The Grin of the Dark (26 page)

Has the boy been tearing up his copy of the in-flight magazine
because he couldn't use his mobile? As I shuffle to the exit I glimpse
words on the yellowed scraps of paper at his feet: crown, come, hack,
judge, guilty, riot... I mumble thanks to the festively bedecked staff
and am rewarded with grins surely more identical than they need be.
I tramp up the passage to the immigration desks, where I'm surprised
to find the four are overtaking me in an adjacent queue; I would have
expected the grandmother to slow them down. 'English,' I can't help
calling to them as I exhibit my passport. 'English.'

They look as unimpressed as the immigration officer, who spends
so long in comparing me with my photograph that I'm about to
declare that we're the same person when he hands my passport back.
I sprint along sections of crawling walkway to the baggage hall and
stake out the end of the carousel. The conveyor belt waits for the last
passenger before it twitches and creeps forward. The first suitcase
isn't mine, nor are its motley followers, each of which brushes or
shakes dangling strips of plastic like a clown's version of hair out of
its boxy face. There's a pause while an unclaimed shapeless package
lumbers offstage, and then the next procession is led out by my
suitcase. As it blunders abreast of me I lug it off the belt and pull up
the expanding handle to wheel it away. Or rather, I attempt to, but
the handle has been snapped off.

'Well, thank you,' I say loudly. 'That's really useful. Thanks so
much.' I raise my voice further as I notice the family watching me
from across the carousel. Is the amused fat man with them? Was he
the skulker by the window on the plane? 'Some fool behind the scenes
buggered up my luggage,' I inform anyone who ought to hear.

I'm not inviting a response. It comes as more than a surprise when
a head pokes through the plastic strips, especially since it isn't human.
Before I can react the large grey dog sails along the belt, trailing its
leash, and rears up to plant its considerable weight on my chest.
'Good boy. Good dog,' I try saying as I topple backwards.

I sprawl on my back with the animal on top of me. 'Down, Fido.
Off now, Rover,' I command with all the authority I can summon,
but the dog is busy snuffling at my clothes. The family of five all grin
at me as they wheel away their luggage; Tim looks positively
triumphant. As I struggle to flounder from beneath the dog a
uniformed man recaptures its leash while his colleague not so much
helps as hauls me to my feet. 'You'll have to come with us, sir,' he
says and tightens his grip on my arm.

Might they have let me go if I hadn't tried to insist on making a
phone call? They kept saying they weren't the police, to which
I could only retort that they shouldn't act as if they were. Once I'd
had enough of that routine I was reduced to peering at my watch until
the mime attracted the attention of one of the uniformed men. At
least, I thought it did, although he homed in on my other wrist. 'Show
me that, please, sir.'

No doubt I shouldn't have attempted to joke. 'Haven't you seen
enough of me?' I said, since they'd taken my clothes as well as the
suitcase.

He frowned at the remark and then at my wrist. His even bulkier
colleague joined in as a preamble to asking 'What's your explanation
for this, sir?'

'I hurt it on the handle of my case before some bloody fool broke
it. Maybe it's infected. I'd better see a doctor.'

'That isn't an infection, sir. We've seen things like it before.'

The reddened remnants of a circle with a gleeful face inside it did
indeed resemble something else – a brand? I was about to ask what
they thought it recalled when the lesser but more sharply voiced man
said 'Is that your explanation, sir?'

'If you mean the clown, all right, I know you do, I got it here.'

Both men seemed to grow instantly heavier, and so did the larger
one's voice. 'Here.'

'Not here as in here here. Up the road. In London.'

'Where exactly, sir?'

Perhaps my jet lag was doing some of the talking. 'They called it
St Pancreas,' I said.

The men's frowns stiffened almost imperceptibly, and the lesser
hulk glanced at the sheet he'd filled in. 'Are you sure you've given us
your correct address, sir?'

'Of course I'm sure,' I declared, not far short of an undefined panic
until I grasped the point. 'Yes, I live near there. I know it isn't really
called that. It may have been a joke. Not mine.'

'Perhaps you can tell us whose,' the man with the document said.

