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…

Tangles In The Web



Episode 2: Tangles In The Web

    Later still, the same night. Katie’s blissfully snoring in Joanie’s old room, now my study, just as well we forcibly stopped John from tidying it up into a proper study and removing the bed. Rupy wanders into my room in his pie-jams.
    “Will she be okay, dear?”
    “Well, you saw the screen test! Um, yes, actually, Rupy, I really think she will. She read that first scene miles better than me.”
    “Really?”
    “Mm. Amaryllis was terribly pleased, she gave her one of her little pat-pats on the hand.”
    “Cor.”
    “Yeah,” I say, yawning. “Proves it, doesn't it?”
    “Taken your nice vitamin pills, dear?”
    Not yet. Scowl. “I will!”
    “I had an audition myself the other day,” he admits glumly.
    “What for, for God’s sake?”
    “Well, for something to replace Commander, dear: you don’t think they’re going to keep me in it now that you’ve you been and gorn and married me, do you?”
    I haven’t, the actual wedding is in Captain’s Daughter The Christmas Special that they’re not filming my parts of until October, though it’s true they’ve shot some of the exteriors (pumped-on fake snow, right) and Paul’s about to start rehearsals for words. However, I know what he means, so I nod numbly and croak: “But Commander’s so popular! I’m sure they won’t write him out! And he was never a juvenile lead before Brian decided I had to be married off, was he? More of a comic part, really. One of the main comic parts.”
    “That isn’t the point! Husbands aren’t interesting!”
    “But he can still be a social climber anxious to help Daddy Captain marry the girl off! I mean, who else on the boat has got Connections, for God’s sake?”
    “Rubbish. Where are you supposed to be, while I do all the Connections nonsense?”
    Firmly I say: “Where all good Fifties wives did oughta be. At home in the wee nest in my frilly apron.”
    This gives him pause for a moment. “Er… Possibly. But I’m not turning down anything else that’s offering.”
    Weakly I bleat: “Well, what was for the audition for?”
    Juvenile lead in a lovely drawing-room epic, what else. Oh, God, Rupy’s been playing those since he was nineteen. In fact it’s how I met him: Joanie had a supporting rôle in a drawing-room comedy where he was the juvenile lead.
    “I can do it the evenings, it won’t interfere with the fifth series. What lines I get in it,” he notes sourly.
    “Rupy, you can do it in the evenings standing on your head with both hands tied behind you, that’s not the point!”
    “What is?
    Weakly I say: “You can do better.”
    “Tell the casting agencies that, dear.”
    “What about that nice cameo in that Dickensy thing?”
    “I can fit that in. If they ever get back to me,” he notes sourly.
    I give in. “Yes. Well, it is sensible of you to keep your options open.” –He is sensible about most things, actually. Not about who he falls in love with, but how many of us are that?
    He looks marginally more cheerful, watches me swallow the vitamins, bids me and Tim nighty-night, and goes.
    Bummer. I never thought of that as I cheerfully promised John I’d give up doing the bloody Captain’s Daughter for good an’ all. Uh… Maybe talk to Brian? Or Varley? Unfortunately Varley is very, very peeved with me for having ruined his original concept. Even if it wasn’t his but Brian’s. Uh… Maybe if I promise to do plenty of guest spots for them, shots of blissful wee wifey kind of thing, provided they keep Rupy on as Commander? Ugh: what’s the betting the filming of these spots will coincide with John’s shore leave?
    Blast! Oh, what a tangled web we weave… Not that I imagined marrying John was immediately gonna solve all my problems, no. Well, not consciously. Consciously I did realise that I still have to finish the fourth series and the Christmas Special for Brian and finish my nationalism study for my publisher, not to say for Prof. and the university that are expecting to see something for three years’ fellowship money. And I did recognise that I had yet to let on to John that as soon as the nationalism study’s wrapped up I want to start an in-depth study of a small semi-rural community rapidly being de-culturised (i.e., filled with wanking weekenders and bloody retirees), in other words his village. Tracing the fate of the cottages and the little shops and of those in them. Will Murray and Belinda Stouts’ Superette be taken over by a giant, shiny supermarket? Or forced out of business by a giant, shiny supermarket? Will old Miss Haydock, who’s lived in her cottage for eighty-one years, give in to market forces and sell it to a wanking weekending couple or a pair of putrid retirees? Will the village be overtaken by a rising tide of Portsmouth commuters? Like that. Over at least five years and if it goes good, maybe a sequel five years after that. Mark Rutherford’s quite excited about the idea, and positive The Observer will want to publish extr— Been there, done that, Mark, I reminded him sourly, and his face fell ten feet.
    No, well, as I say I didn’t imagine that marriage was all orange blossom and happy ever after. I only felt that it was, see?


    Ugh, is it tomorrow already? “Wuff! Wuff!” pant, pant, lick, lick.
    “Yeah, love ya too,” I say glumly, giving him a hug, there being no other male present to hug. “No, good boy, Tim: down!”
    At least I’m over the bloody morning sickness, touch wood. Just no-one say the word “oysters”, please. Ugh, shouldn’t have thought— Gulp. Am I? Y— Uh, no, don’t think so. The nausea passes and I stagger off for a pee.
    Now Tim has to be walked, the neighbourhood is slowly getting used to the sight of a very pale Lily Rose Rayne in ancient tracksuit pants and battered tee-shirt, with or without, according to the weather, battered parka, sorry, sorry, anorak, staggering down the street with a large black dog, a pooper-scooper and a plastic bag. Or if it isn’t, it oughta be. Yeah, hi, Barry, how’s it? Young Barry Machin from the corner shop-cum-newsagency. Why he’s lounging in its doorway I dunno, maybe his dad’s off sick today. He greets me with great pleasure and asks me if I’ve seen the photo. Oh, God.
    “What photo, Barry?” I croak.
    Proudly he produces the rag in question. Royal Navy on manoeuvres. Dauntless flying the flag. Captain John Howarth of Dauntless with Lily Rose Rayne in a bikini top and sarong plastered to his fab chest: oh, no! “Wouldn’tcha think the negative of that woulda worn out by now?” I groan.
    “Yeah,” he concedes, grin, grin. “It still looks good, though, doesn’t it?”
    Yeah, doesn’t it. Poor old John. Even if British warships on manoeuvres don’t get the tabloids—and actually I have a feeling they have great netted bags of them dropped from helicopters every day, in fact that’s probably what that helicopter in shot with Dauntless is doing— there is no hope at all that certain evil-wishers, largely his close relations or his closest friend’s nuclear family, won’t make sure he sees it.
    “It does say you’re married,” he says kindly.
    “To each other? Gee, Barry, that’s a consolation!”
    Kindly he offers me one of those “ice lollies” (his vernacular) I really like. On the house. His dad must be off sick, all right. Vernacular or not, I’d say “ice-lolly” is a misnomer: ice cream, cherry stuff in the ice cream, chocolate coating on the ice cream… Oh, go on, ya talked me into it.
    Oh, another pic of me in another one, is there? Fun.
    It’s only a snap of me and Katie and Rupy being bundled into the limo outside Henny Penny by Mike. Boy, that was quick. The caption’s interesting: LILY ROSE & LITTLE SISTER. Ya could say, their spies are everywhere. Or, on the other hand, Timothy from PR got the nod from Brian well before Katie’s screen test and arranged for them to be lurking there. One or the other.
    “So, has she got the part?” he asks, grinning.
    “Yep. Seeing Sheila today.” I close one eye carefully.
    He goes off into a terrific sniggering fit. Then recovering and reminding me I need more milk and bread. Right, another mouth to feed. How long is she staying? Uh—dunno, Barry. Does the Captain know? –He came to the wedding, for God’s sake, he is allowed to call him John! I don’t say it; it’s the wanking British clawss thing, folks. Well, plus and the fact that John’s fifty-one and, though the greatest dish that ever walked to some—like, the Patrick Stewart type only even dishier, geddit?—can look pretty bloody terrifying to others, like of the wrong sex and only nineteen and rather spotty and been sat on by their bullying father ever since their mum walked out on them when they were three. Or for even longer, most likely.
    “Uh, no, John doesn’t know yet, Barry. Well, he never rung me yesterday.” I eye the rag moodily. “I suppose he was too busy.”
    “Yeah, on his bridge!” he says eagerly.
    To tell you the truth that about sums up my knowledge of what John does, too. Well, apart from the fact that the buck stops with him and he seems to have mountains of paperwork and he doesn’t see one fiftieth as much of Cock’s-un and Bo-son and them as Michael Manfred does as Captain Harding in the show. Though he does try to fit in a bit of sparring with Bo-son Evans if they’re both free in the early morning.
    “Yeah,” I agree lamely. “Um, like giving them orders to turn it to a hundred and seventy-five degrees mark six.”
    “Um, don’t they only have marks in Star Trek The Next Generation?” he says cautiously.
    He could well be right. “Ya could well be right. ’Specially since I’ve never been privileged to be on it when it’s moving.”
    “She,” he corrects firmly.
    Uh—oh. Shit. “Yeah.”
    “You say it often enough in the series.”
