by Peter Watt
But he had only promised not to try and join the fighting in Africa and Europe. He had promised nothing about enlisting again. It was a very thin line to walk and in a court of feminine laws his case would not really stand up.
Jack grinned and swallowed the remaining contents of his beer. He folded the newspaper under his arm and left the cool bar to make his way to see an old friend. He hoped the chief administrator of Papua and New Guinea would be in. He was a powerful friend with the ability to get things done and there was something called the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, a local military unit of men drawn from the ranks of old Papua New Guinea hands – men like himself.
‘You cannot stay here,’ Sen said under his breath. ‘You stand out as a foreigner in the Moresby district.’
Fuji glanced over his shoulder and could see the native gardener eyeing him with more than curiosity. Both men stood face to face in Sen’s tropical garden of colourful frangipanis and bougainvillea. Fuji felt like laughing at Sen’s statement. He had been born and lived most of his life in the Port Moresby district. Rather than being a foreigner, if anything he was too well known. He also knew of the local rumours that linked him to the infamous and murderous recruiter of native labour, O’ Leary. ‘You will explain to anyone that asks about me that I am a relative from China on a visit to you.’
Sen wiped his brow with the back of his hand. ‘You look nothing like a Chinese man,’ he replied in an exasperated tone.
‘To you,’ Fuji replied. ‘But to the barbarian Europeans we Asians all look alike.’
Sen had to cede his point. He had experienced the contempt that Europeans displayed towards his own people, whose civilisation and history were far more sophisticated than they in their arrogant ignorance could comprehend. But Sen still held the ancient dislike and contempt for the Japanese race, of his own people. The terrible war raging in China only exacerbated Sen’s dislike to hatred. ‘That explanation will only work if you are not recognised by any of the old Papua hands – they know your father and will probably know you.’
‘I have thought about that,’ Fuji said. ‘I will avoid any areas in town where the Australians gather. I will be discreet.’
Sen stared for a short time at the young Japanese sailor. It did go through his mind to betray Fuji but he dismissed the thought when he contemplated the possible reaction by his new controllers, the Japanese. He was aware of how ruthless they were and did not doubt that they would seek revenge against not only himself but his family in Singapore. It was their way. ‘You should come inside,’ Sen gave in. ‘I will find suitable clothing for you.’
Fuji instinctively knew that the gardener dressed in his lap-lap was still watching them – with more than curiosity.
FOUR
Standing side by side outside the tin shed that was also the airstrip’s terminal, the two men made an impressive pair. One had a face known to millions whilst the other, younger by a decade, was hardly known at all. Yet the well-known actor of the silver screen cherished the company of the younger man who had been his pilot for the flight from Los Angeles to a tiny, formerly Spanish town in southern California that nestled on the coast.
‘They’re bloody late,’ the actor snarled, flipping open a packet of cigarettes and offering one to his pilot who declined with a polite shake of his head. ‘Jose was supposed to be here to pick us up.’
‘No, Errol,’ Lukas Kelly said with a yawn, kicking the fat tyres of the Lockheed Electra he had flown into the isolated desert airstrip. ‘We’re early. I picked up a tailwind.’
Errol Flynn lit his cigarette, inhaled and watched the exhaled smoke waft away on a gentle breeze. It was a magnificent day, the sun hot and still in the early morning sky, and the silence of the isolated airstrip a pleasant diversion from the noise and stress of the movie lots at Jack Warner’s studios.
Errol glanced around and spotted a bench outside the tin shed. The airstrip was seemingly deserted except for an old man pottering amongst the fortyfour gallon drums marked ‘avgas’. He appeared to be the caretaker and took little notice of the two men who had stepped from the recently landed aircraft.
‘How about we sit over in the shade and wait,’ Errol said, walking towards a corrugated tin shelter. Lukas followed and they sat down and stared from the open-sided shed at the heat haze rising over the sunburnt airstrip. ‘Not as bloody hot as Papua,’ Errol said, and in this sentence he touched on the place that linked them in the common bond of true frontiersmen.
‘Always gets me how theYanks identify you as an Irishman,’ Lukas said for no other reason than he knew it would take his friend’s mind off the delay in hitching a ride into the little village.
Errol smiled and flicked his cigarette butt at a lizard basking on an empty oil drum. ‘The Yanks don’t even know where Australia is,’ he replied. ‘So it is easier to identify me as an Irishman.’
‘They ought to be making a movie about your times in Papua and New Guinea rather than casting you in bullshit roles about cowboys,’ Lukas said, leaning back against the tin wall behind them. ‘Far more exciting stuff than some of the movies you have been in.’
Only from Lukas Kelly would the vain actor accept such a comment on the films he had starred in. It was not as if the young Australian who had trained to fly in the United States was criticising his acting abilities, only some of the scripts Errol had accepted to star in. ‘The Yanks don’t believe there is such a place where a man had to fight against Kuku warriors, be hunted by the Dutch in the jungles for poaching birds of paradise and end up nearly being hanged by the bloody Papuan authorities for a socalled murder I didn’t commit. It is a bit beyond their comprehension when they live in a country without head-hunters, cannibals and any real frontier left to boast about anymore.’
