The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  I determinedly checked every crack and crevice of all the dressing rooms, much to the flirty glee of the Folies Bergère dancers, but Tilly was nowhere to be seen. At last Maurice beckoned me into his room. Mistinguett was there, and the two of them were drinking champagne.

  “Join us, mon ami,” Maurice said, looking for another glass. “We must cheer you on your way, eh?”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I was looking for Tilly. Mathilde, I mean.”

  Maurice turned to Mistinguett, and they began an animated exchange in French which I couldn’t follow. He was protesting about something and she was forbidding him to do something, if I understood the pantomime correctly.

  “She… … um … Mathilde is doing something for Mistinguett, and Mistinguett is doing something for Mathilde. An admirer, you see, and they have left together already. I am sorry.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  “I cannot tell you, I am sorry. She will not allow it. She has high hopes for Mathilde and this nobleman, he is a Count from Prussia, it could be a very advantageous match.” He shrugged his apologies. “Have some champagne with us, my friend, and let us talk of other things.”

  I reeled out into the corridor again and stumbled towards the stairs. Before I could make it out into the evening air, however, there was a little whistle from behind me, and suddenly Maurice was by my side.

  “L’escargot d’Or,” he whispered. “Rue de Rivoli. Bonne chance, mon ami, et vive l’amour!” Then he embraced me, kissed me on both cheeks, and trotted back to his room. I mentioned he was French, didn’t I?

  Shortly afterwards I managed to locate the restaurant where Tilly was apparently having a late supper with some continental nob. L’escargot d’Or had a large front window and the brightly lit tables could clearly be seen from the street. I spotted a good vantage point from which to look in, behind a sort of cylindrical wrought-iron installation, so I loafed there and tried not to look too suspicious. I spotted Tilly quickly enough, at a table with two military gents in fancy blue uniforms – not quite as fancy as King Alfonso’s, but still – and another girl. I realised I had nothing, no plan of any kind. I fantasised briefly about making a scene and starting a fight, but even though it was my own fantasy the two foreign soldiers gave me a good sound beating.

  Through the window I saw the Prussian count take Tilly’s hand and bring it to his lips, paying her a compliment of some kind, and she laughed. I remembered that laugh. I hadn’t heard it for a year. A steady reeking trickle of steaming liquid suddenly began to run under and over and into my shoes. Suddenly the gulf that had grown between Tilly and me was brutally apparent. She was being wined and dined by the aristocracy in a fancy restaurant, while I was outside in the cold, hiding behind a pissoir.

  A Frenchman emerged, adjusting his clothing, and gave me a quizzical look, and I found myself walking away with my regrets, one of which was definitely choosing that hiding place. As I walked and walked it came to me that spending this last evening watching her from afar was maybe all I had left of my dream of us ever being together again, so I turned myself round and headed back up the boulevard.

  And not a moment too soon, either, because as I made it back within sight of L’escargot d’Or, there was Tilly and the Prussian on the pavement outside. A moment later a carriage hoved into the picture (closed, with a fancy crest on the side, a bit like the one the Guv’nor had off the Duke of Chatsworth). It stopped alongside, and the driver jumped smartly down, saluted his highness and held the door open as Tilly stepped inside.

  I froze, horror-struck, thinking that this might actually turn out to be the last glimpse I ever got of her. Then, to my surprise, the nobleman closed the door to the carriage while still standing there on the pavement, took Tilly’s hand (through the open window) and kissed it, saluted, nodded curtly to the driver, turned smartly on his heel and went back into the restaurant.

  I watched the carriage go, carrying Tilly out of my life. Then, with a mind of their own almost, my feet began to stride after it, faster and faster, until I was fairly pelting along. I dodged in and out, weaving through the late-night promenaders, until up ahead the carriage slowed to take a corner across me into a narrow street. If I’d carried on running I’d have flattened myself against the side of it. Quickly I grabbed the handle, wrenched the door open and flung myself inside.

  “Arthur!” Tilly squealed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Bit of excitement for a Saturday night,” I said, sitting down heavily on a plush leather banquette opposite her, gasping for breath.

  “Get out, for goodness’ sake!” Tilly hissed. “This is Count Adalbert’s personal carriage! If he finds out you were in here molesting me I don’t know what he’ll do. Challenge you to pistols at dawn, most likely.”

  “Who’s going to tell him?” I said. Tilly agitatedly indicated the driver, and I shook my head. “He didn’t see me.”

  “He will, though, when we stop, and he escorts me to the front door! Whatever were you thinking of?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said, trying to keep a bleating tone out of my voice. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

  “Well, you had all week to talk to me, didn’t you, or were you too busy knocking poor Charlie’s teeth out?”

  “Poor Charlie, is it?”

  “What’s that supposed to…?” she started crossly, but then our conveyance slowed and turned into a drive. “Oh God, we’re nearly there, this is it. Come here, come here…!”

