Box Office Browning Page 3

  I caught a glimpse of Suzanne at the meal break although they kept the male and female workers well apart. Despite her Maori blood she'd needed a little staining too and they seemed to have wrapped her in a sheet of bark. Still, she flashed me a smile with her own full set intact that looked whiter than ever against the darkened skin. I went back into the water thinking that, with half an ounce of luck, I'd be well rewarded for my noble and manly conduct some time before midnight.

  Towards the end of the day they started giving out tots of rum each time we came out of the water and I was first in line every time. My hands were torn and sore – I needed the anaesthetic. I got a final stiff drink as the shadows lengthened on the beach and we were instructed to return our costumes and assemble in the courtyard for our pay. I ought to have mentioned my fellow workers but, truth to tell, I can't recall much about them. They were extras, like thousands I've seen since on all four continents, and they tend to blend into one insignificant mass. (It's different with the stars of course, Doug and Mary, that swine Flynn, good old David Niven – they stay very fresh in the mind.)

  Dressed again, but feeling a bit naked without my upper lip hair, I wandered into the courtyard hoping that another rum might be available before the handing out of the shekels. Damn me if Suzanne wasn't there already chatting away to Lottie Lyell like a long lost sister. She saw me and beckoned me over.

  'Here he is, Miss Lyell. Isn't he handsome? Especially without the moustache.'

  That was pretty high-handed I thought, but she'd washed the stain off and was looking near to her best. I don't know whether she'd had any rum – probably had.

  'Hmm,' says Lyell. 'Yes, he'll do.'

  The upshot was a session of still photography, God knows what for – very exhausting, but more money for both of us.

  As I recall, I ended up with nearly three pounds in my hand and Suzanne must have had more because she had been in close-up scenes and had had to do some acting. (I've never seen the film so I can't say whether her scenes survived to the final print. As she was an amateur they probably didn't.) It wasn't a bad result for a couple who'd fetched up penniless on the beach that morning and we celebrated in the saloon bar of the hotel with a drink or two before ferry time. I tipped the hotel kid (avoiding Goodluck, never could stand men who parted their hair in the middle) to carry the bags down to the jetty. My hands were only fit for holding a glass or, perhaps, for cupping gently around an obliging woman's warm breast.

  Such thoughts were very much on my mind as I stood with Suzanne watching the approaching ferry churn up the water. Our luck had been right in because this was the only day of outdoors filming Longford and Lyell had scheduled. The Mutiny of the Bounty was all but finished but for some studio scenes in which there was no place for amateur blow-ins. Gently, as much for the sake of my tender palms as for gallantry, I put my hand on Suzanne's arm. The flesh yielded nicely under the silk sleeve.

  'Well,' says I, 'what about a night on the town? We could get a room in a hotel and go out and kick up our heels. What d'you say, Miss Select?'

  She turned up her face and parted her dark brown lips slowly. 'The Metropole, Mr Browning?'

  'Er, what about the Adams? Fine house, the Adams.'

  4

  Earlier that year, the wowsers had got their way and the pubs closed at 6 pm.4 Part of the reason for this was to keep the soldiery sober and so increase the chances of their being killed by the Hun rather than by one of their comrades. But it was also the old, old story of the people who didn't know how to have a good time trying to stop those that did. On the surface it might have seemed to be working; the streets were quieter and the dimmed lights in the hotels probably convinced the wowsers that the menfolk were at home saying their prayers.

  Of course it wasn't like that at all; the early closing merely brought into existence sly grog shops and various dodges to ensure that a sporting gentleman could have his pleasure as before – although he might occasionally have to swill down what was in his cup quicker than he might like and might also spend the odd night in the lock-up. I'd done both over the past few months.

  The trick was to book into a sporting establishment like the Adams Hotel, drop a little oil into the right palm and learn where the high life was going on. There might be a card game in the hotel or a party where, for a modest charge, all your requirements could be met. Also popular were private theatrical amusements with food and refreshments provided. It was with something such in mind that I booked into the Adams with Suzanne as Mr and Mrs Robespierre. You have to understand that I looked a deal older than twenty – the height helped and two years of living by your wits gives you a certain bearing. Besides, I was probably a bit tipsy from the rum and whiskies I'd absorbed and, if there were any funny looks from the underlings at the Adams, I didn't notice.

