Episode 2: Taps

Episode 2: Taps

    “Whaddaya mean, a show?”

    Rupy’s all pink and flustered. Pleasure or embarrassment, it’s anyone’s guess. Bit of both, maybe? “A little show, Rosie, darling. Dancing. Music. Lovely frocks.”

    “I thought you were a professional?”

    He wriggles. “No, well, one can’t let dear Gray and Della down: y’know?”

    In my opinion Rupy Maynarde’s about twenty years too old to use “y’know?”, it’s only convincing on five o’clock-shadowed little items in droopy black daks they haven’t got Mums to take up for them and baseball caps on backwards and extremely expensive Stussy tee-shirts. I don’t point this out; if he wants to believe he’s with-it, good on him. “The way I hear it, Gray and Della often put on shows without the benefit of your presence, not to say of your reputation, Iago.”

    He smirks: he loves it when you recognise that he really is in the Business and once did Ariel with the RSC. So I try to remember to do it fairly often, why not? “Yes, but it would be a favour, dear.”

    “Well, all right, I’ll come and clap you, Rupy.”

    This, of course, is entirely the wrong response: not that he doesn’t want to be clapped, but of course I have to be in it. Oh, God. …Um, would Mark wear a study of the pecking order in a totally idiosyncratic tap show put on by Gray Hunter, fortyish, untrendily baldish, he oughta shave it off, and whenever I’ve seen him, eyelinered more professionally than Elizabeth Taylor in her heyday, and Della herself, sixtyish, dyed yellow and very bouffant, leathery and lined, with “old trouper” written all over her in magenta lippy of the genuine Dame Edna variety? Probably not, no: too atypical, not to say, not prime Sunday-paper fodder. Gray’s got responsibilities, as he’s told us at great length over the white wine and cappuccinos, or he’d be in the Business himself: to wit, his gaga old Mum who had him when she was already pretty well past it, and his even more gaga widowed Aunty Pet. Once in the Business herself. Della hasn’t bothered with excuses, she’s pretty well as hard as she looks, and a total realist. She’s admitted frankly she never was good enough for the big rôles, and decided long since that teaching was going to bring in a much better income than front row of the chorus. Which it does: she owns her flat and every year in summer she shuts Della’s Dance Studio and takes off for Ibiza or somewhere equally exotic. Hence the leathery tan.

    Five minutes later we’re in class and Heather, who thumps the piano for them, has been shouted at to stop and has stopped. Heather’s at least Della’s own age and my guess would be more, a mountainous presence in layers of woollies and those strange gloves with the fingers out of them. She’s a bit deaf, no wonder after forty years of thumping the piano for anything between five and fifty thunderous tappers, depending on whether tap is In or Out. Della’s does other sorts of dance, too, Della not being not the sort of person to put all her eggs in one basket, but at the moment, in the wake of A Chorus Line, tap is momentarily In again.

    And Gray announces The Show. Ruthlessly reading out the list of them what are allowed to be in it, and them what are O,U,T, out. Poor little Arthur Morrissey’s Out, I knew he would be, he's got no sense of rhythm, but he just loves to dance. He’s taking ballroom and soft-shoe, as well. And would have signed on for ballet but Della told him ruthlessly he was too old to start. Given that he’s about thirty-five this was probably true, but was it necessary? On the other hand, she probably has her insurance payments to think of and I don’t think any firm, not even Lloyd’s, would indemnify a dance studio that knowingly let Arthur Morrissey loose anywhere near a b—

    “What?” –barre.

    Smugly Gray reads out again: “Rosie Marshall. The Good Ship Lollipop.”

    “Gray, I’m not gonna stand up in front of hordes of people and do a Shirley Temple number!”

    Immediately Andy with the platinum crew-cut offers to do it instead. He’d be more convincing than me as Shirley Temple in a baby-doll with a sailor’s collar, but.

    “No. –You were the best in the class, Rosie.”

    I had been under the impression that we were only learning it because (a) Gray’s got a smudged video of the film that allowed him to demonstrate very clearly to us where we were all going wrong and (b) it’s so easy even a child of six could do it and therefore there was some faint hope of our being able to half-master it by the end of a set of fifty lessons. Not Arthur, obviously.

    “I was camping it up,” I say without hope.

    “She was camping it up!” agrees Andy eagerly. “I’ll do it, Gray, I—”

    No. He doesn’t even have to drag Della in as his big guns, either. Well, bugger. Of course Rupy’s only going to inform every mutual acquaintance in London. Thank God he doesn’t know the sociology types. Um, maybe I can keep the whole thing secret from them?

    It turns out it isn’t just our tap class, it’s most of the school with the exception of the serious ballet girls, they have their own show, but the littlies are gonna be in it, you betcha boots. Oh, my God. A terrific argument then breaks out over What to Wear but Gray vetoes everyone’s suggestions with horrid finality and hands out sketches. It is a fucking baby-doll, and—

    “Are these frilly panties?”

    Rupy comes to peer over my shoulder. “Yes. –Knickers,” he corrects pleasedly.

    “I’m not gonna—”

    “Yes, you are, Rosie. Can’t let Gray and Della down!”

    I didn’t even know them until four months back— Oh, the Hell with it. Why not? I’ve done it before, because between the ages of six and ten Mum made me go to ballet lessons, or strictly speaking a mixture of modern dance and ballet, because you had to have two pairs of dancing slippers for it, black and pale pink but otherwise identical, for which your unsuspecting mother had to pay the money direct to the dancing teacher: even at six I could see that was a crock, or rort, in the vernacular of the Land of Oz. As soon as Kenny turned six, which was when I was eight, Mum made him go, too. Dad was too absorbed in building up the business to stop her, unfortunately. Added to which, he said it was healthy exercise and at least it meant we’d know what Kenny was up to two out of five afternoons a week after school. And during this vile period I wore the costumes of, not in this order, a cute little bunny rabbit, a cute little tomato, a cute little pixy (that show was very trad), a cute little baby swan (even more trad), a cute little sunbeam with my golden curls all combed up and hairsprayed (spew), a cute little emu chick (that one was very ethnic and at least I wasn’t made to be a bloody gumnut like poor old Kenny), a cute little lamb (a Christmas show, Baby Jesus was in there somewhere), a cute little dancer in black leotards and huge purple spots (something modern), and several cute little fairies in tutus and the obligatory wobbly wings. And would have worn the costume of a cute little Chinese boy but I had chicken pox just in time. I think they danced that show to the music of Chu Chin Chow, though I may only be extrapolating, there. All of which can be proven in glorious Polaroid by Mum’s bloody family albums. Anybody that can get through that unscathed in their tender years can get up on stage at the age of nearly twenty-seven in a fucking Shirley Temple sailor costume. Wait: a faint hope flickers. “Um, I couldn’t wear bellbottoms instead, could—”

    No. Right. Thought so.

    Then we get on with the class. Only of course it’s no longer class, it’s fucking rehearsal, isn’t it? “O-hon the goo-hoo-hood ship, Lol-li-pop—” Jesus.

    Joanie goes into hysterics.

    “Thanks very much for your moral support, Big Cousin.”

    “Serves—you—right—for going round—with Rupy Maynarde!” she gasps.

    “I like him.”

    Joanie mops her eyes. “That’s your bad luck, then, Rosie.”

    “I thought you liked him, too?”

    “I do, but I’ve got more sense than to let him drag me off to silly tap classes with his wee gay friends.”

    “That’s very pejorative,” I say very, very weakly indeed.

    “Pooh. They are, aren’t they?”

    “Um, all the men are, yeah. Well, I’m not sure about Arthur Morrissey, I mean, he probably would be, but I don’t think he knows what it is. Well, at the moment he’s convinced he’s in love with Della on the one hand, and—uh—” I break off, coughing a bit.

    Joanie pounces. “Barbra Streisand?”

    “No,” I say, not with much conviction, however.

    “Um… Liza Minelli!” she says, her eyes lighting up.

    “No, he thinks her look’s a bit hard.”

    “Judy Garland, then!”

    “No. I admit his mum’s a terrific fan, and Arthur thinks she had such a sad, sad life, but ’tisn’t her.”

    “Um… English, then?”

    “Mm.”

    Joanie persists and finally gets it out of me that it’s Gaynor Grahame and her evening gowns: he’s been to the bloody Symington Woman seven times. She goes into hysterics again.

    “Just for that, you can ruddy well let him have tickets so as he can take his mum!”

    “Take her again, you mean. Oh, all right, then.” She eyes me narrowly and then says accusingly: “You haven’t let on that you can sing, have you?”

    After I refused to go to the dancing lessons any more Mum sent me to singing lessons. She was convinced I was going to be this generation’s Dame Joan Sutherland, just because I could warble in tune. I stuck it for a few years, the technical bits were interesting and the singing teacher’s old mum made great ginger cake. “No, because I can’t.”

    “You’ve got good voice production.”

    “In the bath, ya mean? So would you, with Signorina Cantorelli breathing down your neck, not to say punching you viciously in the diaphragm, for five years on end.”

    “Was that her name?"

    “No, she made it up. Not that there aren’t loads of Italians in Sydney. Anyway, I can’t really sing.”

    “Not opera, you haven’t got the range, but you’d be good in musical comedy.”

    “As well as in the bath, ya mean? No, well, you tell Rupy that and I’ll walk out and leave you with the whole of the rent for this dump.”

    Joanie smiles weakly. “And go where?”

    “Rupy’d have me like a shot, he’s lonely.”

