Box Office Browning

by Peter Corris

  Miss Select had overlooked two halfpence in the bottom of my bag; I used this to get me to the Central Railway terminus where I bought a ticket to Nowra with a flourish of the fiver. Then heigh ho for the bar to wait, behind a newspaper and in a cloud of smoke, for the train.

  Train journeys were not too bad in those days. The seats were comfortable and intact, and the floors were clean – not like the things we travel in nowadays. The train stopped too often to let on the second class riff-raff (I was travelling first) and so the trip was damnably slow. But with a paper and a good cigar and a flask of brandy from the bar, the time could be made to pass more or less pleasantly.

  It was winter of course, and so we smokers closed up the carriage and let the fug build. What with the gas lamps alight and the foot warmers steaming, the carriage became hot and close. I finished the paper and dropped off to sleep. When I woke most of the travellers had got off and I found myself sitting opposite an elderly gent with a red face and fierce, bristling moustaches. He was staring at me oddly; I tried to avoid his eyes but they had a mad magnetism.

  'I'm too old,' he spluttered.

  'I beg your pardon.'

  'I'm too old for the war. God, how I envy you. On leave are you? Glad to climb into the old mufti for a bit, eh?' He reached down for a walking stick, lifted it and shook it so hard it disturbed some of the fug. 'Christ, if only I could get a crack at the Hun. What's your unit?'

  I looked at the waving stick and decided discretion was the better part of valour. I mumbled something and he inclined his head at me. He seemed to be about to ask me to repeat myself but thought better of it. 'Good, good. Fine troops. Couldn't help seeing the pamphlet fall from your pocket, you see.'

  I looked at the seat and saw the conscription pamphlet lying beside me. The cover had a crude drawing of a furry creature with dripping teeth, wearing a spiked helmet.

  'Oh, yes,' I said lamely, stuffing the pamphlet back.

  'Slackers!' the madman boomed, producing spittle as he spoke. 'I'd brain them all!' Swish, swish went the stick. I felt suddenly panicked and a cramp gripped my right calf as sometimes happens when I get the wind up. I groaned and reached to massage the leg.

  'I say, old chap, a wound?'

  I mumbled something affirmative, collected my bags and hobbled out of the carriage. I heard him slam the stick on the spot where I'd been sitting and spit out the word 'Hun'. The seat would be awash. I stood in a draught at the end of the carriage and, for want of something better to do, I pulled out the pamphlet and squinted to read it in the faint, flickering gas light.

  'What do you want?' the pamphlet called. (Well, I could answer that easily enough – warm bed, soft woman and good drink.) 'You want a strong Empire, a White Australia and FREEDOM from military despotism.' (I could go along with most of that.) 'You want the crushing of Germany and the liberation of Roumania and Serbia.' (Not so sure about that – Germans made damn good beer and I couldn't say I knew anything about the other two places at all.) It went on hammering away at those who said industry would collapse or the country be flooded with niggers, and praising Haig and Robertson as brilliant strategists who only needed a few million more men to make their plans succeed. I felt chilled and not by the cold south coast wind. The referendum on the conscription question was coming up in October; I wasn't old enough to vote but by God I'd be old enough in January to be sent to the trenches if the bloody thing passed.

  7

  Nowra was a small place, centre of a rich dairy district and much frequented by city swells in the summer months. There was a single span bridge over a handsome river and a glorious white beach where the women paraded in light summer dresses shaded by their parasols. In winter the township was muddy and could be cold, depending on the wind. The night I arrived was mild but threatening to rain. Straight to the Commercial Hotel I went, depleting the fiver still further, but determined to have one soft night before I began my period of rural seclusion.

  I got a room at the back of the hotel and as far away as I could from the church in the main street. The last thing I wanted was to be woken by Sunday morning bells. If all went well I could probably judge my liquor intake so that I'd sleep through till midday. I was too late for dinner but they gave me some bread and soup in a small room beside the kitchen. Good enough to line the stomach before a few brandies, thought I, and I ordered a bottle of claret to help the bread down. I'd hardly tucked the napkin in when the maid set another place at the little table and a big, red-faced fellow plonked himself down beside me. I nodded to him and started on the soup.

