The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  After a cup of tea and a slice of rather heavy fruit cake I was shown up to a room on the top floor. There was a single bed, bowed in the middle, together with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers which were stuffed – sort of half full, actually, as though he’d gone away on a trip – with some fellow’s belongings.

  “This was poor Ronny’s room,” Clara said rather wistfully. “Such a shame…”

  She tugged a trunk out from under the bed and began to fold poor Ronny’s shirts, trousers and socks and pile them inside. I was wondering what poor Ronny might say if he were to come back and find me in his bed, with all his belongings packed away.

  “So he’s definitely not coming back, then?” I said, passing her a pair of rather battered slippers.

  Clara shook her head sadly. “Oh no, I should say not.”

  Which was all I was going to get on that subject. “I thought I caught a glimpse of your neighbour when I arrived earlier,” I said. “A pale lady, watching me from the first-floor window…”

  Clara sucked a loud breath between her teeth and began shaking her head again.

  “Poor woman,” she said. “Poor, poor woman.”

  And with that she left me alone in the room, to the rather gothic accompaniment of a loud thunderclap from outside that shook the glass in the window frames.

  I looked at my new home, which then began to spin slowly. That slice of cake wasn’t sitting very well on all the beer, or else the nervous tension of my unpromising welcome at the Fun Factory was making itself felt. I sat heavily on the bed, and noticed for the first time a brand spanking new gas fire in the fireplace, which was nice. Sitting on the floor in front of it was a bowl of water, as was the custom, to keep the room from getting too dry.

  I threw up in it.

  6

  A NIGHT IN AN ENGLISH MUSIC HALL

  I woke with a pounding head and the dim recollection that I was to start work that day and that I was to be a “super”, whatever that was. A super, eh? Not too shabby!

  Clara furnished me with some breakfast, not that I could manage much, and I was formally introduced to young Edie’s dolly, whose name, rather splendidly, was Miss Churchhouse. Then the three of them, Clara, Edie and Miss Churchhouse, kindly walked me to the tram stop.

  When the tramcar arrived Clara called to the driver to be sure and set me off at Coldharbour Lane, which he duly did, and I found my way back to the Fun Factory easily enough. It seemed deserted, especially in comparison to the hubbub of the day before.

  Alf Reeves blinked at me for a moment when I presented myself again at his office, but then he recalled our meeting the previous day and snapped his fingers.

  “Dandoe, Arthur Dandoe, of course. Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  He led me out into the cavernous workshop and over to the enormous construction taking on the shape of an ocean liner that I’d seen the day before. One or two lads were rolling their sleeves up and just getting to work on it, and a considerable amount of banging was coming from somewhere behind it.

  “You see this, lad?” Reeves said, waving a proprietorial arm to take in the whole gigantic contraption. “What does it look like to you?”

  “Well, like a part of a great ship, Mr Reeves,” I replied.

  “Precisely so. You have heard, perhaps, of the Lusitania? Of the Mauretania?”

  I had, naturally. They were the two enormous and luxurious ocean liners of the Cunard line that had been launched with a great fanfare not long before.

  “Well, this,” Reeves announced grandly, “is the Wontdetainia, ha ha, and God bless all who sail in her.” He banged it with his fist and this made a clanging sound. “It is the set for our newest production, which begins next week, and it’s not a wood and canvas and plasterboard fake. It’s sheet metal, see, just like the real thing, and real rivets, put together special by some laddies from the docks. The end panels are hinged – here…” – he strode along to a point towards the front of the ship, pointing – “…and as the whole thing moves slowly across the stage the bow will fold into the wings out of sight, while the stern unfolds correspondingly on the other side, to give the illusion that we have fitted something even larger than the theatre itself onto the stage.”

  I nodded, impressed, and Reeves led me round the back to see the platforms where the actors portraying the passengers would stand, and some fearsome-looking mechanisms concealed there.

  “And then behind, look, we have these three hydraulic rams, which will simulate the rocking motion of the sea, backwards and forwards and side to side – port to starboard, I must remember to say, apparently – to make the effect completely convincing. It is all mightily exciting, you agree? It is also the most expensive stage machine that we, or anyone else, have ever constructed, costing upwards of two thousand pounds…”

  I whistled, staggered by the sum. Reeves grimaced.

  “So it had better damn well work, or we shall be ruined. Well, not ruined, exactly, but belts will be tightened, let’s just say that.”

  We walked back round to the front and he put his arm around my shoulders.

  “When this show opens next week, my boy, you will be a super.”

  “I’ll try my best, Mr Reeves,” I said in what I hoped was a businesslike fashion, and waited for him to tell me what a super actually did.

  “In the meantime we have only a week before we shift this lot up to the Paragon and it all needs to be painted. So hang your jacket up, there’s a good lad, grab a brush and a ladder and off ye go!”

  And with that he strode off to take care of a million other things, all of them more important than me, it seemed.

  Great gallon buckets of whitewash waited over by the wall of the scene dock, and there was nothing for it but to pitch in, so I put a ladder up against the flank of the mighty Wontdetainia, clambered up and began to slap the paint onto the metal.

