Episode 9: Clash Of Cultures

Episode 9: Clash Of Cultures

    Rupy thinks John’s taking me over. He is not! Just because he’s got some leave and said he’d drive us to Chipping Ditter and stay for the festival! Yvonne thinks—besides thinking he’s almost as gorgeous as Sean Connery, of course—that maybe I’ve let myself be dazzled by him, and it might be wise not to let myself be carried away. Barbara thinks he’s too old for me, but she’s too nice to say it, she only says that we do have very different lifestyles, and maybe his expectations will be different from mine. She doesn’t mean sex, she’s not that naïve, she means marriage versus humble little mistress content to live in the background of his life, and marriage versus not marrying me in his wildest dreams. Something like that. Well, she’s only said “Of course he’s been married once” five hundred times since I told her about him. Nobody else knows about the relationship so at least I haven’t had to put up with any more well-meaning clichés.

    It’s only Thursday evening and we were supposed to stay on until Friday and check out on the Saturday morning, but Paul tells us actors we’re not needed any more, they’ve done our bits, and we can go, or put it like this, NO, Henny Penny won’t pay for us to idle about in a hotel for another whole day and NO, Rupy, he doesn’t give a damn if you and Lily Rose had planned to leave for Chipping Ditter on the Saturday, you were told to MAKE YOUR OWN ARRANGEMENTS! No, we weren’t, but we don’t argue.

    “You’re all right,” Rupy says glumly. “You can go and stay in The Captain’s Cottage.” (He’s named it that. Hard to blame him, really.)

    “Stay on here, I’ll pay.”

    He’s pathetically grateful. Am I sure? I am sure, Sheila’s just got the latest cheque from Henny Penny and rung me up to gloat about Overseas Sales, she’s already worked out how much we can expect from those, in total.

    So Rupy stays on at the hotel and I go off to the cottage with John. I’m feeling a lot better and I don’t need a hot gin and take it for all it all we have a lovely evening, and night, and in the morning we have another one and then he discovers the mess the sheets are in.

    “That is apt to happen if a person says he doesn’t practise the Jewish rites and gets all keen, and—” But he put a towel on the bed! Yeah, and we went right through it. I can’t see what the fuss is about, menstrual blood is a perfectly natural phenomenon and, in case the Navy hasn’t noticed, happens every month, but I obligingly get out of bed and borrow his dressing-gown—yeah, I do own one but I never brought it because I thought I’d be staying in a nice centrally-heated hotel room with an ensuite, he looks blank, those puce and magenta ladies sure musta been weird—and prepare to soak the sheets. There isn’t a proper laundry: like, the washing-machine’s in the kitchen like I think I mentioned and the dryer’s in a big cupboard above it, it’s got these louvered doors that swear at the rest of the kitchen and an extractor fan that takes the steam— Ya don’t wanna know all that. There is a sink but he goes into a Pommy tizz at the thought of soaking laundry in it. I’da scrubbed it out after with Vim, but I don’t argue, I bung them into his pale blue bath with a lot of cold water and go down to investigate Marion’s laundry cupboard. There is a packet of enzyme soaker; in fact there’s packets of every type of cleaner and softener and fluffer-upper known to laundry science, so I grab it. It’s unopened, which on the whole is quite cheering, only the thought arises, if the puce and magenta ladies were that weird, did they even let him do it when they had their periods? I dump a whole lot into the bath and to make sure it mixes in good I step in and stomp around a bit. Then I have to have a nice hot shower, partly because I don't want my toes to get eaten away and partly because that cold water was bloody cold, June or not.

    I enjoy be-hing a gurl! Apparently I have to hurry up, we’re running late this morning. I’m not. But I obligingly stop rehearsing and let him have the bathroom. Yeah, yeah, I’ll get breakfast, keep ya hair on. I collapse at my own wit while he shoots into the ensuite not even noticing it.

    Downstairs I find he's already fed Tim. Tim tries to tell me a Big Fat Lie but I ignore him. Oof! Stop leaning on me, Tim! He goes on leaning on me. “Sit!” He ignores me. Okay, I’m not in a mood to take no shit from no dogs, because it’s now forcibly occurred that all the fuss about the sheets was either embarrassment at the thought of Marion being faced with them or fear at what Marion’ll say when she discovers stains on good tan and totally icky sheets in her care, or both. “Sit!” I roar. Poor old Tim sits.

    John has at least got a toaster, so I make toast, why didn’t the bloody woman buy us some sliced bread, if she hadda buy bread? He’s got a fancy coffee-pot, so having observed his technique narrowly yesterday, I can make coffee! …Um, bummer, where does the water go? No, hang on, if this thingo is for the coffee, then uh— In the top? I put the water in the top. There doesn't seem to be any Weetbix. There’s gritty muesli, though, and an unopened box of cornflakes. Okay, if he likes this stuff he can have it and on consideration of what my period usually does to my innards I’ll have nice, safe, mild cornflakes. Bowls? Can't find any. So I grab a couple of the flowery ones off the huge dresser that lives in the dinette next to the huge sideboard. Remarks were made about provincial and farmhouses and not very good but even I can see that they’re both black with age, it’s not just dark varnish. Oak, yep, you goddit. Milk? Yes, there’s plenty. “NO! SIT!” I roar. Poor old Tim sits again. Well, I’m not gonna be responsible for him chucking up.

    When John comes down he looks at the kitchen table and a funny expression comes over his face but he doesn’t say anything. Then he discovers I done the coffee wrong. But I put the water— It’s not a drip machine. Never thought it was. He unscrews the coffee-pot and puts the water in the bottom. See? I see, Master, but I don’t understand. Then he puts it on this neato little electric element that lives next to the toaster on the bench, just by the power points, boy if it was mine I’d use it all the time and the Aga could just sit there. It could have a vase of flowers on it. We must have these in Australia? They’re Italian. Oh! I knew it seemed familiar, but Mr Franchini’s is miles bigger and it hasn’t got those, like, fluted sides? Whatever. “Yeah, but what makes the coffee come in the top?” Steam. He goes into great detail but it’s already dawned it’s engineering slash science, so it doesn't get past my Automatic Engineering/Science Virus Scanner.

    “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Eat ya nice muesli, John. Have some sugar on it.” This distracts him and he sits down and puts milk on his muesli and gives me the standard fibre-eater’s spiel.

    “Yeah. You won’ta noticed, but having my period gives me the shits, I don’t need fibre, thanks.” –That silences him, in fact I’m pretty sure he thinks it was Coarse. Oh, how dreadful: I’ll have to watch my language in future.

    There’s something wrong with the toast, according to the look on his face, but it popped up automatically and I never reset nothing, so too bad. Tastes all right to me. Well, a bit leathery, maybe: it has been sitting around for— That’ll be it. I put extra Marmite on mine, it’s nice, but if I had to choose I’d say your dinkum Aussie Vegemite was nicer. Only because I grew up on it, I recognise that.

    “I think there might be some marmalade in the larder,” he murmurs, looking at the jar I found in the cupboard next to the Marmite.

    “This is a good brand, though.”

    “Mm.” He gets up and looks in a tall cupboard that I never looked in, and produces a little dish with, gee, some marmalade in it, and another little dish, with, gee, some soft butter in it. Jesus, don’t they get ants in Blighty? “What’s up?”

    “Don’t you get ants here?”

    Not in the house, apparently. I don’t ask if this is because Marion sprays all round the outside of it with a giant bomb like Aunty Kate uses against the cockroaches, they just step over it, natch, but it makes the people feel groggy efficiently enough, or because English ants have been trained for the last two millennia. I just say: “I’d say, won’t that butter melt, only I think it takes a temperature of slightly above ten degrees Celsius to melt butter.”

    “Mm. It is easier to spread when it’s soft.” –This is Planet Civilised, folks, as I’m sure you’ve recognised. I’m of the school of thought that, when it’s not eating marg, which is most of the time, likes carving large chunks of cold butter off the block from the fridge; mm-mm, there’s nothing like a really large chunk of cold butter on a bit of leathery toast! Try it if ya don’t believe me.

    “Drink your coffee, if you’re late you’ll get a Captain’s Bad Conduct Black Mark.”

    “Very witty,” he says, but grinning like anything, phew, that’s a relief. Maybe he doesn’t really mind that I done it all wrong.

    When he goes Tim doesn’t even make a pretence of wanting to go with him, how embarrassing.

    “You got no cunning,” I tell him, sitting down on the lawn beside him and giving him a great big hug. He licks my chin and we just about got time to count to ten before the little red Mazda pulls up and she’s here.

    I am dressed, I didn’t think her constitution could take it if I just wore John’s dressing-gown. I forgot to pack my ordinary clothes, what with the bustle of pre-paying Rupy’s room before John arrived to pick me up, something told me he might not absolutely approve of me paying for it when Rupy’s on a decent salary as Commander. So I’m wearing Yvonne’s choice, i.e. tight sky-blue, very shiny stretch pants, they’re not pedal-pushers, actually they’re more like tights, and a fuzzy pale blue jumper, angora according to Yvonne, also skin-tight, but never mind, there’s nothing to bulk it out because I’m not wearing anything under it. Yvonne thought I might be too warm in it, what a laugh. Well, I have pushed the sleeves half up my forearms but I don’t aim on going further than that this millennium. The shoes are little pale blue soft things with white laces, not leather, I think they’re possibly padded nylon and Yvonne could be right in saying they’re house shoes (? not a term I'd come across before), but they are exactly the same shade as the pale blue top, so she let me get away with them. There was no particular reason for me to put on the pearl screw-on earrings this morning except that I’ve fallen in love with them. John gave me a great big hug when he left and said in my ear as he pressed it hard, in both senses, against my tummy, that I was so cuddly, so chalk one up to Yvonne, huh?

    “Hi, Marion,” I say, giving her a Lily Rose smile.

    “Good morning, Miss Marshall,” she replies properly. Oh, God. “Good dog, Tim.”

    I’ve got a good grip on him and I give him a bit of a squeeze, and he doesn’t bark at her this time, though whether that’ll make any difference remains to be seen. “Call me Rosie.”

    “If you’re sure? Thank you: Rosie, then.”—Oh, God.—“Was that John’s car I saw just now? I hope he won’t be late.”

    How many old black Jags are there in this neck of the rural woods? “Yeah, we were running late this morning,” I say mildly, scrambling up. That was wrong, she’s gone red.

    We go inside.

    The breakfast things are still on the table because of course John had to dash. She gives a horrified gasp. “You didn’t use the good dessert bowls?”

    Pudding bowls, aren’t they? “Those flowery ones? I got them from the dinette.”

    “He never uses them for breakfast,” she says fervently, gathering them up tenderly.

    He uses them for bloody pudding, so what’s the bloody difference? I don’t say anything. She’s putting them in the dishwasher anyway, so what’s the bloody— Forget it. “Um, where are the ordinary ones?”

    In here, of course. Right, in a top cupboard that she can reach easily, she must be nearly as tall as he is, but that I can only just reach because I barely top his shoulder. Which up until just now I’d sort of thought was an asset in this relationship instead of the drawback it is in normal daily life. Kindly she shows me “the steps”, they live in a cupboard with the brooms. I’m not gonna get up on a freaking ladder to get his bloody breakfast bowls, what does the woman think I am, besotted?

    Eh? Yeah, we did forget to turn the dishwasher on last night. (Jesus! It’s self-evident, isn’t it? And yep, I am disturbing their comfortable little routine. Geddit? Thought ya had, yeah.)

    “I’ll make the bed, we hadda soak the sheets,” I say mildly.

    Soak the sheets? Not his good (insert expensive brand name) caramel sheets?

    “Yeah, I’ve got my period, we got blood on them,” I say in a voice that comes out a lot more bored and indifferent than I’d actually meant it to and more like what I’m now starting to feel, if ya get me. Yikes.

    “Oh,” she says, going very red. Jesus, how old is she? I’d’ve said she was less than his age, maybe forty-five? Still young enough to have them, for God’s sake. Mum’s only dried up for good about six months before I left; when she decided they’d actually stopped she took me and Joslynne and her Mum and Mrs Franchini and Tanya out for a real slap-up lunch, all girls together, none of Them need apply, thanks. Well, work it out, they started when she was thirteen, actually the week before her thirteenth birthday, and she was fifty-two when they stopped. Thirty-nine years of it? Except for when she was actually pregnant with me and Kenny. Anyone’d feel like celebrating. After a minute I work out Marion maybe wouldn’t of gone so red if I’d said “I got blood on them” instead of being literal and saying “we got blood on them.” Too late, now.

    We have to go upstairs and inspect the damage and she concedes that at least I didn’t use hot water on them but she doesn’t know what that enzyme soaker’ll do to John’s good caramel sheets, if she says caramel once more I’m gonna scream. I don’t need to make the bed, that’s her job, Miss— Rosie. John doesn’t pay her by the hour, does he? I demand in my tactless Australian way. She goes very red again but admits that no, they have a weekly arrangement. Good, because if they hadn’ta done I was gonna put the hard word on him. I don’t say that, I only say that in that case I’ll make the bed and she can make a start on the downstairs. She goes off, I can’t hear the vacuum cleaner or anything but at least she isn’t here. Bummer, she hasn’t told me where the clean sheets are. I rush out to the head of the stairs and without stopping to think bellow like I would at home, not that we ever had a staircase, most of Sydney’s one-storeyed, you only get those multi-storey palaces on the waterfront where all the millionaires live: “HEY, MARION! WHERE ARE THE CLEAN SHEETS?”

    She shoots out of the kitchen; good grief, she’s not only got her flowery apron on, she’s tied up her hair in a scarf. The linen cupboard is at the end of the upstairs passage, of course. Silly me: I thought it was merely the end of the passage, possibly because it’s all olive-oiled oak panelling like the rest of the shit. …God Almighty, what does one person need all this linen for? Towers of sheets, mountain ranges of towels, no wonder he didn’t mind me using a towel to dry my hair, I think there’s one for every day of the year and two for birthdays and Christmas! And what are these, face washers? Nope, mini-towers of hand towels. And different hand towels, like, um, hang on, we had this stuff in sewing class what I failed like in about Year Six, when I was about eleven. Huckleberry… Huckerback! Piles of bloody huckerback towels with little crocheted navy-blue edges. I totter back into the bedroom and make the bed. I don’t do hospital corners, mainly because I haven’t a clue what they are, but Matron’s slipping, she doesn’t come and catch me out. “HEY, MARION! YA WANT ME TO PUT THE TOWELS IN THE WASH?”

