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…

Tacks, Tact, And Tactics



Episode 18: Tacks, Tact, And Tactics

    He’s stopped thinking. He finishes his breakfast coffee and says: “Rosie, I think we’d better have a serious talk.”
    So do I, mate. Given that Derry’s secretary’s rung four times and his P.A., that’s too important to ring with normal messages, has rung three. Whether D.D. in person is keeping out of it because he’s being tactful or merely exercising tactics, or because he’s utterly elsewhere, I dunno, but for this relief much thanks.
    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce! It’s time to start the spoon biffing, he’s had his morning bottle and his shlop. Automatically I hand the bungee spoon back to him. “Um, yeah. Can I have another cup of coffee first?”
    He looks sort of wry, but pours me another coffee. I won’t say I could do with another piece of toast, he’ll think it’s delaying tactics.
    “Thanks. Shall we start?” –And hopefully get it over with before Yvonne arrives.
    “Mm. You could tell me what you know of Dawlish’s plans.”
    “Uh—yeah. He wants to film in Sydney, using the studios there. That’s definite. He’ll of had to book the studios yonks back. The scuttlebutt is he’s gonna centre it round the British Navy in Singapore—you know, like in your parents’ day.”
    His lips twitch. “Anything less like Mother and Father—!” After a bit he adds: “Is this some sort of bribe aimed at you, Rosie?”
    “Probably.”
    Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!
    Automatically he hands it back to him. “And?”
    “Um, well, it’s not as if I want to be a fillum star, it’s a stupid sort of life. And one D.D. epic certainly doesn’t make a star. With the exception of Georgy Harris, of course. But everybody else that he’s starred in his wanking arty epics, I mean the Unknowns, of course, have sunk like a stone.”
    “Ye-es… Rosie, darling, could you please just say what you mean?”
    Blast! I thought I was.
    Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!
    Automatically I hand it back to him. “Um, well, that’s it, really. I mean the D.D. bits. Euan reckons he’s keen on having him do the boyfriend. Um, I mean the husband. Um, Daughter’s boyfriend. A rewrite, like, take the boyfriend bits out of Rupy’s part. But I haven’t heard whether Derry’s actually cast him. Only he won’t star Katie.”
    After a bit he says: “May and Jerry would love to see you, darling.”
    Yeah, Mum and Dad probably would, and they’re dying to see Baby Bunting, but what do you think, John? Jesus!
    “Say it,” he murmurs, shit, thought he was looking at Baby Bunting. Bugger the man, he is, how can he possibly read my face if he’s looking at— “The thought waves,” he murmurs.
    “Yeah, right! Um, well, when D.D. started nagging me I talked it over with Rupy, because I didn’t think a person could do both, only he thinks it’s possible because acting isn’t full-time. Um, and I do like the work, ya see.” –Cringe, is that gonna remind him of the Grate Breakfast Row?
    “Mm, I’ve recognised that for a very long time,” he murmurs.
    Haven’t ya, just. “So?”
    “Mm?”
    Boy, is he irritating! “So what do you think?”
    He raises his eyebrows and looks wry. “If you’re asking for my permission—”
    “No! I’m asking you if you think I can manage it, like a reasonable human being; and if you think I want or need ya fucking Royal Navy permission—”
    “Hush. I’m glad to hear your perception of me as an authority figure”—oops, that rankled—“doesn’t go so far as believing you need my permission. And stop slandering the Navy.”
    Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!
    Automatically he hands it back to him. “You’re not lecturing, and it sounds as if the sociological survey needs time to, um, simmer? Well, that’s how I envisage it—so I’d say you probably can manage it, given that it seems to be timed to coincide, though judging from what you’ve said about Dawlish that’s not the word, with the university holidays.”
    “Um,” I say in a voice that comes out smaller than I meant, “so you don’t think it’d be overdoing it?”
    “You’re not feeding Baby any more, Yvonne’s taking the pressure of looking after the little bugger off you—’Es, who’s a little bugger? You’re going to throw it again, aren’t you?—Uh, sorry, darling: no, I don’t think it’d be overdoing it.”
    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!
    “So long,” he says, the mouth twitching, “as you don’t get pregnant again. I’m afraid I really would have to put my foot down, then.”
    “Get pregnant! A woman doesn’t get pregnant! Or fall pregnant, either, like the wanking Aussie media always say!”
    “Ugh, God, do they?” he says with an expression of startled distaste.
    “Yeah,” I say, oddly enough feeling pacified. “So long as you don’t make me pregnant,”—yep, he is now smirking, it’s the Y-chromosome factor, he can’t help it, he’s merely the victim, so I generously overlook it—“I reckon I could manage it. –Look out!”
    The lip’s wobbling. Hurriedly he hands him the bungee spoon. “Go on, then, fellow.”
    Biff! Sproing-g-g, clack, bounce!
    “The thing is, Rosie, have you really thought it through? –Wait.”—I’m waiting.—“In the first place, do you really want to do it, and in the second place, have you considered the possible repercussions?”
    “I’d like to do it: I think it’d be interesting to see a film being made, though I know the acting bits as such won’t be anything that could be called fun, and if D.D.’s on form, it’ll all be maddeningly short takes, worse than Paul.”—He nods: good, at least he can see it’s not that I'm dazzled by the idea of being a fillum star.—“But I don’t want to do it so much that I’ll be awfully disappointed if you’re dead-set against it. Only it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: I'm not getting nay younger, you know, and the Daughter’s supposed to have just left school. That is, if he sticks to the original concept at all. You realise he scrutinised Georgy Harris’s neck before he cast her as Titania?”
    “Neck?” he says imply.
    “Waa-waa—”
    “Damn! Here! Sorry, fellow. Come on, nice bungee spoon! Oh, Lor’, don’t bawl!”
    “Woo-hoo-hoo! Woo-hoo-hoo!”
     He gets up and hauls him out of the highchair and hugs him, mopping his face a bit. “It’s all right, little man. Weren’t they paying any attention to you? There now, Daddy’s got you! Don’t cry, Baby Bunting.”
    “Give him this,” I say, handing him a toast crust with a bit of Vegemite on it.
    “Uh—thought you were saving that for Tim, darling?”
    “Yeah, but it can do him as a rusk. Go on, John, he’ll just slobber over it, rusks are normal baby fodder, won’t do him any harm.”
    Dubiously he hands it to him and of course it goes in the mouth immediately.
    “Um, where was I?”
    “Something about Dawlish inspect—no, think the word was scrutinising Georgy Harris’s neck?”
    “Oh, yeah. It was scrutinising, definitely: she thought it was funny but Adam was real annoyed. Like, D.D. reckons the neck goes first. –Shows the ageing, John. He wanted a really young Titania. Portrait of a marriage between disparate ages, ya see.”
    “Yes,” says my middle-aged hubby weakly. “Has he had the brass face to inspect your neck, darling?”
    “Not yet, though he did some peering at that bloody Christmas hooley of his when he thought I was too far gone on champagne to notice. That’ll be what this screen-test thingo next week’s for.”
    He nods groggily. “Well, given the neck’s perfect, repercussions?”
    “Well, of course the Lily Rose shit’d start up again stronger than ever, for a while.”
    “Public appearances?” he says on a grim note.
    “I’d have it in my contract that I’d only do a few specified ones, John. Like, for the premiere. Actually D.D.’ll probably have at least two, one in Sydney and one in London. And probably one in Yankland, I’m afraid. Like that Moulin Rouge thing,” I explain, “because Nicole Kidman’s an Aussie.”
