The Grin of the Dark (12 page)

She's the next best thing to a cold shower, but I retreat to my chair
in case the remains of my state are apparent. It's my top half Bebe
gazes at across the desk. Her chubby face has turned paler, inflaming
her freckles and even seeming to intensify the redness of her bobbed
hair. As she plants her hands on her hips I blurt 'Sorry, didn't realise
it was you.'

'I should hope not.'

Should I have leavened the remark with a laugh? I try one with 'I
thought I was talking to Natalie.'

'I should hope so.'

She doesn't look remotely as approving as her words might
seem. She holds me with her gaze as she sinks onto the flaccid
leather couch, and I'm compelled to add 'It's just our joke.'

Her face relaxes for a second, but only to frown afresh. 'What are
you doing here, Simon?'

'Working.'

'I should hope so.'

She's beginning to sound like a tape until she stares at my desk.
'I'm asking you why you're here and that is.'

'You've got one of your investments back. There's room for a
student in Egham.'

'And when were you planning to let us know?'

'I've only just moved out. My rent's paid up to the end of the
month. I wasn't going to ask for any back.'

'I should hope not. We need a month's notice.'

I'm close to enquiring whether that applies to members of the
family, but I say 'You gave me that.'

'Excuse me, I said no such thing.'

'Your husband did last time he was in my room. Where's Sniffer
today? At home having a sniff?'

Bebe stiffens with a leathery creak I'm tempted to attribute to her
rather than the couch. 'What are you saying about my husband?'

'He said you wanted to get rid of me by the end of the year.'

'That's a flaky way to put it,' Bebe says and stares harder. 'Not
that. What did you call him?'

'I was talking about Sniffer. That's your bitch, isn't it?'

'If you mean our dog she's called Morsel.'

'Warren must have been having a joke.' At whose expense, I
wonder, which provokes me to demand 'What kind of a name is
that?'

'It's the opposite of what she eats. That's the joke,' Bebe says as
she stands up. 'Where do you need driving to? I can fit those in the
Shogun.'

'That won't be necessary, thanks,' I'm to some extent amused to
tell her.

'I was only looking in to check if Natalie needs anything from the
supermarket. I can wait if you have work to finish,' Bebe says. 'May
I see?'

I'm making to cover up my response to Smilemime when I realise
that I would be doing so with the site for obese sex. By now Bebe and
her aggressively sweet perfume are at my shoulder. 'That doesn't look
much like work,' she says.

'You don't think my reputation is worth defending.'

'I guess that might take some work. Is this how you spend your
day?' Bebe says as she reads further up the thread. 'I see, you're
advertising for information. Will you be doing research of your own?'

'Obviously. Here's just the latest,' I say with perhaps the last of my
restraint and click the mouse.

Have I called up the wrong page in my haste? For a moment I'm
sure Bebe is about to see fat naked bodies tumbling in slow motion
over one another. No, I've brought up Willie Hart's email, at which
Bebe peers for quite some time. Eventually she says 'So you'll be
travelling. Where are you going to be till then?'

'Here.' I don't believe she was in any doubt of it, and I immediately
regret adding 'I thought Natalie might have said.'

Bebe turns her back and marches into the kitchen to open the
refrigerator. 'Looks like I had a wasted journey,' she says as she
returns, but her pace suggests that isn't all she's thinking. She halts
halfway across the room as if she wants to keep the sight of me at a
distance. 'If she didn't tell us she'd taken you in,' she says, 'maybe you
should wonder what she may not have told you.'

'I think she'd tell me anything I want to know.'

'And has there been much of that recently?'

'Nothing I haven't been told,' I say with all the conviction I can
muster.

'You're being very modern, I must say. I wouldn't expect it of her
father.'

I want to ignore the cue, but I have to ask 'What wouldn't you?'

'Have you really not made the connection? I thought a researcher
would.'

'If it was important I don't believe you'd be playing games.'
'If it were, Simon. Good grief, you're supposed to be a writer.'
Bebe presses her lips together, webbing them in extra wrinkles, before
she says 'What do you feel you're providing for my daughter and my
grandson?'

'Would love do?'

'Would it do what? We love them more than anything else we've
got, and that's why we've supported them whenever they need it. Can
you?'

'There are more kinds of support than just financial, and besides – '

'You bet there are, and you won't find us lacking in any of them.
But it didn't seem like you had many to offer when she lost her job
because of stuff she didn't write.'