    She comes out, now she’s got giant pink rubber gloves on as well, what the fuck is she up to, she doesn’t need to do any dishes, they’re in the machine and I can hear it chugging. “Please don’t bother, I’ll look after them.”

    “If ya want them to go in the wash, I can bring them down, no sweat, only they’ll do for another day, that heated towel rail of his is neato.” That was wrong: of course she changes his towels every day. –That partly explains the linen cupboard, but only partly: he isn’t here every day, is he? I bring them down. The thought occurs, if I was John’s Mother or a puce and magenta lady, I would probably, assuming that I’d lower myself in the first place, just bring them down without asking if she wanted to wash them. She’s done the bench and the table, right, that’s what all the gear was for, and she’s just about to wash the kitchen floor. I bung the towels in the machine and she gives a horrified gasp. Not those navy-blue things in with the whites! There isn’t anywhere else to put them and the machine isn’t on, but I don’t say this. There is a laundry basket, but John doesn’t like it cluttering up the passage. Huh? She goes outside and comes back with a big white plastic laundry basket, it would tend to occupy the entire width of the minute back passage, right. I dump the navy towels in it and she then ascertains I haven’t brought the bath mat. No, because in the Marshall nuclear family the bath mat wasn’t a towel and unless Kenny had drowned it, didn’t get washed every bloody day. I’ll get it! I rush off before she can tell me please don’t bother.

    When I get back Tim’s in the back passage looking hopeful. “No. Good boy,” I say, fondling his ears, mm, they are nice ears. “No morning tea for dogs.” She heard that, because she asks nicely if I’d like a cup of tea.

    “No, thanks, it’s too early.” She’s about to take the bath mat off me but I’m already on my way to the laundry basket. So she goes over to the door and goes to pick up my army surplus satchel that I parked by it last night.

    “Wuff! Grrr!” He springs forward and guards it.

    “Tim! Stop that!” she gasps, this time going absolutely puce and retreating hurriedly.

    “Grrr-rr.”

    “Um, sorry, Marion,” I say limply. “I think he thinks he’s guarding it. –It’s all right, ya nana, that’s Marion—Marion, okay? She’s allowed to touch my laptop.”

    “Oh, dear, is that your computer, Miss—uh, Rosie? I’m so sorry!”

    “Gee, that’s okay, Marion. –Give it here, ya great nana.” I pick it up. He licks my hand, panting like anything and waving his tail in great swoops. “No. Silly fella.” I pat him anyway. He pants and waves even more.

    I was gonna work on the kitchen table, but I can see this is the centre of her Territory, it’d be bloody silly to try to invade it. So I say: “If you don’t need me to help, I’ll do some work in the other room.” She seems quite pleased, though giving the satchel a sideways look, so I go. Tim comes, too, of his own accord.

    John’s got a great big desk, one of those roll-top ones, I don’t think it’s oak, it’s not grainy, but I wouldn’t dare to try to open it. So I sit at the dining table. Tim comes over and lies down by my feet and then makes a big huffing noise and rests his chin on my ankles, I’m really honoured, I thought he only did that to John. I get my notes up and the tape recorder out and plug in my earplug attachment, and start transcribing. There are voice recognition programmes that’ll do this, more or less successfully, but they’re very expensive and take up multi-gigabytes of space that my laptop hasn’t got. I’ll give it fifteen minutes before she’s in here vacuuming.

    … Seventeen minutes on the dot. She hopes she’s not disturbing me. I heard her perfectly well but I remove an earplug and yell: “Eh?”

    She hopes she’s not disturbing me. This won’t take long. I wave vaguely. “No sweat.” No, hang on. “Marion! MARION!” She turns the vacuum off, very red. “Yes?”

    “Where’s the phone socket? I wanna plug my modem in.”

    She just gapes at me.

    “My modem, I wanna plug it into the phone socket. Like, where the phone wire comes out of the wall?” Jesus, there must be some keyword that’ll trigger something like consciousness, if not actual recognition! “I wanna get on the Internet.”

    “Oh! John hasn’t got a computer, he said once they’re far too new-fangled for the cottage!” –Silly laugh.

    Yeah, and he only drives one of the hugest, most high tech moving objects on the face of the planet. “I don’t need a computer, I got a computer, this is it, I need to plug it in.”

    “I'm sorry, dear, I don’t understand.”

    Oh, we’re on the dear shit now, are we? Now, folks, there are shades and shades of dear, and when Rupy says it to me he means it most of the time and the rest of the time it’s just an actor’s thing, but this is not one of those. I stand up. “I think we’re having a communication problem here, Marion. I’d better ring John and get him to sort it out.”

    She’s horrified, absolutely horrified, and forgets to call me dear again, good. There’s absolutely no need for that! Right, well, in that case I go over to the phone on the desk. Please, there’s absolutely no need to bother him— I ignore her, feel my way down the cord, boy that socket’s in an awkward place, and unplug it. She gives a horrified gasp. I go on ignoring her, and fetch my huge reel of modem extension cord, I’ve been through these hassles before, plus and the double plug, and plug it into his connection and put his phone’s plug into one of the sockets. “What have you done?” she says faintly.

    “Connected the computer. The phone’ll still work.” I unreel the cord carefully and take the end back to the laptop and connect it to the modem. Dit-da-da-da-da-dee-ee…. Why the fuck they still have to do that in the new millennium… She’s looking as if it’s gonna bite her, why the fuck she still has to do that in the new millennium…

    “You can get on with your work, now, Marion,” I say kindly, ”but whatever you do, don’t disturb that cord.” Oh, but she has to vacuum the— “It can wait, it all looks spotless, anyway. If you’ve got a problem with that,”—yes, I am getting ratty and my voice is getting colder and colder, because I’m fed up with the silly bitch, added to which I have got my period, there’s some slight excuse for me—“I’ll ring John immediately, because I need to get this done today, and I can’t go on wasting time like this.”—Maybe she could leave the carpet, just along there, just for today.—I look at her expressionlessly. Maybe ya could, ya cow.—No, well, of course she doesn’t want to disturb my work, she didn’t realise I was studying!—I look at her expressionlessly and she doesn’t add “dear”, she just says quickly that in that case she’ll leave me to it, and goes back to the vacuuming. I ignore her. If it hasn’t sunk in, and she pulls that cord out of its socket and breaks my connection while I’m dumping my files to the uni’s system, the S. is gonna hit the F., and no mistake.

    … It’s sunk in. I get a whole morning’s work done and she only interrupts me twice: first to ask would I like a cup of tea, I say vaguely, not looking up from the screen, Not when I’m working, thanks, and second to ask very humbly would I mind if she dusted in here (i.e. the dinette, there’s four inches between the chairs and the wall, who does she think she’s kidding?). I say less vaguely, but still not looking up, Not when I’m working. I’m no longer online, but I don’t feel that’s a need-to-know.

    Eventually I stretch and say to Tim: “Good boy, you didn’t disturb me at all!” And she comes in and asks Did I get a lot done, and I say, not smiling, “Aw, a fair bit,” and she says, Am I studying for a degree, then, and I say in bored voice: “No. Post-grad research,” and she subsides. I don’t smile or say anything, it was her that started behaving like a bitch, if she wants to make an advance she can but no way am I gonna set myself up to be patronised and given the dear shit.

    “I thought you were an actress,” she offers.

    “I am a TV actress, but that sort of crap doesn’t actually occupy the mind.”

    “No, of course not.”

    I’m not gonna smile, that mighta been an overture but it didn’t sound like one. But I do say nicely: “Didja get the washing done?” That goes over like a bucket of lead, she’s offended. Yes, of course and it’s all on the line. Didn’t think he had one. Maybe it’s an extendible one. “Oh, good. I’ll keep an eye out in case it rains.”

    “Er—yes, thank you. Well, I’ll be off, then, if there’s nothing more?”

    Could there be, after all that crashing around that went on upstairs? Sounded like she was doing a total spring clean. “Not that I know of, thanks. Hang on, do ya need your pay?”

    She goes very red. “No, of course not! John will pay me when I pop in tomorrow, it’s our usual arrangement.”

    “You better pop in early, or you’ll miss him, we’re going to Chipping Ditter.”

    “Oh. Well—er, you won’t be leaving too early, surely!” –Silly laugh.

    “Dunno. He said something about an early start,” I say indifferently, closing the laptop. “But I wasn’t listening. Don’t worry, I’ll remind him you need your pay.”

    “It isn’t urgent.”

    “If it is I can advance ya some, no sweat. Don’t feel embarrassed, John’d want me to.”

    “No, please, Rosie.” She’s in agony, I know she hates me, but I’m offering to do her a favour, here. Poms are weird, all right. “I’m quite all right. I’ll be off, then.”

    I get up. “Okay, then. Me and Tim’ll see you out.”

    She lets us see her out. Of course once she gets John on his own she’s gonna tell him that she’s afraid she’ll never get on with Miss Rayne, and please could he ask me not to upset her routines, it’s written all over her, but sufficient unto the day.

    Me and Tim go into the kitchen and find the pan and the oil and the potatoes and have a big plate of chips with a slice of bread and Marmite as well, and a drink of milk for me because even after this morning’s training session I’m not sure I can produce coffee from that coffee-pot and there is no way I’m gonna run the risk of breaking his flowery china teapot, it’ll turn out to be an heirloom. Tim wants Milk but he doesn’t get any, but I do break down and give him a slice of bread and Marmite. I finish the last of John’s apples with a big helping of raisins and another drink of milk, I often get a craving for it at this time of the m— Shit, that was the last of it!

    After deep thought I ring the number John gave me. He’s right, it does take a while to get through but eventually his operator comes on the line and I ask for him. I have to give my name but we’ve agreed that I’m Rosie Marshall for the purposes of, so I say that and then John’s on the line. “Haworth here.” My knees go all wobbly and my throat closes up and I can’t utter.

    “Rosie? Is that you?”

    “Yeah. Hi,” I croak.

    “Hullo, darling! Everything all right?”

    “Yeah, good, um, I gave Tim a slice of bread and Marmite, sorry.”

    “That’s all right! Were you ringing up to confess?”

    “No. I’ve drunk all the milk because I often get a calcium craving when I’ve got my period, and I was wondering, is there a shop in the village?” There is, but do I feel like the walk? I do, I’ve been working all morning. That’s good; get some good stuff done? Yeah. He isn’t going to ask about the sheets, probably someone’s watching or listening, or both. So I tactfully don’t mention them, I just say: “Marion came, she done the washing and the floors and everything, and Tim growled at her again, she was only trying to pick up my satchel.”

    This goes over really well: he chuckles and says: “He has become partisan! Be sure and take him with you, he needs the exercise, bloody Marion never walks him.”

    Ooh, bloody Marion, eh? “Righto. Has he got a lead?” He has: John explains where it is and then he’s ringing off only I say Hang on. Yes? “I think I put my foot in it because I asked her if she needed her pay and she got all embarrassed and said she'd see you as usual on Saturday, so I said we were going away and that made it worse, so I offered to advance her the dough, only that was a boo-boo, too.”

    “It’s the bloody Pommy expected thing, Rosie!” he says with a laugh. “Or rather, the not-done thing.”

    “I got that. Only what if she does need the money and was too refined to say?”

    “I’ll pop in and pay her on my way home, shall I?”

    “Yeah, good. And hey, if you’ve got the time, can ya pick up some steak? I got a craving for meat.” –“Wuff!”

    He’ll do that and not on any account to buy any from the local butcher, it’ll be like old boots, and he’ll see me soon! Yeah. Bye-bye, John. Bye-bye, Rosie.

    I hang up and look limply at Tim. “Wuff to you, too. You know too many W,O,R,D,S, don’tcha? Well, that was pretty much a pre-emptive strike, but if ya gotta start off on the wrong foot with your aged lover’s faithful domestic slave that’s been with him since forever, you might as well get your point of view over first. Come on, I gotta go to the bog and then we’ll have a nice walk, eh?”

    “Wuff, wuff!” Pant, lick, prance!

    The village is all pretty dinky. Nice gardens. …Ooh, there’s a nice little superette! Oops, a cross man says from behind the cash register: “Oy! You can’t bring that dog in here!”

    We stop. “Sorry. Heel, Tim! Actually, he’s better behaved than I am, he won’t touch anything.”

    “Not that, it’s the hygiene regulations…” He’s staring, look out. “Is that Captain Haworth’s dog?”

    “Yeah, do ya know him? Tim.”

    “I thought so.” He’s still staring. “You’re Lily Rose Rayne!”

    “Yeah, I’m staying in John’s cottage for a bit.” –And I’m astonished Marion hasn’t already told you, or was she hoping that if she didn’t look at it it’d all just quietly go away?

    He’s all excited, welcomes me to whatever its name is, but tells me regretfully I have to tie Tim up outside. I admit I’ve never done that before, so he comes out from behind his cash register and shows me how to loop the lead round the lamppost. Tim doesn’t seem to mind, I pat him anxiously and assure him I’ll be back in a minute but he just sits there panting. “I’m looking for a cheesecake,” I explain.

    Of course! They’ve got some very nice ones! We go back in and I choose a cheesecake and some sliced bread, he’s very sympathetic about that, maybe he’s the local baker’s rival, the thought occurs, and Marion patronises the bakery on John’s behalf because that’s more up-market than the superette. And I dunno if they have it in England, but I’m dying for some peanut butter. He’s got some! Hooray! Oh, and some milk, low fat. (That’ll counteract the peanut butter.) Is there anything else? Does he sell instant mash? Beaming, he goes off to get it and while he’s doing that I sign autographs for two panting women in curlers and a panting hairdresser in a lilac smock, gee, if I’da known they were that keen I’da popped in the salon and done them for them there, one large woman with a flowery blouse, shiny light-weight black tracksuit pants and a large basket, and one panting butcher in an apron. And lastly, one panting hairdresser’s assistant in a very short lilac smock over urban grunge and a large pink cardboard flower with Georgia on it on one tit, probably not a souvenir of the USA, more likely her name—they musta made her guard the shop while they dashed out.

    We do venture further down the street, Tim’s eager to go and six autographs isn’t enough to put me off. They haven’t got many shops. And here’s the hairdresser’s. I wave and Mrs Bellinger, Mrs Stowe, Georgia, and Georgia’s boss, Pauline, all wave back, grinning like anything. It isn’t called Pauline’s, it’s called Sloane Square Salon.

