I attempt not to find this too ominous. Dozens of emails are waiting: reports that messages I never sent have been returned, offers of Viagra and other drugs, requests for me to help Nigerians or Gulf War veterans in secret financial transactions by sending every detail of my bank account. I delete them all before informing Rufus that I've gathered plenty of material about Tubby and that the bank has made a decidedly unauthorised donation. 'Maybe they mistook me for our friend Tickell,' I add, though it doesn't feel much like a joke.
I'm supposed to be writing to the bank. I log onto the site for their address and grin with the opposite of humour at my balance, which is still flourishing a minus sign. Could Tess of the bank have told me that they weren't able to restore my credit until I wrote to them? It's her job to make herself clear. By the time I've finished emailing, Mark has said good night from the hall. Instead of checking for Smilemime I switch off the computer. 'Can we talk now?' I say. 'I'm pretty shagged.'
I must be, otherwise I would have avoided the word. Natalie lets me interpret her gaze before she relents, if she does. 'What would you like to say, Simon?'
'I didn't know about Willie Hart, and that's the truth.'
'What didn't you?'
'She's no more a man than I am a woman, but what's anyone expected to think with a name like that?'
'Maybe you ought to have looked a bit closer.'
'I'm not saying she didn't look female. She certainly did,' I say with, to judge by Natalie's expression, too much enthusiasm before I understand her remark. 'I swear it didn't say she was short for Wilhelmina when I read it.'
'We've had quite a lot of swearing tonight, haven't we.'
'Not as much as I feel like.' I visualise this as an intertitle but say aloud 'I believed Mark, didn't you? I hope you'll believe me.'
'Why didn't you tell me while you were there?'
'I wanted to face to face.'
'I'd rather have heard it from you than from my parents. They made it sound like some grubby little secret they were ashamed to have to tell me.'
'I hadn't met her then.'
'How do you – ' Natalie's mouth stiffens around the last word. 'You've discussed it with them, have you?'
'Disgust is more like it. Theirs, I mean.'
Natalie shakes her head as if too many words have settled on it. 'Just tell me. Leave the random stuff where it belongs.'
'All right, they did their best to make me betray myself.'
'What did you have to betray, Simon?'
'Not a thing,' I say, fending off a memory of three naked girls with Tubby's gleeful face. 'I'm saying they tried. Are we happy now?'
'I couldn't say what you are. Maybe you can tell me.'
I might object that she wanted me to rid the conversation of this kind of tangential link, but I say 'I mean is there anything else you want to know? Anything at all.'
'How was she?'
'As professional as they come.' Hastily I add 'The time I didn't spend watching her grandfather's films she was telling me about him and his career.'
'Poor you,' Natalie says with, I suspect, at least as much mockery as sympathy. 'Sounds as if you never went to bed.'
'Oh, I did quite a bit of that too.'
Natalie makes for the door, and I'm afraid that language has tripped me up again until she says 'That's where I'm going. You're not the only one in need of sleep.'
'Sorry. I didn't realise wondering about me would keep you awake.'
She halts with her hand on the doorknob. 'Mark has been.'
'You should have told me. What's been wrong?'
'I hope he's just been missing you. Perhaps whatever's kept waking him up will go away now you're home, since he won't tell me what he's been dreaming.'
At least her hope is encouraging. 'I'll let you get in first, shall I?'
'I'd appreciate it.' As she opens the door she murmurs 'I'm glad not to be on my own again.'
'I'll be here,' I promise and switch on the computer.
She bolts the bathroom door as I reach the newsgroups. Perhaps the splash of water in the sink would deafen her to any other sound, but I grab my mouth to trap whatever noise I might emit. I clutch my face hard enough to bruise it while I stare at Smilemime's latest message. I minimise the image and don't restore it until I hear Natalie switch off the bedroom light, by which time I've thought to let go of my aching face. Various members of the groups have already responded – 'Nobody cares who any of you are' and 'Why don't you all go forth and multiply, in other words fuck off' and 'I'd like to meet you and separate your head' – but nobody has on my behalf. It makes me feel spied upon by more people than I want to imagine.
So the other one of Mr Questionabble wants me to meet him somewhere now and if I don't it shows I'm not telling the truth, except everyboddy can see it's beccause I'm telling it he wants to meet me and shut me up. Here's what I'll prommise. I'll meet him if someboddy who can prove who they are comes allong to keep the peace, but it has to be somewhere I sellect. I wonder how many of us there'd be then. Less than he wants us all to think. His name's nearly Less, which gives him away again, and Colin Vernon's his CV, he'd like us to believe. If you want an idea of his real CV and the kind of films he's mixed up in, have a look at the site where he's performming with three girls. They do things you couldn't dream of. He looks like he's dreamming himself. Dream on, Mr Questionabble. Just don't bother dreamming of tricking me. That's me in the middle of the web, and I've got tricks I havven't even thought of yet. Better get off it while you can, beffore you're stuck. You wouldn't want that for Christmass.
THIRTY-SIX - LISTENERS
We should never think history is fixed. That's as untrue of the cinema as it is of any other area of study, especially now that so much we thought was lost is being rediscovered. Sometimes we might feel as if the collective unconscious has repressed a memory. We can see why Stepin Fetchit became an embarrassment, though not in the French sense, but how long will anyone even remember him? By now the world has forgotten both how hilarious audiences once found Max Davidson and how his brand of Jewish humour was declared unacceptable. Of course some groups might prefer to pretend that Jewish comics never parodied their race, but the awkward truth is that he did for one. Now that he's safely embalmed in the form of extras on Laurel and Hardy DVDs, perhaps history can come to terms with him. Some resurrections may be harder to keep quiet, however. The films of Tubby Thackeray caused ructions during the First World War, and they're still difficult to contain within their genre. Comedies they may be, but his uniquely anarchic brand of slapstick seems to have tempted contemporary viewers to throw off too many conventions. Some resisted, some gave in, but nobody was comfortable with him. It's time to find out whether today's audiences will be more in sympathy with the films he made with director Orville Hart...
It reads as if I'm trying to delay discussing Tubby. I'm attempting to place him in a context, even if it's reluctant to accept him. The rest of the chapter sketches his and Hart's careers and speculates about Tubby's influence on the director's later work. It's as much as I can manage until I'm free of jet lag and able to do justice to the notes I made in California. I change several phrases and several details before emailing it to Colin. For a moment I have a sense of achievement, and then it's crowded out of my head.
By the time I went to bed last night, Natalie was asleep. When I awoke, having very eventually managed to doze, she and Mark had gone. I keep feeling prompted to ring her about Smilemime's latest, but for any number of reasons this seems inadvisable. At least my bank balance has been restored, though I've yet to receive an explanation. Just now I'm more anxious to understand how Smilemime could have made the allegation.
I want to believe it's just another deranged fantasy. Is it a coincidence too outrageous for any fiction to risk,
