'Go on, put it on me. I can't look more of a fool than anyone else.'
As Mark jams the hat on my head so enthusiastically it feels urgent, the phone enquires 'I'm sorry?'
'Somebody's just stuck a silly hat on me. Well, more than somebody. My, not exactly my son. My partner's son.'
Natalie must think I'm distracted by her presence or Mark's, because she murmurs 'Shall we be outside?'
'Hang around. I wouldn't mind a witness,' I say and wield the receiver. 'Anyway, let's not get too festive. The line was so bad I must have got her name wrong. The important question is how you're going to close your hole in my account after you've put my money back in.'
My words feel close to unstable again, even when I remind myself that Tom can't see the hat lolling over my head. My imprecise reflection could make me imagine that I'm being watched by a buffoon on the far side of the screen – one who grins as he says 'I'm afraid it isn't that simple.'
'Me neither, matey.' As far as I can tell my teeth keep this quiet, which only makes it harder for me to retort 'What isn't?'
'The authority for payment must have come from you.'
Isn't he supposed to call me Mr Lester now and then? Sir would be acceptable as well. 'Mustn't. Didn't,' I assure us both.
'I can promise you our computers don't make payments on their own.'
I'm tempted to wonder aloud if faith in technology is the new religion until he says 'I'm very much afraid you will have to write to us with all the details of the situation before – '
'Same as lasty. Re that.'
My invitation to read my previous complaint must surely have emerged more whole, because he says 'How did you communicate with us?'
'He may,' I inform him, and my teeth click as I try to bite the words into shape. 'Email.'
'I've checked while we've been speaking. I'm afraid we have no record of receiving anything from you about this.'
'Well, I wrote it. Sent it too. Don't ask me who got it.' I fancy my response may not sound quite like this – I seem to hear myself say tit and ass, for instance – but then my last sentence catches up with me. As I struggle to restrain my language, the worst that escapes is 'Bastard.'
'I'm sorry?'
'I know who's doing this. He stole my work to make me look bad and he's been screwing with my finances. He's all over the Internet.'
'I can't make sense of what you're saying.'
'I don't know his name but I know the one he's using. Don't tell me you can't track him down. There has to be some trace for you to follow where he hacked into my account.'
'I do apologise, but I can't understand what you're saying. If you could put – '
'Never mind writing. I can talk. It's the oldest form of communication, you know.' Every word leaves my mouth feeling less controllable, because I'm uttering little if any of this. 'Smilemime,' I cry. 'That's his pseudonym.'
At least, I labour to, but not a syllable escapes. I'm convinced that if I manage to pronounce the name, it will destroy the verbal dam. 'Smilemime,' I repeat as audibly as I said it in the first place. 'Smilemime.' The shrill word squeaks against the inside of my teeth, but I've no idea what expression is baring them and bulging my eyes. Perhaps it could be mistaken for the amusement with which Mark greets my antics. 'Smilemime,' I shriek mutely, which reminds me of performing Tubby's Telephonic Travails in the chapel of fun. Tracy's features rise to the surface of my mind, his teeth splitting the etiolated flesh with a helpless grin. 'Are you there?' Tom says, but I've snatched the receiver away from my face. As I brandish the phone with no plan beyond ending any resemblance to Tubby, the adviser reaches across her desk, but Natalie is quicker. She relieves me of the phone and says 'Who's this, please?'
Her tone must be intended to take the listener off guard. It works for me – I feel addressed. 'I'm with Simon,' she explains, and now I have a sense that she's dubbing my dialogue. 'He can't just now. He's under a lot of strain... I see what's wrong, but what will he need to do?... How soon can you deal with that?... You can't... I understand... He will... Happy Christmas.'
Is it her performance that has left me speechless? I watch her return the phone to the adviser. 'You will have to write in, Simon,' she says. 'Sadly there won't be anyone there till after Christmas.'
'He was there now. You let him go.' I'm straining to make certain she hears this when an employee shouts me down.
'The bank will be closing in five minutes,' he announces. 'We will be open again for business on the 29th.'