  Without so much as a by your leave, he picked up the bottle and read the label.

  'Think I'll have the same,' he said. 'Could be a long night.'

  I pricked up my ears at that. I was tired but talk of a long night will always get at least a hearing from Browning. 'It's one of the better domestics,' I said, not too warmly.

  He grunted and gave the order to the maid when she brought his dinner. He ate noisily and I would have been put off my food, being a bit sensitive that way, if I hadn't been so hungry and this my first meal in freedom. As a wine drinker I wasn't in his class; the level of his bottle stayed inches below that of mine. He also finished eating first, sighed and wiped his face with the napkin.

  'Mind if I smoke?'

  'No,' I said, still chewing bread and thinking about taking the rest of the wine up to my room. Perhaps I was too tired for a long night of whatever sort.

  'Have one.' He put a cigar beside my plate and helped himself to another glass of wine – mine. 'You look like a sporting cove. Down for the fight?'

  'Fight?'

  'Shhh, man, it's a hush-hush affair.'

  'Why?'

  He waved his cigar. 'Wowsers are down on the game, reckon it's keeping fit fellows out of the war. Damn the war. Anyway, ask me a chap'd be safer in France than in the ring with Moffat.'

  I lit the cigar and looked enquiringly at him. 'Don't know Moffat? Well, local reputation, I suppose. He's from around here, bowled them all over he has, all weights. They say he beat Hughie Dwyer7 – unofficial, of course.'

  I nodded. 'Not too many have done that.'

  'No. Well, Dwyer worked around here at one time, might be something in it.'

  'And this Moffat is fighting here, tonight?'

  'Mmmm, some blackfellow. Said to have a punch.'

  We finished off the claret and fell to talking about fights the way men will, and the upshot was he invited me to attend the fight with him. I mentioned something about brandy and we managed to squeeze in a tot or two before we took off.

  My companion was a Mr Ryan who had a large dairy farm near the town of Berry, a little to the north of Nowra, and extensive interests in the area besides – fruit canning, commercial fishing and the like. I learned this in the bar over the brandies before we got into his Buick which appeared to be only marginally older than Les Darcy's.

  'And you are . . .?' Ryan said as he started the car.

  I gave him the name I'd used to register at the hotel. 'Hughes, sir. William Hughes.'

  We drove out along a rutted road to a rambling building with high chimneys which was surrounded by a high post and rail fence.

  'Abandoned brick factory,' Ryan explained. 'Ideal spot, good solid floor, fit a lot of people in and easy to post a few watches around the fence.'

  The word had certainly got around; there were plenty of miners present as well as farm labourers and wharf workers as well as a fair number of the better class of people. Some of the rougher types inspected the Buick suspiciously but Ryan was given the thumbs up by a lantern-carrying fellow who was stationed on the track that led from the fence to the factory. There were a few other cars pulled up in a row, all pointing back down the track. Ryan manoeuvred his car into a similar position.

  'Everyone looks nervous,' I said, feeling it.

  'Troubled times, Hughes. This could be interpreted as riotous assembly under these blasted wartime regulations.' He gave a tobacco and brandy-laden s
nort. 'They might call the troops out.'

  The line of men, huddled down into their coats against a light drizzle, waited at a wide, iron-barred door. Ryan puffed his cigar, checked his half-hunter and nodded with satisfaction when the door swung open.

  'On time,' he said. 'Good organisation. Should mean the coppers've been seen to.'

  'Good,' I said. I had no wish to be behind bars so soon after my release.

  We paid two shillings at the door, received a cardboard disc in return and trooped into a large room lit by hurricane lamps. A ring had been set up in the centre and there were a couple of rows of chairs around it for the disc holders; the others, who had paid less, stood.

  Ryan and I had a swig from the flask; we both had cigars going and there were pipe and cigarette men among the crowd so that the room soon became thick with smoke.

