And All His Men

8

And All His Men

    “Where are we?” said Miff blankly.

    Gareth sighed. Was this going to be her theme song, the whole trip? “Still in Australia,” he said heavily.

    “Oh. Where’s Derry?”

    Gareth blinked. “I thought he was with you?”

    “No.”

    Oh, God, had the Great Director wandered off on his own in a strange city? Gareth rushed out of the palatial drawing-room of the suite, through the palatial main bedroom of the suite and into the palatial, er, not very palatial bathroom. No sign of him. He rushed into Pommery’s room, which adjoined Derry’s. “Where is he?” he snarled.

    Pommery had gone into his perfect-English-servant thing. He bowed smoothy. “If you mean Mr Dawlish, s—”

    “YES!” shouted Gareth.

    “–sir,” continued Pommery, bowing again, “I’m afraid I have no idea. I have not seen Mr Dawlish this morn—”

    Gareth rushed out frantically.

    “–ing, sir,” finished Pommery smoothly.

    Gareth rushed into the less palatial room allotted to Bernie. The artist was standing by the window, looking dubiously at a view of grey mizzle. “Have you seen Derry?”

    “No.” said Bernie mildly. “Don’t tell me he’s gone off on his own?”

    “Yes.”

    “Don’t rush off just yet, tell me what that is.”

    Gareth strode over to the window. “No idea. Another hotel? Conference centre? Revolving restaurant? Their Lloyd’s?”

    “Hah, hah,” said Bernie weakly. “Well, any of the above. Didn’t Derry claim that Adelaide was a charming Victorian city?”

    “Parts of it,” he said sourly.

    “Not enough to be used as Singapore in the Fifties?”

    “Judge for yourself, Bernie. Seen Harry?”

    “No, but I heard him singing Pagliacci in the shower, so he must be in a very good mood.”

    Gareth strode over to the door which communicated with Harry’s room and flung it open.

    “He isn’t there,” said Bernie mildly. “The singing stopped some time since.”

    Hope flickered for a moment in Gareth’s distracted eye. “Has he gone down to breakfast with Derry?”

    “How can I phrase this?” replied Bernie with a laugh in his voice.

    “Quickly!” shouted the driven P.A.

    “Oh, beg your pardon. Harry has gone down to breakfast; he’s gone into an ebullient, no-nonsense, hearty Downunder mood, in which Room Service is declared to be effete, or would be if the word was allowed to pass the lips of something as no-nons—”

    “Oh, get STUFFED!” shouted Gareth, stomping out.

    Bernie wandered over to the door of his room and listened with interest to the interrogation of Pommery that followed, Gareth shouting very loudly that he must have SOME idea where Derry had gone and the manservant maintaining with horrid smoothness that he had not seen Mr Dawlish this morning, sir. No contractions need apply. Bad as Data, in fact.

    Deserted in the palatial drawing-room, Miff wandered over to the plate-glass windows and looked out uncertainly at a view of grey mizzle, unattractive glass-sided buildings, what might have been a stretch of railway yard, though no trains were visible, and what might have been a stretch of pond or river had she been able to see enough of it to be sure. “Yes, but where in Australia?” she said on a pathetic note.

    What possibly seemed like aeons later to the distracted Gareth, though Bernie just spent it in quietly ordering some quite acceptable breakfast from Room Service and consuming same, they seemed to be well and truly out of the Tropicala zone, Derry re-surfaced, arm-in-arm with Harry. Both beaming. Derry had found Harry in the dining-room and hauled him off for a walk. During it he had found a very colonial building in that direction which would do for a Singapore exterior, it seemed to house a cricket exhibition but they could get over that one, and a couple of very exciting colonial buildings in that other direction, one of which had the perfect interior courtyard for the on-shore scenes between the naval officers—

    “Were they?” said Bernie without hope to Harry.

    “Well, yeah. Painted dull yellow shades, though; seems to be in favour here, but I don’t think it’s the Singapore look, is it? But of course we could spray them white. Only one real drawback,” he added, grinning broadly: “they were on the main drag of this burg.”

    “Derry, that’s hopeless!” said Bernie loudly. “They’ll never close off the main street for us! And may I remind you there will be people in the audience who know Singapore?”

    “Yeah, why not film it in Singapore, Derry, mate?” asked Harry, grinning broadly.

    “You know perfectly well it no longer has the Fifties ambience. I want that interior courtyard, Gareth. Get onto it.”

    Gareth got out his notepad but paused. “When you say interior courtyard—”

    “He means it!” said Harry with a chuckle. “Went up to the front door—they’ve got an anachronistic Nineties wheelchair ramp, that’ll have to be ripped out, and some unsuitable plate glass in the door, that’ll have to be ripped out—and caught a glimpse of it: so he walked through the building and into it.”

    “It’s built as a hollow square,” said Derry, apparently oblivious to Harry’s speech, not to say to its tone, “and parts of it are still perfectly preserved, don’t think they’ve touched the courtyard in the last hundred years. It’s got verandahs,” he said in tones of awe.

    “Um, Derry, are these verandahs with heavy square white columns, or more your, um, tin-roofed, I think is the expression, tin-roofed verandahs that we saw in Queensland?” said Bernie uneasily.

    “Tin-roofed, dear boy; perfect colonial style, completely untouched!”

    “Ye-es. I really don’t think they’re so typical of old Singapore as the heavy square white-columned look, Derry.”

    “You’re thinking of Delhi,” he said dismissively.

    “Possibly I am, but weren’t large parts of colonial Singapore built at the same time?”

    “I don’t want that look,” he said dismissively.

    Bernie sighed. “Very well. Is it, dare I ask, a public building?”

    Derry shrugged voluminously.

    “I think it is,” admitted Harry cautiously. “Well, seemed to be full of little semi-governmental offices. Quangos, that sort of thing.”

    “Then I might venture into it with a sketch-pad. Though I should warn you—” He paused.

    “What?” said Harry with an uneasy grin.

    “The use of the word ‘quangos’ consorts ill, very ill, with that down-home Aussie gear you’re in,” replied Bernie primly.

    “Ass!” said Harry with a relieved laugh.

    “So does the use of that word,” noted Derry drily.

    Harry jumped slightly. “Uh—yeah. I’ll try harder.”

    “Don’t. I do not want down-home Aussie crap in My Script!”

    “Hell, it won’t creep into the script, mate!” replied Harry breezily.

    “See it doesn't.”

    “White safari suits’d be the go, Harry,” said Bernie dreamily. “Or cream, at the very most.” He handed him a sketch.

    Derry snatched it out of his hand while he was still gulping. “This isn’t Fifties.”

    “Er—no,” conceded Bernie. “Well, generic colonial-sahib wear, Derry?”

    Rapidly the Great Director retorted: “Slightly crumpled white linen jackets, not double-breasted and not smothered in damned pockets. With collars and ties for business, not bloody cravats!”

    Bernie raised his eyebrows slightly but sketched rapidly. “This?”

    “NO! It looks like Peter Lorre at his seediest!” he shouted.

    Harry came eagerly to look at it. “He’s right, by cripes!” He went into a sniggering fit.

    “Do some research,” Derry ordered Bernie evilly.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, the costumes aren’t really my—”

    “I want you to set the LOOK!” he shouted.

     Bernie took a deep breath. “In that case, Derry, I require to be paid as, and credited as, Production Designer.”

    There was a short pause. The point had been raised in the past, given that in his last, old-Russia-in-Prague epic, Derry had dispensed with the service of what in his epics was variously called Production Designer or Artistic Director, and had set the look himself in consultation with Bernie, the which had resulted in Bernie doing most of the practical work. Derry had then credited the position to himself with Bernie listed as “Assistant Artistic Director” and not paid accordingly.

    “But of course, dear boy, wasn’t that made clear from the outset?” he said with horrid geniality. “Gareth, get on to Lucas and make quite sure he’s got that right. Oh, and tell him to adjust Bernie’s salary, if that hasn’t already been done.”

    “Very well,” agreed Gareth. “I can’t do it now, Derry,” he said as the Great Director looked at his watch. “It’ll be the middle of the night at home.”

    “Then do it as soon as he’s in at the office.”

    “Won’t he be furious?” asked Harry with interest. Lucas Roberts, generally credited only as “Executive Producer” or something equally vague in Derry’s epics, was actually the man in charge of Double Dee Productions’ finances. And of course acted as if every penny squeezed out of the budget was coming out of his own pocket. Nay, was being hot-minted from his own pocket. He was undoubtedly the most valuable man on the payroll and had been with Derry for very many years, working his way up from an initial very humble position in the Accounts Department. He was, in fact, an Executive Director of the company.

    “No,” said Derry firmly.

    “If you say so, mate.” He came to look over Bernie’s shoulder at the new sketch. “Leslie Phillips and Peter Lorre?” he said weakly.

    “It’s actually meant to be Rupy Maynarde and Peter Lorre,” replied Bernie smoothly.

    Harry broke down in sniggers yet again.

    “Give me that!” The Great Director snatched. “Stop farting around,” he ordered Bernie.

    “They have to wear something as they stand under these tin-roofed colonial verandahs of yours, Derry. Or do we want Commander to be in uniform all the time?”

    “Like in those Dirk Bogarde epics,” put in Gareth unexpectedly, on a dreamy note. “The Captain’s Table, that sort of thing.”

    “The Cap— That wasn’t Dirk Bogarde, you cretin!” choked the Great Director.

    “No? I’ve got a definite mental picture of him in white duck, though, Derry,” he said with a smile.

    “Mm,” agreed Bernie, sketching. “Have it, Gareth.”

    “Ooh, ta!” he said with a laugh.

    “Give me that!” Snatch. “Uh—well, yes. Research’ll need to check just what the Navy was wearing, of course, but— In principal, yes. Put it with the other preliminary costume sketches,” he ordered Gareth grimly.

    “Derry, I did it for him!” objected Bernie.

    “Not while you are on My Payroll,” said the Great Director with horrible finality.

    Gareth rolled his eyes, but went off to insert the sketch into the rapidly-growing portfolio. Soon to be torn apart and divided into several portfolios. He had made noises about digitising the sketches and indexing them all and being able to consult them instantly on the computers, but Derry had decreed that computers were soulless, however useful they might be for mindless effects designed to appeal to the lower instincts of the credulous masses, and they didn’t give him the feel. So that was that. Gareth was still meditating the idea, however. After all, he was the mug that had to actually find the exact piece of long-forgotten rubbish that Derry had had squirreled away, wasn’t he?

    The limo had been ordered for nine-thirty, and after a certain amount of confusion, in the course of which Miff got out of her cotton sunfrock and into a tweed suit which did nothing for her but for which, on the contrary, she did everything, then smothering it with a fur coat which no-one had the guts to tell Derry would provoke animal righters and insult the sensibilities of the much larger number of environmentalist sympathisers world-wide, and in the further course of which it was discovered that the cretin in charge of the hotel’s front entrance had sent the limo round the block because it was blocking the airport transit bus provided for persons who were not capable of paying for giant suites, they got into it.

    “It is cold,” noted Miff, huddling into the coat.

    “Yes, it’s their winter,” said Gareth on a weary note,

    “It wasn’t cold in Queensland.”

