In The Captain’s Wife the irrepressible Rosie Marshall, whom we first met in The Captain’s Daughter, is now Rosie Haworth, married to John Haworth, R.N., her Real Captain. She’s known to the world’s telly-viewing public as Lily Rose Rayne, 21st-century Marilyn Monroe, darling of the tabloids, and star of the hugely popular television series The Captain’s Daughter—but of course in real life she’s a research fellow in sociology. Her idea is that she’ll give up the TV stuff—not least because she’s pregnant. She’s got more than enough on her plate, with a big research project to finish off and another one in the pipeline.

But it’s a case of the best-laid plans, as Rosie plunges herself into finding someone to take over her rôle, and copes with the ups and downs of married life – “a lot harder than in your up-yourself carefree bachelor-girl days you ever imagined it was gonna be. I mean, three days back from your honeymoon and barely over the jet-lag when his new orders arrive?” And then there’s the baby, due in September. September 2001…

Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington



Episode 1: Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage,
Mrs Worthington

INT.  Chillingford SCHOOL/Headmistress’ Study - DAY

Headmistress (50) seated at desk. Captain’s Wife (40s) in well cut tweeds,
small dark brown felt hat, yellow and brown silk scarf at neck, conservative tooled-
leather brown shoes, and Captain’s Stepdaughter (nearly 17) in perky pony-
tail, flared quilted skirt over two stiff petticoats, tight sweater and
high heels, standing in front of desk.

HEADMISTRESS
(rises; smiles)
Delighted to meet you, Mrs Harding. So this is
Virginia?

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
(smiles uneasily; shakes hands)
How do y—

CAPTAIN’S STEPDAUGHTER
(blows large pink bubble; interrupts her)
Nope. Ginny. Hi.

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
(hurriedly)
Oh, well, yes, Miss Johnson, we do call her Ginny.
Er—excuse her, won’t you? We’ve been living in
America for some time, you see.

CAPTAIN’S STEPDAUGHTER
(informatively)
Yeah, only Mom came home to England, beginning
of last year: she already dumped Pops three years
back, she couldn’t take the extra-curricular
activities, geddit?

Headmistress blenches, tries to smile. Captain’s Stepdaughter chews.

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
(faintly)
That’ll do, dear.

CAPTAIN’S STEPDAUGHTER
(ignoring her)
I stayed on in the States, she thought I better stay
on at my school, like I was used to it, see? And
Pops doesn’t approve of progressive private
schools but he was coughing up the dough,
geddit? Only then Mary Jay, she’s his second,
well, she wanted him to move to Florida, and I
hadda stay with Gramma and Granpop, they’re
okay, only real old-fashioned, see? Squares. And
Gramma said junior high had taught me real
coarse ways. Square, daddyo. And it wasn’t like it
was in Aunty Shirley’s day. And called Mom, long-
distance. Which she coulda waited, Mom was
coming over for the summer vacation anyroad,
huh, Mom? So Gramma said senior high would be
worse, and I wasn’t learning nothing, and never
mind Pop’s dough, I was never gonna get in at a
decent college. Real square, huh? So Mom said I
better come on back with her and go to her old
school. And Christmas vacation I can stay with her
and her second, he’s in your British Royal Navy.

She Chews, blows large pink bubble.

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
(quickly)
Of course, Roderick would have come with us, but
he’s in the Med. with his ship.

HEADMISTRESS
I quite understand, Mrs Harding; please don’t
apologise: many of our Chillingford gels have
fathers in the Services.

CAPTAIN’S STEPDAUGHTER
(laughs hoarsely)
Yeah, they’re the ones with the brothers she
imagines she's gonna marry me off to! Dream on,
Mom!

Captain’s Wife smiles palely.

INT.  Chillingford SCHOOL/GIRLS’ DORMITORY - DAY

Captain’s Stepdaughter about to unpack. English schoolgirls in gym slips
cluster round her, examining her American clothes, half-envious, half-
sniggering. Captain’s Stepdaughter’s face blankly indifferent; she shrugs,
chews.

    Well, that’s the working script. But we ain’t seen nothing like it yet. There’s a gloomy silence as the fifteenth and last candidate for Captain’s Stepdaughter, having managed to look blank while chewing, is thanked and minces out in her slim-cut après-waif-look dress under her scraggy, après-waif hair. Finally Paula O’Reilly notes sourly: “They all managed to chew.”
    Amaryllis Nuttall has obligingly been reading her rôle of Captain’s Wife for the second round of auditions, someone having had the bright idea that it might lend the thing more verisimilitude and drag something like a performance out of the short-listed candidates. She comes and perches down my end of the big table we’re all sitting behind and says: “Their American accents were all dreadful, though, Paula.”
    “Like their acting,” notes Paul Mitchell grimly. He’s the director. He’s directed all four series of The Captain’s Daughter; Brian Hendricks, the producer and head of Henny Penny Productions, likes to achieve continuity in his productions and also likes Paul’s way of working, which is very economical, like not calling in hugely expensive camera crews and sound crews and lighting crews before he’s worked out the moves and the camera angles.
    Amaryllis is a very tolerant person, not to say even vaguer than her character is, and she flutes: “Oh, well, yes, I suppose they weren’t very good, poor little souls… But we were all young once!”
    “Yeah; I’ve seen that film you were in with Cliff Richard,” I note helpfully, if tactlessly.
    Smiling like anything, she returns pleasedly: “Wasn’t it dire, Rosie, darling? Of course, I was only a kid.”
    “Yeah, but I don't think that necessarily contributed all that much to the direness, Amaryllis. The purblind producers not realising that you can’t offer a challenge to the Elvis flicks unless you’ve got something to put on screen that’s got as much S.A. as Elvis coulda had something to d—”
    “Shut up,” groans Paul. “Is that all, Damian?”
    Round-faced young Damian is something in Production, he’s more Brian’s helper than Paul’s; but he checks his folders helpfully and replies: “Yes.”
    Paul grabs his forehead in despair and sags all over the table.
    “This is ludicrous,” announces Brian Hendricks grimly.
    Ludicrous it may well be, but nevertheless it’s a fact. When they spread the word they were casting for the part they had something like four hundred applications from possibles, plus several hundred more from impossibles, the casting agents being ever-hopeful—ever-hopeful of a commission, right. But they rapidly winnowed out the impossible possibles, none of them having the Fifties look they want for the show, let alone the perky American Fifties look, let alone being able to act, though at that stage that was a secondary consideration, and were left, as I say, with only fifteen possible possibles.
    Varley Knollys gets up: he’s had it. It was obvious from the moment the possible possibles minced into the room that none of them had the Fifties look he wants. Varley appears in the credits as The Captain’s Daughter’s writer and half of the “Original Inspiration”, the other half being Brian Hendricks himself. (They had a HUGE demarcation dispute over that one. But it is Brian’s company, so he won.) Actually Varley only writes the series outline and the story outline for each episode, plus any choice dialogue he happens to feel like writing, and Paula O’Reilly, who only appears in the credits as “Additional Dialogue by” in fact does ninety-eight percent of the dialogue and all the one-liners the thing’s become famous for over the year and a half it’s been screening. (They’re running two series a year, it’s long since broken all records for continuous top ratings. Well, apart from Match Of The Day.) Varley is a serious writer, like, Simeon’s Quest. No? Lucky you. It’s one of those wanking English young man’s tribulations-at-his-exclusive-university at-the-taxpayers’-expense epics. Near-autobiog., you got it.
    “Look,” he says: “this is a waste of time.”—Like, beneath the dignity of a serious writer like him.—“Ring me when you’ve found something that can manage an American accent, Brian. And if it hasn’t got tits, don’t bother.” He stalks out, looking sour, it’s not that he’s a tit-man, it’s that skinny little New Millennium girlish actresses haven’t got the Fifties look the show’s famous for, and he’d quite like it to go on generating the megabucks that allow him to buy all those silver-grey hand-made Italian designer suits and shoes.
    After a bit Brian says glumly, apropos the tits: “She is only supposed to be a schoolgirl.”
    Surprisingly enough Amaryllis’s mind hasn’t wandered completely off the topic: she says to me: “Were you busty at sixteen, Rosie?”
    “Nearly seventeen, isn’t it? Very.”
    “Thanks,” puts in Paula drily. “Don’t suppose you can do an American accent, can you?”
    Oh, please, my name’s not Branagh! (Don’t say it.) “I can imitate one. You want Californian?” (I know a Californian, you see: Mark Rutherford.) Paula nods groggily and concedes it’ll do.
    Amaryllis is pleased, it’ll give her an idea of how the scene should go, so she jumps up and says: “Come on, then!” And Mandy, one of Brian’s slaves, who’s been reading Headmistress, they haven’t cast that yet, looks dubiously at him but gets the nod. So I get up, with some difficulty, I’m six months pregnant going on seven, and there’s not that much room behind our table, and go and stand with them.

