The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  It was then that the penny dropped.

  “Good evening, Mr Luscombe,” I said. Mr Luscombe was a first-year student, a friendly, cheerful chap whom I rather liked. (When I said earlier that his leg was shapely, you have to remember that it was quite dark, and the mind sees what it hopes to see, often, doesn’t it…?)

  “Oh dash it all!” he moaned. “I hoped I was going to get away with this. Damnation!”

  I assured him that his secret was safe with me, and he clutched my arm.

  “I say, do you mean it? Stout fellow, stout fellow indeed…” He clambered to his feet and brushed kitchen rubbish from his frock, then looked around furtively.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to trouble you for the late charge, though, Mr Luscombe, if you would be so kind.”

  Luscombe’s hand went for his trouser pocket and then remembered that neither trouser nor pocket was there.

  “Oh, hang it all! I say, listen, Dandoe, you’re a decent fellow, I know, and this must look dashed odd to you. How about you pop up to my rooms in a few minutes and I’ll see you right. And perhaps, what, a little bit extra, eh? What do you say?”

  Well, Luscombe was all right in my book. Some of the other gentlemen of my acquaintance – including, I may say, Mr Luscombe’s humourless older brother, who had left the college to join the family business the previous summer – would lounge around pulling a face as though something had died on their top lips while I made their beds for them in the mornings. This Mr Luscombe, though, always had a smile and a cheery word or two, and so I nodded, and he darted off into the darkness like a startled rabbit.

  I, meanwhile, carried on with the late rounds, ambling around the old courtyard and up to the Wren chapel, little realising that the course of my entire life had just been dramatically diverted.

  2

  THE SMOKING CONCERT

  BY the time I got round to O staircase and tapped on his door, Luscombe had transformed himself back into the pink-faced young fellow that I knew, now wearing a mauve smoking jacket and dark trousers. A cigarette and a fire were on the go, and there was a small kettle dangling in his fireplace steaming away.

  “Hallo, Dandoe, old chap,” he cried. “Come in, come in, let’s have a cup of tea, eh?”

  I thought about offering to serve the tea up, but then thought, what the hell. If he wanted to play at being friends, then why not?

  “You must be wondering what on earth I’ve been doing this evening?” he asked with a nervy laugh. I merely shrugged, as though I apprehended young gentlemen scrambling over the walls dressed as women every night of the week.

  “Well, you’ll have heard of the Footlights Club?”

  I hadn’t.

  “Oh surely? The Footlights Club, no? The Honorary Degree? It was an absolute smash last summer, everyone was talking about it? Rottenburg wrote it. You must have heard of Rottenburg? Harry Rottenburg? The Rotter?”

  I assured him that I knew of no Rottenburg. His face fell.

  “Oh. Well, look here then. The Footlights Club is absolutely the premier dramatic society in Cambridge. Their shows are all comedy and music, none of this dreary highbrow stuff, The Taming of the Thing or The Merry Wives of Wherever, no, no, just the most tremendous fun. I’ve been simply desperate to join, and tonight after supper they were having auditions in a room in Magdalene. The Rotter’s speciality, as it happens, is female impersonation, and I’ve been getting together a little item for a smoker in college next week…”

  I must have been looking blank, for he paused to fill me in.

  “A smoker? A smoking concert. We have one every term in the Old Reader. Very informal, really. Chaps do a turn, or a song they’ve written, or a poem, or a dance. There’s a fellow called Hulbert2 in the first year at Caius, apparently he’s the most terrific clog dancer.”

  Luscombe handed me a cup of tea.

  “My turn, do you see, is going to be an address in the character of the Master’s Wife, Lady Marjorie. So I took the old costume along with me to the audition this evening, and do you know what those rotters at the Footlights did? They kept me waiting until the very last, and then finally while I was onstage, in character, doing the little monologue that I’ve worked out, they pinched all my own clothes and disappeared into the night.”

  He wore such an expression of pop-eyed outrage that I had to laugh, and after a moment he began to giggle as well.

  “I didn’t even notice they’d all gone right away. I thought I wasn’t getting many laughs. Really, those rotters! They’ve got my wallet and everything…”

  Mention of his lost wallet reminded me that I was there to collect gate pence from him, and also the “little bit extra” that he had mentioned.

  “It’s past midnight, Mr Luscombe,” I began. “I should be on my way, really…”

  “Oh yes, yes, my dear fellow, I’ll see you right, of course…”

  He pottered about looking for coppers on the dresser, but I could see that his mind was on something else, and suddenly he turned to me with a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “I say, listen here, Dandoe. I wonder if you would like to help me out.”

  “If I can, sir, of course,” I said, a little wary.

  “Well, look, it’s about my turn, my monologue. You see, I want it to be a big surprise at the smoker when I come on as Lady Marjorie, and if word gets out it’ll ruin the moment. You see that?”

  I supposed that made sense.

  “So I was thinking, since you’ve already seen, I mean, the cat’s out of your particular bag, as it were, perhaps you wouldn’t mind having a quick look and letting me know what you think…?”