    Ooh, a selecte tea shoppe! Not The Selecte Tea Shoppe, no: Dimity’s. Betcha they don’t know what dimity is. It’s very up-market, like with bits of polished brass and lots of indoor plants and real tablecloths with a very up-market flowery pattern, sprays of something yellow, maybe kinda lilies, on an oatmeal background, have ya noticed that oatmeal’s much more tasteful than white? Several up-market ladies that must belong to the flash cars double-parked in the vicinity are in there and they all stare fixedly at me but none of them pants out to ask for an autograph, presumably that’s up-market manners for you, I’d rather have an honest manifestation of an honest desire to meet a Household Name, but I think you mighta guessed that by now. There’s the butcher’s across the road, Tom Hopgood’s his name, I wave and he waves back. The bakery’s over the road next to it, and surrounded by more up-market double-parked cars, and by now I’ve gathered that this isn’t a real village like in those Forties movies, it’s more like those places in that John Nettles series where’s he’s much older, Midsummer Murders or something, it’s been largely taken over by up-market retirees or up-market commuters, though the road, according to John, doesn’t encourage those, or up-market owners of weekend cottages. He called them “weekenders” but back home in New South Wales that’s the scungy dump by the sea that you spend the weekend in, mate. They got a Garden Centre, as well, that shows ya.

    Since I’m carrying a large plastic bag with the superette’s bread in it I don’t need to cross over to the bakery, but there’s a little hardware shop over there. Well, I have to do some translation: “POTTER, Ironmonger” is what it’s called, but yeah, that’s what it is. Keeping a wary eye out for up-market ladies in Volvos and real cultured pearls pulling out without looking, that’s a syndrome we got back home and I’ll give ya twenty to one it’s prevalent in this neck of the trendified rural woods, we cross over.

    Tim can come in, and Potter, Ironmonger, does turn out to be a Mr Potter, call him Jim, and it was his granddad’s shop, and aren’t I Lily Rose Rayne?—Yes, but call me Rosie.—ISABEL! She shoots out from the back regions, beaming, with a skinny teenage boy in those strange daks with pockets on the legs and a big droopy grey tee-shirt with Stuzzy on it in black, at first I think my eyes have gone funny, the shop’s rather dark, but then I realise it’s gotta be a Korean clone, and after I’ve given autographs all round and got the recent family history, like, Isabel does dressmaking and helps out in the shop on busy days (when are those? Uh—Saturdays, maybe?), and Harry’s home from school with a tummy upset (he looks all right, and grins sheepishly at me, probably partly tummy, partly a maths test), and Gwennie and Cora’ll be really sorry to have missed me (Harry’s sisters, I’ve already signed one for each of them), Jim remembers to ask me what I was looking for. Yes, of course! He thought everybody had one of those, these days! He's got two models but confidentially, this Jap one’s not much chop, the German one’s miles better. I retreat from POTTER, Ironmonger, grinning and waving, thinking dazed thoughts about the last sixty years of British history and Dunkirk, like that, clutching the German electric tin-opener.

    Back in the direction of the cottage they’ve got an arty-tarty shop. Maybe you’d call it a crafts shop, like that? In the Marshall nuclear family we call them arty-tarty shops. Full of dainty watercolours of Portsmouth or sprays of cottage-garden type flowers, in this case; back home it tends to be dainty watercolours of Sydney Harbour or sprays of eucalypt; if you were thinking those fuzzy gum flowers must be real difficult to paint convincingly, I can confirm that for ya, yep. Me and Tim pass by and head for home…

    On the way he does a poo on an up-market verge before I can stop him. Hell, it’s definitely pooper-scooper territory round here! What’ll we do, I never brought one because I thought there’d be plenty of countryside for him to use! Finally I shoot up the front path, it’s crazy-paving even neater than Maybelle’s, and gasp out to the lady that answers the door, she’s quite young actually: “I’m awfully sorry, but could ya let me have a plastic bag? My dog’s just done a poo on your bit of outside lawn!” –I’ve got a mental block where the word for that lawn is concerned, and though it occurred when he done it, after the panic took over it went again, ya see. She’s very taken aback but obligingly gets me a plastic bag. After I’ve scooped it up I realise she’s come down to her gate. Is that Captain Haworth’s Tim? He’s wagging his tail like anything so I admit he is. She goes very red and says excuse her but aren’t I Lily Rose Rayne?—Yes.—She thought so, her Duncan—blushing—is on Captain Haworth’s ship. I don’t need to ask if he’s an officer: it’s already pretty clear from the way she talks and the carefully casual gear and the fact that she was holding a paintbrush—like, an artist’s brush, not doing the decorating herself, whaddareya, this is England. And he met me at lunch on Wednesday, blushing again: Duncan Cross. I admit I met all the officers but I don’t remember him and she gives a confused laugh and says no reason I should. And they did think of asking the wives but all the officers wanted to meet me and there wouldn’t have been room. She means in the mess, I think. By this time I’m thinking she’s rather nice, a bit thin, why do I keep on meeting thin females, with short brown wavy hair, not the waif look, smudgy grey eyes, and rather crooked teeth. So I grin and say well, it’s nice to meet you now, Mrs Cross, and she blushes again and says it’s Velda.—Good, I’m Rosie.—And, um, would I like to put that in the bin, um, Rosie? I sure would, so her and me and Tim go up her garden path and I praise the cottage quite genuinely, it’s brick, very like John’s, and she says they’re very pleased with it, even though of course the village is a bit isolated. And would I like to come in?

    I’d love to come in, I love looking at other people’s houses or flats or cottages, whatever, so we go in. She’s been painting a spray of cottage-garden flowers. I gulp a bit, but actually it’s very good, so I can praise it quite genuinely. She’s a professional illustrator, and she is getting a reasonable amount of work these days, and she shows me some of what she’s done. And we end up having a cup of tea and a lovely chat and she admits that she was a bit overcome when she found out that it’s the same village where Captain Haworth’s got his cottage. By this time I know that Duncan’s only a lieutenant so I can sympathise with that, yep. She wants to drive me back, she’s got her little runabout, but me and Tim need the exercise. I explain about Marion not walking him and she’s horrified. And if ever Captain Haworth needs someone else to take care of him—? Going very red but looking longingly at Tim. I thank her very sincerely and promise her I’ll bear that in mind. And we go, Tim very reluctant at first, even though she only gave him a drink of water and one arrowroot biscuit.

    “That was nice, eh, Tim? Nice lady?”

    Wag, wag, pant, forge eagerly ahead, he’s remembered that we’re out for a walk.

    I don’t register much of the return journey, I’m meditating ways and means of making sure that John leaves Tim with Velda Cross next time.

    When he gets home, first he hugs me rapturously and kisses me fiercely, then he apologises for being a bit late, he was doing a bit of shopping, then he kisses me again, it’s stiff as anything, then he brings the shopping in. A bit of shopping? Is there anything left in the whole of Portsmouth?

    He heaves the big parcel onto the table, grinning like anything. “Open it.” I take the wrapping off and find a microwave box. But it’ll only be a box— Shit, no, it isn’t! It’s a really good brand, too. I just watch numbly as he finds the right spot on the bench for it, next to the electric jug and the electric element and the—

    “Um, I bought it at the hardware shop, I mean, like, Jim Potter’s, Ironmonger,” I hurriedly confess.

    “Great minds think alike!” he says, laughing.

    Oops, he didn’t? Yes, he did, only his is a more complicated one, it’s got a knife sharpener on it as well. Never mind, they don’t last forever, I assure him. He puts his electric tin-opener carefully away in a top cupboard.

    The rest’s only food. Fortunately his cheesecakes are still frozen, so they can go in the freezer, he's laughing like anything. Likewise the frozen peas and the frozen oven chips. He got a lot of meat.—What? Oh, well, darling, we can always get some bones for Tim at—did you say Tom Hopgood’s? At Hopgood’s.—Ooh, good, there’s a frozen chook, too. I can sort of do them, ya leave them in the fridge for twenty-four hours and then ya pat them dry and put them in at the setting that says picture of a chook. Just as well he got a microwave, eh, because Agas don’t do that. He puts most of the stuff in the freezer but leaves out a packet with two huge T-bone steaks in it. Cripes, how much did they set him back? Tim’s all excited, no wonder.

    About the only thing he didn’t buy that I did is the instant mash, he didn’t know where to look for that. And the peanut butter, he gulps a bit but admits he didn’t know I liked it. He’s gone one up on me with the sliced bread, he’s bought an electric bread knife. Yikes. He does a demo. Yikes again. Come on, Rosie, you can do it! After his whole loaf of crusty cottage bread from the Portsmouth supermarket’s been cut up I concede I’ve got the hang of it. He looks dazedly at all the cut-up bread so I tell him we’d better have steak and bread for tea and there’s a real neato trick with sliced bread, like if ya layer it carefully and put it in a plastic bag in the freezer carefully, you can just peel slices off it, and to totally ignore everything the microwave book says about not defrosting bread: it works like a charm, all ya gotta do is zap it with the setting on— He envelops me in a huge hug and kisses me until I’m breathless. –On high, for two seconds or one second if it’s a fierce one. Another big hug, this time he’s laughing like anything. How do you know if it’s a fierce one? If it ruined the bread the first time, ya nana. This seems logical to me but he goes into hysterics. Can’t be bad, eh?

    By the time we’ve fed Tim and had dinner and left the dishes and gone up to bed early and done it, and he’s remembered we never let Tim out and rushed downstairs and let him out and put the dishes in the dishwasher and turned it on, I can hear it chugging, and come back upstairs with the brandy bottle and two of the proper-shaped glasses and we’ve drunk some and had what he calls a bit of slap and tickle, I do know that’s a joke, upper-clawss people don’t say it for real, and he’s gone into the ensuite to take a leak, I’m feeling pretty relaxed and happy, as ya can imagine. So when the phone rings—he’s got an extension in the bedroom: after all, the Brits might need to attack Argentina again over the flaming Falk— Forget I said that, will ya?—I grab it up without thinking and say happily: “Hullo?”

    There’s a very surprised silence. And then a very up-market Pommy lady’s voice asks me if that is Bellingford 2572.

    Dunno, he hasn’t got it written on a curling bit of audio-tape label stuck to the phone, because of course he’s the sort of person that can remember numbers. “Um, dunno, sorry. But this is the right number for John Haworth’s cottage, if that’s who ya want.”

    More surprised silence. Then she says: “Er, yes, may I speak to John, please?”

    I’m just gonna bellow for him when it occurs that just maybe it’s a puce and magenta lady that he doesn’t want to talk to, instead of a puce and magenta lady that he does flaming wanna— You geddit, huh? Yeah, ’course ya do, any actual human being would. So I say: “May I ask who’s calling?” I had a holiday job once in an architect’s office, a mate of Dad’s, most of the time all I hadda do was file stuff, but when the receptionist was out at lunch or gone to the toilet I hadda do the phones, and I got that phrase down pat. Real fluting and off-putting. Well, only to the normal human being.

    There’s more surprise, then she says: “Yes, of course. It’s his Mother.”

    Yikes. His Mother, and I used my fluting and off-putting voice, not to say on top of my down-home Aussie voice? Cringe. I’m just gonna bellow for him when a Truly Awful Thought occurs and I gasp: “Yeah, um, is the admiral okay?”

    Gee, another little silence. Then: “John’s father? Yes, he’s very well, thank you.”

    “Oh, good. –HEY, JOHN, IT’S YA MUM ON THE PHONE!”

    No answer is the stern reply. Damn, I think he’s having a shower. “Hang on, Mrs Haworth, I think he’s having a shower, I’ll just get him for you.” I rush into the ensuite.

    “Hullo, come to join me?” the nong says, poking his head round this up-market sort of corrugated plastic door that Fiona and Norman chose. Like, semi-translucent?

    “No, ya nong, it’s your mum on the phone, are you deaf?”

    He’s getting out hurriedly.

    “It’s okay, your dad’s okay, I asked her.”

    He sags. “Did you? Thanks, darling. I’d better take it, though.”

    “Yeah, ’course.”

    We go back into the bedroom and though I do know that polite English persons don’t listen to other people’s phone conversations there isn’t anywhere else to go, especially as I haven’t got any clothes on, so I just nip back into bed.

    “Hullo, darling, why on earth are you calling at this hour? –Oh, is it?” Cheerful laugh.—“Mm? All what bellowing?”—Guess.—Oh!” Cheerful laugh. “That was Rosie. … No, I know you don’t. Rosie Marshall. Why are you calling? Rosie tells me Father’s fine.” She yacks at him, can’t make it out. He makes a face at me. I scowl at him. “Mm? Sunday? That would be lovely, darling, but we can’t manage it, we’ll be over at Chipping Ditter.” She yacks at him. “No, of course not! I wouldn’t dream of buying there, it’s bloody Surbiton in Shropshire, thought you knew that?” She yacks at him for ages. He makes a face at me. I scowl at him.—“Well, hang on, darling, let me see what Rosie thinks.” He lowers the phone but doesn’t put his hand over the receiver like any normal human being. I goggle at him in horror. “Rosie, darling, Mother and Father were thinking of driving over on Sunday, but I’ve explained that’s impossible for us. But what about some time next week? Have you got rehearsals every day?”

    “Um, dunno. Um, well, they said turn up on Monday without fail.” He nods. “Um, well, I only gotta do two numbers: they wanted The Good Ship Lollipop and Brian okayed it, but Gray’s partnering me, so we gotta work on that, I’ve got used to doing it by myself, and then we thought Steam Heat from The Pajama Game, it isn’t tap but Gray loves it, and Rupy can be in it, too, it’s better with three, only we haven’t even learnt the routine, yet, we’re gonna have to really work on it. Um, and Gray said we better work up something for an encore, too. Friday’s the Opening Night, and I’m not on, only Henny Penny, well, Timothy I think, promised them that I’d be there for the dinner.”

    “Yes, of course, sweetheart. It sounds a bit rushed… But perhaps they’d like to come over for the show, mm? Stay a couple of nights and come home with us on—is it the Tuesday?”

    “Yeah, um, Tuesday of the week after next. Monday’s the last night, it’s not a very big festival, like, only a long weekend.”

