Browning Battles On

by Peter Corris

  'I suppose you'll get an old, rusty one,' Porter said, 'so we can be sure it'll break up. Give it a coat of paint.'

  I shook my head. I knew a bit about this sort of thing from my Hollywood days. 'You weaken it by cutting partly through the chassis. I've seen it done. Do you want a fire?'

  'Fire? No, David has to survive the crash.'

  'OK. No fire. I'll get a car and find someone with an acetylene torch.'

  Porter was impressed. He paid me my wages that week, unlike some other weeks. I still saw Finch. He was constantly being offered work on radio, which he accepted when he needed the money, and in the theatre. His army leave seemed to be infinitely extendable and he suffered some guilt over it.

  'I should be with the blokes,' he said drunkenly one night in the back room of a Darlinghurst pub where the licensee had an arrangement with the relevant officers of the law.

  'You've done your bit, Peter,' I said. 'Another round? Your shout.'

  'Too right,' Finch said. He stood to go to the bar and collapsed in a heap. He was very drunk. I helped him up and he went through that transformation I'd seen before. Almost as a matter of will, he appeared to sober up.

  'Tamara doesn't understand this,' he said.

  'What?'

  'Why I go out drinking with my mates. And I can't tell her why.'

  I wasn't sure that I understood it myself. Tamara was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen—dark-eyed, perfect facial bones, masses of hair. She was slender and her movements were magically graceful, even when she was just pouring a cup of tea.

  'Why do you?' I said.

  He threw back his head and laughed. 'To stop myself from racing off other women.'

  'Tricky,' I said, and I meant it. Finch had what every man dreams of having—an enormous power to attract women—and it brought him more problems than pleasure. Life is strange.

  I kept alert, but heard and saw nothing of Oliver Featherstonhaugh and his nasty friends. I made tentative enquiries about the family I had so unwisely married into—the MacKnights of Melbourne. I learned that Elizabeth, my wife, was still alive and running her private hospital in East Melbourne. I drew back from endeavouring to find out if we were still married. Where the MacKnights were concerned, it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. I was on the way to becoming a solid citizen. I applied for, and got, a copy of my birth certificate. I got a driver's licence and opened a bank account. Ushi, as my landlady, signed the papers necessary for me to get a ration book. Almost everything was rationed: bread, meat and milk, tobacco, beer and petrol. Naturally, there was a thriving black market in some of these commodities.

  But things were getting easier. Cuffs came back on trousers and shirts had long tails again. Skirts got longer, which was a pity, but bathing suits shrank a bit. Ushi was a keen swimmer and we often went to the baths or to Bondi Beach. I couldn't keep up with her for more than a dozen or so strokes, and it was nothing for her to swim out beyond the breakers and ride some big, booming wave almost back to the beach. She was the only woman I ever saw do such a thing, and she drew some disapproving looks. Ushi didn't care. She rubbed coconut oil on her skin and it rapidly turned brown. We were both keen suntanners.

  One day at Bondi she was unusually quiet. She fiddled with her sunglasses, swore when the coconut oil spilled on the newspaper she'd been reading.

  'What's the matter?' I said.

  'The war's going to end soon, isn't it?'

  'Looks that way. Hard to say when.'

  'What will you do?'

  Careful, Dick. I sifted some sand through my fingers. 'I don't know.'

  'Neither do I. The Yanks'll stop coming and then where will I be? Dick, do you think you could get me a part in the film? Maybe I could work in the films.'

  I breathed a sigh of relief. 'I can try,' I said.

  We started shooting in January in the middle of a heatwave. It made things difficult—the actors sweated and their makeup ran. They had to wear heavier clothes than were comfortable and tempers frayed. The only scenes they wanted to shoot were the outdoor ones—when Kay Selden and Paul Graham swim and play golf—and Finchie wasn't in any of them. In fact Finch's part, although it offered the best opportunities to show off his acting skills, confined him to the indoors—the small rooms of the Graham flat and the rather unconvincing set they used to suggest a low-life bar. He missed out on the elegance of Wahroonga house scenes and it rankled with him. Still, it helped to give a good, irritable edge to his performance.

