The Grin of the Dark

THIRTY-EIGHT - I EMOTE

Perhaps at least one office party is celebrating at the funfair. The big wheel appears to be laden with businessmen. Whenever a carriage is lifted above the hundred-yard races of traffic outside the hotel, the passengers seem to turn their grey twilit faces to me. Are they seeing something behind me, beyond the roof, and telling their mobiles about it? Car drivers are using mobiles too, and commuters on the elongated trams that skirt the square, and pedestrians and loiterers around me on the pavement, so that I could imagine I'm surrounded by a solitary communication. Quite a few are gazing silently at their phone screens, and at least one man is grinning at his. I'm distracted from all this by a car that prowls along the kerb.

It's a shabby Ford saloon the colour of rust, with a dent in the front passenger door. It spews fumes like a magnified negative image of the breaths that hover beside all the mobiles. The driver's large pale face ducks towards me as the car judders to a halt, and then he leans across the passenger seat to roll the window down. He's Charley Tracy. 'Don't know what you're waiting for,' he calls.

His features aren't as large as the dimness made them look. Only his head is as big as I thought. He's wearing a dinner suit and white shirt and bow tie, all of which lends him the appearance of a bouncer more than the orator he presumably intends to resemble. His cramped face seems to wince smaller at the harsh dry creak of my door. I haven't finished hauling the twisted safety belt out of its slot when he swerves the car across two lanes and through a set of traffic lights that have just turned red. 'How long have you had a car?' I wonder aloud.

'A lot longer than I've known you.'

Does he think I meant to criticise his driving? I simply had his van in mind. That almost revives a memory, but when I strain to recapture it there's only vagueness. I don't speak again until we've left a broad road out of the city for one that leads past the university. 'So where were you meaning to take me last time?'

He honks his horn like a speechless comedian, a response that I'm attempting to interpret when I notice he's ogling a gaggle of girls dressed as several sizes of Santa Claus. Once they're out of sight even of the mirror he says 'That was it.'

'You've lost me.'

'The university. Bet you don't know why anyone would look for Tubby there.'

He sounds so enthusiastic, at least for him, that I'm reluctant to destroy his triumph. 'Tell me.'

'Not so great at research even if you went to college, eh? Maybe it ought to be me writing your book.' As I ponder how much more of this I can politely take he adds 'It's where he started being Tubby.'

Presumably I should hear a name, not an adjective. 'Putting on shows, do you mean?'

'If that's what you want to call it. You'll see. He left all his notes.'

'For his routines, do you mean? That would be exactly what the doctor ordered.'

'I said you'll see. Don't know what you'll do then.'

The road grows crowded between dozens of Indian restaurants. The odd people sporting red floppy festive hats resemble drunken tourists. Beyond the restaurants the road leads past large houses set back in larger gardens, in the midst of which the car veers across the road in front of an onrush of traffic and speeds between a pair of spiked iron gates. We've arrived at a church. I presume it's deconsecrated, since the churchyard has been razed to provide a car park. Streetlamps cast the shadows of bare trees onto the façade, cracking the plain pale stone and the stained-glass windows. The concrete grounds are occupied by dozens of cars, so that Tracy has to park around the side of the building. As he drags the handbrake erect he says 'Better get a move on. You're late.'

By the time I shut my door with a resounding creak he has waddled into the porch. It's decorated with posters, none of which I have a chance to read before Tracy shoves the doors into the church wide. 'Here he is at last,' a woman cries.

She could mean me, because I've seen her before. With her shawl and her numerous jewels she looks more than ever like a fortune-teller. I recognise other people seated on the pews: the heavy-eyed heavyweight, the man with the tortoiseshell scalp, the long-faced fellow with bristling eyebrows, the almost colourless bony woman, and could the man whose round face seems to need a stack of chins to prop it up have been selling tickets outside the St Pancras Theatre? I'm virtually certain that more of the audience were at the fair. 'What is this?' I mutter.

'What do you think? It's our Christmas get-together.'

Or perhaps Tracy said it was theirs, although people greet him as he plods down the aisle to the space vacated by an altar. 'Merry Christmas, Chuck,' they call, or 'Many of them' or 'Here's another one.' Disconcertingly, nobody acknowledges me when I follow him. I take some kind of refuge on the front seat closest to the left-hand wall as if I'm playing an anonymous spectator, at least until Tracy speaks. 'Who's heard of Simon Lester?'

'I have.'

Surely I don't say this aloud, but it prevents me from hearing whether anyone else did. The murmur that passes through the audience seems to consist mostly of 'Who?'

