First, Last, Everlasting Day

Episode 20: First, Last Everlasting Day

    “Rosie, darling! You’re awake! …Who am I?”

    “You’re John, of course, ya nana.”

    “Thank God,” he says, sagging.

    “Have I had that unconscious thing?”

    “Concussion,” he says, biting his lip. “Mm. Just a bit. You slipped on your parents’ front path, darling.”

    “Yeah. Mum always said he oughta bought those more expensive paving stones with the like, knobs on.”

    “Yes, I think you are yourself,” he says limply, sinking onto the bedside chair. “Christ.” Passes hand across forehead.

    “Hey, ya weren’t worried about me, were ya? Shit, I’m tough, didn’t Dad tell ya about the time I fell down that gully when we were camping with Uncle George’s lot?”

    “Mm.”

    After a minute he’s recovered enough to say he’ll fetch May and Jerry: he went for coffees and she—

    “Hadda go to the toilet, yeah. Hang on a mo’, John.”

    He hangs on.

    “Does Derry know?”

    “Yes,” he says, grimacing horribly.

    “And?”

    “Furious. Worried, true, but furious. The doctor says you’ll be in traction for a while—”

    “I knew there was a word for it!”

    “Yes. There’s no way you’ll be back on your feet within the time specified in the contract.”

    Thought not. “That’s that, then.”

    “Darling, are you very disappointed?”

    “Nope.”

    He swallows. “That’s good,” he says weakly, tottering out.

    A short time passes. During it I mostly wish my leg and my head would stop aching, on the one hand, and on the other hand that I’d been a fly on the wall, a fly well outa range, when D.D. heard that his Star’s out of action.

    Mum rushes in. “Rosie! You’ve come round!” Bursts into floods of tears.

    Dad hurries in. “See? I said she’d come round in no time! How do you feel, Rosie? –Stop bawling, May, for Chrissakes, she’s fine!”

    “I’m okay. Don’t bawl, Mum. How long was I out, Dad?”

    He glances cautiously at the door but John doesn’t reappear. “’Bout five hours, love. John was out of his mind.”

    “Balls, Dad.”

    “Yes, he was, dear! Fran—tic!” sobs Mum.

    “Crap, Mum, he was never frantic in his life.”

    “Fran—tic but con—trolled!” she sobs.

    “Yeah. Five’ll get ya ten he’s chucking up in the Gents’,” notes Dad elegantly.

    “I’ll take that bet, Dad.”

    He eyes me sardonically. “Make it evens, if you like.”

    “No!”

    Shrugging, he hands Mum his hanky and strolls out.

    “I’m okay, Mum, I had a bit of, um,” blast, forgotten its name again, “that unconscious stuff, that’s all.”

    “Con—cush—shun!” she wails, bursting into fresh sobs.

    I just wait it out, what can ya do?

    Dad comes back, looking smug. “He was. You owe me ten bucks.”

    “Jerry Marshall! How can you!” She’s so indignant that the sobs have dried up.

    “He’ll be here in a minute. –Ten bucks,” he repeats smugly.

    “I haven’t got it on me, whatever this nightie thing is it hasn’t got money in it. Or a bum, either.”

    “Rosie, really,” says Mum faintly.

    “Hospital gown,” says Dad briskly, holding out his hand in a meaningful manner.

    “Here he is,” I say as John comes in, looking pale but composed. “Were you chundering in the gents’ bog, or is Dad lying?”

    “Yes,” he says with a grimace. “Thought I’d brought you all this way only to lose you.”

    “Not to mention,” notes Dad with enjoyment, “deserting her for probably the most important six months of your married life so as to go and take pot-shots at defenceless Afghan peasants.”

    “Jerry!” gasps Mum, dropping his hanky.

    “That, too,” John admits, grimacing. “Don’t be cross with him, May; he’s quite right, I’ve been a damned fool.”

    “No, you haven’t, John!” I say quickly. “Ignore him, he doesn’t understand what it’s like, being a serving officer!”

    “No, he’s right, Rosie,” he says heavily.

    “John, it coulda been the start of World War III, no-one coulda known it was gonna be a fizzer!” I urge.

    “No, but with George Dubba You in charge of it, some of us mighta guessed,” notes Dad. “And did.”

    “He took these disgusting bets on it!” bursts out Mum. “I’ve never been so ashamed of him in my life!”

    John’s grinning, of course. “Made a packet, did you, Jerry?”

    “Something like that,” he says smugly. “You got any Aussie money on you?”

    Automatically he produces the wallet.

    “Good. Give Rosie a tenner, wouldja?”

    Looking puzzled, he hands me ten dollars. Ooh, I’d forgotten what our money looked like, doesn’t it look funny! “Go on, Father Scrooge,” I sigh, handing it over.

    “I don’t think I’ll ask,” John decides weakly as Dad pockets it, noting: “You owe John ten bucks, Rosie.”

    “They’re both being silly,” Mum explains. “It’s relief of tension, John, dear: they're both like that.”

    “I think I did get that, May,” he agrees, smiling the real smile, I swear Mum’s gone weak at the knees, that’s her all over. And him. Of course he did it on purpose! Up-chucking in the gents’ or not.

    Mum then explains that the hospital wouldn’t let everyone in, dear, but of course Yvonne and Rupy are here, and my father rang Joslynne and she came over straight away.

    “Who’s looking after Baby Bunting? Christ, not Joslynne’s Mum?” –She lives next-door to Mum and Dad, ya see, and she’s the vaguest thing in Nature. Or not wholly Nature, some of it’s put on in self-defence after thirty years of being married to him, he’s something high up in banking.

    “Of course not, dear! No, your Aunty Allyson—”

    Oh, God, why did I ask?

    “She loves kiddies, Rosie, and she is very experienced.”

    Yeah, and God alone knows what she’s brainwashing the kid into.

    “And he can play with Wendalyn’s little Kieran!”

    Boy, that’s a clincher, Mum.

    And the nurse comes in followed closely by a doctor, isn’t he a bit young? And then the immediate family are shooed out and Rupy and Yvonne and Joslynne are allowed in. Yvonne bursts into tears and Rupy gives her his hanky but then has to ask for it back and blow his nose hard. Golly, he doesn’t even say What about the film?

    “What about the film?” gasps Wendalyn, all agog. Wendalyn and Dot are my cousins, they’ve come together, God knows why, it’s not as if they’re sisters, Wendalyn’s mum is Aunty Allyson, of course, and Dot’s mum is Aunty Sally. Dot hasn’t said much. Wendalyn’s examined all my flowers. D.D. sent a huge bunch of red roses, what else, and given what one rose costs at the florist’s in their Mall— And who’s “Love, Brian & Penny?” Oh, that was nice of them! Flowers by Interflora? Don’t be silly, Rosie, how else would they get here? And who’s “Darling Lily Rose, we said it but we didn’t mean it! Get Well Soon, Paul, Garry, Paula, and the gang.” Ooh! Really?—Yeah, really, why would the people I’ve spent a large portion of my working life with over the last three years suddenly ignore me? Oh, forget it. What did they say? Crikey, Wendalyn, they said “Break a leg!”, what do ya think they said?—Gulp, weak smile, she gets it. Ooh, these are lovely! Who’s Jack? Oh. Eyes me dubiously but refrains from comment. These are pretty, who are Adam and Georg— Not really? Yeah, yeah, yeah…

    “Well, I dunno what about the film, Wendalyn, all I know is I can’t do it. The doctors think I’ll be out of these strings—”

    “Traction,” she corrects firmly. Dot just looks dry.

    “—whatever, in about a week but it’ll be ages before I can do much.”

    She nods and tells me all about when Bryce broke his arm, this is second-hand, she never even knew him back then and actually, I have heard it before. So has Dot, by the look on her face.

    “I thought we might see him,” Wendalyn then admits wistfully, looking round the private room that John, apparently, insisted on. Shit, I’m a citizen, don’t I deserve something out of the bloody Medicare they’ve been whacking off my father’s income for yonks?

    She thought they might see who? “Uh—Adam McIntyre?” I venture groggily.

    “No, it said on the news he wouldn’t be coming out for ages, yet,” she concedes regretfully. “Derry Dawlish.” –Dot pulls a face.

    “The word is he’s closeted with the ideas boys and girls, frantically trying to make a feasible contingency plan before the backers take their moolah out of the thing.”