    I don’t think it, though, do I? (Don’t say it.) “Yeah, well, better be shoving off, I s’pose, Barry. Thanks for the ice cream,” (my vernacular) “it was ace. Um… Is there anything else ya think I might need?”
    More marg, Marmite and marmalade. Yeah, come to think of it, me and Rupy have almost finished that last jar of John’s yummy marmalade that the Queen eats. Barry provides our usual marg and genuine Marmite and a jar that looks nothing like John’s Royal jar, and I pay our slate, dunno what Rupy’s been putting on it, but what the Hell, I’ve got megabucks from the bloody series; and me and Tim head for home and breakfast.
    “Rosie!” Pant, gasp.
    We stop three paces past The Tabla and let Imelda Singh catch up with us. The youngest, she’s fifteen, played Younger (Weeping) Bridesmaid in Lily Rose’s Wedding To Her Captain The Real Thing. Yes, self-invited, do ya think I wanted a couple of teenage bridesmaids, or any bridesmaids, done out in ruby velvet suits and clutching giant frilly white orchids with puce centres? Rephrase that: any bridesmaids, whether or not done out in ruby velvet suits and clutching giant frilly white orchids with puce centres.
    “Have—you—seen—”
    “Get your breath. –Down, Tim!” He knows her very well: she sometimes comes and stays with me in John’s cottage.
    “Seen this?” she gasps, waving it at me.
    Funnily enough I’m able to say that I have. Her face falls momentarily but then she assures me that she’s gonna put them in the album! (Lily Rose As I Knew Her The True Story By Imelda Singh, right). She hasn’t got any pictures of his ship!
    Gulp. Weakly: “Oh, haven’t you? Um, I think I can get you some stills from PR, from that time Rupy and Michael and me went down to Portsmouth and did those wank—” Cough. “All those publicity shots. Some on Dauntless and some on a sub.”
    “Really? Can I? Real ones?”
    I’m blank for a moment, and then it dawns: shiny ones, not fuzzy and cut out of a cheaply printed tabloid with an important coupon for a Summer Sale that ya mother wanted on the back of it.—Have they got any?—Some. Like, filing cabinets full of the bloody things. All categorised, referenced, and carefully filed by little Peter or little Louise. And the negs. Weakly I admit that they’ve got a few and no, I’m not going in to Henny Penny today but, um, well, yeah, tomorrow.
    At this instant Mrs Singh shoots out and orders her to stop pestering me. She’s not pestering! Yeah, yeah. Full details get poured out and Mrs Singh tells her sternly I’ll do no such thing, I’m going back to the cottage today. Ouch.
    “Um, well, no actually, Mrs Singh. Um, Paul wants to run through for words for the Christmas Special and, um, since I was up in town anyway, and I do owe him several hours anyway…”
    “John won’t like that, Rosie!”
    No, nor he will. How very true. Don’t say it, just smile weakly, accept interesting-looking Tupperware container from her with usual briskly overridden protests and usual thanks, admit I am feeling quite well this morning, and feebly agree that yes, Imelda, since I’ll be in at Henny Penny some time this week, I won’t forget. And Tim and me retreat, to the sounds of Imelda telling her mum she was not making a nuisance of herself!
    John rings while we’re having breakfast. So I’m still in town. He did try the cottage. Ugh. “Um, yeah, John, um, Paul wants to run through for words for the Christmas Special and, um, since I was up in town anyway, and I do owe him several hours anyway…” Gee, Mrs Singh was right, he doesn’t like it.
    I manage to refrain from telling him he’s not the captain of me, and also, contrary-wise, from bawling down the phone.
    “That was restrained,” notes Rupy as I collapse into my seat again. Coulda been sitting down all the time, actually, what with the giant new phone cord, only habit dies hard, doesn’t it? I been leaning on this grungy brown sideboard that presumably Joanie’s landlord sold to John with the lease for nearly three years’ worth of phone conversations, now.
    Katie’s rather flushed and trying to smile so I kindly ignore her and say to him: “Yeah, wasn’t it? He’s at sea, his radio operator and five thousand interested crew members were avidly listening, as per usual.”
    “Did he say that?”
    “No, you moron! He didn’t have to! He’s never actually said it!”
    “No need to shout.” He grabs the last piece of toast. Resignedly I get up and make more…
    “You know,” he says thoughtfully through some of it, “when you make the point that he’s not the captain of you—”
    “I didn’t!”
    “Not this time, no. What I’m saying is, when you make the point, you ought to think about its implications.” I’m reduced to glaring indignantly, so he’s able to go on: “He’s not, if this is the modern marriage you were going on about at one stage.” I was not! I glare indignantly. “What I’m trying to say is, dear, putting him into the rôle of Daddy Captain and yourself into, dare I say it, that of naughty little Daughter probably isn’t a terribly good idea. Not if you want him to take you seriously, as you’ve only claimed five million times over the last eighteen months or so.”
    Poor Katie by this time is a glowing crimson. She gets up, croaks something inarticulate about using the bathroom, and exits, stage left.
    “He does take me seriously!”
    “Yes, but if you carry on like this, making him the Big Bad Villain to your sweet little ingénue, he won’t, Rosie.”
    “I’m NOT!”
    “It sounded perilously close to it to me, dear.” He grabs the last bit of toast from the second round.
    “In any case, what you’re trying to say is Parent and Child.”
    “I did say it. Daddy Captain and Daughter.”
    “No, you moron! It’s— Never mind. You got the point over, thanks.”
    “So?”
    “So I’ll spend the next five hours trying to contact him somewhere at sea—you realise he wouldn’t even tell me where they are?—and explain why I’m really staying in town this week!”
    “Don’t think his longitude and latitude co-ordinates would actually mean anything to you, would they, dear? Or are you better at charts than maps?” he asks nastily.
    He knows perfectly well that geography is a closed book to me, the wanker. And in any case, so what if I couldn’t find Bournemouth on the stupid map and thought it was near the White Cliffs of Dover? How many bloody Brits could find Sydney on the map and tell ya if it was near to Wollongong? North-centric, see, like all of them. “Co-ordinates to you, too!”
    “Why are you staying in town?”
    Scowl. “You know perfectly well. I’m gonna see Katie’s contract signed, sealed and delivered.”
    He’s unimpressed. “And?”
    “And I do owe Henny Penny hours of time and I did sign that stupid contract to do the Christmas Special.”
    “Mm. That stupid contract that you’ve never revealed the exact terms of to John, isn’t it?”
    “Shut UP! He’s not the captain of me!”
    “There you go again.”
    I lapse into scowling silence, it being impossible to escape to the bathroom because Katie’s in it.
    Rupy goes and gets himself another cup of Instant without asking me if I want one. “Is it the cottage?” he says, sitting down again with it.
    I ignore him.
    “It is the cottage, isn’t it?”
    “I love the cottage, you stupid nit!”
    “Rosie, that’s not the point. It’s bloody isolated, it’s got no neighbours at all, and even though Tim’s a good watchdog, I wouldn’t fancy being there all my ownsome, especially if I was preggy. And without transport, not to mention unable to drive transport if I did have it.”
    “Look, Velda Cross is only just the other side of the hill, at the end of the phone!”
    “Unless she’s doing her shopping in Portsmouth or come up to town to see her publishers, yes.” –Velda’s an illustrator. Doing quite well at it, too.
    “Half the village would come over if I gave them a bell.”
    “This would be while you were passed out on the kitchen floor, would it?”
    “Look, SHUT UP!”
    The awful brown sitting-dining room rings with silence. Rupy just sips Instant placidly.
    “All right, you’re right,” I admit at long last, “and I’m not gonna tell John: he’ll think I don’t love his cottage!”
    “And that you’re a helpless nit?” he prompts helpfully.
    “NO! Because alone of the wanking male population of the bloody universe, he understands that I can’t make the car go and work all the pedals and watch the traffic and decide what to do next at the same time, because it’s neurological!”
    He knows all that, he’s heard the saga of every male relative and half the female ones and all the boyfriends, with the notable exception of Captain J. Haworth, R.N., believing they could teach me to drive. I can’t, I’ve had two full sessions of professional lessons, and it’s neurological or psychological. Possibly both. Lack of co-ordination or something. I can’t skate, either, on rollers or blades, in my opinion it’s closely related to it.
    “Yes, or psychological,” Rupy agrees mildly. “I wasn’t referring to the driving, I was referring to the being scared of being alone in that bloody dump of his miles from anywhere. So would I be. So would any human being that’s not an actual Royal Navy captain.”—He’s ignoring the scorching glare.—“Tell him. Thought you claimed he wasn’t into condemning people for the weaknesses they can’t help?”
    That’s perfectly true. Unfortunately at the same time, being brave as a lion himself, he can’t really relate to other peoples’ weaknesses, not to say rank cowardice.
    “Tell him. If he does the pat-pat, funny little woman thing” (one of mine, he’s adopted it) “you can point out he’s not the captain of you.”
    “Very FUNNY!”
    “Well?”
    “No,” I say, scowling. “That’d only reinforce the bloody Parent and Child thing.”
    “Rosie,” he says with a sigh, “if you persist in staying in town, he’ll think you were lying to him about wanting to give up the Lily Rose stuff.”
