AS I travelled back to London, having not expected to return there for at least six months, I had plenty of time to consider how the land lay. Even though I was disappointed that my scheme to leave Chaplin behind had come to grief, and was mortified at missing out on a first-class ride on the Lusitania as a consequence, nonetheless I found myself beaming happily as the Midlands rolled by outside the carriage window.
It was Tilly. Tilly was the reason for my sunny mood. And in the end what did it matter how we got to the States, and who else came on the trip? The important thing was that we would be together again. Charlie’s name hadn’t even come up in our reconciliatory conversation the day before, and she had not seemed at all agitated that he might not make it to the ship in time, unlike Albert Austin, who had looked close to tears.
So while I’d much much rather he stayed behind with his career in ruins, if he absolutely had to come with us to America, in order that we could go to America, so be it. I could bear it.
Once I reached the hustle and bustle of the capital once more time was not on my side, so I made all haste to the address on the Brixton Road where Charlie lived with his brother.
The Chaplins rented a top-floor flat above a parade of shops – there was a butcher’s and a baker’s but disappointingly nowhere that I could see to buy custom-made candle holders. As I approached I found myself on the wrong side of the road, so I paused on the pavement and looked across, trying to judge where number 16 was to be found while awaiting a break in the traffic. I had my target in sight and was just about to step out when I glanced to my left and got the shock of my life. There, leaning indolently against a wall, flicking through a newspaper, was none other than the creature Moulden.
Really, this was too much.
He had not spotted me, fortunately, so I quickly retreated to a safe distance up the road and found a vantage point from which I could spy on him. What was he doing there? Every few seconds he would glance up from his reading – if indeed he was actually reading – and he’d eye the doorway opposite, the one which I had determined led to the Chaplins’ flat. He was keeping watch, that’s what he was doing. It defied belief that he could be expecting me to turn up, so he must have been waiting for Charlie, or for Syd. Then, with a heavy sigh, I spotted one of his cohorts, the fellow with the enormous hands, a little further along, also keeping watch. He was sporting a rather natty beret. Very nautical.
I considered for a moment, and decided that the fact that they were not expecting me would not for a moment prevent them from attempting to resume our last encounter where it had left off.
Damn it all!
I needed to get in to see if Chaplin was at home, and there was precious little time before I would have to make for Waterloo and the boat train. What was I to do? I inched carefully along the pavement towards Chaplin’s address, taking cover wherever I could find it, falling in step behind a fat gentlemen for a few strides, then ducking into a grocer’s a few doors down to pretend to shop.
An ailing white motor van bearing the legend ‘Pears Soap’ oozed and parped along the street towards me. As it drew level with me I nipped out into the road and trotted alongside it until I was level with Chaplin’s front door, which happily was ajar, and then I darted into the darkened corridor. I made it unseen and quickly ran up the stairs to the top flat, where I pounded on the door.
There was no response from inside. I banged again and again, and shouted Charlie’s name, but to no avail. I gave up and sat on the stairs to think, and after a couple of minutes I realised I was being watched. At the foot of the stairs was a child, a raggedy street urchin, looking back up at me.
“You ’is friend, are you?”
“Yes,” I said, “but he’s not in.”
“He’s in there all right,” said the urchin. “He just don’t want to see nobody, is all.”
“Is that right?” I said.
“Yeah,” the kid said. “He comes out for smokes. I fetches ’em for ’im, don’t I?”
“That’s why you’re waiting?”
“Right.”
“Well, perhaps I’ll wait with you.”
“No skin off my nose,” said the child, and we sat in companionable silence for a while. I lit a cigarette, gave one to the kid and checked my watch with increasing anxiety, reckoning that there was barely time to make it down to Southampton and catch up with the rest of the company. I was damned if I was going to miss the boat as well.
“You in an ’urry, are you?” the urchin asked, languidly puffing out a cloud of smoke.
“Somewhat,” I said.
“Only if you wants to get in and see ’im, there’s a key just there, on top of the door frame.”
I leapt to my feet and felt with my fingertips, and blow me, the kid was right. I saluted him, opened the door and went in.
It was dark in there, and didn’t smell especially pleasant. The curtains were drawn against the world, and on the kitchen table there was a lump of bread and some cheese, both of which were rock hard and bore signs of mould. The parlour seemed cosy enough, with a pair of matching chunky armchairs arranged beside a fireplace, which didn’t seem to have been home to a lit fire for a while.
I found my way along to a bedroom, and eased the door open gingerly. And there I found him, curled up on top of his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest. Piles of cigarette ends littered the floor, along with several empty bottles which had contained intoxicating spirits of one kind or another. The room smelled of a pub the morning after a busy night before. At the end of a really busy week.
