The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  “Oh, like most people, really,” she replied nonchalantly. “My family are in the business, so it was in my blood. My father has his own theatre, and my mother is a seamstress, she makes all the costumes for the shows.”

  This was news to me and I was intrigued. “So you first appeared at your father’s theatre, then?”

  She laughed at that. “I suppose I did!” she chuckled, and then she stuck her hand up and waggled her fingers at me.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked, but apparently it was a private joke between Tilly and herself.

  Just then Charlie strolled over, clutching his little glass of port and a cigarette, and stood over us, a disapproving expression on his face.

  “You’re giving away company secrets, Dandoe, is that it? To this spy from the opposition?”

  “Oh, come on, don’t be so bloody po-faced!” I said, slapping Charlie hard on the back. “Anyway, I’m the one who’s getting information. Did you know that Mr Jefferson gets his people to call him ‘The Guv’nor’?”

  “Well, perhaps he shouldn’t after tonight’s little embarrassment,” Charlie snorted, then he stuck his nose in the air and went back to the top table to consider weightier matters.

  Tilly, Stan and me, we rolled about. If you could have seen Charlie’s pompous little face with its pointless little sneer, and if you’d had a good night onstage followed by a few ales, then maybe you’d have been holding your aching sides, too.

  The rest of that week was a triumph, a rout, a slaughter. The church hall was packed to wheezing point night after night, and we had to do two extra shows on the Saturday. We cleared far more than we would have at the Empire, while Home from the Honeymoon et al limped along to cavernous empty houses. So much for ‘The Karno of the North’, we thought.

  We all really took to young Stan, though – even Charlie did, once our victory was certain and he loosened up a bit – and we spent a good deal of our spare time in his company. And so we were delighted, naturally, to find that the following week while we were topping the bill at the first-rank West Hartlepool Palace, the Jefferson mob were not far away, in Hartlepool’s somewhat lesser second theatre, the Crown, and we were able to continue meeting up for an after-show pint or three.

  Stan, Tilly and I even managed to organise a bit of an outing for ourselves, one sunny day when we had no daytime rehearsals, taking a picnic out to the headland. Syd had taken himself off to visit a friend from his days on the Cape mail boats whose ship was in the Victoria dock for a spell, so when Charlie got wind of our day trip he tagged along.

  We met up outside the hotel where the Chaplins were spending the week, Tilly and I sharing a knowing look at the grandeur of the place, compared to the modest lodgings we had been billeted in. Charlie himself was in beaming dapper form, dressed up to the nines (sometimes he simply wouldn’t make the effort and looked pretty much like a tramp, which I’m sure, Reader, you will not be hard pushed to imagine). He skipped down the steps as though he owned the place and greeted the three of us with exaggerated formality.

  “Mrs Dandoe,” Charlie gushed, bowing low to kiss Tilly’s hand. “I see you are looking particularly fetching today for our day out. This collar shows off your classical neck to particular advantage, and this tie, why, it’s almost like a gentleman’s tie, is it not? Not that it makes you look at all like a gentleman, I hasten to add. Anything but!”

  Tilly simpered. It’s the only word for it. She was indeed wearing a man’s thin tie that afternoon, one of my own, as a matter of fact. It was something of a fashion for the young ladies at that time to wear a high, stiff gentleman’s collar and a tie, making a none too subtle point about equality for women. Charlie knew this perfectly well, of course, and so when he offered Tilly his arm in a parody of a courtly gesture he was gently mocking her. And when she took his arm, loving the fuss he was making of her, he was highly delighted, and winked over his shoulder at Stan and me.

  The two of them set off chattering towards the sea, which glistened away on the horizon, leaving Stan and me to stroll along behind with the picnic basket. This had been prepared by our landlady, a nice widow named Mrs Budgen, who had been cooing over Tilly, seemingly convinced that she was going to need to build up her strength for a couple of decades of childbearing.

  When we reached the headland, jutting out into the shining North Sea, we put the hamper down for a moment to fill our lungs with North Sea air and admire the view, the ships below, the docks down to one side and the beach curving away to the other.