    Goodness, will he? Me, tell him a lie? Surely he’d never think that! “Gee, brill’, Rupy, d’ja work that one out all by yaself?”
    “Added to which,” he says, unmoved, “your computer and all your notes and your books are down at the cottage.”
    I merely scowl.
    “Um… Get someone to stay with you?”
    Yeah, like someone that doesn’t have to be elsewhere earning a living or attending their school or uni classes and won’t bend my ear unceasingly while I’m trying to work, and won’t be bored to death in John’s cottage on the wrong side of the hill from a tiny, rapidly-being-de-culturised village just too far from Portsmouth to be convenient for the commuters. I don’t say it, Rupy is aware of it all.
    “Someone that enjoys swimming and boating?” he says weakly.
    Like, the cottage is right on a tiny little bay and I have now discovered that John owns the entire bay, well, all of the flat land and the precipitous hillside that shelters it to the far right as you face the sea and the less precipitous hillside that shelters it to the left as you face ditto. It used to belong to his parents but, get this, before that it belonged to bloody Lady Mother’s bloody maternal grandfather who gave it to them as a wedding present, because he could spare it. Because for why? Because he was a bloody English Lord, that’s why, and used to own the entire village and like for miles around as well. The estate’s now been reduced to only the size of half a county plus the house, not the original “great house”, quote unquote, which burned down in the 1930s allowing the then owner to collect on the insurance, coincidentally at the time other owners of huge country estates were going bust because of death duties, but “the old dower house”, quote unquote. It’s still owned by one of the wanking rellies that, thank God, I haven’t been forced to meet yet.
    “Swimming in the icy English Channel, yeah. And his boatshed is locked and the key is on his key-ring in his Naval pocket. Well, fair enough: he knows I get sick on anything that moves.”
    “I dare say your friend Potter, Ironmonger, “—not doing the class thing, it’s what it says on Jim Potter’s shop—“could manage to open it for you.”
    “Yeah. But who do I know that likes boating and doesn’t have to work for a living or go to school or uni and is available and wouldn’t bend my ear when I’m trying to work?” I say dully.
    “Uh—well, over half the members of the Profession are resting, dear,” he offers limply, not saying they wouldn’t bend my ear because he knows bloody well they would, it’s endemic to the acting life. “Um… Arthur Morrissey?” he offers brilliantly.
    Arthur’s a friend of ours from our tap classes, Rupy started doing them originally partly for the exercise and partly because he was lonely and I started doing them partly because he talked me into them and partly for the exercise, and partly because Mark Rutherford was just starting his study of small group behaviour under imposed hierarchical conditions that eventually developed into the book on small group dynamics in the workplace that I did the fatal chapter for. Arthur lives on a pension, I think some sort of disability pension. Technically he is available, but…
    “Um, Rupy, his mum relies on him to make her lunches and look after the flat and get the dinner,” I remind him.
    “Invite both of them!” he say brilliantly.
    “I can’t. I mean, I’d love to, but Mrs Morrissey would lose all her housework clients. Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, because I do: Joslynne lost most of her housework clients when she went off to Queensland with the Rough Trade type that time.”
    “Oh. You’re right,” he says, his face falling.
    Bummer, I’d sort of hoped I was wrong.
    “Well, um… Not Doris, I don’t think Buster would like living with Tim. Miss Hammersley?” he suggests.
    She’s our next-door neighbour in the flats, as I think I mentioned, and I’m very, very fond of her. She is free, being one of those spinster ladies left over from World War II with a prayvate income: fortunately darling Daddy, macho shit though he was, invested wisely and had a whacking great insurance policy that even bloody Mummy didn’t manage to run through before she popped her clogs. The trouble is that Miss Hammersley’s got such a strong sense of duty that she’d never say No if she didn’t want to come. And I’m not capable of seeing through her and telling whether she’s just obeying the dictates of duty or not. I try to explain this to Rupy and he more or less sees. And admits that he wouldn’t be able to tell if she meant it, either.
    “No. Um, her life looks very boring to us,”—he nods violently—“um, but the thing is, she’s got her little routines, Rupy, and she’s been living in that flat since bloody Mummy sold the house back in the Sixties.”
    “Time for a change?” he offers weakly.
    “Um, at her age? It might do more harm than good,” I say, gnawing my lip.
    “Ye-es… But she came back quite stimulated from her Christmas hols with the senior Admiral, Rosie!”
    They’re a Naval family, and yes, John does know them, and no, it’s pure coincidence that I ended up living next to her. Rupy means the brother that’s a retired admiral, there’s another one who’s still at the Admiralty. They were snowed in over the New Year, and it’s true she came back stimulated. But would staying in John’s small cottage, with its mountains of nayce linen and its wanking oiled oak wainscoting and its inadequate heating and bossy, obstinate Rosie Marshall, um, Haworth with her head buried in her computer from morn till night, actually have the same effect? And the walk to the village, being largely vertical, is much too much for an elderly lady who’s only used to stepping out of our apartment building into a taxi or at most walking slowly down to the hairdresser’s with Doris and Buster.
    “I'm awfully tempted,” I confess, having gnawed on my lip. “But I think it’d be very selfish of me to ask her.”
    He sees what I mean. And a glum silence falls.
    Finally he suggests Greg Singh.
    “Um, he’s finishing up his term… Um, well, maybe he could come down early,” I concede weakly. I hadn’t planned to start the village study until I’d got the bulge and the nationalism study out of the way, only there’s no logical reason why Greg shouldn’t get dug in, no pun intended, as jobbing gardener. He can certainly start by doing something about that garden of John’s: it consists of a bumpy crazy-paving path and a small stretch of sandy lawn as to the front, though there is a nice brick wall with a lovely concrete top that’s just the right width and height for sitting on, and a much larger stretch of lawn with a few apple trees as to the back. Plus and a small structure that he keeps his axe and his manual lawnmower in, made of glass, and therefore classed by L.R Marshall, M.A., Ph.D. as a glasshouse but which the British side calls a greenhouse. There isn’t a garage because when he’s at sea the elderly black Jag lives in Portsmouth at the dockyard, tenderly fussed over by a crowd of working-class slaves, stop me if I’ve said— All right, I’ve stopped.
    Rupy’s on the phone to Greg. Mr Singh knew it was gonna happen some time, but he can’t just leave him in the lurch, they’ll have to arrange for someone to take his place at the restaurant. Beginning of July? Thinks: That’ll mean I’ll have to go on lying to John for the rest of the month. Well, I have promised Paul I’d do those rehearsals… Yeah, fine. Why not?
    Somewhat later. The thought has had time to surface that maybe John’ll think there’s something wrong with the baby that I’m not letting on about and I’m staying in town to be near the doc or the hospital or both. Ulp. On the other hand, there is the other thought, that if he starts realising that he does now have other worries, not to say responsibilities, besides his bloody ship, it won’t be entirely a Bad Thing. Gee; and I was really, really sure that, whatever illogical, unfair feminine flimflam other and feebler women might indulge in, I’d never descend to doing the whining wee wifey bit or blame him for having determined on his profession before I was even born. (Yep, folks, work it out, I’m twenty-eight, he’s fifty-one.) Only when ya start having to live it, it’s 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? Jesus! Yeah, well, reality bites. Ya could say.
    Somewhat later. Another thought. Greg Singh is twenty-four and gorgeous with it. And hetero. John won’t think anything of it, he’s got far too much sense, added to which he knows my sentiments about his unequalled-in-the-universe self, Watson. But what are the village gossips going to say? Not to mention, what will the tabloids say, should they get hold of it? …Oh, well. Sufficient unto the day.


    Katie popped back to Manchester for a long weekend, whether or not to sit an exam we didn’t ask, but she’s back, apparently foot-loose and fancy-free. All ready to come to rehearsals with us! Groan. We try to explain that, never mind signed contracts, Paul won’t want her until the fifth series, i.e. in September, like your contract says, and he hates having spectators at rehearsal, even more so when he’s filming—shouldn’t have said it, her eyes light up—and yes, he is filming some of Rupy’s scenes but you can’t come! And anyway, last ditch attempt, today Rupy’s not filming or rehearsing and I’m not rehearsing, I’m recording some of the songs for the fourth— She comes.
    Ooh, isn’t it exciting! Only if you’ve never seen a sound studio before, Katie. (Don’t say it.) She didn’t realise we’d have a proper one! Huh? Oh, forget it. Fortunately Dean Margolis, the Chief Recording Engineer, is a really nice bloke and he lets her go into their little sound-proof cabin where they have all their equipment and knobs and stuff. So long as she doesn’t chatter. She’s too overawed to want to chatter, she just nods convulsively. I go down into the studio and put the ruddy headphones on and take up a position where I can see both Dean and his guys and the screen on which they’re projecting the tape of what I’m supposed to be doing in this bloody scene. It’s so long since we filmed it that I’ve forgotten all— Ugh, did I wear that?
    We start. I forget the words—blast! Dean thought I was gonna, he surfaces with the sheet music, someone’s helpfully marked the words in bright yellow marker, ulp. Don’t rustle it. Right.
