Episode 6: Lily Rose Rayne

Episode 6: Lily Rose Rayne

    I’ve been such a good girl. For one thing, I’ve let Euan trot me round Paris as his sweet little girlfriend. –If ya wanna know, it was bloody cold, but very beautiful, all misty shades of grey, but not romantic as such, it’s just a big city, and very industrial on the outskirts. And especially not romantic since we stayed on for the New Millennium Celebrations, and the Frogs’ idea of that was just as vulgar as any other racial or national group’s could possibly be. Added to which he was trailed by paparazzi most of the time, not because he’s a big international star, that Robinson Crusoe thing, as I think I might have mentioned, bombed, but because Double Dee Productions have had their PR persons busily on the job—geddit? I only got a mention as “et une amie” in a caption, just as well, given that he knows me as Rosie Marshall—though at that stage I had yet to be introduced to the PR world as Lily Rose Rayne. I was in fear and trembling for a while, but I don’t think Brian Hendricks reads the Paris papers. Actually I don’t think anybody reads the Paris papers, they’re dreck, apart from the hugely up-market ones which in their quiet way are pretty unreadable, too, you oughta cop a gander at Le Figaro. Little fat men in grubby blue overalls who sit round in cafés smoking heavily buy them for the racing results. And presumably for a hopeful glance at the pics in case any tit’s showing. –No, it wasn’t: the whole place was freezing, as I think I might have mentioned.

    We went to innumerable trendy, glitzy dumps, I can’t tell you where or what they were because it was just bundle into the taxi, be decanted from the taxi and bundle into whatever glitzy hole, later bundle out, be decanted back into a taxi, and back to the hotel. The only bit of the whole Paris trip that I actually enjoyed, except one or two of the bits in bed, naturally, was one afternoon when we escaped from everything and everyone and just got the Métro and then walked round the outside of Notre Dame and went in, it always seems to be open. It was a very, very cold day and very misty, outside you couldn’t see much. Flying Buttresses In The Mist, it was ace. Then we went to a café for a cup of the blackest, strongest coffee in the world, I thought the short blacks in Sydney were strong, but boy! He tried to tell me it was the café where J.-P. Sartre and Simone de B. used to hang out but I shut him up, I didn’t wanna know, I just wanted to enjoy the moment.

    Back in London I’ve also been a very good girl, I’ve let bloody Varley Knollys and Brian Hendricks, plus Terry vander Post, he’s the Designer, he’s responsible for the over-all Look, trick me out in the pink wool suit and trot me out to our august pre-sold clients. They didn’t go so far as to put a little pink rosebud in my hair or make me wear a Fifties hat but I kept feeling they were going to any minute now—y’know? High-heeled black patents, a Fifties-look black patent handbag from Wardrobe that had to go back to them straight after, Ruth actually made me sign for it, and, why not, Miss Hammersley’s huge brown fur coat. Terry was over the moon at the sight of it, even on Rupy, and tore it off his protesting back. “My God!” he screamed, “it’s gen-u-ine! Look at the Label!” The Label didn’t mean a thing to all us mere actors, but we obligingly looked. Incidentally, Rupy had me practising getting elegantly into and out of coats with the help of a gentleman, he was horrified to find I couldn’t do it. Never knew anything about it, more like. This all was for the showing of the pilot, cringe.

    They finally worked out, after all the screaming-matches, that there’s going to be a simple but strong storyline, Varley reckons that’s one of the main reasons why The Good Life succeeded so well. Personally I’d say there were four main reasons, namely, four wonderful actors totally suited to their parts. And an additional one, that it was only a half-hour show. Ours is gonna be an hour. However. Our Simple but S. storyline is, the Captain (a widower) and the Ship’s Doctor (a misogynist) want to get the Captain’s daughter married off and out of his hair and settle back into their comfortable bachelor life of pink gins and a game of draughts when alone in the evenings in the Captain’s cabin. (Day Cabin.) Rupy’s character, Commander, the First Officer, adds the complication of eagerly helping with ever more unsuitable suitors: he’s a social climber with Connections. Daughter’s much more of a simpleton than the Reluctant Débutante, she doesn’t object to any of them, or any of it, in principle, but only because she’s not in love with them. She’s very young, and the pilot episode is about how she turns up from her last term at school before Daddy’s expecting her (in her gym slip, you betcha: they weren’t gonna turn down a legit opportunity to go really kinky). The sailors are putting on a Production and rope her in, even though girls on board are forbidden—this is while the ship’s at Gib, see? Never mind, I don’t think you’re meant to. Daddy’s off at a meeting or something, and Doctor’s ashore on leave, and it dawns on her that if she lets on who she is she’ll miss out on all the fun, so she doesn’t. Mild complications ensue, not to mention a lot of dressing up in bellbottoms, they had to make a pair specially for me, my bum’s the wrong shape. It ends, when all has been revealed, with Daddy Captain and Doctor mopping their brows in the Day Cabin (after the ageing paramour’s been tricked into flouncing off, to Daddy Captain’s relief), and admitting that the only thing to do, old boy, is to marry the girl off and get her out of your/my hair. Meanwhile doing my best, adds Daddy Captain, not to marry myself, off, eh?—This is Varley’s idea: the Captain’s quite self-aware, Varley reckons that one of the reasons The Good Life succeeded was that the characters weren’t two-dimensional. Whether Michael Manfred can do self-aware is another matter, of course.—They grin, and drink to that.

    It went over a treat, believe me or believe me not, grins, handshakes, kisses on the cheek for some, and French fizz all round. I was so shattered that when I got home I crawled into bed and slept for eleven hours solid, shades of my first day here. Michael Manfred was pretty shattered too, poor old thing: given his age and the ruddy drawing-room comedies he saw it as his last chance to make a go of a telly career. We shared a taxi home, and his hands were actually shaking. And he didn’t even think of making a pass. He insisted on dropping me off, I don’t think he wanted to let on where he lives, Rupy reckons it’s somewhere very down-market. The rest of them weren’t invited, it was only Varley, Brian, Paul, some management bods and the two Stars. Gulp.

    Of course everyone was very, very Up. Although people did say: “Wait for the Ratings.”

    We didn’t have to wait for the Ratings, we got so much fan mail after the pilot went to air that they had to send it on from You-Know-Where in a van. Honest. What with me in the gym slip, the baby-doll and the bellbottoms, and pretty little Darryn in his uniform, and lovely Rupy in his uniform, and the darling of the twinset set in white captain’s gear—honest! Brian broke out the champagne for the whole company—I mean, not just our show, all of Henny Penny Productions including two other shows that were in rehearsal. Though still saying, with a big fat grin on his face, that of course we’d have to wait for the Ratings. The Ratings came out, like death and taxes, they do that, and we’d shot to the top by the third episode.

    After that I was a really good girl, I did all the publicity stuff that Brian wanted, meanwhile making bloody sure I got all the requisite outfits out of them as per contract. Sheila kept getting offers for me, she was practically in tears because I turned them all down. But heck, I’ve got to get some real work done some time, and what with Brian ordering the second series into production immediately, they want to screen it virtually on top of the first— Whew!

    We didn’t see anything of Derry Dawlish for ages, though he did send me a big bouquet after the pilot screened, well, got his secretary to do it, and we thought, make that some of us were hoping, he’d lost interest. But actually he was very busy, first shooting all the studio bits of the nineteenth-century Russian thing, and then editing the Prague bits, he shut himself away in the cutting room with his editor for a couple of months.

    Very fortunately Euan was terribly busy with the studio bits of the nineteenth-century Russian thing at the time the series started screening, and it never dawned that it was me. So we’d just see each other in the evenings, sometimes managing to have a meal, and I’d stay the night. He wanted me to move in at one stage, his excuse was it’d be easier for us, he meant easier for him, but I said I wasn’t ready to be that serious, and anyway my work took up such a lot of my time, it’d drive him barmy. He was really pissed off at first but after I’d let the answering machine take his messages for a week and then turned down three invitations in a row because I was working on my notes, he got the picture.

    I’ve also been a very good girl as far as Mark Rutherford is concerned, because I’ve now got mountains of material for the book. The first big job is to sort it all out, not imposing previously conceived categories on it. (Not looking at anybody, M.R.) Then the next big job will be to look at everyone’s results—this won’t happen for months yet, mind you, they’re still all out in the field—and do some correlation, and make quite sure that everyone’s been working within the Concept. It sounds more and more like Varley Knollys and Brian Hendricks at each successive Progress Report Meeting that Mark holds. He tried going with one a fortnight but it was impossible, people had to get up from places like Cardiff and Aberdeen and Watford and like that. So now it’s once a month. So as to maintain their rôles all the field observers of course have to make up excuses to their employers why they need to be away, and it wasn’t working at all, so now Mark has the meetings in the weekends. Norma isn’t all that pleased about it, even though we meet in at the university, of course, not at their place. No, he doesn’t take time off during the week to make up for it, this is Mark Rutherford, Certified Workaholic, remember? Added to which he’s got a pretty heavy lecture schedule.

    The final job will be Mark’s, to pull it all together, write the introduction and the conclusion, not to mention a couple of other nice fat chapters, and put his name above our “with the collaboration of” on the title page. I think I’m the only person that suspects he's already written the introduction and the conclusion. Well, the rest of them are very naïve, or, from Planet Sociology. Correction: I’ll bet you twenty to one Norma Rutherford also suspects but then, she’s an intelligent woman. And not a sociologist.

    Of course I’m also working on my nationalism paper, only I think Mark might’ve forgotten about that, and I’m not reminding him. It’s looking good, I’ve sent a synopsis to a decent journal that wants to publish it, with all the usual provisos, they’re not into pre-sold, unlike some, and actually I think it may turn out to be rather more than that: I’ve got an awful lot of material and I’m still gathering it. Added to which I’m earning so much money from the acting shit that even if the university won’t pay for a couple of researchers for me I’ll be able to afford them myself and get them to do some solid stuff on what the media’s reflection of nationalism is. It’ll be up to me to sort out whether it is reflection or opinion-shaping. I think I’ll leave the political side severely alone, but there is the possibility that Rog Forbes, he’s the main political sociologist in the Department, might want to contribute a chapter…

    So by the time the darling buds of May are sprouting, actually it’s bloody cold and all the blossom on the trees in the front gardens down the road from the flat got knocked off last month in the freezing gales, everything in the garden’s rosy, no pun intended. Euan doesn’t know anything, and he’s rehearsing a part in some Shakespeare thing and dickering with his agent over another drecky Hollywood offer, he’s too busy to take any notice of anything on the box; Mark’s pleased with my progress, I’m pleased with my progress; The Captain’s Daughter, thank God, didn’t bomb and lose poor old Brian his investment, not to say his reputation; Rupy’s character’s become one of the most solid and popular and he’s signed contracts for the third series, and Seve and Joanie are happy as two bugs in a rug in their blessed bar.

