The Grin of the Dark

TEN - MOORS

On the train from Euston I have to sit opposite an intrusively lanky teenager who chortles for almost three hours at some game on his laptop. His feet are too big as well. I might find more distraction in the landscape, even though it's dulled by the featureless grey sky, if I weren't facing away from the engine. I keep feeling that the journey I haven't completed is already rewinding before my eyes. By the time I reach Manchester Piccadilly I've had enough of trains for a while, and walk across town to Victoria Station as fast as I can dodge and sidle through the lunchtime crowds. If anyone were staffing the barrier I suspect they would tell me I'm too late, but I dash to the last carriage and clamber in and slam the door as the train comes to life. I've sprawled panting on the nearest seat, and office workers at computers are sailing past on both sides of me, when my phone strikes up. 'Hello?' I gasp with half a breath.

'You sound surprised, or is it worried?'

'Neither.' I take a deep breath in order to tell Tracy 'So long as you aren't calling to cancel.'

'Why do you reckon I'd be doing that?'

'I don't.'

Rather than ask if he is I fall silent, and he demands 'Did you send me a message?'

'I left you the time I'll be arriving.'

'That's all you've left.' When I confirm it Tracy says 'Where are you?'

The train is racing a tram on the road below. 'Leaving Manchester,' I assume.

'Get off at the one after next.'

'That'll give me the Mumps, you mean.'

'No.' He sounds displeased that I've made a version of his joke. 'The one after next,' he repeats at half the speed and shuts his phone off.

The train is approaching a station that resembles a hasty sketch of one. On either side of the tracks, metal benches or their outlines occupy the angle between a concrete platform and a concrete wall beneath a scrawny awning. Before I can see a signboard, a break in the coating of the sky fills my eyes with the glare of the shrunken white sun. I'm still trying to blink away the pallor, which robs the carriage of most of its substance, when the train reaches its next stop.

It could be the same one. At least the platform feels solid underfoot, however token it looks. A concrete ramp scattered with dozens of handbills – TEAR THE MOSQUES DOWN and WHITE MINORITY UNITE – leads down to a street bordered by a single elongated windowless building as grey as the clouds. As I step onto the ramp, a dilapidated white van parked on yellow lines flashes its headlamps from the shadow of the building. The side of the van reads FILMS FOR FUN.

The driver's seat is more than full of a man. His grey track suit manages to be loose on him; perhaps he stretched it larger. The small cramped features of his rotund face are keeping any cheerfulness to themselves. I'm making to climb in beside him when I see that a film projector is strapped into the passenger seat. 'Have you been showing films today?' I ask as he drags his door open and descends to the road.

He turns away, displaying how the black dye has fallen short of the shaggy tail of his grey hair. 'I've not, no,' he grumbles.

I wait while he plods to unlock the rear doors, and while he fails to transfer the projector from the seat. The rest of the van is empty except for a tattered strip of film and no cleaner than the pavement. When Tracy jerks a fat hand at the interior I say 'Couldn't your equipment go in there?'

'That's you if you're coming.'

I have to hope that the interview will be worth it. I clamber into the back and twist around in a crouch to see Tracy thrusting out a hand. When I make to pass him the strip of film he gives a terse laugh that the van renders metallic. 'Try again,' he says. 'You won't get another word out of me else, and we'll be going nowhere.'

I dig out my pocketful of notes, still in the envelope from the bank. Tracy splays the envelope wide to finger them. As he reaches for the doors I offer him the film again, but he hardly bothers to shake his head. Before I can discern the images on the six or seven frames they're extinguished by a double slam that nearly snatches the film out of my hand.

I slip the film into my inside pocket as Tracy drags his door shut. The van jerks forwards before I can brace myself, and I slide across the floor. I scrabble backwards into the corner behind the driver and jam my fists against the walls as the van swerves around a bend, and another. It feels as if I'm being flung from location to unseen location in the dark. When the road grows straight, every foot of it contains the threat of another unexpected bend. The van is climbing as well, tilting so precipitously that I bruise my knuckles against the walls and strain my knees high in an effort to wedge my heels against the floor. I'm feeling altogether too foetal, not least in terms of being menaced with ejection, when the van swings left and halts with a rasp of the handbrake.

