The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  Over lunch in the restaurant car – the first time I’d ever had a meal on a train, I had beef, I remember – Syd held court again.

  “So you weren’t a student, you say? What were you then?”

  “I was a college servant,” I said.

  “Good, solid, reliable position. You’ve got something to go back to, then, when – I mean, if – you decide to pack all this in. Isn’t that right, lads?”

  Mike and Albert nodded eagerly.

  “Is that what happened to Ronny Marston?” I said.

  There was a loud clang as Mike dropped his fork onto his bone china plate.

  “I mean to say, did he just decide to pack it all in?” I asked. “Ronny Marston?”

  Under the table, somebody kicked me sharply on the shin. I looked to Syd for an answer to my question, but the safety curtain had come down once again and the meal concluded in puzzling silence. Was the guilty flush on his cheek merely because he felt the responsibility of his position as company leader, I wondered, or was there something more?

  When Syd got to his feet and led the way back to our compartment, Mike Asher surreptitiously grabbed my arm and held me back. He watched until the other three were well out of earshot, then he hissed: “Don’t you know better than to talk about Ronny bloody Marston?”

  “Poor Ronny Marston, you mean. Why?”

  “Why, he says! After what happened to him!”

  “I don’t know what happened to him. Nobody seems to want to tell me anything about it.”

  Mike gaped at me. “You really don’t know?”

  “For God’s sake, man, tell me!”

  After a moment he leaned forward over the table, confidentially. “Well, you know the expression ‘breakneck speed’? That’s what the reviews say about us, usually. ‘The action takes place at breakneck speed – Brighton Argus.’ So forth. Well, one night Ronny ran on at breakneck speed, slipped, fell off the stage, landed on his stupid head, broke his stupid neck.”

  “No! Did he…? I mean, is he…?”

  “No, no, he’s alive, but they don’t know if he’ll walk again, the poor chump.”

  “How did he come to slip, for Heaven’s sake?”

  “Ah, well, for that we must look to the Rufford Bioscope.”

  Most music hall bills in those days would have something like the Rufford Bioscope. Down would go the lights, down would come a big white sheet, and a projector would show jerky, oddly speedy moving pictures of this and that, slice of local life stuff, like workers spilling out of a factory, or a horse and cart going by.

  Real-life flesh and blood acts would hate to find themselves following the Bioscope in the running order, for two reasons. Firstly, the mood of the audience would be calmed to the point of torpor. Secondly, the calico sheet that was used for the projection was prone to waft around in draughts, so the projectionist would spray it generously with a gelatinous mixture which weighed it down and kept it flat. It also, inevitably, oozed all over the stage, making the place extremely slippery.

  Usually the curtain would come down and a front of tabs act would go on – a banjo singer or something – so that the stage could be mopped. But on the night of poor Ronny’s mishap this individual had been pronounced too drunk to appear, and so there had been no gap between the Bioscope and Jail Birds. Hence Ronny’s entrance, at, as Mike had pointed out, breakneck speed, was followed immediately by his exit, ditto, poor fellow. Still, he may have been the first to have a music hall career cut short by the moving pictures, but he sure as hell wasn’t the last.

  “The reason we are not talking about it,” Mike whispered, “is that the stage manager swore blind afterwards that he’d told Syd we’d be straight after the bloody Bioscope, and to be sure to tell us all to be extra careful, but I’m telling you Syd never said a word about it.”

  “Careless,” I said.

  “Careless my backside! What happened to Ronny could have happened to any one of us,” Mike said indignantly, “and Syd wouldn’t have minded. Just so there was a vacancy for his precious brother to fill.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t really think…?”

  Mike put a finger to his lips, then wriggled out into the aisle.

  “Just watch yourself, that’s all I’m saying. Come on, we’d best get back…”

  As I followed him through to the next carriage, I wondered just what I had got myself into.

  Back in our compartment, Syd Chaplin had stuck his feet up on the banquette opposite and lit up a cigar. We continued North in frosty silence, until suddenly our leader clapped his hands and stood up.

