The Fun Factory Read Online Free

amusing college characters. I found myself demonstrating my own party piece: my impersonation of my father.
    “That’s priceless, you know?” Luscombe gurgled between laughs. Both of us had become pretty hysterical by this time, and were laughing at almost anything.
    “I’m serious,” he insisted. “You could do that at the smoker. You
should
do that at the smoker. It would be an absolute smash hit. I’ll speak to Browes, he’s organising the whole thing. Do it, say you’ll do it. It will be a
sensation
!”
    Which is how I found myself a week later, still not quite believing it, in the Old Reader, about to make my theatrical debut. There was a little raised stage, with a pianist improvising some agreeable plinky-plonk while a noisy audience of a hundred and twenty souls paid no attention to him whatsoever.
    I peered out through a gap in the hastily strung black curtain that formed the impromptu wing. The room was packed. A fug of smog hung down from the low ceiling, being fuelled by dozens of cigars like the chimneys of some great industrial metropolis. Champagne corks popped and young male voices brayed and hee-hawed boozily.
    Standing there out of sight in my father’s clothes, a cushion padding out my tummy, my left leg trembling apprehensively of its own accord, the week just past seemed like a bizarre dream.
    I remembered Mr Luscombe’s excitement as he told me that he had fixed it with Mr Browes, who was organising the smoker, for me to perform, and the churning of my guts as I realised there was no way to back out of it.
    I remembered lying awake at night in the tiny room I shared with Lance, gripped with terror, and nudging my brother into the land of the living.
    “Lance? You awake? I want to ask you something.”
    He sighed, rolling over to face me, one eye open. “What?”
    “When you were in Africa…?”
    He groaned. “When I was in
Africa
? Lea’ me ’lone…”
    “You were scared, weren’t you?”
    “I told you, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, but how did you …? How did you … manage, when you were really scared? How did you manage to carry on?”
    “I tried to stay downwind of as many people as I could so that they didn’t know how scared I was.”
    “Seriously, Lance.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you this. It was always worse before than it was during.”
    “Really?”
    “Unless you were one of the blokes who got shot in the head or had an arm blown off. Then it was worse during. Now go sleep…”
    “Lance, listen…”
    I told him about the smoker, about what I’d somehow agreed to do, and he rolled over and looked at me, before saying: “There’s nothing to be scared of. How many of ’em are going tohave repeating rifles? How many of ’em are going to try and chop you to bits with machetes?”
    “Not too many, probably…”
    “Exactly. Now go to sleep…”
    There was a rustling, as of a big and complicated frock, and Mr Luscombe was beside me, also peering out.
    “Decent crowd!” he hissed. On the other side of the curtain another cork popped, and half a dozen boisterous voices whaheyed as their owners thrust their glasses forward for a refill. Luscombe suddenly hiked up his skirt and retrieved a hip flask from his trouser pocket. “Here,” he winked, “bit of Dutch courage. Why not?”
    I took a sip and felt the spirit trace the shape of my insides in fire.
    “Why Dutch courage, I wonder, when it’s
Scotch
whisky?” Luscombe was musing to himself. “Do the Dutch even make whisky? And what do they have to be so damn timid about? Living next door to all those Germans, I suppose. Ha!”
    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,”