    Of course somewhere in the offing there’ll be an old Greek crone, a blind old Greek crone I think it is, technically, with her shears out ready to snip the string of Fate, you get a lot of that in life. Especially if you’re suffering, as just possibly you might have gathered L.R. Marshall is round about now, from a strong attack of hubris. I could cite you lots of references for that, but I’ll just explain it by saying it’s very old Greek for up-yourselfness to the Nth degree, and the whole bit can be summed up in my Mum’s simple phrase as: “Pride Goes Before A Fall, Rosie.”

    The blow falls but gee, L.R. Marshall can cope! I belt into Rupy’s room, panicking like billyo. “Rupy, Rupy, wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake UP!”

    He rouses. “Huh? ’S’house on fire?”

    “No! Wake UP, it’s awful!”

    “Worl’ War Three?”

    “No! Wake UP, take that silly sleeping mask OFF!”

    Groggily he takes it off. “Oh. Everything had gone black, dear.”

    “It would have done, under that, you cretin! It’s not bloody World War Three, we’re in the New Millennium and the Cold War’s OVER!”

    “No need to shout. What, then? –If you’ve seen a mouse it’s no use coming to me, dear. Live and let live, that’s my motto.”

    “Right, you and your wanking fur coats and lizard belts!” I collapse onto the edge of the bed. –That proves it was freezing last night, he’s got his fawn silk duvet on. He’s redone the room, he couldn’t stand the brown. I dunno if you’re supposed to paint over wainscoting, but he got a painter and decorator friend to do it all in pale oatmeal, the walls above it as well. It looks ace, with the curtains full length bright canary yellow, and the new black rug. It covers up most of the original grungy brown carpet with little garlands of grungy pink flowers on it and we just pretend it’s not there, though it has reduced some of his more artistic friends to near tears. The mirror’s a fixture, but he hated its gold frame, so after deep thought he got the painter and decorator to paint it shiny black. He really is a painter and decorator, not an artistic friend, it’s his trade, so he just about had kittens, but he did it: Rupy charmed him into it. The Polish girls have moved on, but Rupy’s re-sub-let his flat to Darryn Hinds and an even prettier boy who between you and me I think Rupy’s hoping is gay. He isn’t, he’s already made a heavy pass at me, although he must be eight or nine years younger than me, and last time they asked me round the place was crawling with hetero friends all making out madly in the intervals of eating pizza and drinking awful red wine. –They’re at that stage, you see, and they don’t cook.

    “I’ve had a letter from Aunty Kate.”

    “Yes?” he says politely.

    “She’s one of Mum’s sisters, they live in Adelaide. Aunty Kate and Uncle Jim!”

    “Yes?” he says politely.

    “Stop saying that! She’s the one that invites herself everywhere without asking you if it’s convenient, I told you! She invited herself to Aunty Allyson’s in the middle of Wendalyn’s divorce, and to Mum and Dad’s the week Kenny had his B.Sc. finals, and to Joslynne’s Aunty Pam’s in Queensland the week after her Uncle Dave had run off with his accountant!”

    He brightens, he liked that story, it was a male accountant and Joslynne’s Aunty Pam’s a bully. “Oh, yes: sun and scandal!” he says happily.

    “Rupe-ee-ee!”

    The penny drops. “Omigod! No?”

    I nod frantically, shoving the letter at him, but of course he can’t read it without his contacts. “When?” he gasps.

    “Tomorrow. I told you, she’s like that!”

    “Uh—shall I move out?”

    “What? No, you birk! No, she doesn’t know anything, and the series is on, she’ll be glued to the box, she always is, and I’ve got a personal appearance at a shopping mall on Wednesday, and on Saturday it’s that bizarre opening”—one of his favourite phrases, he nicked it off a character actor who’s a friend of Adam McIntyre’s, he does that sort of thing—“and this Friday as ever was—”

    “Omigod! No!”

    “Yes,” I say grimly. “Parkinson.”

    We gulp, and goggle at each other in pure dismay.

    After a very long time he ventures: “Darling, is there any possibility I could keep her occupied? Take her out to—uh—well, Gaynor Grahame in That Symington Woman Again, or that other one that Joanie was going to be in.”

    “It’s Saturday. She’s due tomorrow. You’d have to keep her occupied tomorrow night because we’re on, Monday afternoon because they’re showing that chat show I did with that female with the specs,”—he nods numbly—“Tuesday morning because I’ve got that radio chat show with that joker that doesn’t know what questions to ask,”—he nods numbly—“all day Wednesday while I’m doing the shopping mall, all day Friday and all Friday night, needless to state, and all day Saturday while I’m at the bazaar. And I haven’t even mentioned Thursday, because as you may just recall, we’ve both got fittings all morning and then a joint appearance at that boat thing.”

    He goggles at me in horror.

    “And that’s only Week One,” I add redundantly.

    “Well—uh—well, how long is she staying for?”

    “Rupy, she doesn’t say, this is Aunty Kate!”

    “Well—uh—it’s not impossible, darling, with supreme organisation… Um, tell her?”

    “My whole family will go ballistic. Ballistic, Rupy.”

    “Yes, but it’s not as if you’ve dropped your degree,”—I finished my degree yonks back but he’s not quite sure what a fellowship is—“or um, the series had bombed, or um—like that.”

    “No, but I can’t tell her the whole truth, can I?”

    “Eh?”—Most of the time he forgets that Tellydom is not my real life, but he does now know all about my research.—“Oh, the laptop bag, dear. No, I suppose not.”

    “Because, she won’t keep her big fat mouth shut! It’ll be ‘My niece the Celebrity,’ and then she’ll let out the lot to one of those wanking paparazzi from the scandal sheets! ‘My niece the Celebrity with the Doctorate in Sociology!’”

    “Ugh. Um—never thought of you as a Doctor, dear,” he says with a wan smile.

    “Well, I am. The ratings’d drop like a stone, the whole of the Great British Public would be totally incensed at being taken for mugs. And in the unlikely event they didn’t think of it for themselves, the tabloids’d remind them of it, because I’ve made mugs of them, too, and being made mugs of is the one thing they can’t stand!”

    He shudders, so evidently he can envisage it.

    “Added to which, my field work’d be ruined and Mark wouldn’t be able to publish my chapter of the book and I’d probably lose the fellowship.”

    “Not really, darling?” he gasps.

    “Uh—well, probably not. Though they have more or less got absolute power. And it is legit sociological research, it’s just not legit behaviour towards the great viewing public and Brian Hendricks, or Them Up There in Television Heaven that’ve got the fate of Henny Penny Productions and all its salaried personnel in their hands.” I’m about to add: “Think about it,” to this last, but he obviously has.

    “Then we can’t tell her you’re still doing your research!” he gasps.

    “No. In that case my whole family’ll believe I’ve dropped the fellowship in favour of lee glamore-ous telly life, and go ballistic.”

    “Ballistic on the other side of the world, dear,” he points out.

    “Ye-ah. Well, Mum bawled her eyes out when I got the fellowship, presumably it can’t make much difference if she bawls her eyes out when she thinks I’ve dropped it. But Dad’ll be ropeable, he thought I’d settled into something solid.”

    His mouth twitches in a sketch of a smile. “Mm.”

    After a while I admit glumly: “I s’pose Euan was gonna find out anyway.”

    “Er—well, yes, dear: I mean, you can keep most things a secret for most of the time when a person’s neck-deep in Stratford and the goings-on of the RSC, but hardly Parkinson. They may not admit it, but—”

    I know. “Glued to it,” I agree glumly.

    “Quite. Er—well, bite on the bullet, Rosie, darling?”

    “Aunty Kate and Euan at one blow?”

    He winces, but agrees it would be sensible. After that he gets up, and, once he’s been to the bog and got his contacts in and his silk dressing-gown on, it isn’t like what you might think, it’s a lovely restrained one, dark navy, we have a nice mug of instant and draw up the most horrifically complicated timetable for next week which will prevent Aunty Kate from Ever Knowing.

    Sunday. “And who’s this?” Leer, leer—thinks he’s a boyfriend.

    “This is Rupy, Aunty Kate, he’s sharing the flat, I wrote Mum all about—” Oh, yes. She’s very pleased to meet him, glad someone sensible is keeping an eye on Rosie—he preserves his calm wonderfully—and very glad to hear his new part’s such a success! –Poor Rupy’s gone green. But I had to say that, otherwise they’d be sending me grim airmails wanting to know if he was paying his share of the rent.

    The rest of the world, being sensible, not to say, not millionaires, doesn’t take a flaming taxi all the way from the airport, they take the bus or the train, but Aunty Kate’s not into that. So we pile into a taxi. Uncle Jim does say in my ear as we try to wedge the luggage in: “I’ll pay, Rosie, don’t worry.”—“Have you got any—oof!—English money?” He subsides, with a mutter of “She’s got this horror story about some types that changed their money into rupees before they went to India.”

    In the taxi she tells us all about the TV quiz that’s the immediate cause of the trip, like, she won it. Probably just talked the other contestants down, yeah. Uncle Jim tries to explain that they already had their passports for the trip to Bali last year but she withers him. She doesn’t explain why the fuck they just decided to hop on a plane right away, in fact we are never to learn this, but as a matter of fact there probably isn’t a why, as such, she probably just decreed they’d come, so they came. She’s like that. Uncle Jim wouldn’t’ve been able to stop her, he’s never been able to stop her, she’s sold eight perfectly nice houses out from under him and that’s only in my lifetime. That makes an average of slightly over 3.37 years per house, if you’re trying to work it out.

    London gets the thumbs down, very dirty and rundown. Uncle Jim tries to say there isn’t as much traffic as he thought there’d be but she withers him: it’s Sunday! He tries to make a feeble joke about the International Date Line. (This probably wouldn’t occur to you if you’re from the North, but it sometimes does to us Antipodeans, you do cross it if you go the other way.) She withers that, too.

