Her voice scarcely carries across the corridor, but I can't be imagining the sounds her mouth forms, having concealed the widest grin at my predicament – I'm almost sure it did. 'I'm still no nearer knowing what you want,' she at least mouths.
'Just to say hello as neighbours do. I heard you in the corridor.'
'What did you hear?'
I feel as if the conversation has reverted to its opening. I'm distracted by the toddler, which is bouncing so vigorously I can't focus on it to disprove that its gleeful face is swelling out of the white hood like a balloon. Of course the hood is simply being shaken off, and the screen isn't really displaying naked babies crawling over one another. I veer across the corridor, but I'd have to go all the way into the apartment to identify the greyish images. 'You were laughing at something,' I tell the woman. 'Can I ask what?'
'When?'
The question is little more than a baring of her teeth. 'Just before we met,' I say.
'I wasn't there. Whatever you heard, it wasn't me.'
I'm tempted to retort that she isn't audible now, but the view behind her has grown even more distracting. How can the toddler's antics be reflected in the glass within the frames of all the posters? Certainly there's pallid movement inside every frame, and I'm even less able to distinguish the posters themselves. As for the toddler, he has twirled like the contents of a spider's web to face me. With the distance or the movement of the sling or both, I'm unable to determine how widely he has begun to grin. The hood has fallen back, which lends it an unpleasant resemblance to a ruff of whitish fat. The toddler's plump unhealthily pale face quivers at each bounce, and I can do without the notion that it looks ready to slither off his bald head. I'm trying to find some element of normality as well as showing concern as I say 'Is that safe?'
'That has a name.'
Her lips haven't finished moving when she turns away. Perhaps she has decided that the toddler is indeed in peril, since she slams the door. I didn't notice her footwear, but she must be wearing strapless sandals for her tread to sound so large and floppy. 'Did he want to talk, then? Is that why he did such a dance?' she asks louder than seems to makes sense, and if I let myself I could imagine she's talking to me. I shut my door harder than she closed hers. I haven't time for any more meaningless diversions. I need to see what Thackeray left behind.
THIRTY-SEVEN - REMOTENESS
'Hi, Mark. What have you been up to?'
'I've been watching your DVD with Tubby on. Mummy said you wouldn't mind if I was careful.'
'Did she? Maybe you should be careful you don't wear it out.'
'That's silly. DVDs don't wear out. We've got him for always now.'
'Calm down, Mark. No need to panic. Maybe you shouldn't watch it too much in case you wear your brain out.'
'I won't. It makes my brain feel lots more awake. You wanted me to watch so I could tell you what I thought.'
'You did, so there's no need – '
'I've thought some more.'
'Ah. Well, as long as you have, what's the conclusion?'
'It isn't like Laurel and Hardy or any of them. It's like seeing a very old play, like the one we did at school last week.'
'I can't say I see the resemblance.'
'Maybe they've both got old things in. You know, faithy things. It still makes me laugh.'
'I won't ask which. Seriously, I hope you're finding other diversions as well.'
'What are those?'
'Activities. Fun. I'm impressed by how grown-up you are, Mark, but don't miss out on things you may not have time for when you're older.'
'I've been looking for Tubby for you.'
'That's very thoughtful of you. Where?'
'Sorry. It sounded like you thought he was round here.'
'All right, Mark, have a laugh and then tell me where.'
'Where would you look for anything? On the Internet, of course.'
'I should warn you, you may find a lot that isn't true and never was. Stuff people imagine or make up for reasons that don't make any sense.'
'I'll show you what I've found when we see you.'
'I'll be waiting. Is Natalie there?'
'Here I am. I thought you'd never finish discussing someone we needn't name. How's your hotel?'
'Lives up to its name and doesn't let you forget it. Shouts it everywhere you look.'
'Lots of style, you mean.'
'Don't know about the substance, though.'
'I expect you can survive until we pick you up.'
'I honestly don't mind if we all make our ways to my parents.'