    “He could do your scenes after you’re better,” Wendalyn offers brilliantly. Dot looks neutral.

    He’s already offered me megabucks to agree to that. “Only if I was available. Which I won’t be, I’ve gotta do my uni work.”

    “But you can’t turn down an opportunity like this!” she gasps.

    Gee, why do all of Rabbit’s Friends and Relations think that? Uh—not Dot, by the look on her face. Well, she is the only one with brains, yeah.

    “It woulda been interesting, but I won’t have the time to fit it in,” I reply without interest and also without hope. Sure enough, she goes on and on and on…

    Dot doesn’t say much at all, except when they’re leaving she offers: “Shall I bring you something to read?”

    “Dot, she’s got piles of magazines!” protests Wendalyn. “Mum brought her all her back copies of The Australian Women’s Weekly!”

    Dot’s eyes meet mine. “Yeah, bring me something to read, Dot,” I agree.

    “You could fit it in,” notes Joslynne, eating those very expensive grapes John brought for me this morning.

    “Have a choc, Joslynne, they’re real expensive, John chose them.”

    She doesn’t get it, she just takes a choc happily.

    I take one, too, since they’re here. “I couldn’t fit it in; my uni work’s more important.”

    “But you’re only doing that observation stuff in your village, you could skip that!”

    Right. Those who claim that the only reason me and Joslynne were ever best friends was that we lived next-door to each other and both started at Putrid St Agatha’s on the same day are not far wrong. I don’t try to explain what I’m really doing, I just say that my professor would never wear it and remind her that the mad Mark Rutherford is now the professor.

    So she changes the subject. “Tell me what Adam McIntyre’s really like!”

    Joslynne, I have told you a million time. A Million Times. Letters don’t count, is that it? “Weak as water. The drip to end all drips.”

    “He can’t be,” she notes, taking another choc, “because you said Euan Keel was!”

    “Right. Adam’s the second drippiest male in the world, and—”

    “I thought Wendalyn’s Bryce was!”

    Grin, grin. “Third, then. And pass me those chocs!”

    She passes me the chocs but whines: “Aw, go on Rosie! What’s he like, I mean, like?”

    She means like, I guess. “Well, totally dishy—Don’t take that one!” I grab it. “It’s a cherry one. They’re my favourites.”

    “Why didn’t he get you a whole box of them, then?”

    He did, it’s in my bedside cabinet for emergencies and you’re not getting one. And I told him that “people”, unspecified, ate them, so he shot downstairs to the boutique and got me this lot. I don’t say it, she’ll tell me I’m a greedy pig and I’ll get fat. Better than being as scrawny as her, that’s for sure. “They’d run out.”

    She accepts this. “Well, go on!”

    “Eh? Oh. Totally dishy. You know that sort of wistful smile he does on screen? Like, wistful but macho?” She’s nodding fervently, gee, and I thought I hadn’t described it at all well. “Well, he does that in real life, too.”

    “Ooh!”

    “Well, yeah, it is. Only then ya start to wonder if he practises it in front of his mirror, and if it’s real at all, y’know?”

    “Oh, pooh! You do, ya mean!”

    I mean everyone with half a brain that’s ever met him. I don’t say it: if she hasn’t got it by now it’ll never sink in past that black rinse she’s using instead of that crimson rinse she used to use. Her hair’s naturally dark brown, why not just go back to that?

    “Something like that. Have that one, it’s a hard one.”

    “I don’t like them.”

    Nor does anyone else, unfortunately. I force myself…

    “So, um, well, I mean, you’ve acted with him…” Stifled snigger.

    “Uh, yersh?” Boy, this thing’s chewy, hope Dad’s dental insurance will extend to me…

    “Well, you know! What’s he look like?” Snigger.

    “Oh! The bod! Jesus, why couldn’t ya say so? Well, not half bad.” I close one eye carefully. She goes into gales of ecstatic sniggers. “He keeps bloody fit. But he’s very white.”

    The sniggers cease in mid-snigger. “What? Ugh!”

    Yeah, I’m pretty well brainwashed by the bronzed-god-on-endless-beaches image, too, though I have verified empirically that they got nothing down below and, given that pearl G-string that D.D. had Adam McI. in for his Midsummer Night’s Nightmare, he doesn’t fall into that class. I don’t bother to explain that rounded white marble lightly dusted with blue-black fur has its own attraction, Joslynne’ll think I’ve gone kinky.

    “Yeah. Well, he lives in England, ya see.”

    She sees perfectly, and we agree it must of been Max Factor in That Action Movie.

    Then she says: “Hey, guess who I bumped into down George Street the other day!”

    What were ya doing down there, in amongst the high-rises full of overpaid bankers, lawyers and similar yuppies and clones of ya father? Given that you’ve tried one of them, and all ya got out of that was Davey, the engagement rock, half the mortgage, and the toy poodle. I don’t bother to ask. “Who?”

    “Hank!” she gasps.—Huh?—“Hank! Your American! The Major!”

    Uh—oh! My major of Marines. Really nice bloke. That was yonks ago, Joslynne. “What’s he doing back here, thought he’d gone Stateside long since?”

    Another liaison job in Canberra. This doesn’t explain what he was doing in Sydney. Oh, right, liaising with Naval bods, yeah, goddit, Canberra is slightly inland for that, uh-huh. Gave her a coffee? She does know he’s got a wife and two kids back home in Little Rock, does she? All he could talk about was me? Ulp. How flattering. She told him I’m married now, she adds quickly. Good on ya, Joslynne. Because heck, everyone’s got a past but I dunno that I want odd bits of mine to float to the surface yet.

    I have got a brother, though anyone that’s been a fly on this here hospital wall for the last week might be forgiven for thinking I’m an only.

    He sits there like a turd, chewing. After a bit he says: “Theshe are all ’ard onesh.”

    “Yeah, everyone’s eaten all the soft ones.” Except for them in my bedside cabinet that you’re not getting, mate.

    He chews stolidly.

    After a bit he says: “Hey, can I put the TV on?”

    “Why not?”

    He puts it on. Ice-hockey? “If that’s flaming Sky Channel, ya can turn it off again.”

    “Ishe ’ockey,” he says, chewing.

    “Yeah. Change channels, there might be something even more exciting. Like Oprah.”

    “Hah, hah.” He changes channels. Dokko about farming? Gotta be the ABC. Very shiny plastic people with beautifully fixed teeth, gotta be an American soapie. Something very blurred, can’t understand a word of what they’re saying. Ya right, Kenny, it is SBS, and that is a foreign language. Very shiny plastic people with beautifully fixed teeth. Kenny, you already tried— All right, different commercial channel, if you say so. Local chat show, ugh! Ice hock—Oh, go on, you’ve convinced me.

    We watch ice hockey…

    “How’s work?” I venture eventually.

    “All right.”

    Yeah. Well. I’ve already asked if he’s still seeing Karen Whatserface, no being the answer. We watch ice hockey…

    This’ll be good. Aunty Allyson’s turned up on top of Derry Dawlish and a bunch of slaves. Oh, and poor Bernie Anderson, the Production Designer. D.D. knows I like him but if he thinks the man can talk me into anything he’s out of his skull.

    Gee, she’s thrilled to meet him. Look, before I agreed to make the film she’d never heard of—Forget it. She’s brought another dame, I remember Mrs Bennett, don’t I? Kathleen Bennett! she urges. Her daughter Maureen was at school with Wendalyn! Of course, now I remember her. Not. Mrs Kathleen Bennett is also thrilled to meet Derry Dawlish. The two of them are also thrilled, though this time they don’t voice the sentiment, to meet the long-haired blonde he’s got in tow this year. And has anyone ever told her, dear, that she’s very like Elle Macpherson? Derry says briskly: “Yes,” and then that’s all he says for the next half hour, ’cos Aunty Allyson’s giving me all the latest goss.’ Regardless of whether I’ve ever heard of any of the characters therein. She’s good at what she does, ya gotta hand it to her. At some point in the saga John surfaces in the doorway but he just grimaces and waves at me over everybody’s heads and disappears again.

    “Oh, good, you’ve brought him!”

    To which Mum replies: “Of course, Rosie.” The implication being that she always brings him. She doesn’t: half the time she’s farmed him out to Aunty Allyson or Mrs Franchini down the road, because they keep wanting to have him. Too bad if I mighta wanted to have him.

    “Come on, Baby Bunting, come to Mum!” Boy, he sure smells good… “Eh?”