    “No, because— Forget it. If I say it’s further north, that won’t make sense, will it?” he sighed. He leaned forward and asked the driver to turn the heater on. This elicited the reply: “It is on, mate.” Harry gave a smothered snigger.

    “There!” shouted Derry as they crawled past a handsome Victorian edifice painted a shade of dirty yellow.

    “Is that yellow ochre?” Harry asked Bernie with terrific interest.

    “Yes, but the term doesn’t go with that jacket of yours, where did you get— Forget it.”

    “There’s a boutique in the lobby that’s full of—”

    “Forget it, I said.” Bernie began a quick sketch. Then it dawned that they were stuck at the traffic lights, so he began putting in detail. The lights changed. He put in more detail. They crawled forward, and stopped again. He put in more detail… The lights changed. He added a few flourishes. And the pavement tree. They moved on.

    “There!” shouted Derry as another handsome Victorian edifice painted a shade of dirty yellow appeared, on the same side of the vehicle.

    “We did see two,” admitted Harry cheerfully.

    “Well, which one was it?” asked Bernie.

    “Can’t remember. There’s some pillared structures over there, though. Ahead and to, um, the left, I think.”

    “No, I want the one with the cricket exhibition!” said the Great Director crossly.

    “Back the other way,” explained Harry helpfully.

    “Mm. I rather like this one. Something feminine about it.” Bernie squinted up at its pediment. “Ooh, ornaments!”

    “What? Oh, that one? No, it was the other one that—Um, was it?” he asked himself in confusion. “Derry, which one was it that had the interior courtyard you liked?”

    “No idea, dear boy,” he said airily. “Gareth, make a note to check that, would you?”

    “Derry, we’re on the main drag, do you honestly think they’ll give us permission—”

    “Do it over a weekend, if they insist!” he said breezily.

    “One weekend,” said Gareth sourly, sotto voce.

    “You could block off the courtyard during the week,” noted Harry with a laugh in his voice.

    “Shut up. Derry, do you realise what this will do the budget?” he said loudly.

    “Mm? But we have to film somewhere, dear old lad! That’s a courthouse,” he explained as they crawled past its frontage and came to a halt at the corner just past its frontage. “Pity they’ve stuck that hideous modern bit onto it, isn’t it? Though we could do something with it. In fact, use the whole square? Rather a nice church on the corner, back there. The big scene between Vyv Carteret-B. and Euan’s Scotch character, Harry,” he explained, waving a hand. “Start in the courtyard, stroll out to the street, have to get rid of that damned wheelchair ramp, of course, stroll on towards the courthouse, big blow-up just outside, the rickshaw comes round the corner and Adam nips into it and away!”

    “Leaving Euan discomforted, would this be?” asked Harry sourly.

    “Of course, dear boy, of course! Well, don’t want the Scotch character to be weak as water the way Brian’s made him, and we’re definitively beefing up Adam’s character, giving it more oomph—”

    “Derry, have you even booked Adam McIntyre or Euan Keel for this magnum opus?” asked Bernie, grinning.

    “Euan’s dying to do it,” he said smugly. “That Renaissance rubbish he was up for in Hollywood fell through. And he’s got nothing much on next year; just some telly Shakespeare for that cretin Aubrey Mattingforth.”

    Bernie took a couple of snaps. “Thought the plan was Mattingforth would direct it at Stratford as well?”

    “Whether or not he does so, Bernie, Euan is on board for the film, believe me.”

    “Fifties kitsch—admittedly for you, Derry—as versus leading rôles at Stratford,” said Bernie thoughtfully. Harry gave a muffled snigger.

    “A starring rôle for me,” noted the Great Director pointedly.

    “Well, yes, except that if you put McIntyre in it as well, will anyone even look at Keel?” asked Harry politely.

    They rounded the corner. Bernie took another snap.

    “Stop wasting film!” ordered the Great Director irritably. Shrugging, Bernie licked his pencil. “And stop talking rubbish, Harry! I said, the square will do for the big scene between the two men!”

    “Provided that McIntyre is going to do, it, I presume?”

    “Adam will do it for me,” replied the Great Director with horrible certainty.

    Harry sighed. “Derry, he may be booked up. Isn’t he in Mattingforth’s on-going saga of later Bardology, too?”

    “Taking Leontes,” confirmed Bernie with a smile in his voice.

    “Gosh,” said Harry in awe, momentarily dropping the affectations.

    Bernie was sketching eagerly, but he murmured: “Quite. Something not to be missed. Personally I intend to be in Stratford for it, come Hell or high water.”

    “Absolutely!” he agreed. “Um, Derry, has Varley actually incorporated this, um, big scene between the two of them into his working script?”

    “He will,” he said with horrid confidence.

    “Personally I’d start off in the square,” said Bernie with a definite laugh in his voice, “and then carry on past that.” He laid his sketchbook on Derry’s knees.

    “What?” gasped the Great Director as a perfect street scene of seedy colonial Fifties kitsch appeared before his starting eyes. “Where did that come from?”

    “We just drove past it,” replied Bernie drily. “Well, not the rickshaws and tea-vendors, no.”

    “Where?” he shouted, craning his neck. “Hoy! Turn round! TURN ROUND! GO BACK, I SAID!”

    “Can’t do a U-ie here, mate,” responded the driver cheerfully. “There’s a tram coming, see?”

    “Look!” he gasped. “Wind your window down, Gareth! I said, wind your—”

    Gareth lowered his window.

    “Listen!” gasped the Great Director in ecstasy.

    The entourage listened, wondering what the fuck they were listening for.

    “I want it,” he said tensely. “Grime, faded paint, rattles and all. –I think it’s a wooden one,” he added in awe.

    “Er—mm. Did they have trams in Singapore in the Fifties?” said Harry very, very weakly as it rattled past them.

    “Yes!” he snapped. “And if they didn’t, they should have! I’m having it!”

    “That will mean booking the entire street, Derry, and it is their main street,” said Gareth limply. “Though I grant you we’re out of the shopping precinct.”

    “Do it. Bugger the expense! –TURN, MAN!” he bellowed.

    “Hold your horses, mate.” Certain members of the entourage just had time to reflect that Harry would inevitably pick that one up and trot it out unendingly, when the driver swung the limo viciously across the road in the path of considerable oncoming traffic. Miff gasped and shut her eyes.

    “This side’s not so interesting,” noted Derry regretfully. “We’ll set up over here, get the tram and the street scene beyond it: colourful extras getting on and off, make a note that we want real Indians, Gareth, I’m not having anything in black-face, good mix of boring limp linen jackets and droopy grey flannels, neat little Chinese clerks in too-tight suits, they can be double-breasted, hangover from the Forties, plenty of hats, fedoras for the men, only one or two pith helmets, this isn’t Maugham”—Bernie avoided Harry’s eye—“old Chinese grandma in traditional pyjamas for contrast. STOP! WHERE ARE YOU GOING, MAN?”

    “You said ya wanted to go back, mate,” replied the driver, very puzzled.

    “WHAT? No! –The fellow’s a cretin, we should have brought Aaron,” he noted to the entourage in general.

    “He kept getting lost, Derry,” Miff reminded him mildly.

    None of the others would have dared. They eyed Derry uneasily.

    “So he did, Pettikins, that’s right,” he said, squeezing the perfect knee. “Turn back, you idiot, we want to look at that street!” he said irritably to the driver.

    “Can’t turn now, we’re in the square, we gotta go round.”

    They went round the square.

    “Actually I think the courtyard was in the feminine building but he liked the outside of the other one better,” discovered Harry.

    “That will be no problem to the magic of Kinema,” returned Bernie calmly.

    “No, but it’ll cost twice as much, mate!” he replied with feeling.

    “Bugger the cost, Harry,” returned Bernie sweetly, sketching.

    Derry peered. “What? NO! I want Adam in a suit for this scene!”

    Gareth couldn’t see the sketch very well from where he was sitting. He peered. “Is that Adam McIntyre in a uniform?”

    “Mm. Wavy Navy,” said Bernie, smiling. He passed it over. Gareth made a face.

    “Don’t you like it?” asked Miff in astonishment.

    “It’s not that, I was just wishing I had half his looks,” he admitted sourly.

    “Yes, isn’t he gorgeous?” she breathed.

    “Delishimo,” stated the Great Director definitively.

    “Hey, are you making a film with Adam McIntyre?” asked the driver eagerly.

    “No,” said Gareth repressively. “Just concentrate on the road, thanks.”

    “Don’t crush the poor fellow, Gareth!” said the Great Director with a jolly chuckle. “We will be making a film, yes, and Adam McIntyre will be in it—if your City Council will come on board and let us film your square and the street leading out of it.”

    –Harry rolled his eyes madly. Bernie swallowed a sigh and concentrated on his sketching.

    “You’d have to do it in the weekend,” conceded the driver thoughtfully. “You’ll need crowd control if ya have Adam McIntyre in it. Hey, he was good as Double Oh Seven, wasn’t he? Pity he only done the one.”

    The Great Director took a deep breath. Gareth bit his lip. Harry’s shoulders shook. Bernie sucked his teeth and concentrated on his sketch.

    “That wasn’t a James Bond film,” said Miff kindly. “Everyone makes that mistake. It was very like them, wasn’t it? I think they should have chosen him as James Bond. I think he’s sexier than Pierce Brosnan.”

    “And so say all of us,” murmured Bernie. He handed Derry a sketch of Adam McIntyre in a Fifties suit. The Great Director, he was not displeased to see, blenched. “Don’t blame me,” he said cheerfully. “I’m not responsible for the fact that gents’ wear in the Fifties had about as much shape as your average block of granite.”

    Harry peered at it. “Yeah, with legs like tents.”

    “Mm, designed to disguise the fact that the owner possessed limbs at all, let alone a bum or—”

    “NO!” bellowed the Great Director at long last.

    Bernie allowed the ringing silence to ring. Then he finished smoothly: “–or genitals.”

    Harry sniggered. “Especially genitals,” he agreed.

    “No American suiting! Savile ROW!” shouted the Great Director furiously. “I want Adam in SAVILE ROW!”

    “I do beg your pardon,” said Bernie with immense courtesy. Since they were stalled at a set of traffic lights within the square, he began sketching again.

    Harry peered at the result. “Champagne-bottle shoulders, would those be?”

    “Something like that, old mate,” agreed Bernie with relish.

    The Great Director snatched. He ripped furiously. He scattered the resultant confetti all over the occupants of the limo.

    “That’s a waste of effort, Derry,” said Gareth unemphatically. “Adam’s shoulders couldn’t possibly do that, whoever the tailor was.”

    Derry breathed heavily. “Make a note that we want a real tailor on board.”

    “Savile Row?” asked Gareth unemotionally. Harry choked.

    “Yes!”

    “Very well.” Tranquilly Gareth made a note. “It’ll cost,” he warned calmly.

    Derry breathed heavily but said nothing.

    “What about Adam’s real tailor?” suggested Miff thoughtfully.

    The entourage held its collective breath.

    “Good idea, Sweetness,” he said, patting the knee. “Driver, what sort of trees are these?”

    “Jacarandas, I think, mate. Look pretty when they’re out,” he said kindly.

