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

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

Hard Yacker



Episode 4: Hard Yacker

    “Ooh, is this the cottage? Ooh, it’s lovely!”
    Yeah, not bad, Katie. If you don’t mind the isolation. (Don’t say it.) Brick, quite old, but done up in the Thirties with a proper tiled roof and a proper lean-to kitchen, and at some stage had the other lean-to incorporated into the one huge downstairs room to make a dinette. The Haworths don’t call it that, they’re too up-market to use the word, but that is what it is. Unlike some cottages you don’t step right into the main room from the front door, there’s a tiny lobby place that’s just big enough for a coat stand in, guess what, old dark oak, personally I’d prefer a brass one, and a little cupboard high on the wall that’s the fuse box. Then you go through the double glass doors with the tiny panes, John says they’re Thirties and ’orribly anachronistic, into the main room. The front windows, over his big desk to the right as you go in, and to the left over a large area of empty floor space which, it has now dawned, must be where the last puce and magenta cow put the crap he got rid of, were “unfortunately” enlarged in the Thirties. This means that you can actually open them. Not to say, see out of them, to the lovely view of his little bay. Over on the left-hand wall is the huge fireplace, it isn’t the cottage’s original fireplace, darling, unquote, and something technical about the brickwork of it. His big brown leather chair to its right, as you face it, and the big brown leather buttoned sofa, he calls it the ancient and honourable sofa, it belonged to one of his grandfathers, in front of it, set well back to make room for one of his posh Persian rugs. And what he calls a club chair to the left of the fireplace, green leather. Couple of occasional tables, and his TV and video recorder. This group forms a sort of island to one side of miles of empty floor and more Persian rugs, geddit? Lots of bookcases but unfortunately they don’t nearly manage to hide all of the bloody oak wainscoting which comes to about eyebrow-level on me. It was blonded (? don’t ask me) by the criminals that did the place up in the Thirties—this woulda been before it was handed on to his parents, they got married just after the War—and subsequently oiled all over by hand with olive oil, I kid you not, by his Lady Mother and her lady help, so that now it’s almost acceptable. Apparently.
    We cross fifty metres or so of wide black oak floorboards dotted with Persian rugs and go through the door in the back wall, beyond the fireplace’s island, and into the minute back passage. I point out the kitchen in front of us and the back door to the right and the staircase to our left, just in case Greg and Katie coulda missed them. Tim’s already in the kitchen, so we follow him.
    They look round dazedly at the apparently untouched-by-human-hand-since-1932, dark cream cupboard doors, ranks of them. They have been touched: if you open two of the lower ones you’ll find a dishwasher. And someone’s committed the heinous crime of concealing a clothes drier behind them newer-looking louvered doors at the far end, above the washing machine. They’ve painted them dark cream, though.
    “What’s this?” she croaks.
    “An Aga,” says Greg, grin, grin. “Thought Dad’s was the only one left!”
    “Yeah. Ignore it, Katie. The microwave’s on the bench, see, and he's got a little electric element, like if ya just wanna boil up the frozen peas.” Why are they laughing? Pair of wankers. –Ah, hah! She’s noticed the lino! That’s wiped the smile off her face.
    “The original lino,” Greg’s explaining, grin, grin. “Those extra yellow splodges over there on top of its own yellow and brown and green splodges’ll be where Imelda spilt the turmeric.”
    “Look, know-it-all, shut up and shove this stuff in the fridge!”
    “Wuff!”
    “No lunch for dogs,” I say firmly. “You can have a bowl of water.”—Nothing.—“Katie!”
     She jumps a foot, and drags her eyes off the lino. “What?”
    “Unpack that basket you’re hugging like a long-lost brother, it’s got Tim’s bowls in it!”
    Dazedly she unpacks it.
    “The reason he’s never done anything about the lino is that he’s always had a devoted slave to wash it for him, that’s why it’s in original condition, apart from Imelda’s contribution, plus and it was always like this in his mother’s day, geddit?” I say clearly.
    She tries to smile.
    “Anyway, give Tim a drink—let the tap run, think they might be the original 1932 pipes—and then you can see the upstairs. Our room’s really ace! And STOP LAUGHING!” Not her—Greg.
    He wipes his eyes and explains: “John got Mum and Imelda and Tiffany and a gaggle of other hens to do up the bedroom while they were on their honeymoon. Rosie went to sleep in the car from the airport and didn’t know where she was when she woke up in her own bedroom!”
    “Nobody woulda recognised it, you cretin!” I say fiercely. “There were pink lampshades and everything! And he used to have anything brown, even the curtains and the duvet.”
    “Um, yes, Bridget told me,” she murmurs, eyeing Greg uneasily. “She and Barbara bought the lamps, as a wedding present.”
    “Yeah: see?” I say, glaring at him. “And that settles it, Greg: you can sleep on the honourable sofa tonight and Katie can have the spare room!”
    “Look out, Imelda did that up all on her ownsome,” he warns, snigger, snigger.
    “She did a wonderful job! And shut up, you haven’t even seen it! Come on, Katie!” I drag her upstairs, ignoring Greg’s sniggering fit entirely. Boy, they’re all the same, same generation or not, Indian or Pommy, Royal Navy or not.
    So Katie absolutely has to admire the master bedroom with its rosebud-scattered cream wallpaper, its matching frilled inner curtains, looped back with big bows, the matching valance, and the pale fawn duvet cover with the wonderful frill of the curtain material edged with brown and pink that Mrs Singh and Imelda made specially. And the best sheets and pillowcases, they were Doris Winslow’s wedding present, the most wonderful pattern of roses, all different shades of pink on a tan background. And of course the dusky pink shades on the bedside lamps.
    Then she has to admire the blue and white striped and frilled additions Imelda made to what was a frightfully naval and ship-shape spare room, to the point of unbearable. Gallantly she admires the hand-painted watercolours on the walls, too: extra-terrestrial blue flowers; but I explain she doesn’t have to, they’re Imelda’s taste, she found them in the arty-tarty shop in the village. At the moment the sheets and pillowcases are navy blue and ship-shape, because he’s got towers of them in the gi-normous linen cupboard that entirely fills one end of the upstairs passage, but there are some much prettier blue floral ones, Imelda found them in Portsmouth.
    Funnily enough at this point Katie breaks down in helpless giggles.
    “Yeah,” agrees Greg from the doorway, grinning. “There wasn’t much she could do about that naval navy rug, though. –Where ya want these?” Two giant suitcases, right. Well, he’s not all bad.
    We do eventually get lunch, and Tim’s allowed a slice of bread and Marmite because he’s a poor dog that’s been dragged all over the country by his humans and he’s just so glad to be home. After which one of us thought we were gonna get down to work.
    “So?” I say as Greg mutters something feeble about no spare desk. I’ve got my computer and stuff on the dining-table, since it’s here. Like Everest, y’know? “Ya see this black oak dining-table only the size of an average house that occupies the entire dinette except for them old black oak farmhouse juggernauts?”
    “Hah, hah,” he says limply. “That’s a really nice dresser.”
    “Yeah? You have it, then. Sit down the other end of the ruddy table and get flaming on with it, Greg. Ya brought ya notes, didn’t you?”
    He fluffs around, God Almighty! Is John Haworth the only rational, organised male in the entire bloody universe? And finally says feebly what’s he gonna work on?
    “I said! The table!”
    “Um, no, I didn’t bring my computer,” he mutters.
    “No? Imelda woulda helped you pack it up, Greg, she helped me pack mine!” I say brightly.
    He winces, but explains that he’s got everything on disk but, um, Tiffany really needs the computer and Imelda’s putting her essays on it, now… I get it out of him that he’s let his mum buy it off him. Not that he’s alone in the universe in that, but boy, is it time he got out from under the maternal wing, or is it time? Jesus!
    Katie’s been upstairs to organise her room but she’s come down again and is now staring at him in numbed horror. “I did waitressing and baby-sitting and shelf-stocking at the supermarket for four years to buy my computer,” she croaks.
    “I worked to buy mine, ya don’t think slaving for Dad in the restaurant’s a sinecure, do ya?” he snarls.
    Oops. “Use the laptop, Greg.”
    This entails more fluffing around, during which time Katie decides to get on over to the village with Tim, and goes, but he finally settles down to it. Silence reigns…
    “Shouldn’t they be back by now?”
    I leap ten thousand feet where I sit. “Eh? Oh, Katie and Tim? No, why?”
    He thought the village was quite near.
    “Well, you saw it as we came through it. It is. So?”
    Nothing. And we get back to it…
    “It’s taking them an awfully long time, isn’t it?”
    I refrain from tearing my hair, and merely roll my eyes slightly. “And?”
    “Um, well, there can’t be much to do, it’s a very small village.”
    “Probably went for a walk, there’s a fair bit of countryside around the village. Those greenish and brownish bits with bits of rock and trees and sheep sticking out of them, Greg,” I explain kindly.
    Glare, glare. “I never saw any sheep.”
    “Cows. then. Up the other side, Jackson’s Farm, you woulda seen them in ya rear-view mirror if you were looking.”
    He glares but says he didn’t think that was on the map.
    “No, most maps don’t have cows and that, Greg, or were you thinking of that map of England Arthur Morrissey gave me, with the walking tracks and hedgehogs and crap?”
    “Very funny. The farm.”
    “Prolly not marked as Jackson’s Farm, no. It’ll be lot number whatever or something like that. And he doesn’t own it, it’s a lease.”
    “Have you got the map on your p.c.?”
    “Only a scanned version, Greg. Vern Kitson from the uni’s putting the entire geog. positioning program off the CIA’s mainframe onto a CD for me with a searchable version of the map, only it isn’t ready yet.”
    “Hah, hah,” he says limply. “Is he really?”
