The Fun Factory Read online

  “You know, it’s not really how it should be, is it?”

  I shrugged again.

  “But seeing as we are … rivals, as such, I didn’t want there to be any bad feeling between us…”

  I raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “So I wanted to apologise, you know, for Paris. I should have told you when I recognised Tilly. Even though she asked me not to, I don’t know why, it’s none of my business. But I should have told you.”

  “Yes,” I said, “you should have.”

  There was a pause.

  “And …” he ventured, “I suppose I shouldn’t have then begun to court her behind your back, that was … not really on, was it?”

  “No,” I agreed. “It wasn’t.”

  “So. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for what happened. Friends?”

  Charlie stood there offering his olive branch of a handshake, and I let him for a moment or two, before finally nodding and taking his hand.

  Left to my own company, I fell once more into the black musings which had occupied my mind over the previous few days. Tilly, the girl of my dreams, the girl I had been desperately seeking for a whole year, had thrown up her new life in Paris and returned to find me, me, and I had rejected her. And try as I might to envisage ways of making that right, I still couldn’t shake the mental picture of Karno ‘auditioning’ her.

  Maybe I would have to leave the Karno organisation and make my own way as a solo, daunting though that prospect was. I remembered Stan’s recent travails as ‘He of the Funny Ways’, and how glad he was to have joined the security and sheer creative enterprise of Karno’s Fun Factory, and my heart sank into my boots. There was Wal Pink, of course, but who knew what he was up to?

  Suddenly there he was in the doorway. Yes, Wal Pink, large as life, as if I’d conjured him up simply by thinking about him.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I said.

  “I’ve come to see your contest of course, Arthur,” he oiled. “At the Water Rats dinner last night everyone was talking about it.”

  “So, you’ve not yet brought the Fun Factory to its knees, then?” I asked.

  “Give me time, my boy, give me time. Our plans march forward apace, and sooner rather than later we’ll…” Pink caught himself. “Well, well, never mind what we’ll do. I just wanted to be sure and let you know that my offer still stands, whenever you wish to avail yourself of it.”

  “Yes, well, if I do, you’ll be the first to know,” I said. “Now if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course, of course, you need to ready yourself. Break a leg!”

  And he trotted off up the corridor as if he owned the place. Just the sort of distraction I needed at that moment.

  Shortly I realised that Charlie’s big moment was drawing nigh, because a tidal wave of studded boots clattered along the corridor as the Midnight Wanderers and the Middleton Pie-Cans headed towards the stage.

  Then I heard the synchronised smashing of boots on the apron which signified that the opening warm-up scene was under way, and I could make out some muffled laughter trickling down to the dressing room where I was still sitting. Some more laughter I judged to mark the entrance of Will Poluski junior as the Villain, and then it must surely be time for Stiffy to appear … and sure enough, yes, there was Chaplin’s first big cheer.

  Long before the end of the sketch I had crawled into a costume hamper with my fingers in my ears, worn out with the stress of trying to read what I could hear of the audience’s response. It seemed to my increasingly frantic imagination as though the whole act was running twice as long as before, maybe three times. I could only assume that was because of all the brilliant new sequences Chaplin had added, and my heart sank lower and lower as the blood pounded in my ears.

  After an eternity of torment there was suddenly a blaze of light. I looked up to see Mike Asher in his referee’s outfit holding the lid of the hamper up and gazing down at me.

  “There you are!” he cried. “Whatever are you doing?”

  “I lost my … er … never mind,” I said, clambering out awkwardly.

  “And with instinctive improvisational skills like that, how can he fail?” Mike crowed, and I punched him on the arm.

  “Well?” I said, kicking the door to. “How was it? How was he?”

  “Young Mister C? Oh, he was a revelation! Such panache! Such finesse! He’s still up there now taking the audience’s applause, even though the act finished a quarter of an hour ago and there are four synchronised unicyclists trying to form a pyramid behind … ow!”

