Free The Fun Factory by Chris England

be carried off to theatreland, leaving me on my own without so much as a “Cheer-o!” or a “See you tomorrow!” I would then make my solitary way back to the Bells’ house in Streatham, where Clara and Edie would share their supper with me, and then I would either end up playing with Edie and Miss Churchhouse, or, if I was quick enough (please, God), escaping upstairs to read one of my penny bloods in peace.
    By the end of the week I was heartily fed up with this show business, to be honest, and ready to slink back to Cambridge. My hands were cramped into claws from painting, and the whitewash was so dazzling in the summer sunshine that even after I’d left the cursed
Wontdetainia
behind for the day I could still see it as an after-image burned into my retinas, little dark portholes floating about in my eye water.
    It wasn’t just the tedious work, though. After all, if I’d remained at the college for the summer I’d have been whitewashing the walls of staircases O to T. It was that the fun folk at the so-called Fun Factory had made me feel about as welcome as Jack the Ripper. Even Lance was better company, and he could go days without speaking to me at all.
    In due course I met my landlord, Clara’s husband, Charley Bell, and you couldn’t exactly call him a cheerful advocate for a life on the boards either. He was working three shows a night, playing in a Karno sketch called
London Suburbia,
in Balham, then Chiswick and then Highgate, and so was usually still in bed when I left in the mornings, and gone out by the time I got back to the house.
    One morning, though, he appeared, bleary-eyed, in the doorway of the scullery as Clara, Edie and I were having breakfast, and we were introduced. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to catch him, but he seemed a man of few words. When asked about the previous evening’s performances he ventured that Balham was “thin”, Chiswick “as good as could be expected” and Highgate “rowdy”.
    Charley had been with Karno for years, and had played the original “Naughty Boy” in the sketch
Mumming Birds
– about which much
much
more later – so I was eager to ask him aboutthe company. Most of all, though, I wanted to hear something, anything, that would make me feel it was worth hanging around for. He shrugged and poured himself a cup of tea.
    “It’s a job, I suppose,” he said. “No better nor no worse than plenty of others.”
    I sipped at my own tea, contemplating the miserable prospect of painting another half acre of metal panelwork, and decided that this particular job was not all it was cracked up to be.
    By the end of that gruelling afternoon, muscles aching, pores clogged and ears untroubled by even a half-friendly conversation, I’d pretty much made my mind up to pack it all in. I’d stay long enough to get paid for what I’d done, but that was that. To Hell with the blasted Fun Factory! It was all Factory and no Fun, it seemed to me. Mr Luscombe would be disappointed, but, well, he’d just have to learn to live with it.
    Once the mob had left and the hubbub had subsided, I was clambering down from the side of the accursed
Wontdetainia
, ready to wend my weary way back to Streatham, when Alf Reeves came bustling out of his office, wrestling his arms into his jacket as he hurried along. For a moment he looked surprised to see me, but then seemed to place me in his mental scheme of things.
    “What are you…?” he began, and then: “Oh yes, I recall. You have no show to do yet, do you?”
    “No, Mr Reeves,” I said. I suppose I must have looked pretty fed up. He cocked his head to one side, thinking.
    “Tell you what. Would you like to see some turns this evening?”
    I reviewed my plans for the evening, which revolved mostly around trying to escape from playing with a small child and her dolly, and said that I wouldn’t mind.
    “Wash up, then, quick as you can. I’ve to go up the Mile End Road. Bit of business to take care of. Come and see what