“Don’t the men in the show find it … distracting?” I asked. I was sure I would have.
“Oh no, no, we never have any trouble in that regard. All the chorus men are specially selected, you see, from those of – how shall I put this? – a more … artistic disposition.”
“They’re interested in higher things?”
“No, no, roughly the same height. Just different. They’re interested in different things. And so what about you, Arthur? What do you do?”
“Oh, I’ve been busy painting this monstrosity,” I said, indicating the hulking form of the Wontdetainia louring in the darkness above us.
“Oh, I see,” she said, looking up politely, taking in the scale of the project. “But I meant onstage. What show are you in?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I haven’t done one yet.”
“What, none at all? Not one?”
I shrugged. I shook my head. Tilly took a step back.
“Why, Arthur Dandoe!” she cried. “You mean to tell me you’re not even a super? You’re the lowest fellow here, you mean to say? Why, you’re nothing, nothing at all!” She pretended to come over all flustered – at least I hoped she was pretending. “This won’t do! I can’t be seen talking to you. I’ve my career to think of!”
And with that she flashed me a dazzling smile and skipped back to her friends, who had a good old cackle at my expense.
Suddenly a frisson of excitement flashed around the dock like ball lightning. The supers murmured giddily to one another: “Fred’s coming! It’s Fred Karno! He’s crossing the road now!”
Ties were straightened, lips were pursed attractively, busts prodded and realigned, and all eyes turned towards the double doors. I confess I too was staring at the entrance, eager for another glimpse of the dapper little fellow whose single scribbled word – “COME!” – had dragged me here from my cosy perch up in Cambridge, if only to demonstrate that he did actually exist.
Just as it seemed the assembled company might spontaneously burst from sucking its guts in and sticking its chests out, a young man, shortish, baby-faced, with slicked-back hair and an apologetic look slipped in through the huge scene dock doors, to be almost blown back out into the street by a couple of hundred people exhaling in disappointment. It was Freddie, of course, not enjoying himself one bit.
Karno junior blushed and then began setting up a trestle table and a couple of chairs for himself and his assistants. While his back was turned the whole great barnful of people rearranged itself, as if playing a huge and brilliantly co-ordinated practical joke on him, so that when he plonked a couple of great ledgers and cashboxes down on the table and looked up the entire assembly was waiting in orderly queues in front of him. Everyone seemed acutely aware of both their own status and that of everyone else in the place, and so this process had occurred with the absolute minimum of fuss.
I was staring open-mouthed at this spectacle, when suddenly Tilly grabbed my arm urgently.
“Do you want to wait all night? Come on!” she hissed, pulling me into the line alongside hers.
Freddie blinked and coughed and smiled a watery smile, then sat down to begin paying the mob. Maybe twenty minutes of shuffling later the fellow in front was telling Freddie his name and the show he had been doing that week, adding ingratiatingly as he collected his earnings: “So nice to see you again, Mr Karno. Remember me to your father, won’t you?”
Freddie grunted, as every single one of the supers he had so far dealt with had had something similar to say, and the fellow departed. I stepped up.
“Arthur Dandoe, remember me? I’ve been working on the Wontdetainia.”
“Dandoe … Dandoe … Dandoe…” Freddie mumbled, running his finger down page after page of names until finally he came across mine. “Ah, here you are. Right at the very bottom of the heap.”
This resonated deep in my subconscious, along with Tilly giggling “Why, you’re nothing, nothing at all…!”
He counted out my money and tipped the coins into my palm, expecting me to leave directly, but I stood my ground.
“It’ll be more next week, you know, once the show goes up,” he said, frowning.
“Yes,” I said, resolved not to remain at the bottom of the heap a moment longer than necessary. “I was wondering whether I might speak to your father, please, on a matter of some importance.”
Freddie snorted. “I’m sure you were. Well, he’s over the road, paying the featured artistes, and all supers are strictly forbidden from forcing themselves upon him on a Saturday night, and that goes double for painters and decorators. Understood?”
