The Grin of the Dark

SIX - LESSER

I'm alone in the house when somebody starts ringing the doorbell and clanking the knocker. Is it Natalie or more likely Mark? I save my last five minutes' work on the opening of They Made Movies Too and hurry out of the room. As I reach the stairs the letterbox disgorges several envelopes. All of them look sufficiently official to contain bills or other unwelcome missives. I'm taking my time until the slot emits a final card: a notification that the postman was unable to deliver an item.

I sprint downstairs and grab the envelopes as well as the card. It's addressed to me, almost by name. I haul the door open and see the postman tramping down the short cracked path. His stocky body looks deformed by the contortions he's performing to return my package to his bag. Despite the winter afternoon, which is dark with unbroken cloud, he's wearing capacious shorts. 'Excuse me,' I call. 'Hold on.'

He pivots as if the weight of the bag is dragging him. His rounded pockmarked face is so pale that I could imagine he's wearing makeup. When his virtually colourless eyes light on the card I'm brandishing, his small nose shares a twitch with his broad mouth. 'You Simon Lesser?' he says.

'It's Lester, actually. That's me all right.'

As he squints at the label on the padded envelope, the corners of his lips wince upwards and then droop. 'Says Lesser here.'

'It's a mistake. Our normal postman knows me.'

Neither comment pleases him. His mouth sags further before discovering a reason to invert the process. 'Got any proof you're who you say?'

This is idiotic, but I want my mail, especially since the package may contain an aid to my research. 'I'll get something,' I tell him. 'Don't go anywhere.'

I leave the front door open as I dump the envelopes on the hall table and dash to my room. The screensaver Joe added to the computer produces the sound of waves to reassure me that the system is still functioning although the screen is blank. I grab my passport from the drawer that hides the furtive pipe, and run downstairs. The postman stares at the passport before trudging to scrutinise the page I'm holding open. 'It says Lester,' he complains.

'We've been through that. It's my name.'

'Haven't you got a licence?'

'To be myself? We don't need those yet, do we?'

The corners of his mouth jerk up and immediately sink. 'A driving licence.'

'I haven't, no. I don't drive.'

'That hasn't got your address.'

'I live here. You can see me doing it,' I protest in a voice that sounds increasingly unlike my own. I dig out my keys and shove one into the lock. 'Satisfied? There's your proof.'

I turn the key, or at least I attempt to. The lock doesn't budge. I strive to twist the key until I'm afraid it will snap. I yank it out and realise it's the key to Natalie's apartment. I jab the right one into the lock and turn it at once. 'There,' I manage to say without shouting.

'You want to lay off whatever you're doing to yourself. Can't even let yourself in.' An undecided grimace flickers over his lips before he thrusts the package at me, muttering 'Suppose that's yours.'

I retrieve the keys and drop them in my pocket. I'm making to shut the door when he lurches forward. 'I need that off you.'

I'm distracted enough to wonder if he means my passport until I gather that he's staring at the card. At last I'm able to close the door and switch on the hall light to see whose post I left on the table. Most of it is mine – invitations to order credit cards, as if my Frugo Visa isn't nearly more than enough. I tear them up unopened and stuff them into the kitchen bin, then set about unpicking staples from the padded envelope. The scruffy item inside is a videotape. It is indeed Those Golden Years of Fun.

I hope the tape is in better condition than the packaging. It's an early VHS rental cassette in a cardboard slipcase. I suspect that the distributor – Variety Video – is small and defunct. The cover bears an amateurish collage of silent comedians, one of whom has been scuffed faceless. I've no reason to assume it's Tubby Thackeray, although he does look bulkier than his companions. The blurb on the back is uncertain of its typeface and of the space between lines, all of which have been rubbed partly illegible. 'Relive... our grandparents... laugh till they... more innocent... all the family...' Why am I trying to piece this together when I could be watching? I hurry into the communal lounge and switch on the video player.

A tape is nesting in it. When I eject the cassette, which bears only a blank label, I can't find its slipcase. I stow it in the case of my film and plant it among the cans and dreggy glasses on the mantelpiece. Once I've entrusted my tape to the player I clear a pizza box off the least lumpy armchair as the television screen lights up. It looks as if the brightness is trying to scratch the screen white, but surely only the start of the tape is so worn. Most of the ragged glaring strips drift off the screen as the distributor's trademark appears – two Vs so close together they could be taken for a W – and I'm able to suppress some of the lingering interference with the remote control, which is sticky from someone's television dinner. Those Golden Years of Fun is compiled and narrated by Charley Tracy, which is all that the credits have to say. 'First of all there was music-hall,' a voice with a faint Lancashire accent declares over a shot of the Playhouse, a theatre converted into a cinema, and I'm wondering whether the entire commentary is in rhyme when two car doors slam in front of the house.

