The Grin of the Dark (7 page)

When Mark glances at me for approval I show him the palms of
my hands. Perhaps my frown is too faint to reach him, because he
takes the warning for encouragement. He tiptoes after the staggering
giants, and the other children follow in single file until the lead clown
indicates that they should copy the dwarfs. The little girl closest to
Mark puts an arm around his shoulders, giggling and eyeing her
parents. The other children pair off more or less willingly, but this
doesn't satisfy the impromptu director. He's urging them to mimic
the crippled antics of the giants.

Perhaps Mark and his companion feel bound to obey because
they're leading the youthful parade. I'm not certain which of them
begins swaying, but in a few seconds they're both doing so with an
abandon that looks positively intoxicated. The pair of boys behind
them has started to compete when a woman shouts 'Lise, that's
enough.'

She's the mother of Mark's partner. The girl halts uncertainly,
bringing all the children to a standstill, while the giants wobble to
confront the interruption and the dwarfs dodge behind them. 'Come
along,' her mother says, tramping down to the ring. 'We're going
home.'

As the girl bites her lip and her mother takes her by the hand, the
clowns on the benches leap into the ring and surround them. Falling
to their knees, they clasp their hands in silent entreaty and bend
backwards so as to turn their stricken faces up. The posture emphasises
every rampant crotch. 'Move out of the way, please,' the mother
says more sharply yet.

That isn't why the clowns jump up and scatter. They're trying to
head off several families that are ushering reluctant children towards the
exit. Nobody is likely to be won over by their supplications when these
involve so much thrusting of their crotches. As the last of the parents
reclaim their children, Mark climbs to head me off. 'Can I watch?'

I assume he's hoping the show will continue. Just now the clowns
are pursuing the families, wiggling their fingers at any child who
looks back, until I'm close to fancying that it's some kind of secret
sign. 'Let's see what happens,' I murmur.

The giants have hobbled to flank the exit. They look capable of
falling on anyone who tries to leave. As each family does, a clown
prances close behind, jerking his outthrust crotch high and gripping
his midriff in silent laughter. These parting japes are too much for the
spectators who've remained seated – for the parents, at any rate. They
lead or in some cases drag their children to the exit and are sent
packing by the same rude dance. I haven't seen the people leave who
were talking as we sat down, but when I glance over my shoulder I
find we're the solitary audience.

If Mark doesn't want to leave, I won't insist. He could see worse
on children's television. I sit up straight and fold my arms, and so
does Mark. Perhaps that's too peremptory, because all the clowns in
the ring scamper to the lowest bench opposite us and sit symmetrically,
the clown with the small head in the middle of the group, the
dwarfs at either end. The giants remain beside the exit and clasp
hands to form an arch.

Are the clowns on the bench waiting for us to move so that they
can mimic us? Their fixed stares and superimposed contradictory
grimaces don't even hint at their intentions. I'll have to move soon,
because I'm finding it hard to breathe, but I feel as if neither Mark
nor I should be the first to stir. Could we all be awaiting a new
arrival? It might be Natalie, though only by coincidence. I take
another constricted breath, and Mark emits a muted giggle. Then we
both start as a phone begins to shrill.

The clown with the small head twists around, pulling his costume
tight around his swollen torso, and grabs the mobile from behind
him. Instead of answering it, he holds it out to us. 'Shall I get it?'
Mark whispers.

'I expect so.'

As he runs to fetch the phone his shadow slides down the canvas
behind the clowns and shrinks to meet him in the centre of the ring.
The leader of the troupe points at me with the mobile and hands it to
Mark. It repeats the same strident note in pairs – the sound of a
phone from the last century – as he brings it to me. He's so eager that
I hope he won't be disappointed by the pay-off. I poke the button to
accept the message and hold the mobile so that he can hear.

Has it anything to offer except static? When I press it to my ear I
grasp that the waves of sound are too patterned to be random. As the
hissing grows more solid and more resonant I identify it as the beginnings
of laughter. The mirth is distant, but not for long. It swells until
I have to lower the phone, to save my ear as much as to let Mark listen.
Even now it seems too loud, filling the tent and shivering the canvas,
except that a wind must be doing at least the latter. Are the clowns
adding to the laughter? Their faces are quivering like jelly as they
expose their prominent teeth and clutch at their midriffs, and yet the
gleeful merriment sounds like the product of a single mouth. The
mobile feels weighed down by hysteria, and my senses are so
overwhelmed that I seem unable to move my hand. Then the chortling
begins to subside, and the quaking of the clowns lessens in sympathy.
At last the noise trails off in a series of hisses that dissolve into uninterrupted
static, and the phone goes dead.

