Browning Sahib

by Peter Corris

  'I mean really dreadful. And she's got her eye on Andrew. Watch out for that.'

  You can see the fix I was in. I still had hopes of a bit in the film and I was dependent on Finch for that. But he was responsive to every whim of Vivien's and if she went on the way she was I could see the shoot being aborted. I'd talked to Ranu and he promised me to stay alert, to keep an eye on the Tamil he suspected and to run for cover if he had to. The last thing he needed was a distraction of the kind Grace Drewe presented. She'd thrived in the climate, had lost some weight and acquired a light tan. She wore thin blouses and tight shorts and lay around the hotel pool a lot in a fetching bathing suit. Dangerous.

  As if that wasn't bad enough, Elephant Walk turned out to be what is called an unhappy shoot. There are lots of ways for this to happen—conflict among the director and the actors is the most common; actor misbehaviour isn't rare, and sometimes the director and the producer are at loggerheads. In the case of this picture it was simply that the personnel fell into two distinct and rather antagonistic camps. One was British, comprising the technicians, Finch, Vivien and a few more. The other was American, consisting of Asher and Dieterle, Dana Andrews and a few other Yanks in their entourages. It was nothing too serious—smart cracks, practical jokes, misunderstandings. But it didn't make for cooperation or smooth filming.

  The weather was kind, in that it stayed hot and clear for most of every day and rained when it was needed. The Californians handled this all right, but it began to tell on the Britishers, who weren't used to such sustained high temperatures and humidity. Nerves frayed and unkind words were spoken. It isn't hard to see how I ended up in the middle of all this. I was a kind of half-breed, neither truly British nor American, and both sides aired their grievances to me and took out their frustration on me. After a short time it became clear that I wasn't going to get a part so I relaxed, considering that my work for the film was just about done. Let them worry about what to do with the elephant shit and how to get a piano tuner at short notice. I had my ace in the hole in the person of Ranu Pelham-Smith, now picking up a bit of money beating people at tennis and (to my relief) taking an interest in one of Da Silva's prettier daughters. She was staying in the hotel, supposed to be looking after her old man. Vasco was a busy guy, making as much of his involvement in the picture as he could, and he had so many daughters it hardly seemed likely that he could worry about the purity of all of them.

  For a while I thought they were going to make it, but Vivien really started to run off the rails—crying jags, rages, insomnia, pill-popping and boozing to try to get steady and only succeeding in becoming more loopy. Not all the time—one day she'd be fine, the next impossible. A suite in the hotel had been rigged up as office and projection room for showing the rushes, but only a handful of people were admitted, not including me. I managed to get Irving Asher aside one day and ask him about Vivien's performance.

  'You mean the way she acts or the way she looks?'

  'Both.'

  'She acts fine, sometimes. I'm afraid she looks old all the time.'

  'She's forty, and Ruth Wiley's not supposed to be a girl.'

  'She's not supposed to look like Finch's mother either. She looks great in the long shots, I'll give her that. I understand you've done some movies, why don't you come and take a look at Dieterle's work?'

  What intrigued me about this conversation was that Asher didn't seem overly worried. You'd have thought he'd be tearing his hair out. I decided to take him up on his offer and look at a couple of scenes being shot. Louise was right, and the only thing more boring than acting in movies is watching them being made. I hovered around to watch a dialogue scene between Vivien and Finch against the background of the plantation.

  Finch: You've no right to interfere.

  Leigh: Right? I'm your wife, or I thought I was. Or something such.31

  It went off all right, with no more than the usual number of takes, and the actors left the area. I was about to wander away when I noticed that the set-up wasn't being broken down quickly the way it usually was.

  I saw von Kotze hanging around, looking unhappy, and I drew him aside. 'What's going on?'

  'See for yourself.'

  The cameras rolled and Francisco Day, the assistant director, supervised the reshooting of the scene without Vivien or Finch.

  'Jesus Christ,' I said. 'They're taking out insurance. They can shoot it again against that backdrop.'

  Von Kotze lit a cigarette. 'We're all sworn to secrecy about it. You can't blame them in a way. Some of the stuff has been unusable. It'd take a brilliant editor to pull it together. Do they have brilliant editors in Hollywood?'

