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