Like Stout Cortez

7

Like Stout Cortez

    The Sydney Morning Star had got hold of a rumour which they were sure—almost sure—was an exclusive. Given that it had come from Julianne who helped out on Reception when Melanie was rushed off her feet and they were almost sure she was too dumb to rush off and flog it to the other papers or The Bulletin, less crucial, it was a weekly, or, horrors, the TV channels. After a certain amount of steely-eyed interrogation by Jim Hopkins in person they were satisfied it was an almost reliable rumour and Julianne was allowed to wiggle off on her high-heels to her allotted task, or, it being very nearly almost ten in the morning, tea-break.

    “If it’s true and the TV’s got hold of it—” began Ann Kitchener thoughtfully.

    “Yes!”

    Ann shrugged.

    “Won’t matter, the public’ll expect us to run it anyway,” noted the photographer, Tony Giorgiadis, helpfully.

    “Yes!”

    Tony shrugged and inserted a fresh piece of gum.

    “Get out there,” ordered their Editor evilly, “and by cripes if it’s true you’ll get an interview with him or die in the attempt!”

    Shrugging, Ann and Tony departed for Kingsford Smith. As usual Ann’s heap seemed to be the appointed heap, why was it always her mingy and completely insufficient petrol allowance that got used up on these fruitless, make that fruitless and pointless, expeditions, and her that had to spend the hours filling in the logbook and the Expenses (Travel) Claims bloody forms?

    “What if it’s true but we don’t get an interview with him?” wondered Tony thoughtfully as they sped, make that crawled, behind an incipient traffic jam, Jesus!—crawled off to the airport and the possible, well, rumoured arrival of Ther Grate Fillum Director Derry Dawlish in Person.

    “We tell Jim he never arrived at all, whaddareya?” she snarled, eyes on the road. Well, on the fucking great truck that had materialised from nowhere and was crawling along in front of them at approximately 5K per hour. “MOVE IT!”

    Shrugging, Tony relapsed into silence and chewing.

    Kingsford Smith was almost in sight, well, they’d seen one low-flying Jumbo, put it like that, and some of the original snarl of traffic had turned off to other parts only to be replaced by incoming traffic from still other parts or possibly the same parts, who cared, when he offered: “If he does turn up but he won’t give us an interview and the other Press are there after all—”

    “Yes!”

    More silence and chewing.

    “Hey, what if it’s like that time Lily Rose Rayne—”

    “YES! Shut UP!”

    Shrugging, Tony relapsed into chewing and a certain amount of fiddling with his equipment.

    After quite some time, it having dawned that the huge traffic jam in front of them was an actual traffic jam and not just the usual Sydney traffic speeding to the airport, Ann offered pacifically, or almost pacifically, given the traffic and the state of her petrol allowance: “That was a one-off. I mean, how many times are we gonna have a temp working for us whose dumb brother works with Lily Rose’s brother?”

    “Dumb brother,” he corrected calmly, fiddling with his equipment.

    “Yes! Are you deaf?”

    “No, I meant that her brother’s dumb, too.”

    “There is no evidence— On second thoughts, you are so right!”

    Smiling slightly, Tony fiddled with his equipment.

    “Qantas,” said Ann through her teeth.

    “Eh? Aw! Yeah! Go on, tell us.”

    Ann sighed but gave in, and let him have it from the jaded old horse’s toothless mug itself. Given that, talking of mugs, it had been her that had been the mug that had got sent out to investigate the rumour that Lily Rose Rayne in Person was arriving at Kingsford Smith, coming out to visit her mum and dad, well, that was likely, she was an Aussie, after all, at such and such an approximate time. Flying Qantas. Unfortunately no-one had verified this rumour with the actual Qantas (possibly because all Aussies automatically assumed that one flew Qantas) before Ann and a photographer, one Bill Evans, a certified dickhead but weren’t they all, were dispatched, driving Guess What, to the airport. There were plenty of Qantas flights due and one actually landing, from which they narrowly observed, make that she, Ann, narrowly observed all the passengers coming off, not just the First Class ones that got tenderly ushered off first, the answer being a lemon. Mr Evans’s contribution was the snide remark that they’d come the other way, via the Pacific and New Zealand, and had stopped off for a lovely honeymoon—Lily Rose’s wedding to her Real Captain having very recently been splashed across any form of media you cared to name—in Rotorua. To which Ann’s response—unwise response, as it would turn out—had been “Hah, bloody hah.”

    So after an exhausted sit-down and a smoke, whether legal or not in the precise spot, and an unspeakable polystyrene cup of unspeakable airport coffee, she had decided that, never mind her cretinous companion who thought he was funny, she might as well check out the incoming flights from EnZed. There weren’t any, so that was all right. Then the cretin had offered: “What if they flew Air New Zealand or British Airways?” To which Ann had of course snarled: “Whatsername’s brother swore the brother said it was Qantas, you nit!” Mr Evans had wondered airily what his word was worth—either of their words—and after a considerable amount of heavy breathing they had staggered off in search of a monitor which might show them what other, non-Qantas flights were due. Not easy, as they were in the Qantas terminal at the time. And to cut a very long and painful epic short, there had been an Air New Zealand flight, it had cleared Customs and Baggage Claim back around—well, around the time Ann and Mr Evans sat down for their smoko, put it like that.

    So Ann had turned on the charm with an Air New Zealand check-in lady with absolutely nothing to do, given that that had been It for either incoming or outgoing for today, and she had revealed, giggling, that actually she supposed it was all right to tell Ann now, because the flight was through, and actually Lily Rose Rayne had been on it, only under her married name, and she and Freda—not visible at the time of speaking—had seen her when she came off, she was wearing a really gorgeous fur coat! As at the time of speaking it was April and stinkingly humid Ann had very nearly almost dismissed the whole of this speech as a lie. Except that the female hadn’t looked or sounded nearly intelligent enough to tell that circumstantial a lie. Added to which she was wearing that genuine smirk of the satisfied rubber-necker who’s actually seen the celebrity, no mistaking that. After a short confab with Mr Evans, who was no help at all, typical of his breed, they had been able to confirm the facts that they had no note of Lily Rose Rayne’s real name and/or parents’ name and that Ann’s bloody mobile phone had died AGAIN.

    “Yeah,” agreed Tony placidly, chewing, “that was the way I heard it.”

    “Then why did you ask? And stop fiddling with your equipment!”

    Blinking slightly, he stopped. “Um, wanted it from the horse’s mouth? Um, so didja phone the office and find out the parents’ name and address?”

    “Yes,” she sighed. “Also finding out in the process that no-one at the airport will change a two-dollar coin unless one purchases, take your pick, a Milky Bar, an unspeakable cup of coffee—”

    “Yeah, yeah.”

    “Or a rental car.”

    “Hah, hah. So ya went out to their place, eh?”

    “Tony, if you know this story, why don’t you tell it?” she sighed.

    “I don’t know it.”

    Breathing heavily, Ann responded: “All right, you asked for it. We went out to her parents’ place, it was the right address, for a miracle, and the drive only took just over two hours, for a miracle.”

    “From the office?”

    “No! From the fucking airport!”

    He just nodded placidly, chewing.

    “So when we got there this dickhead in floral bathers answered the gate, chew—”

    “But there were no other media there, eh?”

    “No! –Chewing.”

    “Yeah, I got that,” he said placidly, chewing, hadn’t got the point.

    Ann took a deep breath. “Yeah. And admitted it was the right place only she wasn’t giving interviews today, we’d have to come back tomorrow, she was doing a photo op at eleven.”

    “Did he actually call it that?”

    “What? Yes! What’s it matter?”

    “Just checking. So didja get it out of him whether he had thought it was Qantas?”

    She eyed him evilly. “You know the answer to that, Tony, don’t you?”

    “No! And keep your eyes on the road!”

    “For what?” she sighed, staring glumly at the truck’s stationary back end. “If you must have it, bloody Bill Evans asked him if he’d thought it was Qantas and he shouted: ‘Yeah, what’s it to ya? The dickheads never told us it was Air New Zealand!’ We concluded he was genuine.”

    Tony collapsed in happy sniggers, nodding.

    Ann sighed. “Yeah. So that was that. Well, we scouted round the place: they had one of those giant cream-rendered walls, about ten feet high, three and half metres, if you insist, no way to get over it without a scaling ladder, and the gate had one of those electronic security systems where you have to punch in the number.”

    “I see, that’s why you said he answered the gate, not the front door.”

    “Yes! So we tried the neighbours, ya wanna hear what joy we got there?”

    “Yes, thanks,” he said placidly, chewing.

    Ann breathed heavily, but admitted that on the one side it was a perky little retired fellow who introduced himself as Tony O’Reardon and she never had liked the name Tony—Mr Giorgiadis merely grinned. Mr O’Reardon furnished them with the unwanted information that he’d sired seven kids, all grown up now, and currently had ten grandkids with another one on the way, plus the information that although it might technically be possible—yes, the old bugger actually said “technically”—to put a ladder against the wall on their side and let Mr Evans get up it with his camera, in the first place there was nothing to see because that was the side of their new wing, see, no garden on that side and they’d had to get special planning permission to put it up—Mr Giorgiadis’s face at this point in her narrative beginning to take on an agonised expression, Ann was glad to see—and in the second place the gent who was Lily Rose’s dad would reliably sue the pants off him if he let them, and the old bugger did say “reliably”, yes.