    The trees were now leafless. Certain members of the entourage eyed them dubiously.

    “This one?” said Derry eagerly. –They were now outside the courthouse once more.

    “Think so,” he said kindly.

    “It’s been ’orribly ’acked about,” noted Bernie.

    “Yeah, pity they hadda do that, eh?” agreed the driver.

    “Shoot it from the square,” ordained the Great Director, frowning.

    “You’d have to, unless you wanted the audience to perceive that it’s only half a tree,” agreed Bernie, sketching. “Something like this?”

    “Haven’t you got a coloured pencil?” replied the Great Director ungraciously.

    “Not a mauve one, no.”

    “I see!” cried Miff. “Those are flowers, not leaves!”

    Harry went into a helpless wheezing fit as the artist, grinning sheepishly, handed Miff the completed sketch, admitting: “Yes.”

    “When do they flower?” asked the Great Director.

    “No idea,” said Bernie.

    “Not you! Driver! When do they flower?”

    “Eh? Aw, the jacarandas? Ya got me there. Uh… December, would it be? Well, before Christmas, anyway.”

    “Derry, we can’t possibly, the streets will be packed with Christmas shoppers,” said Gareth faintly as they rounded the corner.

    “Slow down! Slow DOWN!” he shouted. “Ooh, yes,” he said to Bernie. “Ideal. Look at the verandahs: all different levels! And is that rusty corrugated iron? Perfect!”

    “Ye-es,” conceded Gareth. “They’re not exactly—I mean, the buildings are good, Derry, no question!” he said quickly. “But, um, the tenants aren’t exactly authentic, are they?”

    “Change the signs, of course, dear boy!” he said genially. “Look: that can be an Army and Navy store!”

    “You certainly wouldn’t need to change its window display,” agreed Bernie somewhat weakly to this inspiration. “What is it, Army surplus?”

    This was only a rhetorical question but the driver, taking it unto himself, replied cheerfully: “Yeah, that’s right, mate. Been there forever, that place has.”

    “Yes,” agreed the Great Director genially. “Turn round and park over the other side, will you?”

    As no more trams were in sight, this manoeuvre was accomplished with relative ease, Miff merely gasping this time and not having to close her eyes and, as most of those present had expected, the Great Director then ordered Bernie to get out and get him a panoramic view of the highly desirable seedy colonial Fifties kitsch.

    The driver watched with interest. “That’s a special wide-angle camera, is it, mate?” he said chummily to Gareth.

    “No,” replied the P.A. simply.

    Swallowing, the man subsided.

    “One, two, three, four, five, six,” counted Bernie, getting back into the car and laying his Polaroids out on his sketch-pad.

    The Great Director frowned. “Couldn’t you get more light into them than that?”

    “No. I can sketch the details, if you like to leave me here.”

    “Glue!” replied the Great Director irritably, snapping his fingers.

    Calmly Bernie produced a glue stick from his pocket. Miff and the driver watched eagerly and Harry and Gareth merely looked blankly out of the windows as Derry carefully wrote “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6” on the backs of the snaps, stuck them into place, and then wrote carefully underneath them “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6”. “Where are we?” he said to Bernie, Parker poised.

    “Adelaide,” replied Bernie on a weak note.

    “The sun rose over there,” Harry recalled, “so we’d be north of the square.”

    “Where are we, driver?” said Derry in an evil voice.

    Cheerily the driver told him the name of the street, adding that they were south of the square, your mate, there, had it wrong.

    “But the sun did rise over there!” said Harry indignantly, waving violently at their left.

    “That’s right, mate,” the driver congratulated him.

    “Then we’re going north!”

    “No: south.”

    “Harry,” said Bernie with a laugh in his voice, “we’re in the Southern Hemisphere, now, mate.”

    “But—”

    “In the Southern Hemisphere,” said Derry complacently, contemplating his completed page, “the sun moves in the northern part of the sky. –There! Isn’t it interesting: the colonial heritage! King William Street! It’d be William IV, of course.”

    “Queen Adelaide’s husband,” agreed Bernie smoothy.

    Harry opened his mouth crossly, and thought better of it.

    “Have we got enough?” said Gareth heavily. “We’ll be Hellishly late for our appointment, Derry.”

    “He’ll wait!” he said breezily.

    Bernie cleared his throat. He met Harry’s eye. Neither of them voiced their thought, which was that, quite to the contrary, it was more than likely that David Walsingham had completely forgotten they were coming.

    The limo turned into a quiet back street lined with heavy, gnarled old trees, leafless at this time of the year. Given that this was approximately the thirtieth such street they’d been in in the last fifteen minutes, no-one evinced much excitement. In fact Harry appeared to have gone to sleep. The driver announced pleasedly that this was it, but given that he’d already made this announcement three times, no-one evinced much excitement, though Gareth did note sourly that it had better be.

    “Is it?” asked Derry sourly.

    Bernie looked at the run-down old bungalow, which appeared to be built of a mixture of stuccoed concrete and brick. Its garden wall was brick, topped with a wide cracked slab of concrete, just the right height for sitting on in the sun while one dreamily waited for the evening paper to be delivered. Supposing that the sun was out and that there was an evening paper. The front yard, which was not particularly large, was occupied by a leafless gnarled old tree, a quantity of fawn, dead-looking grass, and some large cracked paving stones serving as a front path. The verandah had huge square stuccoed concrete columns at its ends and on one side of the front steps, the other side sporting a truncated half-column in the same square style, topped with a concrete slab. That’d do nicely for sitting on on the days when it was too cold to sit on the garden wall. What could be seen of the verandah floor appeared to be flaking, once painted wood. The front door matched. By contrast the houses on either side sported intensely neat cottage gardens, crammed with perennial greenery and neatly trimmed shrubs, colonial verandahs with spanking fresh, chastely painted narrow posts topped with quantities of wrought iron, the one on the left having this ornamentation painted in a colour which contrasted with its posts and guttering, and excruciatingly neat stone exteriors. Bernie squinted. As far as he could see, the stone, an attractive dark blue-grey shade, was only a facing: the house to the right had brick side walls.

    “Well,” he conceded, “having met Walsingham, I’d say we’d struck lucky, this time. Lovely old bungalow, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” agreed Derry. “Really generous lines. Pity about those tarty abortions next-door.”

    Bernie smiled. This sort of unexpected remark, not to say evidence of taste, was largely why he’d stuck with the Great Director for as long as he had. “Couldn’t agree more.”

    Miff peered. “It doesn’t look as if there’s anybody at hone,” she said dubiously.

    Or had been, for about forty years—no. Bernie wound his window down. “Yes, it does!” he said with a laugh.

    Miff shrank back into her seat within her dead animal skins. “What’s that?”

    “Mahler, you cloth-eared cretin,” replied the Great Director disagreeably.—And that, reflected Bernie sourly, was why he often felt he’d do anything to get out of Derry’s orbit.—“Gareth! Get out and knock!”

    Resignedly Gareth got out. Bernie got out, too, he had a strong feeling he might clock Derry if he stayed in the car a moment longer.

    They went up onto the verandah and Gareth rang the bell. They waited, but nothing happened except Mahler.

    “Bash on the door,” suggested Bernie.

    Frowning, Gareth knocked briskly on the front door. They waited

    “I think it’s solid— Well, not oak. Whatever the Australian equivalent is,” ventured Bernie.

    “Very well, Bernie, you knock!”

    Obligingly Bernie thumped on the solid front door with his fist, to boot bellowing: “HOY! Walsingham! HULLO!”

    They waited. Nothing. Unless you counted the Mahler.

    Gareth opened his mouth, scowling but Bernie said mildly: “Hang on. The movement’s coming to an end.”

    Sure enough, the Mahler paused. Bernie moved over to the curtained front windows on the side where the Mahler had seemed loudest, and knocked briskly on the glass, to boot yelling: “HOY! Walsingham! HOY!”

    The Mahler started up again. Gareth was beginning angrily: “This is hopeless!” when suddenly the front door opened.

    Both Gareth and Bernie had met David Walsingham before, since he had been responsible for the score of Derry’s recent Old Russia epic starring Euan Keel: the one ethnically filmed in Prague, for reasons known only to the Great Director’s creative mind. Or at least, he had been responsible for those parts of the score not the responsibility of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

    “Oh, it’s you,” he said mildly, chewing. Toast: he had a slice of it in his hand. He swallowed. “You’re late,” he said, taking another bite of the toast.

    “So you are expecting us!” said Gareth evilly.

    David swallowed toast. “Yes. Good afternoon, Gareth. How are you, Bernie?”

    “We’re fine, thanks, though I wouldn’t care to speak for the state of Derry’s temper,” replied Bernie affably.

    David smiled the charming, slightly lopsided smile which, the P.A. and the Production Designer had already observed, went over bloody well with the distaff side, and noted: “Isn’t it always?”

    “Something like that,” admitted Bernie with a grin, while Gareth smiled reluctantly.

    “Come in,” he invited them, holding the door wide.

    Bernie looked with interest at the view of shabby passage thus revealed but said: “If I were you, Gareth, I wouldn’t just bellow and wave, I’d go and kow-tow. Given that at this juncture a bit of servility probably wouldn’t come amiss. Given that it's going to be you who’ll have to break the news in the relatively near future that the local City Council won't want the public buildings of their main square sprayed Singapore-white, even for megabucks, even if they do fancy fencing it off just before Christmas.”

    “Couldn’t you wash it off again?” asked David with idle interest.

    “Well, yes, but does the City Council in fact have jurisdiction over all of the buildings in the main square? Don't you have a complex federal system of government here?”

    “I’m not a local,” he murmured in his very English voice. “But yes: it’s very like the American system. In fact the South Australian houses of parliament are not far from your hotel: perhaps Derry would like to spray them white?”

    “Only if they’re currently housing a cricket exhibition,” replied Bernie promptly.

    David winced slightly. “Er—no. That’s down the road a bit. That is a very nice building. I think it belongs to the public library, which unless I’ve got it entirely wrong, is under the jurisdiction of the state. But now I come to think of it, I think the federal court building is in the main square.”

    Gareth took a deep breath. “We are not going to spend the next year in negotiations with a three-tiered government system!”

    “Then I would go and kow-tow,” murmured Bernie.

    Scowling, Gareth stumped down the front path.

    “Come in,” repeated David mildly.

    Bernie accompanied him inside, smiling a little. As the Mahler was still playing and as Walsingham immediately sat down and appeared to plunge himself in it, he sat down, too, and listened to it for all of three peaceful minutes…

    “You couldn’t give us anything like a direction, of course!” the Great Director greeted his prospective composer irritably.

    “What? Oh, to this place? The street’s clearly marked on the map, Derry,” replied David amiably, not getting up. Miff entered, huddled in her coat, looking timid. His eyebrows rose slightly and he stood up.

    “That cretin got lost three times!” shouted the Great Director.

    “Technically, five,” murmured Bernie as the Great Director threw himself at a huge, battered old sofa. It creaked, but bore up. Pity. “He found the wrong house three times, though. I don’t think you’ve met David, have you, Miff? David Walsingham. David, this is Myfanwy Griffiths.”