  'Some,' I said. 'If Vivien or Peter get to hear of this, all hell will break loose. How long has it been going on?'

  Von Kotze was one of the Englishmen who hadn't handled the climate well. His skin looked yellow and he had a cold. He sniffed, sneezed. 'They're covered. They can use the long shots and put a different actress in for the close work. Just a matter of building sets exactly the way they appear on film. It hasn't been a happy shoot, has it?'

  That was putting it mildly. It became quite common much later, double-shooting and playing around with the sequences. I heard they got two Musketeer and a couple of Superman movies out of the one shoot.32 The possible consequences of what they were doing was frightening. Vivien would almost certainly quit if she found out and there was no knowing what Finch would do. The legal implications didn't bear thinking of. Time was running on and they were getting ready to do the elephant stampede sequence, the trickiest part of the shoot. A major blow-up now could jeopardise the whole thing.

  I turned to leave and there was Asher, lighting a cigarette and blocking my way. 'Get the idea?'

  I understood Asher's position but Vivien mattered to me more and I was angry. 'Yeah. Whose idea was it, yours or the Kraut's?'

  'Look, we want her in the picture. She's a great actress and she's giving it balls. But we're worried she won't play the whole eighteen holes. You follow me? She's coming apart, for Chrissake!'

  'She's tough. English actresses are tough. She'll get there.'

  'Like I say, Dick. Can I call you Dick? Like I say, Dick. I hope you're right and we're doing everything we can to get her over the line. But you understand these limeys and we don't. Have you got any advice? Any tips? We're all in this together, buddy.'

  I thought about it. Vivien and Peter were unlikely to be interested in the filming techniques; few actors are, and the security had been pretty good so far. There was only one major hazard I could think of. 'Do you know Grace Drewe?'

  The reshoot had finished and Asher watched the breaking down of the arrangement of cameras, reflectors and shade boards. 'I know her. The blonde with the little jugs, hangs around the pool.'

  'Keep her away from the set,' I said. 'And tell the people in the know not to talk to her. If she finds all this out you're dead.'

  I was right about where the danger lay, but that was as far as my perceptiveness went. Things were quiet for the next few days because the weather turned sour on us, raining in the morning and again in the afternoon. This was ironical because the script called for a prolonged drought and there were dry shots needed that they just couldn't get. The locals said it had never happened in these parts before, but locals always say that. Ranu, who had his ear to the ground, said that some of the extras were muttering about luck. 'They are worried about the elephants.'

  'Me, too,' I said. 'I'm just trying to tell myself they're better than tigers. How's Celestine?' This was Da Silva's daughter.

  'She's a nice girl,' he said a little glumly and I thought I knew what that meant. 'She says she is afraid that Miss Leigh is going mad. Miss Leigh has been talking to her in a strange voice and addressing her in an odd manner.'

  'Strange, how? What sort of manner?'

  'Celestine says she sounds like a character in a play. She drinks a great amount of vodka and then she walks around saying, "I have always depended on the kindness o
f strangers." What does this mean?'

  I shook my head. 'I don't know, but it doesn't sound good.'

  I drove out to the plantation house and looked for Finch. I found him on a balcony with three cold beers lined up in front of him. He'd towelled off after doing one of his bicycle-riding scenes, but this was his real way of cooling down. I told him what Ranu had told me and waited for his reaction. He choked on the second beer. 'Christ almighty, that's Blanche's last line in Streetcar Named Desire.'

  'She's on the edge, Peter.'

  Just then I was aware of Grace Drewe standing near us. 'I heard all that,' she said. 'A lot you beasts care. D'you know what I've done? I've sent for Sir Laurence.'

  22

  It would be difficult to think of a potentially more damaging thing for her to have done. Vivien was on a knife edge between happiness and hysteria; Finch was in love, but nervous about blowing his big chance, and the whole film was skating along on very thin ice. Not an appropriate way of describing something going on in the tropics, but you can see what I mean. I should have met Olivier at the airport, and I spent the night in Colombo intending to do just that. But Louise was off duty and we went out and ate a lot of curry which meant that I drank a lot of beer and slept late. Louise was annoyed at my behaviour and attitude when I surfaced, some hours after Larry's plane would have landed.