'We'll come for you. Mark's very proud of his route off the Internet.'
'See you tomorrow, then. Love to both.'
'Ours to you,' says Natalie and leaves me alone in a room where everything appears to be about to effloresce or to twist into another shape: the unfurling head and foot of the double bed, the almost angelically winged chair, the tips of the curves of the rest of the bedroom furniture, the glass fans that crown the mirrors. I'm not sure if this is art deco or nouveau, and I don't think the hotel is any surer. My damaged suitcase looks misplaced in the midst of so much extravagance, and so does the television, especially since it can receive the Internet. I wander to the window, which has silenced what I take to be a Mancunian tradition – a fair that fills Piccadilly Gardens with enough coloured lights for a thicket of Christmas trees. The soundless riot of activity makes me feel even more detached from my surroundings. Before I decide how to spend my evening I ought at least to check my email. I log on to find a message from Colin, and not just a message.
Salutations to our foremost name! We both think you've made an excellent start on our book, not that we'd expect less. I've made just the odd tweak. For instance, maybe it should address the subject faster – we don't want anyone to think you wish you were writing about something else. Film is the art of the last century just like the Internet is the medium of the future, so don't give people any chance to get away from it. I've attached the changes to you. Let me know how they look.
Am I reluctant to open the attachment? My fingers are recalling how crippled they were by lugging the suitcase. I have to press them together to regain enough control to click the mouse.
Some resurrections can't be suppressed, and Tubby Thackeray's won't be. Never heard of him? You won't be saying that for long. His comedies caused controversy when they went much further than his rival Charlie Chaplin, and they're set to cause it now. Genre can't contain them. Whatever rules you think slapstick has, he breaks them. They must have looked like anarchist propaganda, but they're too anarchic for propaganda. Perhaps by the end of this book we'll be on our way to understanding what they are...
Most of the chapter isn't so spectacularly recast. Some of the ideas in the first paragraph are versions of points I made later on. I feel oddly distanced from the material and unable to work up much anger. If anything, I'm glad we have a final draft that the publisher can use to help promote the book. Jet lag must be why, whenever I attempt to ponder Tubby's films or my notes about them just now, my mind swarms with undefined connections and feels close to overload. At least Christmas will give me a break, after which I'm sure I'll be able to write.
There are at least a dozen other emails, but none from Willie Hart or from the bank. I delete the mass mailings unread and check the newsgroups. Smilemime hasn't responded to my challenge. I ought to take that as an admission of defeat – I hope everyone else does – but, entirely ridiculously, I feel neglected, ignored, hardly even present. It must be another symptom of jet lag, but I wish I could phone someone for company – and then I remember that I may have unfinished business.
'Films for fun...' I wait for Charley Tracy to finish inviting me to call the mobile if there's a panic. My nerves do feel electrified by the time it gives me a chance to say 'Anybody there? I was wondering – '
'It's never Professor Lester.'
'It isn't, no. Just plain Simon.'
'Plain and simple, eh? How
do then, just plain Simon. How's your book coming?'
'I've seen almost all of Tubby's films. I'm in Manchester to do one more piece of research.'
'What a coincidence. More like a miracle. Must be the time of year.'
'I was going to ask you if there were any other leads I should follow up. Last time we spoke you said you'd meant to take me somewhere else.'
'Do us a favour and I'll do you one, how's that?'
'May I know what they are?'
'Can you talk to some folk about Tubby Thackeray?'
'That's the one you're asking.'
'Could be either.'
The conversation is starting to seem like a joke, not least because the mirrors are displaying my unamused grin. 'So tell me about them,' I urge.
'Just a bunch that like a laugh. They're expecting me to give them a talk, but I bet they'd rather hear from a real book writer that can tell them about Tubby. I know I would.'
'When would you need me?'
'Soon as I can get you. Want to tell me where you are?'
'The Style Hotel.'
'That's not like the thing you have to climb over.'
