Episode 8: The English Captain's Woman

 

Episode 8: The English Captain's Woman

    He comes upstairs about half an hour later and chucks the knickers at me but oddly enough I don’t catch them because he’s accompanied by a huge, black, shaggy beast with Teeth.

    “What’s that?” I gasp, shrinking back against his boring brown velvet bedroom curtains.

    “Your knickers. Fortunately they were under a chair, Marion didn’t spot them.”

    “No,” I say faintly. “Is that yours?”

    “What? Oh, Tim? Yes, of course he’s mine, Marion’s been looking after him.” He fondles its ears, Jesus, look out, it’ll take your hand off! “What in God’s name’s the matter?”

    “I don’t know any big dogs,” I say very, very faintly.

    “What?”

    “Big dog,” I say faintly, trying to sink through the brown velvet, through the brick wall and very, very far away.

    “What? Good God, Tim won’t hurt you! Come and say Hullo.”

    “John, I’ve never met a big dog personally before and I don’t know how!”

    “Stop shouting, for God’s sake, he’ll think you’re nuts. Wasn’t there a daft picture of you in a fluffy thing with your dog in a Sunday colour supplement a little while back?”

    “That was Doris Winslow’s Buster, he’s a corgi, they’re more like cats,” I whisper.

    “Uh—oh. Well, just come over here very slowly.”

    “No.”

    He and the black beast with the Teeth therefore come over to me. “Stop being silly. Give me your hand.” He grabs my hand and puts it on its head, telling it this is Rosie and telling me this is Tim. Tim feels very silky and warm and he’s got a great big tongue.

    “Does he have to pant like that?”

    “Yes, dogs sweat through their tongues, didn’t you know?”

    “No.” And I don’t wanna know it now. How disgusting.

    “Pat him again.” I pat him again. He just goes on panting with that huge tongue and showing all those Teeth. “See, he’s wagging his tail.” Right, and two seconds after that he’s at my throat, isn’t that how it goes? He tells me dogs have been domesticated for tens of thousand of years. Yeah, and every week the tabloids are full of reports of child of three being savagely mauled by one. “Hold out your hand,” he says in a resigned voice.

    “I just did!”

    “Give it here.” He grabs my hand and holds it under the beast’s nose. It licks me. Ugh! “Doesn’t Buster do that?” he says.

    “Um, kisses,” I mutter.

    “Yes, well, poor old Tim’s trying to give you a kiss, he thinks you’re potty.”—Potty and he can smell the fear on me, right.—“You can give him his dinner, he’ll be your slave for life,” he says in a “that’s that tidied away” sort of voice.

    I’m not going anywhere near anything that entails those Teeth, thanks. What if he thinks my arm’s a bone? My arm is a bone, it’s a bone with meat on it, Jesus!

    John goes over to the chest of drawers and the dog goes with him, thank God. So I manage to croak: “Why didn’t you tell me you had a great big dog?”

    He’s opening and shutting drawers. “Possibly because I didn’t think you were such a great big wimp.”—I am not! Um, yes I am, Tim’s looking at me.—“I don’t think I’ve got anything you could possibly get your hips into, but please do me a very great favour and wear this instead of that khaki thing.” He chucks a pale blue tee-shirt at me.

    “Khaki? I’d have said it was technically olive green.” I get into his tee-shirt. The dog’s still watching me. “He’s looking at me.”

    “He has to look somewhere, he’s only human,” he says with that very masculine grin, which this time, funnily enough, I don’t actually appreciate.

    “Hah, hah. –Are you gonna have a shower?” I gasp in horror.

    “I thought I might, yes. Is that so dreadful?” Yeah, because it’ll leave me and It alone together! I don’t say anything and he goes into the ensuite, I’ve already investigated it and it’s really nice, all pale blue tiles and pale blue washbasin and toilet and shower. He’s got a bidet, too, wonder if his ex or one of the up-market puce and magenta ladies made him put it in? Tim looks mildly at me. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull my feet up out of range, toes have got meat and bones in them, too. He just goes on looking at me. I don’t even dare to utter “Nice dog.” Because I know he’d spot it for a lie.

    Apparently I could have a shower, too, while John makes a start on dinner. Why couldn’t we have had one together, for one thing it’s a lot more fun with two and for another thing that woulda left Tim out in the cold. “He’s been looking at me.”

    He pats my bottom. “A cat can look at a king.”

    “Don’t leave him up here, will you?”

    “He’s free to come and go, he lives here.”

    I go into the ensuite and lock the door.

    “Dogs can’t open doors,” he says right against the crack with a laugh in his voice. I ignore that and turn the shower on.

    About fifteen hours later I peer cautiously round the door but they’ve both gone. So I go cautiously downstairs. John’s in the kitchen. “I washed my hair, is that all right?”

    “Mm? Yes, of course, darling. Marion’s brought us a casserole, wasn’t that nice of her?” –Brought him, he means, has he even told her about me?

    “Where’s Tim?”

    “No idea. He’s a free agent.”

    I check under the kitchen table but he’s not there.

    “Stop it, Rosie, you’re being silly. –I suppose we just put it in the oven, eh? Can’t be wrong,” he says with a smile.

    “Don’t ask me, nobody brings me casseroles. Um, bung it in the microwave?” He hasn’t got one. My mouth sags open in dismay, me and Rupy are microwave frozen dinner experts, like we can do your superb microwave lasagna, your totally Italian microwave spag bog, your ultimate microwave Asian beef and vegetables…

    He doesn’t notice the shock, horror and dismay, he puts the casserole in the oven. Gee, it’s a funny-looking stove. Actually it’s a funny-looking kitchen, very old-fashioned. “Um, what sort of stove is that?” It’s an Aga, of course. I goggle at it in dismay. I’ve read the word in The Observer, yeah, but shit—! He doesn’t notice, he’s getting out the potatoes. Would I like to do them? (No.) Valiantly I peel them. He gets me a saucepan. I put them in… “And?” he says brightly, twinkling at me. Glumly I report: “I can only do chips and instant mash.” He puts the right amount of water and salt in the pot and puts it on the Aga. Cripes. What do they work off? No, I don’t wanna know. He’s done the carrots, he puts them in their own pot. Shall we have peas? I’m waiting for him to open the door of the fridge’s freezing compartment but he’s producing a great bag of them. Real peas? But how do ya know how long to cook them if there isn’t a packet for it to say on it? “They do come in pods. Milk comes from a cow’s udder.” Yeah, hah, hah. Numbly I shell them. “It is June,” he murmurs.

    “Eh? Oh!” I do the arithmetic, like, January, February… up to June, six. Six plus six, right. “Yeah, we sometimes used to have real peas at Christmas.” –Like when Mum was out of her tree in la-la land doing the Grate Australian Home Cooking bit to impress any of her bloody sisters that happened to be foisting themselves on us for Christmas. Self-invited in the case of some.

    “I can’t imagine Christmas in summer,” he says with a smile. “Though I have spent one or two Christmases in the Tropics. But I can’t envisage it as a regular thing.”

    Grimly I retort: “It’s not that different from yours, we got the same cards, like with the holly and the snow and the robins. Or sometimes holly and koalas.”

    He gulps, hah, hah, but then he says: “What’s up, Rosie?”

    Only that you’ve got a great big black dog that’s hiding somewhere ready to pounce that you didn’t tell me about, and a housekeeper that you haven’t told about me, that makes casseroles for you unasked, ladies only do that if they’ve got a thing for you, what planet are ya from?—Planet Male, yep—and you seem to think that I can automatically cook and know things like Agas and crap like that! Pommy crap.

    “Nothing. I’m hungry, I s’pose. –And if ya wanna know,” I burst out, “I never set eyes on an Aga before in my life, and I can’t cook, and I’m cold!”

    “Hell,” he says in dismay. “Why didn’t you say?”

    “Because I was trying to do the bloody Pommy expected THING!” I shout, bursting into, you goddit, floods of tears.

    Jesus, I never done it on purpose, but it works a treat because he comes and gives me a big cuddle—I can feel he’s getting stiff again, his is an awfully nice one, by the way, nice and fat—and rushes upstairs and gets me a big Navy jumper. What I mean, it is navy, but it’s a Navy jumper, see? And helps me into it and gives me another big cuddle, still rather stiff, mm-mmm.

    “Mmm,” he says into my neck. “Don’t try to do the bloody Pommy expected thing again, okay? Let’s be honest with each other.”

    “All right, then, I’m afraid of your dog,” I say honestly.

    He bites his lip. “Uh—yes. I’m sorry, Rosie, it never dawned that you might not be used to dogs.”

    “We never had one. Mum’s always had a cat.”

    “Yes, of course. Well, Tim wouldn’t dream of hurting you, he’s far too well mannered.”

    “Aunty June breeds boxers, she’s Dad’s sister, they live in London. In the suburbs, of course. Only they’ve got their own yard, like with wire netting and stuff and fancy kennels.”

    “Mm. They’re lovely dogs.”

    Cretin. “They’re very handsome but the point is, she doesn’t have them in the house walking around free.”

    “Oh! Yes. Do you want me to keep him outside?”

    I go very red. “No. Not if he’s used to being inside with you, that’d be mean.”

    “Well, perhaps you could try, uh, just getting used to him slowly?”

    “Yes.”

    “And if I gave you the impression that I expected you to cook, I’m sorry,” he says in a dubious voice.

    “I can do microwave things really good, and chips, and chops and sausages, in a pan. Like, survival cooking,” I admit glumly.

    “Mm. Well, my cooking’s of the survival variety, too.”

    “Yeah. Only survival cooking for my generation’s the microwave, really, geddit?”

    “Yes. Didn’t your mother— No, sorry.”

    “Mum is into cooking—well, into being chained to the kitchen sink. Think you’d call her a good plain cook. Only for birthdays and Christmases and stuff she makes this huge effort, it goes on for days, and she gets as ratty as anything. And then when it’s time to eat it she can hardly touch a thing, specially the Christmases Aunty Kate invites herself for. It’s really off-putting.”

    “Yes. –Oh, the cow who didn’t pass on my message! I see!”

    Glad to hear it. I look at him hopefully.

    “Different unconscious expectations, I suppose, Rosie,” he says with an awful face.

    “You said it.”

    “Well, for God’s sake tell me if I expect the wrong thing— Uh, that isn’t quite it, is it? The thing that’s wrong for you? Well, just tell me if I’m demanding the bloody Pommy expected thing from you.”

    “Ye-es. I have been here quite a while, now, but I still can’t always tell if it’s, um, just class differences, or lifestyle differences, or the generation gap. You can’t analyse it, there’s always a new one that comes along and trips you up. And people expect you to know automatically, just because you speak the language.”

    He doesn’t laugh, he nods seriously. “Yes. Tell me, anyway.”

    I’ll try, but gee, that’ll mean you’re gonna get sick of the sound of my voice, mate. I don’t say all that. I just say: “Yeah, okay.”

    He hasn’t got a dining-room, but there’s a dinette area in a corner of the lounge-room, sitting-room, I mean, which is quite big, but the front door doesn’t open right into it, there’s a tiny little, like, passage, no, more like a lobby, it’s only got a coat stand in it. The stairs don’t go right up from the main room like at Maybelle’s: there’s a door in the back wall of the sitting-room and when you open that there’s a weeny passage and the stairs and the door to the kitchen and the back door. Like technically the back door’s between the kitchen, it’s a lean-to, I don’t tell him we got those back home, too, and the dinette, it’s kind of like a little wing that makes the main room L-shaped. Maybe it was originally a lean-to as well and they knocked out the wall between it and the sitting-room? The cottage has got a lot of wainscoting but it’s much prettier than the flat’s. Not as brown and kind of a nice grain in it. I’m not gonna ask, it’ll display my colonial ignor— Um, on second thoughts I gotta start somewhere.

    So when he goes through to the dinette I go with him and first I say: “This is a real cool little dinette,” and he tries not to wince and smiles nicely, so that was wrong. “Is that non-U?”

    Suddenly he laughs. “Very! I do apologise, Rosie!”

    “That’s okay. So is there a nice word?” –No. Goddit. Real people have whole dining-rooms, they don’t need the concept. “Don’t laugh again if you can hold back without busting something, but what is this wood?” –touching the wainscoting.

    He has to swallow. “Do you really not— No. Sorry. Oak.”

    “English oak?” I croak. “It’s very grainy,” I croak.

    He tells me that that’s characteristic of oak. And that the experts tell him that back in the Thirties when the place was modernised, the owners committed the heinous crime of having all the oak blonded, blonded oak being characteristic of the Thirties—don’t think he notices that I’m looking totally blank—but that since then what with generations of grime and smokers in the house, not to mention his mother and Marion getting going with the olive oil, his mother’s cure-all for wood that’s been ruined, it’s now got rather a nice patina again. The word “patina” is in my recognition vocabulary, yeah, but I never thought I’d hear a living person utter it, especially not a hetero male.

    “Ya don’t mean they rubbed olive oil over all of your wainscoting?” I croak.

    “Mm. Fanatical, I admit. Oh, more than once, I assure you. Well, Mother was a lot younger then.”

    I get really brave and ask: “So, um, is she still alive?”

    Yes, she’s only seventy-two, and Father is also still alive—he actually calls him Father, shit—seventy-nine, and it did use to be their holiday cottage but they passed it on to him. And he has got a brother and a sister, yes, I met his sister, remember (how could I flaming forget?—though I don’t think I knew her name was Fiona or that she’s forty-five). And his younger brother, Terence, is forty-three and commands a sub. Er, yes, his father was an admiral.—So is he the eldest?—Yes. All this while we’re laying the table, or he is, and I’m just goggling numbly at the amount of table linen and cutlery he apparently considers necessary for two people who’re gonna have a casserole and veggies. I manage to ask him whether he wanted to go to sea and he laughs and says “Always!” Gee, that’s a relief, at least he isn’t gonna turn out to be a neurotic. Actually I knew that already, he comes over as the least neurotic of any person I’ve met in my whole life.

