The Fun Factory (3 page)

Mr Browes, the tall, athletic young fellow who was in charge of the evening’s proceedings, pushed past us and pinned a sheet of paper to the wooden panelling, out of sight of the audience. Luscombe nudged me in the ribs.

“Running order,” he whispered, shouldering his way forward to get a view of it past about eight chaps in boaters and stripy blazers. “These fellows are first,” he said, “then me. Crikey, I was hoping not to be so early. You’re midway through, after the clog dancing.”

The fear gripped me once again. The fear of failure, of making a fool of myself, and in front of these people, who already held me in such low regard (if indeed they gave me a second thought).

Mr Browes completed a hurried headcount of the boaters-and-blazers,
and then, satisfied, bounded past us and up onto the stage. The piano player tinkled to a little flourish of an ending and shut up, which is more than you could say for the packed and sozzled crowd.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen, if you please!” Browes bellowed, and gradually heads began to turn in the direction of the little dais and the hubbub slowly subsided.

“Gentlemen,” Browes began, in a more conversational tone now he had their attention. “Thank you for patronising our little entertainment this evening. It is still not too late to participate if you feel so inclined. See me during the interval and if you have your sheet music, or if Edward knows the ditty you have in mind, then I’ll happily squeeze you into the second half.” There were one or two lewd haw-haws at this, though quite where the double-entendre they thought they had spotted was lurking was beyond me. “And now,” Browes went on, “let the revels commence!”

The first part of the evening went past in a blur. I think the opening item was a song by the chaps in boaters, accompanied by the pianist, a jolly little ditty about why you should always have champers in your hampers. There was a verse in it about all the different ways of popping your cork which they were inordinately proud of.

Then it was Mr Luscombe’s turn.

“Wish me luck!” he grinned, and then stepped out into the light. His Lady Marjorie started a touch uncertainly, it seemed to me, but once he got his first big laugh under his belt – actually, for the bit of business that we’d devised together in his rooms – his confidence grew. By the end he was getting uproarious laughter every time Lady Marjorie opined that something
was “Good for the blood!”, and he left the stage to a thunder of applause.

Flushed and triumphant, he bustled into the wings and grasped me by the hand.

“My dear chap!” he whispered, “what tremendous fun! And I have you to thank, you know! Yes indeed!”

I was happy for him, and naturally pleased that my contribution had made a difference. Mostly, though, I was envious. He had finished.

The jovial mood that Luscombe’s performance had generated in the room gradually dissipated during the next few acts, which were not, it has to be said, the absolute apex. One, I remember, was a rather mournful poet delivering sorry odes on the theme of lost love. Fellows were not just yawning as he droned on, they were actually shouting the word “Yawn!”, but the drip didn’t take the hint.

Then there was the clog dancer. Everywhere you looked people were holding their ears and uttering oaths with absolute impunity. One or two were caught out by the suddenness of the cloggist’s finale and so he was greeted with a bellow of: “…ost confounded bloody racket I ever … oh, he’s stopped.”

Beside me in the wings Browes was frowning at his running order. The evening was spiralling helplessly down the drain, and we both knew it.

“Right-o,” he hissed as clog boy traipsed off with derision ringing in his ears (ours were just ringing). “You’re next…”

Browes hopped up onto the stage and held his hands up for quiet (ever the optimist).

“I am sorry to have to tell you, gentlemen, that the college authorities have informed me that your behaviour so far this evening has left something to be desired…”

A choral “Oooooh!” rose from the audience, half-pleased with themselves for the raucous good time they were having, half-outraged that anyone might dare to criticise them for having it.

“And …
and
… they have instructed me to make way for our esteemed head porter, Dandoe here, to speak to you for a few moments. Gentlemen, please…!”

There was a murmur, now, of sullen displeasure. I began to doubt the wisdom of the conceit I had devised, but it was too late now. Concentrating hard on holding back the trembling in my limbs, I walked out to the middle of the stage in a fair imitation of my father’s arthritically shuffling gait. The combined effect of that, the padding round my waist, the borrowed bowler hat and striped (second-best) waistcoat, and the cigar smoke blurring people’s vision meant, I’m sure, that most, if not all, of the assembled company, took me for the genuine article.

There was silence. Utter, horrible, silence. A second, two, three…

My brain suddenly emptied of all thought.

