Episode 3: England's Green And Pleasant

Episode 3: England’s Green And Pleasant

    I dunno where I am, it’s taken me ages and ages to get here, even though Joanie loaded me up with maps and guidebooks, Aunty June loaded me up with maps and guidebooks, Arthur Morrissey loaded me up with maps and guidebooks, and Uncle George came into town especially to load me up with the proper maps and guidebooks and load me onto the right train. The train didn’t go where I was heading for, or anywhere near it, that’s why I had to have all those maps and guidebooks. I managed to get off at the right place and Gray was waiting for me, but I don’t think it was the station for Bournemouth. He had a hire car and we headed for the coast, if you drive on a bit further you can see the White Cliffs of Dover, are they anywhere near Bournemouth?

    They really are white, only it’s a bit hard to see them when it’s raining. Gray wanted to get nearer so I had to admit I’ve got no head for heights, so we didn’t. Instead we got back in the car and drove to a little town, or possibly village, I’m not sure when that piece of English terminology applies, and had a really lovely afternoon tea! Then we went off to his aunty’s and had High Tea, that’s like dinner except you don’t have a roast or chops or three veg, though you can have a pudding. So I don’t know why they don’t just call it dinner like usual. Cheese on toast with bits of bacon in it, crumpets and jam, and mushroom soup because it was such a dismal wet day. Back home we’d simply call it tea, so there you are.

    The aunty’s name’s Maybelle (not Mabel). She used to be in the Business like his Aunty Pet, except that she’s the other side: she’s his dad’s youngest sister. I was quite surprised because I’d sort of gathered that there wasn’t officially a dad, but there must’ve been. She’d be about seventy-five, but she said I had to call her Maybelle. Her house is in a little town or possibly village and it’s not half-timbered or thatched or even very old but she calls it a cottage and she’s christened it Rose Cottage and outside it’s got a dear little wooden name-plate with the name on it in Gothic lettering, and two climbing roses, one pink and one dark red, just starting to climb up the white trellises against the pale grey walls. Sort of rough-cast concrete, I think. I wouldn’t have thought of pale grey, but it looks really ace with the white windowsills and the white trellises. Personally I wouldn’t have had the front door painted pink but whatever turns you on. The front path’s crazy-paving that she had put in specially to replace the ordinary concrete path it originally had. The front garden’s really small but she’s managed to fit in a small arch in white trellising over the path, with another pink rose starting to climb that, and two little patches of lawn, one with a bird bath with a bluebird perched on the rim. I mean it is blue. Then in the middle of the patch on the other side, there’s a small fountain that really plays. The front fence is a white picket fence, plain pickets, not those fancy Federation ones they have at home, and the front gate’s pink like the front door. And she’s got a row of roses all along the fence, pinks and whites and pale yellows. And pansies in between them and round the fountain. This probably all sounds totally Yuck but actually it’s not, it’s very sweet, and I wouldn’t mind living there myself.

    Inside it’s all rose wallpaper, not the same wallpaper throughout but different ones. The front door opens right into the living-room and she thinks it’s a drawback but it is the cottage Look, evidently. The living-room’s got a white ceiling, just ordinary plaster, but upstairs all the bedrooms have got sloping ceilings with pink rosy wallpaper on them matching the walls, they look ace! There’s three bedrooms and I stayed in the one that’s got the sewing-machine in it: she does all her own sewing and she made the ruffled rosy curtains and even the bedspreads. Well, I was really impressed, even though she is that generation, because back home I don’t know anyone that sews, even Grandma gave it up yonks back, before she went gaga, as soon as Grandpa started making enough for them to be able to buy the girls’ school uniforms. The summer ones, no-one made the winter ones, the pattern was too hard even though by that time they weren’t wearing gym slips at Mum’s school any more. You can tell Maybelle takes it really seriously, she’s got one of those bodies on a stand. I thought it might give me nightmares but actually I slept like a log the whole three nights I was there. And ate like a pig.

    In between times we mostly looked at her albums, they’re fascinating. Gray’s seen them all before but he always likes looking at them. She once had a small part in a play with Laurence Olivier in it when he was quite young, and you oughta see the photo of him! Eat ya heart out, Branagh.

    Then Gray drove me to somewhere the big buses leave from and put me on a bus with strict instructions where to get off, and where to stay when I got there. But even though I asked the driver to let me off there he forgot, and it was getting dark by the time I realised and I lost it and bawled all over the shop like a nong. So Bill, that was the driver’s name, he very kindly took me home to his place, only his wife took one look at L.R. Marshall with “available” tattooed on her forehead, not to mention at the tee-shirt that’s actually Joanie’s and two sizes too small for me, and the golden curls in the Shirley Temple cut they forced me to get for the show, and threw a fit.

    So he got very angry with her and took me down to the pub and though they don’t usually let rooms, Felicity and Jock agreed to put me up. He’s Scotch as you might gather from the name, and she’s really sensible, I liked her, and she didn’t jump to stupid conclusions about Jock and me and the tee-shirt and the “available”. So they gave me something to eat, they’d had their own dinners so it was just cheese and pickle sandwiches, they were good, and then I helped them with washing the glasses and stuff. And Felicity got it out of me about the tapping. So next day, rather than take Bill’s bus back to where I was supposed to be, she said I could get a ride with Charlie Foster, if I liked to wait another day, and he’d get me right to the place I was supposed to be next, to get the train to the nearest place to where Rupy’s festival is. And meanwhile I could earn a bit of pocket money by giving her and Jock a hand and doing my Shirley Temple routine in the pub that evening.

    I didn’t say I was a fellow, not a student or a struggling actress, and didn’t need the pocket money, because she was being kind and I didn’t want to disappoint her. So I accepted gratefully and we had a lovely day, she told me all about the management and financial side of running a pub and showed me the books, there’s a terrific lot in it. And Jock told me all about cellaring and showed me how he taps a barrel, and after lunch he taught me a lot about whisky. Then I had to have a lie-down but I was right as rain by the time their evening customers started coming in. Then I found out that Felicity was under the impression I was gonna do the song as well as tap. If it hadn’t been her I think I would’ve refused, but what the heck, she’d been very decent to me and frankly, over the last few days, what with Maybelle and her cottage and then meeting Felicity and Jock I’d been happier than since first setting toe upon England’s Dark Satanic Mills. So I sang the bloody thing, once the pub had filled up, and everybody laughed and clapped like anything, not to mention the wolf-whistling, and I showed some of them what I’d learnt about telling a good malt. Then I broke a glass when I was helping with the washing-up so Felicity said I’d better pop upstairs. So I did, and the next thing I remember it was morning and Felicity was in her bright green quilted nylon dressing-gown saying I'd better hurry up or I'd miss the lift with Charlie.

    She gave me a packet of sandwiches for my lunch, wasn’t that sweet? And absolutely refused to be paid for the room. So after about a mile of total silence Charlie asked me what was wrong. And I had to blow my nose and explain that nothing was wrong, they’d just been very decent to me and it was like being in a country town back home, sort of. So he said they’d never been able to have kids, and what with everything I broke down and bawled. So Charlie pulled in and patted my shoulder and gave me a nice cup of tea from his own thermos and I felt a lot better. And then he showed me the Polaroids of his wife, Caitlin, and their kids, Nicole, Diana and Petey, and I really started to cheer up as it dawned that possibly he was the only lorry driver in the universe who wouldn’t read that sign on L.R. Marshall’s forehead and make a heavy pass. Which he didn’t. And after a while it dawned that that was why Felicity and Jock had let me go with him. I dunno if I can explain it: not because they had fears for L.R Marshall’s virtue, at all: two sensible people that’ve been running a pub successfully for years wouldn’t miss the “available” and all that it implies. No, they knew that he wouldn’t go and get in bad with his Caitlin by making a twat of himself over an available blonde with no morals to speak of. Geddit? Yeah, I thought you might.

    He dropped me off right at the station and checked what time my train went and explained that although I could get a meal at the Station Hotel that’d probably be quite filling, there was a McDonald’s round the corner where I could do as good for a fraction of the price, and no risk of missing the train while I waited for them to bring the bill. So I thanked him very much and went to the McDonald’s and had a Big Mac and chips. Hoping it was scraped Argentine beef bones like I saw on that documentary on SBS and not something from a British Mad Cow. Then I was still hungry so I had a pink thick-shake, they make it from that soft-freeze stuff and what you get is usually solid soft-freeze because the kids that serve there can’t be blowed actually mixing anything. It was, only not as good as the Aussie soft-freeze stuff. Then I just went round to the station and put my fuzzy jumper on and then my parka and waited.

    And the train came, okay, so here I am. It is the right place, I saw the sign. It’s pretty late, only funnily enough it’s still quite light, it sure stays light for ages in England. It must be because they’re so far north, like at the North Pole, there’s no night in summer, y’know? …Oh. Twilight.

    I walk up and down the empty platform muttering “twilight” to myself for some time. Rupy does know to expect me, Charlie made me use his mobile to ring him. I’ve already checked there’s no-one waiting for me outside the station, in fact there’s no-one here at all, not even anyone to take your ticket, it must be the result of Mr Beeching like on that really funny series they ran so late on a weeknight I nearly missed it. Oh, Mister Beeching? Something like that. That was Fifties, wasn’t it? Great frocks, with very full skirts and tight waists. And pointy bras, of course. Though the younger generation that you didn’t see much of were sort of more Sixties and Mod, come to think of it. Some of the people that were in it, they were in that really good series, I think they ran it on Seven, and in prime time, what’s more, so it was definitely commercially viable, about the holiday camp. Now, that was Fifties: if Derry Dawlish wants some ideas, he’d only have to watch that. In fact if he wants to chuck millions of his backers’ money away, why doesn’t he make a film of it? Everybody’d go, that’d be a nice change for him.

    I mooch out to the front again. Nothing. Blow. There’s no seats on this side so I mooch back to the platform and sit on that seat. I finished my book on the train down from London and there wasn’t a bookstall at the place it stopped so I couldn’t get another one. There isn’t one here, either, there isn’t anything, not even flowerbeds.

    Somehow my thoughts go round to John Hah-with—like what I'm never gonna think of again, yeah—and I construct this totally sickening scenario which involves him and me in a cottage that’s a dead ringer for Maybelle’s and a cat like Joslynne’s Gran’s old cat, Mrs Periwinkle, don’t ask me why they called her that. She was black and white and rather fat with a very friendly round face. Of course I dunno what the real J.H. does, do I? But in my sickening scenario he’s a judge. Well, if you’re into authority figures, why not go the whole hog? Admittedly all the judges I’ve seen in British TV shows have been doddering old wankers and most of the American ones have been terribly managing, with-it females. And Black, preferably. I’ve seen some real judges at home on the News, without exception hard-nosed members of the male Establishment, none of them a day under fifty. In my sickening scenario J.H. tends to be more like them, oh, dear. By the time a voice says: “Hullo, are you Rosie?” I’ve had time to decorate every room in the cottage except the kitchen and I’m just starting on that.

    “Um, yeah.” I can’t see him very well, this twilight’s getting darker. “Who are you?”

    The voice has a slight Scotch accent, nothing like as gorgeous as Sean Connery’s, mind you. “Euan Keel. Rupy Maynarde asked me to collect you.”

    I totter to my feet. Euan Keel? He’s in Rupy’s feeble festival? He’s gorgeous! Though, true, nothing gorgeous and Scotch could be as gorgeous as Sean Connery. Young or old, doesn’t matter, equally irresistible in Dr No or The Rock. (A wanking film, this latter; if you haven’t seen it, don’t bother, even for the combination of Sean and Ed Harris: far too much Nicholas Cage and dark underground tunnel shit with Heath Robinson machinery, as if, where you can’t see what’s happening. If anything.)

    “Um, hullo. Are you in it?”  Gee, witty repartee.

    “I’m in the play with Rupy, yes, if that’s what you mean.”

    “I don’t know what I mean, actually, because I didn’t understand most of what Rupy said. Is it kind of like an arts festival?”

    “Do you mean, like the Edinburgh Festival in miniature?”

    I think he’s laughing at me but it’s too dark to see. “Yeah, I suppose so. Lots of plays and music and fringey stuff that these days is even more Establishment than the official stuff.”

    “So you’ve been to Edinburgh?”

    “No, I’ve only been over here about nine months.”

    “Er—oh. That’s an Australian accent, isn't it?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Oh, well, in that case I’ll try to explain.” He is laughing at me, the Scotch wanker. Boy, that BBC serial he was in was wanking, only the thing is, he’s so gorgeous he made it good. Then they cast him in that blitheringly silly Hollywood thing about a desert island, sort of like Robinson Crusoe, but he was gorgeous again. Mind you, it was a real flop. Then I know he came back home, because he was on Parkinson about two months back being deprecating about his career. They must’ve been scratching round for someone, that night, because he wasn’t advertising his next play or his autobiography or like that.

    He explains that this festival is a theme festival, got up initially by some ancient actor that made a pile or inherited a pile or something, maybe he married an heiress. He was evidently a great hit back before the War in some bloody Restoration comedy, so that’s what everything has to be: Restoration. The money’s in a trust or something that subsidises the shows, and it runs to one play and one fairly big concert piece every two years, though over the last few years they’ve put a proper financial manager in—

    “And gone all Establishment, right, goddit. Not to say fringey Establishment.”