    I take another gander at the flaming wainscoting and wanna ask him if his mother’s a fanatic about other things but don’t dare: because in the course of going on twenty-eight years, the last ten fairly misspent, as much as you can when you’re serious about getting your qualifications, I have learnt one thing about blokes, to wit, they can criticise their mums all they like but if you start, that’s all she wrote.

    –Aw, gee, we gonna have a soup course? It’s gotta come out of a can unless Marion’s slavishly brought round a great big bowl of it. –Don’t mean bowl: one of those up-market things. Mum’s got one, she never uses it, it sits on the poncy sideboard she chucked away megabucks of Dad’s money on when I was sixteen; uh—tureen. I think. Blow me down, it does come in a tin, but when I look at it closely I discern that it’s a very up-market tin indeed, in fact it seems to be the soup the Queen eats. He heats it up carefully in a saucepan and then, you goddit, pours it into a tureen. This is for two people who are on pretty intimate terms, right? Jesus! And just by the by, is there a dishwasher? I look carefully round the old-fashioned kitchen but unless it’s lurking behind one of those old-fashioned cream cupboard doors there isn’t.

    “This kitchen, was it, like, done up in the Thirties, too?”

    The experts tell him it was built on in the Thirties. Goddit. –Who the fuck are these experts, just by the by, and would they be the sort of experts that wear puce and magenta and half a bottle of Madame Rochas merely for afternoon tea? I don’t ask, I may be faint from hunger but I haven’t actually got a death wish.

    I gotta admit it, starving though I am, it’s one of the most boring meals I ever ate. The soup’s supposed to be mushroom, I’ll take its word for it. Think the casserole’s got meat and onion in it, period. Well, don’t ask me, I dunno what they usually have in them, but Mum’s casseroles were tastier than this and Mrs Franchini’s were out of this world. The peas are good: I put some more butter on them to spite the casserole.

    He won’t let me take the plates, well, actually I read that old book of Joslynne’s Mum’s on TA so I know this is Kitchen. I don’t join him in it, he can play it by himself. He comes back with a sort of lumpy china thing and some brown bread. Guess Who brought “us” a loaf, let’s hope she didn’t cook it herself, it’ll be tasteless. He takes the lid off the lumpy china thing, it’s a thing for cheese, of course! Aunty Kate’s got one of those but hers has got a cute moulded mouse on top of it, not ruddy painted flowers. It’s smelly, I’m not gonna— He puts a hunk of it on my plate.

    After a bit he says: “Bloody Pommy expected thing?”

    “Yeah. You can get lots of different cheese in the supermarkets in Oz,” I admit cautiously. “Dad likes King Island brie, it’s quite mild. Mum reckons it’s an indulgence, but it’s his money, she doesn’t stop him.”

    “This is English Stilton.”

    I had an idea it might be, yeah. And I will not like it. He reaches over—he’s like at the head of the table but I’m allowed to be next to him, he hasn’t gone so far as to banish me to the foot—and puts a bit on a bit of the bread and lifts it to my mouth, I’m not gonna— Pwah! Argh! Um, not bad. Not as bad as it looks.

    “See?”

    Yeah, all right. I eat up my nice English Stilton. Where’s the pudding?

    “Is there any pudding?” I say cautiously.

    “Dessert,” he says, smiling.

    “I thought that was non-U?”

    Oh, dear. We’re having what his Mother would call a dessert course, darling, rather than a pudding course. Normally in England one would have the pudding before the savoury, in this case before the cheese. Gee, zat so? But dessert comes after the cheese and is composed of fruit and nuts. –And nuts, right. He’ll lend me a cookery book, he’s never managed to make much from it but he likes reading it, it’s literate. I don’t tell him I have a huge, inbuilt resistance to books forcibly lent to me when I haven’t asked to borrow them, he’s gonna find out soon enough. Literate or not.

    I’d call it an apple and some raisins, but there are some nuts, back home we only have those at Christmas, though when Joslynne’s Mum was going through her vegetarian phase they practically lived off the bloody things until her dad went over the grocery bills with a fine-tooth comb and put his foot down once and for all. I’d much rather have one of those frozen cheesecakes that Rupy chooses from our supermarket. Put it like this, I’d much rather have cheesecake without the “dessert” or the English Stilton, goddit? Thoughtcha had, yeah.

    We had some wine with the main course, as I might mentioned I don’t know beans about European wines but I know enough about wine per se to know that Beaujolais is generally not much even if it does come out of a bottle and that this stuff wasn’t a patch on a nice Aussie shiraz. He apologised nicely for it so I said Yeah, it was anaemic but at least it wasn’t drowning the casserole, and he didn’t know what to say.

    Blow me down, there is a dishwasher, it’s built in behind two of the cream cupboard doors. We gotta rinse the plates and tureens first but I don’t say a thing.

    We go and sit by the fire which he’s lit in consideration of my Southern constitution and just as he’s getting the brandy out there’s a sort of funny noise and I stiffen all over and he says “It’s only Tim,” and goes to let him in.

    I have to go out to the kitchen with them and pour his water for him and open his tin for him. I can’t, I mean, it’s not that I’m terrified of Tim, though I am, but he’s only got one of those ludicrous manual openers, and I can't make it work. Haven’t you got a real opener, John? No, sorry! He opens it himself, no sweat, not even an ow or pinched fingers, let alone your grunting and gasping with no visible result, but then makes me spoon it out into the bowl, ooh! Tim’s come right up against me and pushed against my leg. Brother, is he tall. What is he, a Labrador? No, a retriever. I never heard of those and I don’t think they make them into guide dogs like Labradors so this isn’t cheering news, and he’s still leaning against my leg.

    “Tim! Behave yourself! Sit!”

    He sits, gee, isn’t he clever? I goggle at him. Rosie! Behave yourself! Put bowl down! No, well, it isn’t that bad. I’m terrified Tim’s gonna take my arm off before the bowl even hits the floor, but he doesn’t move, and I light blue touch paper, sorry, put it down beside the water bowl, and retire.

    “All right, boy,” he says, and Tim goes over to his bowl and gollops it down, he’s got the rottenest manners I ever saw, I thought baby Kyle Franchini was disgusting, but crikey! Gollop, gollop, gasp and gollop, gone! Then he drinks some water. Strewth.

    “He’s a dog.”

    “Don’t laugh, you wanker. Um, he was awfully hungry, wasn’t he? Didn’t she give him enough to eat?”

    “Of course she did. He’s always like that. Now, don’t move.” I can’t move, he’s grabbed my arm in a grip of iron. Tim comes up to me and presses against me again. “Pat him, you idiot!” Thanks, lover. I stroke him gingerly.

    John sighs. “He’s not made of china.” He gives him a sort of macho pat, blimey, and rumples up his ears.

    “Does he like that?”

    “No, he takes it as a diabolical liberty.”

    Right, he’s a dog, yeah. Gingerly I pat him again. He’s wagging his tail so it probably isn’t all bad. I stop patting but I don’t move my hand away in time, he licks it. Ugh!

    “Cut that out,” he says sternly. Oh, Tim, not me. Gulp.

    He noticed: he gives a sort of groan and sags all over the parts of me that Tim’s not already leaning on and says: “Come on back to the fire.”

    We all go back to the fire. Tim sits right down in front of it, hogging the warm. “Move over!” John shoves him with his foot. Tim doesn’t seem to mind, he waits until he’s put his foot down and then he puts his head on it with a sort of huffing noise, and closes his eyes.

    “He loves you,” I say idiotically.

    “Mm,” he agrees, smiling a bit and going back to the brandy. Now, folks, to me brandy is medicine, and I was hoping he’d forgotten all about it. I eye it warily. He picks up a glass but he doesn’t hand it to me, he kind of holds it for bit. So much the better. I check on Tim but he’s just breathing and twitching.

    “Do dogs dream?”

    He’s good, ya gotta hand it to him. Doesn’t even blink. Cool as a cucumber. “The consensus is that they do, though as far as I know, no-one has yet managed to demonstrate what they dream.”

    I frown over it. “You could test to see if they’ve got the right brain waves, like REM, that’d prove they were dreaming.”

    “Precisely, Watson.” He hands me the glass he’s been holding.

    I goggle at him. “What was that, you were like hatching it?”

    That little not-quite-smile, oops, watch it. “Try it.”

    I try it. Wow-ee! “Is this good brandy?” I venture feebly.

    It is, but that isn’t it, good brandy needs to be warmed, and he didn’t think, on the evidence so far, that those little paws of mine were gonna be up to it.

    What bullshit, all because I couldn’t make his stupid antique tin-opener work! And all he did was hold it. I glare a bit and try sitting the brandy glass in my hand like he just— No, right. It kind of perches on my hand, ya see, but his covered up all the actual brandy including up past the level it’s sunk to since I started drinking it.

    “Sip it.”

    All right, I’ll try not to gollop it, Master.

    “Say it, Rosie,” he murmurs; boy, he’s so sharp he’ll cut himself.

    I clear my throat. Not that, with all those brandy fumes whistling round in there, it needs it. Whew! “All right, but it’s got expressions in it that you probably won’t know if you’re not part of the Marshall nuclear family.”

    “Mm?”

    I make a silly face and flute: “All right, I’ll try to sip it and not gollop it, Master.”

    He goes into hysterics but after a while blows his nose and says: “Sorry. Didn’t realise I was that bad.”

    Probably doesn’t have to be with the puce and magenta ladies, because they know it all already, see? “No, well, it’s the colonial cringe.”

    “I think I understand, but perhaps you’d better elucidate.”

    I elucidate. I can see he’s miles ahead of me.

    “Mm, I see what you mean, but I did rather have the impression that nothing under God’s good sky would make you cringe for real, Rosie.” He glances at the sleeping Tim. “Er, well, big dogs apart, perhaps.”

    “Some of that’s bravado.” He just looks mildly at me. Somehow I find myself admitting: “No, well, a lot of it isn’t, and some of the time when I look like I’m cringing I’m putting it on because it’s what people here expect. They don’t realise that fundamentally I don’t give a fuck. Well, ninety-nine percent of the time, anyway. Mind you, I am quite glad to know about fish knives and not putting your pudding spoon above the plate—it’s all right, it wasn’t you, it was Rupy, before we went to dinner with Paul and Malcolm—but I can see it doesn’t matter a damn in the scheme of things. I’m a pretty hard case, actually. Well, ya gotta be, or go under, when you’re short and female with yellow curls. I grew up with a million brainwashed female rellies assuming I’d follow in their inglorious footsteps, like into domestic slavery varied in the case of the more recent generations with badly paid jobs to help pay the bills for the consumer goods, it’s called equality but it’s still them that have to take time off work when the kids are sick and cook the meals nine nights out of ten and drive the kids to their fucking sports in the weekends. Dad’s not so bad, but he was busy building up the business. It was a real battle even getting to the point of being allowed to start a B.A., let alone going on to my Ph.D. Well, by that time I was legally old enough to ignore the lot of them, but that didn’t stop them bending my ear.”

    “Mm. Come over here,” he says, patting his knee.

    I approach cautiously, hoping he isn’t going to distract me just yet from this wonderful brandy and also trying to avoid Tim, who’s taking up most of the smallish, dark and to my ignorant eye very expensive-looking Persian rug that’s in front of the fireplace.

    He puts his arm round me very gently as I get on his knee and kind of leans his face into my neck and breathes deeply. After a while he says in a muffled voice: “I like it.”

    “I noticed!”

    “That, too,” he says with a smile in his voice. He looks up and says: “What you call being a hard case. I think I’d call it feistiness, but let’s not argue about terminology. In the Haworth nuclear family we tend to call it Non carborundum, which we translate as ‘Don’t let the buggers grind you down.’”

    I choke. “Honest? Dad says that!”

    He grins. “See? We’ve got more in common than you think!”

    Yeah. Maybe. Let’s hope so.

    We do finish our brandies and then Tim has to be let out and waited for and let in again, and then it seems to be bedtime. So even though Tim might be surprised because it’s still early, John brings his basket in from the kitchen. My eyes are on stalks.

    “Marion,” he says with a sigh. “Convinced it’s not a fit sight for a sitting-room. Something like that.”

    It’s just like Buster’s only bigger. Well, Buster’s got a fluffy peach blanket in his and a bright orange ball that he likes to chew and Tim’s got a very masculine old tartan rug, but otherwise there’s nothing wrong with it.

    “Image? Fleas?” he says with another sigh. “I’ve given up trying to argue with her.”

    “If the basket’s got fleas, there’d be some on him, what’s the difference?”

    “Quite.”

    That went down very well so I open that great mouth of mine and add: “Anyway, what’s a flea or two between friends? Ya can get stuff for it, like at the vet’s.”

    He’s looking very wry. “No flea would dare to show its nose in any house with Marion in charge of it, I do assure you.”

    Ye-ah. Right. Crikey Dick, in summer back home—

    “Say it.”

    “Sorry. In summer back home the lawn was often leaping with them. Mum just powdered the cats, or gave them those drops when they came in, that was later, and slapped the calamine lotion on us kids when we whinged too much about the itching. What I mean, she never welcomed the things but she never went into a tizz over them, she just dealt with them. Um, is this a Pommy thing or just her?”