    “I geddit,” said Mr Giorgiadis calmly, chewing. “So didja try the other side?”

    “Well, Tony,” said Ann sweetly, “what would you have done?”

    “Go! The lights have changed!’

    “Eh? Shit!” They shot forward, only to brake sickeningly.

    “Sorry. As I was saying, what would you have done, given that the sarky old bugger had just told us that next-doors on that side had got a Rottweiler in for the duration?”

    “Sent Bill Evans in to see if it was true.”

    “Hah, hah,” she said weakly.

    “Was it?”

    “I got as far as a metre from the front gate and heard the barking, so I assumed it was true.”

    “What about round the back?” he produced brightly.

    “We did drive round the block, yeah. And round and round and round, eventually concluding that it was impossible to determine which of the misshapen sections back there backed on to Lily Rose’s mum and dad’s misshapen section. If any.”

    “Leave it out, Ann, it wasn’t me that sent you out!”

    “True. Sorry, Tony. Then or now: no.”

    He sighed. “Whaddaya bet he won’t be there?”

    “Mm? Oh: Derry Dawlish? I never bet, Tony. But if you like to give me ten dollars on the assumption he will be there, I’ll let you give me ten more if he isn’t.”

    “Hah, hah,” he noted sourly, relapsing into silence and chewing.

    They got there. There were no incoming flights from Britain but on the other hand, although Derry Dawlish was English, he could have been coming via the States, yes, Tony, across the Pacific with a stop-off at Rotorua, or he could have taken a flight from Britain to Singapore and stopped over to buy some duty-frees and then taken the Singapore Airlines flight, true, or he could even have come down from Tokyo, having been there for reasons which were anyone’s guess but not impossible, no, Tony— All right, she would leave it out.

    “Now what?” he said aggrievedly as they mopped their brows in the usual streaming humid heat of your typical international terminal, never mind if it was a freezing winter’s day outside.

    “Smoko? Coffee break to you.”

    They had one of those.

    “Jim Hopkins’ll kill you,” he predicted confidently.

    “Look, we looked!” she snarled.

    “And asked, yeah. Nevertheless.” –He was right, of course.

    “There aren’t any other Press around.” she noted.

    “No, ’cos this was an exclusive,” he replied brilliantly.

    “Oh, go to sleep again!”

    Tony brooded over his empty polystyrene cup, eventually producing: “Could we ring the studio?”

     “Eh?” replied Ann blankly.

    “The studio,” he elaborated brightly. Ann continued to stare blankly at him. “Like, his studio.” She stared blankly. “Film studio!”

    “Film—” Ann took very deep breath. “His production company’s Double Dee Productions, right?”

    “Um, yeah. Is it? Yeah.”

    “They do not own any film studios in Sydney,” she explained sweetly.

    “Nuh—Uh—Oh. No, um, say we ring the studios, he might of booked to use their facilities, y’know?” he produced brightly.

    In that case all the media would have received unending Press releases boasting about it, they would have been inundated with Press releases— Oh, what the Hell. Anything was worth trying. For a wonder her mobile wasn’t dead and the office did actually find the number for her before the next millennium ticked over. So she rang them. No joy, but they were very happy to tell her what was scheduled and to send the office unending faxes and—Yeah. Like that.

    “Satisfied?”

    “Um, ye-ah… Well, yeah, only it’s a really peculiar sort of rumour if he isn’t coming, Ann!”

    Ann was about to wither him but on second thoughts, he was right. She stared at him, frowning.

    “You’ve got contacts at the big hotels!” he urged.

    Contacts that would divulge that the answer was a lemon for a price, yes. “Yeah, but my expense account isn’t elastic, rumour to the contrary. Added to which, cash money not being transferable into their sticky little paws over the phone, we’ll have to get round and see them in person, and my petrol allowance isn’t elastic, either.”

    “That was my best shot,” he replied simply.

    Ann stared at him with narrowed eyes. Which was the hotel that a celeb like Derry Dawlish was most likely to stay at, given that he’d arrived, putatively arrived, without any of the usual fanfare? Uh…

    “Where’d he stay last time?”

    “Shut up, Tony, I’m thinking.”

    He waited. “Well?”

    Ann got up. “It’ll either be the Hyatt or not. And don’t ask me to shout you lunch at any of them, thanks.”

    “Go Dutch?” he said meekly, getting up.

    “No. Once we hit the Cross I intend patronising a scruffy little Lebanese takeaway joint. You can do what ya like.”

    “I’ll come with you,” he said happily, hoisting the equipment.

    Ann had been afraid he might—yeah. She mooched on glumly…

    Gee, he wasn’t at the Hyatt, he wasn’t at the exclusive and hugely expensive and hideous new dump at Darling Harbor, he wasn’t at the highly exclusive and hideously expensive little hideaway near The Rocks, he wasn’t at any of the other larger, glitzy taverns in between, and he wasn’t at the ultra-exclusive little hideaway some way down from the Cross and much nearer to Rose Bay that Ann had been secretly convinced he would be at. Well, shit.

    “He can’t of come after all.”

    “That is one possible conclusion, Tony—yep.”

    “Look, Jim Perkins can’t blame you: we checked everywhere!”

    Something like that, yeah.

    He did blame Ann, of course, but then, after exactly half a lifetime as a journo, she hadn't expected anything else. Yes, half a lifetime: she’d started as something that laughably called itself a cub reporter at the age of seventeen, meanwhile doing a half-baked co-called journalism course at an emporium of higher learning. She was now all of thirty-four. And anybody that thought she was tough ought to take a look at Mary (Speedy) Gonzales in the black zoot-suit at the next desk. Cute, she was. A size eight, she was. And elbowed sixteen-stone ABC reporters with giant fuzzy mikes aside like she didn't even see them. The sort that got the P.M.’s eye first in any Press gathering short of your actual House of Representatives where the Press Gallery pecking order reigned supreme, and kept it. That sort of journo. Twenty-three years old and hard as a macadamia nut.

    Quite some time later the hard-bitten staff of The Sydney Morning Star were to discover that Julianne’s intel had been partly correct. The great film director was in Australia, yes. But he wasn’t in Sydney, in fact he wasn’t even in New South Wales, he was in Queensland. And he hadn’t even flown Qantas.

    Over the years Derry Dawlish’s entourage had changed somewhat, as to its specific personnel, but there always was an entourage. In fact, over the last ten years it had grown to something approaching the size of a flotilla. So why the great producer-director had insisted on travelling to the other side of the world with only his Personal Assistant, his valet, one scriptwriter and one concept artist in attendance, was a mystery that was beyond the capacity of any of the little people to solve. Oh, and one Myfanwy Griffiths but, as she was the first to admit, she didn’t count.

    Over the years the specific person of the concept artist had changed but there usually was one, the great D.D. being, according to himself, a very visual director. Visual in that, as his artists had discovered over the years, he pointed to something and said “Draw that” and if it didn’t later appear on the storyboard as he remembered it, screamed at you. This year’s martyr was one, Bernie Anderson, a thinnish, mildish, undistinguished-looking character of medium height with medium-brown hair. He had been in the business for some time and he had worked with D.D. for some years but that didn’t mean he was altogether happy with the present assignment.

    “So what’s the word for today, Miff?” he said cautiously as Myfanwy wandered into the sitting-dining room of the great man’s hotel suite, yawning.

    She sat down at the breakfast table and lifted the cover of a dish. “Ugh! –Don’t ask me, Bernie, he didn’t want me last night.”

    Bernie smiled weakly. Not that D.D. had ever made any secret of his amours, but the entourage had never before struck anything quite as, um, forthright was probably the word, as Myfanwy Griffiths. A child of Nature, you could say. She was around five-foot-eleven, and one of those genuinely blonde Welshwomen, few and far between, true, but nevertheless still to be found in their native hills, or more likely on their native coasts where, it was Bernie Anderson’s considered opinion, their several-greats great-grandmothers must’ve been got at by fleets of Danes blown off course. Nothing else would explain those genuine little pale wisps at the forehead or those very wide, very blue eyes. Though they weren’t the hard, sparkling blue often seen in Danes and Norwegians, but a softer shade, tending more towards, if you were going to get critical, which of course no red-blooded male was on sighting Myfanwy Griffiths, forget-me-not. The skin was the colour of dark honey and Bernie Anderson’s Aunty Janet had the beehives to prove it. The legs reached practically to the armpits and the rest of the bod put one distinctly in mind of Elle (the Body) Macpherson, which wasn’t half bad. The only fly in the ointment being that it was all Derry Dawlish’s exclusive property.

    “That’s kedgeree, Miff,” he explained kindly. “Er, well, Spicy Colombo Fish Pullao, according to the hotel, but we’ve verified empirically it’s kedgeree.”

    “Ugh, did Derry order it?”:

    “He must have. We certainly didn’t, did we, Gareth?”

    The great director’s martyred P.A. shook his head glumly. One might have assumed, given the name, combined with the glorious Ms Griffiths, that D.D. was having a Welsh phase. Well, he’d had a Scotch phase, his first big success, years back, and the obligatory very mystic Nepalese phase, not a success in that all of the crew bar none had come down with tummy-bugs and the thing had gone millions of dollars over budget and the critics had panned it, and a bleak desert phase, and a sort of South Seas phase that had resulted in the Midsummer Night’s Dream which the critics had panned but the public had adored, and very recently a very ethnic Old Russian phase—actually filmed in Prague, but the costumes had been very authentic (and very, very expensive)—so why not a Welsh phase? But he wasn’t, it was merely a coincidence and Gareth’s surname in fact was Parker.