    Finally Rupy manages to ask what the prize actually is: is there a tour or— No, just the trip, and a thousand dollars spending money. But they were planning to come some time anyway, blah, blah. That’s the last ray of hope gone, the prize doesn’t include a tour so there’s no hope of getting rid of her in the foreseeable future, and it doesn’t include a hotel, so we will be stuck with her, yeah, like we thought. Just as well we spent the whole of yesterday arvo tidying up Joanie’s old room and moving my files and books and the computer out of it and back into my room, eh? Not just the computer, literally, whaddareya? No, the printer and the scanner as well, not to mention having to disconnect the VDU from the— Listen, if you’ve ever done it you’ll know what I mean, and why we had to totter down to the pub afterwards.

    She insists on going to bed the minute we get home, it’s to counteract the jet-lag. There being two diametrically opposed schools of thought on this one, she had to be in one or the other. They’ll sleep until teatime. (She means dinnertime.) And to be sure and wake them up for it. Once he’s sure they’re in their room and won’t come out again demanding more blankets—it’s May, for God’s sake!—and more towels and some nice English soap, and some bottled water, don’t ask me what for, I’m past even wondering, Rupy notes that she did mean dinner, did she? Good, then it can be nice and late. Well after You-Know-What has gone to air. Too right, Rupy. He wonders if he can risk watching— Uh, no, better safe than sorry. Can we risk going next-door to watch it on Miss Hammersley’s set? He can, I better not. With heroic self-sacrifice he agrees to stay with me. And hold my hand, you betcha.

    … Tea at this hour! Have I forgotten how I was brought up? Good heavens, we don’t need wine, Rosie! Rupy does, he hurriedly pours himself one before she can banish the bottle. And one for Uncle Jim, who’s looking sad. Sadder than usual, if you see what I mean... The phone rings. Don’t these people know enough not to ring at teatime? Well, go on, dear: answer it! Miss Hammersley ringing to congratulate us warmly on the episode. I manage not to say anything meaningful. Or even coherent. Who was it, Rosie? I lie... This isn’t instant mashed potato, is it, Rosie? I lie... The phone rings. Not again! Well, answer it, Rosie! Doris Winslow from downstairs, and Buster, I can hear him panting, ringing to congratulate us warmly on the episode. Again I manage not to say anything coherent, up to and including a warm inquiry after Buster. Buster, Rosie? (Silly laugh.) I lie. Well, sit down, dear, your tea’s getting cold! Surely this isn’t frozen spinach? I lie... The phone rings again. What? This is ridiculous! Don’t just sit there, Rosie! Admiral Hammersley ringing to congratulate me warmly on the episode. I’m so shook up, I was afraid it was Euan, post-episode, that I call him “Admiral”. Who on earth was that, Rosie? Admiral, did you say? I lie... Good heavens, is this a Sara Lee cheesecake? They cost the Earth! I’m too blank to lie: in the first place I don’t distinguish between cheesecake, in the second place I usually buy whatever’s on special, and in the third place Rupy chose this. He comes to the rescue and lies smoothly, ratifying it with enormous detail about the special that was on that week… The phone rings again before we can finish choking it down but by now he realises I’m past it, so he bounces up and grabs it. It’s only Tony, ringing to congratulate him warmly on the episode. Terrific giggles and thanks ensue, but at least he doesn’t get so carried away he asks the big-mouth over.

    She never has coffee in the evenings, it keeps her awake, so we don’t. She’s about to insist on doing the dishes but is almost silenced by the sight of the giant dish-washing machine that I went out and bought with the first salary cheque from Henny Penny. (Rupy was stunned by my extravagance, but he didn’t stop me.) Almost silenced. Good heavens, what did this cost? I don’t even have to lie, Rupy’s telling her without the flicker of an eyelash that it’s a fixture of the flat.

    During the rest of the evening, which is mercifully not that long, we did have tea very late, the phone only rings six times. What’s wrong with these people you’ve met in England, Rosie, haven’t they got anything better to do? None of them is Euan, thank God. One, Darryn, he wants to talk it over, very dashed when neither of us wants to. Two, Brian, very pleased with it, he wants to talk it over, too, and I have to explain we’ve got my relations staying—kindly interest, why not show them round the studios, gulp. Three, Garry Woods who plays Doctor, he wants to talk it over, tell him we’ve got the rellies. Four, Paul Mitchell, how did we think it went, his flatmate thought it went over quite well and several people have already rung him to congratulate him. (So why’s he ringing us?) Can’t think of anything to say but he doesn’t notice. Five, Paula O’Reilly, very Up, lots of people have rung her to congratulate her, she thought it went very well. (Is this compliment or self-congratulation?) Don’t say much and she rings off. And Six, Bridget, our phone’s been engaged for ages!—Oh, has it?—And she saw the episode, it was really great, congratulations, Rosie! I pass her on to Rupy, I’m really pleased she liked it but what with the strain of thinking all these phone calls were Euan, and the strain of not saying anything meaningful because the phone, as you have no doubt guessed, is right here in the middle of the brown combined sitting-dining room…

    Rupy puts the answering-machine on and turns the ringer off, he’s discovered you can do that, well, it makes a sort of purr but you can drown that by putting the telly on, so he does, now that all danger’s past. Ooh, a lovely news snippet of Lily Rose Rayne last Friday, opening a— He changes channels, white as a sheet. The boxing. Uncle Jim’s just congratulating him on it and settling down to enjoy himself when she decrees that he hasn’t come all the way to England to watch that rubbish. Apparently he’s come all the way to England to sleep in Joanie’s bedroom, because she drags him off firmly to it. Rupy and me just sit limply in front of the boxing for ages and ages and ages… All I manage to say is: “They’re a bit small, aren’t they?” And all he manages to say is: “Bantam-weight, dear.”

    We’re just crawling off to bed when the phone purrs and I automatically answer it. Euan, ringing to ask hopefully what I thought of his play. Omigod, it was on tonight, but we never got as far as the up-market channel it was on! I croak out something about having the rellies from Oz this week. He’s terribly, terribly dashed. He thought it went over quite well and several people—not me, right—have rung him up to congratulate him on it. Oh, good. I can’t say anything coherent, I can’t even remember what it was. Rupy’s mouthing “Shakespeare?” I shake my head madly at him. Eventually I manage to make a date with Euan for Tuesday evening, I think we need to talk, Rupy’s shuddering but nodding hard, and does he think he can get me four tickets for his Stratford play? (Well, Christ, we’ve gotta do something with them.) Four? I explain, he’s terrifically pleased it’s only Rupy that’s the fourth. See you on Tuesday, Rosie, darling! Yeah. Ta-ta.

    “Darling, the Stratford effort’ll be terribly intellectual and artistic, probably all black rehearsal cl—”

    “Shuddup, Rupy, ya can sit through it and like it!”

    He blinks. “Not me, dear. H,E,R,” he mouths, rolling his eyes in the direction of Joanie’s bedroom.

    “Uh—oh. Sorry. Well, who cares, she can tell everybody she knows she’s been to Stratford-upon-Avon.”

    He doesn’t comment on the phraseology, he gets it. And we go glumly off to bed, me setting the alarm, because I’ve gotta get up before Her to monitor the answering-machine and grab the morning paper and make quite sure it doesn’t feature a lovely pic of Lily Rose Rayne opening that flaming mall.

    Monday. It does. Thought it would. I bung it down the rubbish chute.

    You might think that my Aunty Kate McHale (right: it is like McHale’s Navy, she doesn’t think it’s funny but good old Uncle Jim does) is one of those giant sixteen-stone, square-shouldered middle-aged ladies, because that is sure enough what she comes on like. But she isn’t. Well, she is middle-aged, she’s in her early sixties, older than Mum, and Uncle Jim’s sixty-seven. He’s retired, that’s why they’re free to jaunt round the world at the drop of a hat. But she isn’t sixteen stone, she’s about ten stone with the sort of scrawny physiology that’s never put on an ounce of fat in its life, one theory common in the Marshall part of her extended family being that the bile eats it up before it can go on the hips. Always had yellow hair, like Mum’s and mine, and it firmly still is. Nicely layered, very short at the neck, slightly bouffant and well controlled on top with a curlier bit over the forehead. Not a fringe, she thinks fringes are messy. Wears rather a lot of icky little pieces of real gold jewellery that Uncle Jim’s been forced to shell out for, for birthdays and anniversaries and Mother’s Days. She is a mother but none of the kids are still living in Adelaide, I wonder why. Medium height: contrary to popular mythology, although Australian women can be very tall, the majority aren’t. Very keen on clothes: normally wears rather bright things but with a tendency to camel-hair coats. Come to think of it, a bit like Coralee Adams’s get-ups. Not quite In, but very acceptable for her age and socio-economic group.

    Therefore we have to go shopping. She doesn’t notice there’s no morning paper, she’s too busy talking, but Uncle Jim supposes wistfully we don’t get the Advertiser, or whatever it is here, do we? I lie to the poor old bugger. He doesn’t want to come shopping, no, not even to see Harrods, in fact he goes green at the thought. Not to mention the thought of what her let loose in Earthly Paradise will do to the plastic. She’s sure Rupy can look after him, men always hate shopping, don’t they, and they’d only be a nuisance. I blink, but go and shake him awake and make sure he knows he has to keep Uncle Jim off this morning’s paper and away from the telly all afternoon because it’s me on that dim chat show with the female with the specs. (Taped, yes!) He’d rather come to Harrods, but since we did have a contingency plan for just this contingency, agrees to take Uncle Jim to the pub and/or the dogs and keep him there. He’s not allowed to go to the dogs, she thinks it’s low, though mind you she makes Dad take her to Randwick to see the gee-gees every time they’re in Sydney and forces him to give her good odds. Though not normally gambling, of course.

