The Grin of the Dark (33 page)

'I did a bit,' Mark says and grins in some triumph.

I don't know which of them is more disconcerting. As my teeth
start to chatter with exhaustion and the icy night if nothing else,
Natalie says 'Try to calm down, Simon. No more scenes.'

'Scenes,' I protest, at least approximately.

'Like that, and they aren't going to forget you in the library either.
You don't need to act like that, do you? Your book's the way you
want to be known.'

My chattering teeth leave me unable to reply, if indeed I want to.
She takes my arm and Mark holds my other hand. Our hats flop
about as I'm led away from the bank. 'Let's have peace now,' Natalie
says. 'It's that time of year.'

'I'll bet my pension you've never been out driving so late before,
Mark,' says my mother.

'Only on my computer.'

Natalie frowns across me at him. 'It's news to me. Just when was
that?'

'When I was looking for things for Simon.'

'That's kind of you, Mark,' I say, 'but you mustn't lose your sleep
at your age.'

'I couldn't anyway.'

'I'll bet you've never been out at midnight, though,' my mother
insists. 'You're going to be in at the birth.'

Mark giggles with embarrassment or in case her comment is a
joke, and Natalie sends him another frown as she sits back. I wish
we'd used her car, but I didn't want my father to think we didn't trust
his driving. With three people on the rear seat the Mini seems insanely
straitened, as Thackeray Lane might have put it while he was
coherent. I feel as if I'm being transported in a cell along a barely
distinguishable route – glimpses of houses clogged with darkness, the
flickers of lit windows, the occasional reveller who grins at the car.
'How far are we actually going?' I ask.

'Listen to him, Mark. He sounds younger than you, doesn't he?'
says my mother.

Didn't she make a similar quip last time they took me for a drive?
As if the memory has created a physical link, a Christmas tree rears
up beyond the windscreen. I could imagine that its lights are trying to
fend off the darkness that leads to it along five roads. 'Isn't this where
you brought me before?' I protest.

'You've been here before all right,' my father says and laughs.

When my mother joins in I have the unpleasant idea that they're
trying to project their confusion onto me. The tree brandishes its
glaring multicoloured branches as it pirouettes with massive
sluggishness while the Mini takes the first exit, beyond which I can't
see anything except two ranks of houses squashed tall and thin.
Curtains seem to shift as if we're being watched, but perhaps that's
the restlessness of Christmas lights. 'It does seem rather a long way to
come to church,' Natalie says.

'We thought we'd give you an extra treat,' says my mother, 'since
we've got a bit of time.'

'We'll show you where he came into the world,' my father says.

For a moment I'm unable to ask 'Who?'

'Now who do you think?' cries my mother.

'Is it Tubby?' Mark responds with at least as much enthusiasm.

'Lord love us, no,' my father declares. 'Don't tell me Simon's got
you as obsessed as he is.'

My mother twists around to smile at us. 'Who else is it going to be
except Simon?'

'I don't remember this,' I say like a contradiction of my ringtone.

'Of course you don't, you silly boy. How could anyone?'

At once the car is flooded with illumination that suggests
spotlights have been turned on. They're lamps on a street that crosses
the one we're following. As the car swings left my mother says 'Here
it is. Do you think they'll put up a plaque one day, Mark?'

Both sides of the road are lined with pale misshapen bungalows
approached and separated by a maze of paths sprouting toadstool
lights. I might be amused by the appearance of a gnomes' village if I
weren't so troubled. 'We never lived here,' I risk saying.

'Isn't this it, Bob?' my mother pleads. 'I was sure it was.'

My father glares at me in the widescreen mirror. 'You're doing it
again,' he mutters.

Is he accusing me of making the car veer as he looks away from
the road? 'Be careful, Bob,' my mother exhorts. 'You've got a child in
the car. You should have let his mother drive.'

'You can't, Sandra.'

If he was blaming me for confusing her, I could equally blame him
as she says 'That's where I used to hold Simon up for you to see.'

She's gazing at the window of a bungalow. Despite the pallor of
the curtains, the room appears to be dark. As the car slows to give
everyone more of a look, Natalie says 'I thought you said he was born
in a hospital.'

'I'd have been frightened to have him at home,' my mother says
and laughs. 'They've pulled it down and built these.'

'She's not that far gone yet,' my father says.

The relief I was starting to feel snags on his comment. As the car
regains speed, Mark wriggles to keep the bungalow in view. 'Was that
Father Christmas?'