  To either side of me were young men engaged in the same work, holding their paintbrushes at arm’s length, both of them, as if to keep themselves as far as possible from the point at which actual manual labour was occurring. Neither deigned to speak to me for a good while, but eventually their curiosity got the better of them.

  “What are you, then?” asked the one to my right. “Are you a super?”

  “I think so,” I said, but to be honest I still wasn’t sure what a super was.

  “What show are you in?”

  “Show? I’m not in a show.”

  “Well, you’re not a super, then, are you?”

  “He’s an ordinary,” the chap on the other side cracked, and they both sniggered.

  “You two are supers, then, I take it?” I asked.

  “We are,” they replied simultaneously, then waggled their little fingers at one another to avert bad luck.

  “Well, what is a super?”

  “What is a super?” the one on my left repeated, incredulously.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind my asking. It’s my first day.”

  “A super,” the other answered with a patronising simper. “A super is an artiste, my dear. The principals perform their routines. We provide the spectacle.”

  “Who is going to want to come and see this?” his friend asked, a little indignantly, banging the Wontdetainia with a camp little clang. “A great hulk of metal, that’s all it is, but imagine when a hundred people are hanging off it, waving their kerchiefs and throwing down streamers, shouting farewell to their loved ones. We will make it … magnificent!”

  It dawned on me then that ‘supers’ was a fancy way of saying that they were not especially important. Supernumerary, in fact. Human scenery. Inhabitants of the very bottom rung of the show-business ladder (not counting the outright unemployed, of course, who don’t have a rung and have to sit on the floor). And I, poor insignificant Arthur Dandoe, wasn’t even important enough to be able to call myself one of them.

  Well, that’s just … super, I thought to myself.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, as I broke off
from painting to flex my aching fingers a moment, I became aware of a growing hubbub behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the scene dock, which had been echoing and empty all day, was filling up once again with exuberant characters, gentlemen and ladies, all chattering away, greeting one another loudly, exactly as they had the day before. One or two looked up approvingly at the progress of the Wontdetainia, and hullooed a greeting at a friend they had spotted on the ladders above.

  Then I saw that all the men who had been working the whole day on the ship were sliding urgently down and grabbing their overcoats, before joining the swelling throng below to spill out onto the street and head for the buses and broughams.

  Silence followed, an eerie, echoing silence, and I was alone.

  This turned out to be the routine. The Fun Factory would be a hive of activity all day and then, come teatime, the place would fill up with assorted performers and supers who would bustle around, chattering and gossiping, until the time came to be carried off to theatreland, leaving me on my own without so much as a “Cheer-o!” or a “See you tomorrow!” I would then make my solitary way back to the Bells’ house in Streatham, where Clara and Edie would share their supper with me, and then I would either end up playing with Edie and Miss Churchhouse, or, if I was quick enough (please, God), escaping upstairs to read one of my penny bloods in peace.

  By the end of the week I was heartily fed up with this show business, to be honest, and ready to slink back to Cambridge. My hands were cramped into claws from painting, and the whitewash was so dazzling in the summer sunshine that even after I’d left the cursed Wontdetainia behind for the day I could still see it as an after-image burned into my retinas, little dark portholes floating about in my eye water.

  It wasn’t just the tedious work, though. After all, if I’d remained at the college for the summer I’d have been whitewashing the walls of staircases O to T. It was that the fun folk at the so-called Fun Factory had made me feel about as welcome as Jack the Ripper. Even Lance was better company, and he could go days without speaking to me at all.

  In due course I met my landlord, Clara’s husband, Charley Bell, and you couldn’t exactly call him a cheerful advocate for a life on the boards either. He was working three shows a night, playing in a Karno sketch called London Suburbia, in Balham, then Chiswick and then Highgate, and so was usually still in bed when I left in the mornings, and gone out by the time I got back to the house.

  One morning, though, he appeared, bleary-eyed, in the doorway of the scullery as Clara, Edie and I were having breakfast, and we were introduced. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to catch him, but he seemed a man of few words. When asked about the previous evening’s performances he ventured that Balham was “thin”, Chiswick “as good as could be expected” and Highgate “rowdy”.

  Charley had been with Karno for years, and had played the original “Naughty Boy” in the sketch Mumming Birds – about which much much more later – so I was eager to ask him about the company. Most of all, though, I wanted to hear something, anything, that would make me feel it was worth hanging around for. He shrugged and poured himself a cup of tea.

  “It’s a job, I suppose,” he said. “No better nor no worse than plenty of others.”

  I sipped at my own tea, contemplating the miserable prospect of painting another half acre of metal panelwork, and decided that this particular job was not all it was cracked up to be.

  By the end of that gruelling afternoon, muscles aching, pores clogged and ears untroubled by even a half-friendly conversation, I’d pretty much made my mind up to pack it all in. I’d stay long enough to get paid for what I’d done, but that was that. To Hell with the blasted Fun Factory! It was all Factory and no Fun, it seemed to me. Mr Luscombe would be disappointed, but, well, he’d just have to learn to live with it.