    He’s looking completely blank. “Something about Montmartre?”
    “Ya don’t wanna know. Anyone that’s ever read Nana— Never mind. Once I start it may be difficult to stop me.”—He ’s shaking slightly but I’m ignoring that.—“We probably would be pestered by the paparazzi for a while, though.”
    “Mm. Think they’d pester us down here?”
    “Um, dunno, John. Um, well, if the film was a roaring success in America, yeah. But I honestly can’t envisage that. The whole concept’s too English.”
    “Mm. And it’ll be about two months in Sydney?”
    “Six weeks’ to two months’ solid filming in the Sydney studios, I’d say. Might take longer, depending on how much location work D.D. wants. The word is he’s gonna use steamy bits of Queensland for Singapore.”
    “Mm. And the rest?”
    “Well, there’d be some rehearsing, D.D. does like his actors to know what he wants them to do before he rolls out the cameras, not like some. –Most. But that’d just be in a rehearsal studio.”
    “I see. Where?”
    “Eh?”
    “Where? Where is he based?”
    “Um, well, nowhere.”
    “Rosie, would you be expected to rehearse in London or in Hollywood?” my beleaguered hubby says loudly.
    “Oh! London, of course! D.D. hates Hollywood. And all the actors’ll be English, it’ll have to be London.”
    “I don’t think that follows, these day,” he says drily. “Well, let’s say that as far as I’m concerned, rehearsing in London’s a sine qua non. And I don’t want to stop you, darling, and I want you to be happy in what you do, but—I know this is calling the kettle black—two months away is a damned long time.”
    “Mm.” I swallow. It’s difficult to put this point over without raising other points, not to say, sleeping dogs, such as has he talked to his father yet and wouldn’t a shore job be the go while Baby Bunting’s still little. “Could you come, too?”
    “Uh…” He rubs his chin slowly. “I may be able to manage to take leave.”
    “Ace! Um, but I gotta warm you, it’d be awfully boring for you, John. I mean, I’d be tied up all day and, um, probably completely out of it by the end of the day, it’s bad enough filming with Paul, but a movie’ll be miles worse.”
    “Mm,” he says, reaching over and taking my hand and squeezing it hard. “That’s all right, darling, I’d rather be there than not. I could spend some time with Jerry. And I might go over to Adelaide to see Kate and Jim. And then perhaps up to the Red Centre, mm?”
    “Why not, the Alice is pretty near. Well, couple of thousand K from Adelaide, something like that. You could nip up there easy, they have flights every day. Ya don’t wanna take the Ghan, that's the tourist-trap train, it costs an arm and a leg.”
    “A plane it is, then. Though I’d really rather see the Red Centre with you, darling,” he says, smiling.
    “I’ve seen it. Um, that didn’t come out right. It was so extraordinary,” I explain slowly, “that I’m scared to go back and spoil the impression.”
    His eyebrows rise slowly. “That is a recommendation. There are very few places I’d say that of… No, well, the miniature sub!” he says with a smothered laugh.
    “Eh?”
    “Terence wangled it. In a big sub like his of course you can’t see a damn thing, you could be a thousand feet down or floating in space. But the miniature thing was built for, um, exploratory purposes, research, that sort of thing”—and spying, right—“and only holds three men. He wangled me a trip on one of its deep-sea trials: that was quite extraordinary. It's got a big forward porthole for observation, and a searchlight…” He shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”
    I mighta mentioned at one point that men can’t describe anything, and boy, is he one with the vast majority. So I prompt: “Like, strange underwater creatures?”
    “Mm, floating up out of inky black… Transparent. No, think I mean translucent.” He shakes his head again. “Unbelievable.”
    “Yeah,” I concede. Actually that put it quite well, given I’ve seen it five million times on boring, blurred nature dokko after boring, blurred— Right.
    “Now describe the Red Centre,” he says with a laugh in his voice.
    “You know I can’t, you wanker! –’Es, Daddy’s a wanker, isn’t he? –He's making a mess with that crust,” I warn. “Um… blazing blue sky, huge um, billows of deep red ochre with black shadows, and great stretches of red plain misted with palest jade, when I was there. Um, like only three colours, see?” –That’s as good as I can do, frankly. You gotta see it. No, experience it.
    “Palest jade?” he ventures.
    “Misty. Fluffy. They’d just had really heavy rains.”
    “Good God, so the desert was in bloom?”
    “Not bloom, John. Leaf.”
    “Mm,” he says, smiling. “I see.”
     No, he doesn’t, the great Pommy git, he only thinks he does.
    “Was it hot?” he says idly.
    Was it hot! Ruddy Pommy twit! “No,” I say grimly, he is not gonna get this: “hottish, merely. Maybe hit thirty-eight at lunchtime the day we went to Uluru—the Rock.”
    Sure enough, the Pommy wanker says feebly: “That’s a hundred degrees, Fahrenheit.”
    Yeah, yeah. “Whatever. Go. See for yaself.”
    “Ye-es. I was wondering about Australia anyway, darling: I would really like to see the Red Centre. And you know your parents keep begging us to bring Baby Bunting out. Though I was thinking of next Christmas.”
    “He’d be fifteen months by then.”
    “Yes. Uh—if Dawlish films during July and August, Jerry and May will miss his birthday. Oh, well, can’t be helped. I can’t stay that long. Though you could, Rosie.”
    “No, if you’re going back I’m not gonna stay without you. And what if I up-chucked on the plane while I had Baby Bunting to look after?”
    “You could take Yvonne. But this time,” he says with a smile in his voice, reaching over and squeezing my hand, “I’d let you take travel sickness pills, I promise.”
    You’d have to, mate. Don’t think I could face the trip again without them. Though I do concede I didn’t up-chuck on the big planes. “Yeah. Good. –He’s slobbered that crust all over ya jumper.”
    “Mucky thing,” he says, smiling, and wiping his shoulder with the mucky feeder. “Give the crust to Dad—”
    Screech!
    “Hell. All right, Baby Bunting, don’t give it to Daddy.” He gets up, goes over to the bench, rinses the hand-towel under the hot tap and carefully scrubs the shoulder, then he goes over to the washing-machine and pops the hand-towel in it. “So?” he says at last.
    “Um, give it a go?”
    “Provided that we can agree on the terms of the contract, yes.”
    “Yuh— Uh—terms of the contract? Sheila will make sure D.D. doesn’t rook me,” I croak.
    “Mm. Not the financial terms, Rosie. I’m not having any Page Three shots of you on the big screen, okay?”
    Heck, it wouldn’t be me, it’d be Lily Rose Rayne. But if that’s the way you want it—“Okay.”
    “Including body-tights, or whatever the Hell it was, scattered with tiny petals,” he notes drily.
    “Eh? Oh! Georgy Harris’s Titania! Most of those petals were stuck onto the actual bod, she reckoned she barely had a body-hair left by the time they’d finished with her. It was agony getting the things off.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” he says sourly. “How the Devil McIntyre could let her—!”
    Yeah, right: so much for not needing one’s hubby’s permission. “In the first instance, she has got free will in spite of that gold ring on her third finger, and in the second instance, can you honestly envisage Adam standing up to Derry Dawlish?”
    We did see quite a bit of them when we were at the Chipping Ditter Festival 2000, it’s their village, you see, so he admits very drily: “Not really, no.”
    “Are we agreed, then? You’re quite sure you can stand it?”
    “Yes. I’d like to see you in a film, actually, darling,” he says, smiling.
    Crumbs, wouldja, John? “Oh, good,” I say weakly. “That’s settled, then.”
    Not that I needed your permission, of course.