    Miff inspected another dish. “What’s this?”

    “We think it’s some sort of scrambled egg,” said Gareth glumly.

    “Ye-es… What are these little red bits, though?”

    “We think they’re red pepper. Um, capsicum?” offered Bernie glumly.

    “Ugh! In scrambled egg?”

    “Yes. And before you ask, neither of us ordered it.”

    “Or any of it,” explained Gareth glumly.

    Even though Gareth Parker was gay and Bernie Anderson, for his sins, was hetero and unattached and, or so it had been claimed in the dim, distant past, not completely unattractive to the opposite sex, Miff favoured them both impartially with the wide, blinding smile that had first attracted Derry—well, combined with the legs and tits, be fair. Bernie swallowed a sigh.

    “Order something else!” she said brightly.

    “Try,” replied Gareth glumly.

    “Yes. –Hold on, take a look at the Room Service menu,” said Bernie, holding it out.

    Miff took it, smiling. After a while the smile faded.

    “Quite. We think that that,” said Bernie, nodding at the red-speckled scrambled egg, “is the Eggs Marimba Olé.”

    “Ye-es… It must be, it can’t be the Egg Salad Tahitienne, because it isn’t a salad. Or the Husky Fried Eggs and Steak, because they’re not fried, and anyway, there’s no steak.”

    “And no husky,” agreed Gareth sourly. “Oh, I agree, Miff!” he said quickly to the puzzled frown. “Eggs Marimba Olé is what they are.”

    “Yes, only is the ‘Olé’ part of the name?” she asked on a plaintive note.

    Oddly enough Gareth gulped, failed to control himself, and broke down in sniggers at this point.

    Bernie swallowed hard. “She’s got a very logical mind, you know that, Gareth. –The evidence would tend to support it, Miff.”

    She stared hard at the menu. “Ye-es…”

    “None of the other dishes have got anything approaching a, um, a comment,” added Bernie on a weak note.

    Gareth went into renewed sniggers.

    “Don’t laugh, idiot,” said Miff amiably. “It could be a comment; like, to encourage you to buy them, see?”

    “Ab-so-lute-ly!” he gasped, collapsing in positive hysterics. Bernie gave in and also collapsed in hysterics.

    Miff merely waited until they were over the worst of them. “Anyway,” she said serenely, “everything here looks just as bad. I mean, the King Prawn Omelette Royale sounds lovely, only not for breakfast.”

    “Quite,” agreed Bernie, wiping his eyes. “Well, uh, there’s plenty of tropical fruit, Miff, that’d be light.”

    “I’d avoid the Thai Spiced Papaya, though,” warned Gareth, blowing his nose.

    “I like papaya, we had it at those lovely people’s house in Honolulu, remember?” she said, beaming.

    “Thai Spiced’ll mean very hot chilli,” he explained kindly.

    “Ugh, then I won’t have that! On lovely tropical fruit? They must be mad!”

    “The evidence of the scrambled egg, olé or not, would tend to support that, Miff,” said Bernie solemnly.

    She favoured him with the smile again.—Blind as well as blinding, concluded Bernie glumly.—“Yes!”

    “There isn’t any toast,” noted Gareth glumly.

    Miff laid the menu down. “No. Where are we?”

    It was a fair question, they’d travelled for hours in the pitch dark last night, bundling in and out of ever-smaller aeroplanes and then a succession of limos. “The Sunshine Coast,” said Gareth heavily.

    She looked uncertainly at the huge plate-glass windows of Derry’s palatial suite. “But it’s raining.”

    “We think it might possibly be characterised as more of a continuous tropical mizzle,” said Bernie heavily.

    “I’d call it rain.”

    He looked at the windows. She was right: the continuous tropical mizzle had thickened into rain. The view was about the same shade of grey, though. “You’re right.”

    “The Sunshine Coast,” said Gareth heavily, “is in Queensland, Miff.”

    “Ye-es… We’re not back in California, are we?”

    Gareth’s mouth open and shut silently.

    “No. –Well, she was asleep for most of that last leg,” Bernie reminded him. “Make that, those last three legs. And that shade of grey does bear a close resemblance to LA smog. –No, we are in Australia, Miff, which was where Derry set out for some three millennia back, you may just recall.”

    “Silly,” she said comfortably.

    Yeah, wasn’t he? Bernie swallowed a sigh. “Mm. Uh, this bit of it’s sort of northerly and tropical. That’ll be warm rain out there. Warmish,” he said with a wince as it beat against the pane.

    “Possibly depending on the wind speed,” noted Gareth sourly. “This bit’s actually called the Sunshine Coast, see?”

    “Yes,” she said, nodding the blonde mop.

    –The hair was just in a big fat plait reaching nearly to the waist. And when she brushed it out— No, a fellow didn’t want to contemplate that at crack of dawn in the tropical Australian wasteland! Not before his breakfast. Since she was now looking at him Bernie croaked: “What are you looking at me like that for?”

    “I was just wondering,” she said in a very lowered voice, “if this was where Derry wanted to come?”

    Good question. Gareth and Bernie exchanged cautious glances. Finally, since the Great Panjandrum’s P.A. wasn’t offering, Bernie admitted: “We think so. Put it like this: when we got here the hotel had a booking for us. But I very much doubt if it’ll turn out to be where he wanted to come, if you get my drift.”

    She nodded hard.

    “It’ll be like that time in Belarus,” noted Gareth.

    Bernie shuddered all over. “You are so right!”

    “Was that bad?” asked Miff kindly.

    Gareth leant forward. “Unspeakable, dear! Well, the caviar was the one bright spot, but in spite of his stomach, it didn’t count for anything in the face of—”

    He was off. They all ate out of Miff’s hand, never mind the sexual orientation. The thing was, she actually listened, and what was more, she liked people, irrespective of their station in life or the aforesaid orientation. Glumly Bernie got up and drifted over to the phone.

    “Hullo, Room Service,” he said glumly when they answered. “This is Mr Dawlish’s suite. Um, yes, everything’s satisfactory, thanks. But could we order some more, please?” Of course they could! Yeah, right, but would it be edible when it came? He ordered the Fruit Salad Tropicala, the Pineapple Macadamia Surprise, though aware it’d probably be more like a norful shock, and, on the assumption they couldn’t possibly do anything truly frightful to grapefruit, the Vie En Rose Grapefruit, having to pronounce it “enn” rose before they got it. And a plate of plain toast? They were sorry but they didn’t do toast. The Crussonts Barrier Reef were very tasty. Bernie didn’t ask, he just said no thanks, just the fruit, then. Oh, and a glass of orange j— Very well, then, Blush Orange Tropicala, and, um, what other sort of fruit juices did they— The Kiwi Mango Combo was slightly what? Oh, sorry, the “Slightly Spritzy” was part of its name, was it?—Behind him Gareth had stopped talking and gone into a sniggering fit.—Um, no, well, just the orange, um, the um, yes, Blush Orange Tropicala and the fruit, thanks.

    “Something coming for you, Miff, but I’m damned if I know what,” he reported glumly, sinking back into his seat.

    “Yes! Thank you, Bernie!” she squeaked, going off in gales of giggles.

    “Mushed up kiwis and mangoes eked out with soda water?” suggested Gareth, grinning.

    “No! That was the one I didn’t order! And shut—up.”

    “In that case, orange and cranberry with a small slice of pineapple on the ri—”

    “I thought I told you to shut up?” he groaned.

    “I bet it is!” squeaked Miff. “Isn’t this fun?”

    Something like that—yeah.

    Bernie had returned to the menu and was just pointing out that he very much doubted that “Tropicala” was a word in any language and Gareth was giving Miff many more horrific details of the time Derry went to Belarus, when the door opened to admit, not Room Service with Miff’s breakfast, but something unshaven in a flowing tropical, make that Tropicala shirt.

    “Hullo,” it said modestly.

    “Harry, take that shirt away and put it out of its misery—please,” responded Bernie.

    “He’s wearing it on purpose to annoy,” explained Gareth, looking down his straight nose at him.

    Harry Strachan was a very gifted scriptwriter, which in the opinion of his colleagues didn’t entirely justify Derry’s keeping him on the payroll. At least he was good-natured and not given to fits of hysteria, unlike all other writers Bernie Anderson had ever met. On the other hand, he was an indefatigable poseur, the chief pose being that of the elephant’s child, difficult to take in anything that had cut its milk teeth and very difficult indeed to take in a burly, broken-nosed character of around thirty-six. He had been at Oxford, Bernie Anderson’s own alma mater, where he’d got a respectable Second, unlike Bernie, who’d given it away the minute he turned twenty-one and gone off to art school instead, to the horror of his entire family; but in Bernie’s opinion that didn’t justify anything. And certainly not the breezy camaraderie turn which he all too often put on.

    “Oh, rats, dear boy, when in Rome!” he responded breezily, inspecting the kedgeree dish. “Ooh, yum, kedgeree!” Under their starting eyes he helped himself to a large plateful and sat down with it.

    “Harry, it’s, um, like fish and rice curry,” said Miff faintly as vast mouthfuls of it began to disappear.

    Harry nodded happily round it.

    “It’s an act. Ignore it,” said Bernie heavily.

    She looked uncertainly from Harry to the other two.

    “Well, yes, it is. When we filmed that thing in Cambridge, Mass.,” explained Gareth, “before your time, Miff, love, he went all button-down-collared.”