    Joanie bites her lip: she knows this, actually, it’s why she didn’t really object when I told her I was gonna go to the bloody tap classes with him. “Um, don’t be silly, Rosie, that would really categorise you as the pansy’s friend. –It’s an expression!”

    “I do know that, actually: I’m not nearly as ignorant as I look. Well, Chris Wainwright’s very keen for me to come and share his flat. Not to say, his bed, not to say, do the bloody cooking for him.”

    “One of the post-grad students? How old is he?”

    “Ageist. How dishy is he, more to the point. Actually he’s a bit older than me, he’s working-clawss, unlike some,”—I leer at her—“and only managed uni part-time for yonks.”

    “University. Or varsity, if you must. Years,” she corrects faintly but kindly, since we’ve agreed that when I get too rabidly Downunder she’s to remind me, because Over Here it either puts people’s backs up or types me as a Crude Colonial Girl, or both. And because absolutely no-one will realise I’m only taking the Mick.

    “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

    “Um, would you?”

    “No. He is a dish, but I don’t wanna get mixed up with a dishy sociologist that can only think like a sociologist.”

    “Rosie, what did you take it up for, if that’s what you think about them all?” she says on a note of despair that makes her sound exactly like Mum.

    “Gotta do something, eh? And it offers a few opportunities for stretching the brain. –A few.”

    “Anthropology would have been better.”

    “No, it wouldn’t, you North-centric person, back home it’s all rock paintings and skulls, and pretending you’re not patronising the ones descended from them.”

    “Mm,” she admits, biting her lip. “I see.”

    “And before you start, not all of us are inspired enough or determined enough or just plain mad enough to do a Gorillas In the Mist thing.”—She’s already suggested that.—“Added to which, I only like cats and small dogs that look like cats.”

    Aunty June breeds bloody boxers. Joanie gets all eager. “Rosie, that’s only because you’ve never had a real dog!”

    “You’re right, there, and I’m never gunnoo, either. Anyway, promise you won’t come?” I say on a pleading note.

    “What? Oh! To your show! Of course I’ll come, wild horses wouldn’t keep me away! If the bloody Symington Woman’s still on I’ll let the understudy take it that night.”

    Without hope I respond: “Won’t it look suspicious with you and Rupy throwing sickies the same night?”

    She only replies, superbly overlooking the Australian vernacular, that they’ll have caught the same cold; so that’s It. Oh, shit.

    I have lost quite a bit of weight, mind you, so I suppose there’s a silver lining. But on the other hand, What For? Because what I said to Joanie about Chris Wainwright was perfectly true. He is a dish, six-foot-four with absolutely glorious copper-coloured thick, straight hair; but no way could I envisage tying myself up to a sociologist even temporarily. And I don’t even fancy the rest of them. And I certainly don’t fancy any of Joanie’s actor friends, even the few that aren’t gay are so incredibly up themselves as to be totally invisible to the naked eye. –That thick, straight hair always falls out by the time they’re thirty-five, anyway, and do I fancy a pink pate with a fringe of fading copper fluff round it? No, I do not. And what more proof could you want that I’m not in love with the guy?

    Meanwhile, back in what some maintain is the real world, I’ve been to tea, sorry, dinner, yonks of times with Aunty June, not to say “tea” as well (afternoon tea, to some), particularly on Saturday afternoons when Joanie’s got a matinée and Aunty June’s apparently got nothing better to do than bake real scones for me to guts. I haven’t let on that they’re not nearly as good as Mum’s scones and they’re not a fraction as good as Grandma’s used to be before she went gaga, I think she kneads them too much. Her and Uncle George have split the house up, is the story, and he officially lives upstairs, so what with only her and the boxers and Joanie always having a matinée, she’s lonely, apparently. The jam’s bought, but it tastes almost real and not nearly as oversweet as bought Aussie jam. Occasionally me and Joanie go over there on a Sunday afternoon, but usually Joanie tells her a lie and gets us out of it because of course we usually haven’t finished the Sunday papers by mid-afternoon.

    I’ve also been to dinner with Mark and Norma Rutherford loads of times, likewise Sunday afternoon tea, sorry, tea. I don’t think Norma can do scones, she usually lays on leaf sandwiches and bought biscuits. I’m not sure what sort of leaf: roundish, dark green, quite small. I haven’t asked because I’m quite sure I’m supposed to know. Norma’s English, so they must be an English thing. Almost every time I go to afternoon tea Mark makes an obscure joke about Gentleman’s Relish and although I have heard of it I’m not letting on that I don’t know what it actually is, because obviously I’m supposed to know that, too. I thought Aunty June and Uncle George’s place was pretty up-market but Mark and Norma’s is miles more up-market, it’s in Wimbledon which evidently you only live in if you’ve Made It. But are still middle-class, geddit? I don’t either, really. Nice but boring trad English houses, the word “detached” being bandied about rather frequently until it did eventually sink in that those large ones with two front doors are not detached. Semi-detached, like what you read uncomprehendingly in English books, right? Or for the majority, like what goes right through the cloth-ears when you hear it on English TV shows. Or very probably in that Notting Hill film that I never went to because I can’t stand him.

    All their friends have seen that putrid Sylvania Waters TV thing that I only managed to watch one and a half episodes of because it was putrid, and of course they all think that’s what all of Sydney’s like, but I can’t be bothered explaining and anyway, they don’t really want to know, they prefer their comfortable misconceptions. Like the rest of us, right.

    It’s supposedly almost summer now and the weather’s getting warmer, or at least, it isn’t freezing cold and raining every day, so Mark and Norma have decided to have tea in the garden this Sunday and I have to go, because if I don’t I’ll be in his bad books.

    Actually I’m slightly in his bad books already, because I won’t finalise what my chapter for the book’ll be on. Well, can’t, because Joanie’s still dithering over whether to take that other drawing-room comedy thing and she hasn’t had any more telly auditions. But she’ll have to decide soon, or do her reputation no good by carrying on with a cast of understudies. This is because Gaynor Grahame never spends the summer in London, it’s too hot. Being a very shrewd businesswoman, not to say having been in steady work for fifty years, she’s got a country house in the Cotswolds, so she usually escapes there after a few weeks in the South of France, which unless all world maps are wrong is actually nearer to the equator than London is—however. That Symington Woman will carry on for the thousands of American and Australian tourists but it’ll be all understudies because Michael Manfred won’t stay with Gaynor Grahame gone, it’d be beneath his dignity. So even though he isn’t a shrewd businesswoman and hasn’t got a country house or even a cottage, he’s going. And Rupy’s got a booking for some fatuous summer festival thing somewhere in the country, and Bridget’ll be starting serious rehearsals for her serious play.

    “Whadd’ll I wear?” I groan, drooping into the kitchen.

    “Mm?” Joanie’s a bit abstracted because Seve’s here and whenever he turns up she always starts wondering if maybe she ought to try to talk him into divorcing his wife of twenty-five years and marrying her. Or at least leaving the woman permanently. Not to say always starts worrying because she can’t cook. I did tell her that in that sort of social exchange between the two sexes the male side is expected to counter the female’s offer of her sexual favours with the offer of restaurant meals if unwilling or unable to counter it with an offer of marriage, but that didn’t go down too well, so since then I haven’t said a thing. Added to which I’ve been doing a solid course of reading in psychology lately, mostly social psychology, though it’s quite hard to find anything in the field that isn’t popularist muck, and I’ve been a bit too busy to comment on anything. What with that and rehearsals for The Show.

    “Up-market post-yuppy garden party at Mark and Norma’s,” I remind her. “Whadd’ll I wear?”

    “Don’t sound so glum about it! Well, something pretty, Rosie.”

    “It’s not warm enough for something pretty,” I whine.

    “Rubbish.” She takes Seve through a tray of tea and croissants. I always thought Spaniards drank coffee? On second thoughts, they probably do, and he took one sip of Joanie’s brown dust and switched to tea for the duration. She buys the croissants specially for him. Talk about brainwashed. Not to say, the slave of your chromosomes. Then she marches into my room and goes ruthlessly through my wardrobe and rejects all of it. Though not without breaking down and asking feebly: “What is this thing?”

    “It’s a nice loose sunfrock that Joslynne’s Mum’s friend Mrs Giorgopoulos made for their Angela when she was—”

    “Sixteen stone. For heaven’s sake, Rosie!”

    “No, pregnant. It was going to waste. Um, that other thing’s a sarong. I quite often used to wear it round home in the summer.”

    She picks it up in two fingers. “Dare I ask what colour it once was?”

    “The Australian sun’s— Um, those grey bits were blue. And those greenish bits were sort of yellow. I got a lot of wear out of it. I didn’t bring the bikini top I used to wear with it, I didn’t think I’d get much wear out of it over here.”

    “Did you imagine you’d get much wear out of— Forget it.”

    “I could still use it. On the beach at Ibitha, over my thong.” –Lithping frantically.

    “You and the kippered Della, quite,” she acknowledges, wincing. “Wait there, I’ll find you something decent.”

    I wait, perforce…

    I’m gonna freeze in this, my tits are already starting to— “Um, yes, very pretty, thanks awfully, Joanie.”

    She retires to Seve’s criticism of the croissants, beaming. Sneakily I grab up a large fuzzy jumper and exit before she can spot me with it.