I lean on one insecure arm of the chair to peep out of the window. The car is Natalie's white Punto, beside which she's on the phone while Mark runs up the path. I stop the tape in response to a prolonged eager shrilling of the doorbell, and let Mark in while Natalie tries another number as she paces after him. 'Are we going to the circus now?' Mark hopes aloud.

'Let's let your mother finish her call, shall we? I was just looking at a film for my book.'

Natalie hugs my shoulders with her free arm and parts her lips to give me a kiss just not protracted enough for Mark to voice his embarrassment. 'Is it suitable?' she murmurs.

'For Mark? I should think so. It's clips of silent comedies.'

'I'll leave you boys to watch it while I nip over to Windsor.'

'Why, what's happening there?'

'I don't know.' A quick frown pinches two of her freckles together and seems to dull the blue of her eyes. 'Mark took the call while I was driving. What did grandma say again, Mark?'

'She wanted me to ask if you could come and then she got cut off.'

'And she sounded how?'

'Like it was important but she didn't want to tell me why.'

'And now I can't get an answer on her phone or my dad's, and the land line's engaged. We've still got an hour, haven't we?'

'Under one,' I say, since it's the truth.

'Time enough for me to drive over and then meet you two at the circus if I don't have to stay for any reason. Better give me my ticket in case I'm late. You don't mind, do you?'

'I won't,' I say before realising she's asking Mark.

He gives his head two shakes so vigorous they tousle his red hair and gazes up at me. 'Can I help you with your book?'

'You certainly can. I'd like to know what you think of a comedian no one's ever heard of. We'll see how he shapes up against the clowns.'

All the same, as his mother hastens to her car I feel a little awkward to be left alone with Mark. I shut the front door and grin somewhat too readily at him. At least I don't ask what or how he's doing at school, but I fall back on saying 'Would you like a drink?'

'Can I, may I have a Coke?'

'I was thinking more of water.' So is my computer by the sound of it. 'Any use?' I have to prompt.

'Do you mind if I wait till we get to the circus?'

'Of course I don't. No popcorn either, I'm afraid,' I say as he leads the way into the front room.

He dumps a stained paper plate off the armchair next to mine and kicks off his trainers before jumping onto the creaky seat and folding his legs under him. He's unimpressed by the television and video recorder. 'Doesn't anyone play games in here?' he objects. 'I thought students did.'

I assume we can thank his grandparents for the idea. 'You should see my new game,' he says as if it's urgent. 'Someone's hunting for treasure and people that aren't really alive are trying to stop him.'

'Does grandma approve?' I immediately feel sly for asking.

'She hasn't seen it. Don't say or she might want to stop me playing.'

'I won't tell your grandparents anything you don't want them to know if you'll do the same for me. Is it a deal?'

'Deal,' Mark says and smacks my palm harder than I intended to slap his. 'Can we see the film now?'

'I may have to fast forward to the bit I'm looking for. You can always watch the rest another time.'

He's amused by the speeded-up film, unless he's just being polite. A few music-hall performers prance about various stages before newsreel footage of scurrying crowds and collapsing vintage aeroplanes and cars racing several times as fast as they ever could represents the rise of commercial cinema. That's followed by clips of Laurel and Hardy struggling at length to undress in an upper berth, Buster Keaton falling into landscape after landscape on a screen, Harold Lloyd coping with ghosts and having to cope with the loss of a finger and thumb in a stunt, Fatty Arbuckle in drag and mincing around a bedroom... Might the performer with whom he has been compared come next? I release the button and hear the commentator say 'Fatty's fame and his fall from favour eclipsed the films of a comedian who some say could have outclassed Chaplin.'

Mark sits forward, presumably because I have, although the film has reverted to the image of the Playhouse. 'Thackeray Lane was drawing crowds at English music-halls when Keystone director Orville Hart decided he could be a silent star,' says the commentator. 'Here's all that's left of one of their most famous films.'

How famous could that be? What's the film called? I can distinguish only 'Tubby' or possibly 'Tubby's' before a thick frayed band of white climbs the screen and then sinks back into the void, carrying the end of the introduction with it. I rewind and try to tune the soundtrack in, but the interference won't be tamed, and so I let the tape run. I'm as impatient as Mark to watch Tubby now that we've had a glimpse of him.

He's in a toyshop. Perhaps his black bow tie and bulging dinner jacket signify that he has left a party or a drunken meal. With his head that's too small for his oval torso and long legs, he looks shaped for comedy before he makes a move. His disconcertingly round eyes are wide with innocence. His black hair is so glossy that it might be painted on his cranium, and resembles a monk's tonsure parted precisely in the middle. The transfer to video, or the age of the copy of the film, may have lent extra pallor to his face. He glances around the shop and notices a Jack-in-the-box opposite a toy pram, and then he grins at the audience as if he can see us.