  Tilly slid sideways along the seat, urging me to do the same, and as the carriage came to a halt she waited with her hand poised on the door handle. As soon as she heard the driver clamber down from his perch on the one side she wrenched the door open and shoved me out the other. The carriage was thus between me and the flunkey, and he was none the wiser. Neatly done. I peeked around the back wheel and watched him gallantly guide Tilly up the steps to a pleasantly appointed town house with lights still burning inside. As she disappeared inside, the driver bowed from the waist, and then as he snapped back upright he clicked his heels with a crack, not unlike the noise Little Tich’s wooden clackers used to make, before hopping back up to his seat and clip-clopping away.

  Ten minutes later the front door opened just for a heartbeat, and a small figure slipped out. She skipped quickly down the steps, peering around from side to side into the ornamental bushes, until I stepped out.

  “There you are,” Tilly said. “Let’s walk, come on.” She slipped her arm in mine and we headed off along the wide, tree-lined boulevard. Even though the hour was late, there were still several couples strolling along in the lamplight. It seemed to be quite the done thing.

  There was so much to say that I couldn’t quite summon up what should be first. The silence stretched on for an achingly long time, until I heard myself uttering the following timelessly charming and witty opening gambit: “I like your hair.”

  “What?” Tilly said, turning to look at me, and as she did so I saw for the first time that the hair tumbling down beneath her hat was actually the gold colour I remembered. “Oh yes, that wig. I just had to take it off. Such a relief! Mistinguett likes all her girls to be dark, you see. We are not really people, we are scenery.”

  “How did you come to be with her?”

  “Do you know it was straight after, you know, the end of that Karno thing – well, the end for me, anyhow…” She shot me a sharp look and I felt a surge of something acid in the pit of my stomach. “What was that, a year ago? I came to London, without an idea what I was to do, and my dancer friend Angeline – you remember her? Pale thing, puked up on the Wontdetainia? She was coming to France and said why didn’t I come too, so I did, and we started dancing at the Folies. I say dancing, it was posing, really, assuming alluring postures.”

  She let go of my arm and demonstrated some of these, which made me smile, mostly with relief that we were starting to relax together.

  “Then Mistinguett asked me to join her troupe, and that
’s been me ever since. She’s lovely, although she does treat me rather like you would a pet. And you? Charlie seems to think you’re still Karno’s blue-eyed boy.”

  “Does he?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been listening to him going on and on about how he could be the next number one to lead a company, just as long as it isn’t you, and how he has such and such a thing in his favour, and you have so and so. I like him, but he will talk about himself, that boy.”

  “Did he not tell you I’ve been looking for you?”

  “Have you? No, he didn’t mention that.”

  “Why didn’t you say something when you realised I was at the Folies?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t recognise you, did I?”

  We turned a corner and found that we had walked to the Champs Élysées. Neither of us wanted to turn back, so we kept on walking towards the Arc de Triomphe.

  “I wrote, you know? Over and over. Then I went to your address and your landlady gave me my own letters back to give to you if I saw you. I even went to Southend.”

  “You never did!” she gasped.

  “I did. I met your mother and father. I saw your father’s theatre. On the beach…?”

  Tilly nodded slowly, acknowledging the demise of that little fabrication of hers.

  “I met your sister, too.”

  She stopped, and turned to face me. “Well then, you know what Fate had in store for me if I’d stayed there. A screaming brat on each arm and another on the way.”

  “Not to mention a thriving ironmongery.”

  She laughed. “They really didn’t keep any of my secrets, did they? Well, things are different now. Dear Mistinguett plans to marry me off to a Prussian Count who wants to whisk me off to the Hohenzollern, whatever that is.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Well, a girl could do worse, it seems to me. Than becoming a countess, I mean.”

  “I see.”

  “I feigned exhaustion tonight to get away early. Keeping him keen, you see.”

  We strolled along in companionable silence, but inside I was churning away madly, trying to think, think, think how to bring up the matter that was eating me up.

  Eventually the pavements began to seem emptier, and we were no longer walking past all-night cafés and bars, but shops and business premises closed up for the night.

  “We should turn back,” Tilly said. She stopped, obliging me to circle her so we could retrace our steps. Now or never, I thought.

  “Listen,” I said, my heart in my mouth. “That time, when we were married, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. I don’t pretend to be married to all the fellows, you know.”

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I’d said something, or done something, different.”

  She disengaged her arm from mine and walked ahead.

  “You made your choice. It was me or Karno, simple as that. And you chose Karno.”

  “It wasn’t as simple as that. We hardly even talked about it…”

  “I was ready, you know, to throw in my lot with you,” she said softly.

  “Do it then! Do it now! I’ll chuck Karno and we’ll make an act together, you and me!”

  “What act, what do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, we’ll think of something! It doesn’t matter what it is, we’ll make it work, and we’ll be together. That’s the important thing.”

  She turned to face me, there in the street. Tears were glistening in her eyes but she wasn’t crying.

  “And then what? Every time you saw a Karno company on the bill, or heard someone say how well Charlie was doing now, it would be my fault, wouldn’t it? My fault for making you choose me.”

  “I want to choose you, I should have chosen you, I would always choose you,” I said fervently. “Always and only!”

  I held my breath, as if I realised suddenly that the whole future course of my life, and hers, could be decided by what she said next.

