Mark gazes up at me, and the performers watch just as intently. I've no idea what anyone expects, since the mobile is as inert as a terminally infected computer. 'Is anything else going to happen?' I wonder aloud.
I might as well not have spoken. There's as little response when I hold out the phone to the clowns, and when I shrug and lay it on the bench to my right, away from Mark. Why should I be expected to perform any more? That's the job of the clowns, however they spell themselves. I'm close to saying so until I notice that they aren't as still as I thought; their eyes are turning leftwards in unison and then back to me. They have to do this several times before I realise they're indicating the exit. 'I think that's it,' I murmur.
Mark seems happy enough. The outrageousness of the show must have satisfied him. As we head for the exit I brace myself for a last prank, but the seated clowns stay where they are. Their united gaze keeps hold of us, and their fattened fingers wriggle, presumably to send us on our way. I glance back from the exit, but nobody is prancing after us, and the jerry-built giants aren't about to collapse on us. Mark peers up at them in delicious expectant panic as I guide him clear of their rickety legs and out into the dark.
There's no sign of the departed audience. We're making for the dim foreshortened avenue behind the tent when the field grows abruptly darker, swallowing Mark's faint shadow and mine. All the lights inside the tent have been switched off. Without its whitish glow it reminds me of an ancient monument, but I'm wondering what the clowns can be up to in the dark. Might they be creeping out of the exit? I can think of no reason why they would, nor why we should wait on the chance that they are. 'Let's see if we've time to watch the film again,' I say to speed Mark onwards.
It's even darker beneath the oaks. The entangled branches seem to prevent any light from filtering down out of the scraps of sky. The hulking trunks are closer together than I would expect oaks to grow. I hold Mark's small chilly hand as we trot along the middle of the avenue; I wouldn't want him to run ahead and collide with anything unseen. Have we strayed into a different avenue? I'm glimpsing the totem pole through the trees on our left, although the pile of wide-mouthed glimmering faces seems to skulk behind them whenever I try to distinguish it more clearly. I even imagine some activity beyond it, rapid movements of pale dim limbs whose gait puts me in mind of an injured spider. If it was one of the giant clowns, where would the other be? When I look back the avenue appears to be deserted, although blocked by the looming bulk of the tent. I face forward again, and Mark clutches at my hand.
The alarm is only the tune of my mobile: 'You must remember this...' The song from Casablanca has lost some of its appeal in the gloom caged by trees. Mark relaxes his grip as I continue walking and lift the mobile to my face. 'What's been wrong with your phone?' Natalie apparently doesn't want to know, because she goes on 'Where are you?'
'Heading for the road near Frugoil.'
'It's all over, then.'
'It seems to be.'
'I'll pick you up at the gate.'
'What did – ' I begin, but the phone is unoccupied except by waves of static. Mark pulls me left around a bend, beyond which the avenue leads straight to the totem pole by the water. Once we emerge from beneath the trees I'm certain that the faces are incapable of springing apart and forming a line to meet us. I can see lamps above the wall at the far side of the field, and I'm disconcerted to find the sight so reassuring. I release Mark's hand as we cross the lawn to the gate.
Natalie's Punto is panting on the road. 'Was it good?' she asks as I let Mark have the front seat.
'It was funny.'
'Lots of laughs,' I say and shut the rear door. 'What did your parents want?'
Natalie meets my gaze in the mirror. 'I'll tell you later,' she says, and I suspect that I won't relish the experience.
EIGHT - SMILEMIME
There's something odd about Orville Hart as well.
He was working for Mack Sennett when he discovered Tubby Thackeray. He and the comedian wrote their early films together, while Thackeray took sole credit for writing the later ones, and Hart directed all of them. Once Tubby lost his stardom Hart found work at the Hal Roach studios, initially as a writer, eventually directing Oliver Hardy and James Finlayson in The Course-We-Can Brothers. For several years after that he appears to have been confined to writing gags until in 1932 he wrote and directed Crazy Capaldi, his first feature film. 'The wildest of the Warners gangster movies,' somebody posting as Smilemime comments on the Internet Movie Database. 'Banned in Blighty and withdrawn in America after pubblic protests, the severely cut reissue was a flop.' I stare at this until I disentangle the sense it's presumably intended to make. Perhaps Hart was better suited to comedy, since he's next noted as a writer for the Three Stooges, whom he directed in 1934 as Eager, Meager and Seegar, three hunchbacked laboratory assistants in a Frankenstein parody, Gimme Da Brain. 'The story goes the pokes in the eye got out of hand and nearly blinded Curly,' Smilemime claims to know. In 1935 Hart attempted to revive Charley Chase's reputation or his own with his second full-length feature, Fool for a Day. 'Screwball so screwy it screwed his career,' Smilemime somewhat imprecisely sums it up. 'Ahead of its time or out of its head? You deccide if you can find it.' The studio may not have had a chance to judge the reaction of the public when Hart began shooting his next film, Ticklin' Feather. This was apparently to be the first in a series of comedy Westerns about a Cherokee of that name. 'Beggins with him riding into the little town of Bedlam on a donkey called Neddy Canter,' Smilemime reports. 'Sound fammiliar?' I'm not sure which reference this means, nor where the pseudonymous commentator obtained the information, because the film was never released.
That's the oddity. Both Orville Hart and Tubby Thackeray ended their careers with unreleased films. It isn't surprising that they weren't hired after that, but why would two studios suppress completed films? The question can't distract me from wondering what Natalie has to tell me. I was hoping that she would last night while Mark stayed downstairs to watch the film again, but she dropped me at the house and kept him in the car. 'I'll be in touch,' she said. I stayed up for a while, searching the Internet for Clowns Unlimited or any variant spelling, but even the site from which I bought the tickets was unavailable; perhaps the performers have alienated so many spectators that they can't obtain any more bookings. Eventually I went to bed, only to imagine on the way to sleep that if I opened my eyes I would see clowns' faces poking up all around me. Between dozes I wondered if Natalie wanted to discuss some situation first with Mark.
It's almost noon on Sunday morning. I could phone her, but I don't want to be told she can't talk. Surely she would have called by now if it was serious. I do my best to believe that while I finish reading about Orville Hart, the grandfather of 'adult filmmaker Willie Hart'. When I reach the page for that name, having been warned about adult content, I see that Willie Hart's films include a hardcore comedy called Dopius, Gropius and Copious. I return to Orville's page and click on Tubby Thackeray in case it takes me anywhere I haven't been. As I expected, it brings up the comedian's listing, but that has changed. All the titles are live, linked to pages of their own.
Could they have been last time I looked? It hardly matters, since there's so little information. Each individual page lists the film as a Keystone comedy starring Tubby Thackeray and directed by Orville Hart. Just one is briefly reviewed: Tubby's Tiny Tubbies. 'Tubby and his little nephews create chaos in a snooty store.' I'd take that to be accurate if the commentator Smilemime didn't add 'Nearly complete in Those Golden Years of Fun – the only known survivving Tubby footage.'