The Fun Factory (7 page)

Reeves cranked the starter handle round a couple of times, and then leapt out of its way as it sprang back, narrowly missing his shins. He glanced up at me, licked his lips, then approached it warily to give it another go. This time he managed to get the engine turning over, and he yanked the handle free and scuttled round to the driver’s seat.

“In! In! In!” he cried, and I hurried round to the passenger side and climbed aboard.

Reeves let off the handbrake, a gout of smoke guffed out of the machine’s rear end, and we rolled away from the little gaggle of gawking street children that had formed.

It was, as I say, my first ride in a motor car, and I remember feeling quite vulnerable. Everything on the road seemed to be larger and more robust than our flimsy carriage, which felt like it was going to tip over at every turn, and Alf’s style of driving involved rather more near misses than seemed strictly necessary.

“Freddie got you settled at Clara’s, then, did he?” he shouted, veering round a grocer’s cart.

“Yes, Mr Reeves.”

“Oh, I’m Alf, you can call me Alf. You mustn’t mind Freddie, you know. He’s a nice boy deep down.”

“I’m sure he is,” I said, although it has to be said I wasn’t, not at all.

“His father won’t let him on the stage, at any price, and so naturally that’s all he’s ever wanted, you see?”

Before long, mercifully, we were barrelling down the Mile End Road, which was nice and wide and straight and with fewer things we could possibly smash into.

“This is the Jewish part of town,” Alf explained, and I suppose the character of the streets did seem subtly different to those of Camberwell and Streatham. A lot more beards about the place, I think that had something to do with it.

“You get some very good crowds round here,” Alf went on. “Do some really good business. Good sense of humour, your Jewish audience, and Jewish comedians are all the rage at the moment, you know.”

He turned down a side road and pulled up with a jolt opposite a brightly lit building, the front of which was plastered with
music hall bills. A queue of people snaked down the steps and along the street, chattering, in boisterous mood, waiting to be admitted to the evening’s performance.

“This place is called Forester’s,” Alf said, pulling up on the handbrake. “One of the smaller houses, but there’s a good bill on tonight. Come on…”

I stepped out of the motor car and headed for the end of the queue, but Alf took my arm and led me down a passage along the side of the building to the performers’ entrance. We went up some stairs and into the backstage area, where Alf guided me through the throngs of folk making themselves ready, looking for someone in particular. Everyone we passed had a greeting for him, ranging from a deferential “Evening, Mister Reeves!” to a cheery “Alf!”, until we reached the object of our quest, who hailed him with a booming “Alfred! Hail fellow well met! Well met indeed!”

“Ah, George, there you are,” Alf grinned, shaking the hand of a formidably confident chap of around forty. The man had luxuriant eyebrows and was rather affluently turned out in a well-cut suit with a gold watch chain draped across the front of his checked waistcoat. “Can I ask a favour of you, do you think?”

“My dear chap! Anything, anything at all!” George beamed.

“This…” Alf pulled me closer by my sleeve, “…is Arthur Dandoe, he’s new with us. Just stick him somewhere where he can watch, and keep him safe until I get back, could you? I need to go to the Paragon, couple of hours probably.”

“Eh? I haven’t heard it called that before,” said George. “But if you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Arthur, my boy – shall we?” He shook my hand briskly and led me to the prompt corner, where he explained to the stage manager that I was his personal friend, and that I was to be given the best possible view of the show.

I hadn’t the first idea who he was at that point, but from the way the stage manager jumped to attention and offered to go and fetch me a beer and a beef sandwich, I gathered that George was a figure of some importance. For the first time since I’d come to London, I was actually beginning to enjoy myself.

The show began. From my vantage point in the wings I could see a swath of audience down below, family groups, gangs of office boys, clerks, a few rougher-looking sorts, ruddy-faced, getting a little the worse for wear, and a healthy sprinkling of the dark-clad and swarthily bearded gentlemen I had seen in the street earlier.

What I noticed at once was a much more ribald interaction between stage and crowd than I had seen before. The audiences back in Cambridge were genteel and restrained by comparison, and the acts onstage were having their work cut out just gaining the attention of the room. Some of them were just not up to it, and their voices strained reedily upwards like a teacher trying to bring a classroom of rowdy boys to order.

A little spectacle held the crowd better. Two chaps dressed like circus gymnasts rode bicycles around the stage in crazy circles, interweaving at breakneck pace. It seemed that they must collide at any moment, cracking their limbs or spilling their brains onto the apron, but they were masters of their routine and exited to the first decent round of applause of the night.

Later a gentleman in evening dress addressed the audience on the subject of a large glass tank full of water, in which a lithe young girl swam like a mermaid, not coming up for air nearly often enough. The man would describe various feats, which the mermaid would then perform.

“And now,” the gentleman cried, “Marina will eat a pie!”