    “Lovely to meet you, Miss Griffiths,” he said with the smile, holding out his hand. Miff, Bernie was not entirely pleased to see, went pink as she shook it. Walsingham then asked very nicely whether she was going to take the part of the Captain’s Daughter in the film but the Great Director shouted: “No! She can’t act! And for God’s sake light the bloody fire, it’s brass monkeys in here!”

    There was a large electric heater standing in front of the empty grate. Shrugging slightly, David turned it on.

    “Full!” shouted Derry. “Turn it on FULL!”

    “I can’t afford to run it, Derry, unless I accept this contract with you,” he said with a sweet smile.

    Miff gave an audible gasp and clapped her hand over her mouth.

    “Please, come and sit by the fire, Miss Griffiths,” he said nicely, ushering her to a seat. “Good to see you again, Harry,” he added, with a passing remark in Russian.

    “He’s given the Russian away, David, he’s all Downunder mateship this year,” explained Bernie.

    “Shut up!” shouted the Great Director. “He isn’t! And if one single, solitary note of bloody Aussie mateship creeps into My Script, you’re off the project, Harry! I’ll hire that woman of Brian’s instead!”

    “Don’t panic: the other day he said she might be the mistress of the one-liner but she couldn’t write anything longer than four-minute episodes with pauses for loo breaks,” Bernie reassured him.

    “I’m not panicking,” he said as David switched the Mahler off. “Which version, David?” Silently David held up the CD case. Harry blinked. “What?”

    “Mm? Oh: sorry. Had a set of LP’s dumped onto this. Don’t know that it was entirely successful.” He handed him the case and Harry read the hand-written label with interest.

    “We are not here to discuss Mahler,” stated the Great Director evilly. “Sit down and shut up, Harry.”

    “I’ve barely uttered,” replied Harry without animus, sitting.

    David came and sat at one end of the sofa. “Go on, then, Derry. I’m all ears.”

    “Well, you got our story outline, of course,” he stated with supreme confidence.

    “No.”

    “What?” he yelled. “Gareth, get on to those cretins in the London office!”

    “I don’t need to. I sent it myself. Well, checked that the address was correct and gave it to the courier myself. Our usual firm.”

    “Then it got here!” he yelled.

    “Possibly David forgot to open it,” murmured Bernie.

    “Will you shut up!” he hollered.

    Bernie shrugged. He got out his sketch-pad and began sketching David’s front room, omitting the piano that occupied a good deal of it and concentrating on the simple, heavy but graceful lines of the high ceiling, the broad wooden architraves at the doors and windows, and the wide stone fireplace.

    “There could be several reasons, but the point is, I haven’t read it,” said David mildly. “Perhaps you’d care to summarise it, Derry?”

    “There were sketches in that outline!” he returned aggrievedly.

    “Mm, there were. Very tentative ones, most of which have since been scrapped,” noted Bernie. “But I can sketch as you go, if you like, Derry.”

    “Very well,” he said grudgingly. “Go on: sketch the theatre.”

    “The bingo hall,” Harry reminded him helpfully.

    Sighing, Bernie sketched the interior of the little old suburban theatre and showed the result to David.

    “Illuminating,” said the composer politely.

    “Shut up! I’m going to start!” For once Derry appeared to be at a loss for words.

    “‘Once upon a time,’” prompted Miff unexpectedly, and they all jumped.

    “Isn’t that how you said it should start, Derry?” she ventured.

    “Quite right, Sweetness. Once upon a time,” said the Great Director in dreamy tones, “a Modern Girl took her old aunties to an amateur tap show. –Sketch, sketch!” he ordered, snapping his fingers.

    Hurriedly Bernie sketched. Old aunties and Modern Girl in audience. True, the Modern Girl bore a certain resemblance to Myfanwy Griffiths, but David kindly didn’t remark on it.

    “Fifties music as we roll title and credits,” continued the Great Director, waving his hand.

    “Shall I hum?” offered Bernie meekly.

    “Please don’t,” he said acidly.

    “I can hum I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair,” offered Miff.

    “Not now!” he said irritably. “I shall hum.”

    Some of those present had been afraid this was going to happen. Gareth, in fact, was seen to wince. Derry hummed, waving the hand. He was possibly a bass-baritone, that was all you could have said of it.

    “What was that, Derry?” asked the composer blandly.

    “That thing in Sabrina that they danced to!” he said angrily, as Harry collapsed in sniggers.

    David’s eyebrows rose slightly. He half-hummed, half-sang: “Isn’t it romantic…lah, dee-hmm, dee-hmm…”

    “Very well, then, you can hum,” said the Great Director, frowning.

    Bernie’s shoulders shook helplessly but he managed not to laugh, largely by dint of biting very hard on his lower lip. He sketched rapidly and held it up.

    “Possibly the skating dance to that, yes,” allowed Derry, managing to attain a lofty tone.

    Isn’t it romantic…lah, dee-hmm, dee-hmm…

    “Yes. Credits roll, cut to Modern Girl and old aunties,”—Bernie flipped back to his previous sketch—“credits roll, Gray Whatsisname and cast, possibly Rupy Maynarde, haven’t decided, in Steam Heat—”

    Taking the pregnant pause as his cue, David obligingly modulated Isn’t It Romantic into Steam Heat.

    “Yes,” said the Great Director firmly. David introduced a bit of Hernando’s Hideaway but he didn’t remark on it. “One of these days I’ll get bloody Lily Rose to agree to do the remake of The Pajama Game for me, or my name’s not Derry Dawlish!”—It wasn’t, actually, though, true, he had called himself that for over thirty years. Bernie cleared his throat and avoided Gareth’s eye. He held up his sketch of Steam Heat for David.—“And the show goes on. Cut to Modern Girl and old aunties”—solemnly Bernie flipped back—“and she asks Old Aunty Number One if it was really as romantic as that back in the olden days.”

    Isn’t it romantic…lah, dee-hmm, dee-hmm…

    “Yes,” said the Great Director happily, apparently not perceiving that Walsingham was taking the Mick. “Close-up of Old Aunty Number One smiling reminiscently—What are you doing?” he shouted as Bernie did a rapid sketch and David choked. “Give me that! –WHAT? NOT JUDI DENCH!” he bellowed terribly.

    “You did say a theatrical Dame, Derry,” noted Harry drily. “And the Yanks love her, don’t ask me why.”

    “She’s too young, you cretin, and I don’t want pink and white!”

    “No. Sorry. But Lily Rose is pink and white, and if this old aunty’s supposed to—I never spoke,” said Bernie, hurriedly sketching.

    “Virginia McKenna? Is she still alive?” asked the Great Director blankly.

    “Got eaten by a lion, didn’t she?” said Harry affably.

    “SHUT UP!” he bellowed.

    “I think that was the real lion lady,” admitted Bernie somewhat weakly. “Er, I should warn you, there is no way Lily Rose’s bone structure could ever develop into— Very well, Derry, I never spoke. Close-up of old aunty smiling reminiscently.”

    “And fade into Gib in the Fifties!” he concluded happily, waving the hand expansively.

    “Gib?” said David on a weak note.

    “Mm.” Bernie sketched. “Something like this. Plenty of Royal Navy flying the flag. We took a crew there a couple of months back, did a few preliminary shots.”

    “Backgrounds,” corrected Derry, frowning.

    “Very well, Derry, backgrounds. Definite backgrounds.”

    “I thought Singapore was mentioned?” ventured David.

    “That will come,” announced the Great Director firmly. “I certainly don't intend it to be just a feeble echo of Brian Hendricks’s concept!”

    “N—Uh, who?” said the composer weakly.

    “The fellow who produces The Captain’s Daughter,” explained Gareth helpfully. “Henny Penny Productions. They are on board for the film.”

    There was a short pause.

    “You have seen the series, have you?” said Gareth very weakly indeed.

    “There’s no telly,” offered Miff helpfully. Bernie had already registered this. He smiled.

    “No,” agreed David. “It isn’t a matter of principle; I did check out the programmes in the local paper, but they were all putrid, so I decided not to waste the money.”

    There was a short silence. Certain people were trying not to look at the Great Director.

    “Before you have an apoplexy, Derry,” said David very kindly indeed, “I have seen some of the television series, yes. My former next-door neighbour is Lily Rose’s aunt. Once we became acquainted, she insisted I come over for it, and of course for anything else worth watching.” He waved his hand and elaborated: “Lovely David Attenborough documentaries. Sydney travesties of Aida. Dame Joan demonstrating that sopranos over the age of forty should be put down for the sake of suffering humanity. Lovely Michael Parkinson.” He eyed them blandly.

    Ignoring Harry’s sniggers, Bernie croaked: “She’s not still singing, is she?”

    “Oh, I wouldn’t call it that, old man,” David assured him.

    “So you have seen it,” concluded Derry with satisfaction.

    “Er—yes,” he admitted feebly. “Well, up until they moved. Just before Christmas, that would have been.”

    “Good, you’ll have seen the first two series.”

    “Um, no, Derry,” said Gareth cautiously. “Australia’s a series behind us. They’ll have had, um, well, he’ll have seen most of One, I suppose.”

    “There was certainly no Singapore in what I saw,” said David mildly. “And I don’t think there was actual Gib. Backgrounds, though—certainly. As I recall, the music was neither naval nor particularly Fifties.”

    “The Good Ship Lollipop!” said Miff eagerly.

    Obligingly David went over to the piano and played it. A very rollicking version, recognised Bernie silently, smiling.

    “Yes. Brian’s agreed she can do it for us,” said the Great Director, rubbing his hands.

    “Is it copyright?” asked David politely from the piano.

    “Yes. Come back here, I want you to see Bernie’s sketches!”

    “He means, the cleverly not-quite-rude version that Lily Rose did for Hendricks is copyright,” explained Bernie helpfully, doing a quick sketch of Lily Rose’s bum in frilled knickers. “She did a much ruder version at the amateur tap show we first saw her at. More like this.”

    Obligingly David sniggered, but replied: “I did mean the dance, Bernie. I have every confidence that Double Dee Productions will sort out the copyright of the songs beautifully.”

    “They will or I’ll have their heads,” admitted Gareth.

    David nodded and smiled a trifle wryly. He was fully ware that Gareth Parker, appearances to the contrary, was very far from being a mere whipping boy to the Great Director. He hummed experimentally, modulating in and out of The Good Ship Lollipop and a hornpipe. Derry nodded pleasedly, waving his hands in what possibly might have been meant to be conjunction with the beat, and emitting a bass buzzing noise.

    “Please let him try it on the piano, Derry,” said Harry on a weak note.

    “My dear boy, who’s stopping him?” he replied with immense cordiality.

    Raising his eyebrows only slightly, David returned to the piano, this time adding, for good measure, A Life On The Ocean Wave.

    “Ooh!” cried Miff. “Isn’t he clever?”

    “Naturally, my dear. That is why I have selected him,” said Derry superbly. “We do the introductory scenes pretty much as Brian had them, David: Daughter turns up unexpectedly from school while Daddy Captain’s ashore, gets involved in the ship’s concert, disguised in bell-bottoms, all that, but we work in Euan’s part early. No point in getting him and then not using him, eh?”