    We start. I rustle it. We stop.
    We start. I don’t rustle, I articulate all the words, then I drop the fucking— Heavy sigh in my headphones. Would I be better sitting down?
    “No, especially with the bulge, it’d ruin the voice production, thanks all the same, Dean.”
    We start…
    Finally it’s a take. “Yeah, and you’ve got so many tries there, Dean, you can always cut in a bit if you need t—” I do know he doesn't like doing that, yes. And that Brian frowns on it, yes. But actually I didn’t realise that Brian had got me lined up to do it on Parkinson later in the year, no. Thanks for that intel, Dean. And you’re right, I will have to be able to get right through it without breaking down, won’t I? Unless I fancy miming it on P— No. Right. Give it another go just for luck, then, Lily Rose?
    We give it several more goes just for luck…
    “I thought we were never gonna get lunch!” she says fervently.
    Gee, so did I, Katie. Even though when it comes to the crews (as opposed to Paul Mitchell’s actors, right), Henny Penny is shit-hot on lunch breaks, we suspect they had a run-in with the unions some time in the not-too-far-distant past. Now, being as how this here is Henny Penny’s own sound studio (they’ve got a couple, just small ones according to Dean but the equipment’s all right), we’ve got a choice of Kathleen’s Tea Shoppe down the road, or the canteen. Ooh, the canteen! Right. We go. It isn’t full of glamorous theatricals chatting vivaciously about all the intellectual plays they’re doing this year, it’s full of stolid-looking blokes eating meat pies and baked beans on toast and baked potatoes. Oh, great, they’ve got baked p—
    “Huh? Oh—yeah, those are the sound crews and the lighting crews and the camera crews and the scene retouchers and like that, Katie. Most of the people who work on telly productions aren’t actors.”
    She nods groggily as several of them look up and grin, and I grin and wave. We line up behind Dean’s guys. Dean isn’t here, he’s a vegetarian, he’ll be eating in his office before taking a brisk walk, he always does at lunchtime, rain or shine, sleet, smog or snow. Time passes… “Hey, Jack, do ya really want that last baked potato?” Grinning, he withdraws his hand and lets me have it, conceding that he’s not eating for two. Katie’s very pink but smiling valiantly. Time passes… I will pay.—No, she came prepared.—For God’s sake, you’re not on a salary yet, I will pay!—We go Dutch. Gee, she’s obstinate.
    “Thish pie’ goob,” I note through it. It’s one of the new varieties they’ve been trialling this year: steak (so-called) and bacon.
    “So’s this,” she admits, grinning. (Steak and burgundy—so-called and so-called, right.) “How’s the potato?”
    This is genuinely polite, though it’s true she did look askance at what I ended up with on my plate, because at Henny Penny the baked potatoes that they usually only have in the colder months, like, most of the year, aren’t just served as potato, though you can have them that way if you wanna fight Vicki or Stella or Jasmine. Not Madge, though, she’s the boss of the canteen. No-one argues with Madge. At the least, sour cream, chopped spring onion and grated cheddar. Many other and much more filling options are on offer and frequently the line is held up for ages while people make the agonised decision between the mince Bolognaise with grated cheddar and a spoonful of sour cream, and the mince Stroganoff that’s already got sour cream in it with a spoonful of sour cream and a sprinkle of spring onions. I like the mince Mexicana with a big spoonful of sour cream and extra grated cheddar and a sprinkle of spring onions but it’s not always on, it’s not so popular.—Look, if ya dunno what I'm talking about I’m sorry for ya, but I thought the whole world knew about baked potatoes? Heck, back home in Oz we got whole baked potato boutiques, they’re called like Spuds or something equally original, that don’t serve anything but baked potatoes with extraordinarily delicious and filling toppings! Like it has to be a really big potato, see, and they split it after it’s baked and chop the actual potato flesh a bit and ladle on the so-called topping, actually an adult-sized serving. Right? Right!—As the Mexicana isn’t on today I’m having the Benedict, scrambled egg mixed up all saucy with cream and lots of chopped ham. Topped with a big spoonful of sour cream and a sprinkle of spring onions, why not? Goes good with the pie.
    “Delish,” I admit (Rupy’s vernacular) and she nods and smiles kindly. I’ve discovered that the whole world forgives greed when you’re eating for two, it’s one of the few good things about preggy.
    I’m just starting on the apricot and apple pie with a big squirt of aerosol cream, it sort of tastes almost like cream, when Barbara comes in, and of course she’s never gonna notice us in the middle of all these sound guys and like that, being as how they’re all in jeans or dark slacks and dark tee-shirts and I’m in a pale lemon Henny Penny-approved suit with a new pale lemon tee-shirt over the bulge and Katie, ours not to reason why, is in a pale pink blouse knotted jauntily somewhat above the waist that she found in my wardrobe, it is a Fifties look, yeah, and very bright blue stretch trou’ that she found in my wardrobe and that I’m certainly not gonna get into again before October. And probably not before December or even March if I keep on eating like this, right. Plus and the bright blue sequinned high-heeled shoes that I had when I did the Sisters number from White Christmas with Gray from Della’s Dance Studio for Della’s Christmas show last year. –Folks, if you’ve never seen the bloody film all I can say is, lucky, lucky you, and I’ll spare you the description of what that number’s supposed to look like.
    So being as how, like I say, Barbara’s never gonna notice us, I stand up and bellow: “HEY! BARBARA!”
    Gee, she’s seen us. Gone very pink, but smiles and waves and points at the queue, now much shorter, and smiles and nods. Yep, very clear. She will join us after she’s— Oh, you actually got that, huh?
    Pretty soon she comes and sits down, with the usual plate of ham salad. Two thinnish slices of pale ham well injected with water, it’s just like the muck we get back home in Oz, pile of shredded lettuce, spoonful of grated carrot, several slices of cucumber, couple of wafer-thin slices of tomato—Madge was on duty, she’s really mean with the tomato—fluffy little bunch of tasteless, nourishment-less alfalfa sprouts. No dressing, no cheese, no pickle, no potato salad with mayonnaise and ham in it, no pasta salad with mayonnaise and sultanas and capsicum in it, no hard-boiled egg. Would it surprise ya to learn that Barbara’s about twenty-four, weighs about six stone and wears waify slim-cut suits in dark grey or black? No, thought it wouldn’t.
    She’s in PR and was assigned to me once the series took off, like she used to arrange all the interviews and openings and chat shows and come with me to make sure that I was wearing what I was supposed to wear, down to, or rather up to, the earrings, and that I said what I was supposed to say and generally behaved myself. So we’re good friends and she’s been down to the cottage with me loads of times, and her and Velda Cross, who’s about her age, are really good friends, now, and Velda’s found her a lovely young sub-lieutenant, Jimmy Parkinson is his name, and it looks like, touch wood, it’s getting serious. He comes to see her whenever he’s on leave or Dauntless is in port (he and Duncan Cross are both on John’s ship); and last Christmas she went to his parents’ place with him for a few days. And let’s hope it is serious, because even if he has to be at sea for most of his working life Jimmy is a really nice boy and nothing like the up-himself Gavin Kensington who’s 2-IC in PR and drives one of those slimy Honda Porsche-clones. And doesn’t even notice waify little PR assistants with meek crushes on him, the wanking shit.
    Barbara’s got dark hair which is still in the waif cut it was in when I first met her and big grey eyes, in fact she’s the same type as Katie’s sister Bridget.
    She’s very pleased to meet Katie and congratulates her on having got the part, at which Katie’s jaw sags. So I explain helpfully that of course everyone at Henny Penny knows: a large part of their livelihoods depends on the continued success of The Captain’s Daughter. And in any case PR has to know officially, they’re the ones that’ll do all the publicity for her. And Katie gapes at Barbara in horror, but having been in the PR business ever since she was seventeen Barbara doesn’t realise it’s horror, and just smiles happily and nods, and confirms that that’s right.
    “So have they assigned you to her?” I ask. Yes, they have. Good.
    “Yes, um, buh-but what’ll I have to do?” the poor girl quavers.
    “Depends partly on whether the Great British Public loves ya, Katie. Doesn’t it, Barbara?”
    “Yes, that’s right,” she confirms, drinking the inevitable mineral water. No slice of lime, Henny Penny’s canteen despises that sort of refinement. And the crews wouldn’t know what it was, it’d be an awful waste of li— Gee, ya got that.
    “Like, interviews and openings and chat shows,” I clarify helpfully.
    “Mm,” says Barbara, nodding round the ham and lettuce.
    “Chat shows?” the poor girl quavers.
    “Yeah, like, Barbara will arrange them. First off, she’ll contact the shows and set the slots up for you, they’re always looking for new material, eh, Barbara?”—Confirmatory nod.—“Yeah. And then, if the GBP loves ya, they’ll be ringing her up and begging for ya, so she’ll select which ones—”
    “I can’t do chat shows!” the poor girl gasps.
    “’Course ya can, Katie, it’s really easy. Ya just go into your theatrical persona—well, Barbara’ll help you: Brian and Timothy, he’s Barbara’s boss, they’ll have got it all worked out.”