'At a fair. A memorabilia fair, that's to say. What's supposed to be
sinister about it? It's just a stamp everyone got when they went in. It
must have got under my skin, that's all.'

'We've seen something very similar on drugs.'

For an insane second I was tempted to enquire which drugs the
two of them were on. 'You can see clown faces all over the show. I
don't mean you,' I probably shouldn't have added, and then there
seemed to be nothing more to say.

Despite the hardness of the chair, I must have nodded off. No
doubt that increased my resemblance to a drug fiend. I flee the
company of Tubby's face, which shines as white as his teeth, to find
myself once again in a windowless boxy place. Beyond it amplified
voices continue to announce delays, though not mine. I feel as if I'm
imprisoned behind the scenes. There are three unformed men in the
room now – no, uniformed – and I have to blink hard to establish that
they don't have Tubby's face. The third is the officer who took away
my belongings, and he's murmuring to his colleague who wrote my
details down. 'Just traces of activity on the clothing. No evidence of
importation.'

His associate notices I'm awake. His expression grows officially
neutral as he turns to say 'You can leave whenever you're ready.'

'I've been that for hours.'

The three men stare at me but don't otherwise respond. The one
with the document adds some lines to it while I dress. I've grabbed my
suitcase and am lugging it towards the door when he says 'You'll need
to sign this.'

The sheet states I was detained on suspicion of possessing a
controlled substance, but it's the last phrase that makes my eyes feel
even rawer with fury than with jet lag: 'insufficient reason for action'.
By Christ there wasn't, and only my unwillingness to linger prevents
me from saying as much if not more. I take hold of the ballpoint,
though the weight of the suitcase has left my fingers clumsy, and
scrawl my name. Before I can retrieve the case the man responsible for
the document says 'May I see your passport again, sir?'

'Good God, what's the problem now?' While it seems advisable to
hand over the passport without uttering the question, I barely
succeed. His colleagues gather round to help him gaze at it and at the
incident report. Eventually the bulkiest man says 'These aren't the
same signature.'

'You try signing after you've had to drag a heavy case about after
some bloody useless incompetent buggered it up,' I snarl and grab the
ballpoint, which my crippled fingers almost fling at him. I rest my
other hand on top of them in case this steadies them while I cross out
my signature and rewrite it at half the speed. 'There, that's the real
thing,' I say with only some of my anger. 'Anyway, that's my picture,
isn't it? You can see it's me.'

The three of them scrutinise the photograph until I have the
deranged notion that they're preparing to deny that too. After a pause
long enough for yet another delay to be announced, the keeper of the
documents hands my passport back. 'Please follow me, sir.'

'Where? For Christ's sake, what's the nonsense now?'

The three adopt pained frowns that look unsettlingly identical. 'I'll
walk you through Customs so you aren't held up any further,' he
says.

'I'm sorry.' Mortifyingly, I am.

As I follow him out of the interrogation room and through the
green exit at Customs I struggle to steer the case ahead of me, almost
catching his heels more than once. Beyond a barrier in the arrivals
hall, people brandish placards with the names of passengers. I glance
along the line, but of course I can't see my name. Above them a clock
magnifies my realisation that Mark's play starts in less than an hour,
and I turn my frustration on my escort. 'Did it really have to take that
long when I'd done absolutely nothing at all?'

'I wouldn't quite say that, sir.'

'I'd done nothing illegal. Nothing that's against the law where I
was, at any rate.'

'Behaviour we'd call paedophilia is tolerated in some countries.
That doesn't mean you can avoid prosecution when you return to
ours. Now if you'll excuse me...'

I will. I wish I had sooner. Bystanders are staring at me over the
barrier as if they've overheard the comments I would least have liked
anyone to hear. I'm trundling the case ahead of me – I feel capable of
using it to ram anyone who looks at me wrong – when I see that my
humiliation hasn't been observed just by strangers. Pacing me behind
the silent chorus line, their faces set for a confrontation, are Warren
and Bebe Halloran.

As the Shogun leaves the car park I begin to think the Hallorans
have taken a vow of silence until Warren thanks the attendant
for his change. The word is enough to release some of mine. 'Would
somebody have a phone I could borrow?'

