opportunity to try and understand when Colin takes hold of the end of the strip. 'Isn't this what we were watching?'
'No mistaking that,' says Rufus.
'Jesus.' Colin has caught sight of the interpolated frame. 'I thought there was something odd, but I couldn't get hold of it. We're seeing film history rewritten here. This has to be the earliest use of a subliminal.'
'Come along, Mark,' Bebe says loud enough to be addressing everyone. 'Let's go where there's something nice.'
'Go ahead, Mark. You'll have to save watching this till you're older.' As if he's unaware of aggravating Bebe's outrage Colin says to Warren 'So long as he'll be out of the way, can I ask you a favour?'
'I guess you can ask.'
'Your player will have single frame mode, yes? I'd love to run that disc again and see if there are any more subliminals. I'd bet a lot of money that there are. I'd bet your advance, Simon.'
My mind is close to abandoning any attempt to grasp what is or isn't real. I don't know if my nerves make me glimpse pale mask-like features flicker over everybody's faces, but I certainly see Colin wink at Warren as he adds 'You can watch if you like.'
FIFTY - MEMENTOS
I hardly know where I am or when. My head feels like a balloon that's close to bursting. The enormous space inside it teems with thoughts that clamour for expression but are too swift to catch. They make me desperate to cling to saying 'I don't think that's appropriate, Colin.'
'Why not let Warren make his own mind up? He's a big boy. So are Joe and Nicky, now you raise the subject. They could join us.'
I know he enjoys controversy, but it isn't welcome now. 'I tempt – ' I say and battle to control my words. 'I meant – '
'Hold on. Let me just tell Natalie I wasn't being sexist, babe. I thought you two might want to check it out together when you're on your own.'
Bebe presses all the colour out of her lips and tries to steer Mark into the kitchen, but he lingers to hear me declare 'Don't worry, Bebebe. Nor you, I the Warren. We won't abuse your whore's fatality.'
If I'm not certain I said that then surely they aren't, but they head for the kitchen without answering. All that matters is to prevent everyone from seeing any further images hidden in Tubby's film. Were any concealed in his earlier work? What else may I have unknowingly watched? I want to believe that subliminal flashes in the last film have made me imagine the sly hints of clowns' faces that keep almost appearing to be superimposed or otherwise present on at least some of those around me, but I need to concentrate on withholding the disc. As Colin holds out a stubborn hand for it I say 'I told you, it sin a pro pro rate.'
Mark has begun to laugh as if I'm putting on a show. I push past Colin to carry my glass and Tubby's film into the kitchen. 'Can't you bear to be parted from it?' Bebe says, shaking her head.
'Just seeing nobody gets hold of it,' I say with as few extra syllables as I can manage, though enough to amuse Mark.
'Well.' Eventually Bebe adds 'Aren't you going to ask your question?'
'Wish won?'
She may assume I'm drunk, in which case she should blame her husband, who has topped up my glass virtually to the brim. She sighs at one or more of us and says 'What did we think of your film?'
Just now I'd prefer not to discuss it, but they might divert my thoughts. 'What id you?'
'I'd rather not say.'
'I guess the movies have grown up a lot since then,' says Warren.
'I certainly hope so,' says Nicholas.
'I think some people may still go for that sort of thing,' Joe puts in as if he's speaking up on my behalf. 'There's still a lot of silliness around.'
Is this honestly all they took from the film? Possibly their comments ought to quell the turmoil in my brain, but they're having the opposite effect. I look at Natalie, who says 'He still makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe that's because of what you wouldn't have known was there.'
Does she mean the secret frames, however numerous they may have been, or Tubby's cryptic lecture? 'You thought it was funny,' Mark protests. 'You were all laughing.'
'We were laughing at you, sweetie,' says Bebe.
'And at Mr Loster,' Nicholas says.
Perhaps he doesn't pronounce it like that, but I might challenge him to repeat it if Natalie weren't quicker. 'They mean with you,' she reassures Mark.
'No they weren't. It was Tubby. Why are you all pretending?'
'Do calm down, there's a good child,' says Bebe. 'I think you've been seeing too much of him.'
'I'm not a child. I know what I saw you all doing.'
'A child and a tad bratty, do we think, mom?' Bebe says with a smile that makes my teeth ache with its sweetness. 'I guess maybe he's the one that was pretending. The way he was laughing, a person could think he was taking drugs.'
Is there about to be an argument over how to laugh at comedies? Before I can force something like that question out of my mouth, Natalie says 'Then they'd be stupid if not worse. He hasn't been.'
'I don't think there's any call to talk smart to your mother,' Warren says.
'I'm afraid I'll be putting her right if she makes that kind of allegation about my son.'
'I don't believe your mother said he'd taken anything,' Nicholas intervenes. 'What she was trying – '
'I know what she was trying. I don't have any problems with words.'
Surely that isn't a sly gibe at me. Ordinarily I would delight in her standing up to her parents and Nicholas, but it doesn't release any tension; it feels more as though some kind of riot is imminent. The idea is at least as ominous as all the others swarming in my skull. 'I wasn't questioning your literacy,' says Nicholas.
'You'd be a fool to,' Colin says. 'She fixed quite a few paragraphs for me in
'You can know every word in the dictionary and still not be able to address people as you should.'
It's absurd to think that violence will break out among these people in this expensive respectable kitchen, however much we've drunk, but something besides the flickers of clownish pallor on various faces keeps snagging the edge of my vision: an eager gleam of metal. Just enough knives to arm everyone in the room are arranged on the wall above a chopping board. As the insistent glints sting my eyes Bebe tells Natalie 'We didn't know you had anything to do with writing that magazine. You never told us.'
'I should have given her another credit,' Colin says. 'She'd have had even more to be proud of.'
'I think,' says Nicholas, 'some of us would rather she kept her pride for the work she's doing now.'
'A lot of you, are there? Where's your gang, in your pocket?'
Mark laughs, and so does Rufus. I'm not sure which of them angers Nicholas more, but I ought to head off any violence – I should take charge of all the weapons. As Nicholas says 'I really must ask you to explain yourself' I begin to sidle to the chopping board. I keep my face towards everyone, and move so gradually that nobody seems to notice. 'Not so handy with language then, eh?' Colin retorts as I wonder if my fists will be able to hold all the handles, and Mark splutters 'Why are you looking at the knives like that, Simon?'
'My goodness,' says Bebe, 'what's wrong with him now?'
'Maybe he'd like to contribute to the discussion,' Joe says.
Mark grows solemn, or at least his voice does. 'You have to say what you thought of your film.'
'That's right, you're Tubby's spokesman,' Colin says. 'Nobody knows more about him. You're the fount of all knowledge. There's nobody else.'
'Do sit down first,' Bebe urges me. 'You're making us all nervous.'
I'm certain nobody can be more on edge than I am, but perhaps I'm infecting my audience. I sit at the kitchen table and grip the DVD case with both hands and feel as if I'm keeping a different kind of weapon safe. 'So
