'He said in one of those Hollywood magazines Tubby made the Keystone Kops look like a garden party with the vicar. That's how he sold him to Mack Sennett. Still, you don't know how Tubby was behaving when Hart saw him. The story goes Tubby kept trying to calm himself down.'
'Only trying?'
'Did you just see him in my film?'
'So far.'
A wind shivers the grey pelt of the moor and rattles the open doors of the van, which creaks as if someone has climbed in the back. As his troubled hair subsides, Tracy says 'That's him being moderate.' 'I'd like to see him when he isn't, then.'
Tracy opens his mouth, revealing the lower gum as well as its teeth, and I've time to wonder what goes with the expression before he speaks. 'My grandpa never let my daddy go to Tubby's films, the ones we even got.'
'Would you have any idea why some of them were banned?'
'People like my grandpa made a row about the ones that were let in. Some woman had a heart attack laughing at one of the stage shows, and they kept on digging that up till it got in all the papers. And there was supposed to be trouble at his films like there'd been at some of the theatres. My daddy heard there was more of a shindy at a cinema in Eccles than they were showing on the screen.'
'These days they'd use all that in the publicity.'
Though I'm not suggesting the industry should, Tracy focuses his disapproval on me. 'Shows the way the world's going. Anything to get into your head and who cares what gets in. And you wonder why I like it up here.'
'I'm surprised you didn't mention some of those stories in your film.'
'Maybe I should have. They're what got me interested in him. I was young, that's why. Anything you couldn't see had to be good.'
'Presumably he lost his contract when his films kept being banned here.' When Tracy stares as if he doesn't need to speak I say 'Then what happened to him?'
'On the payroll writing gags and they used some of his ideas, but they wouldn't let him write a film. Then he went to Hal Roach and thought up Leave 'Em Laughing, and you can just see him in a car at the end if you look.'
'And after that?'
'He tried to give Stan Laurel more ideas but the story goes they were too much for Stan, so Tubby went off with a circus.' Behind Tracy the surface of the moor shifts like an image left too long onscreen, and the van emits another creak. 'He's meant to have said he wanted to get back to the start,' he says.
'I thought he started in the music-hall.' Since Tracy only lets his bottom lip droop as some kind of response, I try asking 'Where did you hear about it?'
'From a lad by the name of Shaun Nolan that sold me Tubby's film.'
'Would it be worth my speaking to him, do you think?'
'Want to go and see him?' Tracy jumps up as if he has been hooked by the corners of his sudden grin. 'I've had my sit,' he says and peers at my lack of alacrity. 'Nothing to keep us here that I know of.'
'Will you be showing me anything of Tubby's later?'
His grin subsides, and then his eyes glimmer. 'You want to see what his act was like.'
'Anything you can put on for me would – '
I don't just leave the word unspoken, I forget what it was going to be. Tracy has stepped back on the concrete stage and is clutching his stomach with both hands. I think he's in pain until I see that he's quivering with silent laughter. At first he pinches his lips together to arrest his grin and confine his mirth. Very gradually his lips part as if he's losing control of them, baring his teeth. There's still no sound from him or anywhere on the moor. His mouth gapes so wide it can barely hold on to the shape of the grin, and his eyes bulge with an unblinking gaze that sets my head throbbing in sympathy. I'm wondering how loud and sharp and huge his laughter may seem whenever it bursts forth at last. I feel compelled to head it off, but I don't think simple merriment will do it, although I can sense helpless mirth building up inside the dam of my clenched teeth. Perhaps I have to perform some routine that will lend his voiceless jollity a point, and I leap up from the bench. I'm not sure whether I'm yielding to the compulsion to amuse him or retreating from it when my knee collides with the table.
I squeeze my eyes shut as a preamble to hopping about and then rubbing my kneecap. If my antics divert Tracy, that makes me even angrier. When I straighten up and blink my vision clear, however, he looks merely bemused, as if his own performance that lasted however many minutes never took place. 'Was that it?' I ask.
His mouth considers grinning and his eyes widen a fraction. 'Want some more?'
'I think we can move on. Would you mind if I ride in the front this time?'
'I'm not letting the projector out of my sight. It's my oldest mate and my best one.' He stumps to the back of the van and waits for me to climb in. 'It's not far,' he says, and I'm hardly inside when he slams the doors and leaves me in the dark.
ELEVEN - INTERMENTS
I'm back in the corner when the van swings out of the lay-by. At least it's heading downhill. I brace myself, because it feels as if it's straying back and forth across the road. A car rushes past, and another, or are they gusts of wind across the moor? Here's one so violent and prolonged it seems almost to force the van into the ditch, but it could be a lorry that's passing too close. I flatten my hands against the metal walls until it relents. A series of vehicles races by, unless they're sections of wall or other objects alongside the road. The sounds are settling into a rhythm that reminds me of waves or breaths; in the darkness it's nearly hypnotic. The sounds are growing louder only because I'm more aware of them. They aren't inside the van, either shut in with me or accompanying the driver. But there is a noise in his cabin, and the van jerks as if expressing my alarm.
It's the two-note pulse of a mobile receiving a text. I hope Tracy won't attempt to read it while he's driving, but the van swerves so abruptly that I'm afraid he's trying. 'Careful,' I shout, which appears to provoke a response – a lurch that almost dislodges me from the corner and sends a pang through my knee. Have we turned off the main road? If this is a side route, why haven't we slowed down? The metal walls are booming with vibrations from the wind or the surface we're speeding over, and the oppressive uproar leaves no room in my head for thoughts. Then the van performs a manoeuvre so violent and unexpected that I can't identify it until it's finished. We've backed full tilt around a bend to a standstill that throws me halfway across the floor.
I hear the driver's door slide open as I back into the corner. I won't risk leaving its relative safety until I'm sure we're parked. The van resounds with the wind, blotting out Tracy's footsteps. I wait for him to unlock the rear doors, and once I've waited long enough I thump the side of the van with a fist. 'Hello?' I shout. 'I'm still in here. Hello?'
Perhaps the wind is rendering my protests as inaudible as any sounds outside the van are to me. I pound the metal until it reverberates like a drum, deafening me to my own shouts. The rear doors take up the rhythm as my fist begins to ache. Aren't they rattling somewhat too loosely? I shuffle forwards in a sitting position and twist the handles. The doors swing wide, almost dragging me out of the van. I sprawl backwards as if I've emerged on the edge of a sheer drop, because the view is at least as disconcerting.
I'm in a graveyard. I'm facing away from the entrance, down the central avenue that leads to a long low white church with a concrete pyramid for a spire, which is tipped with a phone mast. Against the backdrop of a sky that could represent the night, the low sun lends a flat glare to the building. A wind blunders among the monuments, leaning on the scattered trees as if to demonstrate how photographically still the rest of the graveyard is. The wind shakes the van as I poke my legs over the edge of the floor and wobble to my feet on the black path.