  'Right atmosphere for a stoush,' Ryan said. 'Reminds me of the old bare knuckle days. Real fights, then.'

  I nodded. I'd been bored to tears by tales of the bare knuckle days by 'Wild Bill' and others. Glove fights were real enough for me; too real, sometimes.

  The noise mounted with the smoke. A few shouts and scuffles from the hoi polloi indicated that Ryan and I weren't the only well-oiled ones. After a bit, Moffat and his opponent pushed through the throng accompanied by their handlers. A tall, thin man with a drooping moustache and sleek, oiled-down hair followed them into the ring. He was wearing a white shirt and a black waistcoat which he revealed by taking off his jacket. This also revealed a pistol strapped under his armpit.

  'Referee,' Ryan said.

  Moffat was a fair, fattish man in his thirties. His legs looked spindly under the loose trunks and the flesh bobbed about on his upper body as he moved. The Aboriginal was thin and hard with a wide, flashing smile and a bounciness to everything he did. He hung on to the ropes and bounced, bounced again while the referee was inspecting the gloves and kept bouncing as the announcements were made. Moffat, by contrast, was perfectly still.

  'Can't say I think much of Moffat,' I said.

  Ryan shot me a sideways glance. 'We'll see.'

  'Any chance of a schlenter?'

  Ryan shook his head vigorously. 'That's why he's got the gun. You wouldn't care for a small wager, Mr Hughes?'

  The thought of a few more pounds in my pocket was attractive; the longer I could put off the evil day on which I had to go to work the better. 'Perhaps,' I said. 'Let's watch a round or two first.'

  The room was full to bursting; there were a few dark faces dotted among the crowd but most were loud, swearing, sweating, spitting white men. I'd heard that there were a couple of women at the Burns-Johnson fight at Rushcutters Bay seven years before (I'd love to have gone but I was too young); all I can say is they would have been sadly out of place in the Nowra brick factory that night. Would've fainted most likely; what with the smoke and the brandy I felt a little dizzy myself.

  Moffat seemed to be completely over the hill while the black was just reaching his prime. The fat man was blotched with blood and panting hard after two rounds.

  'A pound on Moffat,' Ryan proposed.

  I looked at the other corner; the black was sitting comfortably on his stool and giving his cornerman nothing to do. He'd hardly raised a sweat and was unmarked.

  'Make it five,' I said.

  'Done.'

  I was comforted by the other wagers I heard being made; the odds on Moffat I calculated were three to one on. There's nothing I like better than beating the odds.

  The pattern of the fight stayed the same for another three rounds and changed abruptly in the sixth. The Aboriginal seemed to become a little arm-weary from throwing so much leather. Moffat hit him in the bread basket and dropped him – the first knockdown of the fight. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen Moffat stagger once under the peppering he'd had. The darkies in the crowd shuffled their feet and went quiet, so did all the men who'd bet against their race. The black got up and saw out the round.

  Ryan lit another cigar. 'This round,' he said.

  He was right. Moffat moved no faster but he hadn't lost an ounce of strength. He was suddenly like a solid old tree, resisting winds and flood. After the middle of the round he brushed aside a long left and moved in close.

  Ugh! The black's grunt could be heard above the noise as Moffat's right sank into his hard belly. He bent and swayed, still game, but Moffat battered him down with short punches. He hit the floor hard enough for me to feel it shake three rows back and lay still. The referee counted him out and raised Moffat's hand.

  'Good man,' Ryan said as we pushed through the crowd to the car.

  'Yes.' Ryan drove fast along the dark track; I contemplated jumping out but there was that dark, threatening bush all around and a broken leg would make me a sitting duck if any Long Bay avengers were around. 'I can't pay you the five, Mr Ryan. Not after I settle up at the hotel.'

  Ryan took one hand off the steering wheel and clapped my shoulder. 'That's all right, my boy,' he boomed. 'You can work it off.'