I drew closer to the bed, trying to see if Charlie was breathing, because I suddenly had the ghastly apprehension that he might have done something foolish. No, I could see a shallow rise and fall there, and a quiver of his stubbly lips. Drunk, not dead, thank goodness for that.
I reached out a hand to shake him, but suddenly stopped short.
Here was a thought.
Chaplin … dead?!
He wasn’t, but he could have been. He could very well have been. He had clearly embarked upon a dramatic decline, and if no one arrested it there could surely only be one end.
I sat heavily on a chair as ramifications rushed in, clamouring for attention, clouding my head, drowning my reason. Revenge, revenge for all he had done to me, the dirty tricks, the double dealing, stealing my girl behind my back, smashing my knee, queering my pitch with Karno. And then there would be a clear sunlit run ahead, with Tilly, and with Karno’s in America, without this little bastard gumming up the works. Revenge, revenge was here, within my grasp, if only…
I wouldn’t even have to do anything, would I? Just turn my back, that would be enough. Leave now and say I couldn’t find him, and let nature, his self-dramatising depressive nature, take its course. The outcome wasn’t certain, though, I feverishly reasoned. Someone else could find him in time. Syd, Syd could be back at any moment…
I could … could I? Pick up a pillow and … finish him? The boy had seen me, but boys could be bought. Moulden was outside, but maybe that would be a good thing, maybe he would even be blamed…
I stood slowly, leaned over, looked down at his grubby face, caught a whiff of his foul breath.
That frail frame, curled to protect itself from a cruel world. As I loomed over it all I could think of, marvelling suddenly, was the Power it contained. I thought back to the times I had been with Chaplin onstage, and considered then what I had seen, without the resentment, and the competitiveness, and the bitterness. Some of the finest moments of my life, when the audience was eating out of the palm of my hand, and the Power coursed through my tingling veins, had been shared with him, with Charlie Chaplin. I saw in that moment that I would never, could never, match him, and saw too, I think, what the world would miss if he were to expire theatrically, self-indulgently, in this pit.
“Hey! Charlie!” I said, taking myself by surprise. “Wake up, man!”
He did not stir, so I began to clap my hands together as I called him up from the depths of his drunken stupor.
“Hey! Charlie! Come on, up you get!”
Slowly he roused himself, and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. When he saw me he squinted, as if trying to make his eyes focus. Then he recognised me and scrambled into a sitting position, pressing himself back against the headboard to try and get as far from me as possible.
“What?!” he cried anxiously. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to get you,” I said. He began to tremble, as though I had just confirmed his worst apprehensions.
“Why?” he stammered. “I did what you said, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” He had the look of a man not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming a nightmare.
I looked at the state he was in, unshaven, filthy, hollow-eyed. I supposed he hadn’t eaten in days, and had subsisted only on drink and cigarettes. What a depression he had fallen into, and all because of me. It was all terribly dramatic, of course, and woe is me, but even so, I found myself feeling ashamed.
“Come on, old chap,” I said, more kindly. “I mean to say I’ve come to get you, to take you to America. Get some things in a suitcase, for goodness’ sake, and be quick about it. We’ve a train to catch.”
Chaplin looked at me as though I was a creature from another world. I decided to leave him to pull himself together. I went through into the other rooms and opened the curtains, then opened the windows to let some air in. I disposed of his mouldering left-over food, and found a dustpan and brush to deal with the fag ends.
When I went back into the bedroom he was still sitting there just as I had left him.
“What do you mean?” he said, still baffled.
“America, come on, chop chop!”
“But … the boat’s already left… Aren’t you supposed to be…?”
“We’re going on a different one, and it sails tonight, so get yourself moving, will you?”
Chaplin blinked up at me from the bed. “Why? What made you change your mind?”
“Let’s say I decided I’d rather do Alf a good turn than you a bad one. I’ll explain on the way, but for now you really must get on with it!”
He seemed suddenly to realise that I was neither a figment of his own imagination nor joking, and leapt from the bed. He was a whirlwind of activity now, grabbing fistfuls of shirts here, and a violin there, a Latin textbook, if you please, some carpet slippers, what cigarettes he had left and a packet of lucifers, some ties, a boater, socks, and he stuffed them all any old how into his travelling trunk.
“Ready!” he cried, standing to attention. He looked better already. The light had returned to his eyes, and he seemed invigorated once more.
“Good,” I said. “Let’s make tracks.”
Chaplin dragged his trunk over to the front door, and then snapped his fingers as he remembered something.
