with magic, with make-believe. And here it was: the device they called the Thunder Run.
The cannonballs were backed up behind a little rectangle of wood that fitted into a slot at the top of the run and served as a stopper. Lift the stopper and gravity would do the rest.
The actors on the stage below were rehearsing a scene from a costume drama built around a marriage in difficulties. An earlier incident had sparked a crisis and the wife had finally run out of patience. After an exchange of muted banalities, Irene had lost her temper.
‘The situation is intolerable,’ she shouted. ‘Be honest for once in your life, what is it you want from me?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘I don’t believe you. You want all of me. Every last morsel.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Then leave me in peace, I implore you.’
Perfect, Billy thought, imagining Irene and her stage husband locked in a moment of silence, awaiting a sign from the gods. He reached for the stopper and released the cannonballs. They started to roll down the gully, a gathering rumble that could only be the approach of a summer storm. Billy watched them as they began to slow where the gully flattened out. The support trestles were still shaking. This close, he could feel the thunder deep in his bones.
Below, on stage, the actors had abandoned the script. Billy heard the scrape of a chair as one of them stood up. It must have been Irene.
‘Damn and blast,’ she sounded even angrier. ‘I left my bloody washing out.’
The torch flickered and died. Billy was grinning in the hot darkness. Magic, he thought. Make-believe.