“Lead on,” I said.
Alf and Frank O’Neill walked me across the street to the Fun Factory. We all fell into step, and it struck me suddenly that they were like prison guards leading me to the hangman.
Karno was waiting, almost in the dark. Just one lamp burning low. His fingers drummed on the desk. What was all this?
“Well?” the Guv’nor said. “What have you to say for yourself?”
“I hear you have put Charlie in instead of Stan,” I said. “That’s an utter disgrace. What have you to say for yourself?
“We’re not discussing that,” he snapped. Behind him, Alf closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
“Well, what are we talking about then?”
“Jackett, the manager of the Willesden Hippodrome, you know him?”
I nodded, recalling a stuck-up little martinet with oiled hair who’d been strutting about the place like it was his personal fiefdom all week.
“He’s demanding your head on a platter, or else he’ll book no more Karno shows into his theatre for fear of a repeat of this atrocity.”
“Atrocity?” I laughed. I still saw myself as the righteous victim, you see.
“Well, what would you call it?!” Karno exploded. “Leaping from t’ stage and assaulting a member of the paying public!”
“But…!” I spluttered.
“For crying out loud, what were you thinking?” Karno shouted. “What possible justification could there be for such madness?”
“Well,” I said. “The thing is…” I caught Alf’s eye just at that moment, and he was staring at me hard, almost willing me to say nothing. It dawned on me that I was in real trouble.
“The only reason – the only reason – I’m not going to give him what he wants, is this. No jumped-up little prig is going to tell me how to run my company. I could buy and sell him and his theatre a hundred times over. The pompous little arse! Never been onstage in his life. Doesn’t know what we have to put up with, and that’s a fact.”
I glanced at Alf, who was exhaling slowly, willing me to keep my mouth shut.
“That said,” Karno growled, “this must never, never, happen again. I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Guv’nor,” I said, casting my eyes to the floor penitently. Karno sat behind his desk, and wafted me from his presence with one exhausted hand. As I made my way back over the road to the Enterprise, I realised that that was the first time the Guv’nor had even spoken to me since the Oxford.
“Well?” Stan said anxiously as I walked in. “Are you out?”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re still stuck with me.” The boys grinned, Mike handed me a pint, and I held it up to toast the assembled company.
Later I sat quietly to one side, looking out of the window at the Fun Factory, pondering the question of my ginger adversary. Someone had paid that rotten bugger to heckle Karno shows, but who, and why? He wasn’t going to tell me, even when I stuck a knife up his nose.
I decided that, come what may, I would get to the bottom of it.
32
THE GREAT DETECTIVE
CHARLIE went ahead and took over as Jimmy the Fearless, after a week of haunting our performances like Banquo at the feast. He made a good fist of it, too, I had to admit, even though the way he had shoved Stan aside still rankled with me. With me more than with Stan, actually, I think. One night well into the run, Stan – now just one of the cowboy gang – stood at my shoulder watching Charlie as Jimmy cutting the bread into a concertina, listening to the audience lapping it up, standing there with a big silly grin on his face.
“I don’t know how you can be enjoying this,” I whispered.
“What do you mean?” Stan hissed back. “It’s still my gag. That’s my laugh, that is.”
That was Stan all over. He didn’t care who got the laugh, so long as there was one. I, however, was more inclined to give credit where it was due, and so Charlie’s guilty backside, when presented invitingly to me for a fake lashing at the end of the piece, regularly got given what for with the Dandoe belt.
“Christ!” he complained one night, rubbing his buttocks. “Did you really whack Stan that hard?”
“Absolutely,” I swore. “It’s what makes the ending.”
It is interesting now to wonder what was really going on over Jimmy the Fearless. Charlie was such a hit in it that it was difficult for any of us to see what he had not liked about the idea in the first instance. He was good, too. I still have a cutting in my scrapbook, yellowed and curling, from The Stage,12 which declares: “The best work is done by Chas Chaplin in the name part, and Arthur Dandoe as Jimmy’s father.”
