The Fun Factory Read Online Free PDF Page A

absolutely certain, that everyone in the Old Reader at that moment was in my thrall. I held them in my hand. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do when they stopped cheering, but I did know that I would know, exactly. It was the finest feeling I’d ever had in my entire life.
    As the laughter rolled around the room, I watched it, detached, serene, like a scientist watching an experiment going exactly according to plan. Through the haze of smoke I could make out individual faces, eyes fastened on me, mouths open in laughter or anticipation of laughter. And there, amongst the blazer-clad goons who had drifted round there after finishing their drippy song, I caught sight of a familiar face. Watching. Not laughing. Just watching.
    My father.

3
OH! MR PORTER!
    HE was looking directly at me. I was wearing his clothes, and his hat, and a parody of his paunch, and the better part of the population of the college, which was his whole world, was laughing at me. At
him
.
    All this I spotted in the blink of an eye. I was able to register the sudden sight of him, digest it, consider its implications, set it aside for later, even as the laughter rolled on. The Power did this for me. I seemed to be operating at a different speed to the rest of the world, like the man in the H.G. Wells story whose trousers catch fire. 3
    And then it was over.
    Browes was bounding out onto the stage again, leading applause for me, and I walked off slowly, carefully remaining in character, already wanting to do it again, and wondering how I was going to explain myself.
    “Well done!” Mr Luscombe was saying. “Didn’t I tell you? You were a sensation…!”
    Others clapped me on the back, wanting to share in mytriumph. That clog-dancing fellow trod on my foot with his big wooden boot, but I hardly noticed. What was I going to say to my father? I should have known – nothing got past the old spider.
    I slipped out through the library and out of the side door into the cool night air, leaving another group of bright young things to warble on about punting to Grantchester, or some such, and I stood with my back against the ancient stonework for a moment to gather my thoughts. Lance lurched around the corner and immediately spotted me.
    “Now then, Arthur, before you say anything. I never let on,” he said, as he trotted over, his hands raised defensively in front of himself.
    “Of course not,” I sighed.
    “I never, I swear!” he protested, detecting the sarcasm in my voice. “He heard the rumpus and came over to see for himself what was going on!”
    It had the ghastly ring of truth about it, I had to admit. That I should be onstage pretending to be my father berating the audience for not making enough noise, thus inspiring them to make more noise, and that that noise should then have been what brought him over to see what was happening, well, it was one of those naturally occurring moments of perfect comic irony that you can’t make up. I grunted, letting the lump off the hook.
    “He wants to see you,” Lance said, grimacing in an unusual moment of fraternal sympathy. I shrugged and set off over to the lodge, the condemned man, to take my punishment (without hearty breakfast).
    I shoved open the heavy old door slowly, setting the ancient hinges squealing. For once, though, my father wasn’t standing atthe ready behind the counter, alerted by his early warning system.
    “Hello…?”
    His voice came from the back. “Come through.”
    I nipped behind the counter and into his little back room, which was as snug and warm as a toasted muffin. There was a fire going in the grate and my father was sitting in his old comfy chair (his father’s before him). He waved me over to a stool opposite and I sat there with my hands on my knees for long agonising moments, waiting for the thunderstorm to strike.
    “I was wondering where my second-best waistcoat had got to.”
    “Sorry,” I said.
    He looked me up and down as though seeing me for the