'Sigh Mon Lest Err,' Tracy pronounces, pointing at me. 'Britain's premier young film critic, they tell me. He's the surprise guest tonight. He's going to tell us about the films he's dug up.'

'Which fillums?' says a woman, perhaps as a joke.

'Silent ones with somebody I bet you've never heard of. Went by the moniker of Tubby Thackeray.'

'Someone came to our fair in London looking for him.'

'That was me,' I declare and twist around, to be confronted by unanimously blank stares. I haven't identified the speaker when Tracy says 'Any road, you've heard enough from me. Put your hands together for the man who knows.'

'I feel more like a sacrifice.'

I hope nobody hears me mumble this, since it's absurd. I feel much more as if I've wandered into yet another of the meaningless diversions that seem to have beset me ever since I set about researching Tubby. I step forward as Tracy sits where I was. The scattered tentative applause has already fallen silent, and quite a few of the spectators look more bemused than welcoming. 'I didn't expect to see you all again so soon,' I inform those I recognise. 'I don't suppose you were expecting to see me.'

The only response is a flattened echo of my last word. I'm desperate to bring some expression to the ranks of faces. 'Anyway,' I say, 'I'm here to tell you what I've seen.'

'Tell us where you did,' says Tracy.

'In the States. A relative of the director has nearly all his films.'

Tracy's stare suggests my answer is too guarded, but he says 'What were they like?'

'I'd call them pretty revolutionary. Ahead of their time.'

'Unless they were behind it.'

I could ask how he would know. Instead I say 'In what sense?'

'Plenty,' he retorts. 'Maybe his way was so old you think it's new.'

I'm opening my mouth to pursue this when he sits back, planting a shiny black shoe on the ledge for hymnbooks. 'Let's hear what you've been finding out,' he says, 'only don't start playing the professor. Give us a laugh for Christmas.'

I do my best. I describe Tubby's struggles to communicate with the dentist's receptionist through the hindrance of his teeth. I narrate the mayhem he causes in a library, and his misadventures with a civic Christmas tree, and his trick with the trousers and the mice... Is my voice growing shriller as I summarise each film? Its echoes seem to be, but I could almost imagine that none of the congregation can hear me; every face is as immobile as the figures standing in the windows like insects trapped in amber. I'm managing to conjure up Tubby for myself; I can see his white luminous relentlessly mirthful face so vividly that it seems close to blotting out the silenced audience. How many films have I doggedly summed up? It feels like a dozen at least. I take a breath and refrain from dabbing my prickly forehead in case the gesture looks too theatrical, and then I notice that the fortuneteller and the man with many chins are laughing – or rather, they're showing each other their teeth, although I can't hear any sound. I'm near to fancying they're communicating with mute laughter when the man lifts his head, diminishing his chins. 'Never mind telling us,' he shouts. 'Show us.'

'Sorry, but I didn't know I was going to be speaking.'

'That's what I'm saying. Stop it and show us.'

'I mean I've brought nothing to show,' I say and indicate Tracy. 'He's the chap who shows films.'

Nobody looks away from me, and the man on the back row persists. 'Show us yourself.'

'I've been doing that,' I try and joke.

An impatient rumble passes through the audience, and he gives it more of a voice. 'Show us something Tubby did.'

'You're the only one that's seen these films,' Tracy joins in.

'That doesn't mean I can perform them.'

'If you're a lecturer you're a performer.'

I'm about to deny being either when a man I can't identify complains 'We haven't had our laugh yet. He said we'd have a laugh.'

I feel as if everyone is rejecting my attempts to make sense. I've had enough of striving to entertain them with words. Let them have what they're asking for. I no longer care about making a fool of myself. It's highly unlikely that I'll encounter any of them again. The worst they'll be able to say is that I didn't stand up as a stand-up, and how can that harm my reputation as a writer about films? 'All right, here's one,' I announce, and the echo sings swan. 'Tubby's Telephonic Travails. He keeps ringing people up, but all he does is laugh. Obviously we only see him, because the film's silent, but when they hear him they can't stop.'

'You're still talking. Let's see it.'

I'm disconcerted not just by my inability to locate the speaker – the dialogue might almost be dubbed onto one of the motionless faces – but by his lack of an echo. Perhaps my position means that only my voice resonates; I can't recall whether Tracy's did. If everyone wants silence, nothing should be simpler. I take out my mobile and, raising it to my face, begin to laugh without a sound.

