Living With Miss G (25 page)

At the time Miss G and Henry were either sleeping peacefully or polishing
their tactics for a forceful attack at the net. I knew I had to get their attention. I
ejected out of my bed, grabbed a robe, and raced up the stairs. I tapped with
urgency on Miss G’s door and hissed. “Miss G…Miss G…Walter’s coming up
the drainpipe.” Later, the idiocy of that warning gave Miss G another cause for
laughing hysteria.
Henry knew very little about Miss G’s background or relationships, but he
certainly must have been aware that he might be playing on someone else’s
tennis court. Maybe the awful, possible headline flashed through his mind,
“Henry loses vital Davis Cup match in three sets. Ava Gardner named as
Henry’s new doubles partner.”
Henry went out through the bedroom door as fast as if he were returning a
full stretch match point. He had managed to get his pants on. He had one arm in
his shirt and carried his shoes and socks. Some of these lovers have minds as
wary as racing drivers, as they never know when they may need a fast getaway.
“Follow me,” I hissed. We hurried down the stairs past Bappie’s bedroom.
Reaching the back door, I unbolted it. He paused long enough to get his clothes
on, gave me a quick glint of white teeth, whispered, “Thanks,” and was gone
into the night.
I went back to bed. I wondered if Miss G had woken up. I even wondered
if next morning when she opened her eyes and found Walter she thought,
“That’s funny, I thought I went to bed with Henry last night?”

25 A MATTER OF LIFE AND CERTAIN DEATH

In
On the Beach,
Gregory Peck, playing Dwight Towers, and Miss G,
playing Moira Davidson, dominated the movie. Moira was in her thirties, a little
dowdy, her looks diminishing, a little dispirited about her life and covering its
emptiness with cynicism and a lot of booze. Stanley Kramer had plainly given
Miss G her role believing he was casting from real life.

Nothing worthwhile had come from Moira’s few affairs. She had never
married. She drank a lot because that assuaged the aches of the past. She went
on drinking to counter the inner agonies at the thought she would leave the
world with a meaningless past behind her.

Then into her life came Towers, the tall, handsome, good-natured and
dedicated U.S. Navy career officer, commander of the nuclear submarine, the
Sawfish
. It had arrived in Australia to link up with the Australian navy.

The
Sawfish
did undertake one last voyage up to the west coast of the USA
to investigate a mysterious Morse code signal still being picked up in
Melbourne. It was only a random tapping but was worth examining. Perhaps
some vestige of human existence still survived. It did not. A radio key was still
functioning from a power source, but it was caught in a broken window blind,
and when the wind blew a garbled signal was transmitted. No other sign of life
was detected, and Commander Towers and his crew made the long, weary,
submerged return journey back to Melbourne.

The friendship between Moira and Dwight grew closer and warmer. To
Moira it soon became obsessive. She had fallen deeply in love for the first time
in her life. What an irony, she thought. What a moment for this to happen. She
knew she could not weigh Dwight down with such an emotional burden.
Nevertheless, just to be near him, to experience the joy of love, even though it
was unrequited, was enough. If perchance before the world ended he might
return that love, it would be a fulfillment that would make the coming darkness
easier.

It was not to be that simple. Dwight accepted that he felt deep affection for
Moira. Being close to her helped to blot out the black reality that lay ahead.
Dwight was locked into memories of his past life—his happy marriage to his
pretty dark-haired wife, his two kids, a boy aged nine and a daughter six.
Dwight was aware, everyone was aware, that for the past two years no living
creature had survived in North America. They were all dead.

This other side of Dwight could not, and did not, believe that to be the
truth. With absolute certainty he maintained that he was going back to his home,
a small town on the coast of Connecticut, carrying presents for them: an emerald
necklace for his wife, a fishing rod for the boy and a pogo-pogo jumping stick
for his small daughter. Moira even managed to discover one of the old fashioned
jumping sticks and had it painted and embellished and gave it to him. Dwight
was overjoyed.

Was there any point of Moira trying to tell him that such thoughts were
madness? To Dwight the memories and his return to shore memories supported
and strengthened him and gave him a purpose. Moira had no such illusions. She
knew that even if Dwight made love to her, made her pregnant, there would
never be enough months left to bear his child.

She thrust such thoughts away from her mind. She lived for the next
moment, the next daybreak. Everyone in the small, shrinking community
continued with their work-a-day lives as if tomorrow would come. What else
was there to do?

Actress Donna Anderson played the part of Mary Holmes. She was
married to the young Australian Navy Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes,
played by Anthony Perkins. Their first child, a baby daughter named Jennifer,
has just been born. Mary refuses to believe that this mysterious fallout exists.
How could it be, when she has just given birth to their beautiful little Jennifer?
Jennifer has to be fed, bathed and loved. Doesn’t everyone know that? She will
grow up to be a lovely young woman–so there!

Peter Holmes breathes deeply and goes along with this deception, as Moira
does with Dwight. What other course is there to follow?

“Yes, darling,” agrees Peter. “I will go into town and get the new lawn
mower I promised you. Yes, darling, Jennifer will have a Christmas tree when
the time comes.”

I’ve always thought that
On the Beach
was one of Miss G’s most
wonderful parts. She could tear the heart and start the tears. She was never
maudlin, never out of character, she never faked. She loved…oh God, she loved.
There is a picture of her, wind in her hair and blowing across her face and one
strand of her hair caught in her mouth. Her eyes are soft and luminous and her
heart breaking. The world is ending. Her part was crucial to the film. Her
sexuality was crucial to the film. Her love affair with Dwight should turn into a
real love affair, a last confirmation of the human spirit though the human sex act
was crucial to the film.