The inside of my head is unconvinced that I've stopped moving. As I close my eyes to recapture equilibrium, I hear Tracy haul his door wide and tramp around the van. The rear doors squeal apart, admitting a chilly breeze. I scramble for the exit, only to be confronted by a void as blank as a dead computer.

It's the sky, which is no comfort, because there appears to be nothing else beyond the floor of the van. Tracy must have stood somewhere to open the doors. When I inch forward I see that the rear of the vehicle is overhanging the edge of a cliff. No, not quite: it's close to the end of a lay-by, beyond which the slope is rather less steep than it looked. I thrust my legs out of the van and wobble to my feet to find I'm surrounded by a moor.

It's darker than the sky but nearly as featureless. The black road winds from horizon to horizon. The solitary lay-by is deserted except for Tracy's van, and attended by a single picnic table carved with initials and longer words where it isn't charred. Tracy is occupying much of the bench that faces the road. As I sit opposite him he says 'I come up here to be on my tod.'

I could take this as unwelcoming, but I only say 'You're never alone with your mobile.' Since he doesn't seem amused I add 'Unless you switch it off.'

'They're still there waiting till you turn it on.'

'Anybody in particular?' I ask mostly out of politeness.

'Whoever texted me in the middle of the night off their computer, for a start. Said they were getting rid of some films I'd be interested in. Sent all the directions but when I got there it didn't exist. That's where I've just been. That's why I took the projector, to check what they had.'

His accusing tone provokes me to wonder 'Was that the message you asked if I'd sent?'

'Seemed a bit of a coincidence, hearing from you out of nowhere and then getting that. It's not like I knew who you were.' He peers harder at me as he says 'And some of these films were meant to have your friend Tubby in.'

I'm growing as suspicious as he looks. 'Do you happen to recall who the sender was?'

'Some stupid made-up name like people use on computers. Miss Isle, that was it. Don't tell me that's their real name.'

'I'm sure it isn't. I think it may be partly my fault, sorry. I shouldn't have brought you into it.'

'Into what?'

'There was a disagreement about which of Tubby's films you used. That's why I asked when we spoke.'

Perhaps he didn't clear the copyright. His gaze is avoiding mine now, pretending to search the road or the moor. 'It was already out there on the Internet,' I point out. 'All I did was put it right.'

'So you say.'

'I'm sorry if I drew too much attention to it. Would you rather I didn't acknowledge you in my book?'

'A book, is it? You can call me Charles Trace. See if anybody gets the joke.'

I'm not sure I do, but feel bound to smile, which apparently prompts him to say 'Any road, do you want what you came for?'

'I'd love to watch anything of Tubby's you can show me.'

'Maybe you should hear about him first.' Tracy leans across the table, lowering his voice, and a charred patch of wood splinters under his elbows. 'How's this for a start? My grandpa saw him once.'

Presumably he's trying to make the information more dramatic; he can't imagine that we could be overheard. 'On stage, do you mean?' I ask.

'In Manchester. First place he appeared and the last time he did. My grandpa said there was nearly a riot.'

'Why, because Tubby was leaving the stage?'

Tracy lets out a laugh that seems close to reminiscent. 'Because he got them all going too much.'

'Going.' I then have to repeat 'Going...'

'Daft, it sounded like.' Tracy giggles, perhaps at his verbal dexterity. 'He had them playing jokes on one another. Made some of them laugh so much they couldn't stop.'

'A riot, though, you said.'

'Some of them carried on outside in the street and the rest still couldn't stop laughing. The theatre had to call the police. My grandpa used to say it was worse than when the country went on strike. He didn't hold with unions.'

'That wouldn't have been the act Orville Hart saw, would it?'

'That was after, down south. Seems Tubby wasn't just touring, more like keeping on the move. Some places wouldn't have him when they heard about him.'

'Do we know what sort of an act he had?'

'I'll give you a taste later.'

As Tracy's eyes lose a promissory glint I say 'I was wondering what Hart saw in him.'

'He said in one of those Hollywood magazines Tubby made the Keystone Kops look like a garden party with the vicar. That's how he sold him to Mack Sennett. Still, you don't know how Tubby was behaving when Hart saw him. The story goes Tubby kept trying to calm himself down.'