Crushed, I nodded, and stepped out through the double doors and into the darkness. I looked around for Matilda Beckett, but her queue had been paid more briskly than mine and she’d disappeared into the night. Over on the far side of Coldharbour Lane a public house called the Enterprise was lit up, the windows and doors thrown open to catch the summer breeze, and the sound of loud, mostly male, mirth and merriment carried across the deserted street. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but from the rhythms of the laughter I gathered that someone was holding court and his adoring courtiers were lapping up his every word.
That’s where I should be, I thought to myself, over there. Surely Fred Karno didn’t spot me on the stage in Cambridge and think, there’s a likely lad who’d make a perfectly adequate job of painting my scenery. He’d want me to walk over there and make myself known to him.
The Enterprise was fifty yards away, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. I took a step out into the road to cross over towards the lights, but another loud gale of laughter blew away my nerve, and I stopped again. Just then a small figure emerged and trotted over to me. It was Charley Bell, my landlord.
“By God,” he said, “I’ve had a bellyful of that. Come on, let’s go home. Good of you to wait for me … Arthur, isn’t it…?”
“That’s right,” I said, and, after one last long, wistful glance over the road, I hurried after him towards the late-tram stop.
9
WONTDETAINIA
FINALLY the Wontdetainia was pronounced finished, and rehearsals could begin. A great crowd of supers gathered in the Fun Factory’s scene dock and all eyes were on the mammoth construction, all trying to work out whereabouts one would be seen to the best advantage. Everyone was absolutely determined to be on the ship itself.
“After all, who looks at the quayside when there’s a ship leaving?” one super near me said, chewing his lip nervously.
By the time the stage manager, Mr Bryant, emerged from the office and came to address the crowd, it was like a coiled spring. Greyhounds waiting in the slips, as the saying goes.
“Morning everyone,” Bryant said, waving a sheaf of papers above his head, and the hubbub quietened at once. (On your marks…) “Now, I’m going to want some of you on board the ship … (Get set…) … and some of you down below, so if you’d all…”
All at once there was a thunder of feet, a clack of heels, and a massive mob-handed game of musical chairs was under way. Spotlight-crazed supers scrambled up the ladders like a marauding army assaulting a fortified town. Ladies elbowed gents aside in most unladylike fashion, the elderly were crushed underfoot, the infirm left to go hang.
I was able to stake my claim to a goodish spot at a railing, and looked down to where the tidal wave of supers was now falling back and resolving into small pools of the thwarted, remaindered and disappointed. Bryant stood peering up at us, a long-suffering expression on his face, then nodded briskly to the technicians in charge of the huge hydraulic rams.
At first the rocking was slow and gentle and really rather enjoyable. The supers near me grinned as though they were on a ride at a funfair.
Then the rams were cranked up a notch, to show the Wontdetainia crossing the Bay of Biscay. A chorus girl clutched a hand to her mouth, while others gripped the railings in front of them, their knuckles showing white. Finally Bryant announced that for the climax of the piece th
e Wontdetainia would find herself thrashing through a great storm.
“Oh my good Lord above!” murmured the gentleman alongside me, gritting his teeth.
The technicians paused a moment, malevolently, then cranked the rams up to full power. The ship bucked and dipped, and there was screaming, retching, crying and pleading yells of: “Stop! For pity’s sake, stop!” The sickly-looking chorus girl could stand it no more and threw up in a gentleman’s top hat. Admirably discreet, you might think, except that she was atop the ship and the gentleman holding the hat was way down below at ground level.
“All right, stop!” Bryant bellowed. “Stop!”
Down we came, a far more subdued bunch than had swarmed aboard the Wontdetainia like a pirate crew just a short time before. There was a pitiable moaning from all parts, with many clutching their stomachs or being helped into chairs by friends.