    He’s nodding cheerfully and fixing it all up with her, provided he can book them in somewhere nice, while I’m just goggling at him in frozen horror…

    “What? Well, darling, I suppose I didn’t mention Father’s K, what else would she call you? Brenda?” Cheerful laugh. “No, well, I’m telling you now! Of course she is, her stage name’s Lily Rose Rayne.”—Yack, yack.—“Not in the least!” He does that lowering the phone thing again. “Rosie, can I tell Mother about the you-know-what-ship and the field work? She’s the soul of discretion, I promise you.” I nod in frozen horror and he tells her. Like, all of it, Mark Rutherford and my degrees and Sydney University and the lot. Then he says: “Marion? Don’t care if she does! –What? No, listen, Mother, between you and me, she’s been bringing me far too many unrequested hot meals lately, and turning up before I’ve shaved, and so forth. … No, darling, it isn’t my imagination.” –Horribly dry, Jesus, if I used that tone to Mum she’d be telling me not to use that tone with her, and no mistake. “Mm, I’d say it was all for the best, yes.” –Still dry. And no prizes for guessing what that was about. And he promises to fix everything up at Chipping Ditter and let them know as soon as poss’, he actually says poss’, sends his love to Father, says “Bye, darling,” and rings off. And beams at me.

    All I manage to say is, very limply: “I never heard anyone call their mother darling before.”

    So, it all seems to be settled. Let’s hope the ruddy thing’s booked solid and he can’t get them in anywhere.

    Saturday, no sign of Marion, good. Yes, Tim’s coming, too, he checked whether dogs were allowed when he made the booking. Tim and me hurtle out to the car with shining morning faces.—Sit! Buckle up!—Yes, Master; yes, Master.—And for the sixteenth time, yes, the laptop and the tape recorder will be perfectly safe in the cottage, Rosie, didn’t you notice the alarms? Huh? What alarms?—Sit!—He lets me tell him about these very safe dog restraints that we’ve got in Oz with that tolerant not-listening look on his face and wonders whether we’d better buy me some knickers in Portsmouth. I’m sure Yvonne will have sorted out my clothes and packed them for me as promised, but on second thoughts, probably I haven’t got enough knickers to be ladylike, so I shut up. Hey, did he know that Duncan and Velda Cross live in his village?—Who?—Gulp. I explain.—Oh, young Cross! No, he didn’t, actually. Velda really likes dogs. Mm?—not listening. Am I sure Maynarde will be ready and waiting when we get there? I lie…

    ’Course he isn’t, whaddareya, thick? He’s had the whole of Friday to wander about the town picking up lovely naval lads in bell-bottoms. We go up to the desk, funnily enough there aren’t crowds of Press here this morning, possibly because it’s the crack of dawn. It’s Ray on duty, he goes off at seven-thirty, I know this for a fact. He rings Rupy… Give me the spare key, I’ll go up. Ray gives me an anguished look but hands it over. John offers to come, too.

    “No. Stay there.”

    Meekly the Royal Navy senior captain sits down in a poncy tapestry armchair while I march off to haul Rupy and whatever’s sharing it with him, out of his pit.

    “Whassa— Fire!”

    “No! The house isn’t on fire, you’re in Portsmouth, wake UP, we’re keeping John waiting!”

    “Worl’ War—”

    “NO!” I wrench his sleeping mask off.

    “Ow! Oh, s’you. Uh—this is Vinnie.” –I’d say about eighteen, all big dark eyes, very white skin, and a minimal five o’clock shadow. Just Rupy’s type, except for the non-trendy hairdo.

    “Hi, Vinnie. Sorry to disturb you, but Rupy’s due at a festival in Chipping Ditter this lunchtime and he's about to miss his lift.”

    Amiably Vinnie gets up and gets into his jeans—gee, jeans, not bell-bottoms?—and helps me to shake Rupy awake and shake him into his clothes and gather up garments— “That’s Rupy’s,” I say firmly just as his hand’s closing over the nicked gold watch. He’s not in the least abashed, they never are, in the particular subsection of the gay community to which Rupy belongs. I do a last check of all the drawers and cupboards. Jesus, this is Lucasta Grimshaw’s smudgy purple scarf or I’m a Dutchman! Vinnie looks at it wistfully so I donate it to him, and we go.

    At the sight of John Haworth, looking amiable, rising from a poncy tapestry armchair in the lobby, Vinnie gives a sizzling gasp and shrinks behind us, so anyone that was hoping that (a) he wasn’t in the Royal Navy and especially (b) he wasn’t on Dauntless was sure doomed to disappointment, wasn’t I?

    Of course John doesn’t recognise him or so much as glance at him, he just reminds Rupy to check out at the desk and me that he’s collected my suitcase. And we’re off! Minus Vinnie, in fact he’s disappeared so completely you’d swear he was never there.

    Rupy’s asleep before we’ve even found a shop to buy knickers at. When we park he says groggily: “Brea’fas’?” and falls right asleep again, so we leave him there and go in. After I’ve forcibly stopped John from buying fifteen lacy slips, twenty lacy nighties and matching negligées and like that, we emerge again, with half a dozen pairs of plain cotton ones chosen by me and a set of seven pairs of lacy ones, one for each day of the week, chosen by him. And with the promise of taking me to a nice shop in London, darling, and buying me some nice things. Rupy and Tim are both fast asleep but Tim wakes up when we unlock the car.

    And we’re off again!

    … “Where are we?”

    “The middle of nowhere. Go to sleep again.” He goes to sleep again.

    … “Where are we?”

    “At a servo. I’ve just been to the toilet. Wanna Coke?” No. He goes to sleep again.

    … “Where are we?”

     “Dunno. Some hotel in the middle of nowhere. Want morning tea?” No. He goes to sleep again.

    We go inside anyway and at this point John, who’s held up remarkably well so far, is driven to say: “Is he always like this?”

    “Dunno. Never been on a trip with him before. My guess’d be Yes.”

    “So would mine,” he says with a sigh.

    We have morning tea, sorry, tea, sorry, sorry, elevenses, and get going again. He’s still asleep. Never mind, Tim liked guarding him.

    … “Where are we?”

    “We’re here, Rupy, wake up!”

    He peers blearily at the gracious mansion, now a conference-centre type hotel, that John’s booked us into. You’ll have seen one just like it, Hyacinth Bucket and her long-suffering hubby had tea at one, Rose was in one of the bedrooms with a bloke. “Zis it?”

    “It’s where we’re staying, yeah. Dunno about you, we tried to shake you awake and ask you when we come through the village, but you refused to open your eyes.”

    “‘Came’,” he says groggily.

     “Oh, pardon me, came.”

    “She’s reacting against St Agatha’s, John,” he explains clearly.

    Cool as a cucumber, he replies: “So I’d gathered, yes. Where are you booked into?”

    “No idea, dear.”

    “Then perhaps you’d better get out and we’ll sort it out inside.”

    “Wuff!”

    “See, Rupy, even Tim thinks you’re a nong,” I note graciously.

    “Thanks.” He looks down at himself and blinks. “What am I wearing?”

    “No idea, but not Lucasta Grimshaw’s scarf, because I gave it to Vinnie, and get out!”

    We get out and a uniformed hotel minion who’s been hovering looking hopeful rushes up in time to hold Rupy’s door for him—Wuff!—and blench, and agree with John that he’d better just get the bags—Wuff! Wuff!—Stop that nonsense, Tim! Heel!

    “He doesn’t know about hotels,” I excuse him.

    “Apparently he’s not the only one.”

    “Hah, hah,” I say very weakly.

    John grins, and puts his arm round me and pulls me into his side, and just at that very precise moment, Guess Who comes out of the hotel-cum-conference venue?

    You got it, Euan Keel in person.

    Now, this could be Very Embarrassing for some, but gee! It’s not as embarrassing as all that, because he’s with two ladies in black rehearsal clothes, one of them is Shanna McQuayle, not a hair out of place in that shoulder-length silver bob, and the other is a tall, voluptuous, and totally gorgeous Black woman who’s draped all over him. No, plastered to him. That could explain why all those urgent phone messages dried up and also why when I tried to ring him on the Thursday evening the hotel couldn’t find him.

    Just to prove it she nibbles his ear at the precise moment he spots me and goes red as fire.

    “Gidday, Euan,” I say cheerfully. “Sauce for the gander, is it?” Now, I do know he’s immensely suggestible, and obviously she must be one of the In Crowd, what with Shanna McQuayle and the rehearsal gear, and I’m far from blameless, too, but given that it was him coming on all heavy talking about moving in with him and going on about babies, I kind of feel that remark was fully justified, how ’bout you?

    “Oh—uh—hullo, Rosie!” the chump says with an awkward laugh.

    Rupy’s upright and more or less awake. He peers at him. “I told you he’d be with something from the RSC In Crowd, dear.”

    “You did, indeed. –No, forget it, Euan,” I say as he tries to say something about that headline in Thursday’s News of the World, “no hard feelings, eh?”

    He gives an embarrassed laugh and John steers me very firmly into the hotel.

    “Sorry,” I say glumly in its spacious eighteenth-century lobby with the stolen Italian marble statues and the twentieth-century easel advertising Coming Events.

    “Oh, don’t apologise, I enjoyed it.”

    “Yeah,” I mutter, cringing. “Um, I did try ringing him, but I couldn’t get him, and on second thoughts I thought it would be mean to tell him over the phone.”

    “So did he, apparently.”

    “He wouldn’t have told me, I don’t think: he’d just never have come near me and let it slowly dawn as he was seen with the Big Names and super-pseuds with her.”

    “Charming people you associate with,” he says lightly.

    I just cringe again and don’t even think of saying we can’t all be brave as lions and in the Royal Navy until it’s too late and he’s checking us in.

    It turns out to be the place Rupy and me were booked into in the first place, dunno if that’s a blessing or a curse. Well, at least we don’t have to spend the rest of the day driving all round the environs of Chipping Ditter looking for hotels he can’t remember the name of and I no longer have a note of the name of because it was in my laptop which isn’t with us.

    “What’s he doing?” says Rupy, yawning, as John appears to go into a confab with the man at the twentieth-century Reception Desk.

    “Booking his parents into the Royal Suite. They wanted to come over— Never mind. Only he decided they’d better come to the Festival for the Last Night instead.”

    “Did you tell him about Last Nights, especially festival Last Nights?” he croaks.

    “No, he had the bit between his teeth by then.”

    He nods feebly. After a bit he offers: “At least the Euan thing’s over, dear.”

    “Well, yeah! Oh, having to tell him, ya mean? Yeah.”

    “Mm,” he says, putting his arm round me. Gratefully I lean against him…

    What with introducing Tim to his new quarters and me explaining the hotel’s pamphlet on “Your Dog And Boddiford Hall Park Royal” to John that he’s taken in at a glance, and having to show Tim the grounds, and lunch, and having to take Tim for a nice walk—Wuff! Wuff!—the rest of the day passes very peacefully. So maybe that old Greek woman with the shears has done her bit for a while.

    Of course when it’s time to change for dinner John discovers that I haven’t unpacked properly and when I do unpack that they’re all Henny Penny-approved Lily Rose things. After he’s over the sniggering fit he concedes the hotel will iron something for me. No, they won’t, if they scorch it I’ll be up for the damage! Then the hotel’s ironing lady comes and takes away the ice-blue thing, to return in double-quick time with it beautifully ironed. I get into it.

    “Sweetly pretty.”

    “Shuddup.”

    “Why all the little frills on the tits, aren’t they big enough by thems—”

    “Shut UP! If ya must know, they got it off a Marilyn Monroe frock that she wore in—” The wanker’s gone into hysterics. “In Let’s Make Love,” I mutter, “but don’t take that as an invitation.”

    He mops his eyes. “Sorry. Look, if you don’t want to go down, there’s no need—”

    “I’m starving and we said we’d meet Rupy down there, and don’t tell me he’s a big boy now, this lot are all RSC types and super-pseuds, the two groups not being mutually exclusive, and I’m not letting him sit all by himself on his first night! Come ON!”

    “Mm,” he says with a funny little smile, taking my elbow. What was that in aid of? I eye him suspiciously but now he’s wearing his poker face.

    Just as well we do go down because Rupy’s all by himself in the bar. Mind you, he’s utterly glorious in a white tux, the royal blue evening trou with the ribboned seams that belonged to Jersey sugar daddy, a real evening shirt, tiny tucks on it, and a pale pink satin cummerbund and matching bowtie. And just so as not to be a total cliché, not a matching pink silk hanky puffing out of the breast pocket but a white silk hanky puffing ditto. And a small navy-blue silk rose in the buttonhole.

    “Love the outfit, Rupy!”

    He nods, his eyes starting from his head, and manages to whisper he can’t return the compliment.

    “We’ve been over that, shall we consider the subject closed?” says John genially as I start to scowl

    He nods madly, his eyes starting from his head.

    John’s eyeing the small navy silk rose. The Boddiford Hall Park Royal’s colours are pale lemon and navy blue, and just coincidentally the hallways are full of huge vases of mixed pale lemon real gladdies and pale yellow real roses, and navy-blue silk gladdies and navy-blue silk roses…

    “I’m hungry,” I say quickly.

    So we go into dinner and it’s just as well we did join him because although he recognises everybody and tells us who they all are, in great detail, none of them wave to him.

    And so to bed…

    “Was it very horrible, John?”

    “Eh?”

    “Not that, you clot!” I bash him on the thigh. He chuckles, and puts my hand in a more interesting place. Mmm… “No, but was it? I mean, um, bumping into Euan and, um, Rupy’s clothes, and um, like that.”

    “I thought his clothes were very pretty,” he says mildly. “It wasn’t horrible at all.”

    I’m not absolutely sure he means it, but anyway, he’s said it. So I go to sleep with almost a clear conscience.

    Some time during the night I half rouse and become aware of a warm, snoring presence against my bum that isn’t John, but never mind, a poor dog that’s never been to a hotel before and hasn’t got his own basket, though we did bring his tartan rug, deserves some leeway…

    Actually, stop me if you’ve guessed this, I’ve been nervous as Hell thinking John’s gonna be bored out of his skull all week while we rehearse— Yeah, all right.

    But he isn’t. He’s very pleased to meet Gray. This is just as well, given that Gray’s made a huge effort and had the hair dyed mahogany and then shaved off, little mahogany bristles round the lower part of the scalp to about ear level, right, and got himself some new gear, very tight shiny charcoal grey trou, very tight black knit shirt buttoned to the neck without a tie, this look is still very In, I concede that, and a hor-ren-dous-ly narrow fake crocodile jacket, where in God’s name did he find it? Jesus, and a pair of those white and tan shoes that the more vulgar American characters might have been seen wearing in bad Fifties comedies. And a giant not-gold watch and about ten possibly gold rings and of course the ear studs and earrings to match. He’s got a little bunch of flowers for me and gives me a great big hug and kiss.

