The Grin of the Dark

'It's never Professor Lester.'

'It isn't, no. Just plain Simon.'

'Plain and simple, eh? How do then, just plain Simon. How's your book coming?'

'I've seen almost all of Tubby's films. I'm in Manchester to do one more piece of research.'

'What a coincidence. More like a miracle. Must be the time of year.'

'I was going to ask you if there were any other leads I should follow up. Last time we spoke you said you'd meant to take me somewhere else.'

'Do us a favour and I'll do you one, how's that?'

'May I know what they are?'

'Can you talk to some folk about Tubby Thackeray?'

'That's the one you're asking.'

'Could be either.'

The conversation is starting to seem like a joke, not least because the mirrors are displaying my unamused grin. 'So tell me about them,' I urge.

'Just a bunch that like a laugh. They're expecting me to give them a talk, but I bet they'd rather hear from a real book writer that can tell them about Tubby. I know I would.'

'When would you need me?'

'Soon as I can get you. Want to tell me where you are?'

'The Style Hotel.'

'That's not like the thing you have to climb over.'

'Style with a y,' I say, suspecting that he knows perfectly well.

'Sounds like your kind of place.'

I won't take that as a sly gibe. 'Do you know where – '

'By the fair. See you outside,' Tracy says, and I'm alone with my ruefully grinning self.

THIRTY-EIGHT - I EMOTE

Perhaps at least one office party is celebrating at the funfair. The big wheel appears to be laden with businessmen. Whenever a carriage is lifted above the hundred-yard races of traffic outside the hotel, the passengers seem to turn their grey twilit faces to me. Are they seeing something behind me, beyond the roof, and telling their mobiles about it? Car drivers are using mobiles too, and commuters on the elongated trams that skirt the square, and pedestrians and loiterers around me on the pavement, so that I could imagine I'm surrounded by a solitary communication. Quite a few are gazing silently at their phone screens, and at least one man is grinning at his. I'm distracted from all this by a car that prowls along the kerb.

It's a shabby Ford saloon the colour of rust, with a dent in the front passenger door. It spews fumes like a magnified negative image of the breaths that hover beside all the mobiles. The driver's large pale face ducks towards me as the car judders to a halt, and then he leans across the passenger seat to roll the window down. He's Charley Tracy. 'Don't know what you're waiting for,' he calls.

His features aren't as large as the dimness made them look. Only his head is as big as I thought. He's wearing a dinner suit and white shirt and bow tie, all of which lends him the appearance of a bouncer more than the orator he presumably intends to resemble. His cramped face seems to wince smaller at the harsh dry creak of my door. I haven't finished hauling the twisted safety belt out of its slot when he swerves the car across two lanes and through a set of traffic lights that have just turned red. 'How long have you had a car?' I wonder aloud.

'A lot longer than I've known you.'

Does he think I meant to criticise his driving? I simply had his van in mind. That almost revives a memory, but when I strain to recapture it there's only vagueness. I don't speak again until we've left a broad road out of the city for one that leads past the university. 'So where were you meaning to take me last time?'

He honks his horn like a speechless comedian, a response that I'm attempting to interpret when I notice he's ogling a gaggle of girls dressed as several sizes of Santa Claus. Once they're out of sight even of the mirror he says 'That was it.'

'You've lost me.'

'The university. Bet you don't know why anyone would look for Tubby there.'

He sounds so enthusiastic, at least for him, that I'm reluctant to destroy his triumph. 'Tell me.'

'Not so great at research even if you went to college, eh? Maybe it ought to be me writing your book.' As I ponder how much more of this I can politely take he adds 'It's where he started being Tubby.'

Presumably I should hear a name, not an adjective. 'Putting on shows, do you mean?'

'If that's what you want to call it. You'll see. He left all his notes.'

'For his routines, do you mean? That would be exactly what the doctor ordered.'

'I said you'll see. Don't know what you'll do then.'

The road grows crowded between dozens of Indian restaurants. The odd people sporting red floppy festive hats resemble drunken tourists. Beyond the restaurants the road leads past large houses set back in larger gardens, in the midst of which the car veers across the road in front of an onrush of traffic and speeds between a pair of spiked iron gates. We've arrived at a church. I presume it's deconsecrated, since the churchyard has been razed to provide a car park. Streetlamps cast the shadows of bare trees onto the façade, cracking the plain pale stone and the stained-glass windows. The concrete grounds are occupied by dozens of cars, so that Tracy has to park around the side of the building. As he drags the handbrake erect he says 'Better get a move on. You're late.'

By the time I shut my door with a resounding creak he has waddled into the porch. It's decorated with posters, none of which I have a chance to read before Tracy shoves the doors into the church wide. 'Here he is at last,' a woman cries.

She could mean me, because I've seen her before. With her shawl and her numerous jewels she looks more than ever like a fortune-teller. I recognise other people seated on the pews: the heavy-eyed heavyweight, the man with the tortoiseshell scalp, the long-faced fellow with bristling eyebrows, the almost colourless bony woman, and could the man whose round face seems to need a stack of chins to prop it up have been selling tickets outside the St Pancras Theatre? I'm virtually certain that more of the audience were at the fair. 'What is this?' I mutter.

'What do you think? It's our Christmas get-together.'

Or perhaps Tracy said it was theirs, although people greet him as he plods down the aisle to the space vacated by an altar. 'Merry Christmas, Chuck,' they call, or 'Many of them' or 'Here's another one.' Disconcertingly, nobody acknowledges me when I follow him. I take some kind of refuge on the front seat closest to the left-hand wall as if I'm playing an anonymous spectator, at least until Tracy speaks. 'Who's heard of Simon Lester?'

'I have.'

Surely I don't say this aloud, but it prevents me from hearing whether anyone else did. The murmur that passes through the audience seems to consist mostly of 'Who?'

'Sigh Mon Lest Err,' Tracy pronounces, pointing at me. 'Britain's premier young film critic, they tell me. He's the surprise guest tonight. He's going to tell us about the films he's dug up.'

'Which fillums?' says a woman, perhaps as a joke.

'Silent ones with somebody I bet you've never heard of. Went by the moniker of Tubby Thackeray.'

'Someone came to our fair in London looking for him.'

'That was me,' I declare and twist around, to be confronted by unanimously blank stares. I haven't identified the speaker when Tracy says 'Any road, you've heard enough from me. Put your hands together for the man who knows.'

'I feel more like a sacrifice.'

I hope nobody hears me mumble this, since it's absurd. I feel much more as if I've wandered into yet another of the meaningless diversions that seem to have beset me ever since I set about researching Tubby. I step forward as Tracy sits where I was. The scattered tentative applause has already fallen silent, and quite a few of the spectators look more bemused than welcoming. 'I didn't expect to see you all again so soon,' I inform those I recognise. 'I don't suppose you were expecting to see me.'