Won't they still be working behind the scenes for at least the next few hours? If I email from the library, surely that would reach Tom before he finishes, or is the library shut too? I dash for the exit, my hat flopping like a drunken parasite on my head – drunk with the intellect it's draining from me, or something is. As I hurry out beneath a sky as black as the inside of my skull, Natalie catches up with me. 'It's all right, Simon,' she murmurs. 'It will be.'
My response is terse and sharp enough to bypass my clenched teeth. 'How?'
'The bank will put everything in order once they hear from you. I've got enough to tide us over till the New Year, or if there's any need we can always go to my parents for a loan.'
The prospect seems to release my words, and I have to suppress my reaction to it for her sake and Mark's. 'They've already heard from me,' I object, 'the bank. He was acting stupid. No wonder I gave up when he made me feel I couldn't get through to him.'
Natalie gazes at me for a long pale breath that reminds me of an empty speech balloon, and then she says 'I couldn't follow you either.'
'I did a bit,' Mark says and grins in some triumph.
I don't know which of them is more disconcerting. As my teeth start to chatter with exhaustion and the icy night if nothing else, Natalie says 'Try to calm down, Simon. No more scenes.'
'Scenes,' I protest, at least approximately.
'Like that, and they aren't going to forget you in the library either. You don't need to act like that, do you? Your book's the way you want to be known.'
My chattering teeth leave me unable to reply, if indeed I want to. She takes my arm and Mark holds my other hand. Our hats flop about as I'm led away from the bank. 'Let's have peace now,' Natalie says. 'It's that time of year.'
FORTY-THREE - ST SIMON'S
'I'll bet my pension you've never been out driving so late before, Mark,' says my mother.
'Only on my computer.'
Natalie frowns across me at him. 'It's news to me. Just when was that?'
'When I was looking for things for Simon.'
'That's kind of you, Mark,' I say, 'but you mustn't lose your sleep at your age.'
'I couldn't anyway.'
'I'll bet you've never been out at midnight, though,' my mother insists. 'You're going to be in at the birth.'
Mark giggles with embarrassment or in case her comment is a joke, and Natalie sends him another frown as she sits back. I wish we'd used her car, but I didn't want my father to think we didn't trust his driving. With three people on the rear seat the Mini seems insanely straitened, as Thackeray Lane might have put it while he was coherent. I feel as if I'm being transported in a cell along a barely distinguishable route – glimpses of houses clogged with darkness, the flickers of lit windows, the occasional reveller who grins at the car. 'How far are we actually going?' I ask.
'Listen to him, Mark. He sounds younger than you, doesn't he?' says my mother.
Didn't she make a similar quip last time they took me for a drive? As if the memory has created a physical link, a Christmas tree rears up beyond the windscreen. I could imagine that its lights are trying to fend off the darkness that leads to it along five roads. 'Isn't this where you brought me before?' I protest.
'You've been here before all right,' my father says and laughs.
When my mother joins in I have the unpleasant idea that they're trying to project their confusion onto me. The tree brandishes its glaring multicoloured branches as it pirouettes with massive sluggishnes
s while the Mini takes the first exit, beyond which I can't see anything except two ranks of houses squashed tall and thin. Curtains seem to shift as if we're being watched, but perhaps that's the restlessness of Christmas lights. 'It does seem rather a long way to come to church,' Natalie says.
'We thought we'd give you an extra treat,' says my mother, 'since we've got a bit of time.'
'We'll show you where he came into the world,' my father says.
For a moment I'm unable to ask 'Who?'
'Now who do you think?' cries my mother.
'Is it Tubby?' Mark responds with at least as much enthusiasm.
'Lord love us, no,' my father declares. 'Don't tell me Simon's got you as obsessed as he is.'
My mother twists around to smile at us. 'Who else is it going to be except Simon?'
'I don't remember this,' I say like a contradiction of my ringtone.
'Of course you don't, you silly boy. How could anyone?'
At once the car is flooded with illumination that suggests spotlights have been turned on. They're lamps on a street that crosses the one we're following. As the car swings left my mother says 'Here it is. Do you think they'll put up a plaque one day, Mark?'
