The theatre at the end of the pier closed in 1979 and is a shell kept for the look of it, with the box office window still there and the ticket machine in it, the old kind, that logs on a roll. Every night the roll advances by one ticket. Row F, seat 8, for the last show, the one on the poster that is still in the frame. The stage working light comes on at half past seven and goes off at ten, and the seat, when you look in through the glass, is the only one in the house that is down.
I am the pier's maintenance man and the theatre at the end is the part I am not allowed to pull down and not given the money to mend, and it is open one seat a night.
The theatre.
At the sea end of the pier, a small theatre, built for summer shows, closed in 1979 when the shows stopped paying, and kept, because pulling it down would cost more than leaving it, with the box office window at the front and the machine in it and the posters in their frames, and the last poster is the last show, a variety bill, with names.
Every night the machine sells one ticket.
The ticket.
The machine is a roll, the old kind, that prints a ticket when a lever is pulled and logs it on the roll inside. The roll advances by one every night. The ticket prints: row F, seat 8, the date, which is tonight's, and the show, which is the one on the poster, and the price, which is the 1979 price. The ticket is not in the tray in the morning. It has been taken.
The stage working light, a bare bulb on a stand, the only electricity in the building, on a circuit I keep live for my own safety, comes on at half past seven. It goes off at ten. The show on the poster ran two and a half hours.
And F8, through the glass of the doors, is down. Every other seat in the house is up, on its springs, rusted up, and F8 is down, and from half past seven to ten it has the look of a seat with somebody in it.
What has been checked.
The machine, opened. The roll is the roll. The lever has not moved. The ticket prints.
The theatre, at half past seven, by me, inside it, in row G, behind F8. The working light came on. The seat in front of me went down, with the sound the seats make, and somebody sat in it. I could see the back of the seat, and there was nothing above it, and the seat was down and had weight in it, and the light on the stage was a bare bulb, and the stage was empty, and the show started.
I do not mean I saw it. I mean the seat in front of me did what a seat does when the person in it is watching a show. It leaned forward at the good bits. It went back. It shook, once, at a laugh, the silent shake of a person laughing in a theatre, and at the interval it went up, and the boards creaked to the back, and came back, and it went down, and at ten the bulb went off and the seat came up and the boards went to the door.
Two and a half hours. A full house of one.
Who.
The pier's book has the last show. It does not have a death. What it has, in the pier master's hand from 1979, is a note about the last night, which was not sold out, and about a man who had come every night of every summer season for thirty years, in the same seat, and had come on the last night, and had been the last out, and had stood at the end of the pier afterwards for a long time, and the pier master had gone to him, and he had said, where will I go now.
He is going to the show. Every night. The last one. In F8.
What is done about it.
The ticket roll is on the pier's accounts as a roll of tickets that advances by one a night with no takings, which the auditor has noted, and the electricity for the working light is on the bill, and the council has asked me to isolate the theatre, and I have said the working light is a safety requirement, which it is, for me.
What I do.
I look after the pier.
A show has an audience and an audience has an usher. That was the one thing the last night had that he has not had since: somebody at the door with a torch who said, good evening, sir, F8, this way, and tore his ticket, and at the end said, goodnight, sir, mind how you go.
So I do it. At a quarter past seven I am at the door in the dark with a torch, and at half past, when the boards creak to the door, I say, good evening, sir, and I hold the torch on the aisle, and I say, F8, and I walk down the aisle with the torch ahead of nobody and stop at row F, and the seat goes down, and I go to the back, and at ten, when the bulb goes off and the seat comes up, I am at the door with the torch, and I say, goodnight, sir, mind how you go, and the boards go out onto the pier.
The ticket is in the tray now. In the mornings. Torn. Along the line, the way an usher tears it, and I did not tear it, and I keep the stubs in a tin, and there is a year of them, and I have worked out that if the seat is down for two and a half hours a night and the man in it came for thirty summers, he has, since 1979, seen the last show more times than he saw all the others, and I have started to think that might be what he meant by where will I go now, and that the answer was here.