    The Festival Organisers have got it all sewn up tight as a drum, with scheduled rehearsal times in the three conference rooms at the hotel or the village hall in Chipping Ditter or the big marquee on the village green at Chipping Ditter: no wonder they told us to turn up on the Monday morning without fail. And anyone that doesn’t turn up for their appointed slot, misses out. So we go off to our first one: it’s in the village hall. Not on the stage, a small group of, um, Brownies? have got that. Their, um, Brown Owl? comes and shouts at us but Gray shows her our official rehearsal timetable and tells her that if she doesn’t like it to complain to the Organisers, and Tim goes Grrr, and John suggests mildly she might like to draw the curtains. So she does, and presumably the sounds of us working out the routines for Steam Heat and playing Gray’s tape of the music are almost drowned out because the sounds of the little elves and toadstools forgetting their lines and her shouting at them are almost drowned out.

    All John says as we concede it might be time for a lunch break, and mop our streaming brows and streaming chests and in the case of Gray, streaming underarms, he’s been working hardest, showing the two of us our parts as well as doing his own, is: “Hard work. Well, shall we try the village pub?” And even though there’s nowhere to wash in the village hall except the sink, which the putative Brown Owl has commandeered for her group, mainly to make jugs of orange cordial, by the look of it, we agree eagerly, and get back into our day gear, and at John’s prompting do sign off on the giant noticeboard by the door that says: “Chipping Ditter Festival 2000. All rehearsal groups sign IN and OUT here.”

    We haven’t got a slot booked for the afternoon but Gray thinks we can work on our moves, and in my case and Rupy’s study the lyrics as well, in our room, it’s the biggest, if John doesn’t mind? He doesn’t mind at all, but warns him mildly it’s got carpet on it. So we do that and he takes Tim for a nice walk. Wuff! And comes back to report with a laugh that the arty-tarty shops here are even worse than the one at home and the heavily restored or just plain fake cottages just as he thought: Surbiton in Shropshire. Rupy and Gray pounce on the phrase in ecstasy.

    And we all eagerly accept an offer of drinks in the bar since the sun’s well over the yardarm. Gray and Rupy compete eagerly to put an arm round my waist, and eventually we go off entwined, me in the middle, with John ambling amiably along behind with that funny little smile on his face again. Possibly he doesn’t hear Gray hiss: “What is a yardarm?” and me hiss back: “Dunno!” but I wouldn’t offer odds on it.

    And the rest of the week goes on exactly like that. Pretty well le paradis terrestre, yeah. Even Tim’s deliriously happy, they’ve discovered that over thataway there are holes where possible rabbits might live, and once they’re out of the actual Boddiford Hall Park Royal grounds he’s allowed off the leash. He’s not pining at all at being away from his home, because he’s with Master and being made a fuss of every day. Gee; two of us!

    Opening Night rolls round, I was afraid it might. Rupy’s now found The Man Who Knows and discovered that the hotel’s conference organisers are actually running the whole thing, no wonder it’s so well organised! Evidently Adam McIntyre got really pissed off with the way the Festival Committee, composed of local fake cottage owners and fairly big theatrical Names, was farting round falling over its feet, and informed them loudly he’d take his money and his interest out of it unless they agreed to let him hire the professionals. Gee, I’d never have thought he’d have that much nous. Funnily enough they gave in. As a result everything to do with the festival has got the words “Boddiford Hall Park Royal” on it in navy and pale lemon, or the letters “YDI”, that’s the parent company, or the words “Gano Group”, that’s the parent of the parent company, or all three, but it was a small price to pay according to some. According to others they might have expected that sort of thing once a Celebrity was allowed to get in on the act—this regardless of the fact that without his money from that not-Bond thing they wouldn’t have a festival at all, not to say, no repaired church organ. –He didn’t pay for all of that himself but he started off the fund and used influence: evidently Derry Dawlish is quids-in with the continental organ-repairers since that epic he did on the life of Bach’s organ-maker. From my armchair at the end of the universe I found it so realistic as to be unwatchable, like, it was kind of real-time, y’know? But it was a critical success and almost won a prize at Cannes except that that year there was an Indonesian film starring a very plain Indonesian girl who wasn’t an actress and couldn’t act, even more real-time, taking her sour gourds to the big market, travelling from point A to point B in the pouring monsoon and the running mud.

    Gray and me had an early rehearsal slot this morning in one of the conference rooms and used it for our Good Ship Lollipop routine. Rupy didn’t come, he was slated to dress-rehearse his Noël Coward piece, which is part of a kind of vaudeville show that’ll be on tonight after the Official Opening Banquet. All the Big Names and critics will be too pissed to take in a thing, we saw the crates and crates of champagne being unloaded for it when we came back from our walk with Tim yesterday, but of course there was no telling him, he’s gone into a terrific state of nerves.

    When we come out we wander into the “Solarium”—don’t ask me, that’s what the Boddiford Hall Park Royal classes it as, it just looks like a tea place to me—because John said he might be in there. They let dogs in there so long as they’re on their leads: it’s all part of the Boddiford Hall Park Royal’s gimmick, evidently it brings in the golfing weekenders that own dogs in their droves. Ooh, there’s Lucasta Grimshaw with her Sealyham, drinking what even at this distance is clearly discernible as mineral water with a slice of lime (her, not the dog, whaddareya?) and bawling out a plump man with a pout and a to-die-for blue floral shirt and watermelon pink bow-tie combo. (I only know it’s a Sealyham because Gray nudges me and murmurs “Sealyham”.) Over there we sight Coralee Adams, gulp, drinking tea and looking sulky and feeding bits of cake to her over-fed Pekinese. (“Peke.”—“Yeah, I know them.”) It’s got an emerald bow round its neck, visible even with the long, fluffy hair, and she’s in an emerald linen-look pants suit and a bright yellow silk blouse, same combo as the bloody Oz One-Day Cricket team’s pyjamas. (“Ouch!”—I nod feelingly.) Over there we espy two very well-known character actors from the RSC in expensive and heavily logo-ed black and white tracksuits having a barney over cappuccinos, biscuits and two pugs with pale blue leads. Gray frowns, he likes pugs, and those leads would insult the sensibilities of a child of two, let alone a decent little dog. And goodness, just by a very tall potted palm we see Shanna McQuayle in person, pale silver grey bob well to the fore, wearing black rehearsal gear and poking discontentedly with her straw at a glass of… Nah, not ginger ale, that’s got colouring and sweetener in it… Gotta be iced tea. Iced tea and lemon, goddit, accompanied by, gulp, a giant poodle that I dunno what its natural colour was but is now pale silver-grey. Gray’s so overcome he forgets to be informative and just gapes. Well, what with the way its big rounded ears hang down like that heavy bob…

    Eventually he says limply: “There he is, dear.”

    “What? Oh!” And there are John and Tim, half sheltered by a potted palm, over by the windows. Tim just looks like Tim with his lead on, and John looks like a sensible human being, if gorgeous with it, in his fawn whipcord slacks and short-sleeved fawn knit shirt. Today open at the neck, though I’ve discovered that sometimes when he goes out and wears a jacket with it he does button it up: he isn’t entirely unconscious of the subtle (and to the other sex very odd) nuances of male hetero fashion.

    “Have a good rehearsal?” he asks, smiling, and we concede we did, yes, and sit down, and then he leans forward and says in a lowered voice: “Do you know that woman over there with the grey hair and matching poodle?”

    We exchange uneasy glances and admit we know who she is, yes: Shanna McQuayle. Why?

    “Because she’s been giving me the eye, that’s why,” he says drily.

    We goggle at him in horror. Eventually Gray manages to croak: “Hazards of going unprotected into a tea-room full of ageing prima donnas, I’m afraid, John.”

    I begin: “They aren’t all—” Then I take another look at the RSC pair and subside.

    “Mm. You’d better protect me, Rosie.”

    “Exactly. Not doing your job, Rosie!” agrees Gray with a laugh.

    Shit, I’m doing my best, in fact I’m wearing Henny Penny-approved fake rehearsal gear! That is, I’m supposed to be seen rehearsing in it but no living human being rehearses in this sort of gear any more and I have a strong feeling that even back in the Fifties they didn’t, either. The tights are candy-pink and while not sheer, not as thick as they could be, I think technically a heavy, shiny nylon? Well, bits of me sort of glimmer through them, geddit? Yeah. The leotard’s got a very scooped neck and rather cutaway legs but three-quarter length sleeves; why the upper-arms and elbows need warmth but the chest and buttocks don’t, do not ask me. It’s very bright sky-blue. The curls are allowed to be just pinned back at the temples with two— Wait. If I said “butterfly clips” that’d give you the wrong impression, that’d be verging on Nineties or even Today. No: plastic hair clips in the shape of large blue butterflies with their wings spread. That real-time enough for ya? Yeah.

    John gets up, grinning. “Come on over to the buffet, Rosie, and we’ll give the ageing prima donnas a demonstration, shall we?”

    Smiling weakly, I get up, and he immediately comes and puts his arm round my bright sky-blue waist and pulls me into his side, and we go slowly over to the buffet to look at cakes, followed by the sulky glare of Shanna McQuayle and the bitter glare of Coralee Adams.

    Does Coralee imagine I’ll introduce her to the dishiest guy at the festival bar none, after the way she treated Lily Rose on set? Yes, she does, because she deserts the Peke and comes up and pretends to look at cakes. Goodness, it is me!—Coy look at John.—How am I?—Coy look at John.—So looking forward to the performance.—Coy look at John. He gives in, the nit, and says Hadn’t I better introduce them?

    I look blank. “Didn’t you say you didn’t want to meet any of them? Oh, well, this is Coralee Adams. Coralee, this is John Haworth. –She plays one of Daddy Captain’s ageing paramours, John,” I say blithely.

    Ya gotta hand it to him, even though this is totally unacceptable behaviour in his social circles, he doesn’t even blink. “Lovely to meet you, Miss Adams.”

    She’s trying to smile and saying call her Coralee but it’s pretty obvious she’s beaten because after only a token remark in re the fattening nature of the Boddiford Hall Park Royal’s cakes, she chooses a piece of shortbread and retires.

    “Sorry. She was a total bitch to Lily Rose on set, one of us felt she asked for that,” I say grimly.

    “Mm. Have a piece of fattening cake.”

    We grab some muffins and three cappuccinos and return to our table in silence.

    “That worked, whatever it was,” Gray ventures on a dubious note.

    “Don’t ask. She was appalling,” says John shortly.

    “Darling, she always is!” he says eagerly. John eyes him drily. “Uh—oh, God: Rosie?” he gulps.

    “Mm. Have a muffin, Gray.”

    “Look, she was a total bitch every moment of the time she—”

    “We did establish that, Rosie,” he says mildly. “But given, let’s say, your relative intelligence levels, I think perhaps you might have made some allowances for her.”

    “Look, I can prove it!”

    “I’m sure. Shall we drop the subject?”

    “Yes, let’s,” says Gray hurriedly.

    We drop the subject. My face remains red for approximately the next half hour, though.

    When that’s over John goes off for a walk with Tim, and Gray and me go upstairs to get in a bit more practice.

    “Is he always that stern?”

    “Dunno, I’ve never been that appalling before.”

    He bites his lip. “If you get the chance, maybe you’d better make it up to the cow, dear.” Maybe I better had, yeah, but will I?

    Lunchtime. I’m still obdurate. John’s rather cool. Gray’s wised Rupy up, so instead of only one of them being on edge they both are. After a bit Coralee’s seen to come in and sit at a table by herself. The dining-room, incidentally, is pretty full of super-pseuds, fairly big Names, and the more affluent festival visitors because, though if you’ve forgotten it in the intervening agony who could blame you, tonight’s the Opening Night.

    “Look, all right, I’ll go over and apologise to the cow and ask her to join us, if that’s what ya want!” I snarl.

    “Er—not if that’s going to be your tone, Rosie,” Gray says uneasily.

    “No,” Rupy agrees in a small voice.

    John looks at me drily. “Quite.”

    “No. All right, then, John, I’m very sorry to have been so embarrassing.”

    “Thank you,” he says calmly.

    I get up. “And I will ask her to join us. And I’m very sorry, Gray and Rupy, to put you in the position of having her inflicted on you.”

    “Oh, not at all, Rosie!” says Gray quickly.

    “One can’t hurt,” agrees Rupy bravely.

    No, but Coralee Adams is the sort to take ten ells if given an inch. I don’t say that, I just go over to her and say: “Hullo, again, Coralee. You’re looking very smart.” She’s change: the emerald and yellow must have been leisure wear. Now she’s in a pale, greenish-side-of-turquoise, linen-look suit, the skirt short enough to show off the legs, with a toning silk blouse in a smudgy print of pale mauve and pale blue with the same pale greenish turquoise. The jacket’s got some mauve braiding on it, possibly slightly Chanel-look? If so, mistaken. The earrings are mauve chips set in gold metal, about the size of a good-sized eternity ring. Aunty Kate’s got a ring just like them, except that her amethysts and gold are real, you get a lot of amethysts in South Australia.

    “Um, first I’d like to say,” I add quickly, “that I’m very sorry if what I said this morning embarrassed you. And, um, if you’re not expecting someone, John would be very pleased if you’d come and join us for lunch.” –Of course she isn’t expecting someone, who’d volunteer to have lunch with her? Only someone that was in the Right Royal Naval shit up to their eyeballs, you goddit.

    She’s terribly gracious and of course I’m to think nothing of it, she wasn’t embarrassed, and you young people don’t know when you’re being tactless, do I? And she’d adore to have lunch with us. So she does.

    Those of us who are wondering what the Hell Coralee Adams is doing at an arty-tarty festival full of super-pseuds and RSC types are soon enlightened: she’s had a cottage in the village for years, long before it became so fashionable (read, before Adam McIntyre bought his select residence), actually it’s the place she and her second husband bought. Bright nod at Rupy. Uh—oh! Yes, not darling Bruce, um, um—Harold.—Oh, yes, Harold, he was in um, um—Boxes, Rupy darling.—Uh, boxes, of course. Do you still keep in touch, dear? She looks glum and reveals that they did, but then his third, much younger than poor Harold—heroically not looking at me, gold star, Coralee—dragged him off to California when he retired and they’ve lost touch. But of course there were no children. Some of us by this time are starting to feel actually sorry for her, poor old hag.

