The Grin of the Dark

'That was it. Only ever the one.'

'I don't suppose it was the best time to bring out a new comic, just after Christmas.'

'There wasn't any good time. Lots of places wouldn't stock it because your friend's story in there was giving children nightmares. He'd have given me them at this little boy's age.'

'I never have any,' Mark protests.

'They aren't scared of anything these days, are they? The world wants shaking up,' she says, which rather seems to contradict her aversion to the comic.

'Will you have Tubby in anything else?' When she shakes her head without taking her dissatisfied gaze from me I say 'I can't see a price.'

She parts her lips at least a second earlier than saying 'Fifty will do.'

That doesn't seem unreasonable for the solitary issue of a publication almost a century old. I file the Visa slip with the rest of the evidence of my expenses and entrust Mark with the comic. None of the other stalls has anything to offer my search. Some stallholders are bewildered when I ask for Lane; others seem resentful, presumably because I've exposed their ignorance. On our way out the shawled woman holds up one hand, and I imagine her inviting somebody to shy another bracelet onto her arm, but she wants to hand me a carrier bag for my purchases. 'Keep laughing,' she says.

Whoever's in the box closest to the left side of the stage might be demonstrating the principle. Though it's hard to be sure at that distance, the large figure in the shadows at the back of the box appears to be convulsed with mirth. He may have a companion in the opposite box, where the gloom contains an equally indistinct occupant who is likewise holding his swollen sides and throwing back his pale head. The clearest detail about either of them is a display of prominent teeth. So far away, and with all the hubbub, I can't hear their laughter. I find the spectacle disconcerting, but I'm not about to struggle through the crowd to investigate it. Instead I push Mark out of the auditorium. As the doors thump shut he says 'We could have got in for nothing.'

There is indeed no sign of the doorman – not even of his table and chair. My wrist tingles as the chilly sunlight settles on the clownish imprint. A man with a rolled poster in each hand emerges from the theatre, and without quite knowing my reason I ask 'Have you got a stamp?'

'There's a post office up the road, mate.'

I can see no ink on his wrist. Perhaps he's involved in running the fair. I don't recall noticing anyone else with a stamp, but why would I have? As the man strides into the crowd Mark says 'You can't have mine.'

He looks ready to run away for a laugh, possibly across the road that's loaded with traffic. I should be taking care of him, not indulging in meaningless fancies. 'You keep it, Mark,' I say and show him the DVD. 'Let's go home and see where Tubby came from.'

SEVENTEEN - RESTLESSNESS

Natalie drains her glass of the Merlot that we had with dinner and sinks back on the couch, but as I slip an arm around her shoulders we hear footsteps in the corridor. The sound spurs me to tell her 'Your parents can get in.'

'Gosh, you're paranoid. That isn't them.' She leans her head away from me to scrutinise my face. 'Aren't you joking? They have a key for emergencies, but they wouldn't just let themselves in without asking.'

'Maybe we should bolt the door in future when we're in,' I have to be content with saying, because I don't want to bring up Bebe's comments about Nicholas while Mark is out of bed. I'm hoping that my smile will reassure Natalie I'm not paranoid when Mark knocks at the door of the room.

His mother sighs. 'I thought you were supposed to be asleep.'

'I nearly was. Can I come in?'

'If you must. If it'll send you back where you should be, asleep.'

He's wearing pyjamas swarming with jovial full moons. 'Looks like we've invited a lunatic in,' I remark.

Natalie doesn't seem to care for this. 'So why aren't you in bed, Mark?'

'What about my computer?'

'You aren't making sense. I think you'd better – '

'Why don't you try your DVD on it, Simon? It can play them.'

The disc I bought at the memorabilia fair doesn't work on the player or on Natalie's computer, and mine has no facility for playing DVDs. 'If it helps him sleep, do you think?' I murmur.

'If you're sure it will.'

I can't tell which of us she's addressing: perhaps both. Mark is already running to his bedroom. Several books, including a large pictorial history of films, have escaped from the bookcase under the small high window. The clothes he wore today are sprawled like a sketch of a contortionist on the Mexican blanket that covers his bed. In general the room could belong to someone twice his age, especially given the absence of toys other than computer games. Natalie takes the clothes to the wicker basket in the bathroom as I slip the disc into the computer.

An icon of a disc appears, and then the monitor turns blank as ignorance. As Mark rocks in his desk chair like a driver attempting to start a car with his own energy, the screen grows chaotic with pixels. Natalie sits next to me on the end of the bed as the pixels disappear into a black and white image. Mark bounces in his chair and claps his hands at the sight of Tubby on a stage.

I'm glad he seems to have forgotten about the erased tape. When I told him I no longer had the footage, his mouth looked in danger of writhing out of control. Tubby has his back to a prop that resembles an old fairground attraction – a long board taller than he is, with cartoonish figures painted on it and holes where their faces should be. They represent a mayor in his regalia, a queen with her crown, a judge wearing a black cap, a cowled monk hiding his hands in his sleeves, a mitred bishop or archbishop and a long-haired saint with a rakish halo. Tubby is dressed in an outsize dinner suit, which flaps blackly as he paces to the board. He dodges behind it so nimbly that I could imagine the film has been edited to lend him the power, but he's being filmed in a single uninterrupted take. He pokes his face through each hole in turn, and his grin stretches wider with every appearance. By the time he wags his head on the saint's behalf his teeth could be described as his most prominent feature. Could the long hair suggest that the white-robed figure is more than a saint? Tubby's face shrinks into the dark within the outline and then swells out again, and it takes me a moment to grasp that we're seeing a balloon with his hilarious face. Another bulges out beneath the mitre, and a third from the monk's cowl, and so on down the line until all six figures have a face. Where's Tubby? He's playing the mayor; that's the face whose eyes and lips are widening. I see the lips start to draw back from the gums, and then, with a pop that's all the more shocking for its soundlessness, the face bursts.

Natalie gasps, but not with delight. Mark giggles, to some extent at her reaction, I think. Tubby flaps out from behind the board and advances to the footlights, which lend his pallid face a waxy glow. His shadow reaches back to the faceless figure as if to question which of them is casting it. He twists his head around so far that I wince on his behalf. Having admired the spectacle behind him, where the faces have begun to sag and simper, he clutches his stomach and bares his teeth in an expanding laugh. His body shakes until its outline is a quivering mass of blackness. His mouth stretches so wide that I hear his chortling, if only in my head. He's still laughing as he flutters to the steps that lead down to the auditorium. He means to entice somebody onto the stage, to frame their face alongside five of his. As he advances towards us like a gleeful storm, however, the screen turns black.