    “No,” he says mildly, grabbing my pack. “And actually made a profit. So now they can pay a few actors, not to say singers, who require actual cash dough for their performances. –Come on, the car’s out here.”

    “What’d they use to get for their performances?” I ask feebly, tottering in his wake and not even pointing out that I’m not helpless and that pack weighs almost nothing. Being as I'm wearing most of it.

    “Bed and board, and what was left after the lights, the halls or tents, the chair hire, the advertising, the ticket printing, etcetera, had been paid for. Nothing, some years.”

    “I get it.”

    The car’s really small and sort of no-colour in the dimness: there is one bulb on the outside of the station but it’s very, very weak. A bit like my knees, yeah. Maybe it’s blue or grey. We get in. It’s a Morris Minor. I thought they’d all gone to the scrap heap thirty-odd years ago, when they brought the Minis in.

    “Is this your car?” I croak.

    “Mm,” he says, switching its lights on.

    I sneak a look at him in the meagre light from the dashboard and the reflection from the headlights. It is him. He’s got one of those faces it’s impossible to define; not regular features, at all, and certainly not striking, like Adam McIntyre. His nose is a bit crooked, but not too large, his mouth is well shaped but a tiny bit lopsided and his face is square but with a rather soft look to it. That doesn’t put it well, at all: it is soft, but very male at the same time. Um—no hard angles? His eyebrows are just a bit crooked, and his eyes are brown and rather large, but not bulgy, quite deep-set, and the eyelashes are very, very thick and curly. When you see him on screen he always gives the impression that he’s a bit woolly and vague and just a tiny bit lost—fuzzy, y’know? But without being soppy. Well, I can’t really describe it. But he's got this way of sort of looking through the lashes… His hair’s brown and curly, and certainly in the rôles I've seen him in very untidy. Not short but not long. It’s untidy now. –Maybe he was stupid enough to take a percentage for that awful Robinson Crusoe thing, instead of a fat lump sum, so he can’t afford a fancy new car?

    “It’s a Morris Minor,” I croak.

    “Yes. Oh, do you mean, it doesn’t fit the image?”

    “Actually I’ve only seen you in two things. But I’d say it does fit the image. Not that you can have Morris Minors on desert islands. But it’s certainly got that fuzzy, incompetent look to it.” –That wasn’t very polite but I’m very tired and hungry, and very disconcerted at suddenly being faced with a rising star of British theatre in the middle of nowhere in what I’ve only just discovered is the famous English twilight instead of it just being light for ages. Also I’m still, stop me if you’ve noticed this, really sour about J.H. All right, I’ll stop.

    “Thanks. Actually it’s a very sturdy little car,” he says, starting it up.

    We drive along in the dark for a while. I think we pass some houses but there aren’t many lights. Mind you, if Euan Keel’s abducting me to deepest Dartmoor I won’t object.

    “I thought Rupy said he was gonna be in The Country Wife?”

    “It is Restoration,” he points out.

    “Yeah, um, but who are you gonna be?” I blurt.

    “Horner,” he says mildly.

    An fuzzy, incompetent-looking, lost Horner? I gulp.

    “If you’re thinking of Adam McIntyre’s revival of it two years back—”

    “Um, no! Um, did he? Crikey. On the stage?” Boy, I wish I'd seen it: if he came over even half as masculine as he did in that not-Bond thing—

    “Mm. The West End. Standing-room only. Oh, I suppose you weren’t here, then? Well, I did say to our producers that it was a mistake to choose it so soon after that, but unfortunately the programmes are fixed five years in advance. To allow them to book the stars who then pull out at the last moment,” he adds in a very dry voice that doesn’t sound incompetent, lost, or fuzzy.

    “Um, did someone pull out?”

    The original choice for Horner—right. He names the actor in question. Recently nominated for an Oscar and, as far as is ascertainable from your armchair at the end of the universe, gone over completely to the Hollywood side. Didn’t want to compete with McIntyre’s version—right.

    “I see,” I say weakly. “What about your accent, though?”

    “Oh, I can produce Oxbridge with the best of them,” he assures me in fruity Oxbridge.

    Or the worst—quite. We drive on in silence through the night. I can’t think of anything else to say that won’t make me sound even more of a clot not to say even more anti-Euan Keel than what I’ve already come over as, and presumably he can’t be bothered making polite chat to a not-fan.

    Eventually I say: “Where are we going?”

    “To the house—didn’t Rupy explain?”

    “He just said he’d meet me at the station.” I didn’t mean that to come out as dismal as it did—bummer.

    “Oh. Well, he’d have come himself, but they wanted him to try his costume on, so as I was heading that way anyway, I said I’d do it. We’re at Eddyvane Hall—Maurice Mountjoy’s house. They usually put the cast up there.”

    “Y—Um, but he said there’d be room for me, I thought it’d be like a hotel or something,” I croak.

    “I dare say there will be room, it’s a very big house.”

    Ya mean I've gotta stay in a huge great house with a milling crowd of actors? “Is there a—a pub, or something?” I croak.

    “Sure. Two quite pleasant village pubs, it’s quite a reasonable-sized place.” He glances at me uncertainly. “You don’t mean for accommodation, do you? Everything’s always booked solid for the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival.”

    I don’t manage to say anything except: “I see.”

    After a while Euan Keel says levelly: “I'm sorry if you can’t stand the thought of being shut up with a bunch of actors for the duration.”

    “No, I mean, it’s when they get intense about their rôles that I can’t stand— Sorry.”

    Suddenly he laughs, and you can see why Hollywood thought they were on to something, there. His face lights up and he sort of glows. Radiates energy? Well, something like that.—Casting a person who can light up during social intercourse as Robinson Crusoe would appear to me to be typical Hollywood, and if you can’t see it I’m sorry for ya.—“I can’t stand it, either, so shall we make a pact to admit it to each other when it gets too bad, and run away together, Rosie?” –Sounding very Scotch. Not to say, very like Sean Connery.

    “Um, yeah!” I say with a breathless laugh. –That, see, is what his laugh does to you. Only if you’re a red-blooded normal female, I admit that.

    “Good! -So tell me about yourself. You’re not in the Business? Sorry, the damn British theatre.”

    “No. My cousin Joanie is—Joan Marshall—and I’ve been staying with her, that’s how I met Rupy, so you can use the jargon, I’ll understand. Um, well, I'm a sociologist.” I explain a bit. He asks some intelligent questions, so his looks don't belie him and besides being gorgeous and besides having that, let’s admit it, endearing fuzzy look, he is quite bright.

    By the time some lights flicker into view and he notes that that’s one of the village pubs, I’m feeling brave enough to say: “Have you had the car for a long time, Euan?”

    “Aye, she’s ma first car!” he says with a laugh, patting the steering wheel. “A faithful old girl, brought me down the A1 to my first London rôle with no trouble at all.”

    “What was that?”

    “I don’t want to bore you.”

    “No, I like hearing about people’s lives. It’s the interpretation of the rôles that gets me down.”

    “Aye, it would!” He tells me about his first London rôle and then his next, and then pulls into a carpark and asks if I’m hungry. I’m starving, so we go into the pub. Dinner’s off but in two seconds flat he’s got the barmaid, middle-aged and plump, eating out of his hand, and ten minutes later I get a plate laden with meat pie and roast potatoes, nice and hot from the microwave.

    “Pie all right?” he asks, grinning over his pint.

    “Yeff, goob,” I acknowledge through it. I swallow. “So long as it hasn’t got Mad Cow Disease, of course.”

    “Oh, did you hear about that in Australia?”

    “Yes, and if we hadn’t’ve, the French would’ve made sure we did,” I assure him earnestly.

    He laughs—and radiates that glow—and I can feel myself smirk like an idiot. What an idiot.

    Then he tells me about the smallish part he got in an English telly thing, and how that led gradually to greater things, and about thinking he’d cracked it when he got in with the RSC in spite of Adam McIntyre in person having said something about being typecast which at the time he’d been silly enough to take as sour grapes…

    An hour and a half later, when we finally roll up at Eddyvane Hall, which is ten minutes’ easy stroll from this pub, Rupy greets me rapturously, takes me off to my room, and asks me eagerly what I thought of Euan Keel.

    By this time, oddly enough, whether my brain’s been stimulated by the protein, or by the freezing cold walk to the front door from where the Mountjoy family makes the actors park their cars, or maybe by climbing the three flights of stairs to get to my attic room, I’ve been able to think. So instead of saying he’s gorgeous I return suspiciously: “What was that, Rupy—therapy?”

    He immediately goes into a terrific giggling fit, so I know I’m right.

    Grimly I say, once the giggles have subsided: “Hasn’t he got a girlfriend, or forty? Or even a wife?”

    “No. Just broken up with one of those intense ladies,”—he gives me a mocking look—“who was all set to play Juliet to his Romeo, not literally, dear, and was terribly miffed when he was invited to Hollywood without her, not to say, invited to star in that lovely BBC serial without her. –Not having the groupie mentality, unlike some,” he elaborates kindly if redundantly.

    “Rupy, it was total crap.”

    “Yes, but he was lovely, dear.”

    I give in and admit: “The technical term’s gorgeous.”

    He gets all pleased and gives me another real hug and since it’s pretty late now and I can’t stop yawning, tells me where the bog is and explains his room’s right next-door, and lets me get to bed.

    I’m waking up in a tiny white attic room with sloping ceilings like Maybelle’s cottage. For a minute I’m all warm and pleased and then my stomach drops right through the soles of my feet: I’m not in Maybelle’s cottage any more, I’m in Funnyname Hall somewhere in the south of England with a crowd of actors I don't know except for Rupy. With whom I’m going to have to mix, well, listen to the intense dissections of the interpretation, instead of being able to lurk in my room with my laptop. The laptop’s in the smaller bag that I hung onto like grim death throughout yesterday’s extended travels; probably Euan Keel, if I didn’t simply dream him, assumed it was my make-up case, so much the better. I’m in my winter pie-jams, wincey, pink because Mum chose them, so either I put them on because I was looking for a Linus blanket, understandable, or else last night was as bloody freezing as I sort of dimly remember it might have been.

    I go over to the tiny window, it’s one of those English whatsits, dormers? And look out. I can see a huddle of, um, not sheds, they’re too up-market for that, proper shingled roofs, cor. And a couple of carparks, one of them almost full, help. And in the distance a couple of whacking great tents on a big lawn, and some trees, it’s the middle of nowhere. –Marquees, that’s the word! Like Joslynne had for her wedding reception. Not on he parents’ lawn, there wouldn’t have been room: at a poncy wedding reception place that cost The Earth. I can’t see any bodies except for a couple of scrawny joggers going round the lawn with the marquees on it. …Was that Euan Keel in gorgeous, slightly fuzzy person and the grungiest khaki jumper ever seen on the human form barring the one that’s the property of Kenny Marshall, B.Sc., Y.B.? (Younger Brother, whaddareya?) No, it was probably a wish-fulfilment dream.

    There’s a tap on my door and I yell “Come in!”, forgetting I'm not at home or at Joanie’s and I’m only in my pink wincey pie-jams, but it’s only Rupy, nothing I wore or didn’t wear would embarrass him. Crumbs, he’s already dressed. I wouldn’t have put him down as an early riser. Spruce jogging gear: I wouldn’t have put him down as a jogger, either. Help, maybe it’s the done thing, here. In that case L.R. Marshall is going to be a minority of one, as per usual.

    “Hullo, Rosie, dear! Lovely morning, how did you sleep?” Etcetera. Boy, is he up. Maybe they’re going to let him wear the full-skirted satin coat, silk breeches with lace frills at the knees and huge blonde curly wig he was hoping for, as Sparkish. I’m not asking, sufficient unto the day. Eventually he lets me go and have a wash, warning me that the hot water’s uncertain, not like a nice hotel—he’s right, there, it’s got two settings, off or steaming, but I’m used to that from my scungy student-flat days, so I manage. I come back and he’s still here.

    “Darling, won’t you be too hot?”

    I’m in my grey fuzzy jumper over jeans and a tee-shirt. “Not unless I dreamed the whole of last night, not just the Euan Keel bit. I’ll take it off if I get too hot.”

    “I thought we might do a bit of tapping before breakfast, Rosie darling.”

    “Then I’ll take the jumper off for that. And the jeans, if you insist,” I add as he starts to object to them.

    “Good,” he says, not asking what I’ve got on underneath them. Red stretch-nylon pants, knickers to you, is what. I got packets of them at a sale, really cheap, undies are really cheap here, it’s wonderful. Cheap and good, I mean. Joanie warned me that they’d be far too hot for summer and I'd do better to put them away for next winter, but naturally I pointed out that it was next winter. And as I’m incredibly bikini-lined in the wake of the tap show, they look quite respectable. Not that I care, but others might.

    “And you didn’t dream the Euan Keel bit, darling, it was therapy, don’t you remember?” he says casually as we go out, me grabbing up my laptop bag, I’ve got back-ups of everything that’s on it, but all the same, I don’t want to have it nicked.

    I choke, and stagger, and he has to hold me up.

    And we go downstairs and find this huge great rehearsal room with a barre and everything, don’t ask me why an English country house features one of those. Ignoring the ballet girls and men stretching at the barre, we switch on Rupy’s ghetto-blaster and after warming up a bit, do our routines to his tape. After a bit a very intense lady in black tights, giant grey legwarmers and a black skinny-knit under the most cutaway leotard I've ever seen—bright lemon—comes across to us and after calling Rupy “darling” sixteen times in the space of one sentence asks him very nicely if he could possibly turn it down. I point out that we need it for the beat (largely because she’s totally ignoring my existence), but Rupy hurriedly turns it right off with grovelling apologies.

