Give the Devil His Due (11 page)

“No. I'd say they're sizing up the runners before they set the odds.”

Joan brought the little Riley to a stop.

“Hallo there,” she called, climbing out of the car.

“Miss Richmond,” Rowland said, tipping his hat.

“For pity's sake, Rowly, it's Joan!”

“Of course. May I introduce my friend and the chief of my pit crew, Mr. Clyde Watson Jones?”

“Charmed,” Joan said, pumping Clyde's hand. “Let's not waste any time, Clyde. You must call me Joan, too. By the end of all this we'll be well acquainted enough to warrant it.” She beckoned to the man checking over her engine and introduced him as Bucky Oldfield, her mechanic.

“Righto, Rowly, are you ready? We've already cleared the track of snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“Oh yes. The cement holds the heat, you see. You don't want a blessed snake getting caught up in your axle.”

“Indeed.”

“I might drive in front of you for a while, till you get used to the bowl.” She pointed out the parts of the speedway where the cement track was crumbling. “Just jolly well try to avoid those patches if you can, especially if you're at speed.”

Clyde handed Rowland his driving helmet and goggles. “Good luck, mate.”

Joan Richmond slid in behind the wheel of her Riley and waved. “Try and keep up, Rowly.”

Over the next hour Rowland followed the Riley, becoming accustomed to driving in the bowl by staying in Joan Richmond's tracks. He learned not to fight his Mercedes, allowing it to take its natural position on the banking. It became much easier to control despite the ever-increasing speed at which he took each circuit. Even so, he did not have the need or opportunity to engage the supercharger. In time, the Riley pulled out so he could give his larger engine its head. He did so, being careful to remember where the cement bowl had deteriorated since its construction just over a decade earlier. Eventually, Rowland pulled back allowing the Mercedes to slow, lapping lower and lower on the bank until he eased her to a gradual stop.

Joan met him as he got out of the vehicle. “Good show, Rowly! You probably don't have to give her so many laps to slow down, though.”

“Oh, I was just following your lead.”

“No need. The Riley's never had much in the way of brakes, but Clyde tells me that your braking system is top drawer. Might as well use it, there's a good chap.”

“I see,” Rowland said, impressed that Joan seemed to regard brakes an unnecessary luxury.

He spotted Errol Flynn's silver Triumph. “I see Flynn's arrived,” he said. “Good Lord, what is he doing?” Flynn was standing on the bonnet addressing a small gathering.

“Talking to the press,” Joan said, clearly exasperated. “I say, Rowly, I don't suppose you could distract the journalists long enough for me to teach him to drive?”

“Distract them? How am I supposed to do that?”

“Perhaps if you just give the reporters someone else to talk to. We only have the jolly track for another hour.”

“I'll try,” Rowland said uncertainly.

He and Joan walked over to the Triumph. Flynn greeted them cheerily. “And here, gentlemen, is my crewmate and our intrepid captain.” Flynn saluted and then introduced them to Mr. Murray from
The Sydney Morning Herald
, Mr. Caletti from
The Guardian
, Mr. Bergin from
The Times
and their respective photographers.

“I'm sure you gentlemen are as eager as I am to see Mr. Flynn behind a wheel,” Rowland said.

“There's plenty of time for that!” Flynn replied. “I was just telling these gentlemen about my time aboard
The Bounty
.”

“Oh, I thought that was a film set?”

“Yes, yes it was, but I'm from seafaring stock, Sinclair. Just show me a horizon towards which to point my prow—”

Joan Richmond reached the end of her tether. “Get in the car, Mr. Flynn!” Her tone invited no further discussion.

Flynn was plainly startled.

Joan reached into the driver's seat of the Triumph and tossed Flynn his helmet and goggles, and fixed the actor with such a glare that he meekly put them on.

“Right,” she said. “Follow my car.”

