Beverley Hills Browning Read online

  'Good, well, me 'n Washington here are goin' to see this lady home.'

  I reached over, grabbed the woman's brown hand and kissed the palm.

  'He's cute,' she said.

  'He sure is,' said Jesse. 'See you on bo'd, Dick. Say goodnight to Dinge for me.'

  I nodded. They went out. I looked over to the bar and saw Dinge's broad back and the girl's narrow one disappearing through the beaded curtain that hung over one of the side doors. It was after midnight, the place was still jumping but I was all alone. I bought another beer and settled down to feel sorry for myself over it.

  'Lonely, sailor?'

  I glanced up from the froth; the women was thin-faced with drawn-back dark hair and enormous eyes. She was wearing a loose blouse and scarf around the neck fastened with a strangely shaped clasp. There was a flurry of cloth marked with stars and crescent moons as she flicked at her long skirt and sat down. The fingernails, wrapped around her glass, were long and blood red.

  'Good evening,' I said. I was about half a glass short of the maudlin stage. 'I'm getting lonely. My friends have left. How did you know I was a sailor?'

  'Are you joking?' Her accent was American, not harsh like Clancy's and the other Yankees I'd recently encountered, but softer and slower, more like the Southerners. 'You can tell a sailor from his walk. You roll like a log in a river.'

  Really? thinks I. Have to get rid of that before I hit Hollywood. I smiled at her, admitted I was ashore for the night and bought her a drink. Her name was Atlanta Adams and I was too polite to ask her what she did for a living. It seemed to be obvious. I was more than a little stewed and it wasn't long before I had her on the dance floor and then in a clinch in a dark corner. She seemed oddly reluctant.

  'Let's go to my place,' she said. She was looking deep into my eyes with what I took to be sexual interest.

  'Yes,' I said. I would've looked into her eyes too, but they wouldn't stay still. 'Less have 'nother drink first.'

  I got two more drinks and bumped into a man in a spotless white suit as I carried them back to the table. The liquid splashed his suit and he grabbed at me.

  'You clumsy fool!' He waved a fist in my face. I saw a big, face-cutting diamond ring on one finger and flinched back.

  'Sorry,' I said. 'Only beer, 'n juice, 'n, 'n . . . wha' was that drink, A'lanta?' I tried to find a handkerchief to mop him down and I split some more liquor on his shirt. He punched me on the shoulder. I dropped the drinks on his white shoes. He roared, swung, missed me and hit a man standing beside me. He swore and punched back. The man in the white suit swung a chair. I ducked and put my hands over my head. The floor started to feel like an ice rink. Atlanta Adams struggled through flailing, cursing bodies and grabbed my belt.

  'Come on,' she said. 'Don't fight. Don't hurt your hands.'

  She supported me as we stumbled out. The fight was going full swing and so was the music; there was a white piano player now but the beat was still black. I nearly gagged on the fresh air outside but it helped to sober me. 'How far?' I said.

  She guided me out of the path of a sugarcane wagon and held me up on the corner of two muddy roads. There had been some rain evidently while we'd been in the saloon.

  'This way.' She guided me to the left past shops, two more saloons and down a narrow street lit only at one end, the end we were leaving. In different company I'd have been alarmed, but she talked on quietly as we walked. Couldn't for the life of me remember what she said, but she inspired confidence. Let's face it, after some weeks at sea, being deserted by my pals and with the liquor I'd stowed on board, I'd have gone home with Eleanor Roosevelt.7

  She got a key out of a pocket in her skirt and unlocked a door directly on the street. I expected the usual thug at a desk, or a table under a naked, fly-blown light, but instead there was a well-lit short passage and a set of stairs, also well-lit and carpeted, leading to an imposing door which she opened with another key. The room was large and cool; a fan was turning in the ceiling and I could see a large bed half-hidden by a partition made of woven cane. There was a balcony off to one side. Ideal for a drink afterwards, thinks I and I started to propel her towards the bed.'

  She was a tall strongly built woman, I now noticed, and when she resisted she was hard to move.

  'None of that,' she said. 'You have a most interesting pair of hands – I just want to tell your fortune!'