    … It’s freezing! The fuzzy jumper goes straight on over the sweetly-pretty white dress with the pink roses on it. She’s got loads of sweetly-pretty dresses, some might say they’re all too young for her but with her complexion she can get away with them, so why not? It’s more or less a sunfrock, cut rather slim, sort of influenced by the waif look, with a hemline about six inches above the ankles on her and four on me, and she’s made me borrow these putrid pink sandals because most unfortunately our feet are exactly the same size. But as in spite of the tap classes our bods are not the same size it doesn’t look rather slim on me, it looks tight, especially around the bum, and the tits definitely look as if it ought to be two sizes larger, so it’s probably just as well I have put the fuzzy jumper on over it. Pale grey, and it’s huge. I got it at a garage sale back home. Real mohair, according to Joslynne, but whatever it is it’s really warm, thank God. It was a very up-market garage sale, she saw the ad for it when she was doing one of her cleaning jobs, and the reason they were getting rid of it must’ve been this giant splodge on the left arm. Green. Joslynne reckons it’s food dye and the lady that owned it originally was doing some up-market craft thing. Whatever it is it won’t come out, I’ve washed it several times and it comes up fluffy as anything but the green remains a nice dark emerald. I don’t care: I’m not proud, but I think you might’ve gathered that by now.

    … This is it. You can hear the noise from the front gate, so I’m probably late, I gave in to the temptation to read the book reviews in The Observer before having a shower. Ugh, could run away? Bugger, couldn’t: suddenly a car pulls in and a man and lady in very up-market leisure gear get out and come right up to my elbow, hemming me in between the front door and their huge, horrible, leisure-geared bodies, so that’s It.

    The back garden’s crammed with bodies in similar, all shouting at one another as was evident from the front gate, so possibly Mark’s broken down and got the grog out. Yes, thank God. I will have some champagne—thanks. Americans are all under the impression that it’s up-market, but if he wants to chuck his money away on French fizz that they turn out by the mega-gallon without a year on the label, who am I to object? It’s pretty cold, so you can’t really taste it: good. Not that I’m claiming that Australian illegally-labelled “champagne” is any better, because it’s miles worse. Miles worse. Acid and sweet, with a bitter undertaste. And aftertaste, to get technical.

    “Hullo, Bob,” I say with relief at finding something known, not leisure-geared, not American, and actually, not even English.

    Bob Williams greets me with about equal relief. Though asking kindly, which almost induces me to go and chat socially to a perfect stranger: “Aren’t you hot?” Expecting the answer Yes.

    “No.”

    “I was forgetting you were Australian, for a moment,” he admits in his nice Welsh sing-song that he hasn’t worked hard (a) to get rid of or (b) to retain, as I’ve by now had more than time enough to discover are the two usual attitudes to working-class regional accents in our neck of the academic woods.

    “I wasn’t, not when I walked out of the flat, anyway. Will it ever get warm?”

    “Probably not, in your terms.”

    “I didn’t think so. Is there anything to eat?”

    “Probably not, in your terms.”

    “Very funny. Um, is it afternoon tea, I mean tea?” I hiss.

    “Don’t spit! I am familiar with the phrase. No idea: I’m here because it’s expected of post-graduate students.”

    “That’s funny, I’m here because it’s expected of very minor fellows from the wrong side of the world. –Didn’t you bring anybody?”

    “No. Didn’t you?”

    “I don’t know anybody that’d be able to stand it,” I admit sourly.

    “Lucky you. I’m in the opposite case: six of Mark’s female Master’s students came and made eyes at me and dropped heavy hints, and five of the males.”

    “Would it’ve done you any harm to bring one, Bob?”

    “Of either sex, you mean? No, well, probably not, but it would’ve been boring. And potentially embarrassing, if he or she got drunk and made a pass at the host.”

    “Puts it well.” I grab the bottle of fizz just as he’s reaching for it and take the last of it. But he's the sort of male that can open bottles of fizz without the help of sixteen waiters, and he does. After that we just stand here, drinking.

    About an hour later I’m still standing here, still drinking. Chris Wainwright came up to leer at me, not to mention to ask me if I’m too hot, expecting the answer Yes.—No.—He took this as the brush-off it was, and went away again. Megan Vasanji came up to me looking desperate: could I remember where the upstairs loo is, because someone seems to have locked themselves in the downstairs one and there’s a huge queue outside it.—No: never been upstairs.—So she went off bravely to look for it, after asking me if I was sure I wasn’t too hot in that woollie. And one brightly smiling American, male, in desperately trendy leisure gear, though he looked a bit blue about the gills in an English not-summer, came up to me to ask me if I’d known Mark and Norma for long.—No.—He went away again. Bob’s slunk off somewhere, possibly home, possibly into Mark’s study to read his books. Megan’s not back so possibly she’s now locked in the upstairs loo but I’m not volunteering to check.

    … It isn’t all academics, it’s people from the district and I think from Mark’s up-market golf club as well, and there’s an absolutely dishy man over there with some middle-aged people I don’t know. He isn’t looking in my direction, he hasn’t so much as glanced in my direction and even if I take the fuzzy jumper off and freeze, will he glance in my direction? No.

    I take the fuzzy jumper off.

    Nothing happens for the next half hour, apart from the level in my bottle sinking, except that Megan is sighted in the vast hinterland of Mark and Norma’s ruddy up-market suburban garden, where the Hell do they hang their washing?

    “Penny for them,” says an amused deep voice at my elbow just as I’m reaching for the dregs of the fizz.

    I don’t look round, I’m concentrating on pouring. “Where they Hell do they hang their washing? There’s no Hills Hoist, or even the Pommy equivalent.” –I’m slightly tiddlers, dears, as Rupy would say.

    The amused baritone replies: “I suppose there are many possible answers. They send it out to a laundry? They use their local Beautiful Laundrette? They have a fully fitted laundry in the basement with”—an infinitesimal pause—“a beautiful American clothes drier in it?”

    At that I look round, and gulp. It’s him, the dish! Not very tall, though a lot taller than me, but beautiful proportions. Bald—naturally, I mean, and therefore far too old for me. Sort of the Patrick Stewart type, y’know? Not as old as him, though, I wouldn’t say.

    “Um, did you see that film?” I say weakly.

    “My Beautiful Laundrette? Certainly.”

    Crikey, that’s an up-market voice. The sort of thing bloody Michael Manfred struggles unavailingly to attain. I manage to smile weakly.

    “Is there any more fizz?” he says very meekly. He saw me take the last of it, in other words.

    “No, this is a dead man.” I up-end it in the ice bucket to prove it.

    “Mm. I do trust you’re not driving?”

    “What’s it to ya?” I snarl. Oh, dear, I have had far too much.

    “Nothing, on a personal level, as we haven’t been introduced,” he says, smiling.—Oh, crumbs. He’s got blue eyes, which usually I can’t stand in a man, but his are lovely, like the sky in summer—our sky, not theirs—and not only do his cheeks crease in the most entrancing way, he’s got dimples, which I always thought were totally yucky on a man, but his aren’t. Not deep ones, just little dints in each cheek above the creases. Hold me up.—“But on principle, I wouldn’t like to think of any young person ending dead or maimed in a ditch when a word from me might have prevented it.”

    I dunno why he said “young person” on purpose, but it’s clear to me he did. Maybe as a keep-off-the-grass signal? Anyway, I retort immediately: “Is that right? Well, depending on how authoritarian your tone was at the time, and depending on how much the young person was into kow-towing respectfully to an Ancient Person,”—I’m pissed, all right, I never quote that poem—“the young person in question might take notice of you, or they might be driven so rabid they’d immediately go off and do the opposite.”

    He looks at me thoughtfully, but I don’t squirm, I’m too pissed for that. “Was that Rochester, or a muddled remembrance of things Dickensian?”

    Gulp.

    “Rochester. ‘Ancient Person of my heart’. Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover.” Somehow I’m bright red at the end of this utterance.

    “Mm.”—This time he doesn’t actually smile, he just lets the lips sort of almost move, and the cheeks crease a bit. Strewth.—“I didn’t think he was read at all, these days.”

    “Nor did I. Well, he certainly wasn’t at Sydney University. Dad had a battered volume he bought in Oxford when he was still living in England. From a second-hand bookshop.” –I think I've used the wrong vernacular because this time he’s obviously trying not to smile. So, urged on by the alcohol, I add in a very nasty voice: “But don’t worry, any minute now Kenneth Branagh’ll reveal him to the breathlessly waiting English-speaking public as totally Nineties, New Age and boring.”

    He laughs. Glory, he laughs.

    “Don’t you admire Branagh?” I croak weakly.

    “When not given his head, yes. Well, modified rapture. –May I ask your name?”

    “This doesn’t mean I’m not gonna drive myself into a ditch. Rosie Marshall. I’m in Mark’s Department. I’m a fellow.”

    “You’re not that,” he says in a very odd voice.

    “Hah, hah. There is a dialectal feminine form of the word, but it’s only used in New Zealand, so you won’t wanna know. I only heard it because I spent my Christmas holidays there one year. Looking at geysers. Geysers in the Mist.”

    “Don’t,” he says, gulping slightly. “Er—what is it?”

    “Fellesse. The phrase used being: ‘All you fellas and fellesses out there.’ –In television land, was the context.”

    “This is apocryphal,” he says faintly.

    “No, ’tisn’t.” –What’s your name? Or I am too young and insignificant to be told? And are you married? ’Course he is: on his third round, probably. She’ll be one of those skinny, elegant ladies over there in the fab Ralph Lauren-type gear that I’d look totally ghastly in, always supposing I could get into it in the first place.

    At the same time as I’m thinking all this, the following is unnecessarily coming out of my big mouth: “It was interesting, because the TV personality who said it was a Maori, and judging from his patterns of speech he’d developed a Maori persona that the white majority television audience could relate to, in the same way as our professional Aboriginal television personality back home has developed an Aboriginal persona. Very down-home, in both cases, with completely ersatz versions of the accents which some of their congeners—um, some of the fellow members of their races use quite genuinely.”