    “Yes. And Terry vander Post. He’s the show’s Designer, he sets the look,” explains Barbara helpfully, swallowing carrot.
    Katie’s just sitting there with her mouth open in horror.
    “So like I say, just go into your theatrical persona, and you’ll find you won’t give a shit, it’s all acting, see? And just give the replies Barbara tells ya. Don’t worry, she’ll coach you for hours and tell you everything about the host that ya need to know. And some of them like to rehearse anyway, it isn’t all as extempore as it sounds on the air.”
    Katie’s just sitting there with her mouth open in horror.
    “Um, all the actors do it like that, Katie,” says Barbara kindly.
    “Yeah, ’course! Hey, ya don't think when like Patrick Stewart strolls down that bloody entrance of Parky’s looking casual and slightly macho and smooth, that’s him, do ya? Like, I’ve heard him tell that story about the tights and James T. Kirk on six separate interviews, he’s got it down so pat he could prolly do it in his sleep. Like, two of the interviews were Aussie chat shows, only the rest were overseas ones.”
    “Um, that was some time back, Rosie,” murmurs Barbara, pinkening. “Generations.”
    “Eh? Oh! Well, ya do know who Patrick Stewart is, don’tcha?”
    Katie licks her lips uneasily. “Um, ye-es…”
    Barbara and me, as possibly you mighta guessed from her casual and with-it reference to one of the best SF films ever made, not as good as First Contact, mind you, and from my fixation on Patrick Stewart, are Trekkies. Not to say, will watch anything on TV even smacking faintly of SF, barring X-Files crap and the rest of that feebleized horror garbage that the Yank networks are churning out for the lowest common denominator these days. Like, we both sat through all of Red Dwarf twice, even though we both loathe it. Geddit? Thoughtcha had, yep. So we goggle at her.
    After a very long time Barbara ventures weakly: “He was the villain in that film with Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson.”
    “Oh! The man that got his nose bitten! I know!”
    God, the man that got his nose bitten. It’s another generation. “They might as well call the fifth series Captain’s Daughter Generations,” I groan.
    Barbara’s gone pink once more, she’s a really nice girl, but she laughs a bit and gasps: “Yes!”
    “Anyway, what about him?” says Katie pugnaciously, sticking her jaw out. Boy, if Varley wants contumacious, he’s got it there.
    “Eh? Oh! I was merely citing him as an example of the way actors go into their public personae on these ostensibly casual, meet-the-real-them, live-to-air except for the obligatory seven seconds delay, fully rehearsed chat shows.”
    “She quite often cites him an example,” murmurs Barbara, the nice grey eyes twinkling.
    “Yes, um, come to think of it, didn’t you say that John looks just like him?” she croaks.
    “Prolly did, yeah. Often do. Dishier, though, he’s got sky-blue eyes and a much better chin than P.S.”
    There is a giant photo of him on the sideboard next to the phone, actually. Taken at the wedding, Brian had the reception at his house and to our horror he had one of the smaller rooms (it’s a huge house) all set up ready for the wedding photos, that we thought we were gonna escape. While the rest of them got to drink champagne, or champagne and orange juice, according to taste. Or just orange juice if they were teetotal or in charge of the family car. I grant you it’s three-quarter face, so you don’t get the full impact of the chin.
    “Um, I see. His eyes do look blue in that photo,” she says weakly. –Right, thought it was colourised. Given that not even a kid of her age who’s not sure who Patrick Stewart is wouldn’t assume that a Royal Navy captain was wearing coloured contacts.
    “Anyway,” says Barbara kindly: “you’ll find it’s really easy, Katie. We won’t put you up for any of the ones that might ask difficult questions.”
    After a bit she says weakly: “You never told me I’d have to do that sort of stuff, Rosie.”
    “Uh—didn’t I? Well, if you say so. S’pose I assumed you’d realise it goes with the territory.”
    “But Bridget’s an actress, and she doesn’t do that sort of rubbish!”
    Oops. “The Captain’s Daughter is telly, Katie. Popular telly. Geddit?”
    She scowls, so presumably she’s got it.
    Barbara gets up. “Would you like a milkshake, Rosie?”
    “Yeah, thanks very much, Barbara, I’d love one. Pink. Get Jasmine to make it, not Ma—” She knows. Twinkling, she ascertains if Katie would like anything to drink and goes off to get them.
    After a minute Katie admits grudgingly: “She’s nice, isn’t she?”
    “Yeah. Very. Did you except a PR person to be all magenta lippy and slickness and yap, like a watered-down, up-dated Dame Edna?”
    “Um—I suppose so,” she admits weakly.
    That makes two of us, then. “Yeah. Well she isn’t. Actually she’s quite a reserved person, though she's very good in social situations. That’s partly her training, of course.”
    “Mm. Um, will I really have to do all those things?”
    “Yes. It won’t be for quite a while yet, and they’ll ease you into it. The first round will just be photo ops with Brian and probably some of the cast. You won’t have to say anything; in fact they won’t want you to say anything.”
    “Mm. Um, tell me about how you coped on Parkinson,” she croaks.
    Gee, which time? Though as all were equally hypocritical, can it matter? So I give her a kind of synopsis or overview of the general approach.
    “So it was all acting,” she concludes brilliantly.
    “Yes.”
    Barbara’s come back with the drinks. “Of course it was! If you can act for the cameras, and we all know you can do that, Katie, you can act for the silly shat shows!”
    She nods limply and we all bury our noses in our drinks. More mineral water for Barbara, a Coke for Katie because she’s now discovered how bad the canteen’s coffee is, and a huge pink frothy milkshake with extra ice cream in it, courtesy of Jasmine, for me. I need the calcium.
    Gee, the afternoon’s the same as the morning!
    I manage to get through one song and Barbara then surfaces in the booth at Katie's shoulder. After a moment Dean lets them onto his sacred studio floor and Katie says excitedly will it be all right if Barbara shows her round? Kid, she’s gonna introduce you to the PR types that will look at your face for camera angles and make notes on how much weight ya might need to lose and how inappropriate your gear might be, though as it’s 2001-version Fifties they might just give it the nod, and suggest they get their photographers to take just a few trial snaps, and get Gloria or one of her buddies from Make-Up to completely redo ya face and Joan or Maeve or Wilma or one of their buddies from Hairdressing to completely redo ya mop, possibly not daring to actually cut it, because the Word might have gone forth that Varley wants a pony-tail—
    “Go on, then. Why not? And oy!”
    They stop.
    “What?” says Katie nervously.
    “Just in case the Word hasn’t spread as far as Joan and Maeve and Wilma yet,”—I give Barbara a hard look—“don’t let anybody cut your hair.”
    Katie begins to scoff: “No-one’ll want to—”
    “They know. Varley wants a pony-tail,” says Barbara quickly.
    “You goddit. Enjoy.”
    And off they go, Barbara smiling cheerfully and Katie with her face frozen in an expression of naked horror.
    Well, heck, what did she expect telly acting was gonna be, for God’s sake?
    The day ends, you’ve probably guessed this, with the made-over Katie Herlihy and the re-made up and re-coiffed Lily Rose Rayne standing on the front steps of Henny Penny Productions with a beaming Brian Hendricks, while a crowd of Press photographers flash and snap madly. It’s all very casual and natural and the fact that Brian has discernible eyeliner on is just coincidental. Right.


    I have sort of explained to John about Katie, so now he asks me whether I talked her into it. No! Rosie, didn’t you say she was doing a degree? Uh—did I? Um, yeah, but she’s gonna postpone— What do her parents think about it? John, she’s legally an adult, she’s twenty, she can make her own mind up, she’s not answerable to them! Discernible pause: is it only my imagination or can I actually hear, behind his even breathing, his radio operator breathing heavily? Sulkily I admit they’re not too pleased but her dad quite sees that if the show goes good she’ll have a nice little next-egg. And might even be able (Mr Herlihy didn't say it, this is Lily Rose M— Haworth gilding the, hah, hah, lily) to put a deposit on a house! He asks me sternly if there's been any sign of Derry Dawlish but I’m able to reply quite truthfully that the whole of Henny Penny hasn't seen hide nor hair of the great film director for yonks, and in fact his name hasn’t even been mentioned since I told Brian that he, John, can’t stand the man so he better not invite him to the bloody wedding reception.
    “Where did that bloody come from?” he says with a laugh in his voice.
    “Hah, hah,” I respond weakly. He knows my sentiments, Watson.
    Yes, well, he’s glad to hear it (about D.D., he means), and he would like to think that if D.D. does surface and start making noises about using the poor child in a film I will have a serious talk with her.—Me? What if I’m producing his sprog at the time? Or immured in the cottage nursing his sprog at the time? Or just utterly elsewhere? Shit, I’m not padlocked to the girl’s wrist, how’m I gonna know if D.D. surges out of the woodwork in a great wave of Saint Laurent Pour Homme and hangers-on and suckers-up and just general slaves and tries to dazzle her with promises of a fillum career and Hollywood? Not strictly Hollywood, possibly, he is English, but he does sometimes work for the Hollywood studios. If they’ve got someone on board mad enough to think that Art is gonna go over big with the viewing public, not to mention at the Oscars. Rather than the Cannes Festival, where D.D.’s wanking, navel-gazing, arty-tartified efforts do go over big.—Funnily enough I don’t say any of this, I just say weakly that I’ll try.
