by Peter Corris
He glanced slyly around him, touched my elbow and drifted off to a quieter part of the pub. I followed him instinctively; discretion and the avoidance of wide open ears were second nature to me. Witherspoon watched me butt out my Woodbine and offered me a Senior Service, which he lit with a flash lighter.
'Thanks. Brother, are you?'
'S' right. Three years between me and Georgie. Kept me out of that fuggin' war.'
'Lucky you.'
'You bet. When didja last see Georgie?'
I hadn't thought that far ahead but if I hadn't been able to think on my feet I would've been dead long ago.' 16, would it be, or early '17? Somewhere in France. I was with the Canadians and we did some drinking with the Tommies. Good bloke, Georgie. Did he come through all right?'
Witherspoon looked so sly that his eyes disappeared into slits. In a manner of speakin'.' He drained his lager. 'Buy you a drink?'
We bought each other several drinks and with the oiling of his tongue Eddy let the story slip. The family had been harassed by the authorities ever since Georgie's desertion (which had made him a hero with his nearest and dearest, by the way); their natural concern for his welfare had been set at rest by a postcard from Switzerland.
'Reckons he's got a corker of a missus.' Eddy leered at a faded streetwalker who was resting her weary anatomy on a stool nearby.
'Good for him,' I said. 'What's your game, Eddy?'
'Drivin'. Want a job?'
It was as simple as that. Eddy worked for what must have been one of the first limousine services in the world. All arranged by telephone too, nothing is as new as you think it is. I'd done a little driving around Sydney (the more senior of the Robespierre men had cars) but was no expert. Still, it was an easier age – no tests to pass, practical or theoretical, just a half crown to pay and you were on the road.
Eddy and I got very thick. He introduced me to the manager of Green's Motor Services, gave me my first lessons in piloting the big Vauxhall Tourers and Sunbeam 16hps around the narrow London streets, and gave me a daily guide to the best pubs. I even boarded with the Witherspoons in Camden Town and, gradually, took on the identity of Tony Grace, South African, and relaxed my vigilance.
Mrs Witherspoon was a gigantic fat woman with scarlet, crooked lipstick and a totally criminal outlook on life. She was into everything – fencing, betting, abortions, lease-breaking etc. All services for a fee, no grassing guaranteed. She sat in her front parlour in the little terrace house she'd occupied all her life and ran her operations without benefit of books or accountants. She sized me up within seconds of our first meeting.
'You'd 'ave some sorta nick-name, wouldn't you, Tony?' she says.
I thought back over a few I'd had, all uncomplimentary. I shook my head.
'One'll come to me, don' you worry. Me it was named "Cricket" O'Mahoney.'
'I don't quite see it,' I said. 'A cricket-playing Irishman. What . . .?'
She laughed; her dewlaps shook. 'No. He killed eleven men in the Troubles. You saw Georgie after he scarpered, didn't you?'
I denied it but she made me feel very uncomfortable. She grinned and the lipstick got even more crooked. 'Don't worry about it, boy. Just keep your nose clean and your hands off the customers and their bloody goods. I've got an interest in that firm.'
It was like being at school again, or in the army or worse, and I felt like backing out of her presence. I needed a bracer and Eddy was never loath to have a drink.
'She's a one, ain't she?' he said as we waited in the local for the drinks.
'Whatever that means. Where's your father?'
The beer came (I was getting a taste for it), and Eddy shook his head. 'I think she done him in,' he muttered.
It wasn't a bad life, hanging around the depot in Golders Green and going off to pick people up and take them where they wanted to go, wait as often as not, and bring them back. I suffered a bad case of envy almost every day, especially when some old buffer would provide the service to send some young stunner shopping, but the tips were handy.
It was a useful couple of months I spent with Green's. For one thing I overheard a lot of interesting conversations from the front seat. Stuff on finance and shares (never did me much good), politics (they were carving each other up at the Paris Peace Conference at the time, preparing the ground for Hitler), motor cars, clothes and food and drink. It was an education and helped me to play a wide variety of characters – from brothel keepers to bishops – in the movies.
