by Peter Corris
The concerned, guilty look on Helen's face gave me the answer.
'You told him?' I said.
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'I love you.'
Damn funny way of showing it, I thought, to put a man within reach of the horsewhip. But I've always been a sucker for women who say that they love me; I love them back for at least an hour afterwards and Helen and I made things up in fine style for the rest of the day in the loft.
20
There was no more talk of Dick screwing for his supper after that, and I fancy Helen wasn't doing much in that line either. We were happy, in fact, lazing around town in the cooler parts of the days and nights and going down to the seaside at Brighton. There was none of this strutting around the beach with a piece of string around your waist that you see nowadays. Helen had a rented cabin in the ti-tree scrub at the back of the beach and we used to change into very modest costumes before venturing onto the sand.
I'd learned to swim in the Oakhampton creek so the mild waters of Port Phillip Bay had no terrors for me. Helen wasn't a swimmer; she hoisted up the skirt of her swimming costumes (women wore things like tunics which covered their chest and came down to mid-calf) and paddled in the shallows. We did the things lovers do – walked along the beach at dawn and dusk, threw stones into the waves, wrote messages in the sand. I wasn't altogether easy about it: if I'd had to put all my hopes and plans into one word on the sand it'd have been 'Hollywood'. Helen's word I felt sure would have been 'marriage'.
Summer gave way to autumn. We ate in the Chinese cafes of Little Bourke Street, sipped iced drinks in the backyard of the Brighton bungalow and made love in the Carlton loft. I still didn't have any money to speak of and in March The Kelly Gang was offered to the public.
It was a curious experience for me; I suppose I felt like all those novelists I met later whose books had been adapted for the screen. If the movie was a failure they took no blame but they cashed in if it was a success. My name appeared nowhere on the credits of Kelly but I would have blown my trumpet loudly enough if it had been a hit. It was a lamentable flop.19
Most of the critics regretted the film's subject. Fresh from a time when a couple of million people had been slaughtered, newspaper scribblers got up in arms about glorifying outlaws who'd been the cause of the death of a few rascally policemen. Southwell had anticipated this problem by putting a long homily at the beginning of the film about the perils of a life of bushranging, as if anyone was going to take to it in 1920. This probably helped to kill public interest before the story got underway, but there were other problems.
Helen and I sneaked into the show one day in the city. I was wriggling with boredom within a few minutes and the thing ran for two hours. Helen had to hiss at me to sit still.
'It's terrible,' I whispered.
'You look lovely on your horse.'
Well, that was true enough and I suppose I managed to hold my seat just by waiting for the scenes I was in. Even so, it was hard work. The acting was broad and over-emphatic, the sets looked ill-lit and crude and the sequences were long and boring. There were a few successfully dramatic moments, like the close-ups of the death of Aaron Sherritt, and the shattering of the windows in the Glenrowan Hotel, but overall the film showed up Harry Southwell's deficiencies as a director glaringly. At one point I burst into laughter along with everyone else in the theatre.
'What's wrong?' Helen said.
'Read the title,'
She pulled the spectacles she was generally too vain to wear out of their case and hooked them on. The title read: 'Oh, dear, Ned, you are so dear to me, dear.'
'Jesus,' Helen said.
That led to an outraged 'Shh' from the woman sitting next to her and a sharp reply from Helen which brought the woman's companion into it so that soon everyone sitting around us was hissing and groaning. The music stopped and the attendant threatened to eject us. Helen and I sat through the rest of the film, hand in hand and suppressing giggles.
Out in the soft night air we walked back through the parks towards Carlton. The leaves were thick on the ground and we scuffed through them, still laughing at the film. I collapsed on to a thick bed of leaves and imitated Godfrey Cass's gestures as the fallen Ned. Helen bent double with laughter.
'You should be a comedian, Dick. You'd do marvellously.'
I climbed up a little grumpily; I was thinking of heroic roles myself, swords, muskets, distressed damsels to be comforted on and off the set, that sort of thing.
What's wrong?' Helen took my arm as we resumed our walk.
'Nothing.'