    “No. But it’s some kind of spatial data program. He didn’t think we’d be up to entering stuff to it so it’ll only be a searchable version.”
    “But the map’ll change!” he gasps.
    “We hope. I’m working on him. If all else fails I’ll whine to Prof.”
    He ignores that last: he’s too young to have any idea of the pecking order in the Department, not to mention the actual pecking that goes on. “What categories have you put on it?” he asks fearfully.
    “Rural, commercial, residential. You got any other categories yet?”
    Um, no. Right. I attempt to get back to it but he’s fidgeting. “What the fuck’s up, Greg?”
    He wants a print-out. Jesus, it’s the same bloody map as it was last month— Forget it. I print it out, the printer I’ve got here will only take A4, so A4 is what he gets. B&W. Tough tit. I get back to it…
    “Um, where’s the village shop on this?”
    “Jesus Christ! There! Commercial!”
    It hasn’t printed out very well. Nor it has, no, but I ignore that totally. I can feel he’s not satisfied but I ignore that, too. And silence reigns…
    “Um, what are you working on?”
    “My NATIONALISM study!” I howl. “What’s the matter with you?”
    “Nothing. Sorry. Um, Katie’s an awfully long time, isn’t she?”
    “Probably making the discovery that Tim’s sixteen times as strong as she is, with five times her determination, determined though she is. Dare say he’ll only drag her a quarter of the way he dragged Harry Potter, that time Imelda was down here.”
    He’s goggling at me. “Harry Potter?” he says faintly.
    “Jim and Isabel Potter’s boy. He’d be about sixteen. It’s not copyright, ya know.”
    Weak smile. He supposes it isn’t, no. I get back to it…
    “Greg, will you please stop clicking that ball-point pen, it’s driving me crazy!”
    “What? Oh, sorry; was I clicking my biro?” he says lamely in his lingo. “Sorry.”
    “What’s the matter?” I say heavily.
    Um, nothing. Then he says lamely: “It is very quiet here, isn’t it?”
    Right, no continual rumble of London traffic, no noise of ya sister playing her ghetto-blaster in her room and ya dad shouting at his helpers in the restaurant and ya mum shouting at ya sister to turn that thing off.
    “Mm. I often play one of John’s Bach or Mozart CDs when I’m working. Only I thought it might disturb you.” No, he likes Mozart. “Over there,” I grunt, head in my computer.
    He puts a CD on and we get down to it…
    “Shall I put another one on?”
    I leap ten thousand feet where I sit. “Huh? Oh.” The CD’s finished. “Yeah. –Hang on,. What’ve you got done so far?”
    Smiling lamely, he shows me. Jesus, is that all? I look at him limply.
    “Um, sorry.”
    “Greg, if we don’t get the raw data entered up, we can’t start. And you did volunteer yourself.”
    Yes, but this laptop’s awfully slow. –This is true. In particular because it never expected to have to run that database program that you had a copy of on your bloody p.c.! I don’t say it, what’s the use of crying over split milk? I don’t offer him the use of my p.c., however: start as you mean to go on is an excellent motto, in my experience. And he starts inputting again, looking sad. A short time passes…
    “Had you thought of internal migration?”
    “E-eh?” I say, very, very slowly. That last sentence looks… “Um, sorry, Greg. What?”
    “Internal migration. Within the village. Tracking it.”
    Yeah, about fourteen months back. I don’t say it; after all, he needs some encouragement. “Physically?”
    “Not just physically. Relating it to their socio-economic status, as well.”
    Yeah, about fourteen months back. “Well, it did occur, only given that we think the socio-economic status of each street might be fluid, too, isn’t it going to be bloody tricky to manage, Greg?”
    Yes, but—! I let him get carried away and seize the chance to nip out and make a cuppa—he follows me, talking, of course—and investigate the freezing compartment of the fridge: yep, I did forget to take a couple of sultana cakes out of it, bummer. And I bung a slab of sultana cake in the microwave… Gee, he never had warm sultana take before, fancy that.
    “Yeah,” I say kindly as he at last runs down and siphons up tea, looking hopeful. “Well, think about exactly how we’re gonna establish objective and infallible criteria for determining the socio-economic status of each household, Greg, given that we can’t just bowl up and ask people what they earn.”
    He thinks contents of the house, make and age of car, blah-blah. That isn't infallible, little curly-headed research assistant, because look at Mr Horton, he’s an Hon., all his clothes are old but terribly good, bit like John’s ancient and honourable tweed jacket, and he drives an old Bentley that’s about the same age as John’s Jag, but his small house, Number 1 Upper Mill Lane, Upper Blfd, is very rundown and does not contain (a) a TV, (b) a microwave or (c) a washing-machine, let alone the more up-market consumer junk that the more recent Census papers trawl for, like home computers and giant sound systems and like that. Many would-be weekenders and retirees have offered Mr Horton megabucks for his rundown house, because it just happens to be a perfect little early Georgian gem that once, a very long time ago, before they pulled down the mill and diverted the stream, housed the miller and his family. You might assume he’s upper-class fallen on hard times, and therefore the contents of his house are a very fair indicator, at least of his economic status if not of his social one, but you would be wrong, folks, because Perry Horton has got a share portfolio that’s even heftier than John’s and owns a huge flat in London that’s let for megabucks to a banker. He just isn’t interested in shiny consumer junk or in any form of pop culture at all, and all he spends his money on is books. Not particularly old or valuable books, no. Just books that he wants to read. Funnily enough he isn’t interested in expensive shiny holidays on Lee Continong or any of its offshore islands in the company of fluorescent-garbed mindless cretins, either. Very occasionally he takes the Bentley for a run up to Scotland, where he stays with a like-minded friend that happens to own a huge stretch of fishing and the estate surrounding it.
    I explain about Perry Horton over the remains of the cake and Greg is at first annoyed and then very thoughtful, and then he admits that he sees what I mean. Yeah. If we were the Census a few anomalies like Mr Horton wouldn’t matter but he is actually 25 percent of Upper Mill Lane, Upper Bellingford. (It was Belling Stream before they diverted it. However certain local etymologists claim, though admittedly in little pamphlets even odder than that map of Arthur Morrissey’s with the hedgehogs, that “Bell” in this context isn’t bell at all, but a corruption of something else. Possibly bull, depending which pamphlet you read. Bulling Stream? Oh, well, whatever turns you on.)
    Greg goes back to his data input with considerable food for thought, let’s hope it’ll keep him quiet, and I have a pee and then settle down to my computer again…
    “Um, had you thought we could scan the telephone book, Rosie?”
    Jesus! No, the thought had never even flickered across the surface of my— “Yeah. What you mean is, scan it, correct the OCR program’s W’s for M’s and meaningless squiggles, plus and the times it throws the columns out of synch, then edit the text file so as to make it suitable for automatic loading to the database.”
    “Wouldn’t it be more efficient?”
    NO! And I have been into all this! Grimly I say: “If the village was ten times its size it would possibly be more cost-effective to hire a scanning firm to do it, and an assistant to edit it into a delimited ASCII format that the database will accept. You do realise that the said ASCII file has to have the exact same number of fields in every entry in order to load correctly? And that—gimme that.” I lean over and grab the phone book off him. “Yeah. That, like, for instance, ‘Banks, J.B. and M.L.’ have got one part to their address, like ‘3 High St Blfd’, and are actually two separate and quite distinct people, whereas ‘Barker, Mrs P.L.’ has got two parts to her address, ‘The Willows, 5 Old Meadow Lane Upper Blfd’ and is only one person?”
    “The addresses could go into one field,” he says sulkily.
    “Yeah, they could. Only who’s gonna tell the program that that comma that your Pommy phone book has really helpfully inserted after ‘Willows’ isn’t actually a comma that means ‘end of field’, but only a comma-type comma?”
    Sulky glare. Looks just like Imelda at her silliest.
    “Added to which it’s gonna list Mrs Barker as an M and not a P.”
    Oh, yes, so it is. Um well, we could edit— “No. Not cost-effective. Every job has got dull grind in it, Greg; just think of this as the chopping-onions stage of the curry.”
    “But I really think it’d be more efficient to use the scanner!”
    Jesus Flaming Christ. “I’ve trialled it,” I say loudly and clearly. “Trialled it. You wanna see the result?” Meanly I find the text file on my p.c. and print it out for him.
    Horror and consternation, plus a certain amount of I’m doing it on purpose. Surely it can’t— And what dpi did I scan it at?
    “Three HUNDRED!” I shout.
    “Um, well, maybe a higher setting—”
    “Greg,” I say evilly: “read my lips. The scanner will not do B&W at a higher setting. And to scan it as colour at 600 dpi takes a very, very long, L-O-N-G, long, time. And the OCR program, funnily enough, takes forever to read the resultant giant graphic file and produces a result no better than that.”
    “It was just an idea,” he says huffily.
    “Yes, but you might have done me the professional courtesy of assuming that when I vetoed it I had a good reason for doing so.”
    He gnaws on his lip and goes back to his manual input from the phone book. –Well, we gotta start somewhere on getting every person in the village into the database, and the phone book didn’t cost anything, it was right there on John’s fancy roll-top desk.
    I look at him glumly. Lovely fellow, very bright, got the makings of a damned good scholar… But twenty-four an’ all though he is, he’s hardly ever been away from home before, apart from a couple of feeble trips to Lee Continong with a couple of feeble-minded old mates from school. Don’t think they did anything more daring than sit in cafés, get rooked by the Froggy waiters, and eye up smart-as-paint little French dollies that ignored them. And he’s never lived in the country, he’s a town boy. But shit, Imelda wasn’t phased when she came down— No, well, she may have half his brains but she’s certainly got five hundred times his character.