    She’s very pink. “She is your old teacher, dear.”

    Dance teacher, yeah. And I hated every minute of it. “How can I possibly talk to Madame Garrity’s classes, Mum, I’m immobilised in this bed!”

    “Just the modern dance ones. They could come in small groups. They’d love to see you!”

    “Look, if I was on my feet I’d go and talk to them like a shot. What I’d tell them, see, is that I only made it in Show Biz by pure accident.”

    “And talent, dear!”

    “Bulldust, Mum.”

    “But you’re an example to them, Rosie! Madame Garrity’s very proud of you!”

    Five’ll get ya ten she’s already promised the hag the kids can come. “Look, they can come, only no speeches from the bed of sickness, right?”

    “Honestly, Rosie!”

    “I don’t mind giving them all autographs, if they want them, and they can ask me anything they like, but that’s it.”

    She’s beaming. “And photos?”

    “They can’t take snaps, I’d be in contravention of my contracts with Derry and Brian.”

    “But they’re just little kids—”

    “No. They can have some signed ones. And just get Wayne in here, couldja?” After I’d been invaded by rubber-neckers and Press D.D. got the point and put a private security man on my door. It’s Wayne today. Sometimes it’s Lyle and sometimes it’s Steve.

    Wayne comes in, grinning, and accepts a choc. Heck, Rosie, ya don’t wanna let a crowd of ruddy ballet kids in here! How right he is. I tell him to expect them—all right, Mum, two lots—and he rolls his eyes and tells me it’s my funeral. How true.

    “Have a choc, Mum.”

    “No, they’re yours, dear.”

    She always says that. “I’ll only eat them.”

    “Well, just one, then.” She takes a choc and gives me all the latest goss.’ Regardless of whether I’ve ever heard of any of the characters therein…

    Derry in person. Firmly shuts door. I bet the bloody wanker’s told Steve not to admit anyone including my nearest and dearest. “Darling, you’re looking much, much better!”

    I am much, much better, ya fat-faced clown, in fact I am not sick, merely, I can’t walk. “Yeah. Where’s Miff?” (His blonde girlfriend. Short for something Welsh.)

    “Mm? Oh—gone shopping or something, dear,” he says in the super-vague voice which is allotted to meaningless hangers on like ya girlfriend. True, he is married, so the girlfriends can't count for much in the scheme of things. Also true, the wife lives in the house in the South of France and doesn’t give a shit what he gets up to. Also true, Miff is actually a person! Jesus!

    “I've told them not to let anyone in for a while, Rosie darling.”—see?—“because we must have a serious talk.” Yeah, yeah. Talk all ya like, I still can’t walk.

    So he blahs on. Yeah, I do know the hospital’ll be letting me out very soon, Derry, they did actually mention it to me, even though I am fully aware I’m only the body. He’s worked out exactly how we’ll manage it! Shoot all the scenes he can with a double, leaving out the tap dancing for the moment, lovely smile that fails to hide the shark-like mind behind it, and as soon as I’m able to hop a bit, lovely close-ups, well, as far as the hem, dear, it’ll work out quite well!

    Hem my arse, mate.

    “Derry, I won't be able to put any weight on the leg for ages, and John’ll be right there to see I don’t. So the lovely shots will have to be of me sitting down.”

    But they can arrange that! And Bernie’s come up with the loveliest idea for the big Singapore scenes, darling: hammocks and planters’ chairs on the lovely verandah!

    “In the studio?”

    “No, darling! Singapore! –I mean Queensland, of course, of course!” Jolly chuckle. And the long shots on the beach will all be the double, of course, but the close-ups of me in the bikini or the delishimo Fifties one-pieces—we can go to mid-thigh, dear—will all be me, of course, lying down or sitting up! Delishimo!

    Yeah, right. What about all them misty fade-ins where the skinny blonde tapping in Della’s show mistily turns into me?

    “We’ll do the fade-ins in close-up, dear!” Right, the punters’ll love that, I don’t think.

    “Derry, the only reason the non-pseud, or major portion of the GBP will come to this epic is to see me putting over a number. If you want an audience, this isn’t gonna work.”

    Waves his hands elaborately. First things first! Get it in the can!

    Gee, the shark teeth are showing, Derry, not to mention that sting in ya tail. “Right. So what are the second things?”

    He wriggles. I just wait. Finally he sees he’s not convincing me and admits sulkily that Brian’s come on board with the offer of the Henny Penny studios for all of the song-and-dance numbers, and it’s not as if I was Fred Astaire, they weren’t envisaging huge sound stages in any case—and it’ll hardly take up any of my time!

    “What total crap, Derry. In the first place, I won’t be fit, it’ll take me ages to get limber enough to tap without collapsing, and in the second place, I’ll have to learn the routines.”

    No, no, darling: he’s decided to use Brian’s routines, the punters adore them!

    Well, that’d make it easier— No, it’s ridiculous, I won’t have the time.

    And I can record the songs here, he’d planned for that in any case. With lovely close-ups!

    I concede that. But I won’t have the time to do the tap numbers after I get back to England.

    I could do them in my Christmas holidays!

    “I'm planning to spend next Christmas with my husband and his sister and my baby, Derry. Like normal people.”

    Of course he doesn’t mean Christmas Day, nothing of the sort! And I can invite anyone I like, anyone at all, to watch the filming of the numbers!

    That means he’ll dub in the taps. Huh!

    “What?” he says uneasily.

    “Paul Mitchell manages to film without dubbing in the taps, Derry. Though I do recognise this is the 21st century: ya wouldn’t want not to take full advantage of the latest technology.”

    “Well—uh, well, will you?” he says on a pathetic note. Probably all put on. Though he does put his heart into his crapulous epics, I’m not saying he isn’t genuine about his job.

    “I’ll see what John thinks.”

    Brightening amazingly, he plunges into this huge Master Plan for allowing me to catch up on some real work while they’re filming the double: emails of this, that and the other, a slave will be sent to the cottage to photocopy absolutely everything, the fact that we haven’t got a photocopier down there’s no problem, they’ll hire one, then a special courier, not just air freight, accompanied, no expense spared, burning to CDs is in there somewhere, don’t think he knows what he’s talking about, I can log in to Double Dee Productions’ server—and do what? He doesn’t know what he’s talking about—and in short, the very latest technology is at my fingertips at his expense. Computer map programs, unquote, did he get that off Rupy? And everything! Waves the arms expansively. Yeah, yeah…

    I’ll see what John thinks.

    John thinks it sounds feasible. And he’ll be on hand to see it doesn’t eat up too much of my time! Will ya, John? That’s really good to know, only if you’d spell out exactly where you’ll be, like Portsmouth like ya said before the S hit the F about your Father possibly having wangled that job for ya, it’d be a million times better! I don’t say it, no. I’m scared of what the reply might be.

    “Darling, if you don’t want to, I’ll tell the man where to put it.”

    “Um, no, I think I can manage it. And he has gone to a lot of expense already, it would be awfully mean to pull out now. And he’s arranging for a double for all the walking bits—long shots, you know the type of thing.”

    “Mm. Sure, sweetheart?”

    As sure as I’ll ever be, I guess.

    So he nods and smiles and goes off briskly to give D.D. the good news and get an amendment to the contract drafted.

    I just lie back limply on my pillows, brooding. Why the fuck has he never breathed the syllables “Portsmouth” since we had that bloody conversation about Father Sir Bernard?

    Shit, I cannot manage these wanking crutches! How do people do it? Just as well nice, solid Maurie was there to catch me, eh? “No sense of balance,” he tells Sharon, the physio. She thinks I can do it if I try. Here we go, folks, it’s the “Rosie can learn to drive a car” thing all over again, isn’t it?

    Later. Maurie’s brought me back to my room, told me all about loads of other people that never managed the bloody things, either. Thanks, Maurie, I do feel better. No sense of balance, he repeats, going.

    A bit later. The second man in the universe that really believes I’ve got no sense of balance and doesn’t believe I can do it if I try turns up.

    “John, they’re threatening to keep me in because I can’t manage the fucking crutches! Can ya tell them the money’s gonna run out or something?”

    “They’d switch you onto the National Health, darling,” he says in his lingo. “But I will have a word.”

    Somewhat later. Crumbs. Dunno what he said or who to, but Sheree, the day nurse, bustles in all smiles to report that they are letting me out tomorrow, and Hullo, Mrs Marshall! Huwwo, Baby Bunting, who’s a big boy?