    The same could well have been said of Adam McIntyre, Bernie gave him a dry look but said nothing. He got up and showed David a sketch of Euan Keel in casual gear as worn in American Fifties movies: baggy pale slacks tightly belted at the waist, knit golfing shirt, cravat neatly tucked into same. Carefully he inscribed “Cary” on the breast. David choked.

    “No fooling around,” warned the Great Director in almost genial tones. “Daughter meets him early on, falls for him like a ton of bricks, he makes the mistake of treating her like just a little girl—we know she’s barely eighteen, thanks,” he said as Harry tried to point it out—“and after he’s collaborated in the high jinks on H.M.S. Regardless she discovers he’s actually a Navy high-up like Daddy Captain and Doctor and Commander and the rest, and the S. really hits the F.”—Obligingly Bernie leaned against the piano and sketched a close-up of Lily Rose looking furious and Euan looking superior.—“Suspense all the way through, will-she, won’t-she, love-hate relationship, classic Fifties situation.”

    “Yes, they often married the man the hated, didn’t they?” agreed David. “Not a desirable rôle model, one would have thought. Though it possibly explains why divorce became the most popular pastime of the Sixties. When do they get to Singapore?”

    “Very soon after that. The Fleet makes smoke”—Bernie sighed but sketched silhouettes of battleships making smoke—“and they’re off! ‘Sail away, sail away’,” he moaned.

    David swallowed, but played something approximating it.

    “Well, something like that,” he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Oh: cut back to the theatre a couple of times during all of this, David: Euan’s one of the dancing skaters, or possibly Steam Heat, though it’d be a pity to waste his bum in that Buttons suit he wore for the skating dance with Lily Rose,”—David looked wildly at Bernie but the artist just looked bland—“and of course when she does The Good Ship Lollipop for the sailors!”—Obligingly David played a little of The Good Ship Lollipop, swirling into Isn’t It Romantic.—”Yes, yes, done all that, dear boy! Now, Singapore. We set most of the rest of it there, but end up back home because we want to get the boys into their winter uniforms. Especially Adam,” he said firmly.

    “Who?” said David limply.

    “Adam McIntyre, of course!” replied the Great Director, astounded that this had not been instantly apparent.

    “Wavy Navy.” Bernie flipped through his sketches. “Damn. Did I give that sketch to someone?” No-one spoke up. “Oh, well.” He did another sketch of Adam in Wavy Navy uniform.

    “In the Fifties?” said David feebly. “You do realise what Wavy Navy means, do you?”

    “Mm, delishimo wiggles in their sleeve braiding,” said Bernie smugly, pointing to them.

    “Yuh—Uh, think you’ve made him an admiral, old man. Surely the only thing he could have been called up for in the Fifties was the Korean War? Did they have R and R in Singapore, is that it?”

    “Stop introducing irrelevancies, dear boy,” ordered the Great Director with horrid geniality, waving the arms expansively. “This is the Fifties remembered!”

    David’s mouth opened and shut.

    “Got it?” said Harry cheerfully.

    “Mm,” he murmured. He began to play Anything Goes.

    “No,” said Derry regretfully. “Nice, isn’t it? Not Fifties, though dear boy. Might have something from—uh, not The Philadelphia Story, the Grace Kelly version. –Sinatra being wasted, though he was bloody good in the rôle, I’m not denying it.”

    David played a bit of True Love.

    “Don’t think so. Might consider it, though—make a note, Gareth. We’re having White Christmas, when they have to spend a Christmas in Singapore—dreaming of Christmas back in Blighty, you see. Don’t want too much Bing. No: Who Wants To be A Millionaire.”

    “Isn’t that a duet?” said David, playing it anyway. “Can Euan sing?”

    “Not him. Commander.”

    “The Rupy Maynarde rôle,” explained Bernie helpfully.

    David looked blank.

    “Leslie Phillips lookalike,” explained Harry helpfully.

    “Oh! The social climber! He was very amusing. Uh, can he sing?”

    “Yes. Very pleasant voice,” said the Great Director firmly. “He was damn good in Steam Heat with Lily Rose and Gray Whatsisface, wasn’t he, Bernie?”

    “Yes.”

    …cos all I want is you! David looked hard at Derry.

    “What?” said the Great Director defensively.

    “Granted Sinatra and Whatsername were only half-serious, but do you want your leading lady carolling ‘all I want is you’ to the wrong man?”

    “I’ll think about it. Could be the scene that makes Euan wake up to himself and decide to pop the question.”

    True, David had done the score for Derry’s Old Russia epic, so he did have some idea of how the Great Directorial mind worked. But he hadn’t been involved in the early stages of the production. He had to swallow.

    “Show him the Singapore street scene for the big confrontation between Adam and Euan, Bernie!” urged the Great Director.

    Obligingly Bernie flipped back to it.

    “Is this déjà vu? I could swear I’ve been there,” said David weakly.

    “Yes. Sorry, David. This is a sketch of the road leading out from your main square,” explained the artist.

    He smiled feebly. “Got it.”

    “You can write something original for that, if you like,” offered Derry generously.

    “Thanks so much.” David played something movie-Chinesey, very tinkly. He made it get angrier.

    “Ooh!” said Miff.

    “Yes. Not too fake-Eastern,” warned the Great Director.

    David launched into The Road To Mandalay. Harry collapsed in splutters.

    “Stop farting about!”

    Grinning, David stopped.

    Harry blew his nose and came somewhat unsteadily round to the piano bench. “Shove up, mate, I’ll show you the kind of thing.” He began to play a very bass Chopsticks. Grinning David chimed in with a very treble Chopsticks.

    “Ooh!” cried Miff, bouncing up. “I can play that!”

    Most obligingly David and Harry allowed her to squeeze in between them, David actually rising from his seat to do so, though not ceasing to play. Miff plunged into Chopsticks.

    Gareth, who was not musical at all, was merely looking bored. Bernie was grinning but he looked uneasily at Derry. You never knew. He might take it out on Miff, if they’d really got up his nose. Not physically, no: he was not a violent man. But he could be damned scathing. But to his relief, the Great Director was in a musing pose. In fact he had his arm positioned for all the word like Rodin’s Penseur. “Rodin’s Poseur,” said Bernie to himself under his breath.

    …dah, dah!

    “Seven-Year Itch, I think,” announced the great Director. “Check it out, Gareth, and let me view it. We might work it in.”

    “Which of the sets would have a piano, though?” asked Bernie limply.

    “Any interior of the Fifties will do, dear boy!”

    “Ye-es. Daddy Captain’s Singapore bungalow?”

    “Why not? Or Adam’s tropical hideaway.”

    “So he is going to have a hideaway?” asked Harry, getting up from the piano bench.

    “Yes! We settled that!”

    “No, we didn’t, actually, Derry. And given that any hideaway that he lures Daughter to will be crucial to the script, don’t you think you'd better let Varley know?”

    “Nonsense, dear boy: a luring scene and a near-seduction scene and a discovery—well, either discovery or Lily Rose routing him, I’d like to get some of that feistiness of hers on screen—are the same wherever they may be set!”

    “Um, isn’t it sort of crucial to the story-line whether the heroine routs him or is discovered before she can demonstrate whether she was about to rout him or succumb?” ventured David, helping Miff back to her chair.

    “Very well, not discovery: rescue,” he said, frowning. “But I’m tending towards routing.”

    Sighing, Harry got out his notebook and sat down. “Lily Rose routs Adam,” he said, writing. “Will his agent stand for it, Derry?”

    “Yes!” he snapped.

    “You’re the boss, mate.”

    “Can a boss be a mate?” asked David courteously, returning to the piano.

    “Don't ask me, mate, you're that one that lives here. Derry, much though I hate to contradict you, I’ve never seen Lily Rose being feisty. And I have viewed every demanded episode of Brian’s series three times minimum.”

    “Try speaking to her as a representative of Double Dee Productions,” suggested Gareth sourly. “Ask her if she’ll do the Daughter for us. Feisty’s the least of it.”

    Harry swallowed.

    “She’ll do it!” declared the Great Director with horrible confidence. “I’m just letting her get the baby out of the way first. Oh, and finish that nationalism study Brian said she was working on. Sounds interesting,” he noted regretfully. “Documentary material, though.”

    “Baby?” said David feebly. “Nationalism study?”

    “Yes! Good God, David, her aunt must have told you, even if she didn't make you sit through the episode of Parkinson that broke it!”

    “She’s actually a sociologist,” said Bernie kindly. “Um, they probably haven't had that episode of Parkinson yet, Derry.”

    “Anyway, he hasn’t got a telly!” Miff reminded them. “It was thrilling, David!”

    “It was staged by Brian Hendricks, more like,” admitted Derry with a reluctant grin.

    David nodded dazedly. “Um, the aunt blathered on about the girl giving up her university work… I didn’t really listen. Thought she’d dropped her degree,” he admitted.

    “Balls,” said the Great Director briskly. “Fellow at London University.” David’s jaw dropped. “She auditioned for the part in Brian’s show because she wanted to follow through a series in production for her work. Small group dynamics. That was only a chapter in her colleague’s book: you must have seen that in The Observer, David! The nationalism thing’s her own stuff. She’s finishing it off as we speak. The baby’s due in September. Then Brian’s got her lined up to finish off the Christmas Special for him in late October, and after that she’s only committed to a few guest spots for him.”

    David just looked at him limply.

    “He’s left out the crucial point, which is that at the same time she told Brian about the sociologist bit she told him she was giving up doing the Daughter for him,” said Harry drily. “Going back to the sociology full-time.”

    “Glad someone round here’s got a grasp of the functional plot,” said David weakly.

    “Yeah,” agreed Harry, grinning.

    “She always was full-time, you pack of apes,” noted their director, “that’s why she was doing the show for Brian in the first place! Anyway, he’s found some little girl to take Stepdaughter, claims she’s got oomph.”

    “Varley mentioned pizzazz,” murmured Harry, winking at Bernie.

    “Oomph,” said Derry firmly. “Personally I doubt it. There’s only one Lily Rose, and I’m having her.”

    “This baby she's due to produce does indicate there’s a husband in the offing, does it?” asked David politely.

    “Show him!” ordered Derry grimly.

    Sighing, Gareth opened the immense portfolio. “Lily Rose, Lily Rose… We didn’t file it under Royal Navy, did we? I wish you’d let me categorise these properly, Derry.”

    “No!”

    “He remembers things by happenstance,” he sighed.

    “Serendipity!” he corrected crossly.

    “Happenstance,” repeated Gareth firmly. “Lily Rose, Lily Rose— Hang on, here’s a naval one. It’ll be one of Brian’s PR shots. Wearing a sailor’s hat, leaning on a sub commander, standing on the sub’s whatsit.”

    “Superstructure?” suggested Harry. Simultaneously Bernie suggested, not without malice: “Foredeck?” and Miff suggested: “Conning tower?”

    “Lid,” decided Gareth mildly. Derry gave a muffled snigger. Encouraged, Gareth added: “Does it ring any bells, Derry? Suggest any associations?”

    “Ah… Last summer. Spain,” he produced.

    “You’re so right,” said Gareth, turning over. “Here’s the shot taken in Spain. –This is the husband,” he explained, coming over to show it to David.

