Beverley Hills Browning Read online

  'Beverly Hills'

  Browning

  From tapes among the

  papers of Richard

  Browning

  Transcribed and edited

  by Peter Corris

  Copyright © 2014, Peter Corris

  First published by Penguin Australia Ltd, 1987

  FOR THE MEMORY OF

  J. W. 'Jim' Davidson

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  'BEVERLY HILLS' BROWNING

  APPENDIX:

  Douglas Fairbanks,

  Richard Browning

  and Robin Hood

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  A patient search has revealed the batch of cassettes following on from those which record the early life of Richard Browning (published in 1987 as 'Box Office' Browning). Formerly stored in a box which had contained Old Grandad bourbon whisky, the cassettes are now in the process of being sorted through, labelled and copied.

  As indicated in the Introduction to the previous book, Browning's recording methods were erratic. The chaos now seems worse than was originally thought, particularly in the later stages of the taping. Browning appears to have used different tape recorders at different times and in different places, and he sometimes leaves off his account on a cassette in one machine, resumes on another and then returns to the first still later. Not until all the tapes have been transcribed will a fully accurate version of Browning's long journal be possible, but these recollections of his early years in Hollywood appear to be coherent and complete.

  There is, however, the matter of self-correction. When it pleased him or when he hit upon a stray memory, Browning corrected a statement made earlier, frequently abusing himself for having got something wrong. Thus in the course of the narrative on another tape (provisionally labelled Tape 12/i), he says that it was not Rudyard Kipling whom he chauffeured in London in 1919, but Conan Doyle, and he adds a significant detail:

  The worst part of that job was the uniform — military style jacket, boots and cap. The get-up produced an image too close to that of Corporal William Hughes, 1st AIF, for me to feel comfortable in it.

  Readers of 'Box Office' Browning (see especially pp. 116-20) will know just how uncomfortable Browning (recently a deserter under the name of Hughes) would have felt.

  As in the previous book, it has sometimes been necessary to add a note of explanation or clarification to Browning's text. Once again, indistinct passages, occasioned usually by drunkenness, are present, and these are indicated. Punctuation and elision are designed to convey Browning's tone and manner of speech.

  P. C.

  Sydney, 1987

  'BEVERLY HILLS' BROWNING

  1

  We couldn't have been very far off the coast of New South Wales when I crept out of the sail locker of the Sternwood. I just couldn't take the smell any longer – lock yourself for a few hours in a closet along with some sheets that the cat has pissed on and you'll have some idea of what it was like.

  I stumbled across the deck trying to keep my balance as the ship heaved and tilted. I had my bag in one hand and was groping for the rail with the other when a voice cut through the steady hum of the wind.

  'Hey! You there!'

  Like a fool I dropped my bag and put my hands in the air. Then I fell over and slithered along the messy deck. When I got my face out of the salty slime I looked up to see a black giant looming over me.

  'Why'd you put yore hands up like that, man?'

  I grinned foolishly. 'I don't know. I thought you might have a gun.'

  He threw back his head and laughed. He seemed to have about fifty teeth the size of tombstones and the colour of cue balls in his head. 'Gun. Man, why would I have a gun?'

  I climbed to my feet and retrieved the bag. 'I'm, just nervous. I'm a stowaway.'

  'You don't say. We'd better go see the Captain. Less'n you fancy swimmin' home from here?'

  He pointed at the sea; his hand was pink-palmed and about the size of a shovel. I shook my head and got a grip on my bag.

  'Least you ain't sick. Las' one we had, why he was sick all over that locker. Took him a day an' a night to clean it up.'

  'Then what?' I said.

  'I disremember. Come on, the Captain down here.'

  I took a look to the west before we went down the companionway but I couldn't see land. Just grey water and white tops. If I'd been wearing a hat I would have doffed and waved it. Stay on the boat at all costs, Dick, I thought. That's the ticket.

