The Fun Factory (31 page)

Come the first night, Stan was on pins with nerves, as he’d every right to be, of course. We were playing the show twice in a night, once in Ealing, and then again up in Willesden, huge
Hippodromes
both.

We assembled along with the other Karno companies that were playing the capital that week at the Fun Factory, to be ferried off in the Karno omnibuses. It was cold, especially for April, and Stan and I had bought ourselves hot potatoes from a street brazier, which we shoved in our pockets to keep our hands warm – an old Fun Factory trick.

“I still can’t believe it,” Stan grinned. “Me! A star comedian with a Karno show.” I grinned back. I was happy for him. Really I was.

The buses arrived, and Stan and I made to go inside on the lower level, which was a prized perk of the lead performers, but Frank O’Neill barred our way.

“What’s up, Frank?” I said. “He’s a principal, isn’t he?”

“Not yet he’s not,” O’Neill growled. “Up top, you two.”

Nothing could take the wind out of Stan’s sails, however, and we rode to West London, he and my teeth both chattering away in the late winter chill.

Stan still seemed to be shivering when the curtain went up at the Ealing Hippodrome, and I was a trifle alarmed as I watched him begin, waiting in the wings ready to join him onstage. He was reading his penny blood at the kitchen table, and slicing a crusty loaf of bread at the same time without taking his eyes from the page. In his nervousness he cut the loaf into a sort of spiral, so that when he came to pick up a slice to eat the whole thing was all still in one piece. I saw him realise what he had done, and smile at himself. Then he grabbed the ends of the loaf and pulled it in and out, playing it like a concertina, doing a little jig around the table all the while. The audience hooted with glee.

I didn’t worry about him any more after that, because I knew full well what I’d just seen. I’d seen the Power.

The crowd at the Ealing Hippodrome quite simply loved little Fearless Jimmy and his adventures. I had time to take a peek out at the audience, and what do you know? I caught sight of a familiar face slap bang in the middle of the front row. It was Charlie, of course, dressed to the nines like a dude, and with a face of stone. I guess he still didn’t think much of the idea. He was in a minority of one, though, that night.

The climax of the whole thing was a bit of business Stan and I devised between the two of us. Jimmy’s dad (yours truly) would find Jimmy (Stan) asleep on the kitchen table, still clutching the forbidden volume, and would administer a fearsome thrashing with his belt. Stan would begin to cry, a particular effect all his own, and it brought the place down.

The audience were on their feet, cheering and stamping. All except Charlie, who sat there in his seat in the middle of the front row, stock still, his arms folded, his face grim as a rock, his purple eyes locked on Stan. I watched him as the curtain came down for the last time, watched as it wiped him from sight.

Then I turned to join in the celebrations. It was so thrilling, suddenly, the feeling that we had created the thing from scratch, and made such a hit of it. I forgot myself entirely and threw my arms around Tilly. After a moment I realised what I was doing, but she did not seem to object, and was hugging me back. We broke apart a little awkwardly then, and smiled at one another shyly. And then we turned and each hugged someone else. It was that sort of a night.

If possible, the second show at Willesden went even better. Three thousand people were packed in there – it was a real monster of a hall, the sort of place where you sometimes were caught out by a big laugh taking its own sweet time to roll in from the back – but they loved Jimmy too.

And there, in the middle of the front row once again, arms folded, impassive, unmoved, was Charlie Chaplin.

The next night, he was there again, at Ealing and Willesden both, sitting smack in the middle of the front row, not laughing. And the night after, same thing.

Some comedians, you know, find it impossible to laugh at other people working. There’s just too much going on in the old brainbox. Thinking how they would do such and such a thing differently, how they’d have left more of a pause there, or less of one. All sorts of things rattling about between your thinking equipment and your laughter machinery, getting in the way, fouling up the works.

I asked one comedian (who shall remain nameless on account of the fact that I’ve forgotten which one it was, but believe me there are several it could have been) why he wasn’t laughing at an act that had the rest of us in tucks.

“It’s too good,” was his reply.