    He scratches his chin. “How can I put it? This is a nice house-proud Pommy lady thing, class immaterial.”

    I think this means his Mother’d go rabid over fleas in the house too, but I’m not gonna say that! “Yeah, I see.”

    He puts his arm round me. “Bed?”

    “Mm. –Isn’t he gonna get in it?”

    “No, he’s waiting to see if I’m going to suffer softening of the brain and let him sleep on the bed. I never have yet but a dog lives in hope.” He shrugs. “Apparently.”

    “Oh.” We go over to the door, him with his arm still round me and me twisting my neck. “He isn’t in it.”

    “No. Don’t keep looking at him: the clown’ll assume we want his company.”

    “Oh. Um—night-night, Tim!” He gives me a very, very sad look.

    “Rosie, darling, you’re encouraging the brute.”

    “Will he be warm enough?”

    “Yes, and I’m also sure he wants you to wonder that. Come on.” He switches the light out and we go out. He leaves the door a bit open, good, I wouldn’t like to think of Tim panicking all by himself in there. Halfway up the stairs I look back. “Ooh!”

    “Get out of it!” he shouts, and Tim’s nose vanishes from the doorway. “Come on.”

    “Are you sure we ought to shut the door?” I say as we go into the bedroom and he shuts it.

    “Yes. I don’t say he will come and keep us company, but it has been known to happen. The lady in question found it disconcerting, especially at the point where he went into the bathroom as she was using the bidet and did his favourite foul trick of drinking from the lavatory bowl.”

    I fall on the bed in helpless hysterics. “Mum had a cat once that did that! Dad just about blew a gasket! But she just said calmly as anything that he sometimes did that when it was just her at home during the day. And Dad was a nong to leave the toilet door open.”

    He grins. “I think I’d like to know your mum, Rosie.”

    Yeah, right, her and the sweet sherry and the stories about the strings of boyfriends in the flares and beads and Flower Power gear. “She’s just an average Australian mum, in most ways. Pretty easy-going, I suppose. Well, um, she used to be slightly into Flower Power and that shit before she married Dad.” –Not to mention those boys with the Beatles haircuts and drainpipe trousers she used to go round with before that. Great-Aunty Lil used to say she was man-mad, that’s an expression of her generation, and that that was where I got it from.

    “And?” he says, starting to get undressed.

    “Look, you’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days! Put it like this, she’s stubborn as a mule and though ya think she’s a conformist it’s only because she mostly agrees with all the conventional shit, but if there’s something she doesn’t agree with, she just goes her own sweet way, you better believe it! And it wasn’t only the Flower Power, Great-Aunty Lil reckoned she was man-mad before she settled down with Dad, and that’s where I got it from.”

    “I'd very much like to meet her!” he says, laughing. “And does she look like you?”

    Groaning, I reply: “Yeah, yeah. Yellow curls, at least they used to be, she’s fifty-three now. She does looks quite like me except her eyes are blue, mine are sort of halfway between hers and Dad’s—his are grey. Hers are very pale blue. Not as pretty as yours.”

    “That’s a compliment, is it?” he says, grinning.

    “No, it’s just an observation.”

    He’s got all his clothes off by now so he can see I’m also observing him. “I see,” he says, grinning.

    “I wish you wouldn’t grin like that, it makes my knees go all wobbly and then I can’t think.”

    He comes over to the bed, still grinning. “You think with your knees, do you?”

    “Yeah, it’s got something to do with being an ignorant Southern colonial—Ow! Ooh! Stop it!” He’s kinda jumped on me and is kinda tickling me unmercifully…

    And so to bed.

    Folks, I can reliably report that as a lover Captain John Haworth, R.N., is extra. It isn’t just that we both want each other terrifically, which ya mighta guessed by now. But also he wants me, he actually told me this, to enjoy it as much as he does. No-one ever said that to me before and only one guy, like Mr Sophisticated, ever acted like it, in fact even Euan sometimes didn’t— Never mind. Also, to my astonishment he admitted he was worried about not being able to perform to expectations because of his age. Crikey, fifty’s not old, look at Picasso and that other old man, um, Charlie Chaplin. Well, if anyone was worrying, which I for one certainly wasn’t, there was nothing to worry about, because he knows all about women, that’s for sure, more than I do, actually. As for thinking a person of his age might not’ve heard of a sixty-nine or might not fancy it if he hadda heard of it— Hah, hah again, ya could say. Whew! Afterwards I didn’t stay awake wondering if he was gonna be able to do it again tonight, funnily enough I passed right out, I don’t think it had much to do with the brandy, either.

    In the morning he’s already awake when I wake up but he’s just sort of cuddling up against me i.e. spoons. After a while I'm awake enough to realise he’s actually pressing it against my bum. That’s a relief. I have to have a piss, of course, I always do, but he only says “Mm,” with a smile in his voice when I say I gotta go, first. When I come back we do it again, he calls it just an ordinary one. It’s very nice and cuddly, but I wouldn’t say it was all that ordinary. Then we just lie here for ages, me with my head on his shoulder, gee he’s got great shoulders, in fact he’s got the perfect figure. Not ye young bronzed god type: I’ve seen enough of them on the beach back home to last me several lifetimes, thanks. They got nothing down below, it’s something to do with those teeny, weeny, narrow hips, and absolutely nothing between the ears but concrete. Not an ideal combination and I have verified it empirically, yeah. John’s not like that in any way. He’s got a very balanced figure, eventually I work out it’s because his legs aren’t too long for his torso and the said torso is nice and solid, but absolutely not fat. What does he usually do in the mornings? Not this. (I bet. Well, I’ll concede he doesn’t when he’s at sea, no.) Does some push-ups and jogs round the deck, and if Bo-son Green’s available (doesn’t notice me jumping at the discovery they have them in real life) they might put the gloves on. Huh? Oh, boxing, goddit, goddit.

    –And what’s wrong with Bo-sons? Gulp, did notice me. Feebly I try to explain. He smiles, and tells me all about where they all fit in. It’s interesting, but I dunno if I’ll be able to remember it all. I think Varley’s got it right in the scripts. Though Daddy Captain seems to have a lot more to do with Cock’s-un and Bo-son than he would in real life. I ask some cautious questions. Right, chains of command, etcetera. Yep.

    He reminded me to ring the TV crowd yesterday while we were waiting for the veggies to cook and the casserole to warm up, so I know they won’t be panicking. They might well be rabid, but they won’t be panicking. I didn’t speak to anyone in person, I just left a message with the hotel desk. However, he says would I like to ring them now. (No.) Peer blearily at his bedside clock. Shit, that early? None of them’ll be awake, not even the crew, so I definitely won't ring them. Would I like to use the bathroom first? No. He grins and goes off himself. I just lie here in his nice big bed…

    “Wake up!”

    I come to with a jerk. “I wasn’t, really.”

    “No, and you didn’t really let him on the bed. Get OFF!”

    Poor old Tim gets off the bed and it begins to come back to me. “Um, after you went in the ensuite he was whining outside the door, and I thought he might need to go out, so I opened the door, but he didn’t, he wanted to come in, he was lonely.”

    “Balls.”

    “Yes, he was, John, he looked at me ever so sadly.”

    “Rosie, you total nit, he wanted you to let him on the bed, he was suckering you!”

    “Well, it worked.”

    He groans and sits down to put his shoes on. “Dogs are not allowed on beds. Rule Number One of the Haworth nuclear family.”

    “Aw, is it? Gee, I thought it was everyone hadda be in the Navy!”

     He straightens, grinning. “You’ve got me, there. Give us a kiss?”

    Mmm…

    “Er—no: work, darling.”

    I remove my hand from where it was. “Bummer.”

    He goes out, sniggering. He’s wearing his white uniform shirt and his uniform pants, words cannot express how dishy he looks. What a waste. Sighing, I go into the ensuite. Just in time I remember about Tim and the toilet bowl and close the door. …If the bathroom’s so gorgeous, which it is, how come he’s got this grungy sort of fawn wallpaper in the bedroom, with a pattern of very small brownish things that if you get very close you can see are fleur-de-lis but from a distance of more than a foot they look like spots, and those revolting brown velvet curtains and that revolting brown duna, sorry, sorry, duvet on the bed? Not to mention the rug, why doesn't he put a nice Persian one in there, since he’s got all those nice Persian ones? … I enjoy bee-ing a gurl! –Don’t blame me, it’s in Episode One of the third series and I’ve been ordered to learn it up.

    I haven’t got anything clean to put on, army surplus satchels that have to hold a tape recorder and a laptop haven’t got room for much else. Considerately I put on the blue tee-shirt and the navy jumper he lent me yesterday, but I can’t face those red stretch-nylon knickers again so after some thought I investigate his drawers.

    Uh, no, like I said, his hips are not teeny-weeny, but he’s right about me not being able to get into any of his pants, no pun intended. So I just put my jeans on.

    “Where’s my satchel?”

    He’s at the Aga. “Good morning to you, too!”

   “Hah, hah.” He comes and gives me a big kiss, funnily enough I don’t push him away. “Mmm… Where’s my satchel?”

    “Surely you don’t want to work at this hour?”

    “No, ya nong! I wanna bung these pants in it! Or alternatively I could put them in your washing,” I note snidely.

    “Put them in my washing,” he says calmly.

    My jaw drops.

    “That’s the washing-machine in the corner: those things in it are waiting to be done.” So they are, it’s one of those Pommy-type ones with a glass porthole that lets you see the clothes going round—front-loader, yeah. I add my red stretch-nylon knickers to his shirts and stuff.

    “Does the dye come out of those?”

    “No, ’course not, they’re from Marks & Sparks!” I say proudly.

    “Good show,” he says, grinning; see, he’s being so haw-haw and British because I proudly used the correct British expression, he’s not slow.

    “Shuddup.” I come and lean on the bench beside him.

    “Want to feed Tim?” –Tim’s been sitting near the fridge; Buster does that, too. He comes over to us hopefully.

    “Yeah, only I can’t work that dumb tin-opener.”

    “Oh, nor you can.” He opens the tin. I put fresh water in Tim’s drinking bowl and  spoon the dog food out into his dish.

    “There’s a bone for him in the fridge, Rosie, but give him this muck first.”

    I put the dish down but I’ve forgotten what to say. “I’ve forgotten what to say.”

    Now, some men, in fact all of the Aussie creeps I know back home, would just say it themselves, like, the little woman’s hopeless, ya see, but John Haworth replies: “Speak to him in an encouraging voice, telling him to come on. It’s largely tone.”

    “Come on, Tim!” Wow, he’s at it in a flash. Gollop, gollop—same old story. This time I know he’s not starving, he ate a whole tinful of it last night.

    “Does he always have a whole tin?”

    “Yes: they’re not very big. He should be fed once a day—a larger tin—but being away at sea so much I’ve never got him into the habit. –Give him the bone now, darling.”

    “Oh! Righto!” I open the fridge and peer in, not letting on that I may not recognise the Pommy idea of a— Phew, gosh. It’s huge! “It’s huge.”

    “Yes, a beef bone.”

    I get it out and unwrap it. Tim’s come over to me, panting like mad. I think if I was a dog I’d be panting too, though there’s not all that much meat on it. “There’s not much meat on it.”

    “No, it’s for his teeth, really. You could either put it in his mouth, or just put it in the bowl.”

    After a moment I say: “If this is a test, I’m not up for it, thanks.”

    He bites his lip. “No. I won’t ask whether that was inspired by the men you’ve known in the past or your expectations of bloody Pommies. All I meant to imply was, if you’re still nervous of his teeth, for which, by the by, I’m not blaming you, put it in the bowl.”

    I manage to say “No flies on you, eh?” but somehow or another I’m grinning like an idiot. “Um, actually I think I quite like him.”

    “I did get that impression when I found both of you snoring on the bed, mm. But that doesn’t mean you have to brave the teeth. –Better put him out of his misery, darling.”

    “Oh! Yes, poor old Tim!” I coo, very, very bravely approaching the bone to his maw. Uff! Crikey! But he missed my hand by miles.

    “Can you let him out? He’ll eat it in the garden.”

    Dubiously I go over to the kitchen door. “Come on, Tim! –Gee, he’s following me, he knows!” We go into the little passage and I open the back door, it’s already unlocked and unbolted, someone was no doubt busy while I was in the shower. He takes it out…

    “Ahoy! Breakfast!”

    I come to with a jump, and shut the door. “Sorry, I was watching him,” I explain, going back into the kitchen.

    “Mm,” he replies with a smile. “Hungry?”

    I better be: that’s an awful lot of cholesterol for one middle-aged man, fit or not, to get round by himself. Not that I’m not. We’re actually allowed to eat at the kitchen table like normal human beings, phew. I collapse onto a chair but say cautiously as he brings the coffee pot over: “John, do you always have scrambled eggs for breakfast?”

    “No, only when I feel the protein needs replenishing,” he replies primly.

    I go into an awful sniggering fit but admit: “That’s a relief.”

    “I do watch my cholesterol intake,” he murmurs.

    “Yeah. Good.” The coffee-pot’s got its own little blue-patterned tile to sit on, now if this kitchen had some blue in it, not so much yicky cream, but maybe keep some of the cream, it’d be real ace…

    “Rosie, ahoy?”

    “Mm? Oh, sorry!”

    “What in God’s name were you thinking about? Rehearsing your lines?”

    “Uh—” He’s staring at me. Oh, God. “Um, I was just thinking that some blue would improve this kitchen...” Ending very faint.

     “Blue? That’s an idea.”

    “Yes, um, like what you’ve got in your ensuite, I really like it!” I say enthusiastically,.