MANDY, AS HEADMISTRESS
(rises; smiles—doesn’t do it)
Delighted to meet you, Mrs Harding. So this is
Virginia?

AMARYLLIS, AS CAPTAIN’S
WIFE
(smiles uneasily; doesn’t shake hands
How do y—

ME, IN MARK RUTHERFORD’S
CALIFORNIAN ACCENT, AS
CAPTAIN’S STEPD.
(purse lips as of one blowing large pink
bubble, make bubble-popping noise, not in
script; interrupt)
Nope. Ginny. Hi.

AMARYLLIS, AS CAPTAIN’S
WIFE
(hurriedly)
Oh, well, yes, Miss Johnson, we do call her Ginny.
Er—excuse her, won’t you? We’ve been living in
America for some time, you s—

ME, AS CAPTAIN’S STEPD.
(interrupt, not in script; informatively)
Yeah, only Mom came home to England,
beginning of last year: she already dumped Pops
three years back, she couldn’t take the extra-
curricular activities, geddit?

Mandy as Headmistress omits business. I chew as Captain’s Stepd.

AMARYLLIS, AS CAPTAIN’S
WIFE
(faintly)
That’ll do, dear.

ME, AS CAPTAIN’S STEPD.
(chewing, not in script; ignore her)
I stayed on in the States, she thought I better stay
on at my school, like I was used to it, see?
(Take juicy breath, chewing, not in script.)
And Pops doesn’t approve of progressive private
schools but he was coughing up the dough,
geddit?
(Chew juicily, breathe heavily, not in
script.)
Only then Mary Jay, she’s his second, well, she
wanted him to move to Florida, and I hadda stay
with Gramma and Granpop, they’re okay, only real
old-fashioned, see? Squares.

I chew, pretend to blow large pink bubble.

PAUL MITCHELL
(desperately; interrupts)
For God’s sake, stop!

