Aboard Sirocco

We stood shivering in the darkness on the landing, waiting for a water taxi to take us out to Errol Flynn’s yacht Sirocco, which expedition my Navy jg brother Richie had arranged for Bonny and me and Bob-O and his steady Amy Perrine.

A three-quarter moon threw down a freckled track on the choppy water. Somewhere out beyond the bay, the Pacific stretched off to where the subs and battleships of the Japs prowled--who, since Pearl Harbor, had spread over Asia as though nothing could stop them. Even with all the bad headlines, people were still saying the war would be over before 1942 was out. Day by day, especially at midterm time, more guys from San Diego State were disappearing from campus, as Bob-O was doing.

“Richie got to know a lot of Hollywood people when he worked for a studio up there,” I heard myself say. “He’s played tennis with Flynn at Mulholland Farm.”

Bob-O offered his pack of Old Golds to the girls. A flame illuminated Amy’s cheek.

“Stop that shivering!” Bob-O ordered.

The water taxi slid up to the pier with a hoarse putting. The girls were handed onto the launch. The four of us sat knee to knee on slat benches. Bonny was probably shivering too. We were headed for Flynn’s notorious Sirocco!

“I understand you lose your virginity just stepping aboard Flynn’s boat,” Bob-O said. “But you can get it back buying War Bonds.”

“Oh, shut up!” Amy said.

“Are you scared?” Bonny whispered in my ear.

I said I wasn’t.

“Will you take care of me?”

“Yes I will!” I said, and she leaned against me. She gazed back at the Hotel del Coronado as though she wished we had never left it.

“Did you know that the Oz book guy got his idea for the Emerald City from the Hotel del?” I asked.

“The Wizard of Oz” reminded me of arguing with Richie about “The Grapes of Wrath.” He had hated it because he hated Okies. They’re stupid and they stink, he’d said. They don’t even know how to use a bathroom.

We slid alongside a long shape with the masts disappearing into darkness, a leak of light past a curtained porthole, and moon gleams on polished woodwork. A figure crossed the deck with a scissoring of white trouser legs.

I sucked a deep breath to brace against my own shivering. “Come back for us in an hour,” I said to the pilot. Bonny made an approving sound.

The deckhand reached out to help us aboard, and the taxi drifted away.

Light splashed across the deck as a door was opened. Ducking under a low lintel, we passed down steps into a mahogany cabin that held an arrangement of chairs. As soon as I saw Richie lounging, with his long, uniformed legs stretched out, I thought it would be all right. My brother grinned at me, tanned face with the black bar of eyebrows.

Flynn came forward to greet us, head ducked under the low ceiling.

My brother’s fiancee, Liz Fletcher, sat in a director’s chair with a champagne glass in her hand, her silken ankles crossed, her dark hair piled up from the nape of her neck. She raised her bright face to Flynn as he moved past her. At State Liz was just another dance major with good legs, but in a formal with her hair up she was beautiful.

Flynn pivoted like a swordsman, helping Bonny and Amy off with their coats, repeating the names as Richie made introductions. Flynn had a stuffed-nose British accent, a pleasant voice recognizable from his movies. He drew a heavy green bottle from a silver bucket and wrapped it in a napkin.

Bob-O said it was nice of him to invite us out on his yacht.

“It is brave of you to come, my friends, “ Flynn said, easing the cork, and everyone laughed in relief.

The cabin walls reflected confused shards of light from the framed photographs. One showed Flynn bare-chested in a boxer’s raised-fists stance. Others were of movie people. A photograph of Carole Lombard had a faded white blossom stuck in a corner of the frame.

Flynn gimbled right and left, pouring the champagne, putting everyone at ease with jokes and attentions.

“Here’s champagne to our friends and pain to our sham friends,” he said. He aimed his glass at Liz, posed in a graceful S in her chair. “To Miss Fletcher, who glistens as lovely as the stone in the ring on her finger.”

Liz held up her hand to show off Richie’s ring.

“And has the date been set?” Flynn wanted to know.

“Last week of June,” Richie said. “Unless they ship me out first.”

Just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl, Richie had told me once.

Flynn pointed his glass again. “And here’s to the fair Miss Bonington and the dark Miss Perrine. And Mr. O’Connor and the younger Mr. Daltrey.”

