The Grin of the Dark (11 page)

Once the van has halted in the basement, Mark runs to the rear
doors and shows me his face through the left-hand window. He
hauls his lips back in a grin while he wobbles his head up and down
in silent mirth. After quite a few seconds I say 'You can let me out
now.'

He ought to be at school, but the staff are being trained to use a
new computer system. He carries on mimicking Tubby until his
mother calls 'Go on, Mark. Let the hermit out of his cell.'

He twists the key and throws the doors wide before sprinting to
the lift. I've been hugging my computer all the way from Egham. I
cradle it and follow him between two hulking pillars as he darts into
the lift to rest his modest weight on the door hold. I lower my burden
into a corner, and then I hurry to help Natalie lift out a suitcase obese
with clothes. As its wheels hit the concrete she glances past me and
cries 'Mark.'

I'm kneeling on the edge of the metal floor. I straighten up so
hastily that I bang my head on the roof. The ache in my scalp seems
to pierce my brain, almost extinguishing the sight of the lift. It's shut,
and there's no sign of Mark. My skull throbs in time with my
footsteps as I run to pummel the metal doors. 'Mark, where are you?'
the pain makes me shout, though he can't have gone far.

'Come down, Mark,' Natalie calls beside me. 'Come down now.'

We can hear his muffled giggles. I'm wondering if I should run
upstairs, however painful that may be, when a faint metallic rattle
indicates that the lift is moving. I can't judge whether it's descending
or the reverse until the doors inch open. Mark is at the controls, and
the computer looks undisturbed. 'What did you think you were
doing?' Natalie demands.

His grin wobbles, but not much. 'Someone wanted the lift. I was
going to take them and come back.'

'So where are they?'

'Don't know.'

'Oh, Mark, you can do better than that.'

'I don't. I heard him but when I went up he wasn't there.'

'All right, if he wasn't he wasn't. I expect he used the stairs,'
Natalie says. 'Why were you laughing?'

'Somebody's face.'

'So someone was there.'

'No, just his face.' When his mother gazes at him Mark protests
'You'll see.'

'I hope you aren't going to behave like this now Simon's with us,'
she says and steps into the lift. 'I think we'd better go up and down
together.'

They wait for me to trundle several cases in, and I'm about to
suggest that I lock the van so that I can accompany them when Mark
sends the lift upwards. I hear the lift come to rest on the first floor,
and hold my breath until it escapes in a gasp at a rumble of indoor
thunder. It's the wheeling of a suitcase. Soon Natalie shouts 'You can
call the lift, Simon. We'll take the stairs.'

What did I expect to hear down the shaft? I jab the button and
fetch boxes, one of which I use to prop the lift open. By the time
Natalie and Mark reappear I've unloaded the van, and my head has
stopped throbbing. While she locks the van I stow the flattened desk
we bought on the way to Egham, and then I feel compelled to ask
'What am I going to see, then?'

'Nothing,' Natalie says, and I don't think all her sharpness is
directed at Mark. 'We've been through it once.'

'Was there ever really anything, Mark?'

'I said,' he insists and punches the metal wall so hard the lift
shivers on its cable. 'It was like a face on the floor.'

'A picture, you mean.'

'Fatter than a picture.'

'What was it doing?'

'How could anything like that do anything?' Natalie objects and
starts the lift. 'And control yourself, Mark. I won't have you
damaging property, and it's dangerous as well.'

I doubt that even his fiercest punch could harm the lift. When he
turns to me I wonder if he wants me to defend him, but he's
answering my question. 'Laughing.'

I don't know what he's trying to communicate. I won't pursue it
while his mother can hear. I face the doors, and as they part, so do
my lips at the sight of a pale object that's slithering across the floorboards
into Natalie's locked apartment. The next moment the door
opposite shuts as silently. No doubt I glimpsed light spilling into the
corridor. Of course, whoever's in the other apartment must have
dropped some item that they've just retrieved – a bag with a face on
it, from Mark's description. 'Come on, Mark,' I say and prop the lift
open with a suitcase. 'Let's get me out of the box.'

I stagger into the apartment with everything that's heaviest while
Natalie ensures that Mark doesn't tackle too much. My suitcases
move into her bedroom. Once the rest of my belongings have found
at least a temporary place Natalie says 'I'd better return the van.'

'Do you mind if I stay and set up?'

'Can I help you make your desk?' Mark says at once.

'I expect Simon won't want to be distracted. You keep me
company and we'll walk back by the river.'

Mark tramps along the hall as if he's been encumbered with the
heaviest burden of the day, and Natalie flashes me a private smile as
she follows him. Once they've gone I indulge in feeling completely at
home. Or rather, I try to, but I won't be able to until I know my
computer has survived the journey. First I ought to build the desk.

The photocopied information sheet appears to be designed to
demonstrate how many languages besides English there are in the
world. The diagrams seem less than wholly related to the contents of
the carton. By the time I've solved the puzzle of slotting the sides of
the desk into the top and preventing them from immediately sliding
out again with wedges of plastic, my hands are almost too sweaty to
grasp the slippery wood. It isn't much of a desk, but the one in
Egham came with the accommodation. I stand it next to the corner
bookcases and unpack the computer onto it. I hook up the system
and switch on.