    Harrods is Harrods—Earthly Paradise, yep. I suppose there may be one still-breathing human female that doesn’t love it, but I’ve yet to meet her. We cast a few glances over a couple of boutiques on the way, why she wants to walk part of the way don’t ask me, but once we get there we just plunge in and immerse ourselves for hours and hours and hours…

    When we get home Rupy and Uncle Jim are sitting by the electric fire drinking nice cups of tea and reading the racing tips, looking smug. We’re taking them out to dinner tonight, not The Tabla because in the first place the Singhs’d come up and congratulate us warmly on Sunday’s episode, and in the second place she won’t eat spicy food. She tells us it’s an extravagance but that doesn’t mean she’ll offer to pay or let Uncle Jim pay. We’ve chosen an obscure little almost-French, slightly nouvelle cuisine place that Rupy’s been to a couple of times, but as it’s not run by any of his little mates it’s probably safe. Just to make extra sure I wear a baggy black blouse that Rupy got at a flea market, it looks a million times better on him because he’s got those nice shoulders that even quite slim men have and that short, plumpish females don’t. Plus and sneakers and a newish pair of jeans. Rosie, you can’t wear those! Aunty Kate, nobody minds what you wear these day— I change the jeans for a baggy pair of greenish slacks that Joanie had when she was going through a fat phase, years back. Much better, but can’t we do something with my hair? I wish we could, it’s hard to disguise a Shirley Temple cut. But with Rupy’s help and five million bobby-pins we put it up, kind of a fake French roll. That’s much better, now I look my age! It’s silly to dress younger than one’s actual age, Rosie, no-one is deceived. Poor old Uncle Jim’s looking as if he wants to die but I wink at him behind her back and he has a choking fit. She adds a pair of large gold clip earrings, glad to see I haven’t got my ears full of holes like the silly children do these days. I don’t mention that Varley Knollys, Terry vander Post and Paul Mitchell, not to say the head cameraman, are also very glad about it, and I don’t look at Rupy, even though he’s only got four in each ear. A jazzy green, yellow and white neck-scarf of hers finishes the effect off. We go. Funnily enough, although the place is quite full no-one recognises me as Lily Rose Rayne.

    She condemns all these little bits and pieces that they think they have to serve up these days and notices that she was right, the meat helpings are incredibly mean, but nevertheless eats it all up. Uncle Jim gets told off for pushing his food round his plate. Rupy is also less than enthusiastic, usually he loves the nouvelle sort of stuff that takes ages to do, because of course neither of us can cook, we’re worse than Joanie. So when she’s gone to the bog and dragged Uncle Jim off too whether or not he wants to go, I demand: “What did you two stuff your faces on this afternoon?” Chips, beer, jellied eels, Uncle Jim had never had those before, more beer, more chips, hot sausages, more beer, winkles, Uncle Jim had never had those before, more beer, more chips. Rup-ee-ee!—What?—She’ll do him if she finds out, that’s what! He winks and assures me that she won’t. Then citing several other fascinating instances of what Uncle Jim’s got away with when out from under Her eye. Cor. Never knew he had in him.

    We manage to take them to see London Bridge and the lights even though it’s really far too late to be jaunting all over the city, unquote, and get back so late that all there’s left to do is totter groggily off to bed, me setting the alarm: I’ve got that chat show at crack of dawn tomorrow, remember?

    Tuesday. Rise before crack of dawn, get into pre-agreed pale lemon suit, matching pale lemon shoes, and grab up signed-for Fifties-look brown crocodile handbag. Fidget like mad, waiting for morning paper. Here it is—thank God! I bung the thing down the rubbish chute unread, nay, unfolded, and hurtle downstairs before Barbara can arrive in the studio’s black limo and ring the doorbell and wake Her up and cause her to wonder why I’m going in to my early appointment with my professor as early as this and all gussied up. Younger than my real age, too.

    There would seem to be no point in all this gussying up because this is steam radio, one cannot be seen on it, but actually five thousand phone-in morons ask me what I’m wearing, only one of them being a heavy breather that got past the radio station’s monitoring person. Then the five thousand paparazzi from the tabloids that Barbara’s told as an exclusive turn up. Oh, so that was the point. Silly me.

    –The reason Barbara has to come with me is that Lily Rose can’t be trusted to remember to say the right sort of thing without being reminded of it five minutes beforehand or to wear the right sort of outfit without being checked up on, and because every single thing I go to has to be approved and then monitored by Henny Penny. Or, indeed, initiated, and then approved and monitored. But you’ve guessed that, eh?

    Barbara’s arranged a lunch, not a nice lunch as such, a lunch appearance, so we go there next. I borrow her mobile to ring Rupy. It’s all right, Aunty Kate didn’t think of turning the radio on, he got her to try on all her new clothes and parade in them for him. And Miss Hammersley’s just rung to say she’s called a taxi to collect them for lunch. We’ve let her in on the lot, well, heck, she knows all about my thing for J.H., like, the nadir of my existence, so why not let her in on the next worst thing?

    I offer blessings all round and he rings off but not before reminding me that I’ve got that date with Euan this evening.

    The lunch is a sort of Mothers’ Meeting. It can’t be the Country Women’s thingo, like at home, but something like that. Kind of like a church hall, they’ve decked it out really nicely with boughs of holl— Sorry. Real greenery, artificial blossom, real spring flowers on the tables mixed with bits of artificial asparagus fern, and a real bunch of pale blue irises for me! I love irises, and tell them so, this goes over big so I manage to forget the butterflies in my tummy—not at the thought of the lunch, no! At the thought of having to confess to Euan later today. And I give them a very little, girlish, breathy speech, that Barbara’s written for me and made me practise. All they really want to hear about is what I wear in the shows and what it’s like acting with Michael Manfred, anyway. After lunch I sign autographs, I’ve developed a lovely signature in cooperation with Terry vander Post: “Lily Rose Rayne” in flowing, rounded script, the dot over the I’s a little flower; and tell them individually what it’s like acting with Michael Manfred. (The reason they didn’t invite him instead is that he already had an engagement for a much more up-market ladies’ lunch, geddit?)

    That’s it, and Barbara asks me kindly where I’d like to be dropped off? Anywhere they have stiff gins. Uh—Euan’s? He’s given me a key, you betcha. Um, if a person leaves Stratford at the time he reckoned he was gonna… Where the fuck is Stratford, anyway? Finally I consult her. She’s thrilled: Euan Keel? Why didn’t I tell them? And works it all out, and since he can’t get here for a while yet accepts with a shining morning face, even though it’s now well into the arvo, my invitation to come round to his place with me and wait for him.

    We do that. She’s thrilled, it’s this block! Look, you can see— Can ya? I never knew that was what all those old buildings were. I know where the gin is, though, so after we’ve both used the bog I get it out. Barbara’s a bit taken aback, she’s the mineral-water-with-a-slice-of-lime or at the most glass-of-dry-white-wine type. So I forage in the fridge. Will this do? She turns pale, and gulps that I’d better not open that! The label doesn’t mean a thing to me, it doesn’t say anything like “Clare Valley Sémillon Blanc 1998. A fruitily dry vintage with the taste of the airy Clare hills underlying the springlike youth and sweetness of carefully blended Sémillon grapes, set off by a whisper of blackberry and the subtlest of oaking in French casks. Bottled by Outer Woop-Woop Wines Pty Ltd. Produce of Australia. Contains Preservative”, like what I’m used to. Actually it only says “Pouilly-Fuissé 1994. Appellation contrôlée.” It’s a bit old, isn’t it? Don’tcha think we oughta drink it up before it goes off? No, all right. I find a deep blue bottle. Is this all right? (I kind of remember Euan drinking this, one evening he didn’t feel like alcohol.) Yes, this is lovely, thank you, Lily Rose, so I pour her a glass of it. There aren’t any saucers of sliced lime in the fridge so she doesn’t get one of those.

    Barbara isn’t the sort of person you can really chat to, all she’s interested in is her work and her aerobics classes, so in desperation I put the telly on. He’s got a huge, up-market one, black and slimline, with its own little stand, made of— Yeah, spindly black wrought iron, how didja guess? It’s Oprah, dunno if it’s a repeat or not, they’re all the same. She looks slim, dunno if that means it’s a repeat or not. We watch it avidly. Afterwards Barbara has to pretend it was very silly, really, but Lily Rose Rayne doesn’t, good, because it wasn’t: I always enjoy it, it’s a fascinating social document. I switch over to the racing but I don’t really want to watch that, do I? So I have to switch again. Nothing—dunno—something ethnic—dunno—racing, sorry, sorry— Gee, he’s got lots of channels. She tells me a lot of technical stuff that explains how and why, but I don’t listen. Ooh, is this a rerun of Emmerdale Farm? Uh—no, ad for marg. Finally we settle for a very smudged rerun of McHale’s Navy—well, gee, it’s topical, huh? After that I have another gin and as an afterthought find a packet of cheesy biscuits, and Barbara, who’s a very polite girl, in desperation picks up the blab-out and chooses something herself. Dunno: Pommy something. We watch it anyway.

    By the time he gets here I’ve eaten the entire packet of cheesy biscuits, the level in the gin bottle has sunk considerably, she’s had another drink from the blue bottle and we’ve both been to the bog again. It was getting dark so I ruthlessly switched the lights on and drew the curtains, ignoring Barbara’s faint representations as to the view of the lights out there. May nights in London aren’t that mild.

    “Rosie, darling! Don’t you look sweet!” Big hug against the cream Aran-knit sweater that’s replaced the urban grunge because I remarked of the latter that it was horrible and of the former that it really suited him. Pathetic, really, aren’t they? He smells of smoke, he must’ve stopped off at one of those roadside caffs, he doesn’t smoke.

    “Uh—yeah. Hi, Euan. This is Barbara, she’s been keeping me company. This is Euan.”

    He gives her a totally indifferent look, poor girl; she’s the thin, dark, intense type, and that suit might be linen-look but it’s dark grey and waify with it, and, stop me if you’ve noticed this, he’s gone off the waif look and onto— I’ve stopped.

    Barbara’s all breathless and pinkish, even without any gin. “Mr Keel! It’s wonderful to meet you—” Blah, blah, seen the play the other night—good on her, she’s one up on me, then.

    “Euan,” he corrects with that practised don’t-see-you smile, gee, he’s getting nearly as good at that as Adam McIntyre.

    “Euan,” the poor girl says, going pinker than ever.

    “I hope this dreadful wee pairson here”—rolling the R’s and giving me a squeeze—“gave you something to drink?” She tries to tell him yes and I try to tell him she doesn’t drink. “Good, good.”—Not listening.—“Well, can I call you a cab, Barbara?” Boy, that was easy. I was gonna ask her to stay for a meal: I mean, for heaven’s sake, she’s been keeping me company for hours and she let Mike, the limo driver, go home.

    While we’re waiting for the cab he gives me another big hug and tells me he’s never seen me in yellow. I’m gonna bite on the bullet. “Technically lemon; I had to wear it, eh, Barbara?”

    “Well, yes!” she says with a flustered laugh. “For the lunch, you see, Euan.”

    “Oh? Something special? Girls’ get-together, was it?” he says nicely, investigating my erstwhile cheesy biscuit packet. His face falls.

    “No, she was doing a personal appearance!” she says eagerly.

    “Mm? –Come and sit down, darling,”—patting the sofa beside him. “That’s right!” as I give in, sit down, and let him put his arm round the lemon suit. “Personal appearance? What on earth for?”

    Barbara’s more flustered than ever: she tells him about the women’s group. He looks blank and she adds with a flustered laugh: “For The Captain’s Daughter, of course!”

