The Grin of the Dark (40 page)

We've travelled just a few miles when I'm tempted to ask Rufus
to drive me back to Windsor. Our route to London is taking
us into Egham, past the park. As I glimpse the totem pole in the
distance, I could imagine that the pile of wide-eyed masks is stalking
over the frozen grass to match our speed. I could almost think it's
craning to keep me in sight, unless one or more pallid grimacing
heads have added to its stature. It's yet another of the distractions
that are massing in my skull, but the thought of Mark is most
insistent. What kind of fun is he having? If he's out of control I'm
certain to be held responsible by his grandparents and very probably
Nicholas too, but do I blame myself? Returning to Windsor isn't a
solution; my presence might well aggravate any problem. Calling
Natalie is unlikely to help, and I can't think of a reason to give her. I
do my best to concentrate on the journey, which my overloaded brain
must be rendering unreal.

I can't see the student house in Egham, but several people are
dancing up the road that leads to it. They're so plump I'm amazed
that they're able to dance. Of course their baggy costumes are
flapping, not their flesh. The Frugoil station looks deserted, or is a
grinning face flattened against the inside of the window? We're past
before I can determine whether it's a poster. Beyond Staines the sky
is full of lights that put me in mind of sluggish fireworks, and as the
Volvo speeds alongside the airport our progress snags a take-off and
does its best to drag the airliner to earth. I open my eyes to find we're
miles away along the Great West Road. I don't relish this kind of
instant travel, and so I try to make conversation. 'You didn't say what
you thought of the film.'

Rufus and Colin keep the backs of their heads turned to me.
'Maybe we thought we couldn't improve on your performance,' says
Colin.

'Give it a shot,' I urge and am immediately afraid that they'll take
this the wrong way. 'I mean, give me your critical opinions.'

'I'd say he has a future,' says Colin.

'I don't see how I can disagree,' Rufus says.

I would say there's too little to disagree with. Are their comments
so rudimentary because they feel I've withheld mine? I'm loath to risk
trying to share them; I don't think I could cope with another helpless
struggle to speak. Streetlamps make my companions' eyes gleam at
me in the mirror, a glassy artificial glitter that reminds me of dolls'
eyes. I find it so irrationally threatening that I squeeze my eyelids
shut. When I look again we're miles ahead in the West End.

Revellers of an unsettling variety of shapes and sizes are dancing
in Piccadilly Circus. A glare of light on a street sign blots out most of
the letters, leaving only I ILL US. As we turn along Shaftesbury Avenue
figures seem to lurch at my back in the mirror, prancing and jigging
and hopping over or even onto one another. Do I glimpse an impossibly
tall shape composed of dwarfish acrobats bowing towards me
like a worm? Surely it's a shadow, and a shadow can't bear even a
single grin. It falls behind – it doesn't spring apart and scurry in
fragments along the pavement – as the Volvo inches through the
crowd. If stunted figures appear to be skipping in the side streets, they
must be shadows too.

I lose sight of them as we reach Charing Cross Road. As the car
takes its pace from the crowds all the way to Tottenham Court Road I
feel as if we're part of a procession, but in whose honour? I'm glad
when the last of the merry faces stop clustering close to the windows,
turning the glass and themselves pale, as the car veers across the road.
A dizzy bout of swerving through the side streets brings us to the office.

The dark sky lends the brows of the attics an extra frown. Their
windows glint as my publishers' eyes did in the mirror. I can still hear
distant explosions and rejoicing, but the bells seem to have pealed
their last. As Rufus slips his key, a plastic card from a different era
than the door, into a slot I hadn't noticed beneath the brass
doorknob, I say 'Watch out for the guard.'

'There's no guard here,' says Rufus.

He must mean the watchman is off duty. The door opens without
a sound to reveal that the lobby is lit and deserted. Although the
handwriting on the blotter that occupies much of the top of the
reception desk is reversed, it looks familiar. Before I can examine it, if
indeed I want to, Colin pokes the button to open the lift and reveal my
face. It's decidedly too plump, though I might say the same of my
companions. The mirrors on the walls insist on it while the lift quivers
upwards. However hard I stare at the doors, I'm still aware of faces
multiplying on both sides of me. I have to fend off the impression that
a grin is spreading through them out of the dark.

