The Fun Factory Read Online Free Page B

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 theold 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