    Eventually I say glumly: “Perhaps it wasn’t a very good idea just to plunge right into it without getting you oriented—showing you round a bit.”
    He’s looking at me hopefully. Oh, gee, Mummy, now you gotta take him by the hand and lead him round the village, what fun!
    Folks, in case you were thinking I don’t, he’s a grown man, he can take himself round the village, stop now. If I don’t take him he’ll go into a sulk, and while objectively I don’t give a stuff if he sulks for the rest of his life, that’s not the most efficient way to get your research assistant on side and producing decent work for you, is it?


    We go to the village. I have to warn him not to flourish the map around, and that he’s here as jobbing gardener, but let’s not pretend I wasn’t expecting I’d have to. He folds the map up carefully and puts it in his pocket. Should I warn him that the lace curtains of, to name but one, Church Lane, do not shelter London-type persons quietly minding their own business, but village busybodies of the worst sort? Both the upper end, hideously trendified and restored out of all recognition as it is (annoyingly not officially called Upper Church Lane, how’s our map, not to say our database, gonna cope with that?), and the lower, in the natural state of dilapidation attained by four-hundred-year-old cottages that the current generation of owners haven’t been able to afford to do up any more than their ancestors could. Um, no, I think he might get the point, after a bit.
    At the Superette Belinda Stout’s on duty, it’s Murray’s afternoon for taking the van round. Ssh! she warns, giggling, as three blue-rinsed retirees enter in a phalanx.—The frozen beans will be down the back in the freezer. Frozen asparagus? Um, no. The three ladies retreat down the back, frowning.—Can ya get frozen asparagus? she hisses. I dunno. Greg just shrugs, and barely has he finished shrugging than she’s telling him that of course they’ve met Imelda, she got on so well with Isabel’s kids (Isabel Potter’s her sister), and there’ll be plenty of gardening work, she’ll put a card in the window right away, and not to let them do him, like they tried to do her Terry! All this without a word being said as to who Greg is and why he’s here, geddit? And Katie was in here just a little while back, and don’t worry, Belinda explained that John never lets Tim eat any but the one brand of dogfood.
    When we eventually stagger out, still without a word of explanation needing to be offered by either of us, he croaks: “What was that? Osmosis?”
    “Something very like it, Greg. I know the small shopkeepers round our way in London are pretty tight-knit, but believe you me, they got nothing on a village.”
    He nods groggily and we stroll on…
    Georgia, the hairdresser’s apprentice, pops out to tell me that they saw Katie and Tim, earlier, and that this week they’ve got a really good special on. Not that! she scoffs as I look at the notice in the window of Sloane Square Salon. Beyond the potted palm and the giant hairdryers, Pauline spots me, and waves madly. I wave back. Groggily Greg notes that it says “This Week’s Special.” That’s for them! Georgia explains with immense scorn. I eye him drily. Nodding and grinning madly and noting by the by that they saw that photo of me and the Captain in the paper a bit back, we looked great (she means the one with the chest and she means he looked great), she pops back in. “Them?” croaks Greg weakly.
    “Uh-huh. Come on. Ignore the ruddy tea shoppe, it’s exclusively for them.”
    Smiling weakly, he comes on…
    Tom Hopgood saw Katie and Tim just a little while ago, he thinks she’ll do great as the Captain’s Step-Daughter. Greg by this time is pretty well past speech: he just stands there in Tom’s old-fashioned butcher’s shop with his jaw sagging. And how’s Imelda? Tom asks brightly, hacking up a giant haunch of meat. Didn’t want to give these to Katie, thought Tim might knock ’er over in his excitement. No, don’t worry, she was controlling him pretty good. Not like—closing one eye carefully—that little nit Harry Potter. I avoid Greg’s eye at this point. Oh, and do we like pork liver? There’s a special on, this week. Greg looks dazedly at the large notices under the counter on top of the chilled “steak mince” and “spring lamb” advertising “This Week’s Special”, and is advised briskly to ignore those. I admit I wouldn't know what to do with pork liver. Immediately Tom says that Greg isn’t a vegetarian, is he, a purely rhetorical question, and he bets his mum and dad’d know what to do with a nice piece of pork liver. Or is it like Judaism? Not pausing for a reply, though this time it possibly isn’t rhetorical. But if we like, Maureen can give us her recipe, it’s easy. Just pop in on our way home. Oh, and if we go that way, look out for Number 26.
    And eventually we retreat, minus the pork liver but having promised to look in on Mrs Hopgood anyway, and with a giant bundle of bones for Tim and a giant package of chuck steak because for he thinks Greg’ll be able to make a really good curry out of that, Isabel’s been using that recipe of Imelda’s ever since the sky fell and that Gwennie and Cora learned how to make it.
    “Gwennie and Cora are—”
    “Yes. The Potter kids. She’s always going on about them. Are there any Jews in the village?” he croaks.
    “Dunno. Doubt it. Think that was a manifestation of Global Culture, Greg. Ya wanna come and meet Jim Potter?”
    “Will he tell me I’ll have no trouble finding gardening jobs as I set my foot over the threshold?”
    I admit he’s bound to but he comes anyway…
    Quite some time later. Church Lane. The lace curtains twitch…
    “Up this end they’ve all been trendified.”
    “Yeah.” He looks round with clinical interest mixed with personal horror. We wander slowly down towards Lower Church Lane. “Where’s the church?”
    “Further down. Round the bend. Or, put it like this, round the bend and round the bend.”
    He looks puzzled. We stroll on. Mrs Hartley-Fynch’s real cottage garden at Number 11 comes in for great admiration, is this genuine or is he into his undercover rôle? (Don’t ask.) “Yes, it is lovely, only she never done it herself, she got a firm of landscape gardeners over from Portsmouth. There is a Mr H.-F., only he does even less. See that Volvo?”—Hard to miss it: free-standing 16th-century cottages don’t include space for large garages: he nods groggily.—“Yeah. Well, Sly Hopgood, that’s their youngest, he cleans it for him for megabucks. Mr H.-F. tried seven other village kids that were cheaper but it finally dawned it was accept Sly’s prices or nothing. Or take it over to Portsmouth to a drive-through place and get it all dirtied up again coming home.”
    He nods groggily and we head on inevitably to Number 26—
    “Jesus Christ!”
    “Um, that one?” he says blankly. “It doesn’t look much worse than—”
    “Greg, they’ve had it thatched;” I say tensely, grabbing his arm. “Thatched!”
    “Y— Oh. What was it before?”
    “Very ordinary tiles. Jesus, if only I’d taken a picture of it!”
    “Um, yeah. It would’ve made a good illustration… Is there a thatcher in the village, then?”
    Is he mad? I wonder loudly. Light dawns, and he concedes he must be. And we stagger down round the bend, leaving the restored-out-of-all-recognition abode of Mrs Charlotte Patterson and Mr Aaron Patterson behind us. And which of them decided on the thatching, her or her son, would be bloody hard to say. They have equal shares in it, he’s forty-five if a day, and the village has drawn the traditional conclusion. As neither of them bothers to speak to persons such as the butcher or the Superette owner, no facts have surfaced which might contradict this conclusion. Though observation has confirmed that she is hard as nails and bossy as all get out and that he does favour Earl Grey tea, only Twining’s, and sautéed lamb kidneys.
    Greg has now noticed the church. “Help!”
    “Good, isn’t it? Belongs to Caroline Deane Jennings and Robert Jennings, never Bob,” I report with relish, “and that there corralled in the hygienic playpen well out of reach of anything that even looks like a blade of grass is Kiefer Deane Jennings.”
    He has to swallow. Though he might of guessed. They’ve retained the stumpy tower, but on top, instead of its original flat roof and broken-down crenellations it now sports very neat crenellations plus and a pointed witch’s hat of a roof with, not a cross, a gold-painted rooster on it. The roof being a particularly choice shade of aubergine. The stonework has been ruthlessly outlined in white, real sharp-looking, y’know? The windowsills and surrounds have been replaced and painted. Yep, aubergine. And on one side there’s a sort of permanent scaffolding which according to village gossip is holding the whole thing up, not just that upper storey they’ve put into it for the bedrooms. Aubergine tubular steel, quite. The lower portion of it is glassed in and Robert Jennings’s huge collection of succulents and cacti appears to be doing very nicely in it. Naturally the giant old front door had to be repainted. And those giant black hinges, that is, fake hinges, with the fleur-de-lis on the ends, had to be added to it. No, the door’s not aubergine, only the woodwork surrounding it is. The colour of the door is either, according to the decade you’re stuck in, eau de Nil or avocado. No kidding. Euan Keel’d be right at home in the dump.
    “The Church of England junked it back in the Sixties. Bellingford and four other old rural parishes all come under some joint pastoral set-up based in a suburb of Portsmouth, now. They send over a vicar about once a month to hold a service in the community hall.”
    “That figures.” He looks round dazedly at Lower Church Lane. “Why on earth build a church down here?”
    “See that?”—No.—“That kind of dried-up, uh, back home we’d call it a claypan and be done with it. Uh, field? That was the original village green before they diverted the stream. Correction: the local landowner diverted the stream, in collaboration with one of his wealthier tenant farmers.”
    “When was this?” he says dazedly.
    “Not as far back as it looks. Just after the First World War. After that the village went rapidly downhill. The original well went dry and all the people down this way found their pumps weren’t working. Some of them gave up and moved to Portsmouth, but some just moved over to where the High Street is now. Quite a few of the cottages there only date from then. There was a brief revival in the Thirties, some entrepreneur built a roadhouse up on the corner of the High Street, like at the turn-off to Graham Howell’s service station, and trendies and weekenders started coming over from Portsmouth. At which point John’s great-grandfather built that ruddy great stone wall all along the ridge behind the cottage and put a giant five-barred gate across the track going down to the bay. Just in case any of the hoi polloi might have fancied using the beach. But being as how it was him that was the landowner in question, ya might’ve guessed he would.”