    Brightly Mum tells her about the time I fell off a chair trying to change a light bulb because I lost my balance and shook so much the thing tipped over—yes, folks, it is vertigo as well as no sense of balance. Sheree’s horrified, quite obviously thinking why is this the first time I’ve busted my leg, then? And bustles out again.

    “Ya know how she spells her name?” I note to the cracked hospital ceiling. “S,H,E,R,E,E.”

    “Rosie, that name’s C,H,E,R,I,E!”

    “Nope. ’Tisn’t. Ya might do me a favour and tell Aunty Kate, too.”

    “Stop it,” she says weakly. “You were never going to be a Cherie, were you, Baby Bunting? No, ’oo wasn’t! –He does look like a John,” she notes thoughtfully.

    “Ya can cut that right out.”

    Goes all hurt and bewildered. “What did I say?” Yeah, right.

    “Rosie, for Heaven’s sake, you’ve got that stubborn-as-a-mule look of your father’s on your face! What did I say?”

    “We are not calling him John. He’s Baby Bunting.”

    “But I never— Well, all right, dear.”

    “We might call him Fred,” I note evilly. “It is his middle name, after all.”

    Mum can’t stand that name. She smiles feebly. Then that reminds her, and we have to dig out “poor Mrs Stolz’s lovely card.” It is lovely, they sure produce beautiful get-well cards in America. …Oh, bummer!

    Sniffling, Mum hands me a tissue from my box, taking one for herself while she’s at it. We sniffle together…

    “It’s settled,” he announces firmly from the doorway. “You’re going home tomorrow.”

    We’ve both jumped ten feet.

    “Yes. Not that, John,” I say, blowing my nose.

    “Poor Mrs Stolz,” explains Mum, blowing her nose, and smiling at him. “We were just looking at the lovely card.”

    He nods limply.

    “Thought I was over it,” I offer in feeble explanation.

    “Dear,” she says firmly, “you never really get over something like that. Not completely.”

    “That’s right, Rosie,” he says with a little sigh.

    Shit. If he says so.

    Mum’s telling him all about the time poor Cooee died, for Pete’s sake, Mum! He was a pigeon! And even if I was only ten, I did have some notion that pigeons didn’t live as long as people. “And then she kicked up the most tremendous fuss when we moved to the new house, and that was a good three years afterwards!” she finishes, smiling.

    He understands. Yes, he probably does, though he doesn’t understand the Colonial urge to up stakes and move, that pillared brick place has been in the Haworth family for two hundred years. So I’ll spare him the information that Kenny volunteered to dig him up and move—Oops. She’s telling him.

    Yes, Mum, Kenny musta had a scientific bent, even then… Ghoulish, more like. Yawn.

    “I’ll let you rest, dear. Baby Bunting and I’ll be waiting in the car, John!” She gives me a kiss and kindly lets me kiss my own infant, and toddles off.

    He comes to sit on the bed with his arm round me and gives me a big kiss, mmm…

    “Hullo!” says a high, interested voice from the doorway and we jump ten feet. What is Wayne doing out there? On the other hand, she probably told him she’s my cousin. She is, she’s Dot’s younger sister. Deanna. She waddles in. She’s not fat, far from it, it’s not that sort of waddle, it’s a ballay waddle. “How are you, Rosie? Hullo, John,” she coos, batting the eyelashes frightfully. She’d be about twenty. Dumb as they come. “I've just come from advanced point class,” simper, simper. It still hasn’t sunk in she isn’t the 21st-century Fonteyn. “Mum said you and Aunty May might be able to give me a lift home.” Bat, bat, simper, simper.

    He’s now got some idea of the size of Sydney so he glances at me cautiously and I note: “They’re only a few stops up the line from Mum and Dad, you could just dump her at the station.”

    No, of course he’ll take her home. She’s terrifically pleased, but there's obviously something else on her mind.

    “Whaddaya want, Deanna?”

    “Um, I was wondering if you’ve finished with your magazines…”

    I tell her to take what she wants. She sorts through the pile eagerly. John watches her neutrally, huge made-up ballet eyes, scraped-back dyed black ballet hair, skin-tight black rehearsal clobber over the scrawny frame, an’ all. I watch the pair of them drily. Yep, she flips past the Country Lifes he bought me as if they were invisible, think to her they probably are, spurns all them Women’s Weeklies and New Ideas of Aunty Allyson’s and Wendalyn’s, and pounces on the Vogues and Harper’s Bazaars from Rupy. “These are really ace!” Bravely: “Are you sure you don’t want them?”

    “Yeah. Uh, some of those Vogues are in French, Deanna,” I remember feebly.

    Beaming smile. “That’s all right, I’ll just look at the pickshas!”

    Right. Well, ya seen the worst of my rellies this trip, John, that’s for sure. And yes, that is why she came.

EXT.  the front entrance of the hospital - DAY

A gaggle of paparazzi struggle for position in amongst the huge triple-parked O.B.

vans. The flashbulbs pop and flash.

Paparazzi

(together)

{ Lily Rose! Lily Rose! Are you glad to be going

home?

{ Lily Rose! Are you gonna do the film for Derry

after all?

{ Captain! Captain! Can you pick her up?

    He has to flaming pick me up, ya wanker, because I can’t walk! Maurie’s on deck, he’s appointed himself my guardian, and Wayne and Steve are here, doubtless the security firm will put in for a full day’s pay for both of them even though it’s only ten in the morning. So they shove the Press morons back bodily and this means John can get me into the back of the giant limo which Derry insisted on providing. There’s so much leg-room I could just sit facing forward but he makes me put the leg up anyway. He nips in the front beside Aaron and we’re off. Wave, wave, smile, smile. No, I’m not holding a giant bouquet of frangipani, thank you all the same, D.D., because for one thing they’re not in season. Not Singapore orchids, neither. No, not even smiling mistily above a soft billow (all his) of pink roses and gypsophila. For why? For I am not a performing seal, plus and the bloody things’d get in John’s way, ’ve you ever tried to manoeuvre someone with their leg in plaster into the back of a limo? (And yes, I could’ve had an ambulance but the great D.D. vetoed that, they’re not so photogenic. Added to which, he was undoubtedly thinking of the unfavourable impression it’d give his backers.) After that he suggested that John might like to wear his uniform. I kid you not.

    Shit, there’s another gaggle of them at the house! Or maybe the same gaggle, maybe they took a quicker route. Fortunately John’s got Dad’s electronic thingo so the giant triple garage doors slide up and we drive in. There is plenty of room, given that Dad’s re-parked Mum’s station-waggon and his Merc isn’t here, he’s at work. Mum waxed very tearful over that but he ignored her, good on him. Yes, hullo, Mum, ya right, here we are at last. Hi, Yvonne, yep, it’s good to be home, all right!

    None of the paparazzi have had the guts to duck under descending giant garage doors, so sucks to them. John thinks, frowning, we might need to have Wayne or someone on duty here. That won’t stop them bringing scaling ladders to get over Dad’s wall if they feel like it. Ya don’t need to go, Aaron, unless Derry needs you. Come in and have a cuppa.

    He’s hesitating, but Mum seconds me, so he comes. She gives him the low-down on the kitchen bench-tops and stuff but as his background’s very ordinary, his Dad’s an office worker back home in Montreal, he doesn’t think she’s potty, he accepts it as normal.

    “That’s a nice boy!” she beams as he departs, complete with a Tupperware container of home-made biscuits.

    “Mm. One wonders what he’s doing in the Dawlish entourage,” notes John drily.

    “Never mind, it’s giving him the opportunity to see a bit of the world. Well, to get lost in a variety of city streets,” I concede. “John, I think I better go back to the wheelchair, I need to go to the bog, sorry, Mum, toilet, and ya can’t be leaping up and down at the service of the weak family bladder all day.”

    Mum thinks that isn’t funny, and warns him to be careful of his back. Now Yvonne’s leaping up to help him. He’s strong as a horse— Never mind. And once I’ve been I’m gonna get Baby Bunting up for his lunch, after all, he is mine, not yours and not yours.

    “I can go by myself,” I note as John and Yvonne then both accompany me to the toilet.

    “You might slip, darling.”

    “I won’t. I been manoeuvring myself in and out of the wheelchair for ages, now.”

