The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  It was only when we were all back at Liverpool Lime Street station the next morning that we realised we had lost Charles Griffiths. We discovered later that he had bedded down for a bit of an afternoon kip in his luxurious first-class cabin. When he awoke he was well on his way to New York without us. The purser was, evidently, most agitated, since Griffiths was occupying a first-class cabin on the understanding that the Karno company would be performing regular entertainments along the way, and now there was only him. Griffiths was extremely sanguine about the situation, however, and said that he would happily honour the obligation to work his passage, and he did.

  “I just did a load of Gus Elen’s songs,” he explained when we caught up with him. “I knew ’em – I’ve ’eard ’em often enough. Went down a storm, I did. Why wouldn’t I? He’s a copper-bottomed guarantee, is old Gus.”

  Alf had dragged us all back to the station, and it was there he outlined the new plan he had been able to make, and the groans when we heard it, dear oh dear.

  “We have a passage booked on another ship,” he announced. “The RMS Cairnrona. Leaving from Southampton.”

  “Wha-a-at?” went up the cry of dismay from all throats.

  “I have wired to Charlie to meet us there, and we shall travel by train first to Birmingham, then to Reading, and then on to Southampton. It’s the cheapest way, ’cos it means not carting all this stuff across London. So let’s make the best of it, shall we, and head for platform 4.”

  There was a decidedly mutinous muttering, but the company began to shuffle off. Alf grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to one side.

  “Not you, Arthur,” he whispered. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Oh yes?” I said.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting a ticket into my hand. “I’ll take care of your bags. You go back to London. Find Charlie for me, and get him onto that boat. I’ve wired the little bastard time and time again and he hasn’t replied. I can’t think what he’s playing at.”

  I could, of course. “What if he doesn’t want to come?” I said.

  “Bring him anyway,” Alf said, with a dangerous look in his eye. “You can persuade him if anyone can, or else I’ve missed my guess.”

  I gave my dream scenario one last go. “We can manage without him, you know, Alf. Stan is just as good, and how’s America going to know the difference? They don’t know Charlie Chaplin from a bar of Five Boys chocolate, do they?”

  “You’re right, lad, you’re right,” Alf sighed, looking tired. “But if Karno finds out I’ve left on an American tour without my number one, then that’s it for me. I’ve pushed my luck once too often as it is, and on your behalf more than once, I might say, so I’m asking you to do this for me. Can I count on you?”

  He was gripping my forearm now, and wearing the look of a desperate man. I hated to see him that way, so what else could I say?

  “Yes, Alf, you can. I’ll find the little bastard, and I’ll bring him.”

  36

  ALWAYS LEAVE THEM LAUGHING

  AS I travelled back to London, having not expected to return there for at least six months, I had plenty of time to consider how the land lay. Even though I was disappointed that my scheme to leave Chaplin behind had come to grief, and was mortified at missing out on a first-class ride on the Lusitania as a consequence, nonetheless I found myself beaming happily as the Midlands rolled by outside the carriage window.

  It was Tilly. Tilly was the reason for my sunny mood. And in the end what did it matter how we got to the States, and who else came on the trip? The important thing was that we would be together again. Charlie’s name hadn’t even come up in our reconciliatory conversation the day before, and she had not seemed at all agitated that he might not make it to the ship in time, unlike Albert Austin, who had looked close to tears.

  So while I’d much much rather he stayed behind with his career in ruins, if he absolutely had to come with us to America, in order that we could go to America, so be it. I could bear it.

  Once I reached the hustle and bustle of the capital once more time was not on my side, so I made all haste to the address on the Brixton Road where Charlie lived with his brother.

  The Chaplins rented a top-floor flat above a parade of shops – there was a butcher’s and a baker’s but disappointingly nowhere that I could see to buy custom-made candle holders. As I approached I found myself on the wrong side of the road, so I paused on the pavement and looked across, trying to judge where number 16 was to be found while awaiting a break in the traffic. I had my target in sight and was just about to step out when I glanced to my left and got the shock of my life. There, leaning indolently against a wall, flicking through a newspaper, was none other than the creature Moulden.