  The smells below deck reminded me that I hadn't eaten for around fifteen hours. Sea air and the movement of a ship gives me an appetite rather than the reverse. Also I was parched after the first hour or two because I'd swigged down all the brandy I had with me in an effort to control the fear. And I had a bursting bladder. I clattered down the iron stairs after the negro thinking that I'd give one of my gold sovereigns for directions to the toilet, and a mug of tea with a good dose of rum in it to follow.

  My discoverer hammered on a door at the end of a narrow passage.

  'Who's that?' The voice was deep, slurred and slow, either by booze or sleep.

  'Bosun, Cap'n. Jesse.'

  'Are we sinking, bosun?'

  'No, Cap'n.'

  'Then go 'way.'

  'Got a stowaway here, Cap'n.'

  'How old?'

  Jesse looked enquiringly at me. 'Twenty-four,' I said.

  'Twenty-fo', Cap'n.'

  'What size?'

  'Big, Cap'n, looks strong.'

  'Feed him and put him to work. If he talks English tell him the first stop's Honolulu, if he don't just put him to work.'

  Jesse rolled his eyes at me and we backed away from the door. 'Sounds like a decent chap,' I said. 'What's his name?'

  'Captain Clancy. He all right, long as you ain't drunk when he sober or vice versey.'

  'So I work my passage, is that it?' I tried to sound nonchalant but I probably didn't succeed. I had an awful feeling that this big black ran the ship and could do pretty much what he pleased. Like all Australians at that time (and since for the majority), I wasn't used to black people having any authority. That was scary enough, but I also had a bursting bladder.

  We climbed up onto the deck again. The wind was strong and a couple of hands were busy with equipment. They looked incuriously at Jesse and me. 'That's it,' he growled. 'What's yore name?'

  As always I thought quickly before answering that question. No reason to lie. 'Richard Browning, Dick.'

  'Well, Dick, my man, first thing you do is hand over that valise there.'

  'What?'

  'The bag, man. You a stowaway, maybe you got the Crown jools in there.'

  I gave him the bag. He opened it and rummaged through the contents. The .45 pistol came up smoothly; it looked like a toy in his big hand as he cocked it and sighted out over the rail.

  'Careful,' I said, 'it's loaded.'

  He nodded. He looked at my book on card playing and the new pack of cards I'd thrown in the bag at some point. 'You gots to realise the delicacy 'a yore position, Dick,' he drawled. 'Here you are, an illegal person at sea . . .' Suddenly, he lunged forward and jabbed at me with the pistol. The muzzle hit the money belt around my middle and coins clinked. He nodded again and riffled the pages of the book. I was sweating although the wind was cold. Spray lashed my face; I realised the delicacy of my position.

  Jesse stripped the wrapping off the cards and did a fast one-handed shuffle. He held up the cards in one hand and the gun in the other. 'Yo gets yore fun with which one a these?'

  I gulped, painful with so dry a throat. 'The cards,' I said.

  The cards literally disappeared and he held out an empty hand. 'Welcome abo'd, Dick.'

 
I got hold of a couple of fingers and shook them. 'Thanks. Your name is . . .'

  'Jesse Bill.' The cards re-appeared and he dropped them and the pistol into the bag. The Sternwood runs on work an' play.'

  'Great. Any chance of a feed before work begins?'

  'I like yore style. If you can keep down our cook's breakfast you a natural-born sailor. Ain't yore first time at sea, is it?'

  'No.' I was hobbling by this stage and didn't have time for the niceties. I rushed to the rail and unbuttoned. As blessed relief came, I thought about the troopship Wisden that had transported me to the madness of the Somme and the P & O cruiser that had taken me back to Australia and a welter of troubles. It seemed to me that I was at sea as a free man for the first time. Of course, a first class berth with champagne of an evening and some bad card players in the smoking room would have been better, but bolters1 can't be choosers.

  The crew of the Sternwood was a good bunch, easy and friendly the way Americans are (those that aren't treacherous, murderous swine, that is). I was Dick to all and sundry within a day or two and they were 'Chuck', 'Hal', 'Jerry' and so on to me. The work was damnably hard and they were all glad of an extra hand; that was one reason for my good reception. Another was my rotten bad luck at cards. Within a week they'd lowered my gold supply alarmingly. Jesse, who was the bosun and had authority over the white men, which was unusual in those days, was a big winner. He'd flash his teeth at me as he raked in a pot.