    “Oh, aye? Oh! I know: everyone was talking about it down at Stratford, they say it’s the hit of the New Millennium.” Then he looks puzzled. “E-er… pairsonal appearance?”

    “I’m in it,” I admit glumly, waiting for him to let go the lemon suit and do his nut.

    “In it!” says Barbara with a laugh. “You’re so modest, Lily Rose! –She’s the making of it, of course. It’d never have taken off without her. Of course, to hear Michael Manfred talk, you’d think it was all down to him, but even The Observer’s television critic said it’s impossible to look at anyone else when she’s on screen!”

    There’s a short pause. Euan’s looking puzzled. Barbara starts to look puzzled, too.

    “He’s been very busy with his Shakespeare,” I say quickly. “And before that he was finishing a film for Derry Dawlish.”

    “Yes, of course, in Prague,” she says faintly.

    “Rosie, what have you been up to? What about your—” Gee, saved by the bell, that’s the front door bell: I leap up before he can say “sociology stuff”.

    “Thanks for keeping me company, Barbara!”

    “That’s quite all right.” She lets me push her towards the door. “Good-bye, Mr, um, Euan.”

    “Bye, dear,” he says vaguely. I push her out of the door.

    “Lily Rose, have I let the cat out of the bag or something?” she hisses.

    “No, I was gonna tell him, that’s why I didn’t bother to change out of the suit.”

    She nods numbly.

    Suddenly I give her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for getting up at crack of dawn and coming with me and everything, Barbara.”

    “Oh—well! It is my job, you know!” Very pleased and taken aback. We can hear the taxi hooting. “I’d better go! Goodbye!”

    “Yeah, see ya, Barbara.” I go back in slowly. He’s poured himself a whisky, is that a good or a bad sign?

    “What on airth have you been up to?”—rather Scotch but very tolerant: pat-pat, funny little woman syndrome.

    “Um, I sort of got mixed up in it before I knew what I was doing…” I tell him a string of half-truths. Joanie and Rupy get most of the blame. Well, she’s in Spain, and he’s signed contracts for the third series that they’re not even gonna start filming until next September.

    “But why didn’t you tell me?”—half laughing, only slightly hurt.

    “Um,” here I prod his up-market rug with my toe, “I thought it’d be a flop and I didn’t want you to laugh.”

    “Aye, but to hear Adam and Georgy, it’s the hit of the century!”

    Shit, have they seen it? I don’t point out the century is barely five months old.

    “Yes, but I thought you’d think it was silly, Euan. And it is: it isn’t serious acting!”

    Light dawns: funny little woman. He knocks back the whisky and grins at me. “Did I no’ tell you you were verra guid in that wee skit in the Festival? You’ve got audience appeal, Rosie.”

    “Tits and bum, you mean. –You can laugh,”—he’s obligingly doing so—“but half the time I’m wearing bellbottoms or bathing-suits or stuff!”

    “Aye, I bet. Come and sit down.” He pats the sofa again.

    I come and sit down. He puts his arm round the suit again. “So you thought I’d laugh at you, wee Rosie?” Sort of purring in my ear, I’ve seen him do that on the box, actually, so it doesn’t go over quite as big as it otherwise would. “Do you no’ know by now that I’m no that sor-rut?” Shit, is he Scotch! How much whisky has he drunk?

    I give him a Lily Rose Rayne look. “I do now, Euan.” Boy, does that go over good. Go to the top of the acting class, L.R. Marshall.

    He gives me a big kiss. I say weakly: “How much whisky have you had?”

    “Och, well, a triple, but on an empty stomach.”

    I think that’s a cue. “Shall we have tea?” This is a genuine slip of the tongue: he laughs pleasedly, corrects it to “dinner,” and asks hopefully if there is anything. Naturally I haven’t brought anything, I’ve spent all day doing footling interviews and posing for the paparazzi and travelling in huge limos and making footling speeches and signing autographs and drinking gin. I go and forage. He gets himself another whisky, kicks his shoes off, a very good sign, and pads after me. Comes up very close behind me in the kitchen, and presses it against my bum. Why do they all do that, when they know you’re trying concentrate on getting their bloody dinner? Not that I mind, far from it, but it sure does spoil the concentration.

    “There’s a lot of frozen steak, do you know how to defrost it, Euan?” Put it in the microwave and turn it to defrost, right. Will it be edible after that? I do it anyway. “Oven fries?”

    He laughs, presses it to the bum, actually puts down his glass to hug me and says into my curls: “Chips with everything! Oh, go on, then, you’ve talked me into it.”

    I think there was a nuance or fifteen there that I missed, but too bad. I bung the chips in the oven. Then I discover some beans and start slicing them. He hasn’t seen anyone do that since he was a wee boy. I'm doing something non-U? I already know he grew up in a lower middle-class family: not picturesquely working-class, his Dad ran a corner shop, did quite well out of it, and has since retired to a seaside suburb. He doesn’t like to talk about it, so I don’t ask.

    “Um, I brought a video of the show, but it’s pretty sickening. Do ya wanna watch it?” (Miss Hammersley’s religiously taping every episode. This is the one we missed.)

    He’s pleased, of course he wants to see my show! He goes off to put it in the machine. I go on slicing beans. It’s difficult to do that with all your fingers crossed; but I think it’s okay now. It’ll only turn into a disaster, though this is outside the bounds of credibility, more like what nightmares are made of, if he decides that I’m a real actress and therefore competition to his talented self… Well, if we bust up we bust up, no skin off my nose. He’s laughing. I slice beans carefully…

    Uh, shit, we’re never gonna get through all these beans!

    He’s stopped the tape, he comes into the kitchen, I don’t dare to turn round. “I’ve done too many beans.”

    “Mm? Och, never mind, chuck them out! You’re verra guid, Rosie! Come and sit down and watch it!”

    We go back and sit down and watch it. He laughs a lot, but sometimes he shakes his head. Eventually I’m driven to say: “I only did what Paul Mitchell told me.”

    “Mm? Oh, yes; he’s not bad…” It finishes with this week’s guest, the older Spanish lover, shades of Seve (not in the clinical sense, though, as Varley would say) shrugging ruefully and going back to his ageing paramour (he’s about Daddy Captain’s age), and Daddy Captain, Doctor and Daughter having a nice game of Scrabble together while she reveals happily that of course he was awfully romantic, but quite old.

    “Shit,” says Euan numbly as they run end credits. “Were those Oedipal overtones deliberate?”

    Not Oedipus, Electra, but most people make that mistake, so I don’t correct it, the more so as I’ve firmly decided to do the Lily Rose bit whenever anything faintly intellectual or artistic crops up with reference to the bloody thing. “Um, dunno. Um, what do you mean, exactly?”

    “Well, for God’s sake, is he hung up on his own daughter, and vice versa?”

    “I never thought of that. Um, I don’t think so, isn’t it supposed to be a family show?”

    He’s rewinding it. “Who’s the writer? …Varley Knollys?” he cries.

    “Um, yes. Paula O’Reilly, she writes most of the funny lines.”

    “The dialogue, darling, yes. Look, if Varley Knollys is the writer, every last nuance of the thing’s deliberate!”

    “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t Brian Hendricks have stopped him?”

    He rubs his chin and decides that Hendricks has no doubt spotted it and decided that the undertones will have subliminal appeal. Since I’ve overheard Brian and Derry Dawlish discussing precisely this point, only in very much ruder terms, I goggle at him with my mouth slightly open and finally utter: “Um, what if the critics notice? The up-market ones, I mean. Will they um, pan it?”

    “Possibly, but will the thing’s public read them?”

    “No, they all read The News of the World,” I say with a sigh of relief.

    He’s grinning. If he thought about it maybe he’d grin on the other side of his face, because if he had as many fans as the tabloids have readers, he’d be the biggest household name in Britain and wouldn’t have to consider another drecky Hollywood flop while they wait to see if Derry Dawlish has laid another egg with the Old-Russia-in-Prague epic.

    I remember the chips and scream, and rush out. He follows me, sniggering. The chips are okay, just a bit well done, and I bung some of the beans in a big pot and Euan chucks the rest out. He wants to fry the steak, good, let him, I’d only ruin it. We don’t open that bottle in the fridge with the plain French label, we wash it down with McDougall’s Pale Ale and go to bed.

    About eleven o’clock I panic and remember that I haven’t rung Rupy. Phew! Isn’t he wonderful, he’s told Aunty Kate a string of lies about me staying over with Mark and Norma. I owe him several, he warns, hanging up.

    “Didn’t you say you had relatives staying?” says Euan muzzily, yawning.

    “Yes, but Rupy’s looking after them. He took them down to the pub this evening.”

    “Oh, good,” he says in a puzzled voice.

    I give him a bit of a push. “To see a real English pub, ya nong!”

    He gives me a bit of a push back. “Oh, a real English pub, eh?”

    “British!” I squeak, collapsing in giggles. Euan falls on me and tickles me unmercifully…

    Boy, does Somebody Up There, I’m not speaking of Broadcasting House at this precise moment, you understand, love L.R. Marshall.

    Wednesday. Rupy’s of the same opinion when I get back from, cough, Mark and Norma’s, only he puts it rather differently. “Luck of the Devil.”—I nod, looking round uneasily.—“I chucked the paper down the chute, like you said.”—I nod, looking round uneasily.—“It’s all right, she’s gone downstairs to visit with Doris and Buster.”

    I sag. Doris is firmly on our side.

    “And if I was you, I’d get out of that mac.”

    “What? Oh—it’s Euan’s. I’ve got the lemon suit on under it. Where’s Uncle Jim?”

    “Having a ciggie on the roof, dear, where do you think?”

    “He doesn’t smoke.”

    “He doesn't smoke where she can catch him, you mean. No, well, as he says, he’s not an addict, but sometimes a bloke deserves a quick fag.”

    I choke in spite of myself. Rupy looks bland.

    “Yeah, well, I’d better nip off and change.”

    “I think you better had, dear, yes, because in case you’ve forgotten it, you’ve got that shopping mall—”

    “Omigod!”

    “I thought you might have.”

