I'm about to respond when I have an idea that shouldn't have been so belated. As I search for London University Press my mouth works on a grin. The opening page displays an enlarged colophon. The initial letters of the three stacked words are in a modern typescript, the rest of each word is more old-fashioned. The top link in the sidebar is STUDIES IN FILM. There isn't much on that page, but certainly enough. The series editor is Dr Rufus Wall, and he's announcing the first book – 'a major rediscovery of forgotten legends of the cinema by the premier young British film critic Simon Lester'.
If anybody's still awake now that Mr Mime has finished
muttering, here's a straightforward fact:
www.lup.co.uk/html/cinema
Perhaps I'm being pubblished, sorry, published because I can spell. I expect it helps. There'll be stories about Tubby in my book, but they'll all be true. Forgive me if I keep them to myself until then. And if prior publication is a requirement for posting on these boards, I wonder where Mr Mime has been published. What has he written? Under what name?
Perhaps the gibe about spelling is a little glib, but it's too late: I've sent the message. I gaze at the screen in case a counterblast appears, until I remember that Natalie is waiting for me. I switch off the computer and tiptoe along the hall to bolt the apartment door. I close the bathroom door and do my best to hush my various activities. The toothbrush buzzes like an insect that has found its way into my mouth, and I wish it were as silent as my toothy reflection. As I edge the bedroom door open I put my finger to my lips, but there's no point. Natalie is asleep.
I feel as if my argument with Smilemime has sent her to sleep. I use both hands to inch the door shut, and then I pad to the bed. Perhaps she's aware of my presence; her lips part, though without a word. When I touch them with a kiss she murmurs a phrase that has been filleted of its consonants before she turns over as if to give me more room. I slip under the quilt into the warmth she left me and reach across her to extinguish the bedside light, a pottery cottage inhabited by gnomes in drooping red hats, which she found irresistibly kitsch. As the room darkens I bring my arm under the quilt and close my eyes.
It seems that I need to put Smilemime out of my head in order to engage with sleep. Surely I dealt with all his points that were worth answering and quite possibly some that weren't, or did he raise one that I failed to grasp? I suspect he says anything that comes to mind, and he can stay out of mine. That's easier to vow than to achieve, and soon I'm back at my desk.
I don't want to see what the screen has in store. I type gibberish as random as I can manage and furiously click the mouse. The yellowed keys rattle like bones while the mouse emits its plastic chatter, but none of this helps. The screen is no longer featureless. Its sides extend backwards to form the floor and walls and ceiling of a corridor. Though it appears to stretch almost to infinity, I can just distinguish a figure that is waiting at the end. It's approaching, or am I? I would very much prefer it to keep its distance, and the distraction of Mark's voice comes as a relief.
It isn't quite so welcome once I hear his words. 'He's on. He's lit up.' Presumably he too is having a bad dream. At least his dream has rescued me from mine, and I open my eyes. A clown's blurred glowing face is beside me on the pillow.
I gasp rather less than a word and jerk away, backing into Natalie. The next moment the bedside light comes on. That's scarcely reassuring, because we're surrounded by shadowy figures in jesters' hats. I feel like a child who has wakened from a nightmare into worse until I identify them as the shadows of gnomes inside the lamp. As for the clown's face, it was printed on my wrist. I didn't realise that I hadn't washed it off or that it was so luminous. 'I'll go if you like,' I murmur, sitting up. 'I know what it'll be.'
Natalie blinks rapidly to clear her eyes. 'What will it?'
'Just this,' I say, exhibiting my wrist, but now I can't see the imprint. I'm wondering if Mark has sorted out the situation for himself when he breaks his silence with an inarticulate but heartfelt protest. I'm almost out of the room before Natalie says 'Better put something on, Simon. I know you're boys, but you aren't related.'
I grab my towelling robe from the hook on the door and struggle into the inside-out sleeves and knot the cord around my waist. I open Mark's door gradually so as not to startle him awake. The room isn't as dark as it should be; it's illuminated by a dim glow that drains everything of colour. Mark is lying on his side with his face towards the source of the illumination – the blank computer screen. I can't see whether he's asleep, even when I move to shut down the computer. Shouldn't it be displaying a screensaver if it isn't dark? I wonder if he may only recently have finished using it with the sound turned off, a possibility that's preferable to the unappealing notion that someone or something has gone to ground inside the computer. I take hold of the mouse and hear a flurry of bedclothes behind me. 'What are you,' Mark says and leaves it at that, or his drowsiness does.
'You need to switch this off when you go to bed, Mark.'
I face him to say so. When I turn back to the screen it's teeming with icons. I must have touched them off with the mouse. I shut the computer down, leaving the room illuminated by light from the hall. 'Now what were you shouting about?'
'I wasn't, and I did switch off.'
'It sounded like shouting to us. Were you dreaming?'
The charcoal sketch of his face peers out of the gloom. 'Must have been.'
'Was it to do with today? Was it this?'
I bare my wrist, on which the clown's remains have saved up a faint pallid glow. Mark holds up his like a response to a secret sign. It's more clearly defined, in particular the grin. 'Do you think you'd better wash it off?' I suggest.
'No,' Mark protests as he hides it and the rest of him under the blanket.
I pad out of the room and close the doors. I'm reclaiming my half of the quilt when Natalie says 'That was better.'
'I'll keep trying,' I say as she returns the floppy-hatted shadows to the dark. For a while I listen to be sure that Mark is quiet. Without warning it's so silent that I don't know where I am. Where was the desk in my dream? Not in this apartment, now I think about it. Why should it matter? I'm with Natalie, and there's another of her breaths. I'm nearly asleep, that's all, and then I wholly am.
EIGHTEEN - I'M NOT REMISS
It's the time of year. The reduced landscape seems to have been trundling past as repetitively as a screensaver for hours. As the train dawdles north, frost and frozen snow keep pace with a sun like a disc of ice embedded in the colourless sky. They've rendered the fields and small towns rudimentary: pale sketches of themselves, or faded photographs. As though to contradict the spectacle, the train is so overheated that the air tastes like laryngitis. The windows in the doors are the only ones that open, and they won't do so except all the way, sending a winter gale through the carriage. I can't even buy a drink of water; the buffet shut half an hour ago, although it isn't unattended – I'm sure I heard laughter beyond the metal shutter of the counter, but there was no other response however hard I knocked. The water from the cold taps in the toilets is so lukewarm I don't want it in my mouth. I feel trapped by all this, borne helplessly onwards with more than one symptom of fever, but there's no use in pretending not to know why. I'm gripping my mobile in a clammy fist while I put off making the call.