  'You sure there ain't another one like you in that sail locker, Richard? I'd sure admire to meet him.'

  'The luck'll change,' I said grimly. But it didn't and after the first week or so I'd only play for tiny stakes. I didn't want to land in America broke.

  As I say, the work was hard. I shovelled coal, cleaned boilers, greased machinery, peeled potatoes and stood watch. The food was monotonous – salt meat, hard tack, rice – but I'd had worse in Long Bay Gaol and other places, and I wolfed it down to fuel the body for the work. The main trick to surviving was to stay out of the way of Captain Tom Clancy.

  Clancy was an eccentric. Now, eccentrics, for my money, belong in mansions surrounded by servants who can stop them doing things that make other people unhappy. Clancy was in the worst possible position for an eccentric – ruler of a small universe which is what a ship at sea is. He was completely unpredictable; nice as pie one day and roaring for the times when he could have given his men the lash the next. It was he who'd appointed Jesse bosun, a highly eccentric act although a brilliant one because Jesse was the perfect man for the job. But he was also capable of enormous folly, like trying to rid the ship of cockroaches or ordering the men to attend prayer sessions on certain saints' days.

  He was a rabid Baptist, a renegade Roman Catholic, addicted to Biblical quotation.

  'Browning,' he boomed at me one day when I was attempting to lash something down on the foredeck. 'You are remarkably clumsy at that. Can you say with Gershom that you are "a stranger in a strange land"?'2He was a broad, stocky man with iron grey hair, yellow teeth and a cast in one eye that made it hard to tell where he was looking.

  'Beg pardon, Cap'n,' says I. 'Must get below to the boilers . . .'

  'Hold hard, man. "The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord".'3 His mad, off-centre eyes glinted and his hands worked convulsively, clenching and unclenching around the ship's rail. We had brilliant sunshine and calm weather, worse luck. I prayed for a wave to cover him with spray or for a marlin to break the surface, anything.

  'What caused you to become a stowaway, Browning?'

  My mind raced. You're usually safe with some kind of anti-woman sentiment with sailors. None of them has the least idea of what women are about. But there was no knowing with Clancy – his views on the Virgin Mary were unorthodox, or so a Catholic in the crew had told me.

  'Woman trouble, Cap'n,' says I. 'The whole continent of Australia could not hold her and me.'

  He stared out at the ocean. We were nearing the tropics. Flecks of phosphorus danced in the water.

  ' "It is better to live in a tree top, than with a brawling woman in a house",'4 he said glumly.

  'Quite,' I said.

  He turned on his heel and went below. I breathed a sigh of relief and got back to work. At least he'd been sober; when tipsy the quotations could spew out for an hour and I once saw him have to be restrained when he went for a crewman shouting, ' "If thine eye offend thee . . ." '5

  But all things considered the run across the Pacific to Honolulu wasn't too bad. The ship handled the going pretty well; the cargo didn't shift and I didn't get seasick. There was just enough rum to give a man something to look forward to, and to an old soldier like me (albeit one who discharged himself a little ahead of schedule), enforced abstinence from women wasn't a new experience. I'd had enough of women for a time anyway. I had occasional dreams of my dear wife, Elizabeth, in which she got fatter and fatter and her voice got louder as she expanded. Terrifying.

  Honolulu, in the 1920s, was a wide open town. What else could you expect with sailors landing there every day after months at sea? Add to that the beachcombers, the land dealers, the money lenders and the gamblers and you had the makings of a hell-town. A hell in Paradise of course. The islands appeared to me to the most beautiful part of the world I'd ever seen as we steamed towards Oahu. I don't think so now; I'd have to give that award to parts of France. But then I'd only seen France as a bloodstained, body-strewn sea of mud. After my trials military, filmic and marital, I was ready for some relaxation and Honolulu looked like the perfect place for it.

