I call up train timetables on the screen and see the joke. There's a station called Oldham Mumps. The journey from Egham takes nearly six hours and involves five changes of train. Perhaps I should give driving another try. Perhaps I would have persevered when I was a teenager if the task hadn't been so much more complicated and demanding than the games with cars I'd played on the computer. I ring Tracy to tell him that I should arrive shortly after one, but he's either elsewhere or not answering. Having informed his machine of my plans, I return to the movie database.
Sorry to bring facts into the argument, but the compiler of
Is that too sarcastic? Not by comparison with Smilemime's gibes, and I've sent my answer now. I don't expect to hear from him again, but if I do my book can be the answer. He has been enough of a distraction from my work. At least he can't do it tomorrow, and I leave him with another laugh.
TEN - MOORS
On the train from Euston I have to sit opposite an intrusively lanky teenager who chortles for almost three hours at some game on his laptop. His feet are too big as well. I might find more distraction in the landscape, even though it's dulled by the featureless grey sky, if I weren't facing away from the engine. I keep feeling that the journey I haven't completed is already rewinding before my eyes. By the time I reach Manchester Piccadilly I've had enough of trains for a while, and walk across town to Victoria Station as fast as I can dodge and sidle through the lunchtime crowds. If anyone were staffing the barrier I suspect they would tell me I'm too late, but I dash to the last carriage and clamber in and slam the door as the train comes to life. I've sprawled panting on the nearest seat, and office workers at computers are sailing past on both sides of me, when my phone strikes up. 'Hello?' I gasp with half a breath.
'You sound surprised, or is it worried?'
'Neither.' I take a deep breath in order to tell Tracy 'So long as you aren't calling to cancel.'
'Why do you reckon I'd be doing that?'
'I don't.'
Rather than ask if he is I fall silent, and he demands 'Did you send me a message?'
'I left you the time I'll be arriving.'
'That's all you've left.' When I confirm it Tracy says 'Where are you?'
The train is racing a tram on the road below. 'Leaving Manchester,' I assume.
'Get off at the one after next.'
'That'll give me the Mumps, you mean.'
'No.' He sounds displeased that I've made a version of his joke. 'The one after next,' he repeats at half the speed and shuts his phone off.
The train is approaching a station that resembles a hasty sketch of one. On either side of the tracks, metal benches or their outlines occupy the angle between a concrete platform and a concrete wall beneath a scrawny awning. Before I can see a signboard, a break in the coating of the sky fills my eyes with the glare of the shrunken white sun. I'm still trying to blink away the pallor, which robs the carriage of most of its substance, when the train reaches its next stop.
It could be the same one. At least the platform feels solid underfoot, however token it looks. A concrete ramp scattered with dozens of handbills – TEAR THE MOSQUES DOWN and WHITE MINORITY UNITE – leads down to a street bordered by a single elongated windowless building as grey as the clouds. As I step onto the ramp, a dilapidated white van parked on yellow lines flashes its headlamps from the shadow of the building. The side of the van reads FILMS FOR FUN.
The driver's seat is more than full of a man. His grey track suit manages to be loose on him; perhaps he stretched it larger. The small cramped features of his rotund face are keeping any cheerfulness to themselves. I'm making to climb in beside him when I see that a film projector is strapped into the passenger seat. 'Have you been showing films today?' I ask as he drags his door open and descends to the road.
He turns away, displaying how the black dye has fallen short of the shaggy tail of his grey hair. 'I've not, no,' he grumbles.
I wait while he plods to unlock the rear doors, and while he fails to transfer the projector from the seat. The rest of the van is empty except for a tattered strip of film and no cleaner than the pavement. When Tracy jerks a fat hand at the interior I say 'Couldn't your equipment go in there?'
'That's you if you're coming.'
I have to hope that the interview will be worth it. I clamber into the back and twist around in a crouch to see Tracy thrusting out a hand. When I make to pass him the strip of film he gives a terse laugh that the van renders metallic. 'Try again,' he says. 'You won't get another word out of me else, and we'll be going nowhere.'
I dig out my pocketful of notes, still in the envelope from the bank. Tracy splays the envelope wide to finger them. As he reaches for the doors I offer him the film again, but he hardly bothers to shake his head. Before I can discern the images on the six or seven frames they're extinguished by a double slam that nearly snatches the film out of my hand.
I slip the film into my inside pocket as Tracy drags his door shut. The van jerks forwards before I can brace myself, and I slide across the floor. I scrabble backwards into the corner behind the driver and jam my fists against the walls as the van swerves around a bend, and another. It feels as if I'm being flung from location to unseen location in the dark. When the road grows straight, every foot of it contains the threat of another unexpected bend. The van is climbing as well, tilting so precipitously that I bruise my knuckles against the walls and strain my knees high in an effort to wedge my heels against the floor. I'm feeling altogether too foetal, not least in terms of being menaced with ejection, when the van swings left and halts with a rasp of the handbrake.
The inside of my head is unconvinced that I've stopped moving. As I close my eyes to recapture equilibrium, I hear Tracy haul his door wide and tramp around the van. The rear doors squeal apart, admitting a chilly breeze. I scramble for the exit, only to be confronted by a void as blank as a dead computer.
It's the sky, which is no comfort, because there appears to be nothing else beyond the floor of the van. Tracy must have stood somewhere to open the doors. When I inch forward I see that the rear of the vehicle is overhanging the edge of a cliff. No, not quite: it's close to the end of a lay-by, beyond which the slope is rather less steep than it looked. I thrust my legs out of the van and wobble to my feet to find I'm surrounded by a moor.
It's darker than the sky but nearly as featureless. The black road winds from horizon to horizon. The solitary lay-by is deserted except for Tracy's van, and attended by a single picnic table carved with initials and longer words where it isn't charred. Tracy is occupying much of the bench that faces the road. As I sit opposite him he says 'I come up here to be on my tod.'
I could take this as unwelcoming, but I only say 'You're never alone with your mobile.' Since he doesn't seem amused I add 'Unless you switch it off.'
'They're still there waiting till you turn it on.'
'Anybody in particular?' I ask mostly out of politeness.
'Whoever texted me in the middle of the night off their computer, for a start. Said they were getting rid of some films I'd be interested in. Sent all the directions but when I got there it didn't exist. That's where I've just been. That's why I took the projector, to check what they had.'
His accusing tone provokes me to wonder 'Was that the message you asked if I'd sent?'
'Seemed a bit of a coincidence, hearing from you out of nowhere and then getting that. It's not like I knew who you were.' He peers harder at me as he says 'And some of these films were meant to have your friend Tubby in.'
I'm growing as suspicious as he looks. 'Do you happen to recall who the sender was?'
'Some stupid made-up name like people use on computers. Miss Isle, that was it. Don't tell me that's their real name.'
'I'm sure it isn't. I think it may be partly my fault, sorry. I shouldn't have brought you into it.'
'Into what?'
'There was a disagreement about which of Tubby's films you used. That's why I asked when we spoke.'