    “It’s horrifying.”
    “Yeah. But we’re not here to study village history, Greg,” I remind him.
    “Um—no!” he says, jumping slightly. “Well, um, when was that done?”
    “The church? Musta been about the time the water reticulation actually reached down here,” I muse. He swallows. “No, well, it had quite a history, a hippie commune tried to infest it in the early Seventies but given that there was no water, no sanitation and no heating, they pretty soon gave up. Then in the late Eighties a pair of trendy restaurateurs opened up a place but it didn’t last long: too out of the way and no pretty view. They might’ve made a go of it if they’d hung on a bit longer and dumped the trendy fake Thai crap, because the new wave of retirees was starting to come in, but they couldn’t lower themselves to offer fake French country cuisine. A retirees’ quilting group used it one summer, that was during the great pub dispute when the villagers wouldn’t let them use the community hall at all. And then an architect bought it and did it up like that. And as soon as Ms Deane Jennings and Mr Jennings laid eyes on it they snapped it up.”
    “I thought they must have commissioned it specially,” he croaks.
    “Ya would,” I concede. “Hi!” I call to the woman coming into the church’s garden.
    Greg is actually observed to shrink. “Is that her?”
    “What? No, ya nong! She works in Portsmouth, she’s a high-powered lady exec! That’s Juliette Bellinger, she looks after little Kiefer.”
    “I thought you were making the ‘Kiefer’ up,” he confesses as we go over to the amazingly well-ordered stone wall of “The Church,” such is its name, they’ve got the brass plate to prove it, 60 Church Lane, Bellingford.
    I just have time to give him an amazed look, who’d want to make that up about a perfectly nice, chubby-legged, round-faced little boy? And then Juliette swamps us with enquiries after my health and the bulge’s, and how’s John, and when is he due back, no pleasure at the vague reply, and supposes that this must be Imelda’s brother! And she’s absolutely sure that Ms Deane Jennings would be really glad to have someone do her garden at a reasonable price, because That Man that comes over from Portsmouth charges The Earth.
    And what with this, that, and the other it isn’t until after we’ve had a nice chat with Maureen Hopgood, and a nice cuppa and biscuits, and made our way along the unofficial but nevertheless well-used track, not on Greg’s map, that leads from Church Lane to Moulder’s Way and thence to Harriet Burleigh Street, and back up to the end of the High Street that at this point hasn’t really got a name, and up the hill to within sight of the cottage, that he pauses, leaning on what he probably hasn’t realised is the tumble-down end of that bloody stone wall that John’s bloody ancestor built, and croaks: “Shouldn’t the church logically be Number 1 Church Lane?”
    “It was. But the Powers That Be renumbered the roads when it dawned that the High Street had become the new centre of village life. In the Fifties, this was. Like, getting on for forty years after the fait accompli.”
    “But why?” he croaks.
    “Dunno. Something to do with efficiency? Well, don’t look at me. But it woulda been round the time that Mr Beeching was dismantling the most efficient railway system in the world in the name of efficiency.”
    “Dr Beeching,” he says limply. –No! Go figure! (Don’t say it.)
    We walk slowly down to the cottage. Was it the Post Office? he asks suddenly. Uh—no idea, Greg. And, I remind him again, we’re not here to study the history of the village.
    “No,” he concedes weakly as we reach the cottage. He collapses onto that convenient low garden wall. “But all the same, it really puts you in the picture, doesn’t it?”
    Something like that. Yeah. Too right.


    The orientation did seem to settle Greg down, or in, whatever, and we’ve been working pretty steadily since.
    Katie’s seemed content to take Tim for long walks and read John’s books, though she did wonder where all my books are. Back in Oz, being the answer. Well, there’s no room here for shelves and shelves of battered paperback Agatha Christies and D.L. Sayerses, manifestly. And funnily enough I don’t seem to get that much time for reading, these days.
    Only now it’s the week of the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival, and she’s determined which village it’s actually in and found it on Arthur’s map with the hedgehogs, and worked out the best way to get there. Subsequently going over to Graham Howell’s service station and buying a real map and discovering, with Graham’s help, that two of those roads that would’ve shortened the distance by X kilometres are actually walking tracks. And working out a different best way to— Yeah.
    So we gotta go. Better not take Tim, we might have to stay the night. So Velda Cross takes him: she’s always thrilled to have him, and he’ll be company for her, won’t he, because guess what? Lieutenant Duncan Cross is at sea with John.
    Much later. Approaching scattered dwellings. “Is this it?”
    “Dunno.”
    “Ro-sie!” cries Katie loudly.
    “You have been to the dump before, haven’t you?” Greg asks acidly. What with my total inability to read a map while progressing in a car from point A to Point Could-Be-Anywhere, and Katie’s helpful navigation which has to be from the back seat, because I get sick as a dog if I have to go in the back—not just with the preggy, any time…
    “Um, yeah, only I got the train.”—A huge rustling and muttering proceeds from the back seat but I manage to ignore it, plus and Greg’s wincing at it.—“Rupy said, or was it Eu—” Cough. “Um, the station’s on the outskirts of the big town and you don’t really see it.”
    “Big town? You said it was a village!” he shouts, braking savagely.
    “Help! Don’t do that, Greg, the bulge’ll be born with a huge bruise across its forehead.”
    “Hell. Sorry,” he gulps.
    Folks, I was right all the time, we should have got Graham Howell to drive us. He was real keen to, only Greg seemed to see it as some sort of usurpation of his male rôle… Forget it.
    “Um, lemme get it straight. Yeah. There was a town, about, um, maybe half an hour’s drive from the village. We had fish and chips there several times. If there’s a railway line on that map, Katie, it’ll be the town with a station.”
    “Give it here!” cries Greg as the rustling is followed by dead silence. …Oops. He can't figure the fucking map out, either.
    “Maybe if we look for, um, a garage or a caff, and ask?” ventures Katie, for once asking and not telling. Has it penetrated that Greg, feeble though he is, doesn’t like to be told? Possibly it has. At least momentarily. But will she now go on and apply this knowledge to the entire male half of humanity? No, you’re right, it’s much too much to hope for.
    “We’ll have to, won’t we?” But he sounds slightly mollified, and we drive on looking for a garage or a caff…
    They get lots of people asking the way to the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival!—Gee, fancy that.—And if we take the next turn off, to the right, that’ll take us straight there. So we buy two packets of salt and vinegar crisps, Katie’s as keen on them as I am, and three Cokes and retreat. And after Greg’s drunk his Coke we continue on, taking the first turn to the right. And sharing the crisps between the three of us, declaring one doesn’t want junk food and then eating one’s female belongings’ junk food being a phenomenon apparently common to the male half in both Blighty and Oz. Well, to the feebleized male component like our driver and my brother Kenny, anyway. And before ya say anything, yes, Katie can drive, and yes, she offered to, and no, he wouldn’t let her. Geddit?
    “This is it,” Greg decides happily as we drive into a pretty little village with a giant banner strung across the main street declaring: “TRETHICK CIDER and LUPIN ORGANICS LTD, Proud Sponsors of BIENNIAL MOUNTJOY MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL”.
    “Yes, hurray!” cries Katie.—Sweet-natured, see? Just like her sister. Many females would have felt tempted to utter, nay would have uttered, something along the lines of: “You don’t say,” or “How can ya tell that, Greg?” or more simply: “About time.”—“Now, Rosie, concentrate.”—Who, me?—“You put that piece of paper with the address of Michael Manfred’s cottage in your handbag.”
   “In a handbag?” I reply deeply, opening it. “Um…”
    She leans over my shoulder, since Greg’s now pulled into a little side street. “In your purse,”—she means wallet, sigh, sometimes this Pommy lingo versus Aussie lingo bit gets very tedious—“in one of those compartments behind the notes.”
    Uh… two taxi receipts, something about claiming on them for my taxes, John reckons Rupy and me have to keep them all, he was horrified when he discovered we weren’t bothering to get receipts and if offered, were chucking them away, three old bus tickets, a tube ticket, three more taxi receipts, oops, a small pic of Patrick Stewart, blush, forgot that was in there, another taxi receipt, receipt from Mr Machin’s shop, that could go out, receipt from Sally and Raewyn for humungous dry-cleaning bill, that could g— No, it couldn’t: John reckons we gotta keep them if they’re for work-related garments. Carefully folded Mars Bar wrapper, uh, ticket to Taronga Park Zoo?—oh, yes, souvenir of a misspent honeymoon; another bus ticket… Here it is, no-one’s more surprised than me.
    “Katie, ya do realise that if we go round to his place he’ll give ya the tongue—”
    Nevertheless we have to go, because he’s expecting us and he’ll be so disappointed if we don’t. True. But the only reason he’s expecting us is that that cretin Rupy let it out to him we were coming, so why do we have to suffer? (Don’t say any of it, it won’t have any effect whatsoever.)
    And after asking only five people, four of whom, yep, the first four, are strangers here themselves, we find the obscure little lane where Michael’s bought his long longed-for cottage with his Captain’s Daughter money, not to say a huge bank loan, and bump slowly—gasp!—along it…
    The silver-haired figure in the frilly pinny that appears at the cottage door as we draw up outside the battered wicket gate is Michael himself. He’s not married, though there was a wife once. But according to Coralee Adams, who’s about the same vintage, she left him for the postman because she couldn’t stand living with someone who can’t talk about anything except his appearance and his parts, past and present. Those of us who’d thought this syndrome was common to all members of the acting profession having to bite our tongues as she said it, yes. Though it’s certainly true that Michael’s general knowledge is approx. zero.
