The Grin of the Dark (38 page)

'Well, thank you for the cake and all it's brought me, Joe. You
must have the next piece.'

'I don't think I want it if it's offered in that spirit.'

'Who'll be next, then? Someone who can vouch for its innocence. We
don't want anybody thinking Joe provided something questionable.'

I don't know why I chose that word. It makes my speech feel
dangerously close to straying out of control, as if the ingredients of
the cake may not be as trustworthy as I've been led to believe. I could
almost fancy that the word has disturbed someone else in the room.
Of course Colin and Rufus are aware of its significance. 'I think I'll
take a rain check,' Bebe says.

'Me too,' says Warren.

Nicholas merely shrugs, and even Natalie looks disinclined to
respond. I'm struggling not to imagine that she's being influenced by
her employer, Mark's father, when Mark says 'I'd like some.'

I have an unhappy sense that his gesture on my behalf – even if it
isn't one, that's how it's bound to be interpreted – will cause more
problems than it solves. Nevertheless I cut him a slice that spans the
middle of the clown's mouth. As he raises it to his own he says 'Can
Simon open one of his presents now?'

I'm not sure how much urgency I sense. 'Any in particular?'

'The one mummy and her friend got.'

There's no mistaking the tension this brings into the room. I avoid
glancing at Nicholas to discover how much of it is his, and pick up
the flat rectangular package that wishes me happy birthday and love2
in Natalie's handwriting. 'This one?'

'That's right, isn't it, mummy?' Mark chortles, spluttering crumbs.
He wipes his mouth as I untie the bow. Before I peel back the
silvery wrapping I can tell that the item is a DVD. I uncover the back
of the case, which is blank. Is emptiness the joke that's provoking
Mark's caked mirth? I turn the case over and strip it of wrapping, and
have to laugh as Mark does harder. The rudimentary cover tells me
that it contains Tubby's lost and final film,
Tubby Tells the Truth
.

The best word for the cover is amateur. A sheet of paper has been
cut into a shape with aspirations to the rectangular and inserted
under the transparent surface of the plastic case. Beneath the title,
which is printed in capitals simple enough for a child's first reading
book, is a blurred image, presumably a still from the film, of Tubby
in a gown and mortarboard. He's pointing with a stick that
resembles a wand at a dozen or more lines chalked on a blackboard.
I hope the reproduction on the disc is clearer, because it's impossible
to judge whether the text is nonsense. If Tubby's face and his fixed
grin seem better defined, perhaps that's because they're more
familiar. Around me everyone is smiling like him – anticipating my
reaction, especially Mark. 'Thank you, it's just what I wanted,' I tell
Natalie and give her a lasting kiss, even if it discomforts at least one
person more than Mark. When I eventually pull away from her smile
I say 'Where on earth did you find it?'

'Online. Everything's there if you look hard enough.'

This makes me feel unexpectedly inadequate. 'You mean you
downloaded it?'

'No, it was on an auction site.'

'An expensive one,' Bebe is concerned I should know.

'I hope you didn't pay too much, Natty.'

'I don't see how it could be when it's so important to you.
Anyway, we'll make it back from your book, or maybe your
publishers could cover the expense.'

'Worth a thought,' Rufus says to Colin, who laughs.

I'm still feeling less adept with the Internet than I ought to be,
which may be why I remind Natalie 'And you said someone at work
helped.'

'Guilty as charged,' says Mark's father.

Too late I realise I was willing it not to have been Nicholas. 'Then
I must thank you as well.'

'Gratitude accepted.'

'Nicholas had it picked up by courier,' Natalie says, 'otherwise we
wouldn't have had it in time.'

'Dubbing the granite dude, then.'

'Run that past me again?' Nicholas says with a frown at Mark's
giggling.

I struggle to retrieve my language from a random eruption of
mirth. 'I said double the gratitude.'

'Likewise the acceptance.'

'Where did you have it picked up from?'

I believe my words are clear enough, but Nicholas manages simultaneously
to scowl and raise his eyebrows. I'm about to repeat the
question, even if it emerges yet more deformed, when Mark says 'Can
we watch Tubby now?'

'Wouldn't you rather wait till you can make notes?' Rufus asks
me.

'I wouldn't mind having your impressions. Colin's too.'

'Doesn't anybody else count?' says Bebe.

Any ill-defined doubts I have about watching the film in all the
present company give way to recklessness. If she's inviting the
experience, she can be responsible for the consequences. 'Everybody's
welcome,' I say as though I'm at home. 'It's been a while since
Tubby's had a proper audience.'

'Better fortify ourselves on the way,' says Warren.

Of course this isn't meant to sound ominous. He's proposing to
replenish our drinks, which he does. The waxy sweetness left over
from the cake turns my Merlot harsh as medicine, a taste that
quickens a pulse in my skull. I don't know what effect the cake has
on Mark's orange juice; his smile wobbles oddly before growing firm,
presumably at the thought of the imminent show. Certainly he's first
into the screening room.