“One minute,” he said, scrambling around in the drawer of the bureau until he located a pencil and a scrap of paper. He scribbled on it quickly, and then slapped the note on the table. I glanced at it as he did so, and saw that it read: “Off to America, love Charlie.”
For Syd, of course. Which reminded me.
“One slight problem,” I said, as we stepped out onto the landing. “That unsavoury ginger geezer is loafing about outside. I reckon he must be waiting for words with your Syd.”
Charlie twitched his mouth from side to side, thinking.
“Show me,” he said.
We tiptoed down to the street door, which was still ajar, carrying his trunk between us.
“There, see?” I said, as Charlie peered carefully out. “And further down that way is his chum, the chap with the neckerchief and the beret, see him?”
Charlie nodded, and withdrew into the shadows. “They’d be upon us before we got to the corner. Wait, I have it…” He inched back to the door and whistled softly a couple of times. In a few moments we were joined by the street urchin I had met earlier on.
“Arternoon, Mister,” this youngster said cheerily. “Ciggies, is it?”
“Not this time, my friend,” Charlie said. “Look over yonder. You see that fellow?”
“The one with the prize ’ooter, you mean?”
“Exactly. And you see … that chap, there, with the beret?” The urchin nodded. “Here’s a shilling. Go and tell that one that that one wants to speak to him urgently.”
The kid flipped the shilling up in the air and caught it deftly. “You’re the boss,” he said, and sauntered out into the street. Charlie watched him go, and after a moment or two his protégé was leading Moulden by the arm down the street to our right.
Charlie gripped the handle of his trunk and I grabbed the other end. He was a changed man, a livewire.
“Ready?” he hissed, and I tensed. “Let’s go!”
We darted out of the doorway and belted off up the street to the left. We made it to the corner, and Charlie started to turn to find us somewhere to conceal ourselves, but before we could nip out of sight I saw that Moulden had realised he’d been had, and he and his mate were hurrying diagonally across the road towards us. There was no earthly point in hiding now, we just had to run for it, so we pelted straight up the main road.
Charlie looked back, and his eyes widened. We were badly hampered by his trunk, and Moulden was only a few yards adrift. He was going to catch us for sure.
Then, blessed relief, I heard the ting-ting of a tram bell warning us to move over, and a northbound tram slid alongside. Gathering the last of my breath I shouted to Charlie: “On!”
He jumped up onto the tram’s backboard. I shoved the trunk up after him, and made my own leap, landing there – just – on my knees. Blast it, that hurt!
Moulden’s chum in the beret had fallen badly behind, but Moulden himself wasn’t giving up his quarry so easily. A nasty grin spread beneath that bulbous twin-lobed pitted red nose, and he managed to get a hand on the pole. Next he would pull himself aboard, but before he could I lashed out a boot at his fingers, crushing them. With a howl he let go his grip and sprawled on the road in a heap, and Charlie and I watched him dwindle into the distance as the tram rattled away up the Brixton Road. We looked at one another then, breathless and sweating, and both began to laugh.
We caught the boat train from Waterloo station with not an inch to spare, Chaplin-style, and as the locomotive headed towards Southampton Charlie seemed to regain a little of himself with every passing mile. Having started the journey looking very much like – well, not to put too fine a point on it – a tramp, he finished it spruced and gleaming like a thoroughgoing dandy. He contrived to shave along the way, which must have taken considerable dexterity, for there was not a scratch on him.
So high were his spirits now, from one extreme direct to the other without calling at points in between, that he was not much interested in any explanations from me. He preferred to beam at the passing countryside, and burble about America, the land of opportunity. I suppose, in a way, he must have felt like he’d been spared the noose, as he would not now have to invent an explanation for Karno that would enable him keep his job. He would have to make some sort of excuse to Alf Reeves and the company, but that was small beer by comparison.
As we neared our destination he suddenly leaned over and put his hand on my knee.
“Thank you, Arthur,” he said, with a quite dazzling smile (those teeth!). “Friends?”
“Friends,” I said, and we shook on it. He just loved doing that, didn’t he?
And at that moment we were friends, I think, and I was glad I had relented, not just for Alf’s sake, but for Charlie’s and for mine. After all, I thought, so Charlie Chaplin comes to America with us. What’s the worst that could happen…? (Hint: read his autobiography and you’ll find out.)
Once at Southampton we were collected at the dock gates by a functionary of the Thomson Line, and led to the RMS Cairnrona on foot. As we made our way along the quay we found ourselves passing by a steam packet with a lavender-grey hull and two red and black funnels. The name on the stern caught my eye.