  Really, this was too much.

  He had not spotted me, fortunately, so I quickly retreated to a safe distance up the road and found a vantage point from which I could spy on him. What was he doing there? Every few seconds he would glance up from his reading – if indeed he was actually reading – and he’d eye the doorway opposite, the one which I had determined led to the Chaplins’ flat. He was keeping watch, that’s what he was doing. It defied belief that he could be expecting me to turn up, so he must have been waiting for Charlie, or for Syd. Then, with a heavy sigh, I spotted one of his cohorts, the fellow with the enormous hands, a little further along, also keeping watch. He was sporting a rather natty beret. Very nautical.

  I considered for a moment, and decided that the fact that they were not expecting me would not for a moment prevent them from attempting to resume our last encounter where it had left off.

  Damn it all!

  I needed to get in to see if Chaplin was at home, and there was precious little time before I would have to make for Waterloo and the boat train. What was I to do? I inched carefully along the pavement towards Chaplin’s address, taking cover wherever I could find it, falling in step behind a fat gentlemen for a few strides, then ducking into a grocer’s a few doors down to pretend to shop.

  An ailing white motor van bearing the legend ‘Pears Soap’ oozed and parped along the street towards me. As it drew level with me I nipped out into the road and trotted alongside it until I was level with Chaplin’s front door, which happily was ajar, and then I darted into the darkened corridor. I made it unseen and quickly ran up the stairs to the top flat, where I pounded on the door.

  There was no response from inside. I banged again and again, and shouted Charlie’s name, but to no avail. I gave up and sat on the stairs to think, and after a couple of minutes I realised I was being watched. At the foot of the stairs was a child, a raggedy street urchin, looking back up at me.

  “You ’is friend, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but he’s not in.”

  “He’s in there all right,” said the urchin. “He just don’t want to see nobody, is all.”

  “Is that right?” I said.

  “Yeah,” the kid said. “He comes out for smokes. I fetches ’em for ’im, don’t I?”

  “That’s why you’re waiting?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ll wait with you.”

  “No skin off my nose,” said the child, and we sat in companionable silence for a while. I lit a cigarette, gave one to the kid and checked my watch with increasing anxiety, reckoning that there was barely time to make it down to Southampton and catch up with the rest of the company. I was damned if I was going to miss the boat as well.

  “You in an ’urry, are you?” the urchin asked, languidly puffing out a cloud of smoke.

  “Somewhat,” I said.

  “Only if you wants to get in and see ’im, there’s a key just there, on top of the door frame.”

  I leapt to my feet and felt with my fingertips, and blow me, the kid was right. I saluted him, opened the door and went in.

  It was dark in there, and didn’t smell especially pleasant. The curtains were drawn against the world, and on the kitchen table there was a lump of bread and
some cheese, both of which were rock hard and bore signs of mould. The parlour seemed cosy enough, with a pair of matching chunky armchairs arranged beside a fireplace, which didn’t seem to have been home to a lit fire for a while.

  I found my way along to a bedroom, and eased the door open gingerly. And there I found him, curled up on top of his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest. Piles of cigarette ends littered the floor, along with several empty bottles which had contained intoxicating spirits of one kind or another. The room smelled of a pub the morning after a busy night before. At the end of a really busy week.

  I drew closer to the bed, trying to see if Charlie was breathing, because I suddenly had the ghastly apprehension that he might have done something foolish. No, I could see a shallow rise and fall there, and a quiver of his stubbly lips. Drunk, not dead, thank goodness for that.

  I reached out a hand to shake him, but suddenly stopped short.

  Here was a thought.

  Chaplin … dead?!

  He wasn’t, but he could have been. He could very well have been. He had clearly embarked upon a dramatic decline, and if no one arrested it there could surely only be one end.