    He’s pleased. Oh, dear. I’ll never be able to live up to his standards, not if I live to be a hundred. By which time he’ll be long since under the sod…
    “Rosie? Is anything the matter, darling?”
    “No,” I lie bravely like a real Navy wife. –If ya dunno what I’m talking about, folks, see that really ghastly Pommy film made during the War with Noël Coward as a married (as if) Royal Navy captain (as if). His every utterance is so stiff-upper-lip it's incomprehensible but I don’t mean him, I mean the wife. Totally supportive, stiff-upper-lip, and brave. I have tried to ask Miss Hammersley tactfully if women were actually like that during the War, but I was so tactful that she didn’t get it. And as the lad she didn’t get engaged to was killed during the damned thing, I didn’t like to come on any stronger. “Um, ya know the sideboard?”
    “Which one, darling?” he asks cautiously.
    Which one? The one at the cottage is old, dark oak and although claimed by the British side to be merely farmhouse ware, I wouldn’t dare to so much as breathe on it! “This one. The one at the flat.”
    “The brown one,” he discerns with a smile in his voice, his mouth’ll be doing that thing it does when he's not quite smiling, oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit!
    “Mm.”
    “Rosie, there is something the matter, isn't there? Have you or Rupy or the little girl spilled something final on it? That pear-drop stuff he uses for his nails?”
    Gulp. I did ask him not to redo his nails in the sitting-room when John was home, but obviously, too late. “Um, no. Nail-polish remover, it always smells like that.”
    Helpfully he tells me the technical name for it. It passes through my automatic engineering and/or science virus scanner and is immediately vanished into thin, thin air.
    “Um, yeah. Um, Jessica was saying she thought it could look nice if we had it stripped. Like, and revarnished, I think she meant.”
    “I do hope she didn’t mean the distressed look,” he says mildly.
    Yikes. So they got that in Blighty, too? Mum was thinking of it at one stage, she went to this posh boutique not a million miles from Double Bay, only once she’d managed to close her eyes to all the trendy garbage they’d surrounded the stuff with, only costing five thousand times as much as the stuff itself, it dawned that what she was really looking at was old, cheap wooden furniture, badly made and of no particular style, with a really bad, flaking paint job. And that Dad, even if he is the easiest-going man in the universe when it comes to interior décor, would go raving ballistic at the sight of any of it in his house. Especially at Double Bay prices.
    “What?” he says.
    “Sorry! Nothing. I never realised ya had it here, as well. Oz is full of it. No, well, Jessica didn’t mean that, I’m sure of it. She said it would come up really nice, and ya don’t say that when ya mean distressed, do ya?”
    “No, I don’t think you do. Unless chains were mentioned?”
    “Chains?”
    “Mm. I’m told they whack them with chains.”
    “Thought they only did that when they were faking up antiques?”
    “No, distressed as well, I believe.”
    –Sorry, but this is the sort of daft conversation that actual married people, as opposed to Lily Rose and her Commander, actually have.
    “Jessica isn’t there at the moment, is she, darling?” –Not gonna take the little woman’s word for anything without actual Proof, geddit? Thoughtcha had, yeah.
    “No, ’tisn’t her day.”—Jessica Strezlicki is our cleaning lady, maybe you already got that. Once the moolah from the series started to roll in, Rupy and me decided we could afford her.—“Um, we could ring you when she comes. Only I s’pose you might be training your guns or turning the ship at that precise moment.”
    “Or even wading through a mountain of paperwork, mm,” he says, I can feel he’s doing that not-quite-smile thing again.
    “Yeah. So whaddaya think?”
    “I’m not opposed it in principle. Only do you envisage having it done in situ?”
    “Uh—oh, I getcha. Um, dunno. Why?”
    It might smell terrible, and possibly I’ve forgotten it, but he remembers very clearly what I told him about that time Imelda Singh was down at the cottage with me and polished his silver cups. –Trophies! He doesn’t drink out of flaming silver cups, even if one of his ancestors was a wanking English Lord, whaddareya?
    “Oh, yeah. Think the technical term is projectile vomiting.”—He winces, I can feel it all the way down the phone line from my end and the whatsit that makes the phone speak to his radio waves and the radio waves going off to his ship and the wire connecting his receiver to the—Yeah.—“Um, well, we better not, no.”
    “No. And Rosie: I quite sympathise with your feelings about that damned wainscoting at the flat, but it wouldn’t be wise to have any painting down while you’re pregnant. Perhaps this summer, mm? When you’re at the cottage and Rupy’s on his holidays.”
    “Y— Um, not holidays, exactly, John, it’s the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival again this year, and he’s gonna be in it again.”
    “Oh? Didn’t you say that McIntyre was taking Sir Fopling Flutter?” –Yes, folks, he listens to what the little woman blahs on about, and this is a contributing factor in why I married him. Though the dishiness and the not-quite-smile and those shoulders and his lovely straight back, not to mention that dream of a male bum, would probably have done it all on their ownsome, I admit.
    “Yeah, that’s right. Not that. Him and a mate are doing some of the Witwoud and Petulant scenes from, um, is that The Way Of The World?”
    He confirms placidly it is, he’s quite well read, considerably more so than yours truly. If he’s back in time, we’ll try to get over to see it. Look, he could park the bloody ship at Plymouth, which is quite near to the dump where the biennial Mountjoy Midsummer Festival is held, and be there in half an hour, but let it pass.
    I don’t say “If you’re back in time?” in a nasty voice, I just agree that that’d be nice, and agree that I’ll ask Jessica whether she knows of someone that can take the sideboard away and do, quote, “a really nice job”, unquote—if it doesn’t come within the Haworth definition he’ll have it out and being re-done before the cat can lick its proverbial—and say goodbye nicely, preserving the stiff upper lip and not bawling or telling him to come home or none of like that. He’s seen through me, of course, but he doesn’t say anything because he's not gonna encourage me to be a pathetic, clingy, snivelling nit.
    Katie’s politely gone into her room but she comes back in time to discover me bawling all over the grungy fawnish sofa that’s a feature of our hideous brown living-dining room. And gets it out of me that there’s nothing the matter, I just want him to come home! And very kindly puts an arm round me, not realising that that's gonna make me bawl even…
    I’m sort of over it. I sit up, sniffing and gulping, and admit that I would love a cup of tea, thanks, Katie. Weak. She knows: weak, with skim milk and one sugar.
    “Did you mention the sideboard?” she says cautiously as we sip the tea. His English Breakfast seems to have vanished like the dew, so we’re having Lipton, recommended by Barry Machin. It’s very nice tea, and though I concede English Breakfast is also very nice, why spend all that money on— Forget it. He wants English Breakfast, he shall have it, bless him. Only there’s no point in wasting it on me and Rupy and Katie.
    “Yeah.” I explain about possible smells and she nods seriously, also mentioning things like mess on the carpet and having to have it covered with heavy cloths which wouldn’t of occurred to me. Right. Send it out. We’ll have to empty it, she reminds me.
    “Yeah.” Blast, she’s got that gleam in her eye. What with the preggy and the bout of bawling, I haven’t got the strength to argue with her.
    So we investigate the sideboard. There can’t be that much in it, because John efficiently cleaned it out when he moved in, and packed all the stuff that belonged to Joanie or that Rupy and me didn't have a clue who it belonged to, and sent it off to her and Seve in Spain. Since she never asked for it, presumably she doesn’t want it. Oh, well, Seve’s got enough force of mind to chuck out anything they don’t need.
    “What in God’s name—” It’s full of stuff!
    “Did John buy it?” she asks numbly.
    “Not when I was watching him, Katie.” We get some of it out and goggle at it. I swear there’s two full dinner sets here, and given that I only do microwave survival cooking and shallow-fried chips, chops and fish fingers, and John only does steaks and boiled veggies, why in God’s name would he ever imagine we’d need these huge, um, meat platters?—Mum’s bloody Christmas turkeys come vaguely to mind—and, um, soup tureens? Um, don’t they have to have little notches in the lids and huge matching china spoons, though? Mum’s expensive one that she never uses, think she actually bought it as a sideboard decoration, certainly does. “What are these?”
    She thinks they’re vegetable dishes.
    “With covers on them, Katie?”
    “Mm. I think that’s what vegetable dishes are.” –Gone rather pink because of my Australian ignorance. Gee, doesn’t she know me well enough to realise I don’t give a shit?
    “Right; take ya word for it. He musta run mad,” I mutter dazedly. Peering at five cruet sets at the back of a cupboard.
    “No! I know!” she cries, causing me to hurl a soup t— uh, vegetable dish, to the floor. Cover and all. It’s landed on the grungy fawnish carpet with the brown and dirty pink flower garlands on it. Not broken: pity.
    “What?” I utter feebly.
    “They’ll be wedding presents!” she beams.
    Uh—oh, Lor’. So they will. Silly, silly me. “Ya right, there, Katie. Brian and Penny had them all spread out in a huge room at their place”—she’s nodding, Bridget must have told her about it—“and I do vaguely recall there were something like five dinner sets. Wonder where the others have got to?”
