The Grin of the Dark

I haven't stored the number. This is such a pathetic excuse that out of rage I almost mistype an enquiry code. Someone in India has me repeat the details while another white field etched with bare black trees is dragged past the window. When a voice composed of samples speaks the information I type it into the memory, and now I've no pretext for delaying. I poke the keys and lift the mobile to my face.

As the phone miles ahead starts to ring, the train loses speed. I could imagine that the sound has snagged the landscape. The trees beside the railway plod to a halt at the precise moment the notes cease, and I feel as if the silenced world is unable to move without a response. There's a wordless hiss, and then my father says 'You've reached Bob and Sandy Lester. Just because we've retired doesn't have to mean we're in. We can't have got to the phone, anyway, so don't leave us wondering. Speak your piece and we'll be in touch.'

The answering machine is newer than my last call. I can only utter my prepared greeting. 'Hello,' I say flatly. I'm echoed at once.

It might almost be an aberration of the machine. 'Hello,' I repeat.

'Hello.'

That's flatter than ever, but then so was mine. 'This is fun, isn't it?' I say to move us on.

'Is this who I think it is?'

'If it's who you'd like it to be.'

'I shouldn't think I have much choice by now. They call that being a father.'

I'm back in my adolescence, when my days with him seemed to consist of verbal skirmishes that he wouldn't abandon until he won. Sometimes I think all this crippled my ability to communicate. Before I can decide on a response he says 'What's the occasion, may I ask?' 'Does there have to be one?'

'Better hadn't be if they don't matter to you.'

'I'm sorry.' That's an overstatement and a simplification, which I resent as bitterly as needing to explain 'I was having some problems at the time.'

'You could always have told us. Are you able now?'

'Losing my job.'

'We weren't looking for a wedding present, Simon. If you'd let us know you were in difficulty we could have paid your fare.'

'I could have managed.'

'Right enough, you could.' Somewhat less sharply he asks 'And what's your situation now?'

'I've sold a film book, maybe several.'

'May we hope there'll be one with our names on it?'

I'm pierced by a sudden unexpected sense of loss. Despite all our confrontations, didn't we grow closer for a while on our weekly days out? Sometimes climbing the fells north of Preston with him felt like an antidote to being indulged by my mother at home. Perhaps inscribing a book to my parents will make up for all my uncommunicative Christmas and birthday and Mother's and Father's Day cards. 'Of course, when it comes out next year,' I say. 'I'm researching it in Preston.'

'Are we to be honoured with a visit? Don't put yourself out if it's too much trouble.'

'Let me see what I have to do first.'

'Is it a secret?'

'I'm looking into the career of one of the old Keystone comics. He was on stage as Thackeray Lane.'

At once there's a burst of wild laughter, and the landscape jerks as if it's an image projected not quite steadily on the window. The train subsides, and I realise that a door had opened, releasing the mirth of a television audience, as I hear my mother say 'Who is it, Bob?'

'Have we any fatted calves in the freezer?'

This seems to earn a surge of laughter before she says 'Fatty what again?'

'Calves. Not your legs. No need to show me those. Stop dancing about, Sandra. Calves. Little bulls. The fatted variety.'

'How little?'

'Never mind what size. We haven't really got any. That's the point I'm struggling to make.'

'You're struggling all right, but I'll be blessed if I know why.'

'It used to be expected of the father of the prodigal.'

All this might be a routine they're performing, especially given the waves of hilarity in the background, if it weren't so dogged and increasingly peevish. It seems to thicken the heat, which is already as inert as the frozen landscape. I'm dismayed by how much their age has slowed them down since I was last in touch, unless my lack of contact has. As my skin prickles with feverish guilt my mother says 'Are we talking about Simon?'

Applause almost blots out my father's weary reply. 'That's who it is.'

'He's on the phone?' my mother cries, and the whitened fields begin to ooze backwards like an immense river in the first stages of a thaw. 'Are you trying not to let me speak to him? Give it here or it's us that won't be speaking.'

I hear blurred voices beyond an amplified commotion that suggests she has grabbed the receiver, and then she says 'Simon? Are you there?'

'I haven't gone anywhere.'

'I wish you were here. You sound as if you are.'

'That's technology for you.'

'I believe it's more than that. I believe it's you wanting to be. Let's all forget our differences, whatever they were. Are you coming for Christmas? Will you be on your own?'

I was last year. I pretended not to have the day off from the petrol station, but I could tell that even Natalie didn't think the invitation her parents sent through her to celebrate with them was too sincere. 'I'm with someone,' I say.

'Bring her, of course. That's if she's a she. Bring them whichever way.' As trees race past the window my mother says 'So are you coming to us now?'

I'm dismayed by the notion that she has elided the weeks before Christmas. 'I was saying it rather depends how my work goes. I don't want to be away from my desk too long.'

'Do your best to see us, Simon. Nobody's getting any younger.'

'I will.'

'I'll let you get back to your work, then. It was lovely to hear your voice. Bring the rest of you as soon as you can.'

A final wave of merriment is cut off before it crests, and then the only sound is the muffled monotonous conversation of the wheels with the tracks. Her assumption that I'm working at this moment makes me feel I ought to be. I re-call the enquiries line and ask for the number of the library in Preston. The switchboard operator at the library sounds more remote than my parents did, and the reference librarian seems even more distant. I feel compelled to raise my voice halfway through saying 'Do I just need to ask at the counter for the Preston Chronicle?'

'If you let us know which issues we can have them waiting.'

'I'd like to look at 1913. Maybe 1912 as well. I should be there in an hour or so.'

'Could you hold on?' For no reason that I can imagine, she sounds doubtful. The clacking of a keyboard overtakes the rhythm of the wheels, and then her voice returns. 'You must be thinking of a different newspaper.'

'I'm not, I promise you. Who says I am?'

'The computer,' she says, and I'm preparing to argue with it when she robs me of words. 'It wasn't published in the last century at all.'

NINETEEN - SENIORS

I have to walk around the Harris building twice before I find the way in. The pillared Grecian building houses the museum and library and art gallery, and they're reconstructing it on behalf of the disabled. Contractors have walled off the massive steps that lead up to the main entrance. At first I miss a back door so rudimentary that it resembles an unpainted portion of a stage set. It leads into a lending library, where I'm confronted by shelves of books in Urdu. A computer printout on a door around the corner of the L-shaped room directs me into a circular vestibule. In the middle of the marble floor a giant figure is wrapped so thoroughly in opaque plastic that it's impossible to guess what the statue depicts. Somewhere behind the scenes, hammering and stony clanks suggest that another one is being sculpted. I climb one of a pair of marble staircases past a door marked THIS DOOR IS NOT TO BE USED to a circular balcony, which is a maze of plastic barriers and hulking chipboard pillars twice my height. While several of the pillars bear computer printouts saying THIS WAY, some of these appear to be or to have become jokes. I dodge around the obstacles into the reference library, where a tall young woman with black curls dusted by the renovation is standing behind the counter. 'You've got some newspapers for me,' I tell her.