The Grin of the Dark

SIXTEEN - OMENS

As I see daylight beyond the escalator, eight stairfuls of children trapped between two women sail past me. Either somebody up above is painting faces or the children are involved in some other kind of play. Perhaps it's for Christmas, though I'm uncertain from their appearance what roles they would be taking: possibly the comedy relief. Have they been told not to risk cracking their makeup, or is it so stiff that it's holding them silent? The parade of unnaturally still white faces seems capable of exploding into bedlam, but Mark distracts me. 'At school,' he says, 'they were asking if you were my dad.'

'They won't have met him, then.'

'I haven't either.' His eyes grow eager as he says 'I don't think I have, anyway. I wouldn't mind if he was you.'

The temptation I experience is worse than irrational, but it costs me an effort to say only 'I wouldn't. I wish I were. Careful, Mark.'

The steps ahead of him are flattening before they crawl down the underside of the escalator. As he twists around to grab the rubber banister, I'm not sure if he murmurs 'You can be.' I'm even less sure how to respond, since I've yet to tell his mother about Bebe's revelation. 'I'll try,' I say not quite under my breath.

Outside the station every lamppost on Euston Road is bandaged with a poster. TWO DOZEN STALLS OF COMEDY COLLECTIBLES AND MUSIC-HALL MEMORABILIA. The posters insist that the venue is called the St Pancreas Theatre, but the real thing is visible on the corner of Gray's Inn Road, across the herds of traffic. Decades of exhaust fumes have turned the wide Victorian façade the colour of a storm. The iron sign above the cracked stained-glass awning has shed its vowels, as if they've joined the one it never had. As we wait on an island that's a plantation of traffic signals I see that the box office in the middle of the marble lobby is boarded up. Next to it a man is seated on a folding chair behind a trestle table. Besides a heap of leaflets and an ink-pad with a stamp the table holds a cash-box, but I assume I just need to say 'Simon Lester.'

The man pinches the collar of his black overcoat shut before he raises his increasingly less moonlike face out of its nest of chins. 'Nobody called that here.'

'I know that,' I say and remember to laugh. 'That's to say yes, there is. He's here.'

'This isn't an audition,' he informs me, apparently on Mark's behalf. 'It's a fair.'

'We know that. Lester's my name. I was told you'd let me in.'

'They must've been having fun with you. Everybody pays. Two quid and one for his nob.'

He drops the coins in the box with three separate clanks. I'm ushering Mark towards the auditorium when the man says 'What's your hurry, Mr Lister?'

'It's Lester,' Mark virtually shouts.

'Come here and I'll give you a grin. You too,' he tells me and inks the stamp. 'Now you can roam all you want.'

While the images he prints on our wrists are perfectly circular, they each have a clown's face. Mark admires his as he hurries to the double doors and holds the left one open for me. The theatre stalls have been removed. At least two dozen tables fill the space that's overlooked by concave boxes and shadowed by the circle. I'm advancing to the first stall when Mark springs into the air and claps his hands. As boards reverberate under him he shouts 'Here's Simon Lester, everybody. Simon Lester.'

'That isn't necessary, Mark.'

I suppose he feels provoked by the doorman, but I have the odd notion that he's playing the jester. 'Don't let us bother you,' I tell the stallholders. 'I'm only another punter.'

Mark is gazing at the stage. 'There's comics up there. Can I see?'

'Just stay in the theatre,' I warn him.

The first stallholder is jewelled and shawled enough for a fortuneteller, and anxious to learn if I'm looking for anything special. 'Thackeray Lane,' I say.

'I'm not from round here.' She raises her voice to enquire 'Does anyone know where Thackeray Lane is for this gentleman?'

'He's here.'

'And over here.'

'He may be here as well.'

'Don't worry, nobody's making fun of you,' I assure her and head for the nearest of the people who responded, a large man so heavyeyed he looks as if he's smiling in his sleep. His table is piled with old newspapers, not much less yellow than papyrus inside their cellophane envelopes. 'Can you show me?' I ask him.

