The Grin of the Dark

TWENTY-TWO - NO STILLNESS

I barely sleep. Whenever I manage to doze, my mind lights on Smilemime – on how his messages may be multiplying like a virus designed just to harm me – and I jerk awake. I wouldn't be in bed if Natalie hadn't gone to the bathroom and then wandered somnolently to find me. As soon as she began to fumble with the doorknob I logged off and shut down the computer, and was in time to meet her at the door. I was ashamed of what I'd been looking at, which added to my rage. She was nearly asleep, and wholly so before I joined her in bed, where she nevertheless slipped an arm around my waist. Its comfort is oppressively unhelpful in its lack of awareness. I try to sink into the peace of her breathing, but Smilemime is there, and Tubby's face shining like ice. I feel like an armature composed of nerves that unite in the dark lump of my brain. Perhaps my nerves are making my wrist tingle reminiscently, which is why I give up lying still.

I inch my arm from under the quilt. I thought I'd scrubbed off the last of the clown's face, and there is indeed no sign of it in the almost imperceptible glow from the sky through the curtains beyond Natalie's side of the bed. Dawn must be on the way, and there's no point in my courting sleep when I'll need to take Mark to school in a couple of hours. If I deal with my tormentor now I'll be able to sleep after delivering Mark.

As I steal out of bed Natalie emits a faint sigh that could be interpreted as resigned. I pad to the main room, closing doors without a sound, and switch on my computer. Even the burbling of the modem seems muffled, presumably because my senses are. When the Frugonet icons swim up I could imagine that they're floating in my eyes. I blink hard to focus and in an attempt to render my eyes less parched while I type Smilemime in the newsgroup search box. His message is the same, but in more places now. He has been at work while I wasted time in bed.

Watch out for Simon Jester aka Lester aka Leslie Stone

Claims he's been pubblished. Says he's seen films noboddy else has. Wants people to think he's an authorrity on films and commedians. You can find him putting on his act at

www.imdb.com/title/tt1119079/board/nest/30615787

May show up on this newsgroup. He'll be after information he can claim he found himself and make out he's an expert. Don't anyboddy let him. Noboddy had ever heard of him till he started claiming he knew more than me.

The message has been posted to newsgroups about the cinema, about silent films, about theatre, comedy, music-hall... At least I drafted a response in my head while I was failing to sleep.

I'm going to confine myself to facts. My name is Simon Lester. I wrote at least one featured article in every issue of Cineassed. I never write under a pseudonym, even on the Internet. Anyone who helps me with my research will be named in the acknowledgments if they want to be. As for this person, whatever his real name is, I've said all I intend to say about him.

I copy this before I post it, and once I've loosed it I set about sending it to the other newsgroups, almost forty of them. By the time I've finished, my tendons are twitchy with repetition. I shut my eyes while I recompose the next message I outlined at the edge of sleep.

Dear Rufus:

Just wanted to update you. I'm on the Tubby Thackeray trail. He caused a riot at one theatre he played at, and someone died laughing at him somewhere else. I'll be visiting the grandson of the director who made all his films. I may find out more than I can write up by the deadline. Can we solve this, do you think? Oh, and I seem to have attracted some kind of Internet antagonist by putting him right about a Tubby film on the IMDb. Part of the fun of being a writer, I expect.

Yours until the final frame –

Simon

I've shut my eyes in an attempt to recall another task when I hear Natalie emerge from her room. The door swings inwards, and she blinks at me. 'What are you doing in the dark?'

'Trying not to waken anyone who shouldn't be awake.'

'No need to go blind doing it,' she says, surely not because she's suspicious of my activity, and switches on the room light. Beyond my eyelids she asks 'Haven't you been to bed?'

'Hours ago. I thought you knew I was there.'

'Well, I didn't. I'll be back in a minute.' She's at least four times that in the bathroom, but when she returns I still haven't identified the thought she interrupted. 'Do you want coffee?' she says. 'I should put something on before Mark joins us.'

Since she's wearing a robe, she means me. I'd forgotten staying naked so as not to disturb her sleep. I fetch my robe from the bedroom as she fills the percolator. 'Close the door,' she says, and then 'You might want to watch out round the school.'

'Is Mark having trouble? What do I need to sort out?'

'Not Mark. I think some of the parents were talking about you. Were you making a fuss of one of his girlfriends?'

'Me? A fuss? I may have smiled at one. That wasn't illegal last time I looked.'

'I'm only saying you might have taken a little more care when nobody knew who you were.'

'Did you tell these parents you thought it was me?'

'I had to. One of the girls thought you were Mark's father.'

I'm not going to ask how Natalie responded, but I'm provoked to ask 'So how was your day at work?'

'Good fun. Hard work but I enjoyed it.'

'You like it hard, then. Much contact with Nilochas?'

'Who did you say?'

'Sorry if I've mixed him up. Too long at the keyboard. Head full of letters and no sense. Nicholas, that's the man.'

'He's behind the scenes. I don't expect to see much of him,' Natalie says with a smile that's ready to be more of one. 'You aren't jealous, are you, Simon?'

As I open my mouth it stiffens as if a mask has been clamped to my face. I'm struggling to voice my thoughts when Natalie says 'Anyway, how were your parents?'

'Old.'

'You'd expect that, wouldn't you?'

'Older.' Rather than pursue this I say 'We've been asked up for Christmas.'

'Then we'll go, or we could for your birthday. We'll need to spend either Christmas or New Year with my parents.'

'Whichever you like,' I say, although the prospect of either with them makes me nervous.

'Let's see what Mark says.' She pours two coffees and carries them into the room. 'I may as well have my bath,' she says and is taking her Supermum mug to the door when she pauses. 'Was your trip successful otherwise as well?'

'Maybe next time.'

'I'm sure it was still worth the journey,' Natalie says and delivers a swift kiss to convince me before she pads out of the room.

I take a sip and then another from my mug, which is decorated to resemble a spool of unexposed film. I set it down almost hastily enough to spill coffee across the desk. Natalie's last question or the caffeine has booted up my brain, and I've remembered what I couldn't bring to mind: I need to check which newspaper I bought at the fair. The trouble is that the paper isn't on or in the desk. It isn't in the room.