And she did, rising to the surface to collect her treat, then sinking down to her knees on the floor of the tank and munching away until the whole thing was gone before allowing herself another breath. The audience were fairly captivated, principally I suspect by the fact that she was a lithe young lass not wearing very much and that sooner or later she’d climb out of the tank absolutely soaking wet to take her bow.

A curtain came down so that the tank could be carted away by stagehands, and a cockney coster singer of supreme cheeriness cavorted about on the forestage, tweaking his braces with his thumbs and singing about eels. In the meanwhile I became aware of a slight figure pacing nervously in the wings beside me. His beard and get-up mimicked those of the Jewish contingent in the audience, and I could hear the fellow muttering as he ran through his jokes.

I suppose I was peering at him rather, principally because I had the suspicion that he was much younger than he was trying to appear, when he suddenly turned and glared at me, as much as to say: “What the devil are you looking at?”

I stared back at him, and after a moment of two of frosty hostility he stomped off muttering to himself. I frowned quizzically at the stage manager, who shook his head in a long-suffering manner.

“This is his first time as a solo turn,” he whispered. “He was here with Casey’s Circus a while back and sweet-talked the boss into giving him a go. He’s been giving us hell with his music cues and such. Nothing’s good enough for him, and he’s not happy with the running order, like we’d change it just for
His Majesty
…”

The band struck up with a tune I didn’t recognise, but it seemed to strike a chord with the Jewish contingent, and I could
see them nudging one another, as if expecting now to see one of their own.

What they saw, though, was a slight figure stepping onto the forestage, clearly a slip of a lad pretending to be older than he was, with a mountain of black crêpe piled on his head and a further waterfall of the stuff cascading from his chin in a parody of the style favoured by most of their number.

“Cohen’s the name,” the youth began. “Sam Cohen. I was talking the other day to my friend Levy, I was, and do you know what he said to me…?”

He then proceeded to relate, line by line, a conversation between himself and his absent friend – who didn’t seem, from what I could make out, to be the brightest spark. And thus his whole act seemed to be made up of “then I said such and such…” and “to which Levy said so and so…” so that you had the substance of a slick two-handed patter act, except with just the one hand, if you follow me.

His first jokes, such as I could make them out as he was affecting a very nearly incomprehensible Jewish accent and his voice lacked power, seemed to have originated in America, concerning as they did “a debt of some seventeen dollars and fifty cents”.

None of this went down at all well, and it was downhill from there. After a couple of minutes or so, I heard the first loud clang of a penny landing on the stage, followed by another, then another. Sometimes money arriving onstage during your act is a good sign, but on this occasion you could tell that the coins were being thrown really quite hard. Could have been worse, though. I once saw a singer hit full in the face by a dead cat hurled from the stalls.

The lad froze as the full horror of the growing hostility towards
him sank in. An orange cannoned off his head, knocking his home-made wig askew, and then more loose change arrived. He peered out over the footlights, as if puzzled that these people were unable to perceive the genius in what he was doing.

A rain of pennies and halfpennies settled the matter finally, and as he withdrew I even saw a shilling or two bounce off his back, so desperate were the audience to see it.

He rushed into the wings and past us, his cheeks fairly ablaze with humiliation, ripping his wig and beard off as he fled and leaving them where they fell.

Onstage the master of ceremonies was trying to get the audience to calm down for the headline act of the evening. I was suddenly aware of George alongside me, shaking his head philosophically.

“I think they preferred that act when it had two people in it,” he murmured. “And two different people at that.”

I nodded, but I was distracted. I was sure I’d seen, again, that when the youth flung his props down and stormed through the pool of light thrown by the lantern on the prompt desk, the eyes that flashed defiantly at me were purple.

7

THE MAYOR OF MUDCUMDYKE

“…OWN
, your very owwwwn!” bellowed the master of proceedings above the hubbub. “Mistah … George … Robey! Ey thank yew!”

Hang on a mo’, I thought. I’d heard that name. George Robey, the Prime Minister of Mirth, was one of Mr Luscombe’s favourites.

Robey had transformed himself. His already luxuriant eyebrows were heavily accentuated with make-up and were now two huge black half moons covering most of his forehead. A little round derby perched up top, with two small tufts of dark, curly hair sprouting above his ears. His jacket was a couple of sizes too small and his trousers and shoes a couple of sizes too large, and he supported his weight on an achingly slender ribbed cane which looked like it might snap at any moment.

The crowd were still rowdy from their success in banishing the upstart beginner, but Robey stood before them with a look of benign puzzlement on his face. He began telling tales of an
everyday life not so very different to their own, except that everything about him said “fallen on hard times” as clearly as if he had it written on a sign hanging round his neck. All his stories were designed, I could see, to make the audience feel smarter than Robey himself, and he was the unwitting butt of every one of them. He even became indignant that he was not getting the sympathy he felt he deserved.