  I sat heavily on a chair as ramifications rushed in, clamouring for attention, clouding my head, drowning my reason. Revenge, revenge for all he had done to me, the dirty tricks, the double dealing, stealing my girl behind my back, smashing my knee, queering my pitch with Karno. And then there would be a clear sunlit run ahead, with Tilly, and with Karno’s in America, without this little bastard gumming up the works. Revenge, revenge was here, within my grasp, if only…

  I wouldn’t even have to do anything, would I? Just turn my back, that would be enough. Leave now and say I couldn’t find him, and let nature, his self-dramatising depressive nature, take its course. The outcome wasn’t certain, though, I feverishly reasoned. Someone else could find him in time. Syd, Syd could be back at any moment…

  I could … could I? Pick up a pillow and … finish him? The boy had seen me, but boys could be bought. Moulden was outside, but maybe that would be a good thing, maybe he would even be blamed…

  I stood slowly, leaned over, looked down at his grubby face, caught a whiff of his foul breath.

  That frail frame, curled to protect itself from a cruel world. As I loomed over it all I could think of, marvelling suddenly, was the Power it contained. I thought back to the times I had been with Chaplin onstage, and considered then what I had seen, without the resentment, and the competitiveness, and the bitterness. Some of the finest moments of my life, when the audience was eating out of the palm of my hand, and the Power coursed through my tingling veins, had been shared with him, with Charlie Chaplin. I saw in that moment that I would never, could never, match him, and saw too, I think, what the world would miss if he were to expire theatrically, self-indulgently, in this pit.

  “Hey! Charlie!” I said, taking myself by surprise. “Wake up, man!”

  He did not stir, so I began to clap my hands together as I called him up from the depths of his drunken stupor.

  “Hey! Charlie! Come on, up you get!”

  Slowly he roused himself, and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. When he saw me he squinted, as if trying to make his eyes focus. Then he recognised me and scrambled into a sitting position, pressing himself back against the headboard to try and get as far from me as possible.

  “What?!” he cried anxiously. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to get you,” I said. He began to tremble, as though I had just confirmed his worst apprehensions.

  “Why?” he stammered. “I did what you said, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” He had the look of a man not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming a nightmare.

  I looked at the state he was in, unshaven, filthy, hollow-eyed. I supposed he hadn’t eaten in days, and had subsisted only on drink and cigarettes. What a depression he had fallen into, and all because of me. It was all terribly dramatic, of course, and woe is me, but even so, I found myself feeling ashamed.

  “Come on, old chap,” I said, more kindly. “I mean to say I’ve come to get you, to take you to America. Get some things in a suitcase, for goodness’ sake, and be quick about it. We’ve a train to catch.”

  Chaplin looked at me as though I was a creature from another world. I decided to leave him to pull himself together. I went through into the other rooms and opened the curtains, then opened the windows to let some air in. I disposed of his mouldering left-over food, and found a dustpan and brush to deal with the fag ends.

  When I went back into the bedroom he was still sitting there just as I had left him.

  “What do you mean?” he said, still baffled.

  “America, come on, chop chop!”

  “But … the boat’s already left… Aren’t you supposed to be…?”

  “We’re going on a different one, and it sails tonight, so get yourself moving, will you?”

  Chaplin blinked up at me from the bed. “Why? What made you change your mind?”

  “Let’s say I decided I’d rather do Alf a good turn than you a bad one. I’ll explain on the way, but for now you really must get on with it!”

  He seemed suddenly to realise that I was neither a figment of his own imagination nor joking, and leapt from the bed. He was a whirlwind of activity now, grabbing fistfuls of shirts here, and a violin there, a Latin textbook, if you please, some carpet slippers, what cigarettes he had left and a packet of lucifers, some ties, a boater, socks, and he stuffed them all any old how into his travelling trunk.

  “Ready!” he cried, standing to attention. He looked better already. The light had returned to his eyes, and he seemed invigorated once more.

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s make tracks.”