They talked about “They Died With Their Boots On.”

“They called Custer ‘Old Iron-Bottom,’ you know,” Flynn said. “Ah, what a sore bottom I had! I’ve just signed to play James J. Corbett in a film. Rigorous training will be required.”

Bonny asked who Corbett was.

I told her that he was called Gentleman Jim, and he’d won the heavyweight boxing title from John L. Sullivan.

Richie squinted at me as though he’d caught me showing off.

“Bruiser versus artist,” Flynn said, nodding. “It will be hard work playing Gentleman Jim, but an adventure. That’s what we are here for, is it not?”

He turned his attention to Bob-O. “And you are off to a life of adventure in the Marine Corps, Mr. O’Connor?”

“Recruit Depot at 1400 hours tomorrow!” Bob-O said, flexing his shoulders. “How about you, Mr. Flynn? Does the draft board go after movie stars?”

“Does it not! Unfortunately--fortunately!--the physical examination disclosed some rather nasty spots on my lungs.” Flynn stood with his head inclined under the low ceiling, one hand in his pocket, the other gripping his glass, always the center of attention.

“In all truth, this war is not an adventure in which I care to participate. Colonials have had enough of pulling Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire.”

“But aren’t you English?” Amy asked in her small voice. She held her hands clasped together before her bosom, her shoulders as frail as bird wings.

“Ah, no, little one. I am Australian, a colonial as you were once also in this great country. I’m o’ Irish stock in addition, and you must know how the Irish feel about the Sassenach!

“I will tell you what true adventure is, my friends,” he continued. “New Guinea! I worked in the gold fields there. Headhunters! Orchids! Creepers strangling trees 100 feet high! Men were men in that place, and women stayed well away. I bought the first Sirocco there, transporting native labor. Someday I’ll go back.”

He lowered himself into a chair and set down his glass to light a cigarette. Bob-O had lit up also, and the cabin was layered with smoke.

Richie looked amused, watching Flynn. I’d been relieved when he went into Naval Air from his fancy studio job at Fontainebleau, with his Cord car and nifty Desmond’s clothes. San Diego people thought of L.A. as the Evil City, and anybody who tarried there too long was in danger of turning into a poison frog. I didn’t want to know if he’d been one of the USC jocks who had gone up to the valley to beat up on the Okie fruit tramps.

“First ran across Jack London’s books in New Guinea,” Flynn said. “No one reads Jack London any more.”

“I’ll bet Brud has,” Richie drawled. “My brother’s read everything.”

He sounded proud of me! I said I’d read “Martin Eden.”

Flynn said, “That’s the way to go. Off the taffrail when the voyage is over.”

I explained the ending of “Martin Eden” to the others, Richie grinning.

Just then the deckhand in the white trousers came down into the cabin on squeaking rubber soles. Flynn introduced him as Pancho Hagen. Hagen nodded curtly to us and moved into the galley, where he seated himself on a stool and lit up, as though trying to conceal himself in a smokescreen. He was dark-complected, with a hard, lined face like a cigar-store Indian’s.

Hagen must be the stuntman from “They Died With Their Boots On.”

When Flynn talked about a film Richie had worked on with David Lubin at Fontainebleau, I saw Hagen thrust his face forward as though his attention had been caught. Then he withdrew into the smoke and shadows again.

“Someday I’ll make a film with Liz dancing,” Richie said.

“I’m a good dancer,” Liz said in her husky voice.

“I’m sure you are, my dear,” Flynn said, gazing at her with his head cocked admiringly. And I saw that Liz was aware of it.

The Sirocco rolled and pitched from something passing.

Flynn asked Bob-O what he intended to do after the war. Bob-O said he would go to law school and join his father’s law firm. Amy wanted to be a schoolteacher. And the fair one?

Bonny said she would marry a doctor. Her family were all doctors. “We’ll have a boat. They all have boats. It doesn’t have to be a schooner, though,” she said, to make a joke of it.

“Ah, a schooner is not so large a boat, my dear,” Flynn said. “Especially when it is filled with lunks who have performed too many stunts without their helmets on.”