    “Glad to hear it. Fiona and Norman gave it to me as a birthday present. –She has got taste,” he murmurs as I goggle at him. “And they did ask me if I’d like it.”

    “I was suddenly having visions of Aunty Kate let loose in her siblings’ bathrooms, yeah. It’s an ace present, though!”

    “Mm-hm. So, where would you have the blue in here, darling? Repaint the cupboards?”

    “N-o… Like, up there.” There’s lots of cream tiles about to where the wainscoting comes in the other rooms, and then paler cream plain walls.

    “Paint the plaster pale blue?”—Oops, said the wrong thing? I look at him fearfully.—“Yes, that’d be pretty.”

    “Oh, good. Then I think I’d keep the cupboards cream, only maybe a bit lighter, and you know what? In the middle of each door, I’d put a little navy-blue motif!” –Rosie, you’re getting carried away, stop it.

    “That would be nice. And the floor? Replace it with something in blue, perhaps?”

    I haven’t mentioned the floor before because I couldn’t bear to. It’s probably the original lino. Like, before people realised lino could be tasteful, geddit? Speckled, bits of brown, bits of cream, bits of fawn, and to really top it off, bits of green. Totally Yuck. “Yeah. Well, Aunty Kate’s keen on real tiles but they’re murder to stand on, your Marion’d probably come down with varicose veins. Navy-blue vinyl, maybe? Sort of a Spanish tile pattern, like your coffee-pot stand?”

    He lifts the coffee pot, smiling, and holds up the stand. “It is a Spanish tile: got it when we were in Gib. Uh, Gibraltar.”

    “I know what Gib is, ya nong, it only crops up in every second line of the bloody show! That’s really pretty, I like it.”

    “Good. Rip out all those foul dark cream tiles above the sink-bench and replace them with real Spanish tiles?”

    Rosie, you are nesting, stop it, it’s far too soon, you’ll scare him off, and who knows if the relationship’ll ever— “Yeah,” I say eagerly: “that’d be really ace, John!”

   Oh, well, he doesn’t seem to mind. And at least I haven’t ordered him to replace his repulsive bedroom wallpaper with pink roses like Maybelle’s.

    Take it for all in all I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself and after I’ve cleaned my teeth John seems to be pottering, so I say is it okay if I go outside and look for Tim, and of course it is, so I rush downstairs and outside. No sign of him, so I hunt round the back garden, it’s quite big, but no veggie patch, what a waste. Some nice apple trees, though the apples aren’t ripe, yet. No peach tree, though, pity. Um, on second thoughts maybe England’s too cold for peach trees? No citrus, either, too cold for them, too? I thought they were pretty hardy? Well, ours sure are, Mum never does a thing to them, and they’ve always borne like billyo. There’s a kind of little glasshouse, real small, I peer in but it’s empty. I go round the front. “Tim! Tim! Oh, there you are!”

    He comes up to me and lets me pat him and licks my hand, I’m getting used to that. “Good boy. Hey, you got a nice view, eh? Lovely housey, eh, Tim?” Probably thinks I’m nuts. Dunno what to say to a dog. Um, say what I’d say to Buster? Only Buster’s smaller, often I just pick him up and give him a big cuddle and say “Mm, you are nice! I wish you were mine! Lovely Buster!” Stuff like that.

    He’s looking sad. “Whassa matter, Tim? Didja eat your bone all up?”

    “Wuff!”

    Shit! Uh—oh. Think he recognised that W,O,R,D. “Never mind, life isn’t all B,O,N,E,S, even for dogs.” He leans against my leg, huffing a bit.

    “You’re a lucky dog,” I say with a sigh. “I wish I lived here.”

    Tim just leans against my leg, waving his great big tail.

    We could sit on that neato wall, and look at the sea. Gee, it’s a lovely view, a dear little bay, there’s no other houses, think that over there to the left is the track we came down: the other houses, um, village? are just behind that bit of a hill. “Shall we go over to the wall? Come on, then.” I move off uncertainly but he’s got the point, he trots along beside me, panting a bit. I sit on the wall, it’s just about the right height for me. I swing my legs over, and look dreamily at John’s bay. After a bit Tim comes up and nudges my bum. “Ooh! –Come on, then, you wanna sit up here? Come on, you can!” Ooh! He can, too, he’s up beside me. No sweat. He sits very close. After a bit dumb Rosie gets the point and puts an arm round him, he’s very warm and solid. He leans against me… It dawns that maybe he’s used to doing this with John and my eyes fill with tears like a total nong and he makes an anxious noise and licks my face.

    “Ugh! Yeah, good boy. Dumb Rosie, eh?” I grin at him and try to sound happy and he just leans against me, panting a bit…

    We’re sitting like this in a complete dream when a neat little red Mazda zips round the hill, zooms down the track and pulls up by the gate, and a handsome middle-aged woman in a tailored apricot blouse and black slacks gets out. That reddish hair that’s dyed, with a kind of purple sheen to it, very well controlled: layered, like Aunty Kate’s cut. Help!

    One of us had better speak, because I don’t think Tim’s gonna. “Hullo, would you be Marion? I’m Rosie. Rosie Marshall.”

    She’s goggling, so he didn’t tell her about me, the wanker. “Er—yes, I’m Marion Blaine. Good morning. –Good dog, Tim.” She stretches out a hand to him but to my absolute horror he goes “Wuff!” sounding real cross, and the poor woman takes a step backwards.

    “Tim! That’ll do!” says John’s voice from behind us and he comes out of the front door, comes up to me, and stands very close behind me with his arm sort of round me a bit and his hand on my upper-arm, not the one I’ve got round Tim, the other one. “Sorry, Marion, I think he’s got some potty idea he has to defend Rosie against all comers. –What do you think you’re doing, you fool?” he says to him, ruffling the ears. Tim just licks his hand.

    “You two have introduced yourselves, have you?” he adds, squeezing my arm.

    “Yes,” I say. “Thank you very much for the casserole, Marion, it was ace.”

    “What? Oh, it was nothing… I’m sorry,” she says, going red. “Did you say your name was Rosie Marshall?”

    “Yeah, that’s right.”

    She looks in a bewildered way from me to him. Personally I wouldn’t have thought she could be in any doubt, I have got “available” on my forehead, remember. Or is she wondering if he’s fallen out of his tree?

    “Darling,” he says to me, squeezing the arm again, “I don’t know if it’s the result of solid food instead of that microwave rubbish you and your theatrical friends exist on, but hasn’t it dawned that Marion might have recognised you?”

    Eh? Never seen the woman before in me— What a nit! “Um, sorry, Marion!” I gasp, turning puce. “My real name is Rosie Marshall, but I am Lily Rose Rayne, if that’s what you were thinking!”

    “Of course she was,” he says, dropping a kiss on my curls, help, I don’t dare to catch the poor woman’s eye, after all I am practically half his age and she’s been wooing him with unsolicited real casseroles. “Marion’s been taping the series for me, I told you that.”

    “Mm,” I agree.

    “Yes. It’s nice to meet you,” she produces limply. Boy, that was an effort! It’s plain as the nose on your face she took one look at me in my mop of yellow curls and grungy jeans, and, oops, his Navy jumper, and decided to loathe me forever, and finding out I’m Lily Rose has not helped.

    He manages us inside capably, the thought occurs, Is he used to this sort of scenario? and manages me into finding my army surplus satchel, and then it’s time to go. Marion’s put on a flowery apron she had in a cupboard; she comes to the front door and tries to do the woman-in-possession bit. “Will you be back tonight, John?”

    “Oh, yes, I think so. –Don’t want to stay at the hotel this evening, do you, Rosie?” he says in a super-casual voice.

    “Not if we can stay in your cottage instead,” I reply blatantly.

    “Good.” He smiles very nicely at her and says: “Please don’t bother about supplies, Marion, we’ll manage.” –Will we? That freezer compartment of his better be full of frozen oven-ready dinners, in that case.

    She’s making bleating noises about bread.

    “That bread you brought was lovely, we had it with the Stilton cheese,” I say inanely, just for the sake of something to say, really, and hoping she’ll be pleased the bread was a success.

    Oops, it’s the wrong thing, because she gasps: “The Stilton? I thought you were saving that for your father, John?”

    “No, well, decided it could go to a better place,” he says, grinning like anything. The wanker! Can’t he see she’s suffering? …Oh. Wait just a mo’, here. Is he saying it on purpose? I stare at him, but he’s wearing the poker face again.

    “Yes, well… I can bring over some more bread, it’s no trouble. And you could probably do with some more milk.”

    Is she sure? She’s sure. He thanks her very nicely. I refrain from thanking her very nicely, I think that might be the last straw. I just say: “Bye-bye, Marion. Bye-bye, Tim!”

    And we go over to the car. He’s just gonna open the gate when she calls: “Tim! Come here!” and we see he’s come up to us, all frisky.

    “What the—Get down! Stay! Sit! He hasn’t done this since he was a pup!” he says as Marion hurries up, all flushed, and grabs his collar. “Yes, you’d better hang on to him, I think, Marion. Rosie, what in God’s name have you— My God, you didn’t give him milk, did you?”

    Who, me, sir? No, not I, sir!  “No. Why?”

   “Why? He sicks it up. And normally he does know that when I go, I go.”

    “Ye-ah. Couldn’t he come, too?” I say sadly. “I mean, like to the ship? It’s not as if you’re gonna sail it today.” I brighten. “He could be, like, a mascot! Hey, I tell ya what, he could be in the shots!”

    “Balls. Get in the car. –Sit!” I am! Oh, not me: Tim.

    John backs out, then he gets out and closes the gate. It’s quite a nice gate: double, technically gates plural, I guess. White, like Maybelle’s picket fence.

    “Bye!” he calls, not really waving, just lifting his hand. Marion’s still hanging on to Tim. She waves, trying to smile. I wave. And we go.

    We’ve gone up the track, turned right, and gone down the other side of the rise, the road’s sort of in a dip between two hills, and through the village—it must be a village, it isn’t big enough to be a town—before I get up the courage to croak: “Were you deliberately discouraging Marion with all that stuff about not bothering about supplies and eating up the Stilton and stuff?”

    There’s a short pause.  “Discouraging?”

    “Don’t try to kid me, you wanker!” I shout.

    He grins. “I love it when you lose your rag, Rosie, darling. Well, yes, I suppose I was. There have been—uh—a few too many unexpected casseroles of late months. I suppose I—er—seized the moment.”

    “Yeah. I think you coulda refrained, actually.”

    “Oh?”

    “Well, heck, she drives up and sees me sitting on your wall with your dog in your Navy jumper with this here ‘available’ tattooed on my forehead, what do you think she was thinking?”

    “Mm. I suppose I assumed that a little reinforcement wouldn’t come amiss.”

    Jesus, men can be cruel! They say that woman are cats, but crikey—! Incapable of realising what the other half feels, is wot. I don’t say anything.

    After a while he says: “Have I blotted my copybook?”

    “No. Men are like that.”

    “Goodness, I have blotted my copybook!” he says in horror. Like, mock horror.

    “Shuddup.”

    There’s a short silence. Then I say: “Does she always turn up that early?”

    He sighs. “No, she doesn’t, darling, and that was another reason why I felt that a certain amount of reinforcement might be in order.”

    “Ye-ah. It wasn’t just she knew you had a guest and she was nosy?”

    “No, I didn’t say anything about you, I felt it would be tactless. The wrong tactic, as it turned out, I think.”

    “Yeah, I s’pose it was.”

    “Am I forgiven?”

    Dunno. Depends on if you expect me to cook stuff tonight. “Yeah. Well, at least you didn't order me to hide in the wardrobe.”

    “Hide in the— Rosie, it’s not like that!”

    Gee, that’s good news.

   “I thought you realised?”

    “Not really. Well, I don't know you that well yet, do I?”

    “No. Well, it’s not like that. Not in my private life. But—uh—”

    Goddit, Captain, sir, ya don’t have to bludgeon me. “You want to play it cool for your crew, is that it?”

    He makes a face. “Given that you’re Lily Rose Rayne, darling, yes. We are both free agents, but nevertheless… Well, I don’t think it’s the sort of publicity the Navy’s hoping for.”

    I suppose I more or less expected as much. “Okay, sure, play it cool. Um, do I know you?”

    He’s taken aback. “Uh—yes, of course!”

    “All right, but for Pete’s sake don’t give me any of those casual English darlings in front of your sailors, I’ll give the game away.”

    He smiles and pats my knee and murmurs: “No. –They weren’t casual.”

    No, because as I’m beginning to discover, nothing about him is casual. Talk about your ship-shape and squared away! But I’m very pleased to hear it, and all I say is: “Good.”

    And we drive on in a state of perfect harmony…

    It lasts up until the moment he offers to let me take the car for the rest of the day, if I’d like to, at which point I have to reveal the Awful Truth that I can’t drive. Yep, the only person in the twenty-first century over the age of fourteen— I explain about the two sessions of driving lessons, the umpteen helpful friends and rellies that believed they could teach me, and the total, but total inability to work the hands and the feet and watch the traffic, plus and decide what I’m gonna do next, simultaneously. My own opinion is that it’s either psychological or more likely neurological, but I already know that I’m alone in the universe on that one: I can do it if I try, and every boyfriend I've ever had, up to and including Euan, oh, yeah, has been convinced he’s the one that’s gonna—

    John Haworth remarks tranquilly that it could be psychological but it sounds more like a neurological problem. I gulp. In that case he’ll drop me off at the hotel, and don’t let anyone try to talk me into walking to the ship, it’s too far, take a taxi, darling. I smile weakly…

    He finds the hotel, no prob, and kisses me very hard before he lets me out. “See you soon!”

