The Fun Factory (4 page)

4

THE VARSITY B.C.

IN
the event, rather than try to pull the wool over my father’s eyes, I decided to come clean right away – well, the next day – and tell him about the conversation with the Rotter. Remarkably, it turned out that he was quite happy to accommodate my absence in the evenings, as long as I was prepared to make up the hours late at night – more late rounds – and early in the mornings. The crucial factor, I think, was that Mr Luscombe had decided to describe me as his gentleman’s gentleman. There were few ways in which a college servant could hope to improve himself, other than graduating to head porter, but being taken into private service by a wealthy gentleman when he left the college was certainly one of them.

And so, shortly thereafter, Mr Luscombe and I found ourselves taking part in Mister Harry Rottenburg’s newest venture, a production called
The Varsity B.C
.

There was a busy hum about the university at that time. You couldn’t miss it, even if you were only serving the port at High Table. The chatter was all about dinosaurs, and fossil bones which somehow proved that giant lizards had once ruled the
earth. Back then, in ought seven, these bones were being discovered all the time.

Some of the finest minds in Cambridge were absorbed in the business of connecting these prehistoric monsters with animals that still lived on the planet, hoping to shed light on some of the murkier corners of the theory of evolution. Others, like the Rotter, were thinking along different lines, such as: “I say, wouldn’t it be an absolutely spiffing lark to make a model of a brontosaurus and have it eat a chap?”

So while on one side of town the archaeologists and anthropologists pored over ancient ribs and bits of spine, on the other the engineering department were devising a complicated system of wires and pulleys, weights and counterweights that would allow the Rotter to climax his new show with a full-size moving brontosaurus – its head and neck, at any rate – with room in its mouth for a human snack.

And who do you think was in line to be lizard lunch? That’s right, yours truly.

The conceit of the show, as you can probably guess from the title, was to depict Cambridge in prehistoric times. Rival groups of cavemen from rival caves would compete in a variety of activities which aped –
rotted
, I should say – college life, with the whole scheme enlivened by the appearance of the mechanical dinosaur.

Mr Luscombe and I had relatively small parts to play, as cavemen from ‘St Botolph’s cave’. I was Caveman 4, and I’m pretty sure that Luscombe was Caveman 3. There was a deal of standing around in animal skins, and numerous scenes in which twenty or more of us were running around trying to bop one another on the head with papier-mâché clubs. Caveman 4’s moment in the sun came near the end. It turned out, wouldn’t you know it,
that I had been secretly working to further the interests of the Trinity cave, and I got my comeuppance when I was devoured by the brontosaurus.

One evening the company were just finishing a run-through in the club’s private rooms, which were above Catling’s sale rooms near the Corn Exchange, and I was busy dispensing whiskies-and-waters when Browes burst in, mopping his face.

“I say, you chaps, I’ve some frightful news!” he cried.

“Whatever is it?” the Rotter said, steering him to a chair, while I ghosted alongside, manservant-like, stiff drink at hand.

“A fellow on my staircase is writing a thesis…” – a collective shudder went through the company at the very thought of this – “about … well, about good old Brontie, actually!”

“No!” someone gasped.

“Yes, I assure you, so I told him – in strictest confidence, of course – about the climax to our show. I thought he, of all people, might be amused, but do you know what he said?”

“Go on,” the Rotter said, upper lip stiff as an ironing board.

“He said to me, he said: ‘Browes, you priceless ass! Don’t you know that the brontosaur was
herbivorous
?’”

After a moment Rottenburg smiled, and snorted, relieved: “My dear chap, so we got the name wrong. We’ll just call her ‘Herbie’ instead. Problem solved…”

“No, no, no!
Herbivorous
! It only ate plants! It couldn’t possibly eat a chap! The whole ending’s ruined!”

There was a grim silence. The Rotter shook his head slowly from side to side, much like Brontie herself. Did I mention, by the way, that Brontie was female? She had to be, do you see, because of a truly awful line in the closing number about her being one of the Brontie sisters.

“I’ll have to give this some thought,” The Rotter declared suddenly, then strode urgently out of the theatre. “Some serious thought!”

Next evening we all gathered again, desperately worried that the whole show had been fatally undermined. Cigarettes were smoked, carpets were paced. Everyone was convinced that the show was done for, but we reckoned without the never-say-die spirit of our president. He burst in with a big grin on his face, flourishing a drawing he himself had done.