  3

  I was too surprised to protest. She hustled me into a small room off to one side and sat me at a round table. It was dim but I could see paintings and markings on the walls that recalled the decorations on her skirt. She looked into my eyes again and I felt oddly relaxed. The hard, straight-backed chair felt comfortable too. She produced cards from somewhere, larger than the sort of pasteboards that must have cost me a couple of million dollars through my long and chancy life. She started to lay them out, muttering the whole time and clicking her tongue.

  'Well now, anything to drink?'

  'Shh. I've got to concentrate.'

  Concentrate she did, for what seemed like an hour. You might think I'd be bored, sitting there, sobering up and with a good-looking woman who'd very clearly given me the hands-off, playing gypsy queen. But I wasn't – you see, all the muttering and exclamation, all the gasps and long silences were about me!

  She laid the cards out in different patterns, picked them up according to some system or other, shuffled and spread them again.

  'A long life,' she said. She took my right hand and examined the palm carefully. Her hands were smooth and cool.

  'Oh, good. Healthy, I hope?'

  'Long, very long, if certain dangerous obstacles are overcome.'

  'Ah.'

  'Money.'

  'Good, good.'

  'Much earned, much spent . . .'

  'I chuckled. 'None saved, eh?'

  'Much wasted, thrown foolishly away.' She was right there, by God!

  'An adventurous life – travel, speed, crowds of people and . . .'

  'Yes, yes?'

  'Periods of loneliness, terrible loneliness. I can't quite understand.'

  'Let's not bother. Stick to the good stuff.'

  'It is puzzling. There are horses and . . . slaves, it is as if you lead several lives and many of them not of this century.' She gasped.

  What? What?'

  'Reincarnation! You are my first! A genuine reincarnate, carrying the aura of other lives. The cards tell it all.'

  'Steady on. Don't get carried away.'

  'I could hypnotise you, take you back to those earlier lives.'

  I pushed back my chair and stood up. I reeled and nearly fell. 'Oh no, you don't. Nothing like that for Dick Browning!'

  'Sit down, please. That is another strange thing. I've worked on the name Richard Kelly Browning and it reveals much about you. But there are contradictions, as if you have many names . . .'

  'Yes, quite, well . . . very interesting.'

  She riffled through the pack again and flicked three cards out. 'Beware of the Israelite and strong drink.' She flicked the third card with her long red nail. 'And the number fifty-two is very unlucky for you.'

  'Avoid Jews, whisky and poker,' I said. 'I'll remember that.'

  I was still standing; she stood up and moved towards me. She reached for my hand again, probably wanting to check the life line again, but I chose to misinterpret the action. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. I kissed her hard, she started to respond, then drew back quickly.

  'Ah, no, no.'

  'Why the devil not?'

  'You forget that I have seen your life, laid out right there on the table.'

  'So?'

  'There are many women and you do harm to them all. You are very attractive to women but you do not make them happy.'

  'I say, that's a bit hard. I . . .'

  'No. Your life is drenched with women's tears.'

  Well, that was a facer, to be sure. It took the sap out of me and no mistake. I moved towards the door.

  'Ther
e is one more thing.'

  I spun around. Some good for old Dick after all in this mumbo-jumbo? thinks I. Change of heart?

  'Ten dollars, please – for the reading.'

  Somehow I found my way back to the ship. It wasn't that I was drunk; all the talk of dangerous obstacles and Israelites and women's tears had fixed that, but I didn't know in what direction to head. The woman had taken me away from the docks area and I walked along the dark streets, brushing aside fragrant bushes and slipping on wet roads and generally making heavy going of it until I decided that the night was mine and I'd enjoy the walk. Besides, it was my first time ashore in the tropics and everything was unfamiliar to me.

  I can feel it now as I sit here in this damned farmhouse with the sun beating down on the roof and wild dogs howling in the foothills – in Hawaii the air was sweet and heavy and seemed to get inside my shift and run down my ribs as sweat. The trees and bushes had strong smells, some sharp like a sliced lemon and others soft and subtle like expensive perfume. That was one of the things that gave me steering problems – no smell of the sea over all those essences.