    “But the hospital toilets have got safety rails, Rosie,” Yvonne reminds me anxiously.

    “Unless the whole family’s been lying to me, so have Mum and Dad’s.” He’s had them put in—at enormous expense, of course, because what Aussie tradesman actually agrees to come without five months’ warning? Plus and re-laid the front path: what with Aussie laissez-faire and the weather he was reduced to using his contacts to get that done. A big racing client. Dunno whether he wrote his debt off, or— Forget it. At least Double Dee Productions have agreed not to sue him for negligence. I kid you not.

    John makes me show him that I can do it. Honestly! Which of them is volunteering to pull my pants down for me? I am wearing some, the plaster’s not so huge I can't get them on. Like, first ya hitch yaself up, pant, gasp, hanging onto the wheelchair with one hand, while you edge and wriggle the things— He pulls them down for me. Thanks, hubby. Now I can demonstrate that I can half hop, half haul myself onto the bog. See? All right, John, you’ll be right outside. When I’ve been I get back into the wheelchair by myself, fancy that. He’s been thinking strategically while I’ve been in there, so he tells me it would probably be easier if I sat on the toilet and then edged the pants down, more elbow room. Thanks, Royal Navy.

    So by now I feel so weak I don’t really care that Yvonne’s helpfully got Baby Bunting up for me. And yes, Yvonne, I suppose I will want him in my room, now. Jesus!

    The wheelchair’s really low, so no way am I gonna sit in it at the table. John, I can do it! I'm not a paraplegic, I’ve got one good leg! He hovers anxiously while I hop out of the wheelchair, easy-peasy, and sit down on a dining chair like a normal human being. Almost; I have to sit well back.

    Mum serves the quiche. “Ace, Mum. It’s wonderful to be eating real food again!”

    “Instead of all those chocs,” notes Yvonne.

    “Hah, hah.”

    “You’ve got a spot, you know,” she warns.

    I do, actually, and I’ve stopped eating chocs, but you have no idea how boring that stint in hospital was, Yvonne. Even with all the visitors I had.

    “So, whaddaya think, John?”

    “Mm?” –He’s watching Baby Bunting squirming round on his tum on one of Mum’s fake Persian rugs. We’re sitting in the refurbished family-room, so-called, actually what used to be the sitting-dining room, it was all open-plan with the kitchen anyway, and if it ever was a family-room, it was back when Kenny and me were both— Forget it. It’s a nightmare of shiny hotel décor, with a puce leather suite and a turquoise leather feature chair, just looks like a non-matching armchair to me. Possibly them floor-length turquoise curtains were a mistake: the cat’s taken a scunner to them, every time Mum’s back’s turned he nips behind the one that’s furthest from the famous granite bench top and starts ripping it up. Serve her right.

    “Do ya think I can fit in the tap dancing for D.D. some time in January?”

    “Why not, if the leg’s up to it?” he says mildly. “After all, we are going to Fiona and Norman for Christmas, darling: we’ll be in London, won’t we?”

    Will we? Like, both of us? Or will you definitely be down in Portsmouth doing this job you reckoned you were gonna accept back before you realised your Father probably wangled it for you and that we haven’t heard a word of since? Which if you will be, I don’t mind, in fact three cheers. But on the other hand I do mind if you in fact won’t be there at all but gone back to sea because you won’t accept a job unless it’s on your merits. And why haven’t you at least said something, good or bad, because it’d put me out of my misery, John!

    “Um, yeah. Well, Wimbledon, yeah.”

    “That is London, cuckoo,” he says mildly. “I expect Baby Bunting’ll be crawling by then! Come on, fellow, you can do it. Come on: come and get Tigger!” Holds out Terence’s Tigger to him. Not a sausage.

    “He’ll do it in his own time,” I offer dully. Gee, just like his father.

    The thing is, there’s no privacy in Mum and Dad’s nightmare of refurbished and extended Year 2000 crappola. You guessed that? Gee, brill.’, go to the top of the class. And what do I want privacy for, haven’t we got a perfectly good bedroom? Yeah, we’ve got a thing the size of a football field with a palest pink body-carpet scattered with tiny pale turquoise flowers, a pink and turquoise silk, I kid you not, silk duna cover, and a lovely view of the giant turquoise pool with its turquoise safety fence (yes, she must like turquoise, mustn’t she?), but I’m not talking about that, for once. I want to have a word in Dad’s ear but it's impossible at home.

    So given that there’s something drastically wrong with the set we were supposed to be filming on today and given that John’s booked himself in for a day tour to the more exciting sights in the extended Sydney area like, mangy kangaroo park in the drizzle, extensive views of the Darling Harbor conference centre’s virtual reality architecture in the drizzle, like that, I’ll go in to the office. No, I won’t tell Mum where I’m going. Or Yvonne. Or ask either of them to drive me in the station-waggon. What I will do, I’ll wait until they’ve both gone off for a lovely session of gossip and hairdressing at the Mall—far from fighting over the rights to Baby Bunting they’re getting on like a house on fire—and then I’ll give Joslynne a bell.

    So she turns up in her heap, grinning. “Hi. Where ya wanna go?”

    “Dad’s office. I’m gonna put the hard word on him: see whether John’s told him anything definite about his plans for the next five years. –Hullo, Davey, shouldn’t you be at school?”

    He had earache so they went to the doctor this morning and he gave him some antibiotics—that’s what they always prescribe, Mum’s theory is that it explains the prevalence of asthma amongst Aussie kids of this generation, my own tending towards the correlated presence of air conditioners in the general population—and told him to stay out of the wind. Mum’s solution woulda been a woolly hat and if that didn’t work, a hottie, and stay out of the wind.

    “Well, the woolly hat should keep the wind offa ya, yeah; hey, are those the Sydney Swans’ colours?”—’Course!—“Yeah, up the Swans! Shall we go?”

    Davey warns me he’s going in the front.

    “You’ll have to, I need to stretch this bloody leg out.”

    Davey warns me he wants to come up with me and see Dad’s computers.

    “Look, they haven’t got the online games their end, you’d do better dialling up—”

    He knows! He wants to see the computers!

   “All right, good on ya. Dare say Dad’ll let ya. Come on, then.”

    Joslynne grabs Baby Bunting’s now slightly-the worse-for-wear pale blue carrycot and we go.

    Gee, all the moos that work for Dad immediately assume I’ve come for a Royal Tour of the place in me flaming wheelchair. Yeah, I did get your lovely flowers, Deirdre, thanks very much. Yeah, I did get your card, Betty—Alice—Maureen, thanks very much. Glad you like the signed photos. (Thinks: pre-signed by the Henny Penny PR types that can do the “Lily Rose Rayne” signature better than I can? Signed for the porpoise by Rupy? Or actually signed by me? Cringe.)

    Dunno that Davey actually envisaged being shown the accounts system by the head moo, Deirdre, that can only do a basic search and input the punters’ payments, but that’s what he gets. So the dust having more or less settled, though Shona, who’s gone out with the lunch orders, will have to see me before I go, is this a threat or a promise, we go into Dad’s office. Me and Joslynne do, Betty’s kidnapped Baby Bunting, we may never see him again.

    Cripes, he’s got his own workstation now. Yeah, Dad, good on ya, ya can work it now, uh-huh. This is how ya do a very elementary search and this is how ya enter what the punters have paid, yeah, great. Ooh, and this is how ya generate a threatening “pay up now” notice, is it? Gee, never knew ya system could do that at the push of a button. And send it straight out on the email, eh? Goodoh. And these are all the stats displays, yawn, is this never gonna end? Though some of the family will be glad to know that you and ya Japanese mafia mates are actually in the black, yep. Uh-huh, predictions look good, Dad, is this never gonna end? Ooh, yeah, thanks, Helen, we sure would like coffee! Biscuits? Ya twisted me arm. Exit Helen, giggling madly. And to see how many suckers have logged on to ya website ya just— Yeah, yeah. I know all this, Dad, because funnily enough I am marginally computer-literate. (Don’t say it.)

    Joslynne’s given up entirely, she’s giving the windowsill plants the once-over. They’ll be good, Deirdre doesn’t trust the plant people that only do a great job all over the greater Sydney metropolitan area, she polishes their leaves herself.

    “Yeah, great, Dad. Can I have a private word?”

    He logs off and turns round and eyes Joslynne’s back drily. “Private?”

    “Don’t be a clot, Joslynne knows. Private as in no members of our extended family are present in this office as we speak.”

