The Grin of the Dark (14 page)

If anybody's still awake now that Mr Mime has finished
muttering, here's a straightforward fact:
www.lup.co.uk/html/cinema

Perhaps I'm being pubblished, sorry, published because I can
spell. I expect it helps. There'll be stories about Tubby in my
book, but they'll all be true. Forgive me if I keep them to myself
until then. And if prior publication is a requirement for posting
on these boards, I wonder where Mr Mime has been published.
What has he written? Under what name?

Perhaps the gibe about spelling is a little glib, but it's too late: I've
sent the message. I gaze at the screen in case a counterblast appears,
until I remember that Natalie is waiting for me. I switch off the
computer and tiptoe along the hall to bolt the apartment door. I close
the bathroom door and do my best to hush my various activities. The
toothbrush buzzes like an insect that has found its way into my
mouth, and I wish it were as silent as my toothy reflection. As I edge
the bedroom door open I put my finger to my lips, but there's no
point. Natalie is asleep.

I feel as if my argument with Smilemime has sent her to sleep. I use
both hands to inch the door shut, and then I pad to the bed. Perhaps
she's aware of my presence; her lips part, though without a word.
When I touch them with a kiss she murmurs a phrase that has been
filleted of its consonants before she turns over as if to give me more
room. I slip under the quilt into the warmth she left me and reach
across her to extinguish the bedside light, a pottery cottage inhabited
by gnomes in drooping red hats, which she found irresistibly kitsch. As
the room darkens I bring my arm under the quilt and close my eyes.

It seems that I need to put Smilemime out of my head in order to
engage with sleep. Surely I dealt with all his points that were worth
answering and quite possibly some that weren't, or did he raise one
that I failed to grasp? I suspect he says anything that comes to mind,
and he can stay out of mine. That's easier to vow than to achieve, and
soon I'm back at my desk.

I don't want to see what the screen has in store. I type gibberish as
random as I can manage and furiously click the mouse. The yellowed keys
rattle like bones while the mouse emits its plastic chatter, but none of this
helps. The screen is no longer featureless. Its sides extend backwards to
form the floor and walls and ceiling of a corridor. Though it appears to
stretch almost to infinity, I can just distinguish a figure that is waiting at
the end. It's approaching, or am I? I would very much prefer it to keep its
distance, and the distraction of Mark's voice comes as a relief.

It isn't quite so welcome once I hear his words. 'He's on. He's lit
up.' Presumably he too is having a bad dream. At least his dream has
rescued me from mine, and I open my eyes. A clown's blurred
glowing face is beside me on the pillow.

I gasp rather less than a word and jerk away, backing into Natalie.
The next moment the bedside light comes on. That's scarcely
reassuring, because we're surrounded by shadowy figures in jesters'
hats. I feel like a child who has wakened from a nightmare into worse
until I identify them as the shadows of gnomes inside the lamp. As for
the clown's face, it was printed on my wrist. I didn't realise that I
hadn't washed it off or that it was so luminous. 'I'll go if you like,' I
murmur, sitting up. 'I know what it'll be.'

Natalie blinks rapidly to clear her eyes. 'What will it?'

'Just this,' I say, exhibiting my wrist, but now I can't see the
imprint. I'm wondering if Mark has sorted out the situation for
himself when he breaks his silence with an inarticulate but heartfelt
protest. I'm almost out of the room before Natalie says 'Better put
something on, Simon. I know you're boys, but you aren't related.'

I grab my towelling robe from the hook on the door and struggle
into the inside-out sleeves and knot the cord around my waist. I open
Mark's door gradually so as not to startle him awake. The room isn't
as dark as it should be; it's illuminated by a dim glow that drains
everything of colour. Mark is lying on his side with his face towards
the source of the illumination – the blank computer screen. I can't see
whether he's asleep, even when I move to shut down the computer.
Shouldn't it be displaying a screensaver if it isn't dark? I wonder if he
may only recently have finished using it with the sound turned off, a
possibility that's preferable to the unappealing notion that someone
or something has gone to ground inside the computer. I take hold of
the mouse and hear a flurry of bedclothes behind me. 'What are you,'
Mark says and leaves it at that, or his drowsiness does.

