Nobody looks away from me, and the man on the back row persists. 'Show us yourself.'
'I've been doing that,' I try and joke.
An impatient rumble passes through the audience, and he gives it more of a voice. 'Show us something Tubby did.'
'You're the only one that's seen these films,' Tracy joins in.
'That doesn't mean I can perform them.'
'If you're a lecturer you're a performer.'
I'm about to deny being either when a man I can't identify complains 'We haven't had our laugh yet. He said we'd have a laugh.'
I feel as if everyone is rejecting my attempts to make sense. I've had enough of striving to entertain them with words. Let them have what they're asking for. I no longer care about making a fool of myself. It's highly unlikely that I'll encounter any of them again. The worst they'll be able to say is that I didn't stand up as a stand-up, and how can that harm my reputation as a writer about films? 'All right, here's one,' I announce, and the echo sings swan. '
'You're still talking. Let's see it.'
I'm disconcerted not just by my inability to locate the speaker – the dialogue might almost be dubbed onto one of the motionless faces – but by his lack of an echo. Perhaps my position means that only my voice resonates; I can't recall whether Tracy's did. If everyone wants silence, nothing should be simpler. I take out my mobile and, raising it to my face, begin to laugh without a sound.
Nobody responds with one, even when I gape and tilt my head wildly to mime communication. I might as well be labouring to draw some reaction from the flattened figures in the windows. I feel as if the general dumbness is swallowing my energy, draining my ability to communicate. I dodge to the left side of the bare stage in the hope that the action shows I'm now receiving Tubby's call. If I drop the phone and keep falling down while I attempt to retrieve it, might that trigger a titter or two? My antics are failing to do so, even when I produce a bout of silent merriment so fierce that my teeth and my stretched lips ache. The sound like a whispering giggle is static; the mobile is emitting it, at any rate. Am I attracting it somehow? It will more than do as a response. If the audience doesn't care for my performance, that's another reason to stop. 'Well, there you have it. Best I can do,' I say. Or rather, I mouth it, but not a word emerges.
'It's only my jet lag. Things have been lagging. My voice must be.' I've made better puns, but it hardly matters how feeble this one is, since not a syllable leaves my mouth. I thrust the mobile in my pocket without quelling the mocking wordless whisper, which can't be static after all. 'Anybody seen my voice?' I try appealing, but this doesn't produce it. I can't tell whether I'm mouthing the words or grinning mirthlessly at my plight; without question I'm baring my teeth. 'It's in here somewhere,' I say or rather struggle to, gazing at Tracy as if he's responsible and can help. I haven't finished straining to utter the words when I'm rewarded by a sound, though not the one I'm desperate for. Tracy has started to laugh.
'I've finished performing. I'm done. I can talk.' Even if I managed to pronounce any of this I mightn't be able to hear it for his chortling. His grin is so wide that he might be determined to surpass mine. He's clutching his sides as if to force out more laughter. How is he generating so many echoes? Because of my confusion and my endeavour to speak, I don't immediately realise that the rest of the audience is joining in with him.
'Forgive me, I'm not trying to be funny any more. This isn't meant to be.' Apparently it, or at any rate the spectacle of my attempts to say it, is. There's so much hilarity and so many glistening teeth that I could imagine the robed figures in the windows are entertained too. Tracy has snatched his foot off the ledge of the pew and is crouching wide-eyed over his mirth. 'Shut up,' I strive to tell him and the rest of them. 'I've had it. Really, that's enough.'
'I haddock. Wee-wee, that's a duck.' While I don't think I said that, it's impossible to judge in the midst of the uproar. Hearing the nonsense in my head is almost as bad; it feels like losing my grip on language. 'I meany. Stoppy now. Shutty Christup.' I can see the words like intertitles in my mind, and am suddenly afraid that if I regain my speech it will come out as gibbet, as gibbous, as gibbon, giggle, gimcrack, gimmick, gismo, gizzard. Can't I laugh? Mightn't that be a sound I could make to bring my words back? I have to laugh – everyone else is showing me how. I drag in a breath that bulges my eyes, and then I throw my head back and project something like mirth.
