Box Office Browning Page 12

  'I hope you know more about the State of Victoria than you appear to about the Cape,' he said.

  I'd never been south of Gundagai.

  Halfway down the hill a dog shot out of the bushes at the side of the road and ran straight across in front of the Southwell buggy. The horse shied and bolted; my black bastard reared and almost threw me as the buggy swerved in front of us and then he was off too, bolting down the hill in a cloud of dust as if he was determined to dump me under the wheels of the buggy.

  I yelled and hung on. The yell seemed to push the horse harder. The road was pretty wide and clear but the bends were sharp; the buggy got around the first one and then there was a long steep stretch to the next. I looked up and caught a glimpse of Harry pulling at the reins and Annette's sheet-white face. My horse gained on the vehicle and drew level; I was clinging for dear life as the ground shot past. There were some skull-crackers of stones by the side of the road, too.

  I'll never know how it happened but my horse suddenly propped, reared back as if a giant hand held it; I went sailing over its head and I landed, splayed out like one of those insane free-fall parachutists, on top of the horse pulling the buggy. I suppose I screamed; I know I grabbed hair and leather and pulled. The bend ahead was practically an S and the terrified horse couldn't have made it. My arms were loose in the sockets when the beast slowed, swerved, grunted and came to a halt. It must have been a hundred in the shade but I was shivering like a Covent Garden whore on a winter's night.

  And that wasn't the end of my heroism. I slid down off the horse; Southwell jumped down from his seat and came towards me. A clatter of hooves and my stallion comes bowling down the road towards us. Blindly, I reached out and felt the reins slap into my hand. I hated the bloody nag so much I gave them a vicious tug and it threw up its head and stopped. Southwell gaped at me.

  'That was the greatest piece of horse work I've ever seen, bar none. Do that for the cameras and we'll be rich.'

  I felt moisture in my pants but maybe it was only all the sweat trickling down into my socks.

  16

  Nothing was too good for Tony after that. The word went around the ship and I could've stayed drunk on free drinks from the Cape to Singapore. I didn't because I didn't want to undermine the hero image by blundering drunk into the wrong bedroom or, worse, confessing in my cups to my abbreviated war. The adulation was heady enough and I basked in it, as well as the sun, all the way to the Straits.

  Luckily the old Africa hands had got off the boat at the Cape so my new notoriety didn't prompt awkward questions about my background. The hero-worship yielded nothing in the way of a sexual dividend, unfortunately. The few attractive wives were close-watched by their husbands and the only daughters around were a trifle too young. One of the Etonians showed a little too much quickness in producing a match or being on hand for deck quoits (and the shower bath afterwards), and I had to accidentally trip him down a flight of steps. Iron steps too, a painful landing.

  At Singapore I almost jumped ship. I'd never seen such women as the ones who paraded around that town under parasols and with silk wrapped around their narrow haunches. Some of the eyes I gazed into promised unbelievable depths of sin and I had to shake myself like a wet dog to stop from following them for miles through the shops and markets. The long abstinence had a lot to do with it and perhaps the heat, but I can't remember feeling so randy before or since. The ship lay over for three days which was enough to get me in a fine lather over the slanty-eyed Chinese wenches and the chocolaty Indians.

  The ship was really lightened now with all the people for the F.M.S. and adjacent parts getting off. I was sorry to see them go as the rest of the voyage promised to be even duller. They were great story-tellers, some of those gin-soaked Malaya hands. The more approachable ones used to spend time in the second class and I heard some fine old tales of unfaithful wives, desperate card games and wily natives. If I'd scribbled them down I could have anticipated old Willie Maugham's success with his stories, but I didn't bother. Life is full of missed opportunities.

  In any case sex was on my mind more than literature. Towards the end of the second day in Singapore I was feeling almost ill with the strain. I was having a drink on the after-deck with Annette. She tapped me on the arm with her fan.

  'Tony! You haven't heard a word I've said.'