Anyway, after a few days of this, and having ample reason besides to want to put Charlie’s nose out of joint, I decided to do something about it. Knowing that he and Tilly were still seeing one another, I contrived to sit next to her on the Karno omnibus one evening as it trundled to the theatre.

“Stan is doing well, don’t you think?” I began brightly.

Tilly smiled at me, a smile which warmed my cockles more than any hot potato ever could.

“Isn’t he?” she agreed. “He’s a little marvel, that boy.”

“I think this could be the making of him, you know,” I said, laying it on with a trowel. “I’ve heard lots of people say it. He could be the next big thing.”

“Do you think so?” Tilly said.

“Oh yes. Charlie made a terrible mistake getting out of this sketch, you know.”

“Well, good for Stan, I say. He deserves it. He’s made it what it is.”

“That’s right,” I said, loving her then for not suggesting Charlie would have been better than our friend. However, I wanted her to be sure to pass on the meat of this conversation to him, so ended with a topper. “Actually, you know, I’ve heard people say that now he’s got Stan … the Guv’nor won’t be needing Charlie any more.”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t say. Coo!”

I wished I could have seen Chaplin’s face when that one
arrived. There was something else on my mind, of course, and she seemed relatively kindly disposed to me just at that moment, so I found myself blurting out: “You remember when we were pretending to be married, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember,” she said, pursing her lips and looking at the floor. “But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

She gave every impression of wanting to quit this conversation, but we were on the omnibus, so there was nowhere else for her to go just then.

“Do you never wonder why it came to such a sudden end, that time in Warrington?”

She frowned, puzzled. “Well, Syd Chaplin found out about us, didn’t he, and put a stop to it.”

“Yes, but we never knew, did we,
how
Syd got to find out about us?”

“Well, he must have… I suppose I thought…” she tailed off. Like me, she’d been so dumbstruck by the speed of events back then that she’d never tried to work it out. It seemed an insignificant point compared to the collapse of our happy idyll.

“Charlie,” I said.

“What about him?”

“Charlie knew about us, and he told Syd.”

Tilly looked at me, baffled. “But … why would he? He’s your friend…”

“That’s not all,” I said. “Charlie knew about us in Hartlepool. He got wind of it off Stan. Stan assumed he knew about it already, you see, but Charlie, right, didn’t spill the beans until just before the Guv’nor was coming to sneak a look at both of us, remember? Him and me, in Warrington. He waited, waited, waited until he could use it to put me off. What do you think of
that
?”

“Yes, yes,” Tilly said, wafting her hand distractedly and turning away from me. “I’m sure it’s all about
you
, Arthur, dear.”

By the end of that week
Jimmy the Fearless
was running on rails. Two-a-nights will do that for you. We’d all settled into our roles, all the effects were coming off, and Stan was in blistering form. The response in Ealing was rapturous – with the exception always of one member of the front row – and we moved on to Willesden in high spirits.

There, however, things took a bit of a funny turn.

We all knew that Fred Karno would make the pilgrimage up from the Fun Factory at some point to check on the progress of his newest creation and asset, and as he hadn’t been seen thus far we all assumed it would be this, the last show of the week, that he would grace with his presence.

It started well enough. Stan sat at the table sawing away at the loaf of bread and reading his penny story. Some of the audience were already giggling when suddenly a voice cut through.

“Hey! Jimmy! That’s not how you cut bread!”

It threw Stan, you could see it. He peered out over the footlights, a puzzled expression on his guileless face, and then he tried to carry on. The bread-concertina gag went for nothing, but Stan just shook his head and got onto the next bit.

A minute or two later I heard the voice again. This time it was loud enough to be heard onstage, but not so loud that the rest of the huge theatre knew what was happening: “Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy…?”

It was a relentless, insistent, brain-emptying chant, and Stan
could hardly not look out into the stalls again to see what the fellow wanted. When he did, the voice stopped, but something else happened which I could not see, because Stan took half a step back in astonishment.