'This film business is silly, don't you think? I thought it might be a nice change and lead to something, but after that . . .'
She burst out laughing again, no doubt remembering the trial scene in which the judge had born an uncanny resemblance to a spaniel.
I clammed up. There's nothing better than being happy with a woman, that is, when she bounces along with you, shares the fun and doesn't get moody. But the trouble is that women don't understand that men have difficulty expressing their feelings and needs and they have no talent for guessing what's on a man's mind. Then they trample on your hopes.
Helen clutched my arm tighter. 'Never mind, love,' she said, not having the faintest idea what it was I was minding. 'I've got a lovely surprise for you. Something that'll really cheer you up.'
'What?' I said.
'A surprise. Wait and see.'
That was my mistake. I did wait; I should've started running.
I fiddled about with a few things, considered trying to set up a limousine business like Green's in London, thought about throwing in with a bookie, but somehow I couldn't feel right about going into business in Melbourne. I missed Sydney for one thing, although I wasn't in a hurry to get back within reach of 'Wild Bill'. The Long Bay matter would have long blown over and I supposed there wasn't much chance of being recognised as William Hughes. I'd changed a good deal and the majority of the chaps who'd known me as a soldier were beyond the reach of any court. I started to think about Sydney as a staging post to Los Angeles.
Meantime there was Helen's surprise. It turned out to be a fancy dress party to be held in one of the plusher houses in Brighton. The residents were on an overseas trip and Helen had somehow contrived the use of this white pillared edifice with a ballroom, oak staircases and chandeliered ceilings set in an acre of rolling lawns and sculptured gardens.
She told me all about it one night in Brighton over brandy. I was still muttering darkly about a future in the movie business and Helen told me that there would be some film people present.
'Who?' I said.
'Oh,' she said airily, 'Raymond Longford, Lottie Lyell.'
That's interesting, I thought. 'Who else?'
She named some sporting figures like Lewis, the jockey who'd taken Artilleryman first past the post in the 1919 Melbourne Cup, Tommy Uren, the boxer, and others. 'A very mixed group, darling,' Helen said, 'and I've excluded the two categories you dislike most.'
I was getting pretty keen on the idea by this time and the brandy was going down extremely well. I gave her a hug and we exchanged a kiss that promised well for later on. What two categories d'you mean?'
'Politicians and clergymen.'
I laughed and gave her another squeeze. She was dead right there and I appreciated her thoughtfulness. She was a nice woman, Helen; she certainly tried to please me in the small things while pleasing herself in the big ones.
I must be frank. I was a bit starved for company and fun; Helen held the purse strings and was keeping a fairly tight rein on me as well. Oh, in the nicest way: 'Let's go out, dear; here, you hold the money' and all that, but I was still under the thumb. A big bash might give me a chance to kick over the traces a little and, besides, I might meet someone useful and get a leg up.
So I was ready for anything when the great night arrived. It was late April or early May and the year was on the turn, just the time for this sort of thing. A little coo
l so that the dancing is welcome, but not so cool that the women are covering their arms and chests and presenting you with so many hooks and eyes and buttons and laces that it's hardly worth the trouble. Helen had done the thing in style, hired the best catering firm with the best drink johnnies and prettiest little snack servers you ever did see. She was looking magnificent herself; she'd spent the day at the hairdressers and a king's ransom on something low cut and black with red trim. I fancy I was up to the mark in my wing-collared soup and fish.
The old drunk (or bore, when he wasn't drunk) Scott Fitzgerald hit the nail on the head when he called the 1920s the Jazz Age. It was all the go in Melbourne as early as 1920, I can tell you, and Helen had hired the hottest orchestra available, Bunty Browne's Scorching Six, to kick things along. They set up in the ballroom, close to a supply of booze and where they could also be heard, through an open set of floor-to-ceiling French windows, out on the terrace. Bunty Browne was a six footer who must have weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds. Standing up, trombone in hand, he looked a formidable figure and it occurred to me that his popularity at affairs like this might reflect the fact that he would be damned useful as a bouncer if things got rough.