    We stop and I say: “Was that wrong?”
    “No, only too right,” he groans. “I can’t take any more of it! Why don’t I just shoot myself now?” –Yeah, why don’tcha, Paul? (Don’t say it.) He is an excellent director and he does save Henny Penny Productions lots of money but he’s a Little Hitler and all the cast have suffered more than enough at his hands over the two years the thing’s been in production.
    “Yes, you were very good, Rosie!” flutes Amaryllis happily. “I quite see how the two of them will interact, now, Paul, dear!”
    “Yes, but what good will that do us?” he asks nastily.
    She looks totally blank—her character’s slated to do that a lot, vagueness, blankness and outright but nice dottiness being Amaryllis’s thing. Combined with those wonderful pixie-like looks on top of the fabulous bone structure, they mean that she’s been in telly work for most of the last forty years, even though she’s hopeless at remembering her lines and has to have an auto-cue if she’s required to speak more than forty words together, I kid you not, and equally hopeless at turning up for rehearsal, not to say for actual shooting, unless her hubby’s there to see she does. Which he is, today: he’s just sitting quietly reading his book, looking up now and then to see she hasn’t put down a scarf or a handbag or a coat and wandered off from it. They say she once put down one of their kids in a supermarket and wandered off from it, around thirty years back, but this is possibly apocryphal.
    “No Stepdaughter,” Paula reminds her tolerantly. Paula’s quite bright, but not bright enough to see that getting into the habit of prompting Amaryllis is a Big Mistake, because Amaryllis will start relying on her (like she does on the hubby, right) and will make less and less effort to remember things for herself, up to and including the lines Paula’s written for her, yep, you goddit. And this will be no sinecure, since the fifth series and its successors are going to centre more and more on Amaryllis as the Captain’s second wife. (Though they aren’t renaming the thing—well, fair enough, The Reluctant Débutante, which was largely the inspiration for the new turn the thing’s taking, wasn’t called after the Kay Kendall character who carried it, either.)
    “I don’t suppose—” Round-faced Damian breaks off, he’s not here to make suggestions, only to take copious notes for Brian and make sure that everybody on the list to be auditioned, is auditioned.
    “What?” says Brian heavily. He’s quite a decent type, not into putting down his subordinates unnecessarily, unlike Paul Mitchell.
    “Um, well, we couldn’t let Lily Rose read it and, um, dub it, I suppose?” he squeaks.
    Lily Rose Rayne is my stage name, folks, if you’ve been anywhere near the idiot-box these last two years you’ll have heard it. And yes, it’s true that I am actually a sociologist, a Fellow at London University, and also true that I’ve recently married a senior Royal Navy captain. And whether or not that gruesome episode of Parkinson or the issue of The Observer that broke it actually got the point over to you, the only reason I got involved in The Captain’s Daughter in the first place was that my academic colleague, the aforesaid Mark Rutherford, who’s deeply into small group dynamics, wanted me to follow through a TV series in production for a chapter in his latest book. Which I agreed to, not then having permanent tenure and only having got my fellowship because Mark was on the interviewing panel and spotted me as in his court, methodology-wise. Neither of us envisaged at the time that I’d be dumb enough, not to say brass-faced enough, to go along to an audition in place of my cousin Joanie, who’s a real actress, or that I’d actually get cast for the leading rôle, busty blonde types with Shirley Temple hairdoes who can sing and tap a bit being rather sparse on the ground in the last year of the last millennium.
    And I only went on with it because it dawned, up-myself and almost completely self-centred though at that point I was, that when the thing was unexpectedly a hit, a large number of other people’s livelihoods, not to say their mortgages, depended on me.
    What neither Parkinson nor The Observer, nor any of the wanking tabloids that have been publishing ceaseless ill-informed crap for the five months or so since the story broke will have told you, however, was that it was all pretty traumatic. Especially the bit where I had to confess to Brian Hendricks who I really was, and tell him I’d had enough of being Lily Rose Rayne, telly actress, darling of the tabloids, and the New Millennium’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. And even more especially the bit where, having let Brian talk me into agreeing to do the feebleized Daughter for the fourth series, I then did an interview with The Observer as me (i.e., L.R. Marshall, M.A., Ph.D.) when they were publishing extracts from Mark’s book, and got spotted. And also especially the bit where, Brian having fixed it all up that I’d be kept in seclusion until The Observer broke the story and Parky had done the first post-story TV interview (who was scratching whose back at this juncture not being absolutely clear), I then had to further confess to him that I was preggy, so if we didn’t film my bits of the fourth series P.D.Q.— Yeah.
    However, possibly more traumatic for yours truly, though not for poor old Brian, were the bits where I had to confess it all, up to and including the preggy, to Captain John Bernard Godfrey James Haworth, R.N. Posted to some sort of daft defence liaison job in the States as he was, poor John, for having got himself snapped on holiday in Spain in nothing but a pair of white shorts and his fab chest in the close company of Guess Who, most of the confessing had to be done by phone. Obviously the preggy didn’t happen by phone, it happened just before Christmas when I was over there on hols. And forgot to remind him— Yeah. Well, he is twenty-three years older than me, he’s The Pill generation, so to be fair, it was more than fifty percent my fault. Being John, he let me go through the big confession scene and eventually admitted he already knew. Well, he wasn’t too pleased with my behaviour over the putting-off-telling-Brian-for-three-months bit. Or over the deliberate going off to be interviewed by The Observer in a state of up-myselfness to the Nth degree, being under the delusion that smart little Rosie Marshall could fool all of the people all of the time. You guessed a Royal Navy senior captain might not’ve been, didja? Yeah. –He wasn’t deliberately punishing me by making me confess the preggy, NO! He was waiting to see if I’d have the guts and integrity to tell him. Like, instead of getting one of our mutual friends to do it for me. Like what I nearly did, actually.
    I don’t need to reply to Damian’s suggestion that they could let me read it and dub it, because Paul and Brian, ably seconded by Paula, are shouting at him that NO! We couldn’t! And none of those cretins could ACT! Words to that effect.
    Amaryllis has been looking very sympathetically at Damian and now she flutes: “Is there anybody else that might do? Do you know anybody, Rosie?”
    Me? I don’t even know why they wanted me to sit in! Well, true, my contract stipulates one working day per week for the fourth series for Henny Penny, and since they’ve finished filming my bits but the series isn’t completed yet, Paul is grimly getting his pound of flesh. Brian did start off by saying he wanted to check the Looks with me, but it pretty soon dawned that none of the thin-chested, scrawny, salt-cellary, spindly-armed, bow-legged looks we were getting needed checking. Make that bowed-chested.
    “N— Um, well, Bridget Herlihy could do the accents on her head, including the phasing out of the worst of the American after Chillingford’s had a go at the poor girl, and you could always make her eat red meat and chips for the Look, but she’s a serious actress, really, and she’s doing Cleopatra’s handmaiden at Stratford, and then those nice little supporting rôles in those telly Shakespeare things, this year.”
    “And next year and the year after that, if Aubrey Mattingforth works at his usual pace,” notes Brian with a shrug. –Henny Penny doesn’t do Shakespeare. Too risky. Well, little risk that the Beeb won’t screen it, so long as most of the Wurds are intact, but highly unlikely it’ll get enough of an audience to even scrape into the Ratings.
    “Who? Oh, the director,” I say in my tactless Australian way. “Yeah. Um, well, there’s her sister, Katie. –Katie Herlihy,” I explain helpfully.
    “Have I heard of her, dear?” asks Amaryllis cautiously.
    “Nah, she’s only done amateur stuff in the Provinces,” I explain helpfully in her lingo.
    “Then why suggest her?” snaps Paul.
    I shrug. “Thought you were desperate. Can me and Tim go, now?” –By my feet John’s big black retriever lifts his head hopefully. He’s used to rehearsals, poor Tim, and doubtless has assumed, because we’re in a great big bare rehearsal room with our Grate Director shouting at inept actresses, that this is what today’s lot is.
    “Just a moment, Lily Rose,” Brian says slowly. –I have asked him to call me Rosie, which I’d always been called all my life until I started the fucking Lily Rose Rayne crap, but he forgets more than half the time. “Why did you suggest her?”
    “We-ell… She has got the Look. And she was quite good in the uni Drama Society’s production of Twelfth Night. She was Maria.”
    “OUDS?” he says sharply.
    “No. Manchester. Me and Bridget popped up to see it, last year. She’s at uni there,” I explain helpfully. “It’s quite handy really, because she can live at home.”
    He’s not listening. “How good was she?”
    “Um… Well, she did it with a Yorkshire accent, Brian, evidently she’s so strong-minded the director couldn’t stop her, but— Well, I haven’t seen all that much Shakespeare. And almost no good Shakespeare.”
    “You said you got that television Dream with Helen Mirren, in Australia,” objects Paul.
    I wince. “Exactly. Helen Mirren and that bloody pond.”
    He looks blank, but Amaryllis gives a delighted trill of laughter which she tries unsuccessfully to turn into a cough and Brian grins reluctantly. And Paula says limply: “Oh, did that get on your wick, too?” –For quite some time Paula was under the impression, her and the rest of the English-speaking public, true, that I was as dumb as the actual Captain’s Daughter. And she hasn’t quite adjusted to the fact of the Ph.D. and the not as green as I’m cabbage-looking.
    “Yeah. Um… I’d say that Katie Herlihy is unpolished, she’s got very little idea of timing, her voice production’s ragged, and she moves about as well as your average water buffalo, but she’s definitely got something. Well, it was impossible to look at anyone else during any of her scenes.”
    “How good was the Sir Toby?” asks Paul sharply.
    I have to admit he wasn’t very good and they all frown over it. But then Brian decides briskly: “Trot her down here, it can't do any harm to hear the girl read. And if she’s got the Look, we might be able to do something with her.”
    Paula’s eyeing me drily. “Mm. But does she want to a be a nacktress?”
    Bummer, they’re all looking at me fixedly, even Amaryllis. “Uh—dunno. She’s not doing too good with the B.Sc., or so report has it.”
    “B.Sc.?” croaks Paula. She did Arts, at Oxford. Just managing a Second.
    “Does she read?” asks Paul in a voice of doom. “Correction: can she read?”
    “Dunno. She might of learned up her part off a tape, for all I know.”
    “Look, shut up!” Brian orders heatedly at this point. “Can you get hold of her?”
    “No, but Bridget’ll be able to.”
    “In that case, Lily Rose,” he says grimly, “since it’s entirely your fault that we’re in this hole, do me a great favour and ask her to do so, will you?”
    Silly nit, I’d do it anyway, he doesn’t have to threaten me! “Yeah,” I concede mildly. “I’m having tea with her tonight, actually. –Sorry,” I amend, untruthfully: “dinner. Will you spring for Katie’s fare to London and back?”
    He will, but only on the train. More than I expected. And I haven't got a picture of her, have I? No, but I’m pretty sure Bridget will have. (Actually, I may have the programme somewhere with a very smudged photo of her, but I don't mention this. Since John moved into the flat it's become remarkably ship-shape and Bristol fashion and it’s on the cards the programme has quietly disappeared along with the other piles of crap in the kitchen drawers. And the drawers of the sideboard, yep.)
    So we’re at last allowed to go. And no, Damian, Brian doesn’t want to check through your notes, thanks. At the last moment he holds me back. I look up at him meekly: he’s about five-ten, broad-shouldered, quite burly, late fifties, and I’m five-two, with the ruddy yellow curls in a Shirley Temple cut for the part.
    “Don’t bother with that look, thanks. We’re all aware of precisely how much it means. Is there one garment left in your wardrobe that you don’t bulge out of?”
    “No. Sorry, Brian.”
    He sighs.
    “Of course, Henny Penny could always spring for some politely-concealing gathered or pleated maternity blouses. In the Fifties they had little Peter Pan collars of broderie Anglaise, like in those revolting movies with June Allyson as Jimmy Stewart’s wife while he bombed Korea.”
    “At least you didn’t say Doris Day,” he concedes heavily.
    “Really! What an offensive suggestion! Doris was never pregnant. She merely got married and inseminated, in that order, and then produced twins!”
    “Drop that,” he says, trying not to laugh. “I suppose you’ve done what passes for your best. Come along, then.”
    I let him gather me and Tim up and cart us downstairs, hoping he hasn’t got a flaming interview lined up— No. Merely wants to make sure the bulge and I get from point A to the flat safely. Oh. well, his only daughter’s been married for three years to a person whom Brian has been heard declaring bitterly is incapable of it, and she lives in Edinburgh and they hardly see anything of her. Poor old Brian. We get into his shiny car and Tim goes to sleep while I listen tolerantly to the latest in the only-son-not-working-at-any-of-his-university-subjects saga…