  “I … er…”

  “Stout fellow! It’ll only take a moment to pop the kit back on and I’ll be right with you!”

  I tried to say there was no need to make this a dress rehearsal, but he’d already shot into his bedroom like a rabbit down a hole, and I could hear petticoats a-rustling. After a minute or two the bedroom door opened a few inches and Luscombe’s voice declaimed from within: “Gentlemen, would you give your best attention please to the Master’s wife, Lady Marjorie.”

  Then the door was flung open and in he strode in the green dress and the wig once again.

  “Good evening, my boys, and my what big boys you all are…!”

  I knew pretty well what Lady Marjorie herself was like in real life, having served afternoon tea at the Master’s lodge. Mr Luscombe had the lady’s querulous tone off pretty well, and he certainly looked the part, and as I watched him recite his monologue a curious thing began to happen.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone trying to perform comedy. I’d never been to a pantomime or a circus, never even set foot inside a theatre, and yet as I was sitting there I felt my mind begin to whirr and click, little hammers hammered and tiny cogs ground their teeth together. It was an extraordinary sensation. I found myself assessing each line, each movement, each little aspect of the impersonation as it went by, mentally ticking off the bits that I thought would work and crossing out the bits that wouldn’t. Yes, that’s not bad, I was saying to myself, exaggerate that a little more, repeat that, lose that. I was really starting to enjoy myself, actually, and before I knew it he’d finished and was looking at me.

  “You didn’t laugh,” he said, crestfallen.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said.

  “I thought ‘good for your blood’ would get you going, I really did.” He slumped forlornly into the easy chair opposite.

  “Yes, now that’s a good line, but you should bring it in a lot more often.”

  “More often, you say?” he frowned.

  “I think so, yes.” I could see, suddenly, that he was feeling a little bit sensitive, and so I hesitated to say anything further, but he pressed me.

  “And have you any more bright ideas, Mr Dandoe?”

  I took a deep breath to get my thoughts in order. “Well, I think you would find it much easier if you were to sit down rather than standing. M
ost of your audience will know Lady Marjorie from having tea at the lodge – in fact why don’t we pretend that the whole performance is an afternoon tea at the lodge…”

  A spark of interest ignited in my companion, and he leaned forward in his chair.

  “Now you’re sitting like a man in a dress,” I said, emboldened. “Knees together, and perhaps to one side. Yes, that’s better, and back absolutely straight. That’s good. Now suppose we put a little table here with a cup and saucer on it, then … then, you can use Lady Marjorie’s little trick.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  I couldn’t believe I was the only one who’d noticed this. Lady Marjorie was a fearsome woman with a voice like a foghorn and a physique that made you believe she could knock down a horse with a single punch, but she liked to affect a feminine weakness, making out that lifting a cup and saucer full of tea was the most tremendous burden.

  “Would you be so very kind?” she would simper, obliging some young chap to leap to his feet and hand her a cup which she could very easily have reached herself from a table only a couple of feet away. I was always sure that she did this with the sole intention of having young male consorts bending in front of her so that she could ogle their firm athletic backsides.

  “Yes! Yes!” Luscombe shrieked, delighted. “The very thing! I’ve seen her do it a dozen times! Let me try…”

  We quickly devised a little bit of business whereby his Lady Marjorie would require someone from the audience to lift the heavy cup and saucer for her, and then leer lewdly at his rear end for a moment, seen by the audience but not the unwitting stooge.

  Lady Marjorie was utterly fanatical about rowing. “A boy should row,” she’d pontificate at the drop of a hat. “It’s good for the blood!” Luscombe had already used this line once in his routine, but I reckoned – I don’t know how, it was instinctive – that he needed to repeat it over and over again and its impact would build. Before long the script had developed to a point where tea was good for the blood, walking was good for the blood, parsnips were good for the blood, and looking at saucy French lithographs in the privacy of your own home was good for the blood.

  Hours slipped by unmarked, consumed in gleeful invention, and as the dawn began to light the chimneys on the far side of the New Building our conversation had turned to other amusing college characters. I found myself demonstrating my own party piece: my impersonation of my father.

  “That’s priceless, you know?” Luscombe gurgled between laughs. Both of us had become pretty hysterical by this time, and were laughing at almost anything.

  “I’m serious,” he insisted. “You could do that at the smoker. You should do that at the smoker. It would be an absolute smash hit. I’ll speak to Browes, he’s organising the whole thing. Do it, say you’ll do it. It will be a sensation!”

  Which is how I found myself a week later, still not quite believing it, in the Old Reader, about to make my theatrical debut. There was a little raised stage, with a pianist improvising some agreeable plinky-plonk while a noisy audience of a hundred and twenty souls paid no attention to him whatsoever.

  I peered out through a gap in the hastily strung black curtain that formed the impromptu wing. The room was packed. A fug of smog hung down from the low ceiling, being fuelled by dozens of cigars like the chimneys of some great industrial metropolis. Champagne corks popped and young male voices brayed and hee-hawed boozily.

  Standing there out of sight in my father’s clothes, a cushion padding out my tummy, my left leg trembling apprehensively of its own accord, the week just past seemed like a bizarre dream.