'We're past that now. We've survived it together. I've had my
advance from my publisher and she's got her new job.'

'That doesn't bother you.'

'Tell me why on earth it should.'

'I don't know if I'd like Warren to be so laid back. I guess some
men don't dare to be too masculine these days.'

My skull is buzzing with impulses, one of which threatens to bare
my teeth in a mirthless grin. It feels as if the expression is trying to
fasten on my face as I say 'I can't imagine why you think I ought to
be upset if an old friend has helped her find a better job. I'm happy
for her and I'm grateful to him.'

Bebe takes a breath like a sigh in reverse. 'If I have to be crude for
once to make my point, that's how it works. Do you really think
that's all he's given her?'

'You're right, that's pretty damned crude. I didn't realise you
imagined things like that about your own daughter.'

Bebe sinks onto the couch as if she's burdened by the pity in her
eyes. 'I don't have to, Simon.'

'You aren't asking me to believe she's told you.'

'No, but Nicholas has.'

My rage doesn't quite rob me of speech. 'And what does she say
about it?'

'She doesn't know he told us.'

'I think I should have a word with him. Maybe a lot more than a
word.'

'It's a bit late to be male. You'd just be making a fool of yourself
if nothing worse.'

'Forgive me or don't bother, but I'm not getting the impression
you confronted him.'

'It took honesty and guts to own up. We admired him. If you ever
met him you'd see the truth at once.'

I'm about to declare that I've met him and to treat her to my view
of the truth about him when she says 'Okay, it could be that's
expecting too much. I guess there are some things a mother sees
clearest. Even Warren didn't straight away. But if you ever saw Mark
and Nicholas together you'd know.'

At last I'm silenced. As I strive not to believe it, all I can see is how
much more rectangular Mark's face is than Natalie's. Why isn't the
computer producing its waves? They might help soothe my thoughts.
Eventually an idea that I want to voice occurs to me. 'Look, I don't
mean to be rude, but why should he have told you?'

'Because we asked him. We ran into him while we were shopping
for Mark's new computer. Right away I saw the resemblance.'

'You're saying you asked him where? In the street? In a shop?'

'We aren't all anxious for fame, Simon. Some of us like to keep a
few of our thoughts private.' Before I can retort that I'm doing so she
says 'We invited him home and put him on his honour. There are still
people who don't think that's a joke.'

'Let me tell you, you've no reason – '

'Your face says I have. Maybe you could let me finish. He hadn't
heard how Natalie's career was progressing. He'd always supported
Mark, we knew that from her, but now he wanted to do more for
them.'

'So you lured her over.'

'Good gracious, what a way to describe inviting one's own child to
come visit.'

'Did I figure in the discussion?'

'We told Nicholas she was seeing somebody she used to work
with. She didn't mention you herself.'

If any more questions need to be asked, I don't think I want to
voice them, certainly not to Bebe. My face may be expressing this,
since she has found a cue to stand up. 'Well, I expect I've given you a
lot to ponder,' she says, 'and you have your work as well. I guess it's
time I left you by yourself.'

I won't be. I'll have the entire Internet with me, only for research,
of course, though in fact for distraction. I'm reaching for the mouse,
to look busy yet unflustered for at least as long as Bebe is in the room,
when she rests a hand on my desk. 'You'll excuse me for saying this,'
she says, 'but you've made the place look cheap.' She takes her
footsteps that no longer sound at all like Natalie's out of the
apartment, and as the door shuts, the computer rediscovers the sound
of waves. The chatter of ripples is far too reminiscent of giggling. It
might almost be a soundtrack for the blurred reflection of my
humourlessly grinning face.

As I see daylight beyond the escalator, eight stairfuls of children
trapped between two women sail past me. Either somebody up
above is painting faces or the children are involved in some other kind
of play. Perhaps it's for Christmas, though I'm uncertain from their
appearance what roles they would be taking: possibly the comedy
relief. Have they been told not to risk cracking their makeup, or is it so
stiff that it's holding them silent? The parade of unnaturally still white
faces seems capable of exploding into bedlam, but Mark distracts me.
'At school,' he says, 'they were asking if you were my dad.'

'They won't have met him, then.'

'I haven't either.' His eyes grow eager as he says 'I don't think I
have, anyway. I wouldn't mind if he was you.'