Guests started to arrive around nine and I greeted the first few suavely enough; after that, their faces began to blur and I didn't bother. I have to confess that I got fairly tanked fairly early. I hadn't seen French champagne of that quality and in solid supply since my days at Robespierre's and I'm afraid I sampled it too freely. That was a mistake as it turned out; if I'd had clear vision I might have been able to take evasive action.
Helen's friends were mostly young and mostly rich people who knew other young, rich people. They were all experienced at having a good time and a party in a ballroom was just their style. The music blasted out and the heels were kicked up and the levels in the punch bowl and bottle went down the way they will when the booze is free, the woman are pretty and the talk is loud. Some of the women were pretty, by God, and I began to get an idea why Helen hadn't trotted me around to her friends' houses more than a trifle. There were a few good fellows there, too, chaps from the best schools in Melbourne and between dances it was most pleasant to smoke a cigar out on the terrace and listen to male talk about stocks and shares, horses, real estate and that sort of thing.
The Scorching Six seemed to know all the latest numbers and Bunty whipped them into a frenzy with his little dances up in front; for such a big man he had a light, airy step; he'd cut up for five minutes and then go on with his tromboning not a whit out of breath. In other company all that booze and jazz could have made things pretty willing by midnight; you'd have expected a fight or two and the odd scream from the shrubbery, but this was the Melbourne upper crust and they seemed to set limits on themselves. I heard a few voices raised in anger, once when I danced a little too long with a very fetching redhead in a green silk dress, but there were always cooler heads around. A few of the younger bloods staggered into the garden and came back a trifle pale, but no carpets were ruined.
'Are you having a good time, darling?' Helen was at my elbow, fresh from a dance, looking slightly flushed and with her bosom heaving.
'I am,' I said. I was, too, and looking at her I was thinking that I'd have an even better time later on if I could just slow down on the grog and perhaps get a bit of coffee into me.
'That's good.' She took my arm and steered me out to the terrace.
'Hold hard,' says I. 'We've scarcely had a dance, you and I. I want to try that . . . what is it . . . Melbourne rag. Ho, Bunty, play it again, I . . .'
'Not now, love. Later. There's someone I want you to meet.'
'Meet? Oh, you pearl of a woman, you. Someone in the film business is it, someone to give old Dick a dashing part?' I sketched a few parries and thrusts as she drew me across the terrace.
'No, darling. Though there is a man here who might be able to do something for you if you've set your heart on it.'
'Hollywood,' I muttered.
'Yes, we might. Who knows.'
I heard that, I thought. We, she said, we. So that's the way the wind was blowing. It sobered me a fraction I fancy. I'd been thinking of Browning the lone wolf in Hollywood, not Browning the tied-down one-of-a-pair. I drew in a deep breath of the night air; there was a tang of the sea in it and a touch of new-mown lawn. The lights blazed from the house and the jazz drifted through to the terrace in gusts of happy sound. I was standing stock-still in one of those rare moments in which I analysed life. I was thinking that I should be happy having such jolly times with this beautiful woman who was now pulling me by the arm, jerking me out of my reverie, dragging me across to where another woman stood in the shadows.
'It's such a coincidence, darling,' Helen was saying, 'that you should know each other. One of my oldest friends. It's amazing.'
'Who? What?' I said.
We were over near a low wall between the terrace and the garden. A large blonde woman was standing there raising a cigarette to her mouth.
'Richard,' Helen said, 'I'm sure you remember Elizabeth Macknight.'
21
It had happened this way: during one of the periods of coldness in our relationship, Helen had gone through my things and discovered the envelope on which Elizabeth had written her name and address. This had puzzled her. She'd known Elizabeth from school days but had lost touch with her over the war years. She renewed the acquaintance, but I suppose you don't sit down over the first cup of tea in ten years and start flinging questions about men out of the past. As she later reported it to me, Helen had sidled up to the matter by asking Elizabeth if she'd seen the film of The Kelly Gang.
'Yes,' Elizabeth replied. 'Rubbish!'
'Did you recognise anyone in it?'
'No.'