  Ahead of us Charlie trotted down a little slope onto the sands, then turned to catch Tilly as she skipped after him pretending to be running out of control, so that he had to grab her by the waist for a moment. He made some joke which we couldn’t hear, smiling his toothy smile, and she threw her head back and laughed, leaning her weight against his arm.

  Stan looked at me with a wry half-frown. “Charlie seems very familiar with your wife, doesn’t he? Do you not mind?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I found myself saying, “she’s not actually … which is to say, we’re not, strictly speaking…”

  “What?” Stan grinned at me. “Spit it out, man!”

  And so I told him about the misunderstanding with young Freddie Karno which had led to Tilly and myself sharing our accommodation as man and wife. He gawped at me, his mouth open wide, and then broke out into great gusts of high-pitched laughter. His eyebrows flew so high I thought they would disappear off the top of his head, and tears poured down his cheeks.

  Charlie and Tilly came running back up the hill to see what the fuss was about. I was laughing myself now, laughing helplessly at Stan, and Tilly, too, began to giggle at the pair of us.

  “Whatever is so funny?” Charlie demanded, refusing to get drawn into the hysteria, as ever resenting any laugh that he himself had not generated, but I managed to signal, somehow, to Stan to keep his counsel.

  We found that the laughter had taken the wind out of our walking sails for the time being, so lunch was declared. We found an agreeable spot where we could perch on those sort of grassy tussocks that you often find where the beach meets the land, and tucked into Mrs Budgen’s picnic.

  I asked Stan how the week was going for the Jeffersons at the Crown.

  “Oh, not all that well, I’m afraid,” he said. “Mr Spencer, the owner, he’s talking about converting to a picture house.”

  “More fool him!” I scoffed.

  “All the staff are walking around like condemned men. He’ll not need above half of them, you see, just to show pictures. It’s about as cheerful as working in an undertaker’s.”

  “Madness,” I said, and I’m sure that most music hall folk would have agreed with me then. For us the Bioscope was the part of the bill where the music hall audience upped and went to relieve themselves.

  “Your father would never think of doing that, would he, Tilly?” I asked. “Turning his theatre into a picture house?”

  “Not likely,” Tilly snorted, breaking into a giggle at the very idea. “Not very likely at all!”

  “Why must it only be real life that is captured on film?” Charlie mused. “Why should it not be performances by the very same people you might go to the music hall to see?”

  “So George Robey, say, might come here one day and find himself appearing in the flesh at the Palace and also on film at the Crown?” said Stan.

  “How can that be better, though, than seeing the real thing?” Tilly mused.

  “It can’t, of course it can’t, and people will realise that soon enough,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie. “Think about it this way. You could capture a perfect performance, just the way you want it, and then you never have to do it again, never have to step out in front of a crowd wondering if they’re going to be captivated by your art or baying for your blood.”

  Suddenly Stan, Tilly and I all found ourselves choking on our sandwiches, and all at the same word.

  “Your art?” I managed to sco
ff.

  “Yes, my art. What’s so funny about that?”

  “Nothing much that I’ve seen,” I shot back, and the others laughed along.

  “It is an art, the art of comedy performance,” he insisted. “I’m like any artist, trying to capture the essence of the human condition.”

  “And you do, you do, every time you fall on your face or get hit by a bun,” I chortled.

  “And the frustrating thing, it seems to me, is that once one’s performance is honed to perfection, then that perfection can never be preserved, it can only be repeated, and deteriorate, slowly but inexorably, as the artist strives too hard to regain the perfection he once created.”

  Stan and I shared a look, still amused by the pretentiousness of Chaplin styling himself an artist. Tilly, meanwhile, seemed carried away rather by the little fellow’s eloquence, and was wearing an expression of intense interest as he directed his argument to her.

  “If I were a painter, or a sculptor, or a writer, then my art would live on, would it not? In galleries, in museums, in libraries. Perhaps one day film will be able to do that for me, will become a new art form. What do you think, Mrs Dandoe?”