Bebe turns with a slowness that I could take for reluctance to look
at me. 'We thought you were meant to be sufficient now.'

'I've left mine at home.'

'Home.'

'Natalie's.'

I can see that her response is going to be pointed, but I don't
expect 'Let me guess. You need to call a lawyer.'

'No, the bank.'

'I won't ask why,' Bebe says, but might as well. 'Don't tell us
you're in money trouble.'

'Not for any longer than it takes me to talk to them.'

'What are you figuring on fixing?' says Warren.

'Some fool has put me in the red.'

'Maybe you want to check your account before you throw a fit,'
he says and hands Bebe his mobile, presumably to pass to me. 'If it's
online it's on here.'

I have to thrust my hand between the front seats before she yields
up the phone. By now the Shogun is racing past Heathrow. Its speed
is subtracted from a take-off, so that the airliner appears to hang
motionless in the black air as if a film has been paused while I wait
for the Internet to load. The vehicle feels cramped and dark with
hostility, and chilled as much by it as by the night, in which the edges
of the pavements are fat with cleared snow. We've reached the
motorway stretch of the Great West Road by the time I type my
identification. My tiny portfolio page appears, and I bring up the
details of the deposit account. I peer at the shrunken transactions in
one kind of disbelief and then another. 'Idiots,' I hiss.

'Gee, there seem to be a lot of those around,' Bebe says. 'Which
ones now?'

'The bank. They've gone and paid my publisher twice as much as
the publisher paid me.'

'Isn't that called vanity publishing?'

This reminds me so much of Smilemime that for a crazed instant
I'm tempted to discover what he has been saying about me since I was
in the Pot of Gold. 'No,' I say and take the phone offline. 'It's mismanagement.
Bungling. Ineptitude. Incompetence. Cack-handedness.
That's what you're suffering from if your hands are full of cack.'

Bebe emits a small prim gasp, and Warren advises 'I wouldn't say
all that to your bank.'

I wait for the message to finish exhorting me to select keys. At last
I'm connected with an agent, or at least with an assurance that the
bank values my call even though every one of its operatives is busy
elsewhere. This is repeated so often that it's begun to sound like a
lullaby, however little it alleviates my tension, when a slightly less
automatic voice says 'Tess speaking. May I take your name?'

'You've already taken a lot more than that.' I don't know if she
hears this, but I ensure she hears 'Simon Lester.' I tell her my account
number and the sort code and my date of birth and my mother's
maiden name and the recipient of a standing order from my current
account, but when she asks for the amount I've had enough. 'I
couldn't tell you. There's a limit to the stuff I keep in my head. Believe
me, if I wasn't who I say I am I wouldn't be this pissed.'

Bebe tuts and Warren shakes his head as Tess says 'How may I
help you, Mr Lister?'

Does she really say that? It sounded as if there was a gap where the
vowel should have been. I hope the connection isn't breaking up, but
rather that than my consciousness. 'Lester,' I say with just a fraction
of my rage. 'You've paid out an insane chunk of my money to LUP,
that's London University Press. Tell me why.'

I could take the silence for an admission of guilt until she says 'We
must have received an instruction.'

'Not from me. Who from?'

'From whom,' Bebe murmurs as Tess breaks the silence, fragments
of which are embedded in her answer. 'We don't see to ha a re or, Mr
L ster.'

'You're coming apart. You bet there's no record. What are you
going to do about it?'

'It does loo a i there may ha bee an e or. If you cou pu i in iting – '

'I'll email you, that's fastest. You're damn right there's an error,
and you need to deal with it now.'

'Ple ho on whi I spe to – '

I assume she's consulting her supervisor. The gap at the end of her
sentence is followed by Mozart on a synthesiser, music whose jollity I
find inappropriate. It splits into a run of random samples, and I hold the
mobile away from my face until Tess interrupts the performance. 'We ca
cre it your a ount be or you ut i in wri ing.'