Mark gazes up at me, and the performers watch just as intently.
I've no idea what anyone expects, since the mobile is as inert as a
terminally infected computer. 'Is anything else going to happen?' I
wonder aloud.

I might as well not have spoken. There's as little response when I
hold out the phone to the clowns, and when I shrug and lay it on the
bench to my right, away from Mark. Why should I be expected to
perform any more? That's the job of the clowns, however they spell
themselves. I'm close to saying so until I notice that they aren't as still
as I thought; their eyes are turning leftwards in unison and then back
to me. They have to do this several times before I realise they're
indicating the exit. 'I think that's it,' I murmur.

Mark seems happy enough. The outrageousness of the show must
have satisfied him. As we head for the exit I brace myself for a last
prank, but the seated clowns stay where they are. Their united gaze
keeps hold of us, and their fattened fingers wriggle, presumably to
send us on our way. I glance back from the exit, but nobody is
prancing after us, and the jerry-built giants aren't about to collapse
on us. Mark peers up at them in delicious expectant panic as I guide
him clear of their rickety legs and out into the dark.

There's no sign of the departed audience. We're making for the
dim foreshortened avenue behind the tent when the field grows
abruptly darker, swallowing Mark's faint shadow and mine. All the
lights inside the tent have been switched off. Without its whitish glow
it reminds me of an ancient monument, but I'm wondering what the
clowns can be up to in the dark. Might they be creeping out of the
exit? I can think of no reason why they would, nor why we should
wait on the chance that they are. 'Let's see if we've time to watch the
film again,' I say to speed Mark onwards.

It's even darker beneath the oaks. The entangled branches seem to
prevent any light from filtering down out of the scraps of sky. The
hulking trunks are closer together than I would expect oaks to grow.
I hold Mark's small chilly hand as we trot along the middle of the
avenue; I wouldn't want him to run ahead and collide with anything
unseen. Have we strayed into a different avenue? I'm glimpsing the
totem pole through the trees on our left, although the pile of wide-mouthed
glimmering faces seems to skulk behind them whenever I try
to distinguish it more clearly. I even imagine some activity beyond it,
rapid movements of pale dim limbs whose gait puts me in mind of an
injured spider. If it was one of the giant clowns, where would the
other be? When I look back the avenue appears to be deserted,
although blocked by the looming bulk of the tent. I face forward
again, and Mark clutches at my hand.

The alarm is only the tune of my mobile: 'You must remember
this...' The song from
Casablanca
has lost some of its appeal in the
gloom caged by trees. Mark relaxes his grip as I continue walking and
lift the mobile to my face. 'What's been wrong with your phone?'
Natalie apparently doesn't want to know, because she goes on
'Where are you?'

'Heading for the road near Frugoil.'

'It's all over, then.'

'It seems to be.'

'I'll pick you up at the gate.'

'What did – ' I begin, but the phone is unoccupied except by waves
of static. Mark pulls me left around a bend, beyond which the avenue
leads straight to the totem pole by the water. Once we emerge from
beneath the trees I'm certain that the faces are incapable of springing
apart and forming a line to meet us. I can see lamps above the wall at
the far side of the field, and I'm disconcerted to find the sight so
reassuring. I release Mark's hand as we cross the lawn to the gate.

Natalie's Punto is panting on the road. 'Was it good?' she asks as
I let Mark have the front seat.

'It was funny.'

'Lots of laughs,' I say and shut the rear door. 'What did your
parents want?'

Natalie meets my gaze in the mirror. 'I'll tell you later,' she says,
and I suspect that I won't relish the experience.

There's something odd about Orville Hart as well.

He was working for Mack Sennett when he discovered Tubby
Thackeray. He and the comedian wrote their early films together,
while Thackeray took sole credit for writing the later ones, and Hart
directed all of them. Once Tubby lost his stardom Hart found work
at the Hal Roach studios, initially as a writer, eventually directing
Oliver Hardy and James Finlayson in
The Course-We-Can Brothers
.
For several years after that he appears to have been confined to
writing gags until in 1932 he wrote and directed
Crazy Capaldi
, his
first feature film. 'The wildest of the Warners gangster movies,'
somebody posting as Smilemime comments on the Internet Movie
Database. 'Banned in Blighty and withdrawn in America after pubblic
protests, the severely cut reissue was a flop.' I stare at this until I disentangle
the sense it's presumably intended to make. Perhaps Hart was
better suited to comedy, since he's next noted as a writer for the Three
Stooges, whom he directed in 1934 as Eager, Meager and Seegar,
three hunchbacked laboratory assistants in a Frankenstein parody,
Gimme Da Brain
. 'The story goes the pokes in the eye got out of hand
and nearly blinded Curly,' Smilemime claims to know. In 1935 Hart
attempted to revive Charley Chase's reputation or his own with his
second full-length feature,
Fool for a Day
. 'Screwball so screwy it
screwed his career,' Smilemime somewhat imprecisely sums it up.
'Ahead of its time or out of its head? You deccide if you can find it.' The
studio may not have had a chance to judge the reaction of the public
when Hart began shooting his next film,
Ticklin' Feather
. This was
apparently to be the first in a series of comedy Westerns about a
Cherokee of that name. 'Beggins with him riding into the little town of
Bedlam on a donkey called Neddy Canter,' Smilemime reports. 'Sound
fammiliar?' I'm not sure which reference this means, nor where the
pseudonymous commentator obtained the information, because the
film was never released.