    “What are we gonna do now?” I whine loudly as she goes away with another half-dozen “darlings” to him and still ignoring me.

    “Ssh! That was Lucasta Grimshaw,”  he tells me impressively.

    “I don’t care if it was Margot Fonteyn, what about our beat?”

    “Do it to theirs?” he suggests with a silly grin as they switch on their ghetto-blaster and strains of something to the beat of a very different drum, as it were, fill the room.

    “Oh, the Hell with it. Why not?”

    So we do our tap routines to the beat of Monteverdi.

    After a while something gorgeous and slightly fuzzy in droopy, greening black tights and a giant droopy grey tee-shirt emblazoned with a Russian legend in faded black lettering comes in and comes over to us, grinning. “Hullo. Dancing to the beat of a different drum?”

    At which we’re able to respond that we’ve already thought of that one, thanks, and hullo, Euan.

    “Mind if I join you?” he says, grinning.

    “They’re much more artistic over there,” I point out hurriedly.

    “Aye, but I canna dance, I just do it for the exercise.”

    It was so Scotch and what with that and the grin… All I can say is, very feebly: “Have you been to Russia?”

    “No, I’m not into taking their own culture back to Moscow, in full English-language versions.” He can see that’s the wrong reference entirely, he’s not thick. “Sorry. Well, if not that, what did you mean, Rosie?”

    “The message on your tee-shirt,” I say feebly.

    Euan looks down at himself, very puzzled, and Rupy mysteriously collapses in giggles.

    “Oh!” Grinning, he takes the tee-shirt off before I can scream “Wait! I have to be held up for this!” Actually the bod isn’t nearly as good as Adam McIntyre’s: it’s a bit soft-looking like the rest of him, so he definitely needs the exercise. Then he puts the tee-shirt on the right way round.

    MCDOUGALL’S PALE ALE.

    Right. Goddit.

    We all collapse in giggles. And then we get on with it. Rupy and me tapping valiantly and Euan Keel doing aerobics, all to the music of Monteverdi.

    Well, can’t be bad, eh?

Three days later

    It turns out there are advantages to Eddyvane Hall, because they feed you and you don’t have to pay. No-one seems to realise I’m here on false pretences, so I tactfully don’t mention it. The breakfasts are good, there’s a huge choice, in this whacking great kind of dining hall. Buffet-style, with proper thingos for keeping stuff hot and everything. One of those commercial toast-makers, I stayed in a motel once in the Alice where the restaurant had one of those. You put the bread on this kind of moving footpath and it goes slowly under the elements and just when you think it’s gonna burst into flames it suddenly flips it out at the other end, done, and you realise the moving footpath writes, and having writ moves— Um, yeah, one of those. Bacon, scrambled eggs, grilled sausages and cooked tomatoes, I’m not sure if they’re fried or grilled. At home there’d be baked beans and probably tinned spaghetti, but they don’t seem to go in for that here, good. And lots of different kinds of bread, and muffins and croissants and rolls. Also cornflakes and three different kinds of muesli, and bananas, not cut up, whole, that’s sensible. At home there’d be loads and loads of fruit, too, like sliced rockmelon and that pale green other melon, and pineapple, of course, plus watermelon and strawberries, either in season or those Queensland ones, only here there isn’t. There is a bit of rockmelon and some grapefruit halves, but the very thin, intense ladies always grab those and it’d be mean to try to deprive them of them. There’s orange juice or cranberry juice. Since I conscientiously boycotted cranberry when it hit the Oz market a few years back, it’s American and we’ve got our own juice companies, for God’s sake, I choose that, goodness knows most of Britain’s fruit’s imported. –Good; not too sweet.

    Rupy always has a really good tuck-in at breakfast and after a bit it dawns that one of the reasons he was so keen to be in this bloody festival, besides the kudos of associating with Euan Keel and intense ballet ladies, of course, was the free food.

    Lunch isn’t free, but very cheap. You have to put your name down at breakfast time for it, and it’s just a cardboard box of sandwiches and an apple. The sandwiches are good, mind you. Thinner than we have at home, though. Wouldn’t you think bread-slicing machines would be standardised all over the world? Not if you know anything about human nature, I guess.

    You have to pay for dinner, and you have to put your name down for that at breakfast time, too, and pay up-front. Because evidently in the past a lot of them discovered it’s cheaper to drive into the place with the station, Rupy says it’s a small town and the reason I didn’t see it was that the station’s on the outskirts, and go to the McDonald’s or the pizza place. That or go to one of the village pubs. Or if you’re in funds, which most of them aren’t, there’s a really nice restaurant on the outskirts of the town by a river.

    Rupy and me haven’t got transport so on my first day we paid for the dinner, it isn’t dear and he says you usually get seconds free, and it isn’t worth going to the pubs, there’s always such a scrum. Only on the second day Euan discovered Rupy hasn’t got a car, so he invited us to come into town with him. It almost didn’t work because I didn’t mind whether we went to the McDonald’s or the pizza place, I like both, and Rupy wouldn’t admit he hates pizza, he can’t digest the onion or the green peppers, because they never cook them properly. And Euan didn’t want to have the casting vote: I’m beginning to discover he’s almost as soft as he looks. But then he admitted that he’s found a very down-market wee chippy that’s miles better than either, so after I’d translated the vernacular and asked if it did have fish, Aye, of course, being the answer, we chose that. It was really ace and guess what! They had tables and chairs! So we ate it there. And went back the next night, with Gordy Russell, he’s an old friend of Euan’s but not gorgeous, very ferret-faced, and specialises in character rôles like Second Yobbo With Flick-knife.

    Now it’s my fourth morning and I’m all set for the tap practice and the breakfast, only Rupy breaks the Awful News. I’m not here for the free breakfast, I have to sing for it. Or tap, rather. He’s sold me to some students for their fringey thing.

    “Nell WHAT?” I bellow, turning purple.

    “Now, don’t be like that, Rosie darling, you’ll breeze through it, they just want someone with good boobs who can tap.”

    “I’m NOT gonna joggle my tits in a ruddy Restoration Nell Gwynne outfit!” I bellow.

    “Isn’t the technical term jiggle?” says an interested soft baritone with a Scotch tinge to it.

    “Piss OFF, Keel, I’m NOT doing it!”

    “No, it is joggle, Euan, dear, she’s got really good ones,” Rupy assures him.

    He’s noticed, actually. Before I can point this out the rising star of British theatre chokes: “Aye, I’ve noticed!”, falling all over the attic landing. I’m so pissed off I just about push him down the stairs.

    “Sing for your supper, dear!” Rupy says brightly. “And David and Freddy and Quentin are really nice boys, you’ll like them.” He tries to tell me a long, boring story about persons who have started off in OUDS or something in Cambridge and really made it, Elizabeth Taylor somehow creeping into the narrative as well, but I shut him up. Anyway I can’t stand any of them. He tries to tell me, whether relevantly or not who can say, about Whatsisface’s really excellent performance as Angelo in Measure for Measure but I shut him up, I don’t wanna KNOW.

    “Didn’t you get that, on Australian television?” asks Euan.

    “Shut up, it’s irrelevant! And if it was him, I’d walk right out, I can’t stand him!”

    “Just as well it isn’t him, then,” he says mildly. “You will like David and Freddy. Not too sure about Quentin: he’s gone over to the other side.”

    I’m looking uncertainly at Rupy so he explains quickly: “No, dear! He’s gone into the City, you see, that’s what Euan means. It was last year that their little OUDS production was such a hit—”

    Yeah, yeah. “Will I have to sing? Or speak?”

    “Nothing but tap, darling, cross my heart!” he says quickly, crossing it.

    “I’ll do it if they’re decent blokes and not otherwise,” I threaten.

    He beams and promises I’ll love them. Yeah, yeah.

    “What are you doing on the servants’ floor with us servants, anyway, Euan?” I ask glumly. –Being a star, he’s got an actual person’s bedroom on the floor below us.

    “Oh! Came to tell you you’d better skip the tapping this morning, there’s a rumour of kippers for breakfast!” he beams.

    Rupy shudders all over and I look blank, and his nice, squarish, fuzzy face falls ten feet.

    “We don’t have them, in Oz,” I explain kindly. Less kindly, Rupy’s saying at the same time: “Fish for breakfast?” In the sort of voice that’s just picked up a pongy sock.

    “Oh.” –Very dashed. If it was on the Big Screen all his female fans’d be positively palpitating with the need to hug him to the bosom.

    I’m not that sort, in spite of appearances, so I merely say: “Well, whatever turns you on. If you really like them, you’d better nip downstairs again. But thanks for the thought.”

    “Yes, thanks ever so, dear, but really!” says Rupy, shuddering again.

    Smiling weakly, Euan Keel goes off to breakfast by himself.

    “Tap practice, dear?” says Rupy brightly.

    We go off to tap practice.

    As it turns out Daffyd (not David, I had that wrong), Freddy and Quentin are really nice boys, in fact they’re just the sort of large, dim, vaguely well-meaning types I used to fraternise with in my undergrad days, if rather artier with it.

    Quentin’s average height, with a slim, well balanced figure, and very blond, wavy hair in a very expensive cut. A rather pinkish skin, it’s quite a common English type, y’know? He’s clearly lost interest in the acting shit, it was only a temporary amusement for him, he’s really into the merchant banker thing, now, but he’s tolerantly come along because the other two had kittens at the thought of having to find a stranger to take his part. He’s on his summer holidays, geddit? His fiancée refused heartlessly to come with him for the duration, and only consented to come down for a weekend when they actually do the show because Quentin booked her in at a very nice convention centre about five miles away that’s got a golf course and everything. Not that she plays golf, but she doesn’t want to pig it in a tent with the three boys. Well, young men, I suppose, technically, though that isn’t the impression. As Daffyd and Freddy were naively pouring all this out to me and Quentin was going rather pink and trying to smile, a sort of fellow-feeling for the heartless affianced Harriet swept over me, but I think I managed to conceal the fact that I’m actually old and unsympathetic, and prefer my home comforts. Put it like this, I just put on the sort of expression that I use when I’m taking my tutorial group and it went over really big.

    Daffyd’s tall, very dark, and skinny, and terrifically earnest, he wants to be a real actor. Also very energetic and clearly the driving force in that trio. It was his ex-girlfriend, Chloe, who did the Nell Gwynne part last year, though she couldn’t tap. Just came on with a basket of oranges and jiggled the tits and threw a few oranges at the crowd, until they did their sums and realised what it was costing them in oranges. So then they got her and Freddy’s girlfriend, and Harriet, who at that stage was into the student thing, to make fake ones out of rolled-up newspaper painted orange. Having investigated the price of tennis balls and rejected that clever idea.

    Chloe was all set to marry Daffyd, in fact he’d bought her a ring and everything, only then she discovered he wasn’t going on to do a higher degree and become a respectable academic like all his teachers said he ought to, and certainly like her Daddy said he ought to. In fact Daffyd didn’t get a First like everyone thought he would, he only got a Second because he’d been concentrating on his acting instead of his swot. So then she tried to make him agree to be sensible and go into business with his uncle and just do his acting as a hobby, in fact she picked out the actual village where they could have a cottage because it’s got a thriving amateur dramatic society who are really good. –True: Rupy’s confirmed it, and they’re coming to put on a play here this summer, actually. Vanbrugh, The Provoked Wife. No, I’d never heard of it, either. I had heard of Vanbrugh, he’s the maniac that designed Castle Howard. No? Brideshead Rev— Got it? Good.

    Daffyd remained deaf to all Chloe’s persuasions including a fright over whether she was pregnant (no), and went up to London and joined a squat with some other like-minded would-be actors and so she dumped him. But as he knew she would if he didn’t fall in with her sensible plans, who can say, really, who dumped whom? He’s had short-term things with any number of intense young would-be actresses since then. Although he’s not particularly good-looking that lean and hungry look, combined with the driving energy, really gets them going. Chloe was blonde and quite tall and had a bust, but all the intense actresses have been dark or darkish and skinny. Whether that was just the statistical occurrence of the type in that particular demographic group, I wouldn’t like to say. Possibly it was, because although reportedly they all begged to be Nell Gwynne he wouldn’t have them.

    Freddy’s a very different physical type, short and sturdy, verging on the plumpish, with mad brown curls and an infectious grin: giving the impression of being terrifically easy-going. This look belies his personality, which is totally determined and sensible. Apart from wanting to be a real actor, that is. But he’s got a proper job in a solicitor’s office, which his deluded family is convinced is the first step on a solid career ladder. Actually he’s spending just as much time as Daffyd in bit-parts in scungy off-Broadway-type theatres, and putting on little skits in pubs and night-clubs, and going to auditions where they never get out more than two lines and sometimes get sent away after one look. But unlike Daffyd he has had a part in a TV show, it was two lines in an episode of a cops thing, not The Bill, I don’t think. Second Mugger. Progress of a sort, yeah.