    As we approach, underneath the apron we glimpse a pair of flowing cream trou’ like something off a cricket ground of the Fifties (did he nick them from Wardrobe?), and a terrifically casual pale yellow knit short-sleeved shirt, with, of course, the cravat. Today’s is pale blue with narrow gold stripes. The cream shoes are impressive.
    “Hullo, my dears! You got here! Welcome to Manfred’s Retreat!” he cries. He’s named it that. He might not’ve got round to having the gate fixed in the six months or so since he bought the place, but he’s had a lovely little varnished wooden plaque carved with the name, and stuck it up next to his door within his little wooden porch. The porch is awfully nice, actually, white trelliswork, I love that look. And the cottage is grey stone, really sweet, and he’s had the front door painted a nice bright blue and the windowsills match. And so do the two big tubs by the front step, full of, um, dunno.
    We’re not spared the tongue, but she can’t say I didn’t warn her. And I praise the cottage with genuine enthusiasm and he takes us inside, beaming, and shows us round. Two fair-sized rooms downstairs, plus a lean-to kitchen, and two bedrooms upstairs. Strewth, I thought John’s staircase was narrow and step, but Michael’s is little more than a ladder. It has got a handrail, thank God, so I clutch it very, very tightly coming down. He hasn’t done much to the interior yet, he admits modestly. We can see that, it’s all shabby early Sixties, at a guess, he must’ve taken over the furniture that was in it. He takes us through to the kitchen. Boy, that’s a genuine set of Fifties kitchen table and chairs: pale pink and grey spotted shiny table top, pale pink and grey spotted and streaked plastic covering on the chair seats and backs, and all the legs in tubular steel—fantastic! I admire it tremendously and he's quite taken aback and admits he was thinking of getting rid of it and having the kitchen repainted, grey and pale pink looks a bit odd, don't we think? No, it’s fab! He takes another look at it and concedes it is quite fun, isn’t it? But the linoleum’s terrible, we mustn’t look at it. We do look, of course, and he’s right, it is. Dirty cream background with a faded pattern of seahorses in grey, blue and green, why? Greg asks dazedly if the sea is quite near. About twenty minutes’ walk away. We can only conclude that someone must have had the place as a beach house. That or the stuff was on special, yeah. The stove and fridge are quite new, and Michael pours cold drinks for us all and takes us proudly through into the room he’s using as a sitting-dining room, the other downstairs room being temporarily turned into a bed-sit for his Paying Guests, here for the Festival.
    Although we did start off very early it’s definitely afternoon now, but he forces us to admit that we haven’t had lunch—we would of, only we never found a place that did meals as opposed to junk food—and he bustles off, very pleased, to get some for us. It’s no bother at all, because Mr and Mrs Seaton, his PGs, will be sure to want some when they get back from their matinée!
    “Are you all right?” asks Katie cautiously as I blow my nose hard.
    “Yeah. Just sending up a prayer of thanks that the show didn't fold and, um, another prayer of thanks that we found you, Katie.”
    She smiles uncertainly, so in a very lowered voice I explain about the always having wanted a cottage and the never having been able to afford it until The Captain’s Daughter, and thank God that me revealing myself to the Great British Public as an impostor didn't sour them on the show because then he’d never have been able to meet his mortgage payments, and about the Captain being the last chance at a decent telly career…
    “Yeah,” agrees Greg, looking merely interested, heartless male beast, as she blows her nose, and blinks. “Mum reckons he was Little Micky Manfred in that badger thing, years ago, he musta made a fair bit from that, mind you..”
    “He was about nine, Greg, for Pete’s sake, that badger thing dates from the ark, it was the great rival to Basil Brush!”
    Greg’s unmoved; he gets up and looks at the silver framed pics clustering on the old sideboard. “Here—see?” Katie gets up and joins him, they’re looking at all the pics... Ooh, look, Rosie, here’s one with Princess Margaret! I've now come to the conclusion that every light comedy actor who’s had any sort of a success has had a pic taken with Princess Margaret; I mean, for cripes’ sake, Rupy's got one! But I agree it is a pic of Michael with her, yep. Of course they don’t recognise most of the faces but they don’t think of asking me because of course I’m just a Wild Colonial Girl. Don’t they realise we’ve had all the wanking British B movies that were ever made unendingly repeated on the ABC at an hour when all good little students did oughta been tucked up in the land of dreams?—“That’s Joan Sims, you idiots!” I’m driven to shout.
    Michael bustles in carrying a tray. “Of course, darling Joan, the most delightful person!”
    “Um, who’s this?” enquires Katie. –It’s Donald Sinden, you cretinous young person! Poor old Michael has to swallow, but admits gamely it is. And, let him see, that’s Sid James, of course, the most genial fellow; and darling George Cole—even they recognise him, they nod wisely—a tragic thing, that accident, after such a wonderful career; and, swallow, that’s wonderful Judi Dench, Katie, my dear, you must recognise— Well, she was younger then, of course! And in those days, of course, only took the most serious rôles, but that was at a delightful party— Etcetera. There isn’t one more face they recognise, in fact it gets so bad I have to follow him out to the kitchen.
    “Sorry,” I say grimly. “The pair of them know from nothing.”
    He smiles weakly, and I help him to gather up the cutlery and the plate of cold ham, and the salad, and take them through. And the Seatons arrive, just in time! And we all sit down to it. With genuine Trethick cider for the rest of them but not for me. Funnily enough the Seatons are thrilled to meet me, oh, dear. And most intrigued to meet Katie and to learn that she’s going to be the Captain’s Stepdaughter! And after lunch we go out into Michael’s embryo garden and pose for pics. One with Mrs Seaton and us, one that he sets up very, very carefully—quick, Gerald!—and runs to be in with us all, one of just Michael, me and Katie—think she’s starting to wonder if I done it on purpose, forgetting it wasn’t my idea to drop in on Michael—and a couple, if Greg wouldn’t mind? of just Michael, me and Katie with the Seatons.
    And it’s all very cosy, and what with the nice lunch and the virtuous glow we’re all feeling very relaxed, and so we pile back into the car, together with Michael, he seems to have appointed himself our official guide, let’s hope he isn’t squeezing Katie’s knee back there, and off we go to find Rupy. He’s staying at Eddyvane Hall, the big old house that used to belong to the Mountjoy family, and his afternoon performance should have finished, and we should find him in the tea tent! And here it is, a giant candy-striped marquee in a large field which also holds a couple of big performance tents, and this year there’s a sort of covered canvas tunnel leading to it, that’s new, and Michael explains that the Festival Organising Committee decided that in view of the uncertain English weather, blah-blah, and we join the queue in the tunnel…


    And there he is! He’s seen us, he bounces up and waves, and the sequinned object next to him bounces up and waves, Felix Beaumont, still in his Witwoud costume, right, wonder if he’ll favour uth with the Witwoud lithp, and the rather familiar, rather nice male back that’s with them also gets up, turns and— Omigod.
    Yep, you guessed it, folks: Euan Keel in person. Even from this distance I can see he’s crinkling up the eyes and tangling the lashes. Across a Crowded Tea Tent. Quite.
    Katie’s gone as red as a beet, of course. Michael’s innocently thrilled, because Euan, if not quite such a Household Name as Michael Manfred or Lily Rose Rayne, is a Serious Actor and quids-in with the Stratford lot, so he urges us all forward, here we all are, lovely to see you again, Euan, “the girls and I” are looking forward so much to doing Series Five with you, blah-blah. I can see from the quick suspicious look Euan gives Greg before he turns on that don’t-see-you practised smile that he’s wondering if he’s the boyfriend, though clearly the thought that he might be wondering it hasn’t crossed Katie’s mind. Doubt if any thought has crossed her mind, don’t think thoughts can when a female person’s female hormones are doing what hers obviously are. Damn and blast! Of course he can see it: he is, though you may already have recognised this, bloody experienced with women.
    Katie doesn’t say much through the extended period of torture which follows but then, she doesn’t need to, does she? Bloody Euan doesn’t hide the fact that he’s still very keen: keeps smiling at her and crinkling up the eyes and tangling the lashes. And we will come to “the show”, won’t we? –Wistful look but half laughing with it, the little boy that knows he’s irresistible, think I'm gonna spew. Greg’s obviously taken an instant dislike to him: he says grimly that we’re supposed to be going to Rupy’s show, but instead of backing us up Rupy and Felix, not that you’d have expected anything more from a nit that’s made a career out of lithping, cretinously cry but no, Greg, dear! Their little skit isn’t on again until late-late, supper club type of thing! And there’s a divine supper club this time, only not as divine as ours was last time, Rupy adds nostalgically.
    “That wasn’t here, you great raving clot, it was at the Chipping Ditter Festival 2000,” I remind him, trying to give him a meaning look.
    He doesn’t see it, it’s the after-the-performance syndrome, even if it was only a matinée full, as he’s already told us, of floral frocks. “Oh, so it was, silly me. Probably where they got the idea from, dear. They’ve taken over the old conservatory, Rosie, dear, really quite chick.”
    Some of us don’t think that saying “chick” pointedly is clever and others of us, like the ones that didn’t even recognise Donald Sinden, don’t realise there’s anything to get.
    “We thought your show was on in the early evening, Rupy. We were planning to drive quietly back home tonight,” I say grimly. Wish he was near enough to give him a really hard kick under the table. but Michael uxoriously placed himself at my elbow before I realised what he was up to. And funnily enough I forced Katie to sit down at my other side and Greg, glaring, sat down on the other side of her. This means Euan can lean forward across the table and give her a really good view of the thick tangled lashes and the wistful smile, but we done our best, folks.