Warren seems to need to take charge. He holds out his hand for
the disc. I thumb the plastic spindle in the middle of the case and lift
the disc with my fingertips, only to find that my precautions are
somewhat beside the point. Surely Natalie knows better than to touch
the playing surface, but somebody has smudged it with marks that
must be fingerprints despite their lack of whorls. As Warren loads the
disc into the player I sit beside Mark on the couch directly in front of
the screen. Natalie is on the other side, and my publishers sit at our
feet on the polished floorboards. Nicholas and Joe attempt to leave
the remaining seats for our hosts, but Warren brings Bebe a diningroom
chair and another for himself. By now Mark is restless with
impatience, swinging his feet in mid-air while their blurred reflections
pedal in the depths of the floor. As Warren picks up the remote
control Mark says 'Can we have the lights off again?'

'Why, are you fond of the dark?' says Bebe.

I'm trying to decide whether her tone implied the comma when
Mark says 'It'll make the film more real.'

'Gee, here's something else that isn't real. It's your movie, Simon.
Your call.'

Her first comment has angered me so much that I want to put an
end to the sight of her. 'I'll go for the dark.'

I'm not sure if the unease I sense is hers as, having switched on the
cinema system, Warren turns the light off. The room is illuminated by
the screen, which drains everyone of colour. As Warren thumbs the
control the screen takes on a cloudless blue. It stays like that until I
wonder if the disc is blank and how I'll feel if it is. Then the azure
vanishes, driven out by the credits of the film.

There aren't many.
Tubby Tells the Truth. A Tubby Thackeray
Production. Written by and Starring Tubby Thackeray. Directed by
Orville Hart
. I'm wondering who photographed and edited it, not to
mention who composed any missing score, when the film begins. The
camera pans away from a blackboard on which the credits were
chalked to show us Tubby crammed behind a desk, then cuts to
another student version of him seated in the otherwise empty
classroom. Both of him are broader than ever. 'Wrong ratio,' Colin
protests.

'Never mind,' Bebe says as if she's soothing a fractious child. 'I
guess that was the best they could do in those days.'

'Colin means you're showing it in the wrong one,' I say. 'It would
have been shot fullscreen.'

'Nothing wrong with your eyes, is there? That does fill the screen.'

I'm keeping my gaze on the film, which makes her and everybody
else's faces flicker at the edge of my vision. 'We mean it wasn't shot
that way. It shouldn't fill this screen.'

'That's the way we like it.'

'Right, we've paid to have it wide,' says Warren.

By now Tubby has pranced into the classroom to lecture his
students, who fling missiles at each other whenever his back is turned.
What feels like at least a minute's impassioned oration is translated
as a single intertitle of gibberish. As if he's aware of the inadequacy,
the teacher grabs a stick of chalk from the shelf of the blackboard and
sets about scribbling in a hand I recognise all too well. The board
seems to have other ideas; it pivots away whenever he tries to write
on it until, having sprawled over it and jumped at it to catch it
unawares and stood on his head to write while the board is back to
front and upside down, he clings to it with one hand and rides it while
it swings over and over. The result of all these exertions, throughout
which he maintains his unblinking wide-eyed grin, is precisely the
same as the intertitle. I could imagine that he's growing desperate,
since I've yet to hear a single laugh.

Perhaps the argument about ratios has left everyone too conscious
of the wrongness of the image. For myself, I'm additionally thrown
by seeing Tubby as a slapstick victim and by the irrelevance of the
title of the film. The silence feels unquiet, and it's emphasised by the
speaker system; I could fancy I'm surrounded by the absence or the
threat of Tubby's laughter. Could everyone be waiting for me to
laugh, since it's my birthday present? Tubby finishes another
dramatic pop-eyed grinning declaration and seizes a piece of chalk to
summarise it. I expect more antics from the blackboard, and when the
chalk explodes as he inscribes the first stroke I emit a surprised
chuckle. That's apparently the cue. At once everyone is competing for
mirth.

Is the film really so hilarious all of a sudden? Perhaps they're
releasing amusement that was pent up. Mark is giggling wildest, but
Rufus and Colin aren't far behind. Warren's merriment is almost as
shrill as his wife's; despite their habitually amused looks, I don't recall
ever having heard them laugh before. Joe chortles like an understudy
for Santa Claus while Nicholas signifies his jollity with a succession
of staccato grunts. The uproar covers Natalie's reaction. She's
shaking and weeping, so that only her wide grin and intent eyes
convey that she's doing so with glee. The unstable light appears to be
turning all the faces around me into blanched comedic masks, unless
it's simply emphasising aspects of them I've overlooked. I strive to
concentrate on the screen, where the students are exchanging increasingly
extravagant missiles – having graduated from balls of paper and
ink pellets to exercise books, they're now slinging baseballs at each
other's heads and through the glass of the classroom windows – while
pedagogue Tubby battles with his chalk and removes its latest errant
fragments from his nostrils. He manages to write another incomprehensible
line before he returns to his desperate clownish mouthing.
Mark gulps and succeeds in controlling his laughter enough to
pronounce 'I want to know what he's saying.'