Nobody responds with one, even when I gape and tilt my head wildly to mime communication. I might as well be labouring to draw some reaction from the flattened figures in the windows. I feel as if the general dumbness is swallowing my energy, draining my ability to communicate. I dodge to the left side of the bare stage in the hope that the action shows I'm now receiving Tubby's call. If I drop the phone and keep falling down while I attempt to retrieve it, might that trigger a titter or two? My antics are failing to do so, even when I produce a bout of silent merriment so fierce that my teeth and my stretched lips ache. The sound like a whispering giggle is static; the mobile is emitting it, at any rate. Am I attracting it somehow? It will more than do as a response. If the audience doesn't care for my performance, that's another reason to stop. 'Well, there you have it. Best I can do,' I say. Or rather, I mouth it, but not a word emerges.

'It's only my jet lag. Things have been lagging. My voice must be.' I've made better puns, but it hardly matters how feeble this one is, since not a syllable leaves my mouth. I thrust the mobile in my pocket without quelling the mocking wordless whisper, which can't be static after all. 'Anybody seen my voice?' I try appealing, but this doesn't produce it. I can't tell whether I'm mouthing the words or grinning mirthlessly at my plight; without question I'm baring my teeth. 'It's in here somewhere,' I say or rather struggle to, gazing at Tracy as if he's responsible and can help. I haven't finished straining to utter the words when I'm rewarded by a sound, though not the one I'm desperate for. Tracy has started to laugh.

'I've finished performing. I'm done. I can talk.' Even if I managed to pronounce any of this I mightn't be able to hear it for his chortling. His grin is so wide that he might be determined to surpass mine. He's clutching his sides as if to force out more laughter. How is he generating so many echoes? Because of my confusion and my endeavour to speak, I don't immediately realise that the rest of the audience is joining in with him.

'Forgive me, I'm not trying to be funny any more. This isn't meant to be.' Apparently it, or at any rate the spectacle of my attempts to say it, is. There's so much hilarity and so many glistening teeth that I could imagine the robed figures in the windows are entertained too. Tracy has snatched his foot off the ledge of the pew and is crouching wide-eyed over his mirth. 'Shut up,' I strive to tell him and the rest of them. 'I've had it. Really, that's enough.'

'I haddock. Wee-wee, that's a duck.' While I don't think I said that, it's impossible to judge in the midst of the uproar. Hearing the nonsense in my head is almost as bad; it feels like losing my grip on language. 'I meany. Stoppy now. Shutty Christup.' I can see the words like intertitles in my mind, and am suddenly afraid that if I regain my speech it will come out as gibbet, as gibbous, as gibbon, giggle, gimcrack, gimmick, gismo, gizzard. Can't I laugh? Mightn't that be a sound I could make to bring my words back? I have to laugh – everyone else is showing me how. I drag in a breath that bulges my eyes, and then I throw my head back and project something like mirth.

I don't know if it's audible. It sounds like little more than jagged static in my skull. I've outshouted Tracy before I'm convinced that my mouth is producing any noise. His hands have given up gripping his sides and are sprawled palms upwards on the bench. His face looks determined to compete with my performance, and I feel driven by his. Now that I've succeeded in laughing, can I stop? My whole body shivers as if it has gone into spasm, and my jaw aches so much that I dread being unable to close my mouth. I dig my fingers into my cheeks and lever at my jaw with my thumbs, but hysteria has clamped my mouth open. I can't think for laughing – I have the impression that it may never allow me to think again. Then instinct takes over, and my body recalls what it ought to do. I let go of my throbbing jaw and use both hands to slap my face as hard as I can.

My eyes are already streaming with laughter, and soon I can barely see for tears. I hear a few shocked gasps at my antics, but most of the audience seem to find them even more hilarious. So, by the sound of it, do I. My waves of mirth scarcely allow me to breathe. I renew my assault on my blazing face and then, out of utter desperation, I slap both cheeks at once. Either the impact frees my jaw or the shock of the pain quells my hysteria. My last few hiccups of laughter trail into silence, but my body continues to shake, perhaps as a reaction to the flood of applause. 'You're the best yet,' the fortune-teller shouts.

'Wank you. It's been mumblable.' I don't know if I say this; the clapping blurs my words. The applause subsides at last, leaving me nervous to hear myself speak. I don't need to address the entire audience. I turn to Tracy, who is still miming great amusement. 'I'm going to head back,' I tell him, more loudly as my words emerge intact. 'You stay. I'll get a taxi.'

His face doesn't change. Is he expressing astonishment at my routine? He could at least blink; my eyes are watering in sympathy as well as with the stinging of my bruised cheeks. 'Are you all right? Don't do that, it isn't funny,' the woman next to him says and leans over to shake his arm. It isn't until he lolls against her, still grinning wide-eyed, that she screams.