The Fun Factory (30 page)

“Good, good, and so … are you back in harness, so to speak?”

“No, no, I’m just down for the day.”

“So when can we expect you to return to the strength?” he said, punching me playfully on the bicep.

“I’m not … I’m working at the old college again. I’m not coming back.”

He was shocked for a moment, and then the relief washed over his features. He couldn’t hide it.

“So-o-o-o! Cambridge’s gain is comedy’s loss, eh? Well, well, well. It’s a great pity, in a way, because I really think one day you might have been almost as good as me.”

“You what?!”

“And you know things really are going
tremendously well
for me just at the moment.”

Suddenly, with a rustle of skirts, Tilly was beside him. I saw her slip her arm into the crook of his, and she was whispering into his ear before she recognised who he was talking to.

“Shall we get some champagne?” she said, and Charlie glanced at me apprehensively. She followed his eyes, and her mouth popped open into an O of surprise.

“Hullo, Tilly,” I said, my heart racing. “I hope I find you well?”

“Yes,” she said, collecting herself quickly. “And you? Your injury?”

I shrugged, nodded, held up my cane. I wanted to speak but no words would come. An awkward pause was developing, until Charlie clapped his hands smartly. “Well. Let us find ourselves some champagne, shall we?” He pressed his forehead to Tilly’s
in a two-turtle-dovey gesture then patted me on the arm in a way which made it clear that I was not invited along. “Delighted to see you up and about, old chap!”

I watched them go, arm in arm. So that was how things were now, I thought. Chaplin had my career, and he had my girl. Maybe he
was
just the better man, and that was that.

I began to feel I couldn’t get my breath, that I needed to go outside. The desire to take back the things I had said to Tilly was like a physical pain. What did it matter if she had done what she needed to do in order to get herself a job with Karno? She had come back from Paris to be with
me
. What did any amount of ‘guvving’ matter? Really?

Suddenly Charlie was back at my elbow. “Listen,” he said. “You’re not going to make a scene, are you? All’s fair in love and war, all that?”

I shook him off and headed for the street. It crossed my bitter mind that I should just tell him about Tilly’s audition with Karno, and that such was his romantic inclination to place women upon pedestals that he might then have dropped her at once like a hot coal, but I couldn’t really do that. I had done enough.

Outside the Fun Factory I lit a cigarette and loosened my shirt buttons, trying to calm down. It was late afternoon by this time, and there were groups of Karno performers hanging around waiting for the omnibuses to take them to the evening shows. They peered through the big double doors at the festivities inside, not venturing in.

I nearly didn’t go back in myself, but I decided I couldn’t leave after only that ridiculously brief conversation with Tilly.

Inside the tables were pushed to the sides, a band struck up, and dancing got under way. Tilly was sitting by herself now at the
top table watching the happy couple twirling away. No time like the present, I thought, and limped over there.

She glanced up at me as I joined her.

“Lovely day,” I ventured, and she nodded and smiled.

“That’s Amy sorted out now, then,” she said.

“I suppose so,” I said, not sure quite what she meant.

“Her career is his career, now,” Tilly explained. “Alf will manage the shows, and Amy can be in ’em.”

“Good luck to them,” I said.

“Well. It would not suit me,” Tilly said firmly.

“In what way?”

“To have my career determined so by my husband’s.”

“I see,” I said.

“Why should I not have my own career, that’s all?” she said. “There’s Marie Lloyd, over there look, as big a draw as any in the land, without any help from a husband. Why should I not be able to make my own way?”

I shrugged, then asked: “What are you doing at the moment?”

Tilly paused for a second. “
Skating
,” she said then.

“With Charlie?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the table, and I realised I had inadvertently scored a point off her.

“And you?” she said. “When are you returning?”

“I’m not,” I said. “That’s it for me.”

Tilly gasped. “Oh? What a shame!”

“Well,” I said. “There it is.”

“What a shame!” she said again, and I saw to my surprise that she was becoming upset. “Do you mean to say that you’d really…? Because of…? Oh, you are such a…!”