  Chaplin dragged his trunk over to the front door, and then snapped his fingers as he remembered something.

  “One minute,” he said, scrambling around in the drawer of the bureau until he located a pencil and a scrap of paper. He scribbled on it quickly, and then slapped the note on the table. I glanced at it as he did so, and saw that it read: “Off to America, love Charlie.”

  For Syd, of course. Which reminded me.

  “One slight problem,” I said, as we stepped out onto the landing. “That unsavoury ginger geezer is loafing about outside. I reckon he must be waiting for words with your Syd.”

  Charlie twitched his mouth from side to side, thinking.

  “Show me,” he said.

  We tiptoed down to the street door, which was still ajar, carrying his trunk between us.

  “There, see?” I said, as Charlie peered carefully out. “And further down that way is his chum, the chap with the neckerchief and the beret, see him?”

  Charlie nodded, and withdrew into the shadows. “They’d be upon us before we got to the corner. Wait, I have it…” He inched back to the door and whistled softly a couple of times. In a few moments we were joined by the street urchin I had met earlier on.

  “Arternoon, Mister,” this youngster said cheerily. “Ciggies, is it?”

  “Not this time, my friend,” Charlie said. “Look over yonder. You see that fellow?”

  “The one with the prize ’ooter, you mean?”

  “Exactly. And you see … that chap, there, with the beret?” The urchin nodded. “Here’s a shilling. Go and tell that one that that one wants to speak to him urgently.”

  The kid flipped the shilling up in the air and caught it deftly. “You’re the boss,” he said, and sauntered out into the street. Charlie watched him go, and after a moment or two his protégé was leading Moulden by the arm down the street to our right.

  Charlie gripped the handle of his trunk and I grabbed the other end. He was a changed man, a livewire.

  “Ready?” he hissed, and I tensed. “Let’s go!”

  We darted out of the doorway and belted off up the street to the left. We made it to the corner, and Charlie started to turn to find us somewhere to conceal ourselves, but before we could nip out
of sight I saw that Moulden had realised he’d been had, and he and his mate were hurrying diagonally across the road towards us. There was no earthly point in hiding now, we just had to run for it, so we pelted straight up the main road.

  Charlie looked back, and his eyes widened. We were badly hampered by his trunk, and Moulden was only a few yards adrift. He was going to catch us for sure.

  Then, blessed relief, I heard the ting-ting of a tram bell warning us to move over, and a northbound tram slid alongside. Gathering the last of my breath I shouted to Charlie: “On!”

  He jumped up onto the tram’s backboard. I shoved the trunk up after him, and made my own leap, landing there – just – on my knees. Blast it, that hurt!

  Moulden’s chum in the beret had fallen badly behind, but Moulden himself wasn’t giving up his quarry so easily. A nasty grin spread beneath that bulbous twin-lobed pitted red nose, and he managed to get a hand on the pole. Next he would pull himself aboard, but before he could I lashed out a boot at his fingers, crushing them. With a howl he let go his grip and sprawled on the road in a heap, and Charlie and I watched him dwindle into the distance as the tram rattled away up the Brixton Road. We looked at one another then, breathless and sweating, and both began to laugh.

  We caught the boat train from Waterloo station with not an inch to spare, Chaplin-style, and as the locomotive headed towards Southampton Charlie seemed to regain a little of himself with every passing mile. Having started the journey looking very much like – well, not to put too fine a point on it – a tramp, he finished it spruced and gleaming like a thoroughgoing dandy. He contrived to shave along the way, which must have taken considerable dexterity, for there was not a scratch on him.

  So high were his spirits now, from one extreme direct to the other without calling at points in between, that he was not much interested in any explanations from me. He preferred to beam at the passing countryside, and burble about America, the land of opportunity. I suppose, in a way, he must have felt like he’d been spared the noose, as he would not now have to invent an explanation for Karno that would enable him keep his job. He would have to make some sort of excuse to Alf Reeves and the company, but that was small beer by comparison.