    Of course there’s a terrifically good reason why it was decided that Th’Affected Wits, such being the nauseating title of their rehashed bits of Congreve, should form part of the supper club, blah, blah, don't listen to it. There was no good reason why Rupy shouldn’t have rung us to inform us of the fact, but as there’s no point in mentioning this, I don’t. Oh, he’s almost sure that was The Guardian’s drama critic in the front row last night laughing his head off, is he? Lovely, super, good show…
    So it’s all decided, we’ll go and see Euan as Dorimant in The Man Of Mode first and then on to the supper club in the Restoration-ized conservatory of Eddyvane Hall. Lovely, super…
    Those actors who are in the official Festival performances, as opposed to the much larger number of actors who are in the Fringe, are allowed to use the bedrooms in the actual Eddyvane Hall instead of camping out in the fields, so Rupy then takes us upstairs. And up, and up— Hang on! I gasp. They all stop, great concern. Michael’s got left behind on the last flight, so Euan comes and uxoriously takes my elbow, explaining kindly that Rupy’s up in the attics again, and making quite sure that I’m only puffed and blah-blah. The worst of it is, he’s quite genuine: did I mention he went potty over Georgy Harris when she was having her baby last year? Oh, so I did. Well, all right, I’m mentioning it again: he used to ring me up from Stratford and cluck down the phone at me. There were some heavy hints that we could also build a cosy nest and provide it with a nestling, but as I had never given him the slightest indication that I was serious and in fact had refused point-blank to move in with him, I felt wholly justified in ignoring them. No, well, he’s played the field enough, and his career’s on a pretty solid footing, and he’s at the point where it’s only natural that he should be looking round for a little hen bird to build a bower for. I’d just rather he didn’t select Katie Herlihy for the rôle. She’s all pink and smiling, obviously approves of the uxorious bit, oh God...
    Rupy’s got a twin room, ostensibly sharing it with a baritone from the opera chorus, but the baritone’s been adopted by someone rather nice from the nearby posh conference hotel, yeah, yeah. I’ll take the spare bed, I’m used to Rupy, and— No, no, no! cries Michael. “You girls” will of course stay with him, in his spare upstairs bedroom, oh, cripes. But we didn’t come over here to put you out— Of course we’re not, and the room’s going begging— Of course it isn’t: everything for miles around is booked out solid for the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival, Restoration-lovers flock to it from all over England. And this year they’re even having a pre-Restoration Cavaliers and Roundheads battle in the big field overlooking the Channel. Which makes a real change from what they had last time, to wit, a non-Restoration show by the Royal Navy with guns firing and vertical take-offs and a Navy band in white suits playing horribly brassy Monteverdi and, guess what, Captain John Haworth of Dauntless making a speech and letting Commander Corky Corcoran and two puce and magenta females drag him away from the vicinity of L.R. Marshall— Er, water under the bridge, folks. Sorry.
    So we give in gracefully and go downstairs again so as Greg can hike off to the carpark and grab his overnight bag, just as well we all packed one, isn’t it? And so as, apparently, Euan can take me over to a shady seat under a tree and ask me tenderly if I'm sure I’m all right and tell Katie, in a tolerantly kindly but also tolerantly amused way, all about the great success I was as Nell Gwynne in that dumb skit last time. All I had to do was tap a bit and smile and throw oranges, for God’s sake!
    “Um, I’m afraid she’s tired,” she says, pinkening, as I suddenly yawn widely in the middle of one of his most telling lines.
    And they decide I must be, after all that travelling, what bullshit, if they think that’s travelling they oughta try sitting out the trip from Adelaide to Sydney with Aunty Kate. She and Uncle Jim shared the driving, and she made me go in the front because she knows I throw up in the back .During his spells off Uncle Jim napped in the back seat, but don’t go imagining she did, folks. No way. He mighta gone the wrong way if she’d of relaxed her vigilance. (Joke. Like, if I said a person mighta gone the wrong way on the M1? Yeah.)
    … Much later. “Um, yes, I did have a lovely nap, thanks. Michael.” (Sheepishly.) “Um, where’s Katie?”
    “Just popped out for a little stroll, dear.”
    I can see Greg in the garden, looking interestedly at the weeds by the front path, so it can’t’ve been with him. “By herself?” I croak.
    “Er, well, no, dear. Euan—”
    “And you let him? You cretin, Michael!”
    The twit’s looking pleased, he’s under the impression that Lily Rose Marshall, Intellectual Sociologist and Lady Lecturer, only says that to her intimates. “No, well, there’s nothing wrong with him, is there, Rosie? Quite a decent young chap.”
    “He’s thirty-fi—” Cough. Actually he’s not. ’Member when I said he was, in front of Katie? That was a Grate L.R. Marshall Lie. He’s very nearly thirty-four. “Um, thirty-four. Anyway, miles too old for her.”
    Kindly look, mixed with a knowing leer. Very odd combination, actually. “But an experienced, rather older man—”
    “I don’t mean the sex!” Rapidly I sketch out the possible scenario already discussed with Rupy, plus and the alternative scenario, where she rules him with a rod of iron.
    Poor old Michael’s horrified. “Really, Lily Rose,”—forgetting to call me Rosie like the In Crowd do, poor old thing—“I do think that’s taking a far too pessimistic view of it. It may never get that far, after all. And—er, well, I can see she is quite a determined little thing… Don’t you think she may be just what he needs?”
    “If she was older and more self-aware and knew a bit more about what makes people tick, yes. But at twenty?”
    He bites his lip. “Mm.”
    “Where did they go?”
    He thinks Euan just took her down to the village. That means the pub, and being horrendously modest and self-deprecating as he signs autographs for anyone that recognises him, and there’ll be a few of them: the culture-vultures and pseuds that turn up to wanking Restoration festivals in the middle of nowhere will be sure to have seen all his gloomy intellectual plays on the box.
    “It is mostly cider, the sponsors are supplying it at cost, dear,” he offers dully.
    “Huh? Oh! No, I wasn’t thinking he’d get her drunk. Not specifically. Well, not literally.”
    “What? Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose it can all be rather heady for a young person,” he owns sadly.
    Heady. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there, mate. But as he’s looking all sad I admit: “Well, it had to be someone, at her age, and at least he’s a decent enough type. I was wondering, would there be time for me to have a look at some of your albums, Michael?”
    Of course there would! Because Rupy’s booked us all in for dinner at the Hall, he’s quite at a loose end! And so we sit down and punish me as I deserve. No, well, actually they’re fascinating social documents, not to mention sartorial documents. He’s got quite a nice figure, but nevertheless it is very, very hard to believe he ever was as thin as those shots in the flares and the skin-tight, high-necked sweaters would indic— My God!
    “It was only a bit part. My series had been canned, that year,” he says with a sort of sad pride as we look at the pic of him and the actual Terry in the actual flared jeans and the actual Arfer in the awful overcoat and hat. And it’s then revealed that not only has he known the actual Dennis Waterman since then, he knew him back whenever— And a good time is had by all.


    Later. Washed and brushed up, and up at Eddyvane Hall. “I thought we were meeting Rupy for dinner?” says Katie dazedly as milling crowds of ladies in floral frocks, silk frocks, and some actual evening gowns elbow us aside in their eagerness for Restoration Cultcha, and we join the queue outside “Eddyvane Hall Ballroom (pointing hand), Featuring tonight, The Man Of Mode, with Euan Keel, Amanda Grey, and Adam McIntyre”.
    “Nope. Well, yep. Forgot to explain the peculiarities of the Everybody Knows syndrome, sub-species arty-tarty festivals for pseuds in the middle of English nowhere, to ya, Katie.”
    “Stop that, Rosie,” she orders severely, trying not to laugh.
    “Sorry,” I lie. “The big shows, like usually there’s a play and an opera, they start around seven-thirtyish, then they have a huge dinner break in the middle, like, two hours. If the play starts much later, like, nine-ish, they just have normal intervals and expect you to have your dinner first.”
    Greg’s got an official Mountjoy Midsummer Festival 2001 sponsors Trethick Cider and Lupin Organics Limited Programme, it’ll be one that Rupy nicked or my name’s not Lily Rose Mar— Haworth. “There’s nothing in here that says that,” he reports dubiously, turning to the musical section and double-checking.
    “Of course not. Everybody Knows syndrome, see? If ya pay megabucks for the dearest opera seats ya get a posh dinner in the real dining-room, where the Mountjoys used to dayne.”
    “That is right,” confirms Michael placidly as they both look at me suspiciously.
    “But how do you know?” persists Greg.
    “Greg, if ya know, ya know. If ya don’t, you’re a yob and didn’t ought to be here. Geddit?”
    Suddenly Michael does get it and collapses in splutters, having to blow his nose and mop his eyes with a giant silk hanky. “I’m afraid it is like that!”
    Greg and Katie are now looking askance at his version of Festival evening clobber: flowing black evening trou’ with yer real ribbon down the seams, draped white tux, jaunty little red silk bow-tie, and svelte black cummerbund. When we set out they assumed it was just Michael, understandably.
    “It’s all right, we’ll be eating in the servants’ hall with Rupy and any performers that aren’t actually on or in the throes of nerves between acts,” I assure them.
    “Honestly, Rosie!” –Gee, Katie doesn’t believe me. But before I can open my mouth Michael’s assuring her placidly that it is the old servants’ hall, yes; they’ve made it very nice: buffet-style breakfasts—self-serve, Katie, dear, in case she doesn’t understand his vernacular—and one has to queue for dinner, usually there’s a choice, very nice.
    “Yes, solid nosh,” I confirm. “The puddings are good, too.”