“She's bloody fearsome,” Flynn whispered to Rowland as Joan returned to the Riley. “I find it rather fetching myself. If I hadn't just spent the evening with Miss Higgins, I'd be tempted…”

“I suggest you get into your car, Flynn,” Rowland said tersely.

“Oh yes, right. Don't want to upset the captain. Heave-ho, then!”

When the time came to hand the raceway over to another team, Errol Flynn somehow invited himself back to
Woodlands
for a late luncheon. “Nothing like a meal and few drinks to get the crew pulling together,” he declared.

Joan Richmond declined to join them despite, or perhaps because of, Flynn's appeals that it was her duty as captain to “come ashore with the crew”.

Flynn's Triumph had been blowing light grey smoke. Joan and Bucky Oldfield volunteered to have a look at it and adjust the carburettor, refusing hastily when the other gentlemen offered to stay and assist. “Just take Errol,” Joan whispered to Rowland. “Please.”

And so Errol Flynn was in the back seat of the Mercedes when they approached the underpass that led in and out of the Maroubra Bowl. The motorcar's canopy, having been removed for racing, was still down. The gentleman who flagged them was just outside the underpass.

Assuming that the man was in need of assistance of some sort, Rowland pulled over and stepped out. It was only then that he noticed the half-dozen other men who exchanged cigarettes in a haphazard contingent behind the first. Flynn and Clyde had also alighted, so it was too late to reconsider stopping.

“Wombat Newgate! What are you doing here?” Clyde singled out a fat man with a large flat nose who did, in brutal truth, look rather like a wombat.

“Good day to you, Mr. Watson Jones,” Newgate said nervously.

Clyde introduced Rowland Sinclair and Errol Flynn to Milton's SP bookie.

Newgate said nothing. Instead, the man who had flagged them down spoke on the group's behalf, introducing himself as Redmond Barry, a businessman, entrepreneur and motor racing enthusiast. “So are we all,” he said, waving a hand towards his companions, “all motor racing enthusiasts.”

“Indeed,” Rowland said. “What can we do for you, gentlemen?”

Barry grinned, exposing a gold tooth which caught the light in a manner that was almost dazzling. “Nothing at all, Mr. Sinclair. We just wanted to tell you of our interest, and wish you the best of luck.”

Rowland glanced briefly at Clyde. “That's very civil of you, sir.”

“How do you rate your chances, Sinclair?”

“Chances of what?”

“Of taking home the Lucky Devil, naturally.”

“Why, excellent!” Flynn interjected. “I'd say we're the team to beat, wouldn't you, Rowly?”

Rowland's face was inscrutable. “We'll do our best, but you should understand that Mr. Flynn and I are complete novices to the sport. I expect the competition will be rather fierce.”

The gathered men regarded them solemnly for a moment. “You're being modest, Mr. Sinclair,” Barry said suddenly. “I'm willing to wager that Mr. Flynn here is dead on. You'll be leaving with the Devil.”

“You're most kind,” Rowland replied. “Thank you for your good wishes, gentlemen, but we'd best be on our way.”

“We'd hoped you gentlemen might join us for a spot of luncheon,” Barry said a little too pleasantly. “As our guests, of course—a show of our esteem.”

“Thank you, Mr. Barry, but we are expected elsewhere,” Rowland said calmly.

For the most fleeting moment Barry's face became hard, and then he was beaming again. “Well, we're disappointed, but rest assured we'll ask again. Good day, gentlemen. And drive carefully.”

“I say, very decent of them to want to treat us to lunch,” Flynn said as they got back into the Mercedes.

Rowland pulled back onto the road before he said, “They were bookies, Flynn. They are at best trying to get some kind of inside information before they set their odds.”

“And at worst?”

“Well, that would also be about setting odds,” Clyde replied. “Just not so sporting.”

