The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  13

  THE NEW WOMAN’S CLUB

  WHENEVER we were playing in London, the routine was that we would gather on a Saturday night at the Enterprise to collect our pay from the hand of the great man himself.

  It was my habit, on those Saturday nights, to position myself by the window so that I could see across the road to the Fun Factory, where Freddie junior was even then dishing out the dosh to the supers and chorus girls. My fervent hope was that I would catch a glimpse of lovely Tilly Beckett, whom I hadn’t seen since we last set sail on the Wontdetainia together. She would pause at the end of Vaughan Road. I would then stroll over from the Enterprise, looking prosperous and successful – to which end I always wore my best suit and hat to be paid in – and would offer to escort her home. That was how it always played out in my head, anyway.

  As I kept my vigil on this particular night, a pint of ale for company, I looked around at the gathering of Karno principals. I felt that what I had joined was far more than just a bunch of new workmates. It was like a secret society, in a way, a fraternity that extended well beyond the limits of the Karno organisation to include every comic and comedical actor who worked or who had ever walked upon a stage.

  The Power was part of the secret, for we had all felt it at some time or another. It set us apart from the herd, and once you had looked down from the apron of a stage and seen the faces turned up towards you, hanging on your every gesture, your every word, how could you ever again be content to be the man on the Streatham omnibus?

  And in this secret society, we all somehow instinctively knew our place. We knew that the top echelon was occupied by the great solo artistes, Little Tich, George Robey, Marie Lloyd, those that followed in the footsteps of poor mad Dan Leno, who was then four years dead but still remembered with love and reverence. Clara Bell used to say, whenever it started to rain, that it was “the angels crying with laughter at Dan”.

  Karno’s principals held a high rank, but they were denied the very top rung by the knowledge that it was Karno’s name that put the bums on the seats. Some were content with this, but others, like Harry Weldon, burned with the desire to prove themselves worthy of top billing in their own right. They were always held back, though, by the knowledge that the Guv’nor offered them security and a guaranteed weekly wage.

  And so on down the bill, past the trick cyclists and the mermaids, the coster singers and the nigger minstrels, until you came to those “billed amongst the wine and spirits”, as we used to say, a reference to the very bottom line of a music hall poster, or worse still, “sharing a line with the Biograph”. We were all “in”, because at some time or another someone somewhere had decided that we had “it”, but we all knew our place as surely as we knew our own names.

  That place could change in the blink of an eye, mind you. Take Fred Kitchen, for example. He was working as an understudy when one fine day the principal comic decided to throw his weight around a bit. Dickery, his name was, and he thought he’d play sick, show Fred Karno how valuable he was by going missing for a couple of nights. Well, the Guv’nor didn’t blink, and shoved young Kitchen centre stage, where he blossomed, and overnight he was an understudy no more, while his erstwhile superior was sliding backwards down the greasy pole.

  Karno himself – sitting over there at his rickety fold-up table, scratching figures into his ledger – was an interesting case study for this imaginary hierarchy. As the master employer he held dozens of artistes’ lives and their very standing in the world in the palm of his hand. Yet he had been a performer in his day, and a good one, who had given it up, and do you know what? All those who actually practised their art nightly on the stage, who felt the Power coursing through their veins, secretly felt themselves placed higher on the ladder than the good old Guv’nor. You’d never say it out loud, least of all to the man himself, but it was true.

  Charley Bell, never one to hang around of a Saturday, strolled over to me and said: “I’m off home – you coming, Arthur?”, and I was just about to give up my window seat for yet another week when I caught sight of a little blonde bob in the big double doorway, lit up brightly by the lights from inside the Fun Factory. I pressed my nose against the glass, trying to make sure it was really her. It was – surely it was…

  “Arthur…?” said Charley, on pins to go.

  “No, you’re all right,” I said, as casually as I could manage. “I’m good for one more, I reckon.”