We gave way to the principals – Shaun Glenville, a small, wiry, athletic young man playing a tipsy purser, and Charles East, a twenty-stone human leviathan, who was the ship’s captain. A few of us winced as East clambered aboard the Wontdetainia for the first time, fearing that it might not be able to cope with his bulk. He was a massive fellow, who used to dine nightly on a whole leg of ham – which was a show in itself, by the way.
The whole flimsy contrivance, involving card sharps, a rich heiress and a detective in disguise, was funny enough, but it was clearly going to take second place to the spectacle of the storm-tossed liner itself, especially the carefully choreographed chase-in-the-storm sequence, involving passengers (us) and furniture flying through the air from side to side.
As I watched I began to understand why Mr Karno had been so unimpressed by poor Brontie. It must have seemed a puny effect indeed in comparison to this.
At the weekend we somehow got the great liner broken up and loaded onto carts. There were dozens of us, all the occupants of Karno’s lowest rungs, and it took several trips, but eventually we managed to get the whole contraption all the way from the Fun Factory up to the Paragon in Mile End, where we bolted it all back together again. It must have been a strange sight for anyone up at the crack of dawn that Sunday morning, seeing parts of an ocean liner drifting majestically over Southwark Bridge, while the barges slunk down the river below.
When the time came for the dress rehearsal I found my mark, and as I looked around I noticed that a number of gaps had appeared here and there. The sickly chorus girl was no longer with us, and neither was the man who had been next to me, murmuring entreaties to his maker.
“Hullo there, Arthur Dandoe,” said a soft voice behind me. I turned and discovered that my new neighbour was to be little green-eyed Tilly Beckett. Things are looking up, I thought to myself. Tilly was every bit as attractive as I remembered, but maybe not quite so full of beans – indeed she looked positively apprehensive.
“This old thing is a real monster, isn’t it?” she said, stamping her heel onto the deck. “You know Angeline has been fired, just like that?”
“Really?” I said, not knowing who Angeline was.
“On the spot. I mean, I know she threw up into that man’s hat…” Ah, so that was Angeline. “…but dear me, they’re brutal. Brutal! They know, you see, that they can get a hundred new chorus girls just by going up the Corner and giving a whistle, so they might as well have ones that won’t puke up all over the shop. Margaret’s fired, as well, and Nell, and Winnie. A few of the men too, I heard. Anyone who looked a bit green about the gills…”
She shivered and drew her shawl tighter about her shoulders. “I tell you, I nearly lost it myself that last time, when it was the storm, and Lord knows I can’t afford to miss this go.” She looked up at me, and sidled a little closer along the railing. “Let’s you and me be a couple, like, then you can hold onto me, and maybe it won’t be so bad. What d’you say? Are you game?”
Well, I was game, right enough, and as she slipped her arm under mine I found I was actually looking forward to it quite a lot.
“Here we go everyone!” cried Mr Bryant, and we all braced ourselves. There was a muted sort of a chugger-chugger-chug from behind, but nothing much else happened.
“Cue!” Bryant shouted, and again there were faint stirrings down at the back of the stage. The Wontdetainia did not budge. We were in dry dock.
Bryant skipped up onto the apron and stagehands appeared from all corners to confer. They peered at the machines, gave them the occasional desultory tap with a mallet, scratched their chins, shook their heads. Tilly’s arm clasped mine and she rested her head on my shoulder while we waited.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Something like this always happens. They’ll sort it out, they always do.”
The longer it went on, though, the less it looked like anything was being sorted out. We began to hear snatches of the discussions below, and the words “…no good … water pressure too low…” and “…may have to cancel…” sent shivers of apprehension through the assembled company.
Eventually Bryant came to the front of the stage and sent us all away. There was no point in everyone hanging round all day, he said, and we should all be back at six o’clock. It didn’t sound promising.
I turned to ask Tilly if she would like a walk, or a cup of tea somewhere, but she was already skipping off with some friends, so I just found myself shuffling out with the rather despondent crowd.