    Miff goggled at the unshaven, luminous-shirted Harry.

    “Uh unshoy,” he said thickly, swallowing. “Sorry. I enjoy conforming slavishly to the norms of wherever I happen to be. It helps me to get the ambience. Y’know?”

    “Is the redundant interrogative ‘y’know’ an Australian usage?” responded Bernie evilly.

    “Almost definitely not, in the same breath as ‘ambience’,” noted Gareth sourly.

    “Sure to be, old man, they’ve picked up almost everything else from the Yanks. Ooh, that looks interesting!” he said brightly as, at last, Room Service, responding to Bernie’s desperate cry of “Come in!” wheeled a trolley full of glowing, in fact luminous tropical offerings into the room.

    “What’s this?” croaked Bernie faintly, indicating the huge crystal bowl perched on top of a huge silver goblet of ice. He certainly hadn’t ordered a towering, um, tower, of um, pale pink spun sugar?

    “Candy sugar;” explained Harry helpfully.

    “Americanised cretin,” returned Bernie quickly.

    “It’s only sitting in it,” reported Miff, peering closely at it. “Thanks ever so,” she said to the waiter. This produced no reaction from anybody so she said loudly: “Gareth! Tip this poor boy!” and the Great Director’s P.A. came to with a jump and fulfilled his essential task. “Hang on!” she said just as the waiter was escaping. “What is this, please?”

    The “poor boy”, who was a tanned blond hunk of about twenty-three and thus very possibly, though none of the entourage knew Miff’s exact age, older than she was, very visibly fell under the spell of the blinding smile and replied happily in his native vernacular, dropping the servile bit for the nonce: “Yeah, it does look funny, eh? That’s the Vee Enn Rose Grapefruit.”

    “Who was V.N. Rose?” murmured Harry to his colleagues, momentarily ceasing to masticate kedgeree.

    “Shut up,” warned Bernie, sotto voce.

    “An Indian horticulturist?”

    “Shut—up!” he hissed through his teeth.

    “See, what they do is, they freeze it up, like, an ice cream, y’know?” continued the waiter happily.

    “See?” said Harry smugly, apropos the redundant interrogative.

    “I see!” cried Miff. Harry, Bernie was not displeased to see, jumped slightly.

    “Yeah. We keep them in the Room Service freezer like that, ya see, and then we just put them into the candyfloss when someone orders them. –Ya don’t have to eat that if ya don’t wannoo, most of them don’t,” he explained kindly.

    “Of course. But I like it.”

    “Yeah, me too.”

    Before Miff could invite the waiter to sit down and tell her what the rest of the stuff was, or possibly to join them for the rest of their stay in the country, Bernie got up and said quickly: “Thanks very much. We’ll manage now, thanks. Come on, Miff, grab a glass of, uh, orange juice.”

    “Orange and cranberry, that is,” said the waiter on a confidential note.—Gareth gave a triumphant crow which he tried unsuccessfully to turn into a cough—“See, the orange juice is Aussie, only the cranberry, that’s American, they mix them up in the kitchen, that’s what makes it look sorta reddish.”

    “Or Blush Orange, we presume,” said Bernie sweetly.

    “Eh? Is it? Thought it was Bush Orange, meself,” he said cheerfully.

    “It’s ‘Blush’ on the menu,” explained Miff helpfully.

    “Yes. Miff!” said Bernie loudly. “Choose something and sit down, he’ll be here any time and all Hell can reliably be expected to break loose.”

    “The minute he sights the kedgeree, very probably,” noted Gareth, looking hard at the waiter.

    “I’ll try this,” decided Miff, taking the grapefruit ice and spun sugar tower. “Ooh! –Cold,” she explained, smiling at the waiter.

    Bernie gave in entirely. “My dear young man,” he said kindly, taking the startled boy’s arm in a grip of iron, “thank you for bringing us these tropical delights. Let me show you out.”

    “Um, yeah, um, sorry!” he said with a startled laugh. “Um, well, got everything ya want, then?”

    “No, we want toast,” said Gareth evilly.

    “Yeah—no. We don’t do toast,” he said uneasily, edging towards the door.

    “So we understand,” agreed Bernie. “That’s one of the points that our boss is very shortly going to explode over. Do you want to bear the brunt of it? –No,” he discovered as the young man, with a silly laugh, at last took himself off.

    “Really, Miff!” said Gareth on an exasperated note as the door closed and Bernie tottered back to the table.

    “I didn’t do anything,” she replied calmly. “Ooh, this is an ice! It’s really peculiar!”

    “Yes. Possibly technically a sorbet,” responded Bernie, sinking onto his chair. “Try the pineapple thing.”

    Miff got up and approached the trolley. “Um… this?”

   “Yes,” agreed Bernie, not looking.

    “Bernie, it’s smothered in, um, stuff,” said Gareth uneasily.

    “I’ll have it!” offered Harry cheerfully.

    “The stuff is possibly slivered macadamia nuts,” said Bernie, not looking.

    “I don’t think so,” reported Miff, sitting down with it.

    “Not unless slivered macadamia nuts are bright green, Downunder,” noted Harry with relish. “Hand it over, Miff, I’ll—”

    “Um, no, it’s not bad,” she said valiantly. “I think there is some pineapple, underneath. Um, and some bits of, um, I think they’re bits of nut.”

    “Scrape it all off and just eat the pineapple,” said Gareth briskly.

    Obediently she scraped it all off and tackled the pineapple. “Ooh, it’s nice pineapple, I think it’s fresh!”

    “It bloody well ought to be; don’t they grow the damned things here?” replied Bernie heavily. “What’s the orange juice like?”

    “Um, nice,” she lied, trying to smile.

    “Have some coffee instead. And don’t worry about your caffeine intake, I don’t think it’s heard of caffeine.”

    “I’m sure it hasn’t,” agreed Gareth sourly. “My metabolism can’t cope without toast. Do you suppose we might find a café that sells it if we forage?”

    “Dependzh how far from shivilisation we are,” noted Harry through the kedgeree, as Miff was looking dubious and Bernie seemed to be ignoring the question completely.

    Sourly Gareth concluded: “That settles that, then.”

    Silence fell, apart from the sounds of Harry shovelling in scrambled egg and red pepper on top of kedgeree and of Miff trying to extract sliced pineapple from under mounds of green stuff in a polite manner.

    Harry was just tackling Miff’s discarded grapefruit ice and Bernie was desperately pouring himself a third cup of non-caffeinated brown fluid when the door opened and in he came.

    Any devoted follower of the Cinema would be able to tell you that Derry Dawlish, in the Year 2001, looked very much the same as he had when his Scotch epic first dazzled the eyes of the Art House devotees some twenty to thirty years back. In fact any follower of the Chat Show would be able to tell you that he looked like one of those opera singers. Big, with a black beard. The Three Tenors, yes. He wasn’t a tenor, more a sort of rumbling bass-baritone, at least as to the speaking voice, the current entourage having mercifully been spared the dubious pleasure of hearing Derry sing. At the precise moment he was a big, black-bearded bass-baritone in a horribly genial mood.

    “Well, well, well! Here we all are!” Rubbing the hands together.

    “In body if not spirit,” noted Gareth sourly. “There’s no toast.”

    “Then order some, dear boy!”

    “That’s what I mean, Derry. You can’t order it.”

    “Then come out of that conservative shell of yours, Gareth, and order something you wouldn’t have at home with your mum in outer Watford.”

    As Derry well knew, Gareth had several years back moved his Mum to a much choicer house in a much choicer situation. “Ruislip!” he responded crossly, bristling.

    “Mm? Oh, Ruislip, of course. –Lucia,” he said arcanely to Harry. “Dreadful pity it’s been done so recently on the box.”

    Harry brightened. “Not that recently.”

    “No, dear boy.”

    “But I love Lucia!”

    “We all love Lucia, Harry, but is she Big Screen box office?” he responded with horrible geniality. “No, alas,” he answered himself calmly.

    “Is Thirties tap combined with Fifties pointed bras and Fifties morality as the Fleet swelters in Singapore any sort of box office?” retorted Bernie sourly.

    “Bernie, dear, what on earth’s the matter?”

    “For a start, Derry, there’s no toast and the coffee’s appalling. Then if you’d take the trouble to glance out of the window, you’d see there’s no view of tropical Queensland.”

    “Oh, that’ll clear!” he said breezily, not looking. “What have we here?”

    His entourage watched eagerly as he lifted the lid of the dish that had held the kedgeree. And as the face fell.

    “Harry ate it,” explained Bernie, cheering up. “It was kedgeree. That other dish held scrambled eggs with red peppers. He ate that, too.”

    “What?”

    “Eggs Marimba—Olé!” replied Bernie and Gareth in chorus. They looked at each other and grinned.

    “Order some more,” suggested Harry, getting up and investigating the trolley. “Did someone order fruit salad?”

    “Yes. Is it?” replied Bernie without hope.

    “Judge for yourself.” He placed it proudly on the table. There was a short silence.

    “That’s a piece of banana leaf it’s sitting in,” explained Harry helpfully.

    “It’s got pineapple in it,” offered Miff. “The pineapple’s nice, Derry.”

    “That’s good, Sweetness. I'll try some.” He reached for it…

    They watched in awe.

    Finally Bernie croaked: “What was that?” as a sort of slimy white spoonful of, um, something slimy, disappeared down the maw.

    “Mm? Think they call them pine nuts, dear boy.”