  Charley followed my eyeline across the street. “Aye aye, it’s like that, is it? Well, happy hunting, my lad, happy hunting…”

  Tilly was strolling slowly towards the corner of Vaughan Road and Coldharbour Lane, quite alone. I watched her as she paused beneath a street light – instinctively knowing, like a good super, where she would be seen to the best advantage – and looked both ways down the street, a move which enabled her to toss her lovely hair in the light, and crane her perfect neck.

  Well, this was as propitious an opportunity as my many fevered imaginings had devised, so I determined to grasp it. I took a deep breath, jammed on my hat, shoved my way out of the pub and set off across the road.

  When I was halfway there, a casual and worldly smile (that I had been practising) fastened to my features, I saw that she had suddenly been joined by someone – Freddie junior, damn his eyes! – who was striking up a conversation with her. I tried to veer away, but just then saw that she had spotted me, so I had to press on. The confused messages my brain was sending to my legs at this point meant that I ended up doing a few paces of a strange, uncertain bandy little skip not unlike a two day-old foal finding its feet for the first time.

  Freddie guffawed. “That’s very good! What sketch is that from?” he said. I ignored him, my face burning, and turned to Tilly.

  “A very good evening…” I began, touching the brim of my hat.

  “My, my, aren’t we formal?” Tilly smiled. “Is that any way to address your wife?”

  “Eh? What?” said Freddie junior.

  “Um…?” said Muggins, your narrator.

  “That’s right. Oh, we had such plans once upon a time, didn’t we? To go to America and seek our fortune?”

  “Indeed we did,” I said. Tilly gave me another radiant smile, raising an eyebrow as if she wanted to signal something to me, but I was too overwhelmed – or just too plain dim – to pick up what it was.

  “Now, Freddie, what was it you wanted to ask me?” she said, turning her full attention back to the baffled junior Karno.

  “Well, um…” he said, “to be honest, you’ve rather taken the wind out of my sails. I was going to ask if you had plans for tomorrow afternoon…?”

  “Oh, Freddie, I’m sorry, I do, I do have plans. I’m going to be taking a stroll in Hyde Park with Arthur here, aren’t I, Arthur?”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right,” I said.

  “And then maybe some afternoon tea somewhere. We have been parted for such a long while, you see, and have such a lot to discuss, don’t we, my dear?”

  “We do,” I said. I was conscious of not really contributing to this fiction, so I added an apologetic little shrug.

  “I see,” Freddie said. “Well, I hope the weather keeps fine for you. Goodnight to you both.” He traipsed forlornly back into the Fun Factory, where, it has to be said, there were plenty more fish in the sea. Tilly gave him a winning smile and a little wave as he went.

  “Thank goodness you appeared, Arthur!” she said, once he was out of earshot. “I was afraid he was going to proposition me again.”

  “Again?”

  “Oh yes, he’s a persistent little chap. I’m afraid he’ll never amount to very much, though, poor Freddie. So, shall we say Speakers’ Corner, at half past two?”

  She stood up onto her tiptoes and kissed me quickly on the cheek, then she skipped off into the night, leaving me standing there, my head spinning.

  I had the opportunity to put poor Freddie straight the very next morning. I was pacing up and down Charley and Clara’s garden
, thinking. Suddenly I heard a voice hailing me. I looked around and saw our neighbour, the mysterious friend of Marie Lloyd, looking over the garden wall. She was wearing gardening gloves and a headscarf (as well as a full range of other clothes, naturally) and seemed to be engaged in a little light pruning.

  “Hallo-o!” she called, beckoning to me. I walked over to introduce myself. “You must be Clara’s lodger. I’m Edith. I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance at last.”

  She peeled off a glove and we shook hands. Her hand was cold, though it was a warm spring day, and she had little colour in her cheeks for all the work she had been doing. A small, half-moon-shaped scar showed clearly on her cheek, and I tried not to stare at it.

  “And you work for the celebrated Fred Karno, I suppose, do you? Like Charles?”

  She seemed surprisingly thrilled to have this confirmed.