'You need to switch this off when you go to bed, Mark.'

I face him to say so. When I turn back to the screen it's teeming
with icons. I must have touched them off with the mouse. I shut the
computer down, leaving the room illuminated by light from the hall.
'Now what were you shouting about?'

'I wasn't, and I did switch off.'

'It sounded like shouting to us. Were you dreaming?'

The charcoal sketch of his face peers out of the gloom. 'Must have
been.'

'Was it to do with today? Was it this?'

I bare my wrist, on which the clown's remains have saved up a
faint pallid glow. Mark holds up his like a response to a secret sign.
It's more clearly defined, in particular the grin. 'Do you think you'd
better wash it off?' I suggest.

'No,' Mark protests as he hides it and the rest of him under the
blanket.

I pad out of the room and close the doors. I'm reclaiming my half
of the quilt when Natalie says 'That was better.'

'I'll keep trying,' I say as she returns the floppy-hatted shadows to
the dark. For a while I listen to be sure that Mark is quiet. Without
warning it's so silent that I don't know where I am. Where was the
desk in my dream? Not in this apartment, now I think about it. Why
should it matter? I'm with Natalie, and there's another of her breaths.
I'm nearly asleep, that's all, and then I wholly am.

It's the time of year. The reduced landscape seems to have been
trundling past as repetitively as a screensaver for hours. As the train
dawdles north, frost and frozen snow keep pace with a sun like a disc
of ice embedded in the colourless sky. They've rendered the fields and
small towns rudimentary: pale sketches of themselves, or faded
photographs. As though to contradict the spectacle, the train is so
overheated that the air tastes like laryngitis. The windows in the doors
are the only ones that open, and they won't do so except all the way,
sending a winter gale through the carriage. I can't even buy a drink of
water; the buffet shut half an hour ago, although it isn't unattended –
I'm sure I heard laughter beyond the metal shutter of the counter, but
there was no other response however hard I knocked. The water from
the cold taps in the toilets is so lukewarm I don't want it in my mouth.
I feel trapped by all this, borne helplessly onwards with more than one
symptom of fever, but there's no use in pretending not to know why.
I'm gripping my mobile in a clammy fist while I put off making the
call.

I haven't stored the number. This is such a pathetic excuse that out
of rage I almost mistype an enquiry code. Someone in India has me
repeat the details while another white field etched with bare black
trees is dragged past the window. When a voice composed of samples
speaks the information I type it into the memory, and now I've no
pretext for delaying. I poke the keys and lift the mobile to my face.

As the phone miles ahead starts to ring, the train loses speed. I
could imagine that the sound has snagged the landscape. The trees
beside the railway plod to a halt at the precise moment the notes
cease, and I feel as if the silenced world is unable to move without a
response. There's a wordless hiss, and then my father says 'You've
reached Bob and Sandy Lester. Just because we've retired doesn't
have to mean we're in. We can't have got to the phone, anyway, so
don't leave us wondering. Speak your piece and we'll be in touch.'

The answering machine is newer than my last call. I can only utter
my prepared greeting. 'Hello,' I say flatly. I'm echoed at once.

It might almost be an aberration of the machine. 'Hello,' I repeat.

'Hello.'

That's flatter than ever, but then so was mine. 'This is fun, isn't it?'
I say to move us on.

'Is this who I think it is?'

'If it's who you'd like it to be.'

'I shouldn't think I have much choice by now. They call that being
a father.'

I'm back in my adolescence, when my days with him seemed to
consist of verbal skirmishes that he wouldn't abandon until he won.
Sometimes I think all this crippled my ability to communicate. Before
I can decide on a response he says 'What's the occasion, may I ask?'
'Does there have to be one?'

'Better hadn't be if they don't matter to you.'

'I'm sorry.' That's an overstatement and a simplification, which I
resent as bitterly as needing to explain 'I was having some problems
at the time.'

'You could always have told us. Are you able now?'

'Losing my job.'

'We weren't looking for a wedding present, Simon. If you'd let us
know you were in difficulty we could have paid your fare.'

'I could have managed.'

'Right enough, you could.' Somewhat less sharply he asks 'And
what's your situation now?'