    I rush off and change and frantically disappear into Miss Hammersley’s to call Barbara and wait for the limo…

    The milling crowds at the shopping mall just love Lily Rose in the black Marilyn suit with a pink rose in the buttonhole and a double string of pearls. –Barbara decreed, whether in consultation with Terry vander Post I don’t know, that it had to be the black suit because anything else would be swamped by the colours in the shopping mall, and she was so right. Not only the mall itself, which is all pastel shades, but the crowd, they’re all colours of the rainbow, and somebody’s wife, possibly the mayoress, she’s all colours of the rainbow all by herself… They give me a lovely bouquet of gladdies, shades of Dame Edna, and I make a lovely and very short speech, declaring this splendid mall open. And cut the big ribbon. At least I don’t have to ride through it on a little dodgem car, I did have to do that last month when I opened a factory wing. I can’t drive: they hadn’t thought of that. So a nice man in blue overalls had to squash in beside me. He didn’t seem to mind, judging by the grin and the hard-on, but their Management felt it was awkward and our Management was cross, because the awkward bit was on the telly news, they were having a slow week.

    When I get home I find Rupy’s managed to get tickets to see Gaynor Grahame in That Symington Woman Again tonight, but let’s face it, I fully deserve it.

    Thursday. Usual routine, rise early, chuck paper out. We all have breakfast together, yes, isn’t it nice? Then Rupy has to dash off for his fitting for “his” show, so disappointing that it won’t be on while she’s here, and just coincidentally I have to dash off to uni. You’d think they could let you have one week off! Aunty Kate, you can’t argue with the professors. We escape. Rupy’s pulled something out of the back of the telly so she can’t turn it on and as we go we drop off the radio at Miss Hammersley’s. Aunty Kate’ll go and poke around in my room, but I’ve pulled several somethings out of the back of the computer so that nothing’s connected to nothing and she can’t possibly turn it on and wipe my research. The tape recorder’s with me, in my laptop bag, so she can’t play my field research tapes. If she does look in my huge folders of notes she won’t have a clue because there’s no names, they’re all codes. The secret of which is in the computer, right.

    So we go to our fittings, they take all morning as predicted, and then we do the joint appearance at the boat thing. The paparazzi are disappointed I’m not in a bathing-suit but nevertheless make me drape myself over the boats. The TV’s here, you can see their giant fuzzy mikes and their skinny little cameramen staggering under the weight of the cameras. In that case we’ll have to keep her away from the box all night but I’m pretty sure we can do that, Rupy’s got tickets for the drawing-room thing Joanie pulled out of and Miss Hammersley and Miss Winslow are both coming with us.

    This morning they’re going out with Miss Hammersley. I think the destination is either Knightsbridge or Buckingham Palace. And this afternoon the Admiral has volunteered for zoo duty. They won’t do much, all she wants to see is some aviary designed by, um, was it Princess Margaret’s ex? Whatever. The Admiral has been warned not to mention the show. He doesn’t know the details but he reportedly grinned and saluted and said “Little thing up to something, is she? Aye, aye, sir!” Anyway, she won’t let him get a word in edgewise, she’ll be gushing at him non-stop.

    Friday. We got back so late last night I nearly don’t make it to the chute with the paper before she appears. Dear, what is wrong with the television? Dunno, it sometimes does go on the blink, Aunty Kate, it’s an old set. She can see that! Over breakfast she’s glad to know I’m associating with such nice people, why didn’t I tell my mother I was associating with such nice people? Huh? Oh, the Hammersleys: right. Upper-clawss. Gee, Mum won’t give a shit.

    While she’s monopolising the bathroom Uncle Jim, who’s reading a sporting paper he bought yesterday, it won’t have any pics at all in it, let alone of Lily Rose, lowers the paper and eyes me drily. Then he notes: “If you don’t wanna tell us, that’s all right by me, Rosie.”

    “Tell you what, Uncle Jim?” I croak.

    “Anything. Whaddever.” He sniffs slightly. “Unsuitable boyfriend, is it?”

    I gulp. “No, he’s very nice,” I say weakly. Well, he is.

    “Right, you just don’t wanna expose him to your rellies.” Boy, was that dry! I’d forgotten how dry he can be when left to himself, poor old bloke. “What’s he do, or is that a secret, too?”

    “No, um, he’s an actor,” I admit feebly.

    “Pretty well known, is he?” –No flies on Uncle Jim.

    I have to clear my throat. “Well, not a big name. Um, well, he did have the main rôle in a play on TV on Sunday night. Um, sort of an intellectual play, um, and he’s doing a Shakespeare play down at Stratford this month.”

    “Oh, yeah? Hamlet, is ’e?”

    Gulp. “Not quite.”

    “I geddit.”

    Yeah. After a moment I venture: “He’s getting tickets for us all.”

    “Ya don’t say. Thanks ever so,” he says daintily.

    Yeah. “Sorry, Uncle Jim.”

    “Look, she’d never of forgiven ya if ya hadn’t taken her to ruddy Stratford on Avon, boyfriend or not, so let’s forget it, eh?”

    “Thanks, Uncle Jim.”

    The rest of the day proceeds pretty much as planned except that she’s ropeable because “those people at the university” have demanded I roll up again. However, Rupy takes her off to the Tower of London and St Paul’s, and a nice lunch in there somewhere, and I change, wait for Barbara and the limo, change again, pack another outfit entirely, and we go. It’s the Parkinson day, in case you’ve forgotten by now, which I must say is understandable. Speaking personally I haven’t been able to give it a moment’s thought all week, probably just as well.

    It’s all pretty faked up but you’ll have guessed that. Though it is filmed live, those boo-boos are real, they’re what people watch it for. His or his guests’, right.

    They wanted the Good Ship Lollipop routine, but Brian wouldn’t wear that, he’s saving it for another occasion: like, when they ask me back after the second series has been a raving success and the third series is due to go to air. So he said I could do My Heart Belongs To Daddy, that was in the week before last’s show and we got nearly as much fan mail for it as we did for the pilot, not all of it favourable, some of them think I'm not a patch on Marilyn Monroe. I agree, actually. But it’s all grist to the mill: if they’ve bothered to write, it means they’re watching, according to Timothy, Barbara’s boss in PR. Barbara decides I can wear the thing I’ve packed, to wit, the pink satin strapless full-skirted Fifties evening-gown that belonged to Miss Hammersley. Most of the actresses that go on it wear black, don’t they? In fact half of them wear black evening suits that are even more depressing than his own gear. So this’ll be a nice change for the viewing public.

    Fortunately once I get in front of the cameras he doesn’t seem to expect me to say much at all, he talks for quite a long time himself. And I’m the last and the other two were good talkers. Actually I can’t see why they wanted me on with them, because they’re serious actors. I can’t remember anything the guy’s been in but he reckons he was once in something with Arnold Schwarzenegger. They kept calling him Arnie and everyone was very polite like they always are on Parkinson and no-one mentioned steroids or like that. When I get on I’m dying to ask him is it true only I don’t because I don’t want to be the only one that isn’t nice. Added to which Brian Hendricks would kill me. And also he was in something filmed in Africa, Michael seemed to know all about it. (You’re supposed to call him Michael if you’re on it and everybody has to kiss everybody, I don’t see why, because English people usually don’t.) The actor never made it big in Hollywood and you can see why, he’s got one of those thin faces that look sort of gay even if they’re not. Not very manly, y’know? And not the Hugh Grant type, either—mind you, I don’t think Hollywood was into that when he went over, anyway. So now he’s into really serious cameos, like in Dickens serials. So if they screen another one I must remember to watch. Actually I like him, he’s obviously shaking with nerves, poor thing, and I want to hold his hand and tell him to buck up, it’s pathetic and a total beat-up and he doesn’t have to talk any more and it’ll be over soon. I sit here trying to emanate sympathy at him in my flaming pink strapless thing, at least it’s full-length, so they can’t look up it: have you noticed those camera angles on the thing? No wonder the ladies wear trousers! Like I say, I sit here trying to emanate sympathy at him and simper at Michael and not look directly at the camera, who are they kidding?

    Yes, actually, I was born in Australia, that’s right, Michael. Pause. He does that, you see: wants them to rush into speech and put their great feet in their mouths. I’m not into that, thanks, so Lily Rose just sits here simpering at him. He finally has to ask what my family thinks of it. Oh, they’re thrilled, of course, pause. I simper, he looks blank like he always does. Gee, it’s not my show, and people aren’t watching in order to hear Lily Rose talk. I just simper. So he breaks down and says he thinks I mentioned when we were talking before—like, being relentlessly drilled, who if anyone he believes he’s kidding, I don’t know—that I started off in a tap show? This is a cue; and I know I’ll get a rocket from Brian Hendricks in person if I still sit here simpering, though I’m very, very tempted. So I admit Oh, yes, that was at the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival.—It wasn’t, but if he thinks I’m gonna breathe the words “Derry Dawlish” on his show and make myself look a total nong when the great D.D., who has a strong and well known dislike of being pre-empted, denies it all over the media, he’s got another think coming.—It was fun, I was Nell Gwynne in a very intellectual skit—I actually say this, he’s trying not to blench—put on by some boys from Oxford University. Simper. I didn’t have any lines, of course, all I had to do was my tap routine, pause. And throw oranges. Lovely smile. He’s forced to say The Mountjoy Midsummer Festival’s always had a Restoration theme, hasn’t it, and what was the skit about? I reply sweetly that I don’t know, exactly, but it was very political and one of the boys had a suit all made of newspapers, it was very clever—the skit or the suit, unspecified. At this his third guest breaks down and interrupts, she’s been bursting to ever since the magic words “Mountjoy Midsummer Festival” were mentioned. So I sit back and let her go.

    She’s an intense actress; mind you, you’re supposed to call them actors, too, aren’t you? I think that’s more sexist than calling them actresses but Barbara’s forbidden me on pain of death to say so in public. And why do they still have separate men’s and women’s awards if they’re the same? Several Management people have warned Lily Rose to be very polite to her because she’s almost a Dame. I don’t know why they imagined I might be rude to her, actually I don’t dare to say anything to her. Her gear’s really with-it, only too young for her. She’s doing like a promo for that thing about the intense lady lawyer. But actually mostly during her interview she talked about her trip to Moscow to do a very hard play, and after a while it dawned that that was what Euan was on about that first time I saw him wearing his MCDOUGALL’S PALE ALE tee-shirt! It was in English, you see, well, that’s the Poms for you.

    Maybe My Heart Belongs To Daddy is meant to be light relief? Or maybe they thought they were gonna have a good snigger at it because it’s not intellectual? Anyway, it goes over really big and the studio audience adores it. So sucks.

