The Grin of the Dark Read online

  One of the towering clowns is gazing at him. I'm as interested to watch how the performer will respond as I suspect Mark was eager to discover. As the parade halts again, the giant figure does indeed topple backwards and recover his balance without striking the ground. Not just the painted grimace but the wide unblinking eyes might as well be set in a mask. I'm so impressed by how skilfully he wields his stilts that I can't help laughing and clapping my hands like a child.

  The clown fixes his stare on me. It seems capable of freezing my suddenly clumsy hands and rendering me mute. I'm reminding myself that it's another joke when I observe that the lanky figure inside the loose costume is no longer quite vertical. So gradually that I can't distinguish the movement, the clown has begun to stoop towards me. He's at least a dozen paces away, even allowing for his elongated legs and feet, but my awareness is trapped by the ambiguous immobile painted face that's lowering closer. The audience is so hushed it might not be present at all. The clown's posture is starting to resemble a sprinter's crouch, and I imagine him scuttling over the benches at me. I'm about to break the breathless silence with a forced laugh when a sound forestalls me: the siren of a distant ambulance.

  The stilted figure rears upright, and the circle scatters in all directions. The clowns dash back and forth across the ring in a panic so elaborately choreographed that they must have been awaiting a cue. In the midst of this the giants collide and stalk backwards at a perilous run and rush at each other once more. This time they trip up, entangling their legs. There's a loud snap, and another.

  They sound unnecessarily painful, which is how the results look. The victims roll apart and try to stagger upright on their uninjured legs, only to sprawl on their backs. As they writhe about, legs flailing the sawdust, at least one parent is unamused by the way the antics emphasise if not enlarge their bulging crotches. The other clowns redouble their panic, beseeching the audience mutely as if they're hoping for a doctor or a nurse. When nobody comes forward and a few people even laugh, the clowns fall upon their damaged colleagues. The fattest or at least the one in the loosest costume, which makes his head look grotesquely small, fetches splints and bandages and less likely items from under a bench while four of the performers immobilise each invalid. He dumps the collection in the middle of the ring, and the dwarfs fight over it before scampering to repair the damage.

  They splint the legs by nailing wood to them – the wrong legs. They keep missing with the extravagantly heavy hammers, and soon an agonising snap is followed by another. As the voiceless wretches squirm all they can in the grip of their fellows, the clown with the small head mimes directing operations between sallies to the edge of the ring. His outstretched flabby hands urge spectators to participate as the dwarfs attempt to straighten the broken legs. When the unblinking gaze finds him Mark whispers 'Can I?'

  Bebe and, I suspect, Warren would forbid it, but that's hardly the point. 'What would your mother say?'

  'She'd let me.'

  His gaze is as steady as any clown's. 'Go on then,' I say only just in advance of his sprint into the ring.

  The clown beckons other children to join Mark. Several do, having asked or pleaded with their parents, one of whom peers at Mark and me as if she suspects us of being planted to entice her daughter to participate. The dwarfs have completed their task, although the mended limbs are anything but straight, and some of the children are visibly disappointed that they weren't given a turn with a hammer. Then the giants wobble to their feet and begin to stagger around the ring. They've thrown their arms around each other's shoulders and are attempting to grip them with their swollen hands, but rather than providing mutual support they seem to be in even worse danger of losing their balance. They lurch enormously from side to side, clutching at each other, and somehow regain their equilibrium for the next step. All this might be funnier if the dwarfs didn't scurry to catch up with them and imitate their crooked efforts behind their backs. Then the clown with the small head gestures the children to follow the dwarfs while the rest of the troupe sits on the lowest bench to watch.

  When Mark glances at me for approval I show him the palms of my hands. Perhaps my frown is too faint to reach him, because he takes the warning for encouragement. He tiptoes after the staggering giants, and the other children follow in single file until the lead clown indicates that they should copy the dwarfs. The little girl closest to Mark puts an arm around his shoulders, giggling and eyeing her parents. The other children pair off more or less willingly, but this doesn't satisfy the impromptu director. He's urging them to mimic the crippled antics of the giants.