You can see why I kept that one. Ever since Charlie had joined Karno all he’d been asked to do was mimic (and improve upon) other comics’ creations. His brother Syd showed him the way in Mumming Birds and Skating, and Harry Weldon broke the ground in The Football Match. With Jimmy the Fearless he was asked for the first time to create a new character from scratch, and his confidence deserted him. Strange to think that, considering what he went on to do and to be, but still.
Stan always said that poor, brave, dreamy Jimmy grew up to be Charlie the Tramp, so maybe Chaplin actually never did have to create another character for himself.
One balmy Saturday evening I clambered to the top deck of our omnibus, to come face to face with Tilly and Amy Minister, shrieking excitedly and laughing their heads off.
“Whatever is the matter?” I asked.
“It seems I am to have my honeymoon after all,” Amy babbled, all of a flutter. “Alf is to take a brand-new company to America!”
America! It struck me like a thunderbolt! The Land of the Free! The Land of the Fresh Start! The setting for so many of the adventure stories I had lapped up since I was a boy! Surely Alf could get me on that trip? After all, was I not the hero of the great standing-up-to-Fred-Karno-over-the-tormenting-of-his-wife incident? Did he not say he’d do anything for me?
“And the best news of all is that Tilly is to come too!”
Their happy giggling began afresh, and I staggered to the back of the bus in a daze.
I had to get on that trip.
That night I sought out Alf at the Enterprise, grabbed him urgently by the sleeve.
“Alf?! Listen to me. You’re going to America again?”
“That’s right,” he shouted over the hubbub at the bar. “And Amy is coming too! It’ll be a grand adventure!”
“When?”
“Next month.”
“Take me,” I said. “Please?” Alf’s face fell. “Take me,” I urged. “I’ve had a bellyful of this country, and I really want to go to America.”
“I don’t think I can,” he said.
“What?!” I yelled.
“I don’t think I can,” he said again.
“What do you mean, you don’t think you can?” I cried. “Surely you could pull a string or two? For me?”
Alf frowned. “The truth is I’ve just about used up my credit where you are concerned, young man,” he said. “And anyway, listen, this one isn’t up to me. It’s up to the number one, he can say who he wants, and he can say who he doesn’t want, and if he doesn’t want you that’s it.”
“He doesn’t want me, you say?”
“No, lad, he doesn’t.”
“Well, who is the number one?” I asked, although deep in my central nervous system I already knew what the answer was going to be.
“Why, Charlie Chaplin, of course.”
I pushed my way through the crowd out into the street, and set off walking furiously to nowhere in particular. Thinking frankly murderous thoughts, I ran my finger along the handle of the knife I had taken from that ginger heckler before I shoved him into the canal, which was still in my pocket like a little trophy. I suddenly noticed for the first time that one of the sides was not as smooth as the other, and pulled it out to take a closer look. Sure enough there was a pattern of indentations, symbols, letters, carved in the grime, which spelled out … what?
I turned the knife around, trying to catch the light from one of the street burners, and found a stub of pencil to poke away the muck that was caught in the grooves, and after a little amateur archaeology I had it.
“SS Dover Castle.”
So our heckler was a seaman, was he?
And what was his game, anyway? There had been something so deliberate about what he did, the way he had seemed to know exactly the point to interject to cause the most disruption. And someone had paid the man, evidently, so who stood to gain? Perhaps Wal Pink was behind it? Perhaps this was the beginning of his great move against the Fun Factory?
Perhaps I could find out a little more. And perhaps if I did, that would go some way towards repairing my relationship with Karno. Perhaps I would be the hero of the hour. Perhaps, I reasoned feverishly, I would even be able to parlay that into a place on the boat to America?
So the following morning, having no rehearsals, I left Fenchurch Street station on the London, Tilbury and Southend railway service, as I had on my previous Sherlock Holmes-style adventure, this time heading for Tilbury Dock.