Both sides of the road are lined with pale misshapen bungalows approached and separated by a maze of paths sprouting toadstool lights. I might be amused by the appearance of a gnomes' village if I weren't so troubled. 'We never lived here,' I risk saying.
'Isn't this it, Bob?' my mother pleads. 'I was sure it was.'
My father glares at me in the widescreen mirror. 'You're doing it again,' he mutters.
Is he accusing me of making the car veer as he looks away from the road? 'Be careful, Bob,' my mother exhorts. 'You've got a child in the car. You should have let his mother drive.'
'You can't, Sandra.'
If he was blaming me for confusing her, I could equally blame him as she says 'That's where I used to hold Simon up for you to see.'
She's gazing at the window of a bungalow. Despite the pallor of the curtains, the room appears to be dark. As the car slows to give everyone more of a look, Natalie says 'I thought you said he was born in a hospital.'
'I'd have been frightened to have him at home,' my mother says and laughs. 'They've pulled it down and built these.'
'She's not that far gone yet,' my father says.
The relief I was starting to feel snags on his comment. As the car regains speed, Mark wriggles to keep the bungalow in view. 'Was that Father Christmas?'
Perhaps somebody's acting the role. The curtains have parted to let a watcher peer out at the car. The face seems more than fat enough for the image of the Christian saint. It will be wearing a false beard. No whitish mass is foaming out of the enormous grin, no wadding has burst out of the stuffed white face. The next moment the occupant of my birthplace is out of sight, and my mother says 'You'll have to sleep as soon as we're home or he won't come for you.'
I would happily have nothing for Christmas except sleep, but not if it invites the visitor I just glimpsed. The more distance the car puts between us the better, and I'm uneasy when it halts further up the road. 'Aren't we going to our church?' my mother says.
'We've no time, Sandra. This'll have to do.'
She emits disappointed noises as he kills the engine outside the rudimentary church, which is little more than a concrete tent topped by a token cross and extending a long concrete block, breached like the tent by a few stained-glass windows. Then she claps her hands as if a performance is about to begin. 'Why, it'll more than do. Did you know where you were taking us?'
I've no idea why she has changed her mind until I see that a board names the church as St Simon's. I find this less worthy of celebration than everyone else does, even my father. 'Hurry,' my mother urges Mark. 'We don't want you turning into a pumpkin.'
While I realise she has Cinderella and midnight transformations in mind, I can't help thinking of grins carved for Halloween. I would rather not imagine Mark's face swelling up to pumpkin size and expanding its grin to match. My mother waddles rapidly to the open door, half a pointed arch, in the blunt end of the building, and the rest of us straggle at various speeds in her wake. The inside of the small stark porch is decorated only with posters, all of which look old for the church. Before I can read any of them my mother blunders through the inner entrance and pokes her head out. 'It's starting,' she hisses.
A large robed figure and another half as big are indeed proceeding down the aisle to the altar in the middle of the concrete tent. The pews on either side of the aisle are almost full of a decidedly well-fed congregation. My mother flaps a hand at me and indicates the back row. The first part of the gesture sprinkles me with water from the font beside the door as if I'm being rebaptised. Mark follows me so closely that he almost pushes me against the solitary occupant of the pew, a corpulent woman whose face is concealed by a headscarf. Natalie comes after Mark, and then a disagreement is expressed by much pointing with upturned hands before my mother precedes my father. We're all taking black missals from the ledge in front of us when the priest turns to the congregation and intones 'I go to the altar of God.'
We're at midnight mass because my mother thought it would be a treat for Mark. My parents used to take me at his age and somewhat older, but I've forgotten most of the experience, although I seem to recall thinking that the worshippers were huddled in the light as if they hoped it could fend off the dark. Isn't that too sophisticated a notion for a young child? The priest's performance has revived it. However joyous the celebration is meant to be, does he really need to smile quite so broadly? Perhaps it's the modern approach, but it looks uncomfortably like desperation. It isn't improved by his whinnying voice, which is so high that it could belong to a woman in drag, except that his vestments are scarcely even that. I open my missal in case remembering the ritual will distract me from the spectacle of him.