  'Eh? I'm sorry, Annette. The heat. Would you like another drink?'

  'No. It is not the heat. It's hotter than this in Sydney and you know it. I know what's the matter with you.'

  I was peeved. 'Do you, by God?'

  'Yes. I am a married woman, after all. I understand men.'

  Hello, I thought. Could this be it? Damned difficult, but she's not a bad-looking little thing and Harry would rather scribble than screw it appears. I smiled at her non-committally.

  'Have you made the acquaintance of Mrs Barnes, Tony?'

  'Can't say that I have.'

  'She is a lady travelling first class . . .'

  I got her drift. 'Alone?' says I.

  'No, not alone. Her husband is with her but he is . . . that is, he was hurt in the war.'

  'Hurt?'

  Yes.' She waved her fan in a movement that might have meant almost anything. 'You know.'

  'Ah, yes. Poor chap.'

  'Mrs Barnes confided in me, perhaps she sensed a kindred spirit.'

  You don't mean that Harry . . .'

  'No, no, of course not. It's just that Harry is frequently preoccupied with his work. Women can sense these things.' She snapped her fan shut. 'This is the modern world. That ghastly war, made by men, is over. Times are changing. Women . . . Mrs Barnes would like to make your acquaintance.'

  And that is how I was saved from an almost certain dose of Singapore clap or a steady decline into insanity across the Indian Ocean, or both. Nancy Barnes was a thin, dark, intense woman with hard, glittering eyes and sharp features. She was wearing a cloth-of-gold dress like a modified sari which, after the fantasies I'd been enduring, was no bad thing. She ate me up with those eyes on our first meeting and I felt that her long fingernails were curving like meathooks, waiting to bite into my flesh. Ordinarily this would be a bit off-putting for Browning but at that particular time I'd have taken her on if she'd had stainless steel teeth. (I know what I'm talking about; I had a woman with stainless steel teeth once, in Russia. Just the once, but still it's not every man who can say he's put his head into the lion's mouth as it were.)

  Annette Southwell got us together over a drink in the first class saloon and then she quietly slipped away. Nancy and I were both suffering from the same fever and we both knew the cure. I bought her a gin, lit her cigarette and our burning eyes locked (well, it was like that, and it's no worse than some film scripts I've read).

  'I saw you in the Orchard Street market,' Nancy said. 'I thought you were going to rape that Chinese woman.'

  Such plain speaking was uncommon with well brought-up women in 1919, but it was welcome to me. I grinned. 'And her daughter.'

  She sipped gin. Yes, she wasn't young. You've no objection to women older than yourself, I mean as lovers?'

  I judged she was about five years older than me. 'None,' I said.

  'Good.'

  That was about it for preliminaries. We couldn't go to her cabin or mine and the first time we did it was in a lifeboat. She'd equipped the thing already with a rug and a pillow and a bottle of wine and we climbed in, already tearing at each other like fighting cats.

  The moon was up and the sight of her small, hard breasts made me groan and pant to be rid of my trousers. She was skilled and co-operative and we were soon going at it hammer and tongs, shaking the boat so much that I thought it might spontaneously launch itself from the davits.

  After, we lay back and sipped wine while looking up at the southern stars.

  'Were you in the war, Tony?' says she.

  'Yes.'

  'So was my husband. He had his testicles shot off.' Her hand was cradling mine as she spoke. And this
is all I ever want to say about him to you. Do you agree?'

  I did, most heartily. The truth was that after we'd finished I did feel a small pang of guilt about cuckolding a man who couldn't strike back, as it were. I felt the same pang once or twice again. But Nancy's formula of no discussion on the husband subject helped considerably. After a bit, I began to feel that I was probably doing the poor chap a service in keeping his missus happy.