  “Tell me all about it!” she said. “How do you find Mr Karno? And how do you come to be working for him?”

  We chatted away over the wall for quite some time. She laughed heartily at the tale of my being chased by the entire population of Bolton, and generally lapped up any morsel of information I could give her. She was particularly interested when I told her I had had the good fortune to visit Karno’s house and meet his wife, and she wanted to know all about the furnishings, and most especially what impression I’d formed of her.

  We heard a door open, on her side of the divide, and a voice called: “Hullo…!”

  “Oh, do excuse me, I’m expecting a visitor,” Edith said, and then called out: “I’m in the garden, darling!”

  A young man appeared and strode down the garden towards us, and who should it be but young Freddie junior.

  “Oh, hello there, Arthur,” he sang out when he saw me. “Of course, you live with the Bells, don’t you? I remember.”

  He stepped up to Edith and kissed her most familiarly on the cheek, which rather took me by surprise, I must say, but it was nothing compared to the surprise I got from the very next thing he said.

  “Hello, Mama.”

  Mama…?

  Freddie turned to me sheepishly. “Listen, Arthur…” he said. “I hope you don’t think I was stepping on your toes last night. She’s a pretty little piece, that Tilly Beckett, and I didn’t realise she was spoken for, and all that. Uses her maiden name, you see, doesn’t she?”

  “Really, don’t mention it,” I said.

  “No hard feelings?”

  “Absolutely no harm done.”

  “Good man.” Freddie checked his pocket watch. “Hey, hadn’t you better be off if you’re going to meet your good lady?”

  I hadn’t realised it was getting so late, so I excused myself and hurried on my way. I didn’t want to humiliate young Freddie by telling him that a girl he liked had made up a fanciful story just to put him off, and anyway I was still thrown by discovering that our mysterious next-door neighbour seemed to be the lad’s mother.

  Which is why, do you see, I never quite got round to mentioning to him that Tilly and I were not, and never had been, man and wife.

  For a good few years women had been angling and agitating for the vote, same as men, and a number of factions had emerged within the women’s movement who seemed to find it hard to agree on anything much. The main bunch, the Women’s Social and Political Union, which was the one run by Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters, had just, after five years of wrangling, decided that their colours should be green, purple and white, which smacked of compromise rather. After all, green is neither blue nor yellow, and purple is midway between blue and red, and white goes with everything, doesn’t it?

  The Guv’nor, never one to miss a trick, had put together one of his most successful satires on the subject. The New Woman’s Club, it was called, although truth to tell it was less an impassioned discursion illuminating the issues surrounding universal female suffrage than it was an excuse to have ladies riding bicycles around the stage in their bloomers.

  One of these suffragette types was holding forth to a small crowd when I approached Speaker’s Corner. She seemed to belong to the more militant wing of the movement, as she was suggesting (at the top of her shrill voice) that there was nothing for it but to chain herself to the railings in front of Mr Asquith’s residence and refuse food and water until he saw sense.

  “You could be there for quite a while!” some wag shouted out, to general laughter.

  Perhaps Tilly saw herself as one of these modern women, which is why she had made all the running and invited me to meet here. Or maybe it was all just a subterfuge to escape from the hapless Freddie junior. Maybe she wasn’t even going to turn up…?

  Then my speculations were banished into the ether, for there was Tilly, off to one side, watching the same performance. She spotted me at the same instant, and skipped over.

  “Arthur, there you are!” she beamed, quite taking my breath for a moment. “I suddenly had the horrible thought that you might have taken the whole thing as a joke and not come.”

  “Well, joke or not, here I am,” I said, and then couldn’t stop myself from blurting out: “You look wonderful.”

  “Oh now,” she said in a hushed voice, taking my arm and beginning to lead me away. “I’m not sure we should let my sisters hear you complimenting me like that, it might not be quite the thing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you want to stay and listen?”