And she covered her face with her hands and fled from me, pushing her way through the dancers and out of sight. I sat by myself, wondering what had just happened.

The band reached the end of the number, and the dancers came to a halt to applaud them. I watched Alf and Amy, the two of them beaming and out of breath. I was just thinking of slipping quietly away, back to the railway station and up to Cambridge, when I saw a familiar figure, leaning over one of the tables helping himself, and I clapped him heartily on the back.

“Stan! Have you been here all along?”

Stan turned furtively and whispered: “No, I came to get the bus for tonight’s shows and I just slipped in. I thought there might be cake. How’s the leg?”

“Better, thanks.”

It was good to see Stan again. He had been one of my visitors when I left the hospital – he had leaned on my injury, and brought me a gift of hard-boiled eggs and nuts, which made a change from candied fruit. And he’d been making real headway at the Fun Factory while I was away, building up a good reputation for himself.

“Wasn’t that Tilly you were just talking to?” he said, munching away. “However did you let that one slip through your fingers?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I just don’t know.”

“When I first met you you were pretending to be married, remember that?” he chuckled.

I nodded. How could I have forgotten it? I thought of little else. “They found out about it, though, and Syd gave me the choice to leave Karno or to split up with Tilly, basically.”

“And you chose Karno?”

“Well … I didn’t really have the chance … to actually choose one way or t’other… It’s complicated,” I said.

“But…” Stan frowned. “However did they find out?”

“Beats me,” I said. “No one knew except her and me. We told no one in the company.”

Stan had frozen, a piece of wedding cake halfway to his mouth.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You told me.”

“Yes, but only you, and you weren’t in the company then.”

Stan still hadn’t moved.

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“Well … you told me about it that day we had the picnic in Hartlepool, remember? And we laughed so much…”

“I remember…”

“And later, days later, Charlie asked me what was so funny, and … I knew you two were friends, so I thought what was the harm…? And I … told him.”

Our eyes met, and I knew we were putting it together in the same instant.

Charlie told Syd.

30

JIMMY THE FEARLESS

THE
very next morning I sat in a rehearsal room at the Fun Factory, my good knee bouncing up and down with nervous energy.

Charlie sat opposite me, with Tilly. He was perplexed to see me there, you could tell that, and his toe was tapping out an agitated rhythm on his chair leg. Tilly, meanwhile, squinted at me, puzzled.

I looked levelly at Chaplin, enjoying his discomfiture. He had reminded me that it was war. How could I have forgotten?

Also present, and on tenterhooks, were Stan, Mike Asher and Ernie Stone, Albert Austin, the taciturn fellow I knew from
Jail Birds
, Bert Williams and his wife, and Emily Seaman, who was already fluttering her pretty eyelashes at Mike across the room – her husband George was touring in Scotland, I think, at the time – and a couple more I didn’t know yet, Harry Daniels and Willy Parsons.

We were waiting for the Guv’nor.

Right at the end of the previous afternoon a large part of the wedding party had been breaking up. The omnibuses were there,
loading up with passengers to spread laughter out all over the capital once (or twice) again. Some were staying on, the lucky few who were important enough to be able to take a night off. Suddenly a bunch of well-wishers had dispersed and the
bride-groom
was by himself for a moment. At last! I’d darted in to take advantage.

“Congratulations, Alf!” I’d said, pumping his hand heartily.

“Thank you, Arthur,” he’d replied. He’d seemed distracted. It was his wedding day, after all, and rice had begun to rain down on both of us from the top deck of the nearest bus. I’d decided to get straight to the point.

“Thank you for inviting me,” I had said. “I feel privileged.”

“The least I could do,” he had said, keeping hold of my hand. “And if there’s ever anything else I can do for you, you only have to ask.”

“There is one thing, as it happens.”

“Name it,” Alf had said earnestly.

“I want to come back.”