    Once a decision’s been made, no more discussions need take place, so immediately he’s in managerial mode. We go up to London—what happened to all those meetings in Portsmouth? I’m not asking—and see Sheila at Sheila Bryant Casting. Of course I’ve already rung her, nevertheless she’s so pleased she bounces up, comes out from behind her big desk, and practically fawns on John. Then he gets down to it. He’s drawn up a list of points which should be included in the contract, or perhaps in a schedule to it? Sheila blinks. Groggily she takes the list. Then it’s: “But we can't ask Double Dee to—” And: “I can’t see that it could be a problem. But I’m afraid that’s not negotiable, Sheila.” Followed by: “What? John, she’s not Julia Roberts:”—doesn’t notice he’s looking blank—“we can’t possibly stipulate that they have to give Commander to Rupy Maynarde!” And: “I’m afraid that’s a sine qua non, Sheila.” Gee, what a good thing he came, eh? She raises five million more objections that Double Dee might very reasonably raise to this one point alone, but he remains quietly adamant. I knew he was good, but boy! And, this won’t surprise ya, she gives in on everything. Though she does note weakly that possibly he’d better come along to negotiate with Double Dee. To which he replies calmly that he’s quite prepared to.
    Then to mollify her he takes her off to a lovely lunch. Theirs is lovely. I’m not allowed to have the pâté or the fried chicken or the lamb chops with roast potatoes, because if I’m going to do this thing, I’m going to take it seriously, and I still haven’t lost all the weight I put on last year, have I? Very well, one fillet steak, medium-rare, no sauce, and a green salad for Mrs Haworth—thank you. The waiter goes off looking mystified, he’d thought I was Lily Rose Rayne, judging by the hat alone.
    When John spots an old crony over on the other side of the room and goes over to say hullo Sheila takes the opportunity to croak: “Is he doing Manager for you, Rosie?”
    “Not officially, no. But when he decides to anything he does it properly.”
    “That’s good,” she says drily. “I don’t think Dawlish will want a white velvet blimp in his Singapore-in-Sydney epic.”
    She’s thinking of the Christmas Special, what else? “Hah, hah. Um, so it’s definite he’s doing the Singapore shtick?”
    She shrugs. “All I know is, someone from Double Dee rang to warn us you’d be expected to look good in a bikini and mentioned Queensland. But as they also warned us about vaccinations, I don’t know I’d take their word the earth’s still turning.”
    “Uh—no. I come from Australia,” I manage to croak.
    “Quite. –I’d eat that Japanese salad green, if I was you, doubt if he’ll let you have pudding.”
    Glumly I eat my vile Japanese salad thingo. Why did I ever start this thing? I might have known he’d get the bit between his teeth!


    Double Dee Productions will of course pay all fares, he actually had that put in the contract, but we can decide which way to go. (And that.)
    “Um, well, say we go via California again and see Matt, could we break the journey in Honolulu, John? Like, really break? A couple of days before we have to— I mean, between planes?”
    He thinks it might be difficult to book a hotel at that time of year, but he’ll try. Folks, why did I say “a couple?” Because if he can get a booking, he’ll make it for forty-eight hours, exactly. Oops, now he’s planning to go home via Adelaide, in other words staying with Aunty Kate, plus and taking the train across the Nullarbor to Perth. Then home by way of South Africa, because last time I found it easier that way, didn’t I? Folks, by that time I was so out of it I didn’t even find it. And I’ll leave it to the travel agent to break it to him that the Indian Pacific is always booked up a year in advance, and in any case, even though it does go through Adelaide, no way will they let you break your journey there, because guess what? They can get five times as many full bookings, Sydney to Perth, for every train. Does this prompt them to put on five times as many trains, thus quintupling their income, I hear you cry? No, no, and no. That’s Downunder for ya.
    Happily he decides that we’ll ring Mum and Dad as soon as the time’s right.

INT.  THE LONDON FLAT - DAY

Captain and WIFE on the phone, later the same day.

CAPTAIN’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
(O.S.)
Oh, John! Not really?
(bursts into tears.)

CAPTAIN’S FATHER-IN-LAW
(O.S.)
For Chrissakes, May, anybody’d think they’d broken
the news they were emigrating to Mars! Give it
here!
(nothing)
May! Give me the bloody phone!

    And etcetera and so forth. Yeah, what a good thing they decided to have ducted reverse-cycle air-con throughout the New Wing, wasn’t it? We’ll get out Aunty Kate’s recording for posterity, The New Wing The Video, and remind ourselves of it, I don’t think. Huh? Yeah, Dad, this time we will be able to spend more than a couple of weeks, and NO! This time I will NOT be three months gone! Jesus! Parents!
    And eventually we hang up, not without a harangue from Mum on the subject of taking lots of nice photos of all the places we’re filming the series at and sending them to her, Rosie, because I never do. –This could have something to do with the fact that all the pics I take come out fuzzy.
    “I’ll take some photos,” he says mildly.
    “Will ya? Thanks, John. –What are you doing?” I demand suspiciously as he sits down and outs with the pocket diary and the Parker.
    “Making a list of some of the things we mustn’t forget to take with us.”
    “JO-OHN! For Pete’s SAKE!”
    Ignoring me, he says solemnly, writing: “Baby Bunting. –What about a pushchair?”
    “On a ruddy plane? No! Anyway, Mum’ll line one up. Or half a dozen, prolly. –Oh: ya gotta call them pushers, out there.” I give in entirely and come and look over his shoulder.
    Clown! He isn’t making a list of things to take, at all! It’s a list of things to do. He looks up at me, smiling. “In my carefree bachelor days, I wouldn’t have needed to make a list. But you and Baby Bunting between you seem to—er—have a distracting effect!”
    I’m glad to hear that. Because just every now and then, like when you go into your really-sorting-it-all-out mode, John, I sometimes sorta get the feeling that ya don’t even remember we’re here.
    “Say it, Rosie.”
    Right, I’ve said it. He gets up, grinning like anything, and manhandles me off to bed. Highly unfair—just because he happens to be taller and bigger and stronger than me! And anyway it’s all stereotyping and it doesn’t have anything to do with—
    Very much later. Maybe it does have something to do with the real relationship between two human beings, after all. Well, put it like this, I don’t feel as if he doesn’t remember I’m here and I do feel as if I might be able to face them up-market, to-the-manor-born friends and relations that Rabbit’s got lined up for the very near future.