'One of the actors knows you.'
'Ooh, who?' Elizabeth was totally screen-struck.
'Richard Browning. He played a trooper and other bits; he was a member of the jury.'
'I've never heard of him.'
Helen laid it out for her then – the envelope, the dashing, moustachioed six foot two inch Browning, but Elizabeth still disclaimed all knowledge. You see what this means, of course. She must've been leaving envelopes in chaps' bedrooms all over Europe, no doubt hoping that she'd strike it lucky with one of them.
I've always suspected that she swore some dark oath to the effect that the first of her overseas lovers to reappear would get the treatment. However, she must have played it very cunning with Helen. Polite interest, apparently, was all she displayed and she passed off the envelope as 'the sort of thing one did for those poor boys who were dying over there, so far from home'. Dying? I'd never been fitter apart from being paralytic drunk. Horseshit!
Anyway, there we were, two years later and she recognised me instantly. I'll say this for Elizabeth, when her own self-interest was involved her mind was as quick as lightning.
'Richard! Of course, how wonderful to see you.'
'Er, hello.' I looked around, wishing the terrace would stop spinning and the garden beds wouldn't jump up and down. I must have had some mad idea that I could escape because I tipped my hat to Elizabeth (although I was bareheaded) and started to wander off. Helen grabbed me.
'Now you and Elizabeth have a lovely talk, dear. People are starting to leave and I must see them off. Hasn't it been a heavenly party? It still is . . . don't go, Elizabeth, will you?' Her heels clattered across the terrace and she was gone. I looked blearily at the woman who'd put out her cigarette and was waiting for me to light a new one. I fumbled a match alight somehow.
'How have you been keeping . . . Tony?'
'Er . . . all right. You?'
'I'm well. 'I'm glad to see that you came through it all right – the war, I mean.'
'Yes.' Her image was blurred and unsteady. Christ, I thought, why can't the bloody woman stand still. 'Er . . . about that Tony thing, I . . .'
'No need to explain. They were dreadful times. Isn't Helen a wonderful girl?'
She said this in what I later came to know as her acid voice. She adopted it when she was saying the complete opposite of what she was thinking. She wasn't aware of the habit but it helped me to cope with her, not that I ever coped well. At that moment I was thinking that Helen was a wonderful girl, the most wonderful girl, except why didn't she come and rescue me?
'Wonderful girl,' I said. 'Where is she?'
'Sit down.' She pulled me down onto a seat that ran along the wall and sat down herself. I remember being surprised at the strength of the pull. Then it all came back to me – that ghastly outfit, the boots, the douche . . . I struggled to get up but I was too drunk to co-ordinate body and legs properly. 'You stay here and tell me everything that's happened.'
She proceeded to tell me everything that had happened to her. I won't pretend that I grasped it all then, given the condition I was in, but I got the gist and heard more later. She and the dreadful Pat had re-joined their nursing unit and been transshipped to England. Believe it or not she'd hung around looking for more wars to go to and she actually went to those parts of Russia where the Bolsheviks were still mopping up and sundry odds and sods were still shooting at each other. (No doubt she left envelopes in a few cavalry officers' bedrooms here and there.) She'd not long returned to Australia and she was setting about establishing a series of private hospitals. Her family had money, you see – and that was about the only thing she said that interested me.
But she was also doing things as well as talking. In my befuddled state it took me a while to realise that she'd put her hand inside my trousers and was getting to work with her strong fingers and firm palm.
'That's my boy,' she crooned. You're a fine boy, I remember you.'
It will sound strange, but it was oddly pleasant. The sight of Helen and all the other lovely women around had made me randy enough but I was in no fit condition to do anything in the least energetic about it. Elizabeth had hit on just the right strategy for the occasion. Besides, she didn't look too bad herself: big, of course, with wide white shoulders and a magnificent bosom that was mostly on display. The bigness continued all the way down unfortunately, but it wasn't easy to see that in the shadows with her wearing a stylishly cut full-length dress. I put my hand on her left breast and we sat there squeezing away happily with the breathing becoming a touch more rapid.