    “Derry, pine nuts are pignoli!” said Gareth loudly.

    “Mm? No, don’t mean that. Something tropical. Palm nuts!” he produced proudly. “I’ve had them before. Forget where.”

    “Have you had those pinkish cubes before?” asked Gareth faintly.

    “Mm.” He swallowed. “Mm. Some sort of papaya. Not quite ripe. Think this,” he said, spearing something white and thin, “is a slice of star fruit.” He engulfed it. “Mm. Think so. Not quite ripe.”

    “All right!” said Bernie loudly. “I give in, Derry! What the devil’s that spiky thing sitting on top of the leaves on the top of it?”

    Derry removed it carefully. “The leaves are Kafir lime, you cretin. It’s a rambutan, of course. Had millions of them when I was in Indonesia. And Malaysia, come to think of it. God knows why they’re using it for decoration.”

    They watched numbly as he peeled the spiky outer integument off…

    “I’ve had something like that in Hong Kong,” admitted Gareth weakly.

    “Uh,” replied the great man, swallowing. “Possibly. Might’ve been a lychee, very similar texture. Grow like weeds in China. Probably grow like weeds here, too, but the Australians won’t have had the nous to cultivate them. ‘Should Australians peel lychees, John Howard says No, ’Cos no-one but a Chinaman would stoop so low!’” he chanted.

    “That dates you,” acknowledged Harry weakly.

    “Old but good,” he said smugly.

    “Not in your version, however. And who the Hell’s John Howard?” croaked Bernie.

    “The Prime Minister of Australia, what world do you live in?” responded the Great Director amiably.

    Bernie blinked. “Oh, beg your pardon, I’m sure.”

    “I looked it up for him before we left,” said Gareth heavily.

    “Synopsis. Always gives me more than I ask for, though, damn him,” explained the Great Director, pushing the plate away. “Not bad. Could have been better. Those jackfruit slices were tinned. What did you have, Pumpkin?”

    Automatically responding to this appellation, Miff explained: “The pineapple thing, Derry. It wasn’t bad, but it had some funny stuff on top of it. Why don’t you try the kedgeree? Harry liked it.”

    “I might. Where’s the menu?’

    They waited resignedly while Derry studied the menu, read choicer bits out of the menu and hesitated over what sounded exotic but would be inedible and what sounded exotic and might be edible. No-one bothered to say “Been there, done that.” In the end he settled for the kedgeree and the scrambled eggs but some of them had been expecting that.

    “So what’s on the agenda for today?” he said brightly, having got himself round all of the scrambled eggs and half the kedgeree and having poured them all fresh cups of coffee, unasked and unasking.

    Resignedly Gareth produced the agenda, noting: “Not toast, unfortunately.”

    Derry shovelled in kedgeree, ignoring that. “This dump’s hopeless, of course, but we knew that.”

    “Added to which it’s smothered in grey murk!” said Bernie loudly.

    “It’ll clear. But we don’t want Nineties Aussie resort crap. Though it has its own peculiar appeal,” he said slowly.

    “Drop the inspiration, Derry,” advised Harry quickly. “We have to get this one off the ground first.”

    “Does it appeal, though?”

    “No. Steve Martin did something very similar. Venice, California, I think. No? Roller blades? Still no? Road signs?” he said clearly.

    “Oh! That! Not one of his best. The road sign stuff was bloody fey.”—Those of the entourage who had been exposed to the Scotch epic managed not to blink. Just.—“But he’s damn good at what he does. No, but it didn’t have the peculiar mixture of down-home and not quite authentic Americana that the Australians achieve.”

    “All right, then, make a note of it, Gareth,” said Harry on a resigned note. “Regardless of the fact that the Australians have doubtless done it for themselves a million times and that no-one in the entire universe will recognise that the Americana isn’t quite authentic,” he murmured, winking at Bernie.

    “Least of all the Australians,” he agreed drily.

    Derry just waited calmly until Harry was over the sniggering fit. “Never reject an idea out of hand, dear boy. One never knows.”

    “No. If Brian Hendricks had rejected the Captain’s Daughter idea out of hand, he’d never have made the series!” agreed Miff eagerly.

    Bernie, Gareth and Harry eyed the Great Director uneasily: was he about to explode, given that he claimed that most of the inspiration for that, certainly the more inspired parts of it, was his own? But the geniality didn’t falter, phew.

    “Exactly, Pettikins!”

    They watched resignedly as he shovelled in kedgeree. After a while Gareth noted: “The limo is here, given that you ordered it for eight-thirty.”

    “Let it wait!” he said breezily.

    “Australia’s a big country, Derry,” said Bernie uneasily. “How far is it to this Big Rock Bay?”

    “No idea. Ask Gareth.”

    Everyone looked at Gareth. Sourly he reported that according to the cretin he’d spoken to long-distance they would do it easy in a morning. Which was why, if Derry recalled, he, Derry, had decreed that the limo be ordered for eight-thirty. And did he remember that time they went to Alice Springs? The others hadn’t been with him, then: they looked at Gareth with interest.

    As nobody was speaking Derry was forced to say: “What about it?”

    “He wanted to go to Ayers Rock,” Gareth explained. “You know, it’s a big, um—”

    “Rock,” said Derry blandly.

    “Monolith,” he said, glaring. “Right in the middle of the desert, what they call the Red Centre. The cretins at the hotel desk said it was quite near and we’d do it easy in a morning and booked us into a tour. It turned out it left at six in the morning and got back at one in the morning.”

    “He’s not talking about looped space, before you ask,” said Derry blandly, leaning back in his chair—it creaked ominously, Queensland hotel dining chairs obviously didn’t expect to cater for something the size and shape of a Sherman tank—and patting the beard with his napkin. “We wanted a one-day tour and technically it did it within the twenty-four hours: satisfied the criterion.”

    “Derry, in order to get there by around noon, we had to leave at six!”

    “Technically satisfying the criterion of a morning,” said Harry with a wink at Bernie. “Shall we go? Unless you’d like another plate of kedgeree, Derry?”

    The Great Director was unmoved. “No, that was plenty, thanks. Miff, dear, better pop into something more suitable, mm?”

    Miff looked down dubiously at her glorious person, glad in a glowing tropical sarong she’d acquired in Hawaii. “I thought you said it’d be just like Hawaii?”

    “That was before he copped a gander,” said Harry with relish, “at the grey murk outside. I’d say, safari suit. Long shorts, military shirt with plenty of pockets. Desert boots.”

    “I haven’t got anything like that,” she said uncertainly, looking from him to Derry.

    “Where did you get that one?” demanded the Great Director of Harry.

    “There was one just like it in the lobby last night,” admitted Bernie with a sigh.

    “What? Not that dame!—A Yank, bet you fifty to one.—No, the expression.”

    “He made it up,” said Bernie, smothering a yawn. “Sorry: jet-lag.”

    “I didn’t make it up at all. I heard someone use it at the airport yesterday. One of the airports,” Harry amended on a weak note.

    “Well, just don’t let it creep into My Script,” ordered the great Director heaving himself up. “Find out what the temperature is outside, Gareth; use some nous, for God’s sake!”

    Shrugging, Gareth went to the phone. “No-one’s ever asked them that before,” he reported at last. “The forecast was for twenty-seven degrees. I’d assume that’s Celsius.”

    There was a short pause. Certain people looked sideways at the grey murk outside the windows.

    “Somebody go downstairs, and outside, and find out,” said the Great Director wearily.

    “Yeah. I'll do it,“ said Bernie, vanishing.

     There was a short silence.

    “What in God’s name’s the matter with him?” asked Derry wearily.

    Gareth glanced at Miff and said nothing. Harry cleared his throat.

    “Well?”

    “Well, you know what he is, Derry,” said Harry on an uneasy note, not looking at Miff. “This murk means that any snaps he takes won’t come out and there won’t be anything much to sketch. No tropical beaches of the sort you ordered, at any rate.”

    “Is that all? It’ll clear!” he said breezily.

    “And there wasn’t any toast; I don’t think he ate anything,” said Miff.

    Harry had jumped slightly. “Uh—yeah,” he admitted.

    “More fool him,” said the Great Director cheerfully. “I’m going to clean my teeth. And let me know what the final word on the weather is, thanks.” He vanished.

    “Five’ll get you ten,” said Harry grimly, “that while we’ve been suffering in here with the Colombian Kedgeree and the Ruined Marimba Eggs, bloody Pommery will have been out, found a nice little caff, and stuffed himself with toast, eggs and bacon!”

    Pommery was Derry’s valet. Reputed to be a genius with hair. (And beard, one presumed.) The pronunciation was “Pummrih” but no-one but Harry brought it off with anything like the fruitiness it apparently required. None of the entourage knew what he was or where he came from. He wasn’t an old retainer, far from it, though he certainly behaved like it. He had had a temporary post with Derry about five years back when Derry had been on one of his Hollywood jaunts and, or such was the claim, in desperate need of valeting, and had grabbed the opportunity to ingratiate himself. Harry’s and Bernie’s theory was that he was an unsuccessful English actor who, like not a few of his kind, had turned to the valeting and butlering thing that was in great demand around Hollywood, Beverly Hills and that neck of the got-so-much-they-don’t-know-what-to-chuck-it-away-on-next woods. He certainly did seem to be English, though from what precise area or precise stratum of society none of the entourage, to the annoyance of some, had as yet been able to determine. The accents seemed to come and go at will; Derry claimed he found this entertaining but it was fair to say that nobody else did. As for his age… Possibly not more than thirty-five. According to Gareth his references checked out. And that was all they knew of him. Except that he was the sort who could be relied upon to fall on his feet.