'Do you want us to make less noise?' Rufus splutters.

'What a rude young – ' Colin disguises his last word as a laugh.

'You're asking us to be quiet so you can hear,' Rufus suggests,
though his mirth is close to shaking his words to bits.

Mark stamps his foot, which appears to send quivers through the
floor. The unreliable light seems close to transforming the boards into
jelly or some less stable medium. 'I just want to know,' he protests,
no longer laughing.

'I expect he's saying things as silly as he is,' Natalie says.

'We can't be sure of that, can we?' While I realise she means to
calm Mark, I think a better method is to admit I agree with him. 'I'd
like to know too,' I say. 'Even if it's nonsense it would be worth
seeing what he's inventing.'

'I could tell you.'

I can't identify the speaker amid all the mirth until Rufus responds
none too invitingly 'How are you going to do that, Colin?'

'I taught myself to read lips. Nothing simpler. I was going to write
about what silent actors really say for
Cineassed
.'

Bebe's laughter stops so abruptly it might have been cut from a
soundtrack. 'Excuse me, were you involved with that publication?'

'Involved up to my hilt and proud of it. Wrote a lot of it and edited
it all.'

'You didn't tell us that about your friend, Natalie,' Warren
objects.

I'm afraid he or Bebe may ask Colin to leave before he interprets the
film. 'Have you been following what he said, Colin? Tubby, I mean.'

'Of course. That's what I'm here for.'

I let that joke go and say 'Can you tell us what it was?'

'A lot of it's the same kind of crap as the intertitles.'

'Ladies present,' I feel bound to mutter.

'You don't say.'

Presumably he's cynical because we know that Natalie has heard
and indeed said worse, but I hope Bebe isn't newly offended. 'What's
made sense?' I insist.

'If you're putting it like that, not much at all.'

'Anything coherent,' I say, I'm not sure how much on Mark's
behalf.

Colin turns his colourlessly luminous face but not his eyes in my
direction and begins to intone sentences solemnly as a priest or a
celebrant of some other ritual. 'The portal once opened can never be
closed. The infinite shall be contained beyond the portal. The known
shall never be unknown, nor shall the unknown be. All that cannot
be shall be. All shall be revealed to he who searches. The search shall
choose the searcher. All doors open to him, and all doors are one. He
who opens the portal is the portal.'

Colin's chant has grown increasingly parodic, though I'm unsure of
what. It and some aspect of the film I'm unable to define are making
me worse than nervous. Tubby has run out of chalk and is trying to
write with his forefinger, which – in a gag so gruesome that all by itself
it might have denied the film a release – breaks. He clutches his injured
hand while he executes a wide-eyed grinning agonised jig until he spies
an object on the floor. Whether it's chalk or the joint of his finger, he
seizes it and runs at the blackboard. The board flips over, taking him
with it, and when it comes to rest his face is dangling upside down
beneath it, still lecturing. During all this Colin has been saying 'The
searcher is the jester of the universe. He is its jest, which is his search.
He shall perform the quest that spans all time and space. The quest is
as ancient as the dark. All is created of the dark, and all shall be dark.
The searcher shall hear the voice of the dark, which is infinite
laughter.'

The student Tubbies fling mud or handfuls of some other
glistening substance at their inverted tutor and into his fallen mortarboard.
Perhaps that's the coda, though the copy seems incomplete;
with no words to announce that it's the end, the film is over. As the
screen turns white with the blankness of the rest of the disc,
everybody grins at me. In the relentless light they might all be wearing
pallid makeup if not masks. The sense that they're all waiting for me
to speak makes me do so before I can think, and I hear myself
demand 'Was that about me?'

After a prolonged silence Bebe says 'My goodness, what a way to
thank a person for a present.'

'Maybe he shouldn't have opened it till tomorrow,' says Warren.

That strikes me as the far side of ridiculous, but no more so than
my own thoughts. I'm wondering if Colin invented any of the material
he claimed to be translating. Why would he have done so? What
possessed me to ask the question I asked? Warren switches on the
room light, and I feel so exposed to everybody's scrutiny that I have to
struggle not to hide my face. A grinning stillness seems to underlie
everyone's features, a buried mask about to be revealed. I must have
their bones in mind, although I could imagine that Warren's and
Bebe's suntans – perhaps other people's too – have faded so as to
betray traces of clownish makeup. Nobody must suspect I'm seeing
what I can't really be seeing. I mustn't draw any more attention to
myself, and I'm tentatively grateful when Mark speaks. 'Colin?'