“Well, come on then!” came a voice from the back, cutting through the silence. “Get on with it, for goodness’ sake!”

The casual rudeness of it, the lack of respect that they felt towards me, or rather towards my father, snapped me back to myself. I wasn’t going to fail, not in front of these people.

“First of all,” I barked, “I’ve lived and worked in this college for nigh on thirty year, man and boy. I’ve risen, in that time, to the position of head porter, like my father before me, and as such I believe I have earned the right to be addressed as ‘
Mister
Dandoe’.”

Emboldened by anonymity, several of the audience ventured another “Woooh!” at this, which they’d never have done to the
old man’s face, I’ll tell you that. I fixed them with a stern eye.

“Second, gentlemen. I have been sitting over in the porter’s lodge this past … half hour…” (taking out much-prized pocket watch and checking) “…and I’m exceeding sorry to have to report that the racket you are making in here this evening … well, I can hardly hear it. I’m very
disappointed
in you all.”

Bemusement mostly, as I looked around, but one or two titters beginning to ripple across the room.

“Ordinarily I look forward to your college smoking concerts, because the amount of disturbance you cause will usually bring the head porters of other colleges round to my lodge to complain, and otherwise I don’t get to see them much socially…”

By now they were starting to get it, and were beginning to laugh.

“Poor Dr Leather has a very important lecture to deliver tomorrow morning at the history faculty, and he was relying on you to keep him awake this evening long enough to finish copying what he was going to say out of Dr Simpson’s latest book. Well, I’m sorry to have to report that because of your half-heartedness a very distinguished academic career lies in ruins.”

Confidence building, I stuck my thumbs into my waistcoat pockets and strummed a little tum-tum-tiddle on my padded belly, as was my father’s wont when about to reminisce about previous generations.

“The smoker of Michaelmas term 1782, which I remember well, because it featured a young Arthur Wellesley doing the Wellington boot dance with which he later made his name, got such applause that plaster fell willy-nilly from ceilings as far away as Trumpington.”

Huge belly laughs, now, from everyone in the place. I could see gents turning to one another, asking who the devil I was, and some shrugs in response.

“If you gentlemen are unable to organise a smoking concert that draws complaints from at least as far away as St Catherine’s, I’m afraid we are going to have to forbid the use of the Old Reader until such time as you learn how to do one properly.”

The gauntlet thrown down, the ancient room reverberated to cheering, whistling, stamping, howling, a row like you’ve never heard before. I stood up there in front of the bedlam and had the curious sensation all of a sudden that something was missing. You know what it was? It was the fear.

In its place was something I have always since thought of as the power. Or rather: The Power.

Time seemed to slow down for me. I knew, I was absolutely certain, that everyone in the Old Reader at that moment was in my thrall. I held them in my hand. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do when they stopped cheering, but I did know that I would know, exactly. It was the finest feeling I’d ever had in my entire life.

As the laughter rolled around the room, I watched it, detached, serene, like a scientist watching an experiment going exactly according to plan. Through the haze of smoke I could make out individual faces, eyes fastened on me, mouths open in laughter or anticipation of laughter. And there, amongst the blazer-clad goons who had drifted round there after finishing their drippy song, I caught sight of a familiar face. Watching. Not laughing. Just watching.

My father.

3

OH! MR PORTER!

HE
was looking directly at me. I was wearing his clothes, and his hat, and a parody of his paunch, and the better part of the population of the college, which was his whole world, was laughing at me. At
him
.

All this I spotted in the blink of an eye. I was able to register the sudden sight of him, digest it, consider its implications, set it aside for later, even as the laughter rolled on. The Power did this for me. I seemed to be operating at a different speed to the rest of the world, like the man in the H.G. Wells story whose trousers catch fire.
3

And then it was over.

Browes was bounding out onto the stage again, leading applause for me, and I walked off slowly, carefully remaining in character, already wanting to do it again, and wondering how I was going to explain myself.

“Well done!” Mr Luscombe was saying. “Didn’t I tell you? You were a sensation…!”

Others clapped me on the back, wanting to share in my
triumph. That clog-dancing fellow trod on my foot with his big wooden boot, but I hardly noticed. What was I going to say to my father? I should have known – nothing got past the old spider.