'I've sold a film book, maybe several.'

'May we hope there'll be one with our names on it?'

I'm pierced by a sudden unexpected sense of loss. Despite all our
confrontations, didn't we grow closer for a while on our weekly days
out? Sometimes climbing the fells north of Preston with him felt like
an antidote to being indulged by my mother at home. Perhaps
inscribing a book to my parents will make up for all my uncommunicative
Christmas and birthday and Mother's and Father's Day
cards. 'Of course, when it comes out next year,' I say. 'I'm researching
it in Preston.'

'Are we to be honoured with a visit? Don't put yourself out if it's
too much trouble.'

'Let me see what I have to do first.'

'Is it a secret?'

'I'm looking into the career of one of the old Keystone comics. He
was on stage as Thackeray Lane.'

At once there's a burst of wild laughter, and the landscape jerks as
if it's an image projected not quite steadily on the window. The train
subsides, and I realise that a door had opened, releasing the mirth of
a television audience, as I hear my mother say 'Who is it, Bob?'

'Have we any fatted calves in the freezer?'

This seems to earn a surge of laughter before she says 'Fatty what
again?'

'Calves. Not your legs. No need to show me those. Stop dancing
about, Sandra. Calves. Little bulls. The fatted variety.'

'How little?'

'Never mind what size. We haven't really got any. That's the point
I'm struggling to make.'

'You're struggling all right, but I'll be blessed if I know why.'

'It used to be expected of the father of the prodigal.'

All this might be a routine they're performing, especially given the
waves of hilarity in the background, if it weren't so dogged and
increasingly peevish. It seems to thicken the heat, which is already as
inert as the frozen landscape. I'm dismayed by how much their age
has slowed them down since I was last in touch, unless my lack of
contact has. As my skin prickles with feverish guilt my mother says
'Are we talking about Simon?'

Applause almost blots out my father's weary reply. 'That's who it is.'

'He's on the phone?' my mother cries, and the whitened fields
begin to ooze backwards like an immense river in the first stages of a
thaw. 'Are you trying not to let me speak to him? Give it here or it's
us that won't be speaking.'

I hear blurred voices beyond an amplified commotion that suggests
she has grabbed the receiver, and then she says 'Simon? Are you there?'

'I haven't gone anywhere.'

'I wish you were here. You sound as if you are.'

'That's technology for you.'

'I believe it's more than that. I believe it's you wanting to be. Let's
all forget our differences, whatever they were. Are you coming for
Christmas? Will you be on your own?'

I was last year. I pretended not to have the day off from the petrol
station, but I could tell that even Natalie didn't think the invitation
her parents sent through her to celebrate with them was too sincere.
'I'm with someone,' I say.

'Bring her, of course. That's if she's a she. Bring them whichever
way.' As trees race past the window my mother says 'So are you
coming to us now?'

I'm dismayed by the notion that she has elided the weeks before
Christmas. 'I was saying it rather depends how my work goes. I don't
want to be away from my desk too long.'

'Do your best to see us, Simon. Nobody's getting any younger.'

'I will.'

'I'll let you get back to your work, then. It was lovely to hear your
voice. Bring the rest of you as soon as you can.'

A final wave of merriment is cut off before it crests, and then the
only sound is the muffled monotonous conversation of the wheels
with the tracks. Her assumption that I'm working at this moment
makes me feel I ought to be. I re-call the enquiries line and ask for the
number of the library in Preston. The switchboard operator at the
library sounds more remote than my parents did, and the reference
librarian seems even more distant. I feel compelled to raise my voice
halfway through saying 'Do I just need to ask at the counter for the
Preston Chronicle
?'

'If you let us know which issues we can have them waiting.'

'I'd like to look at 1913. Maybe 1912 as well. I should be there in
an hour or so.'

'Could you hold on?' For no reason that I can imagine, she sounds
doubtful. The clacking of a keyboard overtakes the rhythm of the
wheels, and then her voice returns. 'You must be thinking of a
different newspaper.'

'I'm not, I promise you. Who says I am?'

'The computer,' she says, and I'm preparing to argue with it when
she robs me of words. 'It wasn't published in the last century at all.'