  He rubbed his arm where I had thumped him again, looking faintly aggrieved.

  “Really, how was it?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Of course!”

  Mike shrugged. “Ennnh…”

  “Well, what does that mean?”

  “Ennnh… It means … it was all right, I suppose. Nothing special. Not quite as good as Weldon. Nowhere near as good as he thinks he is – well, how could he possibly be? Started well, but lost them in the middle I’d say.”

  I was fit to burst now. “What do you mean ‘lost them in the middle’? What happened?”

  “Well, it was rather peculiar,” Mike said. “He started in on this new bit of business he’d worked out with Fred Spiksley and Jimmy Crabtree. It was kind of a sentimental interlude, right in the middle of the biggest action bit, and I don’t know if they messed it up or something, because the audience just seemed to get, well, a bit bored, really, and he never got them back. Afterwards Charlie was furious, and Fred and Jimmy were trying to apologise, but Syd was just fending them off and shooing Charlie away. Who knows?”

  “Ha!” I punched my fist into the palm of my other hand. “He ballsed it up, in other words!”

  “Well, it wasn’t bad, as I said, it was just … ennnh.”

  Even though I hadn’t seen it, I knew in a flash of inspiration what Charlie had done. He’d been faced with an audience desperate for entertainment, and he’d tried to give them ‘art’. Art with a capital ‘A’.

  Well, I thought. Ennnh. That’ll do me. Perhaps the game wasn’t entirely up. Not yet.

  The bar at the Oxford was heaving with well-oiled Karno folk. It was the place to be that night, and no mistake.

  My old drinking pals Bert Darnley and Chas Sewell came over at once to wish me luck. The lads had seen Charlie’s performance in the matinée, and were rubbing their hands together with glee.

  “It’s an open goal, I’m telling you!” Bert crowed.

  “It’s true,” Chas insisted. “You’re odds on, now, that’s the word.”

  He nodded over to the far end of the bar, where Fred Spiksley and Jimmy Crabtree were taking money hand over fist. They had been running their book all week, but grumbling and moaning the while about how the odds on Charlie and me were so level that they would struggle to make a killing. Now, though, it appeared that everyone wanted to bet on me, and Fred and Jimmy were taking the bets on, I presumed out of loyalty to Charlie’s cause and the fervent guilty hope that they hadn’t helped to sink it. It occurred to me that I could really put the cat among the pigeons for them if I let on how much reason Karno had not to favour me.

  Billy Wragg saw me looking over the business they were doing, and raised his pint to me in a cheery salute. Then Alf Reeves appeared at my elbow and guided me away to a quiet corner.

  “Now then, Arthur,” he said. “You’re well prepared?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Good,” Alf said, fixing me with a serious look. “Now listen. You go out there and do your best. Don’t go half-hearted, thinking the Guv’nor won’t give you a fair crack of the whip. He’s a businessman first and foremost, and if you show him you’re the better bet he’ll pick you, never mind what passed between you. My word on it. All right?”

  “Yes, Alf,” I said, feeling better every moment that passed. “Thanks.”

  He nodded, patted me on the arm, went about his business, and George R
obey, of all people, wandered over.

  “Hail fellow well met!” he boomed, as was his wont.

  “George,” I said, shaking him by the hand. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wouldn’t miss this, my dear chap. Never been anything like it! Positively gladiatorial! Comedy as combat! Could be the next big thing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.

  “Yes indeed. I’ll tell you what you need. You need a fair damsel’s favour to wear to the lists. That’s right. Excuse me, my dear…”

  George waylaid a passing wench by placing his hand on her arm.

  “I wonder if I might trouble you for a handkerchief?” he asked with exaggerated courtesy. She turned with a smile to give him what he asked for, and it was Tilly, of course. When she saw me she flushed, and we stood speechless in front of one another as George twittered on innocently.