    The report being that that was Celsius, the party was enabled to set off. With the exception of Pommery, who bowed Derry out of the suite with a smirk on his face and the words: “’Ave fun, guv’nor.” His Tom Courtenay thing—correct. Nobody remarked on it, it’d only encourage him.

    Several aeons later they stood in the grey murk of what the limo driver claimed was Big Rock Bay—how he would know, having managed to get lost three times, nobody was asking—and which Derry had confirmed joyfully was Big Rock Bay: look, that was the charming villa the Youngs had told him about, the snap was in the portfolio, Gareth!

    “Is it?” muttered Harry as the Great Director strode forward and stood facing the breaking grey murk of what was presumably the Pacific, his Hawaiian shirt flapping in the breeze and his voluminous cream trousers positively snapping in the breeze.

    “I’m looking!” They waited in silence while Derry stared at the Pacific and Gareth sorted laboriously through the giant portfolio, muttering under his breath. “Locations… Here.”

    Bernie and Harry peered dubiously over his shoulders. After quite some time Bernie admitted: “I suppose it could be a snap of that broken-down dump over there. In its heyday.”

    “Ye-es…” Harry squinted at the broken-down dump. The Pacific breeze had removed a lot of paint from it since the Youngs had taken their snap. “When was it, again, that Derry met these Youngs and fell in love with this snap?”

    “They’re friends of those people he knows in New Zealand,” said Gareth heavily. “He first met them years ago, when he made the Dream with Adam McIntyre and Georgy Harris. Um… Well, I’m not sure. Last time he was out there with Adam, I suppose.”

    “Before or after he decided to make The Captain’s Daughter or die in the attempt?” asked Bernie, squinting from the snap to the tumbledown dump. The lines were the same, true. Given that a piece of the roof had apparently fallen in during the interval between the Youngs’ snap and today.

    Gareth was observed to squirm. “Um… Well, he is always on the hunt for locations… Well, before. Must have been.”

    There was a short silence, during which Harry and Bernie might have been heard to breathe heavily, if the Pacific breeze hadn’t been whipping and snapping quite so hard.

    “That sort of, um, bush, um, that’s lost its leaves, that must’ve been this flowering shrub,” offered Miff weakly.

    “Lost its leaves and died, I think, Miff,” agreed Bernie kindly. “You’re right. Oh, well: slap a coat of tropical white on it, truck in a load of frangipani and those other things, it’ll look as likely a Fifties Singaporean hideout as any other broken-down Australian bungalow.”

    “It has got a verandah,” she offered.

    “True. A rotted verandah, ’ud be my bet,” said Harry cheerfully.

    Miff bit her lip. “Mm.”

    “Is it white ants they have in these parts?” asked Bernie with a laugh in his voice.

    “Think so!” agreed Harry. They looked at each other and grinned.

    Miff gave a relieved smile. “Derry seems to like it.”

    They all looked at Derry, shirt flapping and whipping, trousers whipping and snapping, as he faced the rolling grey Pacific…

    “‘With eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific,’” murmured Harry.

    Bernie collapsed in splutters, gasping: “Yes! Just what I was thinking! Stout Cortez to the life!”

    “‘Silent upon a peak in Darien’,” agreed Gareth, giving in and grinning. “Yes. It’ll be hopeless, of course: this dump’s miles from anywhere, and so far we haven’t been able to find out who owns it, if anybody, and ten to one they get this grey murk for three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and he hasn’t even signed the principals, yet, but at least if it’s what he wants he’ll start off happy.”

    “Mm,” agreed Bernie, sketching. “It could look reasonable… Do the interiors in the studio, of course. What about the harbour, Gareth? I mean, there is the small point of the British Fleet, isn’t there?”

    “Yes. Well, he and Brian Hendricks have spoken to their contact at the Admiralty, and you know they let Brian shoot backgrounds on one of their big warships, uh, last summer, think it was. We can shoot on board for the closer shots, and we can always build anything we need in the studio. And, um, we think, well, we’ve got an agreement in principle, that the Australian Navy’ll give us a frigate.”

    There was a short silence.

    “A frigate,” said Harry faintly.

    “It’s an old one: they’re decommissioning it!” he said quickly.

    “I get it. Who’s going to pay to have it trucked round to where his great brain decrees it’s got to be?”

    Gareth made a face. “Us, of course. Well, sailed round. Well, we’re hoping they’ll, um, park it, um, sorry, moor it, for us in a suitable spot. Hang on.” The pages of the portfolio turned.

    “Singapore before the Japs invaded,” discerned Harry drily.

    “It’s a start! Hang on. Here. Don’t ask me where he got these!” he said quickly.

    They stared at the undoubtedly genuine Fifties box Brownie snaps of the Fleet, well, some of it, moored at Singapore.

    “Somebody’s aunty?” hazarded Harry faintly at last.

    “Something like that. At least they’re genuine!”

    “Er—mm. Well, you could fake up a, um, wharf, is it? A jetty? And, um, well, there’s a bay right in front of it us, park it out there and um, shoot it…” Harry gave up.

    “Shoot it from behind a banana palm, it’ll look authentic as anything!” said Bernie with a laugh. “Hang on…” He sketched quickly. “Here.”

    Harry and Miff goggled numbly at the very authentic sketch of H.M.S. Whatever, steam up, peeping coyly from behind a frond of tropical banana palm.

    “Good,” said Gareth with satisfaction, wrenching the sketch-pad off him, ripping off the sketch, and inserting it into the plastic cover of the portfolio leaf that already held the aunty’s souvenirs.

    “Any time,” replied Bernie weakly.

    “Are there any banana palms around here?” asked Miff limply.

    “They do grow in Queensland,” Bernie assured her.

    “Oh, good! Derry’ll like that! I’ll tell him!” They watched dubiously as she ran over the silver sand and grabbed Stout Cortez’s arm.

    “He seems happy,” concluded Bernie.

    “Wouldn’t you be?” retorted Harry with feeling, eyeing Miff leaning a tit on Derry’s arm. “Come on: let’s take a closer look at this dump. Inspiration of the Maughamish sort might strike.”

    Obligingly Bernie trudged along at his side, though warning: “I don’t think he wants Maugham, Harry: I think he wants Doris Day with an English accent. You have seen the television series, have you?”

    “Of course, dear boy! All the world has seen Lily Rose! What a stunner!”

    “Mm. Now all he has to do is get her to agree to do the film,” noted Bernie drily. “That expedition last year to her rustic hideaway with the stern Royal Naval type failed miserably, if you recall.”

    “That was Derry’s first attempt, Bernie!” he said with a laugh in his voice. “Ask him how many times he tried to talk Georgy Harris into making the Dream before she agreed!”

    “Didn’t that have a lot to do with Adam McIntyre proposing to her?” said Bernie drily. “I don’t think that’ll work a second time. Given that Lily Rose has married the stern Naval type.”

    Harry smiled a little. “Yes. Derry’s biding his time—did you know she’s having a baby?—Yes. He’s biding his time until it sinks in just how much of their married life the stern Naval type has to spend on his bloody ship.” He raised his untidy eyebrows at him.

    Bernie swallowed. “I see.”

    They had reached the remains of a rudimentary path leading from the beach to the front door of the broken-down bungalow. Harry strode up it and stared at the bungalow with narrowed eyes. Bernie eyed it dubiously. The white ants seemed to have beaten them to the front steps, there wasn’t much of them left. At least it didn't seem to be raised on stilts like many of the Queensland bungalows they’d observed as the limo driver wove his way tortuously out of the town and headed into the hinterland. Though there was a fair basement area, say, three feet. Semi-veiled by broken trellising. Well, the truckloads of tropical shrubs could screen that off.

    “Planter’s punch,” he said in his ear.

    Harry jumped. “Uh—yeah,” he agreed weakly. “Will there be enough light on this verandah for his bloody close-ups before I get carried away and start writing actual dialogue?”

    “Is this leaving aside the point that Your Master’s Voice, Varley Knollys, Call Me God, hasn’t determined yet whom the dialogue will be between?” Harry merely nodded mildly so Bernie continued somewhat weakly: “I’d say there will be, by the time he’s brought the big lamps in, though exactly how they’re going to get them through that tropical rainforest we had to traverse—Ooh!” he ended with a gasp as a shiny Japanese vehicle bumped out of the tropical rainforest and parked neatly on the remains of the bungalow’s lawn.

    “Not Press, surely?” muttered Harry.

    “Uh—don’t think so. No,” decided Bernie, as a slim, dark young woman jumped down from the four-by-four’s passenger seat and a tall, blond lump got down slowly from the driver’s seat.

    “This is it!” she said loudly.

    “Um, yeah. Um, who are they?” he asked cautiously.

    “I’ll ask.” The dark-haired young woman marched over to them. She was clad in what Bernie surmised silently must the local suburban norm: a pair of long shorts, almost knee-length, he seemed to recall they had once been known as Bermuda shorts when he was very, very—er, yes; and a long, loose, brightish pink short-sleeved tee-shirt, worn over the shorts. He was very similar except that his shorts were more crumpled and his tee-shirt was black with a strange logo inscribed on its chest.