The grin reveals large almost horsy teeth and broadens his face until it looks nearly circular. Having invited our complicity, he plants the Jack-in-the-box inside the pram and pretends to be a salesman until a real one ushers a silently garrulous old lady into view. As the salesman rocks the pram to demonstrate its quality, a malevolently gleeful head with Tubby's face springs up from it, and the customer faints, displaying her bloomers. It's a good job Bebe isn't here, because Mark's mirth is no longer polite. The distracted salesman revives the old lady by waving his dickey in her face. Perhaps he's the manager, since he leaves her in the care of an assistant while he sallies to banish Tubby from the shop.

The comedian is hiding behind shelves full of Jacks-in-the-box. Head after grinning head pops up as the manager dashes back and forth, and too many of the heads seem to belong to his tormentor. When he pounces behind the shelves Tubby darts out from the far end, but the instant the manager lunges in that direction the comedian appears behind him, then pokes his head out from between two boxes halfway down the aisle. The manager dances with rage, tugging at his sunburst of hair. As he shouts for assistance, a trumpet in the orchestra that has been providing a jittery accompaniment to Tubby's antics emits a stricken croak. A troupe of natty salesmen flushes Tubby out, only to discover that there are several of him. One pedals off splay-legged on a child's tricycle, another releases all the Jacks that are still boxed as he roller-skates away, while a third makes his exit skipping nimbly with a rope. The shots are edited so that the three appear to be communicating with one another, not just with outsize gleaming grins but with laughter, which the trumpet simulates like wordless speech.

At last all three are expelled from the shop. The manager is so exhausted that he locks up early, hanging a sign that says CLOSED BECAUSE OF BANANAS on the door. We next see him preparing for bed. As he ducks to the sink with his toothbrush Tubby's face is revealed in the bathroom mirror, grinning at the audience. Mark's giggle sounds eager but a little nervous. The manager emerges in his nightshirt from the bathroom and, having climbed into bed, tugs the cord above him. The film gives him time to settle into restfulness before his brow twitches and he reluctantly opens his eyes to peer down the dim bed. Between his feet is a lump under the blankets. As he sits up, it rises too. The bedclothes sag away from it, exposing Tubby's delighted face. A change of angle shows it emerging upturned from beneath the mattress, and another finds it as it pokes up from behind the pillow. Did the cameraman intend to light each appearance so that it glows like the moon? A shot of the frenzied manager fighting the blankets dissolves to a close-up of him as he wakens. That's reassuring only until a long shot reveals that he's wearing a straitjacket. As he begins to thrash about rather more realistically than comically, three attendants converge to restrain him. I suspect who they might all prove to be, but that's the end of the film or at least of the clip. 'And now here's a solo by that graceful pudding Oliver Hardy before he met his mate,' says the commentator.

'Can we see it again?' Mark crouches towards me, and his chair gives an injured creak. 'I want to see it again,' he begs.

'Don't smash the place up, Mark.' He's far more demanding than usual; perhaps he feels he can be now that we're alone. 'I take it you liked it,' I say. 'What did you like?'

'It was funny. Can we see it now?'

'Anything else you'd care to say about it?'

'No,' he says, and even more impatiently 'Yes, I want to watch it again.'

I wonder how common his reaction would have been when the film was released. It struck me as a little too disturbing to be popular, but perhaps it was ahead of its time if Mark is so taken with it. 'We don't want to be late for the circus,' I say and switch the tape off. 'I'll lend it to Natalie when I've finished with it. Let me grab a coat and we'll walk over to the park.'

The slap of waves against equally non-existent rocks greets me on the landing. A poster for a muscle-bound computerised heroine called Virtuelle is guarding Joe's door. As I shut my computer down the last shrill flurry of water sounds like giggling, which seems to be echoed downstairs. A trumpet is chattering in the front room.

Tubby is back in the toyshop. The head that fills the screen is his, unless it's the contents of a box. I retrieve the control from my chair and extinguish him. 'Now, Mark, I said we hadn't time. Maybe we can have another look at it when we come back.'

He giggles nervously as a preamble to saying 'I didn't touch it.'

'I'm sure you didn't touch the tape.'

Is he testing my limits or demonstrating his skill with words, or both? I eject the cassette and replace it in its cover, abandoning the other tape on the mantelpiece. How could I have been so thoughtless that I left Tubby in the player while I went to my room? I run to leave the tape on my desk and hurry downstairs. 'Time to move, Mark.' He's still in the chair, and so wide-eyed with innocence that it could almost conjure up Tubby on the screen. 'I truly – '

'Don't say it. I shouldn't think your mother would like you telling fibs, and I'm certain your grandmother wouldn't.' I switch off the television and wait for him to jam his feet into his trainers. 'Come on,' I say to make friends with him, 'and we'll have another laugh.'