Browning Battles On

by Peter Corris

  'Got somewhere to go, old man?'

  'Metropole.'

  'Oh, good pub. Nice place.'

  'Only f'r t'night.'

  'You pop along here, Roslyn Flats, in the morning. Drop your kit. We'll have breakfas' in the Cross and see Eric for lunch. Always sting the producer for lunch, right, Dick?'

  'Right, Peter.'

  How I made it back to the Metropole through the dark, dangerous streets of wartime Sydney, I'll never know. Perhaps homing pigeons are drunk on something carried by the wind. It's as good a theory as any, and the only way I can explain how I came to wake up in the hotel bed, with my head beating like a speedball, somewhere around nine a.m. the next morning. I was even half undressed, wearing my shirt, tie and underpants, and when I dived for my trousers, which were in a heap on the floor, I found that the small amount of money I'd saved from the raging thirst of Peter Finch was intact.

  Don't let anybody tell you that the time to do a flit from a hotel is at night. Nonsense. The time is in the morning, when the fresh staff are still imagining that most people are honest and that a big tipper might happen along at any minute. The secret is to make sure that the hotel guests are at breakfast. All defences are down. I was roughly shaved, half washed, and almost sober when I slipped out of a back door of the Metropole Hotel and threw myself into the no-man's land of Sydney, Australia, in October 1944.

  When I arrived, Peter was sitting on the tiny balcony of his flat, drinking tea.

  'Don't like this stuff, do you?' he said. 'Sorry, there's nothing else, I'm afraid.'

  I said it didn't matter although I would have given a lot for a cup of coffee. It's difficult to convey the way things were in those days in Australia. Not many people had refrigerators and none, as far as I could see, ever had chilled juice in them. What they called coffee was made by heating a mixture of coffee and chicory essence, sweet gooey stuff, with equal parts of water and milk. The Finch flat didn't have a toaster, and Peter was eating thick slices of bread with butter and jam. In a properly conducted household there would be a supply of homemade cakes and biscuits, but my guess was that the bread and jam was the only food available chez Finch.

  'Got a smoke?' Peter said. 'We went through all mine last night.'

  I had two Senior Service left. We lit up. Finch was wearing an army greatcoat as a dressing gown over his underwear, which was none too clean. He hadn't a bean in the world and he couldn't have cared less. I've always admired this attitude but am of a rather more anxious disposition myself.

  'So, are we going to see Porter?'

  Peter puffed smoke. 'D'you know you can glimpse the water through there?' He pointed at two apartment blocks on the other side of the street. 'This is a beautiful city. You can't see it properly from here, but wait till you get on the water.'

  'Are we going on the water?'

  'Ferry to Milsons Point. I hope you've got a few bob.'

  I nodded.

  Peter smiled. 'Thought you might have. Don't worry, I'll hit old Eric up for a quid or two. We'll be right.'

  Ten minutes later, with Finch waved, shaved and wearing sports clothes which, in those days, meant simply that your jacket had fewer buttons than a suit coat and the pants didn't match, we were walking in the direction of Circular Quay. Women stared at Peter and he acknowledged every glance with a bright smile. It was as if he was promising to give each and every one of them a quick tumble sooner or later. I was taller and more solidly built, but with my ill-fitting suit and the grey in my hair I wasn't in Peter's league. Give me an hour with a good Rodeo Drive men's outfitter and barber and I flatter myself I'd have given him a run for his money. But it was poor cousin time for Browning just then.

  It was a warm spring morning and we both had our coats off and our hats back on our heads by the time we reached the Quay.

  'How about a quick one before we go over?' Peter proposed.

  The quick one, at a pub opposite the ferry wharf, turned into several slow ones and it was close to midday before we got on the boat. I can't think of a city that looks better from the water than Sydney. The bridge took my attention of course, but the whole scene was magic, with the small boats playing about in the light breeze and the big white houses on the hills saying, 'Look at me. Don't you wish you could afford me?' Finch and I sat on the outside benches, clearing our heads of the beer and smoke fumes.

  'Good to be alive, eh, Dick?'

  'Right,' I said, pointing to the mansions, 'but better to be alive and rich.'

  'One of these days,' he said. 'One of these days.'