  Finch played Paul Graham, who marries Laurette in the opening scenes, treats her like dirt, drinks and runs around with other women, causing her to leave him. But they have a son, David, who dotes on his ne'er do well dad, who teaches him to do what he likes—get drunk with the boys and despise his mother. Laurette, played by Muriel Steinbeck, leaves when the snotnosed kid is about fourteen. She divorces Paul Graham and marries her wealthy employer, John Selden, played with great panache by John McCallum. After Paul is killed in a car accident, David, now twenty-one or so, comes to live with the Seldens. The war is on. He hates his mother and stepfather and, to spite them, marries and deserts Selden's daughter, Kay.

  For 1945, all this philandering, drinking, divorcing and marrying of a stepsister was pretty racy stuff. With Finch and Randell glowering away, and Muriel projecting buckets of decency while trying not to look too satisfied at landing so nicely on her feet, I had the feeling that the picture was going along well. I was on the payroll as what would have been called a production assistant in Hollywood and worth a screen credit. There was no question of that, however, with Porter.

  'You're doing a great job, Dick,' he told me a couple of weeks into the shoot. 'I couldn't do without you, but, you know the problem.'

  'Sure, Eric,' I said. 'The unions. Don't worry about it, and you've already made it square with me.'

  I meant his agreement to hire Ushi as an extra. She was in the church as a respectable person when Paul and Laurette got hitched, in the bar as a floozie, on the golf links when David and Kay are plighting their troth, and in some crowd scenes. She was thrilled by the whole thing and the rushes showed that the camera liked her. She got along very well with the other cast members and the crew and I was confident that Porter would find something for her in Storm Hill.

  I told her so in bed one night.

  'D'you really think so, Dick? A speaking part?'

  'Who knows? Maybe.'

  'I like working in films. It's fun, even if the money's not much.'

  'Everyone likes it, babe,' I said. 'You should see them in Hollywood. They'd kill to get the sort of parts you're looking at. People have killed for them.'

  'Really, Dick? Tell me.'

  I spun her a story about Mabel Normand and Desmond Taylor that might have been true.27 She lapped it up, but Ushi was no fool and the question she put to me next revealed her shrewdness.

  'Why don't you want to be in the picture yourself, Dick? Eric'd give you a part, wouldn't he? With these war scenes coming up, you'd be perfect.'

  True enough, but I didn't want my face, however disguised, appearing in giant size on screens around Australia. For all I knew, 'Oily Feathers' and Elizabeth MacKnight Browning were keen picture-goers. I made some joking remark about being shy and we got back to doing what we'd been doing before—more fun than talking, as I recall.

  The shoot progressed smoothly. My only problem was getting hold of a suitable car to arrange the crash scene.

  It had to be a decent-looking vehicle and it was to finish as a total wreck. Porter didn't want me to spend too much money on it and I was spending a good bit of time scouting the used-car dealers. The scene could be shot at any time, but Porter became anxious to get it in the can. He was moving into one of the more interesting parts of the picture, where footage he shot in bushland outside Sydney was to be blended with stuff shot in New Guinea by the famous war cinematographer Damien Parer. The Parer material was gritty—battered-looking diggers scanning the skies, waiting for the mail, carrying woun
ded comrades through the jungle. The New Guinea village set looked realistic enough as far as I could tell, and everyone was interested in the work. Ushi was playing one of the nurses dealing with the wounded heroes.

  Convinced that he was about to be killed on a dangerous patrol, David Graham wrote Kay a letter apologising for his caddishness and telling her that he loved her. The letter was found clutched in his hand after he was wounded and was conveyed to Kay who, somewhat miraculously, was on the spot. I was busy setting up a Japanese machine-gun nest when Porter sent a messenger to collect me.

  'Cecil's not well,' he said.

  Cecil Perry was playing a character named Tazzy, a big soldier with winning ways, a mate of David Graham's.

  'That's tough,' I said. 'Will you have to reschedule?'

  'No, I need him in the next scene but I can keep him in medium shot and he doesn't have a line.'

  I was puzzled. Porter got up out of his canvas chair and walked around me, inspecting me like a prize bull.

  He made me nervous. 'What the hell are you doing, Eric?'

