The Grin of the Dark

'Where did you have it picked up from?'

I believe my words are clear enough, but Nicholas manages simultaneously to scowl and raise his eyebrows. I'm about to repeat the question, even if it emerges yet more deformed, when Mark says 'Can we watch Tubby now?'

'Wouldn't you rather wait till you can make notes?' Rufus asks me.

'I wouldn't mind having your impressions. Colin's too.'

'Doesn't anybody else count?' says Bebe.

Any ill-defined doubts I have about watching the film in all the present company give way to recklessness. If she's inviting the experience, she can be responsible for the consequences. 'Everybody's welcome,' I say as though I'm at home. 'It's been a while since Tubby's had a proper audience.'

'Better fortify ourselves on the way,' says Warren.

Of course this isn't meant to sound ominous. He's proposing to replenish our drinks, which he does. The waxy sweetness left over from the cake turns my Merlot harsh as medicine, a taste that quickens a pulse in my skull. I don't know what effect the cake has on Mark's orange juice; his smile wobbles oddly before growing firm, presumably at the thought of the imminent show. Certainly he's first into the screening room.

Warren seems to need to take charge. He holds out his hand for the disc. I thumb the plastic spindle in the middle of the case and lift the disc with my fingertips, only to find that my precautions are somewhat beside the point. Surely Natalie knows better than to touch the playing surface, but somebody has smudged it with marks that must be fingerprints despite their lack of whorls. As Warren loads the disc into the player I sit beside Mark on the couch directly in front of the screen. Natalie is on the other side, and my publishers sit at our feet on the polished floorboards. Nicholas and Joe attempt to leave the remaining seats for our hosts, but Warren brings Bebe a diningroom chair and another for himself. By now Mark is restless with impatience, swinging his feet in mid-air while their blurred reflections pedal in the depths of the floor. As Warren picks up the remote control Mark says 'Can we have the lights off again?'

'Why, are you fond of the dark?' says Bebe.

I'm trying to decide whether her tone implied the comma when Mark says 'It'll make the film more real.'

'Gee, here's something else that isn't real. It's your movie, Simon. Your call.'

Her first comment has angered me so much that I want to put an end to the sight of her. 'I'll go for the dark.'

I'm not sure if the unease I sense is hers as, having switched on the cinema system, Warren turns the light off. The room is illuminated by the screen, which drains everyone of colour. As Warren thumbs the control the screen takes on a cloudless blue. It stays like that until I wonder if the disc is blank and how I'll feel if it is. Then the azure vanishes, driven out by the credits of the film.

There aren't many. Tubby Tells the Truth. A Tubby Thackeray Production. Written by and Starring Tubby Thackeray. Directed by Orville Hart. I'm wondering who photographed and edited it, not to mention who composed any missing score, when the film begins. The camera pans away from a blackboard on which the credits were chalked to show us Tubby crammed behind a desk, then cuts to another student version of him seated in the otherwise empty classroom. Both of him are broader than ever. 'Wrong ratio,' Colin protests.

'Never mind,' Bebe says as if she's soothing a fractious child. 'I guess that was the best they could do in those days.'

'Colin means you're showing it in the wrong one,' I say. 'It would have been shot fullscreen.'

'Nothing wrong with your eyes, is there? That does fill the screen.'

I'm keeping my gaze on the film, which makes her and everybody else's faces flicker at the edge of my vision. 'We mean it wasn't shot that way. It shouldn't fill this screen.'

'That's the way we like it.'

'Right, we've paid to have it wide,' says Warren.

By now Tubby has pranced into the classroom to lecture his students, who fling missiles at each other whenever his back is turned. What feels like at least a minute's impassioned oration is translated as a single intertitle of gibberish. As if he's aware of the inadequacy, the teacher grabs a stick of chalk from the shelf of the blackboard and sets about scribbling in a hand I recognise all too well. The board seems to have other ideas; it pivots away whenever he tries to write on it until, having sprawled over it and jumped at it to catch it unawares and stood on his head to write while the board is back to front and upside down, he clings to it with one hand and rides it while it swings over and over. The result of all these exertions, throughout which he maintains his unblinking wide-eyed grin, is precisely the same as the intertitle. I could imagine that he's growing desperate, since I've yet to hear a single laugh.

Perhaps the argument about ratios has left everyone too conscious of the wrongness of the image. For myself, I'm additionally thrown by seeing Tubby as a slapstick victim and by the irrelevance of the title of the film. The silence feels unquiet, and it's emphasised by the speaker system; I could fancy I'm surrounded by the absence or the threat of Tubby's laughter. Could everyone be waiting for me to laugh, since it's my birthday present? Tubby finishes another dramatic pop-eyed grinning declaration and seizes a piece of chalk to summarise it. I expect more antics from the blackboard, and when the chalk explodes as he inscribes the first stroke I emit a surprised chuckle. That's apparently the cue. At once everyone is competing for mirth.

Is the film really so hilarious all of a sudden? Perhaps they're releasing amusement that was pent up. Mark is giggling wildest, but Rufus and Colin aren't far behind. Warren's merriment is almost as shrill as his wife's; despite their habitually amused looks, I don't recall ever having heard them laugh before. Joe chortles like an understudy for Santa Claus while Nicholas signifies his jollity with a succession of staccato grunts. The uproar covers Natalie's reaction. She's shaking and weeping, so that only her wide grin and intent eyes convey that she's doing so with glee. The unstable light appears to be turning all the faces around me into blanched comedic masks, unless it's simply emphasising aspects of them I've overlooked. I strive to concentrate on the screen, where the students are exchanging increasingly extravagant missiles – having graduated from balls of paper and ink pellets to exercise books, they're now slinging baseballs at each other's heads and through the glass of the classroom windows – while pedagogue Tubby battles with his chalk and removes its latest errant fragments from his nostrils. He manages to write another incomprehensible line before he returns to his desperate clownish mouthing. Mark gulps and succeeds in controlling his laughter enough to pronounce 'I want to know what he's saying.'

'Do you want us to make less noise?' Rufus splutters.

'What a rude young – ' Colin disguises his last word as a laugh.

'You're asking us to be quiet so you can hear,' Rufus suggests, though his mirth is close to shaking his words to bits.

Mark stamps his foot, which appears to send quivers through the floor. The unreliable light seems close to transforming the boards into jelly or some less stable medium. 'I just want to know,' he protests, no longer laughing.

'I expect he's saying things as silly as he is,' Natalie says.

'We can't be sure of that, can we?' While I realise she means to calm Mark, I think a better method is to admit I agree with him. 'I'd like to know too,' I say. 'Even if it's nonsense it would be worth seeing what he's inventing.'

'I could tell you.'

I can't identify the speaker amid all the mirth until Rufus responds none too invitingly 'How are you going to do that, Colin?'

'I taught myself to read lips. Nothing simpler. I was going to write about what silent actors really say for Cineassed.'

Bebe's laughter stops so abruptly it might have been cut from a soundtrack. 'Excuse me, were you involved with that publication?'

'Involved up to my hilt and proud of it. Wrote a lot of it and edited it all.'

'You didn't tell us that about your friend, Natalie,' Warren objects.

I'm afraid he or Bebe may ask Colin to leave before he interprets the film. 'Have you been following what he said, Colin? Tubby, I mean.'

'Of course. That's what I'm here for.'

I let that joke go and say 'Can you tell us what it was?'