The Grin of the Dark Read online

  'Of course I don't. No popcorn either, I'm afraid,' I say as he leads the way into the front room.

  He dumps a stained paper plate off the armchair next to mine and kicks off his trainers before jumping onto the creaky seat and folding his legs under him. He's unimpressed by the television and video recorder. 'Doesn't anyone play games in here?' he objects. 'I thought students did.'

  I assume we can thank his grandparents for the idea. 'You should see my new game,' he says as if it's urgent. 'Someone's hunting for treasure and people that aren't really alive are trying to stop him.'

  'Does grandma approve?' I immediately feel sly for asking.

  'She hasn't seen it. Don't say or she might want to stop me playing.'

  'I won't tell your grandparents anything you don't want them to know if you'll do the same for me. Is it a deal?'

  'Deal,' Mark says and smacks my palm harder than I intended to slap his. 'Can we see the film now?'

  'I may have to fast forward to the bit I'm looking for. You can always watch the rest another time.'

  He's amused by the speeded-up film, unless he's just being polite. A few music-hall performers prance about various stages before newsreel footage of scurrying crowds and collapsing vintage aeroplanes and cars racing several times as fast as they ever could represents the rise of commercial cinema. That's followed by clips of Laurel and Hardy struggling at length to undress in an upper berth, Buster Keaton falling into landscape after landscape on a screen, Harold Lloyd coping with ghosts and having to cope with the loss of a finger and thumb in a stunt, Fatty Arbuckle in drag and mincing around a bedroom... Might the performer with whom he has been compared come next? I release the button and hear the commentator say 'Fatty's fame and his fall from favour eclipsed the films of a comedian who some say could have outclassed Chaplin.'

  Mark sits forward, presumably because I have, although the film has reverted to the image of the Playhouse. 'Thackeray Lane was drawing crowds at English music-halls when Keystone director Orville Hart decided he could be a silent star,' says the commentator. 'Here's all that's left of one of their most famous films.'

  How famous could that be? What's the film called? I can distinguish only 'Tubby' or possibly 'Tubby's' before a thick frayed band of white climbs the screen and then sinks back into the void, carrying the end of the introduction with it. I rewind and try to tune the soundtrack in, but the interference won't be tamed, and so I let the tape run. I'm as impatient as Mark to watch Tubby now that we've had a glimpse of him.

  He's in a toyshop. Perhaps his black bow tie and bulging dinner jacket signify that he has left a party or a drunken meal. With his head that's too small for his oval torso and long legs, he looks shaped for comedy before he makes a move. His disconcertingly round eyes are wide with innocence. His black hair is so glossy that it might be painted on his cranium, and resembles a monk's tonsure parted precisely in the middle. The transfer to video, or the age of the copy of the film, may have lent extra pallor to his face. He glances around the shop and notices a Jack-in-the-box opposite a toy pram, and then he grins at the audience as if he can see us.

  The grin reveals large almost horsy teeth and broadens his face until it looks nearly circular. Having invited our complicity, he plants the Jack-in-the-box inside the pram and pretends to be a salesman until a real one ushers a silently garrulous old lady into view. As the salesman rocks the pram to demonstrate its quality, a malevolently gleeful head with Tubby's face springs up from it, and the customer faints, displaying her bloomers. It's a good job Bebe isn't here, because Mark's mirth is no longer polite. The distracted salesman revives the old lady by waving his dickey in her face. Perhaps he's the manager, since he leaves her in the care of an assistant while he sallies to banish Tubby from the shop.

  The comedian is hiding behind shelves full of Jacks-in-the-box. Head after grinning head pops up as the manager dashes back and forth, and too many of the heads seem to belong to his tormentor. When he pounces behind the shelves Tubby darts out from the far end, but the instant the manager lunges in that direction the comedian appears behind him, then pokes his head out from between two boxes halfway down the aisle. The manager dances with rage, tugging at his sunburst of hair. As he shouts for assistance, a trumpet in the orchestra that has been providing a jittery accompaniment to Tubby's antics emits a stricken croak. A troupe of natty salesmen flushes Tubby out, only to discover that there are several of him. One pedals off splay-legged on a child's tricycle, another releases all the Jacks that are still boxed as he roller-skates away, while a third makes his exit skipping nimbly with a rope. The shots are edited so that the three appear to be communicating with one another, not just with outsize gleaming grins but with laughter, which the trumpet simulates like wordless speech.

