The Grin of the Dark (16 page)

'Less than seven months pregnant, you said, Bob.'

'The same night she went to the show she had to be rushed into
hospital.'

'You can't blame him for that,' my mother objects.

'All I know is my dad was premature, and they didn't have half the
facilities they've got in hospitals now.'

'But he was all right and she was.'

'If you call it all right when nobody could be sure if she was
laughing or crying. My granddaddy told my dad she kept being like
that for weeks, and a nurse said she was while she was giving birth.'

'She was quiet whenever I met her. You could hardly get a word
out of her.'

'Maybe it used her up.'

We've wandered into an area I can't define, and I'd rather not
linger. 'Did they have anything to say about the court case?'

'My granddaddy thought he deserved a lot worse, and I got the
idea she agreed with him.'

I seem to have run out of questions. I'm trying to make sense of
the information when my mother says 'Shall we take him?'

'Where?'

She's helplessly amused by my duet with my father. 'To whatever
its name is,' she splutters. 'The theatre. The Harlequin, wasn't it? It's
still there.'

'That doesn't say it's open. I'm pretty sure it's not.'

'It might give you ideas anyway, mightn't it, Simon? It might make
your book more real.'

She's so anxious to help me that she has overcome her mirth. 'Let
me check what the library's doing,' I say.

'Being where it's always been, I should think.' She knocks her
elbows on the table and props her chin on her hands, drumming her
cheeks with her fingertips while she watches me wield the mobile. It
looks as if she's fanning the gleam in her eyes brighter. When my
father reaches to calm her down she drags her wrist away from him.
I pocket the mobile once I've been informed a second time that the
number is unobtainable. 'Was I right?' my mother demands in some
kind of triumph.

'They don't seem to be operating today.'

'Stay over, then, or you can go when you're all here for Christmas.'

As I mumble ambiguously she raises her hands, exposing a face
that I could imagine has grown bonier. 'Shall we go to the theatre,
then?'

She could almost be proposing a night at a show. At least the
excursion will take us out of the kitchen, which feels shrunken by the
heat. As soon as I push back my chair she jumps up, and my father
rises grudgingly to his feet. 'Let's see what there is to see,' I say as
though I'm eager.

'Haven't we been this way before?'

'He'll be asking us next if we're there yet, Bob.'

'No, I'm saying I think we have. I'm sure we've passed this roundabout
once.'

'Do you think I wouldn't remember?'

'He doesn't mean that, Bob. Don't confuse your father. Everything
looks the same, that's all. Is it along there? I might know if they
hadn't taken all the names away.'

'Nobody's done anything with any names. Don't talk daft, Sandra.'

'I know they haven't really. I was only joking. It's at the end of a
road, I'm sure.'

My father is driving us north through if not out of Preston. I'm
convinced that an elaborate detour accompanied by muted cursing
has returned us to the same five-way intersection planted with a
Christmas tree that spreads its lowest branches almost to the edge of
the grassy ring. Their shadows twitch like spiders' legs groping over
the snow. Now we're across the intersection, and my mother inhales
shrilly at the hint of a skid as we follow the route she suggested. It's
the second exit, somewhere between a quarter to and ten to if the
roundabout were a clock.

The suburb has been simplified by the weather. While there was no
trace of snow in the town centre, here it fattens the trees and erases
the names of the wide streets. Light encircles the roots of the streetlamps
and spills out of some of the broad white-headed detached
houses across their colourless lawns; otherwise the route is dark. The
night seems to coop up the stale heat of the Mini, which feels even
more airless than the kitchen did. I'm thinking of proposing that we
end the search before the icy roads or the distractions of my parents'
arguments can grow more dangerous when my mother cries 'It's that
way, isn't it? That one.'

She's waving her forefinger to steer the car left where the road
forks. Haven't we already driven past the house on the corner, or was
there another garden crowded with pallid dwarfish shapes that must
be ornamental gnomes encased in snow? On the other hand, I don't
think the houses in the street gave way to shops. Both rows of shops
are boarded up, and snow is heaped against most of the doors. All the
upstairs flats are dark, except for one that flickers with ashen light
surely too colourless for a fire. None of this is encouraging, but my
mother says 'Isn't that it? There's nowhere else to go.'

Indeed, the street comes to a dead end beyond two broken streetlamps.
The barely visible glow of the moon behind the padded sky
outlines the hulk of an unlit building. Very little identifies it as a
theatre apart from a line of rusty protrusions where the awning must
have been, twelve feet or so up the grey stone façade, and the pairs of
faces carved lower down, their theatrical grimaces blurred by age or
the dimness. Boards sprayed with large dripping initials are nailed
across a door in the left-hand corner. 'That's it, then,' says my father.
'Don't you want a closer look, Simon?'