  At first, we had trouble finding places, especially in the daytime when the lifeboat was out. But I mean morning, afternoon and night because that's the way it was. After a while Nancy located an empty cabin and a steward with an itchy palm and that problem was solved. I don't know where Mr Barnes (I never even discovered his first name) got his money from but there must have been plenty of it and he was generosity itself towards Nancy. She bought drinks and cigarettes, meals and snacks in the cabin and kept the steward happy. I occasionally wondered if she was keeping him happy in another way too, but I can't honestly believe she could've found the time, let alone the energy. It's possible, though; she was a remarkable woman.

  It was as well we had these diversions because there were some damned dull stretches on that cruise. The nuts and bolts in the ship rattled in the same way day after day and the monotonous beat of the engines was enough to send you crazy. Exotic country, of course, if you care for black beaches where you can't swim for crocs and sharks and flights of brightly coloured, squawking birds you can't eat. The nights were often as hot as the days and Nancy and I worked ourselves into a fine sweat. She preferred sex to be vigorous.

  'Bull me, bull me,' she'd say, and I had to do it standing up and bullocking her back against the wall or the door. Astride a chair was one of her favourites and, indeed, she liked almost anything except the good old missionary position. She particularly liked to do it while wearing an item of clothing – stockings and shoes, a blouse or slip – and I own I developed a taste for this. She had slim, well-muscled legs that seduced me utterly, especially when silk-covered, and to nuzzle her hard nipples through a thin, lacy blouse . . . well, I was young and I thought myself a hell of a fine fellow.

  I was well up to the work, that I must say. I took exercise every day on the deck, didn't drink over-much and my young lungs seemed to be able to cope with the forty cigarettes a day. The sea air probably helped. Added to all that, a real spice and stimulus, was the mutual knowledge, that it was all going to end, forever, at Fremantle.

  The ship headed south from Singapore for the Straits of Sunda but first we put in at Batavia in the Netherlands East Indies. A worse combination than the natives of these parts and the Dutch is hard to imagine. I've scrubbed most of Batavia from my memory – only recollection of the heat and the dust and the present Nancy Barnes bought me remain with me now.

  It was a dirty, noisy little place with a lot of people bartering and haggling over nothing at all as far as I could see. I went ashore with Annette and Nancy, making sure that I kept a lot closer and paid my attentions to Mrs Southwell rather than Mrs Barnes. It was hard to keep up the pretence; Nancy was wearing a light dress that seemed to float around her. She had turned darker under the sun, not for her the obsession with the fair English complexion, and she looked mysterious and exotic with gold bangles and jewel-studded open weave sandals that she'd bought in Singapore. I knew every inch of her body but that didn't stop me panting at flashes of exposed flesh or feeling an urgent response when a breeze pulled her dress tightly across her body.

  'Stop it!' She hissed at me when I was crowded up against her at a street fruit stall. 'There are other people from the boat about.'

  'Why are we here? We could be in the cabin. The ship's almost empty.'

  'I want to buy you something.'

  After some hours of searching she found what she wanted in a filthy little shop in which half of the merchandise seemed to be covered with chicken dung. It was a cigarette case, gold, flat and with a beautifully smooth spring action that years of neglect hadn't harmed. Intricately etched and embossed on the front were the figures of a man and a woman performing the sex act in a highly imaginative and just barely possible position. You had to look very closely to see the figures and even closer to see what they were doing. I forget what she paid for it, a lot for Batavia at that time.

  Nancy showed the case to Annette when we got out of the shop.

  Annette stared and raised her eyebrows.

  Appropriate?' she said.

  'Entirely,' says Nancy.

  She gave it to me with a smile and a squeeze of the hand. We went back to the ship and that night we discovered that the position was possible and had a few highly rewarding side benefits. I kept the cigarette case for twenty years. It entertained a lot of people (some of them women, I have to admit and I only parted with it very reluctantly when I needed the money desperately, after I'd got the sack from Gone with the Wind).