    At least the crowd of paparazzi that infested the front steps of our building for three months after the story broke have now vanished. And me and Tim go thankfully indoors.
    “Good grief! Talk about mother hens, eh, Tim?”
    He wags his tail like anything and leans on my leg, and I make very sure the tail isn’t sticking through the wanking grille-work of the frightful lift and up we go. Our London flat used to be my cousin Joanie's flat but when she and her Seve bought their bar in Spain John bought the lease. But what with him being sent off on manoeuvres less than a week after we got back from the honeymoon we haven’t had time to do anything to it and it’s still very brown. Wainscoting. Only pine, according to him. Not sure if that means he’ll let me have it painted over or not. His cottage just outside Portsmouth has got real oak ditto in the downstairs rooms, and I know he’ll never let me touch that, in fact I haven’t even breathed a suggestion of touching it, the more so as the besotted nong had the bedroom entirely redecorated for me as a surprise while we were honeymooning Downunder with the rellies.
    Well, officially it was our honeymoon. Actually it was more like a period of extended torture. What with Mum bawling at the drop of a hat—it’s not that she doesn’t like John, she’s a natural bawler—and having to lie unendingly about liking what she's done to the house, not to mention sit through the entire New Wing saga approx. fifteen times... And what with John not actually taking a shine to my oldest friend, Joslynne—understandable, what with the navel ring and the dagger tattoo next to it she had done when she was in her Rough Trade stage… And what with, further, Aunty Allyson inflicting my bloody cousin Wendalyn and Wendalyn’s wet-behind-the-ears second, Bryce, on us, plus and the sickening Little Taylor, by Shane out of Wendalyn, all done out in nylon frills and a smirk: “I can dance too, Aunty Wosie!” I’m not her aunt, I’m technically her first cousin once removed, poisonous little toad. Not to mention being unable to get out of visiting Aunty Kate in Adelaide because John wanted to go home via Perth— Oh, forget it. At least the Navy let him have some time off, and at least I was with him. And everybody’s rellies are vile, aren’t they?
    Anyway the flat’s all brown, as I say. So we go through to the kitchen, closing our eyes to the brown sitting-dining room, and I give him real dogfood out of a tin, poor old Tim. Wish Bridget would hurry up, I’m starving.
    There’s the door, but it’s not Bridget, it’s Rupy: Rupert Maynarde, my official, or Captain’s Daughter husband, as opposed to my real husband. Confused? You and the rest of the Great British Public. People keep accosting him in the street or the supermarket and congratulating him on the baby, poor old Rupy. –Gay, fortyish, looks thirtyish, one of those very smooth, delicately boned faces that photograph marvellously and make up marvellously and that will doubtless look no more than forty-five when he’s sixty. He shared the flat with me and Joanie and then with me, after he sub-let his. The plan was, after John bought up the lease (ninety-one years left in it, think he envisages leaving it to the bulge in his will), that Rupy was going to go and lodge with Doris Winslow on the second floor, because her and us are great friends. (Though her Buster isn’t great friends with Tim, he’s only a corgi and comes to about Tim’s knee.) But then the Navy sent John away, and what the heck, Rupy and me are used to flatting together, so he just stayed on.
    I’m not allowed gin while I’ve got the bulge, so Rupy considerately helps himself to a drop of John’s brandy instead. And considerately pours me a glass of fortified orange juice, or, certified MUCK, while we wait for Bridget. Thanks, comrade.
    Here she is at last, panting and apologising. First rehearsal with Aubrey Mattingforth went on forever— Yeah, yeah. Rupy asks did they actually read any Bard, dear, but of course the answer’s a lemon. He discussed some of his theories about some of Shakespeare’s later plays— Yeah, yeah. -Folks, if you didn’t think there were any female supporting parts in the later plays, you’re more or less right. She’s doing Helen, some sort of lady-in-waiting to Imogen in Cymbeline. What if you’ve never heard of, you’re with the vast majority. I wouldn’t let it upset you, I only know it because they made me read it at uni and I rather liked Imogen, she’s got guts and sense. I mention this and Rupy gasps: “You're not doing Cymbeline?”
    “Um, yes, it is one of the later plays, ” she says, blushing at his ignorance—sweet-natured girl, Bridget. And only twenty-two: still young enough to care about other people’s ignorance, not to say, think it matters.
    Rupy doesn’t know or care if it’s a later play, in fact he wouldn’t care if it was by Francis Bacon, that's not his point. “But darling! After the Stratford version?”
    “Well, it was such a hit, Rupy. That’s why Aubrey”—another blush, calling the famous director by his first name, not a crush: no sensible human, even aged twenty-two, could possibly have a crush on him—“thought it would appeal to a wider public.”
    “It’s it, ya nong,” I clarify helpfully.
    “Yuh— Uh— Oh,” he says, sagging. “You mean he directed the Stratford version, too?”
    “Um, yes. Of course. Didn’t you realise?” she says limply.
    He sags. “No. Darling, one was envisaging the most frightful feuds— Good grief.”
    “Have some more of John’s brandy, Rupy,” I suggest pointedly.
    “Thanks, I will!” he says with feeling. He pours himself a strong one and insults it grievously by dumping ginger ale into it.
    Generously I offer Bridget a drink but as expected, she refuses, she doesn't drink much at all.
    Rupy verifies that Adam McIntyre is repeating his success as Cymbeline, yes; and, with a sideways glance at me, that Euan Keel (ex-boyfriend of mine) is repeating his success as Posthumus; and, this time not looking at me, asks who’s taking Imogen? He’s afraid she’ll say Kiki Brathwaite, the gorgeous Black actress that Euan took up with before actually dumping me. As I was taking up with John at the same time I don’t give a stuff, and I was never in love with Euan, anyway. So I say baldly: “Is it Kiki Brathwaite?” But it isn’t, she’s very busy in rehearsal at Stratford as Cleopatra, it’s Georgy Harris, Adam McIntyre’s wife. She is a lot younger than him, true, so not at all unsuited to the rôle. But dear little Bridget’s obviously thinking that the idea of a much younger wife playing a daughter to her husband might be a touchy subject for me, since I play the daughter of a Royal Navy captain in the ruddy series while being married to a much older real—
    I get up. “Good. That girl that did it at Stratford was quite good, but too waify. Georgy Harris’ll be miles better. Can we go? I’m starving.”
    So we leave Tim on guard at the flat, and go. Only down the road to The Tabla: Rupy and me often eat there and as Bridget has admitted she’d love an Indian meal, she hasn’t had one for ages, we don’t need persuading.
    Mr Singh greets us with delight, as usual, and gives us the best table. And nips out the back to tell Mrs Singh we’re here. I saw her this morning but she asks after me and the bulge again, and as usual tells us to ignore the menu, and also as usual produces something totally wonderful. Greg, their second son, shoots over to warn us, as usual, not to touch—
    “–that pickle!” we chorus, even Bridget, and she then goes into a terrific giggling fit. –Ooh, Greg and Bridget? The Singhs aren’t strict: they wouldn’t mind, once Mr Singh’s old father pops off, and as he's turned ninety-three, it can't be long, now. Greg’s about the right age, he's doing his Master’s degree in sociology, and in fact, once the bulge is out of the way is going to help me with my next big research project.
    “Stop that,” orders Rupy sternly as Greg retreats, grinning, to serve the other customers.
    “Eh?” –I’m only adding a bit of yoghurt to the curried meat I’ve scooped up with my bit of chapatti.
    “Not that. And you haven’t been getting enough calcium, have you? John’ll kill you.”
    “And then string you from the yardarm, yeah. Stop what, then?”
    “Match-making,” he says sternly.
    Far from taking offence or becoming embarrassed, Bridget goes into another fit of the giggles.
    “I was not!”
    “Yes, you were, Rosie, you do it all the time!” she squeaks, collapsing again.
    “Look, just because I thought you and Matt—” Matt’s John’s grown-up son, he lives in California, and that wasn’t the only reason I asked Bridget to come over to the States with me and Rupy last Christmas! Now they’re both in hysterics. Silly idiots. I grab half the sweet chutney to spite the pair of them. ...But all the same, Bridget and Greg would be ideal together.
    What with this and that it isn’t until we’re sipping tea, I'm not allowed tannin at this hour so mine is peppermint tea, and estimating whether we can cram in a bowl of rasgullahs, or if it’s only gonna be a barfi or two, that I remember to tell Bridget about Katie’s Big Chance.
    “Um, I don't think she’s ever seriously contemplated acting,” she falters.
    “You did, dear!” Rupy points out quickly.
    “Mm.”—Her parents of course were ropeable over it, what ordinary middle-class parents wouldn’t be?—“But Katie’s always had more sense than me.”
    “Look what The Captain’s Daughter’s done for Rosie!” he urges.
    We goggle at him, teacups suspended.
    “Er—oh. Well, you must admit you are a Household Name, dear!” he urges.
    “Clot. No, well, if she gets the part, it would mean a nice little nest-egg for her, Bridget. And she needn’t go on with the acting after that if she doesn’t want to.”
    So, what with this, that, and the other argument, we wear the poor girl down and she agrees limply that of course it wouldn’t do any harm just to tell Katie…
    Later. Katie Herlihy has been rung at home and has gone into a terrific fit of the giggles, accusing her older sister of being drunk.
    Rupy wrenches the phone off Bridget. Gee, that’ll really convince her…
    Katie’s accused him of snorting something, and into the bargain told him roundly he ought to be ashamed, at his age.
    I grab the phone. “Katie, it’s Rosie Marshall. It really is true. We’re not pulling your leg, Brian Hendricks would like you to try out for the part, I told him how good you were as—”
    “Very FUNNY, Bridget Herlihy!” bellows her sibling. “You don’t even sound like her! She hasn’t got nearly as much of an Australian accent as that! And go to bed and sleep it off, or I’ll tell Mum you’re DR— Ooh, hello, Mum.” –Noises of Mrs Herlihy asking her why she's shouting like that at this hour, and is that Bridget? There’s nothing wrong, is there? Katie says there isn’t. Her mother tells her tolerantly not to stay up chatting too long, dear, and to give Bridget her love. Then I try to say feebly it is me. Then I make the mistake of doing the Lily Rose voice to prove it is me, breathy little coo an’ all, but she just snorts scornfully and says she’s heard Bridget’s Lily Rose before, it wouldn’t fool a child of two with its eyes shut—think she means its ears. No, dunno what she means, don’t think she does, either.
    Bridget takes the receiver off me and says it was me, and that was awfully rude. They have a sisterly argument. Bridget makes the telling point that she’s with Rupy, who else would be here with them?
    I suggest we oughta speak to her at the same time and go out to the kitchen and pick up the pale blue extension. So Katie’s convinced, but still contumacious. We’re both drunk!
    It takes ages but eventually she concedes that we might not be drunk and that if we can ring her tomorrow at a sensible hour she might believe us. But we needn’t think she’s going to pay for a train ticket all the way to London just so as we can laugh ourselves sick at her expense!
    Tomorrow. Bridget’s come over, so we ring Katie again. She sort of believes us, though she does point out I called myself Rosie Marshall instead of Rosie Haworth (gulp), so no wonder she thought it was Bridget pretending to be me. Rupy corrects her pronunciation severely to “Hah-with, dear,” and at first she thinks that’s a leg-pull, too. All right, she’ll come, if we can get Henny Penny to wire her the fare.
    We agree and hang up. Then goggling at one another in consternation.
    “How do you wire money?” I croak.
    Rupy embarks on a long story about how him and a friend were stranded ten miles on the wrong side of deepest Shuddersford, something about the Post Office, but we don’t listen and Bridget suggests I’d better ring “Mr Hendricks”.
    I do, first having a nice chat with Karen, his secretary, she has to know all about how me and the bulge are. And is John still at sea? Great sympathy. Then Brian comes on the line, very brisk. Good, good, fix it up with Karen, and firmly names a day. Gulp. What if Katie’s got lectures that day? Or, put it like this, lectures she doesn’t want to wag, less likely. So we fix it up with Karen, and Bridget rings Katie to warn her. Evidently she doesn’t object that she's got lectures.
    Then Bridget has a panic because she won’t be able to meet her, she’s got a rehearsal all that day! So Rupy and I firmly say that we will meet her. Bridget’s got a rehearsal today, too, and after she’s dashed off to it he checks the diary and realises he won’t be able to meet Katie, he's got a bizarre opening that day. (Work it out.) I’m not incapable, I’ll meet her! He doesn’t believe I’m capable, but there’s nothing he can do.