  All right for him, at twenty whatever he was, but I was a lot further down the track and I had exactly four shillings and sixpence in my pocket. Finch had suddenly gone moody on me. He stood by the rail with his hands deep in his trouser pockets.

  'What's the matter?' I asked.

  'I should be back with my mates in Darwin, or in the Middle East. Instead, I'm poncing around making these stupid films. It doesn't seem right.'

  'You say the government wants you to make films.'

  He spat into the water, a very un-Finchlike thing to do. 'The government,' he sneered. 'A pack of running dogs, sucking up to the Americans. Just you wait and see, when the war's over they'll get the boot and Menzies and his mob'll be down on the unions and all for letting the capitalists have a free go.'

  Finchie posed as a radical in those days, a hater of the system. Perhaps it wasn't a pose, but it never stopped him pursuing his own career ruthlessly and tramping on anyone who got in his way. In any case, it was lucky for me—my story about being more or less on the run from Military Intelligence had a strong appeal for him. As we docked at the Milsons Point wharf, his gloom seemed to lift.

  'I like it over here,' he said. 'I think Tamara would too. I think we might move.'

  'Why not?' I said. I filed away for future reference the insight that thoughts of his wife cheered him up. Exactly the reverse, you might say, of my situation.

  We climbed the steps from the wharf and walked up a steep street away from the water. Peter had already told me that Eric Porter had a solid reputation as a maker of documentaries and shorts and that he had an ambition to move on into feature films. It was a comfort that he knew which way a camera pointed; in Hollywood, not all of the guys with the same ambition did. We stopped outside a block of flats which had nothing to recommend them except the view. Finch whistled piercingly and a man put his head out of a second storey window.

  'I wish you wouldn't do that, Peter. Marjorie's asleep. She was up with one of the children all night.'

  'Sorry, Eric,' Finch said. 'Come down and we'll go for a walk. I want to talk about The Sun is Warm.'

  'A Son is Born,' the man I took to be Eric Porter said.

  'I'm tired,' I said to Finch. 'Can't we go in and sit down?'

  'Are you mad? And catch some revolting childhood disease? No fear.' He gestured emphatically for Porter to come down. The head was withdrawn and Finch leaned against the gatepost. He patted his pockets. 'Blast. Out of smokes. Well, Eric'll see us right. Just help me keep him talking. Don't say anything negative. I'll steer him to the pub and we'll be set for lunch and a few pots.'

  Porter was a tall, thin man with spectacles and a stoop. Finch introduced me but Porter barely acknowledged my presence. He walked briskly so that I had to struggle to keep up. Finch kept pace easily enough. We stayed on the high ground, skirting a headland with a magnificent harbour view and a very pleasant park. The sun was hot and the shade was inviting. Porter ignored all these things and talked non-stop.

  'I think I've got McCallum for Selden,' he said.

  Finch nodded. 'Good. He'll be fine. Have you cut any of those "darlings" out of the script yet?'

  'A few. But it's a good script. We're all very happy with it.'

  'It's OK, but there's too many "darlings".'

  'It's a sophisticated piece.'

  'Sophisticated people say darling a lot, do they?' Finch propelled Porter towards a set of steps. To my great relief,
I could see the pub at the bottom. 'Is that right, Dick? I wouldn't know.'

  'Some do,' I said. 'And some don't. Are you trying for a British feel for the film?'

  Porter stopped dead in his tracks. 'Good God, no. Just the opposite. I want an American feel, you might say—pacy and with a sense of plenty of money about. For some of the scenes, that is.'

  'I might be able to help you there,' I said.

  15

  The Military Inn at Milsons Point did a very good fried fish lunch. I hadn't had any breakfast and fell on the plate when it arrived. Porter picked at his food; Finch ate heartily, but was more interested in the beer. The day had turned cool suddenly, with the wind swinging around to the south. We sat in the Ladies Lounge, which was where they served food in Australian hotels in those days. Not all of the women in the room were ladies, and I could feel eyes being drawn to Finch. His responses were lazy. He waved to a few people he evidently knew but did not invite them to join us.

  'What do you think, Peter?' Porter said sharply.

  'There's a way around it.'

  Here again, Finch amazed me. I'd been busy getting the last few chips down and I hadn't paid much attention to what Porter had been saying—something about the difficulties of the similarity in age between Finch and Ron Randell. I'd have sworn that Peter was taking less in than me, but he hadn't missed a beat.