  Perhaps Mark and his companion feel bound to obey because they're leading the youthful parade. I'm not certain which of them begins swaying, but in a few seconds they're both doing so with an abandon that looks positively intoxicated. The pair of boys behind them has started to compete when a woman shouts 'Lise, that's enough.'

  She's the mother of Mark's partner. The girl halts uncertainly, bringing all the children to a standstill, while the giants wobble to confront the interruption and the dwarfs dodge behind them. 'Come along,' her mother says, tramping down to the ring. 'We're going home.'

  As the girl bites her lip and her mother takes her by the hand, the clowns on the benches leap into the ring and surround them. Falling to their knees, they clasp their hands in silent entreaty and bend backwards so as to turn their stricken faces up. The posture emphasises every rampant crotch. 'Move out of the way, please,' the mother says more sharply yet.

  That isn't why the clowns jump up and scatter. They're trying to head off several families that are ushering reluctant children towards the exit. Nobody is likely to be won over by their supplications when these involve so much thrusting of their crotches. As the last of the parents reclaim their children, Mark climbs to head me off. 'Can I watch?'

  I assume he's hoping the show will continue. Just now the clowns are pursuing the families, wiggling their fingers at any child who looks back, until I'm close to fancying that it's some kind of secret sign. 'Let's see what happens,' I murmur.

  The giants have hobbled to flank the exit. They look capable of falling on anyone who tries to leave. As each family does, a clown prances close behind, jerking his outthrust crotch high and gripping his midriff in silent laughter. These parting japes are too much for the spectators who've remained seated – for the parents, at any rate. They lead or in some cases drag their children to the exit and are sent packing by the same rude dance. I haven't seen the people leave who were talking as we sat down, but when I glance over my shoulder I find we're the solitary audience.

  If Mark doesn't want to leave, I won't insist. He could see worse on children's television. I sit up straight and fold my arms, and so does Mark. Perhaps that's too peremptory, because all the clowns in the ring scamper to the lowest bench opposite us and sit symmetrically, the clown with the small head in the middle of the group, the dwarfs at either end. The giants remain beside the exit and clasp hands to form an arch.

  Are the clowns on the bench waiting for us to move so that they can mimic us? Their fixed stares and superimposed contradictory grimaces don't even hint at their intentions. I'll have to move soon, because I'm finding it hard to breathe, but I feel as if neither Mark nor I should be the first to stir. Could we all be awaiting a new arrival? It might be Natalie, though only by coincidence. I take another constricted breath, and Mark emits a muted giggle. Then we both start as a phone begins to shrill.

  The clown with the small head twists around, pulling his costume tight around his swollen torso, and grabs the mobile from behind him. Instead of answering it, he holds it out to us. 'Shall I get it?' Mark whispers.

  'I expect so.'

  As he runs to fetch the phone his shadow slides down the canvas behind the clowns and shrinks to meet him in the centre of the ring. The leader of the troupe points at me with the mobile and hands it to Mark. It repeats the same strident note in pairs – the sound of a phone from the last century – as he brings it
to me. He's so eager that I hope he won't be disappointed by the pay-off. I poke the button to accept the message and hold the mobile so that he can hear.

  Has it anything to offer except static? When I press it to my ear I grasp that the waves of sound are too patterned to be random. As the hissing grows more solid and more resonant I identify it as the beginnings of laughter. The mirth is distant, but not for long. It swells until I have to lower the phone, to save my ear as much as to let Mark listen. Even now it seems too loud, filling the tent and shivering the canvas, except that a wind must be doing at least the latter. Are the clowns adding to the laughter? Their faces are quivering like jelly as they expose their prominent teeth and clutch at their midriffs, and yet the gleeful merriment sounds like the product of a single mouth. The mobile feels weighed down by hysteria, and my senses are so overwhelmed that I seem unable to move my hand. Then the chortling begins to subside, and the quaking of the clowns lessens in sympathy. At last the noise trails off in a series of hisses that dissolve into uninterrupted static, and the phone goes dead.