That's the oddity. Both Orville Hart and Tubby Thackeray ended
their careers with unreleased films. It isn't surprising that they weren't
hired after that, but why would two studios suppress completed
films? The question can't distract me from wondering what Natalie
has to tell me. I was hoping that she would last night while Mark
stayed downstairs to watch the film again, but she dropped me at the
house and kept him in the car. 'I'll be in touch,' she said. I stayed up
for a while, searching the Internet for Clowns Unlimited or any
variant spelling, but even the site from which I bought the tickets was
unavailable; perhaps the performers have alienated so many
spectators that they can't obtain any more bookings. Eventually I
went to bed, only to imagine on the way to sleep that if I opened my
eyes I would see clowns' faces poking up all around me. Between
dozes I wondered if Natalie wanted to discuss some situation first
with Mark.

It's almost noon on Sunday morning. I could phone her, but I
don't want to be told she can't talk. Surely she would have called by
now if it was serious. I do my best to believe that while I finish
reading about Orville Hart, the grandfather of 'adult filmmaker Willie
Hart'. When I reach the page for that name, having been warned
about adult content, I see that Willie Hart's films include a hardcore
comedy called
Dopius, Gropius and Copious
. I return to Orville's
page and click on Tubby Thackeray in case it takes me anywhere I
haven't been. As I expected, it brings up the comedian's listing, but
that has changed. All the titles are live, linked to pages of their own.

Could they have been last time I looked? It hardly matters, since
there's so little information. Each individual page lists the film as a
Keystone comedy starring Tubby Thackeray and directed by Orville
Hart. Just one is briefly reviewed:
Tubby's Tiny Tubbies
. 'Tubby and
his little nephews create chaos in a snooty store.' I'd take that to be
accurate if the commentator Smilemime didn't add 'Nearly complete
in
Those Golden Years of Fun
– the only known survivving Tubby footage.'

Are all Smilemime's comments as unreliable as this? Is he (I'm
certain it's a man) remembering a different film, and is it one of
Thackeray's? The site doesn't let you contact other users directly, but
I can start a message board. First I have to register. As long as I'm
addressing a pseudonym I don't see why I shouldn't use one. I sign in
as Leslie Stone and head my message
QUESTIONABLE ATTRIBUTION
.

I'm afraid the reviewer is mixing up two films. The one in
Those
Golden Years of Fun
is surely
Tubby's Terrible Triplets
. None of
them is little, they're all the same size. Can anyone identify the
film Smilemime describes and say if it's still available?

I send the message and return to Tubby's main page. I was hoping
to open up his biography, but now even the sentence about music-hall
and the next two tantalising words have gone. Why would they have
been deleted? I search for an address for Variety Video in case they
can put me in touch with the source of their footage, but there's no
trace of the distributors in the list the phrase calls up. As I finish
scrolling through the list, my mobile rings. 'Are you busy?' says
Natalie.

'Never too busy for you. Is Mark there?'

'He's on his computer. Why, do you want him?'

'No, I meant...'

'Nobody's listening if that's the problem. I'm sorry things didn't
go as planned last night. Actually, I think you've made a fan.'

'Well, I hope he knows I'm one of his.'

Natalie is silent long enough for me to grasp I've missed the point
before she says 'A fan of this Tubby of yours. He couldn't talk about
anything else all the way home.'

Does that mean he thinks it best not to tell her about the circus?
'Remind him I said he could watch it again.'

'I don't know if he even needs to. I wouldn't be surprised if he was
laughing in his sleep.' Her voice stays indulgent as she adds 'By the
way, I shouldn't have to tell you he's fond of you.'

'I'm glad.'

'Or that I am.'

'I hope you can hear an echo. So what happened last night?' I risk
asking.

'I'm sorry I kept you wondering. I might have lost my temper if I'd
phoned from Windsor.'

'With me, do you mean?'

'I will do if you make that sort of comment.' Natalie sighs at one
of us and says 'I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't answering their
phones so that I couldn't find out why they wanted me till I got there.'

