The Grin of the Dark

FOURTEEN - SITES

As we reach the Abbey School, outside which children's uniforms are turning the world black and white, I decide not to spend the rest of the day without knowing 'Were you across the corridor?'

Because of the babble of children, some of whom are greeting Mark, I have to raise my voice, and he isn't alone in staring at me. 'When?'

'Yesterday, before you came back in. Were you and Natalie in the other flat?'

'Why'd we be there?'

'Because I thought I heard you but I couldn't see you. You can tell me if you were.'

'We weren't, though. We just had a walk by the river like you and her wanted.'

'Don't say that, Mark.'

'What?' he says and gazes through the railings at the girls who greeted him.

'Don't call your mother her, and it isn't like you and her wanted either, it's you and she.' I'm growing impatient, not least with feeling entangled in my own words. 'You know them at any rate, don't you?' I persist. 'Whoever lives opposite us.'

'I don't and mummy doesn't.'

What do I imagine I'm doing, interrogating Mark on the very first day I've taken him to school? I must have heard another child yesterday, perhaps one who lives across the corridor. 'Go and have a great time and I'll pick you up at four,' I tell him. 'You know why it's called school, don't you? Because it's cool.'

I hope the discomfort in his eyes is at least to some extent a joke. I shake his hand and grip his shoulder and pat him on the head, only to suspect that I've enacted one gesture too many if not two. Calling 'Be good, Mark' after him doesn't improve my performance, but he seems confident enough as he marches through the gates beneath the wrought-iron name of the school. I'm wondering if I should linger until the bell when the prettiest of the girls says 'Who's that, Mark?'

She giggles and covers the smile to which I've already responded. For a moment I'm absurdly flattered, and then I feel worse than uncomfortable: she's no older than Mark. I look away hastily and find I'm being watched from the doorway of the red-brick building, which reminds me of a fullscreen version of a widescreen image, since it's less than half the width of either of my old schools. The watcher must be the headmistress, although she's only just taller than the tallest of the children and as monochromatically dressed. She hands the bell she's holding to a pupil, who does his best to shake the clapper loose, and then she waits for the children to line up in classes and for the silence of the bell to settle over them. Is she still aware of me? Some of the parents at the railings are. Mark doesn't need me to wait any longer – he hasn't glanced back – and so I turn away towards Tower Bridge Road.

I'm in sight of the crowded bridge beneath the grey undercoated sky when my phone comes to life. I recognise the displayed number, but all I say is 'Yes.'

'Found it.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' I say and try to match Charley Tracy's accusing tone. 'When was that?'

'Not long after you shot off, I reckon.'

'If I hadn't I might have missed the last train home.'

'I'd have got you to the station. Why didn't you lock it away?'

'Why didn't you lock me in?' I'm surely more entitled to complain. 'I could have fallen out anywhere.'

'I got you there, didn't I? It cost a packet, this phone did, and the projector. We're not all on a university payroll.'

'I didn't think anyone would steal them so near a church.'

I hope he finds this less naïve than I immediately do. After a pause he says 'Any road, I've got some people for you to meet.'

'Are they dead as well?'

'You're never still moaning about that. I thought you'd appreciate a joke, seeing as how it's your job. I'd have took you somewhere else if you'd waited a bit longer.' Before I can articulate a retort he says 'This lot are on in London this Saturday.'

'Who are?'

'The Comical Companions, they call themselves. If anyone can tell you about Tubby when he was on the stage it's them. They'll be at the St Pancreas Theatre.'

'Are you quite sure that's the name?'

'St Pancreas Theatre. May I be struck dumb if it's not.'

He has inserted a vowel in the second word. As I reach Tower Bridge I seem to feel it quiver underfoot with the vibrations of pedestrians and traffic. I could imagine that it's sharing my amusement. 'Is there anybody I should ask for?'

'Just tell them your name on the door,' Tracy says and, even more abruptly than he speaks, is gone.

Clumps of tourists are competing with the traffic on the bridge at expelling greyness into the November air. The river laps with gusto at the concrete of the north bank as I let myself into the apartment building. I jog upstairs and head straight for my computer, where an email is waiting to be deciphered.

der simon

gr8 2 her from u! unxpectd mal is the best. im nockd out yor interestd in orvilles work. th move archives dont sem 2 want 2 no about him. y dont u com + sta? u can c everythng i hav of his + ask me anythng u want 2 no. anytime b4 xmas is fin. lets put him bac in move history wher he blongs.

from 1 move buf 2 anothr!

wille hart

Perhaps this style of writing saves Hart's time, but it gnaws at mine. Once I've returned the email to English by reading it out loud I'm able to respond.

Dear Willie:

Many thanks for your speedy response! Where shall I find you? Let me know and I'll book the trip. Do you have any of the films your grandfather made with Tubby Thackeray? If so, guard them with your life.

Enthusiastically –

Simon Lester

I don't know if I'm hoping to have silenced my adversary on the movie database, although surely my response should have. Or am I secretly anticipating some kind of perverse fun? Certainly a grin, not necessarily of mirth, creeps onto my face as I call up the page for Tubby's Terrible Triplets.

So Mr Questionabble's a film expert now, is he? Oh no, he says he's a researcher. That's someboddy who picks other peoples' brains because he doesn't know annything himself. If he starts sniffing around after Tubby we won't tell him annything, will we? We'd be clowns to give our knowledge to someone who won't even say his name. And does anyboddy know which stupid tricks he's going on about? If he's got annything to say he should say it like a man. He won't, though, will he? Maybe he's not one. Leslie could be a womman, come to think.

I'm not going to lose control, although my skull feels electrified. I wait until my words are cold enough to post.

My name is Simon Lester. I've been writing on film for years. I wouldn't dream of asking other people or even other peoples to help if they don't want to, but I would have thought that anyone who cares for Tubby's films might like to see them more widely appreciated. As for stupid tricks, let's hope we hear no more of them. If anybody takes them further it should be the victim.

I'm about to post the message when I delete the final line. It isn't worth preserving if it might bring Charley Tracy more harassment; indeed, I should have asked him whether the call he received in the churchyard proved to be a trick. I send the revised version and take the chance while I'm online to make sure no fresh information about Tubby has shown up on the net. His first name does take me to an unfamiliar site, but a glimpse of that is enough. It offers the spectacle of corpulent performers in a variety of positions, their naked bodies glistening with greyish light as they flop over one another. I close the window hastily, to be confronted by the underlying one – the message board for Tubby's film. I stare at it as if to conjure up a response to my posting, and seem to be rewarded by an unexpected but welcome interruption: the sound of a key in the lock.

'Well, that's the best kind of surprise,' I call as the door shuts. 'Do you want to get naughty while there's nobody around?' Presumably Natalie hasn't much to do at work before she starts next week at Arts About, a name I would have expected her mother to question if not worse. 'Come along, little girl. I've got a little present here for you. Actually, it's not so little any more,' I say and, having risen to my feet with some pleasurable difficulty, shuffle from behind the desk as she advances down the hall. But she isn't Natalie, she's Bebe Halloran.