I was waiting in the wings to enter as Jimmy’s dad. It was not yet my cue, but I thought, to hell with it, I’m going out there. Let the bastard take us both on if he dares. So I stormed out onto the apron. My part required me to be loud, and forceful, and I was double that. The voice could have continued niggling away for all I knew or cared, no one could have heard it. Stan saw what I was doing, and skipped into step with me. We built up a head of steam together, and got the sketch back on its feet. I caught Stan’s eye, and he gave me a merry wink, so I knew he was back.

Inevitably, in a sketch as long as
Jimmy the Fearless
was, there were changes of pace, lulls and lacunae, quieter passages between the louder and more frantic parts, and after a little while the voice returned to its insidious malicious work.

“Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy? Jimmy…?”

Stan and I spotted him at the same moment. A dozen rows back, bang in the middle. He saw Stan spot him, which was, of course, the whole point of the imbecilic little chant he’d set up, and when he knew he had his full attention he pointed straight at my friend, and then pinched his own nose, in the international language of mime gesture for indicating a bad smell.

Stan blinked at the man.

I didn’t, though. I had recognised him.

For the nose that he was pinching was a distinctive one. It comprised two uneven swollen globes, with a cleft in the middle, so that it looked like nothing so much as a pair of testicles.

I heard muted gasps from my comrades behind me as I strode
down to the front of the stage and glared out at the fellow, his bald head surrounded by a ginger halo. He saw me, of course, and his smug expression changed to one of some apprehension.

I raised my arm slowly and pointed straight at him.

“YOU!” I roared.

31

I'LL GET MY OWN BACK

THE
fellow blanched, and would, I think, have fled that very instant if he hadn't been hemmed in on all sides. Everyone else was wondering whether this was a part of the show, of course, because if it was it was quite interesting to watch, and if it wasn't, well, then it was even
more
interesting, wasn't it?

Who knows what might have happened next if Stan hadn't taken my arm and pulled me gently back into the fictional world of Jimmy the Fearless.

“Come on, Dad,” he said softly.

As I thrashed away at poor Jimmy with my belt at the end of the sketch I was looking straight at the miserable ginger bastard. He was pinned there by my gaze, and I was thinking, just stay there, chum, just stay right there…!

Down came the curtain.

“Ouch!” Stan said to me, rubbing his stinging backside. “Hold something back, can't you?”

I wasn't listening, though, I was reaching for my walking cane,
which was leaning by the prompt desk. All thoughts that the Guv'nor was probably out there, in the auditorium, had been driven from my mind.

Up went the curtain.

Warm applause broke out, perhaps not quite what we had become accustomed to that week, but still not bad. Stan walked out to take his bow. I followed him, then stepped over the footlights and leapt down into the audience. I took the brunt of the landing on my good pin, but my right knee still sent a blade of fire right up my other leg. I roared, a wild animal noise.

Some in the audience screamed at this. It must have been like that time when the Bioscope showed a train heading straight for the front row, and people believed it was about to burst through the screen.

I landed close to Charlie, who pulled his feet up in alarm like a child who's been told there's a crocodile under his bed. I saw clearly in his face that he feared I might be coming for him. I wasn't, though. I was after Testicle-nose, and old Testicle-nose knew it.

I raced as best I could around to the end of his row, ignoring the various whoops and shouts coming from all around, and began clambering towards him over knees and legs and coats, while he began to barge along the row away from me. The audience were cheering now, cheering me on. It might have been an act, or it might have been real. Either way, it was certainly added value for their one and sixpenny.

His arms were flailing. It looked like he was swimming desperately through a sea of people, but even so he still made it out into the aisle before I was near enough to snag him. He ran pell-mell up the side of the auditorium, and out through the exit. I was
not far behind, and as I reached the foyer I saw him bursting out into the street.

I gave chase, myself pursued by several dozen excited audience members. I half-ran, half-limped with my cane, out into the night, and for a moment couldn't see my quarry. Then my little posse gave a disappointed groan, and a couple of them pointed at a shadowy figure, already quite a way off, heading for the railway bridge.

