The Grin of the Dark

'Watch where you're pouring for mercy's sake,' he says and stares at her until she relocates the mug with the teapot. 'Just bringing up your favourite subject. That's the family.'

The last remark is directed more at me. Perhaps it isn't as accusing as it sounds, because my mother says 'Now we're retired we'll have time for more of one.'

She plants the mug, still brimming despite the extended ellipsis it has scattered on the floorboards, in front of me on the oaken table that bears the childish start of my first initial, and then she giggles like someone a fraction of her age. 'Don't worry, we aren't expecting a little stranger, even though we still get up to mischief.'

'I don't want to know that,' I'm tempted to retort like some forgotten comedian. Instead I take a gulp of milky tea as she says 'I'm sure you can guess what we're hoping for.'

'She's on about grandchildren,' my father explains. 'She always is these days.'

'My partner has a son. He's seven.'

'We'll look forward to seeing him at Christmas,' my mother says. 'And I can't wait to show all our friends your dedication.'

What kind of performance are they expecting of me? Apparently I look bewildered enough for her to giggle again. 'Bob told me how you're putting us both in your book.'

I have to rewind quite a stretch of conversation to recall my actual words. I was planning to dedicate the book to Natalie, but I don't see how I can disappoint them, even though it feels as if my intentions have been diverted. I'm silently promising Natalie the next book when my mother says 'So you're here to research it.'

For at least a second I'm unable to mumble 'And I came to see you.'

'I'm so glad, aren't you, Bob?' Once my father grunts, either in agreement or in resignation, she says 'Hands.'

She reaches for my left and my father's right and nods at us until we join hands too. His is hot and moist while hers feels stripped down to its mechanism. I'm put in mind of a séance, because it's my early childhood, before she and my father parted, that she's trying to call up. I can't cling to my resentment now I've seen how much they've aged, but I grow uncomfortable as my mother squeezes the hands she's holding and waits not just for reciprocation but for my father and me to demonstrate as well. When at last she lets go of us, our hands immediately separate. 'Will you be talking to people up here for your book?' she appears to hope.

'I'm counting on the library. If there's any record of what happened it'll be there.'

'What do you think did?'

'A comedian by the name of Thackeray Lane took his act into the street and got arrested for it. Sounds as if he was too much of a laugh for the law, but there won't be anyone who'll remember now.'

'We do.'

Once again I feel imprisoned in a cramped dark place, and my face seems too unfamiliar to work. I want my father to tell her she's mistaken, but I'm afraid of how roughly he may do so. She giggles, which I don't find even slightly heartening. 'You ought to see your face, Simon. I'm not saying we were there.'

'Sorry, then, but how do you remember?'

'Bob's grandparents were. We were talking about it after you rang.'

'Did they say anything about his act that you remember?' I ask my father, and when he seems reluctant to speak 'Did he do a trick with balloons?'

'Never told me if he did. They used to say if I was bad they'd chase me like he chased them.'

'He was on stilts, wasn't he?' my mother prompts.

'Some kind of special ones, they must have been. I don't know if everyone had had enough or it was the end of the show, but he came down off the stage and got taller while he was chasing them. My granddaddy said he was so tall when he got to the door he had to bend nearly double and some children thought he was going to jump on them. Like a grasshopper with a man's face, my dad said.'

'I expect he just wanted to give them an encore. Like Simon said, he was there to make them laugh.'

'He tried hard enough in the street, according to my granddaddy. Maybe he wanted to win them back, but he still got arrested.'

This differs so much from the account I read that it sounds like an alternate take of the scene. 'What size was he then?' I wonder.

My father waits for my mother to finish giggling, though the question strikes me as less amusing than grotesque. 'His normal,' he says. 'A bit late if you ask me.'

'I'm sure he didn't do any real harm, Bob. If your grandma survived I don't see why anyone else should complain.'

'It didn't help her much, did it? I blame my granddaddy as much as him. Granted he mightn't have known what kind of tricks Simon's character was going to get up to, but I wouldn't have taken a woman to the theatre in that state.'

My mouth has grown dry with the overheated air. 'Which state?'

'She was about to have my dad.'

'Less than seven months pregnant, you said, Bob.'

'The same night she went to the show she had to be rushed into hospital.'

'You can't blame him for that,' my mother objects.

'All I know is my dad was premature, and they didn't have half the facilities they've got in hospitals now.'

'But he was all right and she was.'

'If you call it all right when nobody could be sure if she was laughing or crying. My granddaddy told my dad she kept being like that for weeks, and a nurse said she was while she was giving birth.'

'She was quiet whenever I met her. You could hardly get a word out of her.'

'Maybe it used her up.'

We've wandered into an area I can't define, and I'd rather not linger. 'Did they have anything to say about the court case?'

'My granddaddy thought he deserved a lot worse, and I got the idea she agreed with him.'

I seem to have run out of questions. I'm trying to make sense of the information when my mother says 'Shall we take him?'

'Where?'

She's helplessly amused by my duet with my father. 'To whatever its name is,' she splutters. 'The theatre. The Harlequin, wasn't it? It's still there.'

'That doesn't say it's open. I'm pretty sure it's not.'

'It might give you ideas anyway, mightn't it, Simon? It might make your book more real.'

She's so anxious to help me that she has overcome her mirth. 'Let me check what the library's doing,' I say.

'Being where it's always been, I should think.' She knocks her elbows on the table and props her chin on her hands, drumming her cheeks with her fingertips while she watches me wield the mobile. It looks as if she's fanning the gleam in her eyes brighter. When my father reaches to calm her down she drags her wrist away from him. I pocket the mobile once I've been informed a second time that the number is unobtainable. 'Was I right?' my mother demands in some kind of triumph.

'They don't seem to be operating today.'

'Stay over, then, or you can go when you're all here for Christmas.'

As I mumble ambiguously she raises her hands, exposing a face that I could imagine has grown bonier. 'Shall we go to the theatre, then?'

She could almost be proposing a night at a show. At least the excursion will take us out of the kitchen, which feels shrunken by the heat. As soon as I push back my chair she jumps up, and my father rises grudgingly to his feet. 'Let's see what there is to see,' I say as though I'm eager.

TWENTY - IT STIRS

'Haven't we been this way before?'

'He'll be asking us next if we're there yet, Bob.'

'No, I'm saying I think we have. I'm sure we've passed this roundabout once.'

'Do you think I wouldn't remember?'

'He doesn't mean that, Bob. Don't confuse your father. Everything looks the same, that's all. Is it along there? I might know if they hadn't taken all the names away.'

'Nobody's done anything with any names. Don't talk daft, Sandra.'

'I know they haven't really. I was only joking. It's at the end of a road, I'm sure.'