  “Well, that was then, wasn’t it?” she said finally. “I’ve got a life here now. A different life. With Mistinguett and Count Adalbert of Prussia.”

  She put her arm in mine again, and we walked along together. I tried to think of something else I could say, but nothing came, and in any event I was choking. In no time, seemingly, we reached the house where she was staying and it was time to say goodnight.

  I found a stub of pencil in my pocket, scribbled the Streatham address on a scrap of paper and gave it to her.

  “Send me a postcard from the Hohenzollern,” I managed to croak out.

  She reached up and put her hands on my shoulders, then gave me a quick peck on each cheek. Very French, I thought. Very sisterly.

  “Take care of yourself, Arthur Dandoe,” she said, and then skipped lightly up the steps to the front door.

  I turned and walked until I recognised where I was and eventually found myself back at the hotel where I was staying for what little was left of one more night only. It took hours and hours, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t really see the point of anything any more.

  25

  THE TOSS OF A COIN

  “HARRY Weldon has up and quit.”

  Charlie and I looked at one another, then across at Fred Karno. Our jaws hit his desk in amazement.

  “Yes, would you believe he’s got it into his fat head that he wants people to come and see him for a change, not the Karno Comics, and d’you know what? I say the best of British luck to him. He’s going to sing comical songs, if you please, and if he can get a booking outside of Lancashire by the end of next year then I’ll eat my hat. Not just my everyday hat, either, I’ll eat t’ big hat.”

  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the cupboard where all Karno comics knew the big hat resided, waiting to take you down a peg or two if you got too big for your outsized Karno comedy boots.

  “What does this mean, boys, I see thee struggling to calculate? Well, I’m going to need to find myself a new number-one comic, as The Football Match still has bookings to fulfil. There’s Will Poluski, maybe, and there’s the two of you. So who reckons they could fill Weldon’s shoes, eh?”

  “I could do it,” Chaplin blurted out, quick as a flash. “I’m ready. I know all the moves, and I’ve got some ideas too…”

  “I’m sure you have,” Karno interrupted. “What about you, Mr Dandoe? Do you think you have what it takes?”

  I tore my eyes away from glowering resentfully at Chaplin, and answered: “Yes, Guv’nor. I’m ready to step up, if you want me to.”

  Now Chaplin was glaring at me, although what else he expected me to say I can’t imagine. Karno leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers behind his head.

  “I’m inclined to think that young Poluski let Weldon push him around too easily, and he can wait his turn until he gets himself some gumption. So here’s my problem. Two promising candidates, but only the one opening. What to do, what to do…?”

  He knew perfectly well what he was going to do, of course. He was just toying with us. We held our breath.

  “All right,” he said, sitting forward again. “Here’s how it is.” He took a gold sovereign from his waistcoat pocket, showed it to us and poised it on the end of his thumb. He looked at Chaplin, and said: “Call it.”

  Chaplin was aghast. “Guv’nor?” he wheedled. “You’re surely not going to decide something as important as this on the toss of a coin?”

  “If I want to do so then I shall,” Karno said. “Call it, Mr Chaplin.”

  Chaplin looked plaintively at me for support, but I just shrugged my shoulders.

  “Very well,” he said, conceding defeat. “Heads.”

  The sovereign spun and twinkled in the air, and then tinkled onto the desk between us. We all peered in to look, and ‘heads’ it was. Chaplin smirked triumphantly.

  “Interesting…” Karno said, building suspense like the master showman he was. He was a master showman, I mentioned that, didn’t I?
/>   He coughed.

  “All right,” he said then. “Listen carefully. The Football Match opens at the Oxford on Saturday next. There is a matinée and an evening performance. In one of these performances Mr Dandoe will play Stiffy the Goalkeeper, and in the other, Mr Chaplin, you will play the part. After this I will make my determination and my decision will be final. Follow?”

  We both nodded, brain cogs spinning, competitive juices already beginning to flow.

  “Mr Chaplin, you won t’ coin toss. Will you take first or second turn?”

  Now this was clearly a matter worthy of serious deliberation. The evening bill at the Oxford would certainly be rowdier than the matinée, and if the act went well the audience would potentially be more demonstrative. A calmer atmosphere, though, often meant that an audience was more attentive to details, and easier to control.

  “Well?” said Karno, tapping his fingers on the desktop. You didn’t want to make him lose his patience.

  “First,” said Chaplin hurriedly. “I shall go first. And he should not be allowed to watch.”

  “Happy not to,” I said.

  “Well, there it is,” said Karno, getting to his feet and fixing us with a stony eye. “I expect all this to take place in t’ proper spirit,” he said.

  Truth to tell, the two of us had not spoken since the night of the fight in Paris. I think the last words that had passed between us were Chaplin sneering: “Call that a punch?” just before I relieved him of a molar. We’d studiously avoided each other’s company on the train from Paris to Calais, on the ferry from Calais to Dover, and then on the train back up to London. I wasn’t going to extend an olive branch. Now, though, it seemed we were going to have to put a diplomatic face on things, for the Guv’nor’s sake.

  Charlie forced himself to offer his hand and look me in the eye.