    He overlooks that last slip, I can see him doing it, his mouth does the thing it does when he’s trying not to laugh—hold me up, yet again—and says: “Don’t they all have the same accent, then?”

    “No, lots of them speak the same as the rest of us. It depends partly on whether they’re from Outer Woop-Woop, um, sorry, the depths of the countryside, and partly on their socio-economic status. That us nice people don’t refer to.” –And what IS your name?

    “Mm.”

    There’s a short pause during which he just stands there trying not to laugh and I just stand there glaring at him.

    Then he says: “I had the impression, possibly from too much Nevil Shute in my youth, that it was ‘Beyond the Black Stump’?”

    “No, that’s only in Nevil Shute novels or really faked-up down-home TV epics that the ABC tries to flog off overseas. Nice people say ‘Outer Woop-Woop’.”

    “I see. There’s a lot of the nice sort about, in those parts, I gather?”

    “Well, yes. Seventy percent of the urban population and ninety percent of the rural, including the entire female percentile of the rural. Not counting the aforesaid Aborigines, which believe you me, they still don’t.”

    “Mm. So Crocodile Dundee was all wrong, too, was it?” he says sadly.

    My jaw drops.

    “I saw it on a plane,” he excuses himself.

    “I see! Um, I am a Paul Hogan fan, it’s something to do with being a normal red-blooded female,”—like what you haven’t noticed, mate—“but it was pretty ersatz, yeah. Um, but they did get that snide Aussie sense of humour down pat. Snide but crude,” I excuse it, me, and all of my compatriots. “But the percentage of simple-hearted but snide down-home country folk, as opposed to the nice sort, was all wrong, for sure. Well, talking of Nevil Shute, remember in A Town Like Alice how she describes what the local reaction’d be if she just walked out and took up residence at that bloke’s farm while she’s only engaged to him? –That.”

    “Still?” he says in horror.

    “Not their attitude to pre-marital sex, you birk! Broadly speaking.”

    “Oh, broadly speaking!”

    “Go on, laugh.”

    He does smile, but says: “Is ‘birk’ an Australian usage?” Genuinely curious, as far as I can see.

    “I don’t think so; I think I picked it up off my cousin Joanie, that I’m flatting with.”

    He nods. “And did she come with you, this afternoon?”

    “No, she’s got her married Spaniard this weekend. And?”

    “Did I imply there was an ‘and’?” he says, too mildly. “I was wondering if she was unfit to drive, too, I must admit.”

    “I didn’t come by car, I came by fifteen different buses and tubes with gigantic waits between them.”

    He raises his eyebrows slightly. “Heaven forbid we should expose you to any more gigantic English waits.”

    “Look, I know that’s a pun, I’ve heard of the waits and bloody Yuletide, so drop it!”

    This time he breaks down and actually grins, it’s the most masculine thing I’ve ever seen, never mind ruddy Paul Hogan and his bloody skinning knife. Hold me up, please!

    “Sorry. Irresistible. I meant, can I give you a lift, Rosie?”

    Some females would simply admit, tacitly, of course, that this is a Gift Straight From Heaven and accept meekly and thankfully, not to say, slavishly, but L.R Marshall has to open her big mouth and say: “How drunk are you?”

    “I don’t think I’m drunk at all. Well, two glasses of champagne?”

    It was so bad he wasn’t tempted to drink more: right. I think that’s probably okay, given that I think three glasses is the going rate for not-drunk for Aussie men, but is it the same over here? “Um, well, that sounds all right, but um,”—going very red—“are you going in my direction?” I give him the address of Joanie’s flat.

    “Of course.” So smooth that I’m almost sure it’s a lie, but somehow I don’t dare to challenge him. Or want to, of course.

    “Um, what is your name?” –Very weakly indeed.

    Stone the crows, he goes a bit red, so he must be genuine, after all! You can see it, even though he’s quite tanned, not like most of this whey-faced lot that’ve just been through the unending English winter and haven’t yet gone on their summer holidays. “Didn’t I—I’m so sorry. John. John Hah-with.” How much? It’ll be one of those impossible-to-spell English surnames. Bummer. He’s holding out his hand, grinning, so I put my hand into it, I’d tap out my Good Ship Lollipop routine in front of the lot of them if the grin suggested it, I’d fly to the moon, I’d— I hope it isn’t one of those brutal pseudo-masculine grips, usually with a bloody ring as well, that cr-r-rush—

    ’Tisn’t. Warm but not sticky, firm but gentle— Hey, if we’re getting physiological, here, folks, it isn’t my dirty mind!

    Funnily enough I go all colours of the rainbow and say idiotically: “Hullo, John. Um, how do you spell it?”

    He is obviously a person of quality, because he just replies: “H,A,W,O,R,T,H. It’s a Yorkshire name.” Not that the quality wasn’t obvious from the clothes alone, you oughta see the slacks, the words “poured into them” come to mind but that isn’t it, at all: pale fawn, beautifully cut and flat as bejasus across his tum—middle-aged or not, he must be awfully fit—and totally flattering to the totally masculine dream of a bum, that’s let not pretend I wasn’t watching when he was standing in profile to me talking to those hags in the Ralph Lauren gear. The shirt is just a plain white shirt, no tie, collar unbuttoned, and I can tell ya, it makes all the trendy gear of all the middle-aged, saggy trendies look pretty sick. Boy, has he got shoulders.

    “Huh? Oh, yeah,” I agree weakly. “Of course. Like Howard. –I never knew it was pronounced like that,” I add feebly.

    “Sometimes.”

    “Yeah. Um, so you’re not a neighbour, then?” He’s looking blank, as well he might, so I add feebly: “Most of them seem to be either academics or Mark and Norma’s neighbours. But I know most of the academics.”

    “Oh, of course, you’re a fellow,” he says, the mouth doing that thing. I’ll never last out a whole car ride alone with him. –Yikes, or did he mean with him and the wife? The human frame could definitely not take that. “I’m not strictly speaking a neighbour, but my sister is.”

    That doesn’t tell me if he’s married or not, does it? “I see.”

    “Ready to go now?”

    Yes, I’m ready fly to the moon, or do the tap routine, or— “Um, yes, I am, thanks. They seem to be going, don’t they?”

    “Mm.” He puts his hand very gently under my elbow and I just about pass out. “Are you all right?”

    “Yes! It’s not the champagne, it’s the bumpy lawn! –Um, hang on, that’s mine.”

    He releases my elbow, picks up my fuzzy jumper, I’ll die of frostbite before I put it on again, I can tell ya, and puts the hand under the elbow again. I can’t tell you a thing about the walk across the lawn because I’m floating...

    In the front passage I come down to earth and admit I have to go the toilet, not daring to pronounce the word “loo”, which is not my native usage, even though aware that to persons in his socio-economic bracket, “toilet” is very non-U. He very kindly suggests I try the one upstairs, as there seemed to be a bit of a scrum round the downstairs one earlier. So I go upstairs. Probably he isn’t watching every twitch of my bum in bloody Joanie’s too-tight sweetly-pretty frock as I go, but it sure as Hell feels like it, why did I ever eat all that mash? Not to say all those chips. I find the bog quite easily: that’s a first. Largely because there’s two very up-market females in Ralph Lauren-type gear queuing outside it. They look right through me and continue a very boring, if loud, conversation about one, Susan, and one, Richard, though who is betraying whom I am hard put to it to say. Finally it’s my turn and I go. The last bitch used up all the bog paper, not that one can blame her, but she never said anything. I look in all Norma’s cupboards and finally find some, heavily disguised in a frilled bag that matches the curtains. A Laura Ashley print, I think. Cor. Tasteful.

    When I eventually totter down again I just about fall downstairs because he’s standing in the hall with another Ralph Lauren-type female of around his own age who’s looking possessive!

    “There you are,” he says, not-quite-smiling.

    Don’t—do—that. “Yeah.”

    “Rosie, is it?” says the female very nicely, ugh. She can afford it, the cow. Mind you, she’s got horrible teeth. But what can that matter: she’s the woman in possession.

    “Yeah. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient,” I mutter.

    “What? No, dear, that’s quite all right! But it’s silly to take two cars, and John’s staying with us while he’s on leave, so if you don’t mind—” Blah-blah. It turns out that she’s his sister, not his wife, and there’s no wife in evidence, but that doesn’t mean much, and her and Norman, that’s the hubby, are planning to go to a friend’s place with him for dinner—blah-blah. If I wouldn’t mind waiting while they change?

    I agree to everything, I’m too limp to even think of alternatives, and they drag me off to her house, which is right next-door. He looks sort of wryly apologetic throughout all this, but then, if he really wanted to be Alone With Rosie Marshall In A Car he could’ve stood up for himself, eh? Sod him. Chickened out. Either I’m too young for him, or I’m too Australian, or I’m too down-market. No, all three.

    Their house is even posher than Mark and Norma’s and even more heavily into the ye olde shit. Polished antiques and flowery vases. Like that so-called cottage of hers in To The Manor Born, only a lot bigger, that style. They let me sit in the sitting-room, but I can tell ya, it feels like waiting in the hall! When he comes back he’s in a different pair of slacks, not as nice, but on him, not bad, and one of those horrible hairy tweed coats, ugh. “Anything up?” he says mildly, not coming anywhere near L.R. Marshall.

    “No. –I loathe those tweed coats!” I burst out.

    “Mm? My jacket? It is rather repulsive, I suppose. I’ve had it for years. Harris tweed never wears out.”