  'You're a dead ringer for Cecil. Darken your hair, put on a moustache and you're perfect.'

  'No.'

  'Why not? C'mon, Dick, be a pal. Ten quid.'

  Finch was standing within earshot, dressed in sports clothes, watching sardonically while the rest of the cast ran around in army singlets with mud on their faces. I couldn't think of a convincing reason to refuse. Hoping to put Porter off, I said, 'Twenty quid.'

  'You bastard. Right. Go to make-up.'

  I got togged up in a singlet, shorts and boots, let them comb some black muck into my hair and stick on a small moustache, and did the scene. It needed a couple of takes because I was trying to keep my face turned away from the camera as much as possible. Eventually, Porter got what he wanted. I was walking back to the make-up tent when Ushi came running towards me.

  'Dick,' she said. 'Oh, Dick, you look so handsome like that. I want to race you off into the bushes.'

  'Well . . .'

  She pulled free. 'I've got a scene. Don't take it off. Please, Dick, stay like that. I'll make you glad you did.'

  Promises in her eyes and her voice. What could I do? I took a look at myself in the mirror and I could see what she meant. Dark suited me better than fair and the moustache was handsome. I looked younger, almost the dashing Dick Browning of earlier days. I cleaned myself up a bit and went off again to look for a car to roll down a cliff.

  Henderson's car yard was in Ultimo, near the fish markets. It sounded like a good place to pick up a cheap car. In fact I'd been told about the establishment in a pub. My informant had more than hinted that some of Henderson's cars were not necessarily honestly come by. That didn't matter to me, because the vehicle in question was going to be in several widely scattered pieces very soon. The tip was of extra value because where you have a car thief you have an oxywelder, as sure as God made wire coat-hangers to open car doors.

  I was driving an old Riley that belonged to Eric Porter's brother, Dudley, who was assistant director on the film. I'd borrowed it to make the trip to Ultimo and Dud was glad to lend it to me for this purpose—he'd feared that his Riley was going to end up as the death car. There wasn't much fat in the budget of A Son is Born.

  An afternoon shower fell as I went over the Pyrmont Bridge and wound through the wet, narrow streets until I found Henderson's. It was nothing like your modern car lot, with bunting, knee-high fences, life-sized cut-outs of girls in miniskirts and prices written on windscreens. In those days a used car yard was an adjunct to a petrol station or a mechanic's workshop. The typical colour scheme was an oily grey-green and the decor was toolshed functional.

  Henderson's was just that sort of place. It stood between two factories. The high cyclone fence in front of the narrow block was topped with a couple of strands of barbed wire and the office inside was a fibro shack with grimy windows and a rusty iron roof. The workshop was like a barn except that there were machines inside instead of animals, and the smell was of oil and petrol instead of hay and cow shit. A dripping sign reading 'Henderson's Mechanical Repairs—All Models' hung above the entrance to the workshop. The wide gate stood open and I drove the Riley through and parked it beside the six cars that stood in a tight formation under a FOR SALE sign tacked up to a post.

  I ran my eye over them. A two-tone black and yellow Standard looked a possibility. I lit a cigarette and strolled towards the office, trying to keep clear of the oily puddles that lay in my path. I was aware of being watched from the office. Someone was polishing a peephole in a window. Nothing strange about that. If I ran a hot car yard I'd watch strangers pretty carefully too. I took off my hat and mounted the rickety steps. The door was open and I stepped through it.

  'Mr Henderson?'

  I couldn't see the man standing back from the window. The light in the room was dim and the visibility was further reduced by a smoke fug. The figure stepped forward to a desk in the middle of the room, but he was still in the shadows. He opened a drawer.

  'I'm Henderson.'

  'My name's Browning. I've been told—'

  'Your name's William Hughes,' he said. 'And I'm going to blow your fuckin' head off.'