    Saturday. Rupy and me get up early, wipe the five thousand congratulatory messages on the answering machine, and nip next-door to Miss Hammersley’s, scooping up the paper as we go. She doesn’t take this paper, she’s quite pleased to have it for a change; good, she can have it every day until they go. She’s a very early riser, she’s told us that elderly people don’t sleep much. We’re both from the socio-economic background that thinks they sleep all the time, either in their broken-down armchairs in front of your parents’ fireplace or in front of the heater in the old folks’ home your parents have bunged them in, but as Doris Winslow’s told us the same thing, we do believe her. She taped Parkinson, of course, so, making sure her door is locked, we sit down and watch it. Cripes.

    “Well done, darling!” Rupy gasps, collapsing in a paroxysm.

    “Maybe—um, well, maybe Euan didn’t see it,” I say, very feebly. Because even though he thinks I’m a funny little thing, I’ve come over as the Dumb Blonde personified, and he does know I’m a sociologist, and what’s the betting he won’t start thinking about the other evening and conclude I was stringing him a line throughout?

    He mops his eyes and finally gets out: “Wasn’t he going back to Stratford? They’ll all have watched it, dear!”

    “Maybe he’ll just assume I was nervous.”

    “Rubbish, I’ve never seen anything more self-possessed in my life.”

    Yeah. Maybe he’ll think it was just a performance…

   “Bizarre opening,” he reminds me.

    “Yeah.” I've forgotten what I have to wear. It’s a perishing cold day, if it is May. ”Is it gonna rain, d’you think?” Miss Hammersley thinks it is, I’d better wear something warm. Rupy thinks I’d better wear something very Lily Rose if I don’t want to Cop It. Eventually I decide on the black Marilyn suit and creep back to the flat. Good, she’s still snoring, I can hear her. I have a very quick wash and get into it, plus a warm jumper. A pale blue-grey angora thing Joanie didn’t want. Tight, but really warm. Blue-grey isn’t my colour, too bad.

    “You’re not going out again?” Oh, shit! “What on earth are you wearing?”

    “These black suits are really In, Aunty Kate,” I offer without conviction.

    “Not for a young woman of your age, Rosie. –I really do think you could have made an effort, on a Saturday!” Yeah, and if you’d given us reasonable notice I could of. No, I don’t say it, I haven’t got a death wish! Yet. The door phone goes, it’ll be Barbara and Mike and the limo. “I’ve gotta go, that’s my lift! Sorry, Aunty Kate, but it’s one of Mark’s Monthly Progress Report Meetings. See ya!” I vanish.

    Barbara’s horrified by the jumper. Look, I’m not going back up there, it’s got my Aunty Kate from Adelaide in it in a stinking temper because she arrived with one day’s warning from the other side of the world and thinks I ought to cancel all my engagements and trail round the Tower of London with her! She gulps, poor little thing. Very well, but I haven’t even got any earrings on. Uh—haven’t I? Oh, well, never mind, no-one’ll notice, Barbara! She smiles weakly...

    The bizarre opening proceeds as planned. It’s somewhere in the country, that’s why we hadda make such an early start. Actually it’s started by the time we arrive but this is when they told us to turn up. It’s spitting a bit but the organisers have got plenty of great big umbrellas. Golfing umbrellas? Big, anyway. I wouldn’t mind being left to myself to just wander round the stalls and buy crap I don’t need, but of course they don’t let me do that. It’s kind of like a Royal Progress, geddit? Barbara’s already told me I have to buy at least X and Y and Brian will pay. I’ve already got a lovely bunch of flowers, mixed gladdies and florist’s carnations and lots of spritzy gypsophila, I never knew they had it over here, too. So I don’t buy a bunch of flowers. I buy a fat little spiky cactus off a lady in a flowery dress with gold-rims and a slight squint and one of the yellowest complexions I’ve ever seen, largely because her helper’s a dear little round-faced boy in grey shorts and a red sweat-shirt with a hood. The hood’s down, the usual macho defiance of the weather, not to say of his mum, bless him. I buy Rupy a set of pale blue face washer, pale blue comb, pale blue guest soap shaped like a pear, and pale blue ribbon, he’ll appreciate that. I buy Miss Hammersley a little jug that could be Rockingham, well, it almost matches Mummy Hammersley’s tea-set. And if it isn’t she can use it for everyday. I buy Buster an imitation bone that’s good for your dog’s teeth with a red bow on it, and Miss Winslow a plate with a picture of a dog on it, she’ll like it, even though it isn’t a corgi. I get carried away and buy Paula O’Reilly a small wooden bowl, she was moaning like billyo the other day because they seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth. If it’s wrong she can always chuck it out. “Am I buying too much?” I say to Barbara. “No!” she gasps, very red, all the organisers and things heard me. In that case, I buy Bridget a shiny brown apron with a picture of an onion and a red pepper on it, and Euan a giant emerald-green tee-shirt with “Guiness is Good for You” on it, it’ll be a change for him. Barbara’s looking agonised, she’s seen the spelling mistake, but I don’t point out that’s why I bought it. I buy a dear little bowl of pot-pourri with a mauve bow on it and force it on her. She’s very pink and pleased, so I don’t remind her that she said Brian’d be paying for it all.

    Now it’s time for tea. Shit, what happened to lunch? Scones, they aren’t as good as Mum’s, but nicer than the Ritz’s, I don’t say this, and slices of cake. I eat as much as I can get my hands on, what happened to lunch? Do I want to buy anything for my relations? (No, actually.) Uh—no, thanks, Barbara, they’d have to pack it all and their luggage was overweight coming. (Especially after Uncle Jim made the mistake of letting her have a stopover in Singapore, or, Duty-Free Heaven.) Tea-towels are only light. I break down and buy tea-towels for everybody, even Grandma Leach, what’s she gonna do with a tea-towel in the old folks’ home? Well, claim the attendants nicked it like usual. Don’t you have home-made lamingtons at English bazaars, Barbara? (Prompted by the fact that I’m still hungry, what happened to lunch?) Doesn’t know what I’m talking about, right.

    Then it starts to pour so she concedes we can go and I thank everybody for the lovely day, which it genuinely was, I love bazaars and fêtes of all kinds, and they thank me for coming and we dash back to the limo. Mike’s eating a PIE! Where’d he get that? “What happened to lunch?” he says mildly, starting the car. “Thought Henny Penny were shit-hot on that?” Yeah, right. Barbara goes into a terrific tizz: what with being late starting, and losing the way, twice, and the traffic— He was only joking. She subsides, smiling weakly. I sort out my booty, gee, it’s an awful pity that English bazaars don’t feature home-made lamingtons. I seem to have got an awful lot of tea-towels… Maybe Mum’d like two. Um, maybe Euan would like a tea-towel? Would you like a tea-towel, Barbara? She would, good. Mike doesn’t need one, they’ve got a dish-washing machine. Um…

    Aunty Kate’s thrilled by the tea-towels, one featuring Beefeaters, one Diana’s Island Resting Place, and the other a map of Great Britain! Where did I get them? I lie…

   Sunday. At last I’m free! To take Her places, she means. I haven’t nipped down to the corner shop and bought the Sundays, Mr Machin’ll think I’ve dropped dead. Because if I hadda done they’d only have gone down the chute, geddit?

    The door phone. Who the—  She’s over there like a shot before I can move. “Yes?” If it’s male and under forty, whaddam I saying, under eighty, that’ll put them off. “Certainly, bring them up.”

    “Aunty Kate, you gotta push the—” She knows.

    It’s a delivery guy with a huge great bunch of flowers. On a Sunday? Obviously, but me and Uncle Jim don’t say this. Gee, I wish I’d stayed in bed like Rupy. Red roses, half-opened, delirious. I don’t think I know anybody that can afford— And after all those pauses, I really don’t think they’d be from Brian Hendricks, generous employer though he is. I don’t have to wonder for long, she’s swooped on the card.

    “‘Congratulations, lovely, Derry Dawlish.’ It’s not your birthday! Lovely? What does he mean, is he calling you— Who is he?”

    “Leave it out, Kate,” says poor Uncle Jim uncomfortably into his racing paper.

    “Just, um, someone I know.”

    “But who? Good heavens, they must have cost a fortune!” No-one reacts: this has dawned on us. After a minute she says: “Well, put them in water, Rosie!”

    I put them in water.

    We got up pretty late and though we’ve had a cuppa we haven’t yet had breakfast and she’s just condemning my suggestion that I could nip out and get something from Mr Goldman’s deli—it isn’t that she’s anti-Semite, it’s just that she’s anti-foreign food, like, not Australian and not English—when the door phone goes again. Same routine. Except that this time she’s glaring at me. She also glares at the poor delivery man. This time I manage to race over and tip him before she shuts the door in his face.

    “What on earth was that for? He’s paid a wage, isn’t he?”

    “They expect it.”

    “Nonsense.”

    This time it’s not such a big bunch, and multicoloured. Not as expensive, but very pretty. “Congratulations, darling, terrifically Lily Rose, we laughed our socks off, sorry it’s late, we had the show yesterday, Euan, Adam and Georgy.”

    “Rosie, what is going on?”

    “Nothing, it’s a stupid joke,” I mutter.

    Ignoring this, she reads out again: “Euan, Adam and Georgy. Euan Who— Adam and Georgy?”

    “I said, it’s a stupid joke!”

    “Expensive stupid joke,” mutters Uncle Jim, sotto voce.

    Unfortunately she heard that, she’s got ears like a hyena. As well as its personality, yeah. “Exactly!” She waits, but I just look mutinous. Red and mutinous, to be strictly accurate. “Very well, Rosie,”—gone into a huff—“if you don’t want to discuss it, we won’t.”

    Good. Let’s not. I get out the sausages. This distracts her and she condemns my idea of a Sunday breakfast utterly and completely. And what did we use to have when Joanie was here? I’m very tempted, as you can imagine, but I don’t actually say “dishy married Spaniards.” I tell her not to blame Rupy, he’s just as opposed to grease and cholesterol for breakfast as she is. I get out the mushrooms and the butter. Uncle Jim gives me a desperate look so I put the butter back.

    We have breakfast. Hers is instant coffee, wholegrain toast and English marmalade. Uncle Jim’s is, too, but she lets him have some mushrooms. Mine’s instant coffee, sausages and mushrooms. Rupy comes wandering out in his dressing-gown just as I’m wondering if I can manage that fourth sausage. “Ooh, yummy, bangers for brekky!” He sits down and gobbles up sausage and mushroom, not noticing that poor Uncle Jim’s choked and that she’s turned purple.

    The machine’s doing the dishes, including the frying-pan that she’s pre-washed, and Rupy and Uncle Jim are both having another cup of coffee in spite of being advised that they ought to watch their caffeine intake, when the door phone goes again.