At least her parents couldn't have minded leaving Mark with me,
unless they were hoping I would prove to be somehow untrustworthy.
'And what was that?' I have to prompt.

'They wanted to put me together with someone I used to know.'

'Is it the fellow they were saying has done well for himself?'

'You never told me they had.'

'It was when they ran me back here from your flat. I expect it
slipped my mind.'

'It sounded as though it mattered to you just now.'

'Should it?'

A wave sweeps all the combinations of variety and video off the
monitor, and I nudge the mouse to hush the soundtrack of the screensaver.
'Are you sure I'm not interrupting your work?' Natalie says.

'Of course you aren't. All right, you are but I want you to.' I'm
thrown by having realised that I ought to be searching for Charley
Tracy, compiler of
Those Golden Years of Fun
. 'That's all they told
me,' I protest. 'Not even who he is.'

'He's Nicholas. I went to school with him. He's involved in a
publishing company and he's offered me a job.'

'Natalie, I'm sorry. I should have asked Rufus if he could put some
of all this money your way. Shall I?'

'Honestly, I'd rather you didn't. It might cause arguments.'

'You don't want any of those.'

'Not if they can be avoided, and I think this one could be. We
aren't having one now, are we?'

'I don't see why we need to. So what's your job?'

'One of their magazines is about modern art and they want a more
modern look. Nicholas thinks I can do it because of how
Cineassed
looked.'

'I expect there was thunder in the air if he talked about that in
front of your parents.'

'There wasn't, actually.'

I might express surprise if not disbelief, but I'm busy examining
the cardboard slipcase of
Those Golden Years of Fun
. The distributors
were based in Oldham. 'Have you got the job, then?'

'I'll obviously have to go for an interview, but it sounds as if I
might have it if I want it.'

'And do you?'

'It pays a lot more than the magazine I'm with now, and I think
there'd be more satisfaction in it too.'

I hunch up my left shoulder to hold the mobile to my ear while I
type Charley Tracy and Oldham on the Directory Enquiries page of
British Telecom. 'Then I don't know what you're waiting for.'

I mean to be encouraging, but Natalie says 'Would you rather I
hadn't rung? I'm getting the impression you want to be left by yourself.'

'Not by you. You mustn't ever think that. I may have found a good
lead, that's all,' I say, because I appear to be looking at the phone
number for the compiler of the film.

'I'd better leave you to it, then.'

'Hold on,' I say, having caught a hint of tentativeness in her voice.
'Is there any reason you shouldn't go after this job?'

'I can't think of any right now.'

'Then go for it. When shall I see you?'

'Whenever you can tear yourself away from your computer.'

That seems unfair, but I say 'Shall we do something tonight?'

'I may want to draft some ideas to show them at the interview.'

'I expect that's a good plan. Let me know how it goes if we don't
speak before.'

I don't mean this to sound as final as perhaps it does, or have we
been cut off? I can't think of enough to add that would justify ringing
her back. Instead I key the number on the screen. The distant phone
rings and then issues an invitation to commence to dancing, just like
Laurel and Hardy. After a good few bars of the song Charley Tracy
says 'Films for fun. Don't go away till you leave us a message or call
my mobile if there's a panic.'

'Mr Tracy? My name's Simon Lester. I'm researching Tubby
Thackeray for the University of London. I was wondering if I could
discuss him with you as an expert. Could you give me a buzz so we
can arrange some kind of interview? That's very kind of you,' I say
and add my number.

I hope none of that is too awkwardly phrased, but I was realising
there may be more useful footage on
Those Golden Years of Fun
.
Suppose the footage Smilemime described is there too? I switch off
the computer and take the film downstairs. Having cleared another
pizza box or entirely possibly the same one as yesterday off the
armchair, I sit down as the tape races to the thirty-minute mark.

As Oliver Hardy sets about his scene once more, I speed him
onwards. Everyone else on the remainder of the tape is as familiar as
he is. I gaze out at the underside of the sky, which the window may
be tinting even greyer, while I wait for the tape to rewind. Once it
halts with a plastic clatter I restart it. Before I speak to Charley Tracy
I should listen to his comments on the whole film.

The white bars of static last longer than I thought they did. The
tape mustn't have been fully rewound when I watched it with Mark.
I accelerate it with the sticky remote control, and then I wrench a
distressed creak from the frame of the armchair by crouching
forward. The screen crawls with a white mass like a nest of eggs that
have just hatched as the digits on the counter race on. When they
count to half an hour, Oliver Hardy bobs up from the blankness and
the image stabilises. I rewind several minutes' worth and play the tape
while I attempt to tune it in, but it's useless. The first half-hour,
including the Thackeray extract, is blank except for static that hisses
in a rhythm I could imagine is actively gleeful.