We carried a few celebrities. I remember driving Kipling and his wife around one day but I can't recall that they said or did anything interesting. Somerset Maugham I took to lunch, in the Sunbeam I mean. He just sat there from the West End where I suppose he had a play running,14 to Swiss Cottage, and when we arrived he said, 'Th-thank you, d-driver', and gave me a pound. Jimmy Wilde, the 'Welsh Wizard' was a bit more lively; he did some singing and talked a blue streak, but it was in Welsh and I couldn't understand a word. Driving along one day, I caught sight of a face I knew from photographs. He was getting out of a big, black car and having difficulty keeping the top hat on his head. He was small and sallow, about the same colour as the people he used to rant against as 'the yellow peril'. The Hon. William M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia. Just over from Paris for the day, no doubt. I would've run him down if I could – the bastard almost got me killed.
I didn't see any of Maugham's plays in the West End or anyone else's for that matter. My main entertainments were the pubs, the music hall and the cinema. I saw one and two reelers and films which I'd seen before in Australia, like Birth of a Nation and Fatty Arbuckle pictures like Oh Doctor! and Goodnight Nurse. I had an occasional fling with girls Ma Witherspoon could vouch for, but living in London wasn't nearly as cheap as in Paris. Dinner and a show cost a lot; wine was a ruinous price and cigars had to be rationed. I was making good wages at Green's and the tips were good, but I wasn't making much progress towards saving for a passage back to Australia. I should say that I intended to go first class; no six weeks of steerage for me, and it was necessary to make the grade with the people I might want to impress on the trip and after.
So I was stalled; I even felt that I was going backwards. I was eating and drinking too much in that damned English cold and putting on weight. I was in a foul mood, for the above reasons, when I got the call to take the actor, Harry Southwell, from Grosvenor Gardens in South Kensington to Mecklenburgh Square. Actor? I'd never heard of him and it wouldn't have been the first time I'd struck someone without a shilling to his name raking up the hire price somewhere just to make an impression where he was going.
Southwell was a smallish, nervous-looking type with a voice that contained an odd mixture of Welsh and American intonations. His hair was grey which made it hard to judge his age within ten years. As I later found, he was Welsh-born, but had spent some years in America. He had an Australian wife but I never heard him say a good word about Australia; perhaps that was part of his trouble.
He sat in the front seat, which was unusual, and smoked nervously. We passed a cinema where The Heart of a Texas Ranger, a Tom Mix film, was showing.
'That's rubbish,' Southwell snapped. 'Have you seen it?'
I said I had and agreed that it was rubbish although in fact I'd enjoyed the film. Disagreeing was no way to get tips.
'I could write better,' Southwell says, 'and direct better, too.'
Just to keep the conversation moving I ventured that I'd done a bit of film acting myself. Southwell looked interested.
'Where was that?'
'Oh, in Australia, before the war.'
'Is that a fact now? Say, that's interesting. My wife's an Australian.'
I nodded and he fell into a brown study for the rest of the journey. He directed me to an imposing front door along the square but he didn't seem too sure of himself as he alighted. He didn't give me a tip either. I was about to drive off when he stuck his head in through the open window.
'Say, have you ever heard of
Ned Kelly?'
I was exasperated and said the first thing that came into my head. 'Kelly's my middle name. We're related.'
I opened the throttle and roared off leaving him there with his hat in his hand and one foot up on the white marble step. I thought no more of it and was surprised a day or two later when I got an invitation to meet Mr Southwell for a drink in The Green Man at Notting Hill Gate. The invitation was in the form of a note delivered by hand to Green's depot. It added that I would hear 'something to my advantage'.
I showed up after work with a fairly heavy thirst at the appointed time. Southwell was drinking scotch and soda, a sight which cheered me up at once.
'You know me,' he said as soon as I had a glass in front of me, 'what's you name?'
'Tony Grace.'
'Tony Kelly Grace?'
'Ah, well . . .'
'You said your middle name was Kelly.'
'That's right, but . . .'
'Oh, I get it.' He took a pull on his drink and smiled. 'You look like a fellow that's been around. Well, it's none of my business as long as that's straight goods about you being in films in Australia and a Kelly.'