I slipped out through the library and out of the side door into the cool night air, leaving another group of bright young things to warble on about punting to Grantchester, or some such, and I stood with my back against the ancient stonework for a moment to gather my thoughts. Lance lurched around the corner and immediately spotted me.

“Now then, Arthur, before you say anything. I never let on,” he said, as he trotted over, his hands raised defensively in front of himself.

“Of course not,” I sighed.

“I never, I swear!” he protested, detecting the sarcasm in my voice. “He heard the rumpus and came over to see for himself what was going on!”

It had the ghastly ring of truth about it, I had to admit. That I should be onstage pretending to be my father berating the audience for not making enough noise, thus inspiring them to make more noise, and that that noise should then have been what brought him over to see what was happening, well, it was one of those naturally occurring moments of perfect comic irony that you can’t make up. I grunted, letting the lump off the hook.

“He wants to see you,” Lance said, grimacing in an unusual moment of fraternal sympathy. I shrugged and set off over to the lodge, the condemned man, to take my punishment (without hearty breakfast).

I shoved open the heavy old door slowly, setting the ancient hinges squealing. For once, though, my father wasn’t standing at
the ready behind the counter, alerted by his early warning system.

“Hello…?”

His voice came from the back. “Come through.”

I nipped behind the counter and into his little back room, which was as snug and warm as a toasted muffin. There was a fire going in the grate and my father was sitting in his old comfy chair (his father’s before him). He waved me over to a stool opposite and I sat there with my hands on my knees for long agonising moments, waiting for the thunderstorm to strike.

“I was wondering where my second-best waistcoat had got to.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He looked me up and down as though seeing me for the first time. I didn’t know what to do to break the tension, so I took his bowler hat from my head and handed it over to him. He nodded, took it from me and set it on the small table at his side.

“Would you like me to do the late rounds tonight?” I said finally, unable to stand it any longer.

“I would appreciate that, Arthur, thank you.”

More oddly appraising silence followed, and then I ventured: “I’m sorry, if seeing what I did this evening was … embarrassing for you. I didn’t mean…” My sentence tailed off and he completed it for me: “…for me to see you at it, I know, I know. Well, I’ve got two things to say to you, Arthur Dandoe, and I sincerely hope you’ll pay attention to them.”

Here it comes, I thought, bracing myself.

“When I saw you up on the stage there tonight, well, I don’t mind telling you I got the shock of my life, I did. I saw you up there, dressed like me, speaking my words in my voice and heard all the gentlemen in there laughing and cheering, and do you know what I thought to myself? Do you?”

He wasn’t raising his voice. In fact he was frighteningly calm, and I’ll tell you what I was thinking to
my
self. I was thinking, this is the angriest I’ve ever, ever seen him. Even more angry than when Lance left and joined the army without telling anyone.

“Um … no…?”

“I thought to myself, well, Dandoe. Here’s a nice thing. Look at them all, laughing at you, laughing at your funny little ways. What does this all mean, I wonder…?”

He looked me right in the eye.

“I’ll tell you what it means, my lad. It means they like me. They really like me.”

Eh?

“Oh yes. It means I, George Dandoe, am more than just a college employee, the senior college employee. I’m beyond that now, oh yes, way beyond. I’m a college
institution
.”

He beamed.

“And do you know what else I thought?” he went on. “I thought to myself: look there, Dandoe, there’s your son. He’s had none of what all these other men have had, none of the privileges, none of the advantages, and look at him. He’s as good as every last one of them. Better even. They’re hanging on every word he says.”

I was stunned. Staggered.

“Good luck to you, son. You showed ’em, eh? Oh yes! You showed ’em all! Well done! I’m proud of you. I mean it.”

He leaned over, took my hand and pumped it enthusiastically, a warm smile spreading across his face.

“Now come on, look lively. Off with that waistcoat, and whatever else you’ve stuffed under there, you cheeky beggar…” – here he patted his tummy, more jovial than I’d ever seen him – “and then round to the Old Reader. Some of those gentlemen will
need sending on their way if they’re not to be locked out of their own colleges…”

A couple of minutes later I was outside in the night air once again, shaking my head at my father’s reaction. I’d lampooned him in front of everyone, and he’d loved it! Well, you could have taken the proverbial feather and rendered me more or less horizontal with it.