  He stepped around the desk and into the light. I was looking into the eyes of Jack Henderson, my former comrade in arms whom I'd deserted in France in 1918 and later bashed over the head with a truncheon on the Sydney to Newcastle train.28

  18

  It was Jack's son of course. I realised this within seconds, but the likeness was exact. He was the same height, a rangy six-footer, with his father's grey eyes, long nose and pugnacious jaw. He wore his hair the same way, short back and sides, and he had the same slightly crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. I did a rapid calculation and worked out that he was also about the same age as Jack the last time I'd seen him. That helped to create the eerie illusion that had stopped me in my tracks. If it hadn't been for that, I might have bolted. Then again, there was a good reason not to move a muscle. He held a big Webley revolver in his right hand and it was pointed at my moustache.

  'My old man told me all about you, Hughes. I swore I'd kill you if I ever caught up with you.'

  Bluff was my only defence. 'Look, Mr Henderson, there's some mistake. My name's not Hughes. I'm—'

  'Shut up!' He kept the Webley very steady as he moved towards the wall. Without taking his eyes off me, he lifted a framed photograph off a nail and laid it on the desk. 'Take a look at that, but don't touch it. Keep your hands where I can see them.'

  I leaned forward to look at the photo. A flash flood of memory washed over me and swept me away. I was back in the mud and blood of the Somme with Henderson and 'Wag' Anderson and 'Spit' Thorndike and that mad bastard of an English officer, Evelyn Anthony, who nearly got me killed. This photograph was taken just after we got the news that we were embarking for France. There we were, all still in one piece with the light of battle in our eyes—well, in the eyes of some of us. The smaller men squatted in front with a pair of crossed rifles. I stood at the back alongside Jack Henderson, the lance corporal's stripe clearly visible on my sleeve. For some reason I was hatless; my dark hair was slicked back and I wore a moustache very like the one that was glued to my upper lip now. My head was circled in red ink and the words 'coward and deserter' were written above it in block letters.

  The picture was twenty-eight years old, but I hadn't lost any hair or gained much weight and the 'Tazzy' impersonation had taken twenty years off me if you didn't look too closely.

  'Don't pretend that isn't you.'

  He hadn't shot me yet so he evidently wanted to talk. That was OK by me, though I could've done with a cigarette. It's amazing what you think of when you're seconds away from death. I shrugged. 'It's me. How's Jack?'

  'He's dead.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that.'

  'You didn't help by bashing him on the train. He was never too good after that.'

  I thought back to that event. Jack had been breathing regularly a
nd there hadn't been much blood. I couldn't believe I'd done him a serious injury. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I didn't hit him very hard. How did he come out of the war?'

  'Not as well as you, you fucking coward.'

  'I was shell-shocked. I wandered off. I was out of my mind for a long time.'

  'Bullshit.'

  It was, but there was no way he could be sure. Doubt entered his eyes for the first time.

  'You had to be there to know what it was like. Your dad was the bravest man I ever saw. I wasn't brave, but I didn't desert. Not really. When we met on the train I was under a hell of a lot of pressure. Jack didn't give me a chance to explain.'

  The Webley didn't move. 'What sort of pressure?'

  'I was running away from my wife.'

  That wasn't quite accurate, but it was close and I desperately needed something to deflect him from his purpose. His thin mouth twitched into what was almost a smile. 'I can understand that,' he said.

  'I stowed away on a ship. I was a desperate man.'

  He nodded. 'I hardly knew my dad. He died when I was a kid and I never met any of his army mates.'

  'They were mostly killed on the Somme.'

  'But he showed me that photo and he told me about you.'

  'Did he tell you about how we ran the two-up games on the troopship? And what we got up to in London?'

  'No.'

  'Too bad. We had some times.'

  'You sound like a Yank.'

  'Spent a lot of time there. What's your name, son?'

  I could feel him softening and I hoped the 'son' wasn't pushing him too hard.

  'Bill.'

  'Well, Bill, your dad was a great guy but he got me all wrong. Y'know I met him in the Liverpool camp in 'seventeen. I could tell you some stories.' I pointed at the photo. 'That's "Wag" Anderson. He stopped three machine-gun bullets in 1918. That's old "Spit 'n polish" Thorndike. He was wounded but he survived. I saw him in Melbourne after the war. That's . . .'

  He put the Webley down on the desk. His eyes were brimming, so he probably couldn't have made much of a shot anyway. 'All right, all right. It was all a long time ago. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You can tell me a few things about Dad.'