  Once the mob had left and the hubbub had subsided, I was clambering down from the side of the accursed Wontdetainia, ready to wend my weary way back to Streatham, when Alf Reeves came bustling out of his office, wrestling his arms into his jacket as he hurried along. For a moment he looked surprised to see me, but then seemed to place me in his mental scheme of things.

  “What are you…?” he began, and then: “Oh yes, I recall. You have no show to do yet, do you?”

  “No, Mr Reeves,” I said. I suppose I must have looked pretty fed up. He cocked his head to one side, thinking.

  “Tell you what. Would you like to see some turns this evening?”

  I reviewed my plans for the evening, which revolved mostly around trying to escape from playing with a small child and her dolly, and said that I wouldn’t mind.

  “Wash up, then, quick as you can. I’ve to go up the Mile End Road. Bit of business to take care of. Come and see what we’re up against, eh?”

  Outside Alf was waiting for me by his motor car. I’d seen motor cars close up before, of course, even though they were still something of a rarity on the streets. Several of the more affluent and fashionable young gentlemen at college had purchased them, and very proud they were of them too.

  It was a gleaming new Ford, which, as the saying went at the time, came in any colour “so long as it’s black”. (This one was blue.)

  Reeves fiddled about with some switches or knobs inside the machine and then emerged with a starting handle, which he handed to me.

  “You do know how to use this, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” I replied. His face fell.

  “Curse it all!” Reeves took the handle back from me and shoved it into a socket low down at the front of the vehicle. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this. I really dislike it – it has a kick like a mule if you don’t get it just right. All right, now watch me, and then next time you’ll know what to do, won’t you?”

  Reeves cranked the starter handle round a couple of times, and then leapt out of its way as it sprang back, narrowly missing his shins. He glanced up at me, licked his lips, then approached it warily to give it another go. This time he managed to get the engine turning over, and he yanked the handle free and scuttled round to the driver’s seat.

  “In! In! In!” he cried, and I hurried round to the passenger side and climbed aboard.

  Reeves let off the handbrake, a gout of smoke guffed out of the machine’s rear end, and we rolled away from the little gaggle of gawking street children that had formed.

  It was, as I say, my first ride in a motor car, and I remember feeling quite vulnerable. Everything on the road seemed to be larger and more robust than our flimsy carriage, which felt like it was going to tip over at every turn, and Alf’s style of driving involved rather more near misses than seemed strictly necessary.

  “Freddie got you settled at Clara’s, then, did he?” he shouted, veering round a grocer’s cart.

  “Yes, Mr Reeves.”

  “Oh, I’m Alf, you can call me Alf. You mustn’t mind Freddie, you know. He’s a nice boy deep down.”

  “I’m sure he is,” I said, although it has to be said I wasn’t, not at all.

  “His father won’t let him on the stage, at any price, and so naturally that’s all he’s ever wanted, you see?”

  Before long, mercifully, we were barrelling down the Mile End Road, which was nice and wide and straight and with fewer things we could possibly smash into.

  “This is the Jewish part of town,” Alf explained, and I suppose the character of the streets did seem subtly different to those of Camberwell and Streatham. A lot more beards about the place, I think that had something to do with it.

  “You get some very good crowds round here,” Alf went on. “Do some really good business. Good sense of humour, your Jewish audience, and Jewish comedians are all the rage at the moment, you know.”

  He turned down a side road and pulled up with a jolt opposite a brightly lit building, the front of which was plastered with music hall bills. A queue of people snaked down the steps and along the street, chattering, in boisterous mood, waiting to be admitted to the evening’s
performance.

  “This place is called Forester’s,” Alf said, pulling up on the handbrake. “One of the smaller houses, but there’s a good bill on tonight. Come on…”

  I stepped out of the motor car and headed for the end of the queue, but Alf took my arm and led me down a passage along the side of the building to the performers’ entrance. We went up some stairs and into the backstage area, where Alf guided me through the throngs of folk making themselves ready, looking for someone in particular. Everyone we passed had a greeting for him, ranging from a deferential “Evening, Mister Reeves!” to a cheery “Alf!”, until we reached the object of our quest, who hailed him with a booming “Alfred! Hail fellow well met! Well met indeed!”

  “Ah, George, there you are,” Alf grinned, shaking the hand of a formidably confident chap of around forty. The man had luxuriant eyebrows and was rather affluently turned out in a well-cut suit with a gold watch chain draped across the front of his checked waistcoat. “Can I ask a favour of you, do you think?”

  “My dear chap! Anything, anything at all!” George beamed.

  “This…” Alf pulled me closer by my sleeve, “…is Arthur Dandoe, he’s new with us. Just stick him somewhere where he can watch, and keep him safe until I get back, could you? I need to go to the Paragon, couple of hours probably.”

  “Eh? I haven’t heard it called that before,” said George. “But if you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Arthur, my boy – shall we?” He shook my hand briskly and led me to the prompt corner, where he explained to the stage manager that I was his personal friend, and that I was to be given the best possible view of the show.

  I hadn’t the first idea who he was at that point, but from the way the stage manager jumped to attention and offered to go and fetch me a beer and a beef sandwich, I gathered that George was a figure of some importance. For the first time since I’d come to London, I was actually beginning to enjoy myself.