    They both, Freddy and Daffyd, I mean, think their fringey skit is gonna Make them but having now been through innumerable rehearsals of it, I don’t. Not even with real oranges—though I am genuinely doing my best, it won’t be my fault if they don’t make it to the Big Time. It’s got bits of Ben Jonson in it, which I’m sure will be recognised by the more artistic theatrical types and the more literate members of the audience, who may be few, I grant you, but will probably not be insignificant, like for instance The Observer’s drama critic. The Alchemist. Plus and, bits of the two fops, Witwoud and Petulant, out of The Way of the World, which I should think will be recognised by absolutely everyone that’s bothered to come to a Restoration festival, though quite possibly they’re meant to. It isn’t about anything to do with Jonson or Congreve, it’s about something British and political, Tony Blair definitely being in there somewhere. But maybe because I don’t know enough about British politics, that’s all I can tell you. It was a riot at Oxford last year, and they’ve updated it with some really cutting references to subsequent events, so maybe it’ll go over big. I’d say it possibly depends on whether the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival Fringe audience is expecting the Fringe to be really Restoration, or not.

    The costumes are terrifically campy mock-Restoration, with mad giant wigs. Daffyd’s wig’s bright green and made of paper snails that look like those party whistles, and Quentin’s, he’s the foppiest one, and the butt of the other two’s jokes, his is very pale blue fluff, lots and lots round the shoulders but also piled up very high with a light bulb that lights up in the top bit. Freddy’s is the best: it’s made of steel pot-scrapers, not the cheap steel-wool ones but the ones that are composed of tiny curls of the steel, it must have cost a fortune, even though they’re fixed onto a foam base. Here and there in the steel he’s got little bits of wiggly orange wire, and a little pink tubular sign that works off a battery and lights up and says “DAMES”, he got it at a joke shop, there was a blue one that said “HOMMES” but it got broken, and just a few of those nodding antennae that were really In yonks back. He’s taken them apart and used them singly: some of them have got hearts on the end and some have just got bobbles. The bobbles are just silver but the hearts are pink, maybe you could’ve guessed that. It weighs a ton, naturally.

    Quentin’s foppy pale blue wig is accompanied by a quilted satin turquoise coat, dressing-gown material, and a tight silver waistcoat. No shirt but a giant silver pendant round his neck, black bicycle shorts, those really tight rude ones, blue nylons with garters, and very high-heeled silver sandals. Pretty expectable, really. Daffyd’s slightly less expectable: his mad green curly paper wig is accompanied by an almost genuine Restoration-style outfit entirely made of newspaper. Not painted or anything; just newspaper. Of course I dumbly said wouldn’t it get crushed, but the thing is, he makes a new one for every performance out of current newspapers: that’s the point. I was so flattened I didn’t ask what point? Also I didn’t wanna know, as a matter of fact. Under the steel Afro, Freddy’s pretty expectable. New Age expectable. The style’s fairly Restoration except for the bits of flesh showing, but the gear’s all leather and metal. With things dangling off it: small wheels and spanners, that kind of shit.

    Well, like I say, just three nice boys, really.

    Most of the Fringe people are camping, no pun intended, though both meanings are true. A lot of the younger ones are in tents, but some of them have got caravans or mini-vans. Speaking as one that has once been on holiday with a mini-van, rather them than me. There are a couple of proper campervans but evidently those people are professional Fringies and we don’t wanna know them. In the past huge latrines had to be dug, but these days, what with the proper financial footing, there’s an ablutions block. Cold water showers, Harriet was very wise to keep out of it. The professional Fringies have been grumbling like anything about it, evidently. Up theirs, being the general response.

    Fringe people don’t get fed, though a few of the bolder ones have latched onto the fact that nobody checks names at breakfast and just roll up for it. But most of them, in spite of the Looks, which are pretty horrendous, mixed Seventies Retro and Urban Grunge plus only cold water ablutions, are just nice boys or girls and don’t dare. Added to which they mostly get up too late anyway, not having heard of the adage about the worm. The performances aren’t the excuse, they haven’t started yet.

    The Fringe starts tomorrow night, that’s Friday, but although there’s a lot of bravado, no-one really expects many people will turn up for it, except the fellow-actors who’ll be going to Actor’s Workshop next week, which has become a feature of the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival. The stars of the big set-piece being expected to be on hand all week to teach. In the past this worked very well because the only actors they could get for the play were relative unknowns and really keen. It’s working less and less and the star they were gonna get for Horner refused point-blank to do it. His plan was he’d turn up on the Thursday, run through the lines on the Friday, and be ready to do it for a grateful public on the Saturday. Just as well he pulled out, eh? Euan isn’t like that at all and he’s terribly keen about Actor’s Workshop. Possibly because no-one ever asked him to teach his craft before, but never mind. That goes on all week and then there’s a huge fireworks show on the Friday night for the official Opening. And the real performances start on the Saturday. If the sound systems are working by then, which judging by the mess in the marquees, they won’t be.

    There are two sets of marquees, the ones I can see from my bedroom being only the half of it. They’re the official marquees, the performances of The Country Wife are going to be in the really huge one. They’re already almost booked out, the theatre-going public of England must sure be starved for Restoration comedy. The other big one is for three smaller official acts to share. A musical group, I’m gonna try and get to that, a man who does one of those ghastly one-man shows where all he does is talk, this guy dresses up as Pepys, ’nuff said, and a small dance ensemble. Some of the ones we’ve seen practising in the big rehearsal room are in that. The others are in the ballet that’s in the opera, which is going to be on in the actual concert hall, actually it’s the old ballroom of Eddyvane Hall. Really nicely fitted out and Euan’s and Rupy’s lot are jealous as Hell because they’re not allowed to share it. Whilst maintaining that the intimacy of the marquee will give their performance more immediacy—geddit? Yeah. A third big marquee has gone up over there since I got here, candy-striped, it’s what they call the tea tent. They don’t mean dinner, although it will serve that in the evenings for the ones who’ve bought the most expensive tickets for the play. During the day it’ll serve soft drinks, coffee, tea, and junk food, with sandwiches at lunchtime.

    If you’re wondering about the opera-goers, they’ll only get dinner if they’ve bought the most expensive tickets, but that’ll be in the main dining-room of Eddyvane Hall. Not the joint where us poor players eat, no, we’ve found out that that’s the old servants’ hall. The main dining-room used to seat whole banquets but that doesn’t by any means equate to the number of people expected at the performances. The ones who haven’t managed to get or afford the really expensive opera tickets (I mean really expensive) are expected to picnic by their cars in a field set aside for them. Everybody goes round saying “Like Glyndebourne” but although I have heard of it, I associate it with opera not picnics so I’ve just kept my trap shut. The people who are real theatre-lovers or opera-lovers but can’t afford hugely expensive tickets incorporating dinner and don’t know that you bring a Fortnum’s picnic hamper are just gonna starve during the two-hour intervals in the things. They’ll only be impoverished students or Colonial Yobbos like me, so nobody gives a damn about them.

    Rupy stole a programme for me and I looked through it very, very carefully, but nowhere does it explain or even refer to the fact that there is a giant dinner-break and that you are expected to feed yourself! Likewise not mentioning that even though the evening performances start at a reasonable hour, to wit, seven o’clock, they don’t finish until twelve-thirty at the earliest, what with the two-hour break for dinner and then a second shorter interval and then all the curtain calls, etcetera. Not to mention getting your car out of the public carpark and/or picnic field. I did say in a very weak voice do they run special trains or maybe charter buses, like that? But people screamed words like British Rail? So I shut up. Incidentally I said to Euan that I didn’t think the “Everybody knows” syndrome would be so prevalent in Britain, though it sure is common back home, but he just looked blank. So I thought he was already too old and affluent to remember what it was like when he was still struggling, and I said it again to Daffyd and Freddy, but they just looked blank. Oh, well, it is the country that expects you to know how to pronounce Beauchamp, Marjoribanks and Beaulieu. Not to mention Lympne or Ruislip!

    The other area of marquees is for the Fringe. Their marquees aren’t as big, and there’s a lot more of them. And some of the more enterprising ones have set up little, like, stalls. Little platforms with tarps over them, though I don’t think they have the word here. But that’s what they are. The audience sits on the grass, or stands on the grass. The Fringe is less controlled than the rest of it, and the official organisers have left it up to the Fringe organisers to work out who goes when and where. But as the Fringe organisers have no apparent organising ability, the whole thing’s a total shambles. Well, I think you can imagine it, what with the Seventies-look gear mixed with the Urban Grunge, and the tons of pot circulating, and the fact that nobody’s capable of getting up in the mornings…

    Because Daffyd and Freddy and Quentin have got Connections—there’s some man on the actual Festival Organising Committee who saw them at Oxford and came round and met them—they were offered a performance tent. Not a very big one, but nevertheless. Obviously they can’t be putting on their show for every minute of the day, and besides, Daffyd needs to spend some time reading the papers and keeping up with current events in order to keep the political references current. Not to mention the time it takes to make a new costume entirely out of newspaper. Not to mention the fact that they won’t get an audience if they put it on all day and every day over Fringe Week and Festival Week. So they’ve done a deal with two other groups. One’s a pair of girls who do a twins act, it’s very rude and quite funny, sort of singing and dancing, though neither of them can really sing and they’re hopeless dancers. They call themselves The Two Nellies, so it fits in quite well with the boys’ skit, image-wise. Their act’s not Restoration at all, or it wasn’t, they’ve been doing the rounds of the pubs and dance joints up north, but they’re gonna change the costumes and the Fringe organisers let them in. Actually I think they let in anyone who applied.

    The Two Nellies don’t know much about Restoration costumes so they were very relieved to see mine. It’s got four basic pieces, a full skirt, sort of an olive green, looped right up at the front to show my legs, a dark brown corset, and two big puffy white sleeves. White since I washed them. And very relieved to see I don’t wear a huge wig, it was only the men who were into those. I wear my own hair, the Shirley Temple cut’s quite appropriate. The Two Nellies are really jealous of it, but I can’t help having thick yellow curls. One of them, Amy, she’s Black, or strictly speaking caffè latte colour, she was wearing her hair in those tiny Rasta plaits, but we persuaded her to brush it out and we just put a few clips and bows in it, it looks ace, if you’re into Restoration shit, that is. The other girl, Carol, she was a bit of a problem because she’s got really short hair, sort of the waif look, only bright red. Not auburn, a sort of crimson, with that slightly fluorescent look, y’know? Rupy pinched a big hat from the stock wardrobe for her, there’s literally a roomful of Restoration stuff they aren’t using for the play, but she couldn’t make it stay on while she was dancing. So then Rupy had an inspiration and said why not go the other way, dear? While we were still hoping that didn’t mean what we thought it did, because they’re gay and don’t wanna be anything else, he explained: wear a terrifically authentic dress from stock, and her own hair above it! So he borrowed a grey satin dress with pink bows for her, even though Fringe people are strictly forbidden to use the stock wardrobe, it belongs to the Festival Trust. But it didn’t look right. So after a bit we came up with the answer, and put a spiked dog collar on her, she had that, it was from the original act, and made up her face sort of KISS, and did her nails with black nail polish, and that tied the whole thing together! Which of course meant that Amy could wear her leather gear with her Restoration hair, so she got into the pants and the boob-tube that just wraps round them, leaving six inches of ribs where you could put a chain or like that, and edged the pants down so that the navel ring showed. Rupy isn’t into that, and he gulped a bit even though knowing himself to be Untrendy. That didn’t look quite right, but he had an inspiration and rushed off to the wardrobe room again. We just waited, passing a joint to while away the time. I don’t, usually, it blurs your mind, but I’d been trying to tap all morning on what bloody Daffyd claimed was a floor. (I’ve found a bloke in the village who does real carpentry and he’s fixed it.) Then Rupy came back with a huge lace collar, God knows what he nicked it off. Anyway, we didn’t ask, and it’s just the thing! The Two Nellies look ace, and insisted on giving us both tea, I mean dinner, the next night. (Not the same night, we’d already paid for our dinners in the servants’ hall.) Fried lentil burgers (tinned ones, they brought them with them) and mash with sliced tomato and lettuce, they bought the veggies in the village but they’re not into salad dressings. Followed by a bought cheesecake, Carol apologised for it being full of free radicals and chemicals and shit but actually I think they were both pleased to have the excuse.

    As we strolled back to the house Rupy asked: “What do their parents do, dear?”

    And I had to admit that in spite of the Looks, Carol’s dad’s a bookie and quite well off, we’ve been swapping reminiscences, and her parents made her go to a bloody awful poncy school, too; and Amy’s dad’s a headmaster and her mum’s a solicitor. Even though it was quite expectable Rupy had a bit of a sniggering fit.

    The other act that’s sharing the tent call themselves Coming to Jamaica, that’s a reference to the title of that dumb Eddie Murphy film, but it’s not homage, the implication is that Eddie Murphy films are typical Uncle Tom shit. They’re a Black group, and they’re really wonderful, and I reckon they’ll be the hit of the whole Festival, if only the types that attend arty Restoration theme festivals in the middle of nowhere in an English summer can recognise them for what they are. Which on the whole seems doubtful. They’re a music and dance group. It’s a mixture of genuine seventeenth-century European music, cunningly mixed in with modern Jamaican music, steel drums kind of thing, plus a bit of genuine African music. All the musicians are on stage all of the time, so you can see the instruments really are a mixture. I know it sounds really vile when I try to describe it, but you’d have to hear it. It’s magical! Terrifically sad, but also with a lot of energy.