I was not done yet. I set off in pursuit, pushing myself along with my cane. It hurt like hell, but my blood was up.

Testicle-nose galloped over the railway bridge. A train passed below as he went over, and he was clearly silhouetted for an instant, and then entirely enveloped in steam.

Over the railway the road swung round and down to the left. There were shop fronts and any number of alleyways left and right that Testicle-nose could have darted into, but he was busily charging along in full view, a little way off, and so I still had hopes of catching him.

Testicle-nose let me get closer as he recovered his wind, and then suddenly jogged off again. He wasn't at full tilt now: he didn't feel like he needed to be. He just bounced along, constantly looking back, keeping the distance between us. I drove my complaining leg on and on. I was going to pay for this in the morning.

My prey looked around for traffic. There was none, and he darted across the road to a brick wall, about six feet high, with a wrought-iron gate set into it.

Testicle-nose looked back at me and grinned. Then he reached up, hauled himself onto the top of the wall, and then sprang down to land on the other side. He looked back at me through
the iron gate, smirking, confident that my leg would not allow me to follow. He'd seen what happened to it, of course, at close quarters. I was made of sterner stuff, however, and fuelled by fury. I slapped my cane onto the top of the wall and heaved myself up. I looked down at that hated face, a twinkling drop of some sort of indeterminate liquid hanging at the end of his absurd hooter, and saw doubt creep across it. He turned and bolted as I slithered painfully down to ground level.

I needed a moment to recover after that, and looked around as I sucked air in between gritted teeth. I found myself now inside Kensal Green Cemetery. No light save that provided by Mother Nature. Gravestones loomed up in the dark on the left and right. Family mausoleums, some the size of a small house, lurked blackly in the middle of the lawns. Stone angels the size of a man stood guard over the departed, casting huge black shadows everywhere.

You'd have to be an idiot not to be able to find a hiding place in here, I thought to myself in despair, as I crunched slowly down the path, as inconspicuously as I could, looking for signs of life.

Fortunately, Testicle-nose was just such an idiot, and having lured me into the cemetery to spook me, had spooked himself. He was desperate to get out of there, and I heard his panicking feet on the gravel ahead, just before I saw his silhouette making for the outer wall on the far side of the graveyard, then leaping up and over it. I made a dash across the grass to grab him, and almost had his trouser leg, but was just too slow off the mark. No time to lose! Painfully, I hauled myself up after him, and half-dropped, half-fell on the other side, clutching my knee to protect it from the landing. I was on a towpath alongside a canal.

The canal gleamed in the moonlight, and stretched out straight as an arrow in both directions. The canal disappeared into a dark
tunnel under Ladbroke Grove one way, and round a bend in the other direction, but he couldn't have made either, not without me seeing him.

So he was near.

Right in front of me two longboats were lashed to the bank. Neither had lights on, or seemed to be occupied at all. One of them sat perfectly still on the water. One of them bobbed gently up and down. Got you! I thought.

“Damn it!” I shouted aloud then, looking desperately left and right. I started off towards the tunnel, but then changed my mind and made for the bend in the other direction. “Damn it all!” I shouted again. Putting on a show, you see.

Because I knew where Testicle-nose was hiding. The only place he could be was in the little stairwell at the back end of the boat that led down into the long cabin. Softly softly (with a view to catching monkey), I slipped up onto the roof. After a minute or two he felt safe enough to emerge, inching carefully up the steps, peering round the edge of the barge, left and right along the towpath, everywhere but right above, which is where I was.

I whistled softly. He looked up, startled. And I kicked the sliding hatch which covered the stairwell. I kicked it hard. The front edge caught him squarely on his ridiculous conk. He fell back in a heap, stunned, and blood began to gush freely from both globes. I looked down triumphantly, but he wasn't out cold as I'd expected, and he scrambled to his feet. I picked up the nearest item to hand, which was a hand-painted green metal jug, design floral. I laid it alongside the fellow's head with a satisfying clang, which I should say reduced the capacity of the utensil by about half. Still he didn't go down, though, and he made a dazed spring for the bank, sprawling on his face on the towpath. I jumped after
him, and immediately wished I hadn't. My knee gave beneath me, and I measured my length on the ground, screaming like a girl.