    “That’ll be a ruddy great bunch of flowers for Rosie,” notes Uncle Jim snidely—the caffeine in the brown dust’s gone to his head. She glares, and lets me get the door.

    It is. An enormous bunch of pale pink rosebuds, the most adorable—

    “Derry,” deduces Rupy over his extra cup of coffee. “Where’s The Observer? Eh? Oh.” He withers under my fiery glare for a split second and adds: “Euan? Doing the show all day yesterday and forget to send—”

    “SHUT UP!”

    He blinks, and appears to wake up. “Oh.” Then he notices the two vases of flowers now adorning the sideboard. “Oh.”

    “Yes, ‘Oh’.”

    She’s waiting… There’s a little envelope attached to the florist’s paper, I’m not gonna open it until she’s—

    “Could have ya shower, now, Kate?” suggests good old Uncle Jim. –It’s because they’re on holiday, if you’ve been wondering all this time why she’s sunk to having breakfast in her dressing-gown before she’s had her shower and got dressed decently.

    She goes on waiting, you’d think he’d never uttered.

    “Maybe it’s only the Admiral,” suggests Rupy feebly.

    “What? That delightful Admiral Hammersley? Why on earth would he be sending Rosie enormous bunches of hot-house roses?” –Are they? Would they be? We exchange frantic glances. “Bri-an?” he mouths. I shake my head dubiously. Not after those pauses, no.

    She’s still waiting.

    “Pauses,” I say neutrally to the air six inches above Rupy’s head.

    He jumps. “Oh! Er, mm.”

    “Rosie Marshall, are you going tell us what’s going on?”

    All right, she’s said it, so I might as well reply. “No. If you’re that interested, have the things!” I shove them at her. She’s so startled she takes them.

    Poor old Uncle Jim loses his rag and shouts: “All right, Kate, you’ve bloody done it, now open the envelope and read the bloody message!”

    “There’s no need for that Language, thank you.” But she’s not gonna refuse to do it, did anyone think she would? She opens it, stony-faced. Stony-faced, she announces: “From another man.” Gee, we thought they were from a Martian— WHAT?

    She’s reading out grimly: “Darling Rosie, delicious frock, warmest congratulations, John Hay-worth.”

    “Hah-with,” says Rupy limply.

    The pink rosebuds are exactly the same shade as the pink dr— I snatch the bouquet back off her and read the card feverishly. That’s what it says, all rightee.

    “I thought he was in Bosnia?” croaks Rupy.

    “Rosie Marshall, what is GOING ON here?”

    At this, naturally I burst into snorting sobs and run out of the room, still clutching the pink rosebuds.

    Time passes…

    I’m still face-down on my bed. Tap, tap. “Go AWAY!”

    “It’s only me,” says Rupy’s voice meekly.

    “Oh. Come in.”

    He comes in, looking meek. “I rang dear Miss H., and she’s taken them down to the pub for drinkie-poos.”

    “This isn’t an English village in the Fifties,” I say groggily, sitting up.

    “Nevertheless. Er—Euan rang. She took it before we could stop her.”—I goggle at him.—“I don’t know what you told him to say or not to say, but he upped and said he’d got the tickets for Stratford, so of course she put him under interrogation. She told him you’d been a very silly girl not to mention him, but of course she knew, the minute she saw the lovely flowers.”—I goggle at him.—“Then she got it out of him who Derry Dawlish is, without mentioning huge great bunches of hot-house red roses.”—I goggle at him.—“Then she mentioned them, and asked if he had any idea, I don’t think I can render the exact degree of coyness—”

    “You’re doing pretty well. Get ON with it!”

    “No need to shout. Uh—where was I? Oh: if he had any idea why strings of men, her expression, dear, not mine, might be sending you bouquets this morning. So of course he innocently asked if Derry had sent one, explaining he’s in the South of France, someone must have sent him the video air express—well, it’ll have been Brian, dear, no question—where was I? Oh, yes: he can’t have seen it until yesterday.”

    “And?”

    “Uncle Jim and me lost our nerve, darling, and snuck up on the roof with our ciggies, and I’m afraid I told him the lot. Well, male solidarity, dear?” he excuses himself.

    “That’s all right, I nearly told him the lot myself the other day, only it wouldn't have been fair on him at that stage. Uh—you didn’t tell him about the field study, did you?”

    “What?”—He’s forgotten all about it, again, I register with relief.—“Oh, that! No, of course not, dear, wouldn’t mean a thing to him, would it?”

    “No. Added to which, Euan doesn’t know, and all my subjects don’t know.”

    “Ooh, am I a subject?”

    “No, you’re a personal friend.” I refrain from mentioning the nationalism thing. Well, I only had Gray and Andy, and Tony and the rest of the ballet boys: that cluster needed some solidity. “What happened?”

    “Well, by the time we came back she’d had her shower and was decently dressed.”—I glare.—“Sorry. Er, well, Euan told her the lot, I mean about the show and Parkinson. She was really peeved to have missed it, but he’s taped it for you. No, well, I think it’s Adam’s and Georgy’s tape— What?”

    “Did that wanker LET ON TO HER that I’ve met Adam McIntyre and Georgy Harris?”

    Rupy’s mouth twitches but it doesn’t get anywhere near a pale smile. “Mm.”

    “Jesus Flaming Christ!”

    After quite some time he offers: “She told him all about your dancing and singing lessons as a kiddie and how you’ve always had talent.”

    I breathe heavily. “And?”

    “Um, well, Rosie, darling, after bursting into tears and running into your room at the mere mention of his name—”

    “AND?”

    Glumly he admits: “Of course the bitch asked him who John Haworth is, that type of bitch specialises in watching the victim squirm on the pin, doesn’t she? Er, well, me and Jim were out of it, but I should imagine the response wasn’t totally pro-you, can you blame him?”

    “No.”

    “No. There you are.”

    We look gloomily at each other.

    “Did he leave a message?” I manage to croak.

    “Mm. Tickets will be at the box office under his name, possibly he wasn’t sure what your name is, any longer, dear;”—“STOP THAT!”—“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry, “and if you like to ring him and let him know a time, he’ll meet us, so long as it isn’t in the middle of a matinée.”

    “Oh.”

    He eyes me sideways. “Brian rang, wondering if you might have heard from Derry.”—I don’t say anything.—“Er, in case you were wondering, J.H. didn’t ring.”

    “It’s a JOKE, you cretin!” I scream, bursting into snorting sobs all over again.

    Rupy gives me his clean hanky. –Raewyn and Sally that run the dry-cleaner’s also do a beautiful laundry service, and we’ve given in and let them do our stuff instead of lugging it two streets further and using the actual laundrette, cheaper but entailing hours and hours and hours of watching the things go round and round and— Yeah.

    He pats my back for a while and then says: “They are rather scrumptious flowers, dear, for a joke.”

    “I thigg cabtains idd the rodded Royal Davy eard lods of bunny.”

    “Blow your nose, dear.”

    I blow my nose. “He can afford stupid jokes.”

    “Ye-es… I did ask Miss H., but she said she rather thinks he’s on manoeuvres.”

    “Then how could he have seen it?” I say sulkily.

    “We-ell… Like Derry: someone sent him a tape?”

    “Bullshit! He watched it sitting in his up-market cottage in bloody Portsmouth with his ageing paramour, laughing his stupid HEAD off!” I shout.

    “She did seem very sure he’s at sea, dear. Er—Portsmouth?”

    “Outside it, or something. I asked the Admiral. He spotted me, of course, but he told me anyway.”

    “Er—no, look, if that was the case he’d have nipped down to the pub on the excuse of drinkie-poos before lunch, and sent you the flowers yesterday.”

    The cretin’s probably right. Who cares? In that case he’s at sea and God-Knows-Who sent him a tape, and in any case IT IS A JOKE. “If he rings me up we’ll know it’s not a joke, won’t we?” I say tightly.

    “Mm.”

    “But he won’t, so then we’ll know it is a joke!”

    “Mm. Um, she’s still determined to go to Greenwich today, and I’m afraid she’s going to insist you dress for your public, she’s threatening to view Miss H.’s tapes—”

    “Go a-way.”

    He gets up but says glumly: “Bite on the bullet, dear.”

    I take a very deep breath. “Yeah. Well, they’re not your rellies, Rupy, and you’ve more than done your bit, so why don’t you run away?”

    “Nonsense, dear, you need moral support. I’ll wear my blazer and white duck slacks!”

    So here we are at Greenwich. I’m wearing shades, tight pink pedal pushers, high-heeled red ankle-boots, and a genuine once off-white Fifties fluffy coatee scored from Miss Hammersley not long since and dyed pink by Raewyn and Sally. Aw, gee, everyone recognises me! Aunty Kate’s in her element: My Niece the Comedienne— Of course she always had Talent— Good heavens, yes! Lily Rose is her Real Name! When she was Just a Little Kiddie I said to her mother— So far no paparazzi have surfaced, but give it time…

    Well, folks, that was the week that was. Don’t say I asked for it, I know that, thanks.

    Euan’s tickets turn out to be for next Saturday and Rupy, bless him, finds a tour of blimming upper-clawss country houses she can go on straight after that. So we only have another full week of torture. And believe you me, it is. First off, she rings Mum. Wailings and lamentations, doesn’t understand, Dad goes ballistic, the whole bit. Only slightly calming down when I tell him how much dough I’m making. Naturally she comes to every bloody personal appearance, fitting and rehearsal, giving interviews to anything that even looks like a paparazzo. Not to mention a full column with pics for a women’s page, Brian and Terry vander Post both go ballistic, no permission and wrong image, so does Barbara’s boss in PR, no consultation. As if Terry wasn’t alienated enough she tells him that she was there in the Fifties, and his Look’s all wrong. She tells Michael Manfred coyly Good heavens, she remembers him as Little Micky Manfred! She tells Darryn that he’s much too young for me, and after all, I’m a Star now. She patronises Barbara unmercifully, deaf to my protests that Barbara’s a person I can’t live without. She meets Bridget and, brightly refusing tickets to her latest show, she’s never cared for those intellectual plays where people think it’s clever to take their clothes off, tells her she needs feeding up, you girls today! She— Oh, forget it.

    I manage to ring Euan and he seems amused more than anything. I tell him weakly that J.H.’s roses were a stupid joke. He says he thought as much, and is Derry really interested in our show? I think he’s really interested in my bottom. He laughs, and advises me kindly to watch out for him…

    NO, J.H. doesn’t ring! How many times do I have to say it, IT’S A STUPID JOKE!