Perhaps somebody's acting the role. The curtains have parted to let
a watcher peer out at the car. The face seems more than fat enough
for the image of the Christian saint. It will be wearing a false beard.
No whitish mass is foaming out of the enormous grin, no wadding
has burst out of the stuffed white face. The next moment the
occupant of my birthplace is out of sight, and my mother says 'You'll
have to sleep as soon as we're home or he won't come for you.'

I would happily have nothing for Christmas except sleep, but not
if it invites the visitor I just glimpsed. The more distance the car puts
between us the better, and I'm uneasy when it halts further up the
road. 'Aren't we going to our church?' my mother says.

'We've no time, Sandra. This'll have to do.'

She emits disappointed noises as he kills the engine outside the
rudimentary church, which is little more than a concrete tent topped
by a token cross and extending a long concrete block, breached like
the tent by a few stained-glass windows. Then she claps her hands as
if a performance is about to begin. 'Why, it'll more than do. Did you
know where you were taking us?'

I've no idea why she has changed her mind until I see that a board
names the church as St Simon's. I find this less worthy of celebration
than everyone else does, even my father. 'Hurry,' my mother urges
Mark. 'We don't want you turning into a pumpkin.'

While I realise she has Cinderella and midnight transformations in
mind, I can't help thinking of grins carved for Halloween. I would
rather not imagine Mark's face swelling up to pumpkin size and
expanding its grin to match. My mother waddles rapidly to the open
door, half a pointed arch, in the blunt end of the building, and the rest
of us straggle at various speeds in her wake. The inside of the small
stark porch is decorated only with posters, all of which look old for
the church. Before I can read any of them my mother blunders
through the inner entrance and pokes her head out. 'It's starting,' she
hisses.

A large robed figure and another half as big are indeed proceeding
down the aisle to the altar in the middle of the concrete tent. The
pews on either side of the aisle are almost full of a decidedly well-fed
congregation. My mother flaps a hand at me and indicates the back
row. The first part of the gesture sprinkles me with water from the
font beside the door as if I'm being rebaptised. Mark follows me so
closely that he almost pushes me against the solitary occupant of the
pew, a corpulent woman whose face is concealed by a headscarf.
Natalie comes after Mark, and then a disagreement is expressed by
much pointing with upturned hands before my mother precedes my
father. We're all taking black missals from the ledge in front of us
when the priest turns to the congregation and intones 'I go to the altar
of God.'

We're at midnight mass because my mother thought it would be a
treat for Mark. My parents used to take me at his age and somewhat
older, but I've forgotten most of the experience, although I seem to
recall thinking that the worshippers were huddled in the light as if
they hoped it could fend off the dark. Isn't that too sophisticated a
notion for a young child? The priest's performance has revived it.
However joyous the celebration is meant to be, does he really need to
smile quite so broadly? Perhaps it's the modern approach, but it looks
uncomfortably like desperation. It isn't improved by his whinnying
voice, which is so high that it could belong to a woman in drag,
except that his vestments are scarcely even that. I open my missal in
case remembering the ritual will distract me from the spectacle of
him.

The book is distracting, but not in the way I hoped. The typeface
is considerably older than the church. Perhaps I still have to recover
from jet lag, because I keep imagining that somebody's spidery
scribble has deranged the thick Gothic letters. I don't trust myself to
join in the responses to the priest; I'm afraid my versions of them
may be as deformed as the text appears to be. I turn the pages and
close my jaws so tight that my mouth and teeth seem to merge into
a single aching wound. My struggles not to part my lips achieve less
than I would like; I can hear nonsense if not worse inside my head,
or is the almost inaudible muttering beside me? I'm unable to judge
whether it's invading my skull or spreading out of it, and if so which
of my neighbours is involved, or could both be? I peer sidelong at
Mark, but he appears to be reading far more fluently than me. I can't
risk singing any of the hymns or carols either, especially the ones we
had to sing at his school play. Even the priest's readings at the lectern
offer no relief; another voice, all the more impossible to hush since
it's indistinguishable from silence, seems to be parodying his in
chorus. He can't actually be reading about Deathlyhem or Hairy the
brother of God or declaring 'Undo us, a child is born, unto us a son
will gibber.' Everything he reads seems to be in danger of veering
into worse inanity, an impression aggravated by the smirks that keep
twitching the lips of the altar boy, whose pale plump face looks older
than it should, more like a dwarf's. Surely he's amused just by the
priest's neighing, not by the words that I imagine I hear – that can't
be infecting more people each time the congregation has to sing or
speak. Wouldn't Natalie or my parents have reacted by now? Their
voices are lost in the general hubbub, and when I peer past Mark
their lips are as unreadable as the missal. At least we've reached a
point where I needn't feign participation, thank God. It's time for the
faithful to take communion.