    Bernie gave a gasp. “Don’t put it—”

    Simultaneously Harry cried loudly: “Mind the piano!”

    “I’m not that untutored,” said Gareth on a pleased note. He held the heavy portfolio for David.

    “Cor,” said the composer feebly, eyeing the newspaper cutting of Lily Rose in a very modern bikini top and what seemed to be a muslin sarong, not that he was looking that closely, leaning on the well-muscled, naked chest of a broad-shouldered chap at least twice her age. He was possibly wearing shorts but David’s interest didn't extend that far. “Why don’t you cast him, Derry?”

    “He’s a senior Naval captain!” he snapped.

    “He looks it,” admitted David.

    Derry scowled. “Damn good body. The up-himself prick that he is.”

    “I thought he was a really decent chap, what little I saw of him,” explained Bernie. David nodded, smiling a little. “Mm. Only unfortunately not all that likely to fall over himself to encourage his wife to star in a selection of truncated Fifties playsuits in Derry’s film.”

    “If you think she’ll let him have the final say-so, you’re very much mistaken,” said the Great Director grimly.

    Gareth gave Bernie a warning glance and the artist said mildly: “If you say so, Derry. You saw more of them than the rest of us.”

    Gareth turned over. “This is one of Brian’s PR shots of her with Euan,” he said neutrally.

    The pose was virtually identical. This time Lily Rose’s bikini top was unnecessarily stiff and— Unashamedly David peered. “Underwired.”

    “Bound to be!” agreed Harry cheerfully. “Miff prefers the husband’s chest, don't you, Miff?”

    “Ooh, yes! He’s so masculine!” she beamed.

    David turned back. She was oh, so right. Not that Keel wasn’t male, but…

    “Some of us have discerned,” explained Harry grinning, “that the difference is that Euan’s only an actor with his face painted, though generally deemed by the distaff side to be not half bad, and the real chap’s a real chap with a real man’s job. His ship’s about the size of the Queen Mary.”

    “Balls,” said the Great Director grimly.

    “Them an’ all, Derry,” agreed Harry promptly.

    “Euan has got BALLS!” he roared.

    There was a short silence.

    “Physically, yes,” allowed Bernie. “But I don’t think that any of those who’ve had the privilege of working with him would argue with Harry, if we were being honest, Derry.”

    There was another short silence.

    “No,” said Derry wearily, passing his hand across his forehead. “But then, he’s only an actor. What can you do? It’s not a real man’s job, is it? The only chap who ever came across as truly masculine on screen was Connery. But unfortunately Euan’s what we’ve got to work with.”

    His entourage looked at him nervously. David Walsingham looked at him with some amusement, wondering just how genuine he was.

    “Could we possibly have a cuppa, David?” he added with a sigh.

    “Yes, of course. Like something to eat? Toast?”

    “Is that all there is?” croaked the Great Director numbly.

    “Yes. Or the bread, untoasted, but it’s a bit stale. You can have honey or Marmite on it,” he offered generously.

    “Do some of both,” said Derry heavily. “Miff, dear, give him a hand, would you?”

    Obediently Miff went out with David.

    Then there was a pause.

    “At least he played something,” offered Gareth uneasily.

    “Gareth, dear boy,” returned the great Director tiredly, “anyone with half an eye could see that he’s not taking us seriously.”

    “It is hard to take Fifties kitsch seriously, Derry. Especially when you haven’t signed the leading lady on whom the thing completely depends,” noted Harry.

    “Oh, ye of little faith,” he sighed.

    Bernie took pity on him and passed him his sketch of David’s sitting-room. “Interior of Daddy Captain’s bungalow? Then we can keep the airier Queens—um, colonial look for Adam’s hideaway.”

    Derry goggled at the sketch. He goggled round the room.

    “Discount all this hideous old furniture and the fifty miles of bookcases—”

    “But of course, Bernie, dear! Why didn’t I see it?” he cried. “Quick, nip out and sketch his passage!”

    Obligingly Bernie nipped.

    “Look at the ceiling!” said the Great Director ecstatically.

    Gareth and Harry looked. After a few moments Harry said weakly: “Um, it’s very plain.”

    “But exactly, dear boy! Lovely plain, heavy lines, delishimo!” He plunged into excited ratification and elaboration of the statement. The Romanesque was in there somehow, and Thirties post art-deco, and California bungalows and Bogie—

    Gareth and Harry just smiled and nodded feebly. Richard was himself again. That hadn’t taken long, had it?’

    When Miff and David came in with trays of tea and toast, Bernie was measuring David’s sitting-room with a pocket tape-measure and calling out the measurements, which Gareth was solemnly entering on the sketch, and Derry had taken possession of Bernie’s camera and was ecstatically wasting Polaroid film.

    “What happened to all that Angst?” asked David mildly.

    Harry whistled a phrase of the theme from Gone With The Wind.

    David raised his eyebrows but merely said: “Well, tea?”

    Large quantities of tea and toast having been consumed, especially by Derry, and David in fact having made two more relays of toast, the Great Director was sufficiently refreshed to continue his plot summary.

    “Naturally we want to work in a few more numbers. Well, we’ve looked at everything she's done for Brian: we’ll definitely have My Heart Belongs To Daddy.” Grinning, David sat down at the piano and played it, with considerable bump-and-grind. “Not the Carol Channing version, you ape!” he said irritably, forgetting that he had not as yet got his composer signed up. “Cut back to the theatre—Bernie!”

    Bernie had lost the sketch. He flapped pages frantically. After Gareth had reminded him that it was the first one he found it, even though it was far from the first one in his sketch-pad. “My story-line means a lot to you, I see,” said the great Director, acid-sweet. “Well, show it to him!” Resignedly Bernie went over and leaned on the piano. “Think we might put her in pink for that, possibly the dress she wore on Parkinson. Dior,” Derry noted by the by. David looked expectantly at Bernie, though not ceasing to tinkle out My Heart Belongs To Daddy, this time mixed with the Parkinson theme. “Stop that,” ordered the Great Director. “Go on, Bernie.” Bernie objected feebly that she had worn several pink garments on Parkinson, over the past two years. “DIOR!” he shouted. Gareth opened his mouth and thought better of it. Dubiously Bernie showed David a sketch of Lily Rose in a strapless putatively satin thing. “Yum, yum,” noted the pianist, modulating into Peggy Sue. “NO ROCK ’N’ ROLL!” bellowed Derry.

    …Pretty, pretty Peggy Sue. “Pity,” concluded David. “You wouldn’t care to indicate how these numbers fit into the plot, would you, Derry? Or is that irrelevant?”

    Glaring, the great Director retorted: “They fit! She’s going to sing Daddy after she rejects one of the footling suitors.”

    David started in on I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair. Miff brightened, and began to hum loudly and not particularly musically.

    “All right, Pettikins, we know you can hum it,” said Derry wearily.

    “I love it!” she said to David. “Have you seen the film?”

    He nodded kindly.

    “Isn’t it super! I think she’s got more pizzazz than Doris Day, don't you?”

    David opened his mouth but before he could utter the Great Director was bellowing: “NO! No-one has more pizzazz than Doris!”

    “Not in that silly thing where Rock Hudson pretends to have a fatal disease, Derry.”

    To David’s intense enjoyment, the Great Director was seen to gulp. “Uh—no. Generally admitted she was wasted in those things. Though they were terribly popular in their day,” he added on a feeble note.

    “I like Calamity Jane, too,” Miff informed David.

    “Yep. For a rootin’-tootin’, dykey Fifties show it’s sure got pizzazz.” He began to play, very softly, Once I Had A Secret Love.

    “Stop that,” said Derry heavily, as Miff was now looking hurt and puzzled. “He means that scene with the two girls where they try on dresses,” he said to her. “Got no idea how girls go on when they’re alone, like most of them. Though I’m not denying that Doris in pants was an icon for the undercover dykes for years, poor girls. Well, nothing much else on screen for them to fixate on,” he explained to the company at large.

    “But Derry, she was always getting married!” she gasped.

    “Fifties popular films had to end in marriage,” he explained. “Well, I like it, too, Sweetness: you’re right about it. Not the image we want for the Daughter, however. Well, there you are, David: she dumps the footling suitor, cut back to the theatre, My Heart Belongs To Daddy, Lily Rose puts it over with oomph.” He gave Miff a hard look but she didn’t bring up the word “pizzazz” again. “Oomph,” he repeated with satisfaction, “but no bump-and-grind.”

    “I see,” said David smoothly. “And may I ask whether it’s Euan or Adam McIntyre she rejects?”

    “Neither. –Think we might save I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair for the big row with Euan,” he said to himself.

    “Which big row?” asked Bernie, pencil poised.

    “What?” he replied angrily.

    “Well, they have several rows, starting off with the one on the beach at Gib, then another spat on board over the bell-bottoms, then a big row when she discovers he’s a high-up Navy nob, quids-in with Daddy Captain, and not just one of the boys—”

    “Not then, you ape! The big bust-up! Singapore!”

    “Thought it was Adam she busted up with in Singapore?” said David.

    Derry gave him a hard look. “Him, too.”

    Bernie held up a pencil sketch of Lily Rose in unlikely tropical wear stamping her foot in the lee of a banana palm.

    “Bathing-suit,” said Derry, glaring.

    “Really? Good show!” He sketched Lily Rose in a one-piece bathing-suit that, not that any of the hetero males present particularly cared, was based on the one Marilyn modelled in How To Marry A Millionaire. David whistled.

    “Yes,” agreed Bernie, grinning.

    “So will she wash that man right out of her hair on the beach in her bathing-suit?” asked Miff.

    Wet blouses had earlier been mooted. Several persons watched with enjoyment as the Great Director opened and shut his mouth. “No,” he finally decided. “Big bust-up on the beach, she stamps back to the house—Daddy Captain’s bungalow,” he elaborated, looking round the sitting-room, “takes a bath—showers,” he said firmly, though no-one had raised the point, “were not common in English households of the Fifties—gets into blouse and slacks—pink pedal-pushers, make a note, Gareth—and then decides to shampoo her hair.”

    Bernie displayed a very rude sketch of Lily Rose, arms raised to her shampoo-adorned head, in a wet blouse with nothing on underneath it. David collapsed in rude sniggers.

    Derry’s considerable bulk rose in a huge, surging wave from the sofa. He swam ponderously across David’s shabby fawn carpet, seized the sketch-pad, and ripped the page out.

    “You must admit the soft impeachment, Derry,” said the artist, grinning.

    Harry came quickly to look before Derry could tear it up. He gave a loud snigger. “Two soft impeachments, isn’t it?”

    “Quite,” said the Great Director blandly, folding it up and tucking it away in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “No more, Bernie. Not the right image.” he said mildly. He returned to the sofa. “The blouse won’t be as thin as that. And I’ll do it very artfully…” He paused, screwing up his eyes. “Just glimpses,” he said with relish.

    “That’ll go over good, mate,” conceded Harry on a weak note. “Um, I seem to have got an awful lot of rows with Euan listed here, Derry. Is there going to be room for any more plot? I mean, what about the cameos? And the sub-plot with the Captain and Amaryllis Nuttall and Stepdaughter?”

