Perhaps he didn't clear the copyright. His gaze is avoiding mine now, pretending to search the road or the moor. 'It was already out there on the Internet,' I point out. 'All I did was put it right.'
'So you say.'
'I'm sorry if I drew too much attention to it. Would you rather I didn't acknowledge you in my book?'
'A book, is it? You can call me Charles Trace. See if anybody gets the joke.'
I'm not sure I do, but feel bound to smile, which apparently prompts him to say 'Any road, do you want what you came for?'
'I'd love to watch anything of Tubby's you can show me.'
'Maybe you should hear about him first.' Tracy leans across the table, lowering his voice, and a charred patch of wood splinters under his elbows. 'How's this for a start? My grandpa saw him once.'
Presumably he's trying to make the information more dramatic; he can't imagine that we could be overheard. 'On stage, do you mean?' I ask.
'In Manchester. First place he appeared and the last time he did. My grandpa said there was nearly a riot.'
'Why, because Tubby was leaving the stage?'
Tracy lets out a laugh that seems close to reminiscent. 'Because he got them all going too much.'
'Going.' I then have to repeat 'Going...'
'Daft, it sounded like.' Tracy giggles, perhaps at his verbal dexterity. 'He had them playing jokes on one another. Made some of them laugh so much they couldn't stop.'
'A riot, though, you said.'
'Some of them carried on outside in the street and the rest still couldn't stop laughing. The theatre had to call the police. My grandpa used to say it was worse than when the country went on strike. He didn't hold with unions.'
'That wouldn't have been the act Orville Hart saw, would it?'
'That was after, down south. Seems Tubby wasn't just touring, more like keeping on the move. Some places wouldn't have him when they heard about him.'
'Do we know what sort of an act he had?'
'I'll give you a taste later.'
As Tracy's eyes lose a promissory glint I say 'I was wondering what Hart saw in him.'
'He said in one of those Hollywood magazines Tubby made the Keystone Kops look like a garden party with the vicar. That's how he sold him to Mack Sennett. Still, you don't know how Tubby was behaving when Hart saw him. The story goes Tubby kept trying to calm himself down.'
'Only trying?'
'Did you just see him in my film?'
'So far.'
A wind shivers the grey pelt of the moor and rattles the open doors of the van, which creaks as if someone has climbed in the back. As his troubled hair subsides, Tracy says 'That's him being moderate.' 'I'd like to see him when he isn't, then.'
Tracy opens his mouth, revealing the lower gum as well as its teeth, and I've time to wonder what goes with the expression before he speaks. 'My grandpa never let my daddy go to Tubby's films, the ones we even got.'
'Would you have any idea why some of them were banned?'
'People like my grandpa made a row about the ones that were let in. Some woman had a heart attack laughing at one of the stage shows, and they kept on digging that up till it got in all the papers. And there was supposed to be trouble at his films like there'd been at some of the theatres. My daddy heard there was more of a shindy at a cinema in Eccles than they were showing on the screen.'
'These days they'd use all that in the publicity.'
Though I'm not suggesting the industry should, Tracy focuses his disapproval on me. 'Shows the way the world's going. Anything to get into your head and who cares what gets in. And you wonder why I like it up here.'
'I'm surprised you didn't mention some of those stories in your film.'
'Maybe I should have. They're what got me interested in him. I was young, that's why. Anything you couldn't see had to be good.'
'Presumably he lost his contract when his films kept being banned here.' When Tracy stares as if he doesn't need to speak I say 'Then what happened to him?'
'On the payroll writing gags and they used some of his ideas, but they wouldn't let him write a film. Then he went to Hal Roach and thought up
'And after that?'
'He tried to give Stan Laurel more ideas but the story goes they were too much for Stan, so Tubby went off with a circus.' Behind Tracy the surface of the moor shifts like an image left too long onscreen, and the van emits another creak. 'He's meant to have said he wanted to get back to the start,' he says.
'I thought he started in the music-hall.' Since Tracy only lets his bottom lip droop as some kind of response, I try asking 'Where did you hear about it?'
'From a lad by the name of Shaun Nolan that sold me Tubby's film.'
'Would it be worth my speaking to him, do you think?'
'Want to go and see him?' Tracy jumps up as if he has been hooked by the corners of his sudden grin. 'I've had my sit,' he says and peers at my lack of alacrity. 'Nothing to keep us here that I know of.'
'Will you be showing me anything of Tubby's later?'
His grin subsides, and then his eyes glimmer. 'You want to see what his act was like.'
'Anything you can put on for me would – '
I don't just leave the word unspoken, I forget what it was going to be. Tracy has stepped back on the concrete stage and is clutching his stomach with both hands. I think he's in pain until I see that he's quivering with silent laughter. At first he pinches his lips together to arrest his grin and confine his mirth. Very gradually his lips part as if he's losing control of them, baring his teeth. There's still no sound from him or anywhere on the moor. His mouth gapes so wide it can barely hold on to the shape of the grin, and his eyes bulge with an unblinking gaze that sets my head throbbing in sympathy. I'm wondering how loud and sharp and huge his laughter may seem whenever it bursts forth at last. I feel compelled to head it off, but I don't think simple merriment will do it, although I can sense helpless mirth building up inside the dam of my clenched teeth. Perhaps I have to perform some routine that will lend his voiceless jollity a point, and I leap up from the bench. I'm not sure whether I'm yielding to the compulsion to amuse him or retreating from it when my knee collides with the table.
I squeeze my eyes shut as a preamble to hopping about and then rubbing my kneecap. If my antics divert Tracy, that makes me even angrier. When I straighten up and blink my vision clear, however, he looks merely bemused, as if his own performance that lasted however many minutes never took place. 'Was that it?' I ask.
His mouth considers grinning and his eyes widen a fraction. 'Want some more?'
'I think we can move on. Would you mind if I ride in the front this time?'
'I'm not letting the projector out of my sight. It's my oldest mate and my best one.' He stumps to the back of the van and waits for me to climb in. 'It's not far,' he says, and I'm hardly inside when he slams the doors and leaves me in the dark.
ELEVEN - INTERMENTS
I'm back in the corner when the van swings out of the lay-by. At least it's heading downhill. I brace myself, because it feels as if it's straying back and forth across the road. A car rushes past, and another, or are they gusts of wind across the moor? Here's one so violent and prolonged it seems almost to force the van into the ditch, but it could be a lorry that's passing too close. I flatten my hands against the metal walls until it relents. A series of vehicles races by, unless they're sections of wall or other objects alongside the road. The sounds are settling into a rhythm that reminds me of waves or breaths; in the darkness it's nearly hypnotic. The sounds are growing louder
