I could not sleep. From the Elephant and Castle I went on to Kennington Gate and had another cup of tea. On the way I kept talking and laughing to myself. It was five in the morning before I got to bed, exhausted.
Mr Karno was not there the first night, but came the third, on which occasion I received applause when I made my entrance. He came round afterwards, all smiles, and told me to come to his office in the morning and sign the contract.
I had not written to Sydney about the first night, but sent him a succinct wire: ‘Have signed contract for one year at four pounds per week. Love, Charlie.’ The Football Match stayed in London fourteen weeks, then went on tour.
Weldon’s comedy character was of the cretinous type, a slow-speaking Lancashire boob. That went very well in the North of England, but in the South he was not too well received. Bristol, Cardiff, Plymouth, Southampton, were slump towns for Weldon; during those weeks he was irritable and performed perfunctorily and took his spleen out on me. In the show he had to slap and knock me about quite a bit. This was called ‘taking the nap’, that is, he would pretend to hit me in the face, but someone would slap their hands in the wings to give it a realistic effect. Sometimes he really slapped me and unnecessarily hard, provoked, I think, by jealousy.
In Belfast the situation came to a head. The critics had given Weldon a dreadful panning, but had praised my performance. This was intolerable to Weldon, so that night on the stage he let me have a good one which took all the comedy out of me and made my nose bleed. Afterwards I told him that if he did it again I would brain him with one of the dumb-bells on the stage, and added that if he was jealous, not to take it out on me.
‘Jealous of you,’ said he contemptuously, on our way to the dressing-room. ‘Why, I have more talent in my arse than you have in your whole body!’
‘That’s where your talent lies,’ I retorted, and quickly closed the dressing-room door.
*
When Sydney came to town we decided to get a flat in the Brixton Road and to furnish it to the extent of forty pounds. We went to a second-hand furniture shop in Newington Butts and told the owner how much we could afford to spend, and that we had four rooms to furnish. The owner took a personal interest in our problem and spent many hours helping us pick out bargains. We carpeted the front room and linoleumed the others and bought an upholstered suite – a couch and two armchairs. In one corner of the sitting-room we put a fretwork Moorish screen, lighted from behind by a coloured yellow bulb, and in the opposite corner, on a gilt easel, a pastel in a gilded frame. The picture was of a nude model standing on a pedestal, looking sideways over her shoulder as a bearded artist is about to brush a fly off her bottom. This objet d’art and the screen, I thought, made the room. The final décor was a combination of a Moorish cigarette shop and a French whore-house. But we loved it. We even bought an upright piano, and although we spent fifteen pounds over our budget, we certainly had value for it. The flat at 15 Glenshaw Mansions, Brixton Road, was our cherished haven. How we looked forward to it after playing in the provinces! We were now prosperous enough to help Grandfather and give him ten shillings a week and we were able to engage a maid to come twice a week and clean up the flat, but it was hardly necessary, for we rarely disturbed a thing. We lived in it as though it were a holy temple. Sydney and I would sit in our bulky armchairs with smug satisfaction. We had bought a raised brass fender with red leather seating around it and I would go from the armchair to the fender, testing them for comfort.
*
At sixteen my idea of romance had been inspired by a theatrical poster showing a girl standing on a cliff with the wind blowing through her hair. I imagined myself playing golf with her-a game I loathe – walking over the dewy downs, indulging in throbbing sentiment, health and nature. That was romance. But young love is something else. It usually follows a uniform pattern. Because of a glance, a few words at the beginning (usually asinine words), in a matter of minutes the whole aspect of life is changed, all nature is in sympathy with us, and suddenly reveals its hidden joys. And that is what happened to me.
I was almost nineteen and already a successful comedian in the Karno Company, but something was lacking. Spring had come and gone and summer was upon me with an emptiness. My daily routine was stale, my environment dreary. I could see nothing in my future but a commonplaceness among dull, commonplace people. To be occupied with the business of just grubbing for a living was not good enough. Life was menial and lacked enchantment. I grew melancholy and dissatisfied and took lonely walks on Sunday and listened to park bands. I could support neither my own company nor that of anyone else. And of course, the obvious thing happened: I fell in love.
We were playing at the Streatham Empire. In those days we performed at two or three music halls nightly, travelling from one to the other in a private bus. At Streatham we were on early in order to appear later at the Canterbury Music Hall and then the Tivoli. It was daylight when we started work. The heat was oppressive and the Streatham Empire was half empty, which, incidentally, did