    “Eh?” said David limply.

    “The cameos are the footling suitors, David,” he explained. “Daddy Captain and Doctor dig them up: they want to get Daughter out of their hair—same thing as in Brian’s show—so as to get back to their bachelor Life On the Ocean Wave and pink gins.”

    Nodding, David played I am the captain of the Pinafore, and a ri-ight good cap—

    “NO G AND S!” bellowed Derry.

    –tain too! “If you say so. So where does Amaryllis Nuttall fit in? Not to say this stepdaughter that, correct me if I’m wrong, I don't think he's got? Don’t you have to be married to have one of those? Or is it a divorced step—”

    “NO!”

    David eyed him drily.

    “We’re going to follow Brian’s concept and give Daddy Captain a range of ageing paramours,”—David raised his eyebrows slightly—“only not as many as he has, that’s damned Varley Knollys for you, incapable of thinking up anything like a reasonable subplot,”—David looked from Bernie to Harry and back in exaggerated confusion but they both looked bland—“but three-quarters of the way through, he marries Amaryllis in Singapore. No way am I going to have him come over as a doddering old queen. Anyway, I want Amaryllis.”

    “Understandable,” acknowledged David, launching again into Once I Had A Secret Love.

    Oddly, this time it was Gareth who broke down in sniggers.

    “Look, that was years back!” said the Great Director heatedly,

    Gareth nodded helplessly.

    “It’s not what you think, mate,” Harry informed David, grinning.

    “No?” he said sweetly.

    “No. Derry wanted her for some bloody costume epic back when he was just starting out, but she turned him down. Well, she had more costume work than she could handle, back then: dunno if you’d remember those endless epics for the Beeb? Even those bloody crinolines couldn’t manage to make that bone structure of hers look less than wonderful.”

    “Mm. Didn’t she do some SF thing, too? Also in unlikely garm—”

    “NO!” shouted Derry bitterly.

    “The thing is,” explained Harry, “he was planning to star her—this was after the costume thing fell through, so they tell me—in something that would out-Barbarella Barbarella and make the whole of the Froggy film Establishment eat its shorts. She turned that down, too.”

    Gareth blew his nose. “Rumour has it that it had something to do with the unfortunate hand-up-the-skirt incident.”

    “It DIDN’T!” shouted the Great Director furiously.

    “Very well, Derry,” said Gareth calmly: “it didn’t. Amaryllis enjoyed every moment of it. But perhaps we should get back to next year’s film, instead of raking over old coals?”

    Why, was not exactly clear, but this phrase seemed to strike a chord with Harry: he broke down in delighted sniggers. Tears oozed out of the corners of his eyes.

    Bernie had been sketching during the interchange. Silently he tore the page out and handed it to David. David went into howling hysterics.

    Derry began to heave himself up.

    “Nothing to do with the Daughter, Derry,” said Bernie mildly.

    “No!” gasped David, rising from the piano bench. Quickly he lifted its lid, stowed the sketch in it, lowered the lid, and sat on it.

    “Go on, Derry,” prompted Gareth mildly. “Ageing paramours. Stepdaughter.”

    “I’ve just explained! The Stepdaughter is Amaryllis’s!” he said crossly.

    “So does she take one of the Daughter’s rejected suitors?’ asked David kindly. “Adam McIntyre, perhaps?” he added, less kindly.

    “No. She’s too young.”

    “Also, you see, this leaves the way open for The Captain’s Daughter II, The Sequel,” explained Harry with relish.

    “I don’t make sequels,” he said , looking down his nose.

    “No? In that case, why not marry the both of them off? Double wedding: glorious climax in acres of white lace and twin-barrelled bras,” suggested David, beginning to play We’re Just Two Girls From Little Rock. “You know, the sisters thing,” he said, modulating into Sisters.

    “We are not reprising the whole of White Christmas,” said Derry evilly.

    David raised his eyebrows slightly. He merged into a medley from White Christmas. Gradually he introduced My Heart Belongs To Daddy and The Good Ship Lollipop.

    “That isn't bad,” admitted Bernie.

    Eventually Derry said on a weak note: “No, stop, David. Um, well, we might have a glimpse of Sisters in the title credits.”

    “Gray Whatsisname was damned funny in that in their tap show,” admitted Bernie, grinning. He offered David a sketch but the composer shuddered and shook his head. Grinning, Bernie turned over and began another.

    “Is that it, Derry?” said David mildly.

    “We haven’t finalised the songs, yet,” replied the Great Director, frowning.

    “No, I meant is that it for the plot?”

    “More or less. The plot isn't the point.”

    “No, I gathered that,” he said mildly.

    Derry glared suspiciously but David continued to look mild. “No, well, dear boy, it’s the feel I want to get,” he said, lapsing into an expansive tone. “Double-barrelled bras, as you say, combined with loads of seething repression and the determination not to give it away before the ring’s safely on the finger, combined again with languid Singapore nights and bloody crippling high heels with stockings and suspenders and fuck-witted bloody girdles, and the popular music industry churning out lerve songs with the sex roiling and broiling just under the surface, seedy elements of the End of Empire, dust and tight uniforms and no proper air conditioning and bright blue days at sea with fuck-all to do but read the girlie mags and have a quiet wank—see?”

    “More or less, yes,” croaked David limply.

    “Combined with”—in the background Gareth swallowed a sigh—“the seething gentility of the provinces, ballet mums all pushing their kids into the dance shows, tight perms, ambitious little tappers, those horrible competitions that the mums all made the kids go into.”

    “Er—yes. I got the impression that the dance show was set in the present day?”

    “Well, yes, dear, boy, it’s still going on! The show itself will be called something like ‘A Fifties Extravaganza’, we’ll have a shot of their poster—sketch that, Bernie—but one of my points is, how much has society really changed?”

    “The sex is still sex roiling and broiling, though no longer just under the surface?” suggested David feebly.

    “Well, yes, dear boy, but that isn’t the half of it! Girls are still being pushed into stupid shoes and unlikely garments and slathering their faces with crap, boys are still expected to be little men, the popular song industry’s still churning out crap, make that the entirety of the popular media, the Establishment’s still firmly in charge and still putting its citizens into uniform and sending them out to commit mayhem in the name of duty and some imagined political ideal!”

    “Lily Rose’s real husband,” said Gareth in a terrifically neutral voice, “is as we speak sitting off Bosnia—in his huge ship, of course—with his guns trained.”

    “Exactly!” said Derry on a vicious note.

    “Wasn’t that last year?” ventured Harry. “Think he’s in the Middle East now.”

    “My dear boy, it’s all the same!” he cried. “Nationalism, jingoism, defence of the realm, defence of the Empire, territorial expansionism, defence of the Godamighty dollar, call it what you will! It's all part of the brainwashing of the masses that keeps them as the masses and retains the status quo, never mind the icing on the cake!”

    “You’ve got a point,” said David mildly, as the metaphors seemed to be becoming dangerously mixed and the Great Director’s cheeks had taken on a dangerously purple hue.

    “Of course!” he cried, sitting back and crossing his arms.

    David thought about it. A slow smile spread across his thin, sardonic face.

    “See?” said Derry, very, very mildly.

    “Yes, I do see, Derry. But can even you bring it off?”

    “Can we, David? It has to be a collaborative effort!”

    “Mm. Well, bitter experience has taught me that any sort of vision will inevitably get lost in the minutiae of daily wrangles…”

    “But my dearest boy, we pull it all together in the end!” he cried. “Remember the day you conducted your entire score for Ilya, My Brother right through? What a triumph!”

    David eyed him wryly. He had conducted it right through, yes. Only to discover that there had been something wrong with Double Dee Productions’ hired sound studio’s recording equipment that day.

    “David,” said Derry urgently, possibly recalling that day with greater clarity, “there’s no-one but you who could possibly combine the popular melodies of the Fifties with something that will convey the darker side of my vision!”

    “Thanks,” he said drily. He could have named half a dozen, all far more experienced with film music than he was.

    “I don’t want anything slick,” said Derry, frowning.

    “Er—no. Oh, I see, that was a compliment, was it? Thanks again.”

    “So you will come on board, dear fellow?”

    “Only on condition that if I disagree with the way you cut my music about in the end, Derry, my name comes off the credits.”

    “No! I mean, you won’t, dear boy! Am I capable of cutting your wonderful music about, for God's sake?”

    “No, but you’re more than capable of hiring a competent hack to do it for you. That’s my condition, Derry. And I decide what constitutes disagreement,” he added drily.

    “Well, I—What do you think, Gareth?”

    Gareth rubbed his chin. “No indemnity?” he said.

    “What?” replied David blankly.

    “David, you should have your agent here,” warned Bernie.

    “Haven’t got one. Well, one of the big agencies in London handles things like concert bookings, not that they’re thick on the ground. They don’t do film work.”

    “I’d ask their advice, nevertheless.”

    “I think you should,” agreed Gareth calmly. “Derry, if we don’t do it right, he could sue us or God knows what,” he warned.

    “Very well, then. But have I got your agreement in principle, David?” he asked with terrific earnestness.

    “If that’s worth anything—”

    “But of course! My dear man! Of course!”

    “Then yes, you have my agreement in principle, subject to the contract being agreed by both parties,” said David on a sardonic note.

    Ignoring this note, the Great Director surged to his feet and held out his hand.

    David rose, looking dry, and let his be engulfed.

    “Just be glad he isn’t kissing you,” advised Harry. “On both cheeks, mate. –He only gives ladies the bacio dei baci, so you can be thankful for that, too.”

    “Mate,” agreed Bernie. “Here: Souvenir de Mortefontaine, or some such.” He handed David a sketch of his house. Underneath it was inscribed the legend “The Captain’s Singapore Bungalow, Adelaide, Australia, July 2001.”

    “Thanks ever so,” said David faintly. “Looking forward to working with you again, Bernie. And you, Harry, mate.”

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” agreed Harry, nevertheless wringing his hand. “Varley Knollys is a right pain in the arse, mind,” he warned.

    “Well, yes; I have read Simeon’s Quest,” murmured David.

    Harry nodded feelingly. “And Tinseltown, CA?”

    “Uh-huh.”

    Harry winked. “Got it. You’re prepared, then.”

    “As much as one could be, Harry. And may I say, I’m very glad I’m not in your shoes?”

    Harry winked again, and nodded.

    “Well, that’s that for the time being,” said Gareth on a brisk note. “You’d better give me your agent’s contact details, David.” He handed him his notebook and his biro. David wrote obediently. “We’ll be in touch. And I'll send you copies of the sheet music of all the songs on our list.”

    “He needs to get the feel of them, Gareth!” said Derry crossly. “Send him the videos of the shows, for God’s sake, don’t be so penny-pinching!”

    “Derry, he hasn’t got a telly,” Miff reminded him.

    “Oh. Well, buy him one, Gareth.”

    “Thanks,” said David drily. “I’d quite like the sheet music as well, Gareth.”

    “Very well. Um, anything else? Records?”

    David raised his eyebrows. “Of those not already preserved for posterity on re-recorded celluloid?—By the way, I’ll need a player for those, too, won’t I?—Um, no, don’t bother with records, I’ve got pals in the industry, think they might find a few more than your people will. And if you have any recordings of your stars performing, I’d better have copes of those, too. I’d like to knew what I’m up against. Oh—whose voice are you going to use for Euan’s?”