  At last all three are expelled from the shop. The manager is so exhausted that he locks up early, hanging a sign that says CLOSED BECAUSE OF BANANAS on the door. We next see him preparing for bed. As he ducks to the sink with his toothbrush Tubby's face is revealed in the bathroom mirror, grinning at the audience. Mark's giggle sounds eager but a little nervous. The manager emerges in his nightshirt from the bathroom and, having climbed into bed, tugs the cord above him. The film gives him time to settle into restfulness before his brow twitches and he reluctantly opens his eyes to peer down the dim bed. Between his feet is a lump under the blankets. As he sits up, it rises too. The bedclothes sag away from it, exposing Tubby's delighted face. A change of angle shows it emerging upturned from beneath the mattress, and another finds it as it pokes up from behind the pillow. Did the cameraman intend to light each appearance so that it glows like the moon? A shot of the frenzied manager fighting the blankets dissolves to a close-up of him as he wakens. That's reassuring only until a long shot reveals that he's wearing a straitjacket. As he begins to thrash about rather more realistically than comically, three attendants converge to restrain him. I suspect who they might all prove to be, but that's the end of the film or at least of the clip. 'And now here's a solo by that graceful pudding Oliver Hardy before he met his mate,' says the commentator.

  'Can we see it again?' Mark crouches towards me, and his chair gives an injured creak. 'I want to see it again,' he begs.

  'Don't smash the place up, Mark.' He's far more demanding than usual; perhaps he feels he can be now that we're alone. 'I take it you liked it,' I say. 'What did you like?'

  'It was funny. Can we see it now?'

  'Anything else you'd care to say about it?'

  'No,' he says, and even more impatiently 'Yes, I want to watch it again.'

  I wonder how common his reaction would have been when the film was released. It struck me as a little too disturbing to be popular, but perhaps it was ahead of its time if Mark is so taken with it. 'We don't want to be late for the circus,' I say and switch the tape off. 'I'll lend it to Natalie when I've finished with it. Let me grab a coat and we'll walk over to the park.'

  The slap of waves against equally non-existent rocks greets me on the landing. A poster for a muscle-bound computerised heroine called Virtuelle is guarding Joe's door. As I shut my computer down the last shrill flurry of water sounds like giggling, which seems to be echoed downstairs. A trumpet is chattering in the front room.

  Tubby is back in the toyshop. The head that fills the screen is his, unless it's the contents of a box. I retrieve the control from my chair and extinguish him. 'Now, Mark, I said we hadn't time. Maybe we can have another look at it when we come back.'

  He giggles nervously as a preamble to saying 'I didn't touch it.'

  'I'm sure you didn't touch the tape.'

  Is he testing my limits or demonstrating his skill with words, or both? I eject the cassette and replace it in its cover, abandoning the other tape on the mantelpiece. How could I have been so thoughtless that I left Tubby in the player while I went to my room? I run to leave the tape on my desk and hurry downstairs. 'Time to move, Mark.' He's still in the chair, and so wide-eyed with innocence that it could almost conjur
e up Tubby on the screen. 'I truly – '

  'Don't say it. I shouldn't think your mother would like you telling fibs, and I'm certain your grandmother wouldn't.' I switch off the television and wait for him to jam his feet into his trainers. 'Come on,' I say to make friends with him, 'and we'll have another laugh.'

  SEVEN - TOTEMS

  We're nearly at the bottom of the street opposite the petrol station, beyond which the night sky is trailing a crimson hem, when I call 'We're not in quite that much of a hurry, Mark.'

  He carries on as if the enlarged letters in the middle of the Frugoil sign are urging him, and barely glances back to protest 'You said we were.'

  'No, I said we shouldn't get caught up in the video again. The show won't be starting anything like yet, don't worry,' I say as I join him at the kerb. 'I'm not an old film, you know. I feel as if you want to speed me up.'