  So events more or less took the course I'd planned although I hadn't anticipated working for a couple of months for no wages nor some of the other pressures that were brought to bear. In a sense I was lucky to be working for Ryan because, as a passionate Irish nationalist, he had no use for the war or conscription. It was infernally boring to have him quote Archbishop Mannix8 at me all the time. 'What difference could ten or twenty thousand Australians more make in an army of fifteen million?' Ryan would say and I'd nod as I milked the hundredth cow of the morning or tore another inch from my hide rooting out blackberries.

  There were a fair number of Fenians around the Berry district and they protected their workers from the assaults of conscriptionists and Hun-haters. (Of course, I had more than a suspicion that the Fenians would have welcomed a German victory over England, which was going a bit too far, and it was certainly in their interests to keep their labourers on the farm with their backs bent. Ideals usually have a practical foundation, in my experience.)

  The work was hard, the hours were long, the pay was non-existent, but there were compensations. There was the abundant good food, the occasional booze-up with Ryan, and there was what we'd now call a significant fringe benefit in the package. I mean Katie. By Christ, I had to go carefully there. Katie Ryan was eighteen, built like a music-hall dancer with long legs, a tiny waist and a super-structure that made you blink to make sure you weren't dreaming. She had green eyes and a mass of red hair that somehow, I don't know why and I never struck this in any other woman, helped you to think of her naked. The result of that of course was acute embarrassment, strained britches and funny walks.

  You might think it odd that a man would import a young bull like me to work on a farm where his comely daughter was the only young female for miles around. It wasn't really; farm labour was in short supply for one thing and Ryan was so pickled in booze and obsessed by farming that I think he'd forgotten all about the baser passions. He only had one child after all, which was very rare for a Mick. But what a child!

  She used to hang around me while I was working and I was never sure whether it was the labour that was making me sweat or something else. On the crucial day, a few weeks after my arrival, I was digging a hole for a fence post a furlong or more from the farmhouse. Katie came sauntering along through the grass; she was barefoot, holding her shoes and stockings in her hand. She sat on a tussock of grass and watched me.

  'William,' she said.

  'Miss?'

  'How is it that you have the manners of a gentleman and the hands of a labourer? Papa says it was the first thing he noticed about you and what made him think that you might be a good worker.'

  That was interesting; it sounded as if the old bastard might have set me up. The thought induced a slight change in my attitude towards his daughter. 'Well, Miss,' says I, 'I've done a lot of things. Been a sailor for one, that's hard work for the hands, but worth it, to go round the Horn . . .'

  Her eyes gleamed as she looked at
me. I've always had a talent for constructive lying which basically consists in not elaborating too much. I let the words tail off and gave her one of my hard, manly looks. I'd grown my moustache back and must have looked quite the gentleman pioneer in white shirt open to the waist and new moleskins which Ryan had given me. 'I'd give a lot to see the green water reflected in your eyes,' I said.

  I'll swear she shivered. 'I was thinking of a picnic on the beach. Would you like that?'

  I'd hardly thought of anything else but getting her into a barn or a bed since I'd clapped eyes on her. A beach would do fine, but how?

  'How?'

  'Mama and Papa are going into Wollongong tomorrow to visit a friend in hospital. I'm supposed to be having piano lesson at midday but I happen to know that the teacher is sick and won't be here.'

  Scheming minx, thinks I, but the mechanics of seduction have never interested me all that much so I was happy for her to do that part of the work. I straightened up, took off my hat and mopped my brow. It was late September and a very warm day already.

  'When are they going?'

  'Early.'

  'What of the others?' I meant the house servants and the two other farmhands.

  She shrugged. 'What of them? I can deal with Cook and Bessie.'

  I sank the bar into the hard ground. 'Tomorrow it is, then.'

  It must have been nearly the last day in September and it dawned warm and bright the way days do on the south coast of New South Wales. Dry too, not like this damn California damp. Katie and I set out for the beach in a trap and we bowled along the hilly roads to the sea in fine style. I almost thought that she might have done this sort of thing before from the way she took roads that skirted the fronts of farmhouses and hung back at crossroads to be sure the coast was clear.