    If it ever crossed your mind to do a tour of English stately ’omes in May, my advice is, don’t. We have had a couple of glorious days, yes, and Paul has managed to shoot the exterior cottage scenes down at Michael’s village: me and Rupy billing and cooing in the garden, right. But when I say a couple, I mean a couple. We’ve also had freezing gales, and grey, overcast days, and pouring rain. Paul would like to blame the fact that I have to be Downunder in July but he can’t, Henny Penny’s shooting schedule was fixed yonks back, so he’s sourer than ever because of it.
    Today most of the cast and the crew are due to move on to the next stately ’ome, and John’ll meet us there. No, well, at the pub in the village there. There’s gonna be, according to Paul, lots of outside shots of sweeping lawns and oak trees and Capability Brown vistas. No-one’s asked if the wanking place’s landscaping actually is by Capability Brown because guess what? We don’t wanna know! So we pile into an assortment of vehicles and go. Well, actually Rupy and me pile into Michael’s “runabout”, a very second-hand Mazda. He got the guy in the village garage to do it up for him, so now it’s dazzling silver-blue over the rust and the filler, with sweeping curlicues in gold on its nose and sides. Not ordinary car paint—oh, ya got that. Yeah. I have to go in the front because of the up-chucking but Rupy’s used to that and he’s a good traveller, he just climbs into the back and nods off immediately. Michael’s very pleased: this means he can pat, or, indeed, squeeze my thigh all the way… Heigh-ho.
    … It’s the Captain’s Daughter! And the Captain! Ooh, and the Husband, in uniform! Yeah, yeah, lovely smiles, don’t bother to explain it’s a blazer and Miss Hammersley’s Daddy’s white duck trou’ and Miss Hammersley’s CD scarf, sign autographs, sign autographs, finally manage to order the ploughman’s; sign more autographs, finally get to eat, sign more autographs…
    … “Aren’t we there yet?”
    “No. Go to sleep again, Rupy,” we sigh.
    … It’s the Captain’s Daughter! And the Captain! And the Husband!
    “Wake up, Rupy, you gotta sign autographs!”
    Lovely smiles, sign autographs, sign autographs, finally manage to get to the Ladies’, sign more autographs, drink a shandy (appropriate to the rôle), sign more autographs…
    “I thought that was it,” Rupy admits sadly as we trail on through miles more damp English countryside in the wake of Paul’s Porsche, Varley’s Beamer (Brian got him along by telling him he didn’t trust Paul), Paula’s dunno, think it’s a Mitsubishi, the Henny Penny bus, the 4 Lunch caravan, and several huge O.B. vans all with the firm’s logo plastered on them. Oh, and Euan’s Morris Minor without Katie in it.
    “Nah. Go to sleep again.”
    He goes to sleep again.
    … “Hullo, darling! Here you are at last!”
    That might be John, it sounds like John but through the gloom of the gathering rain-clouds of an English evening in May it’s hard to tell. “Hi,” I croak, ignoring the fact that Michael’s hand is now on my bum. Well, he is like that, surely I mentioned it before? Like, the tongue? Oh, ya do remember—yeah.
    Turns out we’re only two hours later than John expected us, having checked the schedule with Brian, what else, and— Who cares. At least he’s made sure the pub kept some dinner for us. So we have it. Steak and kidney pie: he thought, in view of the weather—?
    “Yeah. Good on ya, John. We were afraid it was gonna be one of those trendified places that only serve slimy mousse on those tickly Japanese salad greens.”
    “And in fact had a contingency plan,” agrees Michael, smirking coyly—ya didn’t think he was gonna leave us to ourselves, didja?—“involving the nearest fish and chips shop!”
    John agrees nicely that of course we would, Rosie’s contingency plans are like that (hah, hah, very funny) and pours him some more red wine…
    Aeons later we finally find ourselves alone in our room.
    “Come here!” he says, hugging me fiercely.
    Groggily I let myself be hugged. “It took hours. I thought England was small?”
    Cheerfully he tells me something about roads and the heavy vans that he got off Brian, who cares, yeah, yeah, yeah. “Are we gonna go to bed?” –Actually I’m hoping I can keep awake for it. What with the hours of travel on top of the frantic filming, and Michael’s unending non-funny after-dinner stories and all that red wine and the brandy I had to console me during the after-dinner stories…
    Funnily enough he agrees we are, so we do that. I’m awake enough to enjoy it. My bit of it.
    … “Um, hullo,” I say cautiously as I become aware of something large and warm snuggling up to me, spoon-fashion, and something large and rubbery being pressed against my bum.
    “Mmm,” he says into my neck.
    “Um, did I pass out like a light last night?”
    “Came like the clappers and then passed out like a light,” he corrects, getting a hand round in front and— Ooh!
    “Cripes, if ya do that, John,” I gasp, “I might come like the clappers again!”
    “What, don’t need a pee first?” he murmurs with a laugh in his voice.
    Of course I do. So I go, at least it’s got its own ensuite, bloody nippy, though, and dash back into bed. “Jesus, it’s brass—”
    “Mm,” he says, rolling on top of me and shoving it between my thighs. Probably this means he wants to go first. It not infrequently does.
    … Yes, it did mean that. On second thoughts I don’t ask the poor joker if he managed to have a come at all last night. Let the dead past bury, um, forget how that goes. Not raking over dead coals, too. Some of those.
    … “Better?” he murmurs at last.
    The brain’s more or less back in gear but I’m still panting. “Yes! Thanks!”
    “Any time,” he says, surfacing to lie beside me on his back and gaze dreamily at the ceiling, hands linked behind his head. He’s got very nice underarm hair, thick and curly, a very pale fawn. Well, greyish-fawn, I suppose.
    “Um,” I say after quite a while, “I gotta make a report, Captain.”
    “Hah, hah.”
    “It’s just that Katie and Euan do seem to have busted up. Well, they haven’t been sharing a room and she’s pretty mad with him.”
    “I see,” he says heavily. “Er—thought you claimed that busting up would be the best thing that could happen to her?”
    “No! I mean, I don’t think it’d work out… Only now they’re both miserable,” I finish glumly.
    He doesn’t say anything fatuously facile, he just pulls me into his side and murmurs: “Mm.”
    Didja think because it was the weekend and because my hubby had joined me I’d be let off the hook? No, you’re right, I’m not.

EXT.  RUTHERFORD MANOR/THE GAZEBO - DAY

The gazebo stands amidst the smoothly shaven rolling lawns and Capability Brown
vistas of the Manor. In the near distance, a charming lake. (Varley at his most
original).

COMMANDER
(facetiously; not in script)
Left hand down a bit!

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(screaming)
Stop that, Maynarde!

Rupy subsides.

CAPTAIN
(very bravely, sotto voce, not in script)
We haven’t had an on-board scene for weeks, has
anybody noticed?

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(screaming)
Shut up, Manfred!