  “How long till Bolton, Frank?”

  The company manager checked his pocket watch. “We’re due in around twenty minutes,” he said.

  “Right, let’s get on with it then.”

  All of a sudden there was a flurry of activity. Everyone but me seemed to know what to do. Mike and Albert reached up to the luggage rack and pulled down a medium-sized trunk, while O’Neill pulled down the blinds so that no one could see in from the corridor, and Syd began unbuttoning his jacket. I just blinked, puzzled.

  “Here.” Syd took a costume from the trunk and chucked it to me. “Get this on.”

  He’d given me a comical sort of convict suit, arrows on it, like a loose-fitting pair of pyjamas. Syd himself was now struggling into something similar, while Mike and Albert were dressing up as prison guards.

  “You see, college boy, this is how we drum up a crowd for Jail Birds. It’s one of the Guv’nor’s oldest and best schemes, tried and tested.”

  Syd seemed to share a look with O’Neill -– or did I imagine it? – and then he went on.: “There’ll be a Black Maria waiting for us at the station. Mike and Albert manhandle us along the platform while we complain at the top of our voices about the horrible injustice of it all, making as much of a racket as possible. You with me? What we want, you see, is as big a crowd as possible following along, watching us all the way to the Black Maria, because then, just as the desperate criminals are being shoved inside… Ho! We make a break for it, off we go, hell for leather, into the town, and the mob pursues us, d’you see? You and me.”

  “Thinking we’re desperate criminals,” I said. Syd gave me an encouraging punch on the bicep.

  “That’s it, you’ve got it. We lead them a little bit of a merry chase around the town centre, and end up, da-daaah! Bang outside the theatre! Meantime Mike and Albert have brought the Black Maria round, they arrest us, and we all turn round and say ‘Karno’s Matchless Comedians in Jail Birds, all this week, at this theatre!’ See? Nothing to it.”

  “And you’ve done this before, have you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, many times. Never fails. It’s an absolute copper-bottomed cert, this one, isn’t it, lads?”

  Mike and Albert nodded their agreement. It was all right for them, I thought. Their part of it sounded a good sight easier than mine.

  Shortly afterwards the train pulled into Bolton. O’Neill kept us waiting until the platform was crammed with passengers, then out we came pushing and shoving and making the maximum kerfuffle.

  “Make way! Make way there!” Mike bellowed. “Officers of the law transporting dangerous murderers! Stand aside!”

  Folk gasped, and a busy murmuring began. Mike and Albert wrestled us over to the back of the waiting Black Maria, trailed by a growing curious mob, and bundled Syd inside, while he declaimed hammily: “Will no one give me justice, sweet justice!”

  “You’ll get your justice on the gallows, mate!” one bloke shouted. It occurred to me suddenly that some of the locals were getting a little wound up and wouldn’t mind dishing out a bit of justice of their own.

  At that moment Syd booted the doors open wide. One hit Mike in the face – I saw him take the blow with the palm of his hand – and the other smacked into Albert – who may actually have been taken unawares – and down they both went like a pair of felled oaks.

  “Run for it!” Syd yelled. “Run for your life!”

 
I pelted off up the cobbled street, gaining a good head start on the mob. I heard Mike shouting “Stop! Help!”, and somewhere a police whistle sounded. Now footsteps, running footsteps, dozens of them, could be heardat my back.

  The street led up a slight incline to a main road at the top. Realising I didn’t know which way to go, I turned to Syd.

  “Which way’s the theatre?!” I shouted.

  He wasn’t there.

  I skidded to a halt and looked back. Hurtling up the cobbles towards me came a tidal wave of local citizens. Behind them I could see the Black Maria. Mr Sydney Chaplin, lead comic, was climbing out in leisurely fashion, dusting himself off. He was smirking his fat head off.

  There wasn’t time then to try and work out what was going on: a particularly mean-spirited practical joke, or something more sinister. I had two choices. Give myself up or run like hell. Some extremely hefty-looking chaps with teeth missing were managing to run after me and roll up their sleeves at the same time.