'I should bloody well think so too.' Instead of this I say 'Thank you
for your help. I'll email you tomorrow at the latest.' As I pass the
phone to Bebe while the car speeds onto the Hammersmith Flyover I
say 'I think this needs recharging. I only just got the message.'

She avoids touching my fingers as she takes the phone.
'Everything's satisfactory otherwise, is it?'

'Pretty well. You sound as if you don't think it should be.'

'You usually get escorted out of airports by security, do you?'

'He took me through Customs so I wouldn't be delayed any more.
I'd drawn some attention because a handler damaged my case, you
saw, and then they insisted on going through my things.'

'We've been waiting for hours because Natalie asked.' Yet more
accusingly Bebe enquires 'What was he saying to you?'

'Just about their procedures. Nothing to do with me.'

'Maybe you're the biggest innocent we ever met,' says Warren.

'We thought you might be held up because you'd brought back
something you shouldn't,' Bebe says and spies on me in the mirror.

'Anything special?'

'Try drugs. We know you were in Amsterdam.'

'Only because I was taken.'

'Like I said, the biggest innocent,' says Warren. 'Sounds like
you've no control over where you go or what happens when you get
there.'

'I've plenty,' I protest, though for a moment his formulation seems
far too accurate. 'Do you honestly think I'm such a fool I'd bring
drugs back from Amsterdam?'

The Hallorans are silent all the way to Hyde Park Corner. They
seem preoccupied, and I am by the meagre traces of snow along the
route. How could it have been bad enough to close the airports? I'm
about to wonder aloud as the Shogun veers up Piccadilly, and then
Warren says 'Anything else you're planning on denying?'

'What else have you got?'

This time the silence lasts as far as Trafalgar Square, from which
pigeons rise like discoloured remnants of snow. I take my question to
have concluded the interrogation until Warren says 'How did you get
on in Hollywood?'

'Well, it wasn't quite Hollywood. It – '

'So we understand,' Bebe says, and the lights along the Strand lend
her eyes a piercing gleam.

'It was a film archive, and very useful too. I've brought back plenty
of ideas.'

'Maybe you should keep them to yourself.'

I'm attempting to interpret this when Warren says 'And how did
you find your director?'

'Pretty useful.'

'Pretty,' Bebe repeats.

'Very, if you like.'

'This isn't about what we like. Useful how?'

'As a source of information.'

'Gee, you must be some writer,' Bebe says. 'You stayed in their
house for a week – '

I find this needlessly disconcerting when my sense of time is at the
mercy of jet lag. 'It wasn't a week.'

'Nearly a week if it's so important to you, and all you did was talk
to them.'

Fleet Street flourishes giant mastheads of newspapers at me, and I
feel as if I'm under investigation. Before I can respond to Bebe's
comment she says 'What was their name again?'

'Willie Hart.'

'Willie as in...'

'Hart.'

The luminous dome of St Paul's floats by, and I'm reminded of a
circus tent. The car swings fast along Cannon Street as though it's
expressing the impatience in Warren's voice. 'She's asking you what
it stands for.'

'More than I'm going to.'

I hear myself say this, but not aloud. I haven't phrased my answer when
Bebe says 'No I'm not, I'm telling him. It's Wilhelmina.'

'If you knew, why did you ask?' That's far too defensive, and I add
'Forget it. The important thing is I didn't know.'

'Something must be interfering with your senses,' Warren says.
'Spending too long in front of the screen, maybe.'

'I mean I didn't till I met her.' I could add that I didn't then, but
instead I demand 'When did you?'

'Before you got there,' Bebe says in some kind of triumph. 'We
looked in your favourite place.'

'The Internet,' says Warren.

'You must be more at home there than I am. All I could come up
with was Willie.'

I might have phrased that better. The illuminated Tower of London
has appeared ahead, and I'm almost exhausted enough to imagine that
Warren is driving me to prison, especially given the tone of his question.
'That's what you'll be telling Natalie, is it?'

'Yes, since it's the truth. Why, what will you be telling her?'

'We already have,' says Bebe.

'May I know what exactly?' I ask with several times the confidence
I feel.

'Hey, Simon, what do you think?' Warren retorts. 'There's no way
you can be as foolish as you're playing it.'