  “No, no, she’s a sideshow, really. You know,” Tilly said as we strolled away in the sunshine, “there was a rally earlier this year, right here in Hyde Park, and thousands of people turned up to hear the Pankhursts speak. What do you think of that?”

  I nodded. What I was actually thinking was that there must have been the most tremendous queue for the ladies’ conveniences, but I judged it best not to speak that thought out loud.

  “It was inspiring,” Tilly went on. “After all, the vote is just one step on the road to full equality for women, and if anyone knows that a woman can be every bit as strong and smart and successful as a man, given the chance, it’s people in our business, would you not say so, Arthur?”

  “I would say so, of course,” I said.

  “Exactly! Look at Marie Lloyd, look at Vesta Tilley! They can top the bill as well as a George Robey or a Harry Randall any day of the week, can’t they?”

  She was right, of course. I didn’t mention that whenever Vesta Tilley topped the bill she did so dressed as a man, or that Robey was the most successful pantomime dame in the country. I didn’t want to quibble.

  “So naturally I am in favour of votes for women,” she went on, “although I don’t need the vote to know that sometimes a girl has to be forward to get what she wants. You didn’t mind me inviting you out, did you?”

  And of course I didn’t. My brain was still happily savouring the phrase “what she wants”.

  We found ourselves towards the end of the afternoon at Hyde Park Corner, where the carriages rattled through the great ornamental façade. Tilly, as befitted a New Woman, again took charge of the situation.

  “Well now, Arthur, shall we take tea, or go our separate ways?”

  “Oh, tea, definitely. That would hit the spot.”

  Tilly looked around for a moment, then pointed up Piccadilly.

  “The Ritz is just a short walk away,” she said disingenuously. I could almost hear my pocketbook screaming a protest.

  “It is,” I agreed. “Or … we could take a cab … to…” I caught sight of a convenient hansom just at that moment and stepped out to flag it down as my mind floundered for a suitable destination.

  “To…?” said Tilly, as I opened the door for her to step in.

  “The Trocadero, why not?” I blurted out, both to her and to the driver. It was the only place that popped into my head. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was still decidedly fancy.

  “Coo!” Tilly said.

  The Trocadero was, as it still is, at the bottom end of Shaftesbury Avenue. A lot of the older music hall turns used
to like to relax there of an evening, and I had been there with George Robey after work one night, listening to him holding forth in the famous Long Bar. I couldn’t take Tilly in there, of course, as it was for gentlemen only, but there were also the rather luxuriously appointed restaurants on the ground and first floors.

  We walked through the marbled hallway past a vast frieze depicting scenes from Arthurian legends, and then up the thickly carpeted staircase to the first-floor dining room. I surreptitiously managed to ascertain, to my relief, that I could afford a light afternoon tea here, as long as neither of us absolutely pushed the boat out, and so I guided Tilly to a table.

  “This is rather grand, isn’t it?” Tilly said in a hushed voice. “I was joking about going to the Ritz, you know.”

  I smiled nonchalantly, trying to convey the impression that I took tea in these surroundings whenever I pleased.

  “You must be doing ever so well. Everyone says you are.”

  “And who is everyone, exactly?”

  “Oh, you know, the supers and the chorus girls. I’ve just come back to Karno’s from another job, with Doctor Potter’s Performing Dogs. I was supposed to be his assistant. Sounds pretty glamorous, doesn’t it? But if I tell you that my duties included following the little beasts around with a dustpan you’ll see why I was glad to leave. He wanted me to go with them to tour Ireland but I told him the dogs were making me sneeze. So I’m back with Karno’s now, and they’re still all talking about you, you know. Freddie says you’ve made his life a misery, moving up like you did, because they all think it can happen to them now.”

  I was gratified to hear this, naturally.

  “Oh look,” said Tilly. “There’s a friend of yours over there.”

  She was looking at a table across the room, where another couple were in the middle of a meal. The girl’s eyes were downcast and she was picking at the crust of a sandwich, while her gentleman friend was dolled up to the nines and gazing directly at her with undisguised adoration.