He lifts his mottled hairy hands from his thighs to perform a magician's pass above the newspapers. 'Half the fun's in looking,' he says before reverting to his contented torpor.

Each envelope bears a handwritten label that lists the significant contents. Among the names inscribed in dwarfish tipsy capitals on the seventh label in the first pile is T. LANE. I unpick the tape that seals the envelope and slip out the York newspaper. I have to turn most of the brittle musty pages before learning that a reviewer thought Thackeray Lane's act at the Players Theatre was 'a good 'un'. That doesn't seem worth thirty pounds, nor does the information that he left a Nottingham columnist feeling giddy, or even a Chester writer's view that Lane was 'too odd for his own good or anyone else's'. By now I'm halfway through the contents of the table, and the stallholder is peering at me as if I've wakened him for nothing. 'Are you buying or just reading?' he's roused to wonder.

'I was rather hoping for a bit more substance.'

'Better keep looking, then.'

I can't judge whether this is an invitation or a dismissal. I take it for the first, though my eyes have begun to ache from squinting at the cramped unbalanced letters. D. LENO, C. CHAPLIN, S. LAUREL, L. TICH ... As I try to speed up the process, because I feel oppressively watched, I turn up an item labelled simply T. LANE. It's an old Preston Chronicle. 'That's where I came from,' I remark.

'Long way to come to buy a paper.'

I release a polite titter as I unseal the envelope. A desiccated smell that seems old even for the yellowed pages fills my head while I leaf through them in search of the review. There isn't one, and I'm about to say so when the stallholder comments 'He's in there all right. You missed him.'

As I turn the pages in reverse somebody walks backwards at the edge of my vision. I could imagine I'm rewinding the action, an idea so distracting that I almost overlook the item again. It's a news report that occupies an entire column.

MUSIC-HALL PERFORMER BOUND OVER TO KEEP PEACE. PERFORMANCE MUST BE KEPT WITHIN PROPER BOUNDS.

At Preston Crown Court today, the music-hall comedian Thackeray Lane was judged Not Guilty of incitement to riot outside 'The Harlequin Theatre' on the first of January...

According to the report, at the end of his matinee on New Year's Day in 1913 the comedian either led or followed the audience into the street and continued his routine. When a Mrs Talbot began to imitate him and refused to stop 'contorting her face and herself in a variety of comical manners', her husband called the police. Several other witnesses testified that they felt compelled to mimic the comedian and blamed some form of hysteria. The judge ordered Lane to duplicate the act for him to watch, but once the witnesses confirmed that he was doing so the public gallery had to be cleared because of excessive laughter. The charge of incitement to riot became the subject of a legal argument that concluded Lane was technically innocent because he had uttered no verbal or written communication. The judge was reduced to warning that 'the licence of a theatre does not extend beyond its doors' and to binding Lane over to keep the peace for two years. Long before they ended, the comedian was in Hollywood under his new name.

The scenes in court sound like a film of his. I'm wondering if they may have inspired him when I notice there's editorial comment on the opposite page.

DO OUR COURTS NEED A SENSE OF HUMOUR?

Elsewhere in this issue we report the unsuccessful prosecution of the comedian Thackeray Lane for affray. The incident has already been reported and commented upon in several numbers of this publication, and our readers may have recognised Mr. Lane as the comic of whose comedy one member of an audience was said to have died laughing. Although this was a tragedy, we question why the recent case was brought to trial. Anarchy may well be abroad within our shores, but should it be confused with the kind of show which affords so much pleasure to so many of our workers? Perhaps they would be more inclined to rebellion if it were denied them. Our reporter at the trial informs us that even the policemen in the courtroom had to struggle to contain their merriment, so that it was left to the judge to represent solemnity. We admit to hoping that he may have been hiding a secret smile. By all means ensure that comedy respects the boundaries of decency and taste, but do not rob the Lancastrian of his healthy laughter.