Hagen lit another cigarette, his attention still fixed on Richie. Cocooned in smoke in the galley, he radiated that kind of menace you feel when some drunk seems primed to raise a ruckus.

Flynn arched an eyebrow at me. “Younger brother Daltrey?”

It was queer that I had been ready for his question, and then was not ready when it came. I said I wanted to be a writer.

“A writer for your brother, the producer-to-be?”

“Well, a fiction writer.” Richie watched me, not quite squinting. Bonny glanced sideways. People seemed embarrassed when you said you wanted to be a writer. In fact, I was already a writer, with five unpublished stories written for Black Mask.

Amy asked if Flynn had known Carole Lombard, pointing to the photograph with the faded flower. I saw Liz touch the gardenia in her own hair as she glanced at it.

“A lovely lady,” Flynn said, nodding. “The pilot lost the beam, I understand. Carrie and 20 others dead in an instant.” He looked at Richie. “Yours is a dangerous trade.”

I was feeling nervous about Hagen, who was staring at Richie, rocking on his stool with his shoulders hunched up around his neck.

“I had a student who ran into a gas storage tank two weeks ago,” Richie said. “Killed himself and his instructor. It was just lucky I wasn’t his instructor that day.”

“Talk about killers!” Hagen said in a sudden growl that struck us silent.

“Spare us your mutterings, Panch,” Flynn said. “I’m afraid you are drunk.”

Richie made a show of slipping his cuff to glance at his watch and, prayers answered, there was the slight jar of the water taxi returning.

“Does the young Martin Eden play tennis?” Flynn asked Richie.

Richie said I had a good forehand if I’d just get the racket back early.

“You are invited to visit me at Mulholland Farm!” Flynn said to me, then extended a hand in a large gesture to include everyone. “I’ll give you good tennis! You’ll meet my friend Jack Warner. He is always interested in young people he might turn into stars of the silver screen.”

Liz gazed at Flynn with an embarrassing nakedness to her face. Richie helped her into her coat, shaking hands with Flynn with some dialogue I didn’t hear. Amy and Bob-O climbed the steps to the deck.

In the galley, Hagen rose, dusting his hands on his trouser legs. He lurched toward Richie. “You rotten throat-cutting studio piece of crap!” he snarled, smashing into Richie as he staggered back. Liz cried out. Then Flynn was in motion, and with a crack Hagen stumbled across the cabin, knocking over two chairs with a crash of glasses, to finish squatting on the floor in the galley, shaking his big head. Bonny caught hold of my arm as though to stop me from hitting someone. I had promised her I’d take care of her.

“My apologies for my drunken friend,” Flynn said, extending a hand to help Richie. Richie’s face was as white as paper.

Bonny and I started up the steps of the cabin, Liz following us, then Richie. I turned toward him but he hissed, “Just forget it, Brud!”

He put an arm around Liz, moving her toward the water taxi. Bonny held my arm.

When we were all aboard, the taxi turned toward the Emerald City lights of the Hotel del Coronado. Richie and Liz had their heads together. Bob-O offered his pack of Old Golds. No one spoke.

At the pier, Richie and Liz called out good luck to Bob-O and disappeared into the darkness, Richie’s tall figure with the pale glow from a light standard kindling the white cover of his cap, Liz tucked against his arm.

Back in the ballroom the four of us ordered a round of too-sweet drinks. Bob-O and Amy didn’t seem to have been aware of the fuss in the cabin of the Sirocco. After another dance set they left, mounting the stairs to the lobby in lock step, as though they couldn’t wait to be alone in Bob-O’s V-8.

Bonny watched them with color in her cheeks, smiling when I met her eyes. Maybe we were thinking the same thing. Bob-O’s last night.

“Am I not supposed to ask what that was all about on Sirocco?” Bonny said, looking down at her hands on the table.

“I don’t know what it was about.”

“That scary guy! Did your brother knock him down?”

“It was Flynn.” I managed a laugh. “I guess it should’ve been Richie.”

We danced, cheek to cheek, flesh adhering to flesh in the body heat of the crowded dance floor, flecks of colored light coursing over the uniforms and the formals and the bare skin.

We talked about brothers. It didn’t sound like Bonny liked her brother much. I loved Richie, even now that there was one more thing about him I didn’t want to have to know.