The Fun Factory (27 page)

“What ho, Arthur!”

I turned, and there was young Freddie striding towards me with a big grin on his silly chops, just the very last person I wanted to see. He spotted the flowers clutched in my fist, of course, right away, and punched me jovially on the arm.

“Flowers, eh? Who's the lucky gal?”

“Ha ha! No one, no one!” I said.

“Oh? Have you got a secret admirer yourself, then? Some fellow sweet on you, is it?”

“Don't be an ass, Freddie.”

“I'm just going to see Mama. Are you going out, or do you want to come in and say ‘Hullo'?”

“I'm … er…”

“It's all right, you can if you want. I'm sure she'll like to see you. I'm just killing time while Maria's out shopping,” he said cryptically.

“What?” I said, and he laughed.

“Maria's out shopping. That's just what I call it. She goes up to town for the afternoon, looking at shoes and so on, deciding she'll maybe get them next time, or the time after. And while she's out, that's when Dad does his auditioning. He doesn't call it the Fun Factory for nothing, you know!”

“Sorry, what?” I said.

“Come along, Arthur, you're not usually this dim. The Guv'nor is
auditioning
a young lady, and he does it when Maria is
out shopping, because she's an extremely jealous woman and he doesn't want her to know what he's about.”

The truth was dawning slowly on me now, although I didn't want it to.

“Likes to see just how super the supers really are, if you follow me?”

I nodded, but was barely listening. In my mind I was hearing Tilly's voice, reciting her letter: “I've got an audition with Fred Karno himself, no less, next Wednesday in the afternoon at his house, while his wife is out at the shops, so fingers crossed for me, eh…?”

Freddie was still talking. “I walked in on him once, not long back,
auditioning
, and got a pound pay rise so I wouldn't tell Maria. Ha! I'd tell you who the girl with him was, but it wouldn't really be fair, would it? I see her on pay night. Think it's her, anyway. I only got the briefest look at her
face
, to be honest. Eh? You with me?”

I laughed along with him, hollowly, my mind racing.

“In fact sometimes I amuse myself on a Saturday night by ticking them off in my head. She's been ‘guvved', she's been ‘guvved', I
saw
her being ‘guvved', ‘guvved'
twice
to my certain knowledge, ‘guvved', ‘guvved', ‘guvved' and so on. I should put a little ‘g' next to their names in the ledger, shouldn't I? Baffle future generations of accountants!”

His bawdy grin turned to a look of concern as he saw my expression.

“I say, are you all right, Arthur? You look rather pale.”

“Here,” I said, slamming the bunch of flowers into his chest. “Give these to your mother!”

I set off at a run down the street.

Too agitated to wait for a tram or an omnibus, I ran up Streatham High Road towards Brixton. Got passed by a tram,
which would have got me there sooner if only I could have calmed down to wait for it. Cursing, ran on up the hill. Lost a scarf – it blew off from round my neck. I didn't go back for it. Up to Coldharbour Lane, red in the face, panting, sweating. Into Vaughan Road, seeing the Fun Factory, lit up by the winter sunshine, seeing Karno's house. Stopped, gasping, leaning on somebody's garden wall, trying to get my breath back…

The door of Karno's house opened, and Tilly stepped out. She was smiling, and gave a little wave back to the occupant, as the door closed.

She set off walking along the street towards me, saw me, smiled.

Karno's face leering down at her.

“Hullo there, you!” she said, as she got close.

Karno unbuckling his belt.

“Guess what!” she asked, brightly.

Karno giving a little cough.

“I passed the audition!” she beamed.

Karno's lips leaving a wet smear on her cheek.

“Didn't you hear me? I got a job…”

Tilly's face changed. I saw her read in my eyes that I knew perfectly well what her audition had consisted of.

She said, in a small voice. “It was for you, Arthur. So I could be with you.”

But I didn't hear her. All I could think of was … her. Being ‘guvved'.

“Leave me alone,” I said. “You … disgust me.”

She walked away, of course. Her head bowed, one hand over her face, not a sound. She walked away from me, to the end of the road, turned the corner and disappeared from view.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I sat on the pavement,
rested my head on my knees, closed my eyes. It began to rain, a sudden, heavy shower. Within a couple of minutes I was soaked through to the skin, but I couldn't bring myself to get up.

After a few minutes I heard a front door bang and glanced up. There was Karno, strutting across the road to the Fun Factory under a bright red umbrella, exceedingly full of himself, clip-clopping lightly around the puddles in his shiny little shoes. I wondered if they were the same shoes he'd used to stamp on his wife's face, to scar her for life. It made me think of the other people he wasn't worried about scarring for life. Me, for one. I felt a volcanic anger building up inside me. I scrambled to my feet and followed.