    “Including your bloody Aunt Allyson,” he acknowledges. “Go on.”

    Deep breath. “Has John said anything to you about— Blast!”

    Deirdre’s never heard of the polite knock. Added to which she has worked for him since he first came on board with old Mr Grant in the original scungy office not a million miles from the scungy suburb where we used to live. –Right, where Cooee was buried. Oh Shona’s back, is she? Maybe she better come in now and whatever. (See me?) She comes in, giggling.

    “Hi, Shona. How’s it?”

    “Yeah, good!” she gasps.

    “Give her a signed photo, for Pete’s sake, Rosie,” says Dad in a bored voice.

    “Um, yeah, thanks, Jerry!” No-one of his entire staff, even skinny little lunch-order girls in tight brown jumpers showing an inch of skin just above the navel—admittedly the building’s heated but isn’t that risking death by pneumonia in the middle of winter, or am I getting old?—as I say, no-one calls him “Mr Marshall.” And, just by the by, how old is she? I suppose someone checked that they weren’t employing her illegally when they signed her on? –Ya right, I am getting old.

    “Do ya really—” She really wants one. After three years in the Business I’ve got some in the side pocket of the wheelchair so I just haul one out and sign it. It isn’t one of Brian’s PR shots, it’s one of D.D.’s, so it’s a close-up of a misty smile with the light from the waves glinting off my curls, and only a small orchid in the aforesaid curls. Singapore orchid, yep.

    Ooh, it’s different from the ones the others got!

    Uh—would this be good or bad, Shona? “Um, yeah, it’s a brand-new one. Um, from the film,” I lie weakly. Well, it’s a publicity shot for it, yeah.

     She’s overcome, goes bright pink, gasps, and totters out to skite about it.

    “There’ll be no work out of her this afternoon,” Dad notes drily. “Well?”

    “Has John said anything to you about what he’s gonna be doing for the next few years?”

    “Uh—no. You mean lately, Rosie? –No.”

    Swallow. “Um, nothing about Portsmouth, or, um, like that?”

    “Doesn’t ‘no’ mean ‘no’ in your part of rural Hampshire?” he says drily. “No. Well, you told me about that stuff he’s been doing, filling in for—”

    Old So-and-So. Right.

    “What about the Admiralty, Uncle Jerry?” adds Joslynne helpfully. (Look, we were thirteen when our families moved to the street and made us go to Putrid St Agatha’s, the “Uncle” and “Aunty” bit was all Mum’s idea and— Forget it. If ya didn’t grasp it straight away, ya don’t come from a family like mine and ya never will grasp it.)

    “The last I heard of the Admiralty was around the time Baby Bunting was born.”

    “Yeah, and I know he gave it up, but you can understand that he wanted to go back to his ship because it was a crisis,”—glad someone’s grasped it, pity she’s not actually part of my extended family—“only has he said anything about he’d like to go back?”

    “No, Joslynne,” he says heavily.

    “Well, what about maybe being an admiral?”

    Shit, why’d she let that rabid tiger out of its bag?

    He doesn’t get it, he just thinks it’s Joslynne being her usual dumb self. “Eh? That’s not up to him, whether or not he’d like it, it’s up to—”

    “She knows that, Dad! Has he said anything at all about his future plans? Or even about what he’d like?”

    “N,O, No. Read my lips. No! Ask him; he is your husband.”

    “She already—”

    “I already—”

    “–asked him!” we chorus, glaring at him.

    “So?”

    “Dad, he gave me a load of reassuring crap, only then it came out about his Father talking to me about how he oughta take a shore job, and now he thinks the old joker used his influence—”

    “Probably did. Par for the course, wouldn’t it be?”

    “Shut up, Dad! He thinks ruddy Father Sir Bernard used influence, so the shore job won’t be on his merits, and will he take it now?”

    “Because he needs to feel he earned it, ya see,” Joslynne elaborates helpfully.

    “Look, the pair of you can stop going on at me, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. And before you ask me to have a word with him, Rosie, the answer’s No.”

    “I’m not that flaming mad, thanks!”

    “Good. Like I say, he’s your husband, if you want to know what he’s thinking, ask him.”

    “But Uncle Jerry, he’s close as an oyster, ’cos ya see, his orders haven't been cut!”

    He eyes her drily. “Dare say. In that case, should she have told you? –Come on, I’ll take the pair of you to lunch.”

    “Ooh, thanks, Uncle Jerry!”

    “Yeah, thanks, Dad. Only we got Baby Bunting and Davey, if he can drag himself away from your computers,” I remind him.

    “I wasn’t proposing the Hyatt’s main dining-room. Uh—McDonald’s?”

    “Um, no. They’re too big, D.D.’d kill me if I gave them free publicity,” I admit regretfully.

    “Thousands of paparazzi aren’t going to surface in the depths of a wet working week in this neck of the woods to snap your mug,” my loving father replies with tolerant scorn.

    “Much. Wake up, Dad, one of the kids that work there’d tip them off! And if they didn't, the manager would, ya think he’d overlook the chance for free publicity and getting in good with his bosses?”

    “All right. Hungry Jack’s? They small enough for ya?” he asks sardonically. Like, they’re only Australian, but they sure are huge here, biggest rival to that big yellow M, if ya get my drift.

    Uh… Gee, I could really go a burger.

    “You are supposed to be on a diet,” my best friend notes repressively.

    “Well, shit, Joslynne, you suggest somewhere that won’t mind Davey’s Swans’ hat or Baby Bunting grizzling, and that can maybe supply some shlop for him and won’t mind how messy he gets as he eats it, plus and won’t tip off the Press!”

    She can’t. So we wrench Davey off the computers, wrench Baby Bunting off the gaggle of moos skiving off in the lunchroom, and it’s ho! for Hungry Jack’s.

    … Boy, have I missed these burgers or have I missed these burgers! Not that I like the ones with the slice of beetroot in them, no. –Aussie special. No, I’m not kidding. Adored by all the macho men that’ve been brainwashed by their Aussie mums in their formative years into believing tinned beetroot is actual food. No! I am not kidding!

    … Later. Naturally John asks me what I did today. I just say Dad took me and Joslynne for a burger and he seems to accept this. Wants to know how Baby Bunting managed, so I give him the full horror story on the thin fry grasped forever in tiny fist, don’t panic, he couldn’t chew it, just sucked it, don’t think he managed to get any of it down him, and the further horror story of the pot of soft-serve ice-cream, even Davey didn’t volunteer to finish it for him.—Did he throw anything?—Well, yeah, but Hungry Jack’s didn’t seem to mind. Or notice, actually. And what did he see on his tour?—It was rather odd, darling. (I bet it was, yeah.) But he saw some kangaroos, lovely smile. I give the lovely smile a hard look. “Mangy kangaroos.”—Er, well, actually he thought they might’ve been wallabies.—All right, I’m easy, mangy wallabies.—And rather a lot of suburbs, he adds. (Ya would do, that’s what Sydney is.) “What about them virtual reality film sets down Darling Harbor way?”—Weak smile, doesn’t deny they are. (See? Told ya so!)

    So that’s that. I’m stumped, frankly. No, I’m not gonna interrogate him about his plans. Because for why? Because I’m chicken! Hasn’t that sink in yet?

    Me and John and Baby Bunting are sitting high on a scruffy hill overlooking Singapore. –A beach in Queensland, yep. There’s actual blue sky today, so we’ve got a sun umbrella up for Baby Bunting. You get a lovely view from up here of the old house that D.D.’s turned into a nightmare of Fifties Singapore, plus and the caravan park over to the far right. At the moment it’s occupied by Double Dee Productions’ giant vans. Whether for dressing-rooms or Wardrobe or filled with lighting equipment or— Giant vans, in other words. Sleeping quarters have been provided, there’s brand-new motel units next to the caravan park, but me and John booked in at the nearest pub, and thank God we did, it’s about twenty miles away, back up on the so-called main road, and it’s very, very, very peaceful.

    The beach itself is an almost perfect circlet of silver sand—yes, Derry, it is the perfect site, it’s the circlet that’s only almost, we get ya—with deep blue ocean (or dark grey, according to the weather) showing through the gap, yes, Derry, it is the perfect site for Singapore. None of us Aussies have asked him where the mangroves are, everyone’s just thankful they’re not required to wade through thigh-deep mud to get to that perfect pale turquoise sparkling water. Or grey-green, according to the w— Yeah.