The supers milled about on the street outside the theatre, and I could hear them all muttering darkly about the jobs they could have been doing instead of this one (a likely story). If the turn was cancelled, of course, it would be a week without pay for everybody.
Before long I was the only one left on the pavement there, fed up, wondering what to do with myself until six. I decided to go for a walk – that was cheap. As I strolled up the Mile End Road, Miss Tilly Beckett was on my mind. It’s difficult to feel you’ve impressed a girl when you have a vivid memory of her saying: “Why, you’re nothing, nothing at all!”
Still, though, there was the memory too of her arm through mine and her head on my shoulder and the smell of her hair, but then the thought that the sketch which had brought that delicious proximity about was probably done for turned my mood dark again. I suddenly realised that I’d been walking out in the sun for some considerable while and had worked up a powerful thirst.
On my way to a pub I happened to glance in at the window of a tea shop, and who should I see but Tilly Beckett sitting there all by herself. I carried on past, being a silly, self-conscious youth with no real idea of how to talk to a girl, but after a couple of strides I took a deep breath and summoned up the nerve to go back and step inside with a determinedly casual air about me. Tilly looked up when the little bell on the door tinkled, and her face positively lit up when she recognised me.
“Oh good! Good! Come and sit with me!” she said, beckoning me urgently to her table. “Sit! Sit!” I did so, and she leaned over conspiratorially to put her hand on mine, at which my heart actually did what hearts are said to do at moments such as this: it skipped a beat.
“I’m so-o-o glad to see you, I can’t tell you,” she gushed. “I’ve been nursing this pot for an hour and a half now. That woman’s started giving me filthy looks so I had to tell her I was waiting to meet someone, and now here you are! She can’t ask me to leave now, can she? Ha!”
Tilly shot a look of purest triumph towards the counter, behind which there sat a beetroot-faced old troll who clearly felt it was high time more money was spent in her establishment, so I ordered another pot of tea for two and some teacakes.
By the time these dubious treats arrived Tilly had explained that she had thought to visit a friend who lived nearby, but that friend had been out, and we’d moved onto fevered speculation as to whether the show would actually go ahead that evening.
“I heard a rumour that the water pressure in this part of the world is simply too feeble to operate all those hydraulic whatnots, and that there might be nothing for it but to abandon the whole week’s bo
oking. Maybe more.”
“So maybe the wretched Wontdetainia is sunk with all hands before it even embarks on its maiden voyage,” I said gloomily, and she grimaced.
“Well, I dare say we’ll find out soon enough,” she said. “Now, shall I be mother?”
I helped myself to a teacake as she did the honours teapot-wise.
“Now then,” she said. “I was thinking it might be fun if we were married. What do you think?”
A sizeable chunk of teacake suddenly headed down the wrong pipe. I began to splutter, and Tilly had to come round behind me to thump me on the back, whereupon the offending morsel shot out of my mouth and cannoned wetly into the little vase in the centre of our table.
“Have a sip of tea now, there we go. That better?”
“Mmm…” I said, then: “Married, did you say?”
“Yes. I was thinking it might be a lark. What do you reckon?”
It’s a measure of how far gone I was, I suppose, that I actually started thinking about it.
“Well … I… er … um… Are you sure? I mean, we hardly … know each other…”
I ventured this gingerly, feeling the point ought really to be raised but not altogether wanting to put her off.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Tilly demanded.
“Well…” I stammered. “Perhaps we could walk out together a few times … see if we hit it off…?”
“We get along all right, don’t we?”
“Yes, yes, we do, I suppose, but…”
“There we are, then, what more do we need? Now, I’m thinking we’d be travelling to America to start a new life together, leaving behind everything and everyone we know … whatever’s up?”
I must have looked shocked, I suppose. “Oh? It’s just … America?”
“Yes?”
“Just like that?”
The Fun Factory Page 8