    “And when it does ya put those ruddy leather patches on it: I know. Mark’s got a coat exactly like that only funnily enough, he bought it with the patches already on it.”

    “Mm,” he says, gnawing on his lip a bit.—It’s an eminently gnawable-on lip: rather full, though the upper lip’s quite thin, so the mouth as a whole, which is wide, doesn't give the impression of fullness. Which I loathe on a man, unless he’s Black, of course, when it looks good instead of repulsive. I think it’s because Caucasian lips are too pink to be attractive when they’re too full. That or my cultural brainwashing, yeah.—“Fancy a drink?”

    “Aren’t you driving?”

    “No, Norman’s driving.”

    The brother-in-law, right. Doesn’t she let him drink? Probably not, no. “Um, no, I’ve had enough, thanks. –Did you get anything to eat?”

    He pours. Whisky, I think. Brown, anyway. “I think there were some nibbles, earlier.”

    “I was a bit late. I missed a bus.”

    “I see.” He wanders over to the window and sips the drink and I just sit here like a dill.

    After a bit the sister hurries in. She’s more gussied up than she was before but still fearfully tailored-looking, even though it’s not strictly speaking a suit. Loose-ish straight skirt, loose-ish blouse—if I was that thin I’d wear everything skin-tight and tucked in, what a waste—and loose linen-look jacket with a loose scarf. Le look casuelle, geddit? All fawn, ultimately tasteful. Makes ya wanna spew: right. Didn’t John get me a drink—blah, blah. Then she starts talking to him about people I don’t know and by the sound of them don’t wanna know, but anyone who hadn’t guessed that was gonna happen must’ve been living on another planet for the last forty millennia. Territorialism, ya could say. What it is, I’m too young, too Australian, and too down-market for him, geddit? Yeah, I thought ya might. And also, pardon my French, too available, it’s tattooed on my forehead.

    At long last Norman comes down. He’s a short, plump, baldish man, it’s not sexy on him like it is on John, and he looks, fancy that, hen-pecked. And after he’s been told he’s held everybody up, we go. She lets me go in the back with John but what’s the use of that? She talks to him herself every minute she’s not telling Norman where to go and to take another route because of the Sunday drivers. After a bit I put the fucking fuzzy jumper back on: who cares?

    “Cold?” he murmurs, under cover of the Susan and Richard horror story I’ve already heard.

    “Mm. The atmosphere in England does that to ya.”

    He gives me a sharp look but doesn’t say anything.

    At long last they let me off at Joanie’s smart brown bricks. John Haworth-pronounced-Hah-with doesn’t ask for my phone number or say he hopes he’ll see me again or ANYTHING but gee, I don’t expect him to!

    “Thanks very much. Good-night.” I go inside, I’ve got a key now, so it’s mercifully quick. The lift’s waiting so I get in. Let’s hope it kills me.

    Unfortunately it doesn’t.

    Joanie and Seve are watching telly so I go into the kitchen and start blindly doing something about food…

    “Rosie! What on earth’s the matter?”

    “Noth-ing!” I sob into the mangled loaf I’d started to cut up for toast.

    “What happened? Were they horrid to you? –My God, you weren’t attacked in the tube?”

    “No! His sister—gave me—lift!” I sob into the bread.

    Joanie puts an arm round me. “Whose sister?”

    “John’s! And I hate him!” I bawl all over her.

    After a while she gets the salient details out of me. “Um, Rosie, if he let his sister put him off… Um, maybe he’s married,” she offers cautiously.

    “So’s Seve, ” I note, sniffing.

    “Yes. But I mean, he may contact you, once he’s out of his sister’s orbit. He didn’t ask for your phone number, did he?” she adds without hope.

    “No, because she was there!”

    “Well, he could ask Mark and Norma, I suppose. Or just pop round.”

    “Pooh.”

    “It has been known.”

    “He got cold feet, and started thinking of all the things that count against me, I could see him doing it, Joanie!”

    “Ye-es… You are awfully pretty, though, Rosie.”

    “The place was full of thin ladies in Ralph Lauren gear and she was one of them!”

    “What? Oh, the sister. Yes, but it was you he came up to, wasn’t it?”

    “That was then, and now he’s chickened out!” I start to bawl again.

    “Oh, dear. Don’t cry, Rosie. If he is married, it’s probably all for the best.”

    “Who’s married?” asks Seve mildly from the doorway.

    “Some idiot Rosie met at this damned party of her boss’s, he sounds far too old for her, anyway.”

    “About fifty,” I say, sniffling.

    Kindly Seve comes and gives me his own hanky. Very good quality: everything Seve owns is good quality. “Well, that ees old, Rosie.” He's about forty-seven. On the other hand, that’s only eleven years older than Joanie.

    “He’s not past it!” I blow my nose angrily on Seve’s expensive hanky.

    Joanie tries to prove he is past it and Seve tries to cheer me up by suggesting Chinese takeaways. With fried dim-sims.

    “No, I don’t feel like it, thanks, and anyway, I eat fried dim-sims too often, no wonder he never made an effort!” I start bawling again so Joanie leads me off to bed with the promise of a cup of tea.

   … Later. I get up again and we all eat Chinese, including fried dim-sims. I do feel marginally better, only funnily enough when we switch channels and it’s something with Kenneth Branagh in it, I start to bawl again.

    “He’s not that bad, Rosie. –Change the channel, for heaven’s sake!” she hisses at her lover.

    I haul out Seve’s hanky again. “Not him. His name sort of cropped up.”

    “Uh—oh! Does he admire him, Rosie?”

    “No. Modified rap—ture!” Tears pour down my cheeks and I can’t stop them. “Sorry, Joanie. Sorry, Seve. I think I’d better go back to bed.”

    “No, no, Rosie, my dear! Thees ees a comedy!” Seve offers hopefully.

    We watch it for a bit, me sniffing off and on. It’s appalling. Joanie knows everybody in it, but it’s still appalling. A fat lady vicar. I’ve seen her before, in something else, but she’s dreadful in this. Or maybe it’s the writing. It’s the dykiest performance I’ve ever seen up to and including The Killing of Sister George and this really weird old silent film made back in about 1914 where the heroine eats a magic seed and turns into a young man. –It’s still her, in trousers, geddit?

    Finally Seve asks feebly: “Ees the lady priest meant to be gay?”

    Neither of us knows and he switches channels again. A documentary about dinosaurs with Kenneth Branagh doing the voice-over. Poor Joanie goes very red and grabs the blab-out off him and switches the bloody thing right off.

    “I’m all right, really,” I say bravely into the awkward silence.

    “Mm. Um, who was he?” she ventures. “I mean, what does he do?”

    I blow my nose yet again. “Dunno. He was only there because he was staying with his sister.”

    “Mm. Rosie, dear, I really think you’d be better off forgetting about him.”

    I get up. “All right, I’ll go and start.”

    I go back to bed and bawl my eyes out.

    Of course John Haworth never does pop round or try to get my phone number off Mark and Norma. So I throw myself into my work and into my tapping. I don’t give up the dim-sims but I’m doing so much tapping, what with the rehearsals and the practising and the extra practising that Rupy insists we do because now that the hour is approaching he’s shit-scared of making a fool of himself in front of all his professional friends that he’s stupidly invited to the show, I do actually lose some more weight. And much good it’ll do me.

    Bridget’s all pink and flustered, most unlike her. “Could I possibly have some more tickets for the tap show, Rosie ?”

    “Eh? Yeah, as many as ya like. Five thousand do ya?”

    “No!” she says with a startled giggle. “Um, well…” She counts on her fingers, muttering. Is it only my imagination or do I hear the words “Derry” and “Adam” in the mutters?

    “Bridget, you haven’t gone off your rocker with delusions of grandeur since you got that part, and started imagining you’re gonna bring Derry Dawlish and Adam McIntyre to our tap show, have you?”

    “No! Yes!” she says with a strangled gasp.

    Illuminating. “Run that by me again.”

    It’s very tangled and there’s a lot of gasps in it but I finally sort of sort it out. It still doesn’t make sense, but I think I’ve isolated a few facts. Derry Dawlish and a friend of his who is some sort of a producer, I think TV, have some deluded notion of making a very Fifties-style film, about what, God knows, with a very Fifties look. Including tap. Whether the film is to be for television or the big screen, unknown. So they want to see our tap show to get some ideas. And not to tell Rupy or Gray or they’ll think they’re talent-scouting and go mad. Personally I can’t see that Della’s Dance Studio’s show’ll give them any ideas at all except the idea that they oughta drop the whole thing, but as I also can’t see the Great Viewing Public wanting to watch any Fifties-style thing, with or without tap, let alone any Fifties-style thing one fraction as arty as that last Shakespearean epic of Dawlish’s, pearl G-strings or not, maybe it’ll be a good thing if they do decide to drop it. Anyway, it’s six more seats sold because, God knows why, Adam McIntyre and Georgy Harris have decided to come, too, and not to tell Gray or Rupy that because they’ll go mad. (Two and two are still four, even though for a minute, there, the world stood still on its axis, but apparently Dawlish and the friend are each bringing a friend, sex unspecified.)

    “I’ll have the money up-front, thanks, impoverished ingénue or not.”

    She smiles weakly but coughs up the dough.

    It’ll never happen, and I most certainly won’t tell Gray or Rupy. Or even Della, though she wouldn’t believe it anyway. And if the world stands still on its axis again and it does happen, Arthur Morrissey’ll be on the door and he’ll put them all, because they’re bound to be late, celebrities always are, right at the back where they won’t be able to see a thing. Because it’s first come, first served: Della doesn’t trust Arthur to put people into the right seats and she doesn’t trust any of her little amateur helpers to sort out which numbered seats have actually been sold and which are still available, long and bitter experience having proved that this is something that eager little amateur helpers cannot do. She put it much more succinctly, mind you. She just ascertains there are X number of seats, and has X number of tickets printed. Simple.