  I was dead keen to get down to it as soon as we had the door closed behind us but I had to practically force Suzanne to the bed: she was mumbling on about a bath. I got her stripped down; I can still remember those big, soft breasts with the pale brown, spreading nipples . . . but oddly enough I can't remember much else. There was a lot of tumbling and fumbling about with ties and laces and, what with my youth and the liquor I had on board and one thing and another, it was all over before it began. I can't honestly carve a notch on my pistol for Miss Suzanne Select although she behaved as if I could, ooh'ing and ah'ing and groaning about stallions and unicorns and such.

  I fancy I had a bit of a sleep and then she was there, standing over me with her bosom pushed up under a blue satin bodice and a light feathery wrap around her creamy shoulders. I could have made a much better job of things there and then but she wasn't having any.

  'Come on, my bucko,' says she, 'let's see what sort of time you can have in this town with a pound in your pocket.'

  I practically did have a pound in my pocket, of rampant malehood, but she was eager to be off and I had to struggle from the bed and stagger down the hall to perform an uncomfortable and perfunctory toilet. Then I followed that tall, swaying illusion down the stairs towards a night of pleasure.

  I can't honestly say that I remember much of it. A few words and coin passed between Suzanne and the night doorman and then it was out to the street and into a motor cab. For a newcomer to Sydney she found her way around very quickly. We went to Adolphe's for a meal and then to the Beefsteak Club where there was dancing and wine – not that there hadn't been a good deal of that with the food. I seem to remember music and feathers, but perhaps I was just humming to myself while I held Suzanne's wrap. I was pretty stewed on top of what I'd already drunk after a hard day's work. I was only twenty after all.

  In the cab on the way back to the hotel we giggled and Suzanne took the hat with the ostrich feather in it from my head and replaced it on her own. I belched mightily as I recall and told her I loved her.

  'Yes, darling,' she said.

  'Prettiest woman in Sydney.'

  'Only in Sydney?'

  ' . . . world.'

  'Yes, darling. Mind my stockings. Oh, we're there. Thank you, cabbie for a very smooth ride. Pay the man, Thomas.'

  'Richard, Tom's m' brother.'

  'I look forward to meeting him . . . Come on, darling . . . up the steps and try to stand up straight . . . I'll get the key . . . you hang on here. Watch out for the pot plants.'

  I held on to a polished brass bar that seemed to be pitching like a ship's rail in a blow and watched Suzanne sweep across the lobby to the desk. I was trying to bring my real nose into contact with a nose in a mirror when she got back and helped me up the stairs. God, she was strong . . . I remember looking forward to undoing that bodice and getting a faceful of those . . .

  When I woke up she was gone, of course. Also gone to Auckland or Paris or God knows where, were my watch and cigar case not to mention two shirts with studs - everything in fact that was portable and of value. I'd been paying for everything, waiters and what have you, but what little money I had left was gone too.

  So th
ere I was, a bare thirty-six hours after my flit from the Metropole, and in much the same circumstances. All I had to show for the time was a clean-shaven upper lip, getting stubbly now, and a headache that was threatening to blind me. I probably hadn't even got my pecker wet. I crawled down the hall to the bathroom and cleaned up – at least I hadn't done anything disgraceful in the regurgitative line. Back in the room I felt better; Suzanne's perfume hung irritatingly in the air but I consoled myself with the thought that I probably hadn't picked up a dose of clap. Breakfast, that was the thing. Probably hadn't drunk all that much. Probably succumbed to fatigue after all that rope hauling.