  Nancy and I maintained our rapid fire rate for the rest of the journey as the ship moved south along the west coast of my native land. I tried to find out more about her but I gleaned very little. She was English, born in India. One night she dressed in a sari with paint spot and nose jewel and we had an amazing time, a sort of Kama Sutra party you could've called it. She'd met her husband in England where he was flying planes in the RAF. She'd read everything, especially in the pornographic line, and had an ambition to be a doctor.

  She got off the ship at Fremantle. We'd had our farewell the night before and I didn't see her that day or ever again. I've thought of her often though. I've wondered whether she ever became a doctor and I've wondered how long her husband lived and if she continued with the same methods of satisfying her natural urges. If she did, there have been some damned lucky fellows down there in Western Australia.

  17

  After a stop in Adelaide which looked like a pretty little place, green hills close to the town, perhaps a few too many church spires for comfort, we went on to Melbourne. It was a grey, wet day in July when we arrived, damnably cold and more like London than California, or so Harry Southwell said.

  'Say, where's all this sunshine I've heard so much about? The only thing you could film in that would be The Phantom of the Opera.'

  It looked as if a cloud was sitting on top of the city; grey mist swirled around the wharf as the baggage went ashore and we prepared to submit ourselves to the officials.

  'It's winter, Harry,' Annette said.

  Harry pulled up the collar of his astrakhan coat which he'd resurrected from one of his many trunks. 'Winter? They don't have winter in California.'

  I was interested to hear that; always hated winter myself. I was more keen than ever to take a look at Hollywood. The words – Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Malibu – already had a shining quality for me; they must have shone pretty brightly for Harry at that moment too because he didn't like anything he saw around him.

  'No wonder you quit this dump, Annette,' he said as he handed over his passport.

  'I'm glad to be back, Harry. You'll see, the gardens are lovely and Cup Day is such fun.' She was a game little thing, Annette, and often stuck up for herself. The passport official could hear the local accent in her voice (although, like Harry's, it was overlaid with English and American) and he slipped them through the entry procedures smoothly. I was a different kettle of fish.

  'You're a photographer, Mr Grace?'

  'Yiss.'

  'Not much call for 'em here.' He flipped a page in the passport. 'Born in . . . Basutoland?'

  'Yiss.'

  'Hmm, sounds native.' He peered closely at me. 'Both parents white?'

  I was still darkly tanned from the cruise. I drew myself up to the full six two. 'Uf cuss.'

  All right, don't get y' back up.' I reached for the passport and he slammed the stamp down on it, missing my fingers by a fraction. He grinned. 'Welcome to Australia.'

  Harry had a sense of style. As soon as we landed he sent a messenger to telephone for rooms at the Menzies Hotel and to organise us a taxi. We pulled away
from Port Melbourne with the car loaded to the last inch of the springs with luggage. It was an emotional moment, or should have been – my homecoming. But this was a strange city to me; I was calling myself something other than my baptised name and the rain was sheeting down. I could have been in Chicago.

  Harry got busy on the telephone as soon as we arrived. He ignored me and Annette both and we went to the bar to talk things over.

  'What now?' I said.

  'Harry will call up everyone who might put money up to make a picture. He's very good at that sort of thing.'

  'Who?'

  She sipped her drink. 'I don't know. He never tells me anything about his business.'

  'And what will you do, Annette?'

  'Oh, shopping, look for a house if we're going to be here long enough. There'll be plenty to do.'

  'What about me?'

  She looked me over appraisingly. 'You do look dashing, Tony. You'll look wonderful on film. Can you act?'

  'I don't know. And my name's not Tony.'

  'No, I thought not. You've been slow to answer to it a few times. And you're not South African?'

  'No.'

  'Well, you can drop that awful accent. You only remember to use it some of the time anyway. Where are you from?'

  'Sydney.'

  'What's your real name?'

  'Richard Browning.'

  'Well, it's a nice enough name. Have you done anything so terrible that you can't use it?'

  'Of course not,' I said, thinking: Different matter for a chap named Hughes.