    We’re doing it in a real old theatre, it’s not that far from the place we have the classes. These days it’s usually used for bingo and for those strange subsidised films that are put on by religious groups, I thought that only happened back home, they’re always Jesus epics or surfing documentaries, full of waves and nothing. It hasn’t got a circle and certainly not a bar but this is just as well, because the amateur helpers couldn’t cope with either. There are a couple of grubby little rooms that might be dressing-rooms if people bring their own mirrors but they’re not big enough for all of us to change in, so all the children and all of the adult chorus have to come in their costumes. Only the soloists are allowed to get changed in the dressing-rooms.

    There was a lot of confusion, not to say bitter cat-fighting, over just who was a soloist, but Gray’s now decided that even though it’ll make the female dressing-room inconveniently full I have to be one. Vanessa, who’s actually a transsexual and waiting for the op., she used to be a Jim, can choose which room she wants and the rest of us can act like professionals for once in our lives and just shut up about it. Vanessa thereupon, though shuddering, kindly opting to go in with the men in order to free up more room for the ladies. Ziggy, his grandparents were Polish so it is short for a real name, he’s been told that leading the chorus does not constitute a solo part and he’s to come in his first costume but since he has to change for his second number he can use the men’s dressing-room for that. His sister, Eva, she’s the strong-minded one in that partnership, she’s been told that she has to turn up in the ballroom thing because it takes up too much room but that she can use the dressing-room to change into her skating dress for the fake skating dance. Herbie, Willy and Leo have all been told to behave themselves and do what they’re told and act like professionals and three lines of song between them do NOT constitute solo parts. Miriam, Joelle, Kylie, Tonya and Verity all decided as a matter of course that they’d be using the dressing-room to get into their playing-card costumes so it was bloody lucky that Gray didn’t want to argue. Especially since Heather, the accompanist, is Verity’s grandmother, even though Verity’s Black and she isn’t. Pamela and Portia, the Poynter Sisters, have been told that their props have to go in the men’s. And if Gray gets any more argument they can turn up in their Ringmaster and Performing Leopard costumes and STAY IN THEM! Which would ruin their big number. And all the clowns, or clownettes, as Rupy and his friends call them, have been told to turn up in those costumes because they’re what they’re on first in and NO ARGUMENTS! We gather it was even worse with the little ballet girls, because they’ve all got ballet mums, all of whom thought that her little darling had a right to use a real dressing-room. Della in person had to wade into that one.

    I’m still not clear whether I’m only supposed to use the dressing-room to change into my navy-blue baby-doll dress, but never mind, Rupy and Andy and Herbie and me are going to share a taxi and get there in comfort, so I’ll wear my chorus costume to it, the first costume I have to wear.

    The dread day’s come. The theatre’s crammed, because everyone’s doting mums and aunties and martyred dads are here, though the uncles mostly seem to have got out of it. Well, Verity’s, Miriam’s and Andy’s have, I know that for a fact because when our taxi picked Andy up his aunty was at the front gate tearing a strip off the uncle, who was then observed to go off to the pub regardless, and when we got here Miriam and Verity gave us chapter and verse, unasked. In particular because Verity’s Uncle Bob was supposed to drive Verity, Miriam, Heather (ouch; even though some them are doing it to their own tapes, Heather and her piano are indispensable), and Miriam’s mum who was coming early to help out in case anything needed ironing. Verity’s mum, that’s Heather’s daughter and therefore Bob’s sister, she wasn’t coming early because she had to wait until the baby-sitter got there to look after Verity’s sister Margaretta’s little Diana Heather, who’s too little to come. The reason Margaretta couldn’t do it isn’t that she wanted to see the show, too, but that she’s gone off to Malta with a bloke who isn’t Diana Heather’s father, and thereby hangs a tale. Or several. So Miriam’s martyred dad was roped in to drive them instead and that meant he had to find something to do with himself for two hours or go home and risk not being able to find a park when he came back. So he decided to sit out front and read his paper. He tried to smoke a fag but Della in person went and screamed at him. Something about insurance, mainly. So then he decided to help Arthur Morrissey show people into their seats, probably not a bad idea because Arthur’s in a shocking state of nerves, but at that stage there were no people to be shown except a few ballet mums who didn’t need or want help, so then he helped him round the corner for a quick drink and both Della and Gray went ballistic. Oh, it’s been all go tonight, I can tell ya, and the thing hasn’t even started yet!

    I’m ready, because of course I came in my first costume, it’s like a shiny spangled halter-neck top, blue, I’d call it Royal blue, with shiny spangled cutaway panties, bright red, and sheer black tights. And red tap shoes. The top hat’s shiny silver and it’s held on with a very firm piece of elastic under the chin. Rupy made sure of that in person. Rupy did my make-up before we came, and since then he’s touched it up a bit and ordered me on pain of death not to lay a finger on it. The first number I’m in is A Tap Tribute To Britannia and believe me, folks, that’s all ya wanna know about it. It’s third on the programme, the first actual number’s A Circus Extravaganza and it’s quite long. All the clownettes are here, so that’s one load off Gray’s mind. Their costumes are even worse than mine: kind of white cone-shaped pierrot hats with three smallish black pom-poms in a vertical row on them, white halter tops with a big black pom-pom between the tits, short frilly white skirts, not tutus but very short, only room for two big black pom-poms vertically, white cutaway panties, sheer black tights and black tap shoes. They’re all fighting over who’s nicked whose makeup and hairspray etcetera. So the female dressing-room is definitely a no-no, added to which several of the ballet mums are trying to infiltrate it again.

    I sneak on stage and peer through the gap in the curtains but Gray streaks on, hisses something about unprofessional—there’s no need to hiss, there’s a very loud Spice Girls CD playing over the sound system—and pulls me bodily away again.

    “I was looking for someone,” I say lamely.

    He gives me a bitter glare. “Well, don’t!” And goes off to blitz a ballet mum who’s dared to poke her head into the actual backstage area.

    Rupy’s been hiding behind a piece of scenery but now he comes up bravely and says: “Who?”

    “Bridget and— Bridget.”

    He pounces. “I thought she wasn’t bringing anyone?”

    “No,” I lie.

    “Ooh, has she got a new boyfriend? Someone from the new play?”

    “Rupy, they’ve had two meetings at which nobody said any lines or was even asked to learn any lines and one after-meeting adjournment to the pub, how could she—”

    Time enough, apparently.

    “Yeah.”

    He puts an arm round me. “Now, don’t, dear: they’re not all like horrid John Hah-with, you know!”

    I smile wanly. “No.” I drank too much white wine and told Rupy the lot one afternoon a bit back after Andy and Willy had pushed off together and Rupy was getting a bit lachrymose because he fancies Andy even though at twenty-two he’s a bit old, really. More of a man than a slim young lad, see? And Rupy’s favourite line is: “I do loathe men.” To which my favourite reply is: “No, you don’t, you love them.” The wine was to keep Rupy company, only it made me even more lachrymose than he was. Oh, well, it was a distraction for him. And he was very sympathetic, he knows all about getting the brush-off from the adored object. Not to say, adoring from afar and never even getting near the adored object. Ever since, he’s been calling him John Hah-with, heavy accent on the “Hah” but also quite heavy on the “with,” sort of hissed, in an effort to help keep my spirits up.

    “So is it?”

    “Um, no. Not a boyfriend.”

    Bridget’s reported very fully on her two not-rehearsals to the breathlessly interested Rupy and the tolerantly listening Joanie, and me, I happened to be holding Joanie’s knitting at the time, even though Michael Manfred had said something loud to the stage manager about damned hangers-on cluttering up the wings, so now Rupy’s eyes bulge and he croaks: “Not Derry Dawlish?”

    “He isn’t directing her play,” I say weakly.

    “Not officially, but he and Adam McIntyre are in each other’s pockets, didn’t you know?”—No, I didn’t, actually.—“And the word is he was at that audition of Bridget’s not just because of that, but because he’s talent-spotting!”—Oh, God.—“Is it him? It is him, isn’t it?”

    “Look, she only said he might come, and shut up!” I hiss.

    “Talent-spotting for what?” he replies tensely.

    “Inept amateurish tappers, apparently.”

    This doesn’t have the desired effect: his eyes go rounder than ever, and he gasps: “Ooh, is he looking for tappers?”

    “No! All she said was, him and a friend of his, it’s probably not even him, are looking for ideas. Sort of Fifties ideas.”

    “Della’s that, all right,” he says unkindly.

    I do some arithmetic and only manage to come up with: “I thought that bouffant hair was more Sixties?”

    “Nevertheless. Well, pointy bras hoisted to the chin?”

    Hers are that, all right. I nod feebly.

    Regretfully he admits: “But I wouldn’t say the show was… No, I tell you what, dear, it’ll be the ambience! Possibly Derry’s planning to do a show about a show? You know, sort of a Ken Russell—”

    I switch off. The more so since he’s started calling him Derry… “Eh?”

    “Come along!” Ruthlessly Rupy drags me off to get his coat and my parka. Oh, help, Della’ll kill us! Especially since he forbids me on pain of death to remove my nicely adjusted silver topper. Then we sneak out the stage door and go round front.

    “Oh, hullo!” beams Arthur, apparently unaware that if Della or Gray spots us, blood will be spilt on the moth-eaten carpet. “Look, it’s nearly full!”