  “I suppose that could be the way of it,” Tilly said.

  Life was good that afternoon, strolling up the coast in the sunshine with my girl and my new friend, and even Charlie was on his best and most amusing behaviour. I made sure to pair up with Tilly when we set off back to town, though. She was becoming a little too admiring of young Mr Chaplin for my liking.

  Later, back at our lodgings after the show, I lay awake in the dark wondering whether either of us had actually won that argument at the picnic.

  I said to Tilly: “You know, I think Charlie would be happiest if they stuffed him and put him on display in the National Gallery.”

  She giggled and drew herself closer to me under the blankets, and I soon stopped thinking about the art of comedy performance altogether.

  17

  TILLY’S PUNCTURED ROMANCE

  TOWARDS the end of the week, George Craig loomed in the doorway of the dressing room.

  “Just to let you know. The Guv’nor’s in Manchester next week, and he’s going to pop over to see us one night in Warrington, surprise visit, so, best behaviour, right, lads?”

  “How’s that a surprise visit, then, George?” Chas Sewell sang out. “You’ve told us about it now.”

  “I don’t know, maybe he’ll have a pink hat on…” George grumbled as he left.

  I looked over at Charlie, and he was deep in thought. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking it too. Karno was coming to check on the two of us.

  During the show itself Charlie was clearly distracted, mistiming a couple of bits of business, which was most unlike him. It was a notable triumph for Bert Darnley, though, who was having a rare old hit that week declaiming The Trail of the Yukon, and afterwards we were all making this the excuse for a celebration while Charlie sat in a brown study, nursing a single port. After a good long while, he got up and had a quiet word with his brother, then he left the pub.

  At the end of the evening Syd came over to our well-oiled little group.

  “Goodnight, lads,” he said. “Keep the noise down, won’t you? Oh, and one more small thing. Tomorrow Bert, you’re Naughty Boy, and Arthur? You’re back to the Magician. All right? Till tomorrow, then, toodle-oo!”

  And off he went. Well, we were all a little worse for wear, and it took us a moment or two to process this turn of events. In fact it was Tilly who first pointed out: “That means … that Charlie … is doing the Yukon poem. Doesn’t it…?”

  Bert was utterly crestfallen. “Oh,” he said, and then, after a moment or two: “Oh.”

  As Tilly and I walked back to our digs later, a thought struck me.

  “Maybe I should do the old Magician quite badly for a night or two, keep Charlie’s paws off it for when the Guv’nor comes.”

  “I don’t know why you’re both so sure he’s coming to see you boys in any case,” Tilly said. “He might be coming for something else altogether.”

  On the Saturday night, George stuck his head round the door again.

  “Syd wants a word,” he said.

  “I’ll see him in the pub,” I replied.

  “Now,” George said emphatically, then went on his weary way. Bert Darnley grimaced at me and drew his thumb across his throat in an ominous fashion. I threw a pair of socks at him and headed along the corridor to Syd’s room. Syd was there waiting for me, sitting facing the door like a judge in judgement, face like thunder.

  “Dandoe.”

  That was all he said at first. He just looked me up and down with an expression of disdain for what seemed like minutes on end, until I could stand it no longer and broke the silence.

  “I’ll sit down, shall I?” I said.

  “You do as you damn well please,” Syd exploded. “That seems to be your speciality!”

  Well. That wiped the smile off my face.

  “Is it true…?” he began. “No, don’t even answer that, because I know perfectly well it is true. You have been living as man and wife with one of the girl supers, staying in married lodgings arranged by our company manager, getting up to Heaven only knows what, despite the fact that you are not and never have been married. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  So that was it. I suppose deep down I knew it was too good to last.

  “Actually it’s funny how it all came about…” I said.