    “Um, down at the cottage?”
    Not when I last looked. Though that cupboard under the stairs’d hold a fair few dinner sets. “Must be, I s’pose. Um, what the Hell’ll we do with this lot? The flat hasn’t got much storage space.”
    She thinks we could fit them in the kitchen cupboards, so we go out to inspect those. Incidentally, the kitchen’s wainscoted, too: the entire building is smothered in brown panelling, it’s totally vile. Doris Winslow has sensibly had hers bodily removed. And actually Rupy’s had the stuff in his room painted pale oatmeal, he couldn’t hack sleeping surrounded by dark brown wainscoting.
    Bugger me, the kitchen cupboards are stuffed with crap, too! But John sent Joanie all her—
    “Wedding presents?” says Katie with a laugh in her voice.
    “Gotta be. What’s this?”
    She inspects it narrowly. “Dunno. Um, some sort of juicer?”
    Who knows? Could be. “What’s this?”
    “A knife sharpener, I think. It could go in a drawer.”
    Eventually, after huge reshuffling and piling up of Pelion upon— Sorry, plates upon plates, we fit the contents of the sideboard into the kitchen cupboards. Discovering in the process that the reason why we never realised the kitchen was full of crap was that John had methodically isolated the one cupboard Rupy and me were using for the plates we actually eat off (as opposed to single-serve microwave containers that don’t need plates) and, as to the lower shelf, for the frying pan we use for chips, fish fingers, and chops, plus and the bowl we use for instant mashed potato. And put the crap in the others. As you might imagine, a lot of it’s very expensive-looking crap, like, real stainless steel where back home Mum always had tin, and weird modern shapes, e.g. a putative coffee-pot shaped like a cone, only with horizontal corrugations on it. And I will never use it. Or, in the case of many examples, never figure out what the fuck they are.
    Back in the sitting-room the wanking sideboard looks as brown as ever, and, come to think of, heavier than ever, and will they ever get it into the lift?
    “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Katie cautiously.
    “Uh—well, giant crane to get it downstairs?”
     She nods, swallowing.
    “How strong are stripping and re-varnishing men?” I croak.
    “Um, well, I couldn’t say, but removal men are incredibly strong. When we moved Grandma into the Home and Aunty Sue wanted the piano, Dad said they’d never shift it, but two of them moved it easily as anything. And one was only a little skinny man, too. But he moved the fridge all by himself!”
    “A whole fridge?” I croak.
    “Well, Mum and Bridget and me had emptied it, of course.”
    “Uh-huh. What about yer Aunty Sue?”
    “She stayed at home on the excuse that she had to tell the men where to put the piano.”
    Right, goddit. There’s a few of them in my extended family, too.
    “But it was only a small one. Not like that Battersea Power Station of yours!”
    Cough. Weakly: “Um, yeah.” Recovering slightly: “That’s my Aussie background, Katie. You automatically assume you’re gonna need a giant fridge twice as tall as you are, with a giant freezing compartment two thirds of its width and the same height; so when the moolah started to roll in and Raewyn and Sally from the dry-cleaner’s— Whaddare ya laughing for?” I demand aggrievedly.
    “I’m—sorry—Rosie!” she gasps. “Only it’s just— I can’t explain it,” she says, wiping her eyes. “It was just so typically you.”
    Huh? Typically me? Jeez, ya don’t mean I customarily rattle on like— Yeah, well. It’s in my genes, you oughta cop an earful of Mum or Aunty Allyson. Or Mum and Aunty Allyson in concert, boy, that’s good.
    “It’s in my genes, you nana. Anyway, Raewyn and Sally said a friend of theirs was looking for a small second-hand fridge to fit in below her top cupboards. So I let her have it and replaced it with something modern.”
    “Yeah! To keep the fish fingers and the one skim milk carton in!” she whoops.
    “Hah, hah, very funny. And you forgot the frozen pizzas.”
    She mops her eyes. “What did John think of it?”
    I glare. I’m not gonna tell her!
    “Go on, Rosie,” she says, grinning like anything.
    “Nothing.”
    “Oh, pooh, you’re scowling like anything!”
    Me? Please! I don’t scowl. I may allow, from time to time, a certain slight cloud to pass fleetingly over the ivory— “Oh, all right, sod ya. He said he didn’t think I’d thought it through and that with the best will in the word he didn’t think, in the time available to him, he could produce enough hungry offspring to justify owning something that could hold enough to feed half the fleet.”
    She’s in ecstasy.
    “Yeah, hah, bloody hah. So I offered to fill it with beer, I reckoned a fridgeful’d be enough to keep him and his wanking Royal Navy mate, Corky Corcoran, going for a weekend.”
    She’s recovered, funnily enough. “What did he say?” she gulps.
    What does she think he said, for cripes’ sake? “He said I had no grasp of forward planning, and he and Corky could easily get through it in an afternoon, whaddaya THINK he said?”
    She’s in ecstasy again. Oh, well. He’s a pretty good type, bless him. And he never asked me how much it set me back, either.
    Eventually the consensus is, maybe the stripping and re-varnishing men will be able to move the damned thing. But we’re still not too sure they won't need a crane to get it down to ground level.


    Gee, just when ya thought things weren’t going along all that bad, and John wasn’t mad with me for having shanghaied Katie for Brian’s bloody telly series, and Rupy had sorted me out nicely over the cottage and Greg was really looking forward to it, and Katie and Rupy and me were getting along real well, and Bridget was coming over pretty often to see Katie and help us eat the fish fingers or go to The Tabla, and telling us happily about rehearsals with wanking Aubrey Mattingforth and ruddy Adam McIntyre—he’s also doing Antony to lovely Black Kiki Brathwaite’s Cleo at Stratford, so he turns up about five percent of the time the rest of them have to— Just when like that, the first real cloud appears on the horizon.
    Katie’s been to rehearsal with Rupy, being allowed to sit quietly and observe. (I think Brian’s had a word with Paul.) She rushes in, all lit up. “Guess what?”
    “Huh?” Me and Tim rouse, blinking, on the sofa.
    “Euan Keel was at rehearsal today!”
    “Uh—yeah,” I say groggily. “Guest spot. Blithering Scotch nit Macfarlane.”
    She ignores the blithering nit bit. “Yes, and guess what! He’s going to be in my series!”
    At this point I’m awake enough to register that to her rear Rupy is giving me an anguished warning look. No, worse, a confirmatory anguished warning look.
    “Oh? Thought he was far too up-himself to even consider a regular part in the most successful telly show of the past three decades?”
    Blast, she’s gone very, very red. “No! How can you say such a thing, Rosie!”—Yo, boy. Here we go, folks.—“He was thrilled to be offered it! He's looking forward to it tremendously!”
    Tremendously. Right. And were ya, as if I need to ask, wearing at the same time Euan was looking forward to it tremendously, the same clobber you’re wearing at this instant? To wit, it being quite a warm day for an English June, that bloody gathered off-theshoulder fake peasant blouse of mine, Maureen O’Hara for the use of, with the pink ribbons they made me wear in it cunningly replaced with bright blue ones, plus and those bright blue stretch pants that you’ve taken over from me, plus and those very high-heeled black patent sandals that they used to make me wear with the lemon suit. What such shoes typically do, whilst impeding actual forward motion, true, is tighten and accentuate the female calves, while at the same time tightening and accentuating the female bum. And believe you me, these ones are typical. The hair’s not in a daft pony tail, it’s in a big black gorgeous cloud, Rupy having introduced her to a really nice shampoo and conditioner. Vaguely reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor in her young, delicious and very much slimmer days. In fact the whole Look is. That musta helped.
    I’m not denying that Euan, what with those slightly fuzzy, brown-eyed, curly brown-haired looks, and the squarish face and what the experts call a mobile mouth, and the lovely thick, curly lashes and the purring voice that he can make the Scotch come and go in at will, is technically gorgeous. He is. No denying it. Even though that Hollywood epic of his was a total flop. Like, Crusoe’s Rescue? Never saw it? You do surprise me. It came out maybe eighteen months before that Tom Hanks thing, so it couldn’t have been said its director was following a trend. God knows what he was doing, since Euan is the sort of actor who can create a terrific feeling of rapport with whoever he happens to be acting with, said rapport being transferred to the screen in a sort of glowing warmth, geddit? And with only a Man Friday who couldn’t speak English—in real life, I mean: he was an actual Haitian, possibly to lend verisimilitude—there wasn’t much to create a rapport with. Added to which, Euan is the sort of actor, skip this if you’ve realised it long since, who creates a very much better rapport if the other “actor” is actually a nubile female.
    Anyway, technically gorgeous, like I say, and he’s had some decent, well, large telly parts here in Pongo, and that nineteenth-century Russia in Old Prague epic he did recently for Derry Dawlish went over really big at Cannes and, expectably, got rave reviews in the more intellectual papers and is being almost ignored by the great viewing public. Obviously slated to do really well in art-house film festivals for the next fifty years—right. And as I think I might’ve mentioned, his recent Posthumus to McIntyre’s Cymbeline at Stratford was a raving success, so that’s why Aubrey Mattingforth’s cast him in Cymbeline The TV Movie. Some of us have been praying that the great Mattingforth would not relax his strict rule of no friends and relations at rehearsal, because we had a sort of feeling that an impressionable kid of Katie’s age would barely need to get within sniffing distance of that unpronounceable Joop muck he— Yeah. Like that.