“I am not heah,” he protested, “to become a laughing stock!”

As I watched the audience, not a couple of minutes earlier a rabble throwing missiles and shouting abuse, calm down, relax and begin to laugh as one, I realised that I was seeing The Power in action. Robey was a master of it, in complete control.

“Desist!” he cried haplessly, meaning them to continue, and they did.

I found that I was not laughing myself. It was funny, I could see it was funny, and I wanted to laugh, I really did, but I didn’t want to miss even a moment of the experience. It was as if I was thrilled beyond laughter by Robey’s display, and was already processing it, dissecting it, taking it apart in my mind to see how it worked. And in my youthful arrogance I felt that I had been shown a vision of my own future, that I too was capable of this mastery.

Too soon Robey was done, and exited the stage to rapturous acclaim. I gave the next acts a few minutes, but they were pale shadows in comparison. I was on pins, anxious to commune with the master, and hurried round to his dressing room as soon as I thought decent.

“Come!” he boomed in response to my knock, and there he sat at a large mirror with a pot of cold cream, wiping away at his huge eyebrows.

“Come in! Sit!” he cried, wafting his arm at a battered but comfortable armchair. “How d’ye like it? Eh?”

“Um … marvellous. You were marvellous!”

“You’re very polite,” Robey smiled. “Bit of work to do after that walking calamity just before me, but
in extremis
we find ourselves, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure you are right,” I said.

“So, you are under Alf’s wing, are you? I often think of Alf as a mother hen, clucking around his chicks, making sure they all get their peck of corn, don’t you know?”

I smiled, nodded.

“Good fellow, Alf. Salt of the earth. And if you can make your way with Karno you’ll not go far wrong. Some very fine comedians he has brought on in his time, and no mistake. Fred Kitchen, now, he’s as good as anyone, and Harry Weldon, too. Karno won’t pay them a quarter of what they’re worth, but they won’t leave him, because they’re safe, they feel comfortable. It’s guaranteed work, fifty-two weeks a year, and they never have to go out and sell themselves. It’s never their name on the bill, it’s always Karno’s, and Karno’s name will always bring a crowd. Now maybe a crowd would come to see good old Fred Kitchen, or Harry Weldon, but they’ll never find out, will they, because they haven’t got the nerve.

“Now, say what you like about that sorry youth tonight. He may have stunk worse than a week-old halibut, but it took courage to go out there like that. Especially with that material, by the way, which was somewhat second-hand, and second-hand old hat at that. Some of Karno’s lads could do with striking out on their own and testing themselves. They won’t, though, because they don’t see the bigger picture. Not like me. But then I have
the benefit, you see, of a Cambridge heducation,” he announced grandly.

“Really?”

“Oh yes, I am the finished article, you might say, both comedically and intellectually.”

“Which college did you go to, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Of course I don’t mind, young man, of course not. Cambridge, of course, as I said…”

“No, I meant which Cambridge college? I am from Cambridge, you see, and I know them all.”

“Oh?” His eyes narrowed.

“Oh yes, I used to play cricket with porters from all the colleges. Jesus, Emmanuel, Clare, Trinity Hall, Peterhouse…”

Robey looked a bit shifty now. “Ahem, indeed, indeed. What was the second one?”

“Emmanuel? You were at Emmanuel, sir?”

“Now, you see, you are running ahead of yourself. What I said was I had the
benefit
of a Cambridge heducation, which is to say, my tutor was a Cambridge man, yes, my tutor was heducated at … um…”

“Emmanuel College?”

“Just so, my tutor, the man who gave me the benefit of
his
Cambridge heducation…”

“I see…”

“…when I was at
Oxford
.” Robey allowed himself a little beam of self-satisfaction at having turned this round. I judged it was time to shut up. In any case just then there was a knock on the door, and Alf Reeves’s head poked into the room. The rest of him seemed reluctant to follow.

“Alfred, there you are. Time for a snifter, what do you say?”

“No thanks, George. I find it hard enough to control that blasted jalopy when I’m sober, and I should get this lad back to his bed.”

“Suit yourself. Goodnight, young man. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” George reached over to shake my hand, and as Alf retreated into the corridor I felt myself pulled in close for a last private word.

“I trust we can keep our earlier conversation, ahem, about my heducation, between the two of us? One doesn’t like to brag, you know?”

That night at Forester’s was my first experience of music hall, and I fell in love with it. I saw success and I saw failure, and the heady balancing act between the two. I had a glimpse of what it was like to be a member of that secret brotherhood behind the scenes, how special that felt. Best of all, in Robey’s performance, I saw the Power in action, and I knew that was what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. How to get there, of course, that was the tricky part, but all thoughts of slinking back to the college were put to one side.

I was sure that I had, that very evening, met a man who would have a profound influence on the course of my career, and my life.

What I didn’t realise was that I’d actually met two.