    “Aye, aye, sir!” I say, throwing a salute.

    “Don’t you dare do that on Dauntless!”

    “No, I won’t. Bye-bye, John.”

    He smiles. “Bye-bye, Rosie, darling.” And off he goes. I stand here like an idiot outside this swanky big hotel while the old black Jag is swallowed up in the traffic…

    Then I go inside, fully prepared to take no shit from nobody.

    Well, you can probably imagine the scene, so I’ll draw a veil. Let’s just say that it’s hard to decide whether Rupy, Paul Mitchell, or Yvonne’s gonna be the first to drop down of an apoplexy, and Barbara’s in actual tears. I just say I left a message, and Henny Penny doesn’t own me, appearances to the contrary.

    So now here I am in a tight pink linen-look suit and pearls, prepared to stand about uselessly for five thousand hours while Paul and the cameraman and the PR types’ stills photographer argue about which shots to take.

    Crikey, that’s a big ship! I goggle up at it in horror. He drives that? Omigod. And how many sailors must the thing hold? Omigod.

    “Nyah, nyah,” says Rupy in my ear, he’s still really narked.

    “Same to you with brass nobs on.” …Crikey! It’s huge! How come it didn’t look that huge sitting out on the water shooting at that stupid wooden target?

    “Authority figures, darling?” he says, no flies on him.

    “Shuddup! And if you think you look sailorly in that stupid blazer and slacks and Miss Hammersley’s CD scarf, you got another think coming! You’ll be the only person on the boat done up like Dirk Bogarde at Monte Carlo!”—He smirks, that was a compliment to him, silly twit.—“And that scarf’s out of period, it’s Sixties, and if Paul spots it, you’re dead!”

    “Cravat,” he says smugly, nevertheless readjusting it so the CD logo’s well hidden.

    Any minute now I’m gonna tell him he looks like Leslie Phillips, I can feel it in my bones…

    Only fortunately Barbara comes up to us and tells me anxiously to smooth my skirt, so she cops it instead. “It’s welded to my bum, I can’t fucking smooth it any more, whaddareya, blind?” She blenches. “Um, sorry, Barbara, I’m nervous, and his nibs has told me that I can recognise him only not to let on we’re doing it.”

    She nods, sort of mixed sympathy and horror. Most of the horror’s because of Euan, of course. Ooh, would she like to have him? Maybe if she started eating things like actual red meat and the occasional scraping of marg she’d fill out a bit… On the other hand, she’s not in the Business and by now I know that Euan, though I don’t think he realises it, looks down on mere PR persons.

    It’s got a fancy, like, gangplank? No, one of those other ones. Gangway? With a fancy navy-blue and white awning over it, do they think I’m the Queen, or what? And two sailors at the bottom of it in bell-bottoms. Which John has already told me they don't wear for everyday any more. Then a nice little officer comes down it, all smiles, he’s not nearly as pretty as Darryn, he’s got a round pink face and rather a pointy nose. And his teeth aren’t very straight and very white. Maybe he didn’t feel that a naval career warranted the expenditure of a whole year’s income on visits to the dentist, oh, yeah, too right, one of Darryn’s flatmates that’s jealous of his part told me the lot.

    Lieutenant McKay, he doesn’t look particularly Scotch, or sound it. He’ll take us up, he tells Paul, who’s officiously come forward as Group Leader, not bothering with introductions, typical, and of course we’ll be piped on board, and then Commander Corcoran, the First Officer (cripes, I didn’t expect it to be that much like Star Trek The Next Generation, and if John goes and calls him Number One I’ll probably have hysterics), will take Miss Rayne and Mr Manfred and Mr Maynarde to meet the Captain—smiling at me.

    At this point Barbara steps forward very firmly and does her official PR thing, making quite sure we’re all introduced. It is only the three of us, Brian Hendricks can be very mean over small things and he decided the expense of sending Darryn and Garry Woods and Toby Vernon, that’s the spiteful gay one that plays Lieutenant Hallett, wasn’t warranted. Garry didn’t mind, it meant longer hols and he and the wife are planning a nice little gloat over the townhouse, they’ve put a deposit on it. Toby was cross but he gets terribly motion sick, worse than me, so he didn’t really mind, only that it was a slight, but Darryn was awfully dished.

    We go up the gangplank, sorry, -way, Lieutenant McKay hovering anxiously and finally taking my elbow, though actually the high-heeled pink sandals are helping, going up; what they’ll be like coming down I shudder to think. He says something technical about tides—don’t get it. At the top there’s Commander Corky Corcoran, fearfully naval, very chuffed when I remember him, though I don’t think he realised it was me, if ya see what I mean. Salutes, grins, pipings— Then, gee, we’re gonna have to do it all again, because the cameraman didn’t get it all and the stills photographer thinks the angle was all wrong, and—

    Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay terrifically disconcerted, second takes aren’t naval, but trying to smile nicely. The man with the whistle just looks stolid. Him and his hard-on, yep, you goddit.

    Take two. The awning’s definitely casting the wrong sort of shadow, it’ll have to come off. If they want shots of Lily Rose at the top of the gangway being piped aboard? Paul and the stills photographer have a shouting match.

    Take three. The awning’s down, they hadda get a lot of sailors to do it, that entailed shouted orders and men running and stuff, the stills photographer took a lot of shots of it, Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay didn’t look all that pleased, this wasn’t meant to happen, obviously. …N.B.G. Lily Rose, what are you DOING? Smiling and shaking hands, whaddareya? Oh, was I holding my hair? Um, it’s quite windy with that awning d— Sorry, sorry.

    Take four. Yvonne’s come up and asphyxiated me with a giant hairspray bomb, bugger the ozone layer. And rearranged the skirt, funnily enough it’s ridden up going up that hugely steep gangway. The man with the whistle enjoyed it, mind you. …N.B.G.: a seagull flew over and cast a shadow in the wrong—

    Take five. Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay are getting horribly anxious, this wasn’t meant to happen. Halfway up the gangway Rupy’s gold watch falls off and he has hysterics. Serve him right for nicking it in the first place, and some of us told him that fancy gold link strap was gonna give way any minute now, it’s why it was in Jersey sugar daddy’s drawer instead of on his wrist. Seventeen sailors are smartly dispatched to find it…

    Take six. Yvonne’s bombed me again and pulled my skirt down again, Rupy’s watch is in his inside pocket, Paul’s threatened to kill him personally if he does anything so unprofessional again, and a crowd has now gathered on the wharf behind us. …No go. Commander, could you possibly smile? (Instead of looking anxious, right.) Rupy thinks he means our Commander, i.e. him, and protests he was smiling, and Paul shouts at him. Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay both blench, especially the Lieutenant…

    Take seven. Our cameraman says it’s a wrap. The stills photographer is still unhappy: does he (the man with the whistle) have to stand there? Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay both blench and the Lieutenant says yes, he does. The stills photographer shrugs and says on our heads be it. After a moment it dawns and the Commander and the Lieutenant smile relieved smiles and the Commander says Good, well, the Captain’s waiting for us—

    Paul decides ruthlessly that we need some shots of Lily Rose standing at the top of the gangway by herself, smiling and waving. Barbara’s noticed Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay both blenching, she tries to suggest that we could do that later, because maybe we’re keeping the Captain wait— No! The light’s just right! And get those people out of the way!

    I obligingly stand at the top of the gangway while Paul and Jerry, his assistant, clear everybody else out of the way. The man with the whistle won’t move until Commander Corky Corcoran gives Lieutenant McKay the nod and the Lieutenant gives him the nod, is anyone else horribly embarrassed? Well, Barbara is, I think it’s dawned on her that the captain of a huge great warship like Dauntless is something rather more important in the scheme of things than God Almighty on his own ship, and we are keeping him waiting.

    It takes approximately five thousand shots before Paul’s satisfied, and during this time Commander Corky Corcoran might be heard discreetly murmuring something to Lieutenant McKay, and the Lieutenant might be heard giving a rather loud order to a sailor to take the Captain a message of apology, on the double. Like, in Lieutenant McKay’s book, we’re insulting not only the Captain himself but also Commander Corcoran by all this farting about regardless of the programme he’s carefully got worked out for us, not to say, of anything approaching naval etiquette.

    However, at long last they’re allowed to take us to meet the Captain. The entire photographic crew comes, as a matter of course. Yvonne has to come, too: I can’t be trusted to meet a captain without last-minute supervision of my hair, skirt, and stocking seams, even though she and Barbara both know this is the very same captain I spent last night with. Very clearly Commander Corky Corcoran and Lieutenant McKay didn’t expect them all. We reach some steps and the Commander clears his throat and says, nicely but firmly, that the Captain is on the bridge and he’s afraid that arrangements haven’t been made for our people. Paul doesn’t get it so he has to spell it out that only the five of us are expected. Paul had understood that the camera crew and the stills photog— No. Not on the bridge. But there was an arrangement—! No. Not on the bridge, sir. He’s got a rather nice round face with one of those rather shapeless but nice noses and a lovely smile, but all of a sudden the steel shows through the upper-clawss manners and you realise he doesn’t give a shit about all us wanking TV people and he’s only doing it because he wouldn’t dream of not doing his duty however pathetically stupid it was. Gulp.

    After a moment I say in a very small voice: “Couldn’t Yvonne come?”—I know she’s been looking forward to it tremendously because one of her brothers is in the Navy.—“She won’t touch anything. One of her brothers is in the Navy. –This is her,” I explain, taking her hand.

    Yvonne’s gone very red, she gives him a scared, humble look. Well, sod the bloody British class system and the fucking Royal Navy, and ruddy upper-clawss Commander Corky Corcoran that sounds like Prince Charles in person!

    Suddenly he smiles and says: “Well, yes, I think Yvonne could come, so long as she doesn’t touch anything!” And everyone gives huge smiles of relief, not to say sighs, and we go up the steps. Commander Corcoran excusing himself very nicely and going first and Lieutenant McKay bringing up the rear, doubtless to make quite sure the photographers don’t follow us, and incidentally stationing a sailor in bell-bottoms at the bottom of the steps to make extra-sure they don’t.

    I don’t take in much of the bridge because here he is, conscientiously wearing his uniform instead of the navy Navy jumper with the little bits of leather on the shoulders that he’s admitted he’d usually be wearing. I do register it isn’t much like any of those old War movies, much more smooth and techo. He says: “How are you, Rosie?” and squeezes my hand very gently, and I manage to croak: “Hullo, John,” even though my knees are about to give way. Those sky-blue eyes are twinkling like anything.

    I introduce Yvonne quickly before Commander Corky Corcoran can admit he doesn’t know her name, and explain she’s my Personal Dresser and one of her brothers is in the navy. Bless him, he says: “Of course. It’s lovely to meet you, Yvonne, Rosie’s mentioned you.” And he remembers she’s from Jersey, and asks nicely what ship her brother’s in. Yvonne’s pink as anything, well, he is pretty overpowering to a normal red-blooded, yellow-haired female of the sort that has giant crushes on Sean Connery.

    Naturally he’s very affable to Rupy, Michael, Barbara and Paul, and to my astonishment Michael actually manages to ask some of the right technical questions, has he been boning up on it for the rôle? John’s showing him some of the technical things; Rupy says in my ear: “Where does Data sit?” So I tread on his foot.

    “Ow!”

    “Gosh, sorry, Rupy, I was looking at the view.”

    He’s trying not to hop, that was the heel of my pink sandal, serve him right, and he doesn’t even say “I bet!”

    Commander Corky Corcoran comes up quickly, it’s obviously his job to look out for things that aren’t going smoothly and pour oil, and explains to me and Yvonne what the things on the pointy bit are, oh, yes, are they really? –Blah, blah. I don’t wanna know all that, I want to know where Bo-son and all them sit, or stand, it’s not like Star Trek The Next Generation in spite of all the high tech. And which is Con? It would go with the Lily Rose bit, but I don't say any of it, I don’t want to run the risk of making John lose his cool, even though it’s clearly a thousand to one against that ever happening.

    I don’t see them exchange glances but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that John wraps up telling Michael and Paul about something very techo just at the moment Commander Corky Corcoran suggests kindly that we ladies might like to see the accommodation prepared for us. Huh? Yvonne thanks him and admits she’d like to set out her make-up kit and I realise that what he was actually trying to say is they’ve got a designated Ladies’ bog for us! Good. I wouldn’t mind going, because if Paul’s on form we’re not gonna get another chance in the next three hours and funnily enough I was quite nervous about this visit. Michael thanks Captain Haworth very nicely on behalf of “the company”, and I manage to smile at him and shake hands with everybody else, they sort of seem to be expecting it, and the young officers all go very pink and smile eagerly, and the sailors look agonised and also very pink. And we go. John doesn’t come with us, of course.

    I expected they’d evict some poor junior officer from his cabin, but gee, no, Miss Rayne is to have the use of the Captain’s Night Cabin. Gulp! Was that his idea? Once the impure males have been banished except for Commander Corky Corcoran, who’s making sure we’re comfortable, I ask him if this is usual. Yes, lady guests are always offered the use of the Captain’s Night Cabin and its bathroom. Of course, it’s got an ensuite, that’ll be it, why couldn’t they just say so from the word go? He tells me who the last august lady guest was and I barely manage to scrape up a smile in reply. Well, if she used it, it’s gotta be the done thing, and John isn’t gonna be at risk of having the finger pointed… I feel so weak I’m barely able to thank the Commander, and have to totter off to it right away. Very ship-shape, and the night cabin’s nothing like that poncy dump they put Captain Picard in. There’s nothing personal visible, but on second thoughts they’ll have put that stuff away for the duration. There’s a Spartan-looking dressing-table and they’ve put a lace mat and a small bunch of flowers in a glass vase on it, very sweet.