Lost, lost, lost... I feel as if my skull has grown so hollow that it's
echoing. The repetitions fill it while the initial test appears. The word
is only in my head. I bring a chair from the kitchen as the screen fills
with icons. When I log on to Frugonet I see that an email has arrived
since I left Egham.

Mister Lester!

Might you be able to email me some idea of how you're
faring, say a couple of chapters? That would help me write the
catalogue copy so I can implant the name of Simon Lester in the
public consciousness. Meanwhile, take a look at your bank
balance and don't forget to send me your expenses.

Here's to rediscovery and telling the world!

Rufus Wall

Editor, LUP On Film

I pull down my list of favourites and click on the link for my bank,
which hasn't been too favourite for a while. I have to type my
password on the site, and another password, and the last one. They
seem to be hindering the sluggish construction I have to watch.
Eventually the details of my bank accounts are revealed, line by
dawdling line. The current account has taken delivery from LUP
today of ten thousand pounds.

I let out a breath I wasn't aware of holding. Somewhere out of
range of my reason I mustn't have been entirely convinced of my
change of fortune or that it would last. I'm no longer leery of
checking how much I owe on my Frugo Visa. Only fifteen hundred?
I can say goodbye to that at once. I make the online payment and
leave just a hundred in the current account, transferring the rest into
the deposit to earn interest. I still have to provide Rufus with
material, but I'm sure I have enough leads, and meanwhile I can write
about
Tubby's Terrible Triplets
. First I can't resist discovering
whether Smilemime has been silenced on the movie database.

So everything Mr Questionabble says is right because he says so,
is it? Hands up everyone that's going to believe someboddy that
won't even put his real name. He's so sure of himself he has to
run crying to the man who made the film he got wrong, and he
still has even if he talked to him. Either he diddn't or he's so
convinced he's right he can't even hear what someone who
knows about films is telling him. I'll tell him again anyway. It's
TUBBIES TINY TUBBIES. TUBBIES TINY TUBBIES. There's your lines,
Mr Questionabble. Write them out a hundred times and maybe
you'll learn something if you aren't an utter clown.

I might leave him ranting into the void if I weren't sure that he sent
Charley Tracy on a false trail and perhaps lured him away from the
van at the church as well.

If a clown is someone who plays stupid tricks on people there's
only one of those here. I'm a film journalist who's researching
Tubby. Stand by for revelations when I've finished.

My fingertip hovers over the mouse, and then I send the message.
I'd rather spend my time telling Natalie and Mark my good news. I
can hear Mark laughing outside the apartment. I hurry to meet them,
but there's nobody in the corridor when I poke my head out. Did I
hear another door shut as I opened mine? I listen until my strained
ears seem to conjure up a sound, but it's only the lapping of ripples
on my computer.

As we reach the Abbey School, outside which children's uniforms
are turning the world black and white, I decide not to spend the
rest of the day without knowing 'Were you across the corridor?'

Because of the babble of children, some of whom are greeting
Mark, I have to raise my voice, and he isn't alone in staring at me.
'When?'

'Yesterday, before you came back in. Were you and Natalie in the
other flat?'

'Why'd we be there?'

'Because I thought I heard you but I couldn't see you. You can tell
me if you were.'

'We weren't, though. We just had a walk by the river like you and
her wanted.'

'Don't say that, Mark.'

'What?' he says and gazes through the railings at the girls who
greeted him.

'Don't call your mother her, and it isn't like you and her wanted
either, it's you and she.' I'm growing impatient, not least with feeling
entangled in my own words. 'You know them at any rate, don't you?'
I persist. 'Whoever lives opposite us.'

'I don't and mummy doesn't.'

What do I imagine I'm doing, interrogating Mark on the very first
day I've taken him to school? I must have heard another child
yesterday, perhaps one who lives across the corridor. 'Go and have a
great time and I'll pick you up at four,' I tell him. 'You know why it's
called school, don't you? Because it's cool.'

I hope the discomfort in his eyes is at least to some extent a joke.
I shake his hand and grip his shoulder and pat him on the head, only
to suspect that I've enacted one gesture too many if not two. Calling
'Be good, Mark' after him doesn't improve my performance, but he
seems confident enough as he marches through the gates beneath the
wrought-iron name of the school. I'm wondering if I should linger
until the bell when the prettiest of the girls says 'Who's that, Mark?'

She giggles and covers the smile to which I've already responded.
For a moment I'm absurdly flattered, and then I feel worse than
uncomfortable: she's no older than Mark. I look away hastily and
find I'm being watched from the doorway of the red-brick building,
which reminds me of a fullscreen version of a widescreen image,
since it's less than half the width of either of my old schools. The
watcher must be the headmistress, although she's only just taller
than the tallest of the children and as monochromatically dressed.
She hands the bell she's holding to a pupil, who does his best to
shake the clapper loose, and then she waits for the children to line
up in classes and for the silence of the bell to settle over them. Is she
still aware of me? Some of the parents at the railings are. Mark
doesn't need me to wait any longer – he hasn't glanced back – and
so I turn away towards Tower Bridge Road.