'It is,' I said. 'I wasn't a lead player or anything of course, too young . . .'
'Sure, sure.' He got out a packet of Fatimas which I hadn't smoked since Switzerland and lit us both up. 'Nothing's what it seems in the movie business. You know Tom Mix, son of a cavalry officer, war hero and all?'
I nodded.
Southwell leaned closer. 'I happen to know that his father was a lumberjack and that he never saw active service. Oh, he was in the army all right, but he deserted in nineteen oh two.'
My heart almost stopped. I carried the whisky to my mouth slowly so that my hands wouldn't shake and had a slug. 'That so?' I gasped.
'Yeah. Anyway, here's why I wanted to see you. I was meeting some fellows the other day to raise money to make a film here.'
'What sort of film?'
'Robin Hood.'
'Good idea.'
'They didn't think so. It's no go.'
'Bad luck.'
'Maybe not. My wife has been at me to go out to Australia. She says the movie business is big out there and wide open to the right man.'
I sipped my scotch feeling the beginnings of excitement. 'That could be so,' I murmured.
'She's told me all about this outlaw, Ned Kelly. Be a great film, she thinks.'
'It would,' I said. I racked my brains for the details – horse stealing, police killing, the fire at the Glenrowan hotel and a rope over a beam. It didn't sound too promising put like that, but I nodded and blew smoke affirmatively. 'Great material,' I said.
'I've got a proposition for you. Why don't you come out to Australia with me, help me raise the money, advise me on how to do things out there? Look you, I don't know a damn thing about Australia and my wife isn't much better informed. Can you ride?'
'Yes,' I said, 'but why me?'
Southwell drained his drink. 'You know, you remind me a little of Tom Mix . . .'
'Eh?'
'Don't get me wrong. You look a little like him and let me tell you – he might be a slippery, lying son of a bitch but he's a great rider and everything he's touched as turned to gold. I've got a feeling about you . . . Tony. Another drink?'
He held up two fingers to the barmaid to indicate doubles. I watched the generous measures of whisky go into the glasses and thought that Harry Southwell was a chap I could work with.
'I'm your man,' I said.
15
We travelled by P & O but I can't recall the name of the ship. I was aboard the damn things so often in following years that they all tend to blend together. I've got a photograph of this one; very arty, all funnels and railings, but it was a foggy day and the angle cut out the name. It doesn't matter, they were all the same – cramped cabins, smelly smoking rooms and stodgy food. You'll have gathered that I wasn't travelling first class. I never did manage to travel first class by P & O; I always seemed to be on the run or short of cash, or both.
It was late April or early May of 1919 and I'd have travelled aboard anything that wasn't a troopship. Some ships offered private passages although they were basically troopships. They were still ferrying survivors from the madness home and the last thing I wanted was to run into an old comrade at arms. Nothing like that on P & O: in first class it was all people resuming colonial posts and holdings and public school boys and Oxford and Cambridge men going home; in second class we had the better type of migrants, representatives of commercial firms with interests in South Africa, Rhodesia and Australasia and some odds and sods, like a small touring theatrical troupe and a few clergymen. Who the riff-raff in steerage were I didn't care to know.
Southwell was paying the passages. He'd made some money in America writing scenarios but probably less than he implied. He also knew less about producing and directing than he implied, but who was I to talk about exaggerating experience? Anyway, I had some money saved but I soon whittled that down at cards. It was illegal to gamble on board of course, but try telling that to a Malay planter when he's holding a straight to your two pair. After wasting too much money at drinking and gambling I had to find other recreations and there wasn't much to do except talk to Southwell and his wife, Annette. She was a pretty little thing who danced well. I'd always been a bit of a clodhopper on the dance floor before then, but Annette straightened me out so that I could glide along with the best of them. That was a useful talent later, too.
Another man might have got jealous at the amount of time I spent dancing with his wife but not Southwell. He could dance already, he said, and he left us to it while he scribbled away in his cabin. He had got hold of a book called Dan Kelly, Being the Memoirs of Daniel Kelly (Brother of Edward Kelly, Leader of the Kelly gang of Bushrangers), Supposed to have been Slain in the Famous Fight at Glenrowan,15 and he spent hours poring over it. I took a look at it myself; it ran the line that Dan Kelly had survived which was all rubbish. Southwell said he needed a 'hook' for the story and that this could be it.