  Mark gazes up at me, and the performers watch just as intently. I've no idea what anyone expects, since the mobile is as inert as a terminally infected computer. 'Is anything else going to happen?' I wonder aloud.

  I might as well not have spoken. There's as little response when I hold out the phone to the clowns, and when I shrug and lay it on the bench to my right, away from Mark. Why should I be expected to perform any more? That's the job of the clowns, however they spell themselves. I'm close to saying so until I notice that they aren't as still as I thought; their eyes are turning leftwards in unison and then back to me. They have to do this several times before I realise they're indicating the exit. 'I think that's it,' I murmur.

  Mark seems happy enough. The outrageousness of the show must have satisfied him. As we head for the exit I brace myself for a last prank, but the seated clowns stay where they are. Their united gaze keeps hold of us, and their fattened fingers wriggle, presumably to send us on our way. I glance back from the exit, but nobody is prancing after us, and the jerry-built giants aren't about to collapse on us. Mark peers up at them in delicious expectant panic as I guide him clear of their rickety legs and out into the dark.

  There's no sign of the departed audience. We're making for the dim foreshortened avenue behind the tent when the field grows abruptly darker, swallowing Mark's faint shadow and mine. All the lights inside the tent have been switched off. Without its whitish glow it reminds me of an ancient monument, but I'm wondering what the clowns can be up to in the dark. Might they be creeping out of the exit? I can think of no reason why they would, nor why we should wait on the chance that they are. 'Let's see if we've time to watch the film again,' I say to speed Mark onwards.

  It's even darker beneath the oaks. The entangled branches seem to prevent any light from filtering down out of the scraps of sky. The hulking trunks are closer together than I would expect oaks to grow. I hold Mark's small chilly hand as we trot along the middle of the avenue; I wouldn't want him to run ahead and collide with anything unseen. Have we strayed into a different avenue? I'm glimpsing the totem pole through the trees on our left, although the pile of wide-mouthed glimmering faces seems to skulk behind them whenever I try to distinguish it more clearly. I even imagine some activity beyond it, rapid movements of pale dim limbs whose gait puts me in mind of an injured spider. If it was one of the giant clowns, where would the other be? When I look back the avenue appears to be deserted, although blocked by the looming bulk of the tent. I face forward again, and Mark clutches at my hand.

  The alarm is only the tune of my mobile: 'You must remember this...' The song from Casablanca has lost some of its appeal in the gloom caged by trees. Mark relaxes his grip as I continue walking and lift the mobile to my face. 'What's been wrong with your phone?' Natalie apparently doesn't want to know, because she goes on 'Where are you?'

  'Heading for the road near Frugoil.'

  'It's all over, then.'

  'It seems to be.'

  'I'll pick you up at the gate.'

  'What did – ' I begin, but the phone is unoccupied except by waves of static. Mark pulls me left around a bend, beyond which the avenue leads straight to the totem pole by the water. Once we emerge from beneath the trees I'm certain that the faces are incapable of springing apart and forming a line to meet us. I can see lamps above the wall at the far side of the field, and I'm disconcerted to find the sight so reassuring. I release Mark's hand as we cross the lawn to the gate.

  Natalie's Punto is panting on the road. 'Was it good?' she asks as I let Mark have the front seat.

  'It was funny.'

  'Lots of laughs,' I say and shut the rear door. 'What did your parents want?'

  Natalie meets my gaze in the mirror. 'I'll tell you later,' she says, and I suspect that I won't relish the experience.

  EIGHT - SMILEMIME

  There's something odd about Orville Hart as well.