'Only trying?'

'Did you just see him in my film?'

'So far.'

A wind shivers the grey pelt of the moor and rattles the open doors of the van, which creaks as if someone has climbed in the back. As his troubled hair subsides, Tracy says 'That's him being moderate.' 'I'd like to see him when he isn't, then.'

Tracy opens his mouth, revealing the lower gum as well as its teeth, and I've time to wonder what goes with the expression before he speaks. 'My grandpa never let my daddy go to Tubby's films, the ones we even got.'

'Would you have any idea why some of them were banned?'

'People like my grandpa made a row about the ones that were let in. Some woman had a heart attack laughing at one of the stage shows, and they kept on digging that up till it got in all the papers. And there was supposed to be trouble at his films like there'd been at some of the theatres. My daddy heard there was more of a shindy at a cinema in Eccles than they were showing on the screen.'

'These days they'd use all that in the publicity.'

Though I'm not suggesting the industry should, Tracy focuses his disapproval on me. 'Shows the way the world's going. Anything to get into your head and who cares what gets in. And you wonder why I like it up here.'

'I'm surprised you didn't mention some of those stories in your film.'

'Maybe I should have. They're what got me interested in him. I was young, that's why. Anything you couldn't see had to be good.'

'Presumably he lost his contract when his films kept being banned here.' When Tracy stares as if he doesn't need to speak I say 'Then what happened to him?'

'On the payroll writing gags and they used some of his ideas, but they wouldn't let him write a film. Then he went to Hal Roach and thought up Leave 'Em Laughing, and you can just see him in a car at the end if you look.'

'And after that?'

'He tried to give Stan Laurel more ideas but the story goes they were too much for Stan, so Tubby went off with a circus.' Behind Tracy the surface of the moor shifts like an image left too long onscreen, and the van emits another creak. 'He's meant to have said he wanted to get back to the start,' he says.

'I thought he started in the music-hall.' Since Tracy only lets his bottom lip droop as some kind of response, I try asking 'Where did you hear about it?'

'From a lad by the name of Shaun Nolan that sold me Tubby's film.'

'Would it be worth my speaking to him, do you think?'

'Want to go and see him?' Tracy jumps up as if he has been hooked by the corners of his sudden grin. 'I've had my sit,' he says and peers at my lack of alacrity. 'Nothing to keep us here that I know of.'

'Will you be showing me anything of Tubby's later?'

His grin subsides, and then his eyes glimmer. 'You want to see what his act was like.'

'Anything you can put on for me would – '

I don't just leave the word unspoken, I forget what it was going to be. Tracy has stepped back on the concrete stage and is clutching his stomach with both hands. I think he's in pain until I see that he's quivering with silent laughter. At first he pinches his lips together to arrest his grin and confine his mirth. Very gradually his lips part as if he's losing control of them, baring his teeth. There's still no sound from him or anywhere on the moor. His mouth gapes so wide it can barely hold on to the shape of the grin, and his eyes bulge with an unblinking gaze that sets my head throbbing in sympathy. I'm wondering how loud and sharp and huge his laughter may seem whenever it bursts forth at last. I feel compelled to head it off, but I don't think simple merriment will do it, although I can sense helpless mirth building up inside the dam of my clenched teeth. Perhaps I have to perform some routine that will lend his voiceless jollity a point, and I leap up from the bench. I'm not sure whether I'm yielding to the compulsion to amuse him or retreating from it when my knee collides with the table.

I squeeze my eyes shut as a preamble to hopping about and then rubbing my kneecap. If my antics divert Tracy, that makes me even angrier. When I straighten up and blink my vision clear, however, he looks merely bemused, as if his own performance that lasted however many minutes never took place. 'Was that it?' I ask.

His mouth considers grinning and his eyes widen a fraction. 'Want some more?'

'I think we can move on. Would you mind if I ride in the front this time?'

'I'm not letting the projector out of my sight. It's my oldest mate and my best one.' He stumps to the back of the van and waits for me to climb in. 'It's not far,' he says, and I'm hardly inside when he slams the doors and leaves me in the dark.