Lukas knew that all Errol had told him of his time in Papua and New Guinea back in the late twenties and early thirties was true. It had been corroborated by friends and acquaintances of his father, Jack Kelly. Lukas also knew that there were many on the great tropical island to the north of Australia who would dearly love to see the now famous Hollywood actor return – not for his fame, but for the money that he owed them and the chance to settle scores over the women seduced by the former Tasmanian’s animal charm and dashing good looks. Lukas grinned, wondering what could be better than to be the pilot assigned to flying stunts for movies and ferrying the great names of Hollywood around the country. He rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous who were forced to rely on his skills as a pilot to get them safely from one place to another in a time when aircraft had a habit of losing their way and landing heavily in many pieces on the ground when things went wrong. Young and beautiful would-be actresses found the Australian’s sex appeal very much like that of the famous Errol Flynn, and Lukas was very rarely without a young lady on his arm at Hollywood parties.
But the smile on his face faded and the guilt was returning. His country across the Pacific Ocean was at war with Germany and Italy, and friends he had gone to school with were in uniform fighting in North Africa, Greece and Crete. He had read the newspaper accounts of the war which seemed so far from the tranquillity of California with its sunshine, orange trees and movie lots. War was an unreal event that did not touch him until he thought about his father in Papua and his best friend, Karl Mann in uniform somewhere overseas, possibly fighting his Germanic relatives. ‘You think we might end up in the war?’ Lukas asked unexpectedly.
Errol gave the pilot a sideways glance. ‘You mean America?’ he asked to clarify the common ‘we’ between fellow Australians.
‘Yeah.’
‘Hard to say,’ Errol answered, drawing another cigarette from his packet. ‘Roosevelt is a bit pro-British from what I have heard. And his lend lease program just seems a way to beat the neutrality bit with the voting public. But it is definitely a means of supporting the Poms against Germany. No, I think it will take another Lusitania sinking or something similar to get theYanks mobilised against the Germans. They went in to help Europe in the
last war and twenty years later the bloody Europeans start another one. The Yanks remember that it was their boys who died in Europe in a cause that was meant to bring stability to that part of the Old World. It seems that they figure they died in vain.’
‘Good point,’ Lukas conceded. ‘Would you sign up if the Yanks went to war?’
The actor paused in lighting his cigarette and gazed into the distance. ‘This country has given me everything. But …’ he trailed away in contemplative thought.
‘You don’t strike me as a pacifist,’ Lukas said quietly.
‘I think that there are many ways to serve in wartime. I doubt that mine would be as a front-line soldier. I felt that my portrayal in The Sea Hawk of a British privateer for Elizabeth the First had a clear anti-Nazi message. That has to mean something towards helping the Brits’ war effort,’ Errol replied carefully.
Lukas did not pursue the subject. He had no doubts about the actor’s physical courage. He was a man who would fight any other on the drop of a hat. ‘How about you?’ Errol asked.
‘I made up my mind a while ago,’ Lukas said, staring into the heat haze. ‘I am going back to Australia to sign up with the Royal Australian Air Force as a pilot. I was just waiting until my contract was up with JL – and now it is. I leave next week on a ship bound for Sydney.’
‘You’re going to leave all this behind!’ Errol exclaimed, staring hard at Lukas. ‘You are a fool. Why don’t you at least wait and see if theYanks go to war?’
‘I can’t,’ Lukas replied with a shake of his head. ‘I have mates who are even now putting their lives on the line while I sit around getting fat off the land here. My dad did not hesitate to sign up in the last war and if I keep sitting around here it will look like I am a coward shirking danger. It hasn’t been easy honouring the contract.’
‘I know JL,’ Errol said. ‘I know that he would have released you if you had asked. He got himself into a bit of trouble when he released that film Confessions of a Nazi Spy in ’39. He was even called up to appear before a Senate investigating committee to justify its release. They had it in for him because they saw the film as an incitement to bring America out of its isolationist stance on European matters. But old Jack beat them. He was able to provide evidence that he had his facts from a former FBI agent who had accumulated them in the course of his work. So you see, Jack would have been sympathetic to you breaking the contract and going off to fight the Nazis.’
Lukas already knew about the incident as it was well known in Hollywood circles. He felt guilty as he could not tell his friend that he had used the excuse of the contract to delay enlisting for service in Australia. His reluctance came from meeting one particular beauty. Her name was Veronica Laurents and Lukas was smitten by the nineteen-year-old, raven-haired beauty.
Lukas had met her a year earlier when he had been a guest at one of Errol’s infamous parties held at his hill-top mansion Mulholland Farm. Prostitutes had been acquired to perform on beds where through two-way mirrors the actor’s guests could watch from above the bodies writhing in sexual ecstasy below. The young would-be starlet had accompanied an ageing actor of the silent screen to the party and Lukas had bumped into her at a bar that was generous in its supply of hard liquor. Despite his seemingly loose ways with the available women of Hollywood, Lukas was at heart a man whose strict Catholic upbringing did not allow him to approve of such wanton excess. Or perhaps it was simply his almost forgotten belief in God that steered him away from the orgy of flesh. As a pilot he had seen the face of death once or twice when his flight had run into trouble. On these occasions Lukas had prayed for survival, promising, as he fought the controls in the cumulus nimbus thunderheads that threatened to tear him and his plane apart, to give up hard liquor and loose women. And he believed that these promises had helped put him back on a righteous path.