'May as well as long as I'm here.'

My father has hardly scraped the tyres along the kerb in front of
the theatre when my mother darts out of the car. I hurriedly follow in
case she slips on the icy carapace of the pavement, but neither the ice
nor her limp prevents her from reaching the door. Beyond the broken
lamps the deserted white street resembles a set, and only the cold that
displays our dim breaths seems to make it real. My mother squints
through a gap between two scrawled boards. 'Bring the flashlight,
Bob,' she calls.

He shakes his head and grabs the item from under the dashboard. As
he slams the car door he thrusts the flashlight at me. 'Hurry up, Simon,'
my mother urges, stamping to fend off the cold or with impatience.

As I pick my way to her I realise that quite a few people must have
used the pavement recently for the ice to be so uneven. Presumably
there's a short cut past the theatre to the streets behind it. I pass my
mother the flashlight, and she fumbles to switch it on with a hand
that's swollen by a stuffed glove. She pokes the beam at the gap and
peers through the disc of glaring light on the boards. 'Is someone in
there?' she says and even more enthusiastically 'Hello?'

'Quiet down, Sandra. What do you want people to think?'

'Which people? Show me any. There's either someone in there or
it's – '

She interrupts herself by knocking on the boarded door. When her
glove muffles her thumps she turns the flashlight around. 'Sandra,'
my father protests, which doesn't deter her from pounding on the
boards with the end of the barrel sheathed in rubber. Amid the reverberations
I hear a smothered metallic clank. She hasn't broken the
flashlight, since the light continues to flail in the air. The next
moment the door falters inwards. 'Good God, woman,' my father
grumbles, 'what have you done now?'

As she trains the flashlight beam on the opening I see that the
boards have been sawn through on either side of the entrance. While
the door is shut they look intact. My mother knees the door through
her quilted winter overcoat and leans into the gap. 'There he is,' she
murmurs.

The beam has drawn the remains of a face out of the dark. It's a
poster on the wall across the lobby, where the obscurely patterned
wallpaper has sprouted whitish fur. The poster isn't just illegible with
age; the features of its subject are distorted beyond recognition – they
look puffed up with a pale fungus. 'Let's see what else we can find,'
my mother says. 'Open the door for your old mum.'

'Do you think we should? If you or dad fall and hurt yourselves – '

'We've been out of your life long enough. We want to help with
our book,' she says and bumps her shoulder hard against the door.

Rather than let her bruise herself I give it a shove, and it swings
wide with a grinding of rubble that I feel more than hear. As my
mother limps eagerly into the foyer, the flashlight beam illuminates
the box office. The giant cobweb that billows in its depths is the
shadow of cracks in the pay-box window. I'm hastening after her
when my father demands 'How far are you two proposing to go?'

As she and the light turn to him I notice that the inside of the door
locks with a metal bar, which couldn't have been fastened securely.
'As far as Simon needs to,' she declares and spins around once more.
The glistening pelt of the walls appears to stir as if the theatre has
drawn a wakeful breath. High in the darkness overhead the dusty
tendrils of a chandelier grope like an undersea creature for us, or at
least their shadows do. The mass of filaments pretends it hasn't
moved as the flashlight beam settles on the cracked window. 'Is that
something for you?' my mother wonders aloud.

A white lump is poking over the counter beyond the glass. Is it a
misshapen plastic bag or a wad of paper? Neither strikes me as
promising, but perhaps my mother can discern the marks printed on
it. She reaches under the window and strains to hook the object with
her gloved fingertips. It appears to wobble jelly-like before slithering
off the counter. I don't care for the resemblance to a sagging face that
has ducked out of sight, but this apparently doesn't trouble my
mother. 'Well, that wasn't much help,' she says. 'Let's see in here.'

As she heads for the doors to the auditorium my father tramps into
the lobby. His tread shivers the carpeted floorboards more than I like.
'Are you done yet?' he demands.

It's only the unsteadiness of the flashlight beam that lends the
double doors a furtive movement, of course. 'Oh, Bob, where's your
sense of adventure?' my mother says. 'You never used to be like this.'

'I must have grown up. Someone round here has to.'

'Then it's a good job we haven't, isn't it, Simon?' she giggles and
pushes the left-hand door with the flashlight.

The beam shrinks as if the dark has closed a fist around it. The door
totters backwards with a creak of its metal arm, and the light sprawls
into the auditorium. It illuminates the nearer sections of about a dozen
rows of seats divided by the aisle. When my mother limps through the
doorway the light finds more of them and outlines boxes full of
darkness above the stalls, but falls well short of the stage. I'm about to
wonder if the batteries are up to any further exploration when my
mother says without much breath 'What are those?'