  The rain had cleared leaving a sky with a high, bright moon and stars that seemed closer to the earth than they did in Australia. There were a few people in the streets, mostly wearing white clothes so that they looked ghostly in the moonlight. People murmured goodnight to each other in the soft voice that seems characteristic of Hawaii. Not in the taverns, the drunk tank or police stations of course, which is where I've spent a good deal of my time on subsequent visits. I think that was the most relaxed time I ever spent there in fact, that night, strolling back to the ship. I even heard, and hummed along with, some soft gospel singing from a house high above the street and half-hidden in the palm trees.

  But when I spotted the whore, in the cloth of gold dress, with her back to the building on the corner and expelling a stream of smoke into the starry sky, I knew I was back on course. Ordinarily, I might have engaged her in conversation to see whether she was to my taste or not. I'd had a disappointment but it wouldn't have been the first evening of my life that the course of commercial love had taken a turn or two. But, somehow, I wasn't in the mood. Perhaps it was my old fear of the pox (that could be seen as an 'obstacle' surely), or maybe I just wasn't in the mood. I can't believe it was the gospel singing.

  The only bed I got into that night was my bunk on the Sternwood.

  Jesse hadn't exaggerated about the work. Those of us who'd slept on the ship were roused out at dawn and given cleaning, scrubbing, scouring and painting tasks that looked, at the beginning, as if they would last a week. As the others straggled aboard they were pressed into service. Some of them were grey and shaky and looked as if they could scarcely stand let alone climb, lift, and crawl through holes the way they were obliged to. Odd thing was, no one protested and every hand did his share. Sailors are like that; in the midst of all the abuse they direct at each other and the world, there's a terrific cameraderie and co-operative spirit. All redounds to the profits of the owners of course.

  Jesse and Dinge were there by midday, pitching in and sweating the booze out of their systems under the high Hawaiian sun. I'd secured a relatively soft greasing job and squatted down near to where Jesse was chipping off rust and old paint the consistency of concrete.

  'Good time last night, Jesse?'

  'The best, man, the best. You?'

  'I met a woman.'

  'Felt sure you would.'

  'She told my fortune.'

  Just then Tom Clancy saw me bludging8 in the shade and roared for me to come forward.

  'I ain't never heard it called that before,' Jesse shouted after me.

  The work wasn't going fast enough for Tom. 'Did I see you having breakfast this morning, Browning. One of the few?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'I was surprised, I'll admit. Thought you would be a carouser.'

  'No, sir.'

  'Well, "If any would not work, neither should he eat."9 Come with me.' He led me to the bow where a rough harness had been rigged to allow a man to lower himself over the side and down to the water line. He handed me a paint pot and brush. 'Paint the name on bold and bright, Browning. Bows and stern, and have it done before the shadow falls across or you'll make a mess of it.'

  'Aye, aye, Cap'n.' It sounds easy but in fact I put in a couple of the hardest hours I've ever worked in my life. You had to lower yourself with one hand while balancing the paint pot in the other, and then it was a matter of leg-bracing yourself against the side of the ship sufficiently far out to wield the brush. Going over the letters was easy enough – although I very soon wished the damned boat had been called the Ian or something such, straight up and down and short. I had to haul myself up after every letter, move the mechanism along, and lower down again.

  Jesse paid me one visit. He spat over the side and missed me by a whisker.

  'Hey!' I yelled.

  'Oh, sorry, man. Didn't know there was anybody there. Hope none o' dem big harbour sharks takes a fancy to yore ass just suspended above the water there.'

  That gave me something else to think about.

  I did a good job though. Clancy came as close to paying me a compliment as he ever did, when he looked over the side with me, be-spattered with paint, sunburnt and panting beside him.

  ' "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." '10

  'I wouldn't say that, Cap'n,' I said.

  I was an exhausted man when I threw myself down on the bunk that night. The usual things were going on in the fo'c'sle – cards, toenail paring, smoking. 'Denver' Jefferson was playing his guitar and moaning softly:

  As I walked out on the streets of Laredo,

  As I walked out on Laredo one day . . .

  'Say, Jesse, where's this Laredo?' I asked.