The temptation I experience is worse than irrational, but it costs
me an effort to say only 'I wouldn't. I wish I were. Careful, Mark.'

The steps ahead of him are flattening before they crawl down the
underside of the escalator. As he twists around to grab the rubber
banister, I'm not sure if he murmurs 'You can be.' I'm even less sure
how to respond, since I've yet to tell his mother about Bebe's
revelation. 'I'll try,' I say not quite under my breath.

Outside the station every lamppost on Euston Road is bandaged
with a poster.
TWO DOZEN STALLS OF COMEDY COLLECTIBLES AND MUSIC-HALL MEMORABILIA
. The posters insist that the venue is called the St
Pancreas Theatre, but the real thing is visible on the corner of Gray's
Inn Road, across the herds of traffic. Decades of exhaust fumes have
turned the wide Victorian façade the colour of a storm. The iron sign
above the cracked stained-glass awning has shed its vowels, as if
they've joined the one it never had. As we wait on an island that's a
plantation of traffic signals I see that the box office in the middle of
the marble lobby is boarded up. Next to it a man is seated on a
folding chair behind a trestle table. Besides a heap of leaflets and an
ink-pad with a stamp the table holds a cash-box, but I assume I just
need to say 'Simon Lester.'

The man pinches the collar of his black overcoat shut before he
raises his increasingly less moonlike face out of its nest of chins.
'Nobody called that here.'

'I know that,' I say and remember to laugh. 'That's to say yes,
there is. He's here.'

'This isn't an audition,' he informs me, apparently on Mark's
behalf. 'It's a fair.'

'We know that. Lester's my name. I was told you'd let me in.'

'They must've been having fun with you. Everybody pays. Two
quid and one for his nob.'

He drops the coins in the box with three separate clanks. I'm
ushering Mark towards the auditorium when the man says 'What's
your hurry, Mr Lister?'

'It's Lester,' Mark virtually shouts.

'Come here and I'll give you a grin. You too,' he tells me and inks
the stamp. 'Now you can roam all you want.'

While the images he prints on our wrists are perfectly circular, they
each have a clown's face. Mark admires his as he hurries to the double
doors and holds the left one open for me. The theatre stalls have been
removed. At least two dozen tables fill the space that's overlooked by
concave boxes and shadowed by the circle. I'm advancing to the first
stall when Mark springs into the air and claps his hands. As boards
reverberate under him he shouts 'Here's Simon Lester, everybody.
Simon Lester.'

'That isn't necessary, Mark.'

I suppose he feels provoked by the doorman, but I have the odd
notion that he's playing the jester. 'Don't let us bother you,' I tell the
stallholders. 'I'm only another punter.'

Mark is gazing at the stage. 'There's comics up there. Can I see?'

'Just stay in the theatre,' I warn him.

The first stallholder is jewelled and shawled enough for a fortuneteller,
and anxious to learn if I'm looking for anything special.
'Thackeray Lane,' I say.

'I'm not from round here.' She raises her voice to enquire 'Does
anyone know where Thackeray Lane is for this gentleman?'

'He's here.'

'And over here.'

'He may be here as well.'

'Don't worry, nobody's making fun of you,' I assure her and head
for the nearest of the people who responded, a large man so heavyeyed
he looks as if he's smiling in his sleep. His table is piled with old
newspapers, not much less yellow than papyrus inside their cellophane
envelopes. 'Can you show me?' I ask him.

He lifts his mottled hairy hands from his thighs to perform a
magician's pass above the newspapers. 'Half the fun's in looking,' he
says before reverting to his contented torpor.

Each envelope bears a handwritten label that lists the significant
contents. Among the names inscribed in dwarfish tipsy capitals on the
seventh label in the first pile is
T. LANE
. I unpick the tape that seals the
envelope and slip out the York newspaper. I have to turn most of the
brittle musty pages before learning that a reviewer thought Thackeray
Lane's act at the Players Theatre was 'a good 'un'. That doesn't seem
worth thirty pounds, nor does the information that he left a
Nottingham columnist feeling giddy, or even a Chester writer's view
that Lane was 'too odd for his own good or anyone else's'. By now I'm
halfway through the contents of the table, and the stallholder is peering
at me as if I've wakened him for nothing. 'Are you buying or just
reading?' he's roused to wonder.

'I was rather hoping for a bit more substance.'

'Better keep looking, then.'