    “Yes, a good crowd, dear,” Rupy corrects his vernacular sternly. “Arthur, darling, have you seen a very stout figure in black, with a black beard, who looks exactly like Placido Domingo?”

    “Pardon?” he croaks.

    “I thought it was the other one? –One of the Three Tenors, Arthur,” I explain clearly.

    “Oh! Yes, he was with a tall man and a very pretty red-headed girl in the dreamiest shade of lemon. Silk.”

    In that case the “tall man” is Adam McIntyre, read my lips, A,D,A,M M,C-capital-I,N,T,Y,R,E, and Arthur’s potty! Certifiable. Rupy’s asking tensely where he put them. Well, they wanted the front row, but they couldn’t go there because Mrs Henderson and Mrs Di Maggio and Mrs Crowe and Mrs Wong— Rupy interrupts this tersely with: “We know: ballet mothers. Where?” They wouldn’t let Arthur put them near the back—fancy—so he was at his wits’ end, especially as they insisted they needed to save two seats for two more friends, but finally he had an inspiration and put them next to his mum! Because she was saving a seat for old Mrs Entwhistle and she’s rather broad, so it had to be two seats, and of course Vera and Gertie always have to be with her, she can’t leave them at home by themselves, but they’d just come in and reminded him that Mrs Entwhistle always needs a seat on the aisle because of her Trouble— Feebly we whisper thanks and after he’s pointed us in the right direction, tiptoe down the far right-hand side of the two blocks of seats, hugging the wall, right, to within three rows of the front, where Mrs Morrissey can now be observed showing the famous director Derry Dawlish her pale green crochet.

    “What is it?” whispers Rupy, his eyes bulging.

    “Crochet, are you blind?”

    “No, dear, is it anything indelicate?” he hisses with an awful grimace.

    “What, like a walking-suit with helpful holes in it for Dinky Doo?”

    Dinky Doo’s the Pomeranian and this is not apocryphal, so Rupy nods in a sort of intense horror, his nails digging into my arm.

    “Dunno. I think she was finishing off a dressing-table set for their Maureen’s Vicky, but I don’t think that’d be green wool. –Green is possible, yes. Wool, no,” I flatten him.

    “I see. Shall we just creep away again?” he whispers.

    I shake him off crossly. “No! Where’s Bridget?”

    We count heads. The pink crochet hat with the bright blue clip in it’s Arthur’s mum, of course; the fat head, make that fathead, with the black hair which is undoubtedly dyed and the black beard, quite probably ditto, is the famous film director, the glorious riot of mahogany is undoubtedly Georgy Harris, and the expensively manicured black waves atop the tall back that’s blocking the view of the ballet mum behind him, any minute now she’ll ask him to slouch down in his seat, is Adam McIntyre in person. Next to him there’s a head of thick, silvering brown hair which Rupy identifies with a gasp as Brian Hendricks! Never heard of him. Oh, a TV producer. What of? Never heard of it: either it never reached Oz or else the ABC’s ad for it was sufficient warning. Then there’s a gap. Big enough for two, I think. I slink down further, ignoring Rupy’s anguished hiss to come back. Well, bugger them! Two seats left. Ignoring Rupy’s anguished hissing, I edge in past a very small somebody’s brother who’s sulking, an even smaller somebody’s sister who’s in a rabid state of excitement, more so at the sight of my topper, and somebody’s mum, and edge up to Mrs Morrissey. There is a gap next to her but it’s the broken seat that Arthur put her next to on purpose so as she could pop her coat and knitting bag down (crochet bag, technically, tonight). “Hullo, Mrs Morrissey. How are you?”

    She knows most of us because she often comes to meet Arthur after class when it’s been an afternoon class, and they take the bus home together. So she greets me happily and congratulates me on the really good turnout.

    “Yes, isn’t it? Excuse me, Mrs Morrissey, I just need to ask these people something. Excuse me!” I say loudly.

    Derry Dawlish, Adam McIntyre and Georgy Harris have all been trying to look like different someones entirely and now assume the agonised expressions of famous persons about to be recognised by a member of the hoi polloi.

    “I think you’re the people I sold Bridget Herlihy some tickets for, isn’t that right?” I say grimly. A question that expects the answer Yes.

    “Er—yes,” croaks Adam McIntyre obediently.

    “Is that the little dark girl?” Derry Dawlish asks him. “—Yes,” he confirms, as if I’ve suddenly gone deaf. Or as if he’s really in charge of this group. One or the other.

    “Well, where is she? And why haven’t you kept a seat for her? Or is one of those for her?” I demand, glaring at Adam McIntyre. He’s minus the five o’clock shadow and the shades, tonight. And if he wasn’t him might just pass for somebody’s brother, except that he’s wearing one of those poncy white collarless shirts that only celebrities buy and a pale blue soft linen jacket that only a celebrity would be seen dead in.

    He just stutters but Dawlish says: “No, those are for two friends of ours. She wasn’t coming with us.”

    Georgy Harris at this says: “Adam, why didn’t you offer her a lift?” and the Big Star goes very red but as I can sort of feel Rupy doing an agitated dance to my rear in which pointing of the forefinger at the watch-bearing wrist is included, I don’t stay to see if celebrities’ matrimonial rows are just like anybody else’s, I reluctantly withdraw.

    And we rush off at top speed to the stage door trying to decide Who To Tell. Because they’ll all go mad, once they hear, but would it be fair to the professionals not to tell? And Andy’s very good, maybe this is his Big Chance!

    Eventually we don’t tell Gray or Della because there’s no sense in raising False Hopes, dear, and we don’t tell most of them but we do tell Andy because of Rupy’s crush on him and we do tell the Poynter Sisters who are the best of the tappers and we do tell Eva (not Ziggy) because I think her skating number’s very good, better than that bloody Les Patineurs the Australian Ballet put on, anyway, and she deserves a chance to see if this might be her Big Chance.

    Then, as the dressing-rooms have emptied for A Circus Extravaganza, which neither of us is in, we just totter into the male dressing-room and collapse and mop our brows. And after a while Rupy revives sufficiently to fix our make-up and ask if I think he’s got the Fifties look. The only Fifties films I can actually recall with any clarity at this moment are, firstly, Let’s Make Love, and he sure doesn’t look like Yves Montand, and, secondly, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and I can’t even remember the men in that. Though I can tell you What Marilyn Wore, pretty well, though not as accurately as Arthur can. And he doesn’t look like Dirk Bogarde even when young. But I lie anyway.

    The show goes exactly as you might expect. Up to and including two of the playing cards locking sandwich boards in the middle of their big number and being unable to do anything but totter drunkenly for the next ten minutes. One little ballet boy who’s far too small to be up at this time of night but has the most determined ballet mum suddenly bursts into tears and sits down in the middle of what was meant to be the cutest number. One small tapper soloist drops her baton, then falls over it, and has to have the curtain brought down on the hysterical wails. Rupy drops his baton but superbly ignores it throughout his number. The Poynter Sisters’ tape won’t start and they have to stand there for ages smiling foolishly in dead silence. Andy’s tapping’s very good but he also keeps smiling fixedly and coyly at Derry Dawlish and Co.: a Mistake, one feels. Eva and Ziggy’s skating scene is wonderful, especially those blue costumes with the little trim of white fur and her Victorian bonnet, but from the cunning position in the wings into which Rupy and I are now wedged we can just see that Derry Dawlish has his eyes shut and doesn’t open them throughout the number, Brian Hendricks is reading his programme and Adam McIntyre’s reading a book. Though the bit where his wife comes to, realises what he’s up to and wrenches it off him, giving him a good ear-bashing into the bargain, is good. Relatively good, in that it’s during the Poynter Sisters’ second big number and Derry Dawlish is watching the McIntyre-Harris ménage instead of them.

    My bloody Shirley Temple number goes over exactly as you might expect, especially the frilly knickers. After it the martyred dads and scattered uncles can clearly be heard shouting “‘Ray!” and “’Core!” and, if less theatrically with-it, producing loud wolf-whistles.

    “Again!” hisses Gray as the curtain closes on my desperately grinning form.

    “No!”

    “Yes! Herbie’s zipper’s stuck!” Before I can object again he makes the amateur helper open the curtain and after a few jerks and wobbles it goes back and the wolf-whistles and clapping and shouting, not ’Ray or ’Core or anything half as polite this time, start up. So I do it again. This time I can see Derry Dawlish heave himself to his feet, clapping like mad. So I give him an extra bow with the kickers to the fore and at that Della herself angrily orders the curtain DRAWN. It closes to more wolf-whistles mixed with loud boos of disappointment, I don’t think it’s my imagination that half of them are coming from Derry Dawlish’s direction.

    She marches on. “I thought you were told not to do that?”

    “Yes, Gray did tell me. I’m sorry, Della, I got carried away.”

    She gives me a nasty look. “I thought you were a professional? That sort of thing gives my dance studio A Bad Name.”

    “Um, no! I’m a friend of Rupy’s but I’m not a professional!” I gasp. “Um, sorry, Della.”

    “And don’t signal to your friends in the audience, it makes you look like a rank amateur!”

    “But I—”

    “Go and change.” She stalks off.

    “I am a rank amateur. And he isn’t a friend, he’s a fat pig,” I mutter, going off to change back into the red, silver and blue for the Grand Finale. Shit.