    It’s The Day. Me and Tim are gonna grab a taxi only Mike turns up with the Henny Penny limo, grinning. He doesn’t say Brian sent him, he says, grin, grin, that nobody seems to need the limo today. Ulp. Well, it saves Tim having to do his seeing-eye-dog impersonation for the taxi driver. We head for the station.
    Blast! Millions of people are getting off the ruddy Manchester train, and I can’t remember exactly what Katie looks—
    “Hullo, Rosie!”
    “Oh, there you are,” I say, sagging. God, what is she wearing?
    “Yeah. Who’s this?”
    I introduce Tim and she pats him, beaming, and he wags his tail and pants, beaming.
    We’ll just nip back to the flat and do something about those clothes. “Do what?” she demands, glaring at mine. The thing is, even with the bulge, I’m supposed to wear Henny Penny-approved garments for public appearances and I’m not sure the station doesn’t count as one. So I’m in a sweetly-pretty pink linen-look suit, normally the jacket would be worn buttoned, unbuttoned jackets have been awfully Out these past two or three years, have ya noticed? Yeah. Only it won’t do up any more so under it I’m wearing a pale pink tee-shirt that always was rather tight and that has to be worn over the skirt, not tucked in, because the skirt won’t do up any— Yeah. The pink suede sandals are a pair I’m actually responsible for buying: they weren’t very dear and I fell in love with them, all right? And their heels aren’t very high. The pink bobbles in the ears, on the other hand, are entirely the responsibility, not to say the Signed For property, of Henny Penny Productions.
    “Stiff petticoats. The pony-tail look,” I say grimly, grabbing her hand with the hand that isn't grabbing Tim’s lead. “Come on!”
    Unfortunately before she can come on five hundred eager autograph hunters spot me and have to ask tenderly after me and the bulge as well as getting the autograph. “Lily Rose Rayne” in an entirely artificial rounded, flowing hand developed in cooperation with Terry vander Post, the series designer, and Timothy Carlton, the head of PR, the dot over the I being a lovely little flower. Most of the staff of the PR Department, but I bet you’d guessed that, can do it as well as I can.
    Quite some time later. The flat. I force the script on her.
    “Ugh, this is rubbish!”
    “The technical term’s garbage, Katie, but yeah, you’re right.” This takes the wind out of her sails. She reads on… Involuntarily she sniggers.
    “The whole thing’s Varley Knollys taking the Mick out of, not necessarily in this order, the Yanks, up-themselves girls’ schools, the Great Viewing Public, the Fifties thing, and the Royal Navy. But Paul shoots it absolutely straight, you see, that’s why no-one has ever noticed.”
    She nods groggily, poor girl, that was pretty much the unadorned L.R. Marshall personality, all the subtlety of a tank, as my loving family would tell ya.
    Then I force her into the stiff petticoats, she’s about my height so the ones I got off old Miss Hammersley from next-door that are genuine Fifties ones would be too long on her, too, if I hadn’t already lopped a bit off them. Miss Hammersley’s terribly interested in anything to do with the show or clothes, so she pops in to see the result and approves of Katie in a bright blue gathered skirt—we couldn’t manage a quilted one and anyway, I think that was apocryphal—unless Varley’s been swotting up very old numbers of Seventeen magazine? Did they have that back then or was it a Sixties phenomenon? Plus and a tight little pale yellow cardigan, quite short and buttoned to the neck, and adorned with tiny crystal beads and small pearls. Once the property of Henny Penny Productions but as my contracts with them were very carefully worded, now my property. I unbutton it to a suitable point, which Katie squints at dubiously, and push the sleeves up. Three-quarter length sleeves were very In, in the Fifties. She’s about to rubbish that when Miss Hammersley agrees wistfully that so they were, she had some delightful outfits with three-quarter length sleeves, and do I still have that lovely powder-blue two-piece of hers, Rosie? Yeah, unfortunately: Rupy wouldn’t let me biff it out. (Don’t say it.)
    The hair’s a bit short for a pony-tail. It’s like Bridget’s would be if she’d let it grow out, black and shiny and very curly. Not in anything that could be called a style. By now dear old Doris Winslow has panted upstairs, without Buster, but with loads of hairclips and things, like, a whole box of them, it’s made of Christmas cards cut into shapes and covered in shiny plastic and crocheted together, with a lid and a crochet bobble fastener. No? Well, I know an old lady back home in Sydney that makes, them, too, it’s not a purely British phenomenon. So Doris and me get going with her clips and pins and spray and little rubber bands, and my spray and mousse and gel, ignoring Katie’s whingeing. Miss Hammersley just looks on, she’s not as practical as Doris. And much more upper-clawss: though they both enjoy going to the hairdresser now, when they were girls Doris would’ve been the sort that went round in curlers the day before a big party, while Miss Hammersley would’ve just popped out to the hairdresser’s, geddit? And for more special occasions she and Mummy had the hairdresser come to the house, yikes. Well, my best friend Joslynne did that for her wedding, true, but all the same!
    Meanwhile Mike’s in the kitchen, eating our muffins—English muffins to some—reading our paper, though he doesn’t think much of it, and drinking our tea. He’s not into Fifties make-overs. Tim’s in there with him, he’s much more into muffins than make-overs, too. Tim greets Katie’s reappearance with happy tail-wagging, maybe she’ll be the sucker that’ll offer him a buttered muffin, and Mike greets it with: “Shit!”
    “See?” she shouts, crimsoning.
    “Shut up, he wouldn’t know Fifties if he fell over it. And come on, ya don’t impress the producer by turning up late for yer audition, ya know.”
    And we all go downstairs and the two elderly spinster ladies wave us off enthusiastically. In the car Mike tries to ask what misguided moo did that to her hair but I shut him up. By the time we get there Katie’s gone into a scoffing mood, doesn’t believe for an instant that anything’ll come of it kind of thing. I tell her what I got paid for the ruddy Daughter for the first series and she becomes rather thoughtful and then makes noises about being able to go on and do her M.Sc. And maybe manage the fjords, next summer! Paula O’Reilly and her nice Jack are going there this summer so I do now know it’s an intellectual sort of place to take a holiday as opposed to like Marbella or the coast of Spain where Joanie and Seve have got their bar, so I just agree.
    Having forgotten what auditions are like from the point of view of the victim, I don't warn her, and when we go in she flinches, poor kid: there they all are, lined up against her behind the barrier of their ruddy table.
    Being as it’s June, Brian’s in one of his slightly crumpled tan linen suits, he wears a lot of shades of brown and tan. In front of him, usual pristine writing pad and Parker pen. He’s in the middle of the long table. Amaryllis has been honoured with the seat on his left, though she’ll get up and come over to the front of the table to read. She never bothers with rehearsal gear, she’s too well established, she just wears normal clothes. So today it’s a very nice oatmeal slub silk jacket and skirt, she’s sensibly slung the jacket on the back of the chair. The blouse is a stylised floral pattern in soft shades of yellows and fawns, she wears those shades a lot. The hair matches, except that a few artful silver streaks are allowed to creep in. Pulled up in a casual-looking twist that probably took her hairdresser three hours to achieve. As usual the perfectly-boned face is flawlessly made up, she goes in for a slightly soft, powdery look with big velvety dark eyes. (Brown, so the hair was possibly never blonde in its natural state.) The hubby isn’t allowed to be at the table, he’s over by the far wall, placidly reading his book.