    Yvonne sets her stuff out, having to move the vase aside to do so, and then just sits limply on the dressing-table stool. “Was that really your captain, Lily Rose?” she croaks eventually.

    “Yes.”

    There’s a short pause. Yvonne and Barbara are both looking at me in awe.

    “He doesn’t come over as quite so awesome when he’s not on his bridge,” I offer feebly.

    “I don’t know how you dared,” says Barbara limply. “I mean—!”

    “Well, she is very pretty, of course, Barbara,” Yvonne reminds her.

    Barbara’s gone red. “Yes! Of course! I didn’t mean that!”

    “Look, when I first met him, I had no idea he was in the Navy, he was wearing ordinary clothes. Not a uniform,” I say clearly. Yvonne doesn’t think that’d make much difference. Barbara doesn’t say so, but she clearly doesn’t think it’d make any. In her case John’s age is definitely a factor in the awe. It isn’t in Yvonne’s, though. “Well, would you have refused, if it was offering, uniform or not?” I say heatedly to Yvonne.

    “Gosh, no! I mean to say! He’s gorgeous!”

    No argument there.

    “No wonder he asked you to—um—pretend,” says Barbara limply.

    “Yes, the Royal Navy wouldn’t approve: no sex, please, we’re the Royal Navy. Though he is unattached,” I admit cheerfully. Oops. They both go into frightful tizzes. Though pretty clearly neither of them really thinks, except in her wildest dreams—make that wildest wish-fulfilment fantasies, Yvonne’s designing the wedding dress and Barbara’s putting forward Paris as a nice place for a honeymoon especially because it isn’t a port—that Captain John Haworth of Dauntless would ever think of marrying Lily Rose Rayne. Of course I don’t join in, I merely point out that he might think Paris was a bit of a cliché and that I don’t like too much lace on a wedding dress...

    After all this wish fulfilment it’s a real jolt to come down to earth and have to stand about while Paul screams at everybody, and the cameraman complains of the racing cloud shadows and the wind, and the stills photographer complains of the racing cloud shadows and the wind and the essentially non-photogenic character of H.M.S. Dauntless…

    We do eventually get lunch. Commander Corky Corcoran doesn’t make the tactical error of trying to tell Paul it’s on, he sends a very large sailor in splendid bell-bottoms and a Hat, to die for, to deliver the message. Which he does in a sort of roar, throwing a salute into the bargain. Rupy notes feebly that he can’t be a sergeant-major, this is the Navy. It has the required effect because Paul stops shouting at the camera crew and looks at his watch and just at that precise moment Lieutenant McKay comes strolling elegantly round the corner of the ship and says: “Oh, splendid, got the message, did you? Lunch in the officers’ mess, as soon as the ladies have freshened up.” And gallantly offers me his arm.

    Gee, the Royal Navy certainly knows how to treat ladies! And as all three of us are now busting, what with standing around in the wind for three hours, and the mineral water in the Captain’s Night Cabin that was set out for us and that we had to sample in case it was Royal Naval mineral water and different, we allow him to escort us to “freshen up”. Yvonne of course takes the opportunity to redo my hair, not that she can hardly drag a comb through it, it’s had so much spray on it. Funnily enough she and Barbara then primp anxiously in front of the mirror. I just go and stare out of his porthole wondering if John’s gonna be there. Because if you’ve been reading all those old naval novels of Miss Hammersley’s with great attention you might just’ve noticed that the captain doesn’t dine in the mess, it’s part of the loneliness of command, he has to be invited.

    He is invited, they’re all standing round having drinkie-poos, and after Commander Corky Corcoran has come forward and welcomed us, very formally, it must be a set speech that he always does, he comes forward and says he’s sure Corky will have laid on a delicious spread for us. By this time I’ve realised with tremendous relief that Michael and Rupy have very, very wisely grabbed the opportunity to change out of their uniforms, so even though Rupy immediately starts asking him what all his ribbons are, I decide I can bear it.

    Lily Rose Rayne has to sit between Commander Corky Corcoran, he’s the host, and Mr Curtis: the officers drew straws “for the privilege.” Mr Curtis looks about seventeen, bright pink and his ears stick out. Adorable, rather like sitting next to a baby doll in a uniform. He can’t think of anything to say except how’s my soup and is this my first visit to one of our ships, Miss Rayne?

    “Call me Lily Rose. Yes, I’ve never actually been on one before. But I saw it”—forgetting to call it her—“last year when you put on a show for the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival, that was very exciting. Were you there?”

    Yes, he was, and he starts to tell me something very technical about the guns… John’s sitting between Michael and Paul, Michael being on Commander Corcoran’s other side. I can’t hear what they’re talking about. Rupy’s between an older man, my guess is he’s their Doctor, and Lieutenant McKay, thank God someone had the sense to put him well away from John’s medal ribbons. Because in case you’re thinking that apart from drawing straws for the privilege of telling Lily Rose about the big guns, it’s all haphazard, it isn’t. Everyone’s got place cards. There are no lady officers at all. So much for Women’s Lib.

    There are four courses, and gee, isn’t it just as well I had that training yesterday evening, because guess what they are: soup, main course (lamb, I pity the poor cooks that had to do chops for this number of people, and they’ve all got those little fuzzy white collars on, what poor slave had to do that in the bowels of the thing?), pudding, and English cheese after that. I know it’s pudding rather than dessert because in the first place Commander Corky Corcoran refers to it breezily as such—the thought occurs, Has John briefed him?—and in the second place it’s really yummy, sort of a cold ginger mousse with like custard and bits of crystallised ginger in it, and swirly cream on top and those up-market chocolate slivers, and just one small brown wafer biscuit, beautifully presented.

    I tell Commander Corky Corcoran it’s delicious and he’s very pleased and knows the cooks would be thrilled if I’d like to tell them so in person. This is all carefully arranged, of course. So after coffee and after the ladies have freshened up—I told you they know how to look after ladies!—they take me to the kitchen with my fresh lippy on and an extra squirt of Varley-approved scent, and I meet the cooks in their white aprons and their hard-ons. Sorry, galley. It’s huge, how many men do they have to feed? This is the right question, and the head cook beams and tells me all about it. Cripes.

    Then Commander Corky Corcoran reveals that they’ve arranged a little parade, the men were all so eager to get a glimpse of me—er, yes, Miss Rayne, they have had their lunch—very weakly. So he escorts me gallantly up on deck and John’s there in his uniform, smiling a bit, and hundreds and hundreds of sailors are lined up in their bell-bottoms, my God. Well, statistically speaking some of them must be gay, but it’s like a fog of testosterone!

    First Commander Corky Corcoran says something into a mike, there’s a little dais and everything: when the Royal Navy puts on a show it puts on a show; and then I’m given a bouquet. A very young sailor, grinning like anything. It’s a lovely bouquet and I tell him so, and add idiotically: “Are you The Youngest Sailor?” He’s terrifically chuffed and tells me he’s a midshipman, Miss. “Really? Admiral Lord Nelson started off as a midshipman.” He beams, he knows that, Miss! Then Lieutenant McKay steps forward and says kindly: “Thanks, Franks. That’ll do,” and Midshipman Franks retires, looking terrifically pleased with himself, him and his hard-on, bless him.

    Would I care to review the men? Huh? Captain Haworth will escort me, of course. He offers his arm, those blue eyes are twinkling like mad, the wanker, why didn’t he warn me? I grab the arm and hang onto it like a vice.

    “All right, Rosie?” he murmurs.

    “Y—Uh—there’s hundreds of them!” I croak.

    “Mm. We did consider just parading the watch, that’s the men who—er—are currently on duty, but Corky thought that might lead to mutiny.”

    My mouth twitches faintly but I can’t smile, I’m too overpowered. I hiss: “Do I have to say anything?”

    “No, you’re not Her Majesty. Just smile at them as we walk by.”

    We do that. It takes ages, walking slowly past all these lovely men on John’s huge ship. The most lowering thought is that he commands them all. Look, I know he doesn’t do it all personally, I am aware that the Navy has chains of command, yeah, but ultimately the buck stops with him, doesn’t it, and if he says steer into a rock, presumably they all drown. Though it’s not the thought of the responsibility, so much, it’s—uh—the authority, I guess. The fact that any one of them will obey if he gives them an order. I can’t explain it, if you’ve never experienced it you won’t have a clue what I’m on about. I do spare a fleeting thought for Mark Rutherford’s favourite theory about positions of authority, but quite frankly, even though I don’t approve of war or the amount the so-called civilised nations spend on their so-called defence forces, there is no way I can bring myself to believe that all these men are according John Haworth the respect due to a captain merely because he’s been put in that position, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, that the Royal Navy would be stupid enough to put a man in charge of a thing this size who wasn’t totally up to the job.

    Our cameraman’s been filming and the stills photographer’s been snapping wildly but funnily enough, even though a few seagulls flew over and it was pretty windy and there was all this racing cloud casting shadows, neither of them tells John to do it all again and nor does Paul Mitchell. Actually, he’s looking quite cowed. Next to him, Michael Manfred’s smirking terrifically. Is he imagining himself as John and me as Her Majesty? Or is he just glad that Paul’s cowed? Or both?

    The rest of the afternoon would have been pretty much of an anticlimax, but for the episode of The Big Gun. It was like this:

    Our cameraman had got all the shots he wanted of us actors, so he’d gone off to film other bits of the ship for background. But Barbara and Paul were worried that none of the still shots so far had much zing or impact. Personally, I’d have thought anything with a large bit of this great huge ship in it would have plenty of impact—however. Paul checked what shots the stills photographer had got: right, wouldn’t put over his vision. He looked round angrily. “Get up there, Lily Rose.”

    There wasn’t anything to go up. “Up where?”

    “Up THERE!” he shouted. “On the BARREL!”

    There weren’t any—

    “Ooh, yes! Ideal!” cried Barbara. “On the gun barrel, Lily Rose!”

    “No!”

    “I’m sure some of the sailors will help y—

    “NO! I’m NOT getting up there!”

    Barbara was bewildered, and very red, she thought I was being bitchy on purpose, throwing a wobbly like Coralee Adams because of my huge importance as a Star.

    Angrily Paul ordered the sailors to get me a box or something. Lieutenant McKay gave them the nod, and the men fetched a step-ladder.

    “No! I can’t!

    “You’re NOT paid to decide what you can or you can’t! Get up there immediately or the Company’ll sue you for breach of contract!”

    –At around about this point Rupert Maynarde and Michael Manfred might have been seen to exchange glances and melt away like the dew, the pair of wankers.

    Yvonne encouraged me, smoothing the suit’s shoulders and twitching at the curls: “You can do it!” Very slowly I went over to the step-ladder. Maybe I could— No, I couldn’t.

    “Get up there, you stupid bitch!” snarled Paul.

    Very, very bravely I went up one rung. Then I shook violently all over and cling onto the thing like a limpet. “I can’t!”

    “Get UP there, we’re losing the LIGHT!”

    I was just about to burst into tears when a very cool, terrifically upper-clawss naval voice (not his, is it the captain’s job to rescue dithering dames that go potty on ladders on his ship?) said from behind me: “Let me help you down, Miss Rayne; Captain Haworth would like you and the ladies to join him for tea.” And something very solid and Naval came up close to me.

    “I’m gonna fall!” I gasped, shaking like a leaf, one step up the ladder.

    “No, you’re quite safe,” he said, putting an arm round me. “Let me help you down.” He prised one hand off the ladder, so I grabbed hold of his Naval uniformed arm instead and, as he hauled me bodily off under the pretence of “helping,” burst into racking sobs.

     “I can’t,—Commander—Corky!—I’m—scared—of heights!”

    “Mm. –I’m terribly sorry, Mr Mitchell,” he said clearly but not particularly loudly, “but the guns are off-limits, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry we forgot to mention it. But Captain Haworth wondered if perhaps you might like Miss Rayne to be photographed with one of our pilots?”

    “And a jet?” he said immediately. “With its hatch open?”

    “Certainly, Mr Mitchell,” Commander Corky Corcoran agreed, ignoring the fact that I was bawling all over him, “and then perhaps you might care for a helicopter flight?”

    “You mean we can film it?” he said suspiciously.

    “Of course.”

    “All right, I suppose it’ll have to do. Though we were under the impression,” he noted, giving the gun a longing look, “that full facilities would be available.”

    “I’m afraid all weaponry is off-limits to all but authorised naval personnel, sir. But Captain Haworth has asked me to say”—here he gave me a pristine naval hanky, help, with his initials on it, NDC, “that if you would care to film a torpedo being loaded, we can certainly manage that for you.”

    I blew my nose hard. “But can you get it out of the tube again, after it’s been loaded?”

    “Yes, Miss Rayne,” he replied, unmoved. “Would you care to come along to the Captain’s Day Cabin for tea?”

    “Mm. Thanks,” I said soggily, blowing my nose again.

    He puts his hand under my elbow and led me off. We were nearly there when I realised what I’d gone and called him!

    “I’m awfully sorry I called you Commander Corky.”

    He smiled a bit. “That’s quite all right.”

    “John calls you Corky,” I admitted limply.

    This time the good manners didn’t screen the fact that he was giving me a curious look. “Yes. We’ve served together for many years.”

    “Yes, he said.”

    We reached the door, with a large sailor on guard outside it. The Commander didn’t speak to him, he just tapped on the door and opened it straight away.

