The Fun Factory Read online

  This wasn’t good, not by a long chalk. I hadn’t been in show business all that long, but even I knew that if your audience had started retching then you’d probably lost them. Suddenly I wanted to retch myself, but somehow I gathered myself together, remembered where I was and what I was doing. I dragged myself up – how, I don’t know – with all my weight on my left leg, and I reached down behind and thumped my right leg back into line with a wet sort of crunch.

  Flashing lights twinkled madly at the edge of my vision and I felt on the verge of fainting. As I’d thumped it, the knee had made a wet sort of crunching, squelching noise, but everything seemed to pop back roughly where it was meant to be, and gradually my head seemed to clear. Suddenly, stupidly, I began to believe everything was going to be all right. I tried, gamely, to step to my right and the leg just buckled under me, sending me sprawling. I registered more horrified gasps from those close enough to see the detail of what was going on.

  I saw Testicle-nose, mopping his freckled brow with a spotted kerchief.

  Looked into his eyes.

  And then I passed out.

  PART IV

  28

  THE SOCIALIST

  THE college was a quiet place over Christmas. The young gentlemen had all gone down to celebrate with their families at their various piles, or else in the South of France and even further afield. Only the usual handful of elderly single dons were still in residence to be attended to over Yuletide. Not a deal of point even pinning up the mistletoe, to be frank.

  My time with the Karno company would have seemed like a strange, far-off dream, were it not for the stud marks from Billy Wragg’s boot on my knee, and the nine-inch scar running North-South where the surgeon had opened up my leg to root around in there for the halves of my shattered kneecap. Not to mention the crutch I still needed to hobble about on a whole month and a half later.

  So there I was, back in the ivy-clad embrace of college life, and back in the bosom of my family. Not that they made a deal of a fuss about it. When I first arrived back, I limped painfully into the kitchens to greet my mother, who was just then engaged in making several hundred mince pies, by the look of things, each of which would bear an imprint of the college crest, and she looked up, smiled and said: “Hullo, dear,” then carried right on with her work. I wondered if she’d even noticed that I’d been away for a couple of years.

  I found my brother polishing shoes, and he squinted semi-curiously at the crutch I was leaning on.

  “Hurt your poor little leg, is it?” he said with withering mock concern.

  “Broke it,” I replied, not particularly wishing to go into details.

  “When I was fighting the Boer,” Lance said, without a pause in his shoe shining. “Bloke standing next to me had his leg shot clean off, and he still drove off the bastards with an empty gun and a bayonet. Hopped after them, he did, screaming like a banshee.”

  “Oh?” I said nonchalantly. I was secretly impressed, as Lance very rarely spoke of his time in South Africa.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So don’t be such a cissy.”

  Welcome home, Arthur.

  My father was delighted to have me back at the college, thus, to his way of thinking, proving that he had been right all along and the theatre was “something I needed to get out of my system”. He was planning to have me back in harness for the start of the new term in January, and to that end was diligently working on my fitness. The doctor had told me that I should be perfectly mobile again once I had built up the muscles in my leg that had wasted away through forced inactivity, and what better way to accomplish this, my father reasoned, than resuming college rounds?

  And so I found myself every morning, noon and night limping around the old circuit, past the still-ghastly Wren chapel, past the red-brick library, past Pitt the Younger, past the Master’s Lodge and its lily pond, down to the New Court that was older than many a college’s Old Court, back up under the arch between the kitchens and the dining hall, and back to the fireside at the porter’s lodge.

  As I walked I pondered over and over again the same question: what the hell happened?

  I had only my own vague shadowy remembrances and a smattering of anecdotal evidence to go on as I struggled to make sense of it all.

  After I passed out at the Oxford I was carried from the stage unconscious, thus missing the traditional cry of: “Is there a doctor in the house?”