Not everyone agreed with that conception. Stanley Kramer did. Miss G
did, and I did, too. The two other most important men close to the film,
however, thought that a physical affair would destroy the entire movie. Both
Gregory Peck and author Nevil Shute thought that. The British novelist, fairly
late in his life, had immigrated to Australia taking his family with him. He was
now living in a house not far away from Melbourne. At first he would not even
come near us. He had been sent the script and so violently disagreed with its
conclusion and its new ending that it was some time before he agreed to talk to
us at all.

Kramer’s contrasting viewpoint was, “This is a serious picture. It is about
the death of the world, and it could be totally downbeat. We have to give our
audience romance, sex, and hope.”

Peck said, “You are corrupting the story, and you are corrupting my
character in the story. The self-denial on a matter of principle is romantic. It is
honorable. The audience will respect Moira and Dwight for it. It is easy to have
them jump in bed together. It is too easy. The denial of that is more touching. It
goes deeper. Their characters are stronger for it.”

Nevil Shute hated those last scenes for the same reasons. He thought it was
a violation of his book. He didn’t hate it on moral grounds. He believed it
destroyed the validity of Peck’s role as the Commander. It was the one thing the
Commander could salvage in the midst of total disaster.

Peck said, “It didn‘t matter at all in the long run because there would be no
more life on earth. The Commander grasped that one thing: he would die being
faithful to the wife he loved so much.”

Miss G and I couldn’t go along with these high-minded, chauvinistic male
thoughts, and neither could Stanley Kramer. The Commander’s wife and family
had been dead for two years. He had paid his proper dues, and his love for them
continued. To carry romantic loyalty forever was ridiculous. They were dead, all
in the grave, a grave which he himself would soon be entering.

He was now deeply and romantically involved with Moira, at times
believing she is his wife. To Dwight, to accept the death of his family and to
turn to Moira in her deep hours of need was natural and acceptable. Any other
course would be an abdication of common sense.

Moira had taken Dwight’s empty life to her heart and filled it again. She
had taken him out to meet her mother and father at their farm. As Dwight’s
duties as the last US executive naval officer left alive dwindled, he enjoyed
visiting them. The countryside, the hills and green rolling fields reminded him of
his own boyhood and cheered him immensely. He began manual work with
Moira’s father on a dozen jobs that were necessary before the next Spring
arrived, ignoring that for them the next Spring would never come.

The plow was drawn by oxen because there was no fuel left. The slowness
of old country habits remained. Values and occupations remained: fishing in the
quick running streams, swimming and sailing over a blue ocean, lying back with
a pipe in one hand and a drink in the other, slightly worried at Moira’s capacity
for drinking too much. Their love for each other in all their meetings made him
happy.

I think that the end of
On the Beach
was one of the most dramatic in film
history. The radiation sickness was spreading to the last inhabited regions of
Australia. Doctors and health authorities had already received consignments of
poison pills which ensured a speedy death. Many people were using them.

Peter and Mary Holmes got the first symptoms—sickness, lassitude and
diarrhea—and they knew they did not have long to live. They decided to die in
their own beds with dignity and the knowledge that they will take baby Jennifer
with them on their journey into death.

Peter heard that maybe in twenty to thirty years the radioactive fallout
would have cleared from earth. The fields would still be green, the hedgerows
bright with berries and probably fish would still flash silver in the streams. But
no birds would sing, no cocks crow, no dogs bark and Mr. Smith would never
return home on the 6:32 again.

Dwight also made up his mind what his course of action will be. As the
end nears, he will embark with the last dozen or so of his crew who wish to go
with him and sail out past the twelve mile limit. There in the deep Bass Straits
he will scuttle his ship, he and his crew with it. Their fuel supply will have
ended by then. It is in these last scenes that Guiseppe Rotunno’s cinematography
was so evocative.

Dwight and Moira became lovers. As a last gesture to each other–a
farewell honeymoon–they decided to go out to a small village in a remote
fishing area, a beautiful little place. What happened? A noisy group of dedicated
fishermen had the same idea and chose the same location for their last reunion.
Dwight and Moira were not angry, and they joined in.

It started raining, and Dwight built a fire outside their cabin. Around their
own fire the fishermen started to sing that wonderful old Aussie folk tune,
Waltzing Matilda. “Waltzing Matilda, who’ll come waltzing Matilda with me?”
It was a song that would never ring in the hills again. Moira and Dwight clung
together and were silhouetted against the setting sun. The camera was moving in
an entire circle around them. As their lips met, the sun sank into the sea.

Next morning they returned to Melbourne, and Dwight readied the
Sawfish
for its last voyage. Moira drove down to his dock to ask him if she could go out
with them on that last journey. Dwight took her in his arms and told her no. He
must obey naval codes to the very end.

Moira was determined that at least in spirit she would be with him until the
end. She got back into her car and drove out at top speed along deserted roads
and through lifeless villages to reach a headland high above the ocean. The long
black shape of the submarine Sawfish nosed around the barrier of cliffs. Sitting
in her car, Moira watched it change course and head south. Sadly, she waved her
hand in a final salute.

“Dwight,” she whispered softly. “If you are on your way already, wait for
me.”

She extracted the poison pill from her handbag and with a gulp of brandy
swallowed it.
The scene cut then to a camera attached to the submarine’s conning tower.
As it started its final dive the sea swirled up and covered the camera lens.
The light in that twilight zone underwater could still be seen. Then, as the
sub went deeper, it grew darker and finally reached the final blackness.
After viewing
On the Beach
in a cinema, I found the effect of that black
screen chilling. For about ten seconds no diffused light turned up, and no one in
the audience moved. We filed out in silence. I was grateful to breathe cool air
and know that I was alive.