    John was writing at a big desk. He put down his pen. “Are you all right, Rosie?”

    “Yes. Commander Corcoran rescued me.”

    “I think she is all right, sir. You were right, it was vertigo: she was shaking violently and grabbing the ladder like grim death.”

    “Mm. Thanks, Corky,” he said, smiling at him and getting up.

    “Did you see it?” I asked limply.

    “Yes, we were watching in case your director broke bits of our ship,” he said, very dry.

    “Oh. Um—I couldn’t help it, I can’t even stand on a chair without getting the shakes.”

    “And Mitchell ordered you to get up on one of the guns? The man must be a sadist!”

    “Um, well, I have mentioned that I’m terrified of heights, only I don’t think it sunk in.”

    “No. –Want to use the loo?” he asked kindly.

    “Yes, please,” I agreed thankfully.

    He opened a door for me. Oh, right: it was the Night Cabin. I paused, then I turned and faced the, frankly, terrifying Commander Corky Corcoran and said: “Thank you very much for coming to my rescue, Commander Corcoran.”

    He smiled nicely, not meaning an instant of it. “Oh, please don’t thank me, Miss Rayne, I was only following orders.”

    John’s hand came down hard on my pink-suited shoulder. “Pop in, Rosie, then we’ll have tea.”

    “Yes. Good. Thanks,” I agreed feebly, vanishing.

    When I came out again the Commander had gone, thank God, so I sank numbly onto a visitor’s chair. “Is he closely related to Prince Charles?”

    “What, Corky? Not so far as is known.”

    “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Has he ever been on the ship?”

    “HRH? Yes. What is all this?”

    “Nothing, only it’s very lowering to make a fool of yourself on a great big ship in a stupid pink suit and have to be rescued by something that sounds like Prince Charles!”

    “Mm. Never mind, a pink-suited actress astride one of our big guns is probably an image the Navy can do without. Er—I couldn’t come myself, Rosie.”

    “I know that. It’s not your job, I’m not totally dumb. Thanks very much for sending him.”

    “That’s all right. Sorry we didn’t spot immediately you were in trouble, darling.”

    I went very, very red, what a total nong. “No. Yes. Um, didn’t you? Thanks.”

    He looked at his pen thoughtfully, and then he screwed its top on and put it down. “May I ask if that sort of thing goes on very frequently in the television studio?”

    “No, because so far they haven’t made any high things for me to go up. There’s a thing that’s like a bridge, but it isn’t very high and it’s got a solid wall all round it to waist height.”

    “Mm. And the general attitude?”

    Cringe. “Paul’s, you mean? Well, that was pretty standard Paul. He’s a Little Hitler. –It’s all right, he’d never have got me up on that gun. Either he’d have forced me a bit further up the ladder and then I’d have been shaking so much the whole thing would have fallen over, that’s happened before now, when I was trying to kid myself it was all in the mind and I could change a light bulb, or I’d have collapsed in howling hysterics.”

    “I see.” He grimaced. “Frankly, my instinct is still to boot the man in the bum, but if he genuinely didn’t recall you suffer from vertigo—”

    “Yeah.” I sighed and admitted: “At least it’s adding interest to the group dynamics study, Mark was very pleased when he found out Paul was a Little Hitler.”

    “I’m glad you can be detached about it, Rosie,” he said wryly.

    Eyeing him edgily, I pointed out: “I am like that.”

    “At the same time as you’re suffering from the phobias?” –Simple curiosity, as far as I could tell.

    “Not absolutely instantaneously, no, you can’t be in mortal terror, sweating all over, and be detached. Very soon after. Well, as soon as Commander Corcoran pulled me off.”

    “Yes, I see.”

    “I hope you don’t mind, but I used some of your deodorant. Yvonne never brought any.”

    “Oh, Lord, you mean you were literally sweating? No, well, possibly Yvonne didn’t realise the lengths to which your sadist of a boss would go. You’re welcome to anything in my bathroom.”

    “Thanks. Um, where are all your things? Like, what you normally have in your bedroom”

    “Mostly in the top drawer of the chest of drawers. Thwaites put them away for me; he normally does, when we have visitors.”

    “And do you have full sets of everything here and at the cottage?”

    He brushed his hand over his bald pate and made a comical face at me. “Not full sets of silver brushes given to me by my grandfather on my twenty-first, no.”—Those brushes, they’re at his cottage, so I grinned feebly.—“But toilet things, yes, certainly.”

    I was just saying that that was sensible when the door opened and a waiter appeared. No, couldn’t be, but he had a tea trolley and he was wearing a white coat.

    John got up, smiling. “This is Thwaites.”

    So I shook Thwaites’s hand and he was very pleased to meet me and if it wouldn’t be a liberty could he possibly have my autograph for his little granddaughter? Aged ten. He and John are the same age, John added helpfully. Gulp! I signed the autograph book, it had those multicoloured pages so of course I chose a pink one. “To Angela, Best Wishes, Lily Rose Rayne” with the little flower over the I.

    After that the others came in—not Paul, thank God, he was still with the photographer—and we had tea, so I can tell you that the Navy’s scones are miles nicer than the Ritz’s, and their dainty sandwiches are extra. And then I was fortified enough to stand on the lowest rung of a horrid little ladder going up to a vertical take-off jet fighter, but only with a lovely Lieutenant Jones in full flying gear and a huge grin holding me very, very tight round the waist. Terribly good-looking: did they pick the handsomest one for the publicity shots or just draw straws like for lunch? I had to put my arm round his neck but gee, I could bear it.

    Then Paul, Michael, Rupy and Barbara went up in a helicopter and it whirled away over the sea and the stills photographer snapped madly as it swooped and whirled and dipped—

    “Lieutenant Jones, it’s not doing that on purpose, is it?”

    “Well, yes!”

    Obligingly I giggled and gave him a bit of push. “No! Um, did someone order the pilot to um, like go round and round and all that?”

    The Old Man did ask if Bob could show them a good time, yes.

    Right. I watched grimly as the thing swooped and whirled and— Well, it didn’t loop the loop, but bloody nearly. And sure enough, when it landed they were all as green as grass. Rupy sat down on a bollard that half an hour before he was making silly remarks about it being a bollard and buried his head in his hands. Barbara gave in entirely and sank down onto the deck and Yvonne had to rush over and administer the smelling salts from her huge emergency bag and then take her off to the Night Cabin. Michael was a bit better, he tottered over to me, trying to grin, and told me I was wise not to come up, and thank God he was only in the Catering Corps when he did his damned Military Service. (Boy, it must have shaken him, he’s never admitted that before!) Paul actually staggered and Jerry had to grab his arm and he shook him off angrily and said something about reporting that to Management, the man never took a blind bit of notice of him! “Think the pilot couldn’t hear him: he had his earphones on,” said Michael in limp explanation. Yeah, right, earphones. Right.

    It’s pretty late when we get back to the hotel but I’m not panicking because guess what: as we were leaving the ship a sailor brought Lieutenant McKay an unsealed envelope which as it had “Miss Rayne” on it he very properly handed on to me, and inside it was a note which said John’d pick me up at the hotel at 8.00 p.m. At least he didn’t call it twenty hundred hours, or so many bells. I’ve had time to shower and change, and wash the ton of hairspray out of my hair and borrow Yvonne’s emergency dryer and get it dry and tell her that I won’t be here for dinner, no, or breakfast, and look in on Barbara and agree with Yvonne that she better just stay in bed and not get up for dinner.

    And since Paul’s disappeared into his room and is incommunicado there’s no-one but Yvonne to care if I’m wearing my grungy old jeans again, is there? She’s almost in tears, I’ll have to go through the lobby and didn’t I notice the photographers on the wharf? Huh? What does she think I’ve been doing all— Oh, that crowd that came up while we were doing all those takes of the gangplank? Were they? Oh. She’s brought the Coat. Anxiously she brandishes it, Jesus, Yvonne! Wouldn’t he like to see me in a pretty— NO! Jesus, Yvonne! But all men do, whatever they may say. I’m about to shout at her again. I stop. You know it’s true, don’t you, Lily Rose? Uh, yeah, actually, I do. It’s similar to the lacy undies scenario. They say they’d rather you didn’t wear any undies, only when they start undoing buttons and find that underneath you’ve got these terrifically lacy ones, they go all funny. Well, all hot and hard, to put it technically. So when they say they don’t want you to get all gussied up— Yeah. Right. She doesn’t even have to remind me of his generation, though I can see it’s on the tip of her tongue. All right, then, but something casual.

    So at three minutes to eight, p.m., I emerge into the lobby in a pair of skin-tight watermelon pink, Terry-vander-Post-ordained pedal-pushers, very Fifties, and a pale pink skin-tight cotton-knit top with minute cap sleeves and a huge scooped-out neckline that allows bits of the white lacy bra and its white lacy straps to show and that ends a good two inches above the waist, very Year 2000. Plus what Yvonne deems is sufficient make-up to look very natural under the lobby lights but just a dusting of glitter on the cheeks and glitter eyeshadow on the— Leave it out, Yvonne! Just a smidgen on the eyelids. The whole set off by the double string of pearls that belong to Wardrobe and have been Signed For, and the pair of pearl screw-ons, rather nice, actually, about the size of a pea, that ditto. And the pale pink suede sandals with the lowish heels that I actually broke down and bought with my own money, firstly because I couldn’t resist them and secondly because they fit like a dream, they have wonderful shoes in Britain, miles more fittings than in Oz and the prices are really reasonable. Plus of course Miss Hammersley’s huge brown fur coat that if Yvonne was me she’d cuddle up adorably under the chin— And if I was me, I’d KILL YOU, YVONNE! All right, then, Lily Rose, but you’ll see.

    No sooner does my pink-suede-sandalled foot touch the elaborate curlicues of the swanky hotel’s Axminster than seven thousand members of the Fourth Estate swarm all over me with their fuzzy mikes and their giant cameras and their tape recorders. Lily Rose! Lily Rose!—I can see ya, I’m not blind.—What did you think of the Dauntless?—I thought one did oughta say “Dauntless”, not “the Dauntless”, you un-nautical cretin.—What do you think of Portsmouth? Lily Rose!—Yes, I can still see ya, and hear ya.—Did they take you up in a Harrier? What did you think of the Royal Navy? Did you go on the sub? Did you do The Good Ship Lollipop for the sailors? What do you think of Portsmouth? Lily Rose! Are those rumours about you and Euan Keel true? Over here! Smile, dear, show us the teeth and the tits! Lily Rose! Are those your own clothes? Lily Rose! Lily Rose! Is it true you’ve signed contracts for a film with Derry Dawlish? Lily Rose! Is it true you’re opposed to Animal Rights?

    Eventually I’m reduced to clapping my hands over my ears and laughing helplessly. They love it, and all the ones that have got cameras of any description snap or film madly, and there’s actually a breathing space for me to say: “Maybe if I just give you my impressions and then you can take turns to ask questions if there’s stuff you still want to know?” They love it. So I say—in the breathy coo, natch, and all at top speed so as the cretins can’t interrupt: “I love Portsmouth, I think it’s terribly naval, and a very attractive city,”—nobody’s noticed that I say that about every city, town or village they ask me about: just fill in the space with “city”, “town”, “village”, or, if desperate, “place”—“and we had a really lovely day, we went on Dauntless, that’s a huge great warship and she’s got vertical take-off jets and helicopters and torpedoes, and they showed us a vertical take-off plane and took off in a helicopter but I didn’t go in it because I was scared, I get terrible vertigo”—might as well get in a veiled dig at Paul Mitchell, and let’s hope the nationals publish it: “VERTIGO SAYS LILY ROSE”—“and they gave us a lovely lunch and introduced us to all the officers, and then after lunch, guess what! I reviewed the troops! It was wonderful, they all wore their bell-bottoms! But I didn’t do a number for them, I don’t know if it was because Henny Penny Productions”—plug for Brian, I’m so well trained I could do it in my sleep—“thought it wouldn’t be appropriate, or because the Royal Navy didn’t ask for it. I didn’t go in a Harrier but I had my photo taken with a lovely pilot in his flying gear, and then they showed us how they load a torpedo, but they didn’t fire it, that would have been a waste of ammunition that the British taxpayers paid for, wouldn’t it?”—Like that splendid lunch wasn’t a waste of the taxpayers’ money, too.—“And everybody was very, very kind to me, they were super. I think that British sailors are real gentlemen.”—“BRITISH TARS REAL GENTS SAYS LILY ROSE”, quite.—“Oh, and I forgot to say, we went on the bridge: it was most impressive and very high tech, and you can see that you have to be a real specialist to be in the Navy these days. And I don’t know what silly rumours you’ve heard about me and Euan Keel, but I’ve never been serious about him. We just had a fun thing, y’know?”—“LILY ROSE DUMPS EUAN,” yeah, well, if he does get some inkling that I’m not as serious as he is before I have to front up and tell him so, so much the better. Not that I’ve ever given him any indication I am serious.—“And we’re going to go on the sub tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to it!” Beaming smile.

    Naturally they ask me a million more daft questions such as how long have I been considering breaking up with Euan, and is there any truth to the rumours about me and Michael Manfred—yet again—and blah, blah. And I have to pose with and without the Coat and assure the lady that asked about the Animal Rights that it’s very second-hand, in fact genuine Fifties, and doesn’t belong to me personally—well, that’s almost true, me and Rupy are joint owners. And if the Animal Righters picket Henny Penny all I can say is, they’ve asked for it. (I don’t say that, of course.)