  There was, apparently, a deal of confusion as to what would happen then. At that point there were over a hundred people on the stage, twenty-two footballers and eighty supers, not to mention my pal Mike the Referee. Kent and Keith, a right pair of banjo-toting chancers, saw their chance of saving the day in front of Fred Karno, and were trying to drop the tabs in so they could begin some of their inane crosstalk, but before that calamity could occur, why, what was this?

  Another Stiffy the Goalkeeper pranced onto the stage, in identical costume, but with two fully operational lower limbs, and the sketch, the well-oiled machine, resumed where it had left off and played to its triumphant conclusion almost as if nothing at all had happened.

  Yes, Charlie Chaplin saved the day! He was the hero of the hour! My one consolation was that I remained spark out and missed the whole thing.

  When I awoke I quickly wished that I had not. The pain in my knee was excruciating, and to make matters worse I had been laid on a chaise longue backstage just a couple of yards away from what seemed to be a victory celebration.

  A doctor had materialised, and he had secured some ether. He was not especially expert in administering it, however – Mike Asher told me afterwards that he suspected the man was actually a veterinarian – so the next few minutes I passed in a sort of dreamlike semi-consciousness, from which I retained only fleeting and impressionistic recollections, such as:

  The anxious face of Ralph Luscombe peering over the doctor’s shoulder.

  Chaplin being carried around on the shoulders of Fred Spiksley and Jimmy Crabtree.

  Karno leaning over me, and saying: “You had yer chance, an’ you blew it!”

  Ralph Luscombe in urgent discussion with Alf Reeves, frowning, nodding.

  Tilly clapping and smiling, and then embracing Charlie when the footballers finally dropped him to the ground.

  The whole crowd of them parting as I hovered magically in mid air and passed amongst them – I appreciate now that I was being carried from the building – and faces looking down at me, some pitying, but most laughing.

  The shock of the cold night air as I was bundled towards a waiting hansom.

  Wal Pink shaking his head sorrowfully, and saying: “You know, funny thing, I told him to break his leg…”

  Loafing against the wall outside the stage door, the malevolent leering face and ginger halo of Mr Testicle-nose, tucking a bunch of fivers into his jacket pocket.

  Syd Chaplin glancing furtively at me, and then ducking back into the warmth of the theatre.

  Then the ether won its final victory over my senses, and when I woke once more it was the next day, and I was in a hospital bed.

  Winter sunlight streamed in through the windows. I looked around and saw several bunches of flowers by my bedside. My right leg was bandaged and plastered from hip to ankle, and itched damnably, although blessedly the pain of the night before had receded. I could not get up and move about, so I resigned myself to lying there waiting for an explanation to present itself, which in due course it did, courtesy of my first visitor, Mr Alfred Reeves, esquire.

  “What ho, Alf!” I said feebly, as he hoved into view.

  “Good afternoon, Arthur,” Alf said, taking a seat by my bed. “How does it feel?”

  “Sore,” I said.

  “I’ll bet,” Alf grimaced at the plaster cast on my leg. “Still, it will be right as rain in a month or two, I’m told, and for that you can thank your college chum.”

  “Mr Luscombe?”

  “Splendid young fellow. He has secured you the very best of care from a specialist surge
on who it seems is an old friend of his family, so things could be much worse.”

  I nodded. “He’s a good sort. And is he … well, is he paying for all this, too?” I waved my hands to indicate the hospital room, which was well above the average, in my estimation.

  “Oh, by no means,” Alf said. “He offered, but it was not necessary to trouble him.”

  I frowned. “Who then? The Guv’nor, I suppose? Takes care of his own?”

  “Wrong again,” said Alf. “No, any and all bills are to be sent, at her express instruction, to Miss Marie Lloyd.”

  Well, I was flabbergasted. I had never met the lady, although I knew her by sight, of course, for hers was one of the most famous faces in the country.

  “What?” I said. “But why on earth would…?” And words failed me. Alf fixed me with a glistening gaze, apparently moved by what he had to say.

