The Grin of the Dark

'Let me send it to you when it's in better shape.'

'Tell me what you thought at least.'

'I wonder if his sense of humour was too much for the public or the studios back then.' Sensing her dissatisfaction, I feel bound to add 'The world could be catching up with him and Tubby too.'

'You can tell anyone that's interested in reissuing them where the movies are.'

'I will. So how long did he carry on making films?'

'He made the stag movies during the war, and then he tried to set up a radio station. It was supposed to just broadcast comedy, but it ended up too weird for the sponsors. Not stuff you'd want to hear late at night, my grandmother Hart used to say. He'd invested everything he owned in it, even his house. The way she told it, it wasn't the loss that killed him so much as not being able to reach the public any more. Mind you, they were divorced by then.'

'He didn't invest the films you've got, or did he?'

'Nobody wanted them. He gave them to her, because she was in quite a few of them. Leonora Bunting.'

She played Capaldi's moll and Chase's wife in Fool for a Day, and a saloon-keeper with a shotgun in Ticklin' Feather. She must have been at least a decade younger than her husband. Are three films quite a few? I haven't decided whether to ask if she appeared in his later work – surely it's an irrational notion – when Willie says 'He couldn't have known she'd get religion.'

'And yet she still kept all the films, even – all of them.'

'Even the horny ones, sure. She was brought up never to junk anything, and she'd been through the Depression too, but I wonder sometimes if there was another reason. My mom said once it was like Leonora was afraid to let them out of her control. I figured she didn't like the idea of people watching them any more.'

I can only conclude that the actress must indeed have performed in her husband's less reputable work. What else makes sense? I've watched more of his films in a single session than very probably anyone else in the world, and the only noticeable effect is to leave me feeling that I dreamed them and have already forgotten parts of them, if all this isn't just a symptom of jet lag. 'You have, though,' I remind Willie.

'Most of them.'

I don't know why that makes me feel so solitary, but my retort sounds accusing. 'Why not all?'

'So I've still got some left to enjoy.' Perhaps she sees I'm dissatisfied, because she adds 'I never really watched any till I persuaded my folks to let me have these. I did see Crazy Capaldi on television one time, but it was missing a whole lot of footage. All the prints you saw were uncut. I believe some weren't ever released that way.'

'Didn't your parents ever try to get them shown?'

'My mom inherited the frugality gene and that's the only reason why we have them. My folks ran a sporting goods store and they used to keep them in back with the guns and ammunition, but I don't believe they had any kind of plan for them. They didn't want me to watch them, only I guess they figured when I started making movies it couldn't do me any more harm.'

I can't quite bring myself to ask whether they're aware of her genre. Instead I say 'Did they know about his wartime work?'

'He worked with Rogers and Astaire, you ought to realise, but he never got a credit. Their director was a friend of his. Orville wrote a whole scene where Ginger's given a drug and she talks crazy stuff on a radio show, and you can see where they cut it because it was too weird.' Willie shakes her head and says 'You're asking did my folks know he made fuck films? I highly doubt it. I didn't till I watched them.'

Before she has said five words her bare knee rests against my trousered one. I withdraw mine as gently as seems polite. 'So what was it your parents didn't want you to watch?'

'Any of Orville's movies. My pop thought there was stuff in them they didn't own up to was how he put it. He and mom only ever saw the release versions of just a few of them, but they even thought some of those were I guess you'd say blasphemous, though they could never pin down how. They weren't as religious as Leonora got, but they were pretty conservative. My mom once said Orville's movies were like propaganda for a world where you couldn't depend on anything and nothing mattered any more. Still, that's what she said about all kinds of movies that were around while I was growing up.'

'I take it you're saying she was mistaken.'

'You'd think so, wouldn't you, when I've turned into the opposite of just about everything she believes in.'

Have I triggered some buried guilt? 'You haven't told me your view of his films.'

'I like them. I admire them. They're a lot of fun. They make me laugh. I don't believe they deserve to be forgotten.'

'They won't be,' I say, which earns me her hand on my knee. 'Anything else?'

'Sometimes I wonder how much he owes to working with your guy.'

'He's not just mine,' I say and use that as a pretext to sit up in my chair, drawing my leg out of reach. 'Do you know what Leonora Bunting thought of them?'

'I understand she blamed your guy for all the problems Orville had with censors and distributors, even on his sound movies after they parted company. She used to say your guy got inside his head.'

'And did what?'

'Left him still trying to make the kind of movie your guy wanted to make.'

'Which was...'

'I don't know exactly, but she thought he wanted to change the world somehow.'

'I thought it was Chaplin who did.'

This brings Willie's reminiscence to an end, or the arrival of Mona and Julia in the kitchen does. Both of them are as bare as their feet. I flash them a grin and look quickly away. 'You were a long time out there,' one says.

'Back to reality now, huh,' says the other.

I feel as if the air has grown insubstantially oppressive. The glare of the desert and the parched sky through the window appears to have intensified. It resembles the threat of a headache, which is aggravated by the squeal of the legs of my chair on the tiles as I push it back. 'If you'll excuse me,' I say, 'I think I'm ready for a nap.'

'Let us know if you get lonely.'

'Dream about us at least.'

'Girls,' Willie intervenes.

She sounds rather too maternal for my liking. She has made them seem younger still. I hurry to my room and consider a cold shower, but exhaustion overwhelms me at the sight of the bed. As I fumble the blind shut the image through the glass appears to shiver with the heat or, I could imagine, with the pulsation of the generator. I stumble across the room and fall on the bed.

The next I know, I seem to be dreaming in accordance with instructions. I look down my body to see who's mouthing my erection. The face that rises into view does indeed belong to one of Willie's performers. When I check again it's the other girl, and the third time I see Willie herself. Despite her task, she's able to present me with a grin – so much of one that it widens her cheeks, stretching them luminously pale, along with the rest of her face. The same condition has overtaken the girls on either side of her. All three have Tubby's gleeful face.

I flounder out of the dream and off the bed, grabbing my watch as I go. The seconds are urging the minute towards seven o'clock, but in the morning or at night? Should I be heading for the airport? I stagger to the window and claw the blind aside. The sky is dark, but the streetlamps are lit. They show me pallid elongated buildings writhing in the depths of a canal.