Michael subsides.

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
Adam! Adam! McIntyre! Where is the bloody man?

JERRY, AS HIMSELF
(very bravely)
He went to the toilet, Paul, you told him he wouldn’t
be needed—

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(screaming; purple-faced)
Get him!”

Exit Jerry, at the double.

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(very grimly indeed)
We’ll shoot the bit where Commander discovers
Daughter and Macfarlane in the gazebo, and by
God, if I have any more left-hand-down-a-bit from
you, Rupy, I swear I’ll kill you. –From the top. Roll
them!

Nothing, though Al McLeod on Camera One is dutifully rolling it.

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
From the top!
(screaming):
Keel! I said, From the top!

MACFARLANE
(quickly)
But darling wee Janey, you know I’ve been at your
feet forever!

CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER
(severely)
Christopher, you’re vewwy, vewwy naughty. This
isn’t the way to make Ginny-Pinny like you, you
know.

Macfarlane takes her hand.

CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER
(continues; severely)
And let go of my hand: if darling Ludo catches you
he’ll be vewwy, vewwy— Ooh! Hullo, Ludo, darling.

Commander enters, left, looking grim. He comes up to the gazebo steps.

COMMANDER
Hullo again, Macfarlane. Do y’mind frightfully
unhanding my wife?

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(interrupting)
No! I said, irony!

COMMANDER
(humbly; not in script)
Um, sorry, Paul, thought I was. Well, um… Do
y’mind frightfully unhanding my wife? No—worse.
Sorry, Paul. Do y’mind frightfully unhanding my
wife? Blast.

Adam McIntyre appears from direction of house.

ADAM MCINTYRE, AS HIMSELF
(not in script; with deliciously light irony)
Do y’mind frightfully unhanding my wife?

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(weakly)
Yes. Like that. –Where the Hell were you?

ADAM MCINTYRE, AS HIMSELF
(insouciantly)
Took a leak. I am human, you know. Go on, Rupy:
“Do y’mind frightfully unhanding my wife?”

COMMANDER
Do y’mind frightfully unhanding my wife?

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(shouting)
No!

    And etcetera and so forth. Boy, my feet are killing me, fashionable shoes of the Fifties sure were unliberated. Bad as today’s—right. And this fucking gazebo is bloody draughty. And if Paul wanted to film in a totally faked-up gazebo that the crew put up for him this morning, why the Hell couldn’t he have done it in a nice warm studio against a pic of the smoothly shaven— Forget it. And I don’t even get to do any tap dancing, which is the stuff I enjoy the most, it’s all stupid sub-plot. I tell ya what, filming Downunder with the Grate D.D. cannot possibly be worse!


    Later. “I’m not in this scene,” I explain as we watch Euan wooing Katie, make that, alas and alack, Macfarlane wooing Stepdaughter, under the spreading chestnut tree, or possibly oak, who cares, something in full leaf, of the soi-disant Rutherford Whatever.
    “No—good,” John agrees, taking my hand and squeezing it in his big warm one. “Shall we go for a walk?”
    A walk? The man’s mad! I’ve been on my feet all morning in pointed-toed Fifties shoes! “In these feet?”
    “Well, just down to the lake? I could row you,” he murmurs.
    “No.”
    “Very well, Rosie, we’ll just sit here and listen to Mitchell—”
    “QUIET ON SET, I SAID!”
    “—screaming,” he finishes acidly.
    Oh, what the Hell. You only got one life, and is spending it sitting in a bloody cockle-shell on moving water with your hubby rowing all that much worse than listening to Paul screaming? So I get up, groaning, and off we go.

CAPTAIN
It is not moving. Get in.

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
Well, hold it still!

CAPTAIN
Give me your hand.
(nothing)
Give me your hand!

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
(holding out hand, gasping and wobbling)
Help!

CAPTAIN
Rosie, you’re still on dry land! Come here and give
me your hand!
(shouting loudly on “feet”)
Move your feet, woman!

    Shit, he is wild. So I move my feet and he gives up any pretence at making allowances for me, grabs me round the hips and dumps me into the boat. “That was easy, wasn’t it?” he says nastily, starting to row the bloody thing.
    I’m not looking, I’m not look—
    “Open your eyes, Goddammit, Rosie! Even you can’t be that much of a coward!”
    Scowling, I open my eyes. “You knew it’d do this bobbing crap, didn’tcha?”
    “Shut up. We are not going to drown.”
    Actually one of us might be, because I’m not an awfully good swimmer, and what if it hits a snag?
    “Stop scowling, Rosie. Just look.”
    I look at him blankly. “What at?”
    “For God’s sake! The view!”
    It’s all flat, wet water surrounded by Capability Brown bushes with a little island craftily placed not in the exact middle of said water. Bluish, only close up more greenish-brown and see-through. The sky’s pale grey with patches of pale blue. What you can see of it for the Capability Brown bushes. This is a view? Finally I offer: “I like our bay better. You can see out to sea.”
    “Mm. Oh,” he says weakly. “I think I get it. It isn’t a view unless it’s a vista, is that it?”
    “I thought they were the same thing. The same word, actually,” I say vaguely, feeling in my pocket. “Have half of a piece of chewed Mars Bar?”
    “Thanks,” he says amiably.
    We munch…
    “Better?” he says kindly as I swallow the last sticky crumb and sigh deeply.
    “Marginally. That lunch feels like hours ago.”
    “It was. Mitchell’s screaming is very time-consuming. –Capable of appreciating the view now?”
    John, it is not a view. Not a view. Read my lips: N,O— Oh, what the Hell. “Yes,” I lie. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is, but I hope you’re not kidding yourself that that took me in.”
    Heavily I point out: “Our aesthetic assumptions are different. Or, put it like this, I haven’t got any.”
    “Rosie, that’s crap!”
    “All right, they’re different. Not that we haven’t got acres of wanking English-style gardens back home, too: the Victorians were terrifically into bringing their own aesthetic assumptions with them, and it doesn’t seem to have dawned in the last hundred and fifty, two hundred years that they look bloody silly plonked down in the middle of mallee scrub or like that. Well, Gardening Australia’s almost entirely on how to raise up ya European-style flowers and bushes good; it doesn’t seem to have struck anyone but me that it’s flaming ludicrous. Shit, they even got this old joker that’s a Pom that tells ya how to do it! Mind you, he lives down in Tazzie, there’s some slight excuse, in their climate.”
    “Rosie,” he says heavily, “are you homesick?”
    “No! Um, well, only slightly.”
    “It won’t be long now,” he says, smiling.
    Something like that. “No. Um, have ya managed to fix up your leave?”
    “Yes,” he says, not elaborating,
    Either this means that for the last umpteen years he never took it when it was due (more than likely), or he’s up for long-service leave, if the Navy has it, or he’s gonna anticipate it like what the Navy doesn’t like them to do, or— Well, I dunno. And I don’t kid myself that I ever will know, either.