    “No-one’s,” said Derry with immense dignity. “Stars opening and shutting their mouths out of synch with lyrics they couldn’t sing to save their lives are not my bag, I do assure you.”

    At this Bernie and Harry went into strangled hysterics and Miff gave a whoop that was half horror, half delight. Even Gareth smiled slightly.

    “I see,” said David drily. “There was a reference or thirteen there that I missed.—Don’t bother to enlighten me, thanks, it won’t mean a thing to me.—Right: no leading male songs. Dear me, that simplifies things, doesn’t it?”

    “We may—I say may—consider having a voice-over. Dean Martin, possibly,” said Derry.

    “Why?” asked David limply.

    “I like his voice. Always makes me imagine I’m a chocolate éclair being slowly smothered with warm cream,” said the Great Director, licking his lips.

    “My God! Why did I ask?” he gasped.

    Derry gave him a sardonic glance. “Serve you right. But it does: my shrink used to tell me I was far too focussed on oral satisfaction, until I told him where to put it.”

    “What did he tell you then, that you were far too anal?”

    “Could have said anything—I’d walked out by then. No, well, possibly Dean Martin, so you might like to investigate his Fifties stuff.”

    “Derry, the royalties—” began Gareth,

    “Just be thankful I'm not a Sinatra fan. Well, I like his early stuff. Can’t stand the later years—well, the voice had gone, of course. But if I’m having a male voice, it’ll be Dino.”

    “I’ll get right onto it,” said David feebly.

    “I’d wait for the contract, old mate,” advised Harry.

    “Nonsense, Harry! I’m quite sure David doesn’t imagine we came all this way only to reject him!”

    David eyed him drily. “You may well reject me, once you’ve heard what I want for the job.”

    The Great Director waved a hand. “Discuss all that with Gareth and Lucas, dear fellow.”

    “Twice what I got last time, Gareth,” said David blandly.

    Ignoring the Great Director’s choking fit, Gareth replied grimly: ”Why?”

    “I could say because Fifties songs are much harder to string together into something approaching a score than Tchaikovsky and the odd Russian Volk melody. And equally I could mention vocal scores on top of orchestral ones. But actually, Gareth, the only reason is, that that’s my price this time round. Period. I won’t starve if I don’t get the work.”

    “What will you do with the money if you do get it?” asked Harry with simple curiosity.

    “Might buy a boat,” he said in a vague voice.

    “Dear fellow, get rid of this dump, come over to France and buy a decent villa—the place next to mine’s up for sale—and buy a boat there!” urged Derry.

    “The mistral couldn’t be more miserable than winter in Adelaide, that’s true. I’ll think about it,” he said smiling. “A cottage if not a villa.”

    “Wonderful! Expect your father will be pleased to see you back in Europe!” he beamed.

    David gave him a dry look. “You expect wrong. But I would like to be nearer Mother. Without actually being in Greece at the mercy of the match-making aunties!” he added with a laugh in his voice.

    “Naturally, dear boy! Well, Corfu’s nice, Adam’s got a pleasant little place there.”

    “Not my scene,” said David with a grimace. “No, well, I will think seriously about the South of France.”

    “Good!”

    “Provided you pay me my price,” he added very drily indeed.

    “Of course! Gareth, dear fellow, I shall speak to Lucas if he kicks up,” he said grandly.

    Heavily Gareth conceded: “It’s your show. Now, we’d better be getting back, we mustn’t miss our Sydney connection.”

    And with more hand shakes all round, they took themselves off.

    In the limo Derry was in an ebullient mood, rubbing his hands together and congratulating the company on a day well spent.

    “Never thought he’d do it!” admitted Harry.

    “Harry, dear boy,” said Derry heavily, “why do you imagine he agreed to see us?”

    “Uh—well, knowing him, could have been spite.”

    “Nonsense. I’m not denying he’d be capable of malice—but not pointless spite. In the first place, he wouldn’t lower himself, and in the second place, he’d never make the effort.”

    “That’s true,” Harry conceded. “Will he make the effort to maintain an interest in the film, though?”

    “He’ll have to, or be in breach of his contract,” replied the Great Director calmly. “No, well, we’ll give him a staff—that little girl he liked last time, Gareth.”

    “Uh, the girl who helped with the orchestration? Derry, she was a Czech,” he reminded him uneasily.

    “What does that signify, dear fellow? Pop her on a plane from Prague!”

    “But will she know anything about American popular music of the Fifties?”

    “Doesn’t matter: he does. All she has to do is ginger him up when he’s getting bored, like last time.”

    “If you say so.”

    “I do say so. She had it down to a fine art. When he couldn’t stand the Tchaikovsky she’d bring up a folk song and when he said he never wanted to hear another wailing piece of so-called authentic Volk crap in his life, she’d drag him back to the classical stuff, or suggest he do a bit of his own, or something! And we've got the money!” he reminded him with a deep chuckle.

    Gareth smiled. “Mm.”

    “What?” said Bernie blankly. “If I ask for so much as a crayon, you blast me with figures!”

    “That’s a different budget line,” said Gareth smugly. “We’re relying on you to overspend later, Bernie, can't let you run mad now. Well, Derry does tend to have five different versions of each set built, it’s got to be accounted for somewhere in the budget.”

    “And he doesn’t have five different versions of the music for every scene, of course!”

    “No, I don’t,” he said with dignity.

    Harry gave a gasp. “That bloody scene beside the Dnieper or whatever that damned stream was meant to be—”

    “That was an exception,” he said with dignity. “And hopping cygnets, may I remind you, were not in my original concept.”

    “It did go quite well with the water tumbling over the rocks,” noted Bernie fairly.

    “Only if one could empty one’s mind entirely of the picture of fucking hopping CYGNETS!”

    “You’re right: no-one who recognised the tune could possibly have done that, and as the thing wasn’t created for the great unwashed who wouldn't recognise the tune, it was a silly idea,” conceded Bernie. Rapidly he drew a picture of hopping cygnets, and showed it to Harry. They both collapsed in wheezing sniggers.

    “Ooh, show me!” cried Miff. Obligingly Harry passed it to her. She collapsed in wheezing giggles.

    “That apart,” said Harry weakly, mopping his eyes—“boy, that’s done me good—that apart, why is the music budget suddenly so elastic?”

    For a moment no-one spoke. The Gareth said neutrally: “Go on, Derry.”

    “You agreed to it!”

    “Technically I think you did. Well,” admitted Gareth reluctantly, “we budgeted for three times what he got for the last—”

    “What?” cried Miff in horror.

    “A musical’s a much more complicated business, Miff, and he’s had the experience, now.”

    “Then why didn’t you offer it to him? –Derry!” she cried accusingly. “Why didn't you offer it to the poor man?”

    “I think he was warned to consult his agent,” replied Derry, very dry. “No, well, he’s happy. It won’t run to a villa, mind you, but then, he doesn't want one, does he? And there are some nice cottages round our way.”

    “Or, in the back of beyond,” noted Bernie. “Won’t he have to buy a car as well?”

    “Possibly, but does it matter what he does with the money?” said the Great Director in a very bored voice.

    “Yes!” cried Miff.

    “Only to those with hearts, Derry,” allowed Bernie. “And while we’re on the subject, how serious were you with all that deep significance, brainwashing of the masses, how much has society really changed, etcetera stuff?”

    For a moment Derry did not reply. In fact the silence was long enough for Harry and Bernie to wonder what lie he was formulating.

    Then he said: “As serious as I ever am, I suppose, Bernie. There was nothing untrue in what I said. And them as like to read deep significance into everything I do may well interpret it that way. In fact, when I feel so inclined, I interpret it that way. On the other hand, I’d also like to create a damn good show with some bloody good old songs before the generation that still remembers them has gone. And Lily Rose is the ideal vehicle for the concept. Tits, bum, pizzazz, the ability to put over a song, and that perfect hair and complexion.” He sighed deeply. “If he was another man I might just have described it as homage to the dumb blonde, but I don't think that would have gone down too well. He’s both too cynical and too naïve to appreciate it.”

    “Both?” said Miff in a tiny voice.

    “Of course.”

    “Mm, I think you're right,” agreed Bernie.

    “Absolutely,” agreed Harry. “Uh—you want any of that to creep into the dialogue, Derry?”

    “No, no, don't want to be obvious.”

    “Good, thought not,” said the writer with satisfaction. “Tell you what, when Lily Rose rushes home and has her bath after the row with Euan on the beach, we might show her struggling with the suspenders and stockings as she gets dressed.”

    “Good idea. The blatant sexual exploitation will successfully conceal any inner message from all but the most dedicated archaeologist of inner meaning,” said Derry, yawning. “Professional students of Ther Kinemah, that sort of irritating moron.”

    “If they’re halfway male I think it might conceal it even from them!” said Bernie with a laugh. “Well, now we know where we are, don’t we?”

    “Something like that,” conceded the Great Director, with another yawn.

    “Not really,” objected Miff. “Why did he want to do it in the first place?”

    “Uh—yeah, why did he?” agreed Harry. “He is a classical composer, after all.”

    “More broke than he was letting on?” suggested Gareth.

    Derry had leaned back and closed his eyes. “Besotted with Lily Rose,” he said.

    “Hardly, Derry,” said Harry on a weak note. “He only saw the show because of the aunt next-door, and when she moved he didn’t even go out and buy himself a telly.”

    “One can think of at least ten caveats to that statement, Harry, but I’m not interested enough to raise them,” noted Derry with his eyes closed. “My other suggestion would be he wanted to make a commercial success with me, but I realise you’re all going to rubbish that. And as a matter of fact I don’t believe it myself.”

    The entourage exchanged disconcerted glances. Finally Miff squeaked: “Then what do you believe?”

    “I said. Besotted. Can you types shut up and let me get some shut-eye? I was up at crack of dawn.”

    Even though they all knew that Derry had immense amounts of energy and was more than capable of a full day’s work on four hours’ sleep, they were obediently silent. No-one, however, was entirely satisfied with his explanation.

    The limo had long since rounded the corner and disappeared. David sighed, and went slowly into his bedroom. There he sat down heavily on the bed and put his head in his hands. After some considerable time he straightened, and looked at the package on the beside table. It contained the story outline which he had claimed never to have received.

    “So much for the horse’s mouth,” he said. “And just how much of that was genuine?” His lip curled. “Very little, I imagine.”

    He flipped through the outline until he reached a photocopy of one of Bernie’s drawings: a close-up of Lily Rose Rayne, laughing, with a sailor’s cap tilted rakishly on her curls. It was, David now recognised, based on the newspaper photograph of her on the sub. He stared at it for some time.

    Then he closed the outline, stood up, frowning, opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet and took out a creased Polaroid. It was a smudged photo of Dot Mallory in a crumpled tee-shirt and baggy shorts, presented by Kate McHale before she moved house, on God knew what impulse.

    “Damned fool,” he muttered. He replaced the snap, picked up the outline, and walked firmly into the sitting-room, where he sat down at the piano and became immediately immersed in an intricate Fifties medley.