IN THE WAKE OF THE BOUNTY
NEW AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION

Travelogues and dramas have drenched the screen with the spray of South Sea beaches until the filmgoer imagines that he knows every angle from which a palm can be photographed. Then an Australian, Mr. Charles Chauvel, makes “In the Wake of the Bounty,” and presents the Pacific under a strange and cloudy beauty such as has never before been filmed… …the first part of the film is a glamorous reconstruction of history, with young Errol Flynn playing the part of Fletcher Christian, Mayne Lynton that of Bligh, and Victor Gouriet that of the blind fiddler, who tells the tale.

The West Australian, 1933

____________________________________

T
here was a kitten asleep on the greyhound's head, and four more snuggled into the crevices of his bony body as he lay on the hearth. The sight might have been alarming if it weren't apparent that the felines were in charge. Lenin did not greet his master with more than a martyred glance. Rowland bent to scratch the hound's single ear. He had been worried that Lenin would eat Edna's rescued litter, but it seemed the small fluffy creatures had elicited a misplaced maternal instinct in the dog. Lenin was as besotted as a child by his kittens, tending them like a fussy hen and even poking his long sharp nose in when their mother was nursing. Milton called it embarrassing. Edna told the hound he had a better heart than most men.

Errol Flynn was delighted to find Edna at home when he arrived at
Woodlands
with Rowland and Clyde. But her presence did make proceedings somewhat awkward. Rowland was rarely hostile to the men who pursued Edna—after all, being so would have put him at odds with half of Sydney. But he did try to avoid anything more prolonged than the occasional handshake. Flynn, however, seemed eager to not only woo Edna, but also Rowland, who he'd taken to calling “the first mate”. Milton, who clearly found it all amusing, encouraged the familiarity.

“Wombat Newgate!” Edna exclaimed, when Flynn finished recounting a somewhat more confrontational version of their encounter.

“Be careful,” Milton warned. “Wombat's slow and harmless on his own, but he does have a tendency to mix with some nasty types.”

“What do you know about Barry?” Rowland asked. Milton's connections within the criminal classes were extensive.

“Not much, but I'll find out. Just watch your back, Rowly. They may well be trying to fix the race.”

“Well, they'd best reconsider that idea!” Flynn declared. “The first mate and I will send that notion to the bottom of the sea.”

“Does he think he's a pirate?” Clyde whispered.

“Shhh!” Edna replied, giggling.

“I gather you're a sailor, Flynn,” Rowland asked, keeping his face straight.

“Indeed, I am, mate!” Flynn replied. “Nothing like the roll of a deck on the waves, the taste of salt on your lips and a fair wind at your back…” He put his arm around Edna's waist and pulled her towards him. “A beautiful woman in every port!”

Clyde and Milton both waited for Rowland's cue, but he said nothing.

Edna laughed at Flynn, quite openly, and Rowland was heartened by the fact that she did not seem to care in the least that the man was a cad.

They sat down to luncheon in the conservatory as the day had become warm. Flynn was garrulous company, and though he was only twenty-five had already had quite the adventurous life. A Tasmanian by birth, he'd been educated in England and then at the Shore School in Sydney, from which he'd been expelled.

Having himself been expelled from Kings, Rowland was not particularly shocked by Flynn's almost boastful admission.

But the actor seemed keen to offer details.

“A youthful indiscretion with the school's obliging laundress.” Flynn grinned, observably pleased with the story. “She was a very understanding lady. Shore was less so.”

After his expulsion young Errol Flynn had gone to Papua New Guinea, seeking his fortune in tobacco plantations and mining. Sadly, fortune proved elusive, though he did do a lot of sailing.

Only the previous year had Flynn discovered his talent for acting, and now he'd set his sights on a career in films, where he expected his success with the ladies would be less of a problem. All this he recounted with such little malice that it was difficult to hold his cockiness against him.

If anything, Rowland was relieved. Flynn would not hold Edna's attention for long, however handsome he was supposed to be. Rowland had become accustomed to the sculptress' loves, and as long as they remained fleeting he could bear it.