    John’s got a map, oh dear. “So next weekend we can get off to see Alan and Daisy, mm?”
    “Um, yeah,” I admit, yawning. “Guess so.”
    “You’d better close your eyes and go to sleep, darling,” he says resignedly.
    So I close my…
    “’Lo. ’S’it morning?”
    “Yes. I’m afraid we’ve slept in. –Yes, all right, Tommy!” he shouts as a voice, could be Tommy’s, I’m not awake enough to tell, bellows something from outside our room.
    “Crikey. What is the time?” I croak, sitting up. Struggling to a sitting position, I think the technical expression is.
    Grimaces. “Eight thirty-five, I’m afraid.”
    Aw, gee, late. No, well, unfortunately in his terms, and of course in Paul Mitchell’s, it is. “Shit. Well, I’m not doing any filming without a nice solid brekky inside me.”
    “Uh—darling, not advisable, isn’t it the scene on the lake this morning?”
    Oh, shit! So it is.
    “You’ll be perfectly all right. I promise it won’t go up and down.”
    “John, of course it’ll go up and down, it’ll have those morons Rupy and Michael and Darryn climbing in and out of it!”
    “Who’s Darryn?”
    “John! The pretty dark one that’s got a crush on Katie! –Very young,” I say as it doesn’t ring any bells. “Sub-lieutenant!” I shout as it still doesn’t— Yeah, John, why didn’t I say so in the first place? Very funny.
    “I’ll have a cup of coffee and a piece of dry toast and a travel sickness pill,” I decide grimly, “and don’t dare to try to stop me.”
    “Wouldn’t dream of it. –This was all your idea,” he notes as I stagger into the ensuite.
    “Shut up. Find me some warm undies,” I order, slamming the door.
    A faint laugh is heard as I stagger under the shower.
    …. Yvonne’s dumped Baby Bunting on John while she does Personal Dresser. “Lily Rose, you can’t wear that woolly spencer under this lovely frock. It’s straining all the buttons and it shows at the neck.”
    “It’s a ruddy horrible frock, are you blind?”
    “Take that spencer off.”
    I take the nice warm spencer off.
    … “You’re going boating in that?” croaks my hubby as I finally emerge onto the scenic stretch of lakeside lawn, not dappled with bluebells: Varley and Paula had a terrific shouting match over that one and Mandy had to get Brian to settle it. (The scene’s set too late in the season, was the word, also we’re not filming The Darling Buds of May.)
    “Blame Terry,” I snarl, as Terry and Dinah are visible approx. two feet from his elbow. “And Dinah,” I snarl, for good measure.
    “It’s a lovely frock, but, um, getting in and out of boats?” he says weakly.
    “Possibly in the Fifties,” I note sourly, “assorted young wankers did sit in boats looking up girls’ skirts as they got into them, but this assorted young wanker,”—glaring at the grinning Darryn in the boat—“will only get a view of THERMAL UNDERWEAR!”
    “Yes, so they are,” he says, grin, grin. “Long ones, with the legs rolled up. What if they descend during Paul’s scene, Lily Rose?”
    “Then you can all CHOKE ON THEM!”
    Darryn promptly goes into hysterics.
    The vile thing is pink, scattered with little bunches of blue flowers, and cuffed and buttoned and piped within an inch of its life. Flared skirt is the technical description, according to Ruth. Yeah, princess-length, whaddelse? The sandals are very high-heeled and strappy, blue to match the little flowers, and no-one that knew anything at all about rowboats would ever have worn any of it to get in and out of one even in the Fifties.
    Dinah’s asking John what his mother would have worn to go boating, just to prove it, serve her right.
    “Ah—well, I don’t quite go back that far myself, Dinah,”—lovely smile, Dinah’s gone all pink, he did it on purpose, girl, wake up!—“but judging by the family albums, it was either smart linen slacks, er, the word ‘pleated’ comes to mind,”—she’s positively giggling, can’t she see every word of it is deliberate? —“with wide-brimmed sunhats—this would be for the more official sort of boating party; or old shorts and striped knit tops with drooping battered canvas hats, if at home with her brothers and the dogs.” –Lovely smile. Gee, if that hasn’t situated his family very naycely in their precise social milieu, I dunno what would, folks.
    “Balls! That’s pure Thirties! D.L. Sayers to the life!” I shout angrily. “Ya Mother never wore pleated slacks in her life, let alone shorts!”
    “No, honest, darling!” he says with a laugh.
    Poor Dinah is now looking very unsure of herself. “Varley wanted a frock, in this scene. He specified a pink one, so Terry had to design the scene around it, didn’t you?”
    “Which proves,” I note viciously, “that that bloody accent of Varley’s is faked from Go to Woe. Only the working class got all gussied up to muck round in boats in the Fifties. But this isn’t the half of it, John, you oughta see what Daughter and Stepdaughter wear on the flaming yacht!”
    He blenches. “My God, Rosie, you’re not going on a yacht?”
    “No. Sheila got it written into my contract that I only go on fake bits of yacht in the studio.”
    “Thank God,” he says limply. “Now, you’ll be fine, darling. The lake’s flat as a pancake—see?”
    Out there it’s got ripples on it, definite technical ripples. But I don’t say anything.
    “And here comes Varley;”—he sounds like one of those ruddy Shakespeare scenes, have ya noticed how the Bard keeps saying it and all the wanking RSC lot are incapable of pronouncing the phrase in anything even approaching everyday tones?—“so no matter how nervous you are, darling, just don’t say anything more about pink frocks or classes, please.”
    “Um, no. Um, that water’s an awful long way down,” I admit in a small voice.
    “It’s all right, Rosie, I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” he says as Varley and Paul come up together, for once not looking like two alley-cats with their hackles up and their claws out.
    “Like he did the time we were on Dauntless and Paul wanted you to sit on the big gun!” Yvonne encourages me.
    One of the most humiliating episodes of my entire life—right. “Mm.”
    “Talking of which,”—oh God, Varley’s put on his smarmy tone, all smiles, every single member of the cast and crew is positive those teeth are fixed, even Darryn, who hates any reference to teeth—well, he’d know, of course—“might there be any chance of doing some more filming aboard, John, do you think? Next spring, round about then?”
    Poor old John makes polite noises as Paul ascertains the cameras and lights are NOT where he told them to be, gets them repositioned, has a fight with Jake, Pete and Bill over the lights and reflectors, gives in and gets them re-repositioned… Yvonne’s put a little fluffy angora cardy, no, sorry, bolero, round my shoulders. Darryn’s sat down in the rowboat and is reading his Wilbur Smith. Rupy and Michael, with due precautions as to the white slacks, have sat down on a rug, and are reading theirs, all right for them, they’ve got blazers on…
    And time marches on. John gives Baby Bunting his mid-morning rusk and rose-hip syrup and puts him down on the rug. Nice Jimmy Fairfax, Amaryllis’s hubby, comes up and sits down with them and has a lovely coo over Baby Bunting. Possibly this means someone else has been deputed to stop Amaryllis from wandering off and getting lost in the grounds, let’s hope so. Paula gives in entirely and sits down and joins them in the cooing…

COMMANDER
Left hand down a bit!

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(screaming, even though this time it is in the
script, Varley’s idea of wit)
No! I said, stand up, Maynarde!”