    On Brian’s right Varley Knollys is a dream of silver-grey possibly-Armani, matching the silver-grey strand-by-strand job. Unfortunately it doesn’t manage to make him look like Richard Gere, which some of us suspect is the intention, it manages to make him look like a supercilious Pommy git that thinks he’s too good for the job that pays him megabucks. On his right there’s Paula, she’d be in her mid-forties so very intimidating to the twenty-year-old Katie, wearing the standard upper-middle summer working gear, nice linen-look suit, today’s is beige, jacket open over a slightly creased plain white collarless silk blouse, tucked in, she’s got quite a nice figure, and little gold necklace. The light brown hair is in its usual rather wispy French roll but it’s not wispy enough to be a mitigating factor, especially as a French roll, unless very shiny and on something anorexic that’s wiggling its way down a catwalk, automatically says “intimidating older moo” to a kid of Katie’s— Ya got that long since, right. Usual huge pile of notes and folders in front of her. Mandy is perched in a temporary sort of way on Paula’s other side, at the far end of the table, ready to leap up and read Headmistress or whatever else the slave-master dictates. She’s in her normal audition gear, slacks and tee-shirt with a touch of something expensive but discreet in the way of jewellery to show she's not actually one of the hoi polloi. Today the slacks are cream and the tee-shirt’s an unfortunate shade of olive that she’s much too sallow to get away with and the little necklace is silver with a tiny thing dangling from it. She’s got her usual clipboard in front of her.
    At the end of the table nearest the door Paul Mitchell is wearing his summer rehearsal gear, black cotton slacks and black tee-shirt, with a tiny silver necklace to show he’s not available to ladies and not one of the hoi— Right. Horrendously neat pile of notebooks and writing pads in front of him. He’s wearing the Blues Brothers shades which normally indicate he has no expectations whatsoever of the proceedings. Typical. On his right round-faced young Damian, not being at the male pecking-order level that’s allowed to wear casual cotton slacks to work, is looking hot in a navy suit that I sincerely hope is lightweight, a pale blue shirt and rather nice Paisley tie. Usual stack of folders and lever-arch files.
    And between him and Amaryllis, just for a treat, is Michael Manfred in person! Daddy Captain! Think he’s had the hair re-rinsed, it’s more silver than ever and, unlike Varley’s, very thick, possibly his greatest asset. The face looks smoother than ever but he can’t have had time for a nip and tuck since I last saw him. Well, not to get over it. Um, Mother’s Night Out? Wouldn’t put it past him. The gear is as nauseating as usual. Blue blazer with something unlikely embroidered on the pocket, casual shirt, today’s is blue and white stripes, well-cut grey slacks with—squint under the table—yep, terrifically polished brogues, and, of course, tucked casually into the open neck of the shirt, the cravat. Today’s is very bright blue with tiny silver stars on it. No, he’s not gay, he's just been in the Business so long that he's forgotten what ordinary blokes wear. And according to Rupy, has no natural taste. You can smell the after-shave coming off him at five hundred paces. I'm not imagining that his eye lights up as we walk in, he doesn’t like skinny ladies. Very fortunately for Katie, he’s marooned behind the table and doesn’t come out to give us the tongue.
    The accused aren’t normally introduced to the Inquisitors but since Katie is with me, I introduce her. She’s unmoved by Michael but overcome to meet Amaryllis in person. Luckily Amaryllis doesn’t ask vaguely if she’s met her, she just smiles beautifully and shakes hands. Then we go and sit down with, guess what, a row of more victims! Someone must have been on to selected casting agents, quite possibly Paul in person, because Brian is getting very, very edgy: they’ve got to start filming the fifth series in the autumn, and everyone’s about to take off on their summer holidays.
    Brian gives Mandy the nod and she gets up and says very firmly that Miss Rayne will read the scene first to give them an idea of what is wanted. Oh, God. But I get up and do it, bulge an’ all, chewing an’ all.
    Then they start. The others read first: they’re all professionals and Katie is obviously a measure of desperation that Brian doesn’t want to have to take. Shit, one of them’s an American! Varley is visibly annoyed: he loathes Yanks. So he demands, after she’s read the Captain’s Stepdaughter’s first scene reasonably well as to phrasing and accent but with no intellectual grasp of anything that’s occurring in it, that she read part of the next big scene, where it’s revealed that Chillingford has managed to tone down the accent. And of course she can’t do it. And he shouts: “We DON’T want a skinny American bitch with a brain like a pea and the acting talent of a BOOT, who SENT her?” And Damian on his own initiative tells her quickly she can go.
    Amanda Grey’s the best, she’s quite well known and some of us also know that Paul likes working with her. However, Varley says grimly: “Too old.” Amaryllis says kindly that good make-up and lighting will solve that and he shouts: “NO! The moronic viewing public’s seen her in five thousand pieces of arty crap on the Beeb:—boy, is he pissed off that they never took up that option on Simeon’s Quest—“they won’t believe an instant of her as a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old ingénue! Get the skinny cow out of my SIGHT!” So Amanda Grey minces off in her waify slip-dress, looking terrifically offended. Which doesn’t mean she wouldn’t leap at the chance of Simeon’s girlfriend.
    One of them is very young and plump, but terrifically self-possessed with it, and according to Damian’s folders has been acting in this, that and t’other on the box since she was eight. She reads very professionally, that is, doesn’t grasp what the scene’s about but manages an almost credible American accent except to those with a very good ear. Okay for the Great British Public, but aren’t they intending to flog it in Yank-land? In fact something-or-other from Boston that I think was the TV channel that co-produced those Inspector Morse things, or at least the later ones, has come on board as from the fourth series, and the show now has a definite following in America. Which does explain the proliferation of stately ’omes in the fourth series, yeah.
    “Not entirely bad. Can you lose a stone by next October?” demands Varley. She’s sure she can, Mr Knollys, and she’d like to take the opportunity to say she adores Simeon’s Quest!
    “I wouldn’t class it as not entirely bad. Why the simpering?” says Brian baldly.
    Very taken aback: didn’t know she was doing it. “Um, I beg your pardon, Mr Hendricks?’
    “She simpered as a wee fairy in that damned Barrie thing on the Beeb, Brian,” Paula reminds him unkindly, “and, you may not recall this, as the youngest aspiring actress in your very own Pamela Brown epic three years back, thus ruining, at least for those of us who’d read the book in our far-off youth, the entire thing: why wouldn’t she simper as the Captain’s Stepdaughter? Added to which, Lily Rose simpers, you may recall, as the Daughter.”
    “She just READ the bloody thing for them, Paula, was there a simper in SIGHT?” he shouts, losing his cool.
    “No,” she says, eyeing him drily. “There wasn’t, Brian. So you may well ask why Miss—er—Jeavons—why Miss Jeavons was simpering.”
    “I am asking,” he says through his teeth. “Why did you see fit to simper, Miss Jeavons?”
    “Um, isn’t this an ingénue part, Mr Hendricks?” she bleats, forgetting to look calmly professional and capable and also forgetting to simper.
    “No, it’s a character part, dear,” he says through his teeth.
    “Oh. I’m afraid my manager”—Jesus Christ, the kid’s got a manager? Who does she think she is, Joan Collins?—“doesn’t think character parts are right for my career, at this juncture.” –Achieves a simper.
    “And he is so right,” notes Paul Mitchell nastily. “Get out, and tell your manager from me that he needn’t bother to send you along to audition for anything that I’m directing until Hell freezes over!” It would have been more effective without the shouting but as there’s only two of them left and then Katie, you can’t really blame him.
    Miss Jeavons stumps out, followed by Varley’s: “She was too damned fat, anyway.”
    The next one copes with the accent okay but she’s all breathy and giggly with it, and Varley stands up and shouts—being as there’s now one more left plus Katie you can’t altogether blame him: “NO! Are you blind as well as deaf? Does the word contumacious mean NOTHING to you?”
    Very clearly it doesn’t, and she goes.
    The last one very cleverly imitates me and Paul tears his Blues Brothers shades off and buries his head in his hands and groans: “No, no, no! I refuse to direct a performing seal!”
    “Parrot, wasn’t it?” says Paula unkindly.
    “Get her to read something else,” says Brian with a sigh. “What have you done, Miss Er?” She’s done Viola in the Provinces. He winces but tells her to get on with it. Of course she does the “What country friends is this” scene, she’s terrible.