    She ends up by finding out that none of us are busy this afternoon except Rupy, evidently the timing this morning was way off and they’re going to have to run through the entire vaudeville thing again, and asking us if we’d like to see her cottage. Boy, as if we haven’t been punished enough! So we collect up Tim, dogs aren’t allowed in the actual dining-room, and cram into her little car.

    It’s a really nice cottage, with what John identifies as wattle and daub walls. I’d have said fake Tudor, but it’s not, most of it’s original, not the roof, Rosie, dear, no—she spotted they were all calling me that and immediately picked up on it. It’s lovely, of course, and several people have offered her a very good price for it, but then, where would she go? Even though the upkeep’s rather heavy, it’s the damp, you see. The décor’s pretty frightful, she’s gone in for what the mags back home call the country look, like, everything’s got turned rods and turned legs and little turned finials on the top of all the chair backs. That very shiny auburn varnish, y’know? And everything that can have a little pleated skirt on it, has, like, easy chairs and sofas and even pleated thingos above the windows. The colour scheme’s mainly blue and brown, some of the patterns are blue and brown checks and some of them are big blue and brown cabbage roses, all in heavy linens. And lots of cushions, blue and brown predominating, but she’s let a bit of mauve and a bit of green in as well. Maybe she does patchwork as a hobby, because a lot of them are in that, those hexagons, y’know?

    And more photos in silver frames than I’ve ever seen in one room before. Gray identifies the first husband, darling Bruce, with a gasp. Yes, poor darling Bruce, well, that was a mistake on both sides, really, but he was the dearest fellow… Yes, AIDS, back in 1989, of course they’d been divorced for years by then… This is Harold.—Her and Harold on their honeymoon in Portugal, it was terribly hot, and the food was dreadful.—Her and Harold in Scotland, he was opening a new box factory.—Scotland again, Harold with a big fish.—Her and Harold in Ireland: that was their fifth anniversary, he was trying out the fishing.—Her and Harold at a First Night— But don’t look at those boring old things, darlings! Now, on this wall— It’s the entire Coralee Adams hall of fame. Her as The Reluctant Debutante (gulp) in rep. Her and Michael Manfred in The Second Mrs Tanqueray. Oh, that’s a silly one, dears: her and Derry Dawlish (looking a lot younger but just as fat and very, very drunk) at “a silly party”; her and Michael Caine, crumbs! Her and Princess Margaret, cripes.

    After she’s got out of John what he “does” she forces a cup of tea and some biscuits on us. Earl Grey—does she thinks he’s Captain Picard? We do finally escape after that.

    We’re halfway down the road to the Boddiford Hall Park Royal with only Tim in anything like high spirits before Gray’s able to croak: “Lonely, poor thing.”

    “Yeah,” I croak.

    “Don’t think she's got all that much cash to spare, either. Think all that furniture dates from Harold’s time.”

    “Yeah,” I croak. “Those were cheap biscuits, too.”

    “Yes,” he agrees glumly.

    “She has got her cottage,” says John cautiously.

    “Right, a cottage surrounded by arty-tarty RSC types and super-pseuds that all ignore her!” I agree fiercely.

    “Mm.” He takes my hand and squeezes it hard. “Maybe it never does to judge anyone too harshly, Rosie, darling,” he says lightly. “Richly though they may seem to deserve it.”

    “No,” I gulp.

    We walk on. After a bit Gray takes my other hand. None of us says anything…

    Dinnertime’s come round, since the world hasn’t considerately ended, so I get into Miss Hammersley’s pink satin strapless evening dress. John thinks it’s delicious. His very word. Gulp!—Would I like to try this scent with it?—Gulp. He must’ve forgiven me, all right. Either that or that roll in the hay after we got back from Coralee’s softened him up nicely— Uh, no. Not John Haworth. Any other bloke under the sun, I grant you. But not him. Relaxed, yes. Softened up—no way. All moral probity firmly in place. Is that tautologous? Never mind, it’s what I mean. I sniff the scent cautiously. It’s real Chanel No. 5, so there can’t be anything wrong with it, and I do know he’s got extreme good taste, but it’s not specifically Brian Hendricks-, Varley Knollys- and Terry vander Post-approved. It’s lovely, so bugger them, I’ll wear it. It beats the Hell out of pink stuff in a pink bottle, I can tell ya!

    Downstairs the ballroom’s been completely done out in guess what, shades of navy and lemon, lightened with silver-dollar gum foliage, well, it’s exotic if ya don’t come from the end of the universe. Lots and lots of little tables, they completely fill the room, plus a long table up the top with seats only on the side facing into the room. Mikes on it, and in front of it ranked pale blue hydrangeas interspersed with giant shafts of pale yellow gladdies and navy-blue cherry blossom. Don’t shoot me, I’m merely the messenger, navy-blue cherry blossom is what it is.

    And me and my escort, poor lamb, have to sit at it with the nobs. Sort of halfway between the centre and one end. The centre features Adam McIntyre looking deprecating in a pale grey silk evening suit. Next to him is a very smart middle-aged lady in a fierce magenta dress, a bit too old to be one of the puce and magenta ones but nevertheless I don’t like the look of her, that sternly controlled artificially blonde, bouffant hair’d be sufficient warning by itself, and on her other side an older man that I don’t recognise but John quietly tells me which Duke he is. Never heard of him, take his word for it. Georgy Harris is on Adam McIntyre’s other side looking completely calm, how does she do it? Also looking rather pregnant in a wisp of something see-through in palest oatmeal over figure-hugging oatmeal satin, good for her. Long green earrings, in our part of the world they’re usually known as greenstone but here in the North they’d be New Zealand jade. That glorious auburn mop looks as if she’s resisted anybody’s efforts to get her to the hairdresser and just washed it and brushed it back behind her ears a bit. Absolutely every other dame in the room, waif look or not, puce and magenta or not, looks either totally overdressed or just plain silly in comparison. We’re down her end of the table but too far away to— Um, no, she's spotted me, smiles and waves. Unfortunately the black heap next to her stirs, looks, and then beams and waves frantically. Bloody Derry Dawlish, damn!

    “Who’s that?” says John mildly.

    “Derry Dawlish,” I say through my teeth.

    He raises his eyebrows slightly but says nothing.

    I can see Euan and the lovely Black woman, right down the other end of the top table. Oh, and Shanna McQuayle: for a change she’s wearing a black waif-look dress, flaming Norah! Euan’s wearing a white tux with a pale grey evening shirt, pale grey bow-tie and a pale grey hanky in the breast pocket. Um… who else? Well, there’s a blue-rinsed theatrical knight, the lady next to him looks prepared to be bored, a wise precaution. Ooh, and a very well-known theatrical dame, I’ve seen her in loads of things. Think that’s her theatrical hubby next to her, not as well-known. Helpfully John identifies the bloke with the strange purple whatsits as a bishop. Lumme. Is he a musical bishop? There’s a church choir that’s gonna do a Bach cantata. He doesn’t think so. Don’t know anybody else at the top table, except that the flashy dame on one side of Derry Dawlish has recently had her pic plastered all over the tabloids with him, so let’s hope she’s a front runner for The Captain’s Daughter The Movie.

    Down in the body of the room I can see Rupy, very severe in the severest of black dinner suits and the narrowest of black bowties, and Gray, gleaming in purple and gold, what with the mahogany hair and the fact that the dinner-jacket is black and purple shot silk… Ooh, there’s Bridget! I wave madly. Rupy and Gray spot me waving and stand up and wave madly at her too, then pointing madly at me. Eventually she spots me, gone very pink, no wonder with those clowns causing everybody to look at her, but she waves back.

    “Sit,” says John mildly. Ooh, was I— Hurriedly I subside into my seat.

    “See anyone else you know?” he says kindly.

    “Hah, hah. Um… No. Well, I sort of know Lucasta Grimshaw”—and her former scarf, yep—“but only by sight. I thought she’d be at the top table.”

    “Mm? Oh, the dancer? “ He looks at her without interest so I explain she was in the tea place with a white Sealyham this morning. I can’t see Coralee.

    “Er, no, darling, think the tickets for this do might have been a bit excessive,” he murmurs.

    It all goes to schedule, chalk one up to the Boddiford Hall Park Royal conference organisers. Adam McIntyre doesn’t make a speech, so why is he in the middle of the table, you may well ask. First off the conference organisers’ master of ceremonies appears on the little stage behind the top table, it’s all very chaste, they don’t draw the curtains back, he just pops out at the side where they’ve put a mike, and welcomes us on behalf of the hotel and then hands over to the bod at one lady’s remove from the Duke, the Festival Committee Chairman, who welcomes us all on behalf of the Festival Committee, blah, blah. Then the master of ceremonies announces dinner will be now be served, Your Grace, my lords, ladies and gentlemen. So we get to eat. Prawn cocktail, I don’t touch it even though it is done up with wings and loops and frilly bits of lettuce, the Poms have got no idea of refrigeration, then chicken with a sort of wine sauce, roast potatoes, turned carrots and sugar-snap peas, and finally pudding, on analysis sponge cake dipped in flavoured syrup with tinned mandarine slices and chocolate icing but it sure looks posh, swirls and wings and curls of stuff galore.

    Then the M.C. comes on again just as we’re starting to relax and looking hopefully round for the liqueurs, and the waiters trot in the champagne but don’t pour it and the it’s more speeches… At long last they pour the champagne and we’re allowed to drink. The Queen! Yikes. All right, the Queen, I’m a republican but at least she’s got integrity and lives up to her principles, unlike the rest of that bloody family. And then loads more toasts…

    And the official part of the evening is over and the noise, which was pretty loud anyway, rises to a roar and diners start to circulate. Led by Rupy: embarrassing poor Bridget again, brings her over to us: “Darlings! Doesn’t she look super!” It’s dark brown see-through stuff over dark brown satin, and almost identical to the style of Georgy’s dress except that Bridget’s not preggy, but at least it’s one step better than black, so I agree enthusiastically and introduce her to John.

    The burly, red-cheeked man on my other side has to be introduced to her, too, his name’s Tom Benson and he’s a businessman who’s just bought a big place outside the village and never expected to get to meet me, and his wife’s name’s Nancy, she never expected they’d get put at the top table, especially as none of the artistic ones on the silly committee took a blind bit of notice of Tom’s sensible suggestions! After that it was humanly impossible not to ask him if it was him who dropped a hint in Adam McIntyre’s ear that it might be a good idea to have the thing properly run by the hotel’s conference people and of course it was.

    Eventually the M.C. chivvies all of “the official party” out, the show’s due to start in twenty minutes and the chairs need to be rearranged. This lot get to the bogs and back in twenty minutes? You’re joking! Me and Bridget’ll go up and use our ensuite. She goes pink but as John doesn’t need to, being one of those men with a bladder like a camel, never goes once all the way across the Sahara type of thing, she comes with me gratefully. On the way we bump into Georgy Harris so we scoop her up, too. This enables us to gather a lot of information in re Adam’s collywobbles about the festival and Adam’s collywobbles about the pregnancy that personally I could have done without. If you must marry a wimp, however gorgeous, what can you expect? But I don’t say it; in the first place she’s too nice, I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings, and in the second place she’s bright enough to know that if you marry a wimp that’s what you can expect. (A Ph.D. in Anglo-Saxon: the women’s mags all had it wrong, she wasn’t a lecturer on Shakespeare in spite of that Midsummer Night’s Dream for D.D.).

    When we come back the table’s gone and a couple of rows of armchairs have been set out at the front of the room instead, but mostly people aren’t sitting, mostly people are standing around chatting amiably, and John Haworth is chatting amiably to the Duke!

    Possibly Georgy notices my sizzling gasp of horror because she takes my arm and murmurs very kindly: “He’s really quite nice, Rosie.”

    “I hope you mean the Duke, because I already know that John is.”

    “Yes!” she says with a strangled laugh.

    Bridget’s looking almost as horrified as me so we let her escape to Gray’s table. There’s plenty of room at it, couldn’t I— Too late. John does the upper-clawss equivalent of waving, it’s kind of like a little movement of the head and simultaneously a little smile, I can imitate it, though not managing it for real, if you see what I mean, but I can’t really describe it. And Georgy and I go over to them.

    John smiles at Georgy and I realise he hasn’t met her, help! Now I’ll have to do an introduction in front of a duke! Not that I give a shit about the entire House of Lords, I am totally opposed to inherited titles, but I don’t wanna let John down in front of someone who’s expecting a senior captain in the Royal Navy to have a girlfriend that’s not a yob. Or at least not to be seen in public with one that is. I do know that John doesn’t think much of the House of Lords, either, though conceding it has some slight rôle as a check on the Commons, but that isn’t the point. Get it? No? Then you must be even more rabidly socialist than I am.

    “Hi,” I say idiotically. “Um, Georgy, I don’t think you’ve met John, John Haworth. John, this is Georgy Harris.” He shakes hands very nicely. Then he introduces me to the Duke: Rosie Marshall, you may know her better as Lily Rose Rayne, George.—George? Omigod.—I do know that you don’t curtsey to them if they’re not Royal ones, and this is just as well because I sincerely doubt that I could bring myself to curtsey to anyone. No, well, the Queen and the Queen Mum, yeah, I do have some respect for them, and then, their generations can’t be expected to understand it’s not bad manners, it’s principles. And I do think older people’s feelings matter more than that sort of principle, yeah. Not than all sorts, no!

    The duke’s seen the series, he asks me about it very genially, cripes. And is it true they’re going to make a film of it?

    “No, I don’t think so: I think that rumour was vastly exaggerated.”

    “Of course it wasn’t!” booms a horribly familiar voice, and a horribly familiar black tent swims up to me and envelops my waist with a giant arm. “Mm, delishimo, darling, Chanel Numéro Cinq, non?”

    “Yeah. Hullo, Derry,” I croak numbly.

    He’s looking narrowly at John, oh, God, what’s he gonna—

    He says it. “The Patrick Stewart type. Don’t think I know you. Not with the RSC, are you?”

    “No, he isn’t, he’s with the Royal Navy and he’s never heard of Patrick Stewart. John Haworth—Captain Haworth. Derry Dawlish,” I say grimly.