I can't judge whether this is an invitation or a dismissal. I take it
for the first, though my eyes have begun to ache from squinting at the
cramped unbalanced letters.
D. LENO, C. CHAPLIN, S. LAUREL, L. TICH
...
As I try to speed up the process, because I feel oppressively watched,
I turn up an item labelled simply
T. LANE
. It's an old
Preston
Chronicle
. 'That's where I came from,' I remark.

'Long way to come to buy a paper.'

I release a polite titter as I unseal the envelope. A desiccated smell
that seems old even for the yellowed pages fills my head while I leaf
through them in search of the review. There isn't one, and I'm about
to say so when the stallholder comments 'He's in there all right. You
missed him.'

As I turn the pages in reverse somebody walks backwards at the
edge of my vision. I could imagine I'm rewinding the action, an idea
so distracting that I almost overlook the item again. It's a news report
that occupies an entire column.

MUSIC-HALL PERFORMER BOUND OVER TO KEEP PEACE.
PERFORMANCE MUST BE KEPT WITHIN PROPER BOUNDS.

At Preston Crown Court today, the music-hall comedian Thackeray
Lane was judged Not Guilty of incitement to riot outside 'The Harlequin
Theatre' on the first of January...

According to the report, at the end of his matinee on New Year's
Day in 1913 the comedian either led or followed the audience into the
street and continued his routine. When a Mrs Talbot began to imitate
him and refused to stop 'contorting her face and herself in a variety
of comical manners', her husband called the police. Several other
witnesses testified that they felt compelled to mimic the comedian and
blamed some form of hysteria. The judge ordered Lane to duplicate
the act for him to watch, but once the witnesses confirmed that he
was doing so the public gallery had to be cleared because of excessive
laughter. The charge of incitement to riot became the subject of a
legal argument that concluded Lane was technically innocent because
he had uttered no verbal or written communication. The judge was
reduced to warning that 'the licence of a theatre does not extend
beyond its doors' and to binding Lane over to keep the peace for two
years. Long before they ended, the comedian was in Hollywood
under his new name.

The scenes in court sound like a film of his. I'm wondering if they
may have inspired him when I notice there's editorial comment on the
opposite page.

DO OUR COURTS NEED A SENSE OF HUMOUR?

Elsewhere in this issue we report the unsuccessful prosecution of the
comedian Thackeray Lane for affray. The incident has already been
reported and commented upon in several numbers of this publication,
and our readers may have recognised Mr. Lane as the comic of whose
comedy one member of an audience was said to have died laughing.
Although this was a tragedy, we question why the recent case was
brought to trial. Anarchy may well be abroad within our shores, but
should it be confused with the kind of show which affords so much
pleasure to so many of our workers? Perhaps they would be more
inclined to rebellion if it were denied them. Our reporter at the trial
informs us that even the policemen in the courtroom had to struggle to
contain their merriment, so that it was left to the judge to represent
solemnity. We admit to hoping that he may have been hiding a secret
smile. By all means ensure that comedy respects the boundaries of
decency and taste, but do not rob the Lancastrian of his healthy
laughter.

There's nothing else about Lane on the stall. I buy the paper and move
on to the next of the tables where I heard a response. The table is heaped
with vintage posters in transparent sheaths. Several of the posters
advertise Thackeray Lane, in each case with a different slogan.
NO NEED FOR NOISE. QUIET AS A CHURCH. QUIET AS A CHURCH MOUSE
. Did the second
one omit a word, or was that added to the last of them to avoid offending
the devout? Here's a notice that says he's
AS SHUSHED AS A PICTURE
, which
seems prophetic – and then I notice something more important. Lane has
autographed the poster.

The faded signature slants across the bottom left-hand corner. It's
so faint that at first the cellophane rendered it invisible. The first
name is painstakingly stitched together out of scraps that remind me
of wisps of cobweb, but then he seems to have lost patience, scrawling
a defiantly elongated L. The letter reminds me of a clown's footwear,
and I imagine the signature as a collaboration between an academic
and a clown. As I look for the price on the back of the wrapper the
stallholder crouches forward, offering me a better view of the
tortoiseshell markings of his bald scalp. 'Twenty,' he says in case I
can't read the aged peeling tag.