When he could be drawn out of his cabin and sat down with a whisky or two, Southwell was a fund of information about Hollywood and New York and he really whetted my appetite for those places. We'd be cruising along within sight of the West African coast and Annette would coo, 'Wouldn't you just love to land on a coast like that, Tony? Face the harshest nature has to offer and survive?'
I'd grin manfully, but privately I'd be thinking of the parties in Manhattan or sitting around a swimming pool in California with some of the under-dressed beauties Harry would tell me about when Annette was out of the way.
'What a time they have,' Southwell would say. 'At weekends, mind you. They're too pooped through the week. But at the weekends they really let go.' A sip of scotch and up went the glass. 'An ocean of this stuff.'
'I thought they had prohibition,' I said. It was one of the things that had decided me against going to the States when I was feeling low in England.
'It's on the way. But I bet you wouldn't know it in Santa Monica on Saturday night!'
I soaked up as much of this as I could get and also Southwell's technical knowledge of films which wasn't a lot. He soon found out that I knew a deal less than him and I sometimes wondered whether he regretted our arrangement, especially when I was a little vague as to the exact whereabouts of places like Glenrowan. I bluffed along as best I could and tried to spend more time with the three other chaps in my cabin – a couple of Yorkshiremen who were going out to South Africa to work as engineers in the goldmines and a Scot who was going to try farming in Western Australia. But their conversation was about dredges and water tables and sheep and I found it hard going. Things were a little strained when we steamed into Cape Town.
'Ah, the old Table Mountain,' I intoned as I stood by the rail with Southwell and Annette. A good number of the passengers were leaving and there were a few people getting on. I was keeping my eyes skinned for a likely-looking woman who might make the rest of the journ
ey less dull.
'Is this where you're from, Tony?' Annette asked.
'Ah, not exactly. More up country.'
'Let's go ashore,' Southwell says. 'We've got all the rest of the day. I want to stretch my legs.'
I wasn't keen; my knowledge of the town extended barely beyond the wharves; I couldn't speak a word of Afrikaans and I knew there were a hundred and one blunders I could make. But I had to look like a man of action for Southwell's sake and, as it turned out, it was lucky I didn't skulk about in the smoking room looking for a worse card player than myself, as was my inclination.
It was a fine warm day and the town had the smells you got then and don't now – horses, fresh country not far away and human sweat. We've covered the sweat up with chemicals. We've done the same to the other smells, come to think of it. Annette looked pretty in a light frock and wide-brimmed hat and Southwell was proud of her as he squired her around, stepping well clear of the blacks I noticed. I had a tropical suit which I'd had made in London. I'd lost weight on board ship because the food was so dull I often couldn't be bothered eating it. The suit hung a bit loosely and I felt untidy in it. I had a solar topee pulled well down against the sun and possible identification. What I'm trying to say is that I was feeling pretty depressed when Southwell proposed that we take a buggy trip up the mountain a ways to see the sights.
'Don't look so glum, Tony,' Annette said. 'You can point out the sights to us.'
That didn't help. Things got worse when we found that the rascally Indian who hired out buggies to tourists only had a two-seater available. So, here we are, under a hot African sun, Harry and Annette with their bums comfortably on a seat and me astride a nasty-tempered black stallion that started at every blade of grass. I was a good rider but anyone would've looked an amateur on that nag. Southwell, who'd seen the great Tom Mix make horses turn cartwheels, wasn't impressed.
That experience put me off touristing for life; ever since I've made it a point never to see the sights of a place I might be visiting. The road up the mountain was winding and dusty and other riders and drivers were impolite. My stallion pulled and heaved and snorted. It was harder work controlling him than lumping coal which looks hard – I've never tried it. I was soaked in sweat by the time we reached the top and Harry and Annette had ridden up like nabobs, sheltered under Annette's parasol. It was sheer misery trying to fob off questions like, And what's that place over there called, Tony?' I made a botch of it and Southwell was looking at me very oddly when we prepared for the descent.