    Well, technically not me, no, I’m in plaster to just below the knee and I’m not allowed to go in the water. (They have shortened the cast, thank God, and the break’s setting splendidly, unquote, hope it wasn’t just a medico lie.)

    “What a perfect day,” he murmurs, lying back and gazing up at pure blue through his sunnies.

    “It sure is.”

    He turns on his side and smiles at me. “Glad you came?”

    Actually I’m ruddy glad I busted my leg, or that’d be me in an underwired bikini down on the perfect arc (D.D.’s) of argent (his again) being screamed at by the Grate Director. “Too right.”

    Some time goes by in blissful silence as to the nuclear Haworth family up on the hill and screaming desperation down on the beach, to judge by the sounds floating up.

    “Glad it isn’t you down there being screamed at by Dawlish?” he says slyly.

    “Whadda you think?”

    He grins, and opens a beer.

    More peaceful lying and, on the part of one, drinking, and on the part of another, gurgling. Not over Gladly Teddy or Rupert Bear, though he has got them: no, over a disposable polystyrene cup. Oh, well, whatever turns you on.

    “One wonders,” he says lazily, “why they need those huge lights and reflectors on a beautiful day like this.”

    “The actual sun isn’t artistic, John,” I explain severely.

    Gee, he’s laughing like a drain. Well done, that Captain’s wife!

    Then he says: “Have you got any lines for tomorrow, darling?”

    “Yeah. Mainly it’s ‘Ooh, Rabbie! Giggle, giggle,’ and ‘Ooh, Jimmy! Giggle, giggle.’ With a few ‘You are naughty’s’ thrown in here and there.”

    “Taxing.”

    “You spoke my very thought.”

    “Why has he called him Rabbie, does anyone know?”

    “Euan’s part? Dunno. Something to do with the Scotch?”

    “Mm. Er… how is he, do you think, Rosie?”

    “What, Euan? This’d be besides doing the Big Star crap unendingly all over the Aussie media, would it?”

    “Not entirely, darling: I’d say that’s symptomatic.”

    “Mm,” I agree, biting my lip. “Well, he’s not very happy, but he’s not talking about it.”

    “Not even to Amaryllis?”

    Sigh. I thought they were having a heart-to-heart the other day, too. “No. Aubrey Mattingforth wants to tackle The Winter’s Tale next year and he wants Amaryllis for Whatsername, the mum. You know: she gets turned into a statue or something. Georgy Harris is gonna be Perdita. Amaryllis can’t stand Aubrey, and Euan was trying to talk her into it—telling her all about what a lovely production it’s gonna be. She told me she doesn’t think Jimmy would want her to be draped in gauze veils”—he looks at me in horror and nods feelingly in agreement with them sentiments—“but she is quite tempted by the part.”

    “I see.” He’s frowning over it, why? Well, sympathy, make that empathy, with Jimmy Fairfax, yes. Then: “What rôle is Euan taking? Surely not Florizel?”

    Who? “Um, is that Perdita’s dim prince?”—He nods.—“Then, yeah. I know he’s miles too old for it, but Aubrey’s gonna solve that by bleaching him within an inch of his life, or so the story runs. He doesn’t like wigs, see? And bleach the whiskers, too. –You may well wince. And if these gauze draperies extend to the males as well as the females—”

    “Don’t!” he says, laughing and shuddering.

    “Plus and make him lose a couple of stone,” I conclude with relish.

    “Will he do it?”

    “He will for the great A.M., yeah. ’Cos otherwise he’d be black-listed at Stratford forever and a day, geddit?”

    “Hours ago!” he says with a laugh. “Fancy a light-beer?”

    “Ya twisted me arm.”

    So he sits up and forages in the esky. (Hamper to some.) This enables him to get a better view of the chaos below, so he notes, frowning: “That boy’s got a terrible dose of sunburn.”

    “Who? Oh: Darryn. Yeah. The sunscreen didn’t have much effect after Makeup had rubbed all that Max Factor into it. Added to which he let that local bloke sucker him into going snorkelling the other day, it didn’t dawn that when you’re swimming along with your back six inches under the water the sun can still get to ya.”

    His eye lights up. “Snorkelling?”

    “Don’t tell me ya wannoo—” ’Course he does, it’s active. “Bri Taylor, he’ll be in the pub this evening. And don’t imagine you’re gonna see any coral reefs or like that. Or turtles. –Don’t look at me: evidently Darryn wanted to see a turtle. And if ya see a shark, do me a favour and hop back on board again, wouldja?” He thought it was the wrong season for them? Jesus! “John, this is Queensland. Ya can get sharks at any time of the year, geddit?”

    Yeah, maybe he gets it, why did I ever open my fat mouth about the flaming snorkelling?

    “Taking of young Darryn—”

    “What? –Sorry, didn’t mean to shout.”

    “I just wondered— Well, at one point you and Rupy mentioned he had a crush on Katie.”

    “Yeah. It never got anywhere. Well, it never got the chance, did it? She turned down Derry’s offer to audition for Amaryllis’s daughter.”

    “Mm,” he agrees, grimacing.

    “She did go up to Skye for the holidays, according to Bridget,” I report. We got a bunch of mail this morning, I’ve been reading it in between just lying. “Her and Perry are gonna collect her and go on over to David’s dump a bit later.”

    “Yes,” he says, smiling at me. “At least that seems to be working out.”

    So far, yeah.

    He’s reading my mind, of course. “You can’t live other people’s—”

    “Yeah, yeah.” I sit up and hug my knees and glumly contemplate the picture of Rabbie Macfarlane (Euan, of course) and Jimmy Welwich (Darryn) flirting with my double and Amaryllis’s daughter (not Katie), while Michael and Amaryllis have a much more dignified flirt under a nearby sun umbrella.

    “Is Dawlish intending to marry Amaryllis and Michael off?” he asks idly.

    “Dunno,” I admit. “It got so complicated I switched off.”

    He gives a smothered laugh.

    Ugh, someone’s heading up towards us. Who is it? She takes off the huge straw hat and pants a bit, this hill’s bloody steep, and wipes her forehead and I realise it’s Miff. D.D. has still got her, to put it the most accurate way, if also the most sexist.

    “Darling,” he says in a low voice, though she isn’t nearly near enough to hear us, “be kind to the girl. I think she’s damned lonely. Bloody Dawlish barely speaks to her, have you noticed?”

    John, you deluded angel, he doesn’t keep her round the place for speaking to! “Yeah. Par for the course—though she is pretty dumb, ya gotta admit it. But I like her: she’s not vain, in spite of those stunning looks, and she’s never spiteful, and Lord knows this lot gives her enough opportunities. Actually I was gonna say you be kind.”

    His mouth does that thing it does when he’s trying not to laugh. “Can’t not be. Hormonal.”

    “Yeah, yeah.”

    And Miff comes up to us panting and smiling. “Hot, isn’t it?”

    If ya grew up in the middle of Britain, it probably is. “Warmish, yeah, Siddown, Miff.”

    She sinks down on the rug and pants a bit, John’s enjoying it, I’m not kidding myself. She’s eyeing Baby Bunting longingly. “Could I possibly pick him up?”

    “Sure. Only if he doesn’t wanna be picked up he might bellow.”

    She picks him up gingerly and beams, as he doesn’t bellow. “I think he’s sleepy,” she whispers.

    “Yeah, it’s been a long, warm day for a Baby Bunting.”

    She nods and smiles. And cuddles him a bit, very gingerly. Shit, he won’t break, she’s as bad as Terence— Ooh! This huge great light bulb’s gone over my head!

    After a while he’s asleep. She could put him down but she’s obviously enjoying it, poor girl, so I don’t suggest it. What a life, trailing round in the train of a great fat toad of a selfish celeb that basically doesn’t give a shit if you live or die. And she can’t act and doesn’t even want to act, what’s she doing it for? Well… It’s a living? See a bit of the world? As far I can gather she’s seen a lot of the world in a total muddle, never quite sure where they are, or, if somebody kind like Bernie Anderson tells her, where it is. She left school at sixteen, lived with some creep that got her up the spout, had an abortion when he wouldn’t marry her, went on to the next creep… Not a very unusual story, no. But not one that generally leads, especially in the wake of a Derry Dawlish, to ordinary home, loving hubby and a couple of kids.