The book is distracting, but not in the way I hoped. The typeface is considerably older than the church. Perhaps I still have to recover from jet lag, because I keep imagining that somebody's spidery scribble has deranged the thick Gothic letters. I don't trust myself to join in the responses to the priest; I'm afraid my versions of them may be as deformed as the text appears to be. I turn the pages and close my jaws so tight that my mouth and teeth seem to merge into a single aching wound. My struggles not to part my lips achieve less than I would like; I can hear nonsense if not worse inside my head, or is the almost inaudible muttering beside me? I'm unable to judge whether it's invading my skull or spreading out of it, and if so which of my neighbours is involved, or could both be? I peer sidelong at Mark, but he appears to be reading far more fluently than me. I can't risk singing any of the hymns or carols either, especially the ones we had to sing at his school play. Even the priest's readings at the lectern offer no relief; another voice, all the more impossible to hush since it's indistinguishable from silence, seems to be parodying his in chorus. He can't actually be reading about Deathlyhem or Hairy the brother of God or declaring 'Undo us, a child is born, unto us a son will gibber.' Everything he reads seems to be in danger of veering into worse inanity, an impression aggravated by the smirks that keep twitching the lips of the altar boy, whose pale plump face looks older than it should, more like a dwarf's. Surely he's amused just by the priest's neighing, not by the words that I imagine I hear – that can't be infecting more people each time the congregation has to sing or speak. Wouldn't Natalie or my parents have reacted by now? Their voices are lost in the general hubbub, and when I peer past Mark their lips are as unreadable as the missal. At least we've reached a point where I needn't feign participation, thank God. It's time for the faithful to take communion.
My neighbour plants her open missal face down on the ledge and deals it a thump as it tries feebly to raise itself. Her large hand resembles her chunky off-white overcoat in both texture and colourlessness, and I'm reminded of the garment of the baby across the hall. She reaches inside the coat and, with a papery rustle,
produces a biscuit. I haven't time to be certain whether the thin white disc bears a cartoon of a clownish face before she pops it into the mouth concealed by the headscarf. As I resist an urge to peer around the impenetrably black scarf, Mark leans forward to watch the communicants at the altar rail. 'Are they having something to eat? Can I go?' 'It's only for some people,' Natalie murmurs. 'Not us.'
'Why not?'
'We haven't joined the flock.'
Why should my explanation amuse my headscarfed neighbour? Her laugh sounds disconcertingly masculine, perhaps because she's doing her best to suppress it, though it seems less muffled than remote. Mark is silent until he sees another boy in the communion queue. 'He's going,' he complains. 'Why can't I?'
'He'll have confessed his sins, Mark,' my mother whispers.
'I can as well. Shall I?'
He's behaving as if he wants to join the performers onstage at a show. 'I'm sure a little chap like you's done nothing worth confessing,' my mother says.
He looks insulted, and her affectionate smile doesn't help. 'She means to the padre,' my father mutters.
'I don't mind. I'm not scared of him. He's just a man.'
'That's enough, Mark,' Natalie says under her breath. 'We'll talk about it later.'
'But they're making me hungry now.'
I'm suddenly convinced that my neighbour is about to offer him a biscuit. It's my mother who intervenes, however. 'We'll be going home soon and then you can have a snack if it doesn't make you dream.'
'I don't care if it does. Won't that make them when they go to bed?'
He's pointing at the communicants. The downcast eyes and folded hands of those who are returning to their seats put me in mind of sleepwalkers somnolent with holiness. 'Shush now,' my mother says. 'You don't want everyone laughing at you, do you?'
I become aware that people are. There's mirth within the headscarf and smothered laughter elsewhere in the church. It doesn't appear to have travelled as far as the altar rail, where a man on his knees is raising his open mouth like a blind fish. I feel compelled to inject some humour into the tableau, or rather to mime how grotesque the proceedings are. 'What about it, Mark?' I say low as I lean towards him. 'Do we want to make everyone laugh?' I haven't finished speaking when he shows me his Tubby face.
The Grin of the Dark Page 30