  “It took a deal of courage to stand up to Karno the way you did, Arthur me lad, and it has not gone unnoticed. Edith is not without good and loyal friends in the world, and they appreciate what you did for her, appreciate it very much. Marie Lloyd is one such, and I am another, and let me assure you that you will find us grateful. There it is, let me not go on about it, for I shall embarrass us both.”

  So, it appeared that I had acquired the aspect of a knight in shining armour. No one but myself (and Tilly, of course) knew of the provocation I had for bearding the Guv’nor in his den that day, and the story being put about by good old Alf was that I had taken an heroic and righteous moral stand against my scheming boss on poor Edith Karno’s behalf, with a selfless lack of regard to the damage this might do to my own prospects.

  And once I was recovered enough to return to Streatham I found that Charley and Clara Bell could not do enough for me, and Edith herself and Freddie K junior were frequent and attentive visitors. I had cakes, and sweets, and jellied fruits, and endless cups of tea, and plumped pillows, until I began to feel quite the fraud. It began to oppress me, to be honest, which is how I came to consider returning to Cambridge for a spell, and now that I was here it was harder and harder to imagine ever going back.

  The new term came around, and the college filled up once again with bright young things. I was finding it easier every day to move around, now, with the help of a cane from the porter’s lodge’s lost property cupboard, even though the knee still looked like a badly made mailbag, improbably lumpy and haphazardly stitched.

  I kept my head down and got on with my various duties. I did the rounds, I took over O and P staircases again, I fetched, I carried, I laundered, I swept. I served the port at High Table, although not yet able to manage the heavier trays with any confidence.

  I even caught one young gentleman sneaking in after the gates were locked, as Ralph Luscombe had done years – was it years? – earlier. I couldn’t give chase because of the knee, of course, but I did manage to trip the fellow up with my cane and extract gate pence from him.

  My father was disgustingly happy about how things had turned out, and rarely passed up the opportunity to share his vision for the future with me. This involved passing on more and more responsibility to me and beginning his own slow easing into a comfortable and prestigious armchair of a retirement, during which he would stroll around the college as a much-loved institution.

  My own mood was dark, however. The disappointment of the showdown at the Oxford weighed heavily on me, but even that was not as burdensome as the recollection of how things stood between myself and Tilly.

  It was still hard to even think of her and Karno together that afternoon.

  Karno unbuckling his belt.

  It was even harder to remember her small voice saying: “It was for you, Arthur. So I could be with you…”

  Karno giving a little cough.

  There was not even much comfort in the memory of the magical time we spent together on that tour masquerading as man and wife, for I had messed that up, and then just as surely messed everything up again.

  More and more I would slip out of the front gate once dinner was done, and nip down to the river for a swift pint or three at the Mill. There I would usually sit by myself, trying to force my brain not to think about Charlie as a number-one comic. Beer helped, but not much, even though I was now following the advice of the great Gus Elen and having at least’arf a pint of ale at every meal, including breakfast, and another meal or two besides that I’d invented between luncheon and supper.

  I puzzled away relentlessly at the events of that night at the Oxford. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I had something. I remembered Spiksley and Crabtree running their book on the contest between myself and Chaplin, complaining that we were too evenly matched. I remembered their special rehearsals with my rival, and Billy Wragg offering his services in a similar regard to me. Then Charlie’s performance went badly, thanks to the two of them, and the odds suddenly became a lot more interesting. Was it not possible that the footballers had deliberately sabotaged Charlie, so that they would then be able to take heavy bets on me from the likes of Ralph Luscombe, knowing that Wragg was going to ruin my chances in turn? It was more than possible. The swine were easily selfish enough and venal enough to devise a scheme of that sort.

  I vented my furious imaginings on the footballers, then, as Charlie and I seemed to be mere pawns in their game. In fact, I reasoned, the whole contest had actually been decided on the toss of a coin in Karno’s office.

  Even though I was not, now I think of it, happy, I had decided that the college was going to be my life from now on. How could I return to the Fun Factory now? My relationship with Karno was surely in ruins. And how could I even contemplate the humiliation of working under Charlie, still less having to meet Tilly again. I tried to put the whole thing from my mind, but it was hard, it was hard.