    This accumulation of circumstantial evidence convinces them, and they nod thankfully. Partly they’re so thankful because they won’t have to enter a posh dining-room in their perfectly acceptable day wear. And partly they’re so thankful because they won’t after all be stared at down the noses of posh ladies in evening frocks as they enter the dining-room in the company of my Festival evening clobber, like, a pair of shocking-pink pirate pants that I couldn’t get into but that Isabel Potter, who’s an ace dressmaker, doctored up for me just a couple of days back by putting in a giant sort of V over the bulge, with a pink tee-shirt that I chose because it’s rather long and covers the V, and not especially because of the white bunny rabbit on each tit, and over that a loose white shirt that John was gonna chuck out because of the bright rose-pink nail polish splodge on it. I’ve hacked yards off the sleeves and ironed an iron-on-patch over the splodge and it looks great. True, the patch is a denim one with a picture of Donald Duck on it. But he is an awfully cheerful-looking Donald Duck.
    Funnily enough Someone has provided excellent seats for us, in the fauteuils. They bloody are, at Eddyvane Hall: great comfortable velvet-covered armchairs. Katie starts to get agitated because Rupy isn’t here, though there’s a seat for him, but I just say: “He’ll be here.” And sure enough, here he is, panting and beaming, looking totally delish in black evening trou’ and a brand-new tux, very, very pale green, pale peppermint is the shade, I think. With a delirious pale peppermint satin cummerbund, showing off the fact that his waist is still the same size as it was when he was eighteen (that’s his story and he’s sticking to it). The get-up being finished off with an excruciatingly narrow bow-tie diagonally striped in dark green and white, and, get this, one perfect little crimson rosebud in the buttonhole. Now, folks, would it astonish you to learn that the Festival Organising Committee this year, in cooperation with Lupin Organics Limited and their parent company, EPRO International (not organic or anything like it, bio-engineered soybeans and maize for mass-produced stock feed are more their line), has smothered Eddyvane Hall and the more up-market performance tent with huge vases of dark crimson half-opened roses? No, didn’t think it would, really.
    They’ve got a little band—sorry, sorry, orchestra—the members of whom Rupy points out to us carefully, with short potted— No, has to stop, they strike up a Restoration ditty. And the curtain goes up and gee, there Euan is, centre-stage, looking deliriously gorgeous in a green, blue and gold brocade dressing-gown and neato red leather slippers, and what is presumably meant to be his own hair, tumbling all over his shoulders in a riot of soft brown curls. Oh, God.
    At least he doesn’t join us for dinner, one good thing. Katie’s so thrilled she can hardly eat. Isn’t it good? She means, isn’t he. Oh, God.
    One of us foolishly assumed that because they let us out to eat after Act II the thing only had four acts but no, it’s got five. The longish interval between Acts III and IV allows some of us to reiterate that “it” is very good and everyone but me to knock back free Trethick cider. The short interval between IV and V allows some of us of us to say rapturously isn’t Adam McIntyre good, while others of us sit there thinking that anyone can mince around in very high heels, though the calves are bloody good, I’ve never denied it, plus and say all their R’s as W’s (makes a change from Felickth Beaumont’th lithping, true), plus and screw up their face in a silly way as they pronounce half their words, not necessarily the half without the R’s as W’s, Fwench-fashion. His wig’s good, though, no argument there. And so’s the little Page that follows him everywhere, dressed in outfits that exactly match his, different every time they come on: after a bit the super-pseuds in the front row get it and start to snigger loudly and applaud at each entrance. Well, the Festival owns rooms full of Restoration gear and at least they aren’t doing it in waify slip-dresses as to the girls and black slacks and collarless white shirts as to the men, as has been known in the past. Oh, yeah.
    It finally ends, boy, they didn’t know how to write final scenes in the Restoration, did they? and the Gothick roof of the Eddyvane Hall ballroom reverberates to the thunder of applause mixed with laughter as McIntyre minces on and gives one of the flourishing bows that featured largely in his portrayal of Sir Fopling… Oh, who cares. It wasn’t bad, it was at least in genuine costume, and it had a few laughs. And even if it was the most putrid show ever put on a stage it could not possibly be as bad as what we now have to face, could it?


    Later. No, it couldn’t. Not nearly. Where do I start? I could just plunge right in and say— Or wouldja rather have the anticipation?
    No, well, not all of us were present for all of it, but the witnessed bits went more or less like this:
    Rupy having announced ecstatically that now it’s time for the supper club and just time for a wee bite and drinkies for us, but he and Felix will abstain (where is F.B? We’ve been mercifully thpared hith prethenthe, think I’ll stop this, all evening), we sort of straggled off to it. Some of us insisted on going to the bog first, thanks, Rupy. Not the downstairs ones, new awash with jostling ladies in posh frocks, but upstairs on Rupy’s floor. Sure enough, no queue, and after a moment’s wait a thin ballet girl exited, neck twisted over her shoulder like an owl, could I see the hole in the tights? I lied, and she went downstairs happy.
    The conservatory was easily identified by the huge notice announcing “Eddyvane Hall Conservatory. Interior Décor by Styles Unlimited, proud sponsors of the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival 2001,” (pointing hand), and the further large notice just outside its door announcing “Eddyvane Hall Conservatory. Interior Décor by Styles Unlimited, proud sponsors of the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival 2001. 11.00 p.m. till LATE, The Barbican Supper Club, Featuring Mr. Felix Beaumont and Mr. Rupert Maynarde as Th’Affected Wits, with Musicke & Songe from The Purcell Players, and Mr. Adrian Truscott in his Celebrated Portrayal of Mr. Sam. Pepys, Esq.” At which point I nearly turned tail: I put a lot of effort into avoiding Mr. Adrian Truscott two years back. But unfortunately the interior décor by Styles Unlimited featured many-paned glass doors with large brass handles and a certain amount of non-Restoration frosted glass, and Rupy had already spotted me through one of the non-frosted areas. So I went in. And duly accepted another bloody orange juice while the rest of them had champagne. Rupy was being very good, however, and kept me company in the orange juice. And explained that, though of course one doesn’t need it so soon after dinner, there is quite a substantial— So I cheered up a bit and had cold chicken with frilly lettuce, Japanese salad fronds and cherry tomatoes, masquerading under the name of salad. Without the balsamic vinegar dressing that was threatened with it.
    And after a wait of only twenty minutes or so, in he came. At least he’d cleaned off the make-up, I’ve known them as would deliberately leave traces of mascara round the eyes, enhances those deep looks while reinforcing the fact that one is a successful ac-tor. Oh, yes.
    “Did you like it?” he said with a deprecating laugh, brazenly grabbing a chair and pulling it up between Rupy and Katie.
    “It was really great, Euan!” she gasped, turning even pinker than what she’d gone at the sight of him. Give ya two guesses what he was wearing. Nope, not black rehearsal gear, too pointed at that time of night—good guess, though. Nope, not the flowing dressing-gown, not The Done Thing for we of Stratford fame, though it would certainly have allowed him to show off the chest. And five gold stars if ya thought of the chest, folks. Because what it was, see, was black evening trou’, artfully draped as to the legs but managing to be really fitting round the bum, which isn’t half bad, and the waist, which if not as slim as Rupy’s, isn’t bad, either, topped off with a white evening shirt, casually unbuttoned to well down the chest. I may not have mentioned the fact that he has got a very nice chest, just enough curly brown hair on it. When I first knew him he used to wear a little gold chain that just sat round the very solidly male neck at salt-cellar level, to die for, but that was missing. Too poncy? Wanted to come on as solidly masculine for Katie? Well, your guess is as good as mine, but I’d take a pretty solid bet it was something like that. By the way, as he came up looking deprecating he also managed to pant slightly, so that the chest was really shown off to its best advantage. Surprised? Didn’t think ya would be, no.
    “Delightful, Euan!” beamed Michael. “A very convincing portrayal.”
    Convincing? All he had to do was look good and say the lines as Mr Etherege wrote them. Though if ya must use the word, I grant you he was more convincing than he was as Horner two years back. That slightly fuzzy, unfocussed thing he specialises in and that has the ladies in the audience palpitating to mother him, at least according to his ill-wishers in the Profession, was totally unsuited to the rôle. I wouldn’t say Dorimant was all that unfocussed a character, either, but yeah, if ya can go for a sophisticated Restoration man-about-town being slightly fuzzy and unsure of himself under the smooth, he was convincing enough. At the time. The afterthoughts didn’t surface until afterwards, I have the same trouble with Mr Branagh.
    Greg, bless his heart, at this point put in eagerly: “Yeah, it was great! I never realised it’d be that funny!”
    “Of course,” agreed Euan immediately, with a lovely smile, don’t-see-you variety.
    “Dear boy, Restoration comedy is both funny and naughty,” Rupy tells him austerely. “It was lovely, Euan: congratulations, absolutely pozz the reviews will rave. Although possibly not over La Grey: what possessed her to go all girlish and skittish?”
    At this point I thought, no, well, hoped, that Euan was going to put his foot in his mouth, because he gave me a look through the lashes and murmured: “Suggestions, Lily Rose?”
    “I was thinking of her audition for Katie’s part and what Varley said about her,” I admitted, wincing. “Um, I think she might have been over-compensating for it.” –At about this point it dawned that possibly what he was doing was encouraging me to put my foot in my mouth as revenge for deliberately leading him on in front of Katie at that rehearsal.
    “Varley?” he said with a shudder, seen him do that on the box a million times. “Ugh! In that case, for God’s sake don’t tell us.”
    “No,” agreed Katie in a squeak. “He was really horrible. And I thought she read it very well!”
    Michael was looking disappointed, he’d been just about to tell. “It wasn’t one of his worst.”
    “It wouldn’t need to be!” he said with a modified version of the shudder. “But tell us what you thought of Adam’s Sir Fopling, Michael!” –The best butter: Michael was so pleased at being deferred to as an Older Man of the Theatre he was practically purring. And Katie was giving Euan an approving look, oh, God.
