The Empty Pit

The narrow projection booth of a large picture house in an English industrial town on a wet winter evening, grey-painted steel walls, a tall black-enamelled projector, its bright beam leaving through a small square port, beside it a heavy turntable on an iron pedestal joined to the projector by a long steel drive shaft, on it a glossy black disc forty centimetres across with a plain cream-white label, a hand in a white shirt sleeve with a sleeve garter lowering a heavy tone arm onto the groove near the label, through the port in the dark hall below a sunken orchestra pit with empty music stands and a covered piano.