The smoking concert was over by the time I reached the Old Reader, and it had dissolved into a loud and raucous drinking party. If anything, there was even more smoke than before, and you could see it swirling and drifting by the gas jets on the wall.

“Excuse me? Gentlemen? Could I have your attention?” I bellowed at the top of my voice. “The front gate will be closing in ten minutes. Those of you from other colleges should be on your way now.”

It was as if I was invisible. The Power clearly did not extend to the delivery of mere factual information. I gave up on them – after all, if they wanted to risk the wrath of the proctors’ bulldogs it was no business of mine. I stepped off the chair and took down one of the long poles to open the top windows, thinking to let out some of the smoke. I was reaching up to the first window, when Mr Luscombe rushed over and grabbed my arm.

“For goodness’ sake, put that down!” he hissed.

“I was just letting in some air,” I protested, but he was already hustling me briskly through the crowd.

“I know, I know, but there’s someone I want you to meet, and it would be better if he didn’t know you really were a porter. You see the fellow in the striped blazer?”

I did.

“Well, that’s the Rotter!”

“The rotter?”

“From the Footlights Club.”

“You mean the one who stole your trousers?”

“Exactly so.”

I drew myself up to my full height. “I see, sir. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to sling him out of the gates on his backside…?”

“No, no, no, no,
no-o-o-o
!” Luscombe urgently grabbed my arm again to hold me back. “He was in tonight, he saw the smoker and wants to talk to you, to me, to
us
! Come on!”

Harry Rottenburg – ‘The Rotter’ – was the president of the Footlights Club and – although I didn’t know it at that moment – he was the university’s leading theatrical celebrity. He was holding court at the far side of the room, surrounded by a dozen or more acolytes gazing at him worshipfully over the rims of their champagne glasses. The Rotter was somewhat older than his courtiers, having been a student himself some ten years earlier, and he now was a senior member of the university’s engineering department. His nickname was rather misleading, as “rotting”, or being a “rotter”, was undergraduate slang at that time for joking or sending someone up. Luscombe dragged me over and we hovered at his elbow, waiting for him to draw breath, which he did presently.

“Mr Luscombe, there you are. I congratulate you, sir. An excellent turn.”

Luscombe beamed. Praise from the Rotter was praise indeed. The Rotter was a burly figure, with broad shoulders and a square face that looked like it had been knocked about a bit. If his speciality, onstage that is, was playing female roles, then they must have been exclusively female characters who had played rugby union for Scotland (as he himself had).

“And I apologise for the high jinks with your clothing last time we met. I sent a man round to your rooms with the items. I trust they arrived safely?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” gushed Luscombe. “And there’s no need for apologies, really. Excellent rotting!”

“Well, there we are. And this is your man, is it?”

“Dandoe,” Luscombe put in, before I could speak for myself. “This is Dandoe, yes. Excellent chap.”

“I congratulate you too, Mr Dandoe, most entertaining.” The Rotter offered his hand and I took it. A huge, meaty fist it was too. “Here’s the gist,” he went on. “I’m putting together a show at the New Theatre. It’s practically written, and I dare say we’ll be able to find something for the two of you. What do you say?”

I was dumbstruck. Luscombe looked as though he had died and gone to heaven.

“I’d be deligh … that is to say,
we’d
be delighted, wouldn’t we, Dandoe? Yes indeed we would,” Luscombe jabbered, and before I could say a word on my own account it was all arranged, and the Rotter swept grandly out of the Old Reader with his retinue in his wake. Luscombe was quite beside himself with glee.

“Did you hear? We are to be in a Footlights show! How absolutely bally splendid!”

I was sorry to bring him down to earth, because surely it was impossible for me, a mere college servant, to take part.

“Ah, no, because I told Browes to tell the Rotter you were my manservant, my gentleman’s gentleman, do you see, and they would have no problem with that, it would be perfectly fine. It was all I could think of at the time, it was all rather sprung on me, and I wasn’t sure whether he liked you or me. But if you’re my man, do you see, he can’t have one of us without the other,
so it fits the bill rather splendidly, doesn’t it?”

Well, whether it did or it didn’t, I’d felt the intoxicating thrill of the Power. I wanted more, and whatever it took I was going to make it happen.