    After that Rupy had to dash and dress. And Euan cleared his throat and warned us very nicely that we’d probably find the costumes a bit overdone, but of course it was just a skit. There was absolutely no need for this: in the first place we saw F.B. all dressed up in his sequins in Euan’s very company earlier this very day, and in the second place two theatrical gays of fortyish and fiftyish when left to their own devices instead of being under the thumb of a stern director are obviously going to go haywire. And in the third place all of us including Greg had already guessed this. What it was, see, he was impressing Katie with his fundamental niceness and just-ordinary-blokeiness. Oh, you go that some time back, didja? Yeah.
    Teasing over not having too much champagne followed, and he tempted the now blushing and giggling Katie to join me in a plate of pudding—awfully nice, it was peach Melba, I decided I might  have another round a bit later—and this whiled away the time…
    And on they came with a fanfare! Rupy being quids-in with the little orchestra it was the trumpet player from that. Felix smothered in lizard-patterned turquoise and mauve sequins was the least of it. The least of it. What with the flowing tresses, and the giant plumes in the giant hats and the lace sprouting from everything that could sprout lace and the bunches of ribbons ditto, in fact the bunches of ribbons sprouting from places that didn’t oughta… The make-up of course dead white with round pink disks on each cheek and hugely bowed bright red mouths and gigantic curved eyebrows, Felix to boot having non-Restoration turquoise sequins on the eyelids. Whistles, catcalls, mad applause, they could hardly be heard for the noise and had to wag their fingers sternly at us before they could start…
    Yes, well, the supper club was now fairly full of assorted super-pseuds and culture-vultures, plus all the performers whose shows were over for the evening, all very Up, with a scattering of theatrical Names that always turn up for it in the hopes of being Recognised, not to say taken for far more literary and intellectual that wot they actually are, and both Rupy and Felix are pretty well known in the profession, and everybody was full of grog, so the show was a riot from start to finish. The conservatory was done out as what Euan had kindly explained to all of us, but especially Katie, was meant to be an orangery, featuring lots of tall mirrors in gilt frames, hundreds of gilt candle sconces on the walls with those fake candles in them, little pointed electric light bulbs, y’know? and scores of chandeliers dripping with cut glass. Plus tubs and tubs of kumquat tress tortured into the requisite ball-on-a-stick configuration. Therefore many persons were enabled to stand up and throw orange plastic kumquats as well as breadsticks or crumpled green and gold table napkins. (Don’t ask me what the Barbican has to do with orangeries, I’m merely the reporter.)
    Of course afterwards they came and sat with us still in the gear, not being from the Stratford In crowd, though Felix in his time has done several stints with them, more especially when lisping cameos were called for. Also when he was very much younger and prettier, pre-lisp. The others by this time had had enough champagne to be able to say truthfully they’d loved it, it was a riot. I just lied, and neither of them noticed.
    The musicke came on again, but by now the roar of drunken pseuds had risen to such a vol. that you could hardly hear it. You couldn’t hear much at our table, either, but as it was mostly Rupy and Felix telling smutty and not-redounding-to-the-credit stories about most of the visible theatrical Names or Almost Names, no loss. Euan entirely withstood the temptation of joining in, even when they had a go at one or two of them he hates. In fact he didn’t say much at all, just smiled tolerantly at the stories, and prevented Katie from drinking any more champagne. Not precisely in a fatherly way, however, and not patronising. Not sure that I can describe it. Um, kindly and sophisticated just-older man, make that man-of-the-world, being protective?
    I was just reflecting several things, one of which was that it was a Helluva pity it wasn’t this year he was doing Horner, because seeing the bastard deliberately setting out to seduce the innocent little Mrs Margery might just have rung a few bells with Katie, and one of which was should I order the second round of peach Melba now, and a third of which was if I ordered that second round now would I get stuck and have to sit though bloody Mr Pepys’s one-man show, when Euan said, in a voice that just avoided being tender by a whisker: “The noise level in here’s getting beyond a joke, isn’t it, Katie? Would you fancy a wee stroll in the grounds? The rose garden’s lovely at night.”
    Funnily enough absolute silence then fell at our table. Even Felix stopped short in the middle of a smutty anecdote, possibly because Rupy had choked into his champagne.
    Poor little Katie went very red, but she stuck that determined chin of hers in the air and said defiantly: “I would, actually. And you can all stop looking at me like that: I am an adult.”
    “Aye, that’s right!” he said cheerily, hopping up and coming to hold her chair for her. “Don't glare at me like that, Rosie, darling, I’m no’ about to ravish her innocence and basely cast her adrift in the cruel world!”
    “With an evil leer,” said Felix weakly, as the rest of us just sagged weakly where we sat.
    “Aye, something like that,” he said calmly, walking off with her.
    Felix has got this trick of holding his head on one side in a considering manner, so he did that, and said: “He has got worse since Posthumus as Stratford, hasn’t he?”
    “You mean it’s not in your imagination, dear?” said Rupy on an acid note. “Exactly.”
    At which I burst out: “I don’t think one syllable of anything he said tonight was genuine!”
     And Michael concluded brilliantly: “I think you’re right, Rosie. Of course, I missed it, with my tooth, but I’d say he was getting his own back at you for encouraging him to misbehave in front of her at rehearsal.”
    Gee, folks, do you think there might be something in that idea?
    Of course we didn’t see hide nor hair of her for the rest of the night. And Michael and I had a pretty glum breakfast next morning. Minus the Seatons, thank goodness, they were sleeping in. Eventually he said what was I going to do and all I could say was Nothing, she was legally an adult. After a bit Greg turned up, reporting that he’d had breakfast, it was a really good spread, but he hadn’t been able to make Rupy get up for it. And was Katie here? No, being the glum reply. And we were just starting to have an argument over whether to go and watch the Cavaliers and Roundheads thing while we waited for her, Greg being pro and me being con and Michael supporting me, he thought I shouldn’t stand around in a silly field for hours on end, when the phone rang and it was her. And Michael handed the receiver over to me.
    “Hullo, Rosie!” she said brightly. “If it wouldn't be putting you out, I thought I might stay on with Euan for a bit.”
    “It's not putting me out, no. But have you got enough cash to get yourself back?”
    “Silly!” she said with a loud giggle. “He’s not planning to cast me adrift in the cruel world, you know!” –Male murmur from the background, followed by cosy joint laughter.
    “Yeah, hah, hah, very funny. Well, it’s your life. Only the consensus this end is that a very great deal of that performance of his last night in the conservatory was designed as revenge on me for deliberately leading him on to behave like a selfish, spoilt twat in front of you at rehearsal.”
    There was a certain period of silence. Then she said: “Did you deliberately lead him on?”
    “Yes. But it wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t wanted to do it, Katie, would it?”
    More silence. “I can see that,” she eventually said in a stilted voice. “But I still think it was very mean of you.”
    “Pretty mean, yeah. But in due course one of the things you’re gonna realise about Euan is that he’s immensely suggestible and can’t bear not to be one of whatever crowd he’s with. And while I’m at it, he’s a very much weaker person than you are, Katie—”
    “He is not!”
    “Of course he is. Just don’t expect him to behave with the strength of mind you would in any situation that calls for resolve or taking a stand, or standing by one’s principles.”
    “Shut UP!”
    I obligingly shut up. So after a bit she said: “I didn’t mean to shout. But I think you’re wrong. You’re blowing it up out of all proportion.”
    “I went round with him for months and months, you nong, including bloody trips to Paris and tra-la-la, I do know him a bit better than you do. He can be a very pleasant companion, and he’s very sweet-natured, but he’s also very weak and a total conformist. If he got the idea that you’re not good enough to be seen in his company with, just as a for-instance, the Stratford crowd, believe you me, you wouldn’t be asked along.”
    “Pooh. Anyway, Bridget knows half of those people.”
    “To the extent that she’s had a few small parts and done quite well and that Georgy Harris has been very kind to her, yes. And to the extent that Adam McIntyre’s followed his wife’s lead, yes. He’s about as strong-minded as Euan is, actually.”
    “I’m not going to listen to any more of this, Rosie, you’re being ridiculous!” she said gaily, oh, God. “It’s the pregnancy getting to you, that’s what. Have you been having awful wind again?”
    “No!”—Burp.—“No.”
    At this point she collapsed in giggles and I could hear him saying with that purr in his voice: “So has she not convinced you I’m the big, bad wolf after all?” And Katie squeaked: “No, of course not! She’s in a bad mood because the pregnancy’s making her very tired and she won’t admit it to anybody. Don’t worry, I won’t take any notice of her.”
    “Katie!”
    “I can hear you, don’t shout. Are you over the wind?”
    “Hah, hah. Look, I meant every word of it.”
    “Your trouble is you expect every man to be just like John.”
    What utter cheek! The girl hasn’t even met him! “I do not!”
    “Yes, you do, Rosie, think about it! I told Michael we’ll pop over later to collect my bag. And I’ll see you in about a week’s time, if that’s okay?”
    “Yeah, yeah. In a week’s time, or sooner if the place gets inundated with Stratford pseuds.”
    “Pooh!” she says with a loud giggle. Gee, why doesn’t she just spell it out: it was great in bed last night. Yes, I know that, little innocent friend, but— Oh, forget it. Talking of hormones.
    “All right, then. See ya.”
    “See you!” she said with another loud giggle, hanging up. And that was that.


    So now here we are back home at the cottage. That pile of work we left on the dining-table hasn’t done itself, fancy that. We get down to it…
    I tell ya what, finishing your nationalism book and guiding your little researcher through the initial stages of a great big five-year study is a breeze, an absolute breeze, compared with the bloody hard yacker of trying to cope with Katie Herlihy in the first throes of an overwhelming sexual attraction for gorgeous, fuzzy, up-himself, weak-as-water Euan Keel.


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