  'Not sure, Dick – Mexico, maybe, or Texas.'

  'You spent much time in California?'

  'Born and raised in Bakersfield.'

  'Ever been to Hollywood?'

  Jesse sat up abruptly and slapped his naked black thigh. 'I knew it! I just knew it! Boys, Dick here goin' to Hollywood. Gwine be a movie star.'

  'Denver' quit plucking the strings. 'Had a sister went to be a movie star,' he said softly.

  Dinge took his little finger out of his ear and used his pocket knife to excavate the wax. 'Hope she's prettier 'n you. How'd she make out?'

  'Denver' picked up the guitar, adjusted the bridge and strummed a mournful chord. 'Not so good. She's a whore in Tijuana last I heard.'

  'You hear that, Richard? Maybe you should stick to the sea. You did jus' fine today. Cap'n Tom practically pattin' you on the back.'

  'And tomorrow he could be knocking me over the side. No, mates, I'm getting off in 'Frisco. I'll invite you all to my first big party in Hollywood.'

  'I'll hold you to that,' Jesse said quietly. 'I'd sure like to see how those Chaplins and Fairbanks and Keatons 'd take to old Jesse rolling up with his hand out for a martini.'

  'Good luck to you, Dick,' 'Denver' said. 'And when you get to Tijuana look up my sister. Her name's Billie Sue.'

  Jesse rolled off his bunk and opened his hand to reveal a new, sealed pack of cards which nestled snugly in his big, pink palm. 'What about a few games of chance. If'n you win, Richard, you could arrive in Hollywood by chauffeur-driven limousine and make a big splash. Now I know you got a little gold put by. Why not use it to underwrite your future?'

  'How will I get to Hollywood if I lose?'

  'You can use your thumb,' 'Denver' said, 'or you can ride the rails. That's the way half the Hollywood stars got there in the first place.'

  I was tired and my vision was blurry. After working the ratchet on the harness and painting STERNWOOD three times I could hardly open and close my fingers, but I felt lucky. I was heading for the USA, Hollywood and a million dollars.

  'Deal the cards, Jesse,' I said.

  4

  I lost all my gold to Jesse and the others on the Sternwood of course. They took pity on me
and remitted a few dollars. Clancy gave me ten dollars saying that he calculated it was what I'd earned over and above my passage. He tried to persuade me to stay on for another voyage.

  'Round the Horn,' he said. 'The experience of a lifetime.'

  I shook my head. He shrugged and filled in a paper which stated that I had been hired on as a seaman in Australia and had committed no crimes and suffered from no communicable diseases.

  ' "The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep." '11

  I wished I'd paid more attention at Dudleigh so I could've topped him with a line of Shakespeare or Milton. They were very big on Milton at Dudleigh. But nothing came to mind so I just tipped my cap and left the ship. Armed with my passport and that paper from Clancy, entry to the United States of America was a piece of cake. I may have stated that I'd be seeking a berth on a ship back to Australia within a month or something such, but I've entered and left under so many names and in so many different circumstances (including inside the trunk of a '48 Cadillac at El Paso), that I don't exactly recall.

  The thing was that I was in California and only around four hundred miles from Hollywood. But those four hundred miles proved to be hard to cover. San Francisco was booming; buildings were going up everywhere. Some of these may have been simply repairing the earthquake damage but a lot of the activity seemed to be looking forward rather than backward. The Panama Canal had not long been opened and that, plus the end of the war, had boosted the city as a place for goods to pass through. Boom towns are expensive. I stayed in a hotel near Fisherman's Wharf for a few days to get the feel of the place, but it soon became obvious that I'd have to move on and watch every dollar, as well as earn a few, on the way to Hollywood.

  I started out by hitchhiking which was unknown in Australia at that time but it had already become a common practice in the States. No thumbing, though. The technique was to stand by the side of the road with a sign telling the drivers where you were going. I didn't know the geography so it took me a while to get the hang of this. It was no good holding up a sign saying HOLLYWOOD. No one was going that far. From San Francisco you had to indicate Stockton or Modesto and from there Merced or Madera. I learned this in a roadhouse where I stopped for coffee and bread, the cheapest stomach-filler available.