  'I could have come with you as your assistant,' she complained. 'I could have met him.'

  I was giving the hangover the Browning treatment—white wine with soda water to wash down scrambled eggs, three aspirin to be dissolved in the drink. 'He's a prick,' I said. 'For all your outstanding assets, darling, I have to tell you that an Aussie nurse would matter less to him than a prickly hair in his right nostril.'

  'Ugh, you're in a foul mood this morning. What an ugly thing to say.'

  I went into my Bogart. 'I'm in an ugly business, sweetheart.'

  'So what are you going to do?'

  I shovelled in some eggs. She could cook, Louise, as well as do others things well. That lucky doctor somebody. 'Fuck him,' I said. 'Let him find his own way to Kandy.'

  Well, he did, and he's written his own account of what went on in his autobiography, Confessions of an Actor. I took a look at the book in the Pasadena Public Library one time, and I guess old Larry put it down the way he saw it, more or less. Vivien met him at the airport and took him off for a drink, he says. According to Larry, he made the suggestion that she should be on hand for filming and this got Vivien in a rage. That was certainly credible from the look of the pair of them on arrival in Kandy. It was also clear that more than a few drinks had been had by both parties en route.

  He's no fool, Olivier. He says that it was clear to him that Peter Finch was calling the shots as far as Vivien's conduct was concerned, and that he was torn between his passion for her and his wish for the film to succeed. Spot on, as we used to say in Australia. He picked up on the two lovers' Indian obsession and, like a wise man, knew he was on the wrong turf. The king of the West End was nobody at all in the Ceylon jungle. Give him his due, he didn't make a fuss, although his mere presence upset Vivien considerably. God knows what they talked about, Finch probably, and when Olivier says he couldn't work up any hostility towards Peter and that he'd always liked him, you can probably guess what he was writing between the lines.

  I was holding my breath for the whole four days Olivier was around, waiting for Grace Drewe to pump some poison into him, for Peter to challenge him to a duel or for Vivien to go into a total collapse. They all kept very much to themselves for that time—holding up the filming somewhat—and it was hard to know what was going on. I managed to get hold of Grace one afternoon at the pool when she had finished a few laps of breaststroke for Ranu's benefit. He, I was glad to see, was deep in a volume of Toynbee and was also keeping well in the shade. Celestine appeared with the lime cordials and they got down to some serious giggling, so Grace was ready to talk, even to me, once I'd fetched her a gin sling and given her a Players.

  I couldn't see any point in pussy-footing around with her. 'Didn't work, did it, Grace?'

  'What?'

  'Getting Larry over to screw things up. Mind you, I can understand how you feel; you're not doing very well—no part in the film, no screwing from Vivien, Peter or young Ranu there, very frustrating.'

  She sipped her drink. 'You're disgusting.'

  'You should ease up. You're trying too hard to be a manipulative bitch. I don't think it's really you, Gracie.'

  'Shut up!'

  'Only trying to help.'

  'Help? The only person you've ever helped is yourself. I understand you, Richard Browning. I've seen the way you watch Andrew. You know who he is, don't you?'

  To say I was alarmed would be a gross understatement. I was shocked; I could see my carefully worked-out plan being totally wrecked by this woman. I tried to keep my voice steady and my face unconcerned. 'I don't know what you mean. He's Da Silva's nephew, and very useful he's been . . .'

  'That's nonsense and you know it. His name is Ranjit Pelham and he's a Tamil terrorist.'

  Close enough, I thought. I managed a scornful laugh. 'Andy, a terrorist? Come on. He's just a boy. The sun's got you, Gracie. You've gone troppo.'

  'Don't call me Gracie and don't try to laugh this off. Look.'

  She reached into her handbag and took out a sheet of pulpy paper. It's lucky my heart is the strongest muscle in my body, because this was the second bad shock in a very few minutes. I was looking at a 'Wanted' poster. You know the sort of thing—a photograph of the offender and an account of his transgressions, a description, and instructions on what to do if you happen to spot him. I couldn't read the text, of course, but the name was clear enough—Ranjit Pelham. The big problem was that the photograph closely resembled the current Ranu—light colour, neat moustache, short hair. This time I had no chance of covering up my consternation. 'Where in hell did you get this?'