  I strolled out into the hallway and glimpsed nemesis. One of the hotel flunkeys was stationed at the end of the passage. He fiddled with a vase of flowers and didn't acknowledge my salute as I passed, so I knew the word was out. I was watched into the dining room and while I ate. They served me courteously enough; I might have been a well-heeled young eccentric, but they were ready for the worst. I ate hearty – eggs and bacon and lashings of toast and coffee – they made quite good coffee in the Adams, probably the only place in Australia that did. I admit I dawdled; only a fool advances into trouble and there was always the chance of a gas explosion or the Germans shelling the city from the harbour.

  But nothing like that happened; I slurped down the last cup of coffee and went up to the desk. All that gilt and glass and brocade I'd been too drunk to notice before impressed me now. I hadn't even had a snort in the Marble Bar.

  There were two coves behind the desk: one looked like the regular thing – pasty face, hair plastered down and fingernails buffed. The other had foodstains on his waistcoat and tobacco stains on his moustache. I fear I fingered the place where my moustache should have been.

  'Sir?' the attendant said.

  'Can't pay the bill,' says I. 'The woman I was with has flitted with the cash. I've been robbed!'

  'Indeed?' Pasty-face took a step back and the other chap moved forward.

  'Richard Browning?'

  I nodded. My mouth was suddenly very dry.

  'I am Sergeant Carlisle, New South Wales police. I am arresting you on two charges of misappropriation, one of wilful damage and one of disturbing the peace.'

  'Can I get my bags?'

  Carlisle smiled and tugged at his yellowed moustache. 'Are they heavy?'

  'Moderately.'

  'Get them by all means. You can carry them the mile or so to Darlinghurst lock-up.'

  'Those bags stay here,' the attendant said firmly, 'to be held against the debt. That's the law.'

  'That's hotel law,' the Sergeant said. 'If it was real law we'd have to run one of the bags over to the Metropole, wouldn't we, Mr Browning?'

  I managed a weak smile; it never hurts to respond to the jokes of those who have you by the balls. Carlisle looked me up and down. He was a stocky chap, around five foot eight but about my weight. He gave a fierce grin.

  'I don't think we'll need the cuffs,' he said.

  I'd been in lock-ups before as I've said, but as a representative of Robespierre's Wine and Spirits Ltd, and even as a senior at Dudleigh, I'd had enough money on me to pay the fine in the morning and walk away. This was different. They charged me at the lock-up, barely gave me time to use the bucket in the cell, and then trotted me off to the Magistrate in Bent Street. I mean trotted literally; I was herded into a closed carriage with benches along the sides together with a dozen or so common fellows. Whip up the horse and it was Sydney through bars after that.

  I had the option of getting a solicitor of course, but that would have meant a communication with 'Wild Bill' and if there was one way I didn't want to approach that worthy it was as a penniless wastrel who started fires in hotel baths. So I sat pat through the whole dumb show, pleading guilty as charged. In fact I just let the law take its course and allowed my case to merge in with whatever else was going on – in this instance various minor matters, mainly to do with excessive intake of liquor. (This is always the safest course, providing you're not had up with a mob of arsonists or sex offenders. Judges seem to have a highly developed concern for the virtue of their womenfolk and the sanctity of their property.)

  Although my clothes were smart enough I was on my second day in the one shirt and after the mauling they'd had in the waters of Watson's Bay my hands didn't exactly look like those of a gentleman. I glanced around the courtroom to see if one of those ferrety reporters was present - the sort of chaps who make it hard for a man to remain incognito. Half of them are in the pay of money-lenders and the like, always standing by to nobble people. But there were none around and my case went through pretty satisfactorily, if you call two months hard labour satisfactory. I did; one of the old drunks in the wagon had told me to get ready for six months.

  The same wagon trundled us off down the dusty road to the state prison at Long Bay. The place had only been opened the year before and none of my fellow convicts had been there.

  'Christ, I wish we was goin' to Parramatta,' one of them, an old inebriate with black gums, lamented. 'I don't like the sound of this place.'

  'What're you talking about, you old fool?' The speaker was a mud-bespattered, bedraggled creature I'd taken for just another drunk who'd learned his trade in Victoria's time; now that he'd spoken I realised that he was much younger, not much older than myself. 'Parramatta's a hell hole.'