Several pale shapes are huddled in seats close to the walls. Surely
they're stirring only because the magnified light is wavering. My
mother limps along the aisle and swings the trembling light from side
to side. 'Keep up with her,' my father growls at my back.

Why just me? I hope his problem is slowness, not reluctance. My
mother halts beside the nearest row in which a plump white shape
gives the impression of waiting for a show or more of an audience.
'Somebody's been making snowmen,' she cries.

Doesn't that need its own explanation? I rest my hand on the
sodden backs of the upholstered seats and sidle along the row. 'What
are you playing at now?' my father complains.

He could be addressing me or my mother, who is making for the
shape that's slumped against the wall three rows ahead. The swaying
patch of light contracts and brightens, though not as much as I would
like. It's enough to confirm that the objects lolling in the seats are
composed of snow. The one I'm closest to may have the beginnings
or the remnants of a face. I turn to my mother, and then I choke down
the noise my open mouth wants to make.

Either my eyes are adjusting to the dimness or the edge of the light
has strained as far as the front of the auditorium. I can just distinguish
a line of figures on the stage, half a dozen of them linked
together somehow. They're draped in costumes as white as their large
heads, and are standing utterly still, waiting to be noticed. I'm
desperate to prevent my mother from doing so. 'I think we should – '

The light flickers like my nervousness made visible. 'Hang on a
tick, Simon,' my mother interrupts and thumps the back of a seat
with the flashlight. While the impact sounds soggy, it has an effect.
The light goes out, burying the auditorium in darkness.

I'm stumbling sideways towards the aisle – I have to reach her
before anything worse can happen – when my father shouts 'Don't
play games with that. Put it back on.'

'I'm trying.' A series of muffled thumps demonstrates how. 'You
were meant to be changing the batteries,' my mother reminds him.
'They're dead as I don't know. They're dead.'

'You've just done that, you stupid woman.'

'It'll be all right,' I attempt to convince everyone, not least myself.
'Stay where you are. Keep talking if you like so I can find you, mum.'

Perhaps the prospect of drawing attention in the blackness fails to
appeal to her. She falls silent as I shuffle blindly along the row,
grasping a spongy handful at each step. I haven't reached the aisle
when she discovers her voice. 'Is that you, Simon?'

I've bruised my shin against a folding seat that has dropped
horizontal since I passed it, and so my response is less amiable than it
might be. 'I'm coming,' I mutter.

'Which of you is it?' she insists, and I realise that she may not be
referring to my progress before she adds 'Don't keep trying to make
me laugh. It's not fair when it's so dark.'

'You heard your mother, Simon.'

'It isn't me,' I say, but under my breath. What does her behaviour
imply about her state of mind? Am I seeing a pack of whitish shapes
ahead, or are they the remains of an after-image? I can't judge how
close they are, which disorients me so badly that I have to remind
myself where the aisle is; I feel as though I'm groping through a maze
rather than along a straight line. I will my mother to speak so that I
can locate her, and then I wish she hadn't when she says 'Is that your
face?'

'That's it. The end,' my father shouts. 'Keep still, Sandra. I'll get
you myself.'

'I don't like that. It feels like it's going to – Oh, my hand's gone
in.'

My body jerks as if it's expressing the panic that has begun to
surface in her voice. I hitch myself desperately to the end of the row.
As I lose my hold on the last seat and lurch into the darkness, I collide
with someone far too plump. I'm embraced by softened swollen arms
without affection before my captor speaks. 'That's where you are, is
it? Want to knock me down?'

'I just want to help her. Let go,' I tell him, and hear my mother
gasp. Perhaps she's startled by the sudden flood of light. It would be
more welcome if the stage hadn't lit up as if we're about to be treated
to a private performance.

The clouds have parted, and moonlight is slanting through several
holes in the roof. Surely they explain the snow that's piled on the
seats. My mother is within arm's length of one of the heaps, the lump
on top of which displays a rictus where her gloved hand must have
plunged in. She moves towards the aisle as I disengage myself from
my father's quilted grip. Before I can reach her, she turns towards the
stage and sees the object of most of the light. 'What are they?' she
says and quite as uncertainly 'They're funny, aren't they?'

At least it's clear that the line of figures is formed out of snow
under the largest gap in the roof. The trouble is that their shapes
aren't random enough. Who would have gone to the trouble of
modelling them in here? Perhaps it's the effect of shadows as well as
of the pallid light, but some of them could indeed be draped in robes,
while others might be sporting icy headgear. I like the third shape
even less, since it lacks a head. I could do without fancying that a
head is about to rise into view and plant itself on the white neck. At
this distance I can't see what the others have for faces, and I'm not
anxious to. 'It's just snow,' I tell everyone – the three of us, that is,
because the boxes are deserted, however much the moonbeams
suggest the presence of etiolated watchers in the gloom. 'We'd better
get out while there's light.'