  I decided to run like hell. Up to the junction, no time to toss a coin, I went right. The theatre was my only possible hope now, so I had to find it. On I galloped, knees pumping, past shops, past terraces of houses whose doors opened right onto the pavement. Fresh pursuers were maybe only a foot or two away, and the hot breath of the mob was on my collar, which they were longing to feel.

  “Stop! Thief!” came the cry from behind. Clearly somebody hadn’t been paying attention – I was supposed to be a murderer.

  I was tiring as I hurtled up what seemed to be a main sort of street now, but I was young and in reasonable shape, and no one was gaining on me. If anything, the crowd from the station were falling back. I began to think I was going to make it, if I could only find this damned theatre. I ran past a group loafing outside a bakery – oh, that’s rather good, must remember that one – and one of them made a grab at me, which I easily batted aside, and then … yes! Up at the far end of this thoroughfare was a large building with a telltale magnificence about it. A tram went Ting! and eased slowly aside to reveal the glorious legend: Hippodrome! Sanctuary!

  Almost there! I looked for the rescuing Black Maria. No sign of it. More shouts from behind. “Grab him! Stop him!” Another whistle. Well, nothing for it but to make a dash for the theatre itself and take refuge inside. I gathered myself for the final sprint … and out went the lights.

  I came to a second later, sprawling on the road outside a butcher’s shop. The meat monger himself was standing over me, holding a great leg of pork in triumph above his head. I still had a moment. I scrambled to my feet to complete my mad dash for safety, only to find myself grasped firmly from behind by an unseen hand. No! I wasn’t going to let myself be taken. I swung round and let fly at my captor, connecting cleanly with his jaw. There was a wet and bony sort of splat, then the sound of teeth rattling, and down he went like a sack of spuds. Off came his helmet, and his whistle bounced into the gutter.

  I’d punched a policeman.

  In all honesty, I can’t recommend spending a night in jail. Especially not – and I say this from bitter first-hand experience – after receiving a right royal kicking from the larger part of the population of a northern industrial town.

  Early the following morning I gasped myself up into a sitting position on my plank – it really didn’t deserve the name of bed – and gingerly tried to enumerate my injuries. One eye was pretty much closed, but I was able to prise the swollen lids apart and satisfy myself that it was still in working order. I seemed to have escaped with all my teeth loosened but intact, although I could only just open my mouth wide enough to count them. Breathing was painful – maybe a cracked rib or two. And the fingers on one hand were like a little collection of black puddings. I tried to stand, but the cell immediately began to swim around alarmingly, so I sat back down again quickly.

  I had a little time then, wincing whenever another unsuspected bruise made itself known, to think about Sydney Chaplin’s hilarious prank.

  Clearly it was one part putting the new boy in his place, mixed with three or four parts of payback for spoiling his plan to get his younger brother a job with Karno. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I realised that Syd was the number one, the top dog, and if I was going to get the favourable notice I needed from him I’d be well advised not to let my temper get the better of me.

  Which is why, when the bolt eventually shot back and the door swung open to reveal a police constable and then Syd Chaplin himself, I didn’t immediately leap to my feet and grab the bastard by the throat. Also, as it happened, neither leaping nor grabbing was on the list of activities I felt capable of just then.

  “Ha! Well, good morning! Look at you!” Syd exclaimed, nudging a surly-looking constable to welcome him into Chaplin’s World of Mirth.

  “Hnnnf…!” I croaked.

  “Well, you almost made it, they tell me.”

  “Mmmmgrmmf…!” I said, spitting blood into the piss bucket.

  “By the time we got the Black Maria round to the theatre you were already in custody, you see, and if only you hadn’t thumped one of His Majesty’s finest we might have been able to get you out, but they insisted that you needed to learn your lesson.”

  The constable whacked the palm of his hand with his truncheon, seemingly keen to enrol me on a refresher course.

  “So what do you say, sir?” Syd declaimed dramatically. “Is he free to go?”

  After a long moment the constable grudgingly stepped aside, and Syd helped me out of the cell.