Does that suggest how undervalued Tubby has become? I add
another Visa voucher to the sheaf in my wallet and make my way to
a video stall, on which the merchandise looks decidedly home-made.
Few of the labels on the black plastic cases are straight, and the
handwritten information is scanty, but I haven't reached the bottom
of the first pile of DVDs when I find one that's labelled
LANE
1912.
As I pick it up, the man behind the stall nods at me so vigorously that
it seems to leave his bushy greying eyebrows too high on his long
angular face. 'Behind you,' he says.

I wonder what kind of a production he thinks I'm in until I hear
Mark calling my name. He's where the footlights used to be, and waving
his hands as if he's batting away his words. 'Just a minute, Mark,' I say
and show the label to the stallholder. 'Can you tell me what this is?'

'It's a dithery video disc. They're all the rage.'

I hope his description is a joke, not an indication of the quality. 'Is
it Thackeray Lane?'

'Simon, he's up here. Simon.'

'Let me finish this first, Mark.' Since the long-faced man has
responded with a nod I ask 'What sort of material?'

'Him on stage off an old film.'

'You've transferred it from a film, you mean? How much?'

'Twenty smackeroonies to you, Mr Lester.'

That isn't the information I was after, but I'm so thrown by his use
of my name that my open mouth stays mute. Of course, he heard
Mark announce me at the door, and he's gazing at Mark now. The
boy is actually dancing with impatience. 'I want to show you,' he
complains. 'She won't let me.'

'I'll be there very shortly,' I promise, feeling compelled to direct the
kind of smile with which adults sum up children at the stallholder as
I hand him my Visa. I add the DVD to my handful of poster and
newspaper and turn back to Mark. 'Now, what's the problem?'

He runs to the top of the steps that I climb to the stage. 'There's a
comic with him in.'

'Thackeray Lane? Are you certain?'

'Why do you keep calling him that? His name's Tubby.' To my
dismay, Mark has started to look tearful. 'It says Tubby in the comic,'
he protests.

'It's both, Mark. He started life as Lane. Maybe he got tubbier.'
I'm not sure how much of this he hears as he runs to the table spread
with old comics. 'Show me, then,' I apparently have to prompt him.

'I'm trying,' he protests and turns his brimming gaze on the
woman at the stall. 'Where's it gone? I put it on top.'

'Dear me, we are getting out of control.'

Her tight bundle of colourless hair appears to have tugged her
small face thin on its bones and stretched her lips pale. 'Perhaps it
isn't here any more,' she says. 'Perhaps I sold it while you were
causing such a fuss.'

I see comics featuring Dan Leno and Ben Turpin and Charlie Lynn,
but no sign of Tubby. 'All right, Mark,' I say as he contorts his body
with frustration. 'Could I see it, please?'

'Is that all you mean to say?'

Presumably she's suggesting I should rebuke Mark, but I won't
embarrass him in front of her. 'I think it's all I need to.'

'Dear me again,' she says and produces a comic from beneath the
table. 'I was keeping it back for you,' she adds reprovingly enough to
cover me as well as Mark.

It's the first issue of a British comic called
Keystone Kapers
, price one
halfpenny. Beneath the title it's described as
A FEAST OF FUN FOR FUNNY FILM FANATICS
. The issue is dated 27 December 1914. The large front
page contains two comic strips with six panels in each. The uppermost
strip stars Fatty Arbuckle, the lower is a showcase for his colleague –
'Tubby Thackeray Tells a Tale to Tickle Your Titter-Bone'. As well as
several lines of caption under each panel Fatty has speech balloons, but
Tubby makes do with captions alone. 'Dear Film Fanatic Friends – Well,
bless my soul and butter my parsnips! Can't a chubby chap choose what
he chews after Christmas? Time we gave the ol' cake-'ole a rest, m'dears,
but your chubby chum's been blessed with a brace of them to cram...'
This seems an excessively elaborate introduction to the story, in which
Tubby is saddled with a pair of gluttonous nephews until the New Year.
They stuff all the Christmas leftovers into their increasingly wide and
toothy grinning mouths, followed by the contents of a cake shop and a
seven-course meal at a restaurant. A sweet each from a sweetshop
proves too much for them, and they burst with spectacular pops just
beyond either side of the final panel, leaving Tubby to present his widest
grin yet to the reader. 'That went with a bang, didn't it?' says his
caption. 'Your chum deserves to be went on his hols now, methinks.
Who's having him for the New Year? Simply simper to select. Give a
grin and get a genius.'