'Style with a y,' I say, suspecting that he knows perfectly well.
'Sounds like your kind of place.'
I won't take that as a sly gibe. 'Do you know where – '
'By the fair. See you outside,' Tracy says, and I'm alone with my ruefully grinning self.
THIRTY-EIGHT - I EMOTE
Perhaps at least one office party is celebrating at the funfair. The big wheel appears to be laden with businessmen. Whenever a carriage is lifted above the hundred-yard races of traffic outside the hotel, the passengers seem to turn their grey twilit faces to me. Are they seeing something behind me, beyond the roof, and telling their mobiles about it? Car drivers are using mobiles too, and commuters on the elongated trams that skirt the square, and pedestrians and loiterers around me on the pavement, so that I could imagine I'm surrounded by a solitary communication. Quite a few are gazing silently at their phone screens, and at least one man is grinning at his. I'm distracted from all this by a car that prowls along the kerb.
It's a shabby Ford saloon the colour of rust, with a dent in the front passenger door. It spews fumes like a magnified negative image of the breaths that hover beside all the mobiles. The driver's large pale face ducks towards me as the car judders to a halt, and then he leans across the passenger seat to roll the window down. He's Charley Tracy. 'Don't know what you're waiting for,' he calls.
His features aren't as large as the dimness made them look. Only his head is as big as I thought. He's wearing a dinner suit and white shirt and bow tie, all of which lends him the appearance of a bouncer more than the orator he presumably intends to resemble. His cramped face seems to wince smaller at the harsh dry creak of my door. I haven't finished hauling the twisted safety belt out of its slot when he swerves the car across two lanes and through a set of traffic lights that have just turned red. 'How long have you had a car?' I wonder aloud.
'A lot longer than I've known you.'
Does he think I meant to criticise his driving? I simply had his van in mind. That almost revives a memory, but when I strain to recapture it there's only vagueness. I don't speak again until we've left a broad road out of the city for one that leads past the university. 'So where were you meaning to take me last time?'
He honks his horn like a speechless comedian, a response that I'm attempting to interpret when I notice he's ogling a gaggle of girls dressed as several sizes of Santa Claus. Once they're out of sight even of the mirror he says 'That was it.'
'You've lost me.'
'The university. Bet you don't know why anyone would look for Tubby there.'
He sounds so enthusiastic, at least for him, that I'm reluctant to destroy his triumph. 'Tell me.'
'Not so great at research even if you went to college, eh? Maybe it ought to be me writing your book.' As I ponder how much more of this I can politely take he adds 'It's where he started being Tubby.'
Presumably I should hear a name, not an adjective. 'Putting on shows, do you mean?'
'If that's what you want to call it. You'll see. He left all his notes.'
'For his routines, do you mean? That would be exactly what the doctor ordered.'
'I said you'll see. Don't know what you'll do then.'
The road grows crowded between dozens of Indian restaurants. The odd people sporting red floppy festive hats resemble drunken tourists. Beyond the restaurants the road leads past large houses set back in larger gardens, in the midst of which the car veers across the road in front of an onrush of traffic and speeds between a pair of spiked iron gates. We've arrived at a church. I presume it's deconsecrated, since the churchyard has been razed to provide a car park. Streetlamps cast the shadows of bare trees onto the façade, cracking the plain pale stone and the stained-glass windows. The concrete grounds are occupied by dozens of cars, so that Tracy has to park around the side of the building. As he drags the handbrake erect he says 'Better get a move on. You're late.'
By the time I shut my door with a resounding creak he has waddled into the porch. It's decorated with posters, none of which I have a chance to read before Tracy shoves the doors into the church wide. 'Here he is at last,' a woman cries.
She could mean me, because I've seen her before. With her shawl and her numerous jewels she looks more than ever like a fortune-teller. I recognise other people seated on the pews: the heavy-eyed heavyweight, the man with the tortoiseshell scalp, the long-faced fellow with bristling eyebrows, the almost colourless bony woman, and could the man whose round face seems to need a stack of chins to prop it up have been selling tickets outside the St Pancras Theatre? I'm virtually certain that more of the audience were at the fair. 'What is this?' I mutter.