My plan, if you can dignify what I intended with the name, was to stroll nonchalantly around the docks until I came across the SS Dover Castle, and then to find a vantage point from which to watch the ship until I caught sight of the man with the ginger halo and the distinctive nasal features that I had so enjoyed rearranging a few nights earlier. After that…? Well, Watson, I was planning to play it pretty much by ear.
Once I strolled up to the docks themselves, however, it became apparent that this plan did not have a great deal going for it. For one thing access to the wharves was blocked off by enormous gates that were guarded by a pair of pretty rough-looking individuals who each looked nearer than I liked to the end of their respective tethers. For another there were literally thousands of men there milling about outside, eyeing the gates hungrily, hoping against hope that someone was going to come out and start recruiting casual labour, at which point they would tear each other to pieces so that the coveted jobs would go to the last left standing. And we thought the Corner was brutal! Comparing that to this would be like comparing a cricket match to the Colosseum. At least if you got into a scramble for work with some of the types down at the Corner you could take the wind out of their sails with a sarcastic remark about what they were wearing.
I elbowed my way through a crowd of surly-looking coves with dirty neckerchiefs – these seemed to be a badge of honour, or at least a credential, a bit like wearing a sign around the neck reading “Will Work Until Filthy For Cash” – and crossed the no-man’s-land to the gates themselves. One of the guards regarded me coolly through the ironwork, slapping a large truncheon into the palm of his hand. He had a gun, as well, I could hardly help noticing, strapped to his belt.
“Excuse me?” I said, extra politely. The fellow didn’t speak. He conveyed to me that I should continue speaking by blinking in a menacing fashion. Not easy to do.
“I am trying to locate a ship,” I said.
“We have ships,” the fellow said drily.
“Yes, ha ha, very good. A particular ship, I mean. Name of the Dover Castle.”
“What business do you have?”
“What business?”
“Cargo? Passage? Or crew?”
“Passage. Yes, that’s it,” I busked off the top of my head. “I’m a passenger, of course.”
The man brightened. “Oh, well, in which case, I’ll just need to see your documents, then, please, sir?”
“Documents? Ah, well, you see, the thing is, I haven’t yet arranged my passage. I just wanted to … take a quick look … at the ship … and make sure, do you see, that she looks nice and seaworthy … before I … um…”
“I see, sir. And once you have had a quick look at the ship, I presume you will be returning with my gift?”
“Your…?”
“Yes, my birthday gift. I was born yesterday, apparently, so it’s a day overdue. I do hope you have bought me something nice.”
“Ah.”
He leaned towards me and lowered his voice. “See those blokes behind you? There’s hardly a one of them that hasn’t tried at one time or another to slip through these ’ere gates. They’re meeting an auntie from overseas. They’re collecting an important package. The idea being, as I am sure a man such as you can fathom for hisself, that once inside they will be able to badger, plead or otherwise grovel their way into a day’s paid work. Now it is my job to see that that don’t happen, for that way chaos lies. Which is why no one gets through these gates without ’is documentation, or at the very least a union card from the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union.”
I nodded. “Right-o.”
“Now you seems like a nice gentlemen so I’m going to help you out. Firstly, you are more than a touch over-dressed for wharf work. And secondly, there is no Dover Castle here, and as far as I know never has been, so whoever sent you down on a promise that he could get you a position was ’aving a larf. Got me?”
I retreated, and strolled away, under the suspicious gaze of a vast throng of surly and unemployed dock workers. Clearly I needed to rethink my approach before I tried this again at another yard. I felt their eyes on my back all the way to the end of the road, where I turned a corner and found myself in a large open space. This was similarly packed with men, but these ones had their backs to me. All were watching a speaker, who was addressing them from a dais, backed by an embroidered banner proclaiming the very same Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union just mentioned.
He was certainly a passionate orator, this chap, and he had this huge crowd in the palm of his hands. I paused to watch for a while, admiring his presence and technique. He had the Power all right.