  He looks at me over his shoulder. 'That'd be funny,' he says, continuing to watch.

  This isn't what jerks me forwards. 'Mark,' I shout or quite possibly scream, but I haven't even completed his name when he steps into the road.

  His small body flares up as if spotlights have been trained on him. They're the headlamp beams of the lorry that is bearing down on him, horn braying. I'm too far away to snatch him out of its path, and what can I shout that will help? I'm terrified that the glare and the uproar and the sight of his imminent doom will freeze him like just another species of roadkill. Then he dodges the vehicle with at least a yard to spare and dashes across the road.

  By the time I reach the opposite pavement he's trotting uphill past the petrol station. 'Mark,' I say, folding my arms and gripping my fists with my clammy armpits.

  He halts but drops into a crouch that suggests he's preparing for the next leg of the race. 'What?'

  'Come back here. We aren't going anywhere till you listen to me.'

  He trudges along the pavement between the entrance and exit of the petrol station. 'What?' he mumbles.

  'Do you want to see the last of me, Mark?'

  He blinks at me and risks a giggle. 'You're like granny saying I'll give her a heart attack.'

  'You damn well near did, but I don't mean that. Do you want your mother and me to split up?'

  'You aren't going to, are you?' Apprehension or the light from the forecourt has turned his face so pale I'm put in mind of greasepaint. 'Don't you like me?' he pleads.

  'I don't like what you just did, but that wouldn't be why. If Natalie trusts me to look after you and then you behave like that, she isn't going to want me around.'

  'You won't tell, will you? We swore we wouldn't tell on each other.'

  'I'll keep this one incident between us so long as there aren't any more like it, ever. Agreed?'

  'Promise,' Mark blurts and looks hyperactively eager to be on his way. Shahrukh is gazing at us through the window of the Frugoil shop, and I wonder if he's going to make an issue of my letting Rufus in. Perhaps he feels inhibited now that I don't work there. Before he can accost me I follow Mark uphill.

  In a minute we're alongside the Royal Holloway campus. Beyond the gates the long five-storey red-brick turreted façade is illuminated so brightly that it resembles a cut-out against the night sky, an image of a French chateau patched into the landscape. A long-legged shadow as tall as the chimneys stalks across it, but I haven't located the owner of the shadow when the wall blocks my view. Mark has forged ahead, so that by the time I reach the end of the wall he's already past a side road. As I cross it, two clownish faces swell out of the gloom ahead of him. One is closer to the ground than anyone's should be, and I might have noticed more immediately that it isn't human if the wide-mouthed faces weren't so similar. Its companion shuffles into the light of a streetlamp, and I see that her mouth is surrounded by lipstick like a child's first attempt at painting. I can't quite shake off the notion that it's the woman who is panting and snorting, not the bulldog. I've dodged around them after Mark when a hoarse voice behind me mutters 'Hurry up.'

  I could take that personally, because I don't know where the circus has been set up in the park. I was expecting crowds to show us, but none are to be seen. Mark's shadow and mine play at giants and dwarfs beneath the streetlamps as we hurry uphill. The closest section of the park stretches away between the main road and a lane, and I'm suddenly aware that the place may be as vast as the visible sky. Mark halts, and I think he's about to ask which road we should use until he says 'There's one.'

  He's pointing at an entrance from the main road. At first all I can see is the shadow of a figure on the thickness of the wall. A substance appears to be bubbling out of its cranium. It steps into my view to reveal that it's a clown with a presumably artificial mass of white curls crowning its scalp. It cocks its blanched extravagantly wide-mouthed head to watch us with a kind of dismayed glee. I pull out the tickets – one for Cwlons Ulnimited, the other for Cwnols Nutilimed – and flourish them. The clown beckons while its white-gloved fingers scuttle in the air, a gesture so eloquent of lateness that I grab Mark's shoulder in case he's tempted to dash across the road. As soon as the traffic relents I usher him to the gate.

