That's all there is to say, Dick. We were prepared to face you and tell you this and about the wedding but you weren't around and perhaps it's better this way.

  Goodbye and good luck.

  yours,

  Terri Tait.

  It was a shock all right. I absorbed it slowly along with the whisky, sitting alone in the quiet kitchen with the light gradually dimming outside. The signature was a hard blow in itself. Why hadn't I seen it? Blue dropping his women, Terri never around, both of them away on trips. It was obvious, but I've always been too trusting of people I like. It's one of my great weaknesses – probably as bad as my habit of totally mistrusting people I don't like. As for signing myself into the poorhouse, I wasn't surprised at that and it wasn't the last time it happened. I've signed away fortunes; I remember when I . . . [Browning, sounding rather drunk, breaks off at this point and mutters the names of film producers such as Darryl Zanuck and Samuel Goldwyn. He also mentions the Knopf publishing house which may be a clue to an attempt to place his memoirs. The editorial department of the Knopf company, however, has no record of a manuscript submitted by Browning nor of any significant correspondence. Ed.]

  I read the letter over a couple of times and wandered through the house. Mr and Mrs Tait had taken everything they owned and left me with the clothes I stood up in, a few more in the closet, more still, all dirty, in the laundry, my camera, some photographs and a couple of packets of Camel. They'd even taken things like the binoculars and the guitar which I could've sworn Blue and I had paid half each for in Chicago. Mind you, I'd probably lost my half of the binoculars to him at poker and I couldn't play the guitar anyway. Blue could. I imagined him serenading Terri on a beach somewhere and I had several more belts of the Canadian to keep the tears at bay.

  About dusk I wandered out of the house with the vague idea of driving into Los Angeles to sell the car. I knew I was drunk but I thought I'd remembered where I'd put the car. No car. I lurched down the driveway and found a card on the ground near the oilspots. It was from the Hughes Transport Services Company and it informed me that possession had been taken of one 1928 Dodge convertible.

  I went back into the house. No car, no money, no passport, no house, no job. Just a bottle of whisky, no, half a bottle of whisky and some cigarettes. And some dirty clothes. It was a very low tide; one of those times when you wonder why you left home and your wife. Wife! That set the alarm bells ringing. I was in a hell of a spot I realised, having agreed to dispose of something I didn't have. I knew how Elizabeth would feel about that. Who was it said, 'Don't get mad, get even?' Elizabeth would get both and Rupe MacKnight would help her all the way. If Aussie Air had been attractive to Hughes it must have been worth something. Rupe wasn't likely to be a good loser.

  I slumped down at the table, poured another drink and raised the glass. 'Here's to friendship,' I said, 'and women and Howard bloody Hughes. Fuck 'em all!' I drank and poured again. I was trying to think of another toast when the telephone rang. I stumbled up and through to the living room.

  'Hullo. Who the hell's this? There's no one here. There's nothing

  'Kelly!' Silkstein's voice scratched at my eardrum. 'Kelly, this is Robert. You drunk, you bum?'

  'No. Not yet. Whaddya want?'

  'Honest to Christ, I don'know why we bodder wit' you drunken actors. Well, since I'm on the line . . . I gotta tip off the cops are comin' for you.'

  That almost sobered me. I saw cold grey walls and bars. 'The police? Why?'

  'I dunnu. I got it from some reporter inna bar. Sounded right. Sumthin' about Hughes, sumthin' about your company. You get it sorted out you wanna keep workin' in this town. Got it?'

  'You're supposed to help me. You're my agent, you . . .'

  'Trouble wit' Hughes I don' need. You get it sorted out you gimme a call. Okay?'

  He hung up and I stood with the instrument in my hand wondering what else could go wrong. I picked up my glass, swayed and cracked the edge against a tooth. The tooth broke and I felt a stab of pain that got deeper and more intense by the second. I sipped whisky and my head exploded as the spirit hit the nerve.

  'Oh, God!' I slid to the floor and the phone rang again. I had my mouth clamped shut and thought about ignoring the phone. What else could it be but more bad news? But I was a tiger for punishment now. I held the listening bit almost at arm's length and croaked into the mouthpiece through clenched teeth.

  'Yeah?'

  'That you, Kelly?'