  “Here you are, Sir Arthur,” he said, handing me the handkerchief. “Tuck this about your person, and when you are victorious, as surely you must be, then you can claim the hand of the fair Lady…?” Here he raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

  “Matilda,” Tilly murmured frostily.

  “Lady Matilda, quite so, as your own. And you, my dear, must be sure to claim your prize!”

  He ground to a halt, finally, seemingly unaware that the temperature in the vicinity had dropped a good few degrees, and let Tilly go, which she did with considerable dispatch, weaving away through the throng. George watched her appreciatively, then gave me a hearty nudge.

  “Pretty little thing,” he said. “There, now, don’t say I never do anything for you.”

  Ralph Luscombe was there, of course. My patron, as he insisted on calling himself. I had written to him about the contest, and he couldn’t keep away, despite the ongoing threat from his brother to send him to South America.

  “I have five pounds riding on you. Spiksley is adamant that Charlie will still win, but I have every confidence, every confidence, old chap.”

  He paused to sip his drink, a dry sherry, and let his eyes roam around the busy bar.

  “This really is the most tremendously exciting evening,” he enthused. “Look, there is Fred Kitchen, and Johnny Doyle, and George Robey, and Jimmy Russell – oh listen to me, you know all these fellows. Good Heavens! Is that not Marie Lloyd?! My my…!

  I began to feel oppressed by the weight of expectation pressing down on my shoulders. Time to leave, I thought.

  “I need to go and get ready,” I said to Luscombe, who winked conspiratorially.

  “Of course, my dear fellow, no need to explain to me. I am in the business, after all. Best of British!”

  Later I stood in the wings by myself as The Football Match got under way. I was nervous, yes, but confident too. My chief concern was not about the act, which I knew was a banker. It was whether the Power would be with me now, when I needed it the most.

  The Power, you see, was by its very nature a thing only partly under my control. The part of it that derived from my own skill and my own personality, well, that was up to me to deliver. But part of it depended on establishing a rapport with that particular audience on that particular night, and that always carried an element of the unknown.

  This is why, in short, so many comedians turn to drink.

  Will Poluski was getting some nice laughs as the Villain, more than he was used to since he had now incorporated some of Charlie’s touches, and then there was my cue.

  On I strode, out into the lights, out where I belonged, and within half a minute I knew that this was one of those nights when the Power was oozing freely from my very fingertips. The audience positively lapped me up, and enjoyment ricocheted around the auditorium.

  This was going to be a good one.

  My first scene with Poluski went like a dream. I could see a veritable ocean of happy faces beaming back at me. I picked off the moments neatly, not too showily, leaving something in the bank for later.

  The second scene, too, went breezily enough, and I knew the best was yet to come.

  Then it happened. A cry, clear as a bell, came from the stalls below me.

  “Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

  I was stunned at first. I could see the faces looking up at me, and picked out the speaker quite easily. He was looking me right in the eye for one thing, a smug grin on his stupid face. For another clue, all the people around him had turned to look at him.

  I shall never forget that face. The man was large, and his features were ruddy and pockmarked. He was bald on top, and the back of his head was surrounded by a crazed halo of ginger hair. His nose was huge and swollen, and seemed to be divided into two distinct yet uneven lobes, so that – there is no particularly delicate way to phrase this, so I’m just going to say it – so that it looked like nothing so much as a pair of testicles.

  My apprehension of this peculiar vision was the work of an instant, as the Power was exercising its particular control over the seeming passage of time.

  What the Power does, one of the ways in which it works, is it corrals an audience together, shapes it into one organism with one mind, and then you can take it with you wherever you wish to lead it. That one discordant voice, shouting from the one-and-sixpennies, shatters the fragile illusion. Suddenly it is not one audience in front of you, one single entity, suddenly it is hundreds of different entities with hundreds of different faces, each of whom may have its own separate opinion. It’s like trying to ride three horses at once, and all three want to go in different directions.

