The Grin of the Dark

She's holding a strip of half a dozen frames of film. For a grotesque moment I have the notion that she has planted it on me as though it's as incriminating as a drug, and then I remember finding it in Charley Tracy's van. I must have been carrying it about with me intermittently ever since, and at last I see that it consists of footage of Tubby. I've barely glimpsed his face when Bebe holds the film up to the light. She stiffens while her mouth forms an O so pronounced it doesn't need to be audible, and her shocked silence takes hold of the room.

The only sound is a plastic creak from the case of Tubby Tells the Truth until I relax my grip. Everyone has turned to gaze at the strip of film dangling from Bebe's finger and thumb, but I have an unnecessary sense that they're surreptitiously aware of me. 'Is it questionable?' Mark says.

He heard me use the word earlier. I mustn't make too much of his using it now. Nevertheless I'm scrutinising his grin, which seems rather too wide for the innocence it's claiming, when Bebe says 'I'd call it worse. Put it away, Simon, unless you want me to burn it.'

Is this an offer or the kind of threat you might issue to a child? She holds the film at arm's length as if she's anxious to be rid of it, but now her finger and thumb conceal a frame in the middle of the strip. As I take the film I see that Tubby is wearing a gown and mortarboard. I've been carrying footage from the first scene of Tubby Tells the Truth all over the world without realising. He's pointing at the incomprehensible formula on the blackboard with his stick, which reminds me more than ever of a wand, perhaps because the isolation of the frames lets me observe that his other hand appears to be describing some kind of occult sign, so complicated that the fingers look misshapen. The next frame shows them performing a different but equally elaborate gesture, but how can they have moved so quickly? I'm about to examine the third frame when Bebe releases her grip on the fourth, and I see that it wasn't any of his secret gestures that offended her. I'm only just able to hold my face expressionless and choke off a gasp.

The frame shows two girls crouching over an equally naked man on a bed. One holds his eager penis while the other takes it in her mouth. The solitary reassuring detail is that the man's face is offscreen, though reassuring is scarcely the word. I recognise his body, and the bed, and the girls. They're Julia and Mona, and we're in Willie Hart's house.

A further unwelcome thought surfaces from the chaotic clamour that fills my fragile skull. Though the girls' hair is tousled out of style, they look far too modern for the film. This surely can't betray me, but my lack of expression might. How ought I to react? The best I can produce is a grin so automatic that it hardly feels part of me, accompanied by an incredulous laugh. I'm about to pocket the film and attempt to forget it until I have an opportunity to try and understand when Colin takes hold of the end of the strip. 'Isn't this what we were watching?'

'No mistaking that,' says Rufus.

'Jesus.' Colin has caught sight of the interpolated frame. 'I thought there was something odd, but I couldn't get hold of it. We're seeing film history rewritten here. This has to be the earliest use of a subliminal.'

'Come along, Mark,' Bebe says loud enough to be addressing everyone. 'Let's go where there's something nice.'

'Go ahead, Mark. You'll have to save watching this till you're older.' As if he's unaware of aggravating Bebe's outrage Colin says to Warren 'So long as he'll be out of the way, can I ask you a favour?'

'I guess you can ask.'

'Your player will have single frame mode, yes? I'd love to run that disc again and see if there are any more subliminals. I'd bet a lot of money that there are. I'd bet your advance, Simon.'

My mind is close to abandoning any attempt to grasp what is or isn't real. I don't know if my nerves make me glimpse pale mask-like features flicker over everybody's faces, but I certainly see Colin wink at Warren as he adds 'You can watch if you like.'

FIFTY - MEMENTOS

I hardly know where I am or when. My head feels like a balloon that's close to bursting. The enormous space inside it teems with thoughts that clamour for expression but are too swift to catch. They make me desperate to cling to saying 'I don't think that's appropriate, Colin.'

'Why not let Warren make his own mind up? He's a big boy. So are Joe and Nicky, now you raise the subject. They could join us.'

I know he enjoys controversy, but it isn't welcome now. 'I tempt – ' I say and battle to control my words. 'I meant – '

'Hold on. Let me just tell Natalie I wasn't being sexist, babe. I thought you two might want to check it out together when you're on your own.'

Bebe presses all the colour out of her lips and tries to steer Mark into the kitchen, but he lingers to hear me declare 'Don't worry, Bebebe. Nor you, I the Warren. We won't abuse your whore's fatality.'

If I'm not certain I said that then surely they aren't, but they head for the kitchen without answering. All that matters is to prevent everyone from seeing any further images hidden in Tubby's film. Were any concealed in his earlier work? What else may I have unknowingly watched? I want to believe that subliminal flashes in the last film have made me imagine the sly hints of clowns' faces that keep almost appearing to be superimposed or otherwise present on at least some of those around me, but I need to concentrate on withholding the disc. As Colin holds out a stubborn hand for it I say 'I told you, it sin a pro pro rate.'

Mark has begun to laugh as if I'm putting on a show. I push past Colin to carry my glass and Tubby's film into the kitchen. 'Can't you bear to be parted from it?' Bebe says, shaking her head.

'Just seeing nobody gets hold of it,' I say with as few extra syllables as I can manage, though enough to amuse Mark.

'Well.' Eventually Bebe adds 'Aren't you going to ask your question?'

'Wish won?'

She may assume I'm drunk, in which case she should blame her husband, who has topped up my glass virtually to the brim. She sighs at one or more of us and says 'What did we think of your film?'

Just now I'd prefer not to discuss it, but they might divert my thoughts. 'What id you?'

'I'd rather not say.'

'I guess the movies have grown up a lot since then,' says Warren.

'I certainly hope so,' says Nicholas.

'I think some people may still go for that sort of thing,' Joe puts in as if he's speaking up on my behalf. 'There's still a lot of silliness around.'

Is this honestly all they took from the film? Possibly their comments ought to quell the turmoil in my brain, but they're having the opposite effect. I look at Natalie, who says 'He still makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe that's because of what you wouldn't have known was there.'

Does she mean the secret frames, however numerous they may have been, or Tubby's cryptic lecture? 'You thought it was funny,' Mark protests. 'You were all laughing.'

'We were laughing at you, sweetie,' says Bebe.

'And at Mr Loster,' Nicholas says.

Perhaps he doesn't pronounce it like that, but I might challenge him to repeat it if Natalie weren't quicker. 'They mean with you,' she reassures Mark.

'No they weren't. It was Tubby. Why are you all pretending?'

'Do calm down, there's a good child,' says Bebe. 'I think you've been seeing too much of him.'

'I'm not a child. I know what I saw you all doing.'

'A child and a tad bratty, do we think, mom?' Bebe says with a smile that makes my teeth ache with its sweetness. 'I guess maybe he's the one that was pretending. The way he was laughing, a person could think he was taking drugs.'

Is there about to be an argument over how to laugh at comedies? Before I can force something like that question out of my mouth, Natalie says 'Then they'd be stupid if not worse. He hasn't been.'