  'Yeah.'

  'This is Joe, Joe Boyd. I got the dough.'

  'What?'

  'Are you drunk or what. I got your five hundred bucks. Whale paid off for our stunt with the camera.' 'Our stunt?' I opened my mouth to shout and the cold air hit the tooth like an icepick to the back of the skull.

  'Okay, okay. Your stunt, but with anyone else flying the plane you'd have been floating down and getting your ass cut up by someone's prop. You want the dough?'

  Want it? I needed it as badly as I've ever needed money. 'Look, Joe,' I said, 'I'm in a spot. Where are you?'

  He named a bar on the Strip and I thought fast. I had to leave town and the police would watch the trains and buses. I'd done enough drinking with extras to know what you did in LA when you were down on your luck. 'Can you meet me by the trucking yards? Where they recruit the pickers?'

  'I suppose so,' Boyd said. 'But why? Five hundred bucks ain't hay.'

  'Just meet me there in two hours with the money. I'll need it to pay the cabbie so don't let me down.'

  'I didn't let you down when you were out on the wing, did I?' He laughed and I realised that he'd already started to work through the money. I had to hope he'd stay sober enough to make the meeting and that he'd have some money left. I was a moving heap of pain as I went around the house collecting up my things and shoving them into a duffel bag. There were angry red blotches on my hand where the cactus spines had gone in and the hand was throbbing nearly as bad as my tooth. I drank whisky on the other side of my mouth, took some aspirin and tried to ignore it. I phoned a cab and nearly choked trying to smoke cigarettes through a crack in my mouth while I waited.

  I reached the trucking yards around five in the afternoon. It was still hot and nothing much was moving. There was a smell of rotting fruit and vegetables in the air and paper swirled around the dusty yards. The cabbie was suspicious of me because I wouldn't talk. I was on a knife's edge of nerves wondering what I'd do if Boyd didn't show. But he was there, parked in a red Buick in the shade.

  'By the Buick,' grated through clenched teeth.

  'Hey, what is this? Some kinda set up? I'll stop here if you don' mind.'

  'I do mind.' That let in too much air and I waited for the pain but the liquor and aspirin were working. 'A guy in that car has my money. He pays me and I pay you.'

  'I don't like it.'

  'It's broad daylight, for Christ sake! You think you're going to get rubbed out for a cab fare?'

  'Don' talk like that. OK.'

  He stopped beside the Buick. I found Boyd asleep in the front seat. I shook him awake.

  'Hey, Joe. Let's have it.' He gave me a wad of tens, twenties and singles. I paid the cabbie and then I counted it. Joe watched me.

  'That looks like the only dough you got in the world.'

  'That's right.'

  What happened to Blue and your business?'

  'Don't ask. You haven't seen me, Joe. OK? You don't know where I am or where I went.'

  'Right. I guess you flew off somewhere.'

  'That's right. I flew off somewhere. So long, Joe.'

  He drove off and I found a shady place behind one of the packing sheds and settled down with my bag to wait. I put some of the small bills in my pocket and the rest in my sock. The whisky and aspirin went on working and I fell asleep.

  It was a bad night, full of dreams, shivers and twitching awakenings. And not all of the bad stuff was dreams. Sometime in the night I was jerked awake by a big guy looming over me and prodding me with his boot.

  'Hey, you.'

  'Wha . . . ? What?'

  'Got a light?' His winey breath was sweet and much too close. I fumbled for a match and he punched me in the face with a fist as hard as stone. I slumped back, half-stunned, and felt him go through my pockets. He got the cigarettes and loose money, tried to roll me over and off my bag but gave up when I wouldn't budge. He kicked me in the ribs and slouched away. I lay there gasping with sore ribs to add to my other pains. I felt blood on my face and something hard and sharp in my mouth. I put my hand up to my mouth and found my broken tooth lying under my tongue. I had to smile. Some dentist, but he'd done a neat job.

  The men started arriving before dawn. They were dressed warmly for the early morning cold and they drank from bottles in paper bags, smoked, coughed and spat. A miserable collection. I joined a line under a roughly painted cardboard sign that read: 'Grayp pikers'. At dawn the trucks arrived. I was lucky. The turn out was light and the demand for cheap, one-day, no-questions-asked-labour was high. The boss didn't even comment on my bag and the good shoes I had on along with my oldest pants, woollen shirt and flying jacket.