  As he helped me out of the police station, into a cab, and then eventually into a comfortable armchair at the digs where I should have stayed the night before, Syd was solicitousness itself, quite unrecognisable as the superior character from the previous day.

  “Now then,” he said finally, as he brought a cup of tea and a biscuit through for me from the landlady’s little kitchen. “You do look in quite a bad way, you know, old chap. Quite a bad way.”

  I felt in quite a bad way too, and was thinking that a drop of Scotch might suit my situation rather better than a cup of tea. The effort of asking, though, kept me quiet. Syd perched on the adjacent settee and patted my knee, which made me hiss sharply through my wobbly teeth.

  “Sorry!” he said, withdrawing his hand quickly. “So-o-o-o… I was thinking, if you wanted to drop out, then everyone will understand. No shame in it, or anything, and don’t feel you’re letting anybody down. I’m sure the Guv’nor will give you another go when you’re mended, of course he will, and I’ll just wire down to London now for a replacement, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

  In a flash I saw what he was up to. The replacement would be his brother, of course, who would be installed in a Karno company before the Guv’nor knew anything about it, while I joined poor Ronny Marston in the ranks of the forgotten. Poor Arthur Dandoe, they’d call me!

  “It’s for the best,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder with extravagant care and then heading for the door.

  “Mo!” I grunted. Syd turned.

  “What’s that, old chap?”

  “Mo!” I insisted. “I’n no’ dro’ing ou’! I be fine, rea’y! Just nee’ couple hour’ res’.”

  Syd looked doubtful. “Really?”

  “Rea’y!”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yeshhh!”

  “You want to do the show tonight, you mean? In your present condition?”

  “Yeshhh! Yeshhh! I do!”

  Syd’s face hardened.

  “Well. On your own head be it,” he said. Then he gave a single nod, and left without another word.

  I sat there in that strange Bolton parlour all by myself, feeling pleased with myself at first for not giving him the satisfaction of my stepping aside. Gradually, though, it became clearer and clearer to me that I was going to find it very difficult to get through a performance of the energetic, harum-scarum mayhem of Jail Birds that evening. Particularly considering that when I tried to take a fortifying sip of tea I could
n’t get any of my swollen fingers through the handle of the teacup.

  Still, somehow I had to drag my aching carcass through that evening’s performance without bringing the whole thing down, or else my career as a Karno comedian was over before it had begun.

  That evening I sat in the dressing room at the Hippodrome and caught sight of myself in a mirror for the first time. My face looked like I’d been hit by a prize fighter, who’d been driving a locomotive engine at the time. On the top of my head there was one of those goose-egg-style bumps with a little tuft of hair on it that you might see in the funny pages, maybe after Mutt has hit Jeff with a pan.

  Mike Asher, stout fellow, trotted off to the stalls bar to fetch me a whisky. While he was gone, Frank and Syd came in. The company manager peered at me, whistling through his teeth.

  “There’s no way this chap should be going onstage tonight,” he pronounced.

  “I agree with you, Frank,” Syd said. “But he insists.”

  “Is that right, Arthur?” Frank asked. I nodded vigorously. It hurt like hell and the room began to drift out of focus.

  “See?” Syd said. “Now all I’m saying is that it would be as well to have a replacement ready, in case he sees sense and decides to step down from tomorrow’s performance, or in case he really fouls things up tonight and we decide we absolutely have to make a change.”

  “A replacement?”

  “Now, as it happens, my brother is coming up tomorrow morning to visit me for a couple of days. He’s more than capable, and he’ll be Johnny-on-the-spot, won’t he?”

  Frank looked dubious. “I’m not sure the Guv’nor would be too happy about that,” he said.

  “I’m the number one,” Syd said. “And, as the Guv’nor said to me the very last time we spoke, the number one takes responsibility.”

  Frank turned back to me. “You’re sure you can manage?” he said.

  “Yesh,” I croaked, sitting down in my chair heavily, and just about managing to make it look deliberate rather than the semi-faint that it was. Frank shot Syd a searching look, and our number one raised his eyebrows.