    Eventually the chaos down on the beach is seen to break up, the technicians’ll be demanding a tea-break, you can see the steam coming out of D.D.’s ears from here, as he looks round…

    “I’d better go,” she says, swallowing. “Thanks awfully for letting me hold him, Rosie,” she whispers, handing him over to me.

    “Any time, Miff.”

    And off she goes, smiling bravely.

    John blows his nose hard.

    “Yeah, she does make ya count ya blessings, eh?”

    “Yes,” he says, squeezing my thigh very hard. “She certainly does, poor damned girl.”

    “Yeah. Listen: whaddaya think of her for Terence?” I say eagerly.

    His jaw’s dropped ten feet.

    “I know she’s never had any education, but she’s got a very sweet nature and she wouldn't be bored when he blahed on about his ruddy car or his sub or like that! And she’s very beautiful, you can’t deny he likes his women to be good-looking!”

    “Just don’t,” he says faintly, closing his eyes.

    ‘But-she’d be ideal!”

    He opens his eyes and sighs heavily. “Rosie, please. You can’t live other people’s lives for them, how many times do I have to say it? Just don’t plot and plan, darling, you’ll only get yourself all worked up for nothing.”

    “Not for nothing!”

    “Yes, because you cannot control life,” he says firmly. “However much you might like to see people get together, it is totally out of your hands. Totally, Rosie.”

    I think I’ve got the point. Next he’ll be telling me life isn’t sociology, like Mum. “Yeah, I do know that, John. Only a person can’t help hoping,” I lie down on the rug and gaze at the blue… Say I throw a bit of a cast party when we get home, well, cast and friends…

    “I can see you plotting and planning,” he warns.

    “You can't say I plotted and planned Katie taking up with Euan!”

    “No, but you got yourself all worked—”

    “Or Bridget taking up with Perry; in fact I didn’t want either of them to get involved with them!”

    “Darling, you got yourself all worked up over—”

    “And I did find Jimmy Parkinson for Barbara!”

    “Mm. And failed to throw Yvonne and Jack Powell together. And regardless of whether you wanted or didn't want these relationships, they were all out of your control but you got yourself worked up nevertheless. So stop it. Just read your letters. Wasn’t there one from Tuppence Hammersley?”

    “Yeah, but I’ve read it. Admiral Sir Kenneth wants to buy a house in the country for his retirement, she’s thinking of giving up the flat and sharing it with him.” I sit up and find it for him. “Here, read it if ya like.”

    He thanks me politely, will this go on for the rest of or married life, I hear you cry, Yes, being the answer, it’s ingrained in the man; and asks if I’d like to read Father’s. No, so I thank him politely and get on with it…

    What? I don’t believe it! I sit bolt upright and goggle at it.

    “What, darling?” he says mildly, squinting up at me.

   “Your Father’s apologising for not consulting you before he tried to wangle you a job in London and—and saying you were quite right to take the post in Portsmouth instead!” I choke.

    “Mm? Oh—yes. I did tackle him on the subject,” he admits, making a face. “Silly old sod. But he means well.”

    Yuh— Uh— Dunno what to say first. I mean, ya just called ya Father a silly old sod in front of me! And did he just get the goss.’ from his old mates at the Club or, um, have your orders been cut, or…

    “What, Rosie?”

    “Yuh-you mean you have accepted the job in Portsmouth?” I croak.

    “Of course, darling, I told you that ages ago.”

    “So, um, have your orders been cut?”

    “Mm? Oh—yes. Just come through,” he says, waving a long, official-looking envelope at me but looking at Miss Hammersley’s letter.

    “John, don’t treat this as if it matters, will ya?” I shout.

    He sits up hurriedly. “Ssh! You’ll wake him up! What on earth’s up?”

    Funnily enough I don’t reply, I burst out bawling.

    “Rosie!” Puts arm round me. “Darling, you wanted me to take the shore job, didn’t you?”

    “Yes—you—nana!”

    “Well, good! Don't cry!”

    Sob, sob, sob. “Thought—gonna—change—mind!”

    “Nonsense, sweetheart.” Hug, hug.

    I just bawl.

    “Come on, mop your eyes and blow your nose!”—Mop, mop. Sniff, blow. Sniff. Mop.—“That’s better! Don’t tell me you didn’t believe me?”

    No, actually I won’t tell you anything of the— Blast! Tears are dripping down my cheeks. He mops them carefully. “You didn’t believe me, is that it?”

    “I did at first. Only then ya found out me and ya Father had talked about ya career behind ya back and I thought you thought he’d wangled it for ya and you’d change ya mind because it wasn’t on ya merits and put in for sea duty instead!”

    A short silence.

    “Then you’re an idiot,” he says calmly. “A paranoid idiot.”

    Yeah, I sure am. Sniff, blow, gulp. “Yeah.”

    “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Rosie,” he says heavily.

    I know that. At least, intellectually I know it, I just gotta convince myself I believe it, see? “Yeah, but the rest of the world does, so it’s quite hard to, um, get out of the habit of… Um, that didn’t come out good.”

    “No,” he says with a sigh, leaning his cheek on my head. “But I think I get it. And I suppose I asked for it, dashing back to sea to shoot defenceless Afghans when I’d told you I’d be ashore for a while.”

    “No, it wasn’t that.”

    “I think it was, Rosie.”

    “Well, not consciously, but it could have been there in my subconscious. So, um, how long is it for?”

    “At Her Majesty’s pleasure,” he says, smiling a bit. “Sorry: several years, darling. Until you’ve finished your five-year study, certainly. Then I might put in for something in London. If they’ll have me.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “No, well, the winds of political change do blow through the Admiralty from time to time. See how it goes, mm?”

    See how it goes? This is Captain Cut-And-Dried, willing to see how it goes?

    Possibly he’s noticed I’m well on the gob-smacked side of flabbergasted. “What?”

    “Nothing. I mean, ya do mean it, do ya?”

    He rolls his eyes. “Yes!”

    All right, ya do. Cripes. Ooh, I feel all peculiar. Must be relief. Not just the Portsmouth job being okay after all, though that is a HUGE relief: the realisation that I haven’t driven a wedge between him and Father, and the realisation that he doesn’t owe the job to ruddy Father after all—Like that. Phew!

    So I lie down flat and put my sunnies back on and gaze up at pure blue. It sure is a perfect day…

    Admittedly I've still got weeks of D.D. screaming at me to be endured, and he’s already forbidden me to touch anything approaching an Orange Julius, Bernie Anderson introduced me to them, they had them when they came through Hawaii, and Miff just about choked when she saw me drinking one, so that coconut milk in them has gotta be stuffed full of calories—yep. And admittedly D.D.’s angling for a full frontal, or as far as the about-to-be-removed bikini bottom, so I’ll have to fend him off without alienating him utterly, plus and try to keep John from wringing his fat neck. Like that. And admittedly I've gotta go home and face The Captain’s Daughter the Christmas Special II for Brian, God knows what crap they’ll of dreamed up to put in it, not to say put me in, by the time I get back. And admittedly this morning’s mail included a letter from Mark Rutherford being real acid on the subject of two months’ holiday in the sun which I am actually entitled to, the bloody workaholic that he is, plus and a letter from Greg containing a completely new idea for approaching the employment categories that I’m gonna have to put the kybosh on before he gets the bit between his teeth…

    Then there’s the fact that D.D.’s got a brand-new idea for another film starring Me. No—way. Once is more than enough. Only I can’t tell him that yet, it wouldn’t be sensible.

    And more immediately, now John’s got this snorkelling idea into his noddle! I’m never, ever gonna be able to get it out again, he’ll be out there at the mercy of marauding sharks regardless of the fact that me and Baby Bunting need him a lot more than the sharks do and a lot more than he needs the snorkelling.

    Still, as of this moment it’s a perfect day.

    And let’s face it, life’s like that, isn’t it? It doesn’t stand still. Or, put it like this: there’s always something.

    What? Ya wanna know who that blonde double down there on the beach being screamed at by D.D. is? Well— No, forget it, it’s a whole other story.

    I gaze up at pure blue. Sigh. It sure is a perfect day…

    He’s lying beside me gazing up at the blue, too. “All right now, cuckoo?”

    I sure am, John. “Mm. Extra.”

    He takes my hand.  “Good.”

    And we just lie here hand-in-hand, gazing up at pure blue through our sunnies. It sure is a perfect day, so let’s just enjoy it while we got it.