As soon as the doors part I step into the low narrow corridor,
which is illuminated so dimly that the source is unidentifiable. At
least it doesn't seem to be relying on the skylights. I hurry down the
corridor and around the corner, only to have to wait for Rufus to
open 6-120 with a card, presumably not the one he used downstairs.
He shoves an obstruction aside with the door and switches the light
on.

There's very little in the room apart from two basic white desks,
each bearing a computer and attended by a scrawny chair. Beyond the
dormer window the night sky flickers with fireworks, which look
oddly colourless. Rufus gestures me to precede him and Colin, then
indicates the flattish object behind the door. 'That'll be you, will it?'

I grab the envelope and refrain from hugging it protectively.
'Where's the copier?'

'We use the one next door,' he says and glances at the computers.
'Everything settled at the bank?'

Is it too early for the mistake to have been fixed? In any case I can
show him and Colin what I've had to suffer. 'Can I find out?'

'See your fortune,' Rufus says and turns on the left-hand
computer.

I don't care for his joke, which suggests he isn't taking my
situation seriously enough. As I sit behind the desk, his and Colin's
faces seem to quiver. Perhaps it's a symptom of whatever condition
I'm in, or the effect of the fireworks behind me. I type the address of
the site for the bank and then my various secret codes. At last the
page for my account reveals that I'm as much in debt as ever. 'No
change,' I complain.

'Not even a penny?'

'It isn't funny, Colin. Not everything's funny.'

'You sounded like you thought it was.'

Can this be true? The memory of my own voice is already out of
reach. 'I'm saying there's been no – '

My words blunder into one another as if they've fetched up against
silence. A transformation is indeed overtaking the amount on the
screen. My debt has just acquired an extra zero. For an irrational
moment I try to joke that it's nothing, and then my skull grows fragile
with realising that now I owe ten times as much. 'No, that's not
right,' I protest as if whoever is responsible can hear me. 'No.'

Rufus and Colin step around either side of the desk. As they stoop
to the monitor, another zero appears to greet them. Rufus is the first
to laugh. 'Well, that's a new one.'

'I've not seen that before,' says Colin.

Do they think it's too absurd to take seriously? It's their job to deal
with it. I don't know what sound I utter when a further pair of zeros
swells my debt. They put me in mind of eyes pretending to be too
blind to watch me. All the noughts might be the eyes of nothingness
– and then I realise whose glee I can almost sense. 'It's him, isn't it,' I
blurt. 'He's doing it. He's here.'

'Who?' says Colin.

'Where?' says Rufus.

'Don't talk like a pair of clowns. Our emeny, our ennenny. The
one who's been after me ever since I started writing about Tubby.'
While this isn't quite accurate, since I first wrote about him in my
thesis, at least I seem to have regained control of my words. 'Let's see
what he's saying now,' I shout loud enough to be heard in the next
room. 'Let's see if he gives himself away.'

Rufus and Colin are watching me oddly, but how do they expect
me to behave? Perhaps we can collaborate on a response to my persecutor;
perhaps they can edit my post. I scrabble at the keys to log onto
my Frugonet account. Is it my haste that brings up an altogether
different site? In the moment before I expel it from the screen I
glimpse fat naked shapes crawling slug-like over one another. In the
greyish light I can't tell whether they're babies or some even more
primitive life form, and they're gone before I'm sure how widely
they're staring and grinning. I don't even know whether the clammy
guilt that clings to me is on Rufus's behalf or my own, since my
typing managed to locate the site. I try to log on fast enough to
pretend I saw nothing and nobody else did.

Hundreds of emails on subjects as nonsensical as the names of
their senders are waiting for me. I leave them unopened and move to
the newsgroups. Too many to count have a single message for me.

Yes it is.

Perhaps the words and the message are too short to give him the
scope to misspell, but I have the disconcerting notion that he has
forgotten to. I glare at the screen until it begins to throb. 'What's he
mean by that?' I demand.

'What do you make of it?' says Colin.