As we waited, I thought about the gossip I’d picked up about Charlie. The thing about him, you see – one of the things, anyway – was that he was a truly masterful mimic and mime. Ask him to express an emotion or a fleeting thought even using just the body God gave him, and he was something of a marvel. If you asked him to
speak,
however, he was simply not impressive at all. It was his misfortune, then, to discover that many of the number-one roles he was now expected to shine in required him to master dialogue, and it was eating away at his confidence. It was getting to a point where there were serious mumblings about his position, and his bumptious and annoying confidence of the day before had been masking his very real concern.

Then the door banged open, and in came the Guv’nor, as if propelled by a hurricano. When he saw me there he half-stumbled on the threshold, but then pressed on regardless.

“All right you lot, listen to this,” he said, gathering us to him. “It is to be an entirely new show, and you are to be the first to play it.”

He clutched a script in his hand – I say a script, it was barely more than a few jottings on the back of a receipt for something or other, but that’s all his scripts ever amounted to – and he had clearly been in the grip of his legendary creative power. Stan grinned at me. This was exciting. Charlie looked as though he’d been given a week to live.

“The name of the piece is…” He scrabbled for his notes. It was so freshly baked that he could hardly hold onto the thing without oven gloves. “There, that’s it.
Jimmy the Fearless
.”

We raised our eyebrows at each other as though those three words conveyed the whole scenario, which of course they didn’t. Charlie looked pale.

“Chaplin? You will be Jimmy,” the Guv’nor went on, hauling Charlie to his feet and putting his arm round his shoulders as if to walk him through it. “Now Jimmy here … is a dreamer. He likes nothing more than to lose himself in a penny dreadful, a penny blood, you know the sort of thing. Drives his folks up the wall. His father – that’s you, Dandoe…” he said, pointing at me, but not looking at me, “…wants him to settle down, take things a bit more seriously, but no, it’s all stories for Jimmy. With me?”

We all nodded vigorously. I closed my eyes and gave silent thanks, to God and to Alf Reeves.

“Right here’s the nub of the whole thing,” Karno said, and
we inched closer in anticipation. “Jimmy falls asleep, and he begins to dream of t’ things he has been reading about. Pirates, Red Injuns, bandits, gunfights, swordfights, and so forth. Suddenly…”

“The dreams come to life!”

We all looked around to see who had dared to interrupt the Guv’nor in full flow. It was Stan, the light of enthusiasm shining in his eyes.

“Yes, exactly!” Karno cried, pointing at Stan, not at all put out. In fact he seemed galvanised by Stan’s excitement, and began to pace around, waving his arms in the air. “We shall need backdrops painting, so we can switch locations in a flash, and it will be a tremendous adventure at breakneck speed, blah blah blah. You…” – here he indicated Bert Williams – “…are Alkali Ike, the leader of the bandits.”

And he went on round the room allocating roles hither and thither. Albert Austin was the Injun chief, Washti-ni Wampum (or Wampum na-Washti: it varied from night to night), Stan and Mike were in the cowboy gang, and also pirates, Ernie would play the bartender in the bar where the big showdown was to take place, and Tilly the beautiful maiden who was held to ransom, and rescued by The Boy ‘Ero himself.

The company broke into delighted applause, eager to get started, to flesh out the scheme the Guv’nor proposed. All but Chaplin. He shrugged and sniffed air out from his nose dismissively. He and Karno looked daggers at one another for a moment, then the Guv’nor turned to the rest of us.

“All right, there it is. Get on with it!” He turned on his
shiny-shod
heel and stalked out.

We threw ourselves into the rehearsals with a will. I had never
played in a sketch with Stan before, and was amazed by the way ideas just streamed out of him. Gags here, bits of business there, and we all were carried along by the flow. The piece seemed somehow to be assembling around Charlie, who, in contrast, was a great leaden lump of disinterest bringing the whole thing down. I don’t know what was the matter with him, but he seemed to have convinced himself that the whole idea was a bust, and just couldn’t get himself up to the starter’s mark.

Well, the Guv’nor could hardly fail to notice this when he stopped by to see how things were shaping up, and there was a bit of a scene between the two of them that was more diverting to watch than anything Charlie was contributing to the sketch itself.