    There’s no talking or recitative, the act’s all music, some singing, some just instrumental, and quite a lot of dancing, and after a while you realise that it’s actually supposed to represent the early days of the slave trade in the West Indies: that’s after you’ve spent quite a long time puzzling over these neatly-dressed Black people in sort of Quaker-type Restoration gear. The dancing just conveys the mood; if you want to figure out any sort of story you have to listen to the words, which are pretty conventional sort of love songs, losing the girl, all that, and it gradually dawns, as the dancing gets sadder and sadder, that the reason he’s lost the girl is she must’ve been dragged off to be a slave somewhere else. At one point the West Indian and African rhythms take over and it gets really hectic, then all of a sudden everything stops dead and it goes dark and you don’t see anything except this huge shadow on the backdrop, a very Restoration head and shoulders, a man with a big feathered hat. There’s no whipping or visible violence or anything, they leave that up to the music and your imagination. It hasn’t got an actual end, they just start doing the dance they started out with, mainly carrying things, vases and bowls and stuff, and doing what by now you realise is dusting and sweeping, and singing the first song, and the lights sort of fade out. There’s no colour in it at all, the costumes are all grey or black with white collars here and there, except when the music gets hectic they turn on these coloured spots and there’s sort of a whirly effect with reds and yellows and oranges. Well, as I say, I reckon they’ll be the best thing in the whole Festival.

    It’s all going with a swing, if Monteverdi can be said to swing, and there’s hundreds of people here, now that we’re into Festival Week proper, and it’s only rained two days out of three, so far, and Actors’ Workshop was a howling success, according to its participants, who are now putting on an “extempore” performance of bits out of The Way Of The World, to Daffyd’s and Freddy’s annoyance (Quentin clearly doesn’t give a shit), in total Urban Grunge.

    Some attendees are in the real caravan park, that’s about six miles away on the outskirts of the town, and some of them are in the official camping field, that’s next to the Fringe camping field, little did they know they’d have to share the Fringe cold water ablutions block, and some of them are in fields belonging to enterprising local farmers, but the more well-off ones that know the ropes (the Everybody Knows syndrome again) booked themselves well in advance into the motels or the pubs in the town, or the convention centre where Harriet was last weekend, or even managed to get rooms in the village pubs or bed and breakfast with some of the villagers. Whereby hangs a tale.

    Evidently when the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival started there was a Helluva lot of local resistance because besides the natural human resistance to anything new they didn’t want their fields to be torn up by a lot of dumb townees or their nights rendered hideous by bacchanals in the main street outside the pubs, let alone having to clear up the horrendous mess left behind in their fields when it was all over. But gradually over the years (it’s only biennial), it began to dawn that they could make money out of it, too. So by now they’re offering bed and breakfast, forcing their kids to share a bedroom for the duration, and allowing the village hall to be used. Which they wouldn’t, in the old days, and that caused terrific ill-feeling because the actual Maurice Mountjoy, besides thinking he was God’s Gift to the British theatre, saw himself as the great paternalistic I Am of these here rural parts. What a shit.

    Fortunately he died yonks back, and his two remaining sons, Dorimant and Leontes Mountjoy, named after two of the old shit’s greatest parts, poor buggers, have never been interested. The Trust owns the property but the Mountjoys are allowed to live in part of it, but Dorimant and Leontes never have, they loathe the place. They’re both very old, in their eighties. William Mountjoy, Dorimant’s son, is the only one of the family that takes an active interest, and he’s a member of the Trust and on the Organising Committee. And reputedly has spent most of his life mending fences with the locals. He lives in the house with his family. Or what’s left of them, they’re all grown-up and the kids only turn up when they need money or somewhere to crash or dump the grandkids. Just like everybody else’s kids, really. Though unfortunately for them, since they’re part of a Grate British Theatrical Family the piercing white light of interest of all the gossips of the British theatre is apt to fall on them as they do it.

    Poppy Mountjoy (her married name’s something else) is the only one of William’s kids to have gone into acting, though one of her brothers is a TV director. You’ll know her better as Doctor Susan Dane, in that crapulous TV serial set in, um, deepest Cumberland or something? As near to a soapie as makes no difference, but chunks of it are filmed out of doors. You know: the one that’s terribly understanding, and always rushing out to her patients in the middle of the night, as if, and getting her car stuck in ditches and/or snowdrifts and meeting mysterious romantic strangers, as if. Plus and the on-again, off-again marriage to the dashing townee barrister when they’ve run out of plot. She was here for Actor’s Workshop, some of the younger and intenser actors appearing less than thrilled by being ordered around by a person that’s been playing an understanding lady doctor for the last five years. Rupy reckons she invited herself but because she’s a Mountjoy and her dad’s on the Organising Committee no-one can stop her. She brought her kids, poor bloody little sods, tricked out in, in the case of the female, aged about six, a full-length granny-dress, black with a pattern of tiny red flowers and a white lacy collar, and in the case of the male, aged about four, fake riding breeches (well, he wasn’t riding anything and there isn’t anything to ride, that’s fake in my definition) and a collarless white shirt, shades of Adam McIntyre, plus a Stewart tartan waistcoat and a tweed cap. Poor little bugger.

    I have to admit that Euan’s and Rupy’s Country Wife has gone over really big. Euan still isn’t my idea of Horner, he gives him wistful, just slightly fuzzy overtones that in my opinion aren’t in the script. Convincing at the time, mind you, only then you have afterthoughts. The Branagh syndrome: yep. Rupy’s admitted that Adam McIntyre’s interpretation was miles better. I said to him, wouldn’t he’ve been wistful too, because let’s face it, he specialises in wistful overtones. Or undertones. But Rupy replied brilliantly that no, he made him wry. I wish more than ever that I’d seen it.

    This production is slightly Yuck in my humble opinion, because in spite of having the roomful of fab gear to wear, they’ve gone fake Minimalist. Totally pointless, not to say wrong-headed, with Restoration comedy, Wycherley would’ve wondered what the fuck they were on about. Like for instance Euan wears this great hat with a huge yellow feather on it but a pair of ordinary black daks and one of those famous collarless white shirts, if I see one more of those I’m gonna scream. He has got a very, very nice neck, but nevertheless. Rupy’s character, Sparkish, is the very foppy one who’s a bit of a social climber and terribly anxious to be one of the In Group. I was afraid that Rupy’d make him too campy, but he doesn’t, he’s really good. But unfortunately they’ve dressed him in a really modern suit, one of those tightish shiny ones, personally I think they’re Yuck, I prefer your draped Armani. However. Dark grey. The Restoration touch being the wig, glorious chestnut curls, and a large lace handkerchief which he’s been warned not to flourish too much.

    Their Mrs Margery’s pretty frightful, in my opinion, but I haven’t said anything because I don’t want to show myself up for the Untrendy, Not-With-It person I really am. Well, skinny, for a start. What total balls! Then, dark-haired. A dark-haired, skinny Mrs Margery? What planet are they from? –Planet Nineties and New Age, you said it. Guess what she wears? Don’t all shout at once, I can hear ya. A black waif-look skinny-knit thing, right. No sleeves, it shows her bony arms and salt-cellars. That’s her first dress, she actually has two, which proves it’s fake Minimalist as well as fake everything else. The second one’s one of those narrow, slippery dresses that look like slips (petticoats, to some). It’s not black, but as it’s very dark grey, even darker than Rupy’s suit, why did they bother? Her interpretation is far too intense, of course, but you can see she’s doing her best. But with all that to fight against, it doesn’t come off. However, the audiences all seem convinced they’re seeing the very latest trends and applaud anyway. The more so because she’s just done a successful, or at least well publicised, TV mini-series: they screened it a couple of months back and Joanie made me tape it for her because she was on, those nights. She wasn’t the central figure, our society couldn’t take that in a mini-series unless it was all ladies united to fight against their menfolk or Helen Mirren in person, isn’t she ace? No, the central figure was a man, he’d gone home to Scotland for reasons that weren’t revealed until halfway through, completely maddening because you feel you’re missing chunks of the plot and it all seems totally unfocussed. (Then you realise it is, it’s the bloody photography.) She was the mysterious, skinny, waif-like figure half glimpsed through the unfocussed Scotch mist on a Scotch moor, then he walks into the local pub and there’s this lady artist, she does twisted metal things, there’s a lot of that about in the Highlands, and you keep wondering if it was her because the whole thing’s so misty and out of focus it could’ve been any mysterious skinny waif draped in a black shawl trying to get a dose of Scotch pneumonia. She turns out to be only a quarter out of her skull, blah-blah. Joanie was ropeable because the last tape ran out just before the thing finished, I was trying to save on tapes. Anyway, nobody murdered anybody though you’re supposed to think most of them did, and they do end up in each other’s arms (some time after having got it together and had an artistic and unconvincingly athletic roll in the hay, of course). Personally I’d’ve clapped the both of them up in padded cells, but there you are.

    Guess what, The Observer’s drama critic had some time on his hands on the Saturday and some enterprising person with actual taste and discrimination took him to see Coming To Jamaica’s afternoon show and even though it isn’t drama, strictly speaking, he gave it a rave review and they’ve been sold out for every performance and offered a chance to perform in London! The critic was temperate about The Country Wife, but he gave Euan and Rupy the thumbs up and Rupy was thrilled. Over the moon. Well, it is a very up-market paper and for one who’s been doing juvenile leads for Gaynor Grahame for twenty years it does open a window of possibility.

    Daffyd and Freddy were terribly peeved because no-one took the critic from The Observer to see them (though Quentin didn’t give a shit). However, at some point Daffyd’s contact on the Organising Committee did get The Guardian’s drama critic along. Should have stayed in Oxford, was the verdict. Ouch! There are some more reviews to come, not everyone’s into reviewing the thing the night before your paper’s due to be printed and emailing the review in, or actually I don’t think Rupert Murdoch’ll wear the expense of holding the presses, but no-one’s holding their breath.

    I’m looking forward to tomorrow, Friday, because Joanie and Bridget are coming down! Joanie’s made up her mind and taken the rôle in the new drawing-room thing, and dumped That Symington Woman, and they don’t start rehearsals for ages, so she’s having a holiday. And Bridget’s not-rehearsals and fake-informal get-togethers afterwards have stopped, everybody else that’s in it being far too up-market to stay in hot, stuffy old London when they can escape to their villas in the Mediterranean. Adam McIntyre being rumoured to own an actual villa on actual Corfu. And Shanna McQuayle being rumoured to have a standing invite to an actual villa in the South of France from a fat middle-aged German millionaire who doesn’t mind the paparazzi snapping him in semi-public with quite well-known middle-aged English actresses that’re a lot skinnier than his actual wife. It almost makes you feel sorry for her.

    I've booked us in for the Monteverdi opera tomorrow night, not the dearest seats, obviously. We’ll have our dinners in the servants’ hall. I’ve got to do my Nell Gwynne thing on the Friday afternoon, unfortunately, so Joanie and Bridget have loyally said they’ll come. Rupy’s free, they only had one matinée, on the Wednesday, so he loyally said he’ll come, too. Euan also said he’ll come, but that depends entirely on whether some big-time producer, director, critic, or Big Star from the Big Smoke might turn up requiring his attendance at the same time, as all involved tacitly recognised. Or, as Rupy acidly said afterwards, If he’s serious about chasing you, Rosie, darling, doesn’t he know it’ll help to behave as if he is? To which I replied he isn’t, he only thinks he’d fancy a change from skinny, dark and intense.

    We’ll take in the last night of The Country Wife on the Saturday. I’m free all day Saturday, because Daffyd’s given in and let Coming to Jamaica have the tent for the evening and The Two Nellies for the afternoon: they’ve been very popular with the younger generation, who think their heavy-handed social comment is witty and biting (whilst not getting Daffyd’s actually witty and biting lines, geddit?), and with the middle-aged trendies who think laughing at the very rude bits makes them look very In and With-It, not to say, young.

    Dunno know what we’ll do on the Saturday arvo. Depends whether Joanie and Bridget are as keen as Rupy to go over to the cliffs, which are very near, just a couple of fields away, and watch some dumb naval thing that the Friends of The Mountjoy Midsummer Festival, all incredibly upper-clawss types, have somehow persuaded the Royal Navy to put on for the last Saturday of Festival Week. Apparently we’re quite near to Plymouth. (Huh? Sir Francis Drake? –Forget it.) I think Rupy’s keen to go because he thinks it’ll be lovely sailor-boys in tight bellbottoms. Yeah, but what’s the betting it won’t be lovely sailor-boys in tight bellbottoms, it’ll be a brassy naval band murdering Monteverdi? But don’t you want to see a real Harrier (?) taking off vertically from a real warship? cries Rupy. Rupy, I’ve seen one of them plus the actual Arnie Schwarzenegger in True Lies, what more does a girl need in this world? But for real? he urges. Oh… maybe. If the others want to. I don’t tell him not to go on hoping for bellbottoms, because (a) it won’t work and (b) why not let him be happy while he can?

    I’d been expecting Joanie and Bridget for ages even though Rupy assured me they couldn’t possibly make it much before lunchtime. So I decided to wait for them out on the front drive. Pardon me, sweep.

    After a while Daffyd found me and stood by my shoulder glooming. Finally I gave in and said: “What’s up?”

    “Nothing.” He scuffed at the up-market pale oatmeal gravel with his giant army-surplus-type boot that actually he paid megabucks for at a posh place in Oxford that caters to spoilt students like him from affluent middle-class families, and then he said: “Will you come up to London with me?”

    Dumb Rosie replied blankly: “When?”