  'Just don't have 'em appearing in the same scene.'

  'But we see them getting into the car together when Paul Graham's drunk and—'

  'Cut it,' Finch said. 'Or if you think you need it, shoot it from an angle that doesn't show their faces. Hell, shoot it from ground level. What does it matter?'

  'Peter, this film is terribly important to me.'

  Finch was studying a redhead in a white dress.

  'It's important to me, too, Eric. I need the money.'

  Porter sighed and sipped some beer. 'They have to be together in the deathbed scene.'

  'That doesn't matter. Slap some paleface all over me. Make me look a hundred. I don't care. Anyway, Eric, you have to understand that it's all an illusion. A man is dying, people think of him as older than his son who's sitting there scratching his balls. People's imaginations do the work. Isn't that right, Dick?'

  'Right,' I said.

  Like everybody, Porter had a breaking point. He'd been sitting there feeding these two, watching them sop up drink he was paying for, and now they were high-hatting him. 'What exactly do you know about anything, Mr Browning?'

  Finch grinned and rubbed the side of his nose. 'He's a secret service agent, Eric. Very hush-hush. Before that, he worked in Hollywood.'

  'Hollywood.'

  'Show him the letter, Dick.'

  I fished out Bobby Silk's letter and handed it to Porter while Peter scooped up some of the change and went to the bar. Porter's hostility faded as he read.

  'Remarkable,' he said. 'Are you going back to ah . . . take up this offer?'

  I swilled the last inch of my beer. 'In time.'

  'What's your connection with Peter?'

  'Oh, we just sort of met and got along well. He's interested in Hollywood and—'

  'I need him for my next feature. It's all planned.'

  'Got a contract?'

  'No, but

  'Eric,' I said. 'I think we can do business.'

  By the time Finch got back, Porter and I had made a deal. I was to go on the payroll at eight pounds a week with the job of scouting locations, advising on costumes and set decoration and anything else that might come along. I was also to use my best efforts to keep Finch in Australia for the filming of Storm Hill, Porter's next film and certain masterpiece. Porter advanced Finch twenty pounds and me four against our wages. Then he had to get back to his wife and sick child.

  'Fancy a walk back across the bridge?' Finch said.

  Well rested, and with a full load of food and beer on board, it seemed like a good idea to me. We set off, wearing our jackets now against the cold wind and having to keep our heads properly angled to keep our hats on. This is a skill that has been lost. You never see a man now who knows how to keep his hat on in a wind.

  'Well, how did you make out, Dick?' Finch said as we neared the approach to the footway over the bridge.

  'You saw. Four quid and a job, of sorts.'

  Finch laughed. 'No, I mean what sort of a deal did you do with him about me? Did you undertake to keep me sober, to stick to the script, what?'

  Finch was a shrewdie and he never expected anyone to have better ethics than his own. There was no point in lying to him, he'd have seen straight through me. 'I said I'd try to keep you here for his next movie. To go quiet on the "I can help you in Hollywood" stuff.'

  'That's a pretty good arrangement. I'm not planning to pop off to America just yet. Good on you.'

  'You don't object?'

  A gust of wind buffeted us as we moved up onto the footway. We gripped out hats. 'Old son,' Finch said, 'I may be an irresponsible, pinko pisspot, but I'm a realist. The strong in this world do what they have to do. They have only one duty in my book.'

  'And what's that, Peter?'

  'To look after the weak.'

  We tramped across the narrow walkway, high above the water, which was churning and frothing as the wind whipped it up. There were fewer boats on the harbour now, and they seemed to be heading for cover. There was a steady flow of cars going both ways and a few trains roared past. I glanced up anxiously at the sky; neither of us was dressed for rain and the clouds were getting darker.

  'Don't do that!' Finch said sharply.

  'What?'

  'Look up like that. It reminds me of Darwin and those bloody Jap planes coming in.'

  'Bad, was it?'

  'I was shit-scared. Much worse than a first night, I can tell you. And that's bad enough.'

  He was an actor, you see, living on his nerves and wits, never knowing whether the next moment was going to bring triumph or disaster. It takes a terrible toll and Finch, even then, was showing some of the signs. We crossed the bridge and he needed a pub, despite my belief that it was going to rain.