There's nothing else about Lane on the stall. I buy the paper and move on to the next of the tables where I heard a response. The table is heaped with vintage posters in transparent sheaths. Several of the posters advertise Thackeray Lane, in each case with a different slogan. NO NEED FOR NOISE. QUIET AS A CHURCH. QUIET AS A CHURCH MOUSE. Did the second one omit a word, or was that added to the last of them to avoid offending the devout? Here's a notice that says he's AS SHUSHED AS A PICTURE, which seems prophetic – and then I notice something more important. Lane has autographed the poster.

The faded signature slants across the bottom left-hand corner. It's so faint that at first the cellophane rendered it invisible. The first name is painstakingly stitched together out of scraps that remind me of wisps of cobweb, but then he seems to have lost patience, scrawling a defiantly elongated L. The letter reminds me of a clown's footwear, and I imagine the signature as a collaboration between an academic and a clown. As I look for the price on the back of the wrapper the stallholder crouches forward, offering me a better view of the tortoiseshell markings of his bald scalp. 'Twenty,' he says in case I can't read the aged peeling tag.

Does that suggest how undervalued Tubby has become? I add another Visa voucher to the sheaf in my wallet and make my way to a video stall, on which the merchandise looks decidedly home-made. Few of the labels on the black plastic cases are straight, and the handwritten information is scanty, but I haven't reached the bottom of the first pile of DVDs when I find one that's labelled LANE 1912. As I pick it up, the man behind the stall nods at me so vigorously that it seems to leave his bushy greying eyebrows too high on his long angular face. 'Behind you,' he says.

I wonder what kind of a production he thinks I'm in until I hear Mark calling my name. He's where the footlights used to be, and waving his hands as if he's batting away his words. 'Just a minute, Mark,' I say and show the label to the stallholder. 'Can you tell me what this is?'

'It's a dithery video disc. They're all the rage.'

I hope his description is a joke, not an indication of the quality. 'Is it Thackeray Lane?'

'Simon, he's up here. Simon.'

'Let me finish this first, Mark.' Since the long-faced man has responded with a nod I ask 'What sort of material?'

'Him on stage off an old film.'

'You've transferred it from a film, you mean? How much?'

'Twenty smackeroonies to you, Mr Lester.'

That isn't the information I was after, but I'm so thrown by his use of my name that my open mouth stays mute. Of course, he heard Mark announce me at the door, and he's gazing at Mark now. The boy is actually dancing with impatience. 'I want to show you,' he complains. 'She won't let me.'

'I'll be there very shortly,' I promise, feeling compelled to direct the kind of smile with which adults sum up children at the stallholder as I hand him my Visa. I add the DVD to my handful of poster and newspaper and turn back to Mark. 'Now, what's the problem?'

He runs to the top of the steps that I climb to the stage. 'There's a comic with him in.'

'Thackeray Lane? Are you certain?'

'Why do you keep calling him that? His name's Tubby.' To my dismay, Mark has started to look tearful. 'It says Tubby in the comic,' he protests.

'It's both, Mark. He started life as Lane. Maybe he got tubbier.' I'm not sure how much of this he hears as he runs to the table spread with old comics. 'Show me, then,' I apparently have to prompt him.

'I'm trying,' he protests and turns his brimming gaze on the woman at the stall. 'Where's it gone? I put it on top.'

'Dear me, we are getting out of control.'

Her tight bundle of colourless hair appears to have tugged her small face thin on its bones and stretched her lips pale. 'Perhaps it isn't here any more,' she says. 'Perhaps I sold it while you were causing such a fuss.'

I see comics featuring Dan Leno and Ben Turpin and Charlie Lynn, but no sign of Tubby. 'All right, Mark,' I say as he contorts his body with frustration. 'Could I see it, please?'

'Is that all you mean to say?'

Presumably she's suggesting I should rebuke Mark, but I won't embarrass him in front of her. 'I think it's all I need to.'

'Dear me again,' she says and produces a comic from beneath the table. 'I was keeping it back for you,' she adds reprovingly enough to cover me as well as Mark.