I don't know if it's audible. It sounds like little more than jagged static in my skull. I've outshouted Tracy before I'm convinced that my mouth is producing any noise. His hands have given up gripping his sides and are sprawled palms upwards on the bench. His face looks determined to compete with my performance, and I feel driven by his. Now that I've succeeded in laughing, can I stop? My whole body shivers as if it has gone into spasm, and my jaw aches so much that I dread being unable to close my mouth. I dig my fingers into my cheeks and lever at my jaw with my thumbs, but hysteria has clamped my mouth open. I can't think for laughing – I have the impression that it may never allow me to think again. Then instinct takes over, and my body recalls what it ought to do. I let go of my throbbing jaw and use both hands to slap my face as hard as I can.
My eyes are already streaming with laughter, and soon I can barely see for tears. I hear a few shocked gasps at my antics, but most of the audience seem to find them even more hilarious. So, by the sound of it, do I. My waves of mirth scarcely allow me to breathe. I renew my assault on my blazing face and then, out of utter desperation, I slap both cheeks at once. Either the impact frees my jaw or the shock of the pain quells my hysteria. My last few hiccups of laughter trail into silence, but my body continues to shake, perhaps as a reaction to the flood of applause. 'You're the best yet,' the fortune-teller shouts.
'Wank you. It's been mumblable.' I don't know if I say this; the clapping blurs my words. The applause subsides at last, leaving me nervous to hear myself speak. I don't need to address the entire audience. I turn to Tracy, who is still miming great amusement. 'I'm going to head back,' I tell him, more loudly as my words emerge intact. 'You stay. I'll get a taxi.'
His face doesn't change. Is he expressing astonishment at my routine? He could at least blink; my eyes are watering in sympathy as well as with the stinging of my bruised cheeks. 'Are you all right? Don't do that, it isn't funny,' the woman next to him says and leans over to shake his arm. It isn't until he lolls against her, still grinning wide-eyed, that she screams.
THIRTY-NINE - IT'S IMMINENT
I barely sleep. Whenever my consciousness tries to shut down I see Tracy grinning like a wide-eyed skull. His lurid face has grown as black and white as his costume. Sometimes he turns into Tubby as his irrepressible teeth force his lips wider. That's another reason why I keep lurching awake, and so is the way that quite a few of the audience seemed close to blaming me for Tracy's death. I wouldn't have left before the ambulance came – they needn't have persisted in reminding me that I'd arrived with him, as if this made me responsible for his fate. All the same, the memory is preferable to imagining that I've been roused by a stealthy noise in the room. Nothing has slithered under the bed; if I switch on the light and peer over the edge of the mattress, no pallid flattened forehead will inch out, never mind unblinking eyes and a grin worse than death. The notion is enough to keep me in the dark, and if I left the bed I would only be tempted to take my insomnia onto the Internet. That's another version of wishing I were elsewhere, which makes me dream more than once that I've wakened somewhere smaller. As soon as I hear people laughing in the corridor, presumably on their way to breakfast, I use that as an excuse to turn on all the lights and stumble to my bathroom.
I don't linger once I've finished showering. I feel compelled to check in the mirror that I haven't begun to grin. The time is no laughing matter, however. It's still an hour to breakfast. Once I'm dressed I log on, but there's no message from Willie Hart or the bank, and even Smilemime has nothing to say. I switch off and head for the window.
The square is deserted. The extinguished fairground makes me feel Christmas has passed without my noticing. The topmost carriage of the big wheel sways like a cradle. Nobody's riding in it; no excessively circular whitish face is spying on me from the dimness. Perhaps an object is propped up on the seat, but trying to distinguish it makes my vision flicker like a thunderstorm. I stare until more jollity in the corridor alerts me that it is indeed time for breakfast. If I dawdle much longer I'll be late for my research.