He'd just started talking to Alf Reeves about some theatre plans of some sort when I kicked the door of his office open. I stood there in the entrance like a drowned rat. He got half the way up to his feet and opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.

“You!” I shouted. “You're a monster!”

“Are you drunk?” Karno said calmly.

“Not yet!” I roared. I grabbed his bottle of Scotch from atop his cabinet and took a big, spluttering swig from it.

“What is this about?”

“I'll tell you!” I cried. “It's about me telling you where to stick your stupid contest, and where to stick your bloody job!”

Karno's jaw dropped. “You
what
?” he said.

“You heard me,” I snarled, pushing my face right up to his, nose to nose. “Stick it where the sun doesn't shine, because if the only way to keep it is to compromise your poor wife, well then clearly it's not a job worth having and I'll find some other bloody thing to do!”

I had no idea what that other thing might be, and to be honest that big swig of whisky was beginning to make me feel dizzy, but I was rather enjoying myself. The smoke in my nostrils from all the bridge burning I was doing had an exhilarating tang.

“Do I take it that you are resigning from the company?!” Karno shouted, trembling with fury.

“You can take it up your arse!” I roared, rocking back on my heels. “That poor woman still loves you, you know, even though you have got yourself another so-called wife, and are betraying
that
one with any available trollop whenever
her
back is turned!”

“Resignation accepted!” Karno yelled, banging his fist on the table as if it contained a rubber stamp to make things official.

“Fine!” I shouted, my face an inch from his.

“No!” another voice cut in, strongly, firmly.

Karno and I were stunned. We'd been so wrapped up in our fury that we'd almost forgotten Alf was still in the room, yet there he was, red in the face and visibly quivering with suppressed rage.

“You
what
?” Karno said, slowly turning to face him, hands on hips.

“I said, no,” Alf said, with a dreadful calmness. “No, Arthur is not resigning from the company, nor are you going to sack him. I won't allow it.”

“Oh-ho!” Karno bellowed nastily, turning an interesting puce colour. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Alf said, ice cold. “That
is
so. Or do you want me to tell everyone what you asked this boy to do?”

“You can do exactly as you damn well please!” shouted Karno, but the wind was leaking from his sails.

“This is what is going to happen. You can play out your contest on Saturday, even though it is silly and demeaning to this lad and to young Chaplin, both of whom deserve better from you…”

“
He
doesn't,” I muttered.

“…and then you may come to whatever decision you think proper at the end of the evening. But I shall be there, too, and I will feel obliged to see that no travesty of justice is done, do you understand me? Fred?”

Karno glared at Alf for a moment, but Alf held his gaze.

“Fred?” he said again, with steel in his tone. “Do you hear me?”

“Very well,” Karno said through gritted teeth, after a long, long moment in which he seemed to be weighing up Alf in his mind, reappraising him. “Very well then. But I shall stop the money for that door out of his wages.” He turned to Alf with exaggerated deference. “Unless
you
think that would be inappropriate?”

“No, that will be perfectly acceptable,” Alf said, holding himself erect. “Now come along, Arthur – time we left, I think.”

I let Alf guide me out of the office, and out into the wet street. I was astonished.

“What on earth did you think you were you doing?” I shouted. Once we were clear of the Fun Factory Alf's superhuman composure suddenly deserted him. He grabbed at his heart and leaned heavily against a lamp post.

“Saving your life, you young fool!” he gasped. “Now get me a bloody brandy!”

27

BREAK A LEG

SO
we come to that most peculiar of days at the Oxford, when Charlie Chaplin and I went head to head.

The Oxford – gone now, pulled down and replaced with a Lyons Corner House – had the reputation then of being the handsomest music hall in London. It was certainly one of the most prestigious places to play. George Robey made his name there in the 1890s, you know, and it was always a favourite of his.

I was there in plenty of time for the matinée, even though I wasn’t to be in it, or even allowed to watch it. Once or twice a couple of strangers popped their heads in at the door and stared curiously at me, before whispering to one another as if to say:

“There he is, he’s one of them!”

At some point during the first half –
The Football Match
was in the second – Chaplin came to pay me a visit, all dressed up in Stiffy the Goalkeeper’s roll-neck jumper and long pantaloons, and shut the dressing-room door behind himself.

“Listen, Arthur,” he began, shuffling from one foot to the
other. “It’s embarrassing, this, isn’t it, to be set against each other like this?”

I shrugged.

“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 Robey, 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…!