  'But I've been there thirty times,' the old-timer whined. 'It's like home.'

  The young chap laughed and I could see youth in his face under the mud and whiskers. 'Time for a change then, Grandfather,' he says. 'Maybe this Long Bay'll be like a holiday home.' He looked around the bucking, rumbling wagon at the dead, dispirited faces and finally turned his gaze on me. 'I can tell you one thing about it.'

  I leaned forward, drawn by his intense grey-eyed stare and the light, British-accented voice. 'And what's that, mate?' I said.

  He chuckled. 'There's a women's reformatory next door, so I'm told.'

  The others were snoring or belching or coughing the dust out of their throats, but he had my attention. 'Is that so?'

  'Such is my information, Mr . . .?'

  'Richard Browning.' We reached across from one bench to the other and shook hands. 'And you are . . .?'

  'Jeremy Farnol, at your service.'

  'At His Majesty's service,' the old-timer croaked. A cloud of dust caught him in mid-cackle and he sank back against the wall of the wagon, wheezing and choking. Farnol pulled his coat collar up and lapsed into silence. I looked out at the white dusty road and thought about Miss Suzanne Select. She was no doubt waltzing around Sydney with her film earnings safe in her purse, along with the residue of mine. I permitted myself a small fantasy: I was a deck hand on a Sydney harbour ferry and I'd caught Miss Select travelling without a ticket. Her petticoats billowed up like sails as I tossed her over the side into the deep green water.

  5

  Long Bay gaol probably isn't fit for a human being now, but in 1916 it wasn't fit for a dog. Behind the high walls were a couple of buildings sited on a hill so that winds blew in from all quarters. As the old lags had told me, the compound was new which meant that the place was like the Tennessee dust bowl when it was dry, and a sea of gluey mud when it rained. And it was cold! Prisons are either ovens or deep freezers in my experience: I recall one in Mexico where I sweated myself down to about a hundred and fifty pounds and one in Scotland where it was so cold I left the skin from the tips of my fingers on the window bars. I've yet to spend a summer and a winter in the same prison, thank God, which is not to say it couldn't still happen.

  We were tumbled out of the cart into a courtyard surrounded by a high wall. The cold wind swirled around inside the wall. The dust drifted in the air and gave the old fellow who'd expressed the wish to go to Parramatta a coughing fit that dropped him to the ground. The prison guard kicked him several times; he staggered up, still coughing.

  Ah hah, thinks I. This is the time to keep the eyes down and the balls covered. I shuffled al
ong like the oldest and most wretched member of the group and I noticed that Farnol was doing the same.

  They herded us into a shed, made us strip and issued us with shirt, trousers and jacket made out of a material as hard as tin. The boots had the weight and solidity of tree roots. I had my first, but by no means my last, experience of being fingerprinted, and then it was off to the cells. This was in the mid-afternoon and I thought it might be a settling-in period for newcomers. Not so. We were locked in the cells around this time every day for the whole of my time there and it was one of the worst features of the experience. I used to pull myself up to the window and gaze out at an afternoon going to waste, a time when I could have been relaxing with a drink or spinning a yarn to a pretty girl.

  We were four to a cell and I landed in with Farnol, the old Parramatta lag, Henry Barton, who claimed that he hadn't been sober since he'd returned from the Sudan War in 1885 except for periods of imprisonment and not always then, and a fourth man whose name I forget. He died of syphilis of the brain on my second night which accounts for my lapse of memory. My recall of names has always been exceptionally good, especially for those who mistreat me. For example, the principal guard in our cell block was Gregory Flinders – that's a name which has remained crystal clear in my mind for more than sixty years.

  Barton and the syphilitic went to sleep on the two lower bunks which left Farnol and me standing by the door. And this wasn't one of the cells you see in the Western movies, with bars from floor to roof on two sides. Come to think of it, I've never seen a cell like that except on a movie set. This was a concrete box, eight feet by eight, about seven feet high, with a solid door in which there was a hatch that could be slid up from outside to allow food and drink to pass into the cell, and the piss bucket to pass out.