  'Evah picked?' he grunted.

  As it happened, I had – back in Australia when I'd worked for Robespierre's Wine and Spirits Emporium, I'd spent a few days in one of the local vineyards as a spy for Robespierre who'd wanted to see whether he had anything to fear from the local product. Robespierre himself dealt only in imported lines. 'I've picked,' I said.

  'Get in th' truck.'

  On the ride out of town I surveyed my companions – winos to a man but mostly thin and hard looking. I doubted that I'd be able to keep up with them. I remembered the actual work, fifteen years or so ago under the Australian sun. It had near crippled me then and I was in no condition for it now. Cautiously, I reached inside my bag for a packet of Camel. I fished it out and every eye – ten pairs, it was – in the truck fell on me.

  'Anyone got a match?' Three books of matches appeared – a total of five matches in all. I shook cigarettes out of the packet; the matches were lit and held carefully and soon eleven men were smoking. These were the old days you understand, everyone in long pants smoked and a hell of a lot of the kids in short pants too. There was no lung cancer, no cancer at all . . . [Browning rambles at this point, very drunk. He rants about the Surgeon General's report, warnings on cigarette packets and coughs harshly. The sound of a match being lit can be heard on the tape and also the sound of his wheezy inhalings and exhalations. Ed.]

  Anyway, I told them that I had a couple more packs and they could have them if they'd cover for me when I made a break out at the vineyard. A hundred per cent smokers, I'm telling you, and a hundred per cent agreement. We smoked the butts down to the last quarter inch and I sealed the deal by passing around the rest of the Canadian whisky. It was almost a party and I was the guest of honour. Some of the guys had some wine left in their bottles and we passed that around too. Loaves and fishes, it was. I was feeling fine when we arrived at the vineyard. I had a missing tooth but I was feeling no pain.

  I stumbled down from the truck and collapsed by the side of the road. I was dumbly aware of hands reaching into my bag and extracting the cigarettes. The winos grinned at each other and moved smoothly off to pick up their buckets. I lay in a sick haze.

  'This man's drunk,' the boss said.

  'So'm I,' said one of the winos.

  The boss looked down at me and kicked me in the ribs where I'd been kicked the night before. 'Ah mean drunk, ah mean cain't-work drunk.'

  'Yo,' the wino said.

  They went off to work and I vomited a couple of times and finally rolled into a patch of shade and fell asleep. I woke up with flies buzzing and guns going off in my head. I staggered up and lurched along the road carrying my bag and feeling like death. I could hear the sounds of men in the vineyard running with their buckets down the line, cursing when they fell and laughing as they worked. I jumped like a rabbit when a bird-scaring shotgun went off. I was sweating and my shoes and heavy jacket were rubbing me raw when I heard the truck lumbering up the hill behind me. I stuck my thumb out. It was a hay truck, moving slow, smelling sweet. The sun was directly overhead and the driver stopped for me.

  'Give y' a rahd if 'n y' c'n jump up at th' back, buddy.'

  It must have been noon when I jumped on the hay truck . . . [At this point a knock on a door can be heard on the tape. Browning leaves off taping but does not turn off the machine as was his usual practice when interrupted. The tape continues to run and the following snatch of dialogue can be heard before the tape runs out. Ed.]

  Browning: Who's that? Why hello!

  Woman: Hello, Richard. You look strange. What's the matter with your mouth?

  Browning: Hee, hee. Missing a tooth there. Got m'plate out.

  Woman: What're you doing, baby?

  Browning: C'm in, c'm in. Taping m'memoirs.

  Woman: Ooh, that's nice. Am I in them?

  Browning : Well. . .

  Woman: Wouldn't these be in them, Richard? Come on, you've never had better then these.

  Browning: No. I. . .

  Woman: That's right. That's my Richard. Ooh, that's right. Richard, what's wrong?

  Browning: Oh, Terri.

  Woman: Terri! Who the hell's Terri!. . .