“I’ve added a small scene, solves the whole thing. The chap, do you see, Dandoe here, has to spy on the other cavemen to find out what they are up to. Do you follow me? So he dresses himself up as a tree, ergo, dear Brontie can chomp him up with a clear conscience.
Voilà
!”

A resounding cheer went up at this elegant solution, and I doubt whether the man who discovered the actual brontosaurus ever had acclaim to match it.

And as fellows like the Rotter and Browes and Lord Peter Bradshaw thumped me genially on the back it really felt like we were all in this great enterprise together, as equals.

As the opening night approached, however, I began to wonder just how equal we all were. Because when the two technicians from the engineering department, Rottenburg’s assistants, Mr Ernest and Mr Kenyon, began supervising the installation of the monster, it became dazzlingly clear to me that the reason why I, of all people, had been selected to be Caveman 4 was that being eaten by the mechanical dinosaur was actually going to be pretty bloody dangerous.

The beast weighed a ton for a start. It consisted of a solid wooden framework, strong enough to hold three men inside, covered with canvas which was painted to look like the giant reptile’s skin. Then there were – I don’t know how many. Seven? Eight? – huge blocks with pulleys on, any one of which could have killed a man on its own if it came loose and fell on him, not to mention the further tons of scaffolding which Mr Ernest was reckoning on using to attach the whole contraption to the ceiling. As the man who’d be standing on the spot marked with an X, I quickly saw that if the slightest thing went wrong I was the one for the chop.

The only way they could make a victim – me – disappear whole into Brontie’s mouth was by positioning Mr Ernest inside the neck to haul me in bodily, with Mr Kenyon further up holding onto Ernest’s ankles. No fewer than eight others were concealed in the wings, yanking on ropes, pulling levers, throwing sandbags on and off, and they just couldn’t seem to get it right.

I was watching from the wings with my heart in my mouth the first time they tried to lower the head to the stage and smashed the chair they were using for target practice into matchwood.

On another occasion the neck started careering up and down uncontrollably. The stagehands were trying to grab hold of a counterweight which would have brought Brontie under control, but it kept bobbing out of their reach. Finally three of them caught the creature’s head as it smashed heavily into the stage for the umpteenth time, and Mr Ernest and Mr Kenyon slithered shakily out onto the floor.

“Most invigorating,” Mr Ernest said, an idiotic grin on his face.

Finally, well after midnight on the day before the opening performance, Brontie was deemed safe enough to attempt to eat me. I said my line (and a silent prayer), the monster’s head came
down, my leaf-covered torso disappeared into its jaws, Mr Ernest grasped my arms, and we all swung up into the flies.

Despite the triumphant cheers and whistles from the rest of the company, I had a strong suspicion that my first appearance on the stage could easily turn out to be my last.

Come the opening night the New Theatre was packed to the rafters with students and local townsfolk, all drawn by the Rotter’s proclamation that this was to be the first time a great dinosaur had been portrayed on the live stage anywhere in the world.

Mr Luscombe and I peeked out through a small gap in the curtain at the crowd milling about, finding their seats.

“I say,” Luscombe hissed. “Did you hear?”

“Hear what, sir?” I whispered.

“Word is that some big noise from London has come up on the train specially to see Brontie in action.”

“What sort of big noise?”

“Oh, our director has contacts, you know, in the London theatre. Sssh! Here he comes…!”

The Rotter shoved his big, square rugger-pug face in between ours and surveyed the scene.

“Full house! Good luck, gentlemen, which is to say, confound it,
bad
luck. Break a leg, I mean. Break all your legs!”

He shovelled us ahead of him into the wings and gave Mr Ernest the signal to begin. The curtain rose, and we were off.

The show itself trundled along agreeably enough to begin with. The Rotter stomped around backstage as his small army of cavemen galloped on and off for the various scenes and musical
numbers. Every now and then there would be an unexpectedly big laugh, and he would note down what had provoked it on his script with a scrawled tick. Then he would resume his nervous pacing, occasionally pausing to give a silent pat of encouragement to someone with a huge paw.

Although the audience were enjoying themselves, there was a palpable air of anticipation about the place. Everyone was waiting to see this much-vaunted brontosaurus. The Rotter himself was pacing nervously, sometimes reaching up to twang one of the control ropes above our heads.

Finally, towards the end of the evening, it was the moment. A flurry of hushed activity suddenly bustled around the contraption, and Mr Ernest and Mr Kenyon wriggled into its neck. The ropes were pulled taut, and the eight stagehands took the strain. I hadn’t time to watch any more, because I had to be onstage.