    Nothing can phase D.D., of course. He holds out a ham-like hand, he can do this easily, he’s got his left arm round my waist, calculatedly, if even one percent of those stories at Henny Penny are true. “What a faux pas!”—Manly grin.—“Very pleased to meet you, John.”

    “How do you do, Derry?” says John coolly. “I’d be very pleased if you’d unhand Rosie.”

    The Duke gives a crack of laugher, Georgy gives a loud giggle, and instead of going into a huff, D.D. unhands me with another manly grin. John immediately puts his arm round me and pulls me into his side. I can’t utter: I never thought he would, not in front of a duke that he calls George.

    Dawlish tries to say it’s a waste of John’s looks but Georgy shuts him up and then more people stream in and John gets us out of it. And we round up Tom and Nancy, and John and Tom grab a couple of the chairs from the second row, and we all join Gray and Bridget at an ordinary people’s table. Oof!

    During the speeches there was quite a lot of flashbulb popping and while we wait for the show to start there’s more, but the wonderful hotel conference organisers seem to be on top of that, they round them up and at least we can watch the show without being watched watching.

    Rupy’s Noël Coward goes over really well, given that most of the audience is too full of champagne and liqueurs to care. Afterwards he comes and sits with us, still in his N.C.-type morning suit.

    But he’s much too Up to stay sitting nicely with us and the minute the next act ends, grabs a bottle of fizz and starts to circulate with it. My God, why’s he circulating in Lucasta Grimshaw’s direction? “Wants a Sealyham pup?” says Gray faintly. Well, quite, what other reason can there possibly be? We lose sight of him… During the next break he’s spotted circulating in the direction of those two RSC type that own the pugs. Wants a pug pup? ...What in God’s name can they be talking about? It seems to go on for ages. Oops, he’s off again. The well-known theatrical dame and her hubby are seen to greet him, even at this distance, kindly. Is he going to foist himself on them? Uh… No. Phew. Off he goes again… “Who’s that?” Gray peers. Bridget peers. John, Tom and Nancy are placidly talking about gardening. Simultaneously Gray and Bridget recognise her: you know her, dear. Yes, you do, Rosie, she was in that play with me and, blush, Adam and Shanna. Serena Matthews. Um—cripes, so it is, she’s let her hair grow out, now it’s waify on top, longish and scraggy round the neck, even worse. She’s in a wisp of black see-through stuff over long, form-fitting black satin. Black still doesn’t suit her. Why is he talking to her? Gray doesn’t think he is, he’s talking to the men with her. This is probably worse, what’s the betting he kidnaps the poor woman’s actual escort? He’s kidnapping someone… Darryn! I bounce up and wave frantically, it’s mostly relief. Darryn also waves frantically. Rupy and him just have time to rush over and sit down with us before the next act starts.

    “What were you doing with Serena Ma—” Ssh! All right, but I’m gonna ask him in the next break.

    “She’s my aunt, actually,” Darryn explains, grinning. We never knew that, and it certainly explains it, and those of us who were exposed to nineteenth-century French literary classics some time earlier in our Glorious Careers don’t say anything.

    Bridget seems quite struck by him, and he seems quite interested in her, so take it for all in all I sit here for the rest of the evening with all my fingers and toes crossed. It sort of works, on the one hand Bridget and Darryn don’t go off the deep end but they agree amiably when his aunt comes up and suggests they might try the disco. On the other hand the duke and the magenta bouffant duchess come up and chat graciously, but fortunately they’re not staying for the disco. When they’ve gone I just sag.

    “Do you want to go to this disco?” John asks amiably.

    “No, I hate loud pop music, thought you knew that? Why didn’t you tell me you’ve known him since your mutual cradles?”

    “Not mutual, he’s a friend of Kenneth Hammersley’s: they were at school together.”—They woulda been, yeah.—“And I didn’t realise he was opening it until we got here and saw the programme.”

    “Well, why—”

    “Didn’t think it worth mentioning, Rosie,” he says with a grin.

    The Bensons are off, yes, discos aren’t their scene. They reiterate a definite invitation for elevenses tomorrow and we reiterate our acceptance, and they go.

    We’ve long since lost Gray and Rupy. John eyes me drily. “That seems to be that.”

    Yawn. “Yeah. Tom and Nancy are nice, eh?”

    “Very.” He takes my elbow firmly. “Bed. Unless you have a burning desire to get drunk with Dawlish?”

    “Very funny.”

    We go off to our room. It’s been such a traumatic day, take it for all in all, that I can’t stay awake for anything.

    Saturday. We’ve got one day’s grace before John’s parents are due to arrive. Unfortunately we haven’t got any leisure to enjoy it, we accepted that invitation from the Bensons for this morning and then I’ve got performances in the afternoon and evening. Actually we have a really pleasant time with the Bensons, and their house is lovely. Tudor. –Afterwards John explains that it’s stockbroker Tudor.

    Gray and Rupy join us for lunch, Gray terribly nervous at the thought of doing the act in front of the fairly big Names and super-pseuds, though he doesn’t seem to care about the actual festival attendees. Rupy frightfully hungover, that was to be expected. He favours us with the full story of Euan and the gorgeous Black girl, as garnered from the two RSC types under our very noses last night. They got it together on the Wednesday, dear, well before Thursday’s News of the World hit the streets, so no blame. And the version of Cymbeline that we’re gonna get tomorrow is more or less the RSC version that’s been in rehearsal, dears, yes: since it was Adam they agreed to it, just for the one performance. However, Kiki Brathwaite, that’s her name, has only got a small part in that, lady-in-waiting or something, but she’s being groomed to do Cleopatra to Adam’s Antony! Cripes. Well, I can see him as Antony, no sweat, in fact when ya think about it, that part seems to have been written for him: very male and very capable of the macho shit, but total wimp underneath it, lets the little woman run his life—yep, uh-huh. But Cleopatra wasn’t actually Black. Oh, well, good on her. And given that a lady did Lear not long back, not that much about the British theatre scene would surprise me any more.

    Our first show’s in the big marquee on the village green, so regretfully leaving Tim behind, we pile into the car, and go. As we arrive the audience for the lunchtime string quartet’s filing out, shit, that looks a bit sparse. What was on? Oh—all modern. John assures me they are a very good quartet. Yeah, but very modern at lunchtime? We hurry in to change and check that the string quartet hasn’t ruined the floor with the pointy bit on the cello…

    The noise is deafening. We peer cautiously round the edge of the curtain. Yikes, it’s full to bursting! Just as well we booked a seat for John. Help, he’s got Shanna McQuayle on one side and Adam on the other, no chance that a nit like A. McI. will forget accidentally-on-purpose to make introductions. Georgy’s next to Adam and on her other side is, you guessed it, D.D. in person. Nobody says break a leg, that’d be too bloody close to the bone. The three of us just silently determine to do our very best…

    They love it, the applause just about takes the top of the tent off, several photographers that are possibly there illegally, they’re standing at the sides, flash bulbs furiously, Derry Dawlish isn’t the only one standing up applauding madly and shouting: “’Core!” and: “Again!” And: “Steam Heat! Hey, Lily Rose, Steam Heat!”—“Steam Heat, Steam Heat, Steam—” We get the point and do the whole Steam Heat routine again as a second encore.

    They still won’t let us go. Cheering, ’Core, Lily Rose, Lily Rose, Lily— We retire to the wings, panting, and Gray admits: “You’ll have to give them something else, darling!”

    “What about I Enjoy Being A Girl, darling?” ventures Rupy.

    Ouch! Pre-empt next year’s series? “We haven’t finalised the interpretation, Rupy, Brian’d kill me.”

    “Uh—My Heart Belongs To Daddy? Not sure I could support you in Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, dear, didn’t do it in the show.”

    Nor he did, it was Darryn and the chorus of officers. Uh—well, at least I know My Heart Belongs To Daddy backwards. Admittedly I’m wearing the black rehearsal pants, sheer black tights, excruciatingly tight, black-sequinned jacket and silver-sequinned top hat that Gray chose for Steam Heat, but— I remove the topper as a vague gesture in the direction of something or other and Rupy goes over and opens the piano to a storm of applause.

    I go and stand centre-stage, right at the front where the apron would be if there was one, and look naïve and lick my lips nervously while he plays the intro and pauses for the huge roar of applause as they recognise it. “While tearing off, a game of goff,”—pause, half-turn, big-eyed look over the shoulder, fausse naïveté—“I may make a play for the cad-deee—” The cheers are so loud I can hardly get through it. After unending bows I run off and we all run on again and bow firmly. No result. I’m reduced to holding up my hand for silence and at last they all shut up except Derry Dawlish.

    “Shut up and sit down, Derry.”—Roars of laughter from the super-pseuds.—“Thank you all very much, you’ve been a lovely audience, and we loved doing it, but we’ve got to leave the tent for the next act, now.” Smile firmly, bow, pick up the huge bouquet of pink roses that bloody Derry’s chucked in spite of the organisers ordaining firmly no bouquets until the last night, and off. It still takes ages for the cheers and clapping to die down, though.

    Now I gotta change into Henny Penny-approved after-the-matinée gear, to wit, the watermelon pink pedal-pushers, and a white peasant-look, off-the-shoulder blouse: you know, the sort that’s basically a gathered tube on a piece of ribbon and you push it down the arms and tits as far as you dare, Maureen O’Hara comes vaguely to mind. The ribbon in my one’s pink, likewise the small ribbons that make the sleeves into puffs, likewise the rims of the Dame Edna sunnies (Henny Penny’s) and my own comfy suede sandals.

    We go out and face them. It’s not only the milling crowds of Press, it’s the milling crowds of autograph hunters and just plain admirers who just have to tell me— I keep saying that Steam Heat was all Gray Hunter’s idea and he worked up the choreography but I don’t think much of it sinks in. Never mind, the three of us stand arms entwined for all the pics, ignoring the photographers’ suggestions of one of me by myself or one of me with Derry. And let’s hope some of it makes the telly news in full Technicolor, because Rupy’s glorious in his white duck uniform trou with white uniform shoes and a pale pink tee-shirt (yes, he chose it deliberately to tone with my gear, whaddareya?) plus the crocodile shoulder bag that he scored from Miss Hammersley; and Gray’s equally glorious in a very different look, dark charcoal narrow trou and a black tee-shirt with the sleeves rolled up a bit and a packet of ciggies tucked into one of them (he doesn’t smoke, it’s Fifties), and a tiny tattooed chain round the muscly bit on one arm. Finished off with a to-die-for effect of a black and gold school tie used as a belt! And B&W would be an awful waste of it all.

    At long last the smoke’s cleared enough for John to come up and take my arm and suggest we might go back to the hotel. But I wanted to look at the stalls! Er, he doesn’t think there are any of those, Rosie, darling. Helpfully Rupy explains I’m getting mixed up with all those bizarre openings I have to do. He sees. Well, er, would I like to look at the arty-tarty shops? It’s a lovely fine afternoon and though I know full well that we’ll be plagued by amateur photographers and more autograph hunters and more admirers who just have to tell me, I would. So we wander round the shops that face onto the green, and sure enough…

    Eventually John suggests the pub and I can see he’s desperate, so we go for a drink. I’d like a nice cold Foster’s lag—Uh, sorry. He’ll see what he can do. Glory, he comes over to our table with a nice cold lager, what’s come over the place? “Weekenders,” he says briefly, sitting down. That’d be it, right: Americanised. Are there any chips? Or peanuts, would do. The poor man gets up again and fetches bags of crisps and peanuts. We fall on them ravenously. “Aft’ uh show,” I explain with my mouth full. Yes; he’s sorry: he didn’t realise, he should have thought we’d need a decent tea. “Beer’sh aw ri’,” I assure him with my mouth full. Swallow. “Ya reckon this place does pies?” At this point Rupy squashes me firmly, though telling John it might be a good idea if we went back to the hotel and sussed out the Solarium, John, dear.

    … Blast! They’ve stopped serving tea! When’s dinner? What? Well, blast!

    Gray suggests Room Service. The thought occurs, if we have it in our room, John will pay for it all. We go up. Gee, you’d never think this was England, because Room Service is terribly sympathetic and suggests High Tea. What I mean is, High Tea is English, but— You get it. It’s great, there’s muffins and scones with jam and honey as well as cream, and cold ham and pickled onions, and a hot quiche and a salad, and a wonderful sponge cake with strawberries on it, as good as Grandma’s before she went gaga. John has a cup of tea but doesn't eat much and Tim isn’t allowed any, but before long that trolley’s looking pretty sorry for itself. Help. Oh, well, we won’t feel like dinner before the performance.

    “Let me get this straight,” John says firmly as Rupy and Gray thank him fervently for the wonderful High Tea and decide they’d better have a rest, now: “you will all require sustenance after the show this evening, right? I’ll check whether that conference room you claim they’re converting into a supper club for the show intends turning on actual food. If not, I’ll put in an order with Room Service.”

    I’m inspecting the programme. “It does say supper club. ‘Hernando’s Hideaway,’ ooh, that’s from The Pajama Game! ‘Select supper club, fully licensed. Tonight featuring Lily Rose Rayne, supported by Gray Hunter, with Special Guest Rupert Maynarde,’—Rupy’ll like that—‘in a Fifties Extravaganza of tap, song and soft-shoe.’ Will that draw the punters in?”

    “Ampersand soft-shoe, isn’t it?” he says drily. He goes over to the phone. I ruminate on the programme. Will it bring the punters in? And what competition did we have this arvo, maybe that crowd had nowhere else to— Yikes. Euan Keel, Serena Matthews and Kiki Brathwaite in Shakespearean Excerpts in one of the smaller conference rooms! Well, possibly the cognoscenti flocked to it and we just got the hoi polloi.

    John’s found out that the select supper club will be putting on real food—yes.  I can see there’s something wrong, even though of course he didn’t mind feeding us on beer and peanuts or High Tea. “Is anything the matter?”

    He sits down slowly. “No-o… I very much enjoyed the show, don’t get me wrong.”

    “Um, yeah?” I say nervously. –Too vulgar? Too much of me visible? Too suggestive?

    None of the above. “I got the impression,” he says slowly, “that you really enjoyed it, Rosie. That you enjoyed performing.”

    I stare at him blankly. “So?

    “We-ell, wasn’t all this supposed to be temporary? Until you’ve worked off what you see as your obligation to your fellow actors and Brian Hendricks?”

    “Yes, that’s right. I can still enjoy it, though. Um, well I suppose it runs in the family!” I say with a laugh. “Joanie’s an actress, you know.”