“Well, well,” I said. “How about that?”
“What is it?” Charlie said.
“Wait here a minute,” I said. A little way off I could see a starched busybody of a fellow in a braided uniform heading towards us. His white peaked cap bore the same name as the ship, and I put on a gentlemanly air and accosted him before he could drive me away.
“Ahoy!” I said. “Are you from the Dover Castle there?”
“I am, sir. What is your business?”
“Are you the captain, might I ask?”
“No, sir, I am not. I am Dawkins, the purser. Can I help you?”
“Indeed,” I said. “The purser, is that so? It so happens that I am acquainted with Mr Turnbull, from your London office on Fenchurch Street. Do you know the gentleman?”
“I do,” said this Dawkins.
“You have a fellow on your boat, name of Moulden,” I said.
“What of it?”
“I have a message from him,” I said. “He wishes you to know that he has retired from the seafaring life, effective immediately, and you should take steps to replace him as quickly as possible.”
“I see,” said Dawkins, frowning. “And did he give a reason?”
“He said – I’m sorry to have to say this, Mr Dawkins, but remember I am merely the messenger – that the ship’s purser was an insufferable prig and that he could not bear to spend another moment in his company.”
Dawkins stiffened, and his face turned a sort of purple colour.
“He also gave me to understand that you would be pleased as Punch, because this would give you the chance to scour the docks for a young boy more to your taste. Does that mean anything to you?”
The purser’s eyes bulged with outrage. “And what is your name, sir, if I might ask?”
“My name?” I said. “My name is Sydney Chaplin. I bid you good day, sir.”
I left him standing there with steam coming out from beneath his starched white cap, and rejoined Charlie and our guide, pleased with a very tidy bit of business.
Shortly we came to the dock where the Cairnrona was berthed, and I got my first look at her. A modest little vessel, black-grey smoke already beginning to billow from her single funnel.
The Thomson man noticed that I had stopped, and retraced his steps with a look of concern.
“Something wrong, sir?”
“Not exactly the Lusitania, is it?”
He grimaced apologetically. “Few ships are,” he said.
Once we joined the rest of the company on board it was plain to see that not everyone was as pleased to see Charlie Chaplin as Mr Alfred Reeves was. Talk about the prodigal! He took him, and embraced him, and pinched his face as though checking he was flesh and blood and not an apparition come to torment him. Have you ever seen a mother who has mislaid a child, exclaiming that when she finds the errant infant she is going to tan his hide and make him wish he’d never been born, but then when the little rogue hoves into view it’s all hugs and kisses and never-leave-me-agains? Like that, exactly like that.
At one point, Alf managed to free an arm from this embarrassing display and grab me by the hand to offer his heartfelt, if silent, thanks.
The rest of the company, however (except for old Charlie Griffiths, who was floating off in the lap of luxury somewhere past Ireland by now), stood and seethed. Arms folded, lips pursed, eyes boring holes in the back of the Chaplin skull.
I found out why when the welcome party dispersed and I could grab a word with Tilly.
“I don’t suppose by any chance we have … first-class cabins?” I said.
“There isn’t even a first class on this bucket,” Tilly said. “There’s second class, and there’s third class, but there’s no first. What’s the point of that, I ask you?”
“I see, but it’s not so bad, is it?”
“I’ll tell you what it is, it’s a converted cattle boat, and I’m not even joking.”
No wonder Charlie got such a muted welcome.
Later, as the Cairnrona steamed out into the Solent, and on into the English Channel, I leaned on the rail and watched England slide by. I was filled with anticipation, for I had dreamed of travelling to America ever since I had whiled away my time in Cambridge reading the good old penny bloods. I had a great sense of well-being all at once, because I felt things had been resolved between myself and Charlie. I had had my victory, but had not, in the end, rubbed his nose in it. I had also, don’t forget, scored a point over the creature Moulden, too.
Yes, I had a great feeling of optimism, a feeling that everything was going to turn out fine. I didn’t know then that instead of heading to New York, where we were due to perform, we were actually en route to Montreal. Nor did I know that the propeller was going to give way, leaving us adrift for three whole days in the middle of the stormy Atlantic, at the mercy of wind and waves and mal de mer. And I didn’t know that my rivalry with Chaplin was destined to erupt into strife, bitterness, alcoholism, ruin and murder. That was all still to come.
Tilly joined me, and slipped her arm into mine.
“The cabins are not quite so grand as on the Lusitania,” she said. “But I do still have one to myself. “Want to take a look?”
Yes, I thought, this is all going to turn out just fine.