  He was working for Mack Sennett when he discovered Tubby Thackeray. He and the comedian wrote their early films together, while Thackeray took sole credit for writing the later ones, and Hart directed all of them. Once Tubby lost his stardom Hart found work at the Hal Roach studios, initially as a writer, eventually directing Oliver Hardy and James Finlayson in The Course-We-Can Brothers. For several years after that he appears to have been confined to writing gags until in 1932 he wrote and directed Crazy Capaldi, his first feature film. 'The wildest of the Warners gangster movies,' somebody posting as Smilemime comments on the Internet Movie Database. 'Banned in Blighty and withdrawn in America after pubblic protests, the severely cut reissue was a flop.' I stare at this until I disentangle the sense it's presumably intended to make. Perhaps Hart was better suited to comedy, since he's next noted as a writer for the Three Stooges, whom he directed in 1934 as Eager, Meager and Seegar, three hunchbacked laboratory assistants in a Frankenstein parody, Gimme Da Brain. 'The story goes the pokes in the eye got out of hand and nearly blinded Curly,' Smilemime claims to know. In 1935 Hart attempted to revive Charley Chase's reputation or his own with his second full-length feature, Fool for a Day. 'Screwball so screwy it screwed his career,' Smilemime somewhat imprecisely sums it up. 'Ahead of its time or out of its head? You deccide if you can find it.' The studio may not have had a chance to judge the reaction of the public when Hart began shooting his next film, Ticklin' Feather. This was apparently to be the first in a series of comedy Westerns about a Cherokee of that name. 'Beggins with him riding into the little town of Bedlam on a donkey called Neddy Canter,' Smilemime reports. 'Sound fammiliar?' I'm not sure which reference this means, nor where the pseudonymous commentator obtained the information, because the film was never released.

  That's the oddity. Both Orville Hart and Tubby Thackeray ended their careers with unreleased films. It isn't surprising that they weren't hired after that, but why would two studios suppress completed films? The question can't distract me from wondering what Natalie has to tell me. I was hoping that she would last night while Mark stayed downstairs to watch the film again, but she dropped me at the house and kept him in the car. 'I'll be in touch,' she said. I stayed up for a while, searching the Internet for Clowns Unlimited or any variant spelling, but even the site from which I bought the tickets was unavailable; perhaps the performers have alienated so many spectators that they can't obtain any more bookings. Eventually I went to bed, only to imagine on the way to sleep that if I opened my eyes I would see clowns' faces poking up all around me. Between dozes I wondered if Natalie wanted to discuss some situation first with Mark.

  It's almost noon on Sunday morning. I could phone her, but I don't want to be told she can't talk. Surely she would have called by now if it was serious. I do my best to believe that while I finish reading about Orville Hart, the grandfather of 'adult filmmaker Willie Hart'. When I reach the page for that name, having been warned about adult content, I see that Willie Hart's films include a hardcore comedy called Dopius, Gropius and Copi
ous. I return to Orville's page and click on Tubby Thackeray in case it takes me anywhere I haven't been. As I expected, it brings up the comedian's listing, but that has changed. All the titles are live, linked to pages of their own.

  Could they have been last time I looked? It hardly matters, since there's so little information. Each individual page lists the film as a Keystone comedy starring Tubby Thackeray and directed by Orville Hart. Just one is briefly reviewed: Tubby's Tiny Tubbies. 'Tubby and his little nephews create chaos in a snooty store.' I'd take that to be accurate if the commentator Smilemime didn't add 'Nearly complete in Those Golden Years of Fun – the only known survivving Tubby footage.'

  Are all Smilemime's comments as unreliable as this? Is he (I'm certain it's a man) remembering a different film, and is it one of Thackeray's? The site doesn't let you contact other users directly, but I can start a message board. First I have to register. As long as I'm addressing a pseudonym I don't see why I shouldn't use one. I sign in as Leslie Stone and head my message QUESTIONABLE ATTRIBUTION.

  I'm afraid the reviewer is mixing up two films. The one in Those Golden Years of Fun is surely Tubby's Terrible Triplets. None of them is little, they're all the same size. Can anyone identify the film Smilemime describes and say if it's still available?

  I send the message and return to Tubby's main page. I was hoping to open up his biography, but now even the sentence about music-hall and the next two tantalising words have gone. Why would they have been deleted? I search for an address for Variety Video in case they can put me in touch with the source of their footage, but there's no trace of the distributors in the list the phrase calls up. As I finish scrolling through the list, my mobile rings. 'Are you busy?' says Natalie.

  'Never too busy for you. Is Mark there?'

  'He's on his computer. Why, do you want him?'