  The Power, if it is with you, can retrieve this situation. You bend the audience to your will, and mould them together once again. The solo act can address his tormentor directly, and humiliate him or win him over, thus isolating him from the whole or absorbing him into it. For the team player, such as myself on that night, it’s trickier, but still feasible, and I set about it with a will. We continued, and shortly I felt it again, felt the Power emanating from me, embracing the room, caressing it into submission. Laughter rolled in from the back of the stalls in waves, and I rode it like a bareback rider. Comfort, confidence, control, all returned.

  Then it came again.

  “Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

  I looked out into the stalls, and Mr Testicle-nose had his arms crossed and was smirking triumphantly back at me. Those in the neighbouring seats were beginning to grumble at him, but he was unperturbed.

  Yet again I felt the reins yanked from my grasp, but gathered them up again. On I pressed, and the sketch was so reliably funny, and this fellow’s opinion of my performance so unsupported by the public at large, that I soon had them again where I wanted them. There was an extra edge to the laughter now, as if people wished to show this witless, gonad-faced rogue what it was to be lonely.

  I was building up now to the climactic part of the scene before the actual match itself begins. It was a nice moment, and required the timing to be just so. Sure enough, right at the crucial split-second there was his rasping bellow: “Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

  The joke shattered in pieces at my feet, and so perfectly was it done that I found myself distracted by the sudden suspicion that a deliberate sabotage was being done, and a distraction like that, trust me, is instant death to comedy. Time seemed now to be speeding up for me where before it was supernaturally slowed, and I barely remembered that I was supposed to exit the stage so that Mike Asher as the Referee could begin the cup final. I caught one last glimpse of Testicle-nose sneering at me, and for that moment I wanted nothing more than to just leap down into the stalls and smash his idiotic face in. To my intense gratification, I then saw a right-thinking individual lean forward from behind the fool and cuff him really hard around the ear.

  This pleasant image revived my spirits as I waited in the wings, composing myself to embark upon the final scene, Stiffy the Goalkeeper’s finest hour, listening to Mike introducing the various players one by one. Each attracted a huge roar, and the atmosphere, as ever, was not so very far from that of a real footba
ll match. My heart was racing, and a muck sweat was trickling down my spine, but I comforted myself with the thought that from now on Testicle-nose could shout whatever he liked and nobody would be any the wiser.

  On I went, to an encouraging roar of my own, and the big match pantomime began to trundle along on its well-rehearsed way. I risked a single glance towards my enemy, but couldn’t pick him out. Maybe someone had sat on him.

  Things were once again going well. All my thoughts now were of the special bit of business I had worked out with Billy Wragg. I had tried nothing new so far, but this, if it came off, would draw gasps from the crowd and, I hoped, even Mr Karno himself.

  Here came the moment. The ball was loose in the centre of the apron. Billy would brace his leg behind the ball and I would dive at his feet at full pelt. Every time we had practised this there was a satisfying reaction from our colleagues, as there was a really meaty smack. It was a variation on rolling with a punch, really. A really hefty-seeming collision, but nobody got hurt.

  The Power was with me again by this time, and I saw the whole thing in every detail.

  The ball.

  Billy’s big tree trunk of a leg telescoping out.

  Myself, leaping, flying through the air.

  Billy’s boot, not disappearing behind the ball, but rising up and over it.

  Myself, puzzled as I flew unstoppably towards him.

  Billy’s boot, with all his considerable weight behind it, crunching into my kneecap, with all my weight behind that.

  There was a gasp all right. The collective intake of breath nearly brought the tabs down.

  I knew something was terribly wrong. A cloud of pain engulfed me, and the world seemed to grind to a halt. I looked up at Wragg, a malicious gleam in his eye as he followed through. I could see the hairs standing up on his great white ham of a thigh, braced against my knee. Then I looked out into the stalls. Every face I could see had an appalled expression on it. Mouths were open, horrified hands were flying to eyes, blood was draining rapidly from features. I saw one woman gasp and then suddenly lurch forward retching into her handkerchief.