    So he went very red and said angrily: “Now! I mean, when the bloody festival’s over! Permanently!”

    At which I croaked: “You’re not asking me to live with you, are you?”

    “Yes,” he said, looking sulky.

    I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I said very cautiously: “Daffyd, you’re not in love with me, are you?”

    That was the wrong thing to say because he went redder than ever and said very angrily: “Yes! Can’t you tell?”

    I’d noticed the hard-ons but then that’s par for the course with males that aren’t gay, in L.R. Marshall’s experience, so I was at a loss for words. Eventually I said very feebly: “I did think you fancied me a bit.”

    “A bit!” He started to tell me about the agonies he was in, actually it sounded very like any Elizabethan or Jacobean poem you care to name, rendered into modern English, and since I know Jacobean literature was his subject at uni I didn’t actually concentrate on it, instead I concentrated on a blue car that was coming up the drive. Only it wasn’t them, it was a man and a lady in upper-clawss summer gear that went into the part of the house that the Mountjoys use.

    “So will you?”

    “No, thanks, Daffyd. I mean, I like you but I’m not in love with you—” Here he gave me the standard speech about not knowing until you’ve tried it, and girls with no experience never realising, blah-blah. I’m older than he is, the silly twit, and had about as many blokes as he’s had hot dinners. Likewise telling me how great the squat is.

    “Daffyd, I’ve got a career and a decent place to live.” He started to object and to give me a lot of reasons why associating with the elderly Joanie, that he’s never even met, not to mention the elderly Rupy, is stifling my creativity (eh?), so eventually I said very loudly: “No! I’m not in love with you, I think the whole British theatre scene’s blitheringly silly, though I’m glad you’ve got ambitions and I hope you succeed, and I don’t want to!”

    This discouraged him so much he put both arms round me and kissed me very hard. It was hard to resist because (a) I was clutching my laptop bag in one hand and (b) he’s about fourteen inches taller than me and very wiry. And also because I haven’t had much practice at resisting. And also because I already knew he’s quite a good kisser, unfortunately I was rather tiddlers one night after the show, having had nothing to do during it except tap, chuck oranges and smile, and in between times taste a whole bagful of little bottles that Freddy got off a girlfriend who’s an air hostess. And I let him kiss me. Later I let Freddy, who’s equally attractive though he won’t be if he puts on much more weight. No, well, actually I let Freddy do it, because he’s great fun and not the sort of guy to take it seriously. He was quite good, for a very young guy. But not Daffyd because I didn’t want to risk getting an intense, serious type like him all encouraged. But obviously I might just have well have given in, what a waste of effort.

    “Look, stop it, Daffyd!”

    He went on kissing me and I started to get quite cross and kicked him in the ankle, only with those great boots of his it didn’t make any impression.

    “Daffyd, stop it! I’m not in love with you, and I don’t want to!”

    This discouraged him so much he kissed me even harder. So I tried to bash him with the laptop bag, but that didn’t have much effect because I couldn’t get a proper swing going, my arm was kind of pinned to my side. And I got really, really cross, and bit his lip.

    “OW! You bitch!”

    He let me go but before I could biff him with the laptop bag or breathe or run or anything an amused baritone with a very upper-clawss acc’nt drawled: “This person’s annoying you, is he, Rosie? Want me to get rid of him?”

    I swung round and nearly dropped dead of the shock because out of the part of the house that the Mountjoys use came John Hah-with in person. Terrifically sexy pale fawn whipcord slacks, foul tweed coat, and all. Looking as if he owned the place.

    “Yes, um, I think he’s stopped!”

    He came up quite close and gave Daffyd a hard look. “Have you stopped?”

    “Piss off, this is none of your bloody business!”

    “Well, I think it is my bloody business, because it appeared to me that you were harassing this young lady.”

    “Yes, that’s the word, I couldn’t think of it,” I said inanely.

    “See? Get out of it, before I’m tempted to teach you what harassment is.”

    “Don’t, John, he’s very wiry, he’s much stronger than he looks!” I gasped inanely.

    “Is he? I think I can cope.” –Trying not to laugh, Hell.

    At this Daffyd took a swing at him and John sort of ducked or something, I dunno, exactly, only he ducked and grabbed his arm at the same time, and twisted it up behind his back. Daffyd went as blue as anything and gave a sizzling gasp, so he was really hurting him.

    “Leave Rosie alone, you bullying piece of shit,” he said in a very nasty voice.

    “Um, he isn’t that bad. Um, he was trying tell me he’s in love with me,” I offered feebly.

    “He’s got a bloody funny way of showing it!” He gave him a bit of a shake, at which point it sort of dawned that he’s much, much stronger than Daffyd, as well as being much heavier, and that he was hurting him on purpose.

    “Daffyd, I did keep telling you not to.”

    “Let me go, you bastard! –Who the Hell is he?” he said in a strangled voice, going even bluer. Well, of course it was only late morning, he hadn’t had a shave, that wasn’t helping.

    “Um, just a person. Um, that I met once.” I took a deep breath and decided I might as well rub it in that in spite of the Shirley Temple hairdo and being fourteen inches shorter than him and going round with Rupy I have got a career and a life. So I said: “Actually, it was at a drinks party that one of my academic colleagues threw to celebrate the fact that it had actually stopped snowing and the Long Vac was in sight. Fairly dire, wasn’t it, John?”

    The prick was still trying not to laugh and his mouth was doing that thing that I’d only been trying to tell myself for two months I’d forgotten entirely. “It was, indeed. Full of the upper-middle class in its Armani gear.”

    “Ralph Lauren,” I managed to croak.

    “Was it? Perhaps you’re right. My damned sister’s was definitely Armani, though: my brother-in-law gave me an earful on what it did to the plastic. –Also a person,” he added to Daffyd in a very superior voice, if it was me at the receiving end I’d have withered away on the spot, “who can recognise an episode of sexual harassment, not to say of plain bullying of a smaller, weaker creature, when he sees it. You can apologise to Rosie, or come over to the carpark and get some real punishment.”

    Poor Daffyd by now was a sort of nasty purple colour, because it had started to sink in. Also that he’d made a total twat of himself in front of this upper-clawss Englishman. “Look, I meant nothing by it! –All right, I apologise!” he added quickly, as John gave the arm a bit of a twist.

    At which I said very faintly: “I think you’re hurting him, John.”

    The nostrils flickered, crikey. “Am I? I tend to hurt bullies; long and hard experience has taught me that it’s the only thing they understand.”

    “Yes, um, he’s only a silly boy!”

    At that his face relaxed and he smiled a little bit, and let him go. “Yes, I suppose he is. I suggest you apologise again and take yourself off in good order, my lad.” This time the tone was sort of tolerantly superior: even worse, I’d have died.

    Daffyd took that in, after all he’d spent years at some stupid boys’ school where all the teachers knew they were far superior to the boys and didn’t fail to rub it in. “I am sorry, Rosie. I didn’t mean it to be luh-like that.”

    Poor boy. “No. That’s all right. But I really didn’t want to.”

    “No.” I could see him swallow; then he said: “What about the show?”

    “What?”

    He went very red and said: “Will you still be Nell Gwynne for us this afternoon?”

    “Yes, of course.” I did try to make that sound merely kind, not tolerantly superior with it, but I didn’t have much success because he went very red again, said very shortly: “Thanks,” and took himself off.

    Then there was an agonising silence, during which L.R. Marshall didn’t know where to look. Boy, I could write you a thesis on your typical upper-class English pale oatmeal gravel, that’s for sure.

    Then he said: “Nell Gwynne?”

    “Don’t you dare to laugh! Um, it’s their show. Um, it’s stupid, but—um—a friend got me into it. I only have to do a bit of tapping.”

    “Er—tapping?”

    “Tap dancing. It’s a skit. They used to be at Oxford, they’re ex-students.”

    “Oh, I see: some OUDS thing?” Boy, I dunno if he meant it, but that sure came out as tolerantly superior.

    “Yeah.”

    Another silence, shorter but on the whole no less agonising.

    “Are you all right, Rosie?”

    “Yes.” I had to gulp; then I managed to get out: “Thank you very much.”

    “My pleasure.” That was very neutral, so I didn’t know what to say.

    Finally, since he didn’t say anything, I said: “I wasn’t really panicking, only he’s so much stronger than me that I couldn’t make him stop.”

    “Yes, of course. Glad I was here.”

    “Y—Um, what are you doing here?”

    That, of course, was entirely the wrong thing to say, because he said very vaguely: “Oh, business,” and looked at his watch and said: “Look, I’m afraid I’ll have to go. My driver, over there, is already starting to fidget.”

    While all this was going on a big black car had driven up and a man in a uniform had got out, but I didn’t take much notice. Actually I’d sort of thought it was a naval uniform but it can’t have been, it must have been a chauffeur’s uniform.

    “Yes. Thank you very much,” was all I managed to say.

    He didn’t say anything, just nodded, and didn’t smile or anything, just hurried off to the car.

     When it had disappeared round the bend in the drive I sat right down on that up-market pale oatmeal gravel because believe you me, my legs wouldn’t hold me up for another second.

    What was he doing here? What sort of business, for God’s sake? Rupy looked him up, he reckoned you can look up all the judges and he said he wasn’t in the book, so he can’t be a judge. Anyway, what’d a judge be doing in the middle of the countryside at bloody Eddyvane Hall? Surely he can’t be an angel? That’s what they call a businessman that backs plays, or sometimes films. No, I think Rupy would’ve found out if he was. Anyway, frankly, I don’t think John’d be that dumb.

    I sat there for ages thinking thoughts like that and how gorgeous he looked in those pale fawn slacks and about the nostrils flickering, etcetera, not to mention cursing myself for wearing my ancient jeans and this stupid pale pink tee-shirt with a white bunny rabbit on each tit that I only bought because Joslynne bet me I’d never have the guts to wear it, because otherwise he might have taken me seriously. But eventually I did get the strength to get up and think Well, I made pretty much of an idiot of myself but not as much as some, and if he wasn’t interested enough to ask me for my phone number or say could he see me again, up his.

    So by this time I’m not convinced or anything, mere mind-power cannot subdue female hormones that are doing a tarantella, but I am capable of not mentioning it to a soul and of rushing forward and hugging Joanie and Bridget and welcoming them to the flaming Festival. And of mentioning that the carpark for mere theatrical persons is round the back, well out of sight of the front sweep. So we leave the hire-car right where it is, as there’s no sign of any official, and take their bags up the three flights of stairs.

    They both loved the opera, thank goodness, and on Saturday we even manage to get up at a reasonable hour. Or at least in time for breakfast. Cautious investigation reveals Rupy’s not in his room so maybe he got off with that dancer, Tony; good, he’s certainly been pining after him for days, ever since we saw him at practice in pale lemon tights, one of those weird singlets that show so much chest they’re little more than straps, his was pink, and giant fuzzy scarlet socks.

    “Do you want to do your exercises?” asks Joanie, yawning, as we forgather on the landing.

    “It’ll be boring, just the girls and boys from the two dance shows and Euan Keel doing his aerobics. Do ya wanna skip—?” No. Bridget’s gone all pink and hopeful, oh, dear. Should I explain Euan’s temporarily off thin, dark, intense rising actresses and more or less on plumpish blonde sociologists with large boobs? Um, no, on the whole I’d rather she found it out for herself, Though there’s always the hope that he’ll take one look at her and switch back— He doesn’t. Shit.

    So after some spirited tapping from me, pretending to ignore the whole thing in the hopes I’ll wake up and it won’t be there, and some very energetic aerobics from Bridget in the hopes of impressing Euan, and some half-hearted aerobics from Euan, no prizes for guessing he was with that crowd of Big Names and super-pseuds carousing in the real dining-room for hours last night, and some even more half-hearted aerobics from Joanie, we give it away and go off to breakfast.

    It would be possible for Euan not to sit next to me, there being four of us, but this doesn’t happen. It would also be possible for Bridget not to join him in the bloody kippers but funnily enough this doesn’t happen, either. Dear little Bridget, it doesn’t work like that: if he doesn’t get an instant hard-on at the sight of you across a crowded room, it’s no-go. Women’s Lib or not, sexual relationships are still dominated, nay, dictated, by male physiology. Geddit? Naturally I don’t say any of this, I simply pile my plate with, for starters, a bowl of cornflakes with real cream, since it’s there, and real tinned peaches, ooh, yum! Since they’re there. Followed by, since this clearly isn’t sufficient contrast with the kippers for it to sink into Euan’s nice, fuzzy head that we have nothing in common, a plate of sausage, bacon and tomatoes to complement his and Bridget’s bowls of third-strength gritty muesli. I hope that poor girl’s got a colon like an ostrich’s.

    The sensible Joanie, by contrast, starts off with a grapefruit half, not realising they’re there for the very thin, intense ladies, and follows it up with a bowl of cornflakes and skimmed milk, though she does break down and take some peaches, and then some toast and Marmite.

    “Have some more, Bridget,” I urge as the last of the grit vanishes down her poor, thin little throat. “They never give you much for lunch. –We had sandwich boxes yesterday,” I explain redundantly to Euan.

    He beams at being actually addressed by the adored object, oh, help. And, barely giving Bridget time to say she’s had enough, thanks, asks in a very warm sort of voice: “Where did you get to yesterday afternoon, Rosie? I looked for you for ages.”