  The clown steps back like a duck in reverse and urges us onwards with its monster hands. Its baggy big-buttoned one-piece outfit and its mask of makeup conceal its gender. Where's the tent? The path across the unlit green leads to a pond, on the far side of which an object taller than the trees around the green stands guard. As I run after Mark, all its faces grow visible, a heap of them with wide eyes and stretched mouths. It's a totem pole, another local landmark that looks transplanted from elsewhere. We're close to the end of the path when the lowest face detaches itself and rises to meet us. It belongs to a clown who was seated on a folding chair. I've scarcely brandished the tickets when the clown shakes its floppy hands to indicate an avenue that leads into the dark.

  Bare oaks mime praying overhead. Their branches look imprinted on the black sky. Wouldn't it have made sense to provide some light? Before long the path angles sharp left, and Mark might have run into a hulking trunk if a clown hadn't sprung out from behind it to direct us. The figure prances in and out of the trees beside us, wagging its glimmering head and flapping its hands so wildly that they seem boneless. Perhaps the performer needs to reach the tent in the field at the end of the path.

  When we run out of the avenue the white tent appears to shrink as if a camera is zooming back. It's the change of perspective. The tent, which has been erected in the middle of the green, isn't quite symmetrical; the canvas pyramid is inclined slightly leftward, giving it a rakish or rickety air. As we cross the field I seem to glimpse a dim leggy shadow that suggests its owner is catching us up, but there's no sign of our guide.

  The tent is encircled by glistening footprints, perhaps of customers like us in search of the entrance. A midget clown leans against a taut guy-rope beside the open flap in the canvas. When I hold out the tickets the puffy white hands wave us through. The mocking tragic mask is painted on so thickly that I'm unable to judge whether the diminutive figure is a dwarf or a child. I hurry after Mark into the tent, and the audience turns to watch us.

  They're in families scattered around tiers of five benches indistinguishable from steps. They aren't merely watching, they're laughing at us, which strikes me as excessive even if we're late. Mark glances uncertainly at me, but as his gaze slips past me his mouth widens with a grin. An assortment of clowns of various sizes is pacing flat-footed yet silently behind us.

  Mark scrambles to join the audience, which doesn't include Natalie. As I sit next to him on the middle bench, someone higher up the tier comments 'Maybe they thought it wasn't on yet.'

  'We didn't think it was till after Christmas,' their companion murmurs.

  'It shouldn't be till the New Year,' says the first voice or another.

  The last clown has entered the ring and is staring at me as if I spoke. When I hold up my hands as a vow of silence I feel as if I'm mimicking a clownish gesture. He, if it's a man, copies this
so vigorously that he might be pretending to surrender, and then he scuttles splay-legged to take his place in the circle his colleagues have formed within the ring. There are thirteen of them. Two are less than five feet tall, and two stilted figures are over eight feet each as though to compensate. I wish I'd seen that pair duck through the entrance, which is scant inches higher than my head. Four of the clowns seem familiar, which I take to mean that we were followed by all those we encountered. They're certainly capable of making no noise. The circle is facing the audience in absolute silence.

  For long enough that some of the children begin to grow restless, the clowns are as motionless as a film still, and then they start to shuffle crabwise around the ring. Their unblinking gaze trails over the audience. Even the stilted figures on opposite sides of the ring manage to keep in step. Spotlights at the foot of the benches project a distorted shadow play on the canvas above the seats. The routine looks more like an obscure ritual than a circus act until a little girl laughs tentatively. The parade comes to an instant halt as the clown who's gazing straight at her falls over backwards.

  From the solid bulge of his crotch it's reasonable to assume he's a man. Despite this distraction, he doesn't hit the sawdust. With a contortion that his baggy costume hides, he bounces upright without touching the earth or altering his painted expression or uttering a sound. He couldn't have been as nearly horizontal as he contrived to appear, but the trick puts me in mind of a film played in reverse. He puts his fattest finger to his outsize lips as he gazes at the little girl, and his fellow performers copy the gesture. As she covers her mouth while her parents pat her shoulders, the clowns recommence circling with their fingers to their lips.

  What joke are we meant to be seeing? Just now I'm more concerned about Natalie. If all the clowns are performing rather than directing latecomers, how will she find the circus? Presumably she'll call me, in which case I'll be guilty of using a mobile during a show. I assume Mark is too fascinated by the spectacle to think of her. All at once, and with some deliberateness, he bursts into laughter.