But such promises faded with time. On the evening of this particular party Lukas still had the promise ringing in his ears after a dangerous flight in the Sierra Nevada skies during which a violent sandstorm pummelled his flimsy aircraft. So he had adjourned to the bar and was struck by the big violet eyes that turned to him as he mixed a gin and tonic. The young woman was dressed in a silky red, body-hugging dress and her long dark hair flowed down her shoulders, shimmering in the half-light of the room. For a brief moment Lukas stood transfixed. ‘I don’t know you,’ he blurted and immediately felt embarrassment at his clumsiness.
‘And I don’t know you,’ the sweet voice purred in reply. ‘Are you an actor friend of Errol’s?’
‘A friend, but not an actor,’ Lukas had replied. ‘I’m a flyer. I work for JL.’ He was not sure what the flickering change in the young woman’s expression meant when he announced this. Was it disappointment? He hoped not.
‘I see,’ the young woman said, turning towards him with a drink in her hand.
‘My name is Lukas Kelly,’ Lukas said, thrusting out his hand and immediately cursing himself for the male gesture.
The beauty hesitated and violet eyes barely concealed curiosity. ‘You have a strange accent, Mr Kelly. Are you English?’
‘Australian,’ Lukas replied. ‘Although my Aussie cobbers tell me that my accent is more Yankee than Aussie.’
‘I am Veronica Laurents,’ the girl said with a smile, extending her hand to curl softly in Lukas’s own broad palm. ‘I am actually here as a guest of Mr Arthur Jensen – you may have heard of him.’
Lukas frowned. ‘Old bloke who did some movies back in the twenties,’ he said, reluctant to let go of Veronica’s warm hand. ‘Never saw any of his pictures though. It was a bit hard to get them back in Papua.’
‘What – or where – is Papua?’ Veronica asked as she slid her hand away. ‘I don’t know of any place around here by that name.’
‘Papua is a big island north of Australia. It is a place of jungles inhabited by head-hunters and cannibals.’
‘It sounds very exciting and dangerous,’ Veronica said with just the trace of a little shudder. ‘Have you ever met a real head-hunter or cannibal?’
‘Dad and I had a couple working for us as deck hands on our schooner before I came here.’
‘Really!’
Before either knew it they were deep in conversation and had drifted away from the mansion to sit under the stars. Veronica confessed that she had only come to the house because she thought she might meet some famous producer or director who might assist her in getting a foot through the door to an acting role. It was the way with Hollywood. She had travelled from New York months earlier and had been able to survive in Los Angeles on her wealthy parents’ money without having to seek employment at one of the cafés or diners. Films had fascinated her and she was sure that they were the means to true immortality. Veronica did not elaborate on how she had spent her time between haunting agencies and Lukas did not ask. The fact that she had attended one of Errol’s infamous parties said enough. But he did not care, he was bewitched by this stunning young woman who shared the starlit night with him.
Before dawn he was able to spirit her away to an airstrip, belt her into the co-pilot’s seat and with a clearance take her on a flight over the sleeping city into the rising sun of the dawn. From that moment on Veronica had been his.
But it was a tempestuous relationship. His duties flying around the country for the movie industry kept him away from LA and often enough on his return she would not be in her expensive, comfortable apartment. When she did make contact with him she always had an excuse that she was at some party or other because of her attempts to establish a career. Lukas knew what she said was true; one did have to be seen around town to catch the eye of the right people. It made him uneasy but he continued to remain loyal to Veronica. However, he often asked himself if she was loyal to him.
But she had promised to be available to go out to dinner upon his return from this flight and Lukas was just as eager as his fellow Australian for Jose to turn up and convey Errol to the little village he was heading to for whatever rea
son. For when that was done Lukas could turn around and fly back to LA to the promise ofVeronica’s bed and body.
‘Will you be doing the pick-up flight?’ Errol asked, cutting across Lukas’ thoughts.
‘Ah, no. Harry will be bringing the old girl back for you,’ he replied, referring to the aircraft in warm and familiar terms.
‘So this might be the last time I see you, if you are heading back to the old country,’ Errol said. ‘I am going to miss our reminiscences of the wild times in Papua and New Guinea, old sport.’
With a start Lukas realised that the famous actor was reminding him that the good times in America were rapidly coming to an end. ‘It seems you could be right,’ Lukas replied as the distant sound of a car engine intruded into the silence of the tranquil countryside. Both men shaded their eyes to see the approaching Dodge sedan pluming a trail of dust on the unsealed road. ‘Looks like Jose is on his way to pick you up,’ Lukas added. ‘No reason to hang around.’