By the time I had pushed myself up to my feet with my cane, Testicle-nose was standing before me. The bottom half of his face was bloody, his nose was even larger than before and seemed to be throbbing. He didn't want to discuss the matter. His hand jabbed forward threateningly, and I caught the glint of a short, broad, nasty-looking knife. A fighter's knife. He smirked, as he had smirked in the theatre, only with even more malicious intent behind it now.

At that moment I suddenly remembered a lesson Ernie Stone taught me one idle evening. We were talking about fighting – he was once a boxer, you will recall – and he said this: “If a man pulls a knife on you, it's because he don't know how to use his fists.”

Which was encouraging.

“He expects you to be scared, see, to freeze, to let him stand there deciding how to stick you. It's natural, it's going to be your first thought. So what you must do is punch him, right away. Punch him hard, knock him down. Don't even think, just punch!”

Good old Ernie. As it happens, I didn't punch Testicle-nose, I whipped up my cane and potted his nose with it as if I was playing a cannon in billiards.
Then
I punched him. Hard.

Really hard.

When he awoke, some little time later, I was sitting on his legs. He was face down, with the top half of his body hanging over the edge of the canal. I had his knife, and I had tied his hands behind his back with some rope I'd appropriated from the longboat. If I stood up he'd go into the water, and that would be
the end of him. It didn't take him more than an instant to work this out, and he started wailing and wriggling.

“Hey!” I said. “Keep still, will you? You don't want to throw me off.”

He saw the wisdom of this and desisted. A great snort came from him as he tried to breathe through a snootful of blood.

“Now then,” I said casually. “You and I are going to have a little chat. All right?”

I'd had a minute or two to think while he'd been out for the count, and I'd decided it was quite a prize coincidence that this same fellow would barrack two separate shows that I was involved with in two separate venues in two separate parts of town. I mean, if he disliked our comedy so much why would he even bother to keep turning up for more disappointment?

“Pummmeeupp! Pummmeeupp!” he cried. I hooked my cane in the collar of his jacket, then rolled off his legs. He squealed in terror as he felt himself sliding towards the murky water, but I held him, and then yanked him up onto his back on dry land. I crouched by his head and shoved his own nasty little knife up one of his misshapen nostrils. That got his attention.

“All right, no more messing about, you got me?”

He nodded, very carefully indeed.

“So what do you think you were doing, eh? How would you like it if I came down to where you work and start having a go at you? Come down to where you're shovelling shit, or whatever the hell it is you do, and shout that you're not doing it properly. Eh?”

I jabbed his knife further up his nose, and his eyes widened.

“Thuck oth!” he hissed.

“Charmer,” I said. “So, did someone put you up to it? Is that what's going on? Someone doesn't like Fred Karno, is that it? Is it?”

“Thuck oth!” he hissed again. “Thuck right oth!”

“You getting paid, are you, for heckling us? Oh-ho…!” I had reached into his jacket pocket, and come out with a little clutch of fivers. His eyes narrowed. “I don't really think you've earned these, have you, letting me catch up to you, and me with a busted knee and all.”

Testicle-nose made a great effort to speak clearly and as menacingly as he could manage. “You let me up right now or it will be the worsh for you.”

“This little sideline of yours is over and done with, you got me?” I said, still skewering his grotesque proboscis. “You tell whoever it is that's paying you that every Karno comic will know to look out for you, and if we ever see you again it will be the worsh for
you
. Got it?”

I withdrew the knife from his nose, at which he sniffed and snorted with relief. I grabbed his shirt front and pulled him to his feet, then spun him round and sawed away at the rope round his wrists. I felt him tense just before he was freed, and he might as well have sent me advance warning by telegraph. Sure enough, he took half a pace forward and swung a huge haymaker at my head. I swayed back out of the way of it, and then shoved him into the canal.