  She giggled maliciously. 'Oh, it wasn't like that when I came by it. I got it in a post office and I worked on it a little.'

  Looking more closely, I could see where changes had been made to the original poster. A full beard had been transformed into a moustache and the long hair cropped. Poor photographic reproduction in the first place had lightened the skin colour. I was never the world's greatest actor, but I'd seen a lot of the top performers at work and I knew enough about the craft to have a shot at pulling off a scene like this. 'It's amazing. It's him all right. How did you get onto this, Grace?'

  I put a lot of sincerity and admiration into it, looking steadily into her cool, grey eyes. She wavered. 'Are you trying to say you didn't know? Why do you watch him so closely, then?'

  'I've got my reasons. But you haven't told me how you sussed him out.'

  She shrugged and drew on her cigarette and then let it almost burn away without puffing again. She was surprised at how close the burning end was to her fingers and she dropped the butt with a start. 'Damn it. I've burnt my fingers.'

  'Cool them with some ice.' I plucked a cube from my glass and she took it gratefully.

  'I went to art school for a while,' she said. 'One of our exercises was drawing members of the class and disguising their features with beards and glasses and such. I've got a good eye for that sort of thing and I recognised Andrew when I saw the poster, particularly the eyes.'

  From gazing soulfully into them, I thought. My mind was at full gallop, trying to work out some way to cope with this threat. All I could think of was that Ranu had to be on the next plane out or he, and my four thousand, was in dire jeopardy. I finished my drink and gave Grace some more of the steady-eye treatment. 'I know we've had our differences, Grace,' I said, 'but this is very serious. We can't have a Tamil terrorist hanging about. He might decide to shoot Peter or kidnap Vivien. Who knows?'

  She shivered visibly. 'Yes, I know. I didn't mean to blurt this out but you've made me so angry and I felt so, so . . .'

  I knew what she felt—frustrated that she couldn't
get her own way. Well, I know what's that's like and what the remedy is—somebody to promise a painless solution. 'Grace,' I said sternly, 'pack a bag. We're going to Colombo.'

  'What?'

  'Do as I say. There's no time to lose. We have to report this to the police. I've got some contacts there. They'll know what to do.'

  'You mean, just go? Now?'

  'The situation calls for action. If we leave now we can be in Colombo in a few hours. The police can communicate with their people here and arrest him. But we have to be quick about it and not let anyone here know what's going on. Come on, Grace, look lively! Grab what you need. I'll meet you at the garage in fifteen minutes. We'll take the Citroën.'

  Of course it was a gamble, rushing her like that and mixing up urgency, alarm and resolution. But she bought it. She'd spent so long being stymied and defeated that she was anxious to be up and doing. I dashed off and found Ranu in the games room, playing table-tennis with Celestine. I yanked the bat from Ranu's hand and practically threw the girl out of the room.

  'Grace is on to you,' I said. 'She wants to turn you in to the cops. I'm going to stall her, but you have to get to Colombo as soon as you can. Get rid of that moustache and catch the first plane to London.'

  'No.'

  'No? What the hell d'you mean, no? Do you want to go to gaol tomorrow? Goodbye father, goodbye Oxford, goodbye Prime Minister Pelham-Smith.'

  He laughed. 'You are a strange man, Dick. Such big dreams for others, such small things for yourself.'

  'Spare me the philosophy, sonny. You have to get going.'

  'I am not going for at least forty-eight hours.'

  'Why, for Christ's sake?'

  'Because I want to see the elephant walk. I must see it, Dick. It will be wonderful, I am sure.'

  What could I say? He'd been caught up in what was undeniably the most dramatic moment of the film (much more so than the conflicts between the planter and his wife and the rather tepid exchanges between the overseer and the Memsahib)—when the elephants, maddened by thirst, come down their age-old track, smash the wall and rampage through the Wiley mansion. I'd been looking forward to it myself, but not to the tune of four grand. I wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake him, but that would have done no good. At his age, romance was all and practicality was a bore.