    In between sucking up to the Big Names and letting the super-pseuds suck up to him, he means. He was supposed to come to our matinée, if he can remember back that far! “I had a matinée with the boys, and then we just wandered round the stalls. Um, Fringe.”

    Euan’s gone into a giggling fit. “It is like that!” he says on a proud note to Bridget and Joanie. “The side-shows, you mean, Rosie, darling?”

    “No, I don’t, ya drongo.”

    He giggles again and informs the table proudly: “She’s so unashamedly colonial!”

    “Shut it, Euan.”

    Beaming pleasedly, he of course responds: “And what are we doing today, darling?”

    At this point the thought arises, he could suggest something, if he wasn’t such a—a sheep! “We’re going down to the village to see the kids’ Morris dancing this morning,” I reply in a pointed voice.

    “Are we?” says Joanie faintly while his jaw’s still sagging.

    I respond fiercely: “Yes! None of the bloody trendies support the villagers’ efforts to join in their fucking festival!”

    “You’re so right, Rosie!” he says warmly, oh, God. “Of course we’ll all come with you, won’t we, girls?”

    So we go. Well, first Euan and Bridget have to wash and change, but I’ve warned Joanie that there’ll be no hot water left by this time, so we don’t bother to wash. Euan changes out of his greenish-black tights and his giant grey MCDOUGALL’S PALE ALE tee-shirt into a pair of greenish-black baggy denims and another giant grey tee-shirt, this one advertising Stussy, fancy that—not an improvement, as the one advantage of the former outfit, to wit the view of the excellent calf muscles, has now been lost. And Bridget changes out of her baggy black tights and baggy black jumper into another pair of black tights and a black singlet. So they’re clearly meant for each other, why can’t he see it?

    Joanie changes out of her black tights and dark blue leotard, in which she looked ace, pity there were only ballet boys and Euan at practice to appreciate her, into one of her sweetly-pretty floral frocks. I stop her from putting on the pink sandals: in spite of the biennial festival the road to the village is little more than a track. So she puts her sneakers back on. They look bloody silly with the dress but I think she probably knows this, so I don’t point it out.

    As a great concession to English middle-class sensibilities I replace the pair of red stretch-nylon practice knickers with a clean pair under the jeans. My cousin asks innocently if I’m going to put on a fresh top?

    Yes, funnily enough, I am going to change out of the pink tee-shirt with the white bunny rabbits on the tits, because, funnily enough, I have sworn never again to wear the bloody thing as normal day-time wear!

    I don’t say any of it, I just get into d into the plain pink tee that was a donation from Joanie herself, the one that’s two sizes too small. I have to, I’ve only got one other one and it’s still hanging in the window, soaking wet. And we go.

    Of course the Morris dancing is bloody stupid, especially since they’ve got grown men doing it as well, Christ! But the little kids are really sweet. After a while I discover that Euan’s watching me watch the little kids with a soppy smile on my face, with a soppy smile on his face. Oh, dear. It isn’t that I don’t fancy him: I do, he’s genuinely fanciable, but not to the extent of wanting to do poor little Bridget out of him. I’m just about to suggest to Joanie, having remembered that she’s not interested in kids, that we sneak off to the pub and leave them to it, when he puts his arm round me. So that’s more or less it.

    And after a while we all go to the pub together and end up having lunch there, and Euan favours Joanie and Bridget with the story of me not recognising the word “chippy” and several other equally hilarious tales of my endearing colonial ignorance, not realising that they don’t wanna know and that there is nothing intrinsically cute, charming or funny about merely coming from an English-speaking community with a scattering of different dialectal usages. Let alone that none of that is the essential Me. And not realising either, at least I bloody well hope he doesn’t, that poor Bridget’s more or less in agony throughout.

    When he goes to the bog Joanie says limply: “Didn’t you really know what a chippy was?”

    “No! I mean, of course I worked it out, its fucking derivation’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, but I wasn’t sure whether it would sell fish as well!” She sniggers horribly; thanks, Big Cousin. “All right,” I snarl, “do you know what a dunny is?” –All I can think of, possibly because he’s gone there.

    She immediately collapses in agonising giggles, barely able to gasp: “Of course—I do! You only say it—fifteen times—a day!”

    “Yes, you do, Rosie,” confirms Bridget with an anxious smile.

    Me? Do I? Not me, surely? How uncouth. I just smile limply at her and offer: “No-one asked him for his autograph, did you notice, Bridget?”

    “Yes, I did, actually,” she says, blushing.

    Yeah. Right.

    Joanie and Bridget are both keen to join up with Rupy and look for naval bottoms in naval bellbottoms. Euan doesn’t get it—genuinely hetero, ya see. But he agrees tolerantly to come—at least, he puts himself forward and then agrees to it, geddit? Imagining he’s concealing a certain eagerness in the matter of putative Harriers that will possibly rise vertically. If there are any—yeah.

    According to Joanie we have to change into something nice for it, does she think it’s gonna be like a garden party at Buckingham Palace? I haven’t got anything nice to change into. I don’t point this out and we head back to the house.

    On the way I start firmly to talk to Joanie about the rellies, because she brought me some letters that had come from home, so this more or less forces Euan to talk nicely to Bridget. After a bit they’re into the Actor’s Craft so I hold Joanie back a bit.

    “This won’t work, Rosie,” she says very quietly in my ear. “She’s not his type.”

    Some of us have noticed. “Balls, he was into intense thin, dark rising actresses for yonks. Anyway, at least it’s giving her a chance.”

    “Don’t you fancy him?’ she hisses as we near the house.

    “Of course I fancy him, it’d be unnatural not to. But I can’t really take him seriously.”

    She takes a deep breath, has she recognised the L.R. Marshall theme song? “At least he’s the right age for you.”

    “As compared to?” Shit, I’ve gone bright red, right up to the scalp!

    She stares at me. “Rosie, what— Don’t say you’ve met another one!”

    “No!”

    Joanie just sighs.

    When we get inside she tries to force me into one of her sweetly-pretty frocks. I resist, oddly enough remembering very clearly the disaster that ensued last time she forced me into a sweetly-pretty frock. Then she gets Rupy in on the act and I burst into snorting snobs.

    “Look, has she met another one?” she says fiercely to poor Rupy.

    He’s horribly disconcerted, he thinks it’s his fault, poor lamb. “Whuh-what?”

    “Another unsuitable old man, that’s what! She was really odd earlier.”

    “N—Uh, Freddy had hold of a rumour,” he admits, eyeing my sobbing form sideways, “that Daffyd tried to—er—force his attentions, as it were. Yesterday morning, I think.”

    “What?”

    Snuffle. “He only grabbed me and kissed me!”

    “Blow your nose. Well, you ought to be used to that,” she says firmly.

    I blow my nose. “I am. It was stupid. And it was in full view, out on the flaming sweep, I didn’t need rescuing by him!”

    They exchange glances, and Rupy says soothingly: “No, of course, dear. But who was he?”

    “No-one! And I’m NOT gonna wear a sweetly-pretty frock!”

    Joanie gets very cunning and says: “Rosie, darling, if you wear a pretty dress, I think it’ll become very clear to poor Bridget that she hasn’t got a hope of Euan Keel. It would be the kindest thing.”

    “Definitely!” urges Rupy.

    Cruel to be kind, is what they mean. But I give in. This one’s white with little pale blue flowers all over it. A dead ringer for the other one except that it’s even lower cut at the bust and instead of plain straps it’s got shoe-string straps tied in horrible dinky bows on the shoulders. Yuck. I haven’t got a strapless bra so I just wear nothing under it like I did the other time. It doesn’t matter, this one’s strangling my tits almost as bad as the other one did, it’s just like wearing my Nell Gwynne corset. Rupy’s got all keen, he rushes out and rushes in again with a little bunch of white flowers tied up with a pale blue ribbon. Artificial flowers.

    “Where did you pinch this from?” asks Joanie interestedly as he fixes it in my ruddy golden curls.

    “There! –Mm? Oh, it was going begging, dear. Doesn’t she look a treat? Where’s your make-up, Rosie?”

    Giving in, I admit it’s in the bag with the laptop. It’s not a real laptop case, they cost megabucks and you can’t fit anything else in them. It’s more the size and shape of a carry-on bag. I grant you it’s totally nauseating, fake tapestry with pink fake leather bits, but it’s got lots of useful pockets and I got it at a Cunningham’s Warehouse in Adelaide for practically nothing when I was staying with Aunty Kate, those are the best shops in Oz. It’s sturdy as anything.

    He does my face with his usual skill and after I’ve made him take half the mascara and all of the blue eye-shadow off I admit it looks okay.

    Then Joanie forces me into her pale blue sandals and we go, her sweetly-pretty in a pink almost-waif-look artificial silk slip with a matching pink artificial silk sort of cardy over it and pink sandals, and me sweetly-pretty in you-know-what. Bridget’s changed into an actual waif-look dark grey slip that’s a dead ringer for Mrs Margery’s: even with her white skin it looks Goddawful, she looks like a ghost. Euan’s changed into one of those collarless white shirts! And slightly baggy pale grey slacks which Rupy instantly identifies with a squeal as real Armani. Silk and linen mix, how does that grab ya? There’s a thin gold necklace just showing below the salt cellars and above the tastefully only-just-visible curly chest hair, and the shirt’s tucked into the slacks, it would look good to any onlooker not in a mood like I’m in. Why did stupid Daffyd have to shoot off his stupid mouth to bloody Freddy? I already know Freddy’s the world’s worst gossip after Rupy himself, so I’m not wondering why he shot off his.

    Rupy, incidentally, looks the best of all of us, he’s in beautiful white slacks with a fawn lizard-skin belt—I don’t point out that if it’s real lizard he oughta be shot, or skinned like the unfortunate lizard, yeah—a fawn tee-shirt tucked into the slacks, and a loose pale oatmeal linen coat. Plus a white Panama with a pale yellow ribbon round it and a real pale yellow rosebud nicked from the display in the front hall in that. And his gold ear studs. Poetic. You’d never think he was pushing forty.

    Tony joins us, and he’s poetic, too, in tight shiny dark grey pants—I don’t think they’re from Rupy’s suit for the play, but at the same time I’m not taking any bets—plus a very tight dark grey tee-shirt, shows off the ballet-boy musculature, a thin silver necklace, matching small silver hoops and studs in the ears, and a long, floating chiffon scarf in tones of purple and grey that looks oddly familiar… As we go downstairs I manage to grab Rupy’s arm and hiss in his ear: “Is that Lucasta Grimshaw’s scarf that Tony’s nicked?”

    “Ssh!” He hasn’t denied it, so I conclude that it is, and he has.

    We head for the south coast of England, me praying very hard that Lucasta Grimshaw isn’t the sort of red-blooded female that fancies viewing naval bellbottoms and large pointy ships with huge guns on them.

    … Cripes. It is naval. There’s a whole—um… flotilla! Flotilla out there. Are they gonna fire off any of those big guns? Because although I don’t like loud noises, at a distance it’ll sure be exciting. And phallic, yep. –Yes, I can see the Harriers (?), thanks, Rupy. And are those helicopters, Euan? Really? –Jesus, it doesn’t seem to matter whether they’re gay or straight, does it? That Y chromosome means they just have to tell you.

    The cliffs aren’t very high, here, though we’re on the higher part: a bit further along the ground slopes back to a lawn which is where most of the up-market summer frocks and Armani suits have gathered with the champers and strawberries. Also a tea tent. Candy stripes like the big one back near the house, presumably it’s the trademark of the tea tent supplier in these parts? That area’s maybe eight feet above the water and there’s proper concrete steps with white rails, going to down to, um, not a boardwalk, what are those things? Not a pontoon. A wharf? –Jetty. Right, jetty. And moored to it is a terribly naval launch, I have an idea a naval launch in the true sense is a much larger affair but this is your actual launch-sized launch, terrifically spick and span with a couple of bellbottoms on guard by it! White bellbottoms, this being summer. Rupy’s completely vindicated!

    Up here where we are there’s a nice solid white railing all along the cliff top. Nevertheless I’m not tempted to go and lean on it. A bit back Rupy tried to tell us a horror story about a frightful accident early in the history of the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival’s association with the Royal Navy but stopped, possibly because I went pale green and Joanie said loudly: “Shut up, you idiot! Don’t you know Rosie’s terrified of heights?”

    At that Euan, who was standing pretty close to me anyway, emanating rather a nice small of warm expensive after-shave and warm Euan, put his arm round me. To which I responded grimly: “Don’t dare to try and make me go any nearer.”

    There was a moment’s stunned silence and then he replied: “To the edge? Rosie, I wouldn’t dream of it! What sort of sadists have you been associating with, in God’s name?”

    “Um, mostly my ruddy family.”

    “Families are like that,” he said with a smile in his voice, giving me, not to say the sweetly-pretty frock, a bit of a hug.

    “Mm. Well, um, most of the boys I knew at uni, I suppose. Sorry—university.”

    “Mm,” he said, giving me another bit of a hug and leaning his cheek on my head.

    At which I was foolish enough to admit: “You’re awfully nice, Euan.”

    “Thanks. You’re not so dusty, yourself.”

    After which we just stood there dreamily for a bit, him with his hard-on and me all flushed as to the capillaries and zingy as to the entire bloodstream below the capillaries. If you’re human you’ll probably know what I mean.