I wouldn't admit to my feelings if I hadn't been asked, but who can
I trust to be sympathetic if not my friends and patrons? 'It sounds as
if he's answering me, doesn't it? It sounds as if he heard what I said
about him.'

Colin turns away before he speaks. 'I'll check next door.'

'You think he's there?' I whisper. 'Did you hear him?'

Colin glances back too briefly for me to read his expression.
'Check,' he says as he steps into the corridor, 'that we've got access
to the copier.'

Does he think I'm being too paranoid? He hasn't been through all I
have. At least he has reminded me that there's one aspect of my thoughts
Smilemime can't touch – my book. As Colin's footsteps and their
flapping echoes veer beyond audibility I brandish the envelope at the
screen. I don't care if Rufus hears me snarl 'Try and alter this, you tubby
little grurd.' I peel the parcel tape off the envelope and unpick the
staples. I look up from dropping the last one with a ting like a tiny bell
in the waste bin, but the other sound wasn't Colin's return, it was Rufus
shifting his big feet. I slip the pages upside down out of the envelope and
feel my grin rising to greet them as I turn them the other way up.

Let stalk about Ubby in Howwylud. Hiss firts flim – hiss debboo –
scalled 'The Bets Messy Din'...

Perhaps I'm still wearing a kind of grin as I search the pages for
even a single sentence that I remember writing. For as long as it
takes me to race through the manuscript it seems my stiffened lips
won't let me speak, and then I manage to force out a few basic
words. 'He's been here. He's got in.'

Why isn't Rufus bothering to examine the pages? He looks as
though just their presence has robbed him of speech. He widens his
eyes and turns up his hands to indicate his smile, which I assume is
meant to be apologetic. 'How could he have?' I demand.

Does Rufus take this for a game? He might be playing charades,
the way he's jerking his hands at his smile, which seems less apologetic
than impatient. His lips part, but at first simply to let his pale
tongue lick them. Eventually he says 'I did my best. I'm sorry, Simon.'

However clear his words are, I find them indistinguishable from
nonsense. 'What did you do?'

'I tried to stop it but I couldn't.'

He keeps lifting his hands as if he's attempting to support his
expression. He isn't just smiling – he's miming a smile. The thought
settles over my mind like blackened cobweb, darkness rendered
substantial. 'You don't mean that,' I plead. 'You're joking.'

He shakes his head but fails to dislodge his smile. 'It's me.'

I grip the corners of the desk. I might be capable of hurling it at
him, but I'm hanging onto it in the hope that it at least can be relied
upon to stay solid. 'What sense does that make?'

'More than some of the things you've been going through, I should
imagine.' He actually sounds self-righteous. 'You've been seeing him,
haven't you?' he says with more than a hint of jealousy. 'He's been
playing his tricks, or something he stirred up has.'

'Have you?' I retort in too similar a tone. 'Have you been seeing
him?'

'Ever since I started looking into him after you brought him up in
your thesis. I thought if I got you to research him that would distract
him, lure him away. I should have known it would just make him or
whatever it is stronger.'

He's apologising again. It's one more bewilderment to add to the
mass that's swarming in my skull. I manage to disentangle a question
that seems to have a point, at any rate until I voice it. 'Are you saying
you found out things about him you didn't tell me?'

'Just a book with a couple of pages on him.' As if this justifies any
secretiveness he adds 'It was about surrealism. In French.'

I can barely hear my own question. 'What did you do with it?'

'Wrote in it and sent it on its way. Don't ask me what I wrote, it
made no sense to me.' Even more defensively he says 'I know I should
have destroyed it but you can't, can you? You have to pass him on to
other people. Anyway, we don't matter any more. There'll be no
stopping him now.'

'Why not?'

'You've put him on the net. It's his ideal medium, the one he's been
waiting for, or whatever he represents has. Everyone can get to him
and he can get to everyone.'

'So you're telling me it was his fault,' I say savagely, 'what you did.'

'Depends what you have in mind.'

How can Rufus continue to smile? I grip the desk so fiercely that
the corners feel close to piercing my hands. 'You said you couldn't
stop posting that crap.'