'Perhaps you could advise me when you told her at least.'

'As soon as we found out, of course,' Bebe says.

So Natalie knew when she emailed me at Limestones. Now I see
the reply she was hoping for, and why her response to mine was so
guarded. I ignore Bebe's surveillance in the mirror and gaze ahead as
we cross the bridge to Southwark. In a minute the Shogun turns left
with a screech of charred rubber to the Abbey School.

Children with electric lanterns on poles are ushering the last cars
into parking places in the schoolyard. Two ranks of children with
lanterns sing 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' to welcome parents
into the school. As the car slows I release my seat belt, although the
captain hasn't turned off the sign. 'Excuse me if I run ahead to find
them,' I say, and as soon as it stops I'm out of the car.

Snowflakes sparkle in the dark air like speckles in an old copy of
a film. The swaying lights distort the shadows of their bearers and
send them ranging about the yard. As I hurry between the waits the
carol falls silent, leaving a corrupted echo in my head: 'God rest ye
merry mental men'. It's an ancient joke and not even a good one. I'm
nearly at the door when I see that the child nearest to it on the left is
the headmistress. 'Miss Moss,' I say clumsily enough for someone to
giggle nearby. 'We met. Simon Lester.'

She only peers at me, and I have the unbearable idea that the
Hallorans will need to vouch for me. As I hear their doors slam I say
'I'm with Natalie Halloran, if you remember.'

Even this doesn't appear to placate her. Perhaps she disapproves of
my flaunting the relationship in front of her innocents. A shiver takes
me by the neck and measures my spine, and I use it as an excuse to
lurch into the school. If she wants to stop me she'll have to speak,
unless she grabs me. She does neither, and I dash after two sets of
parents or at any rate two couples to the assembly hall.

The ranks of folding seats are almost full. A man has planted a
small boy on his shoulders so that the toddler can see the stage, which
is divided by a partition containing a door. The left half of the stage
is bare, while the right has a backdrop of a night sky with a single
enormous star. As I search for Natalie I seem to glimpse on the edge
of my vision the toddler performing a handstand on the man's
shoulders and then a somersault. I haven't time to look, to prove that
I could have seen nothing of the kind. I've located Natalie on the third
row, where she has reserved just two seats. 'There you are,' she says
too neutrally for my liking.

As I sit next to her, daring anyone to challenge me for the position,
children peep around the night sky. She raises a hand, and I'm afraid
she means to push me away until she waves. More of Mark in a
striped headdress and robe appears beside the sky as he waves back.
He catches my eye and gives me a grin that looks like a promise of
fun. Is he scratching his wrist? He disappears behind the scenes before
I can be sure, and his grandparents arrive at the end of the row. I've
just concluded that the best course is to give up my seat for Bebe
when a father lifts his small daughter onto his lap, and the Hallorans
take the seats beside me. 'We thought we'd been disowned there for
a moment,' Bebe says.

'It's Mark's show,' Natalie whispers. 'Let's be nice.'

I fear this may imply she won't be afterwards. Any further
dialogue is cut off by the arrival of Joseph and an emphatically
pregnant Mary onstage, a sight that's greeted by muffled laughter.
They pace around the starry section of the stage and keep returning
to the door into the other half, which does duty as a series of accommodations
represented by placards that other children hold in front
of it. Eventually Joseph and Mary find a stable for the night but have
to wait outside while children strew it with hay and populate it with
cloth animals. These include an elephant and a brace of Teddy bears,
favourites sacrificed to the production and eliciting more affectionate
mirth from the audience. Four of the tallest children hide the stable
with a sheet as Joseph ushers Mary in. A spotlight lends the star
brilliance as a number of robed children guarding toy sheep sing
'While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night', before the end of
which the sheet has grown wobbly enough to suggest that it's
concealing action more vigorous than seems appropriate. Is that
another reason I'm uneasy? There are signs of mute conflict among
the bearers, quelled only by gestures from a teacher in the wings. He
keeps rubbing his scalp as if to complete its baldness, and I wish his
agitation weren't visible. Perhaps it's why I'm nervous of seeing
Mark.