    “Go a—way,” says Varley very clearly.
    Brian looks uneasily at the one remaining Katie. “Er—well, we don’t require a great dramatic actress, Varley.”
    “No, apparently you require something that will need Lily Rose to do every line for her before she utters it. But if you’re willing to let the cow bleed you for a small fortune to act as dialogue coach, Brian, by all means go ahead and hire the girl. I dare say she’s capable of mimicking her way through the entire series. Just don’t expect Me to write for her, that’s all!”
    “I can’t act as dialogue coach, Brian, my baby’s due in September, and I’ve got all my university—”
    “We know!”
    I subside.
    Brian makes her read the scene again and she’s no better and no worse. Then Varley cunningly calls her over to the table and makes her remove her blouse. Then he actually, I kid you not, fingers her bra—she’s a professional but she’s gone rather red—and says grimly: “Padded. But not only that,”—he sticks a finger in the cup, she’s redder than ever—“I’d take my dying oath she’s got— Ah!” He hauls out the extra padding and says nastily to the room at large: “See? I WON’T HAVE IT!”
   “The tabloids won’t like it, either,” Damian admits sadly. “Remember that Page Three shot they did of Lily Rose?”
    “Very clearly indeed,” says Varley with tremendous satisfaction.
    “Yeah,” I admit: “with tit but without nipple: that’s right.”
    That seems to be that and though Damian does say sadly he’s got her details the poor girl totters out crushed, buttoning her blouse.
    “Legs like pea-sticks, too,” announces Varley superfluously. “Come here, dear.” –To Katie.
    Katie marches over to the table scowling, and announces grimly: “Lay one finger on my tits and I’ll sue you for harassment and molestation!”
    “Good, that’s much better, dear!” he says pleasedly. “Spunk,” he notes to the room at large. “We can see that’s Lily Rose’s cardigan, and none of us are impressed, we’ve seen it with the genuine articles in it, so you might as well take it off.”
    At this I come up to her side and admit: “If this lot are on form every second shot of you will be in an underwired bikini or stupid sunsuit, so ya might as well bite on the bullet and take it off, Katie.”
    “Underwired bikini?” she says dazedly, taking the cardy off slowly.
    “Yeah. Fifties thing,” I explain clearly as the natural Katie is revealed in all her glory in my see-through white nylon bra that I can’t get into any more. The nipples are more or less covered by the white double-woven nylon flowers that are a feature of the thing but nevertheless Varley brightens immensely and says: “Well! Actual flesh at last, or I'm a Dutchman!” and Michael Manfred brightens even more immensely and says: “By Jove! Very nice, dear!”
    She then has to remove the skirt and petticoats, and the thighs get the Varley Knollys nod, too, though he notes she’ll need to lose a bit off the tummy, he actually says tummy, does he think it’s U?
    “We have yet to establish,” notes Paula very drily indeed, “whether the girl can act.”
    “Quite,” Paul agrees sourly. “YES! I concede she’s got the Look!” he shouts as Varley urges that she's got the Look. “Tits and bum,” he mutters sourly. “All right, get on with it. –Do the SCENE!” he shouts as poor Katie just looks blank.
    I help her back into her clothes, no way is she going to read without her clothes on, poor kid. And they start the scene.
    Folks, Katie comes over really, really good. Well, she is an intelligent girl, of course, and she can do an American accent. She makes the Captain’s Stepdaughter a mixture of indifferent and contumacious, plus bits of a naturally pleasant girl the awful American progressive school hasn’t quite managed to get rid of just peeping through. Including the signs of a sense of humour, round about the “Limey brothers” bit, which none of the others picked up on.
    There’s a thoughtful silence. Damian’s looking all pink and hopeful. Even Mandy, who’s been through five million auditions, is looking hopeful. Amaryllis smiles encouragingly and nods at Katie, and Michael, though normally he wouldn’t dare to voice an opinion before Brian and Varley, actually comes right out and says: “Well done, my dear!”
    Brian rubs his chin. “Mm… No experience, of course.”
    “She’s had more than I had. Anyway, with Paul directing, you don’t need experience.”
    “Rosie, please be quiet,” he says heavily.
    They ask her if she can sing and she replies dubiously that she can sing in tune. Varley sniffs slightly. Can she dance? No. Brian frowns and mutters “Damn.”
    “Oh, rubbish, Brian, give her a few lessons with that dance studio Lily Rose went to!” says Paula bracingly. “All the viewing public requires is to see the tits jogging, anyway! The girl can give a performance and she’s got Varley’s bloody Look, what more do you want?”
    Of course he doesn’t admit it but he wants that plus someone who can tap and put over a song as well, but as I think I might’ve mentioned there’s very few of them around.
    After a moment Paul asks dubiously whether she knows any Fifties songs and she says “No,” without even having to think about it.
    Helpfully I list: “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend?”—No.—“The Good Ship Lollipop? That’s Thirties but we’ve made a thing of the amateur tap crap that was all the rage in the provinces in the Fifties, ya see.”—Um, well she knows the tune, but— “Blow. I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair?”—No.—“Nothing from Oklahoma?” I croak. “Didn’t they do a frightful modern telly version of that quite recently? Or was it Carousel? It was so bad I can’t remember… Colourless. No pizzazz. No Shirley Jones,” I spell out redundantly.—Um, no.
    “Steam Heat?” says Mandy unexpectedly. –No, total blank.
    “My Heart Belongs To Daddy?” ventures Michael without hope. One of my biggest numbers, folks, as you’ll recall if you’ve been watching the idiot-box any time these past— And on Parkinson, right, you goddit.
    “No, um, that’s the funny one, isn’t it?”—Possibly it is, if you’re her sex. That’s not the other sex’s reaction, folks.—“I saw Rosie do it!” she gasps.
    The table droops gloomily.
    “Um, I know Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” the misguided girl offers.
    “JESUS!” shouts Varley, clutching at the strand-by-strand job and almost touching it.
    “Let her do it,” groans Brian.
    Mandy can tickle the ivories so she goes over to the piano and after a couple of false starts—don’t think the kid’s ever sung with an accompanist—she does it. Very soulful, ends by turning away and giving a little shrug and raising her eyebrows, indicating the whole thing was fake from beginning to end.
    “The voice is a bit light, but— Hmm. Something might be managed,” Brian muses.
    “At least she understands, alone of the English-speaking world, that that song’s a piece of total hypocrisy!” I say loudly.
    He smiles a bit. “Mm, we got that. –Yes, well done, dear, you can sit down again.”
    Thankfully Katie totters over to me and Tim, he’s been dozing all this time, and collapses onto the chair next to mine.
    They go into a confab, the upshot of which is they’d like Katie to come out to the studios tomorrow, they want to see what the camera makes of her. And I whisk her out before she can say anything dumb.
    “Well?” says Mike, grinning, as we pile into the limo.
    “You better take off P.D.Q., Brian’ll be down any moment now.”
    We shoot off but when we’re safely out of range he says over his shoulder: “Well?”
    “All over bar the shouting, Mike. They want her for a screen test, tomorrow!”
    “Not a screen—“’
    “Katie, it is! They’ll make ya stand there for hours and point ruddy mikes and light meters at you and take shots of you and make you say half a line of dialogue.”
    “Not before they’ve slathered you in make-up so’s ya can’t move your face,” notes Mike.
    “Right. Plus and that. Geddit? A screen test. Oh, and asphyxiated you with their giant hairspray bombs, ozone layer depletion for the use of.”
    She looks limply from me to him and back again.
    “Yeah! You’re in like Flynn!” I urge in my strange Australian vernacular.
    “What?”
    “You’ve got the part! They don’t go to the expense of getting in the crews and using actual video film unless they're sure they want you. We’ll ring up Sheila Bryant, soonest. –My agent. She'll make sure they don’t swindle you over the contract.”
    “You bet your boots!” agrees Mike. “Boy, Brian seethed for weeks after your first contract, Lily Rose.”
    “Good.”
    Um, but Katie thought Bridget’s agent— I nip that in the bud before it can take its first feeble breath. No. Because Sheila’s used to the mean-fisted telly companies. So that’s settled.