  APPENDIX:

  THE MAKING OF HELL'S ANGELS

  The assistant editor who partied with Browning and the other fliers in the roadhouse on Sunset Boulevard was right. Hell's Angels did cost Howard Hughes approximately two million dollars of his own money as well as the the lives of four men. And it was doomed to failure if it was released as a silent film – the success of The Jazz Singer had revolutionised the movie industry overnight.

  Faced with this crisis a man less tenacious than Hughes and with fewer resources might have caved in, with the result that Hell's Angels would become an anachronistic curiosity. Not Hughes. He determined to reshoot all the dialogue scenes and dub in sound for the aerial sequences. Joseph Moncure March, a poet under contract to MGM, was commissioned to write a script. March went further; he jettisoned the structure of the silent version and wrote an entirely new script. A first draft took March only ten days and Hughes liked the result. At that time he was still capable of quick decisions.

  But there was a problem. Ben Lyon and James Hall could reproduce their roles without difficulty, but Greta Nissen, who had played the female lead in the silent film, could not. She spoke English with a heavy Norwegian accent.

  Hughes got lucky. A theatrical agent named Arthur Landau managed to persuade the film makers, against the evidence of a terrible screen test, that his client Jean Harlow would be right for the part. Harlow performed brilliantly in the seductive role and put everything she had into lines like, 'Do you mind if I slip into something more comfortable?'

  By the time the reshooting and sound dubbing was completed Hell's Angels had cost $3.8 million, making it the most expensive production to date. The released film was on fifteen thousand feet of celluloid for which 2.5 million feet had been shot. Hughes endured mockery and insult as the film was prepared for release, but he was constantly building a publicity machine to put behind it. He built up curiosity by holding a private showing in advance of the premiere, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. By private he meant private – only Hughes himself was seated in front of the screen. Louella Parsons, then an aggressive young gossip columnist, sneaked in and refused to leave. Whether Hughes had contrived this or not is unknown.

  Planes buzzed the theatres on opening night; stuntmen parachuted onto Hollywood Boulevard and Hughes reputedly offered the owners of the dirigible Graf Zeppelin one hundred thousand dollars to advertise the film in the skies above Manhattan. The owners refused but the offer itself was news. With this much push behind it, Hell's Angels was a box office smash. Audiences and critics loved the flying and Harlow. Wild, distorted stories spread about Hughes' single-handed creation of the masterpiece. Hughes contradicted nothing.

  It has not been possible to investigate records of Hughes' financial operations at this time to check on the purchase of Aussie Air. No mention of the matter is made in Donald Bartlett and James B. Steele's excellent book, Empire: the life, legend and madness of Howard Hughes (Norton, 1979), on which the above account is based, but those operations were already vast and complex and such a small transaction might not merit notice. It is worth pointing out, however, that huge amounts of money washed around in the Hell's Angels budget. Bonuses of various kinds were paid and conveniently forgotten. Browning's account of the thousand dollars paid to Joe Boyd and himself for the wing-walking exercise is consistent with other evidence about the ways in which the film ate up almost four million dollars. Although Hughes later claimed that the film had been profitable, more sober calculations show that it did not recover its production costs and that Hughes lost about $1.5 million.

  NOTES:

  1. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were originally organised as the Northwest Mounted Police in 1873, to bring law and order to the Canadian west and protect the settlers against the Indians. The present name was adopted in 1920, just before Browning arrived in Canada. The Mounties, as the constabulary became known, 'always got their man' in countless books and many films. By Browning's time, as he records, more mundane police duties were the order of the day and the RCMP eventually embraced the police forces of all provinces but Ontario and Quebec.

  2. The Yukon Territory of north-west Canada is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Northwest Territories to the east, British Columbia and Alaska to the south and Alaska to the west. Whitehorse is the capital and Dawson the next most important centre. A gold rush in the 1890s brought more than 30,000 people to the Yukon although the total population, mostly in riverbank settlements, is less than this today. Mining has remained a major activity in the Territory which is 186,299 square miles in area.

  3. Captain R. Burton Deane's Mounted Police Life in Canada: a record of thirty-one-year's service, (Cassell, London, 1916) is a typical memoir of imperial service. In it Browning would have found much useful information on Mountie organisation and tradition and an emphasis on loyalty, courage, duty and self-sacrifice.

 

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