  'Wet inside's the best antidote to wet outside,' he said.

  He was given to remarks like that, and I suppose they helped him to handle the Oscar Wilde role. I once heard him say, 'The best cure for one woman is another woman, or two,' but that was much later, in Ceylon in fact.23

  We had a few drinks in a pub in Kent Street where, remarkably, Finch seemed not to know anyone. 'Dull place this,' he said.

  'D'you mean the pub, or Australia?'

  'Oh, Australia's all right, at least for the time being, but I would like to get to Britain.'

  My mind was running on my own experiences: I remembered working on Longford's Bounty movie, a good many years but not so many miles away.24 Thoughts of Bligh and the mutiny naturally lead in one direction. 'Well,' I said idly, 'that's where Flynn went at first. Before he became a star in Hollywood.'

  Finch sat bolt upright. His deeply sunken eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. 'Flynn, did you say? Are you comparing me with Errol Flynn?'

  'Well, no, Peter, it's just that he knocked around a bit, like you, and—'

  'The man's a mountebank,' Finch said. 'He can't act for shit. All he can do is flash his teeth and swing from ropes, like a monkey.'

  'No argument from me,' I said hastily. 'But he's certainly made it big in the movies. What actors do you admire, Peter?'

  Finch drained his drink. 'Olivier,' he said.

  For next few weeks I did nothing much except lounge around Finch's flat where I was sleeping on the couch, drink beer, go for long walks through Sydney and, as the weather warmed up, swim at the Redleaf sea baths. I became tanned and fit and, instead of darkening my hair, I helped along what the sun had already started by bleaching it. I kept the moustache, but by late October I didn't look much like the Dick Kelly who'd emerged from the Queensland bush. After one or two visits, I stayed away from the Journalists' Club—there were too many inquisitive types
there, men and women hungry for a story. In a way, Sydney was starved of news. The war provided the headlines week in and week out, and readers were keen for human interest stories. I didn't want to be one of them.

  Of course, I kept my eyes open for any expressions of interest in me, watched my back, kept well clear of the Metropole Hotel, avoided getting drunk in public and so on. 'Oily Feathers' had struck me as a pretty shrewd operator, and I knew from my own brief career as a detective how easy it is to find someone if you really try.25 Finch had a wide circle of friends and, although I was occasionally in the company of actors like Hal Lashwood and John McCallum, I tried to avoid them as much as possible. Actors drink and talk too much, and it was likely that Featherstonhaugh would have an ear to the thespian ground.

  I was more comfortable with Peter's army buddies, who arrived at the flat with Gladstone bags full of beer and left when all the bottles were empty. A few were long-term AWOL cases. Finch was not sanctimonious about these men, saying that he might very well have done a bunk himself if he hadn't had the luck to get long 'other essential duties' leave. I never told him about my 1918 desertion, but the feeling that he would have understood helped me to like him all the more. The military police called at the flat once and Peter had his papers ready for inspection in a flash. He might sometimes have looked like a disorganised drunk, but he handled the essentials neatly. I had a bad scare on that occasion, thinking that the MPs might have come for me, but they were looking for 'one of our blokes' and scarcely gave my Canadian documents a glance.

  I ran short of money and Finch came up with the solution. 'Give Eric a ring,' he said, 'and tell him you think I'm getting itchy feet. He'll come across.'

  I did it, suggesting that I could talk Finch round, and mentioning that I'd found a great location for some outdoor scenes. Porter sent me a cheque.

  'An actor's business is to get money out of producers,' Finch said, as we knocked a few spots off the cheque in a Darlinghurst pub.

  'And what's a producer's business, Peter?'

  'God knows. To get bums on seats perhaps. Not many are much good at it.'

  Early in November I travelled to Newcastle on the train and walked down to the beach. Much had changed, but this was where I'd sewed some wild oats and acquired some scars, and memory guided my feet accurately. I hadn't seen the family house since I'd made an attempt to get past the guard dogs before I stowed away aboard the Sternwood in 1920, but I knew exactly where to find it—on the hill overlooking the beach. 'Wild Bill' had chosen the site and the pretentious, sprawling design of the house to show the old-money Novocastrains that he was every bit as good as they were, as well as tougher and richer.