    After the show we discover that Bridget and Joanie came together and that Derry Dawlish has now found them, though from the look on Bridget’s face as he puts an arm round her, she’d prefer he hadn’t, great director or not, especially as the arm’s about as big round as her waist, and somehow we all end up Celebrating together in a pub not a million miles away. Plus Arthur and his mum, Derry Dawlish seems to have adopted her but I’m told celebrities like to do that sort of thing, he won’t remember her in two weeks’ time. What am I saying, he won’t remember her tomorrow! Arthur thinks he’ll try a Fallen Angel, since it's a Celebration, but Mrs Morrissey just sticks to gin and tonic. Sound woman. I join her in it.

    The revels go on for ages and ages and ages, though in my opinion there isn’t much to celebrate. Except that it’s over. I just drink. And eat a lot of peanuts and chips, funnily enough I didn’t feel like tea. –Dinner. After a while I become aware that a tall, black-haired form is now sitting beside me watching me drink and is looking very sympathetic though not saying anything. I give the famous Adam McIntyre a puzzled look.

    “I’m like that, too, after a performance,” he says nicely.—Eh? Wot?—“Effete,” he explains with that sidelong, sort of wistful smile that sends shivers through entire picture-theatrefuls of lady fans. I’m not so drunk it doesn’t send a shiver through me. At the same time I’m astounded to discover it’s part of his normal daily life. At the same time also I’m wondering if he knows what effect it has and can produce it to order even in his daily life.

    “Oh,” I say feebly. “Yeah, I do feel like that, Mr McIntyre.”

    “Adam,” he says nicely. You can see he’s practised that in front of the mirror.

    “Um—Adam.”

    Silence falls in our tiny corner of the pub full of Celebrating idiots.

    “What were you reading?” I ask dully.

    He goes very red. Poor twerp. So even Big Stars can be twerps when at the mercy of L.R. Marshall’s foot-and-mouth syndrome, how interesting. “I wasn’t getting at you,” I explain kindly. “I used to take a book to all the rehearsals.”

    “We call them Wilbur Smiths,” he murmurs, cheering up visibly. He gets it out of his coat pocket. It isn’t a Wilbur Smith or anything like it. It’s a very battered copy of Margery Sharp’s The Nutmeg Tree. What looks like an original paperback edition, the back cover’s fallen off it.

    I’m so horrified I almost choke, even though I’ve long since finished the peanuts. “Jesus, Derry Dawlish isn’t planning to—”

    “No, no,” he says soothingly.

    “Thank God. It’s one of my favourite novels,” I admit limply.

    He looks at me with interest.

    “I know it isn’t great literature!”

    The Big Star merely replies mildly, like an actual human being: “No, but it’s gripping, isn't it? Well crafted. And the characterisation’s good. A bit unusual, isn’t it?”

    “Um, I’ve read a few of hers, she did make a profession out of being a bit unusual.”

    “I thought so,” he murmurs. Still looking at me with interest, however.

    Is he comparing me to Julia? “I’m not an old trouper,” I croak.

    “No, too young!” he says with a grin.

    Then Georgy Harris manages to escape from bloody Dawlish’s roving arm and comes over to us with a fresh glass of something for him. Mineral water? Blow me down flat.

    “Thanks, darling. –Guess what! She’s read Margery Sharp!” he says pleasedly to her, as we edge up in our booth to let her in.

    “Really? Adam adores her,” she says, smiling. “Poking around in second-hand bookshops is his hobby.”

    “So long as the stock can be guaranteed not to be rare,” he says. They exchange glances, smiling. They’re in love, all right. Lucky sods. Even though I don’t seriously fancy Adam McIntyre, and up close and personal I can see he’s a real wimp, at this point I experience a strong desire to bawl my eyes out from sheer jealousy of their happiness. Especially because of the Nutmeg Tree reference: Julia fell for an older guy who was very much more up-market than her humble, and plump, self.

    “That was probably what I said wrong. I should’ve called it a rare book shop,” I note sourly, à propos of nothing that these celebrities have said to me.

    “Or an antiquarian bookshop?” he ventures dubiously. Blank but polite. Nice manners: been brought up right. Never had to be physically forced into his bloody school uniform and forcibly hauled off to St Agatha’s Putrid Academy for Putrid Young Ladies by his father in the father of all tempers, I bet. On a morning when he should have been heading for the races at Randwick, poor old Dad.

    “That’s it,” I acknowledge, sagging.

    “Are you all right, Rosie?” says Georgy Harris kindly.

    “No. I mean, yeah,” I lie hastily. “Effete. –Adam said it, not me,” I add just in case she thinks I’m claiming it for my own. Not a word that has ever passed the L.R. Marshall lips heretofore, though it is in my recognition vocabulary.

    “Yes, it’s one of his favourites,” she murmurs. Smiling just a bit, not getting at him, either.

    “We normally just crawl home and have cheese on toast after the performance,” he explains helpfully. “Don’t we, Georgy?”

    “Yes. If we can manage to get away from them all.”

    Considerately I don’t comment on the times I’ve seen the pair of them on the News at First Night does, not to mention before, during and after the Oscars. “Yeah. I can’t escape, I haven’t got transport.”

    “You could share a taxi with us,” the famous Adam McIntyre offers in a cautiously lowered voice, not looking in Derry Dawlish’s direction: he is now singing, ye Gods. Arthur’s mum’s taking the descant.

    “That’s awfully kind, only the thing is, I don’t know London and I won’t be able to explain how to get there.” I tell them Joanie’s address and they look blank. But then she decides the taxi driver’ll be bound to know. So she suggests it might be a good idea if Adam were to ring one and he obediently goes off.

    “He can’t talk to many people about his blessed books,” she says with that lovely friendly smile of hers, not put on at all.

    “No, I don’t suppose he can,” I agreed muzzily. “Don’t let Hollywood get ya, will ya, Georgy?”

    She goes a bit pink, even though it’s obvious that I’m tiddlers, and says: “I’m trying not to! All the nice ones say that, Rosie!”

    “Good. I bet he went to an up-market school.”

    She’s blank for a moment. “Oh! Adam? Yes, but not a boarding school,” she says kindly in the vernacular we more or less share. “They lived in Cambridge: his father was a physicist. Very eminent, it gave Adam an awful inferiority complex,” she says in a lowered voice. “He can’t do maths or that stuff.”

    I nod drunkenly. “That explains his fruity accent.”

    “Yes, I’m afraid it does. He was born in New Zealand, but they emigrated when he was ten,” she explains sunnily.

    “Is that how you met him?” I ask drunkenly. Honestly, Rosie! I can feel myself doing it, and can also feel myself being powerless to prevent myself.

    “Um, sort of!” she says, getting rather pink and flustered, lucky her. “His parents retired there, they live next to my mother’s place.”

    “My parents live next to Joslynne’s mum and dad’s place. They’re about as down-market as we are, even though I suppose you could say both our dads have made their pile.”

    There’s a short silence. I’ve embarrassed her, Hell. Then she says: “I’m pretty down-market, too. My father was an accountant in a big insurance firm.”

    I smile weakly and volunteer, though she hasn’t asked: “Dad’s a turf accountant.”

    “That explains why he’s made his pile!” she says with that lovely smile. “Dad never made much at all. They built our house when they were married and the suburb just went up-market around them over the next thirty-five years.”

    I smile weakly. The more so as Adam McIntyre comes back and says kindly: “Didn’t you have a big woollie, Rosie?”

    I did, the famous grey one with the green splodge on it that probably went a fair way towards demonstrating to John Hah-with-th just how down-market I really am. I’m still wearing it whenever possible, to spite the bugger. I get into it and grab my parka and we go.

    In the taxi I pass right out but the two Big Stars deliver me faithfully to Joanie’s apartment block, tell me very nicely, once they’ve woken me up, not to apologise, lie in their very straight teeth about it being lovely to have met me, and I go in. Don’t register the lift at all, though presumably I take it—too drunk for the stairs. Manage to totter into the bathroom and have a piss and then I totter into my room and go out like a light.

    Of course it all comes to naught, no-one in their right mind would’ve expected anything else. What with Andy smiling fixedly at the great director every instant he was on, and Rupy dropping his baton, and the poor Poynter Sisters’ tape and bloody Derry Dawlish ignoring the skating number… Eventually I break down, ring Bridget, and ask her if anything’s going to come of it. She doesn’t know, Derry Dawlish wasn’t at their last rehearsal. Adam McIntyre was there but he didn’t say anything about the Fifties film idea, he was reading his book most of the time, actually, because the director and Shanna McQuayle (ugh, shudder) were having a big argument about her interpretation. I shudder again.

    So it’s all over. Rupy was lachrymose for a bit, but he’s used to knock-backs. He’s gone down to the country to start rehearsals for his footling summer festival. I’ve promised to come and see it; well, why not? Joanie’s still carrying on with That Symington Woman for the time being. The tap class has broken up, only Arthur and Andy and Vanessa and me are still faithfully going. I’m doing it for the exercise, I’m not sure why they are. Arthur because he’s lonely, of course. Did I say he lives on a disability pension? Well, some sort of pension. Actually I think Andy and Vanessa are probably doing it because they’re lonely, too. Actually I think I’m probably doing it because ditto.

    It won’t be for much longer, though: Della’s Dance Studio is about to close for the summer holidays: Della heading for Marbella and Gray for his aunty’s near Bournemouth, I’m not sure where that is but it sounds coastal, doesn’t it? Even Bridget’s earnest rehearsals are about to take a summer break. And Mark and Norma have packed their light-weight luggage and flown off to Santa Barbara.

    Naturally there’s no sign of John Hah-with but no-one was expecting that, were they? So that’s it, really. Show’s over. All done. Finito. Finished. Taps, you could say, hah, hah, very funny. …Well, shit.