    Next day. I haven’t been specifically invited but Brian actually sends Mike officially with the limo, so having dressed her, Rupy and I take her in to Henny Penny. Plus Tim. Linda on Reception greets him rapturously. Of course he can stay with her, behind the desk, Brian’ll never know! (Giggle.) And can she give him something to eat? No. I allow she can give him a bowl of water, though, and she cheers up.
    They slather Katie in make-up and asphyxiate her with their giant hairspray bombs, and then make her stand there in front of the camera for hours and point ruddy mikes and light meters at her. Finally they take shots of her and make her say approx. half a line of dialogue.
    Since Rupy’s here they then let her do a couple more lines with him as Commander and me as her step-sister and Commander’s wife. She breaks down in the middle of it and has a mad giggling fit because I call him, using the Lily Rose breathy coo, “angel-wangel Ludo Commander hubby-wubby,” his name being Ludovic, and the hubby-wubby being an addition by me, not in the script, and Paul bellows at her. But she just says sensibly: “Sorry, it took me by surprise. Can I try again?” And we do it again, and she’s splendid.
    Then they play it back on the giant wheeled TV set and admit that that wasn’t half bad. At this stage having made up their minds and started thinking about the budget, geddit?
    So Katie gets all doubtful in spite of Rupy’s ecstatic arm-squeezing and mad nodding and in spite of my short fandango. But then Brian smiles and says “Well, yes, Katie, my dear. We’ll talk to your agent, of course, but I think we can say that’s it. Unless there’s any impediment, like finishing your degree?” –Looking sideways at me.
    “No, I’ll postpone it.”
    Good. He asks her who her agent is, wincing when I say firmly Sheila Bryant Casting, but as it’s no more then he was expecting, nods resignedly. He’ll be in touch with Sheila with all the details, but they will definitely want her from the beginning of September. Sunnily Katie agrees that that’ll be no problem, and at last we can totter out. It’s been almost as traumatic as when I got my part.
    In Reception Rupy embraces her ecstatically and then me, and I give her a bit of a hug, too, and Linda claps her hands and cries: “Ooh, goody! Congratulations, Katie!” And Tim goes: “Wuff!” He's fed up with being an under-the-counter dog, I think.
    And we escape to fresh air, well, gritty London street air, and tea and cakes at the very Tea Shoppe that Rupy and I escaped to after mine. Where Kathleen, the manageress and owner, whom we now know very well, is terrifically interested to learn that Katie’s got the part in the new series. And since it’s closing-time she lets Tim in and pulls the blinds down and gives him a bowl of water and a piece of Madeira cake. Ulf! Gone! Slurp, slop, gasp—gone!
    At which Katie expresses the wistful wish that he was her dog. See? I knew it! Salt of the earth.
    Later. Bridget’s come over, very pleased, in her theatrical persona, that Katie’s got the part, but warning in her sisterly persona that their parents’ll be furious with her for dropping her degree. Katie isn’t, she’s just postponing the rest of it! They ring them. Guess what, their dad’s furious and their mum’s both furious and tearful, it’s so silly of you to go off and do something like this, Katie, not like you at all, and it’s such a risky profession, and with two of you in it— Katie tells them how much I made from the first series and her mum tells her not to be silly, Katie, that was Lily Rose Rayne!
    I get on the phone and try to explain to the tearful Mrs Herlihy that when I landed the part I was a complete unknown with even less experience— But I’ve got wonderful talent! Blink. Large boobs, the ability to tap, good voice production (all those singing lessons with Signorina Cantorelli Mum made me go to in my formative years), plus, let’s not kid ourselves here, folks, yellow curls and considerable S.A. that I don’t mind capitalising on. I don’t say any of this to a nice suburban mum from Manchester that’s very like my nice suburban Mum from Sydney. Mr Herlihy comes on the line and asks me cautiously what was that about the amount I made out of it, and I tell him and he cheers up, especially when I explain about residuals and overseas royalties, and the way Sheila can sew up a contract as tight as a drum. And I managed my university work as well, I remind him cautiously. He cheers up even more and I put Katie back on and she gets modified approval.
    So now Rupy wants to celebrate! The Herlihy sisters, however, are both looking drained. So we end up just going to The Tabla again, this time taking Miss Hammersley and Miss Winslow with us. Mr Singh immediately shows us to the best table and assures Miss Hammersley that he can provide a chicken pullao that’s better than anything she had in India (when she and Mummy accompanied Daddy to see “dear Lord Louis” hand over to his people, her vernacular). So he does. Dunno what went down with the upper echelons of the British Raj, but it’s extra. Not even the remotest possibility that two elderly spinster ladies not used to spicy food might find it too hot. With it there’s a big dish of his special creamy spinach curry and another big dish of Mrs Singh’s special pumpkin curry. So the two old dears take polite small spoonfuls of them and gallantly lie about them. Greg hurries up and whips the chilli pickle off the table before they even notice it, so all is harmony.
    “So, are you pleased?” I say to Katie as we walk Tim after waving Bridget off. (No room in her flat, there’s already two aspiring actress sleeping on mattresses on the sitting-room floor.)
    “Yes, thrilled! It’ll be fun! And don’t worry, I'm not all stage-struck!”
    “Of course not, Katie dear!” Rupy approves.
    No, I don’t think she is, bless her. Far too much common sense. Which, believe you me, if Series Five is a success, which we won't know until some time into next year, she’ll need.


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