    But some of us never actually envisaged he’d notice her. Being as he’s too up himself to notice waify aspiring serious actresses like her sister, starting to get good little parts or not. He was into waify actresses for a long time, well, in his circles that was mostly what was offering; but not obscure ones. Then for a certain period he was very much into a different type: yep, the 21st century’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, blonde, busty Lily Rose in person. Then it was the fabulous, tall, curvaceous and totally glam Kiki Brathwaite. Rumoured to have dumped him without a backwards glance when dear Aubrey indicated he might be interested. He is actually hetero; dunno if, like me, you were under the impression that all Shakespeare directors, especially Stratford ones, had to be gay? So lately Kiki’s been photographed unendingly with him. The word is that Euan doesn’t give a shit: he only took up with her because at the time he was surrounded by Stratford super-pseuds, and she indicated interest and was very much one of the Stratford In crowd. And because he’s about as independent-minded as your average sheep, and would never dream of not conforming desperately to the norm of the In crowd he’s trying to be in with. The norm not being hetero relationships as such, whaddareya? Though of course Adam McIntyre and Georgy Harris are, very much so, that woulda helped. No, the norm being to take up with something gorgeous and very In. Gee, ya got that, good on ya.
    Katie raves on and Rupy’s face gets more and more fish-like and eventually he disappears into the bathroom.
    So when it’s her turn for a shower I shoot into his room and say grimly: “Well?”
    He’s sitting on the edge of the bed in his new terry-claath robe, looking glum. –We went mad a while back when it started to look as if we might have a summer, and went out and bought terry-claath robes with our initials on the pockets, plus and a big one for John, don’t ask me why, precisely. Well, visions of Ian Fleming and Jamaica were in my head, and Rupy admitted that visions of “supreme Noël” and Jamaica were in his head, but as neither of us is contemplating Jamaica for the summer hols—
    “Don’t blame me!”
    “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say mildly, sitting down beside him. Tim’s followed me: he comes and leans on Rupy’s leg. Boy, Rupy must be feeling glum, all right: Tim only does that when you’re very down or standing in the kitchen next to the actual Battersea Power Station or like to John when he’s just home or, contrary-wise, to me when him and me are standing on the crazy-paving front path at the cottage waving John and the Jag off.
    “I think he fancies her,” he says dully.
    “Ya don’t say!”
    “Well, don’t look at me! I could hardly drag the girl from the room with Paul Mitchell doing his little Hitler act!”
    “He’da been pleased to get rid: he hates spectators. But I agree, you couldn’t. So what actually happened, tremendously’s and thrilled’s apart?”
    “Um, well, Euan started doing his Macfarlane stuff, and of course he was bored, as usual. And not bothering to hide it, as usual, and after a bit Katie giggled. At which point he noticed she was there. So then he started to really fool around—well, can’t wholly blame him, I suppose, darling: up until today the company’s consisted of yours truly, bloody Maudie French as Commander’s Connection’s Gracious Hostess, Amaryllis being vague—admittedly lovely but twice his age, dear—negligible little Darryn, and Michael in a foul mood. –That tooth, again, Rosie, dear.”
    “Ugh, poor Michael! Why doesn’t he just go to the dentist and—”
    “Chicken. Like most of us ordinary human beings.”
    I can’t help having good teeth. And I get them checked regularly. So I ignore this and say grimly: “Go on.”
    “Where was I? Oh, yes. Darryn giggled, too, but it’s on the cards he’d have done it anyway, he’s labouring under the fond delusion that Euan’s a Household Name, only with Katie doing it, he was much worse, if you see what I mean.”
    Darryn plays one of the lieutenants. He’s as hetero as Euan is, so I do see, very clearly. “Yeah.”
    “Yes,” he says sadly. “And seeing Darryn sort of joining in with Katie made Euan worse, if you see what I— Yes. Testosterone, is it, dear? Male competitiveness, à la David Attenborough? –Yes. Paul was furious, of course, and threatened to throw Katie out. So Euan did the big male protector bit— Um, sorry, Rosie, wasn’t thinking of that time on the ship when John had to send his Commander to rescue y—”
    “No, all right, I know ya weren’t. She was impressed, was she?”
    “Very. And then he gave the scene all he’d got, and she was even more impressed.”
    Oh, God. “Yeah, right, goddit. Any more?”
    “Um, well, Paul was quite pleased with the scene, so then he took us on to the next bit, after Macfarlane’s exited.”
    Oh, God!
    “You’re right: he went and sat down next to her, and every time Paul stopped screaming at us, could be heard either explaining the interpretation, sotto voce,”—What? Folks, this is the same Euan Keel who sycophantically agreed with me that there was nothing so deadly as actors talking about the interpretation, Jesus! Not that I didn’t know he was like that—“or telling her how Mattingforth’s rehearsals are going.”
    “She knows. I mean, Bridget’s in the wanking—”
    “Nevertheless, dear,” he says sternly.
    Oh, God.
    “I couldn’t think what to do,” he says wanly. “And then old Maudie made Paul have a tea break, the words ‘Actors Equity’ and ‘Henny Penny Management’ being mentioned, so we all nipped out to the tea shoppe with the morve iced cakies: you know, dear, we were in those rehearsal rooms they often use.”
    “Oh, yes, I know! The place that has the chocolate cream doughnuts!”
    “Yes,” he says, looking sick. “Euan sat down beside her, of course, didn’t even pretend to queue for tea, and dim little Darryn volunteered to go and get them something, would you believe?”—Yes, actually.—“So yours truly sat down on her other side, and made silly Darryn get me a morve iced cakie and a cappuccino. Only then I couldn’t think of a thing to do.”
    “Never mind, Rupy, a whole regiment of sensible friends wouldn’t have been able to do anything in the face of her hormones and his hormones and that fuzzy look when he crinkles his eyes up— I suppose he did?” I say dully.
    “What do you think, dear? Well, she does look delish in that early Liz Taylor get-up of hers, no denying it.”
    So he’s spotted it too. “Yeah, I thought of early Liz Taylor, too,” I admit dully.
    “Yes. Michael congratulated her on it,” he reports dully.
    I quail. “Not the tongue?” I whisper.
    “Not with the tooth playing him up,” he reminds me.
    One small mercy.
    After a long silence he ventures: “Is it so bad?”
    “Given that there’s no hope she hasn’t fallen for him really heavily, yes. Because if anything more In happens along he’ll dump her without a second thought, and if Series Five bombs he’ll dump her without a second thought, and if it doesn’t but he decides that he doesn’t want to be associated forever and a day with a telly comedy, he’ll dump her without a guess what.”
    “That is more or less what I… Yes. But, um, if he really, really falls, dear?”
    “Did he look like it?”
    “No. More like, talking of your David Attenboroughs, a youngish male lion with a juicy little rabbit two inches from its maw. Just a mouthful to whet the appetite nicely, style of thing.”
    “Thanks very much, Rupy, I needed it to be that graphic!”
    “Er—she is very young? She’ll get over it?” he offers feebly.
    “No doubt. In how many years?”
    He just swallows.
    “Euan Keel,” I say grimly, after some time has passed in glum sitting, and on Tim’s part, sympathetic leaning, “is a user and a follower.”
    “We know that, dear!” he says tartly.
    “And in the extremely unlikely event that he does really fall for her, what then?”
    “Er—can’t predict the future, Rosie,” he says uneasily.
    “Can’t you, just? Well, I can. She’ll have to prop him up for their entire married life, because believe you me, he is the soft type that requires the little woman to be a prop. And by the time she’s got a couple of kids tied to her apron strings, he’ll dump her and move on to Number Two, who will without any doubt at all be half her age and have the latest In look, whatever the Hell that might happen to be!”
    “I needed it to be that graphic,” he says grimly and without the least trace of a smile about him.
    “Yeah.”
    Then we just sit here glumly…
    Folks, don’t say it’s natural and they’re two young people with some interests in common and it may work out perfectly well. Because I know Euan Keel. He is a nice bloke, yes. And he has got a very sweet disposition: that lovely smile of his doesn’t belie him. But he is also very weak—not where furthering his career is in question, no. Just in every other sphere. Weak and a follower. And Katie, it has now begun to dawn, has tons of spunk and determination, and will be quite capable, once she’s a little older, of riding rough-shod over him, reducing his already pretty pathetic ego to shreds, and driving him to run off from her.
    And if you imagine that either of them will have the maturity to realise all this and act so as to prevent the inevitable bust-up, you’re out of your head, or from another planet. Like, one without hormones or two sexes. Shit, Nature doesn’t care how incompatible you are, all it’s interested in is perpetuating the species! Why the fuck else do you imagine the divorce rate’s what it is, now that the bloody churches are no longer welding couples together in enforced misery?
    Yeah.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)