    “Your cousin: yes,” he says, frowning. “I’d forgotten that.”

    “I don’t see what you’re on about.”

    He looks at me dubiously. “Well, will you be able to give it up?”

    “Yes, of course! This isn’t the real me!”

    He looks dubiously at the peasant blouse and the watermelon-pink pedal pushers. “Possibly not. I got the strong impression that the performance this afternoon was, however.”

    “I can't go on forever living two lives! Of course I’m gonna give it up! Heck, I worked for years to get my Ph.D. and the fellowship, what’d I want to give it all away for?”

    He rubs his chin. “Mm. Suppose, for whatever reason, no academic position eventuated after the fellowship, and that at the same time Dawlish offered you a part in a film?”

    “It’d depend on how broke I was. I suppose I’d take the part if nothing else was on offer. But if Mark’s book’s on schedule and I get the nationalism study finished, I think I’ll be okay. Anyway, I won’t be broke, I’m earning megabucks.”

    “So you keep saying, mm. Well—so long as you know what you’re doing, darling.”

    “Yeah, ’course!” I say with a laugh.

    He still looks unconvinced, though. And he doesn’t suggest we hop into bed, instead he suggests that I might like a rest while he walks Tim. Wuff! Wuff!

    I get into bed by myself. The thought occurs, if I did keep on with the Lily Rose shit, would he dump me? Was he implying that? Or, not that, but was it perhaps the thought behind the thought? Or is this just my devious female mind?

    When they come back he gets eagerly into bed with me and it’s as good as ever, nothing wrong there. But all the same... Well, Lily Rose Rayne is a nit, and not me. But if it was what I wanted to do…

    Well, no point in brooding on it. I get into a Henny Penny-approved dinner dress, and go down to keep him company until it’s time to change for the show.

    The supper club’s crowded, even for the first performance, which the particular conference organiser that’s been organising us warned us not to expect. Tremendous applause, more flash-bulbs, etcetera. Three encores, they’d take more, but we have to give the band a chance. I’m about to get back into my dinner dress but Gray stops me: the public would prefer me in the gear, dear, so I go out and join John in sheer tights, very short black-sequinned jacket, etcetera. Minus the top hat, I’ll spare the poor lamb that. He thinks it went well, and would I mind terribly if he goes off to the Early Music concert next-door? Of course not! I let him escape, even though this means Derry Dawlish’ll kidnap me, ugh.

    Yep: the arm goes round me. Delishimo, dear; and he bursts out with his new idea, a remake of The Pajama Game! What do I think? I think he’s barmy: that was Doris Day, for God’s sake, she was wonderful! Derry reminds that the guy was a pudding, though: no S.A. Uh—true, but a great dancer and singer. Now, this is his idea, darling: cast Adam as the guy, opposite me as Doris. –He’s got It, dear! he urges. I know that, the whole world knows that, we all saw that near-Bond piece of Hollywood crap he did. But as far as I’m aware, he can’t sing. Dub it, dear! Balls, Derry. He loves it, he loves people that stand up to him. (Not when it comes to the interpretation, however, as Georgy has by now feelingly informed me.) Brian would be all for it: they could do it as a joint—And wait! Why not revive it as a musical? It is a musical, ya cretin. He loves it, he gives me a smacking kiss on the cheek to prove it. No, West End, dear! Out Lloyd Webbering Lloyd Webber! Yeah, yeah, rave on…

    John comes back in time for our second show, crumbs, is that Coralee that’s joined him? Bright apricot chiffon surmounted by a bright apricot spangled top, and rivers of apricot sparkling things in the ears. Ooh, help, and Tom and Nancy Benson, shouldn’t they be at Adam and Georgy’s Revue? Rupy points out that over there, the Beautiful People who’ve just come in, him in the white evening suit and the black satin shirt and her in the black satin evening suit and the white shirt, are Euan and Ms Brathwaite, and that the Revue must be over, because they were in it, too. Gray peers over our shoulders: Yes, and here come Adam and Georgy! (He’s in the pale grey evening clobber again and she’s positively glowing in form-fitting jade green satin, good on her. Preggy and proud.) And come on, dears, the show must go on!

    The show goes on. I can see Euan trying not to look when I do The Good Ship Lollipop, I did a private performance of that for him not all that long back, but Kiki Brathwaite’s laughing her head off. Steam Heat gets a totally rapturous reception and we have to encore it immediately. More rapture. Then people stand up and start shouting: “My Heart Belongs to Daddy! Come on, Lily Rose! Dad-dee, Dad-dee, Dad-dee—” and like that. This time we’re prepared, so Rupy and Gray do a semi-impromptu soft-shoe number that gives me time to change. Do you remember Marilyn wore that big soft cuddly blue jumper and sheer back tights, she slid down this pole and Yves Montand just about passed out? You’d have to be crazy to copy it, but Gray’s worked on it with me, not to say going through every garment I’ve got with me until the outfit’s just right. So finally I come on again in Miss Hammersley’s big brown fur coat, the collar up, cuddled up to the chin, right, just as Yvonne at one point suggested, and Rupy plays the intro, they’re going nuts, actually throwing stuff. Pieces of bread stick, mainly, and the flowers from the little navy and yellow arrangements on the tables, and crumpled-up lemon or navy serviettes.

    I’m more or less centre-stage. This time I don’t lick the lips, just give them a very wide-eyed look over the coat collar. “While tearing off, a game of goff—” There’s a terrific lot of wriggling inside the coat, but I keep it on, hugging myself now and then, until the second time round, on “Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-dad.” Then I let it slip off, underneath I’m wearing this nauseating Fifties-type play-suit that I've told Yvonne a hundred times I’ll never wear: its top layer’s white broderie Anglaise with a very narrow bright pink belt, and the underneath’s like a bright pink bathing-suit. Very boned and strapless, the broderie Anglaise allowed to form a little scalloped skirt just at the modesty level, except when I do a high kick, when it isn’t modest at all. So I do a high kick and lapse into something more like the Carol Channing interpretation, bump and grind with that growl in the voice, and do the reprise again: “Da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-dad,” etcetera. Then it’s on with the coat again, this time just draped round me, one shoulder up, y’know? One naked shoulder, you goddit. And back to the fausse naïveté until the finish, more cuddling in the coat, right up to the Marilyn-type “That little ole daddy, he just treats me so…” Dunno if you remember, in the film they did it all jazzy, but we skip the jazz and I just coo, letting the coat slip so that my tits show in white lace over pink: “goo-ood.” The crowd goes wild. Gee, Kiki Brathwaite isn’t laughing any more, and I can see even at this distance that Euan’s gone very red. Up his.

    The applause goes on for ages but we’ve agreed that’s it, so we just laugh and wave and bow, and go off. Finally Derry Dawlish in person comes up on the little stage and gives me a giant bouquet of, Christ, long-stemmed pink roses and pink and white Asian lilies? And holds up his hand, laughing like anything, and booms: “That’s all, folks!” And shepherds us off and tells the curtain man firmly to lower it, dear. The man looks startled, it’s a pull-across one, but then it dawns, and he pulls it across.

    Derry then envelops me in a huge embrace, it’s a real one, yep, the tongue, not to mention the monster hard-on, and I try to shove him away.

    “Do that again and I’ll knee you in the goolies, you haven’t got squatter’s rights here, mate!”—forgetting the Lily Rose persona.

    He laughs like anything and says proudly: “Isn’t she lovely? So direct!” Shit, shades of Euan. But does let me go. “See?” he then says, waggling his horrible eyebrows at me. Actually, though they’re very thick they’re also extremely well shaped and I’d bet most of my income from The Captain’s Daughter that he plucks them. “It can’t miss.”

    “Balls, Derry, they’re all bombed out of their tiny minds, and if I did it like that on celluloid you’d never get it past the censor, it’d be X-rated and none of the grannies’d go.”

    “Cut your audience in half, Derry, dear,” agrees Rupy, faint but loyally pursuing.

    “Oh, rubbish!” He tries to put that arm round me again but I dodge, I’m gonna change. “No!” he cries in horror but too late.

    Most of my evening dresses are nauseating, of course, but I’m gonna keep that pale pink satin one that went over so big with John for tomorrow evening, hopefully his parents’ll give it the thumbs up, after all it did belong to Tuppence Hammersley. So tonight I’ve chosen the least ghastly of the others, it’s black for a wonder, a princess-length skirt according to Yvonne, in black chiffon, very full but also very tight-waisted, the bodice strapless and very boned, black velvet dotted with tiny sparkling things. It’s already got the nod this evening: John said it was elegant. Black suede sandals, not very high-heeled. And a squirt of the Chanel which I then put back into the matching black velvet evening purse, clutching it very tightly, thank God no-one nicked it while we were on. Then I go out and start fighting my way back to John’s table…

    “A triumph!” he concludes with a laugh about ten aeons later when we’re closing the door of our room thankfully behind us.

    “Yeah, sorry,” I say glumly.

    “No, no, you were very good, sweetheart! Though I think I preferred the first version of My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”

    “Yeah, fresher. This one was worked up so as to actually get through the fog of grog.”

    “And the rest: there was a young fellow sniffing something in the Gents’,” he says drily.

    “Ugh. Well, the super-pseud crowd’s like that.”

    “Mm. Thank God you're not impressed by them,” he says with a sigh, taking his coat off.

    “I should hope not! Come on, John, how many times do I have to say it? I’m not her!”

    “No. –Let me hang that coat up; I think it deserves it,” he says, as I dump it on a chair.

     I let him hang the five thousand dead minks up: much good it’ll do them now.

    “Are you okay?” I say cautiously as he pours himself a mineral water and gets into bed with a sigh.

    “Mm. Surfeit of Miss Adams, I’m afraid,” he admits with a grimace.

    “Yeah. Never mind, she was in her element and D.D. pretended to remember her.”

    “Yes. Er, he did seem to me to be bloody serious about this film idea, Rosie.”

    “Too bad.” I hurry off to the bog. When I come back he’s just sitting there sipping his water. I get into bed beside him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

    “Mm.” He puts my hand on it. Yes, that’s all right!

    “Um, worried what your parents are gonna say?”

    “Only if you leer at Father in that coat of Tuppence Hammersley’s.”

    “Yes, you are, John.”

    He makes a face. “I’m trying to persuade myself that they’ll see past the Lily Rose surface… The thing is, darling, they are very conventional people. Very typical of their generation, I suppose, and,”—another face—“class.”

    “Yeah. And even if I’m not being Lily Rose I’m too Australian, right?”

    He bites his lip. ”Sometimes. I know you often exaggerate it on purpose, Rosie. Just try not to, in front of them, could you?”

    I can try but will it work? What I mean is, will I stop? Even if I do, I don’t think it’ll work. But I just say mildly: “Yeah. Maybe we could talk about my research.”

    “Yes, that’d help, if we can manage to shake off assorted apricot actresses!”

    “Alliterative,” I say, leaning my head on his shoulder.

    He smiles and kisses me very slowly. “Mmm… I’m sorry, Rosie.”

    “What for?”

    “Demanding you change just because of my Aged P.’s.”

     Eh? Oh! Dickens. He reads a lot of Dickens, he likes him. “That’s okay: you have to compromise in any relationship, don’t you?”

    “Possibly you do, but I didn’t mean to demand it.”

    “That wasn’t a demand, Captain Haworth, you’re talking to an expert in Little Hitlers, here, ya know!”

    “Mm.” He kisses me again and the topic lapses, along with all other topics…

    Boy, that was good. Gee, if that’s what worrying what his ruddy parents are gonna think of me does for him, he can worry any old time, for mine! Heck, he’s asleep already. Very generously, this is not something L.R. Marshall does for any bloke, I remove the condom, dispose of it, and wash and dry him. He sleeps on…

    Tim slept through it all, but just as I’m gonna turn my bedside lamp off he wakes up and comes over and looks at me sadly. Cautiously I pat the bed. He’s up here like a shot. Well, maybe for whatever obscure doggie reason, he needs comfort and reassurance tonight, too. I give him a big cuddle and let him stay there.

    At least the old joker’s not driving a Roller, or even a Bentley: it’s a Merc, Dad drives one of those but I don’t mention it. Well, keep it in reserve. Silver-grey, Dad’s is maroon. I’m positively maidenly in a Fifties sunfrock, at least Yvonne characterised it as such: white piqué with a very narrow red belt, and a flared skirt. The bodice is a halter top but a very modest one, with a neato sharp white collar. John’s crashingly conservative in fawn drill slacks and a short-sleeved navy-blue knit shirt. He leaps forward and opens Mother’s door before the hotel’s uniformed slave can move.

    “So you found it!”

    “Silly, darling; of course we found it, your father wouldn’t let me navigate!” Deeper voice than the Queen’s, but otherwise— Help, she sort of reaches up and he has to bend down and kiss her. Then he helps her out, it sure as Hell isn’t what my Mum wears for a Sunday drive. She’s thin and tall, very elegant, with lovely white hair, short at the back and beautifully curled at the front, great cut, smart as paint. The outfit’s a three-piece, silk, I think: black permanently pleated skirt with a white edging at the hem, black and white patterned soft jacket, very simple cut, plain white loose blouse. White sandals, white handbag, this is summer, right. The Admiral’s getting out while the uniformed slave holds his door, help, he’s in a navy-blue knit shirt just like John’s. Navy cotton trou. He’s thin, too, rather craggy, very like John facially, but a bit taller. He comes round to our side of the car and that makes three tall, elegant Haworths looking down at dumpy Rosie in her silly Fifties halter-top sun-dress.

    John puts an arm round my waist, I suppose that helps, too numb to decide, really. “Mother, Father, this is Rosie: Rosie Marshall. Rosie, darling, my parents: Lady Haworth, Admiral Sir Bernard Haworth. –Miriam and Bernard,” he finishes, smiling. Right, I’m likely to call them by their first names, and shit, yeah, I did call her “Mrs” on the phone. Limply I shake hands. “How do you do?” I actually say these words, see, but they make the upper-clawss English noise that takes their place. “How’dja doow,” like that. They’re both smiling politely and she says nicely that John’s told her all about me, my work sounds so interesting, and he smiles and nods, shit, his smile is so like John’s! And I can see he quite fancies me if he is seventy-nine. But at the same time I can also see they’re both prepared to hate me forever and a day with an undying hatred.

    And so we go off to the Solarium for a lovely afternoon—tea! Tea. And what I ever done to deserve it in that past life at the end of the universe I’m sure I don’t know.