    “Hullo. We’re the Bells,” she said.—That ruled out one of Bernie’s surmises, then, which was that the chap’s was a personalised tee-shirt and their surname was Curl.—“Are you interested in the place, too?”

    “Er—not with a view to buying it,” said Bernie limply.

    “No,” agreed Harry. “Harry Strachan,” he explained, sticking out a meaty hand. “My colleague, Bernie Anderson. Good to meet you, Mrs Bell. Our production company’s thinking of renting it for a few months next year.”

    “Possibly,” said Bernie quickly.

    “Yes. You’re not the owners, then?” added Harry with an ingratiating smile.

    The blond lump began: “Nah, it belongs to—”

    “Shut up, Scott,” she said quickly. “We probably will be the owners next year,” she announced grimly. “How long were you wanting it for?”

    “Oh—six weeks to two months?”

    “Harry, the filming alone’ll take that long. There’s the setting up, as well,” murmured Bernie.

    “Say three months.”

    The blond lump began: “Well, what say you rent it and then we take it over—”

    “Shut up, Scott! Let me handle this! What time of year did you have in mind?”

    “We’re not sure,” said Harry with his most charming smile. “Just let me check with the Personal Assistant to the Producer. Gareth!” he bellowed.

    Gareth came hurrying up. “Would you be the owners?”

    “We will be, quite soon,” said the young woman grimly.

    “But Isabelle, we haven’t decided—”

    “Yes, we have. We’re planning to turn it into a motel, it’s already got planning permission because see, that’s a caravan park,” she said, nodding at the wide grassy area which Harry and Bernie had assumed was just grass. “We can do full facilities for you. There’s nothing else round here.”

    “We noticed,” agreed Gareth. “That sounds good, Mrs—?”

    “Bell. Isabelle and Scott.” They shook hands as Gareth introduced himself.

    “There is a pub, back on the main road,” noted Mr Bell temperately.

    “Yeah, if ya wanna travel twenny K or so for ya lunch!” she retorted scornfully.

    “No, we don’t,” agreed Gareth nicely. “Er—well, there are catering companies that specialise in location catering, of course, but, um…” He looked dubiously at deserted Big Rock Bay.

    “Not out here,” stated Mrs Bell firmly. “Well, they might, but they’d charge ya megabucks, that’s for sure, the nearest ones’d be based in Brizzie. We’ll do you a much better deal. And don’t worry, we’ve done catering, we’re used to running a motel. –Give him a card, Scott!”

    Jumping, the blond lump produced several cards and distributed them impartially to Gareth, Harry and Bernie.

    “That sounds good,” said Gareth with a smile. “But we wouldn’t want motel cabins all over the place.”

    “And our boss’d insist on keeping the bungalow, that’s why he wants the place,” explained Bernie, handing Mrs Bell a sketch. “Something like this is the look he fancies, see?”

    “Wow! That's ace!” A cunning look came over her pretty little heart-shaped face. “We were planning on keeping the house anyway, make it the centrepiece of the place, like, these days tourists are looking for something a bit different, not your ordinary motel block. If your boss wants to do it up like that, we can probably do you a real good price.”

    “Yeah. Planters’ chairs and all,” agreed Mr Bell admiringly.

    “What? Oh—yeah. Those’d be fittings, though. Well, we might take them off ya hands,” she said airily.

    “Yeah. Like, we were planning to do the house up and live in it and just run the caravan park for the first year while we got on our feet,” her spouse volunteered, ignoring the scorching glare she was giving him. “So we wouldn’t of put any cabins up anyway.”

    “Excellent!” beamed Gareth. “Well, say next year? Around this time, I think, or a bit later: say, August-September? Unless it’s your hurricane season?”

    The Bells exchanged cautious glances and he admitted it wasn’t usually.

    Gareth then poured on the charm and failed utterly to get the current owner’s name out of them, even the blond lump apparently having grasped the idea that they might be onto a good thing here. And gave in and took them down to the beach to meet Derry, now standing in the lee of what was possibly the big rock, giving Miff, to judge by the gestures, the big picture.

    It was very clear to Bernie and Harry that the Bells had never heard of Derry Dawlish. However, when the words Captain’s Daughter were mentioned Isabelle gasped and cried: “Heck! That’s my friend Dot’s cousin Rosie’s series! Are you gonna made a film of that?” In, apparently, an access of excited awe. This went down terribly well with Derry, who went into his most expansive mood, eventually, as the solid grey murk began to disperse into ragged grey murk with bits of blue sky, inviting the Bells hospitably to join them for lunch, the motel having packed a hamper for them.

    The Bells then admitted they’d brought an esky, this turning out to be a hamper, too, and after a short episode of Isabelle shouting at Scott for having put all that beer in it behind her back, who did he imagine was gonna drink it, and a short episode of Scott ascertaining that the limo driver would prefer to go back to the pub on the main road for his lunch, but wouldn’t say no to a stubbie now, thanks, mate, they sat down to it. Isabelle’s cold bacon and egg pie, made to her mum’s reliable recipe, being voted far and away the most acceptable offering. In fact Derry fed most of his helping of the hotel’s Tropicala Quiche Supreme to the seagulls, Scott thankfully following suit, with the remark that he didn’t mind pineapple on a pizza but he’d never had it in a quiche, before.

    “That went well!” concluded the Great Director as the limo bumped away down the rutted track through the rainforest, leaving the Bells in close confabulation on the front path of the bungalow. –They’d had a key, which had allowed everyone to confirm that the interiors, if dusty and deserted, were solid something which Isabelle Bell had explained was a hardwood. Less delicious to white ants, one could only presume. Or did they not care to gnaw their way— Never mind. The floors were solid. The ceilings were decorated with small lizards and Scott had admitted cautiously to Bernie that there might be a snake or two in the roof and he wasn't volunteering to get up there and see, mate. And in these parts it was a choice between colour steel, like, they used to call it corrugated iron in his dad’s day, that’d only blow away in whole sheets in a tropical cyclone, or tiles. They’d blow away one by one. At the moment she was holding out for tiles, and Guess Who’d be the mug that’d have to replace them when the things did blow off? Only if Bernie’s boss wanted something different maybe he’d like to tell them now? All this in the most good-humoured tone possible, and Bernie could only conclude that those myths about easy-going Aussies were true, after all. Isabelle Bell was an attractive young woman but for himself, he’d have slaughtered the creature within five minutes of having taken the marriage vows.

    “It went well given that there are no facilities within eighty miles of the place,” agreed Gareth.

    “Nonsense, Gareth, Isabelle Bell is a whole fleet of facilities in herself,” drawled Bernie.

    “Yes. Reminded me forcibly of my ex,” noted Harry.

    Bernie winced. He’d thought she might. “Yes. Well, don’t let’s get into that. Gareth’s right, Derry: you’ll have to truck everything in, and is it worth it for a few scenes of the Daughter and whichever male on that dump’s tropical verandah?”

    “And the beach scenes. That beach is ideal!” he beamed.

    “Well, photogenic, I grant you. But any tropical b—”

    “No!” The Great Director was off and running. Big Rock Bay had ambience, he loved the way the shadows from the Big Rock, blah, blah. And the caravan park’d be ideal for the trailers!

    Bernie had been quietly sketching throughout the peroration. He jumped. “Er—mm. Well, a practical consideration, mm.”

    “Yeah. How much of the film are you planning to set there, Derry?” asked Harry baldly.

    The speech in reply went on for some time but in summary he hadn't decided. Typical.

    “Well, how much of it’s going to be set in Singapore?” asked Harry uneasily.

    Derry had a meet set up with Varley Knollys to sort out that very point and finalise the story-line next week as ever was, bah, blah. But they wanted something different, they didn’t want the film to be just a pale echo of the series!

    Why not? The series was dazzlingly, nay blindingly, successful; not just in Britain, where it had topped every audience record except that for Diana’s funeral, but in most of Europe, every English-speaking country except the actual U.S. of A, where it was regarded as more of a cult thing but nevertheless had a slavishly devoted public, in large parts of South America—those parts that could afford TVs—and in Japan.

    “It will offer plenty of opportunities to display Lily Rose in a bathing-suit,” murmured Bernie, sketching. “Voilà!”

    Harry peered. “Cor.” He sniggered slightly.

    Derry peered. “Ah!” Grab, rip! “Put this in the portfolio, Gareth.”

    “Under Lily Rose or Locations?” replied Gareth glumly.

    Usually the Great Director made a great play of being in control of every little aspect of his masterpieces but today he was in such a good mood that he just replied expansively: “Use your judgement, dear boy!”

    Glumly Gareth filed the sketch of Lily Rose’s curves under Locations, subsection Singapore, sub-subsection Big Rock Bay.

    “Um, I don’t want to seem captious,” noted Harry, “but if you want any dialogue, not to say outlines of specific scenes, Derry, you and Varley need to decide P.D.Q. just which boyfriend you want Lily Rose to take in the end. Unless you’re planning to make it a Navy wives epic, Lily Rose on the loose in Singa—No. Well, which?”

    “Euan Keel, of course!” contributed Miff brightly. “I mean, he hasn’t been in it all that much, has he, but I read in a magazine that he’s going to be in the next series, and Lily Rose, I mean the Daughter, is definitely going to get married, and it’s got to be him, hasn’t it, ’cos all those others, they weren’t serious, and the officers, they’re hopeless, well, I like Lieutenant Welwich, but he’s too young and silly, and all the others, they’re gay!”