  One afternoon I popped into a cake shop – Fitz’s, around the corner from the porter’s lodge – to collect some pink coconut confections that a Mr Vermont on one of my staircases was particularly fond of, and who should be there taking tea with a bunch of hangers-on and acolytes but The Rotter, Harry Rottenburg, large as life, the progenitor of the mechanical brontosaurus which had propelled me into show business. Well, regurgitated me into show business.

  I could not resist introducing myself.

  “What ho, Rotter,” I said, at his shoulder. He was in mid-anecdote, and turned to see who had dared to interrupt his flow. His florid face clouded as he tried to place me.

  “Dandoe,” I said. “The Varsity B.C.” I turned to his companions while he digested this. “I got eaten by a mechanical dinosaur. Marvellous fun.”

  “Indeed! Indeed!” the Rotter cried once the light had dawned, standing to pump my hand warmly. “How do ye do, my dear fellow? How do ye do? Will you join us?”

  I held up the box of coconut treats by the string, and explained that, sadly, I was expected back at the college.

  “Well, look here, you absolutely must come to the show…” He snapped his fingers at a disciple, who fumbled in his coat pocket and came up with a small fly sheet. “Tonight we try out my latest. Come and see!”

  And so that night, instead of disappearing down to the pub to wallow in misery and ale, as had become my habit, I took myself off to see the show at the New Theatre. It was the first night of a Footlights effort, written, naturally, by The Rotter himself, a self-styled musical satire entitled The Socialist, ridiculing the political ideas being espoused by Mr Shaw, Mr Wells and the Fabian Society.

  The idea of the piece involved a college succumbing to socialism, with hilarious consequences. The students marked their own examinations, and awarded each other firsts. In a society where everyone is equal, you see, what is the point of a second-class degree?

  Now this show may sound flimsy and insubstantial, but it forcibly reminded me of something else I had turned my back on. Those Footlights boys were not a patch on the Fun Factory journeymen I had been used to working with, but watching them made me think of what it was like to be on the stag
e. It made me think of the Power, frankly, and whether I would ever feel anything so intoxicating again. I found I missed it like a physical pain.

  Then there was the ridiculous play itself, with its “Yah-boo-sucks to the workers!” It brought home to me that if I were to continue as I was, as a college servant, then I would always belong to that downtrodden and unregarded class, always be a-tugging my forelock, always be serving the port, making the beds and clearing up after the young gentlemen.

  Whereas at the Fun Factory, it struck me, one man was reckoned superior to another only by virtue of his talents. And when we Karno boys were travelling from city to city, peering out of the railway train windows at the factories and cobbled streets where the workers lived, or at the fancier toffs’ dwellings on the hills, did we really see anywhere we would rather be? We were the chosen ones. We could do the things, and go to the places, and live the lives they could only dream of…

  It was useless to dwell on it, though. That part of my life was over. Karno was done with, comedy was done with, for I could not bear to start from scratch somewhere else, or as a solo. Chaplin, our rivalry, was behind me, and Tilly – ah, Tilly! – how could I look her in the eye again?

  Nothing, I thought, would induce me to go within fifty miles of the blasted Fun Factory ever again.

  Until one spring morning a crisp white envelope arrived at the porter’s lodge bearing my name.

  An invitation to a wedding.

  29

  LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART

  EASTER Saturday was a sweltering hot spring day, and I found myself dressed to the nines and crammed into Brompton Oratory together with the cream of the British music hall. As the matrimonials were concluded I glanced around the assembled crowd and felt the honour of being invited to this gathering, for you could hardly have afforded such a bill unless you were the Royal Command performance itself. The first of those, incidentally, was still a couple of years off, I think I’m right in saying, and Marie Lloyd was not invited to take part – how about that? Too saucy, apparently. Nor was Fred Karno, the single biggest draw in the world of the music hall, invited to submit a contribution to the entertainment.