My neighbour plants her open missal face down on the ledge and
deals it a thump as it tries feebly to raise itself. Her large hand
resembles her chunky off-white overcoat in both texture and colourlessness,
and I'm reminded of the garment of the baby across the hall.
She reaches inside the coat and, with a papery rustle, produces a
biscuit. I haven't time to be certain whether the thin white disc bears
a cartoon of a clownish face before she pops it into the mouth
concealed by the headscarf. As I resist an urge to peer around the
impenetrably black scarf, Mark leans forward to watch the communicants
at the altar rail. 'Are they having something to eat? Can I go?'
'It's only for some people,' Natalie murmurs. 'Not us.'

'Why not?'

'We haven't joined the flock.'

Why should my explanation amuse my headscarfed neighbour?
Her laugh sounds disconcertingly masculine, perhaps because she's
doing her best to suppress it, though it seems less muffled than
remote. Mark is silent until he sees another boy in the communion
queue. 'He's going,' he complains. 'Why can't I?'

'He'll have confessed his sins, Mark,' my mother whispers.

'I can as well. Shall I?'

He's behaving as if he wants to join the performers onstage at a
show. 'I'm sure a little chap like you's done nothing worth
confessing,' my mother says.

He looks insulted, and her affectionate smile doesn't help. 'She
means to the padre,' my father mutters.

'I don't mind. I'm not scared of him. He's just a man.'

'That's enough, Mark,' Natalie says under her breath. 'We'll talk
about it later.'

'But they're making me hungry now.'

I'm suddenly convinced that my neighbour is about to offer him a
biscuit. It's my mother who intervenes, however. 'We'll be going
home soon and then you can have a snack if it doesn't make you
dream.'

'I don't care if it does. Won't that make them when they go to
bed?'

He's pointing at the communicants. The downcast eyes and folded
hands of those who are returning to their seats put me in mind of
sleepwalkers somnolent with holiness. 'Shush now,' my mother says.
'You don't want everyone laughing at you, do you?'

I become aware that people are. There's mirth within the headscarf
and smothered laughter elsewhere in the church. It doesn't appear to
have travelled as far as the altar rail, where a man on his knees is
raising his open mouth like a blind fish. I feel compelled to inject
some humour into the tableau, or rather to mime how grotesque the
proceedings are. 'What about it, Mark?' I say low as I lean towards
him. 'Do we want to make everyone laugh?' I haven't finished
speaking when he shows me his Tubby face.

I don't know what expression bares my teeth in response. I'm
afraid to wonder how long he has been looking like that. The man at
the rail wobbles to his feet, and the sight together with the secret
mirth reminds me of the chapel – of Tracy's death. Suppose the man
chokes on his morsel? He swings around red-faced and stumbles
down the aisle towards me, and I stay apprehensive on his behalf even
after he has sidled along a pew and dropped to his knees. Mark
thrusts his grin up at me like a parody of communion. 'Do we what,
Simon?' he prompts.

'I was telling you grandma is right. We don't want you making a
show of yourself.'

'That wasn't what you said. You wouldn't.'

'That's because you put me off.' I might say anything that would
change his grinning face, even 'You don't want your real grandma
and granddad to hear how you've been acting in church, do you?'

His grin wavers but doesn't collapse as I pray my question was too
muted for my parents to hear. 'Now see what you're making me say,'
I hiss. 'Stop it if you want to enjoy Christmas. Just stop.'

The grin gives way as if I've punched him in the mouth. He looks
betrayed, but how does he expect me to react? When I glance at
Natalie in the hope that my sternness has found favour, she seems less
than impressed. Perhaps she doesn't like to hear her son accused of
causing my behaviour. At least the rumbles of amusement have
subsided, as if a storm has moved on without exploding. The last
communicants return to their places, and the priest puts away his
props. He and the congregation utter a few updated versions of old
words, and the proceedings are rounded off by a performance of 'O
Come All Ye Faithful'. It almost wins me over until I hear an off-key
voice repeating 'O come let us abhor him.' If it's mine, surely it's
inaudible, although the atmosphere feels oppressively electric with
imperfectly suppressed laughter. The carol ends at last with a lusty
chorus of 'Cry iced the lord' that may include a chant of 'Twice the
lord', whatever sense that makes. As the echoes fade the priest
appears to have an afterthought – at least, the extra ritual is new to
me. 'Let us exchange the sign of peace with our neighbour,' he says.