“Injuns?” Karno said, after watching us run through what we had so far. “Very good. More of that dancing, that’s funny. Alkali Ike? That’s all funny too, you and your cowboys. We’ll get some more shooting in there, we’ll work on that scene when we get the firing caps.” He turned to Chaplin. “Jimmy? We need more from you. The whole thing comes from you. We need more energy, more fizz, and we need to find a bit of the old wistful from somewhere too. At the moment you just look like you want to be somewhere else.”

“Perhaps I do,” Charlie said. The whole room froze and held its breath.

“What?” Karno said icily.

“Perhaps I think the whole thing is just a bit … silly…”

“
Silly
?” the Guv’nor said, sticking his chest out.

Chaplin looked at his fingernails languidly. “Yes, silly. Cowboys and Injuns. Like something you’d put on for children. I don’t know why you reckon so much to it, frankly.”

“Well perhaps, then, you’d rather not take part in this
silly
children’s show at all.”

Chaplin shrugged, as if it was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

“In that case,” Karno said, cold steel in his voice, “it is fortunate indeed that there is someone already in t’ company right now who is ideally suited to take your place…”

My heart stopped.

Here it comes, I thought, all of a sudden. Unbelievably.

Out of absolutely nowhere.

Vindication.

Victory.

All around the room, eyes were darting at me in anticipation. Everyone there remembered the showdown at the Oxford, so if Charlie was being shoved aside, who was the next cab off the rank? Why, yours truly…

“Stan Jefferson,” Karno said. “You’re Jimmy. Chaplin? Take a fortnight off. Unpaid.”

And he strode out of the place. A beat and a half later Charlie picked up his hat and followed, his footsteps echoing in the shocked silence.

No one was more surprised than Stan at his sudden elevation. Having said that, though, we were all pretty surprised. Staggered, actually.

“I want you all to know,” he said, breaking the stunned silence, “it isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference.” He turned to me. “You, fellow, bring me tea, just a splash of milk, and be quick about it!”

This was followed by a huge Stan grin, and a great roar of laughter from everyone, which Charlie must have heard as he exited the building in his huff.

Stan was a crackerjack, coming up with gags for everyone, business loaded upon business, and without the dead weight of Charlie’s disdain for the whole idea pulling us down, the thing began to fly. To give you just one idea as an example: Karno’s brief notes called for Jimmy, the ‘Boy ‘Ero’, to demonstrate his prowess with a six-shooter.

“’Tis not for naught I have been called the dead shot of the plains!” he would cry. “I have never been known to miss!”

And then, the idea was, he would shoot the topmost feather from the headdress of Washti-na Wampum (or possibly Wampum na-Washti, depending on which version Albert Austin had used when first introducing himself). The feather, of course, was tricked to vanish when the smoke cap in the gun was fired off.

Stan liked this effect well enough, but then he started to think. That feather is really small. What about the fellows up in the gods? What if the whole feathered headdress were shot off. In fact, what if the whole feathered headdress
and the Injun chief’s hair beneath
were shot off, leaving him suddenly bald as a coot?

So Albert was tricked out in a bald wig to cover his own hair, then the Injun chief’s hair, with two large plaits hanging down, and then the big multi-coloured feathered headdress, and the whole lot was attached to an invisible line. The first time Stan tried it in a rehearsal, he fired off the gun with a tremendous bang and a puff of smoke, and in an instant Albert was standing there, his head as bald as a baby’s behind, a look of pop-eyed astonishment on his face.

Everyone was caught up in the excitement. I stayed behind after everyone else had gone and painted the backdrops. It was
a labour of love, actually. I was able to bring to life the America I had read about in my penny bloods since I was a boy. Mighty snow-capped rocky mountains, great sweeping, bear-laden forests, dusty, sun-baked main streets, just ripe for a gunfight.

Tilly, too, was full of enthusiasm, partly because the fact that Charlie had opted out meant that she was there on her own merits and not just by his patronage. And although we didn’t get round to discussing it, she must have noticed that having once chosen Karno over her, and once dropped her because of Karno, now I was braving Karno for her.