  I only knew one way to relax and that was with a bottle and a woman, or several bottles and women. I intimated as much to Jesse just before we went ashore. It was hot on board in the late afternoon. We were tied up at a wharf that had seen better days; the timbers creaked alarmingly and the fish and bugs in the water seemed to be eating the planks away. There were plenty of bugs in the air, too.

  'You want Long Jack's saloon, my man,' Jesse said, 'but you ain't got a lot of time to fit all those sinful recreations in. We's off in the mo'ning of the day after tomorrow.'

  'Hardly worth stopping,' I said.

  'Naw, I wouldn't say that. Cap'n got radio messages to send about the cargo, 'n we need water and food.'

  'Well, that's a day and two nights.'

  Jesse let out his best basso profundo laugh. 'No, man, it's one night. Tomorrow we be cleanin' this ship stem to stern. She gotta pass inspection in 'Frisco. We'll all get drunk tonight fo' sure. An' we be sorry tomorrow. "Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." '6

  'You've been on this ship too long, Jesse,' I said.

  2

  But that's how it was. Long Jack's was a lantern-lit dive a short stagger from the wharves. The flimsy shack leaked people and music and smoke and noise. Since the crowd in the street seemed to be composed entirely of whores and pimps (I suppose there might have been a cardsharp or pickpocket or two), it didn't matter much whether you were inside or out. I rolled up, already oiled by a few tots of rum on board, about eight o'clock, with Jesse and a big Swede named Ingemar whom everyone called 'Dinge' on account of the whiteness of his hair and the paleness of his skin. He was a tigerish fighter in the fo'c'sle and I figured that I'd be safe in a war zone with this sort of company.

  The Volstead Act didn't apply in Hawaii so there was no restriction on the selling of booze. In Long Jack's they'd have sold rye whisky to a ten-year-old who said he was a midget with a high voice – if he had the price of the drink. The place was rollicking along when we got there; someone about the same shade as Jesse was hammering a piano. The smoke was so thick it seemed to sit on top of the drink in your glass and the men and women were shouting as if that was the only way they ever conversed. And drinking, and dancing, and swearing, and putting their hands where the bishop shouldn't see.

  'Yee-hah!' Dinge yelled and he plunged straight towards the bar pushing and shoving, eager to spend his
money, some of which, I might add, he'd won from me.' Jesse sidled up to the piano player and they exchanged whispers. I grabbed a table and looked up at Jesse.

  'Did you ask him if you could take over? Is that another thing you do well, Mr Bill?'

  'No, suh. You come into a place like this and the first thing you check for is the ol' Jim Crow.'

  I looked around. Some of the women were dark, some of the men were Orientals or looked as if they had island blood, but Jesse and the pianist were the only outright blacks.

  'What did he say?'

  'Said seein' I was big enough and in big white company it should be all right, long's I kept my hands off the light skin gals.'

  Dinge was pushing back towards us carrying shot glasses of whisky and steins of beer. Big as he was, blind loyal to Jesse and a hell of fighter, I didn't fancy getting in the middle of a lynching party, even with him along.

  'And will you?' I said anxiously.

  Jesse grinned. 'Dey's all pink inside. Let us drink!'

  We drank and drank some more. The pianist was joined by a horn man and a guitar player and they whipped up a storm. I got a tall, slant-eyed woman to dance with me but my British and Australian dancing style wasn't up to this action and she dropped me after one stumble through. I've always known when to fish and when to cut bait. I sat and watched while the people danced; mostly it was the women showing the men what to do but Jesse drank quietly for a while and then got up and cut a dark woman out of the herd by the bar. They swirled and jumped and he flipped her through the air and the crowd cheered. Then the pianist got up and did the same with the same woman. Dinge was deep in conversation with a girl about half his size over at the end of the bar. She stroked his white hair and nibbled his ear.

  I looked up from my beer and Jesse, the pianist and the dark dancing woman were sitting opposite me.

  'Havin' a good time, my man?' Jesse said.

  'Oh, sure, Jesse, sure.'