“For we are at war!” the chap cried, pushing his flat cap to the back of his head. “Don’t think that we are not! The owners would crush you if they could! And replace you with unthinking mules!”
“Aye, Ben! You tell ’em!” went the murmuring mob round about me.
“Lord Devonport – there is a man who will stop at nothing!” this Ben13 went on, and a grumbling rose up. Lord Devonport, I gathered, was not a popular figure in these parts.
“He would know what our plans are, and what our strengths and weaknesses! And so he sends spies to move amongst us, listening, watching…”
This brought a wave of angry grumbling and spitting on the floor from the assembled.
“So let us all be vigilant, and seek out the interlopers!”
“Aye!” roared the mob furiously.
Except one voice behind me, which said: “Here’s one!”
All about me heads turned to seek out the speaker. I myself looked round with a sort of detached interest, like a curious observer of the show.
The damned fool was pointing straight at me!
Well, things quickly began to get ugly. A tight ring of muscle-bound wharf hands hemmed me in, and I began to get barged from side to side. One flicked my hat off, but I was too closely packed in to bend and retrieve it, and wouldn’t really have wanted to bend in any case. Questions jabbed in from all sides like hostile punches, and there were hostile punches as well (which jabbed in like, well, like questions).
“‘Oo sent yer?”
“What you up to?”
“‘Oo’s yer master, yer lackey of the ruling class?” Had all the jargon, that one.
“I’m not, I’m not, I’m not whatever you think!” I protested, but my cries were lost in the rising angry hubbub. What I was thinking was: for Heaven’s sake, I am a socialist!
“Wait a minute, lads,” a deep voice cut in, and there was a pause in hostilities for a moment. “This ’un’s no spy. I recognises ’im, I do. Oh yes.”
My heart missed a beat at that, I can tell you. The only person I could possibly imagine recognising me in this hell-hole was none other than Testicle-Nose himself. I’d walked, like a fool, like a dumb fool, into his very lair, where he was backed up
by hundreds of like-minded friends and colleagues, and I was surely done for. A beating, and broken bones, at the very least. I’d probably end up with a nose like his.
I closed my eyes a moment, took as deep a breath as I was able, and turned to face … someone else! Thank the Lord! It was a vast chap wading towards me through a sea of flesh, a head taller than those around him. He could clearly have torn me limb from limb should he have so wished, but a benign smile was spreading across his stubbly features.
“Yes, yes, I recognises ’im all right. ’E’s one of Fred Karno’s boys, ain’tcha, son?”
I could have kissed him, except that that would almost certainly have made things worse.
“Yes! Yes, I am! That’s what I am! Not a spy! I’m a comedian! A comedian!”
My saviour pointed a vast finger not unlike an uncooked Cumberland sausage into my face. “Football Match. You was the centre-forward, the one with all the tricks. Tilbury Empire.”
“Yes! Ratty! That was me! Well, well, well!” I cried.
“So what-choo a-doin’ down ’ere?” mused the giant. “Pickin’ up some tips from our Ben, is it?”
I glanced up at the dais, where the spittling orator was still in full flow, but casting angry looks over towards the distraction we were causing.
“No, no, no, nothing like that. We … we … are preparing a new show. Yes, that’s it!” I clapped my hands as inspiration struck. “A new show set right here in the docks. And we wanted to make sure we get everything just so. Wharf … Birds. That’s what we are calling it. Wharf Birds.”
An excited hum of chatter swirled around me now from my erstwhile attackers, thrilled at the prospect of being immortalised onstage. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a fistful of free passes that I had lifted from Alf’s office, with the thought that they might grease a wheel or two along the way. I thrust them at the giant, who grasped them with child-like glee, and then obligingly carved me a way out of the mob.
“Just one thing,” I added, once we’d made it to a little bit of open space at the edge of the rally. “Do you know a ship called the Dover Castle?”
The Fun Factory Page 33