It's the first issue of a British comic called Keystone Kapers, price one halfpenny. Beneath the title it's described as A FEAST OF FUN FOR FUNNY FILM FANATICS. The issue is dated 27 December 1914. The large front page contains two comic strips with six panels in each. The uppermost strip stars Fatty Arbuckle, the lower is a showcase for his colleague – 'Tubby Thackeray Tells a Tale to Tickle Your Titter-Bone'. As well as several lines of caption under each panel Fatty has speech balloons, but Tubby makes do with captions alone. 'Dear Film Fanatic Friends – Well, bless my soul and butter my parsnips! Can't a chubby chap choose what he chews after Christmas? Time we gave the ol' cake-'ole a rest, m'dears, but your chubby chum's been blessed with a brace of them to cram...' This seems an excessively elaborate introduction to the story, in which Tubby is saddled with a pair of gluttonous nephews until the New Year. They stuff all the Christmas leftovers into their increasingly wide and toothy grinning mouths, followed by the contents of a cake shop and a seven-course meal at a restaurant. A sweet each from a sweetshop proves too much for them, and they burst with spectacular pops just beyond either side of the final panel, leaving Tubby to present his widest grin yet to the reader. 'That went with a bang, didn't it?' says his caption. 'Your chum deserves to be went on his hols now, methinks. Who's having him for the New Year? Simply simper to select. Give a grin and get a genius.'

None of this brings a smile to my lips. The language feels weighed down by age and facetiousness, and the drawings are more disconcerting than amusing. Though the nephews wear rompers and are smaller than their uncle, the three faces are identical. The figures look stiffened by their heavy outlines, not so much drawn as cut out and pasted to the page. All the same, I'm delighted with the find. 'Well done, Mark. You can be my junior researcher,' I say and ask the stallholder 'Are there any more?'

'That was it. Only ever the one.'

'I don't suppose it was the best time to bring out a new comic, just after Christmas.'

'There wasn't any good time. Lots of places wouldn't stock it because your friend's story in there was giving children nightmares. He'd have given me them at this little boy's age.'

'I never have any,' Mark protests.

'They aren't scared of anything these days, are they? The world wants shaking up,' she says, which rather seems to contradict her aversion to the comic.

'Will you have Tubby in anything else?' When she shakes her head without taking her dissatisfied gaze from me I say 'I can't see a price.'

She parts her lips at least a second earlier than saying 'Fifty will do.'

That doesn't seem unreasonable for the solitary issue of a publication almost a century old. I file the Visa slip with the rest of the evidence of my expenses and entrust Mark with the comic. None of the other stalls has anything to offer my search. Some stallholders are bewildered when I ask for Lane; others seem resentful, presumably because I've exposed their ignorance. On our way out the shawled woman holds up one hand, and I imagine her inviting somebody to shy another bracelet onto her arm, but she wants to hand me a carrier bag for my purchases. 'Keep laughing,' she says.

Whoever's in the box closest to the left side of the stage might be demonstrating the principle. Though it's hard to be sure at that distance, the large figure in the shadows at the back of the box appears to be convulsed with mirth. He may have a companion in the opposite box, where the gloom contains an equally indistinct occupant who is likewise holding his swollen sides and throwing back his pale head. The clearest detail about either of them is a display of prominent teeth. So far away, and with all the hubbub, I can't hear their laughter. I find the spectacle disconcerting, but I'm not about to struggle through the crowd to investigate it. Instead I push Mark out of the auditorium. As the doors thump shut he says 'We could have got in for nothing.'

There is indeed no sign of the doorman – not even of his table and chair. My wrist tingles as the chilly sunlight settles on the clownish imprint. A man with a rolled poster in each hand emerges from the theatre, and without quite knowing my reason I ask 'Have you got a stamp?'

'There's a post office up the road, mate.'

I can see no ink on his wrist. Perhaps he's involved in running the fair. I don't recall noticing anyone else with a stamp, but why would I have? As the man strides into the crowd Mark says 'You can't have mine.'

He looks ready to run away for a laugh, possibly across the road that's loaded with traffic. I should be taking care of him, not indulging in meaningless fancies. 'You keep it, Mark,' I say and show him the DVD. 'Let's go home and see where Tubby came from.'