    But eventually they’re satisfied and go off, none of them think to ask me what the fuck I’m doing in a hotel lobby in a coat, and then this obscure person in a huge duffel coat gets up from the obscure corner that he’s been sitting in and comes over to me and says: “I did think of interrupting, about twenty minutes back, but you didn’t seem to need rescuing.”

    “No, it’s just a matter of feeding them the right sort of crap. Once they’ve got it they’ll go, they’re not really interested or looking for a story, they just need to get the right sort of crap to fill the available space.”

    “So I see.” He takes my pink vanity case off me, I think it’s Sixties rather than Fifties, genuine pink plastic patent leather, and Signed For, and we go.

    “Chilly night,” he says as we settle in the car.

    “Yes, you’re wearing your duffel coat.”

    “Mm. Want the heater on?”

    “My toes are cold, actually.”

    He thought they might be, and puts the heater on. We drive off and as Portsmouth on a Wednesday night isn’t all that enthralling it isn’t long before it dawns that all that was probably a dig and I say aggressively: “This isn’t my coat, it’s an old one of Miss Hammersley’s, it’s not my fault if five thousand rabbits died to make the bloody thing!”

    “Hardly rabbits.”

    Dumb Rosie replies dumbly: “Yeah; it is real.”

    “Not real lapin.” He touches it lightly for a moment. “Five thousand real minks.”

    All I can find to say in reply to that is: “I thought it felt funny.”

    “Mm.” We drive on, presumably we’re heading for the cottage? I don’t say anything: for one thing John isn’t saying anything, for another thing he hasn’t bothered to say whether we are heading for the cottage, for another thing he hasn’t bothered to say where the dinner’s gonna come from or who’s gonna make it, and for another thing I do, actually, have a bone to pick with Captain John Haworth, R.N.

    Eventually he says: “What’s up?”

    “Oh, nothing! Merely that Barbara’s feeling so rotten she’s gone to bed without her dinner and Paul’s shut himself in his room, and Rupy and Michael had to have stiff brandies and lie-downs the minute we got back to the hotel! And by a sheer coincidence the Old Man, quote unquote, seems to have ordered Bob, quote unquote, to give the poor sods what the bloody Navy considers a good time in its bloody helicopter!”

    There’s an agonising silence but L.R. Marshall doesn’t back down, no sirree.

    “If I’ve got the personalities right, it did seem to me that Mitchell and Barbara were collaborating to bully you into going on the gun, and that Maynarde and Manfred watched just long enough to be sure you were being bullied and then got out of it. –I think I did tell you on an earlier occasion that I dislike bullies.”

    “And cowards, presumably?”

    “The sort who are capable of standing up to bullies on someone else’s behalf, and won’t do it—certainly.”

    I heard it but I don’t think I believe it. That pathetic pair? I finally manage to croak: “That pathetic pair? Look, the fact they were wearing uniforms doesn’t mean they’re capable of standing up to a child of two in its naps, let alone Paul Mitchell doing his Little Hitler act!”

    He thinks they could have made an effort. It’s not that he’s being stubborn as such, the macho twit, it’s that he genuinely can’t understand, not having a cowardly bone in his entire body, himself.

    I sigh heavily. “Ordinary people aren’t as brave as you, you macho twit.”

    “Thanks; I think,” he says drily.

    “And sending Commander Corky Corcoran to rescue me was enough.”

    “Very well, I’ll try to restrain myself, in future. By the way, how are you in small, dark, enclosed spaces?”

    “Eh?”

    “The sub,” he says calmly.

    Oh! “All right, I think. I’ve been in caves, and in the Franchinis’ cellar. Though the caves were quite big. But it won’t go down, will it?”

    He doesn’t think that Roger Woodforde envisages submerging in the murk of the harbour, no. Right, goddit. We drive on…

    “Still cross?”

    “Not about that. Where are we?” I say desperately.

    “What? Halfway home, are you taking the Mickey?”

    “No. Um, are we?” Apparently this is the same road we came on. It looks different at night, I admit lamely.

    He put his hand on my watermelon pink thigh, and squeezes hard. “Mm. Is that jumper meant to be four inches too short for you?”

    “Yeah. –Two. –Yeah. It’s a Look.”

    “And those bits of underwear?”

    “Part of the look,” I admit glumly.

    He goes into a terrific sniggering fit, so much so that he has to pull in and stop.

    “Yeah, hah bloody hah. I told Yvonne you’d think it was putrid crap—” No! He thinks it’s adorable! –Right, putrid crap, yeah. Somehow I’m grinning, though. Then he kisses me, at last.

    “What in God’s name’s up?” he asks as I then bawl on his duffel coat.

    “Nothing. Sorry, dumb. I thought you were having second thoughts. I mean, seeing me do the Lily Rose bit close-up, and me being stupid about the gun—” Vertigo is a medical condition which no-one can help. That’s comforting, some of us were wondering for a bit back there if it was verging on cowardice.

    He gets out his own hanky and mops my face and kisses me again and says: “I'm not having second thoughts. But I did wonder if you might be. You seemed very annoyed with me, and— Well.”

    “I was cross, yeah, because I think you were unnecessarily stern with those idiots that went in the helicopter. –Whaddareya grinning for?” Just the way I say helicopter, apparently. Eh? I don’t say it differently from anybody el— That long I, apparently. Eh? “Helicopter? Bullshit,” I say briskly.

    “Helicopter,” he says mildly with your genuine Standard English short I.

    Gulp. Goddit. “Um, anyway, I’m not having second thoughts about you. But I suppose I've been having second thoughts about… male peer groups.” I growl. He doesn’t laugh, so I add: “I was never in one before—”

    “No!”

    “Stop it. Um, where was I? Well, what I was trying to say was, I just assumed they were totally silly: I suppose I never saw their… functionality, before.”

    “Functionality,” he says slowly. “That’s a very good word for it; I see exactly what you mean.”

    Do ya? Good. “That and their power,” I admit. “Certainly in the case of a body of fighting men.”

    He puts his hand on my knee. “Mm. I hope you never have to see any more of it than the spit and polish, darling.” Of course he’s being patronising and sexist, and probably ageist as well, but somehow I’ve got a lump in my throat and I admit: “No. War must be awful.”

    “Mm.” His hand tightens on my knee and we just sit for a while not saying anything.

    “It was an experience,” I admit finally with a sigh.

    “Yes.”

    An awful suspicion begins to creep over me and I take a deep breath and say dangerously: “John, did you set all that up on purpose?”

    “No! God, women have devious minds!”—I’ve noticed that, and mine’s even more devious than most, so I don’t categorise this as sexist. Added to which, I may need to save it up for a later occasion.—“No, it was just as I said: given that I was ordered to turn on a bit of a show for you, it would have been highly unfair not to give all of the men the chance of seeing you. Given that there seem to be five hundred copies of every episode of your series circulating on board, not to mention the pictures taped above the bunks. In fact I’m reliably informed that young Nevil Curtis, the inarticulate young idiot who was next to you at lunch, possesses a giant glossy photo featuring a bikini and a flower behind the ear, personally signed.”

    Does he? Cripes. “Um, does he? Um, the PR office sends those out. Um, well, actually there’s several of them that can do the Lily Rose signature as well as I can.”

    “So one would assume.” He starts the car again.

    “John, what are we doing about dinner?” I burst out.

    “Mm? Oh, hadn’t thought. What’s the time? Oh. Well, just forage, darling? Bread and cheese? We did have quite a substantial lunch.”

    Yeah, but that was hours ago, and what with traipsing all over his ship and all the trauma… I don’t say it. He reminds me that Marion will have brought some bread over, gee, that helps.

    “You like things to be cut and dried, is that it?” he says slowly.

    Macho twit, if anybody’s cut and dried—! “No. Um, sort of. I like to know!”

    “Mm. Sorry.” He gives my knee a quick, hard squeeze, I wish he wouldn’t, not that it’s bad, I go all hot and trembly, but it’s very distracting indeed. “Not used to having to take another person into consideration. Well, there’s plenty of frozen stuff.”

    “Good.” I give a cracking yawn.

    “Tired?”

    “Yeah,  pretty much, I’ve been on my feet most of the day.”

    “Mm. Would you like to have your dinner in bed?”

    I’d love to. Is he serious? “What about you?”

    He’s sliding his hand up my thigh but he thinks he can refrain from pouncing on me until I’ve had a bit of sustenance. Hah, hah. Well, wasn’t that what I was thinking? Only partly, also I was thinking I’m not gonna be banished to my room while he eats in solitary splendour at the flaming dining table. I don’t say any of this. “I’ll have tea in bed if you have yours in bed, too.”

    “Yes, of course,” he says mildly. Now I don’t know what to think.

    We get to the cottage and Tim and me have a rapturous reunion, John only has to shout Down! about five times, and then I go upstairs and go to the bog and discover that my period’s started. So maybe that’s one reason why I’ve been feeling so grumpy, but not the main one by a long chalk. The pink wincey pie-jams are in the ruddy pink patent-leather vanity case so I get into them and get into bed. The bedroom door’s not quite closed and after a bit something black and guilty-looking comes in and I pat the ruddy brown duna, sorry, DUVET, and he’s up here in a flash, licking my chin. I give him a big hug and tell him it’s traumatic and I wish I was a dog.

    “Bitch,” says a cool baritone from the doorway. I jump a foot.

    “Technically speaking, if you belonged to the same genus as Tim, you’d be a bitch. –What are you doing on the bed?”

    Tim gets down.

    “It was my fault. And I’ve broken Rule Number One as well because I’m not in the NAVY!” I shout.

    “Feeling grotty?” he asks kindly.

    “If that’s upper-clawss English for have I got my period, YES!” I shout.

    “Er—yes, I suppose it was, really, how blitheringly silly,” he says mildly. He comes to perch on the bed next to me. “No,” he says by the by as Tim looks hopeful. “Have you got enough equipment to deal with it? Tampons, pads?”

    “Tampons. Yes, stacks, Yvonne seems to have given me an extra packet from the emergency bag. Will they bung up your bog?”

    “No. Feel like a drink?”

    “Y—Um—”

    “Name your poison,” he says mildly.

    I got this trick off a girl I did my B.A. with, and I can highly recommend it, it relaxes the abdominal muscles, so if you’re prone to cramps, try it. Hot gin. It has to be fairly strong, you make it by adding boiling water to it, and personally I add some Pink as well. But you can add anything, like, a bit of lemon peel’s nice, only don’t water it down too much. And it works much better if you go to bed with it. “All right, I will. Gin and hot water, a stiff one. And some Pink, if you’ve got it.”

    He gets up but of course says: “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a rum toddy? Or a whisky toddy?”

    “John,” I say clearly, “this is a remedy. It relaxes the abdominal muscles, geddit?”

    “Aye, aye!” he says, grinning like anything and throwing a salute. “One pink gin toddy it is.”

    “Stiff,” I remind him.

    “It already is, but it seems it’s not going anywhere tonight,” he says sadly.

    “It isn’t that I’ve got objections on principle, but not when I’ve got cramps.”

    “No.” He bends down and kisses me very tenderly on the forehead. “I'll bring you up a hot-water bottle,” he says mildly. “And I suppose you can let that brute on the bed, the damage seems to be done, doesn’t it?”

    “Really? Come on, Tim! Up, boy! Up!”

    He eyes John warily.

    Groaning, John pats the bed. “Yes, come on, boy! Up!” Tim jumps up eagerly but he’s still got a wary look in his eyes. John rumples his ears and he settles down with a huge huffing noise very close to me.

    “Just do me a very great favour, Rosie.”

    “Mm?” I say uneasily.

    “Do not let him put his head on the pillows.”

    “No, righto.”

    He goes out looking dry. I look limply at Tim. He opens one eye and looks warily at me.

    “I dunno what I did, but if he thinks it’s feminine frailty, he’s got another think coming, it’s merely a—a corollary to genetic imperatives! Anyway, you done all right out of it, eh, boy?” I pat his head. He pants and moves his tail half-heartedly and closes his eyes. …Hey, I wonder if he’d let us have the telly in the bedr— Uh, no, festina lente. One step at a time. And a bloke that actually lets you have your tea in bed and means it? Crikey.

    He does mean it, he brings me a hottie and then a hot gin, all pink and nice. In a poncy china mug with blue irises on it but I manage to overlook that: I did mention at breakfast that it was a lovely mug and I that adore blue irises; they’re very simple-minded in many ways, aren’t they? And about half an hour after that he brings up a tray with lots of bread and the remains of the English Stilton and some apples and raisins, and hot chips! I put lots of salt on them and fall on them ravenously, not even asking where’s the vinegar. He only eats one or two chips but he has lots of the bread and all of the cheese, I know it tastes much nicer than it looks but at the moment I really can’t face it. And we both have an apple, I’d have just eaten it, like, an apple, but he slices them both up carefully and cores them, dunno if it’s a quirk of his own or just nayce English manners, wonder if Rupy would know? No, probably not. I don’t fancy coffee so he makes a nice pot of weak tea for us both. Cripes, real china cups and a matching teapot and everything.

    After tea I still don’t feel like doing it though the gin’s really helped, but of course I’ll give him a hand job, he doesn’t have to ask! He was really surprised that I wanted to, all I can say is those puce and magenta ladies musta been unnatural. Like the only thing I can compare it to would be, say you had a great big bone for Tim and he could see it and you wouldn’t let him have it. Real mean, y’know? How could anyone be that horrible to a lovely man that wants it? When it’s so easy to give it to him and make him happy? Well, that’s my philosophy, and if you’ve spotted it doesn’t only relate to hand jobs, you’re right. And if you think that equates to man-mad you’re either the same generation as Great-Aunty Lil or potty. Or both.