    Of course, by now Joanie’s cruel-to-be-kind plan has more than worked and Bridget’s more than got the picture. So Joanie’s keeping her company and chatting nicely, she’d do her a lot more good if she’d find a nice intense young actor for her, doesn’t she remember what it was like to be that young?

    Rupy’s found The Man Who Knows, Rupy always does that. And now reports excitedly that they are going to fire their guns, and the jets are going to rise vertically, and the band’s going to come over in the boats and play! We can see that there’s a little dais or impromptu bandstand down below on the lawn, so this last does seem likely.

    Pretty soon someone makes an announcement that we can’t understand on a crackly loud-speaker system and we can see activity on the boats—sorry, Euan, ships, ships—and I screw up my eyes and peer. Yes, they are gonna fire off—  BANG!

    OW! Christ! I clap my hands over my ears even though I can see Euan smiling tolerantly as I do it, funny little feminine thing that I am.

    Helpfully he points out the target. Helpfully Rupy points out the target. Helpfully Tony— Yes! We can see it!

    They seem to have missed it but we don’t point this out, though I’m pretty sure it’s hovering on the tip of Joanie’s tongue.

    “There’ll be another salvo in a minute,” says Euan helpfully. –Salvo?

    “Yes, they’re reloading,” agrees Rupy importantly.

    “Yes, look, there goes another round!” cries Tony.

    Omigod, they’ve gone all seamanlike.

     BANG! They were right. They did reload another round, and there was another salvo. They’ve missed the target again.

    This happens for a third time (BANG!) and Bridget ventures in a small voice: “Maybe they’re missing it on purpose?”

    “For effect? Working up to a grand climax?” Joanie gropes. Climax, eh? Good word for—

    “No! They’re getting the range!” Rupy informs us importantly.

    Right. Getting the range. Yes. Silly us. We girls exchange glances of feminine solidarity but manage to hold our tongues.

    BANG! Fourth time lucky. You see, they got the range! Yeah. Either that or Bridget was right and the whole thing’s faked and the show’s reached its climax. Or, another possibility, they’re a load of incompetent male wankers and it took them four goes to shoot a silly wooden thing about five hundred yards from their big guns.

    None of us mentions this, though I can see Bridget and Joanie are both bursting to, and we allow our expert escorts to guide our feeble female forms down to the lawn. Euan both leaving his arm round me and taking my laptop bag in his other hand. Crikey!

    Rupy decides busily that we’ll just have time to grab some lovely champers and strawberries and listen to the band do a couple of numbers before getting back to a good position to see the vertical— Yeah, yeah. We let them go off and forage for fodder. They all go, even Tony. Euan actually lets me hold my own laptop bag while they do it. We just look limply at one another for ages until Joanie finds the strength to utter: “Silly, wasn’t it?”

    “Yes!” me and Bridget gasp, breaking down in helpless giggles. Well, at least her poor little heart doesn’t seem to be totally broken by gorgeous, blindly indifferent Euan Keel.

    We’ve got a glass of champers down us and are just starting on the strawberries when the sound system emits one of these ear-shattering moans and we realise in horror that there’s gonna be Speeches. Oh, no!

    Oh, yes. Could sit down? Er, not on dampish English grass in Joanie’s dress, you’re not at home now, Rosie. Blow. We resign ourselves to it. Can’t see much, and the sound system’s dreadful. It’s someone from the Organising Committee thanking the Friends of the Mountjoy Festival and the Royal Navy, and then someone from the Friends thanking the Royal Navy, both male someones, ya coulda guessed that, eh, and then it’s someone from the Royal Navy. Boy, those uniforms, even without the bellbottoms, sure are spiffy, what with the whacking great loads of gold braid, and the hats and the medal ribbons; I can’t see very much but there’s a row of them with hats and ribbons and some of them have got gold cords as well, this one hasn’t got gold cords, but a chestful of ribbons, and he’s thanking the Organising Committee and the Friends for giving the Royal Navy the oppor—

    Suddenly I sit right down on the damp English grass in Joanie’s sweetly-pretty floral frock.

    Everybody’s very concerned, thinking I’ve got my period and I’m feeling wobbly, but I just manage, though having to hug my laptop bag very tightly as I do it, to shake my head.

    “I’m all right,” I croak. “Sorry.” I try to get up. Numbly they help me.

    “Rosie, what’s the matter?” asks Joanie. “Do you feel sick? Was it that pie at lunchtime?”

    I didn’t have the pie, because oddly enough after that huge breakfast I ate to show Euan I wasn’t his type I wasn’t all that hungry. “No. Bread and cheese,” I remind her faintly.

    “Oh, yes, so you did! What is it, then? Surely it’s not too hot for you?”

    “No. I’m okay.”

    Suddenly Rupy gets it. “No. It’s him, isn’t it, Rosie darling? Is that it? He’s not a judge, he’s a horrible admiral or something!”

    “Mm!” I gulp.

    “What do you mean, Rupy?” Joanie hisses furiously. “So there was another one?”

    “No, I rather think it’s the same one. –John Hah-with,” he mouths at her.

    Her jaw drops.

    Euan’s been standing by numbly, though he did help to help me up. “Are you talking about Captain Haworth, from the Dauntless?”

    “Are you, Rupy?” snaps Joanie fiercely.

    “Well, look at her, darling!”

    They look at me. A tear trickles out of one eye and down my cheek although I’ve been swearing to myself I’m not gonna let it. “Yeah, John Haworth, I never knew he was a Captain,” I gulp.

    Joanie looks grimly at Euan.

    “Um, I don’t know him, really: he was at dinner last night with William Mountjoy and, um, some of the other Friends and Committee members,” he offers feebly. “Um, well, as you can see, he’s a senior naval captain.”

    “Big Names. And Noises,” I translate, scrubbing angrily at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m all right. Sorry. It was just a shock.”

    Numbly Euan says: “But do you know him?”

    “Sort of. I only met him once. Well, twice. It was just that I didn’t know he was in the Navy.”

    He’s looking totally bewildered, as well he might. He puts his arm round me very tentatively, and as I don’t immediately shove it away, starts to look happier.

    Brilliantly Rupy deduces: “It was him, wasn’t it? The man who rescued you from that idiot Daffyd?”

    I just nod numbly.

    “No wonder!” he says significantly to Joanie.

    “Er, well, ye-es… I suppose he could do no less.”

    “No,” I admit. “He came out of the house and Daffyd wouldn’t let me go.”

    “What? When was this?” hisses Euan angrily, holding me tighter than ever.

    “Never mind. It was feeble,” I offer limply. “Forget it.”

    Nevertheless they indulge in a fever of speculation and comment, in not-very-lowered voices, it’s all pretty noisy because the sound system’s crackling like mad and the crowd’s not making much of an attempt to listen to the speeches. Until finally Joanie shuts them up and decides we’ll go back to the cliff.

    So we make our way back to the higher ground, Joanie leading the others on firmly and Euan holding me back a bit. Finally he says: “Was there something between you and Captain Haworth?”

    “No! I’ve met him twice in my life! If it’s any of your business!”

    “Then why react like that?”

    Why do ya think? “It was a shock. If you must know, he gave me the brush-off and I never expected to see him again. And he might’ve rescued me from Daffyd, but he thought the whole thing was funny. Well, not Daffyd. Me. He thinks I’m funny.”

    Euan’s still pretty puzzled but he gives me a bit of a hug and says: “He sounds like a pillock, Rosie. Forget him.”

    I’ve never actually heard anybody say the word “pillock” before in real life, so I’m speechless for a bit, what with that and other things. Finally I get out: “Yeah.”

    “You’ve probably been overdoing it, you know. Too many late nights, and all that bloody tapping with Rupy. And it is a very warm day: no wonder you came over a bit giddy,” he decides as we reach the top of the hill.

    Very warm? If it’s more than 26 Celsius, I’m Charley’s Aunt from Brazil, where the nuts come from! But if he wants to believe it, let him. “Yeah.”

    “Better?” he says putting his cheek next to mine and hugging me more than ever.

    I ought to say he’s awfully nice, again, but I can’t get the words out. “Yes. Thanks, Euan.” That works just as well, really, because he smiles and tightens his arm even more. Oh, well.

    The putative Harriers (I never do find out if that’s really what they are) do take off vertically, and the helicopters buzz round like helicopters and the boat—ship!—that’s “making smoke” steams very slowly up and down… Rupy’s found another Man Who Knows and tells us that tomorrow we can go on the big warship, the Dauntless! It’s open to view! Thanks, comrade.

    Throughout this entire period I am painfully aware that somewhere in the hinterland surrounded by a bevy of floral frocks and Armani suits and admirals there is one particular very straight back in a very white naval uniform, covered in medal ribbons and gold braid. I try very, very hard not to look for him.

    The afternoon wears on, with more Harriers rising and falling, gee, they can land, too, and Rupy disappears and Tony gets very sulky and then disappears, too, and Joanie stops being a mother hen and is absorbed into a gaggle of floral-frocked actresses who’ve known her forever, and, thank God, Euan lets himself be absorbed into a group of Big Names and super-pseuds and I manage to wriggle free of his arm while he’s telling them just what was wrong with Adam McIntyre’s Hamlet… And I go back up the slope to dear little Bridget. I’m just gonna suggest we commit the heinous crime of sitting on the grass, because what with one thing and another, I’ve had it, when Freddy heaves into view, beaming. He was introduced to Bridget after the show yesterday arvo but obviously doesn’t remember her; but never mind, she’s young and female and without a visible escort. So I thankfully let him take her off. He’ll give her a good time, if she’ll let him.

    I’m just gonna sit down when The Voice says from behind me: “Hullo, again. What do you think of it?”

    First I clench my fists and grit my teeth. Then I ungrit my teeth and take a deep breath. Then I turn to face the uniform. Words cannot express— I mean to say! What with the shoulders, and the medal ribbons, and the gold braid on the shoulders—! And don’t forget, even with Joanie’s shoes I’m barely five-foot-four, while I think he’d be about five-ten without his shoes, which he isn’t, obviously. There’s The Hat, too. He takes it off and grins at me, the wanking, up-himself British naval shit, and then tucks it smartly under his arm.

    So I say: “Macho, isn’t it?”

    “I suppose it is. Though aren’t we keeping the world safe for all you landlubbers?”

    “Not for me, you’re not, I’m an Australian citizen!”

    “So you are. And a fellow,” he murmurs.

    “Yeah. Anyway, you’re manifestly not, you’re farting about playing The Trumpet Voluntary off-key and shooting off good ammunition that probably cost the British taxpayer megabucks, all to amuse a parcel of up-themselves artified English gentry.”

    “Oh, artified and tartified. Don’t blame me, I was ordered to do it.”—Yeah, like he was ordered not to drive me home alone with him in his car! I don’t say it: gutless.—“No more nasty fellows been pestering you, I hope?”—Did he see me with Euan? I just shake my head numbly.—“Good. Enjoying the Festival?”

    “In parts: like the curate’s egg.” I didn’t mean to come out with that, it’s one of Dad’s.

    He throws back his head and gives a startled laugh, he’s just so male I wanna burst out bawling, not to mention, hurl myself at him, chestful of ribbons an’ all. Grow up, Rosie!

    “I haven’t heard that for years! Where did you get that from?”

    “One of Dad’s,” I say grimly.

    “That puts me in my place, doesn’t it?” he says tightly.

    Shit, he doesn’t care, does he? “No. It was a factual observation.”

    He looks wry. “Mm.”

    There’s a short pause. One of those agonising ones: right.

    “Have all your theatrical friends deserted you?”

    I’m pretty sure he did see us. “Yes, thank God. Have all your up-market friends deserted you?”

    “No, I’ve managed to shake them off for a moment.”

    Yeah, right. I can see an admiral or something heading towards us up the slope with a couple of ladies hanging off his arms so I reply: “Yeah, well, here comes your admiral or something to retrieve you.”

    He looks, and smiles a bit, so that was the wrong guess. “Corky Corcoran. He’s a commander: see the three stripes?”

    “No.” Boy, was that puerile!

    He thinks so, too, his lips do that thing. I think I’m on the brink of telling him to go away, that or throwing myself at his feet, one or the other, only Euan surfaces from nowhere and puts his arm round my waist before I can move.

    “There you are! Why did you run away?”

    “You were surrounded by pseuds, Euan.”

    “Aye, I was that! But you could’ve rescued me, Rosie,” he says in a melting voice, eyeing John Haworth sideways.

    He’s not phased, I doubt if anything could phase him. He just says smoothly: “Euan Keel, isn’t it? I think we did meet somewhere in that shemozzle last night. Allow me to congratulate you on your performance.” Holding out his hand.

    Euan, the feeble twit, allows his hand to be shaken nicely. Then Commander Corky Corcoran comes up and the two ladies discover who Euan is and start to gush, but after about fifteen hours of this during which L.R. Marshall says nothing except “Hullo” and “Hullo” and “Hullo”, one of the ladies takes Captain Haworth’s arm possessively and they all go away.

    After that there’s more band and some marching, but at long last it’s over.

    We do go to the last night of the play, but it’s all a blur. Afterwards Euan makes a really heavy pass but I lie and say I have got my period after all. I’m not so blurred that I don’t register the expression of mixed disappointment and relief that comes over his face at this. And since Rupy’s gone off to Tony’s room I take his room and let Joanie have mine to herself. And bawl myself to sleep, for a change.

    And that’s it for the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival. Why the Hell did I have to let myself be talked into coming down here? Of all the joints in all the—

    Yeah. Well.