'What do you think? It's our Christmas get-together.'
Or perhaps Tracy said it was theirs, although people greet him as he plods down the aisle to the space vacated by an altar. 'Merry Christmas, Chuck,' they call, or 'Many of them' or 'Here's another one.' Disconcertingly, nobody acknowledges me when I follow him. I take some kind of refuge on the front seat closest to the left-hand wall as if I'm playing an anonymous spectator, at least until Tracy speaks. 'Who's heard of Simon Lester?'
'I have.'
Surely I don't say this aloud, but it prevents me from hearing whether anyone else did. The murmur that passes through the audience seems to consist mostly of 'Who?'
'Sigh Mon Lest Err,' Tracy pronounces, pointing at me. 'Britain's premier young film critic, they tell me. He's the surprise guest tonight. He's going to tell us about the films he's dug up.'
'Which fillums?' says a woman, perhaps as a joke.
'Silent ones with somebody I bet you've never heard of. Went by the moniker of Tubby Thackeray.'
'Someone came to our fair in London looking for him.'
'That was me,' I declare and twist around, to be confronted by unanimously blank stares. I haven't identified the speaker when Tracy says 'Any road, you've heard enough from me. Put your hands together for the man who knows.'
'I feel more like a sacrifice.'
I hope nobody hears me mumble this, since it's absurd. I feel much more as if I've wandered into yet another of the meaningless diversions that seem to have beset me ever since I set about researching Tubby. I step forward as Tracy sits where I was. The scattered tentative applause has already fallen silent, and quite a few of the spectators look more bemused than welcoming. 'I didn't expect to see you all again so soon,' I inform those I recognise. 'I don't suppose you were expecting to see me.'
The only response is a flattened echo of my last word. I'm desperate to bring some expression to the ranks of faces. 'Anyway,' I say, 'I'm here to tell you what I've seen.'
'Tell us where you did,' says Tracy.
'In the States. A relative of the director has nearly all his films.'
Tracy's stare suggests my answer is too guarded, but he says 'What were they like?'
/> 'I'd call them pretty revolutionary. Ahead of their time.'
'Unless they were behind it.'
I could ask how he would know. Instead I say 'In what sense?'
'Plenty,' he retorts. 'Maybe his way was so old you think it's new.'
I'm opening my mouth to pursue this when he sits back, planting a shiny black shoe on the ledge for hymnbooks. 'Let's hear what you've been finding out,' he says, 'only don't start playing the professor. Give us a laugh for Christmas.'
I do my best. I describe Tubby's struggles to communicate with the dentist's receptionist through the hindrance of his teeth. I narrate the mayhem he causes in a library, and his misadventures with a civic Christmas tree, and his trick with the trousers and the mice... Is my voice growing shriller as I summarise each film? Its echoes seem to be, but I could almost imagine that none of the congregation can hear me; every face is as immobile as the figures standing in the windows like insects trapped in amber. I'm managing to conjure up Tubby for myself; I can see his white luminous relentlessly mirthful face so vividly that it seems close to blotting out the silenced audience. How many films have I doggedly summed up? It feels like a dozen at least. I take a breath and refrain from dabbing my prickly forehead in case the gesture looks too theatrical, and then I notice that the fortuneteller and the man with many chins are laughing – or rather, they're showing each other their teeth, although I can't hear any sound. I'm near to fancying they're communicating with mute laughter when the man lifts his head, diminishing his chins. 'Never mind telling us,' he shouts. 'Show us.'
'Sorry, but I didn't know I was going to be speaking.'
'That's what I'm saying. Stop it and show us.'
'I mean I've brought nothing to show,' I say and indicate Tracy. 'He's the chap who shows films.'
The Grin of the Dark Page 26