The Curtain That Would Not Close

The stage curtain in the boathouse hall closed only halfway. It had done this for nine years, and everyone at the Riverside Rowing Club knew it.

Every autumn the club held a show to end the season. Members sang songs, told jokes and read funny reports about lost oars. Every year the curtain stuck, and every year somebody found a different way around the problem.

This year the show belonged to Yusra. She was thirty-four and had joined the club in June. She did not yet know the rules that nobody had written down.

"Use the chair," said the man who looked after the boats. "Put it on the left side. It stops the curtain from swinging back."

Yusra looked at the chair. It was a kitchen chair with one short leg, and someone had wrapped that leg in blue tape.

"Does it work?" she asked.

"Mostly," he said. "Last year it fell over during the quiz. Nobody minded."

On Saturday morning she climbed the ladder and pulled the curtain by hand. It was heavy dark velvet, and it smelled of dust and old rope. It moved smoothly for three metres. Then it stopped, as if it had hit a wall.

She tried again, and the same thing happened. She tried a third time with both hands, and a small cloud of dust fell onto her hair.

"Don't pull so hard," said a voice from below. "You will only make it worse."

It was Nadine, the club captain. She had rowed for the club for twenty years. She had won more medals than the trophy cabinet could hold. She carried a clipboard everywhere, even down to the river.

"I am not pulling hard," Yusra said. "I am pulling normally. Something is blocking it."

"Everybody says that," Nadine said. "Then they stop pulling and tie a rope to it."

She pointed at a thick rope that ran from the curtain to a hook on the wall. Yusra had thought it was part of the decoration.

"So the rope closes it?"

"Two people pull the rope," Nadine said. "A third person holds the chair. A fourth person runs backstage and shouts when it is closed."

"That is four people for one curtain," said Yusra.

"It is a tradition," Nadine said, and she smiled in a tired way. "Traditions need people."

For the rest of the day, Yusra watched how the club lived with the curtain. The singers practised their entrance so they could slip through the gap. The comedian wrote a joke about it. The treasurer counted every coin the club owned. He walked past the stuck velvet twice and never looked up.

Nobody seemed angry. Nobody seemed surprised. The curtain had become like the leaking roof of the changing room. It was like the bench that wobbled on the dock. Everyone knew about it, and everyone had decided it was normal.

That night she sat alone in the empty hall with an apple. She looked at the rail above the stage. It was a long metal pipe, and one end was bent like a tired arm. Behind it, the ceiling had a dark stain.

She asked herself a simple question. Why had nobody fixed it?

The next morning she asked the man who looked after the boats.

"The committee said no," he told her. "Years ago. There was never any money."

She asked the comedian, who gave the same answer. She asked a girl from the junior team, who said her mother had told her the same thing. Everyone knew the committee had said no. Nobody could remember who had asked, or when.

"Did you ask them?" Yusra said to Nadine that afternoon.

"Me?" Nadine put down her clipboard. "No. It was before I became captain. I assumed…"

She stopped.

"You assumed what?"

"That someone had asked," Nadine said slowly. "And that the answer was no."

They looked at each other. Above them, the curtain hung in its usual crooked way.

"It is strange," said Yusra. "A whole club has agreed not to ask one question."

"It is a small question," Nadine said. "Small questions are the hardest. If you ask and the answer is no, then you have to stop hoping."

Yusra thought about this. She could understand it. Hope was cheap, and a no could feel expensive.

"But if we never ask, the answer stays no forever," she said. "Even when the world has changed."

Nadine rubbed her neck. "The committee meets on Tuesday evening. Seven o'clock, in the room above the boat store."

"I know," said Yusra. "I looked it up."

On Tuesday, at five to seven, she climbed the stairs above the boat store. Her hands were cold. In her bag she had a photograph of the bent rail and a page of notes.

Seven people sat around a long table. The treasurer had a calculator. The head of the committee had a mug shaped like a boat. Nadine sat at the far end and gave Yusra a small nod.

Yusra was item eleven on the list. It said, in tiny letters, "Curtain (Y.)". She waited through the discussion about new oars and the broken gate of the car park. When her turn came, her voice shook.

"I would like to ask about the stage curtain," she said. "Has the club ever asked for money to fix the rail?"

Nobody spoke. The calculator beeped because the treasurer touched it by mistake.

"Fix it?" said the head of the committee. "I thought we could not."

"Why not?" Yusra asked.

"Because…" The head looked around the table. "Because it has always been like that."

The treasurer opened a folder and searched through the pages. Then he went very quiet.

"There is a line in the budget," he said at last. "Hall repairs. We have kept it every year since the roof was done. Nobody has spent a single coin from it."

"How much is there?" Nadine asked.

He told her. It was more than enough for a new rail and a good fitter.

Someone laughed, a short and surprised laugh. Then another person laughed. Soon the whole table was laughing. Even the treasurer laughed, and he held his folder against his chest.

"Nine years," said the head of the committee, wiping her eyes. "We have tied ropes to a problem we could have solved."

They voted in two minutes. The vote was seven to nothing.

"There is one difficulty," said the treasurer. "The fitter is busy for six weeks. The curtain will not be ready for the show."

"Then we do the show the old way," Nadine said. "Rope, chair and four people. But it will be the last time."

Afterwards, Nadine found Yusra on the stairs.

"I should have asked in my first year," she said. "Maybe in my first week."

"You were busy winning medals," said Yusra.

"That is not an excuse." Nadine looked at her clipboard and then put it under her arm. "Next time I hear that something cannot be changed, I will ask who decided it."

They walked down to the empty hall together. The curtain hung there, dark and heavy and crooked, but it looked different to Yusra now. It looked like something that was waiting, not something that was broken.

"The fitter will need the exact length of the rail," she said. "And the height of the ceiling."

"I can find the tape measure," Nadine said.

Yusra pulled the ladder across the floor and set it under the bent pipe. Nadine held the bottom with both hands. Yusra climbed to the top, hooked the end of the tape onto the metal, and began to measure.