    Rupy stands up and the rowboat wobbles like crazy and me and Darryn gasp and grab at the sides, Darryn incidentally letting go of the oars which, fancy that, slip out of their thingummies and float away…

JOHN
(very limply, as at long last we’re rescued
and towed in to land):
Doesn’t that boy know anything about boats?

ME
(rather pleased: he didn’t realise how bad it
was gonna get, heh, heh)
Who, Darryn? No, of course not.”

    It’s too much for him. He takes a deep breath, orders me to keep an eye on Baby Bunting, and strides off to confer with Paul…
    I don’t even try to hear what they’re saying, I just sit gratefully down on the rug and start helping Baby Bunting to play with a small wooden train and a matching string of small wooden ducks, not to scale, all supplied by Fiona from an approved shop, well, possibly Harrods’ children’s department, they’re non-toxic and nothing on them will come off. “Yes, ’tis all silly, isn’t it? Aw siwwy! Aw siwwy! Can you say—” Not a sausage. And good on him, ninety-nine point nine repeating percent of what comes out of most people’s mouths is pure crap.
    “Are these for Mum?” I croak as John suddenly resurfaces with his frightfully techo camera and snaps us.
    “Yes; and for the family album!” he says, smiling.
    “Ours? Um, John, we haven’t got one.”
    “I’m about to institute one,” he says gaily. “We can’t possibly let those snaps of Baby Bunting hang round in the sideboard drawers any longer.”
    “Who’s gonna spend hours of an evening sorting them and sticking them in?” I croak.
    “I will, if you don’t want to,” he says mildly.
    “Oh. Well, okay. Only not of me in pink frocks and angora boleros, for Pete’s sake!”
    “It’s Baby Bunting’s heritage,” he says smoothly and Jimmy Fairfax, who’s been trying not to laugh for some time, goes into hysterics.
    “Anyway,” I note sourly, once Jimmy’s recovered and the male peer group are grinning happily at each other, “you’re probably infringing Henny Penny’s copyright by snapping me in this gear.”
    “I'm quite sure Brian and I can work things out. Now, Yvonne’s going to look after Baby Bunting,”—she’s come up and is nodding and smiling, so he’s sorted her out, for sure—“and Gloria’s going to come out on the raft with Paul and Danny and Camera Two to see to your makeup,”—ditto from Gloria—“and I’m going to row you out, darling.”
    “Out to where?” I say faintly.
    “To where Paul was hoping to film in the first place, Rosie, before it dawned that young Hinds has never set foot in a boat in his life. Near the little island. Come along.”
    “Y— Um, they got all sorts of techniques for towing boats out and hiding the towropes under the water and like that, John, while they film from the raft or another boat,” I say limply.
    “Well, yes, but not all sorts of techniques for preventing Hinds from drowning himself and their Star! Come on, darling!”
    I come on. At least he isn’t proposing bringing our Baby Bunting out on a bloody raft with Paul Mitchell in charge of it.
    … “Roll them!” For the fifteenth time, Katie’s and Amaryllis’s boat is seen to approach from behind the little island (it is real, one of the reasons Brian’s spies chose this dump—or at least it’s fake, but eighteenth-century fake), rowed, though this is possibly not the word, by the sweating Euan. The original script, to which we have now returned, called for this second boat to be in shot when Commander gives with his famous witty line.

COMMANDER
(standing; with light laugh, as in Paul’s
shooting script)
Left hand down a bit!

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
(sounding, alas, near tears)
No! Rupy, what’s wrong with you? You’re wobbling!

RUPY, AS HIMSELF
(desperately)
But Paul, it’s the boat, it’s not me that’s wobbling!

PAUL, AS HIMSELF
It is you! When John did it, there wasn’t a wobble in
sight!

RUPY, AS HIMSELF
(sulkily; it’s well past lunchtime)
Well, let him do it, then. I’m only a telly hubby.

    At this point, well, our nerves are somewhat stretched, me and Darryn collapse in giggles.
    Meanwhile the sweating Euan rows closer… You can see he’s sweating, because he’s wearing a fetching white shirt and there are big patches of— No, can’t be, the underarms are quite dry. Oops, must’ve splashed himself.
    “Go back!” screams Paul.
    Euan stops rowing. Immediately the thing starts to drift.

JOHN
(from the raft; ill-advisedly)
Feather ’em!
(nothing)
Keel: feather your oars!

RUPY
(even more ill-advisedly)
They must be near, Paul, dear, why else am I
yelling “Left hand down a bit?”

PAUL
(screaming)
I give up! I totally give up! The whole bloody thing’s
a disaster! Get off, the lot of you! Get off, I said!

ME
(possibly ill-advisedly)
Do you mean we can go to lunch?

PAUL
(shouting)
Yes! Go to lunch, you damned walking stomach!

A momentary silence reigns on the artificial lake of Varley’s bloody Rutherford
Whatever.

JOHN
(calmly)
That’s rather well put. Though she’s not so bad now
that she’s not feeding the baby. –Give us a hand to
pull them in, would you, Dave,
(funnily enough Dave leaps to it)
and I’ll row them back.

    Meanwhile Euan’s boat is still drifting gently away…
    John solves the whole thing by getting into our boat, rowing it over to Euan’s boat, roping his to ours, and rowing the both of them back to shore.
    Later. It wasn’t brute strength, it was the principle of flotation combined with actual skill, but I’m too bloody whacked to take it in, I just creep into bed without even taking my descending long-johns off…
    “Rosie! Rosie! Wake up, darling!”
    I rouse blearily. “’S morning?”
    “No, it’s dinnertime, sweetheart. Sit up. Eat.”
    I’m not asking how he managed a tray, or actual food, I just fall on it…
    That’s better. “Boy, I hate boats!’
    “Yes. Have some more peaches,” he says soothingly.
    All right, I bloody will, since they’re on offer, even though there's no cream.
    “Is that it?” he says eventually.
    “Um, yeah. Cripes, I’m sorry, John: didja want some?”
    “No: I had my dinner with Jimmy and Amaryllis,” he says, smiling.
    Sag. “Oh—good. Um, so is what it?”
    “Is that the end of the Paul Mitchell mucking-about-in-boats saga?”
    “Dunno. Thought you grabbed the call sheet for tomorrow?”
    “Mm. Ballroom?”
    I just shrug.
    “I can’t for the life of me see where it all fits in!”
    Oh, Jesus.
    “Don’t try, John! It doesn’t, ya see! He’s filming bits of seven different episodes!” I gasp. “All out of sequence!”
    “My God, how does he keep track— Well, to each his own,” he says limply.
    “Yeah. Some blokes know all about boats, not to mention great big ships, and some only know about filming teeny-weeny scenes of seven different episodes of telly series and then sticking them together in the right order. Only if ya think about it, all human activities except actually growing food are mad. So don’t,” I advise kindly.
    “That sums up twenty-first century civilisation in a nutshell,” he concedes feebly.
    “Hah, hah.”
    “So how does it all turn out in the end?”
    I gape at him. Look, I know he lives in a different world entirely from mad tellydom, but really—! “John, read my lips. I—do—not—know. No-one knows, not even Varley.”
    “But— Brian?”
    “No.”—This is his ship-shape, cut-and-dried thing, as if ya couldn’t of guessed.—“In the future, should the series look like bombing, he may make a managerial decision to, um, dunno. Anything. Kill off half the cast? Marry Katie to Euan? Marry her to Adam? –Oh, yes,” I assure his dropped jaw: “big come-back scene, I can just see it. Marry her to Darryn—last resort? Anything. But at the moment, he doesn’t know, either.”
    After a moment he admits: “It seems idiotic, to me.”
    “Yeah. This isn’t the Navy,” I say kindly.
    At that, funnily enough, he dumps my tray on the floor and leaps on the bed and pounces on me and… Ooh! Ooh, yes, John, do that! I’m not as whacked as I thought I was!
    … What? Got to get off at crack of dawn tomorrow? He reminds me that it is Monday tomorrow. Uh—I had lost track, yeah. He’s got a meeting at the Admiralty in the afternoon. To do what? He looks vague. Then what? Back to Portsmouth, darling, they still need him down there even though old So-and-So is due back from leave and old Somebody Else isn’t due to retire for—
    Yeah, yeah. Ya not going to tell me anything that makes sense, why did I ask?
    Now snuggle down, darling—big kiss—he’ll pick me up next Friday. Oh, yeah: good, I’ll look forward to a weekend with your flaming up-market rellies, John.