    “Well said, Miff,” murmured Bernie, trying not to laugh. The Great Director was looking as if he was about to explode, and Gareth’s and Harry’s jaws had dropped. “She’s mixed up the film, dare I say the embryo film, with the series, Derry, and, dare I say it, this is undoubtedly a presage of things to—”

    “NO!” he bellowed.

    “–to come,” finished Bernie calmly.

    The Great Director was seen to take a deep breath and Harry, recovering from his stupefaction, said quickly: “Don’t you remember, Derry, she didn’t come with us to the private screening of Series 4 and the rushes of the Christmas Special. Hendricks was insisting on tight security or some such crap.”

    “I wouldn’t have told anybody anything!” said Miff, nodding hard.

    “Of course not, Sweetness,” the Great Director agreed vaguely, squeezing her knee with a ham-like hand. “No, well, you’ll see Series 4 this autumn.”

    “If we’re in England,” murmured Bernie.

    “Of course we’ll be in England!”

    All right, Derry, they’d be in England.

    “But it is Euan Keel, isn’t?” pursued Miff, perhaps unwisely.

    Harry cleared his throat, whilst simultaneously raising his eyebrows at Bernie. Bernie did his best to ignore him and began to sketch Lily Rose in her Captain’s Daughter wedding dress.

    “No,” said Gareth baldly.

    “But it must be!” she gasped.

    “If you’d read further in that mag,” said Harry, not without a cautious glance at Derry, “you might have read the carefully leaked information that Lily Rose, like all good captains’ daughters, marries a Naval officer.”

    “Yes, of course, I saw the photos of the wedding, she looked lovely!” she beamed.

    Bernie began sketching Lily Rose in the cream velvet suit she’d worn for her real wedding.

    “Pearls,” Derry reminded him tolerantly. Bernie jumped, but added a pearl necklace. “Not that, Pumpkin, you’re thinking of her real wedding. To her real captain. –Haworth. Damned toffee-nosed upper-class holier-than-thou.”

    “Er, yes, we met him,” Harry reminded him uneasily.

    “I think anyone’d have good reason to be toffee-nosed at having his secluded rustic hideaway with his glorious piece of crumpet invaded by us, Derry,” said Bernie fairly, holding out the sketch.

    Derry sniffed slightly. “Wasn’t as low-cut as that. Wishful thinking, Bernie? Show us the other one.”—Silently Bernie turned back to it.—“Ugh. That damned limp-wristed designer of Brian’s.”

    “It was designed for a winter wedding,” said Bernie weakly.

    “Delishimo little Lily Rose in a white velvet tent? The man must be blind! With that skin? White lace,” he ordained, rolling the words ’orribly round his mouth.

    “Very well, white lace, there’s no need positively to dribble,” replied Bernie mildly, sketching. “Somebody please tell her, and put me out of my misery.”

    “Me, too!” admitted Harry with a laugh and a grimace.

    “Tell me what?” said Miff in a bewildered voice.

    “There you are,” said Derry complacently, palpating the knee again. “She’s forgotten all about it.”

    “I haven’t! What?” she cried.

    Gareth sighed. “In the fourth series, that’s the one you’ll see this autumn, Miff, Brian Hendricks has Commander propose to Lily Rose.”

    “But he’s gay!” she gasped.

    “Yes,” agreed Gareth calmly.

    “Shut up, Gareth, you’re a cretin,” said the great Director amiably. “Commander isn’t gay, Mi—”

    “Derry, he is!”

    “No! Just listen!”

    “All right,” she said with a mutinous look on her lovely oval face, “but he’s gay.”

    “Derry—” began Bernie with a laugh in his voice.

    “Shut up!”

    Shrugging, Bernie began sketching Miff in Lily Rose’s Captain’s Daughter wedding dress.

    “Commander is not gay. His character is not gay,” said Derry loudly and clearly.—Harry swallowed a cough.—“Rupy Maynarde, the actor who plays him, is gay. Get it?”

    There was a short silence.

    “No,” said Miff, scowling. “That’s really stupid, Derry!”

    Ouch! Gareth, Bernie and Harry stared fearfully at the Great Director.

    “I quite agree, Pettikins,” he said genially, patting the knee: “a fatuously cretinous decision. They should have made Commander gay and been done with it, I told Brian and Varley that at the time. Well, Maynarde made a damn good fist of Sparkish—was that at the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival? Yes,” he answered himself. “When Euan did Horner. So it was obvious he’d be ideal for the social-climber aspects of Commander. But the thing was, you see, when Lily Rose told Brian she was pulling out of the series— When was that?”

    No-one spoke, everyone having assumed this was just another rhetorical question which the Great Director would immediately answer himself.

    “Um, last January, wasn’t it?” said Harry weakly at last.

    “That’s right, dear boy, of course: they were getting ready to film Series 4. When she told Brian she wanted out, he had to decide how to write her character out. Well, not out, entirely, he’ll have her back for guest spots, of course. Marrying her off was the only option.”

    “But why Commander?” said Miff limply.

    “You just said yourself, Sweetness, all the other officers are hopeless. And he wants Euan back for Series 5, planning to feature that Scotch character of his as the boyfriend, y’see.”

    “Ye-es… How can they do it without Lily Rose, though?”

    “Don’t think they can,” replied the Great Director complacently. “Brian’s lined up some little girl to do the Stepdaughter: sweet little thing, but I doubt if she’ll carry the series.”

    “I see: stepdaughter.” There was a short pause. “But the Captain’s not married, Derry, how can there be a stepdaughter?”

    “He’s going to marry him off to—uh, Amaryllis Nuttall, isn’t it?” recalled Harry hazily.

    “Mm.”

    “Really?” she cried. “Ooh, I like her!”

    Really, Miff all on her ownsome was a gauge of the Great British Public’s taste, wasn’t she? reflected Bernie dreamily, sketching. No need to bother with all those computersful of statistics that Derry and Brian went in for, all that nail-biting studying of the Ratings, etcetera… “What?” he said feebly.

    “I said, she can’t act,” repeated Derry on a complacent note, wrenching the sketch-pad off him and ripping out the sketch of Miff in all her glory, well, in Lily Rose’s glory. “Though you’re quite right, it would take a girl of her height to bring off that damned velvet tent of Brian’s. –Mm?” he said to Miff’s anguished cry of “Don’t tear it up!” “Have it, by all means, dear girl.”

    Gratefully Miff took it. “It’s lovely!” she informed Bernie artlessly. “I look like a model!”

    “Let’s see.” Harry took it. He smiled. “Like a swimsuit model, mm.”

    Bernie began to glare but Miff said happily: “Yes,” so he stopped.

    “Sign it,” murmured Harry.

    Bernie began to glare again: Isabelle Bell had asked him if she could have one of his sketches of the Big Rock Bay bungalow and then had asked him if he’d sign it; but Miff said hopefully: “Would you, Bernie?” So he gave in and signed it. That’d see her grandchildren with a nice little nest-egg. “Eh?” he said, jumping.

    “I said, give that back,” ordered the Great Director.

    Sighing, Bernie handed him his sketch-pad. Derry stared narrowly at the sketch of Lily Rose in a froth of white lace. Finally he said: “It’s too like those dresses Marilyn and Jane Russell wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

    There was a short and guilty silence. Some of those present had been ordered to study all of Marilyn’s movies before embarking on their allotted tasks for The Captain’s Daughter and not all of them had got around to it.

    “True,” said Bernie insouciantly.”—Two of those present relaxed.—“It’s not as rude as that thing Marilyn wore in that thing with Olivier, though.”

    “The Prince and The Showgirl,” said Derry, frowning. “Did you watch it?”

    “With my tongue hanging out,” replied Bernie, sketching rapidly.

    “The navel didn’t really show,” said Derry on a very weak note indeed.

    Harry bent forward eagerly. He dissolved in helpless sniggers.

    “Have it,” said Bernie generously, grinning.

    “Ooh, ta!” he choked, taking it.

    “Shut up, you pair of cretins,” ordered Derry. “What did Lily Rose wear on her head?”

    “Uh, when, Derry?” replied Bernie weakly.

    “At her WEDDING!” he shouted.

    “Nothing, I don’t think,” said Miff helpfully.

    “Not that, Sugar Pie. –In the Christmas Special,” he said to Bernie.

    “Weren’t they still fighting over it? Um, Terry vander Post was holding out for a circlet of white mink, and that new woman they’ve got doing the dresses wanted a circlet of orange blossom, think that was the story.”

    “She’s a cretin, too,” he said disagreeably. “Gareth, make a note to ring Brian, I want to get it straight. –Draw me a close-up of Lily Rose with a circlet of orange blossom,” he ordered.

    Shrugging, Bernie obliged.

    “That’s so clever,” sighed Miff. “I do think he’s clever, don’t you, Derry?”

    “That’s why I hire him,” he replied complacently. “Yes, very sweet. Try the same effect with something more tropical, Bernie.”

    “I will, but remember she’s very short, it’ll look good in close-up but we don’t want her to look like one of those Easter Island hatted figures.”

    “Hah, hah.” He peered. “Are those meant to be frangipani? Too big. Try— Not Singapore orchids. Small frilly orchids.” He watched. “Slightly better.”

    Bernie sighed. “Yes. Now sign her up.”

    “I shall!” he said with horrible confidence.

    Yeah. Maybe. Bernie avoided everyone’s eye and crouched over his sketch-pad. He was aware that Harry was looking studiously out of the window and Gareth was pretending to look studiously into the portfolio. Ouch.