  I remembered Mr Luscombe’s excitement as he told me that he had fixed it with Mr Browes, who was organising the smoker, for me to perform, and the churning of my guts as I realised there was no way to back out of it.

  I remembered lying awake at night in the tiny room I shared with Lance, gripped with terror, and nudging my brother into the land of the living.

  “Lance? You awake? I want to ask you something.”

  He sighed, rolling over to face me, one eye open. “What?”

  “When you were in Africa…?”

  He groaned. “When I was in Africa? Lea’ me ’lone…”

  “You were scared, weren’t you?”

  “I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but how did you …? How did you … manage, when you were really scared? How did you manage to carry on?”

  “I tried to stay downwind of as many people as I could so that they didn’t know how scared I was.”

  “Seriously, Lance.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this. It was always worse before than it was during.”

  “Really?”

  “Unless you were one of the blokes who got shot in the head or had an arm blown off. Then it was worse during. Now go sleep…”

  “Lance, listen…”

  I told him about the smoker, about what I’d somehow agreed to do, and he rolled over and looked at me, before saying: “There’s nothing to be scared of. How many of ’em are going to have repeating rifles? How many of ’em are going to try and chop you to bits with machetes?”

  “Not too many, probably…”

  “Exactly. Now go to sleep…”

  There was a rustling, as of a big and complicated frock, and Mr Luscombe was beside me, also peering out.

  “Decent crowd!” he hissed. On the other side of the curtain another cork popped, and half a dozen boisterous voices whaheyed as their owners thrust their glasses forward for a refill. Luscombe suddenly hiked up his skirt and retrieved a hip flask from his trouser pocket. “Here,” he winked, “bit of Dutch courage. Why not?”

  I took a sip and felt the spirit trace the shape of my insides in fire.

  “Why Dutch courage, I wonder, when it’s Scotch whisky?” Luscombe was musing to himself. “Do the Dutch even make whisky? And what do they have to be so damn timid about? Living next door to all those Germans, I suppose. Ha!”

  Mr Browes, the tall, athletic young fellow who was in charge of the evening’s proceedings, pushed past us and pinned a sheet of paper to the wooden panelling, out of sight of the audience. Luscombe nudged me in the ribs.

  “Running order,” he whispered, shouldering his way forward to get a view of it past about eight chaps in boaters and stripy blazers. “These fellows are first,” he said, “then me. Crikey, I was hoping not to be so early. You’re midway through, after the clog dancing.”

  The fear gripped me once again. The fear of failure, of making a fool of myself, and in front of these people, who already held me in such low regard (if indeed they gave me a second thought).

  Mr Browes completed a hurried headcount of the boaters-and-blazers, and then, satisfied, bounded past us and up onto the stage. The piano player tinkled to a little flourish of an ending and shut up, which is more than you could say for the packed and sozzled crowd.

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen, if you please!” Browes bellowed, and gradually heads began to turn in the direction of the little dais and the hubbub slowly subsided.

  “Gentlemen,” Browes began, in a more conversational tone now he had their attention. “Thank you for patronising our little entertainment this evening. It is still not too late to participate if you feel so inclined. See me during the interval and if you have your sheet music, or if Edward knows the ditty you have in mind, then I’ll happily squeeze you into the second half.” There were one or two lewd haw-haws at this, though quite where the double-entendre they thought they had spotted was lurking was beyond me. “And now,” Browes went on, “let the revels commence!”

  The first part of the evening went past in a blur. I think the opening item was a song by the chaps in boaters, accompanied by the pianist, a jolly little ditty about why you should always have champers in your hampers. There was a verse in it about all the different ways of popping your cork which they were inordinately proud of.

  Then it was Mr Luscombe’s turn.

  “Wish me luck!” he grinned, and
then stepped out into the light. His Lady Marjorie started a touch uncertainly, it seemed to me, but once he got his first big laugh under his belt – actually, for the bit of business that we’d devised together in his rooms – his confidence grew. By the end he was getting uproarious laughter every time Lady Marjorie opined that something was “Good for the blood!”, and he left the stage to a thunder of applause.

  Flushed and triumphant, he bustled into the wings and grasped me by the hand.

  “My dear chap!” he whispered, “what tremendous fun! And I have you to thank, you know! Yes indeed!”

  I was happy for him, and naturally pleased that my contribution had made a difference. Mostly, though, I was envious. He had finished.

  The jovial mood that Luscombe’s performance had generated in the room gradually dissipated during the next few acts, which were not, it has to be said, the absolute apex. One, I remember, was a rather mournful poet delivering sorry odes on the theme of lost love. Fellows were not just yawning as he droned on, they were actually shouting the word “Yawn!”, but the drip didn’t take the hint.

  Then there was the clog dancer. Everywhere you looked people were holding their ears and uttering oaths with absolute impunity. One or two were caught out by the suddenness of the cloggist’s finale and so he was greeted with a bellow of: “…ost confounded bloody racket I ever … oh, he’s stopped.”

  Beside me in the wings Browes was frowning at his running order. The evening was spiralling helplessly down the drain, and we both knew it.