I'm in sight of the crowded bridge beneath the grey undercoated
sky when my phone comes to life. I recognise the displayed number,
but all I say is 'Yes.'

'Found it.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I say and try to match Charley Tracy's
accusing tone. 'When was that?'

'Not long after you shot off, I reckon.'

'If I hadn't I might have missed the last train home.'

'I'd have got you to the station. Why didn't you lock it away?'

'Why didn't you lock me in?' I'm surely more entitled to complain.
'I could have fallen out anywhere.'

'I got you there, didn't I? It cost a packet, this phone did, and the
projector. We're not all on a university payroll.'

'I didn't think anyone would steal them so near a church.'

I hope he finds this less naïve than I immediately do. After a pause
he says 'Any road, I've got some people for you to meet.'

'Are they dead as well?'

'You're never still moaning about that. I thought you'd appreciate
a joke, seeing as how it's your job. I'd have took you somewhere else
if you'd waited a bit longer.' Before I can articulate a retort he says
'This lot are on in London this Saturday.'

'Who are?'

'The Comical Companions, they call themselves. If anyone can tell
you about Tubby when he was on the stage it's them. They'll be at
the St Pancreas Theatre.'

'Are you quite sure that's the name?'

'St Pancreas Theatre. May I be struck dumb if it's not.'

He has inserted a vowel in the second word. As I reach Tower
Bridge I seem to feel it quiver underfoot with the vibrations of pedestrians
and traffic. I could imagine that it's sharing my amusement. 'Is
there anybody I should ask for?'

'Just tell them your name on the door,' Tracy says and, even more
abruptly than he speaks, is gone.

Clumps of tourists are competing with the traffic on the bridge at
expelling greyness into the November air. The river laps with gusto at
the concrete of the north bank as I let myself into the apartment
building. I jog upstairs and head straight for my computer, where an
email is waiting to be deciphered.

der simon

gr8 2 her from u! unxpectd mal is the best. im nockd out yor
interestd in orvilles work. th move archives dont sem 2 want 2
no about him. y dont u com + sta? u can c everythng i hav of his
+ ask me anythng u want 2 no. anytime b4 xmas is fin. lets put
him bac in move history wher he blongs.

from 1 move buf 2 anothr!

wille hart

Perhaps this style of writing saves Hart's time, but it gnaws at
mine. Once I've returned the email to English by reading it out loud
I'm able to respond.

Dear Willie:

Many thanks for your speedy response! Where shall I find
you? Let me know and I'll book the trip. Do you have any of the
films your grandfather made with Tubby Thackeray? If so, guard
them with your life.

Enthusiastically –

Simon Lester

I don't know if I'm hoping to have silenced my adversary on the
movie database, although surely my response should have. Or am I
secretly anticipating some kind of perverse fun? Certainly a grin, not
necessarily of mirth, creeps onto my face as I call up the page for
Tubby's Terrible Triplets
.

So Mr Questionabble's a film expert now, is he? Oh no, he says
he's a researcher. That's someboddy who picks other peoples'
brains because he doesn't know annything himself. If he starts
sniffing around after Tubby we won't tell him annything, will
we? We'd be clowns to give our knowledge to someone who
won't even say his name. And does anyboddy know which
stupid tricks he's going on about? If he's got annything to say
he should say it like a man. He won't, though, will he? Maybe
he's not one. Leslie could be a womman, come to think.

I'm not going to lose control, although my skull feels electrified. I
wait until my words are cold enough to post.

My name is Simon Lester. I've been writing on film for years. I
wouldn't dream of asking other people or even other peoples to
help if they don't want to, but I would have thought that
anyone who cares for Tubby's films might like to see them more
widely appreciated. As for stupid tricks, let's hope we hear no
more of them. If anybody takes them further it should be the
victim.

I'm about to post the message when I delete the final line. It isn't
worth preserving if it might bring Charley Tracy more harassment;
indeed, I should have asked him whether the call he received in the
churchyard proved to be a trick. I send the revised version and take
the chance while I'm online to make sure no fresh information about
Tubby has shown up on the net. His first name does take me to an
unfamiliar site, but a glimpse of that is enough. It offers the spectacle
of corpulent performers in a variety of positions, their naked bodies
glistening with greyish light as they flop over one another. I close the
window hastily, to be confronted by the underlying one – the message
board for Tubby's film. I stare at it as if to conjure up a response to
my posting, and seem to be rewarded by an unexpected but welcome
interruption: the sound of a key in the lock.

'Well, that's the best kind of surprise,' I call as the door shuts. 'Do
you want to get naughty while there's nobody around?' Presumably
Natalie hasn't much to do at work before she starts next week at
Arts
About
, a name I would have expected her mother to question if not
worse. 'Come along, little girl. I've got a little present here for you.
Actually, it's not so little any more,' I say and, having risen to my feet
with some pleasurable difficulty, shuffle from behind the desk as she
advances down the hall. But she isn't Natalie, she's Bebe Halloran.