  “It is not funny!” Syd exclaimed. “Nothing about this sorry business is funny. I don’t know…” – he began to massage his temples – “first the Jefferson business and now this. Do you have any idea of the responsibility involved in leading a Karno company? Do you? I am responsible for how this company behaves itself in the towns we visit. How the company appears. Which is why I will not tolerate drunkenness, and I will not tolerate moral turpitude!”

  I must admit it was the first I’d heard about him not tolerating drunkenness. He’d have had to give himself a right ticking off more than once. And I noticed that he’d managed to turn this round so that it was all about him.

  “So you’re giving me the sack, is that it?” I ventured.

  “I have no desire to see a promising career in ruins over this. Yours or mine. However, I cannot allow the current state of affairs to continue. The girl must leave the company at once and return to London. You may go with her if you choose to, or you can continue with us for the next week in Warrington and the rest of the tour.”

  Syd’s eyes narrowed.

  “If you leave us in the lurch, of course, you will have to explain that to the Guv’nor, and I imagine he won’t take too kindly to being let down.”

  That was true. So there it was, as plainly as could be. My career, or my girl. I was facing the worst dilemma of my life. Up to that point anyway. Worse ones were to come, believe me.

  I left Syd’s dressing room in a daze. George Craig was outside in the corridor, and as company manager he was clearly privy to what had just been discussed. He hissed at me.

  “It’s too late now to find either of you anywhere to stop the night, so you’ve one more night at Mrs Budgen’s, but if I hear any of your high jinks I’ll be straight in there with a bucket of cold water, you mark my words.”

  “Steady on, George,” I said. “We’ve been pretending to be a married couple, not a pair of wild rabbits.”

  I picked up my bag from the dressing room, already deserted. I looked into the ladies’ dressing room for Tilly, but that was empty too. I headed down the stone stairs towards the stage door, and met Charlie coming the other way. As we passed each other on the landing, he smirked: “Well, so long, then, Arthur. It’s been grand!”

  “Eh?”

  “I gather that you are leaving us, you and your … wife.”

  “What’s that to you?” I snapped back.

  “Oh, nothing much,” he trilled. “But I shall watch your future career with interest. Ta ta! Give my
regards to the Corner!”

  Meaning, of course, unemployment, poverty, failure, despair. I listened to his footsteps tripping gaily up the stairs, and a new determination took a hold of me.

  Tilly wasn’t in the pub, but Stan was, leaning on the bar.

  “Hail fellow well met!” he cried out. “Or should I say ale, fellow? Ha ha! What’ll you have?”

  “Nothing, thanks,” I said. “I have to find Tilly. She’ll have gone to our lodgings, I expect.”

  Stan’s face fell. “Oh. Well, then, I suppose this is goodbye.”

  I looked at him sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, next week we’re for Wallsend, and you’re off to Warrington, and that’s a devil of a hike for an after-show pint. But I dare say our paths will cross again. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later, eh?” He smiled and shook me warmly by the hand.

  I found Tilly sitting on the bed in our room back at Mrs Budgen’s house. She gave me a rueful smile as I came in.

  “You heard, then?” I said.

  “Lillie took me to one side. Very serious.” She took my hand and pulled me gently over to sit beside her. “How do you think they got wind of it?”

  “Don’t know. You didn’t mention it to anyone?”

  “Not a soul,” she insisted. “What about you? Been bragging to any of the lads?”

  “No, no. I may have said something to Stan Jefferson, but he wouldn’t have let on. He hasn’t even met Syd or George, has he?”

  “I don’t suppose it really matters, anyway, does it love?” Tilly said. “What’s done is done. Nice while it lasted, all that.”

  “Wasn’t it, though?” I grinned, and we pulled each other close.

  “Do you think…? No, silly…” she said.

  “What?”

  “Well, I was wondering, do you think they’d let us stay if we actually did…?”

  “Did what?”

  “Did … get married?”

  We looked at each other, and we both seemed to be holding our breath for an age. It felt like we were both waiting for a clue from the other. In the end we could stand the tension no longer, and burst out laughing. We rolled back on the bed, making the springs squeak, and within moments there was an urgent rapping upon the bedroom door.