EXT.  Poulton Manor/The front sweep - DAY

Captain and WIFE have just got out of dusty, muddied Jag. The huge front
door swings open to reveal Captain’s Up-Market Friends and Relations, beaming
all over their horse-faces.

UP-MARKET DAISY
John, darling! You made it!

She embraces Captain ecstatically on the cheek, and Captain kisses her cheek
temperately but unnecessarily.

UP-MARKET ALAN
There you are at last, old man!
(shaking hands fervently)
Took that turn-off after Otters Lane, did you?

    —I dunno how familiar you are with The Reluctant Débutante, but there was a character in it whose conversation was exactly like that: all he could talk about was routes. It musta been based on real life, for sure—which proves that nothing’s changed in the British upper clawsses for the last fifty years. But having met Lady Mother, I already knew that.
   And the scene continues:

UP-MARKET DAISY
And this is Rosie, of course! Wonderful to meet to
you at last, my dear!

Embraces Captain’s Wife, missing her cheek by a good six inches.

CAPTAIN’S WIFE
Yeah. How are ya, Daisy?

CAPTAIN
(heartily, putting arm round her)
Stop scowling, sweetheart! –Ignore her, Daisy,
she’s been threatening to chuck up for the last ten
miles.

UP-MARKET DAISY
(thunderstruck)
Good God, John, you didn’t take Alan’s bloody
short-cut, did you?

UP-MARKET ALAN
(loudly)
It cuts a good eight miles off—

    Etcetera and so forth.
    Later. No, their name is NOT Poulton, and just don’t ask.


    A week later:

EXT.  Innish House/THE FRONT SWEEP - DAY

A tall, grey, craggy shape just visible through the Scotch mist. Captain and Wife
have just got out of dusty, muddied Jag. Captain’s Up-Market Scotch Friends and
Relations appear through the mist, beaming all over their horse-faces.

UP-MARKET MARY
(in a strong upper-clawss English acc’nt)
John, darling! You made it!

UP-MARKET ANDREW
(in a strong upper-clawss English acc’nt)
There you are at last, old man! I say, you didn’t take
the road over McEwan’s Craig, did you?

    I kid you not. Being nominally Scotch doesn’t count, see? Well, cast ya mind back to that relatively recent travesty of Compton Mackenzie that they mistakenly cast in Ther Present Day, it not having dawned that the daringness of almost going to bed with bods one isn’t married to doesn’t work in the Year 2000. Tom Good, right? As the old joker, right? Not an och, aye in sight. Oh, you thought it was just he couldn’t do accents, didja? Well, if ya did, you’re one with my mum, my brother Kenny, my Aunty Allyson, my cousin Wendalyn, my Aunty Sally, my best friend Joslynne and, actually, the whole of NSW, that’s for sure. But, see, you were wrong. Upper-clawss types that own huge, draughty Scotch castles that they can’t afford to fix up get sent to hugely expensive Pommy boarding schools almost from the moment they can walk. Or they certainly did in Compton Mackenzie’s day. So they lose the accent. Added to which, there is the small point of the Forty-Five and the Hanoverians awarding large chunks of Scotland to their mates, so half of these fancy so-called Scotch titles are held by Poms anyway. (Don’t ask me how they were supposed to have paid the school fees.)
    Later. These types have got a loch, guess what that is. Yeah, right. No way am I going out on fucking Scotch water with actual waves, read my lips, W,A,V,E,S on it!
    Later still. I overhear bloody Andrew telling an up-market no-Scotch-accent mate that it’s rawther a pity that John’s little wife isn’t more of a good sport. Funnily enough I’m not too upset about this because (a) Up-Market No-Scotch-Accent Mate’s already eyed me up, not to mention dribbling as he told me how much he loves The Captain’s Daughter and (b) I don’t give a rat’s what either of them thinks. Added to which (c), John had the good sense to take one look at the aforesaid water and decide there was no way I was going out on it. Bless him.


Scotland. Wed.
    Dear Rupy, Still stuck in Scotland. This is a pic of Loch Ness. Looked like a lake to me. Seething hordes of Yank, German & Jap. tourists. Had a good Devonshire tea. Why D. tea in Scotland, you may well ask. No L.N. Monster in sight, fancy that. XXX, Rosie.

Scotland. Wed.
    Dear Mum, This is a pic of Innish House, a small castle really, John’s relations own it. It’s got its own loch. Baby Bunting’s in the nursery with a real Nanny. Mary & Andrew took me to Loch Ness: only tourists, no monster! XXX, Rosie.

Scotland. Thurs.
    Dear Rupy, Still here. It’s no better. Baby Bunting immured in Nursery with bloody Nanny. Even my Harrods gear hasn’t convinced rellies I’m suitable for John. Why did he leave me here? Subconscious punishment for wanting to do the film? XXX, Rosie.

Scotland. Fri.
    Dear Rupy, John flew back up this arvo. We’re at a Wee Inn now. It’s got the notice to prove it. Heading for place owned by mate of Perry H’s. David ?? Shoots defenceless birds. Also has fish. This is a pic of Scotch moor. Whole place v. similar. XXX, Rosie.

Scotland. Sat.
    Dear Rupy, More Scotch moor. Made it to Perry’s mate’s. Balmoral said to be quite close, cor. David VERY nice, not like Rabbit’s F & R! Met us in daggy jeans & torn tee! Great dinner, stew he made himself. Widower. Too old for K, worse luck. V. comfy beds! XXX, Rosie.

England. Sun.
    Dear Rupy, Heading home. Ignore this pic, we never saw